Disclaimer: I own Melodie and the plot. Everything else belongs to JKR and Warner Bros.
Warnings: This is canon up to the beginning of Year 5. Beyond that it becomes entirely AU. Grey!Voldemort Grey!Harry Evil!Dumbledore Evil!Weasleys There will also be much DumbledoreBashing, and very likely RonBashing. There will be M rated content in later chapters, ranging from Torture and Abuse to Romance, including Slash. Please keep this in mind. If you are sensitive to such things, continue reading at your own risk. These warnings will not be posted again. Pairings will be as follows: OFC/Tom Marvolo Riddle/Voldemort, Harry/Severus, Hermione/Theo and Luna/Draco.
Author's Note: It has taken many years to do, but I have finally gotten around to editing this story. I wish to apologize to my readers for my long absence and I do hope that you all have not abandoned me. However, I understand if any have. Only the prologue and the first two chapters have remained, the rest simply did not fit with the new time flow and have thus been removed. Some of the material will still be used, but most of this will be brand new.
I would like to thank Tabitha for being such an amazing person and the best friend EVER! She has been kind enough to beta this story and will be helping me greatly in my quest to complete it.
I will ask that you all take just a few moments to review each chapter, even if you just want to criticize. It really does help with motivation. I will keep the original review responses that have been posted in the chapters that follow, and any new responses will be subsequently added.
Thank you all and enjoy.
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Chapter 1
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A New Day, A New Future
'You never truly know someone. For people are only themselves when they are alone.'
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Melodie huffed as she threw herself against a tree, her hands and knees scrapped raw from where she had landed on the other side of the barbed wire fence that surrounded Sacred Heart. Her chest was heaving from thirty minutes of trying to outrun guards. She'd never been so far from that place in all the years she had been there, but now as she stood on the outskirts of the property hidden in a thick of trees, she breathed a sigh of relief. She was finally free. Melodie no longer had to yearn silently for what she wanted. Without so much as a glance back at the building that had been her home and her hell for eight years, she ran once more.
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Two hours of running had given her time to think. It had given her time to process the fact that she was actually free to do as she pleased without having to please anyone. A large building, a mansion of sorts, loomed in the darkness. The moonlight cast eerie shadows across the rather generous expanse of the front lawn. She walked timidly from the cover of the woods, making her way towards the home and keeping to the darkest shadows possible.
The rain had soaked through her simple green dress and the fabric, worn and faded, clung tightly to every curve of her arms, torso, and thighs. Her shoes were gone and her stockings were ripped, the feet almost completely shredded, with a few briar thorns still clinging to them and piercing her flesh with every step. Her entire body ached and her feet were cramped and tired. One of her heels had broken in her escape and she had been forced to cast them off completely.
Her short roughly cut caramel hair lay flat against her head looking dark and muddy. She shook from the cold as she neared steps that led up to the front doors. She paused for a moment to think. Was she ready for this? Would the rest of the world reject her because she was different, because she was gifted? She shook her head, clearing it of any and all traitorous thoughts. She had come this far, she wasn't about to lose her nerve and ruin it all.
She moved slowly up the steps, her wet and bloodied feet slapping lightly against the expensive white marble and leaving behind a trail of small red footprints. Reaching the top step she looked up at the door knocker. It was beautiful, glinting silver and ethereal in the moonlight, depicting a snake with garnets inset into the eyes, woven around a wreath of thorny roses with the head falling from the top to rest in the open space in the middle. An elegant R was embossed in the scales at the center of the snake's head and a ring of silver was clasped in its mouth.
She tried to force away the excitement and the desperation that were building up inside her chest. Surely someone with a home this exquisite had plenty of money. She couldn't suppress the shiver of anticipation that ran through her. She reached up with one trembling, slightly calloused hand and pulled the knocker up only to have it fall back against the knocker plate as she fell to her knees. She was so tired and cold. She tried to force herself to stay awake but it was useless. She slumped to the steps as darkness closed in around her. The last thing she saw before giving herself up to it was a pair of vibrant red eyes glistening in the light of the still-present full moon and her final thought was that the serpent on the door had come to life and was about to feast on her.
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Tom was confused and unsure of what to do. This wasn't something that happened often, if ever. It wasn't exactly an everyday occurrence that someone showed up on his doorstep, soaked to the bone, cut, bruised and malnourished. He wasn't sure what to do with her. Did he offer her refuge from whatever was chasing her?
What if she turned out to be one of them? What if she were a witch? She had no wand, and young Draco had said that he'd never seen her at Hogwarts, but he could sense the power that lay within her. It made her body seem to vibrate. What if her family was looking for her? What if she had no family that cared? So many questions were running rampant through his mind without so much as a single answer. Yes, Tom was indeed very well out of his depth.
