The International Wizarding School Competition
School: Durmstrang
Theme: Let Bygones be Bygones - Write about a character forgiving someone who wronged them.
Special Rule: Story from the point of view of a Pureblood
Mandatory Prompt: (emotion) boredom
Additional Prompt: (action) babbling
Year: 7
Word Count: 2,073
Warning for mentions of canon character death, and also a slight bit out of character too. This is also my first time writing for Marvolo Riddle as the main character. So please let me know what you think. I would like to take this time to thank everyone who beta read this story for me. It truly means a lot that you would take the time to help me out like this. So, thank you all very much and I hope you all enjoy Waiting for Forgiveness.
The afterlife is a very boring place. People talk about fire and brimstone being a part of hell, and pearly gates being a part of heaven. But they never mention the long periods of endless waiting that you have to endure.
In order to escape the mind-numbing waiting, we, the penitent, are allowed to watch the lives of those that we left behind. I wish that they would allow us something else. I really do. Because what I see is one of the saddest things ever.
My son, Morfin, my pride and joy, the one person who is to continue on the Gaunt name, has gone to a Muggle in order to have my remains buried. Couldn't he have gone to a wizarding funeral parlor and have one of our kind take care of my remains? At least I can say that the Muggle did a good job of making my complexion more normal than the curdled-milk look I had when my son had found me.
I wish I could have continued watching my son. The only child that I could still depend upon to do what is right regarding keeping the blood pure. But it wasn't to be. The powers that be,, whoever they are, seem to know who I want to see and who I don't. And they always pick the latter.
And yet, today is different. Today gives me a spark of hope that maybe I was wrong about my daughter. My Merope, who looks much like my wife, is standing over what looks like a pot and is stirring something. I'm about to turn away when I notice the book that stands open next to the pot. It's a Potions Book. Moste Potente Potions, to be precise.
"I hope this works," she whispers, crushing up one ingredient and slowly adding it to the mix. She doesn't sound confident about what she is doing, but her actions make up for how she sounds. Her hand is confident at the stirrer. Her knife is almost a blur as she chops and dices ingredients.
I'm shocked at what I see. . The daughter I so long thought to be a squib could actually do magic all along.
"Is dinner ready yet, dear?" calls the voice of the man who ruined my sweet girl. I don't remember how long it has been since I'd thought of my daughter as my girl. It was probably so long that she probably wouldn't remember it either. I feel the first pang of sorrow strike me like the heart attack that took my life. Or at least that is what I've been told when I've arrived in the afterlife.
"Almost, Tom," she calls back. She puts the finishing touches on the pot that is bubbling away on the burner next to the one with the potion in it.
I recognize the bubbling substance right away as a stew that Merope used to make all the time when we were a family. Or what I called a family. I don't think that we ever truly acted as a true family did since after my wife had died.
"Is that stew I smell cooking?" the cursed Tom asks, stepping into the kitchen. He sees the potion in the other pot and I can see the panicked look on my daughter's face. The first sign that something isn't right in this marriage of hers. "What's that?"
"I'm trying out a recipe for a drink I got from one of the neighbors," she says, smiling to cover her panic. Which works in regards to Tom but I can still see the look of panic on her face.
It is not too long after this that I learn how unfair the afterlife can be to a person. The scene fades to black with Merope pouring a glass of the potion for Tom and making it look like she has poured one for herself, too. I wish that I could see more of this scene, but another quickly takes its place. One that makes me wish that I had been nicer to my daughter in life.
I am once more looking at the nice fancy house that Tom Riddle has moved my daughter into. I can tell, however, that my daughter must be a really good potioneer. There is no saccharine look of love on Tom Riddle's face. But her potion must not have worked this time. There is a look of pure disgust and loathing as he towers over my daughter.
"What do you mean by this?" he asks, pointing towards the book that she'd laid on the table next to his arm. He picks it up, looking as though he is holding a dead slug and not a book.
"I am trying to tell you that I am a witch, Tom," she says, taking it from him and opening to the page where there was the love potion recipe that she'd used to ensnare him. "I want to be honest about everything. So that there is nothing that can come between us when the baby arrives."
"What would come between us?" Tom asks confusedly. "Besides the fact that you lied to me for so long?"
"This," she says, pointing to the potion. "I've been slipping you love potion ever since slightly before we married. So, that you would get to know me and love me the way I love you."
"Everything we have is a lie," he shouts, jumping to his feet fast enough to knock the chair he'd been sitting in over. " So you've been lying to me since we've been married. Is that what you're telling me, Merope?"
"I...I…."
