A/N: Last one! I'm not sure I should have gone with such an obscure character, but I like Merope, certainly I feel sorry for her. Anyway, thank you very, very much to every single person who has read, reviewed, Followed or Favourited this collection. Your support means a great deal to me. I hope you enjoy this final moment.

What a miracle it is, to have the privilege of existence!

With her father and brother locked away, the world reveals itself to Merope Gaunt, clearer than she has ever seen it before. Strength and magic return to her, and eighteen years of dreaming of escape have suddenly become a daunting and exciting possibility.

For her entire life, she's been tied to her family, meek and subversive and terrified. They don't love her or care about her in the slightest, that much has always been clear. They merely tolerate her.

When she is old enough to comprehend such things, she figures that she's tolerated as a means of continuing the family line, diminished and disgraced as it is. Morfin and Marvolo bear the Gaunt name, but they cannot have a child, and they're at least rational enough to realise that no woman will come within five feet of Morfin of her own volition.

Bob Odgen is the first person she can really remember being kind to her and it is nice and foreign and unfamiliar and it makes Marvolo furious and for that reason it is terrifying, too. Still, Merope is forever grateful to Bob Odgen who, in showing concern for her life, gave her the possibility to truly live it.

They say that you can't love if you haven't first known what it is to be loved, and Merope's life is both a contradiction and a testament to that belief. Before she was a year old, Merope's mother died, and to Merope she exists only as snatches of memory – a gentle hand smoothing her hair back, a kiss against her forehead, and hints of a lullaby she can never completely grasp. One day she lived, and the next, Marvolo beat her one too many times, and she just didn't get up.

Her brother and father beat Merope and treat her like slave, but she knows that as long as they think they need her, they won't kill her. It's her only piece of comfort in her bleak and comfortless world, until she sees Tom Riddle. Her days revolve around his appearances outside her window, and her happiness isn't dulled even when he's with that pretty girl (Celia, he calls her), just a glimpse of him is enough.

It's only once she's alone that the idea of slipping him a love potion comes to her, but when it does she can't get it out of her mind, and the possibility of a brand new life revitalises her, and she is lucky it does, because her escape is not immediate.

It seems like a long time before Tom rides past her house unaccompanied, if at all. With each passing day, Merope becomes increasingly anxious, because each day brings the return of her brother and her life of servitude a little bit closer.

And then one day he appears alone, like a mirage she can barely bring herself to believe in, or a miracle.

She knows she must look like as much of a mess as she feels, with her hair wild and dirty, despite the fact that she's brushed it vigorously with an old brush she's hidden under her mattress, and her wandering eyes that she doesn't know how to fix. Still, he doesn't have to like her. He just has to tolerate her, just like her family had done, and drink the "water" she offers him.

Futilely brushing her hair behind her ear, she pushes open the door, the dead snake skin dangling like a macabre warning, and waits for him on the path.

"Hello there," she begins, conscious of how her voice is croaky from disuse. "Aren't you Tom, from the Riddle house over the way?"

She tries not to be hurt by the disgust evident in his expression, or by the way he visibly recoils from her grungy appearance. It doesn't work, and his unspoken rejection feels like a kick in the stomach, a pain that is different and somehow worse than any blow or insult her family could have delivered.

"Yes," he says after a beat, "I am."

"I'm Merope. I saw you coming and I thought you must be awfully hot and uncomfortable riding in this weather. Would you like some water?" She gestures in what she hopes is a casual manner to the glass she is clutching as though it is her salvation, because it is.

The sun beats down relentlessly, and she can see droplets of sweat trickling down his face. Surely he won't refuse her?

Tom Riddle gazes doubtfully at the glass, weighing his reluctance to accept anything from the tramp's daughter against his thirst, and his thirst wins.

"Water would be marvellous, thank you," he answers, downing the entire glass in one gulp.

She isn't really doing anything wrong, Merope reasons, because she will stop giving Tom the potion eventually, once he loves her of his own accord. All she is doing is pushing him along a little.

When Merope spikes Tom Riddle's potion, she has no idea that a loveless union will create a loveless child who will tear the wizarding world apart. To her, it's not a loveless union at all – she certainly loves Tom, or at least the idea of him, and in time she believes he will come to reciprocate her feelings.

She just wants – needs - to be loved, just like everyone else does. And who can blame her for that?