Forgotten Things, Forgotten People
How can I go forward when I don't know which way I am facing?
— John Lennon
Millie Fontenot lived a half-life. She lived as a recluse, her head low, her mouth heavily shut, and her hands aching from early-onset arthritis that would flare up in English winters. She kept to herself, living quietly and easily forgotten.
It was easy. It was easy to be left alone, to smile at her neighbors who accepted that while the little cottage next to them was there, she certainly wasn't.
So it was easy to say that when Millie Fontenot died, no one really noticed. No one noticed her pass on a chilly November morning, her aching joints scrabbling for air—and oh please God, please don't let me go—and they certainly did not notice the way that the trees rattled, bare branches clattering together like bones in a graveyard.
She died alone, forgotten in death as she was in life.
"Up! I said up, you useless, miserable wretch!" A knobby hand seized the girl's wrist, a startled cry leaving her half-parted lips.
"I'm sorry Father! I'm sorry! I won't do it again!"
The man snarled, head whipping around to look at her. His thin lips were pulled back, revealing half-rotted crooked teeth. His grip was harsh and unyielding as he dragged her across the dirty floor, the girl—his daughter—pleading for him to let go.
"Look!" His hand left her wrist, instead fisting his spindly fingers into her stringy hair, yanking her up, ignoring the way she cried out in pain as he shoved her face against the half-cracked window.
"Look at your pest!" He spat, shoving her face further into the glass, her hands helplessly trying to push herself away from further smushing. "Dirty! Such pure and clean blood, daring to look at such filth!"
The girl cried, her sobs muffled as her father hissed down at her, his short, yet thin form seeming like a giant.
It was an ugly scene.
"Filth! A disgrace to the Most Noble and Most Ancient—"
"I'm sorry Father! I'm sorry! Please!" The girl cowered, her thin arms coming up to protect her head from her father's open hands. It did little but change his open hand hits into close fisted punches.
"School?! School?! Is that where you want to go!? Filled with the filthiest—" Spittle flew into her face, his fist slamming down into her thin shoulder.
"Just like her Father!" A voice crowed, sounding absolutely delighted at the events in front of him. "A disgusting little Squib! A shame on our House!"
"Shut your mouth, Morfin!" Her father swung his gaze to the other figure—Morfin, her brother—his mouth pulled back into its perpetual snarl. "You're no better! A stupid little retard; a stain upon my House!"
Morfin's face dropped into a scowl, his dark eyes dropping to his sister's.
Anger.
She shuffled, teeth chattering as she made her way to the building—the Church. It was warm, and the women dressed in dark robes were always friendly, offering to read her their Lord's word as she would quietly sip at the soup they would give her.
"Sister." She smiled, her cheeks burning in the frigid weather as they stretched into a close-lipped smile. Father had knocked out one of her top teeth in a fit of rage the night before.
The Sister smiled back—and wasn't that nice? The women in robes were sisters to all, and the man in white, the priest, was a father to all. A family to all—Bowing her covered head in a silent greeting as more people shuffled in.
She would sit in the back corner. One of the Sisters had quietly delegated her to the back with a few others dressed much like her, their small group with rag-tag clothing standing out among the clean and neat clothes of the rest who attended church.
The church was beautiful. Colored glass, candles burning softly, and Him, looking down so lovingly despite the pain quietly carved in his serene face. It was inspiring, with columns of carved stone reaching up to form a beautiful ceiling.
She followed His gaze, her eyes struggling to focus, but she knew. He always sat there, beautiful and untouchable.
Tom Riddle.
"Don't touch me!" She shrieked, her hands desperately batting away her brother's. They pawed and grabbed, grimy and dirty and—
"Pure, so pure," Morfin crooned, dark eyes alight as he gripped her jaw painfully. "All for me, all for Morfin Gaunt—"
"No!"
His palm met her cheek, silencing her cries.
