A/N: This was written for the forum Diagon Alley II in response to the prompt write a story set in the 1920s. This oneshot is about Merope Gaunt and Tom Riddle Sr. and their story. They were married in 1925. Canon makes reference to the fact that Tom would ride his horse past the Gaunt shack, but that would have been quite an old-fashioned thing to do for a muggle in that time. But I stuck to it anyway. I've never written anything in this era before, so it might seem a little rough. Anyway – please enjoy!

She watched him, sometimes. His pale skin, his dark eyes. That peculiar muggle clothing he wore – peculiar, yet unmistakably sophisticated. She liked the way his lips hugged the vowels as he called good morning to passersby. She liked the way he smiled at them.

Not her, though. Tom Riddle's smiles were never for her.

The horse he rode was a beautiful chestnut colour with a pearly blaze across its long face. Merope often thought there was something suspiciously magical in the way that muggles interacted with their horses. It was a bond between man and beast that shouldn't be possible without the help of wizards. And yet, it existed. He persisted with his horse, despite the increase in popularity of those awful metal carriages muggles kept building, the ones that rumbled past, sputtering and honking. For that, Merope liked him.

Sometimes, a woman rode pillion. Cecilia, her name was. She was beautiful in every way that Merope was plain. Cropped blonde hair set in curls, framing her perfectly proportioned face. Petite fingers resting delicately on his waist. And her laugh, it was like music.

But Merope shared something with him that Cecilia would never have. Tom saved her. If it weren't for him, Merope would still be living with her father and brother. Their words, sharp like knives, chipped away at her, piece by piece. But she was free, now. Free from their torment, from their cruelty. They tried to hurt Tom, and they were punished for it. For that, Merope loved him.

Her love would not be reciprocated easily, though. She was a witch and he was a muggle. She was a pauper and he was a prince. Merope would need to show him how to love her. And for that, she had planned meticulously. If a single component of the plan was overlooked, it would come crashing down. Merope had no intention for cascading failures.

First, she would drink the potion. She had met a woman, hunched beneath her cloak, who had a voice that rasped. A case full of vials hung from her cracked fingertips. Merope had scraped together whatever money Marvolo and Morfin had locked away in the house and purchased two vials from the woman's wares. In one, multicolour bubbles sputtered and sloshed. The other had a mother-of-peal sheen.

The first was a beautification potion. One morning, when the air was crisp with winter frost, Merope listened for the unmistakable clip-clop of hooves before swallowing the vial in one gulp. She emerged from behind the bush that shielded her family's hovel from the path and, for the first time in her life, Tom Riddle truly looked at her.

His lips were parted by surprise. Tom slid from his horse and secured the beast by the reigns. "Aren't you the Gaunt girl?" he said, a hint of scorn in his dark eyes – eyes that scrutinised her body nonetheless.

Merope nodded numbly. "I have tea. For the cold. Would you like some?" Her voice danced in the air, melodic and alluring.

Tom seemed to be regretting his decision to approach Merope, for he glanced up and down the street to make sure that the neighbours had not see them. He leered at her with derisive and cruel eyes. "I bet you get lonely without your half-wit father."

"Please," she said breathlessly, her singsong voice masking the desperation she felt. "It's cold. The tea, it will help."

Merope returned to her home, retrieving a ready-made cup of tea from the splintered table. Quickly and clumsily, she uncorked the second potion and poured a few drops into the chipped teacup. Steam rose in lazy spirals. On the way out, Merope caught a glimpse of herself in the smudged looking glass. Flawless skin, silky hair, voluptuous curves. As she walked to the path, she moved with an unfamiliar grace.

"Here," Merope sang, passing along the teacup. Tom took it with strong hands and drank. With each swallow, colour drained further from his cheeks. And, before he could take the last sip, the teacup fell from his fingertips and smashed in a hundred pieces on the cobbled street. Tom's eyes, wide and full of astonishment, were locked on Merope. Slowly, she raised her fingertips and dragged them across his cheek. His hand caught hers, pressing their entwined fingers against his face, his eyelids fluttering shut with pleasure. Merope smiled.

Her false looks faded, eventually. And yet, Tom still gazed at her with his love-struck eyes and dopey grin. They were married in secret by a muggle priest. The news spread like wildfire through the village of Little Hangleton, and it wasn't long until the malice started. They deserve one another, one woman said, her lips curled around a slender cigarette holder that she held loftily between manicured fingernails. A nasty pair.

Over a repeat administration of amorentia, Merope begged her husband to run away with her. Away from the prying eyes of the village folk who knew her story. Away from the ghosts of her past that haunted the cobblestoned streets. Only too happy to oblige, Tom packed one suitcase with clothes and the other with cash, and they caught the next train to London.

Tom was not yet ready for the next part of her plan, though. Merope's wand lay forgotten, wrapped tightly in a shawl and hidden below the floorboards of their new bedroom. One day, she would tell him. And he would open his arms to her and kiss her and murmur nothing could make me love you less.

