okay but

a bellatrix story when she was forced to marry rodolphus at the age of 18, not even a year after graduating from hogwarts

she’s expected to go into the marriage and be the ideal pureblood wife to compensate for what andromeda did (running away with ted tonks) but even though she tried to do exactly that in the beginning, bella always felt that she was meant for something else – that she was meant for greatness

enter voldemort, and voldemort’s agenda. bella latched on to that not only because she’s a pureblood supermacist, but she also realized that if she just got rodolphus deep enough into death eater activities and tricked him to making a mistake, she could get rid of him by having him killed or sent off to azkaban.

in her attempts to get rodolphus more firmly into death eater activities, bella ends up doing the same as well. And soon she realizes that that is the outlet she has needed her whole life. She has always been exceptionally gifted when it comes to dark arts and offensive magic, and she excels in being a death eater, catching voldemort’s attention.

so he calls for her, praises her and bella feels that for the first time she has been recognized as the force of nature that she knows she can be. She can’t be like narcissa, and she wasn’t happy to stay home and play house with someone who didn’t challenge her and appreciate her.

And eventually when it became more and more obvious that rodolphus was nowhere near worthy of bellatrix, voldemort asks her why she even keeps him around. And she says that well, it’s not like she can kill him (arrange his death, yes, but to kill him herself?).

And then Voldemort asks why

And this is where the story would stop being canon compliant.

Why Marlow loves Voldemort

It’s so late and I’m so tired and a bit sick and very very emotional, which is a good time to start talking about Voldemort.

Like, ages ago I wrote a post on how I see Voldemort and how brilliant and great he is and how he’s definitely not misunderstood, just pretty much evil and how he’s basically angry at everything and that he has the most adorable sense of humour ever. I kid you not. He’s got this whole dry wit thing going on and omg cute why are you so cute shut the fuck up I can’t with you.

Okay so, why do I like Voldemort so much?

When he was younger, Tom Riddle had to charm and manipulate a whole lot of people for years and years without any pause in the middle. Do you know how exhausting that is? That boy took a look at the people around him, figured out how to manipulate them, and created a faux persona that would convince them to treat him the way he wanted to be treated. He learned and succeeded in all that despite the fact that he came from the Muggle world without any previous knowledge on what to do and how to act.

And like, all those summers spent at an orphanage, knowing you deserve so much more. All that anger and rage and hatred that just kept gathering inside his heart. Knowing that the people around him hated him and the people who were at school wouldn’t respect him if they knew about his background – it must have hurt his pride. And when you’re poor and orphan but very smart and ambitious, pride becomes your most precious possession.

He had nothing, seriously. He started from a point where people disliked him or downright hated him for one reason or another. Among muggles he was the weirdo, among his Slytherin house mates he was the Mudblood, and to the rest of Hogwarts he was just another Slytherin. But instead of accepting his lot he grabbed all those prejudices and fucking dealt with them. He left dem muggles in the dust, rose above his Slytherin housemates and made the rest of Hogwarts look up to him. Just by working hard and knowing how to manipulate people, how to read them, understanding what moves them and what motivates them.

This is why I can’t accept the fics that portray Voldemort as someone who doesn’t understand feelings. He does, he understands them well enough to manipulate people’s feelings, to guess what they’re feeling and even if it’s acquired knowledge through observation, he was smart enough to figure out how people work. It’s like a puzzle – just because he doesn’t relate to it, doesn’t mean that he doesn’t know how to figure it out, pull it apart and put it together the way he wants to.

I can’t accept fics where he’s portrayed as some kind of an idiot – he most certainly is not. And he’s not misunderstood either. What saved Harry the first time around was nothing short of a magical miracle, which means that it’s thanks to no one, and no one’s fault, that he survived. It is no indication of Harry’s strength (which I believe in because I love Harry *cries* ilu so much) or Tom’s weakness. Again this harrypotteristic miracle happened when Harry didn’t die in the Forbidden Forest. The two biggest events contributing to Harry’s victory and Tom’s loss were unpredictable and uncontrollable magical miracles.

Not that Tom doesn’t have flaws – hello, he does. I’m aware of them and I do not ignore them – I just don’t dislike his flaws, because I can relate to a lot of them.

One of the things I love about Voldemort is his ambitiousness. People are never anywhere near ambitious enough. Like, y’all are so fond of saying that one person cannot change the world, but y’all are quick to blame individuals for disasters. The moment you say you’re aiming for something more than what you have, you’re told to be realistic and how miracles don’t just happen. Tom didn’t ask for miracles – he worked hard and was ruthless. He didn’t waste his time crying over losses – he used them to his advantage.

