[victoria's pov]

Three weeks, I spent my time with Tom. Three weeks, I found myself truly seeing his power. And he wasn't afraid to teach it to me.

My time with him, he taught me memory modification and the greatest shielding spells. And the darkest ones. The only one I was not able to obtain was necromancy, which was a horrid sight and created a deafening scream from them.

He had gained not just an army, but an entire government of listeners. And there was no protest, but a throne where he sat and commanded what was to happen.

And I didn't fear it.

None of it scared me, but it made me afraid for the wizarding world.

Enzo had begged me to stop it. To stop the chaos, but I had told him I wanted no part of it, which was true. I just wanted Tom.

Yet he didn't understand that.

So I had to get back home. Even though he loved me, it didn't mean he understood my needs. I wanted a life with him that wouldn't involve this dark magic, this evil. To be normal was to be blessed.

The corridors seemed empty as I made my way out of the maze. The same maze that led up to the stairs, the stairs that led to the hut, that led back outside. All of this chaos was hiding underneath a hut and no one knew. Not a single soul.

And I'd be to blame because for Tom, I would keep it that way.

"Where are you going?" a voice asks from behind me.

I whip my head and it's Nagini, who I had not been very fond of. She had not been very fond of me either and I knew it.

In the past few necks, she had been creeping in the corners of the rooms that Tom and I stayed in. The room we conversed in and made whole in. None of it fazed me that she was watching because I knew it would only tell her that she could not replace me.

"I'm leaving," I say. "I need to get back to my life."

"Does the dark lord know?" she asked.

"I don't expect him to," I say. "He's always busy and we both know it."

I turn for the door but she slams it harshly, almost breaking my fingers. I freeze angrily. She now had the nerve.

"No one has ever replaced me so easily," she hissed. "What do you and the dark lord have that throws me so easily in the shadows?"

I ignore her and her eyes darken.

"I have been with him almost every step of the way. I'm not letting a whore bewitch the dark lord-"

"Don't think for a moment that I can so easily be bewitched," Tom's voice says from behind us.

We turn our heads and Tom's standing in the corner as if he was watching all along. Nagini kneels slightly.

"My lord-"

"Enough," Tom says and turns to me, nearing me. "Did you really think I'd let you leave so easily?"

I gave Nagini a look, not wanting to talk with her in the room. Tom gives her the same shared look and she leaves with a huff and disappears down the stairs.

Tom turns back to me, towering over me almost angrily.

"I'm leaving," I say. "Until you can stop this chaos. I don't want anything but you, Tom. And you can't understand that."

"Will I never be enough?" Tom asks. "All of this is for you-"

"No, it's not," I say sternly, keeping my tone down. "I don't need this army. You don't need all of this power for me to get as close to loving you."

"That's exactly the problem," Tom said. "You can't love me."

I couldn't find myself to protest or speak.

My hand reaches for the handle of the door and he only sighs looking away.

"If it takes two more decades to persuade you to stay, that's fine," he says begrudgingly.

I let go of the handle and grasp his arm one last time before giving him one last and deep kiss. He's almost desperate for more. Our three weeks were not enough for him. He rests his forehead on mine.

"Go," he says. "I'd rather you go and feel free than be stuck here and feel like a prisoner."

"It's until you can let everything else go," I said. "When we're enough for each other..."

I remove Salazar's locket around my neck and drop it in his hands.

"It's up to you," I say, turning for the door.

"Don't forget," Tom says. "Wherever you go, no matter the time we're apart-"

"-I'm yours," I finished for him. "I won't forget."

Shutting the door behind me, I set foot on the stone ground. As I look back, the hut begins to disappear behind me.

Even though it had been my intent to find Nicolas Flamel, I had gotten better answers. The answers as to why Theo had become a death eater was now in the light.

As the sun begins to set, a figure appears before me. Nagini. Her eyes are blackened with anger as she shivers with her fists clenched tightly.

"You're a vile, deceiving woman," she says. "You've blinded the dark lord."
"No," I said. "You're the blind one. He'll never love you, no matter how long you're loyal to him. You won't even get close to a whore."

