Tamblin Demosthene and the Narrow Ground
Tamblin looked at the page but did not see it.
The summer passed quickly as always. And as always the demands of his estates buried him in paperwork. There never seemed to be an end to the lawyers, accountants, managers, corporate officers, and so on who needed to be seen, approved, queried, and signed for. The Demosthene estates were substantial and incorporated holdings in 12 different countries as the muggles reckoned things and 3 magical jurisdictions. Majority ownership of two mediums sized corporations as well as interests in a number of smaller companies. Had his family maintained strictly magical holdings things would have been somewhat simpler. But his family dated back to the times before a strict separation between muggles and the magical world, and so had holdings in both. Holdings that required some amount of maintenance and personal attention no matter how much effort was made to make the system self sustaining.
Then too he had to make time to use the portkey to visit with Cascata at the school. His fairly unique abilities, inherited due to the magics his mother was taught, allowed him to become virtually invisible, but they had to be balanced with time spent with an anchor. Cascata was that anchor for him. Without that precaution his power would divorce him from reality, taking first his sanity and eventually his ability to interact with the world at all. He would become like her.
He tried not to think much about his mother. He knew she was almost certainly still around. Too far gone to harm anyone now but endless in her rage. The power prevented the need for sleep, for food, even for air. It might even keep her immortal.
He shuddered. His mother was in a hell of her own manufacture. One that he would join her in were he not careful.
You wouldn't even exist if it weren't for my lord.
He tried to shake the memory from last year but couldn't. He'd brought Cascata back to the mansion after he'd been warned that she was not imagining things. That his mother was indeed trying to come back and that Cascata was the key to her return. He'd returned home and come face to face with the thing his mother had become after a decade of estrangement from the world.
And she'd said those words. At the time they meant nothing to him. It was only later that he found they kept creeping back into his mind. He'd gnaw and worry at the phrase trying to determine what it had meant. Had Voldemort brought his parents together? Introduced them? He'd shown Tamblin's mother the rudiments of the power that made her one of His Invisibles. Was that what it meant? That without her allegiance to Voldemort she would have remained the socially invisible girl she'd been in school? That, without Him, Tamblin's family would never have formed?
Or was it more direct? Had she meant that Tamblin owed more to Voldemort than his parent's marriage? Was it possible? Or merely the ranting of a mind turned insane with hatred? How close had his mother been to her 'lord?'
Tamblin sighed and pulled out his wand. He'd inadvertently ruined the sheaf of papers he was supposed to be signing by leaving his quill on the page too long.
"Scourgify."
The mess on the page disappeared, the one in his thoughts remained.