A Story of a Short Ending | T.R

Chapter 23 - The Memory Remains

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A body. She felt a strange sensation in her.. limbs. She had limbs? Everything about her was weird, she felt alive and dead at the same time. There was no good and bad, there was no hot and cold there was just... barely anything. The first that touched her was the wind, the fresh air the cold sensation against what was supposed to feel like her skin and bone but at the same time it felt like she was a walking cloud, there was barely any life in her arms and legs and anywhere else as she finally moved.

She forgot what wind felt like, what air felt like, the grass, the sun, the life outside. Even if she was technically not alive anymore, she still felt the littlest part of that emotion she once shared. The memories were the next to follow suit after the wind, the blurry pictures and sluggish stories polluted her mind, she couldn't make much out of those but they still made her head pound.

She has been out of that damn painting for a little while now but the feelings, the feelings never stopped. After escaping the Manor and taking an interest in the Manor's new additions, she started planning her way around this delicate matter of revenge. Even as she herself understood revenge wasn't quite the right word for what she wanted to do to Riddle. Revenge is an eye for an eye, a life for a life, and trouble for trouble, while she planned to go deeper, lower, dirtier.

He took away everything she had, her life, her family, her goals and dreams, her plans. Everything she had was gone in a blink as she still remembered her last moments. She would never forget that time she dreaded death, how she begged Merlin to let her live, how she was begging for her life, for her future, not losing hope until her very last breath. Her hope was lost with the gutwrenching feeling of an Avada Kevadra spell wrapping around her mind, her soul and her body. The darkness seeping off that spell into her body was something she couldn't imagine in the worst nightmares she often had before dying. It was as if she knew, she knew he was coming after her.

When she was warned about a boy named Tom Riddle she thought of everything but this. It's common for wizards to entertain themselves with Dark Magic and often take on some of the sadistic tendencies. Wizards often found themselves losing their minds after the Dark Magic took over them, over their minds and souls. There was no treatment, no cure, no hope for those who lost their minds to the magic they were so fascinated by. Even then she guessed it was the best possible exit for those people as they succumbed to the thing they loved the most.

She assumed Riddle was one of them, one of those fanatics who took a liking to the darkest forms of magic and knowledge. She underestimated his lust for blood, and his will to conquer the world with everyone in it. His mind was a place she probably would never understand, his value of a wizard's life was one kind of a paradox.

He never intended to kill those he wanted to conquer, a ruler without a kingdom is a knight without a weapon. Yet he never hesitated to torture people into madness, he never hesitated to take a life, he never hesitated to kill someone, to snuff the air out of their lungs, to leave them suffering for as long as they could before they would finally die. Only a selected few knew about his darkest side, the one he kept hidden from teachers and most of the students. The side of him that was slowly taking over him since the day he was born as she was told. She knew everything there was known about his childhood, his time at the orphanage, and how what happened to him shaped him into what he is right now.

She wasn't considering it an excuse for his behaviour, it was just an example of how cruelty can be grown, how it can be shaped especially at a young age. He wasn't born a monster, even if one could argue that considering the circumstances he came onto this world under. Would he still grow into a sadistic, blood and power-hungry man if he was raised in a loving family? That question would never be answered as no one gets second chances.