The Price of Peace

The Boy Who Feared Death

Before the world learned to fear the name Lord Voldemort, there was only a boy no one wanted.

Tom Marvolo Riddle was born on the last day of 1926 in a bleak London orphanage. His mother, Merope Gaunt, died only hours after giving birth, leaving behind a child with nothing but her surname and a hope that his father would someday love him.

He never came.

Tom Riddle Sr. had abandoned Merope long before their son was born, leaving Tom to grow up surrounded by strangers who fed him, clothed him, and reminded him every day that he belonged to no one.

The orphanage was cold.

The walls were thin.

Children cried themselves to sleep, fights broke out over scraps of food, and kindness was a luxury few could afford. Tom learned early that love was unreliable, but fear... fear never failed.

The other children avoided him.

Things happened whenever Tom grew angry.

Toys disappeared.

Pets died.

Bullies woke screaming in the middle of the night, unable to explain what they had seen. No one could ever prove Tom was responsible, but everyone knew.

He enjoyed watching them wonder.

He enjoyed watching them fear him.

By the time Albus Dumbledore arrived with a letter inviting him to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Tom had already decided that ordinary people were beneath him. Magic wasn't a miracle.

It was proof that he had always been meant for something greater.

At Hogwarts, he became everything the orphanage had never allowed him to be.

Brilliant.

Charming.

Respected.

Teachers praised him. Students admired him. Even those who disliked him couldn't deny his talent. Behind every polite smile, however, hid a boy who had already begun experimenting with cruelty.

Knowledge became an obsession.

Power became a necessity.

Death became an enemy.

When he discovered the truth about his bloodline the once-proud House of Gaunt, descendants of Salazar Slytherin he finally understood who he was. The shame he had carried his entire childhood transformed into arrogance. He was not an abandoned orphan.

He was Slytherin's heir.

His Muggle father was nothing more than a stain on his existence.

Tom hunted him down without hesitation.

He murdered his father, his grandparents, and framed another man for the crime.

He felt nothing.

Not guilt.

Not regret.

Only satisfaction.

From that moment forward, Tom Riddle began carving pieces from his own soul, believing immortality was worth any sacrifice. One murder became many. One Horcrux became several. Every act of violence stripped away another fragment of the boy he had once been until the handsome student admired by Hogwarts no longer existed.

In his place stood something else.

Something hollow.

Something that no longer feared death because it had abandoned almost everything that made it human.

He buried the name Tom Riddle alongside the people who had created it.

The wizarding world would know him by another name.

A name whispered only behind locked doors.

A name mothers prayed their children would never hear.

Lord Voldemort.

By the time the First Wizarding War reached its height, he had become more than a man.

He had become a nightmare.