evelynn | t.riddle

4 | THE COLD WITHIN

Evelynn wakes up to see green drapes, which short-circuits her brain for a minute before she remembers everything - the last time she'd slept in a real bed, and not either the ground or an abandoned ruin of a house or manor was...eight years ago, at the very least. Probably more.

She's not counting the time she spent in the Hospital Wing, seeing as she doesn't remember most of it.

And her conversation with Death in her dream last night...dammit, he could've told her before now! She can bond with one person, and just one can't be taken back or consciously decided.

One person to share the Hallows with, share all the things they give her - eternal life and youth, the power of the Void, the abilities of the Hallows, all of it. One person in the entire history of the universe, since she could - if she so chose, after a few months for her magic to recover fully - go back to Merlin's time and go from there, but she can't pick who it is. Magic herself will decide it with her soul, according to Death.

Once it starts, it can't be stopped either - it hasn't started yet, thankfully, as apparently, she'd have to trust someone completely and then trust her just as much. They'd have to understand her.

This puts the kibosh on ever Bonding her soul with anyone else, as she swore to herself she'd never trust anyone with her life again after her 'best friends' went and hunted her down for twelve years after everything they'd been through together. As if anyone could understand her, either - a betrayed, burned time traveller hunted down by her former best friends after she died for them. Yeah, good luck with understanding that mess. Apparently, though, the human mind isn't meant to be alone forever, hence why she's even capable of bonding her soul with someone - and yet, the past thirty years of her existence has been entirely alone when it came down to it. It's all she knows how to be, dammit!

And it was never relevant since I was all alone on the run all this time!

Quickly changing the subject before she can accidentally freeze the entire room, she grabs her stuff and heads for the showers - she had at least some control of the Hallows, she's not going to claim to be able to control powers granted to her via Death himself completely, but that was in her much older and healthier body that was used to using magic. And used to the Hallows, having adjusted to them.

Her twelve-year-old body? Not so much.

One thing Death said was that she'd have to adjust to being the Master of Death once more and relearn her control - and, dammit, that took a few years before she got the hang of those abilities! And all her magic! Even if she intellectually knows how to control them, her body has to adjust to the power of the Hallows and the full force of her magic once more - ergo, she has to be careful not to freeze anything by accident or have a case of accidental magic or some such for about a year.

She will also need many potions to reach an average height and weight. Damn the Dursleys to Hell! Far as she could tell, Death reverted her body to its twelve-year-old appearance, taking all the scars she'd acquired along the way. Not that it leaves her as a blank slate, but at least she doesn't have 'I must not tell lies' carved into her hand anymore. That would've been hellish to explain. And the only reason she showed up injured was that they had to have a proof for everyone, which shows she was attacked by a vicious group of people determined to kill her.

She gets into the shower, and shampoos her hair as her thoughts inadvertently return to Dumbledore and her relatives, how he made her return to them time and again.

Damn that older man and his twinkling eyes!

Knowing how he manipulated her entire life, she can imagine him doing the same to Tom Riddle. Had he not pushed the as-yet relatively innocent boy into going so Dark - no, not even Dark, Black, Black as night and Blacker than the Black Family! - had he helped him even once...well, the hot-as-Fiendfyre sixteen-year-old she met in the Chamber of Secrets was angry at the world, but he was also bloody brilliant.