S iStEr

The orphanage, as it turns out, is incredibly unpleasant with or without Tom. She tried, at first, to avoid him, quietly. She'd sit down at a different table, next to different skeletal children. They looked at her like she's something decaying. They looked at her like she's something terrifying or terrible or both. Tom would stare at her across the lunchroom, eyes cold and soup untouched, watching as she quietly bit at her piece of stale bread. Alone, the orphanage began to feel something like a body, and she the ghost within it.

Marilyn's seen enough ghosts. She and Tom both knew they were haunted, but she wouldn't be her own phantom, and so she relents. She crawls back to the room they share and when he looks at her from his side, separated by less than a foot, they both know she gives. He wins.

Now, Marilyn sits up, tailbone aching against the stiff mattress. Looks at his cot, maybe a foot away from hers. Tom's still curled into himself, facing the wall. Sometimes when he looks like that she feels bad for him. The pity rolls easily into disdain and then she's just looking at him, her mind on a coil, shaking between an uncomfortable disquieted urge to comfort and an equally discomforting desire to watch him hurt. The way he looks at her—it's something like betrayal but not so strong. It's as though he's disappointed. Like he's watching her go through a phase.

He's going to be unimpressed when he realizes she'll be disgusted by him forever.

(The worse thing, really, is she doesn't know if it's disgust at all. He's a child and she's so, so afraid of him.)

He seems to be universally disliked, which would be a nice surprise, if the same weren't true of Marilyn. Mrs. Cole, the older woman Marilyn'd seen, looks at her like she's the devil, and the other children stare as though they've been brought to a murder scene. Whoever Marilyn Riddle was before Marilyn Potter became her, she certainly was no saint.

This place is fighting to rival the Dursley home. Marilyn hates it here. At least they were her family. There's something in that, for her. There's something in blood. There has to be. She has to believe there is and that's why she was destined to defeat Voldemort and that's why her mother died for her and even though there wasn't love between Marilyn and the Dursley family, between her and Petunia there was blood. That has to have meant something.

It doesn't matter now.

Her only family here is apparently Voldemort himself. She slips from her bed, crawls the two steps to his and lingers there, the cold concrete floor waging a quiet war against her knees. He looks normal. She imagines if she shook him, his eyes would be blurry from sleep, his form vulnerable and pliable. His dark hair is a bit messy—he needs to wash it, she thinks—and his shoulder blades seem too prominent through his nightshirt—he needs to eat, she thinks, but then she remembers everyone in the orphanage needs to eat. She reaches out a hand to touch him, cautious and slow, the moment a monument. The act feels dangerous. Her heart is beating so loudly across her body, pounding in her ears and pulsing against her skin over her wrists. Marilyn watches her own hand stretch towards him as if in a dream.

He rolls over, eyes open, very awake, watching her now. She freezes. Caught.

Marilyn swallows down a gasping breath and as she snatches her hand back, he takes it in his, linking their fingers together. All she'd wanted was to feel his hair or the bones she knows are pushing against his skin the same way hers do. Now, he rubs his thumb over her hand. "Good morning," she whispers. She says it for something to say, something to do with her heavy tongue.

"How long were you going to stare at me?" Tom asks. He seems genuinely curious, tone unbothered. "You haven't done that in a while. I thought maybe you had a nightmare, but I—"

He breaks off. It's the first time he's seemed awkward to her. Marilyn remembers when she first saw him, the morning a few weeks ago, when the cold of September had still seemed like the ice of being dead and the dark in his eyes had never seemed more frightening. The pang of guilt—it surprises her. She has nothing to feel guilty for. He has no right to touch her, no right to pull her to him, no right to her. He has no right.

The guilt remains. Voldemort had no right to touch Marilyn Potter, but maybe Tom Riddle has one to his sister.

"I'm…" The urge to apologize lingers on the edge of her mouth. She can't bring herself to let it escape. "I didn't have a nightmare," she says instead. Marilyn rarely has dreams of note, now. The images her mind creates are neither good nor bad, instead just a muddle of confusing scenery and lacerated colors. "I didn't mean to wake you."

