I honestly have no words for the outpouring of support that I received after this last chapter. I wrote the last chapter in an emotional frenzy, and as a result chapter 47 was the hardest to write thus far. Knowing what needed to happen didn't make it any easier, and I struggled with the #angst and also hurting my dear Florence because after so long together, it's hard to hurt a friend.

My dearest readers, you have been the greatest gift of 2020. I will never be able to express how much I appreciate each and every one of you, and I cannot apologize enough for stepping away for as long as I have. Like I said, this chapter was hard to write, so if you have any issues with it, as always please feel free to let me know.

Thank you, thank you, thank you from the bottom of my heart for all the comments on chapter 46, and a warmest, most sincere welcome to all of the new readers (I'm floored there are so many of you!) Thanks for being here and happy reading.


Chapter 47

"But Mole stood still a moment, held in thought. As one wakened suddenly from a beautiful dream, who struggles to recall it, but can recapture nothing but a dim sense of the beauty in it, the beauty! Till that, too, fades away in its turn, and the dreamer bitterly accepts the hard, cold waking and all its penalties."
― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows


They find her hovering a few inches above the ground, umber eyes staring unseeingly into the plumes of black smoke before her, caramel hair and ash stuck to her face in equal portions so that she feels like a slick mask covers her skin. Florence does not even know she is still flying until Albion's arms wrap around her waist and pull her the last few centimeters to the ground where at once her knees buckle, her head lolling against his chest.

"What happened, Florie?" He asks, and his voice is tight, a calloused palm seeking her wrist where she knows he is checking for her pulse. Florence doesn't answer, can'tanswer, instead staring into the charred remains before her like the clouds of smoke might leave answers written in the heavens for her to decipher. If they are there, she cannot understand them.

"Flor?" Albion asks again before ducking his head behind her shoulders and coughing heavily, his lungs battling with phlegm and ash and smoke. There is a film over her thoughts, a greasy layer so thick that her senses cannot penetrate, let alone Albion's voice which reaches her from the farthest corners of the Earth. For all Florence can understand, havoc is being wreaked beneath the barrier, tearing apart the fleshly muscle of her mind and leaving behind only a gaping hole of nothingness.

"Let's get her inside," a woman's voice murmurs, and through the haze it takes Florence several moments to recognize the chilled tone as her mother. Why does she sound so scared? Albion lifts Florence from the ground with a small huff and makes his way back toward her home, up the back steps and into the first sitting room where he sets her on the couch.

"Cash," Florence hears Eudora calling in the hallway. Her voice is scratchy, as if Florence is listening to a recording on vinyl, not a living breathing person. "I want a bowl of hot water, several rags, and a change of clothes," the matriarch lists off in rapid succession, some of her prior steel slipping into her voice. "Oh, and blankets please. As many as you can find."

Florence does not hear her mother sending Albion from the room, nor does she comprehend the instructions now being given to her in a low, sweet voice – only that someone is helping to remove the wet layers of clothing from her skin before wrapping her in a robe and wiping down the ash and soot from her skin. It might have felt nice if she could feel it at all, but even the ungodly number of blankets now swaddled around her did nothing to warm the tundra-like expanse that was exponentially expanding within her chest, growing to blot out all other sensations until only numbness remained.

"Florence?" Eudora asks, and she knows that the voice is her mother only because the thin faced, olive skinned woman is now kneeling before her, an unfamiliar glint in her dark eyes that Florence cannot recall ever seeing before. "Let's get you to bed."

She does not remember moving up the stairs or down the halls, only the sensation of her world tilting on its axis as her head hits the pillow. A hand brushes across her brow, a blanket is pulled across her form, and then darkness descends upon Florence's mind. It is a particular shade of midnight blue, and it permeates her system until she feels as if she is falling, slipping further and further into shadowed chaos from which she can never return, binding to her place upon her bed until restless sleep at last takes her.

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Florence wakes to a searing pain within her chest, as if her sternum bears a hairline fracture, and a burning along her throat. For only one, silver-intoned moment, Florence questions why her body is wracked with such agony, and then she remembers in flashes the events of the day before. Her father's tightly sealed scroll…Tom's face shadowed and haggard…a hand crushing her throat…the heat of fire singeing her skin…grief made into magic, air supporting her body as if the two were one…

With a small groan she sits up, testing the unconscious theory that perhaps adjusting her position will bring relief. It does not, and instead the sharp pressure upon her ribs seems to expand so that Florence's entire chest is being compressed. Releasing another groan which strains her smoke-charred throat, Florence allows herself to sink into the emotions which she knows better than to even attempt to keep at bay.

