everything was once

by She's a Star

Disclaimer: Cecilia would be J.K. Rowling's, for all the one and a half lines or so that she inhabits. Rock on. So's, ya know, the wonderful world of Harry Potter in general. Duh.

Author's Note: So, summer vacation is upon us! And naturally, the first thing I did was read HBP again. And this time, I got rather intrigued by the Voldemort backstory stuff – particularly his dear old dad's riding companion, Cecilia, who appears for maybe two lines. Maybe. Don't ask me why that's the thing I chose to find intriguing. But honestly, it'd be quite hard, if one was pretty and snobbish, to be inexplicably dumped in favor of Merope Gaunt, don't you think?

Aaand here we go.

--

Cecilia is lovely now, just as she's always been; the air of inexplicable tragedy that lingers around her – more delicate and haunting than the scent of talcum powder, of roses – only strengthens it. She has been sad for practically a year now, and it's turned her slightly strange. It worries her mother sick, and fills her father with secret relief (for it is no easy job, having a daughter so beautiful and so desired). He recalls the dreadful anxiety that had first overtaken him a few years before, when Cecilia's beauty became fully recognized and the porch seemed constantly overrun with lovestruck young men desperate for a word, a glance. She had balanced them all with particular skill (and this had horrified her father even further) – fluttering lashes, peals of laughter clear and cherished as church bells, the occasional sparing sentence designed to intrigue instead of answer. She had been very good at playing the ingénue, very good indeed, until Tom Riddle.

They had fallen in love quite easily, nearly as besotted with the other's good looks and charm as they were with their own. Together, they commanded a certain respect, the faintest touch of awe: how lovely they were, how young and vibrant with the world at their feet. The villagers of Little Hangleton had near-unanimously approved of the match, and spent much of their time talking of extravagant engagement rings (though one was never actually spotted), alleged wedding bells, and the two fortunes combining most prettily. It was as sure a thing as had ever been, Tom and Cecilia, and anyone from the milkman to the barmaid would have gladly told you so.

Cecilia remembers this now, twisting the ring around her finger (she had wished ever so much to wear it in public, had never had the chance) and refusing whatever foolish suitor might still think her anything besides lost. She will be an old maid now, she tells her thin-lipped mother, and smiles wryly afterward to show she is only joking. The truth, what has really happened, clings to the darkest, most shadowy parts of her mind, horrible and somehow unreal; when she wakes in the morning, it is with the belief that it could have been nothing more than a nightmare. Maybe she is dreaming, always dreaming – maybe one day soon, Tom will wake her with a kiss, and that will be that.

(She is no Ophelia, and not as silly as she seems. It's only that her heart is broken.)

Remembering Tom seems to be her particular curse. "The pain will fade," her mother says, stroking her hair by moonlight as though she is a child, "you'll see. In time, you'll begin forgetting things. The colour of his eyes, the way his voice sounds." Thinking of this, Cecilia forces herself not to laugh or maybe scream: she recalls everything perfectly, every vein and eyelash, every sweetly idle word. 'You will be my wife,' he'd told her once by the brook, the sun hot on both their backs, his hand snaking around her waist and pulling her close. He'd lifted her up then, twirled her 'round, and she remembers – though it aches to do so – how beautifully their laughter had intertwined against the muggy summer silence.

Forgetting is impossible. The prospect of it hurts more than remembering ever could.

Their first kiss had been under the stars, in front of the gazebo on the Riddle lawn. It had been one of his mother's parties: the sort that everyone came to because no one was willing to let it show just how much they despised the family. A waltz – lovely and lilting, provided by the string quartet across the lawn – had drifted, lazy, through the air to reach them. Tom had pulled her close to dance without asking (for this was how he was), stared deep into her eyes in the way all the other men couldn't bring themselves to. Tom could look beauty in the face, unfailing, because he knew he was worthy of it; he knew what he deserved. And then their mouths brushed – barely! – and as quick as that, she knew she was through with searching.

She had been beautiful, so beautiful (and remains so even now). Tom would accept nothing less.

It turns her stomach, fuels her most grotesque nightmares to picture Tom – her handsome Tom – with the Gaunt girl.

No one had believed it at first – least of all her, and after all, she had been told face-to-face. The rainy, unexceptional Sunday; Friday's engagement ring on her finger as she waited at the gazebo ("their place," such childish romantic whims have morphed into distant dreams). She swung her feet like a little girl, giddiness the effective murderer of poise, and drew up wedding gowns in her head. She had just decided on a lace-lined collar when he appeared – almost from nowhere, it seemed, his eyes blank and cold as the rain.