The act of conversing with him itches at her. It digs into her skin and takes root there, parasitical. Like a weed.

He looks at her. His eyes scan up and down, cataloging. Marilyn forces her hand not to stiffen. Tom sits up, so he has to tilt his head down a bit to see her. He pulls her closer by her fingers, bringing their interlocked hands from their spot dangling over his cot to the space between his thigh and the pillow. His thumb keeps making tiny circles on the back of her hand. She hates that it has begun to feel comforting. Staring up at him like this makes her feel like she's praying. She can think of no falser god than Tom. "I love you," he announces to her abruptly.

She bites her tongue so hard she tastes blood, her free hand digging crescents into her palm so harshly her nails grow wet. Only the pain keeps her from recoiling. Her hand still spasms in his. "I love you, too," she manages to get out.

His face twists in concern and she hates that, hates that she can make his face do things like that, hates that she has to tell him she loves him and even then it is still the wrong answer. He drops to the floor beside her. She turns automatically to face him and their knees touch. She hates the rush of thought through her, the way she worries if he's bruised himself. His free hand comes up to her face. She wants to reach up to touch it, to feel his fingers on both sides instead of just the calluses that press to her cheek, but that'd be strange and off and she doesn't know why she wanted to do it anyway so she doesn't. "Marilyn," he says. It sounds chiding. Scolding. Like she's been misbehaving. "What's wrong?"

Yes, Marilyn, what's wrong? What's wrong, Riddle? It's 1936 and none of the days in the orphanage have been worse than normal and your brother loves you. Marilyn, what's wrong? She wants suddenly to know exactly what Marilyn Riddle would have said. It's perverse, self-centered. She wants to know everything about Marilyn Riddle, wants to know if she parted her hair on the left or the right, if she were any good at chess. When everything that made Marilyn Potter vanished—the scars, the moles, the freckles—things belonging to someone else appeared in their place. Who was this girl? Who was this girl, with her wavy hair and pale skin? Where did she get the bruises on the back of her calf or the tiny, plush scar at the base of her spine? Marilyn Riddle, she likes to think when she's standing in front of the mirror. She can spend hours pouring over each inch of skin, each movement of her pupils, each thread of the iris. Sometimes Marilyn does it more than once a day.

The girl in the reflection isn't right. She's backwards or too sharp or too angular or too bright. Marilyn can't help it, though. She has to look. She has to judge her. She has to decide if she's worth the skin she's been sewn into. Who is Marilyn Riddle? She wants to know. She wants to know. Marilyn needs to know.

Another part of her is terrified of the prospect.

The selfish part wins.

"Am I a bad person?" she demands, words bubbling free. Other questions rage against her: what's my favorite color how often is my hair put up do we play board games do I play with my hair am I doing my best am I doing my best am I doing my best—

"No," he says instantly. There isn't a hint of hesitation. He says it like fact. A simple truth. He smiles at her a little and it's been weeks without anyone and she's so, so alone and he's all she has and she's so, so weak. He said it like she'd been asking a trivia question and not something unknowable about her darkening heart. Tom said it like he didn't just believe it but knew it.

It's the same way, when Voldemort had been cutting her open for sacrifice during her fourth year, she might have said, "I'm bleeding."

"Okay," she says.

"Does this mean you aren't angry with me anymore?" he asks. Even when he's looking at her like she's holy he still acts like a beaten dog, waiting for another hit to come. The rush of pity and guilt overtakes her again.

She remembers growing up without parents, remembers the war, remembers the certainty she'd had that she was going to die, and she's angry again.

Mrs. Cole's whistle begins to sound. "We should dress," Marilyn says to avoid the question. She hastily pulls away, tugs the bin of uniforms from under her bed. She only remembers she never kicked Tom out after she's done, and has already finished pulling her sweater over her head and her skirt up her legs.

