O Beija-Flor - Regulus Black (Complete)

XII -

If the journal before that one had been light, the ninth and last journal that she could find was barely a few piece of papers together. It was so discreet that most people would put it aside if they didn't know who it belonged to or the story that followed that small brown leather journal tied closed with a leather string with a neat bow.

She opened it. There were no years written inside this time, but a piece of paper fell off to the floor. Cecilia leaned down to get it, not opening it as it was folded a few times, a few scribbles around the edges as if someone had been frustrated with what they wrote and had almost torn the parchment with the quill scratching the same place several times. She decided to read it later, after she finished the few filled pages of the journal that she had in hand.

Regulus seemed to know he was going to die soon.

September First of Nineteen-Seventy-Nine

There's little comfort in my dreams anymore. My Sweet-Eyed Girl is haunted by my nightmares as well, sometimes whispering horrible things in her lovely voice, repeating what Lord Voldemort said to me earlier that day. Though she was made up by my own mind, I feel terribly guilty that I have dragged her down into the depths of my despair with me; she deserves something better than this, something better than me.

I find myself searching more and more about the Dark Lord's life before everything in the image he created was famous. I found his real name. The name he shares with his father, and the name that he hates so much that he refuses to go by.

Tom Riddle. Son of Tom Riddle Sr. and a young girl of the Gaunt family, whom he protects the first name with great interest, but I found the family name - if his mother is a Gaunt and his middle name is Marvolo, his mother is almost certainly Merope Gaunt.

September Third of Nineteen-Seventy-Nine

I have been digging into the family heirlooms that Tom might have had access to. I found some that are quite important and missing from the other descendants of the family at the same time.

However, there was something that got my attention a lot more than heirlooms: his childhood. Contrary to what he makes everybody believe, he wasn't raised by a pureblooded mother until her death; he barely met her. She died at his birth, according to Muggle records and he was raised inside a now closed orphanage during one of the many Muggle wars.

Perhaps the orphanage elder-matron would know something.

November First of Nineteen-Seventy-Nine

The Matron, a woman in her late eighties, going by the name Matron Katherine Halderson was kind enough to answer my curious letter about my dear 'grandfather', Tom Riddle, as I wanted to make a small 'birthday' surprise with some photographs and perhaps even some letters from the people he had with him in the orphanage. She said he had no friends there and that he was quite distant from everybody else, but that she was happy he had managed to find himself a family. She gave me some 'suggestions' about where to take him since photographs had been scarce at the time (at least to Muggles).

They went a lot to a beach near the orphanage and Tom seemed to have liked to go into the water a lot, often trying to get to the cave, even though it's impossible and they would always scream at him to come back to the shore when he got too deep into the water.

November Nineteenth of Nineteen-Seventy-Nine

I revealed my suspicions to Pandora when I went to visit her and her husband at their new home, but she urged me to keep it away from Barty and Evan. Apparently, Evan seemed to be quite taken by the Dark Lord's philosophy at late and Barty, ever so loyal, seemed to follow him, even though he lacked the will to actually fight for it.