The Life to Come

Human time does not turn in a circle; it runs ahead in a straight line. That is why man cannot be happy; happiness is the longing for repetition.

It is February, 1953. In Cambridge, England, a group of scientists discovers the structure of DNA, genes coiling snake-like into a double helix.

In the forests of Albania, Tom Riddle is coaxing the serpent to eat its tail.

On April 2, the Muggles publish their findings.

Tom Riddle does not read the article. He would not care for the infinitesimal, elegant inhabitants of his nuclei. His double helix is only one-half Slytherin; one could pick it apart, separate maternal from paternal. Lay out the genes and show him, "Here and here and here is where you are rotten."

Instead, Tom Riddle abides by blood. The Muggle and the magical hurtle together through his veins, both equally red, both tasting of iron. They blend until he is the only one who knows.

The blood goes 'round and 'round, ceaselessly circulates, will go on doing so for as long as his heart continues to pump. A circle rolling along a straight path from birth to death, along a single, rejected strand of DNA.

This is the trick: to bend the line into a circle without its breaking (the way Hagrid's wand snapped cleanly in two; Tom had crouched outside the door, heard the crack), to stop the circle rolling.

Salazar Slytherin shall not suffer the loss of his long-awaited heir. Tom Riddle (Lord Voldemort) shall not be forgotten.

(After all, he who doesn't exist cannot be present.)

·

The face that will disappear under the earth or into the fire does not belong to the future dead but purely and entirely to the living, who are hungry and need to eat the dead, their letters, their money, their photographs, their old loves, their secrets.

What may happen if the line snaps, if the circle stops its spinning: the champion of blood (of genetic) purity is revealed to followers and foes alike to be himself impure. The secreted-away Riddle family albums brought out and dusted off, sweaty fingers smudging the grainy photographs ("The resemblance is apparent in their eyes, the curve of the lip, look you can see it there."), the impossible, the separation of blood. Floated to the top, the bad blood should be skimmed off, discarded, but they won't do it. They will bottle it, preserve it, drink it. Make a spectacle of what ought never be seen.

There is one thing Tom Riddle fears more than death, and that is the state of being dead. Death lasts but an instant. A corpse is utterly vulnerable.

·

Living: carrying one's painful self through the world.

One of the sisters (Aunt Petunia) is angry again. He hunkers down in winter under the thin blanket and the old mattress springs dig into his ribs, and now in the yard that big boy (Dudley) has nearly knocked him into the mud again, and he doesn't know how but he's escaped (he finds himself on the school roof, the wind must have carried him up, he's a small child still).

He's eleven and he receives a letter, and then he's the Muggleborn Slytherin (the Boy Who Lived), who receives a hex in the common room (whispers in the hall).

And time passes and he discovers he is the saviour of the wizarding world, the heir of the noble Salazar (the only one who can defeat the Dark Lord, kill or be killed).

It has been sealed by his mother's blood, passed down generation by generation. A sibilant whisper between sheets, Slytherin, Slytherin, Slytherin.

(It has been sealed by his mother's blood, an ancient magic, his mother's love that saved him once and for ten years more, despite Petunia's wrath.)

From his birth, he is bound for greatness.

Their awe will be such that they will not bear to speak his name.

(Their awe will be such that his name will never cease to leave their lips.)

·

Being: becoming a fountain, a fountain on which the universe falls like warm rain.

In 1962, three scientists are awarded the Nobel Prize for their findings nine years earlier. An unrecognised fourth had died of ovarian cancer in 1958, at the age of thirty-seven.

Tom Riddle doesn't know any of this, either. The serpent's tongue flicks against the tip of its tail, the smoothly scaled flesh sliding against a fang.

Almost.

·

In the end you are weary of this ancient world.

In 1992, Harry Potter rejects the Philosopher's Stone, the promise of immortality, even before he begins to truly understand the complications of the lightning bolt scar on his forehead (the whispers in the hall, the language he knows without ever having learned it).

And in 1993, Tom Riddle is defeated (again) by Harry Potter, but also by Fawkes, the phoenix flame-devoured flame-revived, who is the embodiment of his desire, who is the serpent eating its tail, only in nice Gryffindor red and gold. Only another symbol for the same concept (...every time it is necessary to stuff people's heads with glory to make them die more willingly), which means good in red, but evil in green, even though Tom Riddle knows there is no such thing, only power.

And in 1994, the whispers grow louder, and Harry Potter is, and always has been, public property (not his, but their letters, their money, their photographs, their old loves, their secrets).

And in 1995, Lord Voldemort (Tom Riddle) is revived by the blood of his enemy (Harry Potter), blood that tastes of iron, impure blood. (But do two halfbloods create wholeblood, or is it simply continuing degradation?)

And in 1996, Harry Potter for the first time realises why he rejected the Stone, why more disturbing than Fawkes's burning is his reappearance in the ashes, and that he is the ally of his own gravediggers. His fate is not so much kill or be killed (because there is no question of "or," he is the saviour, he will be victorious) as it is be devoured (the whispers at a fever pitch, the serpent choked upon its tail), the wide-eyed, hand-shaking masses more sinister than the Dark Lord who spends a year in pursuit of a glass ball.

And in 1997, Lord Voldemort (Tom Riddle)..., and in 1998, Harry Potter..., like a phoenix dying and reborn, the mad cycle spinning on until the blood stops circling 'round and 'round, until the serpent does choke, and one day perhaps Harry Potter will be laid down straight as strands of DNA lined up waiting for division, and Lord Voldemort (Tom Riddle) will perhaps be burnt to ash. And they will both be borne back into the earth, and plants will grow from them and new people will be born to feed from those plants, new Dark Lords and new infant saviours, and that will be power and immortality, which will labour on, quietly victorious.

. . . . .

Author's Notes:

First, apologies for anywhere I've played a bit fast and loose with biology and DNA imagery. Quotes are denoted in the text by italics, but there are also italicised phrases that aren't quotes, just to make things nice and confusing. Everything that is indeed a quote is cited below:

"Human time does not turn in a circle; it runs ahead in a straight line. That is why man cannot be happy; happiness is the longing for repetition." - The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

The following are from Immortality by Milan Kundera:

"...he who doesn't exist cannot be present."

"The face that will disappear under the earth or into the fire does not belong to the future dead but purely and entirely to the living, who are hungry and need to eat the dead, their letters, their money, their photographs, their old loves, their secrets."

"Living: carrying one's painful self through the world."

"Being: becoming a fountain, a fountain on which the universe falls like warm rain."

"...every time it is necessary to stuff people's heads with glory to make them die more willingly."

"...the ally of his own gravediggers."

And "In the end you are weary of this ancient world" and "the phoenix flame-devoured flame-revived" are lines from the poem, "Zone," by Guillaume Apollinaire, as translated by Samuel Beckett.

Finally: "There is one thing Tom Riddle fears more than death, and that is the state of being dead. Death lasts but an instant. A corpse is utterly vulnerable." This line, as far as I know, doesn't contain any direct quotes, but I suspect it's heavily influenced by The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera.