Mages that had potential and didn't fear delving deep into the roots of said magic could accomplish the impossible. They could grasp the unattainable if they pushed themselves hard enough. Some said that these mages could not be human. They had to have some fairy blood in them. This was very limiting and invalidating, actually, because people could and had accomplished wondrous things on their own merit, leaning on their very own magic instead of some belief that everything they had done had been because of some higher power that made them do it.

But, the fairy comparison did hold true. Folkloric fear that twisted people's perception of reality and made them think that only the gods and deities of the realm could show such power. It wasn't meant to be limiting, it was meant to be an explanation for the unexplainable at the time.

Fairies were said to be the creators of magic and that those of fairy blood could seize unimaginable power, but it was also said that those with ambition and cleverness could take a hold of magic and wield it better than anyone. These were the mages everyone feared, as they were rare and remarkable.

People, and this was said about farmers and those that lived on the land, those that lived off of the land, they believed that fairies needed more respect than any creature. That a vampire was a pest how a fox was when it got near a chicken coop. But a fairy wronged was the drought, a fairy wronged was a flood, a fairy wronged was a fire that scorched, a fairy wronged was worse than the unstoppable.

Fairies controlled the elements. Malfoys, for example, believed that a storm was an expression of rage. That it was foreboding and a moment of reckoning between two fairies. The Blacks were more self-centred than this, because they believed that a storm was an indication of the Gods speaking to the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black, imparting lost knowledge to them and teaching them the forgotten arts. The Weasleys thought that a storm was a great battle of magic and will. The Notts did not think very much of storms, but they had a vast respect for it.

Once upon a time Salazar Slytherin, too, would have had an opinion on storms and the fantastical. He would gaze upon the lightning scattering across the sky, giving it light in its unmistakable darkness. He would, then, listen to the thunder rapping all across the ears of mage and muggle kind. Wind would pick up, too, and begin to frighten those without a roof and board.

Nobody knew what Salazar Slytherin thought of storms. He never thought to write down what he thought they represented before muggles had come into his home in the dead of night, only the scream of wind and lightning as companionship, carrying his children's tongues as trophies.

Nobody knew how Salazar Slytherin reacted to seeing such a painful reminder of hatred of parselmouths, of the pogroms his kind had been subjected, the unfair laws made by magic and muggle kind alike. To the former they were dark creatures while to the latter they were satanic beasts, serpent speakers, and devil worshippers.

Nobody knew what Salazar Slytherin thought of storms before one of the muggles aimed fair and struck with precision, killing him and leaving the only remnant of his consciousness in the portrait hanging in Hogwarts.

It was a shame that nobody knew what Salazar Slytherin thought of storms. If he believed in fairies, or if he believed in the gods, or if he believed in the fairy-chosen. The Dementor speakers as people had called them a long, long time ago.

But, Helga Hufflepuff (and she was a wonderful dear that agreed with Salazar on a lot of things, most notable of which was to put their bloody common rooms in the basement because they didn't want to maim their children on those moving staircases like those nutcases in red and blue), oh Helga Hufflepuff had an idea about what a storm as big as the one right above Spinner's End represented.

She had said that she did not believe in fairies. She did not believe in it being the gods. She did not believe in it being creatures or muggles. Her everlasting smile, in the portrait that she had at Hogwarts, would fall. And her eyes would soften in understanding. Her lips would move, and the words would fall out of her mouth with such pity and sadness: ''It is grief. When your grief cannot be contained to your own body and magic, it has to transcend. And it goes to the sky, because, really, going to the ground is never what grief does. Grief never dies. It lingers in the air around you until you cannot move, cannot breathe, and cannot think. But sometimes, the grief yells . And that is thunder. Sometimes the grief is so loud that it breaks apart the sky. And that is lightning. Sometimes the grief is so desperate that it sends a wave of itself through the world. And that is the wind. But, the worst of all of this remains hidden in the body and magic of the one grieving.''

A tree next to a house that belongs to a chemist and a potioneer got hit by lightning. The ends splintered off in all directions. The leaves burned off in a wave of explosion. And from it emerged a man in a robe. Rain fell down on him, soaking him wet, but with a wave of his hand he dried his black robe.

It was night and darkness followed him with each step he took, twirling around his footsteps how a cat might twirl around a person's leg right before feeding. This man adjusted his robe and approached the house. A dance of red flickered over him, his eyes, his skin, his heart. The raw decadence of his soul shouted through him.

