Who was there had seen us

Wouldn't bid him run?

Heavy lay between us

All our sires had done.

-Dorothy Parker, "The Dark Girl's Rhyme"

"Creepy little thing. Probably should be hauling her off to St. Mungo's. Clearly not right in the head."

They probably didn't think she'd heard them, or was in any shape to make out what they were saying. When the men the Ministry sent had shown up, she'd barely been conscious, aware only of Father's hands at her throat and Morfin laughing and hissing encouragement. Fool, she'd thought blurrily, You'll only get stuck with all the cooking when I'm gone, and the cleaning too.

She hadn't had much chance to make sense of the chaos that erupted next. Certainly, she couldn't recall the curses being shouted as she dragged herself under the table. Outsiders. Outsiders and shouting. There had been outsiders and shouting when Mother had died, but she didn't remember much of that either.

But Merope was good at making herself small, at avoiding notice. It was only because the mediwizard the man from the Ministry had brought had insisted that they'd looked for her at all, and then only to give her a cursory once-over to be sure she wasn't seriously injured, and to say she'd be getting an owl in a few days with the results of the hearings.

Without Morfin trapping game for the table, there was only the scrubby garden behind the cottage to turn to for food; that, and the endless jars of pickles and preserves gathering dust on the shelves. She knew how to trap rabbits with a snare, but that was time-consuming. She'd never mastered just stunning them with a wave of her wand. She'd barely mastered doing i anything /i with a wave of her wand; things happened around her, yes, she could make things i happen /i , but her control was scarcely better than an untrained child's. "You need to cast with your mind, not your heart," one exasperated teacher had told her, before Father had withdrawn her from Hogwarts in disgust.

But it took no fine wandwork to chop vegetables, or boil them. And reading was never a strength of hers, but 'six months in Azkaban' was clear enough. 'Three years in Azkaban' was clear enough. She had six months to figure something out, but what?

"Redecorating?"

Merope looked up in alarm. She'd been on her own for a week and a half, and not heard a voice in all that time save the snakes who'd agreed to keep her garden free of rodents if she'd be careful where she put her hoe.

It was Tom-from-the-manor-house. Alone. Speaking to her. Smiling, even.

"I. I'm not sure I know what you mean."

He pointed at the door, which she'd scrubbed clean.

"Oh! My brother..." She coloured, shaking her head. "He'll be away for a bit." i Not long enough. /i "I didn't like..."

"Well, who would, really?" His smile was impossible to look away from. "I'd heard a rumour, actually, that your father and brother had vanished. I couldn't bear to think of a little thing like you all on her own."

Blushing again, she knelt to pull some weeds. He sat on a rock that had once been part of a wall surrounding the cottage, before it had fallen into disrepair. "He'll... my father... he'll be back in a few months."

"You'll forgive me if I observe that you don't sound pleased at the thought."

She kept her head bent, hands laid flat on the newly-turned earth. "I... no." The words stuck in her throat; it was a struggle to speak them. "I want. I want to be gone by then."

The hand under her chin, tilting up her face, was entirely unexpected, and if there was something coldly appraising in his gaze, all she noticed was that he was looking at her. Tom was looking at i her /i , and smiling. "It so happens I've a bit of travel planned myself," he said merrily. "I'm in no rush to marry the girl next door, no matter how rich her father is, and so I'm off to London. It seems to me that you might be the better for a bit of adventure yourself."

"Adventure?" Merope repeated numbly.

"London. Come with me, it'll be all the fresher through your eyes."

How could the word 'no' even take shape in her thoughts, with an offer like that?

He that tears a heart to fringe

Hates the noise of sobbing.

Dorothy Parker, "The Second Oldest Story"

Even if Merope had the slightest idea what to expect, London wasn't it. They'd moved into a little townhouse ("A proper home for you, with a proper modern kitchen, everything will be so much easier!") and he'd left her there, tucked away, cooking and cleaning and waiting for him to come home. Some nights, he didn't. Some nights he did, but stumbling of drink and smelling of what she was sure was perfume.

But there were enough nights where he held her close, and whispered all the things he knew she wanted to hear. Nights that were enough to make her convince herself she felt loved.

And it wasn't as if she actually wanted to go out. The city was loud and confusing. Even Diagon Alley, on the rare occasions she'd ventured that far alone, was unfamiliar and crowded. Better to stay home. Tommy brought her presents sometimes... dresses, stockings, oddly-shaped shoes that pinched her feet, but he seemed to like the way they looked.

There were guests, too. Tommy's friends were writers, poets, musicians, painters, sculptors, and a flock of hangers-on telling them what geniuses they were. She poured wine for them and their girlfriends (never wives; Tommy's friends seemed to think marriage was old-fashioned and more than a little silly, not to mention bourgeois. Merope didn't know what bourgeois meant, but from the way they said it, it wasn't anything good). She served meals and hovered on the fringes of conversations she rarely understood. A balding, bespectacled man whose name she was never able to remember called her 'Tommy's little Fantine', which everyone but his girlfriend thought was very clever.

She'd cornered her alone, once, the balding man's girlfriend.

"I don't know why you put up with it." She'd been drinking rather a lot, and her words were slurred. "You're as bad as Rose, thinking Garry's going to leave his wife for her. Why do you let him treat you this way?"

"What way?" Merope blinked at her, confused. Tommy never yelled at her, never threatened her. There was always enough to eat, and she didn't have to make his clothes, or hers either.

The balding man's girlfriend patted Merope's cheek, her expression pitying (if a little glazed). "Like a maid with bedroom duties, little Fantine. I don't know where he found you, but it must have been dreadful if you're happy with this."

"What do you mean, 'happy with this'?" Merope protested. "Tommy loves me."

"No, little Fantine. You love him. Not the same thing at all. And Heaven help you when he tires of you."

It was two weeks later that Merope realized she was expecting.

Tommy had been sweet at first, when she'd come to him, worried to the point of tears. He'd kissed her and held her close. "Don't be worried, pet, not over a silly thing like this. I know a doctor."

"Doctor?" She blinked at him, uncomprehending. "But I'm not sick. I'm going to... i we're /i going to..."

He grabbed her by the arms, hard, and shook her. She gasped, more from shock than pain. "We're going to the doctor, and get this little mess taken care of, and never speak of it again, do you hear me?"

"Tommy, it's our i baby /i ..."

He slapped her then, and she gaped at him, trying to convince herself that none of this was happening. "Thought you'd trap me like this, you peasant cow? Probably not even mine, you filthy little degenerate..."

He grabbed her by the hair, and raised his fist, and she screamed. But before the blow could land, she felt a surge of power well up in her, the sort that always happened before she made something happen. Somethong uncontrolled, like the magic of an untrained child.

Tommy flew across the room as if struck by a giant, hitting the opposite wall hard enough to knock down the photographs hanging there. He slid to the floor, motionless. Merope stared, horrified, then turned and fled.