Perception A Tom Marvolo Riddle Fanfiction completed

Chapter Nineteen - Reversal

When open war finally couldn't be avoided any longer, the world was plunged into darkness and chaos. Nobody knew who was fighting on whose side, people no longer knew whom to trust, and Tom shamelessly used the panic and confusion to his advantage.

Cassiopeia knew she wasn't able to stop him, but she was determined to try and prevent him from blindly destroying innocent lives. She was aware that every war had its casualties and every victory its price, and she had always known that loving Tom was going to come down to making sacrifices in the end, because he was never going to abandon his ambitions, and he was never going to change. But as long as this war wasn't over, she refused to give up hope of being able to finally make a difference.

Tom's inner circle of Death Eaters brutally set into force whatever he wanted them to. He had branded them all with the Dark Mark, thus being able to summon them whenever he needed them.

Cassiopeia glanced at the faint red outline that graced her inner left forearm. There had been a time when this had been special. There had been a time when this had been the symbol of their unique connection. She sighed. There had been a time when this had been theirs.

By now, she always flinched whenever the mark turned to its jet-black colour, and its burning sensation only made her feel like one of the pawns Tom summoned whenever he pleased, wherever he pleased.

Cassiopeia remembered the evening back in Albania when he had first asked her to let him try the spell. Back then, this had been only between the two of them. Back then, the mark had still had a meaning other than pure domination.

She carefully traced the outline of the mark with her fingers. Tom had crafted it according to the emerald constellation she had created for his birthday so many years ago. She remembered the many nights she had spent experimenting until she had finally decided that the skull and the serpent suited Tom most.

The ghost of a smile flickered across her face when she remembered the night of Tom's eighteenth birthday, out in the Scottish Highlands, and the look of satisfaction and contentment in Tom's eyes when she had cast the Dark Mark into the cloudy Scottish sky. Back then, the mark had been its own kind of beautiful.

Cassiopeia bit her lip. She had never intended for her birthday present to turn into the symbol of every wizard's worst nightmare, being the dreadful signature that Tom's Death Eaters left wherever they killed.

Cassiopeia swallowed hard. It was tempting to grade the world by Tom's categories of power and weakness, pretending there was no good or evil, no right or wrong. Yet, no matter how much she loved him, she knew his worldview was an illusion, and believing it simply meant turning a blind eye to the truth and ignoring the fact that Tom was, after all, evil to the core.

She had always known that choosing sides meant choosing between right and Tom. Staring at the faint mark, she wondered whether one day there would finally come the time when she would have to repent for having stood by while Tom had set the world on fire. In the end it wouldn't help that she had always thought that his disdain for life was wrong, if she had never truly tried to stop him. She was just as responsible for all his wrongdoings as he was, and contrary to him she was going to have to pay for it because she still had a conscience where he had none.

However, changing Tom's intentions seemed a lost cause. In his circle she was very much alone with her opinion about the worthiness of Muggle-borns and Muggles. His pure-blooded pawns panted for domination over everyone and everything that wasn't at least half-blooded. With their help Tom mercilessly enforced his persecution of Muggles and Muggle-borns, consistently proclaiming their inferiority and worthlessness.

She knew she was walking on thin ice whenever she tried to influence Tom's deadlocked opinion. It was only due to some twisted reason, or maybe no reason at all and just sheer luck, that she had not been long since tortured into insanity for questioning his beliefs time and time again. He had crucioed others until they had begged him to kill them for far less.