Half-Sick of Shadows

Notes: Originally written for Springtime Gen 2009. Title comes from Tennyson's 'Lady of Shalott'. Many, many thanks to Krysa for the last-minute beta!

To Merope Gaunt, freedom tasted of strawberries. Sweet and tart at once, and perfectly shaped, just like the ones she watched Thomas Riddle feed to Cecilia Worthington. As she sat, obscured by the nearby briars, her mind's eye conjured such a fruit, red as sin itself, and when she opened her eyes, berries spilled from between her fingers, droplets of blood against her filthy skirts. She raised one to her lips, and, as she bit deep, she could not stifle the soft gasp of pleasure.

"Someone's here!" It was Cecilia's voice, and as Merope crouched as low as possible, she could almost feel those china-blue eyes roving around her. "I heard something, Tom."

"Don't be silly, darling." His very voice sent shivers racing like so many lightfooted cats down Merope's spine. "There's nobody else here. Just you and me. It's as things should be."

She giggled. "I shouldn't be alone with you. Mother would have my head."

"Your mother's far too busy discussing curtains with my mother," he replied, laughing.

His smile was a thing of heartstopping beauty, and Merope's teeth drove so sharply into her lip that she drew blood. Reaching down, she bit into another strawberry, its taste now overlain with a delicate metallic tang. The pair were no longer speaking. Long graceful fingers now tangled in Cecilia's curling blonde hair, drawing her close. Merope could hear the lovely girl draw in her breath, golden lashes falling shut over her eyes as they kissed.

***

The Gaunts had had a castle once, Merope's father had mused aloud in one of his rare moments of introspection. A real castle, with towers, a moat, and an underground chapel. Merope had never seen it. Even her father said it had been in ruins during his childhood, strewn with moss and vines. It had burnt down nearly a hundred years before.

On some days, Merope sat by the window and gazed at the overgrown bushes, imagining they were trees, and she was trapped in a tower. Her mother had told her stories of ladies in towers, imprisoned there by wicked relations, and rescued by knights. But the visions faded quickly, leaving nothing but the filthy little shack in the woods. And there were no knights in Little Hangleton.

Merope rarely allowed herself memories of her mother, but the one that stole back most often was of a mirror that had sat on her dressing-table. It had been in the family for generations, Eurydice Gaunt had said so many times, from when the Gaunts were a great and powerful family. And lived in a castle, Merope would always add in her mind.

The mirror, Morfin had shattered one morning, but not before fifteen-year-old Merope had stared into it, willing her features to shift into something even slightly more pleasing, and found instead a pair of black-lashed eyes studying her curiously from the half-opened window.

"What on earth are you?" The voice was a young man's, rife with scorn and superiority. Merope shrank back, hiding her face on instinct. "My God, this place is filthy!"

It was. She could not deny that, no more than she could deny her own looks. Her mouth was dry as sawdust as she looked at him, the perfect image of a knight from one of her stories. But she was no damsel in a tower. Only Merope Gaunt, worthless and useless, with not even magic to while away the hours.

"...the Gaunts, Master Riddle," a second voice piped up from outside. "Tinkers and peddlers, but they own this land and this...house."

"You call that a house? An eyesore, more like!" snapped Master Riddle. "Father would have you speak with the owner, get rid of him so we can tear it down." Turning on his heel, he stalked away, leaving Merope staring after him, heart thudding hollowly.

For that was how it began--the dispute that carried on for eight, ten months, nearly a year, and ended with her father and brother in Azkaban and Merope trapped in a shell of a house, still echoing with curses and the memory of a beautiful, uncaring face.

Every day during that summer when time itself felt suspended, she watched Tom Riddle as she had before, but now, something else had awakened. Now, when Merope lifted the once-useless wand she had inherited from her mother, things happened. As if a veil had lifted and she could see anew. For the first time, she wondered if perhaps her father had been wrong, but thrust the thought aside in terror, at least at first.

Now, contemplating Tom Riddle and the gnawing hunger she could not ignore, the stray threads of a plan began to weave together in Merope's mind. There was one thing she had now that Tom did not, one force at her disposal he could not brush away. He had land, power, wealth, all the world at his beck and call. But she had magic.

Conjured by her thoughts, a strawberry lay in her hand. She ate it in two bites, the taste lingering on her tongue.

***

As Tom and Cecilia slept one afternoon, curled together on the blanket, Merope crept out from the bushes, fingers trembling on the hilt of Morfin's knife. She was clumsy for a start--clumsy, dirty, worthless Squib, damn you--and desire had only made it worse, made her careless. She caught her breath at the sight of his face, the closest she had ever come to him.

Reaching out, she cut several strands of his hair and secreted them in her pocket. Her heart jumped into her throat as he stirred, drawing Cecilia closer. Merope fled into the safety of the trees. Soon, soon enough.

It was a flawless plan, in theory, as so many plans were. She had gathered the herbs already, beneath the light of the full moon. Asphodel and rosemary, petals from the red roses that spilled across the arbour in the Riddles' garden.

Merope had always understood herbs and potions, had always been able to see how myriad pieces fit together to form countless different shapes. It had mattered little to her father, who thought herblore a poor substitute for raw magical power, and she could not erase the memory of the night after her mother died, when Marvolo Gaunt had forced Merope to set fire to the garden she had tended so lovingly all her life. Only real magic now, he had insisted, no more of this nonsense.

But he was gone now, as Merope needed to remind herself over and over again. For the first few days, she had wandered aimlessly through the house, echoes and snatches of their voices chasing her, berating her as they would have done, had they been there. A strange magic indeed, to have woven their words so deep into her mind that she haunted herself with their words.

For the first time in years, the house smelled of herbs again, sweet and poignant. Merope worked diligently through the night, her normally slow fingers all but dancing. There was magic in them after all, of an odd, halting sort, stunted all these years but reaching out tentatively for some form of life.

Tom and Cecilia rode every afternoon to their secret arbour, and every day, Merope waited. Only this time, she carried the small, stoppered bottle, waiting for them to fall asleep as they always did beneath the afternoon sun. She crept forward and poured a dash into the monogrammed silver flask, murmuring a few words under her breath.

Heart hammering, she waited. Tom awakened eventually, tracing Cecilia's face with a lazy smile that brought tears pricking at the backs of Merope's eyes. He reached for the flask and took a long sip. The perfect mouth pursed, the brow furrowed in distaste, and he studied the flask for a second before his eyes met Merope's through the veil of leaves.

He did not look away, her knight.

From somewhere in her memory, Merope heard a crash of broken glass, her brother's mocking laughter--I wonder how you can bear to see yourself, sister dearest. She needed no mirrors now, no false reflections. They were a prisoner's comfort, and she was a prisoner no longer. No more towers and filthy hovels, no more wasted magic, no more words she could not forget. There was only Tom, whose eyes reflected nothing but her.

For the first time in her life, magic was more than a taunt, a shadow lurking just out of reach, and the world more than imagined pictures.

Merope emerged from the trees and held out her hand to her future. In it, a single, red strawberry gleamed beneath the afternoon sun.