He saw no one except for him and the front door. Nobody was around, too, to make matters easier. Perhaps if there was someone to bear the brunt of his first wave of anger, this night might have gone differently. But, he remembered a man with platinum hair and a shaky demeanour admit to him, confess as if confessing a most delicious titbit of gossip, as if naming the one that had introduced him to salvation, that he had gotten cocaine from the potioneer who lived in the house in front of him.

With ingenious and marvellous glee he exclaimed: ''It was Eileen Prince that helped me see that I could save the world! I did everyone a favour, mon chou! Nobby Leach would have ruined us, the mudblood deserved to die!''

The man, sometimes known as mon chou, rarely known as Tom Riddle, now birthed fully into the persona of Lord Voldemort moved like a figure draped in shadow and darkness. He stood underneath the front porch roof and slithered towards the window. Slowly he placed his hands to his face to properly peer into the room, but he could not see anyone. He could only sense, however, that reason had left him.

For Nobby Leach, he told himself. For Nobby Leach, he repeated under his breath. There was nothing he would not do for the man and the world he had wanted to make.

Days had passed since the murder of Nobby Leach. Arcturus Black announced to the world that this only proved the mental instability of Mr. Leach. He did not call him Minister in his address. No, what he did say, multiple times during the same speech, was the word: suicide.

A greattragedy. Such an unfortunateoccurrence. Nobodycould have foreseen it.

Lord Voldemort felt a scream rip through his insides, cutting his mind to ribbons yet again at the sight of Nobby's body on the floor of his own Minister office. His features had been kind and merry, as if he had done someone a great labour of love. He had not eaten in days, nor slept, else Voldemort was certain he would have awoken in cold sweat, or otherwise thrown up his meals.

When he finally mustered enough strength and willpower to come up to the front door, he laid his hand across the door, and whispered, maily to himself, but also welcoming any entity that had deigned to watch him: ''You are doing the right thing.'' The right thing, for some, needn't necessarily be good or healthy by any means. The right thing was so subjective, in fact, that someone might even believe that what they thought to be the right thing was their ONLY thing left to do.

Unbeknownst to Voldemort and TOm Riddle and Hermione Granger and the Darkness, Death had come to watch Voldemort then, when he had come to attack the Snape family. She had fluttered her skeletal wings and caused his breath to materialize in front of him, how it might during the coldest of colds. Her teeth chattered as she spoke to him, telling him that one day, and a day that she swore would come very soon, she would kill Lord Voldemort. That she would make sure that Tom Marvolo Riddle got his just desserts for his actions towards her and her domain. Just as quickly as she manifested this promise into the world, so quickly she decided to go where she was needed more. A grecian did look delectable as he stubbed his toe against petrified men and women, after all. But, this wasn't about Death and Alexio's epic love story, the author really hadn't the time to tackle that. This story was about an American expat named Montgomery Goldsmith who just so happened to, also, be a terrorist named Lord Voldemort.

Lord Voldemort knocked and his knocks were timed with thunder and lightning. He was an arcane presence, one that some might even have mistaken for fae. But no, even Lord Voldemort was human, no matter how much he thought himself above such a thing.

After his knocking ended, so did the thunder and lightning. The rain continued to fall, so did the clouds continue to form and cluster together as if frozen men and women huddled for warmth after dipping in a deathly cold lake.

Finally, against her better judgement: Eileen Snape opened the door and welcomed death and death's chosen target.

She didn't scream, but she would. Oh she would scream.

Lord Voldemort lifted his yew wand of legend (not yet, not yet, but soon - soon, only a few years later would this wand become the most feared wand in Magical Britain) and enveloped Eileen in shadow.

Darkness called Tom Riddle and Hermione, too. It whispered with a beautiful tonality. A lulling, comforting tonality that was just as fake was that belief that artists had to suffer for their art and that being mentally ill warranted masterpieces and magnum opuses. ''Are you ready to see what lies ahead? This is your only warning. If you cannot stomach it, turn back now and I shall be merciful and forgiving.''

Hermione struggled against one of the tendrils coiling around her throat. The Darkness had followed them and it was tenfold more dangerously set on keeping them away from the exit. Taking them through these memories had to be a strategic plan. Hermione batted one of the damned things away with a hand covered in fiendfyre, but the tendril turned to liquid and coated her hand, pulling her down, down, down.

