Warning: Death of a mentally disabled character. Lobotomy. Echolalia. Self-harm. Ableism. Dead Dove: Do Not Eat. In which Riddle Sr is just a vase to put disorders into like flowers.

oOo

Yes, yes, we all despise JKR. I'm sorry to add to the HP fandom after all these years, as most everything to do with it gives me utter hives, but this brainworm had been eating at me for at least the last 3 years and nobody else ever got around to writing it instead. Tom Riddle needed better reasons to be fucked up.

I don't like putting spoilers in the tags, but this is Intensely Heavy Material and you should be prepared to abandon ship and hit that back button at any point.

This is blatant personal-angst-therapy writing. Sometimes people who really love you aren't capable of handling you at your worst. Sometimes your dysfunctions complement each other, and sometimes they just compound one another and make everybody involved so much worse. Sometimes their desire to help you heal will just end up breaking you down further.

oOo

PreStory Notes:

A millstone goes in circles.

Title is an obvious play on "burying the hatchet."

Blue drapes are blue drapes and all that signifies. Same with red. All the color symbolism.

Songs to read this to:

Runs in the Family – Amanda Palmer (how it started)

We Evaporate – The Family Crest (how it ended)

oOo

1944

oOo

The Riddle Manor was as fine a house as any Tom had seen. Surrounded on all sides by blackberry hedges, lawn manicured in the French fashion, a modern barn that housed both horses and automobiles. It was perfectly symmetrical and perfectly green.

He patted down his hair and smoothed the wrinkles in his clothes as if doing so would brush away the anxious feelings he definitely didn't have. The sky was an ominous grey, as opposed to the usual English overcast gray it typically appeared as. Tom adjusted the already-perfect tie around his neck, dipped his hand into the empty air before him to shake an invisible hand, and silently mouthed an ordinary greeting. Then frowned and mouthed a more furious one.

The air smelled like clover and horses.

It was June and the blackberries were still hard and yellow.

Behind him was the town of Little Hangleton, an English countryside town not much different from any other, burdened with a few hundred residents and an extensive criminal cemetery that dated back and beyond a time when public hangings were as mundane as going to the movies. The Hanged Man boasted itself as a fourteenth century courthouse-turned-inn-and-pub and had once been known for hanging more people per capita than any other village in England. The guest rooms felt as small and claustrophobic as jail cells. In a local brochure it compared itself to the famous Smuggler's Inn on southwest coast. As if it was a tourist destination.

Tom attracted puzzled and wary stares from every shop window. He took this to mean he was in the right place, but started hiding his face in the hood of his robes after the second day. He was getting too many curious inquiries. Though it took some charm, both literal and magical, the local rumor and gossip mill finally led him, like a mule lashed to a millstone, to a sad shack on the furthest edge of town closely followed by Riddle Manor on the opposite edge.

The man in the shack didn't bear thinking about. The sad weeds his mother had sprouted from; the adder nailed to the door like a brass knocker; it was more of a tombstone than a house. Disappointment was a natural part of life. He would leave it behind and move on to better, more promising things. After all, at seventeen he was too old for the orphanage anymore, and with the war going on and the Blitz over London there was nowhere to go back to now. If Tom found himself with less faith in this whole endeavor than he'd arrived with, he was determined to pretend otherwise.

He found himself fiddling with the gold and obsidian ring that sat heavily on his finger, its weight foreign and stolen.

It was a day to be on his best behavior.

The driveway was long and wide enough for two horses side-by-side. It wasn't an old house; Victorian perhaps, with dark trim set in red brick. The roof was tiled rather than thatched like the rest of the houses in town. The front door was blue, pierced with a black knocker in the shape of a cherub, and framed on each side by stained glass windows. A wisteria tree drew a long, purple gash along the face of the house.

Tom lifted his hand, hesitated, and knocked firmly and shortly.

The windows were open and the drapes parted, despite the threat of rain, and voices carried themselves outside like moths.

"Frank, would you answer the door?"

A pause.

"Isn't Frank here, Darling?"

"He's out back."

"Rats. Would you get the door, Darling?"

"Tom! Get the door!"

They called his name several times, a repetitive, birdy squawking.

The wind blew and foreboding coiled like a thunderstorm in Tom's gut.

"Tom, would you get the door, please!"

