FATE BREAKER
CHAPTER THREE
A BOY NAMED SUE
Lucy went about her days in a state of almost perpetual guilt.
She felt it every time she laid eyes on Tom Riddle's face, which was uncomfortably difficult to avoid, seeing as she still hadn't been moved to another room yet. Despite being given the dittany her Uncle always seemed to have on him—something about always being prepared for life threatening situations—Tom would have that scar on his cheek for the rest of his life.
And it was all Lucy's fault.
"Magical scarring," said Uncle Marius, his face grave as ever, "isn't the same as a normal scar. They can be stubborn like that, sometimes… Especially when it comes to dark spells." He'd then urged her, "You need to be careful, Lucy. You're better than this. You're smarter than this."
Apparently not smart enough to know she was a witch.
Not until she'd nearly impaled the once and future Dark Lord on her knitting needles, that is.
Why did she feel guilty about this?
Because she was.
She wasn't going to analyze it; self-analysis often led to stumbling over nasty realizations about oneself. She wasn't going to go poking around in that can of worms—no—not even with an overly-long bargepole.
That way led to madness—if she hadn't already arrived, that is…
It had been a long time since she'd had one of her fits.
And though she was loath to admit it…Tom was right—it wasn't Epilepsy.
She'd only told Mrs. Cole that, because it was what the doctors had said. And maybe they were right. Maybe, hooked up to all their machines that scribbled out brainwaves and electrical activity, she qualified as a classic Epileptic. Well, maybe not a classic case; a true Epileptic had many more fits than Lucy did, after all. What made her different from the classics was something she was relatively sure no one else had discovered…
Lucy had her first, and worst, episode when she was three years old.
This by itself wasn't necessarily unusual…but the shocking events that took place in the aftermath certainly were.
After that first seizure, Lucy was a completely different person.
She didn't 'blackout' during her fits. No, when Lucy's seizures happened, what was taking place in her brain was not just simply abnormal electrical impulses…but a pathologically overwhelming rush of thought and memory not her own. Over a series of several months, Lucy had a total of twenty seizures, and each one appeared to change her personality more and more profoundly until there was hardly anything left of the child she'd once been… Towards the end of month twenty-four of the harrowing experience, the frequency dropped until, finally, when she was five, they seemed to have gone.
But the damage had already been done.
Most of the time, Lucy could no longer tell the difference between her memories, and the shadowy ones left over from her episodes. And the more episodes she had, the more these 'shadow-memories' converged to form a more and more complete 'shadow-self.' They were separate, and yet…not—her, and not her. The memories had a voice, and the voice was hers. Yet it was impossible to explain how she could just know these things—things no five-year-old little girl had any business knowing, like the fact that a war that would span the whole world over was coming sooner than anyone might think—but she did. She knew these things in the same way that, now, at ten-years-old, she knew that magic was somehow real, she was now living in an absurdly popular children's story, and that her grumpy, infuriating roommate would one day become a mass-murderer.
And the worst part of all?
She didn't know why.
How did Tom Riddle expect her to explain any of this in any coherent fashion?
Better yet, what gave him the right?
By all accounts, if by some stretch she did not happen to be mad, and her newest batch of memories was to be believed, he deserved every ounce of contempt she could muster for him. He deserved to have his stupid, perfect face marred a little. The little monster deserved to have needles flung at him for badgering her—not to mention ruining her good work! But then again…remembering Marius' admonishments for caution, she couldn't help but feel a little sick to her stomach.
She'd used dark magic.
"You're better than this…" he had said, with disappointment in his eyes.
Uncle Marius, Lucy understood now, was a 'squib'—essentially a non-magical person born to magical parents—which was the opposite of what she was. And he was a squib who could barely afford to make ends meet, if she paid attention to what he didn't say. Marius was deeply shameful of his situation and refused to speak about it directly. Lucy felt sad when she thought about her situation on top of it, just making things worse for him. She understood why he couldn't take her in; she did. But that didn't explain how she had been kept ignorant and in the dark all these years.
"Your grandmother wanted you kept away from the magical world," Marius had explained to her gently. "Your parents were muggles, and their parents before them—it was unlikely you'd have to be involved with magic in the first place. But more than that, she thought it might make your, 'condition'…worse." With a careworn smile, he'd added, "Seems a bit like flogging a dead horse at this point though, doesn't it?"
