Ok so there may be a lot of grammatical errors in this chapter, I'm not really sure. I've just been writing frantically and posting now since we're drawing closer to the end, and I just want to get things out cause I'm so excited about them! Also this may be my longest chapter ever?

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT! You people are dazzling3


Chapter 55

"It is easier to be in love in a room with closed doors. To have the whole world in one room. One person. The universe condensed and intensified and burning, bright and alive and electric."
― Erin Morgenstern, The Starless Sea


Florence paces in front of the fireplace, painfully aware of the newspaper that she has folded and shoved into her rear pocket that pokes into her back with every other step, a reminder of the conversation she is looking to incite whenever Tom decides to grace her with his near-constant presence. It is nearing nine o'clock in the morning, over an hour later that the typical time in which Tom's towering figure first appears in the kitchen, midnight eyes seeking hers in the morning light with something nearing religious fervor. Florence had been unnerved by the certainty of his pursuit, the single-mindedness with which he had taken to following her around the Lodge and surrounding property, and she is further unnerved still by her choice to encourage it – sending an olive branch that transitioned him in her regard from an abnormality of magic to something in which she was inextricably intertwined.

Florence glances at the clock again, wondering if the letter was too much, terrified by her own heart, the way it moved and shuddered.

She is so lost in her thoughts that she does not hear the telltale creak of the stairs nor the gentle tread of shoes upon the hardwood floor. All she knows is that one moment she is debating apparating to the barn to blow off steam, and the next he is there, divinity incarnate in a simple white button down and tailored black dress pants, pressed as if he is preparing to enter a law office and not accompany her to breakfast in the kitchen. Florence's mouth goes dry, unable to stop the spasms within her chest nor the way her gaze immediately zeros in on the tringle of skin revealed along his collar, the hollow of his throat that she indescribably wants to drag her tongue across. His gaze is a sin, and she feels herself flush beneath the weight of it upon her.

"Happy Birthday, Tom," Florence whispers after a moment, desire and nerves battling with her mind to the point that she thinks she may faint. To make matters worse, Tom smiles at her words – brilliant and blinding and Florence has the uncanny urge to savor it, to lock the sight away somewhere within her mind like a hatchling that needed protecting. For a brief moment, she is seventeen years old and her heart sings as if he has just complimented her upon a summoning charm, but then the moment passes and she is once more herself, Tom the same and yet changed.

"Would you like to start now?" Tom asks, lifting from behind his back her battered copy of the Iliad, the text small within his long-fingered grasp. His thumb brushes across the cover, and Florence blushes at his eagerness, at the ravenous appetite he has for her despite the distance she has created. A small part of her wants to laugh, that even now with a new soul, saying thank you seemed not to be a high priority for one so self-important as Tom Riddle.

"Breakfast," she manages to choke, and Tom smirks, a reminder that his confidence had remained unflinching even in a new body, with a new soul. Florence follows after him, unable to tear her eyes away from the clean line he cuts, cursing her own generosity as heat pooled in her stomach. Tom holds the door open for her, his smirk only increasing as he took in the redness of her cheeks, the telltale shaking in her hands.

Tom seats himself, immediately reaching for the tea-tray as Florence shuffles beside him, hovering off his left shoulder like an errant poltergeist. Her hand closes around the newspaper, and with a quick, calming breath, she pulls it from her pocket, unfolding it and laying it before Tom upon the table. His eyes make quick work of the title before he turns to stare at Florence, the nearly imperceptible ring of pastel blue around his pupils apparent to her for the first time since she first beheld him, pale and yet vivid as a noonday sky. The sight of it leaves her staggering.

"You saved this?" Tom asks, his gaze flickering between the yellowed page that read Lord Voldemort's Reign of Terror at an End! How Wizarding Boy Hero Harry Potter Saved a Civilization, and her. Florence takes her seat across from him, reaching for the coffee and cream.

"I had to remind myself that you dead every once and a while," Florence admits, the coffee scalding its way down her throat. To her chagrin, Tom's smirk returns.

"Dreaming of me?"

"Nightmares, actually."

"So why are you showing me this," Tom asks, casting the paper a look of mixed curiosity and distaste, as if he was trying to decide whether or not to read the article or burn it to ash. She can feel his magic as it permeates the room, the shudder that passes through it as he again glances down at the title.

"I want to know," Florence blurts out, and then she flushes, tearing her gaze away from the corner of his jaw to glance out the window. "I want to know what became of you."

It was a decision that had gone in tandem with her decision to clothe him – to see him as human. She could no longer deny to herself the reawakening of those feelings that had plagued her during their time together, but if she was to remember those things, she would have to also understand what he had become. Florence would hear it from his mouth, and draw her own conclusions on whether or not he was changed.

