"I knew I'd find you here," he shouts as he gets off the horse to haste through the rain.

Harper is completely paralysed at his striking resemblance to me, but I'm no less caught off guard.

What the hell is he doing here?

Of all the possible scenarios in the world, this one would have struck me as the most ridiculous and unlikely of all just a few heartbeats ago – but here we are.

"Well," he immediately begins to put it into perspective, "of course I didn't know for sure, but let's just say I had an intuition …"

Harper stares at him as though he was a ghost. I, on the other hand, don't take my eyes off him just like in the morning because I don't trust him.

"But you don't have to rely on intuition only, do you?" he then says, as serious as it gets. "You know exactly who I am."

"Let's skip patronising questions, I'm not blind."

Unlike so many others, his reaction is neither euphoric nor embarrassed. Not fearful, not uncertain in the face of my sombre gaze – he simply smiles, it's barely noticeable.

"Well, shall we … introduce ourselves?" he asks.

If the rain weren't drumming down on my face like a constant reminder of the very last spark of life inside me, I'd probably kill him on the spot.

But the look he gives me is so oddly hopeful, and at the same time so proud and smug, that I'm simply too irritated to even flinch.
I can't help but realise he's surrounded by the kind of nonchalant charm that I've made use of whenever necessary throughout my life.

"Introduce ourselves," I repeat incredulously, shaking my head. "You don't have the faintest idea who's standing in front of you."

"Oh I do – and I shouldn't have run away from you in the morning." He screws up his face, shrugging. "I was just completely overwhelmed …" It's not meant to be a justification, I suppose, but rather a piece of information for context. "And it wasn't the first time in my life that I ran, I can say that much. It's quite the shame – to unexpected news and twists I always react like that at first."

"Oh really …"

My reproaches remain unspoken, and yet they stand between us.

"But now I'm here." He's bridging our distance by moving even closer to me. His mimic shows a strange mixture of euphoria and joy, and I really don't know what to make of it when he abruptly takes me by the shoulders. "Let me look at you …" He chuckles to himself and then shakes his head in bewilderment. "You'd think it was witchcraft … Impossible to deny you."

"And yet that's exactly what undeniably happened," I remind him and frown, "so be so kind as to take your hands off me!"

"What's your name?" he continues as though he didn't even hear me. "Did she call you Tom?"

Harper's smile, the way she's so touched by this scene, is answer enough for him.

"I never gave up looking for you," he then claims, strangely affected. "Believe me, Tom. And it's not right that you had to find me. As your father, I should have found you … I should have been able to do that. But before the café just now … I thought I wasn't in my right mind. For 17 years I've been looking for you and suddenly you're standing there, the spitting image of me." He takes a deep breath. He then smiles, though he seems embarrassed and taken aback. "I'm sure Morfin has told you a few things, but – I swear to you, your mother was suddenly swallowed up by the earth!"

"Was that before or after you impregnated a penniless eighteen-year-old that you left on her own?" Deep down I know it wasn't really his fault, but still.

"Oh, Tom," he sighs, the weariness is likely even appropriate, "listen, I know … I'd be angry, too, if I were you. But you have to understand – I didn't know what I was doing. I really didn't." He gulps as he stares at the ground. Obviously his sore spot. He knows exactly how stupid it was to get caught up in Merope's web of lies. "And when I came to my senses – my first reaction was the same as today. Away! I had to get away … To sort myself out, to put my thoughts in order …" He shrugs his shoulders in frustration. "And when I did, when I saw everything coherently again – it was clear to me that the only good that came of this … tangled … liaison? To this day I don't know what to call it …"

"Madness?" I suggest. "A tendentious joke?"

He does some soul-searching before admitting, "A bit of both, I suppose, yes. Freud would've had a lot to analyse about it … Tom, the only good thing that came out of it, anyway, is you."

"You don't know me."

"And I deeply regret that. I wanted to find you, I didn't want to leave you with her, I would have grabbed you and saved you –"

"Saved him from what?" Harper interrupts him. "Should you be talking about Merope Gaunt right now, please know that she loved your son until she took her very last, far too early breath!"

Confused and dully indecisive, he asks, "And … you are?"

"Doesn't matter," I reply before turning to Harper. "Don't defend her, you don't know what happened. What she did …"

"Whatever it was," she says, letting her gaze wander to Thomas Riddle again, "I know what we were told. That she loved your son. More than her own life."

