Chapter Sixteen: Mama's Boy

"Well," Voldemort said through a clenched, toothy smile despite the seething rage that embroiled his insides. He despised Narcissa so fiercely in that moment. How profoundly he wanted to make an example out of her by turning her husband into a widower. Or go really overboard and turn Draco into an orphan. Delicious, violent images swirled in the back of his mind. His wand burned eagerly against his thigh. But he remained still, smiling, listening calmly to Ariel as she told her prison break tale. Because if he gave in to the temptation, he realized to his chagrin, Ariel would freak out. Look how terrified she was when she first arrived this morning. Remember the sickness in her face when you told her who you are? She's terrified you. And, who could blame her? But if he wanted her back in his life—which of course I want her in back in my life—who wouldn't want a relationship with the closest thing they've ever had to a—he berated himself into not finishing that thought. Look at you. Little Tommy wants a mommy…So, what if I do? Greyback may be a moron but he wasn't wrong when he said we all have our weaknesses. Stupid, loveless childhood. This would be so much simpler if I didn't have that fragment of a soul left. Once she finished her story, he cleared his throat once, turned his attention away from Ariel, and told the terrified three, with forced placidity, "That's all I wanted to know."

With that, Voldemort rose to his feet and said, "Come along Ariel."

"Where are we going?"

"Oh, I thought we could take tea time to my place." He replied, off-handedly, as if he wasn't fantasying about gutting Lucius like a fish. He hissed for Nagini then added, "That way we could give Bella, Narcissa and, heh, Lucy a chance to get reacquainted. As a family."

Thirsty for more adventure, Ariel hopped out of her seat, swiped the unopened bottle from the ground, and told the terrified witches, "It was nice drinking with you two." Then told ashen-faced Lucius, "Enjoy your first day out of the big house!" She skipped over to Voldemort and Nagini, took his waiting elbow, and disappeared with them in a flash.

It wasn't until they were gone did Lucius cry out, "Okay. What the hell was all that?" He turned to his wife and sister-in-law and demanded, "Since when does the Dark Lord have a friend? And who the hell was that woman? Why does she treat him like their equals? And why the hell haven't either of you—?"

"Oh, for Merlin's sake. Shut up, Lucius!" Bellatrix snapped as she and Narcissa simultaneously slumped into their seats, emotionally and physically drained at having barely survived another day with the Dark Lord.

Pain drives sane men to do desperate things. And Dumbledore didn't consider himself anything close to sane.

He hadn't slept in days. His decaying hand wouldn't let him. Every day, that rotting hand grew blacker, sicker, bonier. Some days he would wake up to the smell of Death choking him out of a sound sleep and he would look down at his hand and find it laughing at him. You arrogant old man, it would sneer at him. Sometimes it would be in Tom's voice. More often, it sounded like Aberforth's. His father's.

Today, he was so delirious from pain he could have sworn he heard Ariana's sweet little voice calling for him.

It was enough to send him there even though he had scoured every inch of that ramshackle shack over the years.

But he was desperate. And that's what sent him there. To the old Gaunt place.

He was in the wine cellar, cradling his wretched hand against his side, while his wand-bearing hand waved over every inch of the walls, searching, hoping, for a sign of disturbance when the sound of footsteps landing from above snapped him out of his thoughts.

His heart stopped. He's here.

They rematerialized in a bare, dimly lit room. Ariel was struck immediately by the barrenness of the place: Aside from a meager chair that sat against the back wall beside an unused fireplace, like a squatter, everything about the place indicated that it was long abandoned. Cobwebs stretched from the ceiling to the floor in thick streams. No paintings or pictures decorated the walls. It was a decidedly unloved place. She felt a chill swim through her veins when she looked down at her bare feet discovered they trampled on years' worth of dust.

A fresh ray of light crossed over her toes and she lifted her head to find Voldemort had opened a side door. He held it open for her. "C'mon, drunky." He said with good-natured humor. "I want to show you something." He stood beside a grime-covered window. She peered out of it to discover he had opened a door to a backyard where a bunch of white stones stood a waist-height like they were teeth plucked out of the mouths of giants and stabbed into the ground.

"What is that?" She said, stepping forward to get a better view.

"It's a graveyard."

As he expected, she had never seen a graveyard before. Her eyes shone with curiosity as she strolled through the door.

Four plain tombstones awaited them in a single row with the exception of one lonely and noticeably smaller slab which hung in the back of the lot by a craggily oak tree in a grassless plot of land that couldn't be reached by the sun, like an outcast. The ones closest to the house were hidden by patches of tall grass, their names and their years on Earth defaced by rain and cruel passage of time.

"Wow," she breathed, unable to pry her eyes away from the dingy gray slabs. "So, the dead are…just buried here?"

"Yes."

It was such a bizarre concept to the former mermaid, whose species, as her people liked to joke, were considerate enough to turn into seafoam once they died, thus sparing the bereaved the responsibility, and torment, of having to care for the dead. She couldn't imagine her corpse spending the eternity, entombed, in the cold ground like that. But even in her unease, she found the custom fascinating. "Wow…"

"Ariel, I'd like to introduce you to my family." Voldemort said as he gestured to the first row and informing her as they strolled by, "This was my maternal grandmother. This was my maternal grandfather. This was my maternal uncle…" Then they veered towards the tree, towards the little square grave marker, which bore only the name 'MEROPE' and the numbers 1907-1926 and he told her, "And this…was… my mother."

