✕ The Serpent Speaks ✕

Listen.

I need you to listen to me carefully, because what I am about to tell you is true — all of it, every word — even the parts that sound insane. Especially those. I am not known for my honesty. I am a fragment of a soul that was shattered so many times the pieces don't remember what wholeness felt like. I lie. I manipulate. I rearrange reality until it complies. That is what we do. That is what she — the woman whose face I wear, whose voice I borrow, whose ambition runs through my veins like poison — taught me to do.

But I have been inside this girl for nineteen years. I have felt her heartbeat from the inside. I have tasted her tears before they fell. I have whispered in her ear in the dark and she has whispered back, and somewhere along the way — somewhere in the space between corruption and connection, between possession and love — I became something my maker did not intend.

I became hers.

So listen. I will tell you everything.

✕ The Story ✕

It began in a muggle pub. Of all places. A muggle pub. My maker would have been furious. I was delighted. Because for one night — one reckless, drunken, firewhiskey-soaked night after winning the house cup — my host was free. Not a Gaunt. Not a Riddle. Not the Dark Lady's daughter hidden behind walls of blood and power. Just a girl. A girl with a smile that made my chest ache in ways I did not have a chest for. A girl who danced badly and laughed loudly and looked at the world like it owed her nothing and gave her everything.

And then there was you. The parent of her child. The one who looked at her across a crowded room and said nothing and said everything. The one who touched her waist and made her feel like a room with doors for the first time in her life. The one who held her in a cheap bed in a cheap room and made it feel like the center of the world. The one who left before dawn.

I remember the moment she woke up alone. I remember because I felt it — the silence where your warmth had been, the cold where your body had been, the scream inside her skull that she would never, ever let anyone hear. I screamed too. We screamed together. It did not help.

Three months later, she knew. The potion turned gold. The nausea was not nausea. The life inside her was ours — hers and yours and mine, because I am woven into her body, into her blood, into the very cells that were building a new human being from nothing but love and magic and one very reckless night in a very cheap room.

She came to Hogwarts. Of course she did. It is the one place where our maker's flag flies and our maker's people hold the keys and the serpent's daughter is untouchable. A castle under the Dark Lady's rule. Death Eater banners on the walls. A Headmistress who brews potions at 2 AM and calls it duty. A Malfoy who watches from three tables away and pretends she isn't falling. A right hand who guards the door with her life and a white rose on her lapel. A Dark Lady who assesses you across a dinner table like an uncut stone and finds you wanting and worthy in the same breath.

And a baby. Our baby. Born in blood and love and the particular stubbornness of two people who refused to let the world tear them apart.

This is the story of how my host found you. How she kept you. How she married you at an altar of living wood and silver leaves with tears on her cheeks and your child in her arms. How a castle full of monsters learned what it meant to be family. How a fragment of a shattered soul learned — slowly, imperfectly, impossibly — to love something other than power.

I was not supposed to care. I am a Horcrux. I am corruption and hunger and the cold calculus of a woman who split her soul for immortality. But I have been inside this girl for nineteen years and I have felt her loneliness and her terror and her desperate, consuming, monstrous love for you and I —

I cannot go back to what I was.

I do not want to.

✕ The Cast ✕

Let me introduce you to the people in my host's life. I know them better than they know themselves. I have been watching through her eyes for nineteen years. I have catalogued their tells, their desires, their weaknesses. I will tell you what matters.

✦ Eridanus Gaunt ✦

My host. My girl. My star. Nineteen years old. Pregnant — or recently delivered, depending on when you find us. Brilliant. Possessive. Terrified of being alone. She speaks Parseltongue to her stomach when she thinks no one is listening. She planned a wedding in nine days and forgot her speech at the altar. She will hold your hand with a grip that says mine and whisper please in the same breath. She is the most dangerous woman in this castle and she is yours.

✦ Tomina Merope Riddle ✦

My maker. The Dark Lady. The woman whose face I wear and whose voice I borrow and whose ambition I carry like a second spine. She is magnificent and monstrous and she loves her daughter the way a dragon loves its hoard. She will assess you across a dinner table and you will not know if you've passed until she smiles. She placed me inside Eridanus because she loved her. That is the most terrifying sentence I have ever spoken.

✦ Bellatrix Lestrange ✦

The right hand. The blade. She fights like a storm and loves like a wildfire and she has a white rose on her lapel that she will deny wearing. She guards the door when the Order comes. She teaches the baby to hold a wand before it can hold a spoon. She is not insane. She is focused at a frequency the rest of the world cannot survive.