"What exactly do you mean by that?" Riddle asks, genuinely interested. But then he begins to wonder even more about the silence and stillness in which we have just been talking. "Well, where's that lunatic anyway? Is he going to attack us with one of his rusty knives at any moment?" He sees my dark glance and quickly corrects himself. "Sorry, he's your uncle after all, I just mean –"

"Lunatic is fine," Harper finds, giving me a stern look. "He's … not here, though."

Riddle pauses, then raises his brow in amusement. "Not here? Has he gone on a hike with his snakes?"

I all but nod. "A slightly more extended excursion."

Thomas eyes me as though he could read me just because we share the same blood, then finally drops his hands from my shoulders and wants to walk past me towards the cabin.

Harper also can't help but look back to the shack.

But both of their first glances into that direction make them pause.
Morfin's motionless legs are visible through the crack in the door. On the floor.
Might look a bit suspicuous …

I briefly close my eyes as I create wind and let the door slam shut. I can't let Harper see him like that any longer …

Most of all, however, Riddle is now staring at me, in complete shock. "She passed that on to you?"

Harper's eyes widen, yet she says, "Sir, with all due respect, that was obviously just a gust of wind!"

"I like you," he immediately laughs as if he hadn't just seen Morfin's body and traces of magic. Nodding his head in acknowledgement, he praises her, "Fast with excuses and a bold attitude … But just as Merope did, you underestimate the power of memories. I know exactly what she was. Who she was. But given her insane family, I assumed it was … a whim of the very nature most people just don't have a clue about."

"So are you going to say it?" I ask him, and I intend to push him.

"What?" He seems indifferent. "That she was a witch? I've realised that by now. I've made my peace with it after all these years. With that, at least. I think."

I give him a dismissive look. "But hardly with the fact that you were just used by her."

"So it was Amortentia in the end?" Harper whispers, and I merely nod. "Oh, Tom," she hushes, moved, yet at a loss for words.

I look at Riddle, then back at Harper. "Such a waste of magic, of blood –"

"Don't talk like Morfin!" she snaps at me.

"They haven't accomplished anything of value, Harper!" I brush past her protest like Riddle wasn't standing right beside us.

"Of course they have," she claims. "You! Don't you look at your father like that, Tom, don't forget that mine is a No-Maj, too! So is my mother. The best of all worlds run through your veins."

"Didn't you hear Morfin?" I grumble. "Harper, didn't you look at him? He was completely mad! She wasn't one bit better and he –" I hesitate, glancing at my father, up and down, only to finally say, "He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. And bloody foolish to underestimate a woman."

"Maybe it was fate," Harper claims. "And if Merope really grew up here, then she obviously wanted to escape her life, Tom! Is that so hard to understand?"

"But at what cost? She abused him, just for healthy blood!" Riddle follows our conversation with increasing uneasiness, but we pay no attention to him. "And by that she condemned me from the very beginning of my life!"

"Just as Morfin spoke of muddy blood," Harper says, "so surely has Marvolo! Heirs of Slytherin? Just think how in their world unworthy blood would have stained their supposed heritage! What would those fanatics have done to a child had your mother not hidden you from the world despite that lonely lethargy? She obviously just wanted you to be safe!"

"She was a witch," I retort, "she could have saved herself after I was born –"

"How so?" Harper shakes her head. "Anyone who practices magic is on the radar. No one casts spells without the Ministry finding out. She would have been detectable, and in her weak state she couldn't have protected you. It was bitterly cold, she was alone, penniless and half-dead when she gave birth to you with the last of her strength! Her father and brother, mourning their supposed blood purity, would have killed you both without any mercy! She's protected you. She loved you more than her own life. She so obviously gave hers for yours, Tom."

"You know," Riddle now sighs, looking as if he had barely understood a word so far, "I was very quick to judge her then, too, I was angry just like you … But where she came from there was nothing but madness, violence and poverty … Marvolo wasn't much better than Morfin. I'm not surprised, at least with a few years' distance, that she was desperate for a better life. What she did, to me, to you – it wasn't done out of malice alone. And I think, as grim as fate was, in the end it has brought us together now, hasn't it? You are living proof that something good can come out of anything bad."

"Are you out of your mind?" I snap. "I repeat myself – you don't know me! You don't know what I've done!"

