You Really Shouldn't

You really shouldn't be reading this. I'm serious, this book isn't meant to be read by human eyes. Bad things happen to people who read my journals. If you keep reading someone will show up at your mother's home and give her an STD. Yeah, this book is protected by one sick freak alright, but for some reason you're still reading.

GOOD. This means you are either terminally stupid, hate your mother, doubt my power, or just refuse to submit to authority, and I like people like you. Keep reading kid, either you'll come to fear my power and put the book back where you find it, hoping I'll never notice, or bow to the inevitable. Personally I hope it's the former, sycophants bore me but a good chase after a tough night of screwing your mother senseless is always a bit of fun.

So who am I and what cursed tome of deadly secrets have you unwittingly stumbled across? Well depending on who you are and when you are reading, that answer changes. Either it's a terrifying story of just how dark and scary the world you're living in really is, or it's a boring history lesson about people fighting for their lives at a dark point in human history. My name is Harry Potter and I am a wizard.

Oh I know, it's strange to think that I could possibly be telling the truth, but I am. I've hidden this book among the non magic using population in hopes of it never being found except by those who know what it is and how to use it. Yes, magic is real, or if you're a wizard who has somehow managed to skip ahead a bit in my narrative, sorry I'm not as kind and gentle as you were lead to believe. Magic is real, and I am a man in a desperate situation.

So here comes your history lesson. In the middle of the twentieth century in a country known as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, a madman began to stalk the world. He wasn't always mad, nor was he always hell bent on the destruction of everything decent and good, but somewhere between his birth and his fifteenth birthday something went horribly wrong. When he was fifteen years old, Tom Marvolo Riddle committed his first murder, a young girl named Myrtle.

The next year he killed his father, both of his grandfathers, and all of his other relatives on his mother's side. By the time he graduated from school, Tom Riddle had turned his back on polite society forever. After school he took a job working as a salesman and buyer for a company that specialized in magical objects with rare abilities. Not long after, he murdered yet again, an elderly witch named Hezibah Smith. Immediately after this he disappeared for several years, years filled with unexplained deaths and dark rumors.

A lone serial killer shouldn't be a problem in any well ordered society, but the problem with Tom Riddle was that he was not just a serial killer, but a brilliant one who was full of charisma. There was never enough evidence to really pin down who committed all those murders and he always had people willing to swear to his whereabouts in those early years. It was more than fifty years before those first murders were ever truly solved and at the time of this writing Tom Riddle is still on the loose.

Tom Riddle was out of sight for just over ten years before he returned in the mid 1960's. He made one last attempt to join society, a job interview for a teaching position, then Tom Riddle was no more. That night Tom Riddle died and the Dark Lord Voldemort rose from the ashes. He left his alma mater and headed to a nearby village where a collection of powerful and idealistic young men waited. Soon Voldemort and his Death Eaters began their reign of terror. Britain would submit to their will or be destroyed.

Those were dark days. No one really knew what was going on, only that people were dying almost every night. They would kill whole families. It wasn't long before everyone realized the truth, the dead were lucky. It wasn't often that the Death Eaters left survivors, but those that were still alive were often driven mad or killed themselves when they remembered the horrors they had witnessed. Fathers were forced to **** their own children while the mother watched. The mother was forced to sexually service her tormentors before she was hung with her own entrails. The children were roasted alive or dismembered slowly, piece by piece. Finally after their evening entertainment was over, the father was released from their control and left with a bloody knife as the Death Eaters disappeared. It's no wonder people soon feared to speak the name if their villain. To say his name was to invoke his wrath and no one knew who was one of his servants.

This continued throughout the late sixties and seventies. Every day brought tales of more deaths and atrocities. An entire nation woke up screaming in the night, suffering from the same nightmare of that feared symbol floating in the sky over their home or the home of a friend. Often enough when that dread sign was spotted, people didn't even bother opening the door. They were afraid of what tragedy might lay inside, and often enough just set fire to the structure rather than have to deal with the truth of what happened to their loved ones. More than one family later learned that the house had been empty at the time. Families reunited over the ashes of their own homes because the Death Eaters used their own fear to trick them.

Then on October 31, 1981, I killed Voldemort, blew him up until he was just a smear on the wall of my nursery. No one could explain it really, and I never tried, he was just gone. They called me savior and praised my name. The name of an Orphan. I recently found out that the Ministry of Magic paid me rather handsomely for ridding them of their problem. I'd done the impossible and they wanted the good press a reward would bring.

Don't worry about some whiny "woe is me" autobiography at this point. This book is about the story of Voldemort. My life is about the Story of Voldemort. You cannot speak of me without mentioning him so we'll be skipping forward a few years. Hope you don't mind, but the next fourteen years were rather dull.

In the spring of 1995, Voldemort made himself another body and rose from the dead to restart his reign of terror. I was there. I saw him rise from the cauldron and my blood was the key ingredient in his new body. I told you my life was the story of Voldemort. In an odd way I am older than my body, funny that but there it is. For the first year, Voldemort was fairly quiet. He had to find all of his old minions again and scrounge up replacements for those who managed to get themselves killed. By now some of that charisma had worn off, his new body was not nearly as handsome as the original, but he made up for it with fear.

