Tom Riddle and the Pure-Blood Prince

The Horcrux Homicides

Just as evening was approaching on a Saturday of the first week of July, Eileen Prince glanced in a looking-glass mirror. She looked sophisticated clad in satin dress-robes of gold. She continued to glance in vain at different angles in the mirror, just as most any sixteen-year-old girls do. Yet, Eileen had never really done that before. Eileen's usually pale face, was flushed a deep pink.

Her thoughts resurfaced once again to Tom Riddle and she strained to imagine Riddle standing with her in the mirror, as she filled with passion.

Forgetting about the party her family was having that night, she immersed herself at the desk where she had hoarded several volumes from her family's library. All of them concerning elements of dark magic.

But tonight, she decided to quit studying and took out a journal and a quill. Seconds later, her hand flew across the parchment feverishly. In tiny, but curly writing she wrote:

Dear Tom:

I hope you can read these letters one day. They are going to explain everything. I think if you did, you would finally understand. But please realize that I am trying to understand you. How is that love must be an "illusion of grandeur?" Love is a wonderful and real thing, Tom! I am so in love with you and miss you so badly. I want you to know that I feel for you so much and all your pain. Of course, I am taking my elixir like you said to and won't break the Unbreakable vow. I know you do care if I broke my-"

"Eileen! Get out of your room, and come to the party. There is a young man, I want you to meet." The voice was raspy and sounded totally stubborn.

Eileen threw her quill down and rose, clearly irate. She was speechless. How could her mother think there was any man for her besides Tom Riddle? Eileen vaguely remembered how her mother, Marie Prince nor her father Graham Prince, nor her six-year-old brother, Francis Prince, knew of the name.

Feeling like a prisoner, Eileen jumped out of the chair and threw a crystal figurine across the stone room. It shattered into hundreds of fragments.

But Eileen didn't care. She detested staying in the room that looked like it was made for royalty, because she was jaded from the life-style of being a wealthy pure-blood.

"NO," she said loud enough and forcefully enough for her mother to hear.

There was a long pause as Marie Prince pursed her lips, wondering what to say. Marie Prince was wearing a trimmed fur cloak and plain white robes. The way she held herself it was apparent that she was an uptight, stand-offish woman. "Tell me what's wrong Eileen?!...Eileen?!" She was now thumping on the door.

"You have not been out all summer. What is wrong with you? Even though you've blossomed, something else is bothering you. Is it the O.W.L.S? They'll be arriving in a couple of days and you'll be yourself again," the mother said, more to herself because she knew her daughter was not going to reply, but at least she knew Eileen was listening. Then her mother left, in a huff and went down, past the twisted balcony.

Eileen sat down at her desk, about to write when she glanced at her cauldron in the corner. It was filled with floo powder. She took a fistful of the shimmering, green powder and pondered sneaking off to London tonight. She hoped to find Riddle's orphanage. She stared at the fireplace straight across from her and weighed her options.

The tranquil blue-flamed candles mixed with the last orange hue of sunlight streaming in from the stain-glassed windows depicting legends of Merlin.

Eileen went to her bed of blue-gray bedcovers with fancy magical designs. She felt despondent in her wish to see Riddle again, for remembering how that was nearly two whole months away. She did not have the faith to believe he would visit her like he had hinted on the train ride.

Eileen resembled a beautiful picture of placid security, comfortable on top of her covers, in the gold dressrobes as she slipped into slumber.


Meanwhile, Tom Riddle was in the gathering darkness just a few miles from Stonewall Estate making his way towards the Victorian style mansion, owned by the Riddles of Little Hangleton....


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In one hand, Riddle held an old-fashioned lamp in front of him, raised to light his way. In the other his Uncle Morfin's wand. For he had just stolen it and stupefied Morfin Gaunt.

Now he trekked in the direction of the house, he'd observed earlier in the late afternoon. The gardener, Frank Bryce, whom would be accused by the Muggles had seen 'the teenaged boy dark-haired and pale' (as he would describe to the police) that very day.

After a few minutes Riddle came towards higher ground, and climbed up a steep plateau. He proceeded over the hedgerows and set across a short field. In the silent darkness, his movement rippled from his cloak whipping in the wind reverberating over the hills.

