How can surreality be put into words? This ideal world out of nowhere, this family dinner – it all feels like a Hitchcock script, just before the dawn of an unexpected catastrophe.

My mind won't rest. I suspect this house of cards made of beautiful illusions to collapse at any moment. It all seems so promising – and that makes me literally wait for it.
I keep an eye on the corners of the room and all its shadows. Every noise startles me to the core and even Harper's ever so familiar touches burn as though my soul had long since ceased to be bound to my body.

It's as if the fading sunlight of this crazy day has also taken all my peace of mind. The later it gets, the more my body becomes desperate for sleep despite my insomnia, and the harder it is to keep this ridiculous charade up.

I'm like a ticking bomb, and to my great regret, I fully realise it. The only question is when someone will venture to light a match too close to me …

Harper can breathe again and Cecilia and her mother-in-law are more than peaceful after a couple of piano pieces. Riddle kept smiling at me pleadingly, as if I hadn't been for me that he buried a body on this much too long day. And the sisters stuck to me like tar, each of them eager to tell me about their lives and their ideas and inspirations.

I was surrounded by people who only want to do me good, and yet I feel enraptured and can hardly grasp a clear thought after all of this. Mechanically, I drop onto the bed in our room, trying hard to breathe in and out in control even though the walls seem so close.

Harper hands me a glass of water at some point, but mentally I'm not present.

What am I to make of all this?
Whenever in my life I dared to think my circumstances could change for the better, it actually got worse. Little Hangleton is my witness.

Due to the Amortentia revelation from Merope's memories, my last spark of humanity was buried today. Deep down in the humid ground, where I can probably never find it again, fused with the branches of the forest's roots, and with Morfin's lifeless corpse, which will all too soon be overtaken by decomposition.

His face, so pale, so tortured, covered by earth – shovel by shovel. How will I ever sleep again, knowing that I couldn't care less about his fate? How will I ever banish the madness of the Gaunts from my mind again? Live with the knowledge of what my mother did? With the knowledge of what I am, and what I will never be able to feel, because of her transgressions …

I certainly heard what the others said throughout the evening, I felt Harper's skin against mine whenever she tried to calm me, but little by little, in waves, the same old feeling of emptiness returns. As it did right after Morfin's death and my mother's third memory.

Even though a naive part of me wants to cling to the bubbly world around me like I've never experienced before, I feel the urge to distance myself.
I don't want to be alone, I don't know what will happen if I am, but what choice do I have?

In the end we're all alone in our heads. And at some point, every evening comes to an end. I can't run from that truth forever …

"You're not well," I hear Harper mumble as she takes a seat on the bed right next to me. "Tom, please talk to me …"

"There's nothing to say."

"But your uncle –"

"I'm not sorry, I don't care about his death."

"Not at all?"

"No," I reply. "That's not good, I know – but it's the truth."

She hesitates, still she needs to get it off her chest. "What about … the love potion?"

The most inevitable of questions – it continues to make me stare into blank space.

"Tom," Harper sighs, "that doesn't mean anything – listen, what the literature describes can't –"

"I confirm the literature in every possible way, Harper," I moan, my tired look is one of wary disbelief. "There's no more denying it."

"No?" Almost cautiously she asks, "So you don't have … feelings for me?"

"Harper …" I draw in a deep breath. "What my mother did resulted in the fact that I cannot –"

"Don't say it," she interrupts me, putting on a brave smile. "Just don't, it's fine …"

"Silence doesn't make it less true. And that's becoming more and obvious to me. I'll have to draw my consequences, as do you –"

"There don't have to be any," she whispers. "Not while we have each other …"

I see her pain, and it feels like my own, yet my mind immediately catches up. I can't feel at all …

"Dean was right," I whisper to her. "Everyone was right, Harper, I'm sorry. I'm not good for you."

"Stop the nonsense," she demands. "We'll get through this. You just need some time. So much has happened today … Tell me – your mother's memories, what did you see?"

"The worst," I say, "vicious circles of violence, abuse and fanaticism."

She just nods in concern. "But you finally found your father," she quietly states, as if it that was the solution to anything. "And he … he's so thrilled to meet you, Tom."

"Well, initially, Morfin was thrilled, too."

She shudders and buries her face in her hands before ruffling her hair. The sleeves of her pajamas slip, I can see all her bite marks again.

It must have been traumatic, she's never been so scared before – and I'm no help in processing it.

"This is my fault," I say matter-of-factly. "This is precisely why everyone warned you. I did put you in danger and you –"

"Tom, you're smarter than that," she wearily claims, "stop talking this nonsense. Let's just hold on to each other." She almost stares at me, for a moment of eternity, and it's like a silent plea. "We're all we have, aren't we?"

"You're all I have," I confirm, "you, on the other hand, have a family that loves you. You're able to not exploit friendships for mere convenience and your own benefit, and you can start over – without all the weight."

"But I don't want that. This is what I want. You and me. Why don't you believe me?"

Because everything I've done today, everything I've seen in the memories, is gradually synthesising with the dark foreboding and anger that has dominated my life for the longest time.