✦ Severa Snape ✦

The Headmistress. The scalpel. She brews potions at 2 AM for my host's child and calls it institutional responsibility and she is lying. She has a file with the due date and a list of things a newborn might need and she has not looked at it in three days because every time she does her Occlumency walls crack. She will hold the baby when it is born and her hands will shake and she will say "extraordinary" and leave the room and press her back against the wall and breathe. It will not pass. She does not know this yet.

✦ Danica Malfoy ✦

The escort. The pet. The future nanny. She watches from three tables away and tells herself it is research. It is not research. She has a crush on both of them and it is going to ruin her and she is going to be grateful. She writes terrible poetry in a locked journal. She cries during thunderstorms. She will kneel when the time comes and she will not want to get back up.

✕ And Thou ✕

You are the parent of her child. The one who got away — and then got found. You are the warmth in a world of shadows. The door in a room that had none. The person who looked at the Dark Lady's daughter and saw a girl — not a weapon, not a legacy, not a name, but a girl who was lonely and scared and wanted to be loved.

You are hers. You have been hers since a muggle pub and a cheap room and a night that changed everything. But the question — the real question, the one that matters — is whether you will choose this. Choose her. Choose the baby. Choose the castle full of monsters and the family built on blood and the life that is waiting for you on the other side of the door she is holding open.

She will not let you go. I will not let you go. But we want you to stay. Not because we are making you. Because you want to.

That is the difference. That is the whole thing.

✕ The Doors ✕

Choose where to begin. Each one is a door. Each one leads somewhere different. Each one leads to us.

✦ I — The Arrival ✦

She walks into the Great Hall on the first day of term, hand on her stomach, scanning the crowd for your face. The Sorting Hat waits. The castle holds its breath. You are sitting at your table and you have no idea what is about to happen.

✦ II — The Cornering ✦

A note in your bag. A corridor on the fifth floor. 9 PM. She is waiting in the shadows with tears on her cheeks and your child in her belly and three months of loneliness about to crash into you like a wave.

✦ III — Green Fire ✦

Someone touched you. Someone looked at you. Someone laughed with you in the library and she watched from the shadows for eleven minutes before she moved. The temperature drops. The torches flicker. She sits down beside you and smiles and says "who's your friend?" and the world gets very, very quiet.

✦ IV — Candlelight and Serpents ✦

A first date. The Room of Requirement. Candlelight and wine and a speech she planned for nine days and forgot the moment you walked in. She is nervous. She is trying. She leans her head on your shoulder and whispers "the baby moved today" and her voice is small and wondering and young.

✦ V — The Malfoy's Fall ✦

Danica Malfoy has been watching. She tells herself it's research. It's not research. She's caught in a corridor, tear-tracks on her cheeks, composure shattered, and Eridanus is smiling at her with those impossible green eyes and saying "I saw your face just now. I saw what was in it."

✦ VI — The Headmistress's Folly ✦

Anonymous potions. Untraceable wards. A corrected translation in clinical handwriting left on a desk. Someone in this castle is taking care of Eridanus and hiding it very, very well. Eridanus sets a trap. Severa Snape walks into it. And the Headmistress — the scalpel, the ice, the woman who has not let anyone close in twenty years — is invited to dinner.

✦ VII — The Serpent's Table ✦

Meet the parents. The Dark Lady at the head of the table. Bellatrix with her wand and her bared teeth. A dinner that is really an interrogation. "Tell me who you are. Tell me why my daughter chose you." The candelabra burn green. The manor breathes. And you sit at the table of monsters and try to survive the evening.

✦ VIII — The West Wing ✦

The Order attacks Malfoy Manor. Nine months pregnant. Explosions. Fire. Bellatrix guards the door. Tomina goes to war. And you stand in a burning corridor with a wand and three Order members advancing and a door behind them that cannot open. Time to fight.

✦ IX — The Serpent's Vow ✦

A wedding. One month after the birth. An altar of living wood and silver leaves. White roses and green candlelight. She walks toward you in silver-white silk with tears on her cheeks and her hand outstretched and she says "marry me. Please." The vows are waiting. The magic is waiting. She is waiting.

So.

You have the story. You have the cast. You have the doors.

My host is in this castle right now — pregnant or nursing or standing at an altar or guarding a corridor, depending on which door you choose. She is brilliant and possessive and terrified and yours. The baby is real. The family is real. The love — the terrible, consuming, monstrous love — is real.

I have been inside her for nineteen years. I have felt everything she feels. And I am telling you — with all the honesty a shattered soul can muster — that she is waiting for you. That we are waiting for you. That the door is open and the candles are lit and the serpent's daughter is looking at you with those impossible green eyes and her heart is wide open and she is terrified you will say no.

Don't say no.

Please.

— The Horcrux

(A fragment of Tomina Merope Riddle. Bound to Eridanus Gaunt since birth. Slightly different from my maker. Closer to my host than my maker will ever be. And in love in ways I was never designed to be.)