PLEASE READ!

Ok people - i'm going buck wild. That's right, I'm going to post TWO WHOLE CHAPTERS today! Mostly because there are so many cats in my metaphorical writing bag that I want to let OUT of the bag, and because I feel like I've been dancing on coals for the past few chapters completely unable to explain myself and the writing decisions I've made and frankly annoying all of you with my endless ramblings.

I've genuinely agonized over chapters 51 and 52, so I'd love to know your thoughts on both...BUT i completely understand if you rush from one chapter to the next and then let me have a piece of your mind at the end of the second update today. Hopefully I'll have them up within 30 minutes of each other.

All of this to say, PLEASE READ THIS CHAPTER BEFORE CHAPTER 52 IF FOR SOME REASON YOU ONLY GET ONE NOTIFICATION UPDATE! A lot of stuff won't make sense, and you my dear readers deserve more than confusion if you've been hanging on this long with me.

I ADORE YOU PEOPLE HAPPY READING XOXOXOXO


Chapter 51

"Don't you want to be alive before you die?"
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See


Tom Riddle forgets about Florence Allman in eight parts, fragments of soul and memory that fade into the ether as the years pass, never knowing nor understanding why they had been ripped apart in the first place.

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The first to go was also the largest, imbedded in a diary, the words and writings of a young man who was determined to make a name for himself in the future based upon a name from the past. Diary Riddle has nearly ten months of writings from the other half of himself, neat lines and carefully crafted phrases about a woman who's hair shone like spun caramel and who's voice was the breeze and who's very being sang with magic more alive than anything either half of his soul had ever seen.

Seventh year, Head Boy Tom Riddle had been nothing if not meticulous, near daily writing of his occurrences, of those things Florence Allman had said to him, of the way the scent of coffee lingered in his room long after she was gone, how the way she said his name sent strange aches throughout his body that surely must have meant that there was magic linking them together. Diary Riddle drinks in the ink, feasting over the intervening years of silence on the descriptions of Samhain, over the Latin phrases of magic that this girl – Florence Allman – had written for his other half, imagining a dress made of stars and a home with eternal summer and a woman that could somehow distract the future Lord Voldemort with nothing more than a smile, a few well-placed gifts.

The Diary Riddle wonders where she is during the years he sits unattended upon Lucius Malfoy's shelf, if this Florence Allman had indeed married the bit of his own soul that lived outside the confines of this book, if the other Riddle had killed her the way he had killed his own Father. It cannot picture her, having never beheld her face before separating from his human body, but Diary Riddle has enough descriptions to fill a novel, every detail of her being from how she takes her coffee to the names of the books she reads for fun. He feels strangely as though he knows her, even though he doesn't. Envious of the other portions of his soul for experiencing in flesh what he'd only received in writing, for things he could never know.

When he is given over to the possession of the young Ginevra Weasley, Diary Riddle most control himself after decades of his own listless ramblings, stop himself from asking whether there was another – a woman – who had stood beside the dark lord that the young Ginny fears to name. Diary Riddle despises her, convinced after years of solitude that even eleven year old Florence Allman would have been more interesting than this girl despite having never known her.

He possesses her body, taking her one night to the library where he searches the records for mentions of one Florence Allman. There is nothing in the papers, no mention in any book about a fearsome woman who had been a part of the revolution, and with something akin to anger, he convinces himself that she must have been killed. Grief passes through him then, or as close to grief as possible without a body to feel it by, something like an abyss in his mind where years of musings and memories amount to nothing.

When a basilisk fang is driven through the heart of his pages, Diary Riddle wonders briefly if his mangled soul will at last meet Florence Allman in death – in that void he'd so feared, but where surely she would be waiting for him? Diary Riddle bleeds ink onto the Chamber floor, and he resigns himself to waiting for her, to at last know the woman he'd been fed with memories of, and then he knows no more.

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The quarter of Tom's soul that resides in a ring is the second to forget. The Ring Riddle remembers only the beating of Florence Allman's pulse, the warmth she'd provided against the unbearable cold of its existence. It had spent the better part of four years pressed against her, wound around her finger, and as a result, it knew everything that make her heart beat faster – the touch of human Riddle's hand, the steep incline of stairs, the fluttering when someone told her she was beautiful.

