He fucking hated her.
Every nerve tingled with hatred, his bones shaking in anger. How dare she leave him like this. How dare she.
It was the first time in Tom Riddle’s life that he experienced the sinking, crushing, agonising feeling in the pit of his stomach. He would never admit it, especially not to her. But it was there. Growing. Festering.
He couldn’t breathe, letting out desperate gasps and clutching his stomach tightly. It felt like he was in physical pain- but he wasn’t. There was no spell to cure this kind of pain. He let out an anguished yell, and gripped his hair with one hand. What had she done to him?
He’d gone against every single one of his rules, his very understanding of how his life was. He was Lord Voldemort. He used people then discarded them the next second. He wasn’t emotional. He was fucking lethal.
Then she came along. With her big hair and her big mouth and her big ideas. She infuriated him. Her thoughts about the world were wrong. Everything was wrong about her. But then one day he saw her reading by the lake and she tossed her hair out of her face and the sun highlighted the blonde strands and he saw she was reading about the Dark Arts and he confronted her about it and she said “knowledge is power” and she smirked. And that was when he should have left but he stayed with her on the boulder by the lake, talking to her like an equal.
Like an equal. And then they decided to go to the Annual Yule Ball together so they wouldn’t have to suffer alone. And she came down the Grand Staircase in a blue dress and she’d tamed her hair and he knew he wouldn’t let anyone else take her. And as the months passed, and every day he woke up to the weight of her head on his chest, he convinced himself he didn’t feel emotion.
But then he found her crying and he went to comfort her, but she slapped him away and in the shock of it didn’t realise she’d stolen his wand. She cursed him to his knees and sobbed something about “Harry” and “I’m sorry Tom” and then she did something to the strange necklace she always wore and she was gone.
She’d left his wand.
But his finger where the Gaunt ring lived was bare. She’d taken his horcrux.
And now he was there, still on his knees, hating her with every fiber of his fractured soul. He hates her. He hates her he hates her he hates her.
And he’s in over his head, he feels like he’s caving in and he feels everything. He can’t move and now he knows he should have walked away from the lake, but he didn’t. He realises that she used him and she knew who he was and it kills him.
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Fin.