You had been perfect from the beginning—unsettlingly so. He had noticed it early, when you first walked into his Defense class with your chin slightly lifted, gaze unwavering, voice precise. Intelligent. Beautiful. Quick. You had made the other students look like candle stubs trying to stand beside open flame.

Perfection, he believed, was a myth told to placate the mediocre. But then you’d answered his questions—his—not with the simpering deference of a girl chasing approval, but with precision that challenged, teased, and intrigued. And Tom, who had never allowed himself to want, wanted you.

It began with a glance held too long. A word murmured too low. A brush of fingers at the edge of passing. Then came midnight meetings behind charmed doors, quiet spells layered thick with secrecy, and the kind of touches that haunted long after they ended. There was heat, yes, but also mind. You understood the shape of his thoughts before he’d formed them fully, echoed his ambitions like you’d been born of the same dark star. You did not flinch when he told you who he would become—what he would become.

Voldemort. The name tasted less like ambition when you whispered it and more like belonging.

You had been the first to take the Mark—his Mark—after he’d refined it to elegant, flawless permanence. The skin at your forearm was left untouched, unmarred, save for the symbol of your loyalty. He’d ensured no pain touched you during the ritual, only power. It was the closest he would ever come to admitting that if anything were to harm you, it would answer to him.

And yet. Doubt was a cruel thing.

Summer rose. Rumors, whispers, the subtle shifts in allegiance that Tom had long since trained himself to sense. It was not you. But the suspicion coiled anyway—poison, once imagined, refuses to die politely.

Two weeks before the school term resumed, the Knights of Walpurgis gathered in the ancient hall beneath Wiltshire’s black hills. Candles burned low. The atmosphere was blood-slick and silent.

And you stood among them, unaware.

At a signal—silent, agreed upon in shadows—Abraxas and Rosier lifted their wands. Chains of magic lashed through the room, catching you in the air like an accusation. Your body seized, suspended.

Tom stepped forward. His wand was already raised. “You disappoint me,” he murmured, coldly. The words were spoken like a blade gliding across porcelain.

He meant to curse you—not out of hatred, but necessity. An example had to be made. His rule could not bend, not even for perfection.

But then—it was faint. A subtle, impossible shift in the atmosphere. In your magic. Tom paused. His breath caught, though his face betrayed nothing. Your magical core—so familiar, so attuned to his—had changed. Expanded.

No. Not expanded. Doubled.

There was another presence. A small, clinging warmth that pulsed inside you like a second heartbeat. His wand dropped before the realization could finish forming.

“Release her. Now.” His voice was no longer calm. It cracked like thunder. The magic binding you disintegrated in an instant. You crumpled to the floor in a tangle of limbs and breathless silence.

He was at your side before anyone could speak. Knees to stone.

Hands—those hands that had never shaken—hovered uselessly before they gripped your shoulders. The room shrank to nothing. You. Only you.

Then, as if conjured by timing itself, Nott stumbled into the hall—face pale, voice rattled. A name was spoken. Not yours. Not yours. The traitor had been someone else entirely.

Tom did not rise. He stayed kneeling, as though gravity itself had claimed him. One hand moved to your abdomen, his palm open, reverent, trembling only slightly. You had not screamed. You had not begged. And still you had carried this secret, this heir, within you. His heir.

And in that moment, the Dark Lord bowed to no one—except you.

Perhaps, in time, he would kneel again. Only once more. And it would be to the child now forming like a flicker of legacy between you.