She had flown, and yet the thought is nothing more than a fact, wonder-less and dull like stating that the sky is blue or the grass green. She had flown and Tom had looked at her like she was the most wretched and yet wonderful thing he'd ever beheld, and no attempt to bury it would every rid herself of the gaze that was now burned into her mind.

Years' worth of memories seem to be teetering upon the edge of a slope within her thoughts, slowly spilling over until Florence was helpless to flit amongst them – cursed to remember. Curling in on herself so that her chin pressed to her chest, Florence feels as if she experiences it all in an instant. Tom: pristine and nonplussed, seated across the Great Hall from her at Hogwarts on her first night when the shear magic of the castle had overwhelmed her. Obsidian eyes boring into her in their lessons, watching across classrooms as delicate fingers raced across parchment, the quill a weapon in his hand. Florence remembered how he began to follow her around the school, how he'd gleamed like a prince at Slughorn's party, how he'd conjured a dragon of fire at Samhain and then looked at her as if he'd like to eat her raw, and she remembers with dismay that she would have let him if he'd asked.

She remembers the trail of fire up her skin when they first touched, the shadow of his figure under the heart tree of her family home. Florence recalls the notes he wrote her – I will carve your name into time itself– which are still stored in her Hogwarts trunk beneath the stairs. She presses her hands to her stomach when she remembers that he has touched her where no one else has before, that she can never have that back, and she cries when she remembers discovering that his eyes were midnight blue and not black, as if she had discovered a new world.

Florence thinks of the books in her library that she has purchased just because she knew Tom would like them, of the wardrobe that stands beside hers just across the room filled with clothes that would suit his pale complexion, his narrow frame. She thinks of the stores of tea she'd shipped in from India that fill the pantry, and of the Dittany tree that literally sings with his magic only a few miles away.

Years of her life she'd devoted to him, and yet hunched over her bed, tears streaming down her face, it feels like centuries, as if she'd molded everything she was to him, a moss that suddenly found itself untethered from the stone upon which it had been growing. You fool she thinks until she is sobbing so hard she cannot breathe and she begins to choke, at which point she falls onto her side and lays still, Focusing on anything but the gaping maw within her chest, a bleeding wound which renders her unmovable.

She remembers last Tom's words from only the day before, although they come to her as if across the expanses of eternity. She remembers the way he'd begged her – please – he'd said, and she'd hated him for learning it too late. Yes, I killed disgusting Myrtle Warren and my filthy muggle father. I do not regret it, but can you live with the knowledge that you suspected, and chose to love me anyways? The words reverberate in her skull like the shrill cries of a hunting hawk, golden eyes locked upon a poor, unsuspecting field mouse.

Did I suspect Florence asks herself, her eyes staring unseeingly out the window and landing upon the charred remains of the Dittany fields behind her house. Smoke still trickled from what had been the first few rows where Tom's magic had done the greatest damage. Perhaps not the extent of his depravity, but I suspected… This thought, this admittance, is perhaps the most painful of all that came before it. She could not lie to herself, a shortcoming of her own nature she could not learn to overcome now in this moment of distress. You fought knowing, you did not probe because you were terrified to know.

There is so much to unpack, so many thoughts so process, and Florence is unprepared for the surge of self-loathing which rises to mingle with the grief and agony within her. It renders her unmovable, and shortly afterward she begins to choke once more upon the tears that stream into her mouth until her chest burns and the physical pain at last eclipses her sadness. For one brief, luminescent second, her mind is free from thoughts of him, and then a deep breath follows another and Tom has returned, a shadow in every plane of her thoughts.

Perhaps it was her sobbing which brought the elves to her, perhaps Eudora had instructed them to care for Florence the evening prior, but a few minutes later the door to her bedroom swings open and June and Cash roll in with a steaming tray of coffee and loaded platters bearing all of Florence's favorite breakfast treats. The thought of food makes her want to wretch across the mattress upon which she lays, but the scent of coffee drives life into her.