Tom Riddle, on the other hand, was too busy going up against the Darkness itself. They fought like, well, the same person. Mostly because they were the same person. Or at least, a part of the same brain.

The Darkness hissed, now, in parseltongue: ''I am giving you an out. Allow me to use this body as I see fit, take a step back. Burying you and destroying you wholly was a mistake. I see this now! I do, I do! We can come to an accord before you ruin yourself completely! I care about you, I do, I do, I do!''

Tom Riddle blocked an uppercut. He tried to trip the Darkness, but its tendrils swooped, sharpened to blades, to attack him. He didn't attempt to do the same as Hermione had with fiendfyre. Instead he summoned the cruciatus to his hands, how he had as a young and frightened child with so much violence in his heart and in his mind and he grabbed at the blades.

It was frightening with which precision and ease Lord Voldemort cast fiendfyre. The snake manifested easily and quickly hurried through the air, burning anything that might be near it to devour. Its goal was the upstairs potion laboratory. And when it met its target, a rapid and thunderous explosion resonated throughout the air itself.

Eileen had sent Tobias to fetch her son, who was sleeping upstairs before this mess had happened. She drowned in tears and clawed at her throat, screaming harder and harder. When she attempted to sprint, thinking that her family was in danger, that her family was dying right above her head. ''NO!'' Her veins jumped on her throat, pulled taught with the screaming. She broke the binds that had been cast on her by Voldemort - and this was Voldemort, she had faintly heard Abraxas tell him the name of Tom Marvolo Riddle.

And she tried to go up the stairs and see to her son, her form overcome with that mother's instinct Voldemort had only ever heard things about. ''SEVERUS! TOBY!''

Voldemort cast a numbing spell, it managed to hit her spine. And she collapsed like a ragdoll over them, hitting her chin against the bottom of the stairs and splitting her lip bloody.

His voice was devastating as it penetrated through her fear and love and terror. ''And suddenly she realised what it is like to lose family. Suddenly,'' his voice hissed, nearly lapsing into parseltongue as the monster of her wildest nightmares continued to speak, ''she realised what it is like to lose the one she loves.''

Eileen couldn't move. She couldn't move. Her body weighed infinitely more than she expected. Her mind whirled like a whirlwind. Like a maelstrom that thundered and sunk any unsuspecting through like a ship lost at sea, thrust at the mercy of nature and the arcane magics. In her eyes was realisation, but not the correct kind. Because Eileen was a different sort of person, the kind of person who didn't know the mental arts, how Abraxas did, how Walburga did, how Tom Riddle even did. No, she was the kind of person that had to put together things through context and the information she was given. And the account Abraxas had given her was one where he and Tom Riddle were the most genial couple of all times and that they both loved each other very much.

It had been, Eileen swore, one of the reasons why she was scared to pursue Abraxas. If, no - no - when Tom Riddle (not anymore, she could tell that this was a new player, a much more dangerous player than the one she knew from school) found out that Eileen had been putting the moves on his Abraxas, there would be reckoning. Orphan boys like Tom Riddle, like Lord Voldemort, clung onto the few things they had with their whole being.

And there was only one reason why he had come to her here. This Eileen, in her misguided attempts to be Sherlock Holmes, and the fact that her position made it so she did not know things that only Tom Riddle and Mandy Leach knew - all accumulated to the fact that Eileen's heart broke in a painful showing of grief for a man she thought had died and sent Voldemort on this path: ''Abraxas.''

Tom Riddle fell down and swiped his hand through the air to cut across the tendrils. They were relentless, forming from the sludge and goop of the discarded parts of his own corroded mind. The Darkness followed along, glancing only to Hermione and her horrified, terrified expression as the tendrils had maneuvered her to watch Lord Voldemort's descent. Her mentor's fall from what little decency he had had.

''Surrender and I won't make Hermione watch what you know comes next. Do you think she will respect you after this? You care for her opinion. You love her, don't you? She is a daughter to you. Your only family which you've allowed yourself after Nobby Leach. Don't be cruel to her. Surrender, we shall make a deal, and the girl will still be on your side.''

Tom Riddle looked briefly interested. Especially when he glanced over to Hermione. He attempted to speak to her, but there were tendrils that slapped across his mouth, leaving a bright welt across them. He screamed at it and attempted to fight his way through by attacking the Darkness head on. This whole metaphor for mental illness was really tough to fight without a system put into place, one meant to aid and support people struggling with such maniacal fiends.