Riddle glanced upward, frowning at the several windows and the wrap-around porch of the front of the house, situated on top of the biggest hill. It was an imposing building on the higher ground, over-looking most of the valley.

Even though a breath-taking sight when he reached the summit, Ridlde did not waver. He was ruthless in his quest to meet the Riddles and so plundered onward totally consumed in the hatred of his father, Tom Riddle Sr. As well as disgruntled from learning his maternal Grandfather, Marvolo was deceased. In the back of his mind was the despicable thought in discovering that all there was to the Gaunt place (the last family descendents of Slytherin) was a degenerate hovel.

Going up the pathway, Riddle aimed his wand towards his torso and concentrated briefly on the immensely difficult transfigurement to make one invisible. He did not want to risk being seen, as he knew what he was going to do tonight. He'd pre-meditated it for years.

Near soundlessly he went through the front entrance, where the key-hole blazed being un-locked magically. Boldly and fearlessly Riddle stepped into the foyer despite his thought that there may be a butler in attendance. He couldn't help but glance around from curiosity, once he saw nobody to be in the vicinity. Riddle judged it to be a well-kept if not lavishly furnished environment with a sense of ambience about it. There was oil-paintings of portraits of the Riddle family leading up a well-lit stair-case.

Riddle wasted no time with the portraits, more than eager for the real interaction as he set the old-fashioned lamp down on a ledge. Just then, he heard sounds coming from up the wooden stairs and Riddle ascended them.

The door to a drawing room was ajar on the right down the hallway.

Riddle snaked his way over to it, quiet as a shadow.

His dark eyes roved right at all three of them and flashed scarlet at the first look at the Riddle family seated at a long dining table in their drawing room.

Tom felt a mixture of gladness and being anxious to let them know his presence, yet continued to listen to the conversation, undetected.

Clearly, the elderly Thomas Riddle and his wife, Mary Riddle with their middle-aged son, Tom Riddle Sr. had only just sat down for their evening meal.

"I'm not long for this world son, I fear. We can't watch your back forever. You'll be inheriting this property. But first, you must secure our name," he spoke as if complaining along with a grandoisity concerning this most family-oriented of affairs.

Riddle, Sr. looked up at the ceiling, rolling his eyes with a petulant air. Then sighed looking and evincing that he felt lonely.

Mary Riddle, setting a spoon down, offered consolingly, "I know you loved her, dear. But that's all in the past. You have your future to consider. Your father is right."

Tom Riddle Sr. burst out in a vexed whine still sounding like a young man, "We've gone over this a hundred times!...The only woman I ever loved was her. Cecelia was perfect, until that thing came along," he added with cold derision.

Sixteen-year-old Voldemort's emotions elevated to anger. His knuckle's whitened over Morfin's beech-wood wand now gripping it.

Mary Riddle became firm and less consoling as she turned to look at her son, "Let me suggest writing a note explaining to Cecelia. You have to marry,...I can't die knowing you'll be left with nobody!," she finished her voice choking and tears welled in her eyes.

The young Voldemort just impatiently stalled as he moved closer to his father, quickly losing his will to listen further. But he let them continue, as more was gradually being revealed.

A second later, the middle-aged son retaliated his mother's advice, "She has no respect for me. Not like she used to, at least. How could Cecelia anyway? With all the talk of the scandal in the village. A letter would do no good."

The elderly father cut-in and said, "When you ran off with that tramp, I couldn't believe it."

As if reminiscing every detail, the elderly Mary Riddle said with zealousness, "An abominable, scarlet woman Merope Gaunt was. She duped my son and lied that she was pregnant. Actually feigned pregnancy. Yet I still don't see how."

Thomas Riddle answered on the immediate defense, "Nor do I! I still don't see how it was possible, Tom."

"The village may take my account as folly. Yet I thought my parents would believe that she lured me," Tom Riddle Sr. said from his hurt pride reliving the shame of being the most privileged young man in Great Hangleton going off with the filthiest scum.

His parents listened, rapt as their son gulped and with quiet terror whispered, "She tampered with drinks, put some kind of poison in. Whatever it was made me crazy. I told you before...she was a witch and definitely pregnant and it had to have been from me."

