white dove ★ T.M.R/Reader ★

Part Three

Little Hangleton is small and quaint and quiet, but despite the pretty cobbled streets and curated front gardens, the place has a suppressive, heavy feeling to it like waking up in the middle of a dream and being unable to shake the throws of sleep. You check the address in your hands one more time before steeling yourself, lifting your hand, and knocking three times on the green front door.

Someone pulls it open almost immediately, a strikingly beautiful woman in her late forties, dark hair in a styled bun, face elegantly wrinkled, rich brown eyes, and red lipstick with a knife edge. She's wearing a long, flowing silk dress with winged sleeves and a white knitted shawl, and although you can't see her shoes you can easily imagine that they're heels. "Yes?" she asks curiously, looking you up and down.

"Cecilia Younge?"

"That is I."

"I'm investigating the Riddle murders, Mrs Younge."

The woman's face hardens, her hand shifting on the door as if she'd very nearly shut it on reflex. "Why now?" she asks sharply. "It's been years."

"The case passed my desk," you say carefully, slipping the parchment with her address into your pocket. "Some oddities caught my attention."

Cecilia is silent, staring at you like she's deciding whether to slam the door again. When she finally speaks again, her tone is stiff and flat. "What do you want to know?"

You need to proceed carefully; Cecilia's wounds are clearly unhealed. "I'd like to talk to you about Tom Riddle, a few people in the village mentioned that you were close."

Cecilia scoffs and stands aside, casting her eyes back into her house. "Close..." she says derisively. "Come in, then, I won't speak of this on my doorstep."

Only when you're sat in her gorgeously decorated living room with a very expensive cup of tea in your hands does Cecilia elaborate.

"Tom and I were not close," she says indignantly, spooning sugar into her tea, "we were in love. He was going to propose you know, before he ran off with that woman."

You blink, a little stunned. In love. "You're meaning... Merope Gaunt?"

Cecilia's eyes flash with anger. "Yes, Merope," she snaps, sipping her tea with a curt motion. "I don't know what she did to him but she did something. He'd never looked twice at her before then, and then suddenly he's just run off with her? And when he finally came home, well..." Cecilia shoots you a significant look. "He was never the same."

Reg flags erupt in your head. Her description screamed of magical interference. "In what way?"

"He barely left his house," she mutters, "he wouldn't speak to me, wouldn't even see me. It was Thomas and Mary – his parents – who told me what had happened, that he'd said he'd been tricked somehow. Though he never said how, exactly."

She stirs her tea again and the tiny sounds of her silver spoon against the china fill the whole room.

"Horrible, what happened to them in the end," Cecilia says blankly, taking another sip. "It was her brother, wasn't it?"

"Yes," you say quietly.

"That union was cursed," she says, her voice bitter but you can see an old sadness in her eyes. "All it brought to the world was pain."

You can't help but think of Merope and Tom's son, but you take another sip of your tea instead of mentioning him – you have a feeling it would only make things worse.

☆゜·。。·゜゜·。。·゜★

The Gaunt Estate is a dump – a dilapidated mess of timbers and broken windows in a poisonous thicket of shadowy woods. You peer at the bones littered around the front door hanging off its hinges and remember McCollin telling you that they'd nailed snakes there.