"Missy, Florence!" June chirps, appearing upon the bed beside her and running a warm hand across her brow. "Crying will do's no goods. Let's get coffee inside us and then we will call the main house. You should not be alone."

"June," Florence mumbles, closing her eyes as the hand begins to pat the top of her head. It feels good, in a childish, indulgent manner, to have someone taking care of her, but Florence cannot bask in it because already the surprise of their appearance has once again faded to the aching in her chest. Will I ever escape thoughts of him again Florence wonders, her gaze once more straying out the window and finding the smoke. He feels like a brand upon her skin, one she will never escape, not now in the height of her grief, and not in an eternity. A dense fog seems to settle over her in that instant, and she shudders into its hold over her, releasing her willpower to its cold gravity.

The coffee is warm, if not flavorless, and June and Cash tend to her with hawk-like precision. But no amount of cajoling or begging can get her to eat, and eventually the two house elves disappear, leaving Florence wrapped in her quilts where she slips once more into restless sleep.

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Her father is seated upon the chair beside her window when she next wakes, the sky outside a vibrant watercolor of orange and red and yellow. It is like a knife to her chest, recalling how Tom's hair had been backlit by a sunset of equal voracity only the night before. Only yesterdayshe thinks, and Florence feels dread wash over her at the thought that she may never be able to separate sunsets from thoughts of Tom. Will everything beautiful be marred by him?

"Good morning, Florence," her father's voice rumbles out, deep and rolling like the hills along the horizon. "Or should I say good evening."

His words seem to amuse him, and he smiles, although even to Florence it is apparent that the humor does not reach his eyes. His tanned skin is drawn, his hands laced over his stomach as if he has been sitting in contemplative silence for some time. She doesn't answer, instead pulling the quilt tighter around her shoulders so that every inch of her body feels cocooned, protected. She tries not to think about what it felt like to share this bed with another, the warmth that radiated from…

"I doubt you have any desire to talk," her father continues after a moment, "but I think it best if we discuss the information that I shared with you yesterday, and the resulting events between you and Tom."

"I don't want to talk about it," Florence says, and her voice is a croak, throat raw from screaming and smoke inhalation and now lack of use. Clifford nods once, his chin nearly touching his sternum with the motion.

"I understand, and yet talk we must," he murmurs, crossing one leg over the other. "Let's start with the letter. What questions do you have?"

A million fly through Florence's head, but her mouth remains firmly shut. How long have you known? Why didn't you tell me sooner? What does it all mean? Yet one question rings louder than all the others, and at last it spills from Florence's lips.

"Is it true?"

It is a petulant question, Tom having already confirmed it the other evening, yet she has to ask. Because he was right, she doesn't want to believe that it could be true despite his confirmation and her suspicions. Because she wants to believe that she didn't love a monster, even though she did.

I still do.

"Is what true?" Clifford asks. "Is it true that Tom has committed the supreme act of evil – murdering other people? Yes, it is true." He takes a deep breath, and his eyes flicker closed for a moment. Florence's gaze strays to the wall where she will not have to see the lines of his face, subject only to the sound of his words which she has neither the will nor the energy to escape. "Is it also true that as a result of these acts, Tom's soul was rendered unstable and therefore separable? Yes."

There is a pause after Clifford's words.

"He told me he killed them…last night," Florence admits, as if double confirming Clifford's words.

"Who?"

"Myrtle Warren. His father."

"I am sorry, Florence. He should not have shouldered that burden upon you," her father begins, but Florence cuts him off with a snort. Tom had done far worse to her, namely the gaping hole within her chest, what more were the identities of those who he had killed? It was enough to know that he had murdered.

"In the letter," Florence continues on, eyes resolute upon the wall. "You said that pieces of his soul were missing, but just now all you said was that killing only renders the soul unstable. I don't understand." The words are bitter upon her tongue. Tom had always made her feel small, always reminded her of the things she didn't know. So limited on your views of magic he'd once said to her. What now was another wound now, even when he had left her far behind?

"It means," and her father pauses. She can hear him sucking air in through his nose. "It means that Tom has chosento separate the fragmented parts of his soul – to embed them in objects."

