Rosie ⎮ Tom Riddle

Forty Seven

Rosalie

  Rosalie sat beneath the oak tree by the lake, the summer sun casting a warm, golden glow over the scene. Tommy was playing nearby, his small hands grasping at blades of grass, seemingly oblivious to the complexity of the world around him. Rosalie's newborn daughter was strapped against her chest in a wrap, her tiny fingers occasionally pulling at Rosalie's hair. Despite the tranquil scene, her heart was anything but at peace.

  She couldn't remember the last time she had seen her best friend, though she had named her daughter after her. The weight of that name, of her past, and of the choices she had made in that life pressed down on her like a suffocating fog. The memory of Lily felt distant, like an old scar that ached when the weather changed. She wasn't sure she could recall their final conversation, not clearly anyway. Words, once powerful, now felt like weapons, dulled by time and emotion, until they were no more than broken fragments in her mind.

  Rosie imagined what Lily would say if she were here now—sharp, wise words wrapped in the kindness that Rosalie had always admired. Lily would likely scold her for giving up, for losing herself in Tom Riddle's love, for allowing herself to become so consumed by it that her very soul was eroding. Rosalie knew Lily had always seen things more clearly than she did, had always lived a life of brutal honesty. And yet here Rosalie was, contemplating her own mortality, with a cowardly grip on the love that had become her shield from the truth.

  The truth was, Rosalie had become the very thing she once feared. She was hiding behind the pillar of love she shared with Tom—a love that, while real, had also enslaved her. She looked at Tommy, who sat quietly plucking at the earth, and wondered if he knew, if he could sense the dark legacy that clung to their family. Did he know the terrible things his father had done? Did he sense the way his mother hesitated, the way her heart ached with unspoken truths?

  Rosalie didn't want to live a life without Tom's love. That was the simple, painful truth that held her captive. Tom Riddle was the only man who had ever given her raw love, but it was a love that demanded everything from her—her heart, her soul, her very essence. And in giving herself to him, Rosalie felt the black poison of that love seep into her veins, a love that was slowly destroying her from the inside out. She had sacrificed everything to save Tom from himself, but it had been in vain.

  Lily would have told her she was giving up, and perhaps she was. But Rosie couldn't help it. She could feel her heart racing faster with each passing day, as if her love for Tom was speeding towards an inevitable end—an end she was powerless to stop. Her love was a curse, a relentless, suffocating force that kept her bound to him, even as she realised she could never truly save him. She had failed in the one thing she had assigned herself to do in life: protect Tom from himself.

  The irony of it all weighed heavily on her chest as she looked out over the lake, watching her children. She had wanted love more than anything in the world, and now she had it—but it was love that was killing her. Slowly, silently, it was taking her apart. And there was no cure for what ailed her. The curse Dumbledore had inflicted upon her was more than it seemed, it only amplified the truth, the curse of loving a man like Tom Riddle. Her love for him, and his love for her, would be her death. 

  Rosalie couldn't bring herself to tell Tom the truth. He could already see her weakening, could sense that something was wrong, but he couldn't place his finger on it. If she told him she was dying, the remaining time they had together would be poisoned with sorrow, with the weight of inevitability. He would never smile again, not even the false smiles he sometimes gave her. No, she would spare him that—spare him the burden of knowing that she was slipping away.

  She knew why Tom wanted their children. Lily and Tommy were his anchors, the only things physically tethering her to him. He feared that without them, without her, he would lose himself entirely to the darkness. She could see that anxiety in his eyes, the fear that she would leave him and that he would become something far worse than he already was. She saw him—all of him. His lies, his manipulations, the way he twisted the world to suit his desires. And she didn't mind.