The man who opened the door at last could have been Tom's double: the dark waves of hair, the angular face, the shape of his ears, the curve of his brow. Though tall, his posture was slack and he leaned a little to one side. His left eye was skewed, angled toward the upper outside corner as though it had been pinned there. Glancing Tom up and down with his good eye, stunningly blue, he laughed.

"Oh, gee, it's just me, Mum!" Chucking, he turned away and closed the door in Tom's face.

The thunderstorm shivered its way up Tom's spine, raising every hair on his body. He knocked again, furiously.

The man opened the door. "Hello!" He said, as if he was seeing Tom for the first time. "Oh, it's me! You'd better come in or you'll miss dinner."

Tom stepped across the threshold, numb, like he was dreaming. The image of Riddle that Tom had gleaned from the townspeople, from his uncle in the shack, wasn't this man standing before him. This…this… invalid.

He stuck his hand out, dumbly.

"Good afternoon," he said. His mouth was dry. "I take it that this is… the Riddle household?"

Riddle smiled, genuinely pleased, and shook it. His hand was firm and warm, his nails a bit too short, the edge of the nailbeds angry and red. He had a cleft chin and a winning smile. He wore a grey sweater that brought out his eyes, snug over a crimson necktie.

"Nice to meet you! I'm Tom Riddle. What's your name, sonny?"

Tom pursed his lips, knew he was staring, couldn't stop, breathless. "I'm… Tom. Riddle."

"Ha! I knew it!" Riddle exclaimed, clapping Tom's shoulder playfully. Riddle held one arm close to his chest like it was injured, fist curled against his body like a fig. The bottom of his awry eyelid seemed to pinch downward and there was a small scar that cleaved the flesh beneath it.

"Come along; the kettle's on."

The kitchen was small and modern. Sink, stove, icebox, cabinets, nothing was more than 3 steps apart. The refrigerator was a new model. Yesterday's milk bottles were drying on the rack. The kettle was indeed on the stove, screaming from its pastel green throat.

Riddle served them both darjeeling with two sugars. It was exactly the way Tom took his tea.

"So, how about that race yesterday?" Riddle said animatedly. "I couldn't turn the radio off! A triple dead-heat race in the Carter Handicap!"

There was a bouquet of wilted yellow and white carnations in the windowsill above the sink.

"Is that so?" Tom murmured. "Do go on."

"Well, sure! Those Americans have got some splendid horses, I say." Riddle cocked his head and his expression flickered uncertainly. "Don't you… know already?"

"I can't say I've ever been much interested in horse races, Mr. Riddle."

"But aren't you…me?"

Was Riddle prone to hallucinations? Had he been in an accident of some kind that left him disoriented and disfigured like this?

Tom set the teacup down. Tried not think about the shapes the dregs made at the bottom of the cup. "I'm here to meet you."

Stress lines creased Riddle's face and he looked down into his tea as if it were a particularly difficult crossword. The hair at his temples was especially grey, though he could only have been in his mid mid-thirties.

"That's not right." His voice was very small. "I already know me…"

"I'm here to meet my father. I'm here to meet you."

Riddle lifted his hand to his skewed eye and blinked rapidly, looking pained. There was a harsh shriek as his molars ground against one another. "I… you are… who… did you say you were, again?"

Something was wrong with this man.

"I'm your son, Tom Riddle."

Riddle paled. The pupil of his eye shrank to a dark pinprick and raw terror glazed his face with cold sweat. "Son. Sun. Sonnet. Soliloquy. Somber. Sunset. Serum. Serum? Son? My son. My…?"

"I'm your and Merope Gaunt's son."

The older man's face contorted, twisted and flushed. The thin line of his mouth tore open, from which emerged a growing wail.

"WITCH!" The man howled. He fell back and gripped the counter, shaking. "No! No, no no, no, NO!"

Voices from inside the house, the man and the woman, older than Riddle, "Tom?! Tom!"

"You're not wanted here, witch!" screamed the man with a face Tom's own, "Go away! Back to hell with you, fiend!" His hand was reaching out, fingers twisted and accusing.

Tom's heart pounded in his chest, fear and fury entwined. He gripped his wand and prepared to defend himself.

