Chapter Text
The grass was soft underneath his naked feet and slightly wet with the droplets of an already passed fall of rain. The forest smelled heavy of said rain, and a fog had shaped over the Hogwarts lake, shielding it from view. No wind blew as the stars and the moon peeked from behind grey clouds, every now and then lighting the scene up by moonlight. The school grounds were eerily dark, as the castle lay silent and utterly without light. Not a single bright spot could be found upon the dark walls, towers or in any window which should otherwise have been lit up. He wondered if Hogwarts had ever been completely dark since the days when it was built.
Hogwarts had been everything to him once, and so he stopped to take in the view of the castle where he had lived for about ten years. He knew it dearly and he recalled it for what it was, rather than all that it could be. No matter from what angle he was looking at it, the castle was so familiar that he could have painted it from memory alone, and the drawing would be accurate. The only thing which wasn’t familiar was the odd, rather aggressive tree in the corner of the grounds, and a pale grave located somewhere not too far away from Hagrid’s Hut, which he recalled by a different name. Even that hut was cold and silent for the moment, but he took care in not coming close to it as he continued on towards his destination.
The gentle, wet grass under his feet became hard gravel as he continued down a newly made, white path which led him to a clearing which had not been there before. Within that clearing stood a white stone casket, risen up by a base of white stonework. It was as if the grave was the backbone of a long dead beast which had been exposed to the elements by chance. The casket was marked, so no gravestone was needed to tell whose grave it was. Not that he would have needed that to know who rested within the bone white grave upon the school grounds of Hogwarts.
“Hello, dad,” the Dark Lord whispered to the grave as he placed a hand upon it.
He and the stone matched each other in whiteness, but then the clouds passed and he could see the bones, muscles and veins within his own supposed body. It was a reminder that he was but a golem of flesh, one who would never quite pass for human again with the exception of within very dark rooms with dim lighting. Yet it was not without its benefits, he would tell himself. He didn’t feel hunger, warmth or cold, he didn’t need many of the things which humans could not escape needing. The Dark Lord liked to think that while he was not quite human, he had transcended humanity, and that was a good thing. He would also not have to fear death claiming him in the manner it had claimed the man beneath this stone. He told himself the pain was temporary.
“‘Here lies Albus Dumbledore 1881 - 1997, the Greatest Wizard of the century, Headmaster of Hogwarts, Grand Sorcerer and Warlock extraordinaire,’” The Dark Lord traced his fingers over the letters upon the grave, reading them out loud in the still and empty July night upon the silent grounds of Hogwarts.
“‘Life is a storm, my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a mage is what you do when that storm comes.’” The Count of Monte Cristo. Really? You chose a quote from that story?” The Dark Lord huffed and sneered at the coffin, not certain whether he was bothered or amused by the fact that the story was one of hatred and completed vengeance, as well as revenge. “How perfectly humorous.”
He remained standing with his hand upon his father’s grave, staring out into the mist above the Hogwarts lake without truly seeing anything. Without really being able to formulate any direct thoughts within the cluster of his mind.
“You asked me if it was worth it, did you not?” he slowly began to speak out loud once more. “I’m sure you remember. I told you it was and now I ask you the same: was it worth it?” He traced the letters for ‘friend’ upon the stone.
“Was it worth dying at the hand of your second son to protect a family which the world already deems guilty? Was it worth adopting the child who would grow up to be the enemy of the world, and the one to order your execution? Was it worth meeting and loving the man who began the American Mage War and who you never saw again? Was it worth saving them? Was it worth believing in them? Was it worth sacrificing me and that man for the convenience and happiness of the masses, for the Greater Good? Was it worth dying for them, like the bloody Lord upon his self constructed cross?” He spit the last words, the disdain for religion evident in his otherwise soft and pleasant voice.
After the convulsions of anger calmed down, the Dark Lord rested his head in his hands, putting his full weight upon the grave inside which his father’s corpse was slowly becoming one with nature. “I wanted you to die,” he told the grave. “I wanted you to leave me alone. I wanted your shadow to be gone, and my name to be my own. But you returned it over and over. ‘Tom’ and ‘Riddle.’ Did you think you were doing me a kindness by attempting to make me human? I’ve always been human, dad. Always, always, painfully human. It has always been my one weakness, just as it always was yours. Now, you mark the last part of my humanity which is dead. With your death, I can finally be what I longed to be, in all my inhumanity.”
He stepped back and took a few deep breaths to steady himself as he wrapped his arms around his functioning but miserable excuse for a body. Despite not being able to feel cold, he imagined that he was cold. He felt cold, somewhere deep inside of his wretched golem’s body’s stolen guts. “I won’t cry for you. You know I can’t cry anymore. Out of all the people I’ve killed, you’re the only one I haven’t cried for, surely that must hurt you a little? I hope it does.” The Dark Lord began to pace around the grave as he spoke, never taking his gaze off it.
He stopped by the foot of the grave and looked at the empty end of it, completely untouched by any writing or mark. The Dark Lord did remember one quote from The Count of Monte Cristo which throbbed to the surface of his mind as he looked upon the empty surface. He raised his hand, and words began to inscribe themselves into the foot of the stone, forming what was so stubbornly present in his mind. When he had finished, the previously empty surface read ‘We frequently pass so near to happiness without seeing, without regarding it, or if we do see and regard it, yet without recognising it.’
The Dark Lord took a deep breath and turned his back to the grave, beginning to walk away the same way he had come. “I’ll make our community what it always should have been,” he said. “Goodbye, dad.”