Chapter 31 - Tom Marvolo Riddle


Lizzie felt suspended in density, she opened her eyes to the murky depths of the black lake and felt the pressure build in her chest. There was a bit of light at the surface, and she pushed herself upwards until she broke air and gasped desperately for breath. She sputtered and waded at the center of the lake, it took a great deal of effort to keep herself afloat and come to terms with returning to this side of life. The painful side. She felt the pain rush through her bones immediately.

She looked to the edge of shore nearest the castle and struggled to swim across the lake. Her arms were weak by the time she washed up on the shore, and she felt limp as wet lettuce. She didn't have a wand, her clothes were soaked through to the bone, and she tried her best to ring herself dry, but ultimately discarded a top layer of damp clothes to rid herself the weight despite shivering uncontrollably from the early morning cold.

She saw nothing when she closed her eyes. There was no connection to Voldemort that she could tap into. Her scar was no longer searing in pain as it had all night. She stood up and tried to transform into the great snake but only managed the doe, again and again, it was just the doe. Lizzie reunited with her body and laughed a quiet but maniacal sort of laugh. Pure relief. But her head, something was different, things she could not recall. If she closed one eye, the other was nearly blind. If she covered one ear, she heard nearly nothing from the other. Her left hand didn't move the same. Her mouth twitched and almost the entire left body felt weak, like there was too little blood flow. She could still walk and move mostly normal, but the feeling was disorienting, and everything seemed to take more effort. She stopped suddenly at the sight of a thestral coming toward the water's edge. Its eyes did not appear white, but golden in the reflection from the early morning sun coming over the horizon and reflecting off the surface of the lake. The creature approached passively, and she met it in the middle where it brushed her face and gave her a sense of inexplicable calm. She'd not only just experienced death, she'd accepted it, welcomed it, but told it she'd return when the job was done. She didn't fear it in the slightest but looked forward with immeasurable anticipation for the day she could sit next to her mother on that train car and fall into her arms again.

The chill from the dementors grew colder and Lizzie became anxious without a wand. The thestral knelt for her to mount and she climbed on eagerly. It took off straight into the air and glided over the trees stealthily in the early morning light.

Lizzie circled the castle from the perch. By the time she reached the bridge, the long line of death eaters was still grouped at far end of the courtyard. Voldemort was near a small fire at its center. She descended over the bridge and the thestral landed in the courtyard. Lizzie saw the hanging figure, and everything made sense when she got close enough to see who it was.


Voldemort narrowed his eyes in shock and horror when Lizzie slid off from atop the creature. She stood there for a moment, taking in Neville who had evidently just been set on fire and all the faces that looked flushed white at the sight of a ghost they'd just witnessed the death of. She helped Neville up and into McGonagall's supportive arms. He was scathed but mostly unharmed which answered her burning question of what the sacrifice meant for the fate of everyone there.

She looked up at the hanging young woman and saw herself. Lizzie clenched her jaw and moved forward, while others backed away in shock at the impossibility of her both standing there and hanging above them. Her hair hung in wet strands and made her shiver. More than a handful of the death eaters apparated immediately, but a few dozen stayed with their wands drawn in defense of their master. She caught Draco's eyes which glassed over with apprehension. His wand was drawn like his father's, but the way he held it was a gesture, not a pose. Lizzie made a snatching motion with her fist and clutched the familiar weapon that had treated her well since she began using it after the manor. Draco stepped backward, disarmed, but gave a subtle nod with his eyes. This clarified something about the wand for Lizzie as well.

Lizzie locked a stare with Voldemort who gazed disbelievingly back at her. She knew he wouldn't kill her with her back turned because every person standing there was burning for an answer to something so completely impossible.

She didn't look at her friends, she only looked at Riddle, gripping the wand tight with resolve to end everything.

"Confused?" Lizzie asked with a rasp in her extremely tired voice. Voldemort stared with a shocked expression at the girl standing in front of him knowing she had not simply woken up and jumped down from where she hung behind him.

