"You and Tom are fundamentally different."
Yes, I was fundamentally different from the fellow who had practiced magic until he lost his own face.
He, Harry, and that one-seventh of Voldemort present had almost the same experiences.
They had lost their parents at a very young age, been taken in by Muggle families, and come to study at Hogwarts...
How similar they were. The difference was that Su Er had met parents who treated him as their own child. Even after they later had a child of their own, their love for him had not diminished in the slightest.
Tom, by contrast, had suffered endless bullying at the orphanage and was filled with hatred for the world. He had come to Hogwarts in pursuit of great power, set himself above everyone else, and turned himself into something neither human nor ghost.
And Harry? He, too, had lost both parents and grown up in an environment where he was unwelcome, but he had made friends in the Castle who cared about him, and had elders who cared about him as well. Everything Dumbledore had done was to let Harry experience love and responsibility.
Of course, it might still have been too early to speak of responsibility.
Su Er suddenly understood Dumbledore's main purpose in bringing him here.
Ethereal, elusive music, otherworldly and mysterious, drifted over from somewhere.
A golden-red flame suddenly lit up above the gloomy Chamber of Secrets. The music grew louder and louder. Like Harry, Su Er felt his heart beat ever more fervently with the music, as though some power was flowing from it throughout his body.
Clutching a tattered hat, Fawkes descended from above and landed on Harry's shoulder. The hat dropped beside Harry's feet with a plop.
"A ragged hat? And a singing bird?" Tom covered