Gone
Disclaimer: They are not my characters...
Wind in time rapes the flower
Trembling on the vine
And nothing yields to shelter it from above
-Sarah McLachlan, "Fear"
Merope was a girl; a romantic at heart, dreamy, wistful and imaginative.
At night she would fantasize about running away. Alone, or with Tom.
Tom ... Tom ... She dared to touch herself thinking about him. Thinking of him, touching her. She breathed hard, eyes rolling back in her head. Tom ... Tom ... My love, my pleasure.
Her keen ear heard the jingling of the horse's reins as he came up the road. She would crouch low in the garden, peering through the hedge to catch a glimpse of him.
How she dreamed of stroking the fine dark hair, of touching his smooth jaw line. Planting feather-light kisses on his forehead, his lips. His arms holding her tightly ...
The reality was much more terrifying.
Three times Merope had done the bad thing. The worst thing.
The memories of it sometimes clouded her dreams of Tom. The memories of Morfin laughing, taunting, slapping her hard in the face and calling her names.
Of Morfin on top of her, grunting and gasping, hurting her. She dared not to cry out, for she knew a fiercer beating awaited her if Father heard her.
He orchestrated the whole thing, of course. The day she started her courses, Father turned to her with a gleam in his eye. "Now it can happen," he hissed. "You will bear a child, a Gaunt child, the most Pureblood of the Purebloods!" She blinked, shook her head, not really understanding what he meant.
The reality of of it dawned on her a few weeks later, the first time Morfin forced himself upon her. Marvolo sat in the corner of the room, watching them, a smirk on his ape-like face. She was to bear his child, Morfin's. Her own brother's.
That had been the first time she had to do the bad thing. She waited until Father and Morfin were gone hunting, then pulled down the dusty old book that had been her mother's. Merope found the recipe, hunted down the ingredients and brewed it up in a secluded forest clearing.
She burned the bloody blanket afterwards, watching the black smoke rise upwards as ripping cramps gripped her belly. She never forgave herself for doing it. But better gone from this world, she reasoned, then raised by a pack of monsters.
Twice after that Merope had done it, two more potions brewed, two more lives gone with a flow of black blood.
Father was getting suspicious. She was eighteen now, a woman of bearing age for nearly four years and still not mother to the Most Pureblood of the Purebloods.
He beat her nearly every day, wearing her down and breaking her spirit. Not that she had had any spirit in the first place; she always seemed like a dog that had been beaten, scared and pitiful. She cowered and refused to look anyone in the eye. Her body was covered in scars and bruises.
Only the locket around her neck remained whole and undamaged, the gold always shiny.
Merope thought it mocked her.
Sometimes the locket seemed to weigh a ton, pulling her down. She wanted nothing more than to be rid of it, but of course Father would kill her if she did. It was the only Slytherin thing they had. Their cunning and intelligent ways had been bred into twisted cruelty and ruthless violence.
Only Merope could rise above, become more than she was borne to.
But she spent her days working her knuckles to the bone and her nights trying to rid her dreams of her brother's sweating, grinning face.
It seemed like a gift from heaven the day the man from the Ministry appeared. Everything happened so fast, it barely had time to register in Merope's mind.
Marvolo discovered Merope's secret about Tom. He had tried to choke the life out of her. Then the Ministry men took them away and she was alone.
Alone. For the first time in her eighteen years she was alone.
Her thoughts immediately went to Tom, as they always did in her idle moments. How could she make him fall in love with her? She giggled, then clapped her hands to her mouth. But she lowered them, smiling. No one was there to slap her for laughing. She laughed until her sides burned, until she could barely breathe.
A love potion. It was so obvious she broke out in a fresh peal of laughter. A love potion like those in the old stories, the ones her mother would tell her when she was tiny. She would brew Tom a love potion and he would fall for her. He would carry her away on his horse and they'd live happily forever after.
Reality came back to her, but by then it was too late.
Merope was heavily pregnant, sitting on the steps of a church in the bitter cold. She had walked for what seemed like hours, only to find herself here.
Tom had left her a month ago. She had decided to stop giving him the love potion. Merope knew she could no longer keep up the ruse, it was foolish of her to try.
He never truly loved her. He never would.
Nobody would.
Merope cried bitter tears of regret for Tom. She felt sorry for tricking him, sorry for making herself believe the lies of fairy tales.
True love was a falsehood. It didn't exist. Now Tom was surely on his way back to Cecilia, back to the one who would make him truly happy.
Merope wiped her eyes with the back of her fist. Her fingers were blue and numb from the cold. She patted the spot on her chest where the locket had been, only an hour before. She had sold it for a pittance, glad to be rid of the last ties to her hurtful past and hateful family.
She would never see any of them again.
Not her brother, not her father, not Tom.
She had made up her mind.
Merope planned to bear this child, the only one she had cared enough for to let it live.
If she did not die giving him life, she would take up a knife and slit her own throat.
Gone were her dreams of a happy life. Gone were her dreams of blissful motherhood.
All gone.
This child would be so unlike her in every way. He would grow up happy, she was sure. Unfettered, unbothered. Completely unknowing of his lineage, of the mother who had given him life.
She smiled in spite of herself.
End