And though Marius was poorer than he was proud to admit, he'd left her with a bag of silver coins her memories had prompted her to identify as 'sickles' and his address in a place called Diagon Alley. "Just in case of an emergency…" he'd said, looking worried for her and muttering about Black Luck. She wanted to talk to him more about that, but he'd gotten a bit skittish at her questions and was off again, with a tip of his shabby hat, sooner than she would've liked.
Once more, Lucy felt cast adrift in a sea of confusion, and she wasn't sure if she'd ever manage to keep her head above water.
The hazy memories she'd received during her episode were vague and hazy, but powerful. They kept her up at night, especially knowing a future Dark Lord was sleeping on the other side of the room… A future Dark Lord who hadn't spoken to her since their row, and she kept catching him giving her the most inscrutable looks out of the corner of her eye. It made her more than a little nervous, and she kept waiting for the moment when he'd get back at her in some dark shady alcove where no-one would hear her scream… And though this potentiality scared her breathless, and actually gave her nightmares once or twice, whenever her eyes fell on that scar she'd given him, her guilt weighed down heavier than her fear, or even her anger.
If he did end up trying to smother her in her sleep, grimly, Lucy thought she might actually deserve it.
She could've killed him.
She kept trying to come up with ways to make amends. But aside from doing all his chores, rather than just most of them as she'd been doing—egads, when had she turned into such a doormat?—she wasn't sure what else to do. She'd even gathered up her courage and tried apologizing to his face, but he hadn't even sneered at her, just gotten up and left. It was causing her no end of anxiety, and if he was planning on punishing her in some way, she wished he'd just get it over with… But no, he seemed content to let her stew in it. But Lucy knew that a pot left to boil for too long would soon blow its top, and knowing herself as well as she did, she knew her temper was just the same.
She didn't want to cause another accident…
It was with that thought in mind that she gathered up the dregs of her courage, not to mention her dignity, to take the seat across from him in the mess hall.
"We need to talk," she began directly, working hard to keep the wavering out of her voice.
"I hardly see how that's necessary," he answered without looking up at her. He was reading under the table again, not touching his food, Lucy noticed.
Not a good start, but at least he was talking to her. She could work with that.
"It is necessary," she insisted, her voice a quiet but forceful hiss as she pointed out, "I know you're like me."
That got her an unimpressed glare as he looked up from his book, his scar still pink and noticeable.
"I am nothing like you."
Guilt assaulted her once again, and Lucy ducked her head, wanting to hide her face from shame. It didn't matter what she thought she knew about him, or the irony of his disapproval of her use of dark magic. It didn't even matter that he was a hypocrite. She'd still hurt him, and it troubled her deeply.
"I'm sorry," she whispered for what felt like the tenth time, trying to convey all the genuine feelings welling up in her chest. She even felt tears prick at her eyes. "I've been trying to control it on my own, so I don't hurt anyone else, but it's…stubborn."
"Somehow," Tom said, eyeing her dryly, "that doesn't surprise me…" Unmoved, he leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms as he regarded her coldly. "Let me guess—you want me to teach you."
Wildly, Lucy shook her head, taken aback at the suggestion.
"No-no, I…I wouldn't feel right asking…" Her mouth bent into a disgruntled frown. "Not after…"
"Good," Tom remarked sharply, "because I wouldn't have done it."
His scathing dismissal normally would have her rankled, but as things stood, Lucy merely nodded in acceptance unable to meet his eyes. He was frowning at her from across the table with a contemplative expression, perhaps expecting her to start up an argument, as per her habit. But Lucy only picked at her food unhappily, looking as if she wanted nothing more than to sink into the floor and disappear.
"Uncle said we should be getting our Hogwarts letters soon…" Lucy muttered to her lap. "Term starts in September, so that should help solve the problem."
The look he regarded her with became riddled with puzzlement, and he wondered, "What in the world are you on about this time? Hogwarts?"
Lucy looked up sharply, and gasped, "Oh, gods—I forgot you didn't know—" She ground a knuckle into her temple in frustration at herself "—of course you don't know; how could you? You've been stuck here all your life, right?"
Suddenly, like a lightbulb coming in her head, Lucy knew exactly what she needed to do to make things right.
