Lord Voldemort's Christmas Carol

Chapter Two.

Voldemort's eyes opened with a start, their scarlet pupils focusing on the bed canopy looming over him. The room was dark and silent, oppressive in its quiet. Bringing his fingers to rub his temples, Voldemort tried to remember why he would be so listless in his sleep. A long, low 'ding' sounded, just once, shattering the silence and announcing the arrival of one o'clock.

'What was it about one o'clock?' Voldemort muttered. Then he sat up with a jerk; it had been Dolohov's ghost, right there in his room, saying a spirit would come at the toll of one! Voldemort looked around, and no spirit could be found in his chamber. Satisfied, the Dark Lord lowered himself back down, once again hoping he might sleep without disturbance.

It was not to be. A brilliant white light burst out of a place in the middle of the room, illuminating Voldemort's white skin, startling him straight out of his position of sleep. His boot-clad feet hit the floor as he watched a figure materialise out of the light.

It was a woman, to be sure; she was wearing a white tunic, long and bright, and a wreath of shiny holly was wrapped around her head. She had limp, light brown hair and a somewhat sad air about her, a defeated look on her face and rather strange eyes. She smiled at Voldemort, transfiguring her into a creature of almost-beauty, and Voldemort could not take his eyes off her.

'I am the Ghost of Christmas past,' she announced in a clear, small, almost meek tone. 'I come to remind you of what has been, for you have forgotten, Tom.'

'How do you know my name?' Voldemort croaked.

'I know many things.'

'What is the meaning of this? Perhaps I don't wish to see Christmas Past.'

'Your wishes are not relevant. You will come with me.' She extended her pale hand to Voldemort, taking his own hand within it, and suddenly Voldemort's bedchamber was gone.

In a blink and a flash, Voldemort found himself in the front hall of Hogwarts castle. It was decorated lavishly for Christmas, with garlands of pine and holly, and red and white candles floating on the air.

'What - you can't Apparate into Hogwarts! It's in Hogwarts: a History...' Voldemort protested.

'We have not Apparated. This is a memory,' the lady spirit explained.

'Ah. Like a Pensieve.'

She merely nodded. They walked along the hall to the Charms classroom, on the first floor. Gesturing for Voldemort to enter, they beheld a small, black-haired boy of about eleven. He was alone in the classroom, bent over his books, an expression of pure rapture on his young face.

'That's me!' Voldemort blurted.

'Yes,' the spirit affirmed. 'It is your first Christmas at Hogwarts, Tom Riddle.'

'I remember...' he trailed off.

The boy was going through his book at a rapid pace, turning pages and occasionally murmuring to himself. Then, another person entered the classroom: a tall, wiry man with a black beard.

'Professor Collier!' young Tom Riddle said brightly. 'I've learnt the Levitation Charm.' He demonstrated with his wand, successfully levitating the entire stack of schoolbooks.

Collier looked at the boy with fond regard. 'So you have, Mr. Riddle! Well done! You are not our star first-year pupil for nothing, I see.'

'And the Alohamora charm,' Tom bragged.

Collier chuckled with a rasping sound. 'Enough work for today. It's Christmas, after all; the feast is due to begin shortly. Why don't you run along to the Great Hall.'

Showing slight disappointment on his youthful face, Tom picked up his books and trudged out of the classroom.

'Don't worry, you can come back to it later tonight!' Collier called after the boy.

Voldemort chuckled out loud. 'I always wanted to learn more, no matter what else was happening.' The white spirit smiled at him.

Voldemort and the spirit-lady followed the diminutive boy figure down the hall and into the Great Hall of Hogwarts. The room was dressed for Christmas, with twelve grand trees towering and a feast table glittering in the middle. Several other students were already seating themselves, their tidy school robes in place, faces alight with the excitement of Christmas.

Little Tom put his books under the bench and sat down between two older boys. He looked around, his pale face expressionless, but the boy's eyes gave away his inner delight at his surroundings. When the feast got underway, table piled high with roasted meats and puddings and vegetables, Tom Riddle ate a little too fast and did not say very much during the meal. He seemed to be concentrating solely on the plate in front of him.

