Poison Ivy | T. Riddle ✔

[41] Secrets Withheld

It was quite early in the morning and nearly everyone was asleep at the Whitburg abode, except for Perseus. He was in his room, sitting wide awake on the bed, nursing his wounds that he had received from months of aimless roaming in the wilderness of Albania.

His feet were covered in blisters, most of which were even bleeding, and the thorns and nettles had scratched through his skin roughly. He remembered how relieved he had been to meet up with the search party that had found him wandering in the forest.

His clothes had been tattered back then and his hair were an awful mess from all the dirt that stuck to him. But they had recognized him and referred to him as the lost man they had been searching for months. Later on, he had been brought to London and taken straight to the Ministry.

They had only given him basic first aid and clothes even though he should have received a full treatment. But by now he had become accustomed to being mistreated. So he had said nothing even though he was in pain and answered all their questions truthfully. He said nothing when he was handed over to Nathan Whitburg who took him to his house. He said absolutely nothing of the pain he was constantly suppressing throughout the time he spent with Whitburg and his newly found cousin.

He hadn't complained to the Ministry earlier because he knew they wouldn't care. And he didn't complain of his injuries to the people he was staying with now because he knew it would get them worried.

That night Perseus had only asked Demelza to give him some warm milk with turmeric powder in it and some ointment with a few bandages. Of course she had wanted to know if he was hurt and obviously she got anxious. But he had refused to tell her the reason and asked her to not worry about him so much.

Throughout the entire night he nursed his wounds, not sleeping a wink due to the pain. And now that he had carefully bandaged up his feet, he was staring out the window aimlessly, waiting for when the others would wake up.

His eyes were caught by the album on his bedside table which Demelza had given him in order to make him acquainted with the faces of all the people he had known. Realizing that he hadn't had the time to go through it earlier, he picked it up and flicked through its pages one by one.

In the beginning of the album were pictures of Demelza and Perseus from when they were merely toddlers. He took in each detail from every picture and racked his brain to somehow remember anything from the times displayed before him in the album. But to his despair, his brain was as devoid of memories as it had been back when he had been stuck with Riddle.

Seeing the people in the album triggered an internal part of his mind though; the subconscious level of his brain. Even though Demelza wasn't there to tell him anything about the people in the album, he was quite surprised to notice that he could somehow guess their relation to him.

He felt as if the woman with blue eyes and light auburn hair was his mother, Mafalda Burke. His mother who had died a few years ago. He felt as if she had loved him dearly and the cause of her death had also been the grief of losing him.

He recalled Caractacus Burke since he had seen his picture earlier when Tom had shown him the likenesses to make sure whether he had lost his memory or was merely pretending. He recalled very well what he had told Tom back then upon seeing that picture for the first time. He had referred to Caractacus as the man who had lost something he valued most. And now he realized why he had said that; of course Caractacus had lost his only son and what other object in the world could be of more value to a father than his own child?

Seeing those pictures one by one seemed to clear a lot of confusion in his head. Some of the questions he had wanted to ask from Demelza were automatically getting solved.