Ok...so... I finished writing the whole thing today. I was going to wait to post, but then I thought - why? There is no reason to other than not being able to let go, and considering it's got to be finished some day, I'd rather do it on my own terms.

So here we are, the final chapter. I will be uploading the epilogue and the rest of the playlist soon after, so you all should be receiving two post notifications from me.

I can't believe it's really happening. This chapter begins with the same quote from chapter one. None of you knew what it meant then, but I'm sure you all do now.

Thank you all. I'm saving my final thoughts for my AN after the epilogue:)


Chapter 57

"There are no happy endings.
Endings are the saddest part,
So just give me a happy middle
And a very happy start."

― Shel Silverstein, Every Thing on It


Florence is awoken by the sensation of thin fingers trailing down the skin of her stomach, a palm pressing flat into her abdomen as if attempting to reach inside of her. Tom's gaze is roving her form when her eyes open, at once returning to her face where he kisses her briefly once, a second time swiftly after for good measure.

"Good morning, Florence," Tom murmurs against her mouth before pulling away, his gaze continuing their prior course.

"Are we becoming…domestic?" Florence asks through a yawn, chuckling dryly at the look of revulsion that passes across Tom's face.

"Don't insult me so early in the morning," he mutters, the hand on her stomach tightening for a moment. "I, at least, have been applying myself. You waste your days away baking."

"As I recall, you like my baking," Florence says through another laugh, bringing her hand to rest over his own and intertwining their fingers. Tom's frown deepens as he looks for a way to defend his honor without insulting her, and more importantly without encouraging her to stop.

"All the same," he grunts after a moment, and Florence's head hits the pillow again as she falls back giggling. When her breath returns to her several minutes later, she opens her eyes to find the same soft expression upon his porcelain features that renders her speechless, and she feels her heart stutter to a stop.

"You we're out late last night," Florence comments, thumb brushing across his the back of his hand.

"I've finished," he replies, his smirk so wide it could drown an ocean. Florence sits up at once, whirling on him before he can even possibly think to continue.

"Why didn't you start with that?" She demands. She's tried to be patient over the past several months, but it was nearing the end of June and still she had not the slightest inclination of what he was working on, why he left her for so many hours to fill her days alone.

"Because you started blathering on about domesticity before I could tell you," Tom murmurs, leaning forward to press his lips against hers again. Florence melts into him at once, and she can feel him smile, his hand sliding around her and pulling her flush against him.

"When can I see it?"

"Don't be greedy," he teases, but his eyes glisten and his mouth pulls back into a genuine smile as he lets his hands roam across her skin.

"I'm always greedy, and I've been very patient," she reminds him. The glimmer in his gaze only increases, his pale skin flushing with excitement, with her obvious desperation for what he will show her.

"Yes, you have been a good girl," Tom murmurs, and every inch of Florence's skin burns with mortification at the sinful lilt in his voice. His responding grin is savage in response, the motions of his hands becoming more suggestive until Florence is a shivering mess, putty in his hands.

"If you're not going to show me yet, you could at least stop teasing," Florence says with a huff, incapable of meeting his eye.

"Alright," he agrees, and he drags the last few inches of the sheets from her figure, his lips settling over hers once more.

Thirty minutes later they are fully dressed in the dining room, Florence scarfing down half a biscuit and a cup of coffee while Tom waits on the back porch. She hadn't wanted to eat at all, but Tom had demanded that she at least have a cup of coffee before he showed her – something about not wanting her in a bad mood when he revealed his masterpiece. Florence smiles at his back out the window, aware of the beating in her heart, of the way it twisted and turned, always back to him.

Two minutes later Florence's hand is ensconced in his as they move across the lawn. She is sure he is electing to walk her there in order to build her excitement, but Florence does not begrudge him this. She has felt the shivers of his magic for months through the ground, aware that whatever he has crafted through enchantment may border on insane, unimaginable, and yet she feels nothing but contentment moving beside him, a tingling of adrenaline down her spine.

They move past the barn, across the steeplechase field, and finally through and out of a small copse of sycamore and hickory and walnut trees. Tom pauses then, his hand releasing from hers so that he can snag the wand that sticks out of her back pocket. Florence smiles at him bemusedly, but she can feel her pulse within her neck, certain that if he drags out his charade any longer she will burst.