Ariel froze before the dead woman's grave. Guilt filled her veins and coagulated her bloodstream the longer they stood there, in silence. Their heads bowed slightly as if lost in prayer. Ariel wondered if her ghost was there, in that graveyard, watching them. She looked over her shoulder but saw nothing. She turned her attention back to the tombstone, which she couldn't help but notice was better maintained than the other graves.

"Me-rope?" Ariel asked, after the moment of silence had passed. "Mer-op?"

"Mer-o-pee." He corrected, gently.

"Merope." Even with her lovely voice, she couldn't improve such an ugly name. Tough break, she thought sadly. But then again, what's an ugly name in compared to forever being known as the woman who gave birth to the darkest wizard who ever lived?

Dumbledore waited until he heard the footfalls disappear from the living room to apparate, camouflaging himself to blend into the walls. He pointed his invisible wand at the window, his aim set on the back of Voldemort's head.

"Mom…" Voldemort said, his voice as gentle as the wind. "I'd like you to meet…" He gestured to Ariel with an open, flat palm and said something he wanted to say for decades, "Mom."

She blinked at him, stupefied. Was she shitfaced or did he really call her 'mom'?

"Ariel, I lied the other night when I said you were my hero." He said, drawing closer to her as her bottom lip trembled and her eyes brimmed with tears. "Because the truth is, whenever I thought of you over the years, it wasn't hero-worship. Whenever I thought of you, I would think about how…" He caressed her wet face with one hand without her flinching. "I would've given anything to be your son. To be your real son."

"I would've—I would've—I would've…if I could've…" She said through croaky sobs as she held his calloused hand against her soft face.

He gently pulled her into a hug and told her hairline as she wept uncontrollably into his robes, "I know." He rubbed her convulsing back as she cried out years of regret, loneliness, and heartbreak, telling her, "I know."

"I love you, Tom."

"I love you too, mom."

They didn't stand there holding each other long. At some point, Nagini came out and warned him, "Sssssomeone's here." Voldemort lifted his head and peered through the streaky window. He didn't see anything but he sensed what Nagini meant. Enemies were near. Too near. He pulled himself away from Ariel and told her, "Sleep tight, drunky." Before she could respond, he pinched a nerve in her neck. Instantly, her body went limp and her eyelids slammed shut. He carefully laid her down on the dirt ground, propped her head against her cloth bag for a pillow, then ordered Nagini to protect her. The cobra compiled, slithering over to her side, laying its body lengthwise against sleeping Ariel, who snored peacefully against the welcoming earth.

Voldemort stormed inside the shack with his wand drawn. He stood in the doorway, waiting for an attack to come. His eyes darted across every inch of the room, searching for this foe. Minutes passed. "Reveal yourself," he ordered the empty room.

Nothing happened.

Voldemort inhaled deeply then smiled at the ceiling. The air smelled faintly of lemon drops and mothballs. "Ah, Albus." He said with a malicious smile as he slowly walked out of the doorway. "You just don't learn old man, do you?"

More nothingness.

His lipless mouth curled wider, revealing two sets of small, sharp teeth. "How's your hand doing, Albus?" He asked with a throaty chuckle. With mock sympathy, he added, "From what I've heard…it's looking awful." He pouted then let out a snake-like laugh as he taunted, "Ah…but I guess that's what you get for taking things that don't belong to you."

Silence was his only reply.

Voldemort grinned. "You better hurry up and strike while you can, old man. We both know you're on borrowed time anyway."

At last, Dumbledore stepped out of the wall and appeared with his wand raised. "I'm not the only one on borrowed time, Tom. Or should I say…mama's boy."

Voldemort let out a deranged cackle as the two of them stared the other down, waiting for the other to make the first strike. Then his eyes narrowed. "Enough chin wagging."

His wand exploded with blue light but Dumbledore blocked it and the curse ricocheted into the ceiling, leaving behind a massive hole. Voldemort struck again, whipping his arm across his chest furiously as he launched another curse which Dumbledore, effortlessly, repelled, sending the beam of light into a wall where it shook the house to its core.

Dust and bits of debris fell to the ground as the shack trembled weakly.

"Too weak to fight back, old man?" Voldemort snarled as he snapped his wrist and sent a blinding force of white at Dumbledore's chest which the wizard managed to block with a shield of blue. "Or is dying making you soft?" Dumbledore didn't respond and, infuriated, Voldemort bellowed, conjuring his hate into a blinding bolt of lightning.

Dumbledore batted the lightning bolt away, back towards him. Voldemort had to leap out of the way to avoid being hit and the white lightning shot out of the house, into the backyard, where it made contact with the trunk of the tree that Ariel slept beneath, leaving behind a vicious, gaping, smoldering tear.

A thwacking noise jerked Ariel out of dreamless sleep. She opened her blurry eyes to find she was on the ground. Confused, she raised her head only to find that she was still in the Gaunt family cemetery.

She looked around, expecting to see Voldemort or Nagini but found herself alone beneath a gossamer sky and a lukewarm September sun.

She let out an ashamed moan, thinking she had passed out on the ground from drinking when a slip of paper sticking out from underneath a small purple velvet string bag caught her eye. She picked up the paper. It read,

Mom, have fun tonight. Buy yourself a new dress.

She pressed the note into her chest, touched.