Chapter 1
Dear reader,
I had always prided myself on my hindsight, but what a cruel joke that is. To see everything so clearly after the damage is done. After the choices are made. After you’ve fallen so deep, you can’t claw your way back. Well, let me tell you, it wasn’t all at once. It wasn’t like flipping a switch. It was slower. So much slower. Like sinking in quicksand as it dipped you from the top of your head to the tips of your toes, and if you could have screamed, it would have been covered up so nicely that no one could hear it .
But I thought I was floating.
I must say though, I find great humor in the knowledge that for someone bearing this name, how fitting that I was the blind one all along. Oh, wait—
Forgive me. I’ve been there so long, I’ve forgotten myself. The manner in which I enunciate and the vocabulary I select. They belong to a different time, don’t they? An era that has seeped into my bones like the fog rolling off the Thames.
Choices, oh yes, I've made them—bad ones, good ones, and some I think are still up for debate. They have all led me here, nonetheless. And if I had to be here, shackled to this sink of despair, I sure as hell want you alongside me, forced to read my thoughts as I recount how I had been the author of my own downfall because misery loves company.
T—
Oh, no. I will not say his name . You do not need it. Names confer power, after all and he already had quite enough of that. My name is Cecile and I thought if anyone could do it, if anyone could fix him, it would be me. I was wrong. It was not in God‘s plans for me to be his salvation. But you can’t know what that feels like, can you? The belief that you’re the one who can save one from a tragedy that has been pre-written, not because you’re noble—oh no, it’s never about nobility, do not flatter me, I am no Gryffindor. It is about ego. It is about thinking you’re different from everyone else who tried. You’re not.
You’re not. I wasn’t.
But you want to hear about him, don’t you? How he wore his humanity like a well-tailored suit, just convincing enough to fool those who never looked too closely. How the world ground him down to the bone and then tossed him aside as though something so broken could be discarded without consequence, and how I stood there, sinfully incredulous to think I could piece him back together. All the while, I was running. You see, when you spend enough time staring into the abyss, it doesn’t stare back. It swallows you whole. I was blinded, not by love, not even by hope, but by arrogance. By this delusion that I was special. I thought that if I could reach him, maybe I wouldn’t have to face the emptiness inside myself. He was the perfect distraction—cold, distant, untouchable. And I, the perfect fool, the dreamer.
But that’s the tragedy, isn’t it? You cannot fix what was never whole to begin with.
And you—well—you’ll see. You’ll see exactly what I mean. If you think you know who he is, if you think you understand how this ends, rest assured—
You do not.
I was blind. But now I see.
Tom Riddle
Qualities: Assertive, leaderly, motivated, calculative, proactive, observant, influential
flaws: smug, narcissistic, conceited, deceitful, manipulative, cruel, sadistic, insensitive, autocratic, detached, apathetic.
Adrien Rosier
Damon Lestrange
Qualities: tenacious, adaptable, self-reliant, loyal, decisive, perceptive
Flaws: aggressive, stubborn, agitated, brutal, violent, sadistic, crazed
Abraxas Malfoy
Qualities: trustworthy, loyal, admirable, reliable, organized, perspicacious, mighty, sophisticated
Flaws: tense, uptight, cold, smug, patronizing, haughty, aloof, judgmental, prideful
Dante Avery
Qualities: humorous, energetic, daring, playful, charismatic, socially adept, entertaining
Flaws: cocky, egocentric, spoiled, careless, immature, messy
Cassius Nott