"You've already read about it, it seems," Tom murmurs, and there is a line of accusation there, a steel blade he slides between his words that once he would have intended to maim. Florence frowns, but does not give him the gift of her gaze.

"I want it from you, Tom," Florence counters, his name like a heavy stone dropping into water. "I want to know what you became, what happened to you. We can't keep pretending as if the years between us did not occur, and we cannot recreate the past."

Tom frowns, his eyes red for only the briefest of moments – as if the insinuation that time itself was beyond the domain of his control had been intended as an insult. In some ways, he's already mastered time Florence thinks with a private smile, but she does not feel the need to tell Tom this. His ego was one of the things that had been unimpacted by his remaking.

"You will not like what you hear," he thunders.

"I don't like what I already know. What you say cannot change that."

"It could drive you away," Tom murmurs, and his head tilts slightly to the side, his eyes narrowing. Florence's mouth goes dry, unhinged by the honesty.

"How can you be so certain that I am what you want?" She demands. "You said yourself that you still want power."

"Because I died with your laughter echoing in my head," Tom admits with such ease that Florence's stomach clenches and the bite of eggs in her mouth turns bitter. "Because when I was remade my first thought was of you, remade for the sakeof you." Florence grips the armrests of her chair, wishing suddenly the table was ten feet longer, that she could escape the burning of his gaze. "Because I ripped my own fucking soul into eight pieces, and when Illini put them back together I finally remembered what it had been to be without you. That having immortality and power had been inconsequential in the end."

Inconsequential.

The word had been a part of Florence since his first use of it at Slughorn's party, a besotted and obsessive seventeen year old who had been forced to watch as his beauty gave way to horror. He'd meant it for muggleborns then – he intended it for a life without her now. The change left her mind swimming as if falling through empty space.

"I still want to know," Florence says at last, incapable of responding to his prior comments.

"Then I want something in return," Tom states, and Florence cannot stop herself from smiling at this, at the challenge that sparks fire between them.

"I've been more than generous with you," Florence points out, and she has, whether he wants to imagine himself a prisoner or not. She's clothed him, fed him, admitted to him that some portion of her heart awoke beating in sync with his the day he'd been remade. It is more than any man who committed genocide could expect to receive, and yet she'd given it. Perhaps I am the mad one.

"I want to know about Forsythe."

"Why," Florence demands, the warmth fading from her body at once like a drain pulled somewhere at the base of her spine. She looks at him then, searching the planes of his face for any hidden meaning, but is met only with a trademark blank expression. Tom has made no effort to hide his distaste for the other man, and Florence is loath to share stories with someone who intends only to fuel their own hatred.

"I want to know what you became," Tom declares, repeating her words. His voice is steady, each word carefully weighed.

"I won't have you mocking him, Tom."

"Illini once told me loving is giving," Tom murmurs, and his face is like marble, cut and still and inherently divine. Florence feels herself pale, fury surging in her that he would dare mention Illini – that he would speak of love as if he had finally discovered its secrets. "Give me this – please– and I'll give you any information you wish to know about me."

"You haven't asked for a gift, you've asked for a trade," Florence accuses.

"A compromise?"

Florence cannot stop the laugh that peels from her chest, and from the corner of her eye she notices the corner of his mouth turn up in a smile.

"Did that word burn your tongue on its way out?" Florence asks, pressing her palms into her chest in an attempt to get her breathing under control. It is a futile attempt, her eyes stinging with withheld tears.

"Just trying it out," he murmurs coolly, but his face is alive as he stares at her, his eyes devouring every toss of her head until Florence has the ability to regain control of her lungs. She ignores the flash in his eyes.

"Fine, we'll trade," Florence agrees on a whim, feeling a bolt of energy surge down her arms and legs as her magic pulses through her, almost as if her spirit was happy to be sharing something with the man across the table. Perhaps it would be good for him – to hear of a man who'd been good from the start, who hadn't needed a second life to resemble something human. Tom's responding smile is luminescent. "But if I ask you about something directly, you have to tell me the whole truth. No leaving out details."

