Please Note: If you have already part of the story, I've actually rearranged the chapters. What was previously chapter 2 is now chapter 3. Though technically you could read chapter 3 and chapter 2 in any order you wanted, I thought chronologically they made more sense this way.
It had started seven months after he had abandoned Ellen.
The first time it had happened had been after he had returned from the grocery store. He had gone there for his week's supply of Magical Meals to Go, as well as a few accessory items like milk and water. He was a terrible cook, unlike Ellen, and her abandonment had catapulted him into the world of restaurant food and to-go meals. It was one of the many life changes he had undergone since leaving his wife.
The truth of Ellen's identity had…devastated him. He had felt so deceived, taken in. How could she? All of her screaming about not knowing—how ridiculous! How could you not know you were a Parselmouth? His fists clenched in anger. She must thought he was so stupid, to think he would believe that. The thought of his wife made him so angry his chest burned. He breathed heavily through his nose, glaring at the Magical Spaghetti box.
In those first few hours, in his shock and indignation, he had told everyone he knew. He had wanted them to know just how deceitful that witch was, how she had betrayed them all. He had wanted them to share his horror. Now he bitterly regretted it. Ellen had played them all, but she had played him worst of all. He had been stupid, and he felt humiliated about the whole affair. He had been avoiding his friends the past few weeks. He just couldn't face them. He was sure to see the condemnation in their eyes. He had married Voldemort's daughter. He felt disgusting. And what was worse, he had procreated with her! Spawned a child, helped continue Voldemort's line. He swallowed bitterly. Fortunately few people knew that—just the doctor, Ellen's boss, his parents. They had wanted to keep it secret for now. Marcus was glad he didn't have to admit that shame to his friends.
He selected the last of his purchases, paid for them, and with a pop disapparated to his neighborhood. He emerged from the alley apparition point and strode down the block to the white building at the end. His apartment complex had a variety of protective wards, one of which was an apparition ward. Marcus had moved to the place shortly after abandoning Ellen. His old apartment had held too many bitter memories. He had burned everything having to do with the woman. The only thing he hadn't been able to burn was the marriage license, since it was magically protected. But that was gone now, too. Two days ago it had burst into flames on its own accord. Marcus knew that could only mean that Ellen was dead. He was glad for it. He rather hoped Voldemort's grandchild was dead too.
He entered the building, greeted the guard on duty, Vinny, and stopped in front of the elevator-like doors. To a muggle, of course, the doors looked like the entrance to an elevator. To wizards they were much more. Marcus ran his finger down a pad on the side, and the light above the door lit up. The doors dinged open, and Marcus walked straight into his apartment.
It was dark inside, like it usually was. He set his bags down on the kitchen counter before turning on the lights, tilting his head to the side and cracking the joints in his neck. It had been a long day at work. He worked for the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes, specifically for the Muggle-Worthy Excuse Committee, and that morning a bunch of giants had decided to riot in Syracuse. It had been a nightmare trying to explain that to the muggles.
He stocked his refrigerator and had stepped out of the kitchen to go to the restroom when he froze abruptly. He stared disbelievingly at the end of the hallway. The hairs on the back of his neck pricked up. His heart started beating a little faster. His breath came a little quicker.
Hanging innocuously on the wall at the end of the hall was a wedding picture of Ellen. It had most certainly not been there this morning. Fear flooded him, and he slowly withdrew his wand, his hand shaking, craning his head around nervously.
There was no one else in the hallway. Still, every sense alert, he crouched into a defensive stance, hesitated, then burst into the bathroom. Bathroom was clear. He burst into his bedroom. Bedroom was clear. Room by room he checked the entire house, his heart pounding, his nerves frayed, on the verge of panic. He cast spell after spell to make sure no one was hiding from him, but he was alone. Unnerved, jumpy, all his senses on alert, he eventually returned to the picture in the hall.
He didn't know how someone had gotten into his apartment, didn't know how they had gotten hold of that picture, but he had a sinking feeling he knew who, or at least under who's orders, had done so. And it terrified him.
He tried to remove the picture. It was stuck to the wall as though built into it. He tried to transfigure it, tried to move it to a different section of the wall, but it wouldn't budge. He summoned a set of curtains and set them over it. They burst into flames—he yelped in surprise—and disintegrated into ash. He tried everything he could possibly think of to get rid of the picture, for hours on end, but to no avail. Ellen continued to smile up at him from beneath her veil.
He glared at her and stepped back. He would have to move out of the apartment.