"I will say only this before I remove the glamour," Tom begins, and his voice is low and roiling, his cheekbones like shards of glass in the pale blue light of the morning that Florence wants to press the pads of her fingers against. Over his shoulder she can see mist gathering, as if the earth itself was working to conceal whatever mystery Tom had crafted. Florence reaches for him then, wrapping her arms around his waist so that she can rest her chin on his sternum. Tom's eyes widen for a moment at the gesture, but then his hands move to her torso and he pulls her closer.

"You were saying?" Florence prods.

"There are things I would like to tell you," he murmurs, stooping to press his lips to hers before releasing her. His face warps into a smirk, regal features like polished glass that leaves Florence adrift at sea. "But first, I must show you."

It is then that she becomes aware of his magic, rippling off of him in such waves that she momentarily blushes at her own ability to be distracted by his touch. Tom's eyes gleam red for a moment, his figure towering above her, and then he steps towards the line where the glamour hums, raising her wand like a conductor before his orchestra. Florence watches with baited breath, every cell in her body screaming for him to continue. She will never tire of this: watching Tom release the storm of magic within him, performing things that not even in her dreams could Florence imagine

Watching Tom execute spells is most similar, she thinks, to watching master painters of old or sitting in the crowd at the first showing of Beethoven's 9thsymphony – magnificent, other worldly, capable and strong. His wrist flicks with the snap of a catapult cut free, and then he is off to the races, stooping low, rising high, his voice expanding and falling in a language Florence does not know as he moves her wand through the air. He is a blur, his lithe form grace incarnate as slowly the air before them starts to shimmer, the horizon itself rippling as if the entire world is under his sway, and then Florence staggers because the skyline begins to dissolve and she is left stammering and dizzy, her body vibrating in time with Tom's magic, a gift he had not even intended.

It is a conservatory Florence knows at once – greenhouse being too paltry a word to describe the wonder before them – the structure refracting light like a cut diamond from thousands of individual glass panes, sage green bars of metal supporting the building that rose before her. Nearly two stories tall, it stretches longer than two quidditch pitches from left to right, the center of the building a massive square while the wings were long, rectangular buildings. The doors are polished oak, and above them there are spires of glass like something off the Taj Mahal, culminating at the tip with a statue of a Piasa seated upon a platform, it's wings opening and closing, tail thrashing through the wind.

Florence does not trust her voice, certain that if she opens her mouth she will crumple to the ground, incapable of withholding the surge of emotion that is ripping through her, burning her until there is only this, only Tom standing like some sorcerer of old before a building that sings with a fucking chorus of his magic, an edifice to his ability. Florence feels her mouth fall open, but still she cannot speak, her body quivering as her very spirit is enveloped by his magic that permeates the air.

"Tom," she croaks at last, and he turns to face her. She knows in the instant his eyes meet hers that there will never be anything more beautiful, that there is no man like Tom Riddle – that in ten thousand lifetimes, the one he shared with her would be the most remarkable. Tom, with his perfect curls and sculpted face and blood that sang of magic, was inevitable, and he stood before a building he'd made in homage to her, and yet all she can see is the softness around his eyes, the hand he extends towards her.

Florence's palm is warm against his, their fingers interlacing without thought.

"You hate Herbology," she says when they stand side by side before the conservatory doors, Florence's face turned upward to read the inscription in the sage green steel.

"It says—" he begins, but Florence cuts him off, being fluent in Latin herself.

"I will carve your name into time itself," she whispers, and her hand twitches in his. Beside Florence, she can see Tom turn to face her, his eyes moving down her profile as Florence again murmurs the line, noting that the script is in his own hand.

"I promised you that I would," he says after a moment. "Look."

Tom pulls her forward, and Florence feels the rush of warm air passing through her body that means she has passed through a ward. It leaves a sensation of static across her skin even after she has passed through, a sign that the wards have been keyed especially to her own magic, a thought that fills her to the point of tears. Tom's hand tightens around Florence's, and pointing above the door again with a delicate finger, she sees that the phrase has been replaced by three words.

Florence Livingston Allman

"I told you I would build monoliths in your name," Tom says, and there is a line of steel in his voice, as if daring her to question his intent. Florence laughs then – because never in a thousand lifetimes had she imagined he would do this for her, and yet here she stood before her own private conservatory, a testament to the things she loved most. She wants to tell him thank you, but the words seem measly, offensive even in the face of what he has done, and so instead she pulls his face down to hers, fingers intertwining in his hair as she presses her lips to his. Tom swallows the laughter that dies on her tongue as they meld into one, sparks emitting from the spaces where their skin presses together until they are boneless and breathless and one.