Mary Riddle began to laugh as if to shake off her fear and said quizzically, "Magic! Silly magic? I do believe you dear that she lured you. But no, not a witch. It must of been beauty, yet from what I saw that wretched girl was far from it."

"Well, even if the Gaunt girl was pregnant, who cares who the brat is if it's alive? It's illegitimate. An illegitimate waif at that, I'm sure." the elderly man said confidently.

The teenaged Voldemort decided it was most opportune to appear to them. So he apparated to the head of the table and made himself visible, as it would be most impressive to the father, and grandparents who dared think him insignificant.

With the wand, clenched in his hand at his midriff, Riddle addressed them feeling as if he were royalty addressing his subjects, "Hello, father. Shall I say, long time no see? This is Merope Gaunt's son, Tom Marvolo Riddle. The son that you abandoned with his mother, you just discussed. All three of you, are about to die. Tonight."

Thinking this would frighten the Riddle's, he was irritated when it failed. They just gaped like he was some exotic figure in a museum, the lines on their foreheads' deepening, trying to make sense of it.

"Are you a ghost, or a mean spirit summoned?," said Mary Riddle, the first to catch her tongue. She was the one who most clearly saw what this was. For when an intruder (as in their perspective Riddle was an intruder) catches someone off guard, it is easy to see their intentions and inner-character. On some level, the old woman knew this was evil at it's worst.

Riddle dully frowned at their ignorance and contemptuously answered, "No, I'm alive, of course. I apparated and made myself visible to you as I'm a wizard whose come to destroy all three of you...it's going to be an annihilation of your existence," he finished, rationalizing with them as if it was a refined, civil thing to do so.

After those words, Riddle took a few heavy steps forward, glaring at one to the next, directly into their disbelieving eyes.

Mary Riddle let out a petrified scream, and almost at once, Riddle's wand was on her and she tottered in the chair. He had used Petrificus totalus, noverbally and so his grandmother was immobilized and muted, yet still capable of looking on.

The two muggle men, quaked under the pressure, they had no gall left inside them to rise and defend her. That exertion, proved in their minds that this stranger did indeed have powers of some sort, and Riddle saw that they were convinced in his control.

So he stood between them, resting the wand on the table, supremely confident they wouldn't touch it. Even if they did, Riddle could definitely retrieve it through a wandless summoning charm or retrieve his other wand, the wands he owns from his robes.

He put his hands in a characteristic gesture, the long fingertips together like he was acting diplomatic: "Let me explain your actual station in life before I watch your deaths. It's not quite the pompous snobs you esteem yourself to be. You're muggles, part of an inferior race. I'm no waif, even if born from a brute," he beckoned at Tom Riddle, Sr. "And a mother who couldn't save herself, though of my kind being a witch? Yes, that's what happened and left me with nothing. Not even her family managed well! But I'm going to show you some more magic...silly, as it was deemed here before. Yes, I was here and heard that. Whom should have their resolve tested first?"

All the while they had stared with appalled shock at the wizard clad in black robes before them. Tom Riddle Sr. was amazed how very much this man (or was he a boy?) had nearly the same handsome features, like he'd had in the flower of youth.

"You know what, I think? You're correct," responsed Tom to the old man nodding and pointing at his chest. "I'll start with you, Thomas Riddle. So that I may revel in the agony of your cowardly son, watching. Waiting for me to finish him off."

With absolutely no warning, Voldemort was casting the same spell he'd used on Mary Riddle onto both of the muggle men. Now they were trapped in their seats. All three facing each other, forced to witness each of the other's soon to be suffering.

Riddle liked the way they looked because they were like frozen statues of stone. It worked well for him as that was how he preferred to see them.

His teeth bared, looking vicious, he closed in on the old man. "Crucio!" issued from the boy's lips and sharp rays of light struck the old man's body.

Riddle swerved in the other direction: There was the son sitting parallel to Thomas Riddle, being forced to watch. Voldemort lingered, looking into both of their eyes. He knew the two men wwre locked in coils of pain, feeding off each other. For Thomas Riddle was in pain, and the younger man was empathizing with whatever horrors that most recent spell had conjured. Voldemort's eyes continued to dart between both of them, watching the effect. Emotions like empathy for other's suffering had always fascinated Riddle, because he did not understand it.

