ethereal | tom riddle.

house not home

tw: implied abuse,
a/n: it's skippable chapter if you don't want to read it, I don't even like it so I'd actually prefer if you didn't read it

Eliza didn't bother packing as she went back home for the weekend. She was only going for a day, just for formalities since her father was unwell.

Really she didn't want to go, but she knew that it wouldn't end well for her to simply ignore the news. She used the floo system in the Teacher's office to go home, arriving in her living room's fireplace.

There was no one there to welcome her back home but she didn't expect anyone there away. She headed into her father's side of the house, going up to his room where the house elves had told her he was.

She knocked on the door, opening it when she heard her father say she could come in. She had only been in that room around seven times as she could remember. She probably hadn't seen it for a couple of years as she walked in, unfamiliar to the room in her own house.

"How are you feeling?" She asked, sitting down on a chair not so close to the bed.

"Well." He replied gruffly. "I have not called you here to pity me or keep me company. You know very well I do not care for that. I simply needed to inform you that you will marry the Peverell's son. It will keep the family line strong."

"Father, you cannot possibly be serious. The Peverell's son is twice my age. You cannot-," she was cut off by her father interrupting her complaints.

"You will marry him. We have no other offer or proposal for you and if I die then you will end up unmarried. It will bring shame upon our family. No one is going to want you if you become any older and your mother has no ability to find you proposals."

"What if I got someone else to marry me?" She asked, the gears in her head turning.

Her father scoffed at that. "Who would marry you, child? All the good ones are taken already. Peverell is as good as it gets for you."

"What about Riddle? You like him well enough." She suggested, entirely unsure of where she was going with that.

"I would be more than happy for you to be married off to the Riddle boy. But he's not going to marry a girl like you. He's certainly got better offers from much better girls."

"I-," she started, but he stopped her.

"Find yourself someone else to marry within this week or marry Peverell upon your graduation. That is the end of the discussion and it is for your own good. Leave me now."

Eliza got up, not saying goodbye and left slamming the door behind her. She went to her room, deciding to take some clothes back to Hogwarts before winter begins in a month. She had no intention of coming back for a while anyway.

The door was already ajar when she reached her room in the other wing of the house. She swung the door open to see a women with a bottle in her hand, laying on the bed in a nightgown.

"Oh, I was waiting for you. Isn't it wonderful? My daughter is home." Her mother looked at Eliza in a strangely judging manner. Her mother got up, circling Eliza and looking at her up and down a few times. "You've gotten fat. Salazar bless the Peverell boy that has to make a wife of you. You look quite terrible." Her mother said, poking her daughter's stomach, stating it as a matter of fact, even though it wasn't true in the slightest.

"I'm not marrying Peverell." It was a mistake to have said that, Eliza realised.

Her mother cackled. "Oh, you foolish girl. You will marry him. That is not up to you. No one else wants you. The Peverell's gave us an ultimatum. We've already said yes."

"I'll find someone else."

"Like who? No one is going to want a girl like you. Don't be ridiculous. No one likes crybabies."

In that moment, Eliza felt like a child again. She hated that feeling of whenever she came home of losing control over herself. She walked away from her mother, reaching for her wand. The wand slipped out of her grasp and her fear rose.

"Are you going to walk away from your poor mother?" Her mother clumsily pulled out her wand. "You know what happens when you behave like this." She made a tsk-ing noise as Eliza backed into a corner.

"I'm sorry. Mother, please." Eliza's eyes went wide with fear as she backed away into a corner, her mother grinning cruelly at her.

"Crucio." Her mother spoke, pointing her wand at her own daughter, feeling no remorse.

*