"Alright," he agrees with such ease that Florence's eyes narrow, waiting for the other shoe to drop. It doesn't, the rest of the meal spent in tolerable silence as Tom flips through the newspaper regarding his own death and Florence tries not to watch him do so. He is impassive, features carefully schooled, and yet she can tell by the blur of his pupils that he is moving through the article with electrifying speed. What would a boy who dreamed of mortality think of reading of his death? She supposes it must be less jarring considered his death was in the past tense. Just any old day to him Florence thinks wildly, stirring her grits and adding a handful of shredded cheese. The thought makes her smile, and before she knows it she's laughing. Laughing at the mystery of the situation, at the man seated across from her, and at herself for somehow being in the middle of it, like a pinwheel caught in a breeze, endlessly circling. That death could be a part of Tom Riddle's past –Tom, who had destroyed the world for the sake of immortality, and that at the cost of his own life, in some perverse way, had succeeded in the end. Florence laughs until she cries, leaning back in her chair and clutching her sides.

She does not see Tom watching her, the softness in his eyes that had only ever lived there for her, the way his skin reddens with the faintest blush, that he moves slightly forward in his chair as if for the simple sake of being nearer.

.

.

.

He spares her no details, seated across from one another before a roaring fire, Florence swathed in blankets, Tom in a suit, their eyes locked in a battle somewhere in the field between their bodies as they take turns questioning each other. Tom's voice is low, rumbling, like the first ripples of thunder on a clear summer's day. He is direct, succinct, responding to Florence's queries with as few words as possible while still managing to tell her more than she could have ever wished to know. She'd eaten lightly at dinner, but she can feel her stomach swoop and drop as he describes the countless deaths, the tortures he'd invented, the thing's he'd deemed necessary.

"I had an army of them," he tells her slowly, reaching for his post-meal cup of chamomile without blinking. Florence pulls the blanket around her shoulders tighter, fighting off the shivers she cannot escape.

"Of dead bodies?"

"They are called inferi – I discovered the practice while traveling through Eastern Germany."

"How large of an army?" Florence asks, and she cannot stop the shaking in her voice, the nausea that is slowly creeping its way up her throat and making her head spin.

"Several hundred at least," Tom says before taking a sip of his tea. "Of course, many of them we're as a result of my Death Eater's actions, but I was the sole re-animator, and I alone had full control over them."

Florence cannot contain her sickness. Throwing off the blankets she sprints to the bathroom, only just placing her head above the toilet before her dinner resurfaces. Florence heaves, her nose burning and eyes streaming as she tries to think of anything besides a writhing mass of pale, reanimated corpses. It is magic as it should never be, ghastly and broken and Florence remembers the way Tom's own enchantment had rang of impurities the day he'd burned her fields to the ground. The thought brings forth another surge of vomiting.

There are gentle steps behind her and a low voice calling out a name, and then Cash is there, wiping at her brow with a damp towel and cleaning off her mouth. Florence seats herself on the tile floor, leaning against the wall to find that Tom is standing in the hallway staring down at her, his midnight eyes focused upon her with such an intensity that she almost freezes.

"I think that is enough for tonight," he states calmly, and in her current lightheaded condition, Florence smiles at the underlying command in his voice.

"Perhaps a break," she counters, turning to smile and pat a doting Cash on the head. Tom makes no motion to move closer or assist in her care, and for that Florence is thankful. She does not think touching him would be a good idea, and especially not now.

It is a few moments later that they return to the sitting room. Florence moves to swaddle herself once more in the thick, knit blankets while Tom busies himself before the tea-tray. She watches his back through drooping eyelids, lazily tracing the curls at the base of his neck, the deft movements of his arms as he conjures from thin air another cup and saucer. Florence flushes against her better judgement, painfully aware of how miraculous his magic is even without a wand. Her blush only intensifies when he turns and crosses the space in two commanding steps, offering her the cup and saucer with a look that brokered no questions.

"Thank you," she says, taking it from him and letting it rest upon her lap. Tom smirks and then retakes his seat, his eyes like molten gunmetal as he watches her lift the cup to her lips. The tea is floral and earthy with just the right amount of cream, washing away the lingering taste of bile across her tongue until at last the burning in her throat ceases. Tom's look of pleasure is sinful.

"Did Forsythe drink tea?" Tom asks out of the blue, one leg crossing over the other. She returns her cup to its saucer with a clinkbefore meeting his gaze once more.

"He preferred coffee, but then again, I would say that most Americans do."

"And yet you keep no less than six strains of tea in your cupboard," Tom points out, and his eyes flash with indulgence, his smirk smug and self-contained. Florence's eyes narrow, but it does nothing to offset the redness that melts across her cheeks.

"June seemed to hope that one day you would make an appearance," Florence hisses. "I threw all of the tea in my home into the river if you must know."

"How patriotic of you," Tom replies, and Florence cannot stop the leaping in her heart at the innuendo any more that she can stop her mouth from falling open.

"Been studying?"

"I must do something during the hours your refuse to speak with me – are you impressed by my thoroughness?"

"I'm always impressed by you."