Then Riddle lunged and his fingertips brushed Tom's hair like he was going to rip it out…

Two sets of arms ensnared him from behind, cutting everything short. Riddle cried and thrashed. Tears overwhelmed his eyes and he began to sob with wild abandon, clawing at the hands holding him and even at his own clothes. A white button landed at Tom's feet.

"Mary have mercy, Thomas!"

A woman with steeling hair squeezed through the three trashing men cramming the doorway. She met Tom's eyes and, for three seconds that felt like an eternity, froze, pupils blown. His own breath suspended in his throat. She had his eyes. Then her attentions were on the thrashing man and his head was in her hands and she was shushing and soothing him with soft words and saccharine nicknames. She held that burning, animal gaze unwaveringly until the man broke and collapsed into her breast, weeping.

She looked back at Tom as she dragged the stumbling man out of the kitchen. Along the way, she tugged on the sleeve of one of the other men and jutted her chin at their unexpected visitor. She had his jaw too, Tom realized.

"Frank, you're with me." She said to the other man, who was donned in gardening gloves and a wide brimmed hat that had been crushed underfoot in the fray. Bits of wicker littered the floor. Her gaze lingered on Tom even as she vanished up the stairs and out of sight.

Tom felt like he was in a nightmare. His eyes flickered between the man he had been left with, presumably Riddle's father, and the foyer and contemplated fleeing.

"My deepest apologies, sir," he broke the silence, edging away, "I seem to have come at a terrible time. I shall call on you another day…"

"Wait, my boy, please. A moment, please." The old man said, his breath stolen during the struggle. He was looking at Tom with wide eyes. He swallowed drily. "What…is your name?"

"Tom. Riddle. Tom Marvolo Riddle."

"Marv…oh. Lord. Oh, God," Esquire Riddle's pale face blanched ghost white, "She was pregnant." His eyes darted to the front door, beads of sweat forming, "Why didn't she…is she…is she with you now…?"

"My mother died, " Tom said softly, "In childbirth. I have been raised in Wool's Orphanage, in London."

He did not look comforted by this. He nearly looked green. "I see," he drew his handkerchief from his jumper and patted his face desperately with it. "You…we had better talk, you and I. The drawing room is through here, please. Please."

What was there to do, but ignore his gut and follow? Could he go back to that hotel room empty handed, weighted with the burn of so many questions?

Esquire Riddle was an aging man in his late fifties. This hair was thick and grey and only his chin was devoid of facial hair, which rounded his otherwise angular features. His moustache curved his face in a perpetual frown. His ancestor had been awarded the title of esquire several generations back; a common sheriff awarded a gentleman's title for services to the Crown, for hanging so many criminals and undesirables. Or so Tom had read in the courthouse records.

The drawing room was dark and mauve, the windows cloaked in the ever-present blue drapes. A ceremonial sword and hunting rifle were mounted over the mantelpiece, flanked by stuffed animals: a fox, ducks, a pheasant. Their glass eyes were crooked and pale.

Esquire Riddle made for the liquor cabinet and poured two fingers into a crystal scotch glass.

"May I offer you something a bit stronger than tea?"

Tom didn't like the idea of mixing alcohol with the atmosphere. He wanted all of his wits about him. "Perhaps just wine, sir."

He was given something heavy and red and didn't ask what it was.

The two men sat opposite one another on the faded purple furniture. Tom openly stared and kept his posture straight. Esquire Riddle's gaze was roaming, nervous, analytical. There were deep crows' feet at the corners of his eyes. A set of gold-rimmed reading glasses poked out from his breast pocket.

"If we had known you were coming… we would have…prepared." He began. "We had no idea that there was a child."

"It has been a day of, " Tom paused tactfully, "Many surprises. For everyone, it seems."

There was a loud bang and a crash from upstairs, the shrill sound of ceramic being shattered. A man's—his father's—screams bubbling down into hard sobs.

"He's mad, isn't he?"

Esquire Riddle's face grew pinched and he stared hard at the glass in his hand. He spoke slowly. "When my son returned from his affair, he was a changed man. It was like he was seventeen again, freshly returned from the Great War. Shellshocked. We tried everything we could afford. Aromatherapy. Electronecrosis. Insulin shock therapy. For a time, we sent him to a sanatorium. Eventually…" The man paused and steadied his resolve. "Eventually, the doctor recommended a lobotomy as treatment."