Not waiting for his scathing, probably defensive response, she leaned forward eagerly, and asked, "Hey, do you know where Charing Cross Road is?"
Looking at her suspiciously, he answered, "…Vaguely. Why?"
"I have a terrible sense of direction—couldn't find my way out of a paper bag," Lucy admitted, "but if you can help me get there, I know this place—" she trailed off excitably, flapping her hands, "—I've never actually been, but my uncle lives around there, and he works in this shop that's all about magical artifacts—"
"Magic?" Tom interrupted, and Lucy knew she had him, since he now looked raptly interested in what she had to say. "It's magic, then—what we can do?"
She nodded and tried out a smile.
"Do you want to come with me?" She asked. "I'll explain more when we get there. Easier that way."
Tom aimed a glare at the high table—mainly at Mrs. Cole—before his eyes darted back to her.
"We'll have to sneak out," he explained, nose crinkling unhappily. "Otherwise we'd have to take Martha, or one of the older kids with us…"
"That's why I need your help," Lucy whispered, glad he seemed to be on board. "I'm not so good at being sneaky… Seems more up your alley."
"Let's go now," he said abruptly, throwing another look at the high table, calculating this time.
"Now?" Lucy was thrown off guard, not expecting something so spontaneous.
"Now or never." He nodded, gesturing around at the full mess hall. "Better to disappear when everyone is distracted. Hurry up and follow me."
She didn't ask twice.
On their way out, Lucy grabbed the bag of sickles she'd hidden under her mattress and proceeded to follow Tom out the front door. She found it remarkable how easily they made it out without anyone noticing and wondered just how often he'd done this sort of thing. Knowing him, probably all the time. Lucy vaguely remembered something about skiving off from school before remembering once again that she'd been homeschooled. But in the memory, she remembered being sneaky, and how exhilarating it had felt to fool everyone, walking right out that door and skipping home to play computer games… She felt something similar to that once they hit the street. Tom grabbed her wrist and pulled her behind him through the crowds of bustling populace, cutting through it expertly like a fish through water. Eventually they trotted up behind a buss just taking off from a stop where he tugged her up behind him to bum a ride on the bumper. She grinned at him for this cleverness as the wind blew their hair around wildly, and she may have imagined it, but she liked to think his lips curled at her smugly in return.
"I hope you know where you're going!" She called to him over the rush, still grinning. "Because I have no clue where we are!"
"I better not let go of you then," he answered, giving her wrist a squeeze, then pretended to think about it. "Or maybe I should…"
"Don't you dare, Tom Riddle!" Lucy objected, frightened of falling off the bumper if he did.
He laughed at her then, his grin wide and feral—almost mad.
"And what would you do if I did?"
She gave him a stormy scowl, and growled out, "I'd hunt you down, and make you sorry."
Surprisingly, this only seemed to amuse him further.
"I might be more intimidated by that if you showed any promise of backing it up."
"I could definitely make you sorry," Lucy insisted with a squinty glare.
"Maybe," he answered with no conviction. "You might have a little trouble finding me though," he pointed out with glee dancing in his eyes, clearly still laughing at her, "if you're already lost, two minutes outside the neighborhood."
Dammit, he was right.
When she was unable to come up with any better retort, Lucy merely grumbled, "You're the worst—I hope you choke on a bug…"
Smirking, he admonished, "Work on your sense of direction, Lucinda. Then maybe you can try making threats."
"It's Lucy," she told him without thinking. "Don't call me Lucinda."
He gave her a careful look and asked, "Why?"
"Because Lucinda sounds like an old lady's name." She stuck her tongue out at him.
He rolled his eyes at her and muttered almost too quietly to hear, "At least your name's not Tom…"
She did hear it though, and couldn't help but laugh, "At least your name's not Sue."
She remembered a song about a boy named Sue, and at his puzzled expression, she proceeded to throw a couple of half recalled lyrics at him:
"Some gal would giggle, and I'd get red,
And some guy'd laugh, and I'd bust his head,
I tell ya, life ain't easy for a boy named Sue…"
"But I made me a vow to the moon and stars,
I'd search the honky-tonks and bars,
And kill that man who gave me that awful name…"
"And he said, "Son, this world is rough,
And if a man's gonna make it, he's gotta be tough,
And I know I wouldn't be there to help ya along,
So, I give ya that name and I said goodbye,
I knew you'd have to get tough or die,
And it's the name that helped to make you strong…""
Tom seemed amused, and a little intrigued, despite himself.
