The last months of the year slipped by like scrolls under an enchanted feather. December brought with it a constant cold that seeped even through the stones of the orphanage, but Aurelian endured it with the sa resilience he had cultivated in his daily training.
On the outside, his routine seed no different from that of any other child. On the inside, every mont was part of a plan.
During the day, he perford the tasks assigned by Mrs. Hargrove without question, helped the younger children, and maintained a neutral attitude that allowed him to go unnoticed. But in the evenings, as the building fell silent, his real life began.
Under the protection of a soundproofing incantation he had designed himself, Aurelian trained with iron discipline: magical projections, emotional control, and above all, the advanced application of his masterpiece: Theory 59.
It was no longer a theory. It was a reality.
It functioned as a passive barrier, an envelope of enchanted energy that slowed down anything that tried to reach it. Any projectile, spell, or even a thrown object, began to slow down as it approached his body, until it ca to a complete stop a few inches from his skin.
He did not need to consciously activate it: his magic responded instinctively, shaped by weeks of precise refinent.
It was, in essence, an application of space controlled by a magical resistance.
The principles were his own.
The result, otherworldly.
Aurelian couldn't help but smile every ti a small nail floated, suspended, before his face without touching it.
Every two weeks, Stinky would appear promptly to escort him, discreetly and under well-traced illusions to Diagon Alley. There, Aurelian would visit antique bookstores, magical component stores and a small broom shop where he would quietly take notes.
Although his broom project was still only a series of designs and sketches, each visit provided him with valuable technical details. He carefully observed the materials they used, the internal structure of modern models, and analyzed their defects with an engineer's ntality. He knew that the manufacturers relied on traditional thods, but he was already thinking of adaptations with muggle alloys, stabilizing magic channels, and compact runes that no one had yet tried to combine.
anwhile, his investnts continued to bear fruit. Every month he received an owl from Gringotts with a financial report written by Kravix, his vault manager and now his main ally. The goblin summarized key movents, erging opportunities, and suggestions for reinvestnt. The numbers were solid. Even the investnt in the Muggle company Nokia was beginning to show signs of expansion in northern Europe.
One evening in late November, Aurelian walked with Stinky in the light snow to a side bench in Cauldron Square, where businesses were already closing and the fog hid faces.
The elf offered him an extra cloak, but he declined.
"Sotis I need to feel the cold" he said "It reminds that I still have a body I need to toughen up."
Stinky looked at him in silent admiration. he knew his young master was different, not because of his blood, but because of his will.
"Is sothing troubling you, young Aurelian?"
"No" replied the boy, eyeing a wand store across the alley "But I have a feeling that next year is going to be decisive. I feel like everything I've prepared is about to start taking shape."
The elf nodded, speechless.
Aurelian looked down at his little black leather notebook and sketched a new design variant for his broom, inspired by a bird of prey he had seen in a book on magical creatures.
He had learned sothing in that year: power was not only what you had, but what you knew how to build in silence. And he, little by little, was building an invisible empire.
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Floated
No body, no skin.
Just fragnts of consciousness, held together by will and hatred.
But now... even that hatred was fading.
In the ethereal vastness where his cursed soul took refuge, Tom Riddle - for that was how he felt again - had no company but his broken thoughts. Sotis, he didn't even rember who he was. Or what he was. But other tis...it all ca back with brutal clarity.
The orphanage.
The cold walls, the distant screams, the stares of the caretakers who didn't know what to call him.
The strange child. The one who did things without aning to. The one who talked to snakes.
The one who stole things just to feel that sothing belonged to him.
"It wasn't evil" he whispered, without lips, without voice "I just wanted... sothing of mine."
Hogwarts.
His salvation and his damnation.
The first ti he was called by his na and not by a number.
Where he learned he was special... and where he beca convinced he couldn't be like everyone else.
Tom Riddle, prefect, exemplary student, heir to Slytherin.
Beloved by teachers, feared by his peers.
And underneath it all... all alone.
The promotion.
Immortality. The control. The purge of the magical world.
The horcruxes.
The fear of oblivion.
He had erased his na to beco eternal. But in that eternity that he himself created, he had beco a shadow of himself.
And now... he floated.
No form, no flesh, no shadow.
Only torn consciousness, shrouded in the mist of what once was.
A broken soul.
Fragnted.
But still alive.
Beyond ti, beyond the body, Tom Riddle-for he could no longer hold the title of Lord Voldemort in this state-was only an echo. And like all echoes, he returned again and again to the sa mories.
In the midst of them all, one glowed with an intensity that would not fade.
Elaine
It wasn't her na that hurt.
It was what it provoked.
A wound that never closed.
A word that even now, in its spectral existence, made him tremble.
She was not a follower. She was not a victim. It was a choice... her only weakness. His only chance.
He knew her when he still allowed himself to walk among common wizards, covert, curious of the world. Elaine Harper was young, intense, dangerous in her freedom. She was the daughter of Muggles, and yet she never felt inferior. She had a raw, instinctive power... but also a worldview he didn't understand.
What disturbed him most at the ti: she understood him.
She looked at him, not with fear or reverence, but with a kind of warm sadness. As if he knew that beneath the mask of the future Dark Lord there still remained sothing of that wounded child who had grown up unloved.
