Transformation

Tom Riddle used to have a cat. It wasn't his really - what cat is? - but the orphanage acted as an unofficial shelter for the stray cats of the city, and this one was particularly mean except to a few children. Its meow was higher than the toughness of the tabby's face and gait suggested. But he did not meow often, only to enter a room that was closed to him. He spent time in the dormitory in which Tom was assigned. When Tom was doing coursework, he spent time in the dormitory, his back against his bed. The other kids did their work in the courtyard, but Tom like the quiet.

The cat - he had never been named - would shove his nose against the door to push it open so that he could slip in. There would be one meow that would alert Tom to his presence. Sometimes the cat would jump onto the bed in front of Tom, sometimes circling the bed to jump on Tom's, sometimes settling under the bed or next to Tom's legs. They did their best to ignore each other - the cat purred when they ignored each other. If Tom could purr, he might have.

Although Tom did not miss the cat when he went to Hogwarts, the cat missed him, and Tom liked the warmth. After his fifth year, the cat did not come back. Tom supposed it died.

He did not miss the cat, but he missed the warmth.

*

The voice came like a spirit in his head, like a whiff of smoke or incense. He was in his bed behind the curtain. He ignored it at first, dismissed it as exhaustion or stress, but still he heard the whispers of temptation. He knew his predilection for Parseltongue, but this was unlike any speech that he ever heard.

He first thought he was crazy, but he thought that if he was, it was not such a bad thing to be. It swirled through his mind, through his body. It made him hard although it did not bring him pleasure. It called to him. He waited until it grew louder before he obeyed. There was no madness in the voice - there was magic. He felt no qualms in following the voice to its source. It wanted him.

The pipes below were filthy, but he did not see the filth and the bones and the scales. He did not hear the scrambling of the rats or the whispers of snakes in the tongue he recognized. All he could hear was the slow whirl of magic and beauty and murderous longings that sang through his blood.

He saw the golden eyes and did not die. The voice that commanded him told him that it was his to command. The King of Serpents, a basilisk. It had no name but basilisk. Or 'mine.'

Its commanding voice was merely the call - it never called him again, but Tom came to it. Tom commanded it to search for the impure. When the basilisk told Tom that he was impure, Tom inquired how that might be remedied.

The basilisk did not have an answer, but it refused to attack its master, no matter what taint was in his blood.

Tom thought about his blood. About how the taint could be lifted. About whom he could tell the basilisk to eliminate. There were books about blood and life. But he knew who needed to be eliminated. He knew where true magic was, in blood, pure, untainted blood. He had his own talent, but the talent did not come from his father's side - they came from his mother, the daughter many generations from Salazar Slytherin. He only imagined what he could have been had he been given two magical parents rather than one.

He did not shun his Muggle past, although he hated the Muggles who kept him at the orphanage and the Mudbloods who sneered at him, who dared to call him blood traitor for being a half blood in Slytherin, a half blood of Muggle background.

The basilisk did not care to hear his musings. He wanted blood, fresh meat. He wanted what he was created to do - purify Hogwarts as he purified it of rats and mice and other filthy creatures of the underground.

So Tom gave it one taste before shutting the chamber again - he was more concerned for his own welfare. He was more concerned about the future that was slowly becoming clear, so clear. He could see what he would become. He would be purified.

After the chamber closed, all that was left were whispers.

*

He was in a forest. He did not know what forest, and he did not really care. He would find what he wanted here. Or it would find him. It was the same end.

His trunks of all his material possessions were in his robes pocket. His magic was free, and he was free from Hogwarts. Free from twinkling, cold blue eyes, free from the half-giant's tortured looks in his direction (We use' to be friends, Tom, why'd yeh... yeh don' know what yeh did teh me... Shut up, Hagrid. Go away, just go away.), free from the constraints of all the people around him, of simpering fools who pledged their loyalty to him when he returned to Great Britain, of wary students who did not know him and did not want to know him, who were afraid of him.

Here, in this forest, there was simply... Tom. No, not Tom. Voldemort. He was Lord Voldemort now - he could be Lord Voldemort, finally, shed that foul Muggle name.

Become pure.

He paused in his steady stride. There, a clearing, and a tent. He could see from the way that smoke drifted from the tent that this was no Muggle vacationing in the backwoods of Eastern Europe.

This is what I've been looking for. He knew it intuitively, as he knew everything else.

Bracing himself, he reached into his satchel for one of his belongings that had been too delicate to shrink - his offering. He had been given a box of complimentary potions materials, ingredients, and rarities as a present from his Potions Mistress for his innate talent within her class and for his period of Head Boy when he rid the school of the unworthy. She had no idea how right she could have been had he been given free reign with the basilisk.

