Night had fallen on Gaunt Manor, and in the dim light of his room, Aurelian sat at his desk. In front of him lay an object that would seem insignificant to anyone else... a simple black notebook, worn by time.
But this diary was no ordinary book; it was one of his father's Horcruxes. A fragment of Tom Riddle's soul lay dormant within its pages, a shadow eager to spread across the world once more.
Aurelian held it in his hands, observing every detail of the cover. His eyes reflected a mixture of emotions: curiosity, suspicion... and determination.
"So... here you are," he said in a whisper, barely audible.
He opened the diary. The pages were blank, pristine, as if they had never been written on. However, the magic it emanated was evident.
After a few seconds of hesitation, he took a quill and dipped it in ink. He held it and wrote with a light stroke.
"Hello, my name is Aurelian."
The silence lingered for a few moments. Then, the letters began to slowly fade, as if they were being absorbed by the page.
Aurelian raised an eyebrow. He knew his father was about to respond. The diary was awakening.
New words began to appear in elegant, firm handwriting, impeccable.
"Hello, my name is Tom Riddle."
Aurelian leaned forward, his dark eyes following the strokes, as if an invisible hand were writing in front of him.
"So this is my father as a young man..." he thought, with cold, calculating curiosity.
The sobriety of the letters, the confidence in the way he presented himself... everything reflected a Tom different from the one he knew and had been told about. Here was not the feared Voldemort, just a boy who still hid his ambitions behind a mask of courtesy and kindness.
Aurelian smiled slightly.
"Tom Riddle..." he murmured softly.
He wasn't the tyrant. He wasn't the monster. He was the seed that would one day grow into that. Now, Aurelian had the opportunity to look closely at that seed, to understand what kind of mind inhabited those pages.
The diary seemed to wait. The letters remained still, glowing for a second before fading away, Riddle himself awaiting his response.
Aurelian picked up his pen again, his thoughts racing.
"Let's see how different you are from what you became..." he whispered.
Aurelian dipped his pen in ink again and wrote calmly.
"Nice to meet you, Tom."
The letters disappeared instantly, swallowed by the void. The silence lingered until new words appeared in clean, calculated handwriting.
"I don't remember seeing you at Hogwarts. Which house are you in?"
Aurelian raised an eyebrow, amused. The tone sounded friendly, but beneath all that courtesy... there was only the shadow of someone he knew too well.
He wrote slowly.
"Slytherin. Which house were you in? How was your stay there?"
The words disappeared, this time the answer was almost immediate.
"Slytherin... of course. That's where those who recognize power always are. My stay there was... interesting. Let's just say I learned much more than the teachers could teach me."
Aurelian leaned back in his chair, watching the letters fade away. He could imagine Tom Riddle's face, with that typical air of an exemplary student.
"Always playing the charmer... eh, Father?" he thought.
With a spark of curiosity in his eyes, he wrote again.
"Tell me, Tom, what do you value most? What are you really looking for?"
The diary remained silent for a little longer. Then the words came out firm and clear, as if Tom Riddle himself were speaking in the room.
"Power. Because with power, everything else is possible."
Aurelian smiled enigmatically.
"Exactly what I expected from you, Father..." he whispered to himself, without the diary being able to hear him.
Aurelian toyed with the pen between his fingers, his eyes fixed on the diary, wanting to pierce through the pages and see the boy writing on the other side.
With a calm stroke, he wrote.
"Tom, tell me something... have you ever thought about having children?"
The letters faded away as usual. The silence lasted much longer than usual, and Aurelian smiled, knowing he had struck an unexpected chord.
Finally, the answer came, slower, as if the words weighed heavily on the ink.
"What an... intimate question. It's not something I usually think about."
Aurelian rested his elbow on the desk, bringing his hand to his chin. "I've baffled you... how interesting."
He went back to writing naturally.
"Don't you think... sometimes, children are an extension of ourselves? A way to leave our mark, beyond what we can achieve with magic?"
The diary remained blank for a few more seconds. Then, the letters appeared with a clearer stroke.
"The mark I leave does not need offspring. My legacy will be in what he believes, in what he conquers. Children are just chains. I will create my own destiny."
