A/N: Just because I forgot to let everyone know something about my story, I am putting it here. Dreams look like that, and thoughts or flashbacks are encased in ' '. The only ones in this chapter are for Tom, but others will have theirs in later chapters.
Tom rushed over to the man on the floor to check to see if he were dead or alive, and found that he was the latter. He had already known that she would never kill anyone, she was too good and pure for that kind of thing, the most she could do was knock him unconscious for a long time and when he woke, he would have a headache that felt like someone was chopping wood inside of his head.
"You swore that you would put a stop to this kind of shit!" He turned around just in time to catch the blur of Aurora as she sped out of that room with the girl in her arms. Tom rushed out of the room just in time to catch a bright light in the eyes, and then the young girl was gone and Aurora was breaking down doors left and right.
In just about every room she pulled out some cowering and quivering young girl and apperated them back to their families with an altered memory so they wouldn't be bale to remember the horrible things that had happened to them. And this usually docile and calm creature became a wild, infuriated monster, damn near killing the Death Eaters that occupied the rooms, and any others who tried to stop her.
By the time she finished clearing out the dungeons, she had passed out from a combination of fatigue, an over use of her powers, and pure red rage. Tom rushed over to her side, forgetting about everyone else, and carried her off to their rooms so she could recover from the ordeal.
'I didn't have enough time to tell her who I was, or that her "love" wasn't the one who had saved what was left of her life. The moment that she forced that little bit out of me, she passed out in my arms.
The poor thing slept for weeks on end, not once had she woken up, or even so much as stirred in her sleep. During that time, I either spent it by her side, tended to her wounds, or visited Lucius in his new room and beat him within an inch of his life, but always with a charm on him that made him heal completely after that night so I could do it to him again when I would find a new cluster of bruises on her body.
I never could figure out what possessed me to do these things; rescuing her, taking care of her, and beating my left hand man for doing something that I had taught him to do years ago. At first I had simply chucked it up to the fact that he had a "special captive" without respect enough to inform me of her presence, but he has had plenty of women and men whom he has held captive like that, in one way or another, and not told me about, and I have never punished him like this for that. so what could it be?
After a month of this routine, I had come to realize that just being near her made me think and fell things that I had never felt about anyone. But that still didn't explain why I had saved her from the dungeons.
Her scream! That night, when I heard her scream, I not only heard it, I felt it as well. The sheer shock of it, and the fear that it had caused within me; pure fear. The same kind of fear that I had instilled in others so many times.
About a week later she began to come to, never much, just long enough to get something to eat or drink, and she never did go back to that unconscious state. She managed to remain in only a very deep sleep, so she dreamt and stirred at night now, reliving all of those horrible things that that monster had done to her. And because she was no longer unconscious, she felt the pain in her body from the parts that were healing, so I had to begin to give her pain suppressant potions so she could at least be more comfortable as she lay there al day and night.
When her dreams started, I connected Lucius' mind to her's and made him live through the painful dreams and memories from her point of view. Just another torture I believed fitting for this situation.'
Aurora woke to find Tom hovering over her bedside with a worried look on his face.
"Go away," she said weakly as she turned away from him.
Tom crawled into the bed and put his arms around her waist I an attempt to reassure her. "Aurora, please don't ask me to leave here alone? you know that I can't bear the thought of you being unhappy either with me or anyone. Please allow me to make it up to you?"
"I said go away!" She pulled his arms off of her and moved farther away from him.
Tom became infuriated and forcefully turned her to face him, "You don't tell me what to do in my own home, my room, my bed! No one tells me what to do, NO ONE!"
Aurora did the only thing that she could think to do at that time. She was frightened by his sudden outburst of anger towards her, his first angry words at her. When she became frightened or angry, she did everything possible to get rid of the thing or person which caused those feelings.
Tom could see the frightened look in her eyes, but before he could calm down enough to apologize to her and comfort her, he saw a bright white light and then the door to their bedroom being closed by some unknown person, and then the sound of a magical lock clicking and her sobs played in his ears for the rest of the night.