The insurmountable linkage of my simple reality – I cannot love – with the transcendent of the past – a literal curse – holds me down.
The noema of insensibility as an ideal correlate to its noesis with a real component – a cursed love potion.
What solution should there ever be?

"Try to sleep, will you?" So many things run through my mind, but little more than that I can utter … At least I try to smile for her, even if I probably fail.

But there's raw exhaustion in her bones after a day in my hell, and so in the end, she just bleakly nods to lie down in my arm.

And with each of her heartbeats, the question vexes me more – how on earth is it possible for me to feel all her withheld disappointment and pain? I pull her tighter into my arms, as if I need her to anchor me, I feel her tears on my skin, but at the same time I'm numb.

The realisation of this day simply changes everything.

All the doubts about us – about me – I don't want to hear, but the shadows keep whispering to me. I don't want to listen to the voices in my head, shouting that I'm finally what I was always meant to be. Uncontrolled, lost, arbitrary. And thus someone who should have no place in her life ….

I don't want to be without her. She's the only person on earth I've ever cared about. But as much as I want to deny it, my circumstances will eventually hurt her.

Sooner or later, for her sake, I have to let her go.

So why not do it sooner?
Why not beat fate to the punch and face the chaos of my insomnia's depths?

Harper is soon asleep. But I take a decision after three or four hours of circular thoughts and weighing between my selfishness and her well-being. In silent regret. And as what I have to do sinks to the bottom of my consciousness, I swallow and already sense the old familiar lethargy taking possession of me.

It recedes, for a heartbeat between space and time and heaven and hell, as I kiss Harper's forehead and look at her one last time.

"Does it make you feel uncomfortable?"

That was my question, on the last day of last year.

"No. I feel protected."

That was her answer.

And to my infinite regret, it amounted to nothing more than a fatal fallacy.

I feel unlike myself as I get up and tuck her in.
Everything is warmer than I am …

Every inch of distance from her feels lethal. The very part of my soul I learned to cherish, especially in the last few months, dies in the face of my abrupt farewell. Leaving it here, with her, is probably the hardest thing I've ever had to do. I can hardly force myself away from the peaceful sight of her – the only one that has ever given me peace myself – but I have to.

I can't burden her with the blood on my hands and all the guilt in my soul any longer. How could I condemn her to a life without love just because she loves me?

I leave her, just like the two remaining vials with my mother's fourth and fifth memories. Just like Marvolo's hideous ring. Also every penny, as well as the life I actually wanted to live.
All I take is our Polyjuice Potion. Wherever I go, flexible optics can hardly hurt.

Then, like in a dark tunnel, I block out everything around me, and as I reach the foot of the winding staircase in the foyer, I don't notice Thomas Riddle in the other room at first. But he notices me.

"I knew it," I hear his heart break, just as I place my hand on the door of the main entrance. He's sitting in the dark, and yet it's as if he's standing right next to me, trying to hold me back. "Don't go … Tom, give us some time …"

"I can't." I don't even turn around. "Tell her I'm sorry."

"This is how you're going to leave her? After everything that happened today? After everything she said?" I turn around to him. Still in the opposite room he looks at me like her intercession, and he follows up with, "She loves you, Tom …"

"Indeed," I reply. "And it's hurting her."

"Is that what you want me to tell her?" I don't have to stand next to him to see the silent reproach in his features.

"Say whatever. It doesn't matter anymore."

And with that, I turn and walk out into the open for good. I feel the clammy chill of dawn on my cheeks and I hear the gravel groan beneath my footsteps – but how surreal does all this seem?

"Tom, wait!" my father whispers all audibly, hurrying after me. "Don't go!"

He rushes to get to me, but halfway there, he pauses. Seeing my wand pointed at him makes him stop and, for the first time, he stares at me with real concern.

"You wouldn't use –"

"You buried what I would today," I retort. "Go back into your huge home to your huge family and forget about me. Don't look for me ever again – and we'll be fine."

"Fine?" His eyes widen. "How could we be fine like that? I want to be a part of your life, better late than never, I want to make up for you growing up in an orphanage and –"

"You can't," I talk over him. "It was never in your hands. The guilty one paid with her life, but not even that means anything. So now when I tell you to turn around and let me go, and not look back, you're doing us both a favour – you do just that."

"I'm not following you," he quietly says, struggling for composure. "But don't make me turn my back on you. I'll stop right here."

I work up a bitter smile. "To watch me leave? I wouldn't have imagined you to be that sentimental." He seems devastated, so I add, "Thank you for the unconventional funeral and the trout. And the cigarette. Maybe I'll start smoking again …"

"Do not, no, from a medical perspective that's –"

"I'm aware … Goodbye, Mr Riddle." I hesitate, shaking my head to raise a brow. "It's so strange that we share a face and a name – and absolutely nothing else."

He remains completely lost and frozen as I leave the manor behind.

I cannot stay, I cannot go back. I know my true colours now, and they're too dark for everything that felt so light so far.