Written for the Cluedo/Clue challenge for the prompts 'Tom Riddle Senior', 'Music' and 'Confused'.
There is music playing. There is a woman vaguely familiar to him in a chair in the corner of the room. He has no idea where he is.
Merope Riddle nee Gaunt looks at her husband.
She loves him beyond words, loves how he looks at her like she is the only woman in the world.
It's a lie her mind whispers to her, all the love potion.
But it isn't, she's sure. Even without the potion she's sure he'd still love her, and love his baby too.
She hopes the child has Tom's looks.
Merope looks at the love potion in her hand.
It's time for the next dose and she can see she needs to do it quickly. Tom is reading the paper, oblivious to the popular wizarding song she's got playing or the potions equipment within the room. But she can see the restlessness that is one of the signs that the potion is wearing off. She knows there will be confusion soon, and that if she doesn't administer the next dose then clarity will follow and he will know the truth.
But they're married. They're happy.
It's a little more cramped than Tom is used to, but he doesn't mind.
He loves her. He'll love her without the potion. And she wants to prove that to herself.
She pours the potion down the sink, sits back on her chair and, singing softly along to the tune on the radio, she waits for the potion to wear off and for confirmation of her faith in Tom's love.
Tom Riddle is confused.
There is music playing. There is a woman vaguely familiar to him in a chair in the corner of the room. He has no idea where he is.
He doesn't recognise the music, but he hears the woman singing along to it, mostly in tune.
She's got her back to him and he can't for the life of him figure out where he knows her from.
He looks around at his surroundings. They are in a small, cramped room that is clean but very bare and quite gloomy.
This feels wrong. This isn't the sort of place he should be.
His mind feels clouded.
He can't remember what he was just doing. When he casts his mind back a bit further he realises that the past seven months are all a bit of a blur. He gets glimpses but nothing solid and it is as if he has lived those months with bad vision and few senses.
The woman has turned around now and his heart leaps at the sight of her.
But why? He can't quite work out who she is but he remembers her giving him a drink, so long ago and in a place far different to this.
It was hot and he was thirsty, but that was so long ago and he still doesn't know what has happened since then.
He looks at the woman and notices with shock that she is pregnant.
Your baby his mind whispers to him and he is just so befuddled because he barely remembers this woman and yet he knows the child inside her is his.
He looks down automatically at his hand and sees a ring there.
A cheap gold band (that isn't right – he's never had cheap anything in his life) is on his ring finger and he can see the glint of a matching one on hers.
Merope his mind supplies. His wife Merope.
But he doesn't feel what a husband should. Doesn't feel anything at all for her except contempt.
He doesn't know where that feeling is coming from. His mind is in such a muddle.
The music continues and Merope is talking but he isn't listening.
He tries to concentrate, to get his mind into some semblance of order.
The music helps by drowning out Merope's voice as he tries to make sense of his convoluted memories.
She looks distraught and distracted and hopeful. Her eyes keep looking towards the cauldron and vial as if tempted by whatever is within them, but the she shakes herself and looks away, back at him.
Tom sees none of this. Hears none of her pleas for him to still love her.
She says she adores him, that she knows they can be happy even without the potion. He does not hear.
The fog is lifting. His mind is clearer than it has been in months.
Every moment more and more comes back to his mind as he remembers his childhood, his family, his village.
He remembers the Gaunt family, dirty and dangerous and vulgar.
The woman is Merope Gaunt. He can't reconcile the image he's had in his head the past few months of the perfect wife with the sullen, homely creature in front of him.
His mind thinks back to all the strange things that have happened over the months, things he is only just noticing now.
He can hear the music again, a woman singing about cauldrons and toads and … magic.
Magic isn't real. It's a fairy-tale for children and of no use in the real world.
But Merope Gaunt has a cauldron. She's got strange bottles and weird mannerisms and no idea how to use half the items Tom knows a child is capable of working.
She mentions potions and wands and spells. He's never quite put it together thanks to the haze he's been under (the potions she has been controlling him with) but now he remembers and he knows that Merope is not normal.
She's some kind of freak. That must be it. Magic isn't real, cannot be real.
The world is a normal, sensible place. His family are upstanding citizens with no hint of weirdness.
They cannot know what sort of creature he has involved himself with. There will be talk enough as it is in the gossip-filled village in which he lives.
He has to get out. Merope would never return, not with a pregnancy and no husband (for he denies this marriage made when he was out of his senses and no one will believe the tramp's daughter over Tom Riddle from the big house).
He'll go home and forget about this temporary lapse, about the confusion and strangeness and the unnatural things he has witnessed.
He's not confused anymore.
He's disgusted and embarrassed and angry.
He has to get home, has to write this off as some misunderstanding, some harlot trying to trick him. He will be normal again, he'll make sure of it.
Tom Riddle leaves Merope Gaunt and he never looks back.
The music keeps playing and Merope just sobs.
Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed it.