He held the flask of virgin's blood and tears in his hands, and he shouted to the tent, "I want to talk to the Master."

He heard the response in his head. Do you seek him?

"Yes."

Why do you seek the Master?

"I wish to learn from you."

What do you wish to learn?

"Everything." Tom placed the flask in the palm of his left hand and lifted it with his arm outstretched for the Master to see. "Everything that you can teach me."

What will you sacrifice for this knowledge, Tom Marvolo Riddle?

The liquid within the flask trembled before righting itself.

"All of myself. As payment, I offer this flask of virgin's blood and tears."

Yours?

"No."

Are you pure?

"In body, yes."

There was a long silence. It was this silence that would determine whether the Master would accept him... or whether he would die.

Come in.

The flap of the tent folded up for his entrance into a wizarding cabin.

"You passed through my initial barriers, which means that your intentions are ill. My barriers were once littered with the bodies of dead men, men who wished to know my secrets or to kill me but did not have the heart for my knowledge. Yet you, the son many generations past of Salazar Slytherin, his only heir, are here.

"I've been waiting for you, Tom Marvolo Riddle."

Tom stared at the cloaked man before him. The man sat at a table, his back to the door.

"My name is Lord Voldemort," Tom said quietly.

The man's shoulders shifted, and Tom realized he was laughing.

"Not yet." The man stood. "If you plan to learn from me, you will earn that name, Tom Marvolo Riddle. You will earn it."

Without warning, the Master whipped around, flinging what looked briefly like a ball of slime at Tom, but Tom might have been mistaken because then he was looking at himself. Himself. Himself. Tom Marvolo Riddle. Himself. Drenched in blood. His, most of it, but other people's, blood from people who were as filthy as he was now, as impure in blood, so much blood, dripping onto the floor of the cabin, pointed and fatalistic. Mingled with the blood was vomit, urine, excrement, all impure, impure, impure.

Tom stumbled back, lips curling in a snarl. The bloody pseudo-Tom followed him wherever he stepped. He knew what this was, but he couldn't... couldn't retrieve his wand, not with that pseudo-Tom staring at him, covered in filth, so much filth.

"N-n-not m-m-me. Not me!" Tom screamed, flinging the flask at the cloaked man, who caught it as though it were a rolled piece of parchment. "Not me!" He whipped his wand out. "Riddikulus!"

The blood, vomit, and everything else became jam, and pseudo-Tom licked his lips. The cloaked man gave a solid, sincere laugh, and the boggart disappeared.

From the floor, Tom looked at the man, fire in his eyes, his face distorted with hatred. "Teach me," he hissed. "I swear that will not be what I become. Teach me."

The Master pulled back the hood, revealing his face. He had no eyes, just a thick membrane of scar tissue, and Tom could not repressed the instinctual roil of horror. He recoiled.

The Master extended his hand to Tom's trembling form. Tom stared at the Master's face, at the lack of eyes that made him so much more powerful because no one could see into him. But he could see, oh yes, the Master could see.

"You are merely a boy. But I was a boy once. I will teach you."

Tom accepted the hand.

*

He lived in darkness. The spells were cast on his eyes the day after his apprenticeship with the Master, and for a moment, he thought he had been murdered or banished to an empty place, a nowhere. But the Master's hand was there to ground him, and he understood in time. The Master did not explain anything to him unless he was lecturing on a spell or a potion. The more abstract lessons were left for Tom to decipher.

Tom was good at deciphering. Although he lived in darkness, blind, he began to see what needed to be seen. The colors in his mind took shape, and he heard things he never heard before, every nuance of movement within the forest, within the Master's cabin, every breath that the Master took, every breath that he took, the slow slide of drink down his throat. And he heard the voices again, but these were not snakes or a basilisk. They were the beginnings of his venture into Legilimency.

One night - he knew it was night, the smells were so lovely at night - the Master came in with a person, a girl of fourteen. Her mewling shrieked like violin strings in the quiet of the cabin, and her smell was like ripe peaches, such exquisite fruit so tender to the teeth. He could eat her, that he could do, god let me eat her, Master.

"Make love to her. Then you may eat her."

The Master pushed her to Tom, who caught her with bumbling hands, hands that had never held the naked body of a female.

Make love to her.

She was beating at him, but she was frightened, and that made her ineffective. He could taste her fear in the air around her, could hear the low, quick thrum of her blood through her heart, and he leaned into that hypnotic sound of primitive life. He tangled his fingers in her hair and pulled her on the bed.

Make love to her.

Make her scream for you.