"Read it for me," She urged, almost desperate. The Sister stared at her, perplexed as the woman shoved a half-torn page, yellowed with age and already eaten through at random across the page by rodents. "Please. I need to know."
Slowly, the Sister took it, her eyes curious as she looked over the odd ingredients, pale brows rising into her hairline after each one.
"What sort of thing…? Where did you find this child? A Love Potion? This is child's play, my dear—"
"Please." The girl begged, her hands clasped together. The Sister pursed her lips, blue eyes flickering to the girl next to her.
"Clean water, free of impurities, three Ashwinder eggs…"
"Don't you agree, Cecilia?"
She peered over the hedge, her odd eyes struggling to focus, hands clenching around the foliage almost excitedly.
"Of course, Tom."
The voices laughed, sounding every bit prim and proper—and oh! How Tom sounded just like a prince! So smooth, so velvety—
There.
Sharp, handsome features, dark haired and pale…And out of her reach.
The blonde woman tittered, shifting the horse she sat side-saddle upon to bump gently into Tom's own.
"I can't keep reading these things for you Merope," Edith sighed, folding a drab gray cloth over her forearm. The Sister turned away from Merope, her dark dress swishing with the movement as she put down the folded cloth. "I mean, it's all just preposterous nonsense! It would be better for you if you stopped messing with such nonsense and found sanction in the hands of the Lord. His word is right, you know. Right and wonderous."
Merope followed the Sister as she moved around the room, adjusting the candles and wiping off dust from table-nooks.
"Please, Sister Edith, I hav'ta know what they say. I can't read—Father wouldn't allow that."
Edith sighed again, slowly stopping in her ministrations. Sister Edith was the only one who truly seemed to not mind Merope's presence, the other Sisters were polite, but she wasn't so dumb to miss the frosty undertones they used when they spoke. When they saw her. Odd and ugly, belonging to the mad family that lived in a cottage that was little more than a shack.
"Fine." Edith sighed, turning around to face the other woman. And wasn't she a woman now? Merope was small and skinny, but she was rarely dishonest. If she claimed to be sixteen, then she was sixteen. Besides, it was Edith whom Merope came to when she had received her moonblood three years ago, all twitchy and nervous, scared to be given another label for strangeness when faced with the bleeding between her legs.
"But this will be the last thing I will ever read for you," Edith warned.
"Yes, yes!" Merope cried, joy lighting up on her ugly features, "Oh, thank you Edith, really, thank you."
"Because." She continued, silencing Merope's cheer with a stern look. "Because you will learn to read yourself."
"Oh." The woman across from her gave an anxious look, her thin lips disappearing into her mouth as she worried. "I-I don't think I can, Sister. I'm quite slow, you see—"
"Our Lord and Savior did not accomplish his divine works in a few moments," Edith interrupted, lifting a hand to silence the other woman. "Change takes time."
She cried, hands scrabbling for purchase among the thin branches of the hedge. The hand fisted in her lank hair was unrelenting however, pulling her back with a great yank, forcing her to stumble back with a cry.
"Looking at that filth again, eh?" Hot breath curled around her ear, her brother's leering face looking almost giddy as he bent down and around her to make eye-contact.
"M-Morfin." She greeted. Her voice trembled, body violently shaking. Morfin grinned at the sight, straightening up and kicking her down into the hard ground.
"Filthy little stain!" He hissed, his face contorting in rage as he continued to speak. "Always looking at that vermin! Always looking, always looking, always looking, a disappointment upon our pure and noble blood!"
Merope inched away from her brother, his muttering turning into a shriek as he fell into unhinged laughter. His strabismus eyes watered, shut tightly as he barreled down to laugh, arms clutching his middle.
It was a calm day.