One morning when she was brewing his tea, Merope noticed something that made her heart stutter. The vial was empty. With shaky hands, she wrapped herself in the big fur jacket that Tom had bought her and plucked her wand from its prison. She abandoned the kettle, whistling on the stovetop, and hurried into the streets.

But she had never been to London before. Merope grabbed the wrists of strangers. "Knockturn Alley?" she whispered, desperately and despairingly. Most of them shook her off, suddenly alarmed, before ushering their children to the other side of the road. One man, however, pointed her to a pub.

At the wall, she sobbed as she waved her wand desperately and to no avail across the stacked bricks. A woman saved her, parting the wall and ushering her kindly into the wizarding part of London. Merope didn't even thank her saviour, and instead darted into the shadowy lanes of Knockturn Alley.

It didn't take her long to locate a man whose teeth were crooked and whose eyes were narrowed, but whose cloak was lined with vials. "I need it," Merope gasped, pointing frenziedly at the familiar mother-of-pearl stained concoction.

"And I need money," the man spat.

Merope stuffed her hands in her pockets and threw paper notes at the man. He plucked one out of the air and examined it. The man cackled. "Is this a joke? Get your muggle filth away from me."

Merope was left sobbing.

When she arrived home, Merope found Tom sitting with his head in his hands at the dining room table. The sound of the door closing made his head snap up. Those handsome eyes that Merope loved so much were red-rimmed and swollen. He jumped to his feet and rushed at her, circling his arms around her waist and lifting her into an embrace.

"My love, my love," he moaned. "I thought I had lost you. I was so worried. I was so worried."

Merope peeled away from him ever so slightly and traced his cheek with her fingertip. "I'm here," she breathed tenderly. "I'm here, my love."

"You're here," he repeated, burying his face into her shoulder. "Don't leave me."

"Never."

She began to feel more hopeful about her chances.

Two months into their marriage, Merope noticed that she had missed her monthly bleed. By that time, Tom was acting strangely. When he kissed her, he did so tentatively and with something akin to confusion contorting his features. When he murmured I love you, he did so with a questioning lilt in his voice.

That morning, he had snapped at her. "Can't you do anything right, woman?" he had spat, snatching the cooled teacup from her fingertips. "What did I do to deserve a half-wit for a wife?"

Merope gaped at him, her mouth a tiny o of surprise and pain. "My love," she whispered.

He flinched.

"My love," she said, more boldly, taking his free hand. She pressed it to her stomach and smiled. "You're going to be a father."

The teacup fell from his hand and smashed into a hundred pieces on the wooden floor.

One morning, Tom woke up in a cold sweat. His face was ashen and his eyes were wide with horror. Merope pressed a palm to his cheek. A muscle memory smile tugged at his lips, but slowly slid away when his eyes found hers. "What have you done?" he whispered.

"My love, I – "

"Don't call me that," he roared, shoving her backwards. As he jumped from their marital bed, Merope cradled her wrist in her lap and bowed her head.

"Tom," she whispered. Slowly, she raised her eyes, wide with hope. "Tom, please."

He looked at her with disgust.

Merope slipped from the bed and fell to her knees, digging her fingernails beneath the floorboard. She pried it open, retrieved her wand, and held it aloft for her husband. "Tom," she whispered, savouring the feeling of his name on her lips. And she told him.

Tom staggered backwards, contempt and loathing contorting his features. "You – you tricked me," he gasped.

"No," Merope cried desperately. "Tom, you love me. You told me, you love me!"

A sound like a crack echoed as Tom struck his wife across the cheek. Merope fell to her knees, fingertips probing raw skin. Tom was piling his belongings into suitcases, staring stonily ahead as Merope began to wail. "Please," she gasped. "Your son. Our son."

Tom turned slowly and surveyed his kneeling wife, her lank and tangled hair, her heavy face and her mottled skin. That witch. That sorceress. "He is no son of mine."

As Tom slammed the door shut behind him, Merope smashed her wand into a hundred pieces.

Fireworks exploded overhead, lighting up the dark sky in a shower of multi-coloured sparkles. In the street below, Merope Gaunt screamed. Doubled over in excruciating pain, she stumbled down the path, her breath ragged and laboured.

Wool's Orphanage, the sign said. She rained her fists upon the big door, wheezing with the effort. As they swung open, she fell into the dank building. Merope screamed.

She slipped in and out of consciousness. Hands probed her stomach and lifted her from the floor. She awoke on a bed where women in aprons were rushing alongside. "Please," she whispered. "Help him." Blackness.

Pain. Blood. Screaming. And then, blackness.

A tiny fist clasping her finger. Merope smiled. She was tired. "Tom," she whispered. "Name him Tom. For his father."

The matron at the foot of the bed nodded.

"And Marvolo," Merope said quickly. "That will be his middle name."

"And his surname?"

Merope smiled sleepily. "Riddle. Tom Marvolo Riddle."

The matron plucked the baby from Merope's arms. "I want him to look like his father," Merope breathed. The matron nodded as Merope settled into the bed.

Those dark eyes. That pale skin. Merope smiled, her eyes fluttering closed. "My love," she whispered.