"I still don't understand," Florence grunts, but this time she is lying as other memories float up to the forefront of her mind, through the fog, the imagine of the ring she'd worn for nearly four years hovering before her eyes. As if I would let you die. I plan to carve your name into time itself. I am not so human as to succumb to death. The signs had all been there, and she'd refused to look closer…chosen not to see…

"Pieces of your soul that are removed render the person… unkillable," Clifford finally admits. "But it is at the cost of one's humanity… It is not a choice that should be lightly made."

Florence feels a surge of energy pass through her as understanding slams into her being. He chose death Tom had howled, and his face had flickered with madness and firelight and gleam she couldn't comprehend as he spoke of Achilles' fate. Now that she could understand, she hated him all the more for it – for what he had chosen, for loving him despite it. She lays immobile upon the bed, but every nerve within her body is singing as if suddenly there is an excess of energy burning its way through her system, illuminating those thoughts she'd attempted in vain to keep in the dark for years.

"Why didn't you ever tell me?" Florence cuts, and it is this question, more than any other, that has been nagging at her mind since she opened her eyes to find Clifford seated in her bedroom.

"If I had told you before you were ready to hear it, would you have listened?" He counters, and Florence cannot stop the slip of her gaze to meet her fathers. For a moment the energy in her peaks and she thinks of striking him, of leaping from the bed and sinking her nails into the available expanses of his skin, but she does not stir from under the quilt.

"That is not a good enough reason."

Clifford sighs.

"I hoped he would choose wisely, that Tom might become more for your sake, and I hoped against what most would consider rational reasoning, that I would not have to hurt you. Tom has known that I was aware of the truth for the better part of three years, and yet he has not informed you likewise."

"He's not my father," Florence whispers, and her throat catches, smothering anything else she might have said.

"No, he is not, and I was wrong," Clifford says slowly, each word like a ton of stone as it passes his lips.

"How long have you known?"

"Since the day I met him – I felt the missing pieces of his soul when I first shook hands with him."

"So long…" Florence whispers, and a knife is pressing between her ribs, twisting and gouging until she cannot breathe. Florence closes her eyes, and pulls the quilt around her until she cannot see her father even if she were to open them. There is silence again, and before Florence knows it, she feels the telltale stream of water down her face and across her nose, tears spilling over and onto her bed. The room feels too small, her chest too tight, and without question she wants her father to leave, for no one to see the havoc that Tom Riddle has wreaked upon her being.

"Florence," her father begins, and his voice cracks. She remembers the way he said her name that day in the hospital, how happy he'd been to see her after his trials. Florence wishes she could return the favor, that she could will herself to enjoy his company now when it felt as if her skin was slowly being peeled away, hair pulled out piece by piece – but she cannot. "I am so sorry… so sorry to have caused you this pain. To have put you in such danger as I did yesterday…"

There is a coughing sound, but from behind the blankets Florence cannot see his face. Is he crying?

"What will you tell everyone?"

"In regards to what?" Clifford asks, and Florence thinks he sounds surprised by her question.

"About Tom. What will you tell them?" She repeats.

"Florence, I understand how traumatic this has been – the end of a relationship, the secrecy, the burning of the fields – but I must ask if you are intending on protecting him still?" Her father queries, and with a small token of relief she hears the creak of the chair as he gets to his feet. Pressure is building between her shoulder blades, her father the drainplug that can siphon it away only with his exit from her room.

"No, I'm not protecting him."

I'm protecting myself goes unsaid. No one could ever know that she loved – still loves – a murderer. That she gave herself to someone capable of such things.

"I don't care if they know what he did to the trees. Tell everyone, it doesn't matter," Florence continues, her voice oddly muffled by the shell of blankets in which she's wrapped. "But they cannot know of his crimes. Or of what he did to his soul. I would be…ashamed… for others to know." There is a beat of quiet following her words, and then Florence flinches as a hand comes to rest upon her shoulder. Even with the layers of fabric between them, the touch makes Florence feel as if slime is crawling up her throat.

"If anyone should feel ashamed, it is Tom. Or myself. Do not hold yourself accountable, Florence."

Florence's chest burns, and she bites her cheek to stop from sobbing. A moment later, Clifford's hand leaves her shoulder and his footsteps carry her from the room, leaving Florence to swirl in the pool of memory that haunts her unceasingly.

