No time to love (A Tom Riddle gothic story)

10 - Horcrux

Chapter 10
Horcrux

Anxiety had become her companion.
Morgana looked around the foreign landscape.
She was walking on a weird grass.
Then she realized it wasn't just grass grass. She saw Larry's black cat, torn to pieces.
Then she saw black quills, until she spotted the fallen crow.
Other bones and corpses laid around her.
She ran, until she found a clean tombstone, white as the bones.
Carved on that, a word.
Horcrux.

Morgana startled on her bed, opening her eyes while her body trembled, sweating cold.
It was the middle of the summer and also nights were hot.
Morgana curled on her bed, but couldn't fall back to sleep.
She waited, lost in her thoughts, until it was breakfast time.
With unpleasant company.
Her father and his new family, one approved by his pureblood parents.
Morgana felt like a stranger.
Just another year then she would graduate and find a flat for her own.

"You got new letters" her father said after their owl dropped the post.
Morgana shot a quick glanced at them, then focused again of her meal.

"Did I see it right? It's from a Lestrange?" he inquired nodding at the letter she hid in her pockets.

"Yeah, just school stuff" she said quickly.

He simpered "That's lovely. Why don't you invite him around?".

Of course he would approve any link with a pureblood.
Her former friends, Larry and Grace, weren't pure enough.
But the Lestranges were known for being obsessed with purity. And being very rich.
Morgana wouldn't call Bran Lestrange "her friend", but in that summer she got more letters from him than from her former friends.
Nothing alarming. Just updates on Tom's Knights faring.
Maybe he wanted to subtly remind her to keep his secrets.
In a kinder way than what their master would use.

"If you've got nothing to do, you can come with me to the Ministry. And then go shopping with your stepmother" her father suggested like it was a very generous offer.

She pondered how to decline politely the offer.
She hated the Ministry. Roaming around Diagon Alley was the only appealing part.
Before she could reply, an unexpected noise came to save her.
Someone rang the bell at the front door.

"Do you mind to see who is it now?" her father said grumpily, eating hugrily his food like fearing that someone was coming to steal it from him.

Unwillingly Morgana stood and walked to the door, hating feeling like a domestic elf.
If she was allowed, she would have used her magic to open the door and check who was behind it.
But when she turned the knob and unveiled the mystery, her eyes widened in shock.

Tom was standing in cheap clothes in front of her.
Her partner, that she didn't know if she missed or not, surprised her with a visit.
He was holding a bunch of roses, behind which he was hiding his smirk at her reaction.
"What are you doing here?" she asked softly, unimpressed by the flowers. He could summon them as easily as he could summon a snake and set it against her.

"I couldn't waste my whole summer in that muggle orphanage, could I?" he said cheekily.

"Ana! Let him in!".
She stiffened at the father's voice booming behind her.

She held her stare on Tom, who just shrugged with an amused grin.
Morgana stood still until her father joined them.

Her father widened his arms to welcome the guest in "Hey, don't be shy. Come in, you don't have to act like secret lovers. What's your name, boy?".

"Tom Riddle, sir".

Morgana could feel how he hated to say that name.

Her father took some distance from him "Ah, muggle born?".