khrysopos

“…The Dark Lord’s magic was a suffocating mass of anger, pressing down on him like a blanket of blackness. He leaned in so that he was speaking in Harry’s ear, his voice quiet but deadly.

“Insult me one more time,” he whispered, “and I shall tear your insolent tongue right out of your mouth.”

Harry wasn’t sure what came over him. Rather than find that terrifying, like he knew he should have, he smirked. He leaned in so that he, too, could whisper in Voldemort’s ear, and with the exact same inflection that the Dark Lord had just used to threaten him, said:

“Fuck. You.”

The reaction was instantaneous.

The first thing Harry registered was the taste of blood.

A sharp, stinging pain exploded in his mouth, and it took him a second to comprehend what was happening. Voldemort had wrapped his fingers around Harry’s throat, viciously tight, and in the same moment had—had crashed his lips over Harry’s, wrenching open his mouth and had ensnared his tongue with his teeth—

He is literally going to bite my tongue off, Harry thought with a blank horror as the pain increased exponentially. Blood, hot and metallic, filled his mouth.

And just when he thought that it was actually going to happen—that Voldemort was going to tear away and take Harry’s tongue with him—everything changed.

Harry wasn’t sure how or why it happened, but it was such a rapid switch that he could hardly understand it. Voldemort had released his painful hold on Harry’s tongue, and, with blood still pouring in his mouth, had begun to feel it with his own. The grip on his throat slackened slightly, and somewhere in the midst of all of this shock Harry realized that he was experiencing the most violent kiss of his life.

From Voldemort.

The pain in his scar vanished. The Dark Lord reached with his other hand, intertwining his fingers into Harry’s mess of hair and forcing his head back against the wall, demanding more access. Harry was too stunned to do anything about it. Voldemort ravaged his mouth, claiming every crevice with his teeth and tongue, completely unbothered by the fact that there was blood everywhere.

Perhaps the most horrifying part of all was that Harry, in the messy whirlwind of it all, found himself almost instinctually reciprocating.

The second he realized just what the hell was happening, Harry reached with both his hands, hoping to push Voldemort away. He never got the chance. At that moment, Voldemort abruptly ended the violence of their kiss, his hands still on Harry’s throat and clawing at his hair. Harry gasped for breath, having not realized just how starved for oxygen he had become.

Voldemort’s lips and chin were covered in blood. Harry was sure that he must look much worse, considering that it was his tongue which was currently pooling blood into his mouth, even still.

Voldemort smirked, and it was possibly the most horrifying sight that Harry had ever seen, to witness someone who looked like Tom Riddle give such a charming and crimson-stained smile. “I’ve changed my mind,” he murmured, releasing his hold on Harry’s throat and reaching into the pocket of his robe. “I like your insolent tongue just where it is." 

There is no good and evil; only power and those too weak to seek it.

“ your hands are scarred from murder

and yet

posters: Death Eaters 

and i promised myself i wouldn’t let you complete me

In our fandom, Tom Riddle is a romanticized character. Even in dark and macabre fics, his most unattractive qualities aren’t really showcased, and when they are, they’re usually portrayed pretty favorably. Now obviously there’s nothing wrong with reinventing and redefining characters—imo, you definitely should. But just for a bit of fun, I put together a list of less-than-sexy canonical traits that make him more dynamic, complicated, and interesting to read imo. (Inspired by this post.) 

1. He’s a compulsive thief — and not only when he wants something for a specific purpose. His character is constructed around pathological emptiness and longing for esteem (rooted in childhood poverty and neglect). When he steals from the other orphans, it’s not because he has any grand plans for these items—he wants to have these things simply so that they cannot. 

As he gets older, this “magpie-like tendency” evolves into the defining flaw of his Horcrux ambition. Had he chosen simple, unassuming objects, he could have been invincible. But the language used to describe him — “hungry” (CoS) and “vacant” with “empty hands” (DH) — shows that there’s something more to this error than mere stupidity or ego or blind ambition. It’s about the conflict between spiritual/emotional needs and material desire, where he is Rowling’s hollow and grandiose foil to Harry’s prevailing moral goodness. 

2. He is shamelessly parasitic. There are three strong literal cases of this (1) Quirrell; (2) snakes and critters in Albania ; and (3) Harry himself. But then it doesn’t end there. He physically depends on Wormtail to wean him like an infant using the ‘milk’ of a Maledictus to whom he later knowingly consigned a piece of his soul. 

Yes, Dumbledore does say that Tom Riddle is a highly self-sufficient and independent child—this obsession with autonomy, however, is more of a self-delusion than a reality. He is the most dependent character in the series. He rends himself so many times, his soul itself is unstable without reliance on bodies both inanimate and conscience. And he doesn’t mind this because his obsession with self-reliance is about detaching from that which he considers weak—human love and friendship. Coerced servitude and allegiance, on the other hand, are qualities he values immensely. 

3. The child Tom Riddle is not sophisticated. This is actually the only fandom habit that does annoy me personally. Really often kid!Riddle is given this rich and colorful vocabulary and aristocratic bearing. This change completely misrepresents his class origins and is pretty inconsistent with his behavior in HBP. Take his line to Dumbledore for example: “I don’t need you. I’m used to doing things for myself, I go round London on my own all the time.” He does not say: “I don’t require your company. I often walk through the city on my own.” And yet I can promise you, you will encounter a lot of that bloated, hyper-mature dialogue in fics. 



Now sure, if you change his upbringing, this becomes irrelevant. Just note the subtle and powerful difference between a child who, unrefined, has an advanced grasp of manipulation and coercion – and – a child who mysteriously sounds like the Queen even though he’s a poor orphan raised in working-class 1930s London. 

4. He has poor impulse control. I’ve gotten into arguments about this one but hear me out. Riddle is undoubtedly intelligent, strategic, and cautious… However, he is not rational. Dumbledore is rational. He relies on impersonal calculations to plot and ploy. Riddle does not. He acts on desire and satisfaction, and calculates maximum efficiency of these things so that he can achieve his only goal: material immanence and domination. 

It was not rational of him to slaughter his family; it was not rational of him to unleash the Basilisk; it was not rational of him to strike Harry with the Elder Wand. He did these things to satisfy an immediate thrill – to get revenge, to acquire the admiration of his thug gang, to kill Harry. He doesn’t anticipate the consequences of his actions and therefore makes foolish errors that even an ordinary and unexceptional person would be capable of avoiding. 



(Notably, deficient fear conditioning is one of the defining qualities of criminal psychopathy.) 

5. He is kind of funny? Far from being humorless and austere, we can gather from a few moments in the text that Riddle/Voldemort has a subtle and vindictive sense of humor. He tells Wormtail that he’d be used for a task that many of his followers would give their “right hands to perform” (GoF). He mocks the Blacks for having their blood mixed with a werewolf and everyone laughs at them (DH). He also laughs hysterically at his own cruelty at many points, such as during Ginny’s manipulation (CoS).