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They come to visit her – one by one – as they hear of the news. First it is her family, her mother and Albion and Owen and the army of house elves bringing soup and sweets that go largely untouched and letters that remain unopened. Eudora cleans the home on her visits, Albion regales her with updates on the running's of the plantation, and Owen lays beside her in her bed and reads – sometimes silently, other times out loud. Her father does not visit again, and Florence does not send for him. It will be some time before she can stomach his presence. He lied to me Florence thinks each time Clifford's name slips from Albion or Eudora's lips, but she has learned to hide the flinch that accompanies his name.

Harder to disguise are the bags beneath her eyes, the haggard, pained expression she cannot stop herself from making when they ask about what happened with Tom, like a spasm through the muscles of her face. They each have their own tactics: Albion is blunt, asking directly, Eudora attempts to circle around it with a variety of questions, and Owen with much stuttering and adjusting of his glasses requests the story of what happened the night Tom burned her fields to the ground. She reminds herself that they do not know he is a murderer, that they cannot comprehend why what appears to be any old breakup has rendered Florence near lifeless – cold and immovable. She tells them only that she broke up with him, that she wasn't ready to be married, and in his rage he burned the trees to the ground.

She doesn't tell them that she gave her heart to a monster, that she cannot forgive herself for the mistake. That she cannot stop the cloying guilt even now that loving him doesn't feel like a mistake.

"Never liked him from the beginning," Albion growls when Florence gives her short explanation, or lack thereof.

"I always thought him so gently mannered, but he must have anger management issues," Eudora concludes, her eyes hard and tone brittle as she traces Florence's pale face. "I know you feel dreadful, Dear, but if that is what he was like all along, perhaps you have escaped something." Florence does not tell her mom what she escaped, and she certainly doesn't tell her that sometimes she wishes she hadn't, that she wakes up in phantom arms whispering his name, longing for the cage she had built for herself alongside him.

Owen had only stared at her in response, long and severe as if she was an error in a translation or a Transfiguration problem he needed to solve. After some time, he'd closed the book he'd left open on his thigh and gotten to his feet.

"You're not telling us everything. Albion is too dense and mom too worried, but I know there is tension between you and dad, and I know Tom Riddle for all of his intelligence did not burn our Dittany crop to the ground simply because you rejected his marriage proposal," Owen states in a dry, matter of fact voice. "Although, I'm sure the rejection angered him immensely."

"Do me a favor and keep your suspicions to yourself," she murmurs in response.

"Radella is coming to visit in a month. Forgive me, but I took the liberty of telling her that you and Tom have separated. I thought it for the best if she found out before she arrived."

Florence returns to work a week after Tom's parting, and though the resulting exhaustion helps her fall asleep faster, work holds none of the joy nor the beauty it had before. She thinks of the seedlings she gave Tom for his apartment that he simply let die each time she turns to water a new row within the greenhouses, and more often than not her eyes brim over with fresh tears. I wish I could take it back Florence bemoans to herself. She had not thought she had a world to give him, and so she'd made him part of her own. Now she could not un-share what had already been given, and her loathing for herself only grows.

With work also comes letters from beyond the Allman Estate, and with the letters visitors. Tallulah arrives with no less than six casseroles and enough heated words for Tom to burn down the Arctic. By the time she leaves, Florence has cracked more than a few smiles and laughed for the first time in weeks. Radella arrives as Owen had said she would, gentle and motherly as she strokes Florence's hair and holds her while she cries. Philip takes a day off of work to Floo down from Boston, and Florence serves him tea and cookies that Tallulah's house elf baked and listens as he describes his role as a part of the Cauldron Sales Force.

"Dad wants me to come back to Britain," Philip says, scratching the back of his head with an uneasy grimace as they stand to say their farewells. "He says my American Holiday has been long enough, and it's time to step up and join the family business, aye."

"Do you want to?" Florence asks, trying to ignore the part of her brain that is leaping down side trails. Philip's father owns Borgin & Burke's…Philip left and a job became open…Tom took the job opening… All roads, Florence has learned over the intervening month since their breaking, led to Tom.

"Course I don't," Philip says, waving his hand before him. "And work with my father? And Herbert? I'd rather lose a leg."

"Forgive me," Florence says, and the reckless, needy part of her brain wins out. "But I thought Tom had taken your job?" Philips face pales, and his brown eyes flicker from Florence's gaze to the carpet to staring down the hall.

"He's disappeared," Philip admits at last, shrugging slightly. "Left without a notice or a word – dad was right chuffed about it to be honest, but it's not like Riddle. Apparently one of their biggest clients got poisoned by her house elf, and Tom was pretty close with her. I reckon it scared him off."

