Ink and Parchment ~ blood and bone

28

Eliza avoided Tom the next day, in fact she avoids everyone as she pulls and tugs and dissects Tom’s words from the night before until she finds the truth in them, until she accepts that truth.

No doubt Tom was a prick. She wasn’t a possession, not something that belonged to him but his words hadn’t necessarily been wrong.

Eliza had discovered she was a horcrux and pretended she had accepted what that meant. She knew she harboured a piece of the dark lord’s soul but she hadn’t viewed it any differently than looking after any other possessions of Tom's.

She needed to accept that before this life she had been someone else. That even though she couldn’t access those memories she had lived through every second that Tom had. That she had murdered for the thrill of it, that she had enacted revenge and revelled in it. That she had come close to death in an air raid shelter and it had driven her to pursue immortality. She had to accept that she had been with Tom Riddle every step of the way until they decided to raise the wand that would end Eliza Potter’s life. And even though Eliza viewed this life, this body, this patchwork of a soul as a fresh start to be her own person she still had to accept that she and Tom had once breathed the same air through the very same lungs.

She was Eliza Potter, before that she had been Tom Riddle and one day when she died her body would rot until she became the grass beneath their feet, the worms that lived in the soil.

But that didn’t change who she was now.

When she had first found out she was a horcrux she had been horrified, now however she felt more settled than she had in years. There was a certain power in being steadfast in who exactly you are. It was how people like Tom and Dumbledore got to where they were. They were unwavering, unmovable and that in turn made them powerful.

So when Eliza left her self-imposed isolation she finally felt settled. The ever-present itch beneath her skin wa somewhat abated and the restlessness that used to invade her bones sat quietly. She knows the feeling probably won’t last but now there is a surety in her steps that wasn’t present before.

Her court don’t question what she’s been up to and Eliza pretends not to notice the furtive glances they send one another. If there was something on their minds than they would tell her eventually; her court were not the kind to keep silent.

Tom was nowhere to be seen however, he had taken to haunting the chamber lately but Eliza couldn’t even find the older boy there. All the better for Eliza she supposed – she had a birthday to plan.

Tom had confessed to her that he had never truly celebrated his birthday before. He never had when he had been younger and so when he was older he put no stock in it even when he finally did have people to celebrate it with.

Until this summer Eliza had spent all of her birthdays alone and she had honestly never known what she had been missing. So she decided she was going to throw Tom a birthday ‘party’ – just the two of them, and she swore this time it wouldn’t end in shambles.

When the 31st of December arrived Eliza felt oddly nervous. She told her court she was going to spend the day with Tom and had spent most of the day setting everything up until she encountered a flaw in her plan – she had no idea where Tom was.

Eliza stood in the entrance hall dumbly, cursing herself over forgetting Tom. Sometimes she really was an idiot. Transferring her lightened wicker basket to her other hand Eliza fished her wand out of the back pocket of her jeans. Focusing on the memory of the Yule Ball Eliza swiftly cast her patronus and watched as her hippogriff pranced around her for a few moments before coming to stand in front of her.

“Tell Tom to meet me in the entrance hall please” Eliza requested, the hippogriff threw its head back and ruffled it’s feathers before it set off trotting down the hall, disappearing through the wall in a silvery wisp.