''I will never surrender. Not when you're so desperate to throw me into this memory, our least proud moment, our lowest and most horrific act! My only goal now is to get Hermione out of here alive and PURGE you from my mind.'' Tom Riddle shouted. ''If I must relive this then so I shall. If Hermione will choose never to speak to me, then it is her decision. But I will make sure it is one of many, many decisions she will be able to make!''

Voldemort turned Eileen over. The position couldn't be comfortable for her to be splayed over the stairs like this, staring up at him, her back against the stairs that were hot from the fire burning on the top floor of her home. Her home, the home she raised her son, and loved her husband. Her home, the one she had brought drugs into for profit. Her home, the one where Abraxas had gone to help out a friend, but stayed to get high on cocaine. Eileen's tears spilled and spilled like rivulets over her craven face. ''Oh no. Merlin no. Morgana no, no no.'' She tried to close her eyes, but even her eyelids weighed like the whole world she held above her.

Voldemort's eyes were red in this moment of grief. And how could they not be? Eileen berated herself for not listening to Toby, for enabling Abraxas, for leading him to his death and Voldemort's subsequent fall. ''I'm so sorry! I am,'' her voice hitched and her fingers moved, because she had loved Abraxas. ''He's dead and I'm so, so sorry.'' She pictured him as he'd no doubt overdosed. It was a grizzly sight in her mind, and one that she replayed as her most horrible fault. Her son was dead, too. Her husband. And the man she loved.

Whatever vengeance Voldemort had come to enact, she deserved it.

They made eye contact.

And Voldemort's sneer deepened when he read her mind. His eyes sharpened with hate, a tool most people would describe as blunt. Voldemort, then, lunged after Eileen, pinning her hard against the stairs. Feeling slowly returned to her, the more she began to fight this spell, this incantation he had placed on her. It hurt. Everything hurt. Her soul, her heart, her mind, her body. Eileen wept and begged a man to know that she had never intended this.

''I never wanted him to die! I never, I was so careful! Whenever he came here, Tom, please - please believe me, Riddle, I never wanted him harmed. Not someone so bright and full of joy; never someone who loved so easily;'' and how easy, oh how easy it was to speak well of the dead and forgive their every shortcoming, ''never someone like our dear Abraxas!''

His hand shot for her throat and pushed hard down on it, the momentum causing Eileen's head to hit against the stair harshly. Her whole world spun and she could only smell the chemicals burning through her home; and what she swore was charred flesh. A bitter, terrified, horrified laugh escaped her. An image of her charred son flashed in her mind and she cried like a young girl who had first heard of the charred bodies from the muggle bomb in Japan, desperately swearing that Grindelwald had to be right, had to know what was true and worth believing in if the muggles were capable of something so inhumane. And she cried with the same intensity now, in this moment, when she thought of her son and husband dead in a flash of chemical and magical might.

''Eileen.'' Voldemort hissed and she looked at him through the tears. He, even in his most chaotic, cut a handsome figure. Eileen couldn't stop wailing. She tried to move her hands - and she could - oh she could - but he pinned them down underneath him. His wand, in his free hand, the one that wasn't holding her down in her last moments - he cast a cutting (or slicing, or dicing - a potioneer really ought to be able to tell, but she was a tad preoccupied at the moment with trauma to fully differentiate) hex over her chest, cutting along with it not only her skin, but her nightgown. Blood smeared the fabric and Eileen cried out at the second and third and fourth cut that appeared over her thighs, her legs, and her stomach.

''This is not about him, pure blood.'' Voldemort's voice was barely above a whisper, and his breath was hot against her dizzy mind. There was so much blood. It was too hot. Eileen saw spots litter across her vision. ''Why do all of you think that everything revolves around you?'' He squeezed her throat and she couldn't breathe. ''Is it so hard for you to understand that there are matters beyond your blood? Even now, all alone as you are in your pain, you cling and worry about having snuffed out pure blood..''

Eileen was terrified of having killed Abraxas with her actions. She was scared of the reaction of the Twenty-Eight, of the world she had once embraced and belonged to fully. Her eyes tracked Voldemort's movement. He let go of her throat, but he pressed his wand to one of her wounds and twisted it, twisting the pain forth into something that caused her to scream.

