waris

Most of the regulars have left this late into the night with the bar long closed. The lights have been dimmed, the place now illuminated by the low hanging yellow lamps. There’s a man clearing up the chess boards from the tables in the center. Her heart stutters as he turns to face her by the door.

“Uncle Tony.” She breathes, her eyes burning with unshed tears. Tony was her grandfather’s closest friend and also the closest thing she had to a father figure. He pulls her in for a hug and she buries her face in the crook of his neck, tears spilling onto his sweater. He smells of fabric softener and home, a scent that tugs at her heartstrings in agonizing pangs.

“La mia star.” Tony’s face breaks into a watery smile, small crinkles crowding his warm brown eyes. “I’ve missed you so much. We all have, dear. What kept you from us?”

Oh just a crazed husband hunting me down and a plethora of bad decisions leading up to said husband.

“I-I’ve missed you even more, Uncle,” the familiar nickname twists her heart. It’s what he calls her too. “There’s so much to tell you, I don’t know where to begin.”

“Then come over to my place and we’ll talk over dinner. Do you wish to play a round before?”

She laughs softly, “Yes, I fear my skills have gotten rusty.”

“I’d love to stay and play with you, love, but Inés keeps insisting I close up early these days. My old knee has started acting up again. There’s a gentleman over there who played with me earlier this evening and beat me thrice in a row. That hasn’t happened since your grandfather, you know? Look, he's still there. Go play with him if you wish, my star and then come over for dinner at my place. Inés often asks about you. She’ll be delighted to see you again.”

She gives him a quick kiss as he leaves before heading towards the corner booth where a man is lounging, typing away on his phone. He has a mask on, his eyes covered by the hood of his jacket. She barely spares him a glance as she sits down, fiddling with the chess pieces scattered over the table. He doesn’t look up either as he pockets his phone before arranging the white pieces on his side of the board.

She swallows a small wave of annoyance. She wanted to play white.

He doesn’t seem very inclined to speak and she feels grateful for the silence. He starts the game, moving his pawn to e4. She counters by moving hers to g5. 

They play in a comfortable, almost achingly familiar quiet. She remembers a fond memory right then, curled up in her husband’s lap on his office chair, scribbling away mindlessly on his writing pad as he took another business call, his arm snug around her waist. The hush from that day falls over this stranger and her, softening her guard enough for her to lean back in her seat. She moves her neck side to side, working out the kinks in her joints. It has been a long, tiring day.

She takes one of his knights. Her stomach twists from hunger. She can’t wait for dinner. Inés’ cooking is simply magical.

He takes one of her bishops., lazily bouncing his leg under the table, lost in thought. There’s a hole in his defenses now, he’s moved the wrong pawn. She smiles inwardly as she sacrifices a bishop to keep him distracted. Maybe I’m not as rusty as I thought.

His finger hovers over the queen. If he moves her to D7, she wins in two moves. If he doesn’t, she loses in three. Come on, do it, do it now.

He takes the queen by her crown, shifting her to D7. Bingo 

“Check.” This time, she lets out a small laugh, her mouth curving into a playful smirk.

“Checkmate”

She holds out her hand to him across the table, “That was a stupid move with your queen.” 

He says nothing in return but accepts her handshake, his grip firm. He doesn’t let go immediately, slowly turning their hands over till his rests atop hers. The silver band on his ring finger gleams as the pale lighting dips over the metal. Her body freezes over, her heart plummeting in her chest.

With his other hand he reaches for his mask and pulls it off, knocking his hood back too. She finds herself staring into the periwinkle blue eyes of her husband, Aerion Targaryen. The same man she’d spent months evading; hiding in rundown apartments, sleeping in rental cars. And here he sits before her, with his stupid, perfectly handsome face and a frustrating, victorious gleam in his eyes.

She tries to pull her hand back from him but he tightens his hold, brushing his fingers over the faint indent of her wedding ring. She’d pawned it two weeks ago after burning through the last of her emergency slush fund, stashed away in an account she had before she married him. He raises her knuckles to his lips kissing them with devastating reverence.

“You’re right, my star, that was indeed a stupid move with my queen.”

