Seven Devils ★ T.M.R ★

Chapter Forty-Seven

╔═══*.·:·. ✧ ✦ ✧ .·:·.*═══╗
TOM'S PROMISE
╚═══*.·:·. ✧ ✦ ✧ .·:·.*═══╝

.•° ✿ °•.
Content warning: blood, violence.
°•. ✿ .•°

"Holy shit," Marina murmured. "That's..."

The crowd was shouting, pointing, moving back from Voldemort and Harry in the middle of the Hall as Marina stared him, as he and Voldemort started to slowly circle each other, even steps, eyes fixed on each other, and silence fell across the Hall very suddenly.

"A fine trick," Voldemort crooned, sneering. "But dead or not, you cannot harm me, Potter. You failed." His red eyes flashed to Tom. Dread flooded Marina's stomach and she instinctively stepped forward, her grip on Tom's arms tightening as she put herself between him and Voldemort, staring at his twisted face, tense and alert.

Voldemort laughed, loud and cruel, echoing around the dead silent room. "Ah – the Muggle protector," he jeered, smiling horribly, "how low my Heir demeans himself... pathetic... I should have known that you would be taken in by Dumbledore's foolish, repulsive influence –"

"You're still so naïve, Tom," Harry said calmly, and Voldemort's attention whipped back to him with narrowed, hateful eyes.

"Naïve?" he hissed. "You dare –"

"Your Horcruxes are gone," said Harry, "you have nothing left to hide behind, it's just you now."

Voldemort leered at him, a grin that somehow reminded Marina of Herpo's skeletal face in the deep darkness of his bone-littered cave. "So you destroyed them," Voldemort whispered, "you have some great weapon, some power you think you can wield against me –"

"Not a weapon," said Harry, quite calmly, and he looked at Tom behind Marina.

Tom exhaled. "Marina," he said quietly, "let go."

Marina's head whipped around. "What?" she asked sharply.

"I have to do this," he murmured, "I have to face him."

But the dread only welled stronger and Marina's grip on him tightened, too terrified of what might happen if she let go because suddenly it hit her, the cold realisation that their time was up. That Tom's time was up.

Behind her, Voldemort laughed again. "Your weakness betrays you," he said cruelly.

"Marina, let go," Tom said again, eyes fixed on Voldemort.

"Tom," she whispered, unable to look away from him. "Don't, please."

"You understand nothing," Harry said loudly, still circling Voldemort. "I know things you don't know, Tom Riddle. I know lots of important things that you don't."

"Is this Dumbledore's great weapon? Is this love?" Voldemort crooned. "Dumbledore's favourite... his only solution? Love which he claimed conquered death? Love which did nothing to stop him falling from the tower and breaking like and old waxwork?"

Tom's eyes flashed to Marina's and he lifted his hands, rested them softly against her cheeks and something ached in her so hard that she felt dizzy. "It'll be alright," he said calmly. "I'll come back."

She let out a brittle breath. "Really?"

He nodded. "But you need to let me go now. I have to fight him. You know I have to fight him."

Marina was frozen, still hearing Harry and Voldemort's voices behind her but no longer processing a single word.

"I'll come back," Tom repeated quietly, his thumbs gently brushing her cheeks as he looked down at her.