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By the time Tom Riddle was eleven years old, he had learned how to shut off his emotions, revealing nothing to anyone who might be looking on.
When an older man with a long grey beard came to visit him at the orphanage, Tom kept his expression neutral through the man's speech despite the emotions he was experiencing beneath the stony facade.
Magic. I have magic.
It was the power inherently present in magic that he found himself drawn to. He nurtured it, chased after it until it became his sole care. There was a seductive lure to it, and Tom was weak in the face of temptation.
When he began attending Hogwarts and was finally given entrance into a world he felt he had rights to, Tom already knew that there was something more to be had, something powerful just beyond the line dividing right and wrong, if one only were to seek it.
And seek it he did. He learned everything there was to know about dark magic, the kind that didn't care about pesky things like morals or other people's opinions.
The older he grew, the more interested he became in the things that went bump in the night, the murky spells that any respectable wizard would avoid.
When he first saw the word Horcrux, his interest was irrevocably piqued. Was it possible that such a thing could exist? Was there an object that could grant him the greatest power of all?
Power over death.