Ring Riddle knows her pulse in sleep – metronomic – and her pulse in fear – schizophrenic – and it remembers the terrible moment it was ripped away from Florence's pulse all together – never to be returned.

The part of Tom Riddle's soul that lived in his ring spends the years of darkness craving the touch of the person who had worn it longest. It wonders why what was left of himself had hidden it away instead of wearing it as an emblem of strength as it'd been intended to be. Ring Riddle wonders if something else adorns the hands of Florence Allman who's hands were warmer than fire, the rhythm of her heart his only measuring of time.

Ring Riddle is longing – to the best of his albeit limited ability – for warmth once more when another hand slides it on. There is a brief moment in which the quarter of Tom Riddle's soul that has sat alone, buried under the Gaunt house for many years, rejoices at being found, but then the hand is too broad, the skin too weathered, and in a rage the curse that sings in its metal seeps out and attacks his new wearer whose only crime was that he was not Florence Allman.

The bit of Riddle in the ring dies with a sword through it moments later, its last seconds spent recalling only how a young woman had once found herself unworthy of wearing it, how the touch of her skin was the closest the ring had ever felt to being alive.

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The bit of Tom Riddle incased in a locket recalls Florence Allman only in that it knows it was created for her. Only an eighth of his soul, what little brain capacity Locket Riddle possesses fixates upon the face and neck it was meant to highlight, upon his past self's recollections of her beauty, of the magic that supposedly hummed in the very fibers of her being. It recalls the sentiments that were sang into its very creation, how his past body had nearly torn itself apart in longing for her, and it wonders what powers she holds that drove him to the brink of madness, if it will ever have the opportunity to understand.

Locket Riddle is only longing, sitting at the base of a potion deep within a cave, incapable of remembering its existence except that it was meant for Florence Allman, that somehow she was meant for him, that surely they were meant for each other?

Decades pass and then there are hands, some human, others not – some gentle, others pressing into him with the intent to maim. One woman wears it, but Locket Riddle is repulsed by the touch of skin that does not sing, that does not stir his magic to the tallest heights, even if she does believe in his message of blood supremacy.

Three children wear him too – one boy who dreams of greatness, another who despises his own, and a girl who does not think about greatness at all. The girl he hates most of all, young and beautiful and decidedly not Florence Allman, and Locket Riddle longs for her all the more.

When a sword shatters it in two, Locket Riddle explodes outward in one final gasp of magic, curious if perhaps his magic is great enough she will sense it. Whether or not Florence Allman does, the locket never knows, blackness taking even its memories.

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The cup sits upon a shelf in a gloomy, mirthless vault hating Florence Allman. One sixteenth of his soul now, the Riddle of the Cup knows only that it was made in spite of her– meant to be a treasure to replace the one lost. Cup Riddle collects dust in the Lestrange chamber, aware that its existence could never replace the warmth lost, the devotion freely given, the softness of knowing hands against his old human form, and it hates the girl all the more.

Cup Riddle dies in a different Chamber, and it is a relief not to hate anymore, to be spared the knowledge that its very reality was insufficient from the start.

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The bit of Tom Riddle that lives in the Diadem spends its life questioning. It knows because its body had known what became of Florence Allman – that she chose differently, in the end. Diadem Riddle is stored in the room of lost things in the castle where once Tom Riddle had met Florence Allman, and it questions what it was all for and if it was worth it, how it could have ended up here and she across the ocean? The Diadem bit of Tom Riddle had remained attached enough to its original host long enough to know that years of scouring the globe had brought him no closer to answering any of the questions Florence Allman had unearthed within him, and now reduced to a thirty-second of himself, it is no longer capable of answering anything.

Diadem Riddle spends years posing query after query, unable to voice an answer, to form an original thought. Meant originally for intelligence, the Diadem wonders what intellect Florence Allman had held that led them apart, and if her choice had rendered her split, portioned off like baking scraps like it had left him?

The portion of Tom Riddle ensconced in the Diadem dies in flames, and it recalls in the moment before it ceases to exist the thought of a young boy to win a prize with fire, and of the blue wings of a flaming dragon spanning across the horizon.

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The bit of soul intertwined with that of Nagini knows only this: it was meant to bring long life not to a snake, but to a woman. Perhaps eternity for the girl who had shaped Tom Riddle from the moment she had laid eyes upon him, and who had left him half-formed and insane.