The words slide from her mouth before she can stop them. Horrified, Florence claps a hand to her mouth, adrenaline pulsing through her system with such precipitous speed that for a brief moment she wonders if she will throw up again, but the urge passes. Across the room, Tom's porcelain skin turns pink, features unflinching in the firelight as he observes her.

"You can transfigure things out of thin air, even without a wand," Florence mutters when her breathing has begun once more, holding up her cup and saucer up in some form of paltry excuse for the words she can never take back. "And though the things you did while we were apart disgust me on every level, it is undeniable that only you could have ever accomplished them."

Tom is silent, regarding her with a face so still she wonders if he has heard her at all. Florence presses a palm to her forehead, feeling shaky and nauseous and ill once more. He created an army of the dead, and yet you think he is miraculous. The truth of the words was so sour that Florence gulped down another mouthful of tea, desperate to eliminate the taste upon her tongue. In her chest, the aching place that had been filled by her very first sight of him seems to sigh, aware that Florence's mind was losing a battle against her own body – her own magic. You spent too long in isolation she reasons with herself, but another nagging voice tells her that isolation has nothing to do with the ease in which she's gotten out of bed the past month, her sudden desire to ride and read and breathe the fresh air. And her isolation certainly didn't not change the fact Tom Riddle was beautiful, like the rarest of diamonds, and he'd claimed to choose her. It was enough to make anyone's head spin.

"I think it best if we cease our questioning for the night," Tom suggests in a voice that brokers no argument. Florence nods mutely. "Perhaps we could start this?"

Florence watches as Tom lifts the ruffled copy of the Iliad before him, the golden figure of Achilles lifting his spear before an invisible army just out of frame. Warmth spreads across Florence's shoulders, soothing the tension that lay there until she can do nothing but shake her head in agreement.

"Come sit beside me," she says, pointing to the other side of the couch. "You'll want to see the pictures."

Tom moves across the room like a hunter tracking a deer, his gaze steady, his movements light but decisive, at all times closing in upon his prey. Florence forces herself not to breathe deeply when the clinically clean smell that can only be Tom washes over her, forces herself not to lean into him when she feels the cushion sink beside her, his towering frame lowered slowly onto the seat.

"I don't know how much my voice can take," Florence admits, holding out her hand for the book. Tom stares at her, but he makes no move to pass Florence the text.

"If you would, I would prefer to be the reader this time," he murmurs, and his voice is velvet against her skin, the softness in his face every truth she has ever known. Florence nods before she can even think about it, the idea of denying him as loathsome as pressing a knife to her own flesh. It is easy, sitting beneath his gaze, to know why so many followed him to the ends of the earth, even if that end was madness. He was captivating, even in the smallest, most intimate of moments – magic of a completely different kind, and after years of being alone, Florence finds that she wants to drink it until she never hungers again.

She turns, resting her head against the back of the sofa, tucking her feet beneath her and adjusting the cocoon of blankets so that she can see the pictures with ease. Tom does not move closer, but he angles to poem to face her, allowing Florence's umber gaze to brush across the cover for a moment before he peels the text open and flips to book one.

"Sing, O Goddess…" Tom begins, but whatever else follows after Florence never remembers. His voice is silk and sin, deep and cavernous, light as the warmest Summer breeze surrounding Florence and drawing her in. She watches as his mouth forms each word, pale lips and flashes of a pink tongue leaving her adrift upon the current of his influence, helpless to the things that stir within the confines of her ribs. He reads and his eyes move like tiny chasms of infinity across the page, drinking in each line, reforming it into something entirely his own, something that only the two of them can share. Tom reads and for a moment he is just a man, and his voice is a song and a promise and a gift all at once, branding her with the weight of his presence again and again and again until there is only him. It is only him.

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.

It becomes their routine, amongst other things. Coffee and tea on the back terrace in the morning, meals in the smallest dining room, afternoon walks or rides in the ring where Tom can observe from the side, and at night conversations that last until the small hours of the morning. He reads to her when the truth of his past actions becomes too upsetting, leaving her panting or faint, and it is Tom's voice that pieces her reality back together as she hovers in a hazy state between nightmares and dreams.

And at all times, as the months pass, she is amazed – that he is alive, that he is here with her, that since the first time he'd looked at her he'd ceased to look away.

His questions about Forsythe are not what Florence expected – menial inquiries into his favorite pastimes, his managerial style while he ran the Blount property, or any number of things. Tom asks Florence where they honeymooned and if he'd wanted a boy or a girl – were they able to have children – and Florence answers him with tears in her eyes, and he asks her what shows they had seen and what flowers he specialized in. She sends Cash back to the farm to bring back a cluster of orange azaleas that were like tiny tongues of flame, and Florence shows them to Tom before planting the cutting by the back door, singing under her breath until even the fragile branch would be in no danger of a cold, New York spring.