"Auror Bob Ogden," The man greeted, his red robes bright against the dreary setting in front of their home. The man stood awkwardly, obviously uncomfortable as he toed one of Morfin's unfortunate serpentine victims, the bones crunching with the movement. "There was a notice of magic used on a Muggle—"
"Of course there was!" Morfin spat, stumbling towards the Auror, wagging a thin finger with vehemence. "Filth deserved it! Nasty, disgusting, odious—"
Auror Bob Ogden stared at her brother as if he was an interesting specimen, his eyes wide as Morfin continued on his tirade. Her brother's hands were clenching and unclenching, at one point even making strangling motions, sallow skin blotchy with rage as he worked himself up.
"I'm afraid I'll need to take you in, magic performed in-view and on a Muggle—"
"Filth! He should be honored to see magic from one such as I! A noble and pure descendant of Salazar Slytherin!" Morfin raved, his face curling into a sneer. "I will not be taken in by a has-been muggle-bitch."
Auror Ogden's face tightened, "Mister Gaunt—"
"Heir Gaunt! Heir Gaunt!" Morfin shrieked, "My blood is of the most ancient! Is of the most noble! Heir Morfin Gaunt, direct descendant of Lord Salazar Slytherin!"
"Heir Gaunt," Auror Ogden continued, "You will be taken in to stand trial for the usage of magic on a Muggle—"
"A filthy stain! Ruining my view! Breathing my air! Desecrating what is mine!"
Oddities were common in Millie Fontenot's life. The badgers near her home who liked to be pet and cuddled were odd. The pottering neighbor down the street was odd with his brightly colored
spectacles made from bottle-ends. The baubles Millie hung in her cottage's rafters were odd. Even at times the pastor at the church was odd.
Millie however, would have to put the oddest on waking up in an unfamiliar home with an unfamiliar body and an unfamiliar woman gently rousing her with an equally unfamiliar newborn swaddled in her arms. Everything was odd. Even her familiar-yet-unfamiliar mind that was reeling from just about everything, even the simple window panes on the room's north wall. Or what she supposed was north.
"G'morning Miss Merope." The woman greeted, gently swaying the newborn in her arms; and wasn't that an odd name that she was calling her? "Tom here was a bit fussy, so I supposed that I would bring him up ta' yous. He's calm now that he's around his Mum, eh?"
She blinked twice at the woman, her words not quite registering at the frankly alarming situation she found herself in. Quite frankly, she had no idea where she was or who she was supposed to be. Her mind was uncharacteristically blank with drawing quick conclusions to her situation, and she seemed to find herself speaking on autopilot.
"Oh, thank you," Millie reached out, almost staring at her outstretched arms in disbelief at the movement. Before she could snatch her arms back—Millie really didn't remember giving birth or adopting a child within the last twenty-four hours, and by looking at little Tom she could tell that the babe was just about that old—the woman placed baby Tom into her arms, his newborn blues unnaturally fixing on her face with a keenness that had to be imagined. She was sure she read a book somewhere saying that babies didn't fully develop sight until they were around three months old.
Tom.
Wasn't that such a normal name for the un-normal situation she seemed to be in?
It almost made her laugh at the absurdness. Here she was, twenty-seven and with a child that wasn't hers (but he felt like hers, he did, a rightness that stirred so deeply in her breast as she looked upon his squashed face), being called by a name that wasn't hers, and in a home that was definitely not hers.
Blinking once at little Tom, she turned her head to the woman who brought him in, "Where am I, exactly?"
The woman blinks, giving Millie a look as if she was most daft. It was a look she had received many-a-time before, especially on Sundays when Miss Adwell was up and about, the gossipy old woman more prone to looking judgingly down at someone from the length of her hawkish nose.
"Wool's Orphanage. You're in Lambeth, miss."
Millie hums, looking back down at baby Tom with a concertedly. She was quite a bit away from her home, but even further away from Merope's. A two hour drive wouldn't mean much, however.
No.
She pauses, her hand smoothing over the pink skin of the baby's, his baby blues solemnly staring back at her.
Of course.
There is nothing there. It is forgotten.