When she turns to look at him, he's adjusting his shirt. She was right. His ribs are as visible as hers.

…

This place isn't all bad, of course. Few things are. The older children have no time for the Riddles and the younger children are often too afraid to bother them, which leaves Marilyn with some space. Space, for her, is frequently a synonym for loneliness. No one will talk to her. Barely anyone looks at her. It reminds her of grade school, of being at the back of the classroom in shirts three sizes too large and with hair desperately tangled. Here, at least, none of the other children are actively cruel to her. The matrons, though, don't have the same reservations, and in just the few weeks it has been, Marilyn's already learned through experience that corporal punishment was all the rage in the 1930s. The food is horrible and the authority figures are nasty and no one will talk to her. She steps out into the courtyard, smiles at a girl named Amy if only to prove her point; Amy flees. This place isn't all bad. It isn't great. For her—and Tom, too—the only fighting back occurs in the form of magic.

Not to say there is much fighting. It's quiet, accidental magic. Marilyn used to set Petunia's shirtsleeves aflame during particularly bad nights at the Dursley house; now, she watches Tom howl until the wind meets his call.

If they're loud enough, if they're angry enough, the world will answer, and she hates it. The other children scatter out of her path and the earth shakes if she thinks for too long about Tom, if she gets too angry, and she hates it. Tom's shouting, the clouds are darkening, and Marilyn follows his voice.

Accidental magic. It's almost misleading. The magic itself is completely intentional; the result, though, unpredictable and purely based on luck, gave it the name. The varying endgame of accidental magic makes it useless and dangerous in equal parts, Marilyn thinks, watching Tom from across the grass. He's talking at a little blond girl, Abigail. He gestures wildly towards her, and then the paperback clutched in her tiny hands abruptly catches flame. Marilyn watches with interest as she flings the novel away from herself. It lands heavy on the grass, inches from Marilyn's feet, and Tom looks on the edge of seething. Abigail is a reasonable girl and not one to throw away good paper in the same way Tom is generally not the type to set books aflame.

Marilyn squints at the burnt cover page. Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier. Not an awful read. Quite good, actually, in her opinion; there was a copy of it in their room and Tom kept it under her bed—

Ah. This is the same copy usually under the bed. The book is stolen. Marilyn realizes this now, watching Tom's clenched fists. Abigail's mouth drops in what would have become a scream if she could get enough breath for it. "You're a thief," Tom hisses, fists clenched, and Marilyn takes the opportunity to quietly stomp out the flaming book. It might still be worth something, if more than half the words survived. "That was mine and you knew it!"

Abigail is illiterate. Tom knows this. The novel in question is certainly not to Tom's taste, either. There is little reason for anger on his behalf. It was Marilyn's book, anyway.

But it doesn't take much for Tom. All he'd had to do was see the book held in Abigail's tiny hands—that was enough for the crisp print to set itself to burn. He's so temperamental. It's early January of 1937, now, and the year hangs over their necks like the axe of an executioner. It was September of 1936 when Marilyn first arrived, and she knows their Hogwarts letters are arriving soon. Their tenth birthday—Tom had to remind her; she didn't know he was born in December until the month arrived and nearly ended and he was wishing her a happy birthday—passed so quickly, and so quietly.

No one here likes us, Tom had said, late on December 31. He'd pilfered some chocolate earlier that week when they'd escaped out the back gate. Crawling over the fence after had been hell. Marilyn refuses to accept his hand when he made it over first. But I don't mind. I don't need them. He'd offered her another piece of chocolate and a secretive almost-grin. Marilyn's never seen Tom grin. I have you. He's right. Without Tom, Marilyn would have nothing. No friends, no family, no kindness. Tom isn't exactly kind, but the orphanage will never do anything for her, for them. Its resources seem to be limited to disgusting meals, uncomfortable living quarters, and anger. Marilyn wishes he would just shut up about it.

