Spellbroken

Chapter 1 - The State of Things

The last few months had passed fairly blissfully to Merope's memory. Of course, her previous life hadn't exactly been in the best conditions either, so supposedly anything else would be blissful in comparison. But she thought the recent line of events to be extra blissful, in all that occured.

The past was littered with bad memories. Well. To be honest Merope's memories of her homelife and childhood weren't always so bad. There had been considerably more wealth when she was born, not a lot, but her father did save up a little for the newborn baby, so she remembered being fairly well fed and looked after when she was born. It was only temper tantrums, anger management issues, and the like which spoke out, along with alcohol the general living state that made her life hell. The later eras of her life at home was characterised by frequent beatings, periods of near starvation, of struggling to make ends meet. Her brother wasn't always nasty to her, but cajoled by her father and her being the youngest, he eventually shifted to a constant state of near teasing and abuse. It was nasty at times, but she supposed somewhere deep down, there was a good heart. Somewhere.

She had been to muggle school for a little while. Before she got pulled out. Knew a little of sums and letters but not much, and her father and brother had attempted to teach her magic for a little bit, before their tempers got the better of them, and the lessons turned into screaming matches.

Still, her life wasn't as miserable as one might have made it out to be, and it was only the latent eras of it that was filled with the abuse and misery anyone who saw them would have witnessed. Indeed, the last couple of years seemed littered with bad memories and running away, hiding, struggling to make ends meet, survival, things had gotten worse with both her father and her brother's temper, and it seemed like there was no escape. No way to leave.

Tom Riddle had been in a way, a path to escapadom. A path to freedom. A path to solitude. He seemed like a way out, and she clung onto him like a daydream. He was handsome yes, and he certainly had a fine display of manners when he chose to, but a little part of her also clung so ardently to him because it was just a way out of their home.

She remembered watching him ride by, sometimes with some village girl that she was destined to never be, and thinking he looked so romantic, and if only he could look at her like that, and oh how it would be a way out.

It had been a whirlwind when after one particularly bad fight, she brewed the love potion. It hadn't exactly been done out of jealousy or evil intentions by any rate, she just wanted out and just wanted to talk to him but didn't have the courage to say a word to him, and somewhere in the back of her mind, was the faint voice from her childhood teachings that a love potion made someone like you, like the way a child thinks medicine makes everything better. It had been so simplistic.

She brewed it. Given the immense amount of time neither of the two members of her family dedicated to her, and the fact that they lived in a little visited area by muggles which had quite a fair few plants of magical properties, the brewing of the potion went along at a much faster pace than she had ever anticipated. Getting a part of him wasn't particularly difficult. He had this habit of dusting bits of hair and trivial things from his riding cape when he drove by, often stopping near the house, as if glad it wasn't near anywhere 'proper' so that he wasn't spotted grooming himself, before riding away with a self satisfied smirk. It wasn't hard to pick up the embers of hair that fluttered in the wind, before dropping them in the potion.

It all went swimmingly. After the first sip, he easily fell in love with her, and after a brief conversation they decided to leave her house, run away from home. They didn't have anywhere to go, though he had some wealth with him, he was disconnected from the greater clutches of the Riddle house on the economy, and they had no where to spend it, not wanting to risk being recognised. Instead they went around the countryside on the horse that he came with, and stayed at odd little places here and there. They had only recently found a lodging in this abandoned property near the countryside, where Merope had found that from the there or four blissful months they spent together, under the brought reality by the spell of the love potion, she had fallen pregnant.

She hadn't exactly meant to get pregnant per say. He was attractive yes, and even though it had been so long in her life since she last felt what she would say was anything remotely close to affection or love for her, and the idea of having a little kid all to herself was so overwhelming, she did want to be a mother, someday, in the horizon, perhaps. But not now, she was much too young for it.

But she was scared and still riding on the exhileration of getting away with the love potion, he was more welcoming and receptive of her advances than she ever expected, and one thing lead to another, and suddenly she found herself missing a period. She remembered vaguely, before her mother died, that sometimes girls missed periods due to stress or whatever, but she had also inadvertly been responsible for the family's housework and housekeeping since her mother's death, so she had a better grasp on survival and maintaining health than either of her two remaining family members could have guessed, so she wasn't exactly on the brink of ill health at the time she ran away with Tom.

She had been in quite okay health, considerably better since she ran away with him, and her monthlys had been regular for quite some time. She was certain, that she was expecting, and even more so, she just 'felt' it the moment more than a few days had passed, it had been a shock to her as well. A wake-up call almost. As if this was more than just a childish tirade of running away in the woods to live amongst a fairy godmother and small (friendly) woodland creatures or something.

She'd never explicitedly wanted to run away to have a child with him specifically (just to be with him), but the romantic idea of running away in the woods and starting a family and living happily ever after did, come to mind when she drugged him and the first day they escaped, but it had never been one of her main plans, and now that she was met with the reality of it all, it all suddenly seemed bigger and more intense than she could handle, and a huge wake-up call. It also felt wrong to keep feeding him the potion.

A million questions came to mind now, that she stood, three or four months deep in the mess of running away. Those three or four months had been blissful, beyond blissful, like a dream within a dream, the best block of her life she had experienced on this terrible and bitter world of the earth she supposed. But vaguely, somewhere in the back of her mind, came the idea that this was to come to an end, it wasn't right, something had to change, it couldn't go on forever. She would eventually stop giving him the love potion either out of guilt or fear, or something would happen so that she wasn't able to keep brewing it.

It took her several more months before she finally had the courage to. But, one day, she just decided to stop. Maybe it was this idea that she was pregnant, unexpected as it was, that he would not leave her. Maybe she hoped he had truly fallen in love with her too during their time together. Maybe. Maybe. She didn't know. Life had turned a hard road and become difficult and she didn't know what to do. A million hopes and dreams were hanging on by a thread.

When one day, she decided to stop the love potion and lift the enchantment away. That morning, Tom drank from his pitcher the usual glass of orange juice or whatever liquid she managed to sneak the potion in, but it was devoid of the shimmery sweet liquid, and as he stood up afterwards to go and touch up on his hair, eyes perhaps already glimmering with a little more recognition as the diminishing dose from yesterday ebbed away some more, she smiled uncertainly at him, before going to their room which she commonly frequented. By herself some time alone before he would come to find her, after having come to their senses afterward.

She stared at her palms, and then at the small bulge underneath her dress, than at the wrinkled and mysterious lines of her palms all over again. Wondering what she had done, and what was to become of things now.

And that was the day that the spell became broken. Spellbroken, enchantment finished, lifted out of a fantasy and into the real world...

Author's Note: Hey so...I've always felt a bit sorry for Merope, and quite like the dark side a lot in fandoms (lol, yay for Draco, Lucius, Snape and Tom Riddle Jr *hearts*) so I decided to write a fanfiction where things do go well. Because I always thought Tom Riddle Sr made a rather rushed decision to run away in the books, and had he stayed for a bit longer and actually talked to her or found out what happened, things might have been different. But oh well. Btw, this is a fluffy/romance sort of thing, so don't expect a lot of plot with the 'Dark Lord' (which doesn't even happen in this story) or like, that type of story. Okay thanks, peace out and please review! xd