Beautiful Riddles

Vol de la mort.

Flight of death.

A beautiful vision, is it not? To have the ability to evade death's playful arms paints a picture of utter purity. Flight...suggests freedom and brings to mind vivid pictures of immense meadows and endless blue skies. But we know better. I know better.

Voldemort is the picture of pure evil, of unadulterated sin that could not possibly exist in a human. Thirst for power, immortality and dominance. Greed. Utterly human. Well, Voldemort was human. He was human when he was still Tom Marvolo Riddle.

He's brilliant. Absolutely so. And beautiful, I must not forget that. A perfect mind in a perfect shell. Raven locks, alabaster-pale skin and unfathomable, cunning eyes that shone with pure artifice and ambition. A sculpted face hid the snake rearing just below the surface, and slender hands concealed spidery appendages. Such a perfect mask.

He had armies at his disposal before he even became Lord Voldemort. He had powerful families to command before he became a god.

Fear. They say that the icy, all-consuming hands of Fear would choke me, bleed me dry, once his blood eyes met mine. They say that I would feel the magic crackling in the air around him, that I would be on my knees without me knowing, that I would be kneeling before a mortal god.

I never felt fear. And I prostrated myself before him, as a Death Eater would, before he even became the serpentine deity. The ability to inspire love had never been one of his strongest points. No. That exquisite monster never knew love, and so he never gave it and believed in it. He had been denied the love of a mother and of friends. He never had the pure love of another soul. He condemns love. Yet we loved him- I loved him, like a child would love his mother, a follower to leader, lover to lover.

Tom Marvolo Riddle could have had the world to himself. He had us, he had me, at his fingertips. All he had to do was reach out, and grasp. But he suddenly walked down a path where no others dared to venture before, and sought immortality. His name could have been immortal, but he also wanted his form to persevere. And so he delved deep, much deeper than anyone has dared before, into the Dark Arts.

Commoners could not understand what became of him. They shirked from his snake-like visage, they feared his brimming power, they wondered at the sick perfection of it all. When commoners fail to understand, they choose to oppose. And that's what they did.

He thrived from the hate. He grew from the fear. Greedily, he drank and drank the viscous ambrosia that seemd to flow from the masses in endless rivulets. He would have not grown more formidable from any other substance. Not the Elixir of Life. Not unicorn blood. Not vampire blood. And not Harry Potter's blood.

When he became Lord Voldemort, he was still beautiful. Of course he was still brilliant. What changed was that his human nature, which was so entrenched in unspeakable evil, became the nature of a god, albeit an imperfect one.

Whoever said that gods should be perfect?

***

Mon ami, c'est pour toi.

I once saw an awkward boy who loved his books as much, or probably more so, as I loved mine. That was not enough for me, and so I did not befriend him. He was quiet, and I did not know much.

He loved machines. That was what I knew next. Nothing really significant. An awkward boy who loved books and computers. That was all. That was all.

I didn't know better.

I didn't know that he was a man, not a boy, in the more profound sense of the word. Yet his masculinity is different and far more alluring than that of commonplace egos and unwanted machismo. His strength lies in his enduring soul, in his precious ability to withstand all his pains and immortalize his rare joys. He does not feel the need to verbalize afflictions, and instead bears it alone to nurture his immense strength. His hands, rough from countless days of perfecting a warlike art, are the most striking of all. Pens are blessed when he uses them to weave words into splendor, words that rise from the superficial papyrus to form corporeality, words so vivid and compelling that they take a tangible form.

He is more than a man who loved his computers and his books. I know this now.

They could not see you. Commoners, the lot of them. Sadly, I was one of them, too, before I ever saw beyond the books, the computers, the strangeness. And, as pointless as this may be, I am sorry. I was a kid. That alone probably speaks for the blunder.

Flight. Go on, Loki, the Skywalker. Take to the air and shed your earthly form.

Ascend to the skies, and be. Be.