Abigail's lower lip begins to tremble. Her fingertips are red with small burn welts. Looking at her has something rising in Marilyn's chest. "I—I—"

"Oh, leave her alone, would you? It's just a silly book." Tom's anger stops, hit by a train. Marilyn walks towards them, forcing her expression unimpressed, with the burnt book under one arm. She puts a hand to Tom's arm, and he stiffens under her touch. It takes only a moment, though, for him to reach for her, and Marilyn allows him to slip his hand in hers. It seems to be a nervous habit of his.

It is absolutely disgusting.

"I'm sure she meant very little by it," Marilyn murmurs, quietly, like it's a secret. Tom loves secrets. Her eyes sharpen, going to Abigail. Then, louder, in a way that makes it seem like she's on Tom's side, "Don't steal from us again."

The poor little girl is shaking in a fashion implying an earthquake. It makes guilt swarm inside Marilyn's stomach, makes her belly writhe, as though something were slithering around inside it. It feels uncomfortable and sickly, and the sea of orphans in the courtyard—Amy and Dennis and Tabitha—are looking at her as though she were molded from lava. All of them, here, are so easily shaken and it's awful because they're just children and Britain will soon be at war but Marilyn can't fix it. Amy's eyes are wild with fear and Paul looks like he is going to vomit and Janet has tears in her eyes and Abigail is shaking.

These children are terrified of them, terrified of Tom. Marilyn turns her back on them, long dark hair flicking over her shoulder, and Tom is still holding her hand as they slip from the schoolyard, yellow grass crunching beneath her feet.

"You shouldn't have stopped me," Tom says, pointedly looking directly in front of him and avoiding her eyes. His grip on her betrays the lack of real irritation. "She stole that from us." Us. How quaint. Rebecca plays to only Marilyn's interests.

Ah. He's upset because he thinks the anger was on her behalf. He wanted a thank-you. He wanted her to call him a hero, to clutch Rebecca as though it were gold. He wanted her to be pleased, grateful.

Not bloody likely.

"Abigail's a little girl, Tom."

"I know that, Marilyn—"

"Would you do that to me if I stole from you?"

His words tumble away, his face scrunching, like she's said something ridiculous. She likes to ask questions like this, to push him, see how far his you-and-me-against-the-world attitude can stretch. Him and her against the world, for now, sure, but she knows it won't last. Sometimes when she looks at him he's a boy and he's scared and sad and lonely and other times he isn't a person at all. Marilyn wonders what he would have done without her to intervene. The orphanage can be traumatizing, but not so much so that he has any real reason for wanting to beat a little girl's face. That was quite rude of you, Marilyn thinks, feeling Tom's thumb rub against the edge of her palm. But you don't deserve to die just yet.

"You would never steal from me," he decides on. It's the safe answer. It isn't what she wants.

"If I did," Marilyn repeats, "would you get like that?"

"Of course not," Tom says, then, indignant and appalled. "You're my sister."

He's just a ten year old boy, the same Abigail is just a little girl. If she can stop Tom from ripping Abby a new one, she can stop him from hurting anyone, maybe everyone, and she might even be able to stop herself from hurting him. Isn't that why she's here, though? Wasn't she meant to slip herself into his life and quietly slit his neck? Avoid the war, avoid the death? Be a preemptive strike?

Sister.

A young boy's hand is warm in hers. She isn't ready to make it cold with death.

…

A part of Marilyn wants to avoid connecting with Tom as much as possible. He kills her parents and her friends and destroys her home and spits on the graves of her grandparents and he wants to take over the world. He wants things too strongly and eventually he'll decide he wants everything. She can't stop that.

There is very little to like.

But she's so, so weak, and so alone. The orphanage isn't full of friendly faces. Sometimes the way Tom looks at her scares her. Sometimes the way he tells her those things, things like, I don't need them. I have you. Sometimes it scares her. He can't do anything to her now, so for now, she isn't his possession. Marilyn doesn't belong to anyone. If anything, Tom belongs to her. His life is in her hands. She can kill him anytime she wants. She's done it before. He doesn't scare her.