It felt as if a cold egg had been cracked on his head. The sensation crawled down his spine. If his hands trembled, he ignored them.

"I have no greater regret." Esquire Riddle tossed back a great gulp of his scotch, wincing as liquid gold burned his throat.

"Regret? Regret?"

"I don't expect a stranger to understand. I wanted my son back. To go back to the way he was before that woman drugged and kidnapped him. He wanted to forget, wanted his life back. My wife and I were prepared to do whatever that took."

"You sliced up his brains." Tom whispered.

Like he had been an animal. Like ingredients on a slab.

"It's a revolutionary and legitimate medical treatment." His grandfather defended. "We should have been more selective in our choice of surgeon. Please, understand, we were desperate."

Tom cupped the wineglass between both hands and suppressed the shudder that had been building inside him since he first knocked. He looked about the room, tried to take it all in, tried to think. Best behavior; today he had to be on his best behavior.

There was a table by one of the windows cluttered with photographs. Photos of a dead man and woman; those must have been some of his great grandparents. A wedding photo. A photo of a small boy who looked too much like himself, arms wrapped around a panting, shaggy collie. There was a photo of Riddle, perhaps sixteen, sitting nobly atop a dark horse in full riding gear; he sat up straight, no lazy eye, both hands firmly on the reigns, a wreath of roses draped over the horse's neck. There was a blue ribbon pinned to the frame.

Drugged and kidnapped, Esquire Riddle had said. The common people of Little Hangleton had described Riddle as having been "taken in" and "bewitched" by the woman known as Merope Gaunt. Tom had taken it for typical Muggle naivety, the dirty gossip of the ignorant. His mother could have been as ugly as her brother for all he knew, but surely a woman of magical means was desirable in her own right.

His eyes flickered to the photo of that perfect and proud boy on the table. Compared him to the broken and crying noises upstairs.

Perhaps not.

"I know we're probably not what you were expecting," Esquire Riddle said.

He rolled Morfin Gaunt's gold ring around his knuckle. "It is a unique situation, sir. It would surprise anyone." He sipped the wine in lieu of biting his tongue. "I'm sure you are equally surprised by me."

There was a sharp tap from the other end of the room. Both men looked up at Mary Riddle, who stood in the doorway. Her husband stood as she joined them, but she only had eyes for Tom.

"The worst has passed." She told her husband. "He's in your bed shaking it off. He'll be up by the time dinner is ready. I told Frank to go home for the day."

Esquire Riddle introduced him. Tom stood as he did so to offer her his hand. "Darling, this is Tom, the Gaunt girl's son. She had the good sense to give him the family name before she passed."

Mary Riddle looked him over with a suspicious, yet prideful eye. "Well. It's a shame about your mother, but… You clearly come from my stock."

Family resemblance and all that.

"I'm flattered that you think so, ma'am."

"You'll be staying for dinner, of course."

She was definitely sizing him up. She seemed to be a stern, direct woman. Her thick hair was piled into a pompadour bun, pinned with an enamel comb.

"As you like, ma'am."

"You might like to freshen up, I take it? My son gave all of us a fright."

He wasn't sure if she was calling him dirty or looking for an excuse to talk to her husband in private. "If you don't mind."

Tom Marvolo Riddle had no intention of using the loo. Instead, he muffled his steps and rifled through the house, tearing open closets and drawers, flipping through bank ledgers and jewelry drawers to put together a family history for himself. When he found cash, he pocketed it without hesitation.

There was some debt in the family, unpaid, expensive, experimental medical treatments, which was why their household staff had been reduced to a single gardener. There were letters to distant cousins, congratulations on births and marriages, social invitations, but Mr. and Mrs. Riddle had been the only children of only children and had, themselves, only one child. They seemed to make up for this with a broad social circle, which had slowly shrunk over time. The Riddle's hadn't been on holiday since their son had returned from the sanatorium, changed forever. He suspected that, as a result of the failed surgery, the Riddles had hidden their son away from the public eye for many, many years. Whatever his deficiencies, Riddle had a bursting portfolio of the most beautiful sketches of horses in charcoal, all signed and dated; the latest had been drawn only yesterday.

When Tom finally found his father's room, he paused. The favorites of Riddle's horse portraits were pinned to the walls with brass tacks. A pair of house slippers was warming on top of the radiator and striped pyjamas were folded neatly at the foot of the bed.

Opposite of the bed in Riddle's room was a Bergonic Chair. Tom had only seen one once before, when Wool's had taken all the children to a hospital to clean laundry and bedpans as part of their charity work. Riddle's chair had a depression in the mattress that mirrored his shape, the leather straps soft and shiny with wear. The device had more knobs, buttons, and electrical wires than should rightly be attached to a single person, he thought. There was an intricate wire mesh that seemed like a cage for a face and a chewed rubber disk. He wondered if his grandparents operated the machine themselves or if a nurse came out to the house on a regular basis.

Tom thought of his grandparents murmuring amongst one another downstairs and thought that, if this played out in any way close to what he wanted it to, his magic was going to have to become his best-kept secret.

oOo

Dinner was an uneasy affair. A decade of guilt had made Mary Riddle complacent and resentful. Every time Riddle spoke, she winced as if slapped. She stared morosely at her plate and pretended to eat.

"So, my boy, tell us about yourself. You said you grew up in London?" Esquire Riddle began.

Tom thought about his answer carefully.

"I was. I was brought up in an establishment called Wool's Orphanage. I received a scholarship when I was eleven for a boarding school of higher education in Scotland. I spend most of the year there."

"The studious type, are you?"

"Yes, ma'am. I'm the top achiever in my class. I begin my final year this September and expect to be awarded the responsibility of Head Boy. It's a great honor."

Riddle, sitting on Tom's left, was whispering something to himself. His parents did not speak to him nor invite him into the conversation.

"What do you intend to do after you graduate?"

"My school offers career counseling and placement tests. I have friends whose family members are in the minister's cabinet; I know some of us will be offered internships. I would prefer to further my education. Though, of course, so much depends on the war ending. I could be conscripted next year if Germany doesn't surrender."

He was muttering about that horserace he had mentioned before, Tom realized. The triple dead-heat. Without a soul in the house to talk to about it, Riddle was recanting the story to himself or perhaps to the peas on his plate. Nobody was interested in the person that was left of Tom Riddle.

"That's enough self-talk, Thomas," Esquire Riddle said firmly.

Riddle did not stop. Tom's gaze found the scar that split his eyelid and wondered. Tom wasn't sure he could.

"Tom!" Mary exclaimed, slapping her hand on the table with a resounding bang.

Riddle flinched so badly that he dropped his spoon. The hair on the back of Tom's neck stood on end. Riddle flushed badly and scrambled to mop up soup that had spilled onto the tablecloth.

"Manners, Tom! Please!"

"Sorry, Mum. We have company. You're right, you're very right, of course."

Under the table, Riddle was tracing the swell of his thigh with the steak knife. Every once in a while, he seemed to steel himself and whittled the pad of his thumb against the blade. The fabric of his trousers frayed, split, peeling away to expose pale skin underneath, roped like the pith of an orange.

Tom felt sick. Tom nodded politely and tried to smile. Tom grasped his father's hand under the table and stole away the knife, smearing his hand with blood. Tom twined their fingers together and held firm. Tom looked at his father. Riddle looked at his son from beneath bowed brows and the agony there stabbed at Tom's heart as surely as the knife had stabbed at Riddle quietly, endlessly, under the dining room table for so many dinners, so many nights, so many years.

"You don't take after your mother's side much, do you?" Mary commented.

Tom thought about his wand, felt its weight lightly upon his leg from where it hid in his pocket. "In some ways."

She tutted.

"Not in any way serious, I hope. Our genes clearly came out on top."

"You wouldn't want to turn out to be like her brother, that Morfin fellow."

Tom bit his tongue and smiled politely. "I wouldn't know." He lied. "Does he live in Little Hangleton?"

"The Gaunt family has probably lived in Little Hangleton longer than there has been a Little Hangleton; they've been an uneducated and poor sort even longer than that."

"How unfortunate; to think that being raised by m—an orphanage may have been lucky, for me."

"It doesn't get much worse than the Gaunts, it must be said," commented Mary. "I did feel sorry for your mother when she was a little girl."

Not sorry enough to do anything, he supposed.

Esquire Riddle was thinking, hard. "Do you have your papers with you, boy? Your birth certificate, identification, those things."

Tom thought of the suitcase tucked away under the bed back at The Hanged Man. "I do."