She offered her hand to be kissed. He contemplated her thin, graceful fingers; the ring he'd so impeccably chosen.

"I'm going away," he said, and she giggled.

"Oh, really? Where?"

"I don't know," he said; his eyes were as empty as a dead man's, but she'd thought nothing of it, not at the time. He did so love to play games with her, after all.

"So mysterious, Mr. Riddle." She eyed him beneath thick, dark lashes. "I hope you mean to take me with you."

He dropped her hand. Did not look her in the eye.

"Tom?"

"I love her," he said to the rain. "Surely you can see that. Surely you've always seen it."

Something in her withered then, poised to die.

"What?"

"Understand," he said, "that I care nothing for beauty, not anymore. There are more important things."

"If this is some sort of joke—" (Which it wasn't, it couldn't be, and she'd known it even then.)

"She has the purest soul. The most radiant soul."

She recalls the sound of the raindrops, the way her hands had trembled.

"You think you could even begin to compare?" he demanded, his voice going odd, like a hiss. "Do you really think I could love you?"

"What are you talking about?" The words spilled out of her mouth, graceless and tinged with desperation, and surely this was not her voice.

"You bewitched me," he accused, and still he would not look at her. "You don't love me. You couldn't. Not as she does. She watched you and me together, for weeks, for months. And still she forgives me." He paused, closed his eyes in penance. "She has the purest soul."

Reverence spilled into the silence. She couldn't bear it.

"Who?"

A smile touched his mouth, and he told her.

Part of her could have laughed.

"You're lying."

He stared at her, confusion lending his eyes a dull light. "No."

She did laugh then, once, sharp – the sound echoed and stung. "That monster? She's repulsive, Tom! My God, she's barely human – all grime and filth and hardly pure! You know what that family's like, you know why they are the way they are, minds of animals, eyes facing every which way – no doubt her brother and father have already had their way with her—"

Tom slapped her, hard, across the face. For a moment, all the world swayed into chaos, a blurry and unfocused thing.

When it cleared, she found herself crumpled at his feet.

"She's done something to you," and the words spilled from her lips like the rainwater. "Otherwise, you would never sink so low."

She recalls some swift movement – his foot, she has concluded since – and everything going dark.

That had been the last time she'd seen him.

Little Hangleton had nearly come undone at the news: the village transformed into a flurry of scandalized whispers and appalled speculations. "She must have been with child," decided Dot in the most confidential of discussions over a glass of sherry at The Hanged Man. "There's no other explanation."

Her companion furrowed her brow. "But why . . .?"

No satisfying conclusion had ever been reached. The idea that Tom might choose such a creature over Cecilia seemed a complete impossibility, and surely would have been labeled one if it hadn't come to pass. Meanwhile, Cecilia's infrequent ventures out were met with pitying glances and low, sorrowful tones. In time, she ceased leaving home at all. Her mother grew thin and pale with worry.

Even now, Cecilia waits. There is some truth she has not found.

It is needless to say that Merope Gaunt disgusts her, but for a time, her thoughts are consumed by little else. She can count on one hand the number of times she saw the girl, and all of them had been with Tom. The first time they'd passed the hovel, he'd told her, in properly dramatic tones, of the filth that lived there: he'd made a fabulous, disgusting joke of the whole affair, recalling their apelike figures and muddled speech and weaving mischievously veiled suggestions as to how they'd got that way. He would stop just as soon as he was about to reach something especially tantalizingly foul, inquiring chivalrously as to whether he would shock too unforgivably her delicate sensibilities.

Tom could never love that revolting mess, that sad-faced monster of a girl. She doubts he could so much as stand to look at her, unless –

On frenzied summer midnights when sleep won't come, certain words spring to her mind, unbidden: magic, witchcraft. She is perfectly aware that it is impossible, and is sometimes struck by the sick, dark feeling that perhaps she is going mad. And yet how else might it be explained? The townspeople all speak of moral obligation, of an unborn child, but Cecilia knows this is false. He would never touch that filthy slut, not with his dear, uncallused hands. Not Tom.

It was the Gaunt girl's doing, somehow. And still, Cecilia cannot understand. (It maddens slowly, like the summer's heat.)

