Tom Riddle Senior watched the strange girl shift uncomfortably, studying her amusedly as her face pulled into an expression of mingled horror and shock. The girl who claimed she was raising the son he had never wanted, at least never wanted with the person that had brought the boy into the world. He'd had a fiancée once after all.

It still turned his stomach when he thought about how Merope had forced his emotions to twist into the strange kind of infatuation that led to his disgrace. His torture. He never wanted to experience it again. He rubbed the handle of the girl's wand slowly with his thumb. He had never wanted to see one of those again either. Retribution. He would force this girl to marry him just as he had been forced into marriage. Let his son's surrogate mother experience what the child's biological mother had forced him into.

"You think this is retribution, but it only makes you worse than her. Worse than Merope," the girl—Zia—said quietly. Tom's hand clenched the wand tighter at the mention of the woman's name out loud.

"How so?" he asked, holding back his anger under a façade of calm.

"She did it because she thought she loved you. All she wanted was love. You saw her family; you made that clear when you exposed my lie. Did you watch the way they treated her? All she wanted was to be free and to be loved by somebody that she really cared for. She...what she did was wrong. There's no arguing that. And the pain and the suffering you experienced because of it should never have happened," Zia looked down at her shoes. He watched her face carefully in the next few moments. She looked pained. Then her face set into a determined expression, she took a deep breath, and looked up directly into his eyes. "But...but you, you have no reason for this other than to hurt someone else. You don't even know what happened to her, you never bothered to see if she was lying or not about being pregnant." Tom frowned. The way this girl spoke to him, it was like a parent reprimanding a misbehaving child. He didn't like that what she was saying made sense.

"Well then, enlighten me. What happened to that woman?"

"After you left, she gave up magic. I don't think she wanted to be reminded of one more thing that you despised in her. She gave up her will to live, sold all her possessions that may have had even a slight value, and barely kept herself alive long enough to have your son. Her dying words, I know them because of what the head of the orphanage he was in told me, were that she hoped he looked like you," Zia's gaze continued to sink into his eyes, and Tom felt uncomfortable under the penetrating gaze she turned onto him. It felt like the girl was seeing through him into his soul, and the slight turn down at the corners of her mouth showed him that she didn't like what she saw there. "She got her dying wish. He does look like you."

"How do I know you aren't lying to me?" he asked her, grasping for something that would ease the uneasy guilt he felt. He knew though, that the girl wasn't lying. Her eyes reflected nothing but truth as she gazed into his. "You've lied about your relation to my son."

"I did lie about that. The orphanage wouldn't let me have him unless I was family because I'm not married. They didn't know his mother, they didn't know where she came from, but he had your name. I told them I was her sister. She was more untraceable." The explanation the girl gave did nothing to ease his guilt, simply increased it. Her dishonesty was more valid than he had wanted it to be. He had wanted her response to make him hate her. To make it easy for him to hurt her.

"Why? Why do all this for a child you weren't related to?" This question made the girl look back down at the ground, and her reply came slowly and so quietly he had to lean forward to hear it.

"I don't want him to have the future he would have had if he did not have someone to love him. I don't want him to become a monster. I love him as if he was my own son, and I will do anything to protect him from that fate." The answer fascinated Tom.

"What do you mean by monster? And how could you know?"

"You don't need to know the answers to either question," the girl said, face still turned to her feet. Tom turned this over in his head, turned the conversation over in his head, trying to find something in it that he could hate her for, something to fuel his anger, something to justify his actions. He was unable to find anything but guilt and disgust with himself. The girl was simply a good person. He realized that even her magic wasn't reason enough to force her to suffer. She was not a substitute for the woman who had ruined his life.

"Why did you come here?" He asked her, now curious as to why she would bother to find him if she knew his past and the story behind his son. He was dissatisfied with her previous answer.

"I told you. Tom thinks about his father. He sees the other children who have their fathers and he wonders about his own, and why he doesn't have one with him. It hurts me to watch him wonder like that, so I wanted to meet you to see what you were like." Tom understood, but sensed that there had been another reason.

"What other reasons did you have?" She looked up at him, and he saw that her mouth was set determinedly. Her eyes flashed.

"I wanted to know if he was missing something by not knowing you. If I was making a mistake."

"What did you decide?" He wondered if he truly wanted to hear what she said next.

"It's better for him not to. Your attitude, the way you treat other people, no child should be raised looking up to someone like you. The people in the town, none of them like you or your family. Proud, selfish, condescending, all of you. You are not the kind of man my child deserves in a father," she said steadily, even though he saw her eyes dart to her wand. She was brave enough to tell him the truth, but he knew that she was also worried that his reaction would harm her. Or more likely, he thought to himself, his son.

"You hate me, don't you, Zia Gaunt." He spoke the words slowly, making the sentence a statement instead of a question. She was silent for an almost unbearably long time before she spoke.

"I could hate you. It would be easy. But mostly I feel...disappointment. Pity. A little relief."

"Relief?"

"I know I am doing a better job than you would have." He did it before he could think.

Zia watched as in one move Tom Riddle Senior stood, turned her wand, and held it out to her, waiting patiently for her to take it. She stared at him hesitantly, wondering if this was some kind of trap, but his eyes were fixed on the ground, so she couldn't read him. She reached out tentatively, then when she saw that he wouldn't pull away, snatched it out of his hand.

"Do what you want." He told her.

"What?" she said, confused.

"Wipe my memories, or leave me the way I am, do whatever you want. Whatever you think is right." Zia stood there staring at him. He looked up into her eyes. "I won't harm you, or my son. You have that promise." Her mouth fell open slightly, and his lips turned up at the corners, showing slight amusement at the expression he saw on her face. It wasn't the same cruel kind of smile as before, and she wondered who exactly Merope had fallen in love with. "If you leave me the way I am, though, I have one request."

"What request is that?" Zia was apprehensive, wondering what it could be this time.

"Come visit me again. Check my progress. I will be a better man. But like I said, do what you think is right." She hesitated, and looked him in the eye. Honesty and sincerity. She turned around and walked to the door of the little room, opened it, and walked down the hallway to the front door. He followed her, pulling the door open before she could.

"I'll be around," she said easily, and left the Riddle House.