For the Greater Good || Tom Riddle ||

Chapter Twenty-Three: Perfection and Deception

Gwen was a shell. The soul and breath had been sucked out of her, leaving only the marrow in her drooping bones until that too was taken and gouged out with the sharp knife of truth.

She was in pain. She ached. She burned. She was numb. She was everything and nothing all at once. It was overload, it was subtle. It was indescribable.

There were some prominent notes—hurt, confusion, fury. They quelled and flared in desynchrony. In the moments where they were quiet and dulled, she could faintly hear it. The echo.

"Imperio."

The word was so easy to slip off of the tongue, but it was so Unforgivable. To steal someone's free will was one of the most despicable, atrocious, sinister things a human could participate in—wizard or not.

How long was Hermina under the Imperius Curse? Did she end her life to escape?

Or did he possibly make her kill herself?

Gwen felt bile rise in her throat at the thought.

If Gwen were to light a match and swallow up the flame, the rage inside her would consume it in mere seconds. Her eyes were open but all she was seeing was the house. Him. The vanishing cabinet. Her mother dead on the floor.

That wretched place filled with shadows and monsters and death. If there was ever a cursed spot on Earth, that would be it. Despite its opulence, it was a rotten, horrible, hated-filled home. She wanted to burn it to the ground. She wanted to burn it all to the ground.

She could understand how such a maddened animosity could make people do desperate things, dastardly deeds, kill even. Their reality was warped, so blemished and calloused. It was a state of dreaming almost; everything felt so suspended. How could cruelty be judged if it could not be felt by the cruel?

Her nails dugs into the flesh on her palms, carving crescent indentations in the skin with the faintest outline of blood. The room swam in and out of her vision—the height of her emotions boiling and snarling against the bars of her caged consciousness.

As a child, Gwen just wanted to be perfect; she wanted to impress her grandfather and she wished more than anything to make her grandmother proud. She spent hours mastering spells, sitting peacefully as she soaked in her special lessons and learned nonverbal magic. She sought approval and recognition.

She had bought into the dangerous fantasy that if she was good enough, powerful enough, hated the right people, perhaps married the right man, then she would be allowed to co-exist in the new world Grindelwald was crafting in relative peace. Her sacrifice of childhood would be worth it.

She had wanted it all to be worth it—the discipline and dedication, but it was all a lie.

Deception and perfection were mated, intermixed, one could say. Coercing yourself to believe perfection was real was, in and of itself—deception—and lead one down the path of self-loathing. And yet, deception was the perfect way to situate yourself in the right place to be adored. Flattery and fakeness got people places, after all.

Did Grindelwald have no humanity? To use an Unforgivable Curse on his own daughter, to drive her to suicide... or to kill her. It made Gwen question everything she had ever known.

Gellert Grindelwald understood the bonds and power of love, and he was not afraid to use it to his advantage. And that was what made her fear him the most.

But what Gwen had learned from her stolen memory was that violence and manipulation wove itself into the tissues of daily living everywhere. It was there in the kitchen, at the table, in the schoolyard, from your father, from your mother, your teacher, your neighbor and yourself.