STUFF CADMUS PEVERELL TOLD ME ABOUT TOM RIDDLE

I, Regulus Arcturus Black, of the most noble house, do hereforth record that which I have personally learned through my investigations into the person of one, Tom Riddle, alternatively and most heinously known by the false name of Lord Voldemort.

From whence came the name of Lord Voldemort, I haven not yet discovered, but his true given name was Thomas Marvolo Riddle Junior. Called a Junior, though his father gave not his full name - Marvolo was not a name from the Riddle line but from the line of his mother, the line which has given him magic.

First and foremost let it be known to the reader who is deceived that Lord Voldemort is no pureblood as he would have his followers blindly believe but of mixed blood, what he himself would hypocritically refer to as a "mudblood", a half blood, the son of a woman who wished to denounce her name and her abilities in order to be with a "filthy" muggle man. Noble, of no doubt, the richest in either of the towns of Hangleton and of fair status in any of the proper towns of the area. Well to do in finances and breeding does not always pace out to a gentleman, however.

Just look at me. Just look at Sirius.

Filthy blood traitors, the both of us.

Though I'll never get to the level that Sirius is at in rebelling. There's just no way to best "queer husband of a werewolf" is there? I couldn't even manage at being sorted Gryffindor. 

I first met Lord Voldemort when I was too young to understand that the man in my mother's library was not visiting to play gobstones with me. I once tried to make him do as a small child before my mother sent me to my room to play my gobstones with my house elf.

Now that very man is the one whose death I seek to be the catalyst to.

He would have the Death Eaters believe he is immortal. He is not. Not once I am finished, at least. If you are reading this, then I have perished in my work of it and without regrets for if I die bringing him even one mite closer to the death of disgrace and dishonor that he deserves then my life has been lived completely and for utmost purpose.

I wish only that I could be in the room when the spell which kills him is fired to watch that old creep die. He would not have to hold me by my chin or cast some sort of weird imperius curse to make me watch that with unblinking eyes. 

Cadmus Peverell, the middle of the Three Brothers of lore, knew Tom before he was Voldemort. Cadmus knew Tom when he was a boy, just eleven, at Hogwarts School for his first yet. Running messenger between student and master, Cadmus Preverell was Tom's connection to the original dark wizard, Gellert Grindelwald, who had collected Tom into his own plans.

Here's what Cadmus told me. 

Tom was born to a woman who had used amortentia to seduce a well-to-do muggle man into marrying her (the so-called Tom Riddle "Senior" of Little Hangleton, who was later brutally murdered by his own son). She lost control of her husband while pregnant with Tom and was so heart broken she avowed to quit magic altogether. Somehow she created something called an obscurial, Cadmus was unclear how that worked since he was not familiar with the details of Merope Gaunt's obscurial. However, Tom apparently inherited this obscurial and it effected his being growing up.

Obscurials are like reservoirs of unused magic that builds up in a magical person when the use of magic is suppressed. Without knowing the details entirely, from only my own research upon obscurials, I believe what may have happened was Merope Gaunt was likely either a squib with intense magical blood or else a very powerful witch who was in some sort of oppressive environment that forced her to suppress her true magic or to hide herself in some way. If magic is suppressed too long, it begins to burst out. It's the same idea as when a wizard kid is growing up and they get to the age of 8 or 9 - especially powerful wizard children will start exhibiting bouts of accidental magic even younger - and those little things are the magic building up and releasing itself. In adults, the magic is already stronger anyway and the longer it's denied, the more power is being generated and turned in on itself and it becomes a violent force.

Newt Scamander found an obscurial in the 1920s in New York which destroyed nearly half of Manhattan when released the first time and very nearly killed the wizard who carried it. This obscurial, by the name Barebone, was later collected, deceived, and ultimately destroyed by Gellert Grindelwald upon proving useless in his plans.

It was the obscurial in Tom that drew Gellert Grindelwald to seek him out. Cadmus Peverell was unsure how Grindelwald discovered Tom's obscurial apart to say that Grindelwald was certain it was there and certain it was more powerful than the one that Barebones had contracted in the 1920s. He was eager to harness the power from the obscurial.

He grew up in an orphanage in London. The woman there knew something was wrong with Tom and they diagnosed him with schizophrenia at the age of five. It was sometime around 1930 and they were doing experimental treatment for such mental illnesses as schizophrenia including electro-shock therapy. The doctor that the woman brought Tom to see treated him this way.