Tom watches with alarming attention as Florence draws upon the spirits of her ancestors, his face rapt at the sight of Florence's magic, frenzied and near-intoxicated levels of desire moving across his face in waves. She meets his gaze as she gets to her feet, brushing off her hands and realizing that it was the first time she had used the magic of Adsila in over a year.

"Do something else," he gasps, and his pupils are blown wide and his throat bobs as he swallows as if he has forgotten how to breathe, and Florence reels because he is begging and the thought is heady. Florence flushes, but she smiles. How could anyone deny him when he was like this? Childish with joy, desperate for her in a way that only Tom had ever been.

She sings for warmth then, melting the final vestiges of snow, drawing forth from the frozen ground the first pale green stalks of grass and buds of leaves upon the nearest trees. The air hums and the earth shakes and Florence feels a grin spread across her face as the spirits move through her, melding her magic with the magic around her, reuniting her with the world until she cannot remember the things that had weighed her down for so long.

When she finishes, Florence turns to find Tom kneeling with both hands pressed to the ground, his fingers sinking into the grass is if he is attempting to grow roots. And yet Florence cannot peel her eyes away from Tom's face, his gaze peeling her apart, remaking her into something new.

"You're beautiful, Florence," he whispers, and if words could maim, these three would have left scars upon her heart. "You're beautiful and powerful, and I will never tire of this."

"You did once," Florence whispers in return, and this is the truth she cannot accept: that he has changed enough to choose her, that he will not revert once more into the man who tore her heart into a thousand pieces, terrified that she will once more give over all of herself to rebuild him and that he will still – in the end – leave.

"I never tired of you," he murmurs, still kneeling on the ground, his face upturned into the sun so that she can see the blue of his eyes, the paleness of his skin which seems to glisten in the light. "In a lifetime of ill choices, you were never one, Florence." Tom's voice is firm, certain with a conviction that others might call fervor.

"You must understand I cannot take you at your word, Tom," Florence murmurs, and the ache inside her chest is like an open maw, a bleeding wound. "No matter how much I wish too. Talking was always one of your many gifts."

His eyes grow cold and Florence can see the surge of anger he attempts to fight, the flicker of red in his gaze as she denies him again. Privately she wonders how much longer she could ever hold out – how anyone could stand up to him when his words are spun gold, his face deific. Tom gets to his feet, his eyes sweeping out over the now green lawn, his magic crackling around him, unleashed.

"Your reticence is growing increasingly infuriating, Florence," Tom hisses, his eyes taking in the grass as if he would like to send the entire field up in smoke. "Maddening even, when you yourself have admitted that magic itself binds us."

"We are both more than our magic, Tom," Florence snaps, her own anger rising to meet his.

"We are more because of our magic, Florence," he counters hotly, stepping closer so that Florence can taste the metallic flare of enchantment across her tongue. "You deny yourself by refusing this truth."

"And you don't get to return to my life after fifty years and pretend that you know what is best for me!" Florence shouts, and her mouth forms into a snarl as if she might rip Tom's head from his shoulders. To her horror, he smiles – savage and wide, bearing his teeth like he'd like nothing more than to tear into her in return.

"Don't I?" He asks, and iron seems to envelope Florence's lungs. "You have reminded me what it is to be alive," Tom whispers, her own words an arrow sliding between her ribs, ripping her open with the truth of it. "I am the only one that knows what is good for you, because I am the only one that knows you, Florence, just as you are the only one who knows me."

"Your ego is insufferable."

"And your pride – your self-inflicted loathing – damnable," he shouts back, thunder clapping in his voice. "I'll fucking make the sun rise in the West and set in the East if that's what you need, but I can't do that if you won't trust me, Florence."

"And why should I?" Florence demands, feeling a trickle of her own magic in the air, the stirring of the wind around them. "Because you've agreed to answer my questions? Because you haven't attempted to kill me or ignite wizarding war in the few months since you were remade? Forgive me, Tom, but that's a low bar, even for a man of your morals."

"Because I asked you too," he says, and his tone is devoid of any emotion at all, his magic receding into him at once as he regains control of his temper. Florence feels her own magic thrash without the pressure of Tom's to fight against, and then it too slowly calms as she takes in the tension in his jaw, the wrinkle between his brow. "And because I want you too."

