The Chamber - 1943
The chamber is dark, nearly suffocating.
Tom squints through the haze of his blurry vision, eyes adjusting to the little light reflecting off the standing water throughout the cavern. It hurts to stare at too long—his head is pounding.
Rough stones feel cold beneath his back, their worn edges cutting into his sides and causing paltry discomfort. Tom senses the muggy pressure of still air and wonders how long he’s been here. The chamber has always had an ancient gravity, a sense of nothingness, a unique way of making him feel like time is meaningless, as though these walls have seen all that was and all that will be… he’s certain he had found that magnificent once.
It’s no small task to sit up. He feels as though a draught envelopes his body, his limbs dragging and weary. Even breathing feels slow and shallow, like a great weight presses on his chest. He thinks the basilisk should be nearby, coiled and unseen but ever-present, asleep and awaiting its master’s next command—a command that will not come. And now, magnificent seems too unsatisfactory a word.
He exhales and stares down at the small, unassuming diary still grasped in his hand. Its blank pages feel heavier.
The ritual is complete.
An odd sensation bubbles up until it pushes out of his mouth in a rush; his laughter, brief and breathy, echoes around him. It’s incredible—Tom had felt it—the moment his soul ripped itself apart, the savage tearing in his chest, a sensation that made his magic pulse violently. It had been fleeting, no more painful than a potion knife’s edge slicing through lacewings, and now here it is… his soul, fragmented, immortalised within these ordinary-turned-extraordinary pages.
But something feels… wrong.
Tom frowns, his eyes narrowing as a creeping sensation slithers up his spine. What had happened? How did he end up like this, covered in dust on the chamber floor? His thoughts, normally sharp as broken glass, feel clouded and distant like a veil has been cast between him and his recent memories.
He reaches into his mind, trying to piece together the exact words of the incantation, the feeling of triumph after he had succeeded—he should remember it with the vivid clarity he always does, the precision he prides himself on.
But it is all… muddled.
The specific words of the ritual elude him like a dream slipping away upon waking. He blinks, irritation in his chest growing. His palm rubs absentmindedly at his eye, trying to relieve some of the mounting pressure. This isn’t right. He always remembers his spells, every flick of his wand, every syllable spoken.
Tom takes a breath, forcing calm. At least he has copies of his notes hidden here in the chamber. This is merely the aftershock of such a powerful ritual, something his body and mind need time to process. Yes, that has to be it. After all, no one has ever recorded an attempt to split their soul—this is likely very expected.
The calm lasts all of seven seconds before the gaps in his memories gnaw at him again, unsettling.
Tom shifts his focus, instinctively probing his mind for other knowledge, reassuring himself with facts and spells he mastered long ago. He summons memories of his early lessons at Hogwarts, a spell of some kind— “Lumos,” he whispers into the quiet.
A small bright light grows and gleams, appearing right at eye height, wandlessly and as brilliant as always. His eyes flutter at its vibrancy, and he looks away. Nox is hardly a word in his thoughts as the chamber dims once again. Then, something stronger perhaps, like— “Accio,” and Tom’s wand sails to his open hand from wherever it had rolled off to.
For a moment, his mind settles. Yes, these memories are as clear as ever, sharp and intact. If he can remember basic spells, then everything must be fine.
His grip tightens around the diary. “This is no side effect,” he commands to the silent chamber. His voice echoes back at him, cold and hollow.
He lowers his wand, and his expression hardens. The diary feels different now, urging. More than just a tool—it’s now an extension of him, yet separate, a piece of his soul cut away and left to linger. Tom ignores it and slips it into his robes, rising to his feet, sealing it from sight but not from mind.
As he turns and leaves the Chamber, the silence deepens behind him. The stuttered groan of the pipes as he closes the bathroom entrance sounds mocking, like laughter—like it knows something he doesn’t.
Tom shakes his head and reminds himself to place a pepper-up potion by his bedside for the morning.
“Riddle?”
Tom’s eyes pause mid-sentence—it’s a book he’s decided to reread now that he’s split his soul. He’s practically memorised it, so the interruption doesn’t press on his nerves quite as badly as it may have. It’s simple enough to acknowledge Malfoy with a quiet, “Mm?”
“How along are you on your charms paper?”
In hardly a moment, Tom responds, “Finished, naturally.”
Malfoy groans. “Of course you are. I don’t know why I bothered to ask. Professor Stockton is a right bitch when she wants to be, isn’t she? Do you think it’s because of her reflection?”
Lestrange laughs; the sound is choppy and staccato—more like a bark. “Or, maybe if you paid any attention in her class, Abraxas, you wouldn’t think so ill of her!”
Their bickering continues loud and boisterous in the calm of the common room. Other students roll their eyes and titter to themselves while Tom stays silent. His finger gently strokes the book’s spine, and he feels the age of its delicate cover pilling off with each back-and-forth motion. It’s trance-like and nearly grounding.
He hasn’t started the charms assignment. He hadn’t known there was one.
When his focus returns to the sentence in his book, the word ‘loss’ curls back at him in a sharp, taunting script.
After a handful of days, the truth begins to sink in, bringing with it a once-familiar sense of dread. It’s late at night, the rest of his dormmates have long since succumbed to sleep, and Tom is wide awake.
He is never one to deny himself the facts. And the facts stand that the diary—the Horcrux—has taken something from him, more than just his soul. Tom is missing time—days, even, and nothing so inconsequential. Sitting up in bed, hidden away behind its curtains, he looks down at the innocuous journal as though glaring at it will help reveal its secrets to him sooner.
In creating a piece of his soul, in tethering his immortality to these pages, something more had been… extracted. Memories. But why?
He hadn’t intended it—hadn’t foreseen it. Yet, Tom thinks in grim amusement, it makes a sick kind of sense. The memories associated with the diary—the research, the intent, the incantations—all of that is bound to the Horcrux now, inaccessible to him unless he… reconnects to it. But the rest? The other memories?
He stares into the void of its blank pages and feels the emptiness claw at the edges of his consciousness. What has he forgotten? What other than his soul has been ripped from him? He can’t know—he will never know, unless he dares to take the diary back.
Tom Riddle no longer fears. He is fear.
Still, he hesitates.
He will not be weak, not after coming so far. The diary is a weapon, an anchor to his future, to his domination over death itself. But perhaps it will demand more than he intends to give. Is this how it will be with every Horcrux? A small price, but a price all the same.
He dismisses the thought. It doesn’t matter. He is still in control, even if his memories of that night—of some things—are no longer his own. The knowledge that truly matters is still his. His power remains. He is as skilled, as dangerous, as unstoppable as ever. If anything, he is more so now, unbound by the chains of mortality, as timeless as the Chamber.
And yet…
There is a faint, nagging sense of loss. Not of life, not even entirely of memory, but of something more elusive. A part of him, no matter how small, is now out of his reach, locked away in a place where not even his mastery can fully reclaim it.
He pushes the lingering thoughts away. He is not about to become paranoid of all things. There is much to do, after all. Many plans still to set in motion. The process has begun, and nothing—no strange sense of disorientation, no fleeting memory loss—will stand in his way.
He is Lord Voldemort now, eternal.
Yet, as he spells his bed candles to darkness, there is an edge to his confidence, a whisper in the back of his mind that will not be silenced as he closes his eyes and lies down.
What else have I lost without knowing it?