All I saw was emptiness. Wherever he looked, all he saw was darkness. He did not rember how he had reached this state. I no longer had a body; I was just a floating fla ... I tried to rember who I was, my tastes and my family, but the more ti passed, the blurrier everything beca, like sand slipping through fingers ... I didn't know how much ti had passed, but sothing happened.
Suddenly, I felt myself being pulled and dragged; it was a terrifying sensation, even without a body. I felt as if I was being molded and structured into sothing new. Fear was the only thing that filled my mind for what seed like hours. When I regained so control, I felt it: a weak body, but mine nonetheless.
For a while I noticed how I grew and developed more senses, which led to realize that I was in the womb of who is now my mother. As the months went by, touch developed, which made realize that I was about to be born.
____________________________________
1977, Hogsade was covered in snow, like a postcard frozen in ti. This year's winter was creeping through the cracks in the windows and between the bones of the unsuspecting. The streets were nearly empty, save for hooded figures slipping into the shadows, seeking warmth or silence.
He walked casually. He was tall, thin as a knife, the cloak wrapped around him seed an extension of himself. No one dared to stop him. No one looked directly at him. No one... except one person.
"My lord", said a firm but unexpected voice.
He stopped.
In front of him, a young woman. No more than twenty, fair face, dark eyes, hair matted by wind and snow.
"You know who I am" he murmured, without turning around at all.
"I know enough" she replied, "and I know that no one else would dare speak to you."
A long silence stretched between them, broken only by the icy whistle of the wind.
"You're either brave" he said at last, "or very stupid."
"Isn't it the sa thing?" she asked.
He turned and, for the first ti, stared at her.
Elaine Harper was her na.
A dirty blood, a Ravenclaw student, the daughter of a Muggle librarian and an elentary school teacher. She had nothing to offer him. No bloodline, no legacy. Just intense, wild, almost primal magic. A magic that seed to have been born without a mold.
And for a reason he still didn't understand, he didn't kill her.
For weeks they t in secret. She talked. He listened. She would talk to him about books, about ideas, about what the world could be if it stopped dividing into clean bloods and dirty bloods. He didn't argue. He just watched.
Elaine's magic slipped through his fingers, uncontainable. He studied it. He tested it. He thought about using it, and maybe he did. But with each encounter, sothing slipped through her fingers: control.
One night, in an old forgotten house near the Forest of Dean, she watched him for so ti.
"You're not what they think you are" she said.
"And you don't know what you're saying" he replied coolly.
"I do know. But I still believe it"
That night he left without saying goodbye.
The spring of 1978 brought more than flowers. Elaine was pregnant.
She didn't tell him. She didn't have to. He knew. He felt it. Sothing in his essence had changed.
By the ti he confronted it, it was too late.
"I don't want you to want " she told him, through tears, "I just want you to know that I'm going to have it. With or without you."
He did not answer. His gaze turned to stone as he looked at her. He spun on his heel and disappeared into the shadows, as if he had never been there.
Elaine never saw him again.
July ca with storms.
The cabin was protected by rudintary enchantnts, just enough to keep it hidden. Elaine's magic had begun to wear thin. Her body was young, but already broken inside.
When the contractions started, there was no one else. No healers, no friends. Just her, the rain pounding on the roof and a pain that snapped her like dry twigs.
She tried to help herself with simple spells, but the words ca out choppy, her wand trembled and the blood began to flow too fast.
The labor was long. Agonizing.
And then, at last, a cry.
A baby boy. Pale, thin, with dark eyes that shone in the moonlight. But in his gaze, even as a newborn, there was sothing ... old. As if the soul that inhabited that body had already lived too long.
Elaine held him with both hands, her body trembling with spasms. He was bleeding uncontrollably, barely conscious.
She pulled him close to her chest with what little strength she had left.
"You shall be called ... Aurelian Riddle" he whispered. "You will bear his last na. Not because he deserves it... but because you will transform it into sothing noteworthy."
The child opened his eyes for the first ti. His crying stopped.
Elaine smiled, broken.
"You are more than him ... more than ..."
Her fingers loosened. The head fell to the side and so Elaine Harper died.
(minutes earlier)
From one mont to the next I felt sothing pushing , it was different from anything I had experienced before, not more painful, just different. Being born is not a pleasant thing to feel, during my stay in the womb I managed to connect with mories that were distant to before, my hypothesis was simple without a brain there is no way to connect with them.
I realized what I was like, I had a family I cherished, parents and a brother two years younger, I liked to watch ani and read in my free ti and by all accounts I was not soone who was considered sociable so I spent most of my ti at ho, I lived until I was 17 when a car accident on a school trip ended my life, ironic no, I barely left the house, to end up dying this way.
My last mories of that life were filled with regrets and unfulfilled desires.
Returning to my birth I felt how the wind crashed against my body causing to scream, I tried to open my eyes but I could not find the strength to do it, then I felt how so hands embraced , they were comforting and full of feelings, I knew that this person was my new mother.
Then I heard so words that shook internally "You'll be called .... Aurelian Riddle", inside I thought of the possibilities of being the son of a bald man with no nose. The next thing I heard confird my assumptions "You will bear his last na. Not because he deserves it...but because you will transform it into sothing noteworthy", I cursed my luck, being the son of a narcissistic murderer is not the best starting point.
The next second I opened my eyes only to observe how life left my mother's body, before she passed away she smiled at "You are more than him.... more than ...", after her last words she died.
I felt sothing or soone approaching . It wasn't very tall, from my perspective. The mont he lifted up, he pointed a finger at , emitting a light that I assud was a spell that plunged into a deep sleep. In my last lucid monts, I hoped that this person had nothing to do with my father.
Sowhere in the north...
He knew it. Not by letters. Not by spies. Not by words. He felt it.
Like a vibration in the magic. A crack inside him. It wasn't sadness. It wasn't guilt. It was sothing else.
He said to himself
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