Onlookers were completely speechless. Hermione looked to be in a feverish thought process trying to grapple with what kind of magic was playing out in front of them. Ron looked between Lizzie and the dangling body with some sense of dawning recognition. Charlie was frozen in place, eyes stinging in anticipation at what would be unfolding, still shaking from the shock of her falling limp in front of him, instead of him.

Lizzie pointed to the body with Draco's wand. "Well. Azaleas are never a single bloom are they? There's always more than one on a stem." He narrowed his eyes at her, still speechless.

"That's you, Riddle," she said simply. He stared back incredulously like it was the most absurd thing he'd ever heard. "If I'm not mistaken, I believe I conjured that as a child in a desperate attempt to get away from the piece of you that you left behind in me fifteen years ago." She watched his snake-slit eyes flick in a well-masked sort of comprehension.

"But you know all about tucking away peices of yourself in other things, don't you?" She asked ominously. He frowned with seething anger. "That's why we both came here tonight. That's the last one. I'm the last one... well... was," she continued. He opened his mouth as though to roar in fury but collected himself and clenched fists in frustration.

"I killed you, you threw yourself in front of the spell, not one of - those," he hissed. Lizzie smirked weakly.

"I had every intention to die. That was me. But that was in my skin and you got rid of it. I really should thank you," she responded evenly as his face boiled under the surface with rage.

"How are you standing? You ought to be writhing in pain, Azalea," he hissed, referring to the ophidians. Lizzie smiled weakly at the ground and then looked back up at him with a peircing stare.

"Thirteenth use of dragons blood," Lizzie said.

"Well done, please, give the girl a round of applause," he hissed sarcastically. Lizzie smirked. There was no applause.

"Trying to get in, Riddle," she said, pointing to her temple with every confidence she'd be able to block him. "When that died, so did our connection. For the same reason the obscurus confused you for me at the ministry. I did not host it, you did...that part of you did," she said, pointing again to the body. "That right there was the reason we had twin wands and why they could not fatally harm one another in that graveyard. It's why I share all of your powers even though you do not share mine..." Lizzie continued as her voice dried out, her mouth curled at the look of recognition and reluctant understanding on his face.

"Hanging me just like her, do you know why?" Lizzie asked, watching the body sway ever so slightly as a tremor ran through her blood stream at the image.

"Like... who?" He asked, but already knew the answer. Lizzie paused. Their wands were at the ready but she could tell he'd give her plenty of time to explain. He wanted to know, he was willing to forfeit a fraction of his pride to know. She swallowed and sighed heavily.

"Tell me something, did any of your loyal disciples realize you'd started to kill little girls at the age of eleven?" Lizzie asked. "I know all their stories. Leah, Myrtle, your muggle sister, Renee, what happened to your mother... I know all about Nora, Estrella, Emily, and Adrianna...you were predictable to say the very least. Brutal and psychotic, disgusting beyond measure, but predictable... I can answer all your burning questions if you'd like... give you the exact reason why it was me," she stared in a sinister way back at him. His silence was inviting.

"I only recently uncovered the answers. Starting with why I was even the subject of the prophecy...In 1938, a young, muggle man named David Evans returned home from a permanently disabling injury in World War II to find out his mother had been murdered on Halloween night by men seeking to collect debts from her late husband. His younger sister, Leah, had been sent to an orphanage after being found alive at the scene. She was adopted within a year, but hung herself just before the new family came to get her. She was in fact a witch, would have been the first known of in her family, and her body was 'found' by a young boy at the orphanage named Tom Riddle, destined for Hogwarts that fall," Lizzie explained. Voldemort was silent, flush, and pacing slowly with his eyes and wand fixed on her intently.

"After discovering your heritage to Salazar Slytherin, you tracked down your destitute, inbred, pure-blooded family to the outskirks of Little Hangleton and found out that your mother was allegedly a squib, whom your grandfather and uncle beat and raped, and most disturbing to you despite that, was that your father was a common muggle..." she said with a sinister grin at the murderous expression on his face.

