Soteria

CHAPTER 24:

Poison.

Who knew it could cause severe damage to one? One who is supposed to be deemed as all-powerful and immortal?

Once again, this girl had displayed these attributes as a lie. She displayed him as a liar. As someone who is weak. Someone who easily succumbs to their feelings and inner desires. She displayed him as a human.

Tom was furious with her for allowing the temptations and himself to fall into her poisonous clutches. It was humiliating, particularly when he sensed his own knights noticing the strange fondness he had for the girl. He had warned them not to approach her, not out of protection but rather because only he was permitted to harm her. They were strictly prohibited from touching her.

This was clearly depicted as another lie when he mercilessly tortured Lestrange for touching her, not only because he had disobeyed his Lord but because Tom had a sense of security to provide for the girl. She was corrupting him. He would've even gone to extreme measures for her, where he would've cut off the filthy hand that had touched her and gifted it to her as a prize as well as reassurance.

But then again, she would've gotten scared, and Tom couldn't have that. In any case, behind that courageous façade she upheld, the girl appeared to be frightened of him. For whatever reason, he didn't know.

From the moment he laid eyes on her in the great hall at the start of the year, he had this odd peculiarity towards her that he desperately wanted to succour, but each time he did, she would stray and hide away. Secrets from him. Answers. It was infuriating.

It was infuriating that she had somehow managed to surreptitiously uncover his secrets. Secrets that Tom had not disclosed to a single soul. Even to his knights, who were the most loyal and devoted to him of all. Well, some.

Was she perhaps that talented at legilimency? Or was she a seer? Was the question that frequently infiltrated his mind. But he knew that wasn't true. She was something else. Something... grand and treasurable. Something that he would collect. He wanted to collect her, her secrets, her knowledge...everything.

Initially, he saw her as nothing more than a filthy, feeble little mudblood. A mudblood who was somehow destined to reside in his pure house as well as the light to his darkness.

He desired to kill her, but this desire was growing precarious by the minute.

She was tormenting him, consuming him to the point that he was responding to her with acts of disgusting kindness and words of reassurance. A mudblood.

If his great ancestor knew the horrific atrocities he was committing, he would be disowned and thrown away, just like his father had done to him. He would be betraying them as well as himself. He would be a traitor.

The name would be branded onto him rather than the Heir of Salazar Slytherin or even the name he fashioned himself that all wizards would one day fear to speak, Lord Voldemort.

He couldn't have that. He couldn't be known as someone weak, powerless, and human.

Tom thought that by making horcruxes, he would be not only powerful and immortal, but those repulsive human traits of his would vanish, leaving him empty since he was replicated with emptiness. It was only right for this, no?

But then she came along and highlighted how, like everything else, his assumption to be false.

He relished how she looked beneath him, withering under his wand, yet under his torture, she remained silent, didn't scream out her secrets, and refused to answer the questions that would satisfy his curiosity, which Malfoy had failed to bring. Rather, she laughed and spat at him like he was nothing. His knights might've thought that she looked insane, but Tom saw something different.