A/n: Dedicated to Rhoddlet and Marvolo. Here's a visual for you to
associate this story with -- http://www.rosaryworkshop.com/MUSEUM-DB-
2heartBox.jpg
The floors of his Orphanage were cold, almost as frozen and heartless as those at Hogwarts. Tom would sit, his feet curled under him, and recite his Hail Mary's like the matron taught him. He would pinch his fingers so tight around each jade turquoise heart of his rosary, the one the priest brought in a bag of rejects to the boys, that the skin under his nails would turn white from the effort.
The priest was mistaken to give away the beads that Tom found when he pushed his eager hand into the bag and pulled out the small brass box. It wasn't until years later, about the same time he discovered the irony of a Catholic wizard, that Tom realized that his beads were blessed by the Pope himself.
Summer holidays meant back to the matron and Sunday mass, and when he was 14 the priest returned frantic, begging the boys to find his blue rosary that he lost the year before. Tom held his hand to his chest and smiled at the man's story of the Agnes Dei and its blessings, and the paschal candle of 1927 that meant so much to the priest because it was the year he was ordained. At that moment, Tom knew vowed he would never take it off, if only to spite the sniveling man.
He kept his promise best he could, and the priest was dead long before the rosary left him. Tom wore it around his neck for the better part of his life, until he was no longer Tom. That symbol of virgin flesh pressed flush against his collar bone. Christ himself, dangling at his very whim, in the hollow of his throat. He wore it inside the diary, hidden by layers of white cotton and blended silk. The blue stitching coming loose after so many years, just frayed around the tip of the heart and below the marking of the lamb.
As Ginny fell at Salazar's feet, he bent down and touched it to her forehead. She would be protected, and she would be sacrificed. With her blood he would mark the passageways to salvation, at his hands.
When Harry Potter plunged the venomous fang into his heart, and as he died as much as a memory can die, the ink washed over his beads and stained the Agnes Dei a bluish grey.
The floors of his Orphanage were cold, almost as frozen and heartless as those at Hogwarts. Tom would sit, his feet curled under him, and recite his Hail Mary's like the matron taught him. He would pinch his fingers so tight around each jade turquoise heart of his rosary, the one the priest brought in a bag of rejects to the boys, that the skin under his nails would turn white from the effort.
The priest was mistaken to give away the beads that Tom found when he pushed his eager hand into the bag and pulled out the small brass box. It wasn't until years later, about the same time he discovered the irony of a Catholic wizard, that Tom realized that his beads were blessed by the Pope himself.
Summer holidays meant back to the matron and Sunday mass, and when he was 14 the priest returned frantic, begging the boys to find his blue rosary that he lost the year before. Tom held his hand to his chest and smiled at the man's story of the Agnes Dei and its blessings, and the paschal candle of 1927 that meant so much to the priest because it was the year he was ordained. At that moment, Tom knew vowed he would never take it off, if only to spite the sniveling man.
He kept his promise best he could, and the priest was dead long before the rosary left him. Tom wore it around his neck for the better part of his life, until he was no longer Tom. That symbol of virgin flesh pressed flush against his collar bone. Christ himself, dangling at his very whim, in the hollow of his throat. He wore it inside the diary, hidden by layers of white cotton and blended silk. The blue stitching coming loose after so many years, just frayed around the tip of the heart and below the marking of the lamb.
As Ginny fell at Salazar's feet, he bent down and touched it to her forehead. She would be protected, and she would be sacrificed. With her blood he would mark the passageways to salvation, at his hands.
When Harry Potter plunged the venomous fang into his heart, and as he died as much as a memory can die, the ink washed over his beads and stained the Agnes Dei a bluish grey.