Being a Greengrass after all should sound pretty serene.
But being a part of "the Emeralds" should not, especially when hearts become entangled with the infamous Regulus Black.
Goodness, lawfulness, or evilness. Which path will they tread in the ti...
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August 13th, 1979
They had returned to their seats. The Pensieve sat in the corner, inert now, its job done. The memory had settled like a stone in Avery's chest, and for nearly an hour, they had sat in that quiet, flickering room, speaking not with a ghost or a whisper of the past—but with a woman who was supposed to be long dead.
Avery had always been sharp, precise, unshaken in the presence of danger. But this wasn't danger—it was something far more slippery. Something human. Something ancient and raw and entirely beyond her expectations.
Merope Gaunt was not what Avery had imagined. She was no mystic nor romantic tragic heroine. She was thin, practical, and matter-of-fact in the way she recounted things. There was no sentiment in her voice—only exhaustion, and an undercurrent of cold clarity. She wasn't hiding a bleeding heart. She was hiding a mind that had survived far too much.
She told them everything. She had loved Tom Riddle Sr., she said, or at least believed she did. Enough to use a love potion—not a subtle trickle of charm, but a full, daily dose slipped into his tea and wine. For a while, it had worked. He looked at her with a softness she had only imagined in her wildest, cruelest dreams. He kissed her forehead. He spoke her name as if it meant something.
And then she became pregnant. The more Merope spoke, the more Avery's discomfort grew. Her face stayed still, but her thoughts churned; it was rape. Not in the way fairy tales cautioned, but in the quiet, violating truth that someone's body and mind had been taken without consent—repeatedly, deliberately.
"I wanted him to love the child," Merope had said, voice like ash. "I thought—maybe—if I stopped the potion... the truth would bloom between us."
But of course it hadn't. The day the enchantment wore off, Tom Riddle Sr. looked at her as if she were a stranger or a madwoman. A thing. And then he left. Merope didn't chase him, scream, or plead for him to come back.
"It was already over," she said with a brittle calm that chilled Avery more than any hysteria could have. "I just hadn't stopped pretending yet."
And so, she ran. She fled to London, half-starved and half-mad, and carrying a child who would never know the way he was made. At Wool's Orphanage, she gave birth under her ral name, because part of her still wanted the truth to survive, even if she didn't. But she had no illusions about her fate. Whether it was death, exposure, or Azkaban, she knew it was coming. So she made the choice before crawling into the cracks of the world and vanishing.
"But why?" Avery had asked, the only time she allowed her voice to tremble. "Why didn't you go back for him even once? Your son?"
Merope had stared at the flames then. "I just watched him from a distance. But he was already... becoming. He didn't need me. He needed the idea of me. And I wasn't that."
It was the closest thing to sorrow she allowed herself.
Now, as the firelight dimmed and the hour stretched into night, Avery sat with her hands folded tightly in her lap. Regulus had barely spoken in the last fifteen minutes. He sat still, shoulders tense, jaw clenched, as if digesting more than just facts.