I know that look on her face now. I've seen that look before plenty of times. I've been the cause of that look on her face plenty of times and it makes me wish that they would make this scene disappear as fast as they did the scene of her making the potion. But they don't. It's almost like they're taunting me with my crimes against my daughter in the form of someone else doing them.
The scene changes with the sound of a loud crack of skin on skin and the clattering of items being knocked off a table as someone hits it. I don't know who that someone is but I'm pretty sure now that if they want me to hear it, it has to have been my daughter being hit by her husband.
The new scene is more blurry and I'm confused because it looks like I'm seeing the world from someone else point of view. But I can't tell who it is.
"Are you alright, honey?" a woman asks, moving down a set of steps towards the person whose ending I am watching.
"My child," a voice says, and I recognize it immediately as the voice of my daughter. It's tight with pain and I know that she's about to have her child soon. "My child is coming. I need somewhere to….."
A loud scream escapes her mouth as she falls to the ground at the bottom of the steps.
The woman calls into the open door for someone to come and help them before running down the steps. I can't help but think that I might have been wrong about Muggles all along. This woman doesn't even know my daughter, and she is racing to help her and her unborn child.I watch unable to pull my eyes away as the world grows fuzzier and fuzzier to my daughter's eyes. She won't make it through this and all I want to do is make sure she knows she isn't alone. That her father is watching her and - Merlin help me - praying to the Muggle God for her soul and that of the child. It isn't long until the shrill cry of the child is heard and the babe is handed over to my daughter's arms. Her arms tremble as she holds the child close. Her eyelids are growing heavy and her eyelashes are fluttering and her sight seems to be dimming as the light around her grows brighter.
"You have a healthy baby boy, Miss," the woman says, jerking my daughter's eyes open once more as she stares lovingly down at her son. "What do you want to name him?"
"Tom Marvolo Riddle," she says, then she speaks no more.
I watch detachedly as they take the baby from the arms of his mother. The child cries and cries and cries. He must know that he'll never see the warm, loving face of his mother ever again.
I can feel my eyes blur as the tears that I don't remember forming fall silently down my face. I have been a terrible father. I haven't looked at my daughter, warmly or with love in a long time.. I was mentally and psychically abusive to her. I had run her ragged and made her feel like a nub of a person. And the sad thing was that I figured this out too late to do anything about it. There would be no making it up to her. She is a good person. She would go to Muggle heaven. I certainly haven't been and I know where I'm heading once this waiting period is over. I am heading to the place of fire and brimstone and I have only myself to blame for that.
"Father?" a familiar questioning voice asks from behind me. "Are you alright?"
I don't want to turn around to see her looking at me with that caring face that she'd shown upon the undeserving Tom Riddle. I didn't deserve that much concern. I didn't even deserve to have her ask after my welfare. But I can't help but turn around. It's as though some other force inside my whatever I have here is making me turn.
And I see her. She is standing like the proud woman she is or was. I'm not sure how to describe people in this place. She doesn't look like the daughter that I treated so horribly. She's much more beautiful in this place. Her hair which once upon a time had been lank and dull now shone with a bright fullness. A dark shade of chestnut that was much like her mother's. Her dark grey eyes that should be glaring at me like raging storms only show concern. She drew closer to me and for a moment I think she might strike me. The sad part is that I wish she would. She deserves to strike me. She deserves to cast me out of this place of waiting and into the torment that is waiting for me.
"Father?" she asks again, concern coloring her voice even more.
"Merope," I hear my own voice croak out. It's been so long since I've had anyone to talk to but myself.
"They want me to condemn you to fire, father," she said, studying me sadly. "But I can't. Whatever you've done and all the ways you've treated me, you're still my father. And I've never stopped loving you. I forgive you for all the things that you had done to me during your lifetime. I have asked the ones in charge to forgive you as well."
"But I don't deserve your forgiveness let alone anyone else's," I say, tears flowing down my face as she pulls me into the first warm embrace I've had in this new world. In this afterlife. "I...I…"
"You don't have to say it, Father," she says, wiping her own eyes as she pulls away and holds out her hand for me to take. "I already know. Shall we go home now?"
I look from my daughter's smiling face to her outstretched hand and then back again. I am being forgiven just like that. With no better reason than my daughter is a better person than I am. How did that something so pure come from something so rotten as me?
"So I'm forgiven, just like that?" I ask, watching to make sure that this is no joke that is being played on me.
"Yes," she says, smiling her hand still outstretched to me. "Just like that."
I take her hand and together we leave this world of waiting and boredom for a new one. Full of hope and possibility. Perhaps I will be able to prove that I actually am worth her forgiveness after all.
I hope that you all enjoyed Waiting for Forgiveness as much as I enjoyed writing it.