He’s intelligent – and gosh, do I love his brain. Just to think of how academically gifted Tom is makes me smile. That Dark Lord was good at everything. He was ruthless, too, and I can respect that trait. Tom got far in his life and did things no other wizard thought possible.Tom achieved all that without anyone really to support him. Imagine how it feels to grow up knowing that there isn’t a single person who’d give a fuck about you if you died. Nobody you could ask for help when you were younger. Having to be so self-reliant from such an early age, especially in a hostile environment is something that shaped Tom’s personality greatly. I think it’s the root of his overconfidence – he relies so much on himself that everybody else just seems either incompetent, useless or expendable. Useful for a time but nothing he can’t survive without. Because if there’s something Tom learned how to do, it was how to fucking survive. His whole life is a story of survival.

People say that love is a strong motivator, and sure, it can be. But love can make you let go of things and forgive. Hate doesn’t. When we’re talking about fury that’s bone-deep, it doesn’t let go. It doesn’t forgive or forget. That’s why to Tom hate is a good, solid motivator. He believes in hate. He knows how deeply love can affect people and how people in love can be manipulated, but if hatred towards everyone else is the only constant thing in his life. it’ll also be a source of strength and stability to him.

And then of course, power. I’m not gonna lie. I’m am so fucking attracted to power and money it’s bordering on criminal. Voldemort created a otherfucking army that he ruled through fear – and yeah, he did make mistakes in how he governed that army. But even if those mistakes were partially responsible for his failure in the last battle, it doesn’t make him any less attractive to me. *sigh*

So there goes. I don’t agree with him on an ideological level, but I adore him anyway.

Also I could go on forever with this topic but I feel like I’ve written plenty already. Until next time!

Let’s talk about Voldemort

Because it’s quarter past 5 am once again and that’s apparently my Voldemort time. I get emotional about Voldemort and the adorable way he hates everyone.

I dislike (downright hate) how some authors portray Voldemort as a “stupid hypocrite” because of his anti-muggle campaign and how he promotes blood purity. Not mentioning any fics or authors because I’m not saying this to start wars, but in some fics Death Eaters desert the Dark Lord because of Harry pointing out that “hey the dude is a half-blood”.

I don’t think the Death Eaters would believe Harry, tbh. But I digress. My main issue is with the keywords “stupid” and “hypocrite”.

As I see it, Voldemort doesn’t give a fuck about purebloods OR muggleborns. He’s just a fuckign smart man who knows what to say to make the powerful and rich people (most of whom just happen to be purebloods) side with him. He chose to glorify the plood purity issue because by doing so he would gain valuable followers.

He doesn’t believe in the cause, and not just because he’s the best example of how wrong it is. He believes in magic, admits the superiority of bloodline-bound magical abilities (like Parseltongue), but he does not believe that an average pureblood wizard is more capable than an average halfblood/muggleborn wizard.

Voldemort is brilliant and brutal and sharp. I once said that if Grindelwald is a bored sociopath, then Voldemort is an angry psychopath. That’s the thing: Voldemort is angry. He was treated unfairly as a kid and if you have an inflated sense of self-importance, the anger you feel then will stick with you for a long time. Even more so if you’re obsessive about being superior to everyone else.

When Tom started studying at Hogwarts he realized that magic or no magic, he was STILL superior to everyone else. And yet yo can bet yo ass that he was treated with prejudice in Slytherin. He was subjected to the kind of prejudice he ended up using to his advantage. He saw how things worked there and learned what to do or say to get which kinda reaction out of the other people. He learned to manipulate.

To me, Voldemort is the most real character in the HP world. He’s also the most misunderstood because so many don’t seem to understand that at the core, the whole agenda of blood supermacy and causing all those wars and battles within the Wizarding World was just a ruse to give him what he wanted. Voldemort didn’t seek to reform the world, like he made his followers believe. He wanted to destroy it as much as he could. He wanted people to be miserable and sad and in pain. He just wanted to punish everyone else for existing.

(ITTR SPOILER, SKIP THE PARAGRAPH TO AVOID IT)

There are a lot of fics where Harry travels back in time to prevent Voldemort from happening, and a lot of those fics portray the young Tom Riddle as an innocent child. Someone who can love. A child who needs guidance. But people, there’s so much more than murder in being a psychopath. Most psychopaths don’t even ever get around to killing anyone. You can prevent a psychopath from killing people, but you can’t prevent a psychopath from being a psychopath. And personally I think that if Harry would try to make Tom “good”, the best thing he can do is simply redirect Tom’s focus into something like politics or business where he can be a calculating, manipulative asshole who kills just a few individuals rather than the massmurders he ended up ordering.

Like, you can’t completely neutralize someone like Tom, but you can do damage control.

Also I love Voldemort’s sense of humour. His dry wit and him just being a sarcastic asshole.

OK I’M DONE FOR NOW. But it’s just… this is the Voldemor that I see. He doesn’t love in the way other people understand love. He gets obsessed and fixated, AND I SAID I’M DONE FOR NOW. Yep. I’m done. For now.