Now from my research into this sort of treatment at its conception and implementation back in the early to mid 1930s, with officially licensed testing only beginning in the late 30s, it was a muggle treatment meant to send electricity into the brain to induce seizures and this is believed to somehow heal schizophrenia.  Basically it was a crucio to the brain. The description sounds like crucio with the wand held to the skull as they put the electrodes directly against the patient's scalp and forehead and basically flip the switch. 

At five years old.

No wonder he's mental.

Tom's so called schizophrenia got worse of course because it was now the muggle treatment that had done damages to his brain. They might have completely destroyed his mind if it wasn't for Gellert Grindelwald's fascination with Tom. Grindelwald killed the doctor and stopped the shock therapy, convinced that the treatment was doing damage to the obscurial. Despite his interest, Grindelwald kept his distance for another six years before actually approaching Tom with his agenda.

Gellert Grindelwald who submitted Tom's name in for Hogwarts. He had not previously been on the list for Hogwarts - his magic was suppressed and the obscurial blocked the usual way that muggleborn wizards are detected, and Merope Gaunt had never reported her birth (she passed before she could have but she never reported her pregnancy either as she was planning to leave the wizarding world). Grindelwald sent an anonymous report of accidental magic following an incident in a cave in Scotland where Tom had controlled a corpse to scare some of his fellow orphans the summer before his eleventh birthday.

Cadmus told me that Grindelwald visited Tom at the orphanage just a few days before Dumbledore went to deliver the owl of acceptance to Hogwarts to Tom and again not long after also and several times over the eight months following before Tom went to Hogwarts, slowly indoctrinating him with the ideas that Grindelwald had on the world and on Albus Dumbledore.

Cadmus said that Tom went to Hogwarts and he, Cadmus, had a portrait there as well as in Numengard, which was originally Grindelwald's own home before it was turned prison. The portrait Cadmus used to speak to Tom is the very one that I was speaking to him through originally. Later I found one in my own family's attic - a third copy that was likely stored at Number 12 Grimmauld Place by Voldemort himself, I am guessing. Cadmus wasn't sure but was certain it was a third portrait as the one in Numengard was the one in Hogwarts were both still in tact, the one at Hogwarts being the prime portrait, thereby meaning that is the one where his sentience had come from and if something happened to the prime portrait the other two would return to being ordinary portraits upon its demise.

Grindelwald planned to use Tom at Hogwarts to spy on Dumbledore and gain information about the Deathly Hallows. Cadmus was the original owner of the Resurrection Stone, which had gone missing during the times of the Founders of Hogwarts, which was the last time the Hallows had been united under one owner - briefly under the care of Salazar Slytherin. Godric Gryffindor dueled Slytherin for the elder wand upon learning of its existence. Somehow Cadmus says Gryffindor might've ended up with the invisibility cloak and the elder wand may have gone to Rowena Ravenclaw. I suppose Helga Hufflepuff kept her dignity by not engaging the other idiots in the duel. But anyway that whole duel thing is something Cadmus says he can't confirm for sure because his portrait didn't actually witness it, he just heard rumors from other portraits.

So if Grindelwald was using Tom as a spy and a pawn in his games against Dumbledore and his quest to get the Deathly Hallows. Grindelwald had ingrained in Tom his own belief in his own anti-muggle beliefs which Cadmus says were actually misunderstood by many of Grindelwald's followers. Grindelwald, Cadmus says, actually intended to rule over muggles in a sort of corrupted kindness to them, citing their inability to make peace with themselves and to heal themselves and take care of themselves. Grindelwald's plan was to subdue the muggles and lord over them to protect them and make the world a better place by returning to a time similar to the old days when witches and wizards were seen as gods and goddesses of benevolent lordship over the muggles, bestowing gifts and punishments as due. 

Many skewed the idea into a completely anti-muggle agenda, becoming purists and wishing to destroy non-wizarding bloodlines within the wizarding world and keep the benefits of magic pure to magical blood only. Muggles were to be killed or ignored, depending on the extremity of the particular believer.

Voldemort got into a crowd of believers like this at Hogwarts, young students who saw themselves as followers of Grindelwald but whose purist beliefs took Grindelwald's own ideas further and twisted them. Grindelwald did not agree with these ideas but Voldemort, hating muggles because of his experience with the doctors  during his time at Wool's, liked the idea of the destruction of muggles and their erasure from the Wizarding World.

Destroy what you don't understand. That's what they had done to him and that was what he planned to do to them. 

So began a divide between Grindelwald and Riddle that Cadmus watched develop over Tom's time at Hogwarts. No longer was Tom contented following Grindelwald but Tom began to form his own plans for overcoming the wizarding world, believing himself better than Grindelwald.