"The land is singing of you," she whispers into his mouth, and Tom devours these words too, inhaling them as if they are his own life force. "Your magic is boundless."

He pulls away from her then, just enough so that she can see the way his pupils blow wide, his mouth hangs open as if he is going to tear her to shreds. Florence cannot even bring herself to blush, too focused on sucking air into her lungs.

"Can I show you the rest?" He asks, his fingers pushing into her waist like he might crush her. His cheeks have turned pink, excitement fluttering in every word as he steps away and takes both hands in his. Florence merely nods, her lips occupied by a smile that rips her face in two, and Tom smiles in return. She'll never deny him, Florence knows, not when he is like this. Not when magic sings in his veins.

The doors open of their own accord, magic for magic's sake, and Florence lets out a peeling giggle because it is a detail only Tom would think about, a detail she knows he has added for her and it makes her feel powerful and warm and overwhelmed all at once. Tom smirks at her, releasing her hand so that he can wrap an arm around her shoulder and pull her close. Florence lets him, certain that her knees could give out at any moment as they step into the conservatory.

Her first thought is only that it is massive, clearly magically altered to be larger on the inside, the scale dwarfing even the Great Hall which had once upon a dream reduced her to a stuttering, amazed mess. The air is metallic with the residue of magic, moist with water and heat that abounds within the glass walls. There are vines crawling up the walls – Devil's Snare thrashing for its next victim – Wisteria with its telltale purple flowers hanging from every surface of the inside of the dome, occasionally a stray petal falling down in a mimicry of a circular waterfall.

Everywhere she looks is something new, her sightline obstructed by plants both magical and muggle, palm fronds and orchids with blooms the size of a horse's head that emit a sickly sweet smell that she feels strangely drawn too. And everywhere, in every molecule about her, Tom's magic stirs, nestling in the still places, in the panes of glass, in the light that reflects through the foggy air and flowing with the sap of the varied florae before her.

"Native magic," she realizes, her entire body trembling to a stop. Without thinking she leaps at him again, crying and laughing and kissing him because he'd mastered the one thing he'd never understood for her. Tom had ceded control to the spirits around him, and in turn the very Earth vibrated with the intensity of his ability, with the enchantment that was wholly Tom himself. "Gods you're miraculous," she splutters, laughing again when she notices that her tears are smeared across his cheeks. Florence wipes at them, chuckling and kissing him and doing her very best to say the words she cannot form without a rational brain. "Show me more?"

Tom's gaze is worthy of an epic poem. Florence would launch a thousand ships for him to look at her in such a way for the rest of her life.

He drags her down gravel pathways, pointing to various plants, explaining how he had struggled in different ways to master their intricacies. There is bitterroot – wide, flat pink blooms – and Tom reminds her of their first Herbology lesson, and there white rosebushes lurking between tropical plants where normally they could never grow without the aid of enchantment.

"There were white roses along the balcony at your debut," he explains, taking her hand and pulling her forward, deeper into the jungle he'd built for the two of them before she can respond. Florence allows him to reveal the world he'd crafted for her, amazed by it all, awestruck by the level of detail, that no space remained unfilled, that each plant sang as if in the prime of its health. And then suddenly he turns back to smirk at her, his midnight eyes sinful, and he tugs her around the final curve of the winding path and the view opens before her.

It is a large square field, sunk two stone steps down to a thick mat of grass. Paths of cropped grass have been cut through the wilder tufts in each of the four cardinal directions – one directly before them, all four leading in, towards the sight that beyond anything else she has seen thus far leaves her breathless.

Rows of azalea, blooms of deepest orange formed into an octagon narrowing in towards a thicket of Dittany, likewise growing in an eight sided shape. Tears spring to her eyes at once because it takes no great intelligence to understand what Tom has tone, the pieces of her life he has put together, binding the stages of her own past with his magic into one.

"It's based upon the Allman family home," Tom explains, and his voice has taken on an echoing quality. "Eight sided like the center of your parent's house, but I went for a bit more of a flare – an entire copse of heart trees instead of one."

"Tom," Florence moans, because how could anyone have done this for her? How could she have ever deserved this? She does not feel herself move, all she knows is that one moment she is in his grasp and the next she is moving down the path, pulling off her shoes as she goes so her toes can sink into the ground, her fingers can brush across the orange petals beneath her fingers. They are waxen and silk-like, beating with a steady pulse that is one part Tom, the other part distinctly not, slower, a drawl, the easy smile of Forsythe Blount. Florence stares at them, the way they ripple in a faint breeze like tongues of flame, and her heart feels as if it is seeping out of her rips and onto the grass below her.

