evelynn | t.riddle

13 | CONTEMPLATING THE UNKNOWN

Tom's up well into the night, still trying to process everything that Evelynn told him before going to sleep - he's focusing on his relations just to avoid a mental breakdown at the thought of a being of myths and stories, something joked about and laughed at mockingly regularly... sleeping on the other side of the room.

Right, his relatives. If he thinks of Evelynn too much at the moment, his head starts to hurt. A lot, actually - a throbbing ache that quickly convinced him to leave the subject be for now.

The Gaunts are a Pureblood family, but so inbred that they've their version of the rumoured Black Family Madness - a vein of violence and instability, if his Grandfather is anything to go by. Much like Voldemort displayed at the end of the war where he'd won and hadn't even realized it - though, he's convinced the Unicorn Blood had something to do with it, and so is Evelynn. Everyone has magic at Hogwarts, even if he's got more than most, but his mind? He'd rather be dead, strange as the thought sounds to him, than turn into that rabid animal, so lost in bloodshed and power lust that he couldn't even see he'd won. And Unicorn blood always curses those who've forcibly taken it.

Tom shudders in revulsion, physically forcing his thoughts away from... that thing he'd become in Evelynn's original time.

His mother, Merope, was the only daughter of Marvolo Gaunt... but was abused quite similar to how Evelynn herself was, but for the opposite reason. Evelynn was hated and beaten because her relatives thought she had magic; his mother was because the other two Gaunts thought she had none. According to Evelynn, it was likely that her Core had been damaged by the treatment she received - and isn't that just a lovely thought? His mother was treated so badly, beaten and degraded so much that she became physically unable to use magic ? On top of how weak she probably was from birth due to the inbreeding?

Now, he feels slightly bad for thinking she was weak all this time. And he's profoundly glad the Orphanage never found the Gaunts and that they were in Azkaban for a while - as Evelynn pointed out, if they would do that to his mother, who was a Pureblood like them, what would the two violently unstable Pureblood fanatics have done to a helpless Halfblood baby born to the woman that was never good enough for them in the first place? With a Muggle father, to boot? A Muggle father that Morfin loved to Hex at every turn? Even if he'd gone to the Riddles, if his father hadn't been such a coward and left him here, he might not have been safe. It's not a topic he wants to think about, not in the slightest.

His father, on the other hand... that makes his blood boil. The man left his mother and abandoned her to fend for herself after learning she was pregnant with him! Left him to this hellhole, even after the Orphanage tried to contact him about his possible son - denied Tom was his, and left him to suffer. Even with the knowledge of the Love Potions - suspected Love Potions, his mind supplies, as Evelynn isn't one hundred per cent sure, and it was all speculation on Dumbledore's part as far as she knows - it doesn't make him any less furious at the man. Evelynn didn't have any kids, but he's damn certain she wouldn't have left them like Tom Riddle Snr.

All the proof he needs is sitting in her trunk, for Merlin's sake - she could've left him here, left him out of the loop, but no. Instead, even after everything he did to her in the future, she's helping him. He couldn't understand it, not one bit - the look on her face when he asked if she was going to kill him said the thought had never even crossed her mind. No, instead, she stockpiles enough food to last the two of them well into the school term if necessary, plus enough Nutrient Potions for both of them and the one she's still taking, and tells him everything about herself!

He wanted to understand her, wanted to know her story. Well, he got one out of two - he knows her story, but it's making her even more of a mystery simply because he can't see why she wouldn't look at him and see a fucking monster. Specifically, that pale, serpentine, noseless, hairless abomination she was forced to watch come out of a cauldron.