He tapped his thumbs together. "All right. Bring them over tomorrow, if you would. When the offices open on Monday, we'll… we'll see about getting you added to the family register."

Tom felt like his stomach had dropped right out of him. He felt aloft. He felt leaden.

"Thomas!" Mary hissed.

"Who would you have inherit instead, Mary? Frank Bryce?"

Riddle's hand twitched in his under the table.

"I don't fault Mrs. Riddle for being concerned, sir," Tom cut in, "I am a stranger to you. We should take time to get to know one another."

"There will be plenty of time for that moving forward. It's not as if you're a bastard, my boy."

In all aspects, despite everything, this was the best-case scenario. This was the outcome he had hoped for. Tom had come all this way to find his family, to connect with them and embed himself in their lives. He needed this. They seemed to need him, in turn, having incapacitated their own son permanently and left themselves without an heir.

Riddle shook his hand free and stood to collect the dishes. He looked like he was about to cry. His eyes were rimmed red with shame.

"Thank you, Tom," Mary said without looking up.

"Put the kettle on, please, Tom."

It was a precarious, teetering stack. Riddle piled as much onto the serving platter as he could, in a clear hurry to escape the room in as few trips as possible. He buried the silverware in the mashed potatoes and balanced half-empty bowls of soup on top of plates. He shoved napkins into the water glasses and the serving platter became a tower. Tom wondered how his grandparents didn't notice that their son's thumb was bleeding viciously.

"I myself was a student at Oxford," his grandfather continued, "I don't intend to promise anything tonight and, as you've said, so much depends on the war, but if you're certain about continuing education, I retain friends there."

"Are you serious, sir?"

"We had Tom's tuition all lined up, but… well." He folded his hands. "You'll have to commit to the family, you understand? To our lands and holdings, to this house. I think we can consider something of a trial period until you finish this scholarship of yours."

Tom pursed his lips, as if speechless.

"Well, boy?"

"This is beyond my greatest hopes upon meeting you, sir." In fact, it aligned with them perfectly. It was almost dreamy.

What happened next had been slowly building all night. Tom had anticipated it so clearly that he didn't even flinch. In fact, he could have stopped it.

It was a tremendous crash. For a moment, soup and cream suspended in the air, as weightless as birds. The blue china, cups and plates and serving bowls and gravy boat, shattered into a thousand pieces each. Riddle's weak left arm and delicate emotional state had caved in. Riddle landed hard on all fours.

"My dishes!" Mary howled, shooting to her feet. Her mouth twisted, devastated.

From there it rapidly dissolved into a cacophony of shouting.

"Three generations—"

"—never could do a damn thing right—"

"—in front of family is one thing, but to embarrass us in front of a guest—"

"—disgrace—"

"—n't know where I went wrong with you—"

Riddle was blushing splotchily, sobbing as he pried the broken shards of porcelain from the hardwood into a pile. The blue china chewed through his fingers like a dog, piercing and slicing and bleeding bleeding bleeding… but Thomas and Mary Riddle didn't notice or perhaps didn't care.

"Silence." Tom whispered. But no one heard.

Riddle's face was as open as a child's. Wept as freely as a child. But no one heard.

No one but Tom.

"Silencio!" His voice tore itself from his throat as an animal roar.

The room went quiet, save for Riddle's wretched sobbing.

His grandfather clutched as his mouth, slapped his hand against his chest as if to dislodge something caught in his throat. His grandmother was wiser. Mary Riddle stared at Tom with terrified eyes, at the wand in his hand, and knew. She threw herself from her chair, dead-set on fleeing.

It was an impossible decision, truly. With his grandfather's support and acceptance, Tom had been as good as promised everything he had longed for as a child. It was the social and financial support he was seeking for his adulthood. He could have a benefactor. It would enable him to pursue his ambitions. To make a name for himself. It was all being laid out before him. His father had lost it all years ago, through no fault of his own perhaps, and Tom's arrival hadn't changed that.

Tom's presence wasn't likely to change much of anything for his father.

So, it was no choice at all, really.

Tom made quick work of Thomas Riddle with a sickening flash of green and turned his wand on Mary as she crossed the doorway. She fell, silent and screaming, and did not rise.

At some point, he realized, he had gotten to his feet. The dining room chair lay on its back behind him. His grandfather slumped over the table like an abandoned doll.