"Are you insinuating my mother gave me a terribly common name to—what?—build character?"
Trying not to laugh, Lucy teased, "Evidently, her intentions backfired utterly…"
Giving her a dry look, he agreed in what Lucy thought was the most pleasantly fake voice he could muster, "Utterly."
Lucy couldn't help but laugh then.
"Well, better late than never. You can still make her proud." She grinned at him, even as he frowned at her. "There's this school for magic—remember, I was telling you about Hogwarts?"
"What kind of an idiot names a school 'Hogwarts'?" he wondered, making a face.
"Maybe it was an inside joke between the founders?" Lucy suggested with a shrug. "I don't remember—don't ask me. I'm sure there're lots of books on it where we're heading."
She watched his eyes light up with a sort of bibliophilic avarice that was slightly disturbing, but it made her laugh again.
Still smiling, she asked, "Have you forgiven me yet?"
His expression fell, slowly smoothing out and becoming something coolly guarded.
"I might think about it," was all he gave her. "Maybe. If you're telling the truth."
"I always tell the truth!" she protested with a laugh. "At least where it counts. I'm not a bad person, you know."
"Except for when you're trying to kill me," he pointed out dryly, and pulled her after him as he hopped off the bumper.
When they dodged out of traffic, circumnavigating a horse-drawn buggy, and they were safely up onto the sidewalk, he let go of her wrist and walked brusquely ahead of her. Lucy, unwilling to let the subject go, hurried to keep pace with his longer stride until she was walking beside him with some effort. He only gave her a side-eyed stare and arched an imperious brow at her efforts.
"I wasn't," she insisted, "Trying to kill you, you know. It was an accident."
"Could've fooled me," he muttered, glaring at the intersection ahead where a newsboy tried to hawk his wears. There was something about a scandal, and a German airship going down in America if the shouting was to be believed. Tom tugged impatiently on Lucy's sleeve when she paused to listen, ordering, "Keep up. I won't go looking for you if you get lost."
"Bossy…" Lucy mumbled back, stumbling after him with a frown.
When they turned onto Charing Cross Road, Tom asked her abruptly, "What are we looking for?"
"A cauldron," was her quick answer, biting her lip as she grasped onto the memory, shading her eyes and scanning the crowded street on tiptoe. "Leaky. It's a pub, with a back entrance, next to a…record store! That's it!" She pointed and took off before Tom could grab her.
She would've been flattened by an A-model if his reflexes had been any slower.
"You're really not too bright, are you?"
"Could've happened to anyone…"
She scowled at him unflatteringly, shrugging out of the hold he had on her collar, and, this time, made sure to look both ways before hoofing it across the street.
"Are you coming?!" she hollered back at him, a feeling of excited anticipation building up in her chest. "Or are you going to stand there looking constipated?!"
At the two red spots on his cheeks and the way he stomped across the street towards her, Lucy knew she was in for it, so with that, she turned on her heel and fled into the establishment. She knew it was wrong, (and quite possibly masochistic), but she derived a certain perverse joy from antagonizing him. That had to say something negative about her as a person, but with a mental shrug, Lucy decided, 'Worth it.'
That was until he caught up with her right as she waltzed through the door.
They got into a little scuffle in which his tugging fingers found their way into her hair, and Lucy nearly ended up poking him in the eye. Failing at that, she did manage to stomp on his foot when he attempted to pull her off into some dark corner—to torture her in some horribly unspeakable way, away from prying eyes, no doubt—but it did little good. Masochistic indeed, Hitchens—she'd asked for it.
"Now-now, wot'sis, then?" an aggravated voice groused. "Have to break up enough bar fights these days, and now little'uns as well? Wa's the world commin' to, eh?"
Lucy immediately felt Tom release her, and almost flinched at the unfamiliar beatific voice he addressed the man with.
"Just disciplining my sister, Sir," he lied, and Lucy's eyes boggled at the horribly polite smile on his face. "We were playing a game."
"Who's your sister?!" Lucy was about to balk out, but a strategically maneuvered half-hug that had his arm hooked around her lower face and mouth had it coming out more like, "Mmmaftmmm!"