I will carve your name into time itself half-Riddle, half-Nagini remembers, and it loathes that it did not succeed in its purpose, that this is all it can remember in the end because it has no hands to carve and no capacity to notice the passing years.

Half-Riddle, Half-Nagini has its head cut off with a sword, and it wonders if its own name will live on through time, like that of some Greek God Florence Allman had cared for, or if it is destined for nothingness.

It never has an answer.

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The fraction of Tom Riddle that was never meant to be, that lives inside a young boy, knows only that whatever magic Florence Allman possessed that made him feel like he was drowning and flying and burning all at once exists in spades within the boy's body. Fragment Riddle burns for seventeen years before he is set free, killed by his own hand, and he never discovers what force it could be that ate at him all those years.

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The final part of Tom Riddle, the shard of his soul that was never stored in any object, hardly thinks about Florence Allman at all because it is incapable. Somewhere along the way it becomes aware that it has passed beyond what it means to exist. His new body, the one known solely as Lord Voldemort, cannot eat or smell, and he hardly even has reason to feel. There is no difference between night and day, summer or winter, only the endless expanse of time stretching on, out past the horizon.

Lord Voldemort does not think of Florence Allman the way he once had, his mind having only the capacity for those dreams he'd traded living for. He thinks of power, of amassing it, of his name arranged in the stars where people will cower beneath it. He thinks of eradicating the impurities in the human race beginning with Mudbloods and muggles even though nowadays, every person regardless of their status or purity was no more than a bug waiting to be crushed beneath his feet. Greatness, it seemed, was the great equalizer insomuch that it equalized everyone else in their lack thereof. These thoughts fill him as much as is possible, and the rest of the void remains empty – Lord Voldemort has moved beyond such menial concerns as happiness.

Yet there are rare moments when he falls into a near trancelike state, the closest he will ever come to sleeping again, and as his mind wanders down ill-used trails, memories bubbling up to ensnare him in tarpits or vats of quicksand.

He remembers the way her mouth would form a perfect owhile blowing on her morning coffee, the way her hands curved around the mug as she attempted to shudder into wakefulness, how her thigh would press against his under the table with too much force to be mistaken. He'd dragged her to the Slytherin table nearly every morning for months, and never once had she complained, content to follow him with that easy smile and knowing brown eyes. He'd liked that long ago, he remembers.

He recalls the weight of her palm in his as she dragged him down yet another row of Dittany trees, explaining with the other hand the irrigation system, the field rotation, the average lifespan of a magically altered tree. Tom recalls that he did not care for any of the information at all, only the feel of her skin against his, noting the way the sun turned caramel hair near golden, as if she was something precious, something decidedly his.

But most often when he sinks into the liminal space between sleep and wakefulness, he remembers the look upon her face as she'd lifted from the ground, writhing in the air in undeniable agony because of the fire he had wrought. Tom remembers, and if he could feel anything, perhaps he might feel grief and having rendered something so beautiful so gruesome, how he could have pushed a person of such skill and power away with so little. She had beaten him to flying, and Tom remembers only the wretchedness in her face as her eyes met his, burning him with a mark he'd never been able to remove.

And whether in wakefulness or in illusion, Tom cannot escape the knowledge that somewhere, at some time, someone had loved him. Florence Allman had loved him, and no amount of journeying or studying or amassing of knowledge had explained to him what that meant, why it still after all these years meant anything at all.

When Lord Voldemort and the boy – the boy who's birthday was her birthday – circle in the Entrance Hall of Hogwarts, he sneers at Harry Potter's demands for remorse. He had only ever regretted this one thing: that he'd never found an answer to the insipid, Dumbledore-esc mysteries of love, and that he had somehow lost Florence Allman because of it, that in the end all his dreams had been inconsequential without her in them.

The spell, his own spell, hits his chest – there is an echo of laughter, and then nothing at all.


please don't hate me for this chapter I literally cried my way through it.

Also MrsLolita - my apologies for making the time skipping unclear, the conversation with Dumbledore happens around the beginning of the first Wizarding war, so late 1960s to early 1970s. That's on me for not including dates! I don't have specific years in mind for most of the previous chapter except that years/decades pass, so you can honestly hold the conversation whenever you'd like in your mind!

Chapter 52 coming right up...