Calling

I cannot deny that I still hate them.

I cannot forget that they were the ones who forsook me when I needed them most.

I cannot remove my need for love and acceptance from them, even when I tell myself that I do not.

But it is something I cannot change.

Professor Dumbledore smiles sadly whenever I arrive at his office, knowing my face is pale and drawn, sheer determination the only thing keeping me from doing something irrevocable. He knows when I have lost control of my faculties and the poker face that I am so proud of.

Whenever I feel the urge to somehow vent the rage and the unhappiness I feel.

It has not fully drained away, and I am not safe from it, because it is part of me. But my dirty blood is part of me. My hatred is me. My anger is me. And every part of their intolerance would have been mine if I had done what I was preparing to do then.

I was so close.

I stood outside their posh, large house, watching them eat dinner in beautiful clothes I had never even been privileged to touch. I had my nose pressed to their window like a beggar drinking in the delights of food by smelling its scent, having been denied the substance itself.

I had my wand with me.

I had rage flowing through my blood, burning through me and razing every single moral that I had left - the little that I had gotten from Hogwarts.

I wanted them to feel like I had so many years ago. Afraid and scared and wondering why no one was coming to save me from all the horrors of the orphanage. And before that I would slowly torture them. Show them just how wonderful being a freak was.

I was on the verge of murder.

Hitler and Grindelwald were both losing then, but I had dreams. I had ambitions that I had no doubt I could fulfill. I would create a new order. To purge what was most evil in the world - Muggles. Their intolerance that had created me. The dirty blood that was me. I would remove it from the wizarding world. And no one would oppose me.

Power. Absolute power. I would never have to grovel again. Instead, others will grovel at my feet. Beg me for mercy.

For a moment I had cherished the hope of calling at their home and seeing them welcome me like a long-lost relative (which I was, only I was abandoned, not lost) who they had loved and thought gone for ages. Perhaps I would have forgiven them.

I urged them to turn their heads. To see me.

Perhaps they would have recoiled in fear.

If I could not be loved I would be feared.

I opened the door. And I walked in.

They stood almost immediately. Strange, I hadn't known I was a lady.

They stared at me.

I smiled. Or rather, smirked.

"Hello, Grandfather," I said softly. "You too, Grandmother."

They were stricken, fear flooding their faces instead of blood.

"Father," I continued, staring accusingly at the man who was half the reason why I was in this blasted excuse of a world.

He looked so much like me.

But he was so different. He was a Muggle. Foul, ignorant creatures who thought they were all-powerful.

"What are you here for?" my grandfather said forcefully, staring me in the eye. "You are no part of our family, wizard."

"You know full well what," I smiled, the smirk on my face becoming a Cheshire Cat size grin. "To punish you."

His face turned ashen. It only made the happiness in my heart grow.

"Kill me," my father spoke up, trembling as he did. He was about to pee his pants, I thought. "If you must. Leave my parents alone."

In his eyes I saw fear.

And I saw love.

The love that I never had.

Because I was a wizard.

Because I was powerful.

And I realised they were just as human as I was. Just as powerful as I could be. As a child I had dreamed of knowing them, but this was not the cozy family reunion I had imagined night after night.

I stared at them once more, memorizing the features that I should rightly have committed to memory along with other happy times.

"You never forgot me," I said quietly. "You always feared I would come back for you."

And then I turned on my heel and left them standing awkwardly at their table, their dinner getting colder.

I could've killed them easily with the Killing Curse that I had perfected.

I did not.

They were what they were. And fear was a dragon not easily vanquished.

They loved each other.

Even if they had not loved me.

I let them live, even though I wanted desperately to kill them then.

But what would have been the use?

They would not love me, still.

They would fear me.

Fear was so much weaker than love was.

I returned to Hogwarts, and I talked to Professor Dumbledore for the first time.

He did not comment on everything evil that I had done.

He simply patted my shoulder comfortingly, and offered me a sweet.

And then he told me about love.

He spoke of a mother's love, a child's love, the innocent love of siblings, the love of friendship, and most of all, that love that so many would have died for. He smiled wisely, and then stared at me penetratingly.

"We all have two families, Tom. The one we are born into and the one we gain over the years."

That night I destroyed the diary I had put my memory into, to enable another to open the Chamber of Secrets.

I burned my secret notes about transformation of features and increment of powers.

I hated the face and the looks I had, but they could be changed by simple magic.

But there was no point doing it.

I am what I am.

I will not become a product of their fear.

That same night I wrote down all my anger and fear and pain. I twisted my story into a tale of fiction, perversely adding the happy ending I had dreamed of for so long. Even if I probably would never get it.

The products of an overactive imagination are amazingly fruitful.

Today I still write. There is still fear and pain and anger and unhappiness in my stories, but there is hope too. And love - the kind that so many people go on looking for even after failing so many times. Not the kind where doves fly into the setting sun and burn their tails off, but the simple, powerful kind. Sharing a cup of tea by the fireplace. Holding hands on a street. Buying a long-admired necklace for a birthday. Smiling at each other over the dinner table when white-haired and old.

I wield power too, but a different kind from the one that I had envisaged myself having.

I write of hope.

Sometimes I sit back in the old recliner that I love to rest in whenever it rains and think about what might have been if I had chosen the other path. Gone to Transylvania and learned the dark magics as I had planned, after leaving death behind me. Become Lord Voldemort, powerful evil wizard. The one who would have purged all impure blood from the world. I think of myself sitting on a throne, with a evil-looking face that I cannot seem to picture, and so substitute with a white mask and red eyes, casting the Cruciatus Curse on my disobedient followers. I laugh every time my fantasy got to that. I never understood why some people were such suckers for pain.

My readers have never understood why I put "the second" behind a perfectly serviceable and interesting penname that also happens to be an anagram of my own name. But I do.

And I suspect Professor Dumbledore does too.

I am still searching for the love that I yearn for, along with so many other people out there.

Perhaps that is why I immortalise that very same feeling in my books. It is my calling - something that hungers from the very depths of my heart.

Poetic. No surprise I am a writer.

My readers and fellow wizards are likely going to look at me very strangely when my little memoir goes on the shelves. They will buy it, and be shocked by what it contains. (I know a few people who would not be, though. That teenager Remus Lupin whom I sponsor at Hogwarts, for one. He lives with me and has gotten used to my crooked mind. And his friend Sirius, who comes over six days a week.)

I am Lord Voldemort.

Tom Marvolo Riddle.

Oddly, also children's book writer and illustrator.

But most of all, wizard. Magic runs in my blood, which is red like everybody else's.

Even Muggles.