Florence chokes, pressing her palm to her sternum to quell the sudden flare of pain in her chest. She closes her eyes, unable to meet his gaze, the accusations and mingled desperation that sit somewhere on the edge of chaos in his eyes, and she is terrified of becoming lost in it. It seems that Tom, in his newest form, had learned to manipulate truth instead of lies, brutal honestly that could mutilate and disfigure.

"I asked you for patience," she murmurs at last, all fight seeping from her voice. She opens her eyes once more, finding him wide-eyed and still, like a deer preparing to bolt. "That is not what this is."

And before he can say another word, Florence returns to the house and to her room, forgoing their tradition of lunch together by the back window.

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It is a week later during their morning coffee that Tom suggests it. Florence has just poured her first mug, stirring in ample amounts of half and half when he slides onto the step beside her, leaving only an inch of air between their bodies that nearly sings with his proximity.

"I'd like to take you to London," he says at once, his face turned to survey the field which is now fully green, stalks darkening with each passing day. Florence nearly spits out her drink, swallowing with watering eyes and followed by several loud coughs.

"What?"

"I'd like to take you to London," Tom repeats as if commenting on the weather.

"Wouldn't I be the one taking you?" Florence snorts. "Considering I am the one with a wand and money."

"Fine," Tom growls, and Florence smiles at the way his jaw bites down around the word, that she can still get under his skin with such ease. "Will youtake me to London?"

"I can think of a hundred reasons not too, number one being that you are supposed to be dead, and number two that you terrorized the entire British Wizarding community for a combined two decades, but I'll humor you by asking why you want to go?"

Tom grimaces at her, his face clearly stating you are not as funny as you believe. Florence beams in return.

"I have things in my flat…things I would like to show you." Tom's words are slow, carefully decided upon.

"Your flat? Surely the apartment isn't still there?"

"I placed wards on it," Tom offers shortly.

"Wouldn't they break when you died?"

"I thought ahead." Tom's reply is curt, his grimace turning into a full blown frown. Florence shakes her head, unable to hide the smile that presses across her cheeks.

"Can I think about it?" Florence asks, surprised that she is willing to consider the trip, aware that she has been itching for a change of scenery every day for the past month. Her newfound energy, it seems, was manifesting in many ways – one of which was that she was no longer content to stay in one place for months at a time.

"I would not ask if it was not important."

"I know," Florence assures him, and then she flushes, alarmed that she does know. That she can feel any form of certainty towards Tom Riddle.

His resulting smile sears its way into her heart, locking itself into her memory in a golden flash of amber.

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.

.

It only takes Florence two weeks to decide – two weeks to confirm that she is either the world's most foolish woman or has finally succumb to insanity, because in two weeks Florence finds she is willing to attempt to sneak the most wanted magical criminal in the world into the heart of London. She almost throws up when she thinks about the smile that will spread across his face when she tells him, disgusted by her need for it, her desires that she can no longer control.

"This is for you," Florence tells Tom, sliding the brown paper package onto the dining room table before him. He stares at it for a moment, delight spreading across his face at the idea of a present, setting aside his half-eaten breakfast so that he can focus upon the box. He tears into it, his appetite in this regard similarly robust as his hunger for food, for magic, for Florence, paper flying into the air behind him like a kid on Christmas. In mere seconds he is lifting the lid of the wooden crate, peering over the lip of the box to stare down upon a broken pocket watch.

"I specially requested the watch," Florence admits when he says nothing, desperate to break the growing silence. "Since I went to MACUSA and decommissioned the one I originally gave you."

"Florence," he whispers, midnight eyes still locked upon the contents of the crate as if beholding a newborn child.

"You'll have to transfigure your appearance, of course," Florence continues. "And I paid extra not to have to move through customs…although I did tell them I was traveling alone…" Her voice trails off, fading in the face of his expression, the levity that lives in it.

"When do we leave?"

"In an hour, and once we arrive we have twenty-four until it brings us back."

"I'll need your wand," Tom says, lifting his eyes from the portkey to meet Florence's own. Her mind goes blank, a tingling running down her spine and a pressure building behind her temples as his words sink into her system.

"Why?"

"I can't cast a glamour without one, it's too advanced for me to do wandless," he admits, and his voice becomes gravely in his irritation. Something seems to catch in Florence's throat as she becomes aware of the piece of wood she has jammed into her back pocket. Tom's gaze is unflinching, like he's asked for a second pot of tea not a deadly weapon. Florence wavers for only a moment, and then she reaches around, wraps her hand around the worn wood, and passes it to him handle forward. His sight does not flicker from hers as his fingers encircle the wood, his head bobbing in a slight nod – the closest he will come to saying thank you.

It is several moments and a few waves of her wand later that a taller, short-haired version of Abraxas Malfoy stands before her, his eyes noticeably blue instead of pale gray.