''Eileen, oh, Eileen , how I find your existence meaningless. I don't even think your pain does anything for me.''

What a dangerous revelation that was. Eileen stared at the man smearing her flesh with her privileged, pure, highly-praised blood which he detested far more than any of them were aware of. He looked her dead in the eye and promised her that by the end of this night, she was going to be begging him to kill her, but that he wouldn't until he well and truly felt she had gotten her comeuppance.

He had pinned Eileen underneath him and told her: ''This brings me no joy, Eileen. But you have forced my hand to make your last moments the worst of your life. I can see it in your eyes, that fear, I'm a legilimens or have you forgotten that?''

Eileen couldn't say anything, and she couldn't walk, and she couldn't bring herself to think of anything other than the horror happening to her. She could feel Voldemort running his wand across her legs, razing them like blades. He squeezed her legs and pumped the blood out of her in copious amounts, hissing something in his serpent tongue. He smeared his hand with her blood and lunged like lightning to smear her face with it. ''Does this feel as if it has protected you now? Does it feel like you get to do whatever the fuck you want without any reprecussions? Does it, Eileen? Tell me.'' He hissed. ''Sssspeak.''

He lifted his wand to her face next and was about to slice it up, as well - when he felt two hands grab a hold of his shoulders and pull.

''I DO NOT CONSENT TO BEING HERE!''

''NEITHER DO I, HERMIONE, THERE ISN'T MUCH I CAN DO!''

''YOU NEED PSYCHIATRIC HELP!''

''I PROMISE TO GIVE IT A SHOT AFTER ALL OF THIS IS DONE!''

''PROMISE? PROMISES AREN'T GOOD ENOUGH, SIR!''

''WHAT THE BLOODY HELL DO YOU WANT ME TO DO? SWEAR AN UNBREAKABLE VOW?''

''YES!''

''That seems a tad brash.''

''THIS ALL YOU'VE DONE WITH THE SNAPES SEEMS A TAD BRASH, DON'T YOU THINK, SIR?''

Tom Riddle had no comeback. The Darkness kicked him in the shins hard then. Tom's life was really difficult.

While Tobias wrangled Voldemort, Eileen took aim. She summoned her strength which seeped from the love she felt for her husband and son. And she didn't need to think. No, there was only one way that her family would come out of this alive. Eileen's cedar wand moved in a zig-zag, lightning motion through the air and, accompanied by harsh and unforgivable words, sent forth a bolt of green light cascading through the air towards Lord Voldemort.

Eileen held onto the stair railing with her free hand. She hadn't cast healing spells on her cuts and her hand would no doubt become scorched and burned, but she needed to see this. She had to make sure that her unforgivable act would hit its intended mark.

Unfortunately, Eileen Snape was not a good marksman. Especially not one that expected the unexpected. Severus, always a bit too difficult of a child, opened the front door to see where his dad had disappeared to. The door was behind Voldemort and Tobias, who weren't really fighting how one might imagine a chaotic and action-packed fight to appear as. It really just looked dangerous and incredibly desperate from both ends.

Now, even that wasn't the worst part of all of this. Those two desperate fighters moved out of the way of the killing curse, though that left it clear open to hit Severus. Eileen screamed her son's name. The boy stood, dumbfounded as the spell rocketed for him. Tobias shouted in pain when Voldemort sent yet another contact-cruciatus curse on him, causing Tobias to finally let go of Voldemort. His red, monstrous eyes fell on Severus and in a knick of time he managed to fling his leg towards the boy, hit him square in the chest, knock him down, and then fling himself back into Tobias, hit his head against Toby's, and then fall down disoriented.

Eileen watched all of this go down in slow motion, as she held her breath, only letting it go when she saw that the killing curse missed her son and hit one of the front porch pillars holding her roof. She wouldn't forget that Voldemort had done this, as confusing as it was for a man that had come to cause her nothing but pain. She wouldn't forget that he'd saved her son. It meant that he wanted Eileen's death only.

The Darkness, that fink, was becoming more tired by the minute. Tom Riddle, somehow a lesser fink than most thought, was struggling. At this point he really had to admit that what he needed, most of all, was dire and immediate help from a loved one or a healthcare professional specialized in the brand of mess he was inadvertently stumbling around.

Hermione, and, yes, she was in the picture, had this to say: ''AFTER THIS IS OVER, SIR, NEVER CONTACT ME AGAIN, PLEASE!''

