I Know

I Know

And if you gaze for long into an abyss, remember, the abyss gazes also into you.

-- Friederich Nietzsche

It is a difficult thing to realise, that you have been the instrument of your own downfall.

The Potter boy sits in court right now, bearing witness against me. It was his hand that struck me down. He was the only one who could have done it. He has told me how it worked, and how could he lie to me? I am the most superb Legilimens of the age, and only Snape, that traitor, has ever been able to lie to me. And I trained him myself.

I have destroyed myself. Potter defeated me through no skill of his own, after all these years. It is my own ignorance, in the end, that brings me to this cell, these chains. Once, not long ago, chains could never have held me. I could have dismissed them with a word, a flick of my hand. I could have taken my dear Nagini's shape and slithered away.

But now Potter has my power. All of it.

How did he do it? It was a plan that by rights should have gotten him killed. Instead, he was able to walk right into my camp, right into my tent, and fell me with a single curse. He cut a lightning bolt into my forehead as I lay helpless before him, and he took all of my power into himself. He claimed he would use it better than I had, use it to protect wizarding-kind, Muggle-born and otherwise, but I know.

I know.

There is a Muggle saying, that power corrupts. This is idiocy, of course. Dumbledore had as much power as I did, and was distressingly incorruptible. Twice, he stood against Dark Wizards. We agreed on very little, he and I, but there was perfect concord between us on one matter: choices are what matter. You can bestow as much power on someone as you wish, and I will accomplish nothing. It is only by one's own choices that one may change. I chose to become what I am.

I think, in the end, Harry Potter will tell himself that it was the power that corrupted him.

He has changed greatly since I first fought him. Potter had had morals once, shining forth from his every act in war. He would never have descended to what he inflicts o me now. The Cruciatus curse was only the beginning of what he has done to me since I was captured. His allies do not dare contradict him, even if they could hold any pity for me, their greatest enemy. They believe he has the right to revenge himself on me; did I not kill his parents, his god-father, his friends and lover? They are also afraid of him, though they do not say this out loud. I have seen them whisper to each other as Potter parades me as his prisoner through his camp. There is fear in their eyes, but all of them watch him, not me. At any rate, I do not expect mercy from him. I would be disappointed if Potter, in addition to holding my powers, had not come to resemble me in other respects as well.

A Muggle-born girl once told me before I killed her that I was like someone called Hitler. I vaguely remember the name, it was in the news a great deal when I was very young. Apparently, the irony of Hitler's life was that while he tried to make his people, the Aryans, into a pure-bred super-race of blue-eyed blondes, he himself bore all the signs of mongrel heritage. He also tried to kill a Muggle race called the Jews. She told me that Hitler himself was most likely Jewish. She compared me to him, saying that my crusade against Muggle contamination was born out of self-loathing rather than any rightness of cause. She may even have been right. I rarely think anymore about the days that drove me to become what I am.

Potter has become almost as Dark as I. He still claims to fight on the side of good, but they fear him. In battle, he has been ruthless, vicious and brutal. I see the impatience he has with his superiors, the contempt he holds for their attempts to restrict his activities, to prevent him using the Dark Arts he has learned in the course of this war. Already he thinks he knows better than they. Soon, he will start to attract others who feel the same. I have seen all this before.

I have done all this before.

The door to my cell opens. Potter stands before me, smiling cruelly.

"Would you like to hear the verdict, Voldemort?" He addresses me in Parseltongue, reminding me of the gifts I gave him. "Or should I say, Tom? You don't have much of the Dark Lord about you anymore." That is the crux of it. My powers. That is how he defeated me.

"Does it hurt, Tom? Does it pain you deep inside, knowing that you've failed? Does it frighten you, knowing you've been sentenced to death?"

The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches . . . born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies . . . and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not . . . and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives . . . the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies . . .

I marked him myself with my first attempt to kill him. Everything that followed, every setback, every failure, every defeat, has been because of Potter. Because I, in my ignorance, assumed that I could kill him.

"I'm done making you pay, Tom. I'm done with my revenge. Now I'm going to wipe you out, so we never have to worry about you again."

If I hadn't already done it, I'd kill Wormtail for this, for failing to hear and carry to me the prophecy in its entirety. As Potter is about to kill me. So I deserve, I admit. He has beaten me. He has been proven the stronger.

He is smiling at me. Potter's smile is cruel, as though he is thinking of the tortures he has inflicted on me. He is imagining all the deaths I have caused, of those close to him, and how he has made me pay for each one in turn.

The smile stays on his face as he speaks the words of the Killing curse, and it warms me. The next Dark Lord will not be Voldemort, but he will rise again, stronger than I. Slytherin's blood has been passed on.