"Having already killed a young girl at the orphanage, and then a muggle born girl at Hogwarts named Myrtle Warren by opening the Chamber of Secrets, you had no remorse whatsoever in visiting your father in his home with his wife and daughter on July 31, 1943, and slaughtering them for good measure. The girl, you half-sister, Renee Riddle, reminded you of Leah, but you saw Leah in everyone, she never let you forget," she continued.

"You fashioned yourself a new name you knew people would fear to speak on your rise to power, and sought to create a series of horcruxes to conceal pieces of your soul in the event you were fatally wounded. To do so, one committs a heinous murder and conceals the split soul in an object - something the soul, a now completely separate and almost living entity will only do if offered a body," she continued and jabbed the wand again toward the hanging body.

"Horcruxes were made out of a six objects, two while at the school, but when you left Hogwarts in 1945, you set out to find other valuable artifacts to continue your mission to create enough horcruxes to be absolutely immortal before ascending to power. The first artifact being the lost diadem of Ravenclaw, the location of which you coerced out of the Grey Lady here at Hogwarts before leaving. You traveled to Albania and obtained it from where she had hidden it, where you soon after met a young catholic girl at a small church named Nora Zabel who, like the others, reminded you of Leah..." Lizzie was enjoying this because he'd yet to offer a single contention and seethed at the accuracy.

"I found that diadem tonight, in the depths of the room of requirement, where you had Quirrell hide it, and I destroyed it," she explained. Voldemort paced heavier, feral with hatred for Lizzie.

"And you discovered this, how?" He hissed.

"Because I could access your mind," she said simply.

"I would have known, I've always known when you were...lurking..." he retorted scathingly.

"Because I could access your mind," she said again, but pointed to the dangling body. "The one you inadvertently gave me. Very deep rabbit hole of secrets that had, chamber of its own," she said with a mixture of reproach and satisfaction. He paced again, fist clenched tight around his wand.

"I'll continue..." she said deliberately. "Following Albania, you decided to work at Borgin and Berkes in the hope of getting your hands on other objects. In this line of work, surely beneath your potential in all respects, you met a woman named Hepzibah Smith. Hepzibah was a collector and had a neice in her charge named Amelia, went by Milly. Thus was only to mask her real name, Estrella Black, deemed a squib by her bigoted, pure-blooded family," Lizzie shot a look at Bellatrix and Narcissa who had no doubt been told of Estrella.

"Hepzibah had obtained a locket that belonged to both Slytherin and later your mother, Merope, from Borgin. She also had in her possession the cup of Helga Hufflepuff, having claimed to be a direct descendent herself. When she refused to sell these to him, she was poisoned, and Estrella, Amelia, or better, Milly, was killed, cut up, and dispersed through the floorboards, her head with the cup but later sent to her father, creating a fourth horcrux...You'd hoped to use her to bear a child of your own from an ancient bloodline but failed when her aunt terminated the pregnancy. So later you moved on to her neice, Bellatrix, to attempt the same...but you failed time and time over because you sacrificed your ability to when you made the horcrux."

"The cup was then given to Bellatrix to hide at Gringotts in her husband's ancient vault. The vault I broke into last week. The cup was destroyed in the Chamber of Secrets earlier this evening," Lizzie explained.

"The locket, however, in your rightful possession after Hepzibah's death, needed a purpose. So you returned to the orphanage you were raised in, and illegitimately adopted a young girl named Emily Teller, who reminded you of...Leah..." she chuckled the last part mockingly.

"Dumbeldore had pieced together some of the details about Hepzibah from Black Family archives at Grimmauld Place while he was using it as headquarters for the Order..."

"Except, who else to inherit the Black Estate and by extension, their house elf, but me...the goddaughter of the last of the Black family. This evidently set us on track to find the whereabouts of the real horcrux at the ministry and destroy it earlier this year..." she said, casting another dark look at Bellatrix who shrank a few inches.

"Five horcruxes now created, but you wanted to split yourself into seven. You came across a piece of folklore while working at Borgin and Berkes. Herpo the Foul, most notorious for hatching the first basilisk and creating the first horcrux, a byproduct of creating the ophidian curse was a series of decendants with a meladictus blood curse that turned them into serpents. Finding a decendant of this idol became an obsession. Eventually you did, discovering a young girl named Adrianna, who was sold often in connection to a traveling circus..."