Tom was a founding member (if not the founder) of a group called The Knights of Walpurgis, a group of pureblood wizards considered the most eligible bachelors among the pureblood families who sought only to further the pureblood lines. This was his first act of lying about his blood as the Knights could only be pureblood in order to carry on the line. This too appears to be the first time of which Tom went by the name of Gaunt instead of Riddle, using the Gaunt line to get himself inducted to the Knights.

(The Knights were so called after the festival of Walpugisnacht, when the pureblood Sacred Twenty Eight traditionally name their betrothals and the traditional date of most pureblood weddings. Even Mother and Father married on 1 May, carrying on the tradition of their ancestors like proper purists.)

The entire Knighthood ended up being what later is now known as the Death Eaters, following Voldemort when he began his campaigns. There was a reformation of the Knights during my time at Hogwarts as well, restarted by Lucius Malfoy whose father had been among the original members. These are the current stock of Death Eaters, a new generation serving the Dark Lord.

The sick bastards believed it was up to them to repopulate the wizarding world with purebloods only and to destroy anyone less than pure.

With the split beginning between them, Voldemort created his name to build his following, in hopes that Grindelwald would not recognize the split until it had gone too far. Disenchanted with Grindelwald himself, Cadmus supported Tom in his endeavor and did not divulge in Grindelwald either what Tom was doing, and Tom was allowed to work quietly at his campaign. But, worried Grindelwald would find out what he was doing, Tom began to worry of being murdered and the thoughts of death consumed him.

Tom promised Cadmus to find the resurrection stone and said he would destroy it if Cadmus helped him at finding it. My belief is that Voldemort found out about the theory that the unity of the Hallows could lead to immortality and unbeatable power.

This is also when Tom found out about the theory of Horcruxes. Mentioned briefly in a text book from the restricted section at Hogwarts, I'm not sure where Tom got his full information about how to create a horcrux. He got some information from a teacher, but not all of it. Cadmus speculates that there was a new mentor Tom had begun talking about around this time, a man Cadmus never met but who Tom simply called Cal and was growing quite close to.

Horcruxes are like a container which hold the fragment of soul broken off by committing a murder so heinous it disgusts me even to write it. But in the memory of Alabastar Jackson, I write now that I witnessed his death when Voldemort cut open his chest and ate his still-beating heart before our eyes - this cannibalistic ritual the way to break the soul, there is then spells that must be cast to embed the soul into the container of choice, that which will hold the soul until the time comes to move the primary consciousness to that portion of one's existence. The fragment rests within you until it is cast into a host.

The horcrux makes him immortal. His body dies but the soul lives on to be moved into a new host or else to have a new body made by a servant - any one of the Death Eaters may be privvy to what needs to be done next if the Dark Lord needs to be resurrected. To destroy the horcrux is to make Voldemort mortal again.

But where is the horcrux?

Until it is found and destroyed, Voldemort cannot be truly killed.

After Hogwarts, Cadmus says that Riddle slipped out of touch with Grindelwald, and Grindelwald allowed the drifting, having used Riddle to spy on Dumbledore and believing the obscurial Riddle carried to be of no use to him after all. Although Grindelwald had other uses for Tom planned, he was defeated by Dumbledore before those thing could be acted upon.

Tom meanwhile grew in popularity, especially following Grindelwald's defeat, proving himself to be the new rallying point for Grindelwald's followers and they were the Death Eaters.

I am going to the Riddle house in Little Hangleton today to learn more about Tom Riddle "Senior" and Merope Gaunt as I feel there will be further clues there.

Lily's hand slid over her mouth. "Oh my God," she whispered, her eyes wide as she read. All of that had been written in a fairly steady, calm hand, with the rigid air of the nobility Regulus Black had been raised in. But a turn of the page and that changed.

Suddenly, the script was messy, hurried.

The Dark Lord had a locket, buried away in a cave of unknown location, protected by liquid nightmare, which he showed to me after the rescue of James Potter when he was held at Havmork at Durmstrang in the far north. Why didn't I piece it together before? The locket is the horcrux. But how to find the cave?

And another page.

FINGAL'S?? WHAT IS FINGAL'S? GREYBACK. 

Yet another:

FINGAL'S CAVE IN THE HEBRIDES

And the last one:

If you are reading this, it is most likely that I am dead and unable to tell this to you myself.

Voldemort will soon be mortal, I go to destroy the locket and if in so doing I destroy myself then so be it for no more worthy a cause than the death of Tom Riddle can I dream of.

Now it's up to you.

Go kill the son of a bitch.

R.A.B.