Reposting one of my first edits but with the quality issue fixed! The delay with this one was due to the bit of writing I had planned, unfortunately it took me forever.
The following is a little blurb I wrote inspired by the theme of the edit from his perspective.
He finds his father. He finds his family. And Tom Riddle is buried beneath the rage that this discovery invokes. What does he find, after all his years of effort? He finds rubble.
So his mother had been magical. She had been the one to set him apart from his muggle peers. She had still died. She died just the same as the other women whose bodies could not endure the strain of birth. The orphanage had seen plenty. She, however, died despite being magical.
Though, taking in the state of the house she had been raised in, itās no wonder sheād been frail enough to die.
He was robbed of his mother, and those responsible are nothing more than a disgrace to Slytherinās name.
If her father had not been so cruel, if her brother had not squashed her under his heel. Perhaps- well, heāll never know.
She should have killed them, for what theyād done to her. He would have killed them, with a rusty knife if nothing else. Sometimes the muggle way was unavoidable. But his mother was not strong. His mother was a weak, frail woman.
His father was a cruel, arrogant man.
Who lived in wealth and comfort while Tom sat in that brick room day after day- in clothes that began to shrink- socks that cut off his circulation and pants that revealed his ankles. While Tom watched fire rain from the sky, while Tom listened to the shrapnel and the screams. His father ate fine cheeses in his mansion estate.
There was nothing for him to find but ruin.
Tom Marvolo Riddle stood in the Riddle house and felt such overwhelming vitriol, it chilled him to his core. It was not enough. Wand in hand, their bodies growing just as cold on the soft carpet, he is unmoored.
He could tear the whole house to the ground. He could destroy all of Little Hangleton, and it would not be enough.
His mother had been strangled by this town.
By the belief that pure blood was what bred magical affinity. Their whole family was proof to the contrary-
By the muggles who thought her nothing more than an eyesore.
He would be every bit the ugliness that his pretty face tricked them into thinking he was incapable of.
He hated her. But he hated them more. Hated his grandfather who had used his limited breath to crow on and on about family heirlooms he had no right to. Living in squalor. Salazar Slytherin would look on at them in derision. And Tom Riddle knew they werenāt worth the dirt on his shoes.
He hated all of them. He hated his muggle father for living a lush life, never bothering to look for him. Never offering to provide for him as he could have.
He hated the Malfoys and the Blacks. Their heirs, who come from long lines and families with rich history. Full vaults and knowledge aplenty. Who had what he deserved. What should have been his. Who didnāt bother to make use of it. Who wasted all the things Tom would have savored.
Tom Marvolo Riddle had known mediocrity. He had lived among it, had fought not to be suffocated by it. The Gaunts did not achieve even that, no, they were deplorable. Their minds in such a state of decay, they were hardly self sufficient.
No, they were the lowest forms of filth that one could encounter. And he was of their blood.
It was an insult that he could not stand to suffer.
The Malfoys were a family old and ancient, money as fervent in their vaults as the blood in their veins. Pure and made entirely of magic.
The Blacks were a family seeped in the darkest magics time had to offer. Secrets, hidden in tombs written years long past, spells forgotten by the masses, rituals that never left the security of the Black library. The right of only the heirs to inherit.
And all that was left of Salazar Slytherin, was a line of descendants so inbred that they couldnāt see straight. These blubbering fools-
Tom had not felt such righteous indignation perhaps, ever.
This what was left for him at the end of his great search? He had finally found what was left of those he was supposed to be able to call his own, and he could not imagine individuals less deserving of being mentioned in the same sentence.
Using their deaths to split his soul was revolting. He could stand to use the Riddleās. The mere thought of using Morfin Gaunt was so appalling, it did not warrant a moment of consideration.
He stared at Morfin Gaunt, and could hardly believe it to be true.
There were muggles far more capable, squibs with more use-
That did not mean that Morfin would escape, that he would go unpunished. There were many things worse than death, sufferings that he could make a reality.
Tom Riddle would see Morfin Gaunt flail like the useless worm he was. A snake with no fangs, minuscule and insignificant.
Marvolo Gaunt was, for such an unfortunate creature, was immensely lucky. For if he had been here in this house, for Tom to find, there would have been no stopping the pain he craved to weave. The screams that would satisfy a great injustice. An injustice that writhed.
Tom Riddle was no stranger to inflicting punishment for the failures of the weak and pathetic. Their crime was not to be forgiven. Morfinās sentence of life in Askaban was nothing less than what he deserved. His mistreatment of his sister may have been forgotten. He may have imagined he would never see consequences for it. Tom would rip that false sense of security from him. Tom would hold him accountable when no one else had cared to. Tom would see him rot. Tom cared very little about the rights and wrongs of others. Had very little care for moral obligation. But Morfin Gaunt had played a part in robbing Tom of his mother, and he would be made to pay for it.
Now, oh so many years later, staring at the boy roped to the statue of a reaper, he feels more alive than he ever has before. He feels it in his toes against the cool grave dirt. Feels it in his exhilaration at having a body once more.
The boy struggles helplessly and Voldemort nearly crows with delight.
Voldemort is born from a cauldron with half a mind and all of his motherās misery, soaked and saturated in the righteous entitlement of a manās ego.
Voldemort seeks to flee any reminder of his muggle origins. He refuses to use the name of the family lineage he had always longed for, a certain sickness in claiming the name of those who had been so disgusting and vile. Unworthy.
Voldemort is an entity. He is ethereal and monstrous, he has grown poisoned. Standing in a graveyard, above his fathers bones, it is a victory. Reborn in this body of his own design, the rejection of his father is whole. Complete.
Voldemort breathes with lungs of his own making. More a snake than a man now, his brilliant mind working in fractals.