(oh, but he does, so terribly, terribly)

But later, if he wanted to, he could change that.

Marilyn's never had siblings. She always thought Padma and Granger were close enough. Brother, she thinks. She's so, so weak, and so alone, and Tom calls her sister. Marilyn shifts in her cot, her back whining from the motion, and turns on her side. Tom's already sleeping, body curled in on itself and facing her, his features gentle in the dark light. He looks younger at night. More delicate. It almost makes her feel motherly, almost inspires her to care for him. It's nearly enough to make him look like a little boy.

He is a little boy. She knows that. He's a little boy in an orphanage with nothing but her to hold on to. He looks soft and small, curled up in his cold cot, and a part of Marilyn suddenly stings, aches with the urge to brush the hair back from his face, with the urge to kiss his forehead and hold his hand.

He hisses something in his sleep. A chill passes over Marilyn, and the moment is lost.

Tom hisses again, a bit louder. She can't work out the words. There's a snake somewhere in their room, Marilyn knows. It speaks to her, sometimes, in the early morning, when the sun hasn't fully risen and the light is clouded as it spills across her face. The snakes seem to feel something for her. She can feel it, too. Her last memory—her last confusing, strange memory—is of being surrounded by them, of feeling them touching her everywhere and hearing their song. When she and Tom leave the orphanage, snakes sometimes follow after them. Marilyn's woken up before with unknown serpents curled around her ankles. Her body always goes tense, skin crawling, and when they look up, realize they've been caught, they slide away quickly.

Marilyn Riddle can speak to snakes. Marilyn Potter could do that, too. She never found out why. It isn't in the Potter family line, and Lily was a muggleborn. She shouldn't have been able to, but she could. Even though she knows Marilyn Potter could do it, too, it still feels disgusting. It's another link to Tom. She and him both talk to snakes. The snake living with them—Tom's snake, probably—has never revealed itself to her, but Marilyn hears it now, as Tom's face tightens and he hisses something again. "I hunger for something," it scratches out. The hissing sounds like it's coming from under her cot. "Perhaps the same is true for him?"

Tom hungers for everything.

She slips from her bed, holding her pillow with her. "Perhaps," Marilyn allows, the noise unfamiliar on her lips. It makes her feel sickly. She thinks of the way Voldemort looked when he spoke it, thinks of the veins protruding from his white skin. The snake makes a small noise as though to agree with her, and bile rises, unbidden, in Marilyn's throat. She swallows it. She's crept to his cot, the pillow clutched in one hand and her eyes already flashing with the image of his dead body.

Tom's mouth twists in what could have been pain, a small noise escaping his mouth. Marilyn can feel her hand shaking around her pillow. The energy drains from her, and she crawls back into her cot and turns over and goes to sleep.

…

She wonders if Tom is truly sick or if something made him that way. He seems—not normal, exactly. He could never seem normal to her. But he seems alright. Sane. Okay. She watches him while he watches the water. Wool's Orphanage has taken a trip to the Serpentine. It was originally going to be the sea, Mrs. Cole said. But that was too far. And this is a pretty lake, she'd said. Marilyn's never seen it before. She hadn't traveled much. The Serpentine is a pretty lake, she thinks.

"It's pretty," Marilyn notes, saying as much to Tom. Most of the other orphans are playing in the sand. The light feels grey to her. It's darkened, cloudy, the sun stuffed behind the sky. The water rises and falls, the blue so dark and cold it feels grey, too.

"It smells like mildew," Tom says.

She sits down in the sand, tucking her skirt under her butt. "That's true," she admits, pulling her knees to her chest. The wind licks at her hair. He sits down next to her and starts to absently play with the tendrils of wavy dark hair flicking with the current. If she closes her eyes, she can pretend it's Padma, and then if she thinks as little as possible, a soft feeling builds in her chest.

