Thank you for reading! I don't own any of Harry Potter! Please let me know if you enjoy! Updates every Saturday!
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As Mae finally stood from that velvet sofa, Tom felt his heart sink.
"I'm glad this first meeting between us and our two worlds could be so pleasant, Daddy." She smiled with a sickening sweetness illuminating her radiant face.
"And have we finished already?" Tom asked with a chuckle clearly dipped in sadness.
"Perhaps for the afternoon." Mae nodded, "I'm certain we'll meet again."
As Mae turned and took her leave, Tom stretched out a hand towards her.
His mouth fell open as if he meant to call her back, but no words left his lips.
What could he possibly say?
That he was sorry he had punished her for the murder of her sister?
That she was welcome to come home, knowing full well the pain seeing her again would cause his wife?
As Mae left the room, Tom struggled not to say the many things that rattled in his brain.
Fortunately, his reasoning won out over the yearnings of his heart and his daughter, his precious, darling girl walked out of the room in silence.
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A short while later, Tom turned the situation over in his devious mind as he returned to his Ministry office.
If he could nurture and mend his broken relationship with Mae, he knew well enough he may be able to align himself in a position of power over all Britain, not merely the country's magical side.
Delusions of grandeur danced in his head, like the happy imaginings of a child looking forward to a scheduled trip to a candy store.
He waved his aides away as he arrived at his office door and put his hand on the knob.
The cold, bronze orb turned easily in his palm, left unlocked after his departure.
Together, he and Mae could-
Tom's dark eyes widened as he opened the door and found Harriet blinking at him from the sofa in front of his desk.
"Hey, Tom." She smiled softly, "How did it go, then?"
Tom stared at Harriet agape, as if her presence there shocked him to his core.
He had become so immersed in his own dizzying daydreams that for once, his wife's closeness seemed more of an offense than a relief.
In that moment, Tom Riddle made yet another unwise decision.
He forced a charming smile onto his handsome face as he assured Harriet, "It went very well, sweetling."
"Brilliant." She nodded as she returned his smile, "And did the two of you get along alright?"
"………Perfectly fine." Tom said as he flashed his glinting, white teeth.
"I trust he's a decent man?" Harriet asked.
"She….." Tom nodded.
"Oh." Harriet blinked, "…….She."
"Yes….." Tom said as he swallowed a nauseating wave of guilt, "She's a gifted doctor. The muggles praise her for curing their ailments. I'm told she won the last election by a landslide."
Harriet raised her eyebrows.
"Well, that's impressive, isn't it?" She asked, "I'll have to meet her sometime."
"Perhaps." Tom smiled, "Let's go to lunch now, shall we? I'm famished, my love."
As Harriet stood, walked over, and pressed her lips against her alpha's, that was the first time Tom had ever considered himself undeserving of her kiss.
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The next evening, in the dark of that cold, autumn night, James and Mark crept across the deserted grounds of Riddle estate.
In his arms, Mark carefully held onto the bronze orb he and his brother had spent the last week perfecting.
Clutched with a much more cautious grip, James cradled a small, black box.
"This isn't safe, James." Mark whispered as he watched his older brother lay the black box on the ground.
"Stay back!" James snapped in a cautionary hiss as he glanced over at his brother, "Get away from it! Back up, Mark!"
Mark blinked at the seriousness in his tone.
With an obedient nod, he did as James ordered and took several cautionary steps backwards.
"James……" Mark whispered in the night, "Please……Be careful!"
"This is the only way!" James whispered back.
Despite the bravery in his words, his eyes glimmered with an embarrassing hint of nervous apprehension as he turned his stare onto that ominous, black box.
As the two young men stood there in the mysterious void of that late hour, it was almost as if a blanket had been drawn over their heads.
Not a single star twinkled in the sky just then.
Mark gnashed his teeth as a strange sort of awful terror filled him from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head.
James clenched his jaw as he closed his eyes and placed his hands on the sides of that sinister box.
"You'll throw it on three?" He asked.
"Yes." Mark nodded, although he knew somewhere in his mind that James wouldn't be able to see him in that flawless blackness, "On three……..Get ready to jump."
"I'm not a dark wizard, brother." James chuckled, "I'm not afraid."
"Still….." Mark shrugged with an exasperated sigh, "I-In case something goes…..wrong."
"Nothing will go wrong, but everything will go right." James confidently huffed, "Ready? One….."
Mark's heart skipped an anxious beat.
"Two….."
Mark braced himself, his arms tense, spine straight, ready to throw.
"Three!" James shouted.
In one terrible motion, James ripped the lid off that small, black box and plunged himself and his brother into a pit of suffering.
Inside that black box lay one of the foulest objects in Tom junior's possession.
The two brothers had stolen it out from under their father's nose barely an hour earlier, having found it after a thorough search of the house.
Tom had used his maternal grandfather's ring to cover more than a few of his more insidious crimes over the years, as a sort of magical confessional for the dark acts he had chosen not to reveal to his wife.
With the sealed screeching of those murdered souls and the trapped cries of painful suffering finally released into the air, James and Mark both grit their teeth to focus on their jobs, purposely ignoring the instinctive urge to clamp their hands over their ears as a guard against the sound.
"THROW IT!" James screeched over the cacophony, "THROW IT NOW!"
Mark raised the bronze orb as his brother dove out of the way.
James's shoulder had barely touched the nearby shrubbery when Mark heaved that bronze orb through the night air, into the depth of that unbearable noise.
In one bright, blue, merciful burst it ended.
James and Mark squinted their eyes shut against the blinding brilliance of that single, aqua flash.
As they both hesitantly opened their eyes, they were pleasantly surprised to find Marvolo Gaunt's ring erased from existence, although not a single scratch remained on the harmless box itself that had served as the cursed object's house.
Mark walked over and helped James to his feet as the two brothers exchanged glad (relieved?) smiles.
"We did it." James panted as he clasped Mark by the hand. His repetition of that phrase sounded more confident, "We've done it, Mark! It's nearly ready!"
As they trudged back to the house, their excited whispering about the next steps of their plan were nearly overshadowed by their anxiety.
The Riddle boys hoped the noise had somehow not managed to wake their sleeping parents and grandparents.
