My humble little tale, if you venture to call it such, begins at none other than Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, my eternal prison. My Hell, where I put in constant purgatory by little raven-haired, pearly-toothed demons. Demons who poked and prodded at me with jokes and jinxes, calling me--what was it?--Snapey, and the like. But my torment was not limited to this little "Fab Four" of Gryfindor glory--Oh no!--The whole damned institution had thought it wise to follow in their footsteps. And I hated them. Every single one of them, my fellow Slytherins among them. I remember thinking, had I gotten the chance, I would've killed them all.

Perhaps this is what drew me to initially to Riddle. (I was one of the few among my ranks to ever have known him by that name--Lucius would've given his eyeteeth for the honor, I daresay...) I had been a mere child of fifteen when I first heard of the Great Dark Preacher. Truthfully, it would've been near impossible to not have heard of Him. He was omnipotent--a constant force threatening to break through the skin of the wizarding world and mold it into Utopia. My would-be friends discussed His prophecies in secret, humming the tune of revolution with youthful vivacity. Many of my elder colleagues had already joined him on his quest for restoration, but I remained hesitant. There was something subversive in His beauty (He still had Riddle's face back then), something foreboding and worthy of mistrust. The words dripped out of Him like honey, poisoned with seductive deliciousness. How was I to believe that this man, this masterpiece of human features, could ever spark the kind of Revolution of which He spoke?

It was in my sixth year that my life came crashing down on me. I had been threatened. This was no schoolyard prank, intended solely to humiliate, that would've been too merciful. This, THIS had been an attempt on my very life. "Just prod the knot," he'd said, spectacles gleaming in the silvery light. "Go on!" And so I had. And everything I had ever thought I'd known--about life, about adolescence, about sheer decency--was lost to me. I poisoned myself later that year.

Oh yes, I ran into the lavatory promptly after, vomiting every last drop of the wretched, lethal liquid from my system, but the intention had been there. My desire for sanctity, for some sort of peace from this damnation, had left me with no simpler solution than taking my own life. But I simply hadn't the willpower to carry out the deed.

It was then when I went to Him, lost and afraid, no longer able to see a purpose in living. And in my vulnerability, He drew me to Him. He offered a solution, a better life, an end to the pain. He offered me power and dignity and respect, none of which I had been accustomed to receiving in life. His silky words flowed like liquor--my ears drank them down with a thirst more rabid than any I had ever felt before. And hours later, reeling drunk from the succulent honey of those beautiful words, I agreed to join Him.