The air between them had always felt electric. He’d first noticed her in their fourth year when she pointed out a small mistake in his potions homework. He’d looked up at her across from the table where he sat, slightly affronted, a curt retort on his lips. Without looking up, she’d scrawled the correct blend on a spare parchment and slid it across to him. Tom had then regarded her in silence for a few seconds before returning to his texts. He didn’t thank her but he’d returned the next day and after finding her in the same spot at the library, had slid into the chair in front of her. 

In the first few weeks they hardly spoke, a comfortable silence lingering in the space between them. Sometimes she’d feel his eyes roam over face before quickly looking away. Once when she had come down with a particularly nasty cold, Tom had quietly slipped his own cloak around her shoulders before settling down in front of her. It was an early winter morning, the sunlight tentatively weaving its way through the biting cold mist of the room, cutting a ray across their wooden table. She’d looked up with a soft smile and could’ve sworn his ears were tinged with red. 

They grew closer as the year went by, he would partner with her in the classes they shared then finish his homework across from her later in the day. She’d once asked him to join her on her evening stroll down by the lake which soon became a weekly habit they shared. They’d even watch the Quidditch matches together and he was amused by her strong criticisms of the Slytherin seeker’s delayed reaction time. At night she’d sometimes share her bottle of butterbeer with him by the fireplace in the Slytherin common rooms

Tom was, by all accounts, an outstanding student. He had excellent grades (though she was not far behind him by any means she loved upping him in potions, the one place she had an edge over him), was polite and admired by his peers and professors alike. He was charming too, had a deft way with his words that drew people to him; a natural leader as a professor once quipped. His handsome face, that annoyingly sharp nose, the soft waves of his brown hair, the deep brown set of his eyes certainly helped him keep up the kind facade.

And she knew it was a facade. She might have slipped through his notice in the first three years at Hogwarts but he had not escaped hers. She’d been fascinated by what she heard of him in their first year, the poor orphaned boy from nowhere in particular turned out to be a wizard prodigy. She’d discreetly strain in the hallways sometimes to catch a glimpse of his perfect side profile as he rushed to his classes, a rosy blush dusting her cheeks.

The day Tom’s mask slipped was an accident, truly. She’d returned from her classes earlier than her schedule permitted, seeking to escape both Professor Dippet’s endless droning and the crushing summer heat that pressed down on the stony walls till the castle turned into a baking furnace. The Slytherin dorm was usually empty during this time of the day, students busy with their classes; third years certainly would not be loitering about the common rooms. 

But there he was, seated on the plush sofa with  one ankle perched on his other knee, an expression of pure delight shimmering in his eyes. He was surrounded by a group of boys; some older than him in their fourth and fifth years maybe. She recognised a handful–Lestrange, Avery, Nott–all spoilt heirs of old pureblood families while some of the other boys were the bullies she had been warned to steer away from by the prefects. Two more boys shrunk into the shadows behind the couch, seemingly more fearful bystanders than active members.

She’d quietly moved behind the heavy curtains before anyone could see, peeking out from the sliver of space between them. Before the sofa knelt a first year student, tears streaming down his face. There were smudges of dried blood along his temple and a dark bruise slowly blooming along the side of his jaw.

“You’re a disgrace, Travers”, Tom’s voice was ice cold, “A filthy mudblood in the house of the Salazar Slytherin, a stain on his noble legacy, we should put you down like the mutt you are and send you back in pieces to your little muggle world, don’t we all agree?”

A collective chuckled echoed through the room, one she barely heard over the blood roaring in her ears. She felt an iron fist closing around her throat, her lungs seizing up. Fear coiled around in her stomach like a serpent, slithering up and up her airway, her eyes watering as the breath left her. She’d clasped her hand over her mouth to stop herself from dry heaving. He couldn’t know, surely? She’d been thorough in covering her tracks. There was no reason for anyone to suspect her. 

Through the haze of her terror, only  fragments of what came next stayed with her. There was a cruciatus curse cast and Traver’s howls of pain echoed through the dorm before a pair of socks stifled them. One of the bullies had broken the poor boy’s wrists before manhandling the child into a corner cupboard. Did they obliviate him too? She can’t remember. By the time she’d unstitched herself from behind the curtain, Tom and his gang had long left. 