"The girl is sleeping peacefully, M'lord." Severus Snape stood in the doorway to the vast library. "She seems to be healthy, save for the fact that she hasn't eaten in at least a week. Her physical wounds were minor and I've healed them all, but I'm afraid there has been quite a bit of damage done to her mentally and emotionally. I attempted to read her, but her mind is disjointed and jumbled up. Parts of it are walled off, but others are open and raw. I've given her the strongest Dreamless Sleep I could, and I left a few more vials on the bed-side table. She'll sleep for a while yet. She's been dried and warmed, and I transfigured her dress into a nightgown for the time being."
"Yes, yes...thank you, Severus. You never fail me. Make certain that it remains as such. If I need your assistance again, I shall call." Tom never turned his gaze from the flames that were slowly dying in the hearth of the large black marble fireplace.
"Very well, M'lord." Severus bowed. He turned to make his way towards the door, but stopped and looked back at the older wizard. "The girl's body is extensively scarred, my Lord. It should not be too surprising if she were to exhibit some…problems as a result."
With that Severus left the manor, disapparating with a thunderous 'crack.'
Tom stood when he heard the front door close and headed up the stairs. It had been a very long night. What had started as a normal meeting had turned into a revel, which had led to half of his Inner Circle getting into trouble. They had, of course, been punished and the master-mind behind the whole thing had paid dearly for disrupting his plans.
Many thought Tom something other than human. Even the Dark Lord himself had wished to be at times, but it simply wasn't so. He still required sleep and nourishment; he still grew wary and exhausted. Now as he climbed the stairs, he wanted nothing more than to sleep through the next day. He paused outside his room, the heavy mahogany door already ajar. Out of all the rooms, he'd chosen to put the girl in his. He sighed, something he seemed to be doing a lot of lately, and made his way in to the room closing the door behind him.
After a long hot shower he crawled into bed beside the girl. He'd dressed modestly, as he always did, wearing a thin white tunic and black cotton pants. His shaggy, dark brown hair was pulled back with a strip of satin ribbon. It had taken him months to find a spell that would restore not only his youthful appearance, hair included, but his youthful strength as well. Performing that spell had drained his core of so much magic that he'd spent the next month locked up alone trying to regain enough strength just to walk. It probably would have taken a good deal of time longer, if it had worked at all, had he been someone that wasn't incredibly stubborn. Luckily for him, he had no shortage of determination.
Now he laid in his king sized four-poster bed looking up at the thick canopy. His mind wandered not for the first time to his life. He wasn't what Dumbledore had made the world believe of him. Yes, he was cold and detached, but he had suffered a harsh childhood. He wasn't heartless, either. He wasn't fighting this war because he enjoyed killing people, or because he was obsessed with power like everyone on the "light" side believed. He was doing it to protect the world in which he lived.
Dumbledore wanted to change everything. He wanted to tell the Muggles of the existence of this world, and Tom knew how that would end. History would repeat itself, and no one in the Wizarding world would ever be safe again. He simply refused to allow that to happen. Tom also believed firmly that muggleborn children and their families should be made aware of their gifts as soon as their names showed on the registry.
It would save them from the shock and fear of experiencing accidental magic, and he had seen far too many enter the Wizarding world at the age of eleven with no knowledge of the community they were joining. It made them targets for bullying and did them no favors in fitting in. Children could be cruel. The less someone stuck out, the safer they were. Someone had to protect them from Dumbledore's idealistic ignorance and neglect. When no one else was willing to do so he had stepped forward. From that moment on the two wizards had been openly at war.
He supposed, in a way, they always had been. The moment that fool had introduced himself and set his wardrobe on fire Tom had hated him. Tom had always known that he was different, special. He could talk to snakes, for Merlin's sake. Dumbledore had just treated him like everyone else did, as though he were a silly child, with silly fantasies. He had never trusted Tom and had treated him with suspicion from the start.
At first Tom had strove to change the older man's mind. He did well in his studies, made top grades in all of his classes, helped other students who weren't so intellectually inclined, and had even offered to help some of the professors with whatever they needed. It was all to no avail. Dumbledore's opinion of him only seemed to worsen, and by his third year Tom had decided that he no longer cared. Let the man think what he wished. It hardly mattered, right? How much power could one man have over the influence of the entire wizarding population? Apparently, quite a bit it would seem. It had been a near fatal miscalculation on Tom's part, and he was willing to admit as much. He would never let it happen again.
He had allowed himself to dream in his youth of having a family. If he were to look into that damnable mirror he probably would have seen as much. Even now, after so many years and so many shattered hopes, he allowed himself to think that one day he could still find someone that was willing to give him the one thing he had never been able to experience. He had craved love as a child, but had never been granted his wish. No one had ever wanted to adopt him, or befriend him. The older he got, the less important the idea became.
His eyes moved to the shivering from beside him clad only in a thin white nightgown. He rolled onto his side and pulled her to his chest in a strange display of compassion that seemed foreign to him, but at the same time felt...right. It didn't hurt that she fit perfectly, as though she were meant to be there, curled against him beneath the blankets, and besides, the last thing he needed was the girl getting a cold on top of everything else.