'It was my first Christmas where I had enough to eat,' Voldemort explained to the spirit as he watched his child self. 'And the first Christmas where I was actually glad to be where I was, at Hogwarts, my true home.' He sighed and looked around.

'Onward we must go,' the spirit said.

'Can't we stay awhile?' Voldemort asked. He wanted to remember the Great Hall as it had been in his school days; watching himself the Dark Lord could almost taste the delicious feast, though it had been many years since he enjoyed such a thing.

The spirit paid him no heed. In another blink, another flash, Voldemort saw himself now as a grown young man. He had almost forgotten what he looked like in those days, a tall and handsome man with fine features and raven-black hair, perfectly combed. The grown Tom Riddle was labouring intently over a column of figures on parchment, in the back of a dusty and dark shop.

'Borgin and Burkes,' Voldemort murmured. 'My first job.'

A back door opened and a small, nervous man appeared at Tom Riddle's shoulder. He peered over, noting the numbers, and cleared his throat. With a look of annoyance, Tom turned his face up toward the man. 'Yes, Mr. Borgin?'

'You've done enough for tonight, Tom,' Borgin said. 'It's Christmas, after all. I am sure there is somewhere for you to be.'

'I really should finish this.'

'No, I insist. I'm closing up now, and as your employer I must insist you go. Have some fun, for once, Tom.' Borgin tittered, as though the concept of fun had been alien to his own life for some time.

'Very well.' Tom sighed as he stood, stretching his arms a little, and fastening his cloak about his broad shoulders. 'I will be in early tomorrow morning.'

Voldemort and the spirit followed as Tom Riddle walked out into the snow, barely leaving a footprint through the muddy slush of the dodgy, winding passageway that was Knockturn Alley. They emerged on Diagon Alley, filled with people, children throwing snowballs, carollers making rounds, in all very similar to the Diagon Alley that Voldemort had so recently visited.

Tom Riddle kept his head down, his eyes evenly fixed in front of him, until a beautiful girl of energetic youth bounded up to him. 'Tom!' she cried, her cheeks and lips pink with the cold. Her green eyes glittered at him.

'Minnie?' Voldemort whispered.

'Minnie?' Tom Riddle said. 'Hello!'

'Happy Christmas!' Minnie peered up at him under long lashes. She was possessing of that fairness of youth, black hair to match Tom's, and an irrepressibly lively, intelligent soul. She reached out with a gloved hand to take Tom's arm. 'We're having a Christmas party. Won't you come?'

'All right,' Tom agreed readily.

Voldemort noticed that his younger self could not keep his eyes off young Minerva McGonagall.

'Good!' Minnie nodded pertly. 'You work too much anymore, Tom. I thought perhaps tonight we could ask my father...you know...'

Tom Riddle smiled down at her, his dark eyes burning intensely. 'I know,' he murmured. 'I'll ask him tonight.'

The couple walked hand-in-hand down a side alley and towards a house decorated with an enormous wreath. Strains of music echoed from the glowing golden windows, casting the silhouettes of Tom and Minerva into shadow.

The white spirit glanced at Voldemort, a secret, sad smile playing on her lips.

Voldemort could only watch as Tom pulled Minnie back from the door, for a small moment before it could be opened for greetings. Tom's head dipped down to kiss Minnie gently on the lips, and her arms wrapped around his neck in passionate response.

Voldemort tilted his own head in remembrance. She had always tasted so sweet, like a ripe flower on a Scottish hillside, that sparkle of intelligence and wit sparring with his own, ever a challenge. Now, of course, Minerva McGonagall was his mortal enemy. Voldemort would never normally remember that once they had been betrothed.

The scene blinked away again, and Voldemort felt an unfamiliar wrench of regret as the warm scene was ripped away into white blankness again.

Sitting on a bench in front of him was Minerva, again, though she looked older and more care-worn than she had. It was late afternoon in the scene, and a fresh, thick layer of snow piled around the wooden park bench upon which the woman was perched. Her dark green wool cloak was pulled tightly around her, a wool hat set atop her head, wisps of black hair falling down.

'Look,' said the spirit, pointing with her pale arm.