"Discipline, issit?" the man mused, eyeing the two of them carefully and sucking air between his teeth in thought. Lucy noticed he was missing at least three of them.
At that moment, Lucy felt Tom's arm slip, and she took the chance to use her own full set of pearly whites to her advantage.
"Ouch!" He jerked away from her in surprise, cradling his forearm dramatically. "You see, Sir?" He pointed out to the barman quickly, "She's a savage beast!"
The barman threw his head back and laughed heartily.
"That she is, that she is," the jovial man chuckled, his large hand coming down to fondly ruffle Lucy's curls. "Gotta bite like a venomous tentacula, don'cha, girl? Keep that brother of yers in line, yeah?"
"Yes, Sir," she agreed, and with a smug look over at Tom she stuck her tongue out belligerently.
"You'll be wantin' back into the alley, I s'pose?" the man assumed, looking back over their shoulders curiously. "Ya got anyone else wit'cha?"
Quickly, assuming he meant an adult, Lucy plugged in, "We're going to meet our uncle—surprise him at work."
"A surprise, eh?" the barman gave them his less than perfect grin, gesturing them after him. "Who's yer uncle, then? Where's 'e work? I might know 'im. Tom's my name, by the way, Tom Barliman."
The younger Tom narrowed his eyes just slightly at the man, but Lucy still caught it.
"I can't remember the name of the place, exactly—I think it's an antique shop?" she said quickly. "Uncle Marius always shows up covered in dust. I'm sure we'll find him if we follow the trail."
The barkeep laughed again.
"Marius? Little Marius Black? Poor sop. Never been a man with worse luck, I'll wager." He ruffled Lucy's curls again, showing them out to a shabby back alley. "Could use a bit of sunshine, that one, I s'pect. Right, Sunshine?"
Lucy mustered up a sunny smile that she hoped outshined even Tom's carefully perfected one.
"Right then." The man pulled a long, thin rod out of his spotty half-apron and began tapping specific stones on an old, dirty wall. "You two have any trouble, you run straight back and ask for Tom the Barman, ya hear?"
Lucy saw Tom her Fake Brother twitch just slightly out of the corner of her eye, and when she began humming the tune to A Boy Named Sue, he turned his glare on her.
"You must think you're a real riot," he muttered bitterly as Tom the Barkeep cursed and tried out another series of bricks.
Lucy grinned at him. "I'm a ray of sunshine—haven't you heard?"
"He called you a venomous tentacula," Tom muttered back. "What is a venomous tentacula?"
"I don't know, but I'm betting it's something with sharp teeth." She grinned, curling her fingers and snapping at him.
He wrinkled his nose and leaned away from her.
"You really are a little savage."
"You like it," she accused him with a smirk.
"What on earth gave you that idea?"
"I can just tell."
A rumbling soon interrupted their bickering, and the two watched, transfixed as the alley bricks scrambled out of the way to reveal a bustling hub of commerce. It was as if someone had just peeled away the silver screen and put everything in vivid technicolor. Memories that weren't hers blasted Lucy's brain like rapid-fire, but she didn't think they did the place justice. There were people dressed in fantastical styles in all colors of the rainbow going about their mundane daily business. Only to Lucy, it was anything but mundane. A young man was levitating a sign up onto what looked to be a brand new ice cream parlor, and a gaggle of fabulously dressed witches were coming out of a store labeled Twilfit and Tattings. There were a bunch of cages outside one shop filled with various hooting owls of all shapes and sizes, and an excited looking cat watched them hungrily from the crooked roof above. There were several colorful displays of what looked to be various potion ingredients, precarious leaning piles of cauldrons out front, and merchants piddling their wears to anyone who would listen. Lucy then looked to Tom to see, for perhaps the first and last time, a completely gobsmacked look on his face.
"You didn't believe me, did you?"
Slowly, he shook his head no.
"Will you forgive me now?" she asked for a second time.
He only looked at her wordlessly.
Tom the Barkeep, gestured them on with a bow and a flourish.
"Welcome to Diagon Alley."
TBC...
Not too sure about this chapter...
I've only received one review on this, (THANK YOU Layla Thrace!), but no wildly enthusiastic feedback yet. I'm desperate to know what you all think!
Thanks again for reading!