"You sought to purchase her to turn her into your sixth horcrux, keeping her alias, Nagini. Except, Nagini, was lured by me, up here earlier to meet her end..." Lizzie was grinning and took a deep breath.

"So... In the decades it took you to create these horcruxes and rise to power, David Evans, the muggle brother of Leah, wasn't blessed with a family of his own until 1957 when his daughter, Petunia, was born, followed closely by Lily, who carried enough magical blood and power to attend Hogwarts as a muggleborn student...as Leah might have had she lived," Lizzie was watching dawning wash over him as she spoke.

"The letter came as no surprise to Lily, though, because she was told all about it by a very young Severus Snape who she had grown up with in her neighborhood. He was completely in love with her from the moment he saw her. But, as star crossed loves do, they chose different sides of the war and she married a young man named James Potter..." she said and the wheels clicked into place for everybody listening.

"On July 31, 1980, she had a daughter and went into hiding because her daughter was the subject of a prophecy, overheard by Severus Snape, which foretold a child being born as the seventh month died who would have the power to destroy the Dark Lord. So, on Halloween night of 1983, after discovering the location, you slaughtered my family the way you had your own and slaughteres my mother in front of me the way Leah's had been... Except, as we all know, I mysteriously didn't die... and neither did you. Your power and fragmented soul lodged into me as a seventh horcrux, entangling us in a web of dark and completely uncharted magic that made us nearly the same person," Lizzie continued. Voldemort was flush, he opened his mouth to speak but closed it with a dark glare at her.

"There's a Bulgarian legend about Vedmaks. When a wizard kills a witch like you had Leah, the soul of the wizard not only splits and seeks direction, but it clutches to the remains of the soul of the victim and seeks payment of a debt. The wizard can either kill the split soul when it manifests itself, they can also offer it a victim of equivalent value, or conceal them in a horcrux with the promise of a future body to inhabit, or kill themselves as sacrifice. Of course, your eleven-year-old self did not know any of this, so you didn't give it what it wanted until you tried to killed my mother, the neice of the victim that created it in the first place..." she explained.

"You didn't need to kill me, or even try to. My mother paid the debt. But you tried and sent the prophecy into motion. It was entirely your own fault I was ever a threat," she added.

"But, despite a split latching on the way it did even though your body was destroyed and power lost, it couldn't kill me, because it was you, and my mother's sacrifice shielded me from you. But it tried, relentlessly, from that moment onward. It possessed the already reprehensible family that took me in to, in all respects, torture me. It possessed me to unknowingly kill six girls in eerily similar ways to those you murdered, eerily related to those you murdered. It compelled me to try on many occasions to kill myself. But the only one that could kill it was you, except you could not kill me," Lizzie shook her head disdainfully.

"I did everything in my power to separate myself from it, to fight your presence and influence, long before I ever knew what happened. The efforts it made all those years to torture me, and my efforts to suppress it, created a unique obscurus that latched onto your soul instead of mine because yours carried the most power. You later realizing I hosted your power compelled you to use me to regenerate your body three years ago. My blood runs through your veins...my mothers blood runs through your veins and that is your undoing."

"Then a year later, when you realized I hosted an obscurus, and intended to use the ophidian curse to control it, you gave me your blood. That further entanglement made it almost impossible for us fight one another directly... at least not until you obtained the elder wand..." she said, pointing to to wand in his hand.

"But my strides to split myself from your soul created what hangs there now. The piece of you living in my skin is now hanging lifeless behind you, killed by you, finally freeing me of you," she said with pure satisfaction.

Voldemort cackled. "There's nothing to protect you then, nothing to protect any of you," he hissed with a sinister grin.

Lizzie shook her head and smiled. "My intended sacrifice protected everyone standing behind me the same way my mother protected me. You can't hurt any of them... because even as I stand here and spell absolutely everything you have failed to understand, you'll never understand or recognize love...the very old and formidible power I have that has always separated me from you," she retorted.