"I requested cuttings from the original field," a sonorous voice murmurs behind her, and Florence turns to see Tom standing with his hands behind his back, dark hair ruffled slightly from the work of her fingers, his face still alight with pleasure at his magical abilities. He has never been more beautiful.

"Thank you," Florence whispers, and Tom steps forward, pinching her chin in his grasp before brushing his lips across hers, a whisper of the sentiment that she can feel echoing across his magic.

"If you would, I'd like to show you the center before we see either of the wings."

Florence nods, her hand finding his again, content to follow him wherever he leads. She'd follow him to the ends of the Earth if that was where he took her.

They move through the rows of orange blooms, Florence observing the two wings of jungle like expanses that peel off from the central arboretum, aware vaguely that the wisteria filled dome is perfectly centered over the copse of Dittany trees, the falling petals culminating somewhere in the center of the trees. As they draw closer, the cardinal path cutting through the shrubs and thicket before them, the first few whiffs of Dittany reach her – silvery sage, round leaves whispering to her: welcome home, welcome home. Tom smiles down at her briefly, and then he tugs her under the boughs and they walk as one through the shadows to the center.

They reappear in an octagonal space the size of the main sitting room back at the lodge, grass carpeting the space, leading them towards a still pond of clear water where the wisteria petals fall, leaving the surface white and lavender and deepest purple, like a sea of cotton candy. Florence's mouth falls open, her system unsure how many more shocks she can take as Tom pulls her to a halt before the pond, their gazes fixing at the same time upon the marble figure reclining upon the pedestal.

"Achilles," Florence whispers. The statue does not move, lounging upon his side, head thrown back in agony as his hand reaches for the arrow that has pierced his heel. Florence feels her eyes move over the curve of his throat, the milkiness of his eyes, unable to observe for long the unquestioning pain that shines in his face.

"He was the last thing I added," Tom tells her, this time his hand twitching in hers. Florence swallows, some part of her brain registering that his voice is still echoing and quiet. "He is a reminder to me."

"Of what?"

"The consequences of our choices."

Florence does not need clarification, but her hand tightens around his, head falling upon the point of his shoulder as they stand side by side in the most intimate of spaces, their memories made real.

"Florence," Tom begins after a moment, and she looks up at him to see that his skin is paler than usual, his eyes frantic as they look at the statue, as if he is preparing himself to do something. "I have something to tell you, and I fear that it will render you furious." His voice maintains the same echoing quality it has, but there is a razor beneath it, a line of smoke that Florence recognizes now as fear.

"You can tell me," Florence whispers, and she cannot fathom what he could say that would erase what he has done for her today, over these past few months. She can feel where their magic is mingling, like something potent resting in the space between their palms. "I promise I will listen."

Tom surprises her next not by speaking, but by reaching into his pocket and pulling forth a small vial. It takes her a moment to recognize it because the color is off – moss instead of pale sage – but she would know that cut crystal anywhere.

"What happened too it?" She asks, taking the Dittany concentrate from his hand, even the heat within the potion different, altered.

"I modified it – long ago," Tom explains, and his voice is barely audible, less than a whisper. "Rejuvenating spells, shredded Agrimony picked on the new moon for restoration, and Hyssop sap for purification."

Florence feels her blood run cold as he lists the adjustments he had made. She was familiar with the ingredients, expensive, potent if picked at the right time, and if added to Dittany concentrate….he would not have Florence thinks to herself, a shiver running the length of her body. He would another voice interjects, and Florence wishes it were not so but the second voice is louder, the truth in its words palpable.

"I gave the mixture to June and Cash during one of my visits to your home," he continues. "It is a self-replenishing potion, intended to give long life to the drinker. They need only place one drop in your morning coffee every day, and it would halt the worst effects of time."

Florence hears his voice, but her mind is far away, recalling the accusatory stares from the people of Spectre as she and Forsythe moved through the crowd. The questions in Albion's face, the shrillness in Owen's voice when he'd asked if she'd done something to her magic, to her body to render the change in her appearance. He wouldn't have she tries to tell herself again, but Florence has never been good at lying.

"I thought only of myself Florence, of securing a way to make you mine throughout the centuries." Ice is seeping into her thoughts now, slowing her body until ever breath is like a knife between the ribs, his voice stinging and cold. "I never dreamt of what would happen to you should we separate, in my blindness it never truly occurred to me that a time might come where you were not mine."