If she thinks too hard, tears threaten her. But if she doesn't think at all, it's just Padma playing with her hair the night before finals, the library full of soft voices and her scrolls spread across a table, Granger reviewing them across from her. If she doesn't think at all, it's safe, and she is, too.

Something wet and warm goes down the side of her face. She's thinking too hard. It's Tom's hand in her hair. Thank god the evidence is on the side not facing him.

"Let's go swimming," he says. He has a habit of being abrupt and insistent and he climbs to his feet, tugging her with him.

"The water's cold," Marilyn protests. Her words are weightless.

He steps forward and tugs her with. "We're going swimming," he says. There's no froth in the water, no salt. She wishes there were. The Serpentine looks dead to her. Colorless, framed by an equally colorless sky. Her skin, pale, looks like it belongs to a corpse. It's so grey. The world is so grey. Lifeless.

Her foot, still in a scrappy saddle shoe, freezes on contact with the water. It shocks a laugh out of her. "It's so cold!" she cries and he pulls her further in. Her legs go coated in goosebumps, muscles tensing, but it does seem fun now so she leaps forward, splashing up sparks of cold water. She's laughing for the first time in weeks, her body shaking so hard from the cold she can barely breathe. It's been months and for once her heart isn't beating so loudly she can't think. "It's February—god, what's wrong with you?"

He turns in the water, and they're both soaked now, far enough from the island for Mrs. Cole and Amy and Dennis and Abigail and Janet to be tiny specks. Tom's smiling and when he's smiling she can pretend to be Marilyn Riddle, can pretend there was never anything different, that she's his sister and always has been and it's her and him versus the world. When he's smiling she can pretend that, as long as she doesn't think about it too hard.

Tom reaches over and dunks her head underwater. She forgets to think.

Marilyn comes up sputtering, brushing wet hair from her face. "You rat!" she accuses, and splashes him across the face. She backpedals away from his response, arms pushing the water and—

Oh. Oh, there's a drop. She can't touch the dirt anymore.

Her body goes frozen and she forgets that she'll have to swim. Falling underwater is so slow that it feels inevitable and she doesn't realize she should be clawing at the water until she's slipped under and there's a drop and she's sinking and when did her clothes get so heavy when did her limbs get so stiff it's so so cold—

Tom's hand closes around hers and when she opens her eyes she's so saturated with water it must be under her skin and she's in the cave where she watched Dumbledore drink poison. She coughs, water coming out of mouth in tiny splatters and Tom is still holding her hand.

"This is inconvenient," she says and at the same time Tom's shouting:

"You forgot how to swim?"

Marilyn squeezes his hand. He isn't smiling now and it's so hard to pretend, but she will. She's Marilyn Riddle and he's her brother and she loves him. She pulls herself up on shaky legs, peers into the depths of the cave. There aren't inferi in there, now. Still, a terror thrums in her. When she turns to look out, towards the entrance, all she can see is a long, heavy line of black water.

"I don't know how to get out of here," she says faintly. "I cannot swim."

Marilyn Potter could. Marilyn Riddle is only capable of lying and fear. Looking out at the dark water, at the faintly visible darkening sky beyond it, has dread inflates her. This place nearly killed her once. The dead hands clawing at her—the same way the snakes wrap around her when she sleeps. Marilyn Potter survived this.

"We'll get out the way we got in, then," she says and when she looks at him, there's something human and afraid in his eyes. She brings a smile to the surface, forms it just for him. Offers her hand to him. "Don't worry," she says. "It's you and I against the world, remember?"

There is so much she must forget to make it so. But he believes her, and he takes her hand, and accidental magic forms through panic and fear—holding Voldemort's hand fills her with both. She closes her eyes tight, thinks about the dead bodies and the way she can only remember a green light and someone screaming; she thinks about standing alone near the back of the classroom and no one will talk to her and she thinks of the cupboard of the altar room of am I going to die here—

(maybe she already has—)

They make it back to Wool's.