Aurelian let out a small, barely audible laugh. He had found the same arrogance that characterized the adult Voldemort, although here it was still wrapped in the youthful voice of a prodigious student.
"And yet... here I am," he murmured softly, with a flash of irony in his eyes.
The diary, oblivious to his thoughts, waited for his next words.
Aurelian remained silent for a few more seconds, watching his father's last words fade away. The echo of that arrogance, that absolute rejection of the idea of family, made him smile.
He dipped the pen in ink again and wrote with deliberate calm.
"I think I should tell you something more about myself... My full name is Aurelian Gaunt."
It took a few seconds for the letters to disappear. The diary remained silent, motionless. Aurelian waited, his crooked smile growing with every second of silence.
"Gaunt... did you say Gaunt? What is your relationship to that family?"
Aurelian tilted his head to one side, enjoying the reaction. He didn't wait long before continuing.
"Yes. Gaunt, and even more interesting... I am your son."
The silence lingered. For a moment, Aurelian thought the diary would not respond, until finally new letters appeared, more clumsy, as if the invisible hand writing them was shaking.
"That's impossible. I'll never have them. Who are you really? Why are you telling me all this?"
Aurelian let the air fill with tension. Then he wrote the final sentence with deadly calm.
"You can deny it all you want. Think about it, Tom. Reflect in silence."
The words sank into the paper, and then nothing. The diary remained blank, completely silent, as if the fragment of soul that inhabited it needed time to process the revelation.
Aurelian watched him with a crooked smile, slowly closing the book.
"Sleep on it, Tom."
He lay down on his bed, still smiling, satisfied. He had sown doubt, confusion, and perhaps a crack in his father's arrogance.
Inside the diary, in that ethereal space where the fragmented consciousness of young Tom Riddle dwelled, a heavy silence enveloped him.
"Me... with a son?"
The word echoed loudly in his mind. A child of his. That was not in his plans, it never had been, he had always despised the idea, ties only lead to chains... How was it possible that his future self, the one who would become Voldemort, would end up fathering offspring?
For a moment, his characteristic confidence cracked. Distant memories began to surface.
A lonely childhood in the orphanage. Nights when, with his head buried in a rough pillow, he wondered what it would be like to have a father, a mother, someone who looked at him with love and true affection. He had denied those ideas, burying them under his ambition and pride... but the truth was that he had once longed for a family.
Young Tom clenched his teeth. That crack of vulnerability infuriated him, but... he couldn't help it.
"What if...?"
He allowed himself to imagine it. A different life, one in which that childish desire had come true. Where power wasn't the only thing that defined him, where he wasn't condemned... to loneliness.
"Maybe... maybe I could have done it?"
But his ambition soon rose again, denying that desire, obscuring that flash of humanity. He couldn't afford that weakness. At least not him.
Morning light filtered through the windows of Gaunt Manor, bathing the room in golden hues. Aurelian, still in his nightclothes, sat on the edge of the bed with the black diary on his knees.
His fingers traced the cover slowly, as if he could pull answers from the aged leather.
He had thought about it all night. Of all the Horcruxes his father had created, the diary was undoubtedly the most volatile and dangerous. The fragment of Voldemort's soul it contained naturally sought to manipulate, seduce, and possess those who wrote in its pages.
It was more than just an anchor for the soul; it was a trap, a tool of corruption for anyone who wrote in its pages.
Aurelian frowned, his gaze fixed on the object.
"I know I can control it. But... should I?" he murmured.
He thought about the books of his past life, about the history he knew. The diary was destined to drag Ginny to the brink of death, to open the Chamber of Secrets and unleash the basilisk.
Now he had it in his hands. He could destroy it, hide it, or use it to his advantage.
He leaned back slightly, closing his eyes for a moment.
"The best thing to do is to observe. See how this new school year unfolds. If necessary... I will allow history to run its course, to the point where I decide it is right."
When he opened his eyes, there was a sparkle in his gaze. The diary would be another piece on his chessboard, and he would decide when and how to move it.
He quickly took it and put it in his personal chest, then got up calmly. Hogwarts was getting closer.
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