It rains one day, just as it had the last time she'd seen him. Her mother comes into her room to wake her hours after she opens her eyes; Cecilia has been staring at the ceiling, painting pictures in the white. She dresses obediently and sits down to breakfast. Afterwards, she tells her parents that she would like to go out for a walk.

"Cecilia," her mother admonishes lightly, "you'll catch your death of cold."

She casts her pleading eyes at her father.

"Be sure to wear a coat," he capitulates, after a few seconds of deliberation. He has never been quite able to resist her.

Cecilia smilingly promises she won't and sets off outside in only her dress. She is wearing white; the fabric clings close to her, cowering from the rain. She wraps her arms around herself as she approaches her destination; closes her eyes against the memories (there, the spot where he'd first taken her hand; there, where they'd been spotted kissing by the scandalized old Mr. Pratchett; there, where they'd discussed nothing at all, but in the sweetest tones).

She draws closer and recalls riding horses side by side.

Her feet are strangers to dirt and roots; she stumbles a few times as she treads on, but doesn't slow. It is in her sight now. She grimaces, almost expecting corpses of snakes to be nailed to the door. No one lives here anymore, she knows; from what she's heard, the father and the son are both in prison somewhere – for what, she is not precisely sure, but can guess. And the girl, of course . . .

She bites her bottom lip as she pushes the door open.

It is filthier than anything she's ever seen in her life, but at the same time, she cannot quite feel the necessary revulsion. The truth, whatever it might be, could lurk here, caught in spider webs or buried somewhere beneath a floor that looks to be made of dirt. Not quite knowing why, she closes the door behind her and steps to the center of the room.

Here I am, she thinks bizarrely, insipidly. The drone of flies interrupts what might have been silence.

She surveys the crude countertops – runs her wet, pretty hand across it. She lifts it to find it coated with dust; dirt sneaks under her fingernails. Surely this is someone else's hand, she muses, and almost smiles at the strangeness.

She takes a step, and feels the snap of something brittle underneath her shoe. Nearly expecting bones, she looks down to see a thin piece of wood. She frowns and crouches down to inspect it – not a stick, but something deliberately made and shaped. How funny. She cannot conclude what it might be for a moment before it strikes her, all at once—

It almost looks like a magician's wand.

But this is foolish, of course. Wands don't seem like they would be quite essential, anyway; if there are black cats and cauldrons, broomsticks, then maybe she will have grounds to contemplate such things. But until then—

She stands. The bottom of her skirt has turned a relentless, ugly grey from the grime. Her mother will be appalled.

She takes a breath of stale air. It tastes something like decay.

There must be something more for me to find.

Feeling almost indecent for a reason she can't discern, she swings open one of the cabinets. The only things there are a few chipped plates and a shoddily crafted jug; she has nearly swung it closed again when it catches her, all at once.

Tom.

She does not know why, at first – only that she senses him here, and for a moment she believes fiercely that should she turn around, he will be standing there, slyly smirking and wonderful as he once was. She pauses and steadies herself, pressing one hand against the dirty countertop.

Slowly, her hand oddly steady, she opens the cabinet again.

And there it is – the sense of him, vivid and overwhelming, and yet she can't tell why—

And then it comes to her.

It smells like Tom. She closes her eyes, lets out a frail breath. Expensive cologne and freshly laundered shirts, the pomade he'd used so religiously and something else –something unidentifiable that reminds her of sultry summer evenings.

Opening her eyes, feeling foolish, she inspects the ugly, chipping plates, then turns her attention to the jug. She lifts it slightly, and is surprised to discover that it isn't quite empty. An iridescent sheen of liquid coats the bottom of it, swishing slightly as she moves it.

She knows at once, without comprehending how or why, that this is her answer.

Something within her is lain to rest.

With a nearly forgotten grace, she sets the jug down and closes the cabinet. Her eyes skim the room once more, fleetingly.

It truly is a cesspool.

When she returns home, her mother is thoroughly beside herself about the state of her dress and hair; her father chastises her halfheartedly for neglecting her coat. She responds just as she ought to, and disappears upstairs to change. After she has peeled off her dress, she pauses – a glint of gold catches her eye.

The engagement ring sits on the corner of her vanity, waiting.

Cecilia tosses her still-dripping hair over her shoulder as she considers the ring, briefly. Its diamonds smile up at her, glinting sympathies – dear girl, can't you remember how very lovely everything was once?

In one smooth movement, she brushes it to the floor, her hands still marred with traces of grime and dirt.

She is no Ophelia, and not as silly as she seems.