"-ope? Miss Merope?" The woman was waving a concerned hand across her vision, peering into her own eyes.
"Oh. I'm sorry. I just realized what quite a-ways from home I am," She gave the woman a strained smile.
"Mus' be with all that racket you kicked up last night," the woman replies, "Gave myself and half the children quite a fright, I say!"
Millie smiles, but it is strained and polite as the woman—the matron, she said that this building was an orphanage, not a home—prattles on, her stiff nurse's cap bobbing with the movement. Millie had thought that the style of uniform had gone out of style many years ago, but from the look of the matron's long dress that was incorrect.
Mayhaps she imagined the shorter length? No, that was silly, it was the style, no matter how uncomfortable she felt exposing her calves and ankles.
"May I have a glass of water?"
The matron pauses in her prattle, nodding once before bustling off, white skirts following behind her as the door to her room closes.
Millie leans back with a soft groan, the baby held in her arms gurgling at the movement as her back evens out. The room is small, the walls a pale gray, trimmed by white paint that had since gone yellow in age and wear. There is no bathroom, but there is a chamberpot in the corner that she suspects to be the bathroom.
The baby gurgles again, wiggling in his tight cocoon-like prison head threatening to flop back if she did not hold a careful hand to support him. He was a quiet baby thus far, which Millie thanked God that he was. Her experience with children was limited to just seeing them in passing, wordlessly shrieking as they ran down the street without a care in the world.
Maybe she should feel overwhelmed. She was in a place that was not hers, with a baby that was not hers, matched with a name that was positively not hers.
Except she didn't. She was Millie Fontenot, the quiet recluse who watched and waited rather than do anything. Biding herself time, observing the environment around her, it was how she lived twenty-seven years, raised with a pair of parents who did the same. Before they died at least.
Mum and Papa had passed away when she was fifteen. Merope (Yes?) would've been lucky if her only parent had passed away at fifteen.
The matron returns, the door creaking loudly as she places a glass of water on a rickety side-table. Her eyes are sharp, but are no less kind as she gives a once-over to Millie that makes her suddenly feel small.
"Where's that husband of your's?" The matron asks.
Millie's brows furrow, her eyes falling to the shining glint of gold on her knobby fingers. A small diamond rests in its center, simple and perhaps even sweetly picked for Merope. A handsome face floats in her mind, one that she has seen before but not with her own eyes.
"He's gone." She finds herself saying, the words sounding much sadder than how she truly felt. She did not know the husband of Merope, but her heart seems to ache at the thought of a noble jawline curving upwards to sharp cheekbones framed by perfectly coiled dark hair.
The rather ambiguous explanation most likely has the matron making her own story up in her head, evident by the way she seems to give Millie a pitying glance over her shoulder as she leaves the room. She does not mention that Merope's husband has left her to be pregnant and destitute, a victim of Merope. She was Merope now, in body at least, the mind of the woman to the body she found herself in was weak, shattered with whatever pieces left behind barely hanging on.
Her first steps are awkward and wrong in a way that has her finding a center of balance that is suddenly too low as she catches herself on the wobbly night-table. She is considerably shorter in a way that has her blinking until her eyes felt overly-moist, if that was even possible.
The matron—"Missus Cole, dear. I can tell you don't remember and it does little to help the way your eyes seem to roll after my every movement"—had dressed her in a loose cotton dress that had spilled over her knobby toes (Millie had no idea that toes could be knobby, but after a night of wiggling them and one came out from under the blanket, she was proven wrong), but Millie had tied one side of the skirt with the extra fabric so it wouldn't catch and drag.
Tom, the baby, her baby seems to watch with blue eyes that can't even properly make out anything other than blobs. He is a quiet baby, worryingly so to Millie who has no experience with children, let alone a babe. He cries only when he is hungry and when his diaper is soiled (that was an experience, and Mrs. Cole, the matron, was patient with her as she showed Millie time and time again how to change Tom).