Meanwhile everyone over on the side of "good" was working hard trying to figure out what happened. Everyone "knew" that it was impossible to bring a dead man back to life, so how was it done? They were both right and wrong. It's funny how blind people can be. Just because it never has been doesn't mean that it can't be done. That's the other story of my life. I am the impossible. Time and time again I do things that others scream are impossible. Strangely that never stops me. I'm starting to take those words "that's impossible" as the surest sign that my plan is the right one. No one ever tries to prevent the impossible so it's often the easiest way to get things done.

It turns out that the mystery of Voldemort's return is a scary bit of magic called a horcrux. Basically he tore his soul into pieces and started putting chunks of it into trophies from some of his special kills. That means that people can kill his body, but his spirit will stick around as long as one of these horcruxes is still around.

Are you scared yet? You should be. There is a madman out there who would love to kill your entire family slowly while he touches himself. I don't care who tells you he's dead. He might not be. You can never be sure. I will never be sure.

Want to know something truly scary? There is a prophecy out there that says I am the only one who can kill him. You can lock your family in a room and stockpile all the weapons you want. It will never make them safe because you can't stop him. Who knows, if you're reading this, I'm probably dead. That's right, more than likely the only one who can stop this guy is feeding the worms.

Now are you scared? Good, because I need you afraid. I need you to be absolutely certain that you want me to be alive. Who knows what you've heard about me by now, but I need you to be absolutely certain that when I ask you to choose the lesser of two evils you're going to choose me.

Why would I ask you to make such a choice? Let's come back to that later. I'm not through with the history lesson yet.

In the spring of 1997 my mentor, the most powerful wizard in the world, was struck dead by one of Voldemort's minions. The good guys mourned him, even I shed a few tears. It was at his funeral that I came up with the first version of my plan. It was far from perfect, but somebody had to do something. In retrospect the plan was way too simple and only had two major points 1) destroy the horcruxes and 2) kill Voldemort. Fortunately I woke up to some very bitter truths before my plan got us all killed (not that I'm ruling the possibility of my death out, just that I didn't have to learn these particular lessons the hard way).

My mentor had once told me that the most powerful force in the world was love. I'm not certain if he was right, but I'm pretty certain he was more than a bit deluded if he thought that would help me. I've got no clue about the kind of love he was speaking of. I've never experienced it so it's not too bright to hope I'll suddenly come out of nowhere wielding some kind of love-laser to smite the bad guys. It's just not going to happen. Unless of course you happen to have a love laser, in which case I'll probably steal it from you when I'm done with your mum. We'll see who's laughing then!

The second thing I realized was that my old mentor was an idiot. He was always reminding me that people die in a war. Unfortunately he forgot that axiom was supposed to go both ways. In the thirty or so years he ran the defense of the Wizarding World against Voldemort, he always encouraged people to capture the Death Eaters without killing them.

FUCK THAT SHIT! New rule, when someone tries to kill you, kill them first! Then go find their family. Kill them, kill their friends, kill their business partners. The only way to make sure a man won't try to kill you is to make sure he knows that your death is not worth the price he will pay for it.

Yes, I am a monster, pleased to meet you. I've done horrible things, wonderful things, and horribly wonderful things. I've done things that make me wake up in the middle of the night screaming and would drive lesser men insane. The only solace I can find is that I am far more merciful than my enemies. I kill people, but I never torture them needlessly. I give them a quick death and generally a painless one if I can. It doesn't make any difference though when you're looking into the eyes of a three year old girl who will never play with Daddy anymore. And it doesn't stop me from screaming myself hoarse every time I remember turning the wand on her next.

You have to kill them all. If you leave a child alive, he will always hate the man who killed his parents. He will teach that hate to his children. And one day, he will come to find you. The cycle will never stop so long as even one of them is left alive.

Yes, I am a monster, but at least I still regret what I have to do. A vicar once told me "Greater love hath no man, than to lay down his life for a friend." He was wrong. If I die, you die, your family dies, everyone dies when Voldemort goes unchecked. That's why I have to kill them all. That's why this book was created, because the priest was wrong. If I lay down my life for yours, you will die too. I'd just have bought you a few more minutes. And trust me, later on you would be cursing my name with every last one of those minutes. You'd wish I'd have let you die fast so at least you would not have had to suffer.

So being willing to die for your friends and countrymen isn't the greatest love a man can have. This book was created because I realized the truth behind that saying. This book, as horrible and blasphemous as it is, is the greatest love a man can have. I am not sacrificing my life for my friends (though I probably will in the end), I am sacrificing my very soul. This book is a horcrux, and there are many others like it.

Now I need you to make that choice I mentioned earlier. You hold in your hands the soul of a murderer. If I ever get my body back, I will kill again. There's no way to prevent it. But I'm asking you to choose which murderer is worse. I'm asking you to decide if you want someone who will kill the guilty quickly and painlessly or someone who will kill the innocent slowly and only after hours of torture.

If you agree to help me, I promise I'll leave your mum alone.

So what will it be?

Know what? It doesn't matter what you choose. You've spent so much time reading my little story that now I can just take over your body anyway. Don't you wish you had listened when I told you not to read this?