Riddle's cries had lessened and he had ceased trying to clean up the mess of china and supper. He clutched at his arms, curled on himself, but his gaze rested on Mary's limp body.

Porcelain crunched under Tom's shoes as he stepped beside his father. When he rested his hand upon the man's shoulder, Riddle didn't flinch, but turned and unfurled slowly. He looked up at Tom with his one good eye, breathing heavily, nearly hiccuping.

"That really showed them, Tom. Abracadabra, Tom." His breath hitched, words caught in his throat, and his eyes glossed over with fresh tears. "Abracadabra…"

Tom dropped heavily to his knees and crushed his father to him. Riddle hung his head on Tom's clavicle; clung to his son like a prayer.

"I wanted you more than anything," Tom murmured fiercely. Riddle's trembling hand ran through his hair with all the clumsiness of a father embracing a newborn. His bleeding fingers left streaks across Tom's cheek.

"Abracadabra, abracadabra,"

"More than a mother, more than a friend, more than being special. I wanted my father." Hot tears ran down Tom's neck into the collar of his robes, though they were not his own.

"Abracadabra,"

"I've been looking for you my whole life and I finally find you and you're mutilated,"

Tom's wand hand slid up the bow of his father's spine, as if to comfort him. He stroked the man's face with agonizing tenderness, dedicating the sensation of that warm cheek upon his knuckles to memory, tears and snot and blood, and then the sensation of his wand tip upon Riddle's temple, yew as white as bone.

"They loved you so much that they would rather destroy you than let you change into anything else."

Riddle raised his crippled arm to cup Tom's trembling fist in his palm. His eyes fished for the wand in the corner of his vision, overflowing with tears in a broken plea. The corner of Riddle's mouth trembled upward and he rocked them both gently, one hand pressing Tom's wand more urgently against his face, the other hand stroking the back of the boy's skull.

"Abracadabra, Tom, abracadabra,"

Tom's eyes burned and his vision wavered. His sinuses felt full and hot; his heart twisted and writhed in his breast; his heart drummed a staccato. Riddle closed his eyes and leaned into the wand. When Tom did not react, his brow knotted and he slapped Tom's hand with his open palm.

"Abracadabra,"

Tom flinched. Riddle slapped his wand hand again.

"Abracadabra, Tom,"

"I wish…"

The wand's handle dug into Riddle's cheek. "Abracadabra,"

Tom mashed his forehead against his father's. The tears ran over and he tried not to think about how their noses were the same length.

"I wish you'd just hated me instead."

"Abracadabra," Riddle's voice was a soft sob.

Tom tilted his chin up and kissed his father's crown for the first and final time. "Goodbye, Tom Riddle,

"Avada Kedavra."

oOo

The young man who had once been Tom Riddle stumbled from the estate and into the cold, dark night. Unsteady on his own two feet, he turned and vomited into a butterfly bush just as rain began to fall. He trembled from head to toe, mouth pulled down into a devastating grimace, and tried to put the image of his father's face out of his mind—that smooth, still face frozen in an expression something like peace, something like relief. He pressed onward, taking nothing from the Riddle House, for there had been nothing inside of any sentimental value to him, nothing he wanted to keep as a trophy or reminder or heirloom.

He forgot the house. He forgot the gardener. He forgot the bodies inside. He forgot the blue drapes and the blue willow china and Mary Riddle's blue dress and the red necktie. He took the memories of the last several hours and stashed it all deep, deep inside the recesses of his mind where he would never have to think about that family and that wretched, haunted house ever again.

In a half hour, Morfin Gaunt would open his front door not knowing that the beast that entered would herald the long, slow end of his life.

But until then, a boy with blood on his hands and tears on his face dragged his heavy heart through the rain and mud and howled as his heart and soul tore apart from within.

oOo

End

oOo

PostStory Notes:

Butterfly bush—butterfly effect

Smuggler's Inn is a real place on the southwest English coat that I have had the great pleasure to visit.

This work is unedited and unbeta'd. There are way too many similes and metaphors but that's just too damn bad.

I Do Not read comments.

I Do Not care what you think.

I Do Not care what character birthdays or setting details are right or wrong.

I Do Not reply.

Sorry.

If you wanna ask me about my original novel we can talk.

-Megii