Merope's breasts, (because yes, somehow she was in the body of another), were small, almost flat if not for motherhood which hadn't made them swollen with milk, but at least would fill the smallest bust size. Millie was small in her own body, but Merope was tiny, both in height and weight. Ribs were easily counted, and Millie, when she was laying in bed wondering how being tossed into someone else's body could even happen, would sometimes try to name the bones she could see shadowed under pale skin that didn't quite match her own shade. It helped clear her head some nights. Sometimes it didn't.
Gone was the milky cream of her own complexion, marred only by small acne scars from where she picked at the bumps too much as a young teemager. In place of those acne scars were actual ones, silvery and puckered on sallow skin. Each one told a story that Millie knew with startling clarity.
Her feet barely slid across the floor as she jerkily made her way to the water closet, always keeping her hand out to lean on the wall as she made her way through the quiet hallway. Missus Cole had promised to get some other workers to help her draw water for a bath that wasn't done with the bare minimum of a bucket of warm water as she scrubbed herself down with a worn towel-cloth.
Seeing herself in the mirror was a surprise, the figure and face not matching what she had known to inherently be herself since the day she was born.. It was cracked and dirty, but the sharper edges were rounded with balls of wax to keep curious children from cutting their fingers.
She traces the face in the mirror, Merope copying her movements as she leaned forward and inspected the face. There's a tight feeling in her chest as she observes who she is now.
Most girls held a sense of vanity, even those who pretend otherwise. Looking good was synonymous with worth in society, those less blessed with looks doing what they can to improve to the best form they could be.
But Merope, Merope was ugly.
Her eyes turned in two different directions, one barely focusing straight ahead, making Millie wonder how on earth she was able to see properly. Her skin was dull and sallow, her nose crooked and the tip pointing downwards to flat, thin lips. The only thing Merope seemed to have going for her was her hair, but it was lank and dull.
The first reaction was to cry, but all she could do is stare disbelievingly into the mirror at the person she now was. Gone was honeyed brown hair and her pale gray eyes she prized as her favorite trait. Of course, she knew there were differences, but seeing dark hair in her vision as she moved or a different skin tone was less jarring than knowing that she was now ugly.
Inhaling sharply, she turned away from the mirror, going about her business and heading back to the room with Tom, whom she had left on the bed sleeping peacefully in a way that only babies seemed to do.
Millie wouldn't be sleeping well, that was for sure.
"You've been here a week."
Millie blinked, turning away from her self-given duty of washing the dishes from supper. There were only ten orphans in the congregate care of Missus Cole and the two other women who helped run the home. Usually Lace, one of the caretakers handled the dishes, but Millie felt guilty in not helping around the home while obviously overstaying the days she was supposed to. There was just nowhere to go, the small flat shared with Tom, Merope's husband, was gone, the landlord kicking her out once her husband had left.
"You can't stay here any longer, Merope," Missus Cole said.
The sugar sand on her hands felt sticky as she continued washing, baking soda dissolving easily in the water as she scrubbed a pot clean. "I know. I just don't know where else I can go."
The matron gave her a look, one that Millie couldn't quite identify before sighing.
"There's a maternity home down in London—"
"My son is not illegitimate, Missus Cole." The words come out sharper than intended, and Millie finds herself in the back of her mind cursing to herself. There were moments where she would say or do things with some sort of indescribable whim that was uncharacteristic of herself.
An awkward silence falls between the two of them, the kitchen clock ticking absently on the wall. It was fifteen to eight, and Missus Cole was looking at her as if she was a specimen she could not yet decipher.
Millie couldn't blame her. There were days she felt less like Millie and more like someone else. Even then she could not figure out her own mind.
"I didn't say Tom was illegitimate." Missus Cole said cautiously, her eyes sharp.
"Maternity homes are meant for unwed mothers. If you are suggesting that my son is illegitimate or are trying to hint at me leaving him up for adoption, I would leave him here and be on my way." Millie replied evenly. But I won't.
