Merope

I dreamed a dream in time gone by;

When hope was high and life worth living.

I dreamed that love would never die!

I dreamed that God would be forgiving!

Merope had dreamed--oh, how had she dreamed! The child was proof of that.

The child. She would have once hoped for it to be a boy, for strength, a girl, for sweetness and beauty... now? Now she couldn't care less. It would be a child, or so she presumed. It would be a child, and it would be her child. It would be Tom's child.

Then I was young and unafraid

And dreams were made and used and wasted

There was no ransom to be paid!

No song unsung, no wine untasted.

Maybe she had been foolish in her pursuit of such a wonderful man. Perhaps she had been stupid, as her father had delighted in telling her. But her father was gone now, as was Morfin--Merlin be praised! Weak Merope could not find the strength of will within her to loathe her father, but she certainly hated her brother. She was terrified of both.

But the tigers come at night

With their voices soft as thunder;

And they tear your hope apart

As they turn your dream to shame!

The dreams that tormented her now at night were demons incarnate, she swore. A continuous reel of the life she could have had if she hadn't told, the lie she could have lived with so happily. Once these would have been pleasant dreams--dreams of Tom, golden dreams of a future that would never be hers. Now, the edges of the pictures swarmed with horrible monsters--her brother; her father; horrible snakes; hooded specters; a slit-eyed, cruel man whom she didn't know and hoped that she never would.

He slept a summer by my side;

He filled my days with joy and wonder

He took my childhood in his stride!

But he was gone when autumn came.

Tom. She loved him, even if he had left her. It was her own foolish fault, anyways, she told herself. How could she be so stupid? Perhaps she was so worthless a person as her father told her. She felt the baby kick her, its tiny push like the fist of a Titan against her spare frame. Even that, the shift of a fetus, took its toll. She was weak; that was why she'd left off the potion. Foolish, stupid, impractical Merope! She should have kept an eye on the potion--she should have kept it strong! But how could she, so heavy with her child? Even she knew that one must be careful around potions when one is expecting. How could she administer the potion, if it would jeopardize her precious child? She couldn't. Not her child. Not Tom's child.

And still I dream he'll come to me

And we will live the years together

But there are dreams that cannot be!

There are storms we cannot weather!

In the delirium that seemed to permeate her days, she told herself that he loved her, too, and he would return to her--she told herself that this was only temporary, that she and Tom would reunite and live together forever with the little child now coiled inside her. Secretly, though, deep down in the honest nether regions of her heart, she knew she was lying to herself. But how could she go on, unloved, castoff, neglected, as she had been her whole life previous? She couldn't. In Merope's fairy tale, strong, beautiful Tom still loved the sickly little witch. He loved her and the child, without magic, without spells. The only problem was that she wasn't living that fairy tale any more.

I had a dream my life would be

So different from this hell I'm living

So different now from what it seems!

Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.

The child kicked again, and Merope doubled over, gasping. Her mismatched eyes watered in grief, in hate, in loss, in fear. Limp, stringy hair sprawled in dark curls across her pale face, and her heavy hands grasped for an amulet long since pawned. She moaned in agony as her muscles contracted and the child began its journey into the world. Her hands twisted in the ugly sheets of the steel bed, clutched at the thin cloth with desperate fingers. Her screams were hardly even loud enough to be heard-- whimpers instead of howls. The tired, worn missionary women in their washed-out dresses eyed the ugly girl with only the slightest pity; the excess of sorrow which flooded the orphanage on an everyday basis hardened their hearts to the suffering all around them. Merope Gaunt shrieked, wraith-like, as the dark-haired child slid, slick with blood, from his mother's womb. The women dried and wrapped the child with the practiced speed of all midwives, handed him to his mother.

"Tom," she whispered. "Tom Marvolo Riddle."

The fairy-tale, the dreams, the short-lived joy, all flickered out with her last rattling breath.

And thus did she, Merope Gaunt, unloved, unwanted, die.