Florence's gaze becomes unfocused as Philip's words reach her, his freckled visage swaying in and out of the light. Idly she wonders if Philip – if anyone – really knew the real Tom. You certainly didn't the cold, knife-like voice at the back of her mind tells her. I want whatever it is you are Tom's voice rings in her thoughts, and Florence has to shake herself before she is overcome with the memories, with the words that had melted her then – that still burn through her even now.

"Well, considering he burned my trees to the ground, I can't say I'm surprised he quit without a word," Florence finally mutters, giving Philip a toothless smile. She feels his hand take hers and squeeze – he'd always been more giving with his touches than Lizzie.

"I'm sorry about what happened, Firstie," Philip says, and the nickname feels like a warm stream of summer air. Florence's smile spreads slightly at his insistence at kindness, at the goofy nature not even her empty heart could repress. "If you need anything, Boston's only ever a Floo away. I've written to your father and MACUSA to link our homes. Pop by for a visit whenever."

They embrace, Florence presses another tin of cookies she will never eat into his hands, and then Philip is gone in a flash of green flames.

Lizzie is the last to visit – not by any fault of friendship, but the transatlantic portkey took some time to secure, and Florence secretly considered that Avery's ties to Tom's circle of lackies would make visiting her difficult. It is two months after the breaking that the blonde haired, blue eyed goddess arrives upon Florence's front porch, a bouquet of white roses in her arms and a deep hug the moment the door is thrown open.

"The flowers along your drive are magnificent, Florence, dear," Lizzie says as Florence ushers her into a chair where she accepts a glass of wine from June. Florence takes a seat in the armchair across from her, curling her feet beneath her in an unladylike pose that would have both Elizabeth and Eudora groaning. Lizzie, for her part, only gives Florence her usual hard stare before continuing.

"I'm so sorry it's been so long, it took me ages to get the portkey, and then Pyrrhus was being difficult about travel dates," Lizzie says, confirming Florence's suspicions while taking a sip from her wine. "How have you been?"

"Better than I deserve I suppose," Florence says with a weak smile, knowing that any attempt at false positivity would be ripped to shreds by the summer-blue gaze of Elizabeth Greengrass. Lizzie rolls her eyes.

"So you're miserable," she asserts.

"That's about it," Florence agrees, and somehow just saying it makes her head feel slightly lighter, the open wound within her chest a little warmer.

"Well you look like a patch of daisies compared to him," Lizzie continues after a moment. Whatever warmth had surged in Florence immediately evaporates, Lizzie's face softening slightly at the obvious tension that settles over Florence's figure. "Don't be surprised, you knew I was going to see him sooner or later."

"So he looks miserable too?"

"No, murderous more like. And mad," Lizzie adds, finishing her glass of wine and taking the bottle from the ice tray to refill. "Of course, no one else sees it, but I've seen the way he looked at you enough times to know what insanity looks like on him."

Florence snorts at this, but her mouth is dry and her hand around the glass of wine quivers. Unbidden, she recalls the wide-eyed look he'd given her, the high, cold laughter he'd emitted before turning and burning her fields to the ground. Madness.

"Do you see him often?" She asks, and Florence wants to wretch at the smallness of her voice, for its breathy quality.

"Oh yes, Riddle comes over for tea every other Tuesday," Lizzie says with an uncharacteristic snort. After a beat, she continues. "Of course not, Florence. I do my best to avoid him, but Pyrrhus has business with him, and I see him at large events. If you must know, he attends galas alone and spends most of his time lurking in the shadows with various heirs to pureblood families bringing him drinks and gossip."

"What is he doing with Pyrrhus and all of them?" Florence asks after a moment.

"You mean his lackies? Whatever they've been doing since Hogwarts I'd assume," Lizzie murmurs coolly. "I have a very happy marriage, but asking what occurs at Riddle's meetings is one piece of information that I'm not privy too."

"How long did you know of them, of his followers?" Florence asks, and she can't help the cutting edge in her words. Lizzie lets out a deep sigh, but her gaze doesn't back down.

