Invictus [Tom Riddle / Tomione]

Snakes & Skeletons

Tom leaned against the stone wall of the chamber of secrets. It had been years since he'd been in this room, and it brought back a flood of both positive and negative memories.

The day was Thursday, and he had come to Hogwarts to visit Slughorn and to work on the soulmate potion. He'd brought Hermione's tears with him and they had added the necessary ingredients, stirring three times clockwise. In another month, the potion would be finished brewing.

On his way out, he'd taken a detour. Tom wasn't sure exactly why he'd wanted to come here. Perhaps to reminisce; or rather, perhaps he felt that the rush of nostalgia would somehow make things clearer. He was lacking in clarity of late, his mind muddled with feelings and contradictions.

He stared at the statue of Salazar Slytherin. The last time Tom had been here, he'd been somewhat torn. Though Myrtle's death had been an accident, Tom had not really known how to feel about it. Her death was the first time someone had died as a result of his actions. A part of Tom had been giddy with delight at the thought of creating his first horcrux. Another part of him felt defiled and twisted by the looming shadow of the murder.

He still to this day wasn't sure how he felt about Myrtle's death. That was part of the reason he'd taken it upon himself to kill his father. He hated his father with a burning passion, and he'd wanted to know what it felt like to mean it . To commit the act of murder and watch the light leave someone's eyes intentionally. Tom had needed to know if he was capable of doing it, and if he would feel remorse. He needed to test himself; to discover his own limits, or lack thereof.

Tom felt no remorse for the death of his father. He'd felt nothing but cold, hard satisfaction. One of Tom's purest traits had always been a pervasive sense of justice. He was committed to the balancing of scales. Wrongs deserved punishment. Rights deserved reward. Which is one reason he still felt a measure of guilt over Myrtle's death. He wanted his victim's deaths to be well-deserved; he desired that murder should be intentional . At the time, Tom had convinced himself that he'd done the right thing in opening the chamber of secrets. He'd been young and impulsive; Tom had since learned to reign in his impulsive side.

He, a young orphan still learning his place in the world, had cleaved to the idea of blood purity. It was the one shining beacon in his dull and colorless life. It gave him a sense of superiority. His lineage both mortified and excited him. He despised his muggle roots, but adored the newfound sense of import he'd gained from the knowledge of his Gaunt blood: the blood belonging to Salazar Slytherin. He was the last heir of Slytherin, and when he'd heard the legend, Tom had made it his mission to open the chamber of secrets.

If Slytherin, who was idolized by the pureblood community, had made it his mission to eradicate muggleborns from Hogwarts, then shouldn't that be Tom's mission as well?

He'd truly believed for some time that muggles and muggleborns alike were beneath him. Tom had done everything in his power to compensate for the muggle part of his ancestry, but it seemed that no amount of magical competency or charm could erase that smudge from his bloodline.

Tom knew deep down that blood purity had nothing to do with wit or magical efficacy. He'd always known it, but when one is surrounded by nothing but purebloods who spout that kind of rhetoric incessantly, some things are bound to be drilled into one's thought patterns.

Tom stared at the statue. Suddenly, his boyhood convictions and philosophies seemed childish and inane. Absurd, even.

Mudblood .

Hermione could've been Myrtle.

Purge the school of mudbloods.

Tom tried to imagine what it would have been like if he had attended Hogwarts with Hermione. They wouldn't have seen much of each other. She was a Gryffindor, and a few years younger than him. Would he have been as enamored of her as he is now? Surely he would have.