"What stops me from killing you now though, Azalea? Surely we can duel as mortals and you would not have the slightest hope of prevailing," he sneered.

"Sure. We duel and one of us will die. We're both mortal and no longer anchored by fragments of a soul to the earth. Though, I don't think you have the slightest hope of prevailing," she said evenly.

"Why is that? And don't say love," He asked with scathing indignance. "I have the most powerful weapon in our world, and astonishgly clever as you may come, you are nothing to my skill and abilities."

"I think you'll find that your wand will refuse to kill who its allegiance has shifted to," Lizzie said.

"Don't flatter. I killed its previous master," he laughed.

"You stole it from Albus Dumbledore's grave, and then killed the man who fulfilled Dumbledore's request to kill him. His wand never shifted allegiance to Snape, much less yourself," she explained.

"Snape was not Dumbledore's," Voldemort hissed.

"Snape was loyal to him from the moment you hunted my mother. You betrayed him by killing her. He protected me in every stride for her," she hissed back.

"He despised you," Voldemort jabbed with malice.

"He despised my father and you for taking her away from him. He viewed me as my father's daughter because it eased the guilt of unknowingly condemning us to death by informing you of the prophecy before it was clear who it was about. I was admittedly rather an insufferable cunt to him too, so he didn't have to try very hard to dislike me. But the ultimate hatred stemmed from the part of me that was you," Lizzie said reproachfully.

"Say you are right about Snape though, it doesn't matter, the wand never belonged to Snape. It belonged to Draco Malfoy when he disarmed Dumbledore on the astronomy tower," she said and Voldemort whipped his head around to Draco. Lizzie cast a shield between them.

"BELONGED, RIDDLE! Don't you dare kill him!" Lizzie roared as his mother stepped in front of him.

"I'm holding Draco's wand. I disarmed him at their Manor when we escaped," she continued and Voldemort's face fell.

"I do believe that is enough to change allegiance of the one in yours, that particular wand never wanted its power to die with it, so it changes allegiance through triumph, not death. But there's only one way to find out isn't there?" She asked and bowed slightly for the duel.

He didn't return the courtesy, before she stood straight-backed he shot a line of golden light straight at her and she blocked it, relaying each back toward him until he momentarily relinquished the assault and paced.

They were circling one another until he transformed into a billowing smoke that swarmed her body until she fell backwards. He remereged from the smoke, picked her up by the hair and backhanded her hard to the ground, kicking her hard as she rolled. Lizzie apparated when he pointed his wand at her face and reappeared clutching her knees for support across the courtyard. Spells ignited from both their wands at this range and they collided in the center until she broke the connection. They were dueling close to one another now and he shot her backward in a swift blow, yelled "crucio!" and she writhed in pain on the stone floor.

He cackled. "Your hero," he said maniacally and released her when the wand resisted him. Lizzie got up on wobbly legs, watching him pace, knowing he knew he was losing and laughed. She spit blood from her mouth and smiled.

"Having fun? You know what spell ends this, but are you too frightened to die to use it?" She asked. "Because I'm not... go ahead..."

He glared enraged, breathing ragged through slits for nostrils and summoned her whole body. With a swift motion she was inches from his face, her jacket clutched in his grip.

"The girl who lived, unafraid to die," he sneered, pointing the wand at her temple. Lizzie winced, glancing at the onlookers and meeting eyes with Charlie.

"Not the slightest," she said in a firm but small voice.

She hit the ground several yards away when thrown backwards. He roared in fury and pointed his wand at her. Lizzie got up on her arms but was slammed hard with a force back into the hard floor.

"Dont get up, Azalea!" He ordered. "I want to stamp you out like your mudblood mother, like the cockroach you are," he hissed.

He slashed his wand like he had with Snape but it didn't cut deep enough into her neck. She clutched the wound knowing it meant he'd lost. He paced for a moment but finally resigned to kill her, bargaining she was lying or the elder wand would not fail him. She raised hers as he did his and yelled "expelliarmus" as he shouted "Avada Kedavra!"