"Since it was founded. All of the pure-bloods knew, how could we not?" Lizzie's voice is sharp, direct. She is not one to initiate these types of conversations, but once they have started she does not avoid them, instead charging on into the deep. "I didn't join, neither did Philip – me because I knew it was dangerous, Philip because he didn't have the stomach for it. Why do you think he's hiding out in America? The only muggle sympathizing Burke in the entire history of the family."

"But why do they follow him? I don't understand," Florence whispers, her chest constricting. Lizzie shrugs and tosses a sheet of long, blonde hair over her shoulder.

"He's powerful? He's the heir of Slytherin? Pyrrhus refuses to tell me of course, but I know he took them down into the Chamber and terrified the will to live out of them in third year. After that, they were prepared to shine his shoes if he asked."

"But what do they get out of it?"

"Power via association," Lizzie clarifies, crossing one leg over the other and leaning back against the cushions behind her. "Riddle has promised to maintain the current blood order status quo – to return the sacred twenty-eight to their former glory. There aren't many Slytherins who would pass up the opportunity."

Florence swallows the feeling that all of this was so glaringly obviousand that she had just been to foolish, too naive to see. Beside her self-loathing is the familiar feeling of resentment, that Lizzie had known and yet not told her. First my father, now my best friend.

"I did warn you," Lizzie says, as if reading Florence's mind. "When you first got to Hogwarts. I did tell you to be careful with him."

"Stubborn American, ultimate consumer, remember?" Florence holds up her glass and they both smile, the moment easing slightly now that the truth lay between them.

"So if Phy won't talk to you about it, does that mean you're not a member?" Florence asks. She knows it's a personal question, but her entire orbit has been shifted, and at the moment she could care less.

"No," Lizzie gives a small chuckle. "I'm not a member."

"I don't understand how you stomach it? I mean, you're no saint Lizzie, but you're not trying to rid the world of NoMaj's either," Florence states, bluntly enough that even she winces.

"Yes, well, I love him – Pyrrhus that is. So I could either turn a blind eye or make myself morose and marry Philip, which I assure you would have made us both miserable in the end," Lizzie replies, finishing her second glass of wine with a large gulp. "I'm sure you can attest to the difficulty of the decision."

Florence nods once, but she does not answer. Yes, Pyrrhus was a blood purist, but Florence doubted he was taking other's lives to make himself immortal. She doubted he had the wherewithal to imagine such a thing, nor the constitution to follow through with it, and she knew at the least he was not following in his leader's footsteps when it came to Patricide, having met Avery Senior during several events. My choice was made for me Florence wants to say, but she holds her tongue. She was not in a sparring match with Lizzie over who had chosen the harder man to love.

They spend the next few days riding and enjoying easy meals prepared by June and Cash, Tallulah often joining them rides, and Forsythe, Albion, and Margaret popping over for meals. Florence laughs more than she remembers laughing for the past few months, and her appetite returns in the presence of her friends, but she cannot shake the tightness at the base of her spine, nor the blanket of exhaustion that seems to weigh upon her at all times.

Can you live with yourself Tom's voice whispers at night when the house is dark and the only sound is the rustling of the wind in the trees, the occasional snore from a painting. Florence stays up into the small hours of the morning nursing a glass of wine and staring deep into the wild, shadowed face of Atalanta – debating whether to take down the painting, or if is a sign of weakness to remove him from every inch of her life. He is in everything, there is not one page of her life she did not share with him, and it makes her hate him all the more – hate herself for giving away her heart to someone who could not love it in return.

Two nights after Lizzie leaves, Florence finds herself pacing the hallways of her home in the dark, and without thinking she reaches for her wand and turns on the spot. Resurfacing at the top of Illini's hill, she pulls her robe tight around her, shoving her wand into a pocket as her bare feet pick their way across the grass to sit at the base of Tom's tree.

His magic is cloying, filling the air before she has even touched its bark, and at once the sobs come. Tremors down her spine, heels of her palms pressing into her eyes until she sees stars, the bark cold and rough against her skin. Tom she thinks, although she is always thinking of him. Of his voice and his words and the brands he'd left upon her skin – invisible but burning, never healing, tearing her skin a part. Tom who'd been given the chance to set aside his dark fantasies, and who had chosen death anyways. The nigh air presses in on her, and not for the first time she wishes for a pair of long, sinewy arms to wrap themselves around her, for a towering frame to cradle hers, for a thunderous voice to tell her she is beautiful. Her sobs ring out into the glade until she loses even the energy to cry.

