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Chapter 1086: Death's Reward
🕑 Added 2024-04-21 06:23:26 +0000 UTC"Did you feel sadness for your mother?" Evan asked, looking at him in surprise. Was this still the Voldemort he knew?
"No, it was just her foolishness that made me sad."
Even though he said that, Riddle had cried after learning about his parents' past, which in itself said a lot.
He felt sad for Merope's experience. That might be the human part of him, the only soft place in his heart.
After being abandoned by Tom Riddle Senior, Merope traveled to London alone.
She was pregnant and could not return to the old house of the Gaunt family. There was no one and no place to seek refuge.
She was so poor that in order to survive, she had to sell her priceless locket to Borgin and Burkes.
She only got ten Gold Galleons, and she relied on ten Gold Galleons to survive for nearly a year.
Suffering, grief, sadness and chronic malnutrition ultimately killed her.
Then, on a snowy New Year's Eve, she collapsed on the front steps of a Muggle orphanage.
There, she gave birth to Lord Voldemort, and less than an hour later, she died, leaving behind a newborn baby named Tom Marvolo Riddle, the wish that the child would be like his father, love for the child and his father, and a shame that could not be erased.
Undoubtedly, this incident was a great shame for Voldemort.
At least until he was fifteen years old, he had always been worried about this.
He thought his mother was like one of those pathetic Muggle girls, shamelessly abandoned after being used.
Finally, she died.
Like many miserable Muggles, she died in obscurity, with no one even knowing her name.
But in fact this was a fight against fate, a failed fight.
The complexity of the matter was far beyond imagination, and Merope was much stronger than Riddle originally imagined.
When the fifteen-year-old Riddle learned about these things for the first time, it would definitely have had a certain impact on him.
This could be proved from the photo that was torn into pieces and then glued back together. His inner feelings at that time were extremely complex.
For a fifteen-year-old boy, even though his life experience was full of darkness, it was impossible for him to have no feelings for his mother.
He must have fantasized about it countless times, and this feeling was called love!
It was very small, but it definitely existed in Voldemort's heart, buried deep in the heart of the fifteen-year-old boy.
"The basis of communication is sincerity!" Evan reminded.
"Well, if that's what you want to know, I admit, I did feel sadness, but absolutely no love!" Riddle insisted.
"But you cried?"
"I cried because I couldn't control those stupid tears from flowing out," he shouted loudly, and the shadowy body shook violently. "I regretted it. I was like this at that time. Emotions or some actions must have accidentally touched the magic left on this ring. In a sway of distance, I saw my mother suddenly appear next to me. Yes, I had never seen her before, but she was exactly the same as in the photo."
"This stone can bring back the dead," said Dumbledore softly, motioning to Evan not to ask further questions on this issue. "But it doesn't seem to be the way I imagined, or perhaps our method of use is incorrect. Tom, what happened after you saw your mother?"
From his school days, Dumbledore wanted to get all the Deathly Hallows, especially the Resurrection Stone, which was particularly important to him.
He had once wanted to use it to resurrect his parents so that he wouldn't have to take care of his sister Ariana.
Now, he wanted it too.
He wanted to resurrect his sister and tell her personally how much he regretted...
But the experience just now might have made Dumbledore understand that the Resurrection Stone would not really resurrect the dead.
It could only bring back the soul, or something more real than the soul, but it was certainly not a true resurrection.
But from Dumbledore's tone, it seemed that he wasn't sure yet, or that he hadn't given up yet.
"That woman said a lot of stupid things to me. It was a kind of magic power that I didn't understand. She guided me forward, leaving the mansion and coming to an illusory world, the world of death," said Riddle slowly. He closed his eyes, seeming to recall that terrible experience.
Evan took a quick look at the ring and the black gemstone on it. The way to use the Resurrection Stone was to rotate it three times in your hand.
But neither Riddle nor Dumbledore had done so; however they still triggered the magic on the Resurrection Stone.
Dumbledore's recent experience could be explained, as his blood dripped onto the Resurrection Stone, activating Voldemort's magic.
But Riddle definitely didn't use the Resurrection Stone in the correct way back then. What was going on?
Also, the Resurrection Stone did not have the function of leading the living to the world of the dead.
Evan wasn't sure about this because he remembered Harry using the Resurrection Stone in the original novel.
After Harry was killed by Voldemort, he entered the world of the dead. He saw the deceased Dumbledore and received his final guidance.
This thing itself was very abnormal. Normally destroying the soul in the body would definitely not have such an effect.
Maybe as Riddle said, the Resurrection Stone and this ring had magic that they did not understand yet, bringing the living to the world of the dead.
Look at the other things left by Slytherin. Which one was really simple? That guy liked to hide secrets.
Perhaps because Riddle was his descendant and met certain conditions, the magic he left behind was triggered.
"Tom, what did the world you saw look like?" Dumbledore asked.
"A realm of illusion, everything presented in black and white like I am now, maybe more real than fog, but still full of depressing feelings. My mother and I left the mansion, and she said she would take me home, we walked through the canyon and came here..."
"Here?!"
"Yes, it's ridiculous. She actually called this rundown house 'home,'" Riddle said disdainfully. "In the photo I saw, this house hadn't become a ruin yet; it still looked like when people lived here. I saw my grandfather, Marvolo Gaunt, here. He told me his name and spoke to me. Although I wanted to communicate with him, the situation was too abnormal. I wasn't foolish enough to believe the nonsense of a magically conjured dead person."
"What did you do then?" Dumbledore asked with interest.
"I drew my wand and cast a spell on him. He dodged and his body shape changed again. He was not Marvolo Gaunt at all, but Death in disguise, an old man with a hood. I hated that guy," Riddle snapped. "He made me feel uncomfortable, so I used Avada Kedavra on him."
"Very interesting," said Dumbledore softly, seeming to ponder the truth of what Riddle said.
"That God of Death, he was hit by my magic. He was about to die. I killed the God of Death! Before he died, he said that I could get a reward from him as a prize for defeating him," said Riddle. "It's ridiculous, isn't it? That's what I thought at the time. No matter whether he was the real God of Death or not, I would conquer him. I was invincible. I would eventually become the most powerful wizard. I told him these words."