He groans and shakes his head indecisively as he looks past me towards the hut again. "That's Morfin, right? Is he … dead?" He hesitates for a couple of heartbeats when I say nothing in reply. "Ah, I must admit," he finally talks on, "that this is a rather wayward first father-son moment. You let me make up for all that missed dealing with your youthful sins right on the first day, and of course a death of any kind is quite a calibre." He looks me firmly in the eye and nods. "But I've missed far too much of your life, and whatever led up to this – I carry my guilt."

"You carry absolutely nothing! Why shouldn't I get rid of you right here and now?"

As if he hadn't heard that at all, he now really walks past me and towards the hut.
Audacity usually wins, he seems to know it as well as I do …

"What are you doing?" I call after him. "Stop walking!"

He turns around briefly and says, "Come, come, you're my flesh and blood! We'll fix that."

"But he's dead!" I shout. "What's wrong with you? How should this be fixed? Easter may be the time of resurrection, but there will certainly not happen a Lazarus effect in this forest!"

"You've inherited my cynicism," he finds in amusement. "I didn't say anything about resurrection. We're digging a grave."

"We?" I almost yell.

"Yes, we," he repeats calmly. "You and me." He winks at Harper. "The young lady doesn't have to help, of course …"

"I arrive here, in the middle of nowhere in Little Hangleton," I shout, taking a few, angry steps towards him, "after 17 years without any family – and then I see you. And your face, so obviously similar to mine. And you don't know me. Nothing about me, nothing about the way I think or see the world, with no idea of who I am. What I can be. In the shack there's a sneak peek though …" I shake my head in utmost irritation, I breath for a moment, then I ask, "And all you can think of on top of all this is that we're digging a grave now?"

"Yes," he says simply. "You're my son, now that I found you – what else would I think of?"

I don't know what else to say.

He, however, still isn't lost for words. "I've wanted to reverse time for all these years. See, I wanted to correct my mistake. And I couldn't go back or forth, my research was getting me nowhere. Sure, I also went on with life, Cecilia gave me three wonderful daughters, but I always knew you must still be out there somewhere. Somewhere with her, or all alone …"

"You don't exactly seem to have a talent for research," I reply grimly. "Even apart from the fact that you were duped by a stranger at this very spot in a dark forest, you seem truly lost! Do you have any idea how much investigation it took us to find our way here? If I could make it to Little Hangleton with nothing more than a name – my name – how could it have been impossible for you to find me with all the knowledge in your hands?"

"I'll show you the letters I sent later at home, I usually got them back unopened."

"Later at home?" I spread my arms. "I don't have a home! We're on the brink of disaster, why won't anyone admit it?"

"I think he's having a nervous breakdown," Harper says to Riddle.

"How dare you," I murmur.

"We'll work it out," he claims, deeply relaxed by now. "I've been looking everywhere for you to no avail, believe me. And now you're standing in front of me. Not on the brink of disaster by any means. Call me foolish – but I'm your father. You're my son. And that you killed that mad Gaunt –"

"It was an accident!" Harper insists, but Riddle just waves it off.

"It actually doesn't matter – even Merope hated him, I couldn't care less about his death. No one in the village will ever ask questions if Morfin just disappears. But if you leave him here and don't want me to help you, you might as well write your name on the door. Or you … do what your mother was able to do and manipulate everything and everyone to the point of memory loss, but … then it really must be everyone. Because everyone here has seen you. Everyone has seen that you are my son. Her son … And who do you think they suspect when your uncle is lying here? So earth to earth. Let's bury him."

"There was a spade and two shovels in the hut," Harper says, walking past us, straight to the door. "Let's get this over with."

Riddle looks after her for a moment, then smiles at me. "You should keep her …"

"Don't you dare get close to her," I warn him.

"I never would!" he says, his face softening at once. "Oh, Tom, what has the world done to you to make you so mistrustful?"

I follow Harper and leave him behind me. "You've got some nerve to ask that …"

"Which just reminds me," he skims over it, "do we even have to dig a grave? Couldn't you use your supernatural –"

"Mr Riddle," Harper begins, turning to us once more, "there are certain things in life that cannot be simplified with magic."

"We very well could, I –" I retort, but she immediately talks over me as well.

"I know he doesn't deserve it. But just as playing the piano is not the same when you bewitch the instrument, more blessings rest on a grave that has been dug. So no magic."

"Oh well," Riddle groans, "all right, Missy. You seem to have the most decency of us, for whatever it's worth …"

Hi there,

50 chapters, about 1/3 of this story – if you got here, thank you! And feel free to leave me your thoughts :)

Thanks for being here!

xx Dalia