"So it's your fault," Florence mutters, and suddenly she cannot stand, collapsing onto the sandstone lip of the pond, her head resting in her hands. At once Tom is on his knees before her, his body wedging its way between her legs, his hands wrapping around her forearms as if he could bind the two of them together.

"Florence," he says, and how can he say her name as if it was everything beautiful after what he had done to her? "Florence." His face is nearly feral, his magic prickling along her skin as his hands become sweaty around her arms. Tom's face is more alive than she has ever seen it, situated just beneath her own so that he must look up at her, so that she is forced to see every inch of the pain that seems to radiate from his skin.

And then, to her utmost horror because she had not thought it possible, his eyes brim over with tears, spilling over the edge and running down his cheeks like tiny pearls upon a plane of marble. Florence's entire body freezes, uncertain what to do, how to comfort him because neverhas Tom Riddle cried, neverhas he broken thus before her, and her heart cannot decide if it should thrash him or pull him close.

Tom makes the choice for her, pressing his face to her stomach, his arms wrapping around her waist so that she can feel the shaking in his shoulders. Without thinking, a gut reaction to be near him, her hands fall to his head, tangling in the curls there.

"Florence I do not regret it," he murmurs between choked sobs, as if his own lungs are betraying him. "I regret only to have caused you pain, but if the past error of my ways has resulted in this second life with you, I cannot fault the decision, no matter how flawed, how selfish it may seem."

Florence does not respond, but she presses his face closer to her stomach, her other hand slipping down his back and resting between his shoulder blades. His heaving breaths vibrate up her arms, his magic trickling across her skin, his tears cold against her shirt that is soon soaked. I regret only to have caused you pain his voice hums in her ears, and seemingly against her will Florence's face turns up to the dome above, umber gaze watching as a few stray petals drift downward from the ceiling overhead, dancing upon the wind and through the rays of afternoon light until landing upon the surface of the pond.

They sit in silence for some time, Florence digesting his words as she watches the petal-fall, Tom with his face pressed to her stomach until his breathing returns to normal. Her mind feels strangely numb, her hand absent mindedly rubbing Tom's back if for nothing more than to remind her that he is real, that she is alive.

"Can I tell you something," Florence asks at last, and she feels Tom stiffen beneath her grasp, his head pulling away from her stomach slowly. Florence lets out an annoyed huff of air, a breathy chuckle slipping from her lips because of course Tom Riddle would be beautiful even when crying, the blue of his eyes magnified by red-rimmed eyelids, lips pink and bitten and begging her to press her mouth to his.

"Anything," he murmurs, his voice still croaking. Florence resumes raking her fingers through his hair, unable to look away, carefully weighing each word in her mind until she feels Tom's body tremble against hers.

"Dumbledore came to me, decades after I was married," she begins, and the hardly perceptible widening of his eyes is the only reaction Tom gives away. "He asked about you, about why we had parted, and I told him that you had split your soul, that you had murdered your father and Myrtle Warren."

She can tell when he stops breathing because suddenly there is no warm brush of air against her tear-stained stomach. Florence feels a rogue smile spread across her face, wan and toothless, but a smile nonetheless.

"So you see, I was the one who took your dream of immortality away from you. I was the one who gave him the information he needed to defeat you, in the end." She brushes back the waves that obscure his forehead, driving her nails into his scalp in the manner that usually leaves him boneless in her grasp.

"It was a useless dream in the end," he croaks. "Without you in it."

"All the same, we've hurt each other."

She bends just enough for her lips to hover millimeters above his upturned face, and then directing her mouth to his ear, she murmurs three words she has said to him before, three words that are a pathetic encapsulation for the feelings Tom stirs within her, but they are the only three words she has. Tom's hands shake upon her back, and then to her surprise he reaches up to cup her face, pulling her ear to his mouth and repeats them – the same three words she had never thought to hear from him.

For a moment everything is silent, and then the world starts spinning once more, Tom altering the very fabric of her reality again as only he can until there is nothing but the two of them and the world they have built together.

"I am still angry with you," Florence tells him, pulling back so that she can meet his gaze. "For taking away my choice, for pushing me away from my family." Tom swallows beneath her, but his eyes are burning once more, two embers that tear into her skin. "But I do not regret this," Florence whispers, her body curling forward so that her lips brush against his. "I have never regretted this."

He kisses her and she can feel every nerve within her body, ignited by this thing that has always lived between them. Inevitable and elemental and magic, magic, magic.


Hope to have the epilogue up in 30 minutes3

so grateful for all of you