She’d never reported him, instead spending countless nights debating her own cowardice. She’d told herself it was the Slytherin in her–the cunning self preservation that defined their house. She could not risk exposing her own secrets, could she? The canopy of her bed had two green serpents stitched into the fabric. She could’ve sworn they spoke to her. In the pale moonlight she saw a sickening gleam of pride in the left’ one’s eyes while the snake on the right seemed to hiss coward, coward, coward. 

Other times, in the dark, Tom’s face swam behind her closed eyes–a glacial layer of ice masking his nauseating satisfaction as he tortured Travers, like the frozen lake they walk along on their evening strolls now. Sometimes she’d see him in the sunlight and he’d laugh at her, giving her the soft smile she’d spent hours and hours dreaming about. But even as light slowly slipped down his curls and fell over his sharp, angular features, his eyes stayed dark like the charcoal clouds rolling over the horizon before an oncoming storm. 

The crime was never traced back to Tom’s motley group. It was deviously dressed as a quidditch accident with the boy waking up on the grounds, a broken broom beside him. Travers, as it turned out, had been caught trying to sneak onto a broom several times before and his injuries were simply concluded to be another ridiculous flying accident. 

So when Tom noticed her in their fourth year,  a phantom fist held on to her windpipe in a bruising grip, a constant reminder of who he was lingering within her. Often she wondered what drew him to her for Tom did not enjoy companionship. He had his crew, yes, the knights of walpurgis as they called themselves but they were loyal followers looking for shared glory and easy cruelty under a sharp, respected leader; certainly not friends. Curiously, he didn’t seem to expect the same deference from her, rather enjoying it when she drew him into a game of wits.

He’d returned from the ‘blasted orphanage’ in their fifth year with hollow, sunken eyes. They were seated in the shade of an old tree by the pond, the silence pressing  down on them with the relentless humidity all around. The sky was blanketed in grey and dark blue, a fork of lightning occasionally shattering the quiet. She’d taken to weaving the grass with her fingers while Tom flung small stones into the water.

“Do you ever wish for immortality?” Tom was stretched out on the dewy grass, unbothered by his robes dampening. His back was turned to her.

Her voice was hoarse from hours of disuse, “No, I’d hate it.” 

“Why?”, he’d turned to face her.

“When I was younger I’d spent hours dreaming of my own death. It was poisonous where I grew up Tom,” She’d paused for a heartbeat, hesitating, “I grew up with so much longing for everything I couldn’t have and may still never reach. I’d think to myself this desire for life is too heavy, the price too hard to pay and then I’d lean out the highest window, dangerously close to letting go; that’s where I’d feel the closest to being alive.”

“Longing?” Tom's voice was softer, his eyes boring into the side of her face but she wouldn’t turn towards him.

“Yes”, There’s an edge to her voice , “I’ve longed for many things but most of all I wanted love, Tom. I have not seen enough of it growing up, you know, rage raised me all through my childhood and rage is a terrible parent. It takes and takes from you, dressing your bruise up as a kiss and you never know better. Even when you leave home, rage is in every shout not directed at you yet the sound still freezes you, in every confrontation you chose to avoid. If I truly was immortal, I’d watch the world move on through millennias but inside I’ll forever feel the same. The stubbornness to still ache for love, the rage still in me, the longing–it will never go away. And I want to stop feeling Tom, I want to put all these blasted emotions down and rest for once. ”

Tom stayed silent beside her, letting her words sink in. The sky above shuddered as it broke into a gentle drizzle, tiny drops falling onto their faces through the tree leaves. A stray droplet traced its way down her cheek, akin to a tear. Tom reached out and softly brushed his fingers against it before speaking again.

“Rage raised me too, you know. But it came from within me, my shrewd teacher rather than a cruel parent. The orphanage was a gilded mausoleum in my eyes and rage let me take whatever loot I wished to steal from that grave. I terrorised the other children there and lived off of their fear. And I grew up all these years thinking I could chase that high for all eternity. Love is foreign to me too but if it makes you long for death in its absence, what a pathetic weakness it is, wouldn’t you say?”

