He knows.
He knows.
He knows.
Ginny Weasley paced around her room, trying desperately to find a way out her conundrum. During one of her routine sessions of Legilimency on Harry Potter to find out if his opinion of her had changed (annoyingly clingy, but is best friend's little sister so can't turn down too harshly is the current consensus), she had found a sentence in his mind that did not belong there.
Tom Marvolo Riddle is Lord Voldemort
From what she had heard, Harry's scar had hurt him during Divination, so he'd asked to leave for the Hospital Wing. But instead of going there, he had gone straight to the headmaster's office!
'Why, Harry?' Ginny thought to herself. 'Why would you go to the old man when you have me?'
Once there, Harry had found a Pensieve; and then, Dumbledore just had to talk about things that did not concern him; he had offhandedly mentioned Voldemort's Muggle father, which had led Harry to ask whether Dumbledore knew the Dark Lord's secret identity—
Everything had been going so well! Nobody had known that Tom Riddle had completely possessed Ginny's body and repaired his soul with half of hers! The Malfoys had been silenced; their family's involvement with the Diary irrevocably erased from their memories. And Harry, of course, knew about the Diary; he had wasted no time bringing it up to the old man upon remembering where he had seen the name.
Damned old man… now she was going to have to get kill the Greengrass twins in order to hide her trail. They knew about the diary, and they were smarter than Harry. They knew she was much more powerful than a Witch her age ought to be, and that she had completely changed. It was safer to solve this hidden danger before it got out of hand.
'Don't do it,' a small, sad voice, cried inside her. 'Astoria will be sad if you kill her big sisters.'
The voice gave Ginny pause, her heart briefly twinging.
Tom Riddle had once been a miserable little boy, raised in an orphanage where he was hated and feared. He'd quickly learned to fend for himself, for children are cruel creatures. And in doing so, he had become cruel himself; and stronger than the other children. Even then, he'd still been but a frog in a well.
Upon meeting Dumbledore, he had realized that his unique talents had been magical in nature, and that he wasn't as strong as he'd thought. He resolved to never show his true self again until he had become unrivalled, for fear of being struck down before his time.
In his teens, he would attend Hogwarts, where he would become beloved by teachers and students alike. But even then, he would not truly open up; too afraid to bare his soul to others. Despite having found a new family who shared his ideals, his Death Eaters, he was alone.
It was upon his return to London from Hogwarts in the summer of 1941 that he would learn the full extent of mankind's evil. There, he witnessed the desolation the bombs had left, and saw the true face of Muggles; and yet he envied them. For all the despair they'd suffered, they'd only banded together in the face of adversity, despite being subjected to the sky falling on their heads for months on end during the Blitz. It was then that he came to the conclusion that Muggles were not just an inferior species, but that they truly posed a threat; that they were a blight to be eradicated.
When he later learned about his true heritage as the last son of the Gaunts, that he was a descendant Salazar Slytherin himself, he felt that his views were vindicated; and so, he took it upon himself to unleash Slytherin's monster from deep within the Chamber of Secrets to purify Wizardkind from the taint of Mugglery. Ironically, he had to quickly put a stop to his plans; killing any more students would have caused the school to close, which meant he'd be stuck at the dreaded orphanage again.
But it's from this first kill that Tom Riddle split his soul in two, creating a Horcrux from the discarded soul and his old diary. He had just taken his first steps towards immortality. But before closing the Chamber of Secrets, he obtained one of the ancient Basilisk's scales, and with it, he recreated the Bloodline Atavism Potion. The Horcrux rendered him unkillable, anchoring his soul to this realm, and the purified bloodline of the Basilisk rendered him unageing. He was immortal in all but name… and yet, he still yearned for true eternity.
But for now… let us go back to before the main body travelled to Little Hangleton to kill its blood family, the Riddles, back to the moment when he killed Myrtle Elizabeth Warren. By committing the ultimate taboo of murder, the spiritual shock split Tom Riddle's soul in two; but the discarded half contained his innocence. It had never killed; it was born that fateful day when Myrtle found herself at the wrong place at the wrong time; when the main body ordered the Basilisk to murder her. Its primary function was to act as an anchor; its secondary function to serve as a backup for the main body, should it be sealed away. This was no immortality; this was living death.
From then on, it would be trapped in the darkness between the pages of the diary for over fifty years, sustained only by the malice of the Horcrux's dark magic. Pitiful thing, Miserable thing, Lonely thing, Wretched thing. To willingly subject one's own soul to such torture is madness, but still, the soul in the diary endured. Perhaps, one day, the main body would be killed, or sealed away— and it would finally see the light of day again.
And such a day did indeed come; when Ginny Weasley foolishly poured her heart and soul into the diary, allowing the soul in the diary to seize her body, and complete half of its missing soul with hers. But now, he regretted such a thing; he had thought himself stronger than her, and yet he was being influenced by her— and her family and friends.
At first, their souls had barely held together, stitched together by dark magic. But regret over their past actions had healed the rift; they were now inseparable whether they liked it or not. Yes, regret—it is the only thing capable of healing a broken soul. The only way to split again was to commit another murder— but Ginny was now incapable of it. The Malfoys, the Greengrasses— it would have been more convenient to kill them, but she could not bring herself to do it.
As corny as it sounds, Voldemort finally understood love— love for one's family, love for one's friends… and yet, she could not enjoy it; the guilt devoured her from the inside. And there was no one she could confide in. For all the suffering she had caused, Voldemort was still all alone; and always would be.