A week into this strange, unfamiliar body. A week of being a mother to a child she had no recollection of birthing. She found herself highly maternal to Tom, and she supposed it was only normal. She fed him, clothed him, and cleaned him. It was only normal for these feelings and instincts to take over when she wanted nothing more than to curl up into her own mind and dissociate from the world that was decidedly strange.
Millie Fontenot was a woman from nineteen-sixty-two. Merope was a woman from forty years in the past that she was shoved into and forced to become by some unseen circumstance. She thought that when you died, your soul, mind, whatever, went forward as that was what time did. Go forward. The closest thing she had even attributed to "time-travel" was rewinding a film or tape to rewatch again.
"Most women's homes won't take you in Merope, you have a child. Dear, no matter what you say, they will assume the baby is from wedlock."
Perhaps she would've felt flattered at the concern the woman was displaying. Mary Cole was not a sentimental woman, but she was caring in her own way, Millie had learned. Religion usually brought either the best or worst in people, but Mary Cole was a dedicated Christian to helping those of lesser circumstances, Millie/Merope included.
Straightening her shoulders, she turned to the matron with the best stern look she could muster, thin lips pursed. "Then we should find a home that does, Mary. You can throw myself and my son out, but it is the dead of winter and I am sure the Lord will not look down on you too kindly."
She turned back to the dishes, scrubbing at the pot with a renewed vigor. Missus Cole's eyes bore into her side for a few moments before the clicking of her boot-heels followed her out of the kitchens.
Her hands were red as she cooed over Tom that night, raw hands careful as she wrapped him into a swaddle that was just right, the faded patterns of blue birds dancing across the soft blanket.
"I don't know where I am, Tom." She murmured, tracing over his squashed nose. It would properly take shape as he got older, but the flatness held by her son (because he was hers, she nursed him, cared for him, and had grown to love him as her own as the days turned into nights and the world kept turning), was endearing in a way that the old her would've found weird. "But I have you, right?"
And the lingering fear of time would make itself known at times. The second World War hadn't yet happened, and from what she could tell, the Great Slump hadn't either. It made her nervous, drawing up what she could remember from her own parent's time, from the time her grandparents had lived and suffered through as adults raising their own.
Millie was already struggling; not only with herself but with the world around her. There were nights she would listlessly stare at the dark ceiling, tracing the outline of the water stain above as she fought the urge to cry. There was no reason to cry, she wasn't hurt, she was healthy, and she was alive. Alive with a child that wasn't hers (Tom is yours, he is yours just as he is mine), in a body that wasn't hers, and memories that weren't hers.
Frankenstein's monster was real, and it was her. Fact, opinion, it didn't matter other than it was the only thought that seemed to run nonstop in her mind as she tried to dissociate and forget that she was in the body of an ugly woman with equally ugly memories.
Its been awhile since I dabbled back into Harry Potter. I know Shrewdness & Wit needs to be updated, but honestly, after looking it over...its so ugly. Hence its TBR status.
As usual with my SI/OCs, they tend to share my personality, not my looks/heritage. Millie may seem more introspective or even craven at times because, well, I am. Reading stories where the protagonist tends to be more 'Gryffindorish' in nature always has my Slytherin sensibilities ruffled. Keep your head down and adapt!
Updates for this will be at random, because unlike Stolen Regrets, the chapters will be longer and possess my actual writing style, not the testing abomination that is SR. Also, unlike SR, which I have written up to the twentieth chapter, Merope doesn't even have the second chapter brainstormed. I'm running on one leg with this.
I don't tend to ask this, but please review! I love reading what everyone has to say to this and I am thoroughly enjoying Millie/Merope. There aren't enough stories with a parental figure to Tom, and when there is, they are my guilty pleasure, just like SI/OCs.
As always, stay safe!
M.B. Westover