"Well," Tom asks, and Florence is relieved that his voice has not changed.

"I prefer you with brown hair, but no one will recognize you," Florence tells him with an easy smile, accepting the wand he hands back to her. "Let's hope we don't run into any Malfoys on the streets of London." Tom's smirk is the same despite the new façade.

They wait in the dining room, Tom pacing before the fire, occasionally stopping to glance at Florence before resuming his weary march. Florence attempts to flip through the day's copy of the Wizarding Times that the morning eagle just delivered, but the words move together until all she can do is stare at the Sunday color cartoons until the clock on the wall informs them its three minutes until ten. Without speaking they stand across from one another, each pressing a singular finger to the surface of the watch, and then there is a wrenching in their navels, and Tom's eyes meeting hers is the last thing she sees before spinning into nothingness.

They land in the designated port outside of the Leaky Cauldron, Tom taking the lead at once as he moves from the yellow circle down the alley and out onto the main road. His pace was swift and yet unhurried, a determined stride that did not beg questions. Florence trails one step behind him – she'd never reached his flat via NoMaj means, but they'd both agreed the less magic Tom did while in England the better.

Yet despite being on an empty, NoMaj sidewalk, Florence cannot stop the pounding in her chest, fighting with each move the undeniable urge to glance over her shoulder. Will I be responsible for returning Britain's greatest nightmare to her streets Florence wonders faintly, but then they are turning down another street and Tom is pressing his hand to the stone archway beside a set of double doors. Before Florence has a moment to ask, the brick wall to their left ripples for a moment, and then a black door with a golden knocker and brass handle appear.

"After you," he murmurs quietly, smirking at the stunned expression on Florence's face. She feels her face redden, but Florence steps through the door regardless, ignoring the heat of his eyes upon her as they move up a dark set up stairs to another landing. It is a dark area, lit only by two sconces, flickering with a pale while flame that emits from two intertwined serpents mouths.

"Charming," Florence frowns, casting her eye over her shoulder to find that Tom Riddle is himself once more, blonde hair now brown, skin once more reminiscent of moonlight. "So much for needing a wand for a glamour." Tom smirks.

"I was curious if you'd trust me."

"Open the door," Florence commands, and Tom – with another wicked grin – steps past her and presses his hand flat against the dark wood. There is a click, and then the door swings open.

"Lumos," Tom whispers under his breath, and vaguely a voice at the back of her mind tells her the spell is verbal only to warn her before light invades her senses.

The apartment is as she remembers it – altered only in that it is covered in a layer of dust so thick that everything has taken on a ghostly quality. Tom steps in first, Florence following just after, her nose wrinkling at once at the stench of mold and mildew, of stale air that has not seen the sun in a generation. The marble floor glistens dully under the layer of grime, the crown molding riddled with cobwebs, but the space holds the same dark, Victorian air that it had when Tom had truly resided here and Florence shudders to be amongst it once more, at the memories that begin to resurface within her mind.

"If I cast a cleaning charm, will I be attacked by your wards?" Florence asks, holding her wand before her. Tom runs a hand across the table in the center of the foyer, frowning at the dust that sticks to his skin.

"No – your magic has always been coded into my wards," he says, still glancing around the room. His words are faint, as if he is not even considering them. "You have nothing to fear from this place."

Unsure how or if she should respond, Florence casts a variety of charms, transfiguring the dust upon the floors to wax, polishing the windows, stirring the air so that the stale, unused sense about the place would soon fade. Somewhere in the distance Florence hears the sound of several windows throwing themselves open, and through an open doorway down the hall she sees light spilling out.

"What is it you wanted to show me," Florence prods several moments after her spells have ceased, Tom seemingly still lost in his mind as his midnight eyes rove the apartment. Her words seem to stir him, turning to observe her, a mask of indifference sliding onto his face. Florence's grip on her wand increases, but she smiles at him, encouraging him in the only way he knows how.

"This way."

Tom leads her down the hallway, each step like bursting through another wall in her mind. In that room Tom first introduced me to wizard's chess. One of my Dittany trees used to grow on that pedestal. There was a painting there I tore when Tom was teaching me stinging jinxes. Her footsteps falter, but she continues, her eyes drawn to the sliver of skin visible along Tom's neck like it is some form of North star. He leads her through the drawing room and down another hallway, and then Florence knows where he is taking her, and the thought makes her want to turn tail and hide, unprepared to face a space made entirely of memories.

