In Answer to the Question of "Why?"

In my considerable time of exile - in Albania, of all places - I admit to spending most of my time plotting my murder of Harry Potter and that old fool and Mudblood-lover Albus Dumbledore. I even began fantasizing about the delicious moment of triumph when those two all-important killings sealed my dominance over the entire European wizarding world. Yes, I used to be human; I retain some of the shameful habits, fantasizing included.

Of course, I would give my enemies a final chance to speak their last words before I finished them off with my favorite two words - those being, of course, Avada Kedavra. That led to the question someone, no doubt, would ask: Why did I commit all these dreadful acts of terrorism?

Who would ask? I pondered. Would it be Dumbledore, my Transfiguration teacher, who suspected me from the beginning, and whom, it is said, I - even at the height of my power, when I was the invincible Dark Lord before whom all the world cowered in terror - feared? Would it be some trembling student at Hogwarts whose family members were among my victims? Perhaps Harry Potter himself, the only Boy Who Lived when I decided to kill him, my embarrassingly young archenemy.

I would need an eloquent answer for the benefit of history, which is, of course, written by the victor - namely, me. So I fantasized (that embarrassing human habit again) about the answer I would give to that question: Why?

After much deliberation within myself, I discovered that for all my ramblings, ranting, fantasizing, and tirades; for all my cruel amusement and bitter sarcasm; for the life, death, and somewhere in between of me - I don't know.

There is of course the answer that the informed yet naïve would assume to be true - that my father abandoned my mother before I was born. Yes, she did sacrifice her fortune and her rank in the wizarding world to marry him, handsome, charming, selfish Tom Riddle - so much like me, when I was younger - and he betrayed her love and courage when he found out that she was a witch. Some would think that I killed to avenge her abandonment and mine, and her death before I could know her. A sort of Sweeney Todd story it is (the man who was wrongly imprisoned, his wife raped, and his daughter abducted by a corrupt judge, so he exacted a twisted revenge on the English justice system by killing the aristocrats who came as customers to his barber's chair). Are the flash of my wand and my "Avada Kedavra" the stroke of his razor across their soft, lily-white throats? Is it justice for myself, too late, I seek to mete out when I murder?

Others, innocent, pitying, naïve, would think that my cruelty stems from the abuse I received at the orphanage at which I grew up before the letter from Hogwarts arrived, an angel on white-feathered wings to salvage my sanity...too late, for my beatings taught me no morals, and I grew up an unredeemable sociopath.

And the theory of yet different wizards is that all my evil deeds set up a shield around me that I erected as protection from the horrors of my past - that, determined never again to be the victim, I set out to be the abuser, the soul-killer, the murderer. They say that it was fear, not anger or moral depravity, that spurred my heartless actions; that my name - Voldemort - truly means 'flight from death'; that I evaded death and dealt it like the Fates, like dark Nemesis, from the terror of the wrongs I had known.

"Know thine enemy" is the advice that warriors are given. I know mine very well. I know everything they think of me; I laugh, I brood, I scorn, I consider.

Is it the memories of the wrongs done me that caused me to kill, to maim, to torture, to tear apart lives? You ask: Harry Potter.

What, then, if I did it all merely because I am a power-hungry maniac who enjoys causing pain and murdering? What then, Harry Potter?