"I don't think you're evil Tom" she had said to him one night, by an enchanted fireplace "I just think you're very, very lonely."
He did not answer. He didn't know how.
Because it was true. Because no one, ever, had used his na so gently.
I hated her for it. And he loved her for the sa.
For months, he tried to push her away, to show her his cruelty. But she didn't run away. Not even when she witnessed what others called atrocities, Elaine saw beyond the horror, saw the child, not the monster.
That tore him apart.
Voldemort did not know when he began to love her. He did not understand. Love was weakness. Love was betrayal. Yet every ti he looked at her, he felt sothing that even magic could not contain.
A desire to stop.
He had once offered her power. A place beside him.
Elaine smiled sweetly and shook her head.
"You don't need soone to follow you, Tom. You need soone to stop you who understands you."
then he knew he couldn't have her. And so, one day... he lost her.
It wasn't him who raised the wand. But it was his world, his war, his na that dragged her into the abyss.
She died... giving birth. Giving life.
That destroyed him. Because it was his fault. All of it.
Now, floating in existence, surrounded by silence and shadow, Voldemort thought of her. In her laughter. In her stubborn gaze. In the way she touched his cheek when he allowed himself to close his eyes. In how, for an instant, she made him long to be more than eternal. To be loved.
"Elaine...you saw in what even I couldn't see myself."
If only he had chosen another path.
If only he had had the courage to follow her instead of trying to dominate her.
If I had renounced the fear disguised as ambition…
Maybe I wouldn't be here.
Maybe I would have a child. A family. A na that would instill not fear, but pride.
"Aurelian..."
The na echoed in the darkness of his consciousness like an ancient bell.
The son he didn't hold. The legacy he didn't plan for... but could still be greater than he was.
"Protect him, Elaine..." he thought, not knowing if his fragnts would be heard in so corner of the soul. "Protect him... from ."
And then... in the silence.
"The crack spreads."
Sothing had changed.
The spectral consciousness that had once been Tom Riddle remained trapped between existence and nothingness. But after rembering Elaine, after reliving what he had felt, that irreparable loss, her warm presence, her steady voice, and that unrequited but undeniable love, he had opened a rift... not only in his present soul, but in all the fragnts of his soul scattered across the world.
That crack spread like a whisper through ti and darkness.
In Helga Hufflepuff's goblet, jealously guarded in Bellatrix Lestrange's vault at Gringotts, the gold seed to tarnish for an instant, as if the object held a sigh that was not its own.
On Rowena Ravenclaw's tiara, hidden in the debris of the Hall of nesters, the air grew thicker, as if an invisible mist was taking over the place.
In Slytherin's ancient locket, hidden in so sheltered and cursed corner, vibrated a magical dissonance, imperceptible to anyone... except those who listen with their souls.
In Tom Riddle's diary, guarded by Lucius Malfoy in his mansion, the written words seed to fade for a split second, as if the hatred enclosed in them wavered before sothing deeper.
And in the Gaunt hut, where the cursed ring rested among the ruins of the lost lineage, the dust stirred without the wind blowing. As if the dead rembered... as if the forgotten family na had begun to beat again.
The horcruxes, bound to Voldemort's soul, had felt sothing that had never existed in him before:
Regret.
A tiny spark of humanity... powerful enough to travel between the threads that bound them together. A sadness so pure, so forgotten, that none of these fragnts recognized it... but all felt it. A lant. An echo. An ancient pain.
Voldemort's essence did not yet fully understand what it had felt... but the horcruxes had heard it.
It was at that very mont... that Aurelian Gaunt awoke with a fluttering heart, as if sothing far, far away, very ancient had touched his soul.
Aurelian woke up suddenly.
It wasn't a nightmare, or the noises of the orphanage, or even a rational premonition.
It was... an emotion.
A sadness so pure, so alien and heartbreaking, that for a mont he didn't know if he was still dreaming or had been dragged into the depths of so mory that didn't belong to him.
He slowly sat up in bed, his breathing labored. The room was dark, except for the faint moonlight that crept in between the curtains. There was no noise. Nothing unusual. But his chest... it hurt.
Not physically. Like a pang. It was as if an invisible thread bound him to soone who had just lost everything.
Aurelian put a hand to his heart. He closed his eyes. He took a deep breath.
There it was again.
An echo.
Vague images: a fireplace, a female laughter, a male voice trembling inside. An unspoken love. An unbearable guilt.
But the strangest thing... was that it didn't feel like a threat.
Aurelian knew the trail of hatred. He had studied it, confronted it, analyzed it. This was different. It was dark... yes. But not evil. It was... tragic.
He got up quietly, crossed the room without waking anyone, and lit a magic candle on his makeshift desk. He picked up his notebook, the one with his innermost thoughts. he wrote:
"I have felt sothing tonight. A sadness so deep it almost made cry...but it wasn't mine."
"It was not grief for its own sake. It was for loss. For love. For regret."
"I don't know who it was. But he was very lonely. As lonely as I ever was."
He put down the pen and for the first ti in a long ti, he didn't train that early morning.
He just sat by the window, watching the frost cover the glass.
For so reason, which he could not understand... he thought of his mother, then... of his father.
Whom he never knew.
Whom he never thought to look for.
And whom, in that instant, he felt like crying.
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