Minnie looked up, her green eyes watering, the flush of youth gone from her face, her cheeks hollowed and sharp. A tiny tear tickled down her cheek, as her breath frosted on the air.

'Minnie,' Voldemort said, forgetting that she could not hear or see him. He knew that he was likely the cause of her misery, and for the first time he wondered how she could have gone from the spirited, loving girl of years before, to this sad and sorrowful woman. He reached out a white hand towards her.

'You cannot change it,' the spirit said in her low voice. 'This is Christmas past.'

Voldemort looked up, startled, as he saw his own younger self, Tom Riddle, appear around the bend, wrapped in winter cloak, head down. With a feeling of distaste, Voldemort noted his own face, his handsomeness fading, skin pale and waxy, features slowly distorting themselves, eyes cold and merciless.

'Minnie,' Tom said. 'I'm sorry I'm late.'

Minerva sniffed, setting her face into strict lines. 'I'm sorry, too.'

'Work kept me,' Tom said, his voice lacking any warmth.

'It always keeps you.' Minnie looked down at her shoes, sighing. 'This can't continue, Tom. Us, I mean. Somewhere along the way, whatever care you had for me has turned back to yourself. Where once you might have had love, and warmth, now you want only power. You are obsessed with it, greedy and ruthless, and I want nothing more to do with you.'

Tom scowled. 'You don't mean that, Minnie. We're engaged.'

'We were young, and different, when that promise was made. I can keep it no more,' Minerva said, turning her head away.

'Please, Minnie, I'll make it up to you...'

'No, you won't! You always say it but you never do make it up!' Minerva wrung her gloved hands together, a gesture that seemed to give her strength. 'Leave me alone, Tom. I don't like what you have become.'

Tom Riddle glared at her for a moment, then turned on his heel and walked away. Minerva stared after him, tears that had been held back now falling freely, her head shaking in abject sorrow. With a flick of her wand, she transfigured herself into a cat, and darted away into the bushes.

'She was the only one who could ever come close to understanding my thoughts. Clever little Minnie,' Voldemort said out loud. 'I did not realise she actually cared for me so. She should not have given her heart away so easily.'

'As you did not,' the spirit said, looking at Voldemort with depressed eyes.

Voldemort felt an irritating little grain, like a pebble in his shoe, except it was in the area where he should have had a heart. He bared his teeth in displeasure; he despised such creeping little emotions as guilt (had he thought guilt?) over someone else's problem. 'Why have you shown me these things?' he implored. 'I don't want to relive this. What else could I have done?'

The spirit woman was looking at him, pity etched across her plain face. 'What?' Voldemort snarled. She just shook her head.

'We go back, now,' she instructed, holding her hand out once more. Voldemort grasped it tightly as he was yanked back to his bedchamber, standing next to the glowing woman, his red eyes still wide. 'Expect the next at the stroke of two,' she whispered.

'The next? Don't tell me there's more of this,' Voldemort gestured a little wildly with his hands.

The woman merely shrugged. 'Goodbye, Tom Riddle,' she said.

'Wait--tell me, what is your name?' Voldemort asked, as the apparition of the woman in white began to fade away.

'My name is Merope,' she said, holding both hands out to him, her image growing weaker and finally disappearing.

A feeling something like panic swept through Lord Voldemort. He reached out with his hands, but it was too late, and the spirit of his mother had departed him. 'No,' he whispered, his high voice sounding alien to his own ears. A peculiar ache washed through his chest, a squeezing pressure that would not relent.

Slowly Voldmort sat back on his bed. He felt as a small child again, helpless and lost and orphaned. It was not a pleasant feeling. He shook off the sensation, struggling to regain control of his thoughts, forcing his own memories into submission.

Looking around to re-orient himself, Voldemort saw his giant snake, Nagini, curled up by the window. Summoning her with a finger, Voldemort tried to relax, and reclined back onto his pillows with Nagini draped across the foot of his bed.

Several minutes later, he drifted off into a fitful sleep, his own mind interrupting his slumber, reality and dream fading in and out. Voldemort could no longer recall if the spirit of Merope had visited him, or if his tired mind had invented the entire episode.