Which, to be honest, was well and truly valid. Didn't mean it wasn't heartbreaking to hear for one easily attached Tom Riddle, mentor extraordinaire and definitely bad at playing american. The Darkness used this moment of weakness to overcome him. It knocked him to the ground, maneuvering its tendrils of pure abyss and eldritch horror, angling them to they aimed true for Tom Riddle's ashen face.

''The student has become more emotionally self-aware, not that that is particularly hard.'' The Darkness seeped, brimmed, flaunted its joy. It twisted the proverbial knife and the tendril that had lodged deep in Tom Riddle's heart. ''You are far too gone to ever be loved. Dumbledore was right about you. Look, even someone as invested in your brain as Hermione is doesn't find herself capable of tolerating your presence any longer.''

Hermione, sadly, had not seen the outcome of her words, as she was still fighting the Darkness from making her watch Lord Voldemort's lowest and darkest moment.

Voldemort cast a petrificus totalus on Tobias when he knocked him off of him. He cursed the persistent muggle and told him that he would have first row seats to the show. There was no joy in that sentence, no joy in that horror he was going to inflict upon the Snape family.

Eileen held her wand and aimed it still at Voldemort. He looked at it, then at her, and then back it, giving her an acidic smile full of teeth. ''Are you going to fire off another killing curse at me, Eileen?''

Severus had been numbed, much how Eileen had before, out on the wet and freezing front porch, away from battle. Eileen wished to run to him, to help him, to warm him, to keep her baby boy alive and well - but she froze at the sight of Voldemort speaking to her. The voice of ever-helpful Head Boy Tom Riddle filled her mind as she remembered him, as she remembered him being awarded for special services to the school. Realisation dawned in her eyes as she fully, fully embraced the fact that he had always been this man in front of her, finally having shown his colours to her.

''I will if I must.'' She said.

''Do you dare?'' Voldemort said and disapparated, only to reappear with Severus to shield himself with. ''Do you dare?''

''Why save him?'' Eileen whispered, her wand wavering, her resolve faltering, her fear doubling, ''Why save him if you are going to use him against me now?''

''You assumed I was rational.'' Voldemort barked out a laugh, his grief for a man that Eileen did not know showing in abundant clarity.

Eileen had to concede that he wasn't rational at all, no. That was on her.

Hermione broke free of the tendrils, finally, when she realised that pretending to be obedient worked wonders on teachers. They let their guards down eventually. And what was the Darkness if not some twisted, horrific, painful variation of Voldemort's subconscious? Or mental illness, but Hermione really wasn't qualified to get into that whole mess. And anything that called itself Tom Riddle adjacent had the qualities of a professor. And Hermione… oh she was adept at pleasing and fooling professors. All overachievers were.

When she did, she stopped watching what was happening around them all in the Snape household and body-slammed the Darkness. As one did. In order to protect her mentor and horrifying terrorist who just, also, happened to be decent to her . This did not excuse his actions, nor would it ever come close to accepting them. But, what she could do, was get Tom Riddle out of this mess (herself alongside him, obviously) and then have him turn himself in and go to prison and think long and hard (alongside psychiatric help) how he had absolutely caused a great mess in magical britain.

She pulled him from his pool of blood and flinched when his eyes zeroed in on her. Now that she was up close to him, he didn't quite look how she knew him. Gone was the disguise of Montgomery Goldsmith, gone were the scales of a failed (or successful?) experiment that would make Mary Shelley proud. He had greys scattered across his messy and disoriented hair.

''Oh.'' Hermione said, only briefly. She remembered this man from the pensieve memories. This was the man everyone thought of when they said: You Know Who, the one that had died in 1981. ''Sir, we need to leave.''

Tom Riddle only briefly nodded. He clung onto Hermione and told her that he did apologize terribly for the inconvenience his mind was causing her.

Hermione cracked a smile: ''You could never have fooled anyone you were American, sir. That's the most british thing I've ever heard.''

He gave her only a fleeting, small smile, as he shattered her happiness: ''I do think you have to let the whole memory play out for us to go someplace else.'' He wheezed, because the tendril had definitely pierced more than his heart, ''Take as consolation, at least, that they all lived happily ever after.''

''Not really.'' Hermione said. ''Severus died.''

And Tom Riddle was much too wounded and tired to keep up these morally sound pretenses any longer: ''Fucker deserved it. I regret not killing him as a child.''