So innocent, so prettily innocent - she did not even know what the phrase meant, not a sweet little girl like her. His fingers loosened from her hair as his body covered hers. He licked her tears away. He had never had a girl before, but he knew what would make her scream. Scream for him. He soothed her with quiet lies, lies that insinuated themselves into her head until she was sighing under his words alone. He drank in her inexperienced desire, the heat lightning of it in her slow, compelling warmth and shudders that were not from her sobs.

He rubbed himself against her, his trousers and the erection beneath making her gasp with each contact on her hypersensitive center, grinding against her clit and wet entrance. She began to cry out as he took her fresh nipples into his mouth, licking and nipping gently, so gently, so lovingly. His fingers played her clit until her moans turned to little cries, to little screams, all while he whispered to her skin, to her lips, in her ear, his words that were his power wrapping around her until she screamed his name in orgasm. Voldemort.

He ate her plump, fresh little breasts first. He came when she ceased to scream her pain, when he reached her heart.

Virgin's blood and tears.

The Master ate the rest.

Your words, Tom, your words.

*

He was given his sight five years later. The Master watched him through sightless eyes, pride swelling at his dark apprentice, his dark child, his. Fingers feathered through black hair before withdrawing. Voldemort's focus was absolute.

He never took the girls or the boys that the Master brought him, simply increased his knowledge of their pleasure and fear. He never took them because he knew that this moment would come, the moment where he would encounter true purity and corruption coupled together in such beautiful contrast, such beautiful conflict under his wand.

The unicorn gleamed white in the darkness of the night, its flanks twitching in bewilderment. This virgin boy and this virgin man - it would not have come if they had not called, had their distress not been throbbing like tears through the boy's voice. But the unicorn could see the virgin boy, and there was no purity behind his dark eyes.

The unicorn reared to run. From behind, the manipulated vampire attacked the creature, falling upon it and sinking its long, knife-like teeth into the chaste ivory of the unicorn's neck. The vampire kept biting and biting as Voldemort directed it, his eyes glittering with the spectacle before him, and the vampire's lips were torn to shreds, bleeding thick, opalescent crimson-black blood into the shimmer of silver that dripping from the unicorn's wound. The unicorn gave a cry like a heart-broken infant before buckling under the loss of blood. The vampire jerked, released from the Imperius curse, and it stared in horror at the dead, white creature before him. The laws of the immortals had been broken. Discord would spread through the forest, but that was secondary to the mingling of black and silver blood staining the chastity of the unicorn's mane.

Voldemort knelt to the forest floor and drank.

His first preparation.

He kissed the unicorn mockingly, his eyes glowing red.

*

He entered the cave in the heat of the day. He heard the rustle of their bodies, but he schooled his own movements to be silent.

When the first one saw him, it spat in surprise and fury, and the others whipped around at the intruder, ribs expanding in threat.

He threw them a skinned lioness with a flick of his wand, and his red eyes glinted underneath his black cloak. They paused in their ire and waited for an explanation, swaying impatiently.

The Seven. The Naga demigods of the East. The center of every pulse within Voldemort's serpent heritage. They towered over him, their own scarlet eyes mirroring his. When he looked at them, he saw a flash of a human face before the face of the cobra dominated again in their anger at such an act of disrespect and contempt from the mortal plane.

"This place is closed to you, human," they said together in a collective hiss made all the more powerful by the intertwining of their minds.

"I am not quite human," he replied. "I have come for my child that Salazar Slytherin promised me."

There was a sudden thunder of hissing and spitting as the Seven surrounded Voldemort with their gigantic bodies.

"You are mortal," they said.

"I am not quite mortal," he said. "I have come for the child promised me that will help me in my path to immortality."

"You are impetuous."

"I am persistent." Voldemort found the leader easily, their identical eyes following each other as the Naga circled him. "I am Slytherin's Heir."

"You speak our tongue."

"It is my gift."

"Our gift to the Slytherin line."

"Yes," Voldemort said warily.

The leader lunged forward as though he would strike. He stopped short of Voldemort's face. Voldemort tightened his hold on his wand, but he did not draw it. The Naga tried to wrap its mind around Voldemort's like it might a phoenix or an augurey. Voldemort's eyes stared back, empty and closed to it. Its hood receded slowly. The action signaled the tentative acceptance, and they hissed into the cave, "Children. The child for the Slytherin line."

Voldemort cast his gaze past the fire around which the Naga reassembled themselves, a darkness that seemed to seethe within itself, and Voldemort saw that the cave beyond the Naga writhed with serpents, a persistent whisper that he had not noticed because he had grown accustomed to the sound.

From the tangle of serpents came one, its voice becoming distinct, strong, independent, and... familiar. His child, the child of the Naga. His familiar. His Nagini.

"Take your wizard, Naga child," they said. "Kill him once and go with him."