"Cub," Illini's voice rasps in her head some time later, and Florence blinks twice before registering the hulking white figure that circles the air above her. Seconds later the creature descends, landing softly despite her size, wings folding under and tail swatting at the air like a whip. "I can hear your grief in your song. I can smell it in the air. What troubles you?" The great white head comes to rest on the ground before her, and Florence feels the warm exhale of Illini's breath coursing over her. For one moment she pauses, and then Florence speaks.

She tells Illini everything – unabridged, unguarded. She tells her of the words Tom has given her that she cannot stop rehearing, she tells her of his pleas for Florence to consume Dittany concentrate to live longer. Florence shares their trip down to the Chamber and she talks of Tom's increasing madness as their time away continued on, and she tells Illini how he murdered three people, how her father and her friends had let her believe the lies she told herself, and how even after he tried to destroy the thing she cares for most in this world, she still loves him. She tells her how she loathes herself for refusing to see, and how she

"He's like a weed I can't uproot from my mind," Florence explains, and her voice is ragged from her tale. "He is in everything. I hear him upon the wind, his face is in my dreams, and I feel sick with it all because I shouldn't miss him and I shouldn't love him and yet every day I wake up and fight the urge to fly to him, to fall on my knees before him and beg him to take me back. I keep thinking over our conversation – the last one – and I scratch my skin bloody trying to figure out what I could have said, what I could have done to save him."

"My Cub, he was un-whole from the start, you would never have been able to help him in the end," Illini asserts, and Florence looks up from her hands to meet the pale gaze of the Piasa before her. Florence swallows.

"You knew of his soul as well?"

"I could feel the emptiness in him, yes," Illini agrees. "It was there before you met him, and he filled it with the love you gave him, used it like a crutch to keep him sane – although he could not understand."

"So when we were across the ocean from each other…" Florence states, and her tears stop as realization sets in.

"He had nothing to fill the emptiness, or not enough. It would have been the first time he truly comprehended the agony of splitting his spirit, and yet he would not understand – how could he? He told you himself."

Florence thinks of the night of her debut, of Tom's gaze seeking hers in the darkness of her bedroom, of the terror in his face when she'd said she loved him. I don't understand. Grief fills Florence again, this time for Tom, for the man she loved who'd ruined his chance at ever living before it had even begun. Did he understand what he was choosing? She thinks of Achilles too, who'd chosen his own glory and killed his companion by proxy. Was this the burden of all great men – to make the wrong choices?

"No, Cub, he could never have understood what he was choosing," Illini confirms, and her chest rumbles with a purr that passes through Florence like a warm bath. "I told him the first night under the moon that to forgo death is to sacrifice life, but he was blind, his mind shattered, limited."

"You told me he would offer me the world."

"And he did, but you did not take it,"Illini replies, and she blinks once, languid and slow.

"No, but I wanted too…" Florence admits. "I still want too."

"Do you think you made the wrong decision?" Illini probes, and Florence gulps down lungfuls of air, swiping at her cheeks to remove the tears from her skin. Her face reddens, but her breathing becomes easier after a moment.

"The hard decision yes, but not the wrong one."

"Then you must live with this."

The beast does not tell Florence she is sorry, that she wishes it could have been otherwise for her sake. Illini does not bemoan Tom's choices or his nature or the pain he has caused her, she simply rustles her wings slightly and exhales.

"Is it wrong for me to miss him? To love him still?"Florence asks after a moment, her mind probing the creature's before her. Illini's claws sink into the ground, kneading the earth beneath her.

"Like your choice, it is what is. You must live with it, Cub."

"How?"

Illini lets out a low growl that vibrates the ground.

"You have roots stronger than this storm, if you must grow again, it is better to be starting from a healthy base."

Florence nods, and leans back against the Dittany tree behind her. She can feel Tom's magic still, the rush across her skin like a mockery of his embrace, of his touch. Could she live with herself for loving a monster?

She would find out.


EVERYONE KNEW AND THEY DIDN"T TELL HER. I get so angry when I think about it, but then I think about sweet, obsessive little Florence and I know she wouldn't have listened, so who's to blame.

Thank you for being here! You make my sun rise in the morning and set in the evenings wonderful readers of mine! Please please please continue to stay safe! The world is crazy right now Xx