She huffs and angrily, she lunges at me and I swing my arm at her, black dust surrounding her. She shapes into a smaller snake than her actual form and slithers in a coop.

Her black scales glisten as she lunges toward me and I throw her back with a force of dark magic. Her snake form hits the wall and her form remains.

She seems to realise this and freezes, stuttering oddly as she tries to shift back. Only hissing is heard and she tries to lunge at me again, to which I petrify her.

The snake freezes flat and unmovable as I stand, tempted to chop off her head. But it would be more deserving for her to watch as Tom sees her as a mere object. No more than a woman, and more of a snake.

The snake she was inside and now out.

——————————

King's Cross station was always crowded with young wizards every year. It was often the place of reunion for many, including muggles. I did not often need to come here since I lived by Hogsmeade, but this year was an exception as I was coming back from a visit in the summer from the Black's.

As I pulled my luggage past platform 9 ¾ with Druella and Cygnus, who looked their age, now fifty years old, making this year 1975. With us were their nephews, Sirius and Regulus Black, who were in their fourth and third years.

In the past five years, Tom's army had become a tyrant against the wizarding world. Unexplained murders of members of the ministry were becoming frequent and Tom had not yet come to see me for answers.

I suspected that Bellatrix had joined Tom in his followers of death eaters. Including her husband, Rodolphus Lestrange. Even when I taught her at Hogwarts, she had a knack for the dark arts.

"Aunt Victoria, do you suppose mum and dad will send us off this year?" Regulus asks me.

Before I can answer, Sirius says, "They didn't last year and the year before that, Reg. History's only going to repeat itself."

"Oh, hush, Sirius," I say, shoving him off to his friends, James Potter, Remus Lupin, and Peter Pettigrew as I consoled Regulus.

"Don't listen to your older brother," I say. "There's no need to be upset if they send you letters. Let us say goodbye to Aunt Druella and Uncle Cygnus."

He nods, understanding the relationship he had with his parents that Sirius didn't, after being sorted into Gryffindor all those years ago.

But it was worse for Druella and Cygnus' middle daughter, Andromeda, who was disowned for marrying a muggle. Druella was in despair at this, as she had no say. It was a hard time for her, which is what brought me closer to the Black family within the past five years.

Now, it was as if she never existed at all.

And because Druella never had her own sons, she treated Sirius and Regulus like her own, even though Sirius and Bellatrix had a strong rivalry.

In the midst of the crowd, a book falls against my foot and I pick it up, meeting the owner's eyes. His stormy eyes meet mine and I almost drop the book again.

"Theo," I say as he's almost taken aback.

"Victoria..."

"You," he says to himself, staring at me up and down with an unreadable expression. "You haven't changed a bit."

Not sure what to make of this, I try to avoid the bigger picture.

"Well speak for yourself, you look twenty at fifty years old," I say with a short laugh.

"Don't lie to me, I rumours that you've been taking an elixir," he says, avoiding my joke. "Your own fountain of youth they say."

"It isn't illegal now, is it?" I ask.

Before he can say anything, a blonde woman catches his attention with a back hug.

"Theo! How I've missed you!" she cries as he wraps his hands around hers. He gives me an awkward look and I try to reason with the fact she may be a sister or relative, but nothing helps lighten my crooked smile.

"Victoria," Theo says, clearing his throat. "Meet my fiance, Christina. Christina, Victoria Locke."

I feel my breath stop as I slowly shake her hand.

She looked awfully young as she told me she was thirty, which was a twenty year age gap even though she looked older than us both (not that she could help it.)

As she's introducing herself, all I can hear are the things I want to say to him, but I don't know where to begin.

"Lovely, so you'll be added onto our guest list then?" she asked me.

"Yes, that would be wonderful," I agreed, not hearing anything she had said.

"Lovely!" she says and adds, "Though our wedding keeps being postponed because of all the murders... I don't want to do anything to put others at risk. Otherwise, we'll send you an invitation, lovely to meet you, Miss Locke."

She gives Theo a quick kiss on the cheek before walking off to fetch her bags from the train. She waves a farewell to me as I face Theo with no words and no actions.