''SIR!''

''He did betray us.'' The Darkness mused from the floor. Hermione roundhouse kicked it back down on the ground.

Tom Riddle marvelled at the ease with which Hermione, a detached party, handled all of this. Well, it wasn't personal to her. No wonder she was so capable. Oh god, he thought, this was why therapists actually worked, wasn't it?

''Nevertheless, you can't kill a child!''

''No children were killed in the making of this traumatic experience.'' Tom Riddle sing-sang.

Voldemort saw Severus clutching onto his small blanket, his eyes shot wide in horror. His form was frozen as he took in the sight of his mother being butchered underneath a strange man. No, Voldemort admitted this freely, he was no man anymore. He was a monster that had been unleashed and would never be reigned back in.

Instead of Severus, for a brief moment, Voldemort saw young Tom Riddle, clinging onto his blanket and shaking like a leaf as Mrs. Cole had thrown him outside in the cold until he learned not to make a mess and not to disturb the other children.

''Please, I beg you, I beg you, don't orphan him. Don't orphan a child, surely you've seen what a life like that is like? Do you, truly, want someone else - someone innocent who had done nothing to you - to endure such a fate? Please, please,'' Eileen grabbed a hold of his arm, wrapped her hands over it, and held him down, held his attention on her as much as she could. But his mouth hung open in a small, horrific 'o' as he stared at a shaky, wet, sickly Severus Snape.

Eileen's wounds would be the death of her, she conceded this fact already, but she would fight until her last dying breath to save her boy. Tobias was immobile both by the spell and the horror that strangled him into compliance.

Something must have registered in those words, or at least something which he had unearthed from another memory, buried deep inside of him, one he'd lifted from his own father's mind right before his death. His mother had begged similarly, right before he'd cast them both out. Voldemort stared at Severus and the boy stared right back, deeper than any abyss could. There was nothing more honest than a child's gaze.

No, he could not kill Eileen in front of her child. It was a line that even he could not cross, not even in this state of distress and panic. Severus looked away for only a moment, to see his father. And Tobias was fighting the enchantment in earnest. Debris began to fall down from the top floor, that had been fully eaten through by the fiendfyre snake. Voldemort willed it away, pulling himself together and denying his emotions from leading him astray and into danger. This had all gotten out of control. He was shaking. He was crying, too, he could tell because something fell on Eileen's face that wasn't blood.

Eileen gagged as Voldemort cupped her face in his hand and shouted, but it wasn't truly a proper shout - it wasn't loud by any means, it was just angry and full of inconsolable emotion: ''Do you want to live, Eileen?''

''Yes.'' Eileen said. ''I want all three of us to live. I want my family to live.''

Voldemort shook his head. ''No, no,'' He gagged when he remembered that his family was dead, that the only man he had ever dared call something so intimate and loving had died by hand of another man, this one dear in a twisted and roundabout way. ''Promise me something, Eileen. Live another day and obliviate your son of this night. Promise me, that when I leave tonight, you will never contact anyone in the magical world, that you will never brew another potion or cast a spell, promise me,'' he stressed, ''that you will never enter the magical world; it is barred from you and your husband. If I find that you did not adhere to this promise, I will come back here, Eileeen, and I will kill your son, and I will kill your husband and I will make you watch - if only hopeful that one day you might understand what you've done to me. I,'' and his voice hitched when an image of Nobby Leach appeared, smiling, in his mind, ''I never wanted this.''

Eileen cried underneath him, her whole body shaking from exhaustion and fear and uncertainty. ''I promise.''There was magic and power in a promise between two mages. Especially the kind that held the other's life in their hands. Eileen would be a fool not to accept any terms set before her. She looked at her boy and hoped that she had the strength to obliviate him while the memory was fresh and still in the forefront of his mind. No child deserved to have such a memory in their mind, rattling about.

''I never wanted to feelany of this.'' Voldemort keened a cry and Eileen felt, more than anything, as if she stared into something deeply broken and terrifying in equal measure. Something that was not her place to fix or observe, but only survive until someone much more adept tackled it head on.

''I'm sorry... I am.'' Eileen said. She spoke in a calming tone she used when Severus had had a nightmare. It felt fitting that she speak in it during her worst nightmare. It grounded her. ''I am so sorry for your loss.''