She looked  at the horizon for an answer yet there was none above save for the loud crash of thunder as the drizzle turned into a heavy downpour. Tom got up and shrugged off his robes, holding them up against the pelting rain. His eyes were feverish and bright as he stared at her.

“You have never left that home in your mind, you know?” His voice hides a small smile, “You look for consolation in memory that holds nothing but a longing for rage and then hope to stop feeling by chasing death. There’s no reprieve in your past but you already know that, so when do you stop looking out your childhood window?”

She shuffles under his arm, her heart twisting painfully, “And what of you? Forever chasing the thrill of power you felt as a child  and to what end? You’re also looking out your window at the orphanage, Tom. We’re both working with rage, it seems, rage that starves me and satisfies you.”

She couldn’t remember what had been said next, her mind torn away from the present back to that lonely shack by the seaside. The scratches on her skin that she’d constantly picked on as a child had left their mark in white stretches along her arm. She had run her fingers along those stretches for hours that day as the winds howled and the trees shivered in the world outside.

The weather today was similar to that fateful day by the lake, a deep sense of foreboding pressing down on her as she drew her cloak tighter against herself, the rain heavy on her back. The tavern was empty at this hour of the night, save for a drunk wizard slumped over his cups in the back. Tom is seated in the corner, his hood covering his face, but she would recognise his straight, proud back anywhere.

It had been five years since they had graduated and five years since she’d last seen him. They had grown even closer in their sixth and seventh years, the spark between them burning into a fire that scared her with its intensity. In those years, Tom had refined his cruelty, becoming more discreet in his attacks against the muggle-born so much so that she too was once or twice fooled by a well-timed, innocently dressed ‘accident.’ He got a new alias, Lord Voldemort, as his followers called him. He was spiralling too, growing deeper and deeper into his fascination with immortality. To her discomfort it became a topic they debated frequently. Tom led her to open chests from her past she wished to keep firmly locked.

It was this intensity between them that had driven her to disappear with a goodbye right after graduation. Half of it was to avoid Tom and the rest was to maybe close her childhood window like he’d once remarked. Tom had ambitiously desired to teach defense against the dark arts but was rejected due to his young age and instead took up employment at Borgin and Burke, turning down the ministry’s job offers to one of Hogwarts most brilliant students, to the surprise of many.

Then he disappeared abroad.

Five years of no contact between them when even his followers from school, from whom she had occasionally slipped information about Tom, were in the dark about his travels. So when the letter from him arrived on an unsuspecting Tuesday, she knew she would go. And that’s how she came to be here, in this dingy tavern,  staring at a face that haunted her every waking moment and watched her in her dreams. 

Tom looks just as devastatingly handsome as ever, his features slightly leaner now with a sharpened jaw and more sculpted cheekbones. He pulls his hood back and she notices the scarred tissue underneath his right ear, with his earlobe sliced off halfway. His eyes are the same haunting brown turning almost black in the dim lighting.

“I have to admit, I’m surprised you accepted to meet me here after your eagerness to avoid me ever since school ended. I heard you picked up employment as an auror, as expected of an exceptionally bright witch as yourself.”

She manages a weak smile, deflecting from herself, “And what of you? You turned down the ministry for Borgin and Burke. Why? Word of your doing has reached me, Tom. They say you’ve been deeply entrenched in the dark arts abroad, pushing its limits and consorting with disreputable people. People talk about your work and not very favourably, mind you.”

He gives her an achingly familiar smile, the same one he’d give when he cornered her in a debate, “That’s why I’m here now, to change my reputation. I plan to take up the ministry on their job offer. An undersecretary for the minister of magic.”

“You wish to work in the ministry?” She sucks in an astonished breath, “Why now?

“Like I said I have an ill repute of mine that I’d like to mend. For that I do have a request for you. What better way to repair the ministry’s growing distrust in me than get married to one of their most capable aurors?”

Her heart has stopped beating, her body freezing all over, “Wha-what?”