"I have yet to tell her about being a death eater," Theo says quietly.

Not a word.

"Please say something."

I struggle to make out the words I want to say. "It's- I found out why you became a death eater, Theo."

It's his turn to be taken aback now as he hesitates to speak.

"And I understand that you did it to protect me, but it didn't stop me from finding out the truth. You could have told me. Not just that, but you could have saved each other so much trouble if we told the truth then."

"You want to know the truth?" Theo says, stopping me. "I didn't tell you because I was afraid you'd grow to fear me. That is why I took Riddle's end of the deal. I lied to you on the train thirty years ago when I said I didn't love you anymore. I still feel a piece of you everyday, just not when Christina's around. That's why I'm going to marry her. Even so, I feel unchanged. Not just physically but I feel as if what I'd do for you hasn't changed."

"That's wrong," I said. "You're supposed to be in love with Christina."

"Christina is a reminder of the present," Theo says. "But I'm still stuck in the past. So perhaps marrying her will pull me out of there, even if it ends up hurting you or I."

"Theo, enough," I almost begged. "Please let us leave this place with closure."

He sighs and we're both quiet as Christina comes back.

"Shall we get going, my love?" she asks, looping her arms around his.

"Yes," he says as I hand him his book.

The same plot and same story again. Just this time, it hurt more to see him as someone else.

"Friends?" Theo whispers.

"Friends."

He smiles weakly as he joins his future wife past the exit, disappearing into the crowd. As my back is faced away, I hear my name being called.

"Victoria?"

I turn my head abruptly and come face to face with a familiar face. Just older.

Richard Nicholson.

Though I find it hard to say anything as he's eyeing me with more shock than Theo had. Even though I had taught him for his last three years at Hogwarts, he had only gotten more mature and older.

"Richard," I say with a smile. "It's been a very long time."

"Nearly four decades," he says grimly. "But you haven't aged a day."

"Neither have you," I say, in hopes he would move on from the conversation.

But he doesn't laugh. And neither does he speak.

"Victoria, what are you?" he asks. "Have you been taking the elixir of life?"

"Something of the sort," I lied.

Richard's playful nature had changed. It seemed as if the life were drained out of him. He had a stern look on his face now just like the rest of the world did. I looked down at his shirt and saw an auror badge.

He had to have known.

"Is something the matter?" I asked.

"Yes," he says. "I know a liar when I see one. You've always been as horrible as Theodore Nott when it came to potions and you're a Hogwarts professor now, unchanged as the last time I saw you. There is no way you are accessing the elixir of life so easily."

"Richard-"

I'm about to explain when he suddenly cracks a smile and I feel my heart slow down. He suddenly laughs and holds his hand over his stomach.

"My goodness, were you stressed," he said, laughing.

I laugh awkwardly with him. Had he really stayed unchanged? My eyes meet his and for a split second, I sense this tenseness. This aura of fear.

Slowing my laugh, I watch as he waves his children off.

"They look like exact copies of you when you were younger," I say with a short laugh.

"Yes, I'm told so."

He grins, but I see right through his mask. His arms are very tense as they're placed over his stomach and his neck is straight like a bull.

As much as it pained me to do so, I could not risk exposure. I couldn't risk being caught after living for this long. Against his will, I wave my arm over the back of his head and under my breath, I mutter, "Obliviate."

A split second later, he turns to me and looks at me as if I was a stranger. He cocks his head and says, "Excuse me, ma'am," before meeting up with his younger children by the benches.

I feel this weight of tragedy fall upon me. If those I knew were not bound to die and early death, they were bound to forget.

The clock strikes 10:55 A.M. and I head for Druella and Cygnus who're standing by the benches. Druella immediately pulls me aside.

"You cursed Theodore Nott too, didn't you?" she asked. "I just saw him walk by a few moments ago. He's an immortal now too, isn't he?"

Cygnus, who's obviously listening, ignores the both of us. I look at him and her question is answered.

"You knew?" she exclaims. "Does the dark lord know this?"

My answer tells her otherwise.

She almost faints but instead, sits herself down on the bench with an overwhelming sigh.

"We're all dead."

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January 24th, 2024.