Oh and this was the first person to tell him this. Nobody knew that he mourned or loved Leach. Eileen didn't know either, but she could piece together that someone had died. Someone that meant a great deal to Voldemort. And she did what any sensible person did in this moment: offered her condolences.

And it broke him. A nerve-wracking, bone-shattering, blood-curdling sob escaped him then as he tried to clench his hands into fists and pull away from Eileen. He couldn't look at the destruction he'd wrought, finding it repugnant, along with his own self. He couldn't look at either of the Snapes, too, in fear of seeing something that would fully shatter him.

So, he ran. He ran like a coward afraid of himself and what he could do if he was left unchecked. There was nobody that could help him, not after Leach had been killed (suicide, voices shouted in his head, mixing and intertwining), not after Mandy couldn't look at him for protecting Abraxas (coward, her voice rang the loudest, HEAD BOY, her voice rang the cruellest), and especially not after Abraxas broke down sobbing, clinging onto him and begging him not to leave him, drowning in his own tears and post-high anguish, (I love you, Tom, his voice was the most heart-breaking to hear because it was true and the truth always frightened Lord Voldemort)

He had to run. There was no coming back from this, not a million years. He needed to remove himself from the world which had hurt him tenfold harder than he had ever thought. Furthermore, however, he needed to remove himself before he hurt it thrice as hard. Before the world turned into chaos and ruin underneath his fingertips.

It was right what Mrs. Cole had told him. Everything he touched did turn to ruin. He made things infinitely worse. He had made Nobby Leach die. What an easier life it would have been had he not become Minister? He had made Mandy's scar happen to her, forever reminding her that this world was not going to love and cherish them. His head was spinning from how shallowly he breathed. His blood pumped in his ears and stopped him from hearing anything. Rain continued to fall down on him, but he could not feel it. He could not feel anything anymore and this was what he was meant to become since the first moment Mrs. Cole had told him he was evil.

What an apt word. A word he had promised Leach not to believe in. That he was not evil and could never be such a word. How naïve and hopeful his dear Leach was.

Voldemort turned to look at the house one last time before tumbling towards the splintered, dead tree. He felt dead, too. Like his heart was going to stop any moment. Like he was going to fall unconscious from a dream and never awaken.

He wondered, for a very brief moment, if someone would wait for him there. His mother? His father? His grandparents? Anyone to greet him and tell him that he was just as bad as they were. That it was okay to feel like this – because he truly felt like nothing he did could right this wrong twisting his chest and insides into ribbons.

Where could he even go?

Malfoy Manor? No, he couldn't bear to look at Abraxas. He had protected him from Mandy and Cohen and everyone. Why had he protected him? Because he loved him? Voldemort let out a shaky, wounded, startled cry. He bit his fist tightly and tried to move away from the premises before someone came to investigate what had happened.

Leach's residence? No. No he could never go back there again. He didn't deserve to be in Nobby Leach's home, not after all of this. Not after letting Abraxas Malfoy get to this point. He should have asked him where he'd gotten it, should have pretended to want some for himself, should have tracked Eileen Snape down years ago and stopped her from pining like a love-sick puppy after Abraxas. Who was not so much love-sick as he was simply sick.

His followers' home? No. He would be easily found. And to make matters worse he didn't trust any of them with such an honour. What honour? A laugh tore through him. At the fact that he was still grandstanding enough to believe himself to be some god, some creature worth respecting? No, he was a monster and there was no coming back from this. This was his lowest point. He bit into his hand so hard that blood – not pure blood how Eileen's was – oh no – this was blood that could enter only half way through to the world. He stared at his blood and as his hand kept twitching because he may have bit through some nerve. It mixed with rainfall and he couldn't feel any pain.

There was no world for him to return to. All of his will to make the world a better place fell when Nobby Leach's body fell. All of his desire for power melted away when he saw what power had created while it was in his hands. He did not want to rule the world anymore. Not after this. Not after the world he would rule had done this to him. Nobody had made him feel this anguish before. Not when he'd killed, not when he'd split his soul, and certainly not in Albania when his master had made him do terrible, dark things in order to hone his craft.

No, this anguish was unrivalled. It made his heart stop. It made him scream through the thunder and the blaring lightning shining down on him from the troubled overcast sky.

There was no place left for him in this world.

One last lightning bolt dashed through the sky and with that, Lord Voldemort knew what he had to do. He disapparated with a resounding crack and marked the storm above Spinner's End over.