Looking up at him, miserably, she confesses, "I'm sorry for this, Tom. All of it. But I can't tell you I'd have done anything differently. I've loved you for years, and I just... couldn't stand it any longer. Can you forgive me that?"

Beside her on the floor sits a shattered glass potion bottle, silvery fluid clinging to the shards. Finding an excuse to turn her eyes away from him, she kneels and begins cleaning up the mess she'd made.

Tom had watched her cringe as it hit the floor and broke into a hundred sparkling pieces. Whatever life she'd had before, well, it was written all over her face.

He sighed. It wouldn't do to just walk out on her, would it?

ooOoo

"It's a, a ... royal family, of sorts," she stammers.

Well then. He couldn't do much better than that for a wife, could he? Royal blood. Now that the bruises had healed, when she dressed up, sometimes she even looked it. Merope liked green. Dark with silver, bright with gold, half her wardrobe was green. And she still kept a small gold locket and a similar ring. "It's all I've got left to remind me," she'd told him once. "There's nothing else left of my family."

Weeks pass, and life takes a new turn.

Pregnant. With his son. Even if he'd wanted to leave, how could he now?

He lays a tentative hand on her shoulder as she beams with joy. "What shall we call him?"

"Tom Riddle for his daddy, and Marvolo for mine."

Tom Marvolo Riddle.

He liked that.

ooOoo

Fatherhood suits Tom the elder better than he would have thought. Even the two Riddles up in the old manor become fond of the boy. As often as Merope will let him, he takes his son to see them - through the back way, of course, to avoid the riffraff. Tom Marvolo grows up quickly, charming and well-spoken if not kind, and his Hogwarts letter soon arrives.

Merope had told him all about her... oddity... as soon as he'd decided to stay with her. If this was the same magic that helped her bring home the strange gold coins, Tom Riddle Senior was happy to let his son learn it.

ooOoo

"What did you say?" he roars. The other students scuttle back. Bullying the younger students he couldn't care less about, and even enjoyed, but one more word against his dear Muggle father...

Little did they know just how much worse things could have been...