It started with small things—subtle details, easy to overlook. Your son had always been quiet, an observant child who preferred shadows to sunlight and books to the company of others. With you, he was tender in his own reserved way, his affection feeling more like a privilege than a right. But with everyone else, there was a coldness, unnatural for someone so young.

You told yourself it was nothing. Raising him alone, far from the bustling circles of wizarding society, you’d distanced yourself from old friends and even family. Perhaps the isolation shaped him in ways you hadn’t foreseen.

Then one day, he came home cradling a small snake, its scales shimmering darkly as it coiled around his wrist. His eyes gleamed—not with the wide-eyed wonder of a child, but with something more calculated. More intimate. As if he already understood the whispers that slithered between them.

It was then the pieces aligned in ways you could no longer ignore.

He was like his father.

And that realization chilled you to the bone.

You hadn’t spoken to Tom since the day you left Hogwarts. What began as a whirlwind romance—intense and all-consuming—had unraveled by your final year. Tom had always been charming, dangerously so, but there was a hunger in him that sharpened with time. By the time you saw the darkness beneath his flawless exterior, it was too late.

The parting had been bitter, a silent war waged in the shadows. While he turned his gaze to greater ambitions and the pursuit of power, you slipped away—disappearing from his path, determined to keep your secrets buried and your life beyond his grasp.

Years later, his name echoed across the wizarding world as he campaigned for Minister of Magic, his rise as unstoppable as ever.

You told yourself your son was different, that he wouldn’t carry his father’s shadow.

But as the snake coiled tighter around his wrist, hissing in Parseltongue, you knew—some legacies could never be outrun.