Tom's bedroom remains unchanged – dark walls, bed still made as if he'd only left it that morning – and yet Florence herself returns to it different. She does not know where to look, every surface taboo, memory after memory assaulting her mind as she recalls the days she'd spent in these quarters. An admittedly limited number, but all the more impactful for it. He comes to a halt in the center of the room, turning to look once more over his shoulder, his gaze black in the semi-dark of the space. For a moment, half of his face cast in shadow, Florence wonders if she has made a mistake – if she will die in the same room in which they had slept together – but then he smiles at her, brilliant and beautiful and Florence could never regret this.

"I…returned here only once after our parting," Tom begins, his voice low as he speaks, his gaze never straying from hers. "I returned only to seal this place…It contained too many memories of you, I had no intent to reside here without you, and yet I could not destroy it."

Florence nods, wrapping her arms around her stomach, unable to speak. She wishes she'd brought a coat – the apartment was painfully cold, but it was too late for that.

"I was weak, and in my weakness I told myself that I kept the apartment only because I would need a place to hold you should you have returned to me," Tom admits, and he lets out a laugh but it is dry and brittle, breaking into a thousand pieces. "I never liked the idea of you mingling with my followers – I wanted to keep you separate, selfishly, I wanted you all for myself."

"So I was to be your prisoner her," Florence gulps, and the cold pressing into her skin sinks a layer deeper, her entire body convulsing with a shiver. Tom notices the movement, and his face grows blanker still until he is more granite then man.

"At one time, maybe…but the truth more honestly put was that I could not destroy the memory of you, and this place is made only of memories. I spent so little time here whenever you were away, it would have been impossible to exist in this space without feeling the ghost of your absence."

"Why are you telling me this?" Florence asks, unsure if she is warmed or petrified by his admissions.

"Because you asked how I could be so certain, and the only way I could show you was this."

Tom squats for a moment, reaching beneath the bed and pulling forth a massive black chest. Its lid was wrought with mother of pearl and gold, silver unicorns running across and field and flying ships across the skyline, and in the center a tree that continuously bloomed emerald leaves that transitioned to amber before they fell away completely, only to begin the cycle anew. Florence steps closer, entering Tom's bedroom against her better judgement in order to better see the lid. It is a work of art, magic for the sake of magic, and Florence cannot stop herself from reaching out and running a finger along its surface. The chest was warm and smooth, and not a speck of dust lived upon it, as if there were protective enchantments living in the wood itself.

"I am certain that I will never tire of you, Florence, because even at the height of my power, when I was less than a man, I could never destroy you," Tom whispers, and she can feel his breath upon her neck as he stands behind her. Every muscle in her body clenches, one hand sneaking up to her chest where she presses against the racing organ there, desperate to quell its frantic beating. "You were a thorn in my mind, even when my mind was in eight parts, and yet with all of the magical ability at my fingertips, never once did I demolish this place, did I attempt to erase the memory of you."

One pale hand lands on the chest before her. There is a hum in the air as Tom's magic vibrates around them, and then with a small click the chest unlocks and Tom throws open the lid. For a moment Florence holds her breath, and then a whimper slides between her lips, long and low.

"Will you set the chest on the floor please," she whispers, unable to rip her eyes away. "I'd like to go through it piece by piece."

Tom complies without question, levitating the chest off his bed to rest in the center of the oriental rug before he moves to seat himself in the chair in the corner. Florence takes to her knees before the trunk, her hands resting upon the edge as she peers into its depths.

There is an aching warmth that begins somewhere beneath her ribs, like slow moving molasses drippling from her fingers and across her skin, small tendrils of magic that ease worried muscles and soothe frantic thoughts until Florence feels balmy and cordial and ready to dive into the case before her. Without thinking, she turns to glance at Tom, his legs crossed in a typically stiff position, and she smiles at him, true and broad and wide until she thinks the gesture causes more pain than joy.

He'd saved everything. Every gift, ever letter, every memory they'd shared together it seemed from a first cursory glance across the chest's top layer of contents. Again there is an ache in her chest as the feeling grows, and then she is suddenly aware of the magic that binds, that moves through her and in her and all around her, how it sings for herself and the spirits of her people, and how it sings for the man across from her too, how it has always sang for him since the moment she first beheld him.

"A thorn in your mind?" Florence asks, hand poised above the lip of the trunk, prepared to meet its contents. Tom's smile is easy, his eyes soft in a way they had only ever been for her, and Florence feels the ache for him consumer her, a wave meeting its inevitable ending.

"Always."


I hope the movement between Tom and Florence doesn't feel too forced or too quick/too slow. I have been struggling with balancing the line between them already knowing each other and yet having to relearn each other, but I hope it at least somewhat worked!

Stay safe everyone3 all the best to you and yours:)