Extra Ordinary (Riddle Era)

Prologue

It was drizzling again, the light patter a white noise to match the pale fog that had settled over the sleeping city as though some great hand had decided to tuck them all into bed. It was the sort of night people wrote poems about. The sort of night that was beautiful in its miserable sort of mundanity. The sort of night people made romantic because if they didn't, then it became just another desolate thing in their all too desolate lives.

Merope Gaunt, however, had no interest in romanticizing this night. She had no interest in romanticizing anything anymore, but tonight especially. Because tonight, she had decided, was the night she was going to die.

She hadn't known it when she woke up that morning. Or when she'd sat huddled on a street corner, begging for spare change from the muggle passers by. Or when she'd collected her paltry few coins and bought a hunk of stale, leftover bread from a half rate bakery that always smelled slightly of fish. No, she hadn't known until late that night, when, while lying cold and shaking and unable to sleep on the bit of alley floor she'd claimed as hers for the night, Merope had felt the first contraction.

It had been terror and relief all at once. The terror, she supposed, was natural. But the relief, she thought, was not. And yet the relief had been overwhelming. Because once this child was born, Merope could go. She wouldn't have to stay alive for this tiny thing living inside her. She wouldn't have to stay alive at all. And she didn't intend to. Which was where the relief was coming from in the first place.

She'd known where to go. She had decided not so very long ago, when she'd found this alley the police didn't bother to check in this part of town where no one bothered the filth and beggars who lined the streets after sunset.

When she'd first come to London, even desperate as she had been, she'd had higher hopes. She'd thought that perhaps, if she could just manage to get herself to the front steps of one of those nicer places, she might offer her child a nicer life, a better chance. But then the reality of her situation had sunk in and Merope had realized that it didn't matter how pregnant she looked, those nice, pretty, private orphanages would take one look at this dress she hadn't changed in the months she'd been here and the dirt practically embedded into her skin and the hair that hadn't seen any kind of care in far too long and they would send her away to one of these dingy, government run places anyway.

So she'd decided to cut out the middle man and just go there herself. It would be easier, anyway. Safer, too. No bother with crossing the river or dealing with the harassment from policemen who thought that a grimy dress made her worthless. And they were right: she was worthless, just not because of the dress.

The dress was a byproduct of all that. Of the life she'd had thrown in her face. Of the mistakes she had made that had left her here, dragging herself through the streets of muggle London late at night. Of her ridiculous, idiotic, stupid belief that anyone could ever really love her.

Because he hadn't. And sometimes, she still couldn't believe that, fool that she was.

She'd been so sure he would. So sure that after so many years, after a full year spent together, after the stolen moments and the stolen life, that he would surely, surely love her. But of course, she'd been so in love that she'd forgotten who she'd been stealing from.

The decline had been slow at first and perhaps, if she had been a little less in love, she would have seen it coming. She knew she should have seen it coming, but that was hardly worth anything now. Because the truth was that she hadn't. Or if she had, she had put the strange looks he gave her down to perhaps a funny feeling in his head, or whatever side effects might occur when love potions wore off. But then, one morning, she'd walked into their little kitchen and she had seen from that clear, lucid look in his eyes as he regarded her all too critically that the influence of the love potion was truly gone. And then he'd made sure she knew that those odd looks had been far more than mere side effects.