The Mark of a Death Eater

Tom Marvolo Riddle

I was the last person to enter charms but didn’t have any problem with the work we were doing because I’d studied it before. I went through my timetable after lunch. I wasn’t taking Divination or Care of Magical Creatures this year so all my subjects fitted nicely. I don’t really like Divination and got and ‘E’ for it last year, (the only E, the rest were all ‘O’s) and I don’t like animals that much so leaving Care of Magical Creatures seemed fine. To be honest, I wasn’t sure what I would like to do when I finished school. A ministry job was definite, and though I didn’t fancy doing any politician work, I wasn’t that up for Banking or Healing. There were plenty of other jobs -an auror wold be marvellous- but I wasn’t too sure what I’d do. I might enjoy joining my father as an ‘Unspeakable’. If only I knew what they did. My mother Isabelle and brother Rigel both work for Gringotts. That’s bound to be dreary. I never liked Arithmancy much but I figured it’d be very helpful in the future so I kept it.

I shoved the timetable back in my bag and headed for lunch. I sat between Vivienne’s red curls and Helen’s golden hair because Daphne was sitting with Rudolph and I didn’t want to interrupt them. Arrianne showed up a little later with her best friend Penny, a pretty elfin-looking girl with dark brown hair in a short bob and wide eyes. She gave me the book Zayn told me about and ran off to her next class.

After dinner and my homework, I got out Tom Riddles book and pricked my finger again to get it open. That was really becoming annoying. The more I read, the more I felt sorry for this Tom. He was a half-blood, his mother a witch and his father a muggle that he had never met and never cared for him. He grew up in a Muggle orphanage after his mother died giving birth to him. He never described that he felt sad over his mother or father, but I suppose he would have to be careful what he wrote in books. I know I wouldn’t want everything to be exposed in there. His childhood seemed terrible. He could do things other children could not. They found him weird, so they teased him, or fought with him, or isolated him. In revenge, he used to use magic (unknowingly) on them. 

Then Professor Dumbledore came. Tom never trusted him, but soon grew used of him. And he liked to be different. He thought ‘Tom’ was such a common name and decided to ‘seek out a more worthy name.’ He described his pleasure in finding out he was different, and his excitement in getting a wand (thirteen and a half inches, yew, phoenix feather tail) from Ollivander’s. He loved Hogwarts, it was his home (much like mine) although he still had to return to the Muggle orphanage where he was born during summers. Occasions he despised.

He was absolutely extraordinary. He was ambitious and intelligent, he liked to improvise and rule. He described the way Professor Dumbledore never truly seemed to like him, how much Professor Slughorn did. He never liked Slughorn much but was simply amused by him. (Hurrah for you, Tom Riddle.) Tom was taken over by the task of finding out his heritage. When he found out he was the last known descendent of Slytherin, he became obsessed with finding out all of the great founder’s secrets. He’d found the book in The Chamber of Secrets in his fifth year, and since then the book changed from a biography to a diary. 

I stopped there, debating whether to read more on this magnificent wizard who seemed to have something unnerving about him. I liked him alot and found I could relate to much of what he felt. He seemed so much like me yet so different. I wished I knew ow he looked. I decided that the first thing I’d do tomorrow was to go to the library and find out about him. His name must’ve been on the old prefect records and maybe even the head boy records. So it was with my head buzzing Tom Marvolo Riddle that I went to sleep.