Voldemort held his hand out for the snake to come to him. Nagini moved with the sinuous grace that Voldemort always admired in the creatures, through the sand like a ribbon of venom. She circled Voldemort like the Naga had, closer and closer until she climbed up his body, wrapping herself around his legs and climbing up his body. He closed his eyes as the snake bit the back of his neck at the base of his skull.

"Yessss," he hissed before he fell forward. The venom killed the last bit of humanity within him, the last bit of Muggle blood, that filth, that reminder of the father he killed, until his blood ran powerful and pure through his veins. It was night when his fingers curled in delight and Nagini slid away from his neck, pleased with her new master's success.

The Seven watched him as he stood, marveling at his new movement, his new skin, his new body, its dry white skin and thin, tight strength. He looked up at the Naga and bowed, bringing Nagini's head to his lips and kissing her in thanks. My Nagini.

The Seven nodded their acknowledgement and turned their backs on him. Voldemort recognized the dismissal, and he left the cave with Nagini wrapped around his transfigured body.

He was ready to go back to his waiting followers. They would know the power not of Tom Riddle but of Lord Voldemort.

Lord Voldemort.

*

The field swarmed with his followers, cloaks darker than the night around them. Their white masks gleamed in the moonlight. He waited, poise dignified, magic emanating from his cloaked body, only his eyes any indication that he was more than solid shadow. They filled the countryside with their numbers, more than he had expected for his revealing ceremony. Within the wizarding world, he was now a prominent political figure - there were many who were concerned about his presence, others who thought that their savior had finally come - the pureblood savior, the savior of the name, of ancient families all over Europe, of half blood desperate for glory, of witches and wizards clamoring for their own bit of glory. His words enthralled them all, but they never saw him, only his imposing figure with the serpent twined about him like a lover.

They said he could speak to it. They said he was immortal. They said he was a god. They said he was born of a serpent and a stone, that he was born as a full-grown wizard. They said he was evil. They said he was good. They said he was more powerful than Grindelwald, more powerful than Albus Dumbledore even. They said he could cast spells without a wand. They said he could command potions to brew themselves.

They said he was enchanting.

They believed him when he spoke, as his words carried effortlessly over the crowds - people who never asked to see his face once he began speaking. His Death Eaters were in the crowd, his true followers, the ones he promised would be his when he returned. They bore his Mark, a mark that would dominate the skies tonight in the first slaughter. When he showed his face, he would know who would fight with him until the end and who would be dead before the sun reached with bloody fingers to the sky.

The field would bleed, and they would drink the fear that flavored the last heart beats of the faithless.

He would have his taste of death again.

As his followers quieted, waiting for him to speak, he reached for the hood of his cloak.

Lord Voldemort.

*

He sat in his audience chamber, his Death Eaters on their knees to the sides, some weeping, some moaning, others mumbling to themselves, all trapped in the nightmare of their minds. Lord Voldemort did not react at all as the dementors filed into the room, their mouth opening and drawing happiness from all in the room but the Dark Lord, who drew them nearer to him with the hollowness around him, the barrier that both attracted and repelled them. They desired this being's happiness more strongly than they desired anyone else in the room - the barrier promised richness beneath.

I know you can hear me. Hear what I say.

They listened to this being, this being with no feeling from which to feed, this being who could speak to them.

I can promise you souls. Souls and memories beyond your comprehension. On a few conditions. You know that I can control you. I called you and I can keep you away. I could banish you to exile from humans. You could shrivel in starvation before falling to a pile of ashes. Or I could leave you under the employment of the Ministry, tamed like other beasts that they look down upon. Or... I could give you free reign with the souls and memories that I offer you. With this war, so many potentials are dying. They could be put to... better use. And in return for these souls and memories, I ask one favor.

Take my soul and put it in this.

Lord Voldemort held out an orb that glowed with a thousand lights.

Should you take my soul and swallow it, I will rip through your bellies and find it again.

The dementors did not even meditate on the offer.

We agree.

Lord Voldemort lowered the barrier, and the dementors swept down over him, sucking at the exhilarating power within this formidable wizard until he gave a mighty convulsion and his soul hovered above him. It began to drift up to the hungry sucking of the dementors, but Voldemort held the orb to the broken light of the soul, and it drifted back down until it was entrapped within the crystal. He brought it to his face, a grim smile on his thin lips. His eyes were hard as garnets against the paleness of his skin.

I am pleased. You will find your meal in the dungeons. Take what you like and return to Azkaban whenever you choose. You are always welcome here.

He was only half paying attention to the dementors as they floated out of the room. Within his hands, he held his last element of mortality. He did not notice when his Death Eaters began to stir without the dementors drawing out their memories. The only remnant of Tom Riddle, no matter how altered, was gone.

I am Lord Voldemort.