"Terrified? Mortified by the pain coursing through those veins of yours?..." Riddle had addressed the elderly Mr. Riddle.

"Just another moment..." He was relishing the screaming he could sense going on inside the old man who could no longer think.

He turned to again peer into the eyes' of his victims. It especially delighted Voldemort to see his father's frustration in his lack of power to stop the events from continuing.

"Avada Kedavra!" A jet of green light sailed over to Mary Riddle. She died right on the spot, beside her husband.

Voldemort composed himself as he peered into the old woman's face, at her eyes empty of the light that had been there when she was alive. He thought of how the eyes froze, forever inert, and forever gone of their power. In that instant, he felt pleasure at his own empowerment over taking another's life for the very first time.

"I believe it's justified to proceed with that grandfather of mine," he whispered.

Riddle gave a clear and calculatingly look at Tom Riddle Senior, and raised the wand. Another jet of green light issued.

For a brief instant, he surmised the fact about his second murder. Then turned furiously on the spot, for it was his father's turn to die.

The young Voldemort's eyes were electrified and the red gleam more pronounced than ever. After all, Tom Riddle had just torn his soul into pieces.

"How eagerly I anticipated your death, father. Quite more than any other. Finally, I can eradicate the last bit of the unworthy Riddle line with your death."

He continued to probe into the man's eyes, sensing the man's grief in his parents' termination. Yet Voldemort's eyes were pitiless, still enfused with rage.

With that mad gleam in his eyes, he roared, "AVADA KEDAVRA!"

After a lulling silence, Riddle set Morfin's wand on the table next to some of the utensils the muggle family had used for eating. He then surveyed the scene with fierce pride. Tom's turbulent emotions boiled down and the concentration of how to continue with his so-called "project" kicked in. He had total awareness to assess how to finish his deeds.

Instinctively, he whipped his wand from his deep pockets full of eagerness to accomplish the next operation with his own wand. A nonverbal spell re-aligned the way the bodies were positioned. He levitated the corpse of Mary Riddle onto the floor, then placed Thomas Riddle to the right of his deceased wife and his most-hated father he squeezed between them. He thought how marvelous it was symbolically. How they represented 'mother', 'father' and 'child'. How he would eventually apply his future horcruxes to their deaths'. Voldemort thought the diary would be best to one day make into a horcrux from Mary Riddle's death, the ring his paternal grandfather, as to reflect on Marvolo's heirloom, and perhaps his own wand for Tom Riddle Senior?

Feeling a mixture of rage, stress, and weariness, his forehead throbbing, he simply kept his wand raised. He could feel his hand burning all the way into the very core of his wand. Riddle then projected the unseen energy outward, as a method to mark his the task he had fulfilled.

Voldemort had just cursed the Riddle property. It was a curse to ensure that none but he would ever be able to claim ownership of it. If anyone tried to take up residence whom was not a resident beforehand, they would now die within a short period.

Riddle smiled gloatingly. He was thinking into the future, when he could someday experience the joy in revisiting the scene of his crimes. He gave one last look, absorbing every detail of the drawing room into his consciousness. He wanted to fix this memory in his mind forever.

As he did so, he noticed a glittering green chain of some sort wrapped around the neck of Mary Riddle. Looking disgusted, Tom aimed his wand at the base of the woman's throat. He extracted the piece of jewelry from her. Tom Riddle did not remove it with his bare hands, mainly because one thing Voldemort secretly fears is dead bodies.

He clutched the necklace in his fist, and dropped it into the pocket of his robes.

Without looking back he turned on his heel, and departed the drawing room. Yet not before running his hand over the table, to take Morfin's wand.

Making his way back to the Gaunt's place, he felt an insane urge to get that black stoned ring with the Peverell coat of arms that Morfin had told him about. His heart raced at the adrenaline rush of tearing his soul and his thirst to know the spell to split his soul and contain it in objects he subconsciously thought of as trophy's.

He would modify Morfin's memory to make him believe he committed the acts. He would pocket the ring and then finally, he would make his way to Stonewall Estate to fetch that follower, Eileen Prince.