AAAA—Page Break—AAAA
Marcus was never able to pinpoint anything, but in the following weeks he began to feel as though he was being watched. It would manifest as the tell-tale raising of the hair on the back of his neck as he left work, as he stood in line for the cashier, as he ordered at a restaurant. He never saw anyone, but that didn't stop the feeling of malevolence that followed him around. Sometimes the feeling frightened him so much he couldn't sleep at night. It didn't help that accidents started to happen all around him.
Three days after the picture appeared in his apartment, his friends the Brewsters, whom he had told Ellen's true identity, died. Magical authorities said it was murder-suicide, that Michael Brewster had killed his three children and his wife before killing himself. Marcus doubted it. Michael hadn't been that sort of person.
Two weeks later, Ellen's old friend Paige Mabry fell of her broom while on her way to her boyfriend's house and plummeted to her death. It was a strange way for her to die. Paige had been a good flier.
On March 3rd, a fire, believed to be started by improperly-frozen Ashwinder eggs, consumed Ellen's old obstetrical clinic, taking with it every Healer in the building.
A week later, Ellen and Marcus's good friends the Hanleys were killed. Their ancient house elf admitted to accidentally slipping poison into their soup.
There was a pattern to these deaths, and only Marcus could see it. One by one, everyone who had abandoned Ellen, or who had known about her pregnancy, was being eliminated. The picture in his apartment had been a warning. Voldemort was on the move, and Marcus was afraid he was being saved for last.
AAAA—Page Break—AAAA
Time passed. In the year following Ellen's death, Ellen's former friends died like flies. Some of the 'accidents' that caused their deaths were so cleverly covered-up that even Marcus wondered whether they were genuine at times. He had tried to warn everyone, of course, told them it was Voldemort's work, but the accidents were so convincing that few people took him seriously when he referenced them, and those that did ended up dead anyway.
It had made Marcus paranoid beyond belief. He moved eight times in one year, but the feeling of being watched followed him everywhere, as did Ellen's wedding picture, displayed in a prominent location in every apartment. It almost made him mad. He did a period of heavy drinking there at month eight, especially after one of his best friends was killed when 'someone' mis-brewed his Pepper-Up potion.
On February 2nd, the one year anniversary of Ellen's death, every single person who had abandoned her, except Marcus and her best friend, Marjorie, was dead. Marcus woke up that morning with a fateful feeling in his stomach. He didn't go to work that day. He sat instead at his kitchen table, wand held loosely in his hand, drinking and listening to the radio. He had thought Voldemort would kill him that day.
He didn't. Instead the Dark Lord killed Marjorie. And it was definitely a murder. Marcus heard about it on the radio. Aurors had found the body of a woman on a park bench. From the description the broadcaster gave, it sounded like the bench where Marcus had first found Ellen talking to snakes. The body, said the broadcaster, was barely recognizable as Marjorie Smitham. She had been heavily tortured, very creatively. They had no idea who had done it. Apparently Voldemort hadn't left his mark the scene.
Marcus listened to the report and drank. He stayed locked inside, waiting for someone to come for him, but no one did. The malevolent feeling never left him. Three o'clock came, four o'clock, five o'clock. As the mantelpiece clock began to toll midnight, he started to breathe a little easier. On the twelfth toll, the picture of Ellen above the fireplace shimmered. Marcus tensed, staring at it, clutching his wand. But the picture simply shimmered…and disappeared, disintegrating like pixie dust on the wind. Marcus stared at it disbelievingly for a second, and then something shifted. The malevolence that had always followed him around dissipated, like it had never been. He felt lighter than he had in years.
The deaths stopped. The feeling of being watched completely disappeared. Marcus didn't believe it at first, couldn't accept it, but as weeks rolled by, he began to feel free. Happy. He decided to leave New York. He wanted to start over. He packed up his bags and moved across the country, to an isolated Wizarding village in Montana. Nothing followed him there. No pictures. No strange deaths. He made friends. They stayed alive. One and a half years after Ellen's death, he met a girl named Christie. She was beautiful, but not in the way Ellen had been, and she was sweet and simple and he knew who both of her parents were. A year later, they married. Six months later, Marcus learned Christie was expecting a child. And he was happy.
Across the Atlantic Ocean, Voldemort watched him as he moved to Montana, as he made friends, as he married, as he learned he was going to be a father. Voldemort watched him as he started to live again, without any concern whatsoever for his first child. He listened as the man exclaimed happily to his wife about how excited he was to "be a father for the first time!" And Voldemort smiled a cruel smile.