EXILE | TOM RIDDLE

31. Excommunication

Content warnings: this is overall a pretty dark chapter. I don't want to give away what happens here because of spoilers, but the author's note at the bottom will have the spoiler version of the content warning for those who need it. (It isn't sex or violence related). Also this chapter contains brief references to cannibalism as a means of Horcrux creation. 

"How did you afford such a place?" I ask in wonder, eyes unable to settle on one thing for very long before moving onto the next. The apartment is not grand by any means, no, but everything it contains has some sort of value to it. Though I am not fully accustomed to the daily items of the times, I can tell no expense was spared on the furniture, with the curtains seemingly made of silk and the couch so delicate, I worry sitting on it may ruin the fabric.

"You really want to know?" Tom shoots a question of his own in my direction. When I nod, he continues, "I killed some muggle and sold anything of value I could find in his home at a pawn shop. I think he was distantly related to the King."

"Will you get caught?"

"How could I? I haven't yet."

I grin at him, still in his wedding suit, which perfectly emphasizes the tone of his body. I too am in my dress, somehow finding myself anxious about taking it off. I do not wish for this day to end, I understand. This wedding, this marriage, was in every way what I had spent God knows how long dreaming about.

"Madam Bailey brought over all your stuff already," Tom's chin nudges towards a door, which I presume leads into our bedroom. "She mentioned something about you having a surprising number of books?"

My face heats red. "Did she...look through them?"

He flashes me an amused smirk. "Why? Are you hiding something?"

"All I will say is, some of those books helped...educate me, on matters of the flesh. Certainly she did not read through them, she is under the impression that I am a virgin."

"I suppose tonight she expects us to consummate our marriage, then," he laughs, and with a stride he steps towards the door and pushes it open.

The bedroom a dreary thing, dimly lit with the light off and the curtains concealing the light of the moon from entering, and a wardrobe half the side of the bed next to the door. A mirror hangs from the wall, stretching from above my head to the floor, and the bed is draped in a multicolored quilt, the shades ranging from browns and beiges to pinks and greens. My books are piled next to the bed, one on top of the other and making a line towards the low hanging ceiling. But even so, only one thought rings in my mind as I take everything in; home.

Tom says nothing, but from the way he is looking at me, I can tell he is searching me for a reaction.

"It is perfect," I turn to look at him. "Thank you."

He says nothing in return, but he does not need to. The odd sort of spark in his eye is all I need, causing my heart to leap. I have a sense of what is coming next, an idea that his next request will be us for to do as he laughed about earlier. Consummate our marriage, share a bed for the first time since uniting our souls in front of God.

But he does not.

"We should change, and then rest," he eventually settles on, his eyes scaling my dress. "We have to be up early tomorrow."

"We do? What for?"

That sparkle I had noticed morphs into something different, something brighter. "We have a train to catch."

*

Apparently, one cannot apparate all the way to Albania, so we must take a muggle train to the country, which is nearly two days away. I woke up this morning nauseous at the mere idea of it, of visiting such a place. Albania, where my sister was killed by the boy who claimed to love her. Albania, where my mother's diadem remains, nearly one thousand years later.