'I have never raised my voice or temper towards her, not even in the beginning, when she truly tried my patients.
After she finally began to be awake more often than she was asleep, she began to cower away from me, and continuously asked me who I was and where "he" was. She was still so fragile from everything Lucius had done to her, that she couldn't accept her new surroundings first thing in the morning. I would have to break her a little bit every morning when I would have to tell her who I was and that "he" had never saved her.
Slowly she began to take in everything around her, and she even quit asking me who I was and began to call me by my name first thing in the morning when I would come to visit her, in what was now her room.
I never told her who I really was. It just seemed correct to tell her my name from school. As far as she was concerned, I was Tom Riddle, and I had a legion of followers at my beck and call, but they were never allowed near her. It wasn't like I was ashamed of who I was, but I didn't think she would be able to handle being in a room with Lord Voldemort, after being tortured and tormented by one of his followers.
After another couple of weeks she was completely healed form her bruises, but she was still mentally and emotionally damaged, plus she was now going to have to learn to walk all over again.
It was amazing how fast I had changed from being a truly evil wizard, hell bent on ridding the world of all muggles and muggleborns, to caretaker and all around mediwizard to this young, fragile thing that Lucius obviously had here for a reason.
After we started working together on her walking I didn't have the time I would have liked to torment Lucius, so I decided that it was time that I allowed him out of the dungeons. He returned to his duties, but he had a much tighter leash on his privileges. Lucius was no longer allowed to do whatever he wanted, and he was no longer allowed to have "special captives", plus he was restricted from Aurora's room and I ordered him and my Death Eaters to stay out of any area she might venture to when she could walk around freely again.
At first we would work on it only in the morning when she would have the most strength. Eventually as her bodily strength progressed, so did her spirit and resolve, so we would work throughout the afternoon. But we would have an evening break so she would have the strength to start again the next morning.
One day I came into her room with breakfast as always and sat it across the room so she could have her warm-up, but she was in so much pain that she couldn't get out of bed that day. She swore that all she wanted to do that day was to just stay in bed and rest. So I allowed her to do what she wanted while I spent the day catching up on the things that I had allowed to slip. I promised her that I'd have dinner with her that evening, but I wouldn't be able to see her again that day until then. She was out cold by the time that I finished my short speech.
I spent the rest of that long, boring day around my men and in the dungeons supervising some interrogations, but nothing helped the boredom. When there was no one around, my thoughts would drift to that beautiful blonde goddess laying asleep in my old bed.
I left earlier than I had originally planned to that night and decided to surprise Aurora by taking her out of the rooms and up to the starlight tower for dinner that night. However, when I got to her room that night, I got a surprise of my own…'
Tom had just fallen asleep outside of the door to Aurora's room when he came crashing to the ground.
"Good morning," Aurora said as sarcastically as she could as she came down to his level on the ground.
"I am so sorry that I went off on you like that last night. Can you ever forgive me?"
Aurora looked down at him and tried to get passed what she had found the night before in the dungeons. "I can't promise anything, but I'll try."
"What do you mean, you can't promise anything?"
"Well, if you can't keep your promises to me, then how can possibly expect me to be able to keep any promises that I make to you?"
Tom gave her a blank stare, silently asking, "What promise did I break to you?"
"Before I under went the memory wipe, I made you promise to stop all of this things that had happened in the dungeons, especially the rape and brutality by your Death Eaters. Do you remember now?"
"Yes. But how do you?" He was completely confused.
"And you swore to me that even if I didn't remember the promise, that you would still keep it."
Aurora was looking intently into his eyes, waiting for him to respond in some way to what she had just said, but Tom was completely dumfounded. She helped him onto his feet and led him over to their bed so he could spend the rest of the nigh laying next to her.
Once she finally got him to lay down and get comfortable, she laid down on his chest and fell back to sleep.
'How could she possibly have remembered that promise?'