The light emitted was blinding and sent a sharp current through the air. She heard something hit the stone floor and reached up to lock her fingers around a wand before her temporarily blind eyes refocused. The outline ahead lifted itself feebly. Bellatrix ran to his side in fury but as soon as she lifted her wand at Lizzie, her body shriveled, crumpled under her and fell, he'd either long since bewitched her or perhaps even killed and reanimated her following the Grigotts break in. Loud cracks were heard from death eaters apparating.

Lizzie got up on weak legs and walked slowly toward the mass on the ground. He was hardly alive, clutching at where a heart would be if he had one. His eyes glazed and stared at nothing ahead. Lizzie stood over him and pointed the elder wand at his head. It was now deafeningly silent, a collective breath being held.

His eyes flicked up at her but his hands were feeble and he was dying, the last portion of his soul leaving his body and entering a void.

"I won" Lizzie whispered to herself. "Avada Kedavra" she said with the wand pointed down at him the same as he held it to her fifteen years ago. With a flash of green light he went still, the air lightened immediately, Lizzie stepped back with ringing ears.

Shouts and screams of raw relief were heard from onlookers that her ringing ears could not decipher. Lizzie felt arms on her and succumbed to exhaustion, looking up for a fraction of a moment at an empty rope where the body that hung had crumpled into ash.

"Liz-Lizzie-L," Charlie caught her fall and held a weak and limp body in his arms. "C'mon no, no, no," he begged quietly as Ron and Hermione knelt by her side. Hermione clenched her hand for signs of life and felt a pulse slow. The crowd gathered silently, some stifled cries could be heard, but Charlie was the only real voice begging her to wake up.

Lizzie opened her eyes a hairline and saw the outline of Hermione in front of her, but her eyes were too heavy to open further. She let them close and saw the train station with the train coming to halt on the platform. Cedric stared back beaming with his hands deep in his pockets. She pressed her face into Charlie's chest but was embracing the other in her mind.

She tried to open her eyes but they fell closed again, the echo of the pleas in the back of her mind. With every attempt to regain consciousness she'd see someone she longed for. Her father holding her in the tightest hug, Sirius overjoyed and laughing, Cedric with a protective hold, Tonks planting a huge kiss on the side of her face, and then finally her mother who held her as though she had never once let go.

"We're not going anywhere," she heard Cedric say in her ear. "That's the magic of it."

"It's over, baby, go be free, and we'll be right here when you're done living," her father said with swimming but sparkling eyes.

Images of every fond moment between her and the friends now anxiously clutching her unconscious body surged like a raging fire. Her heart constricted when she saw Teddy in her arms again and knew this wasn't the time. She now felt Charlie's arms around her and felt the warmth he carried. She burrowed her body as close to his as she could and he felt the pressure of her doing so.

He exhaled and rocked. "You're ok," he whispered and kissed her head. His face was soaked in tears and Lizzie squeezed his and Hermione's hands to say yes. It's all she had energy to do as she watched the train leave again without her, but this time with a heart full of some hope for something she had yet to imagine - a future.

Two aurors broke up the huddled group and lifted Lizzie forcefully out of Charlie's arms. He pulled back defensively. "What are you doing with her?" He asked, anger climbing. They cuffed her wrists and hoisted her up. Her body was heavy and limp and she couldn't walk, so one lifted her into a carry.

"Let her go, what are you doing?" Charlie asked in outrage and followed them into the castle yelling profanities. Kingsley stopped him.

"We just need to make sure she's -" Kingsley said but Charlie cut him off.

"She's what? A threat? Are you arresting her?" Charlie asked.

"No, but we need to be careful. We don't know the half of the magic that brought her back," he said. Charlie watched him follow the aurors carrying Lizzie and rubbed the back of his neck apprehensively. Back in the courtyard, the survivors were speechless in muted shock that the war was over. The dead laid in white sheets down the center on the Great Hall. Some of the death eaters managed to apparate, while others were swiftly detained. Nobody had words and huddled in small congregations void of emotion that had been taxed dry, void of energy and will to function or contrive plans to rebuild or even bury their loved ones. It was surreal. There was hope and relief, but there was dread and intense sorrow.