HP Cronos

As soon as Nora got out of the fireplace, she hurriedly put on her coat and took her guns. After confirming the direction on the map, she set off on a flying broom.

There was no one at the place where she landed, of course there would be no one. This place had been deserted for a long time, and it was as gloomy as a haunted house.In fact, there have been local rumors that the place is haunted.Just a few years ago, the owner of this place, a family of three, all died in bizarre ways.

No wounds, no signs of break-in.Only the terrified expression on the face of the dead.

Yes, they were not injured, just deprived of their souls.The first of the three unforgivable curses, Avada Kedavra.

"Lumos." Nora pulled out her wand.

The room was dark, the only source of light coming from the tip of Nora's wand.She groped, walking on the floor covered with a thick layer of dust.

She has been here!She must have been here.The increasingly familiar scene in front of her made Nora think so.

The atmosphere here is oppressive and dull.Then she saw a row of footprints on the floor.

Intuitively, Nora decided that those were her own footprints.

Nora investigated the ring and found something from Dumbledore, from the Ministry of Magic files, and even from some unverified fairy tales.The Gaunt family, descendants of Slytherin.There was also a murder case that happened here. Morfin Gunter readily admitted that he did it. He died in Azkaban, and the Gunter family disappeared.

Slytherin, Gaunt, Tom's Parseltongue.Nora felt compelled to go and see the house, especially since the owner of the tavern casually mentioned the name of the dead man.

"You mean the Riddles?" he said, wiping his glass. "It was a frightful thing indeed, and it shook the whole village. They caught the gardener and then let him go. If I say, The murderer must be him, otherwise who else could it be?"

Riddle!Nora was about to call out this familiar surname. She pinched the cup and asked, "Riddle? Is that family named Riddle?"

"Yes. The old Riddles, and their son, Tom Riddle. I don't mean to criticize the deceased. He was handsome, but there was nothing left of him but appearance."

"Thank you," Nora said.She left the tavern pale.

She tracked down the gardener and convinced the stubborn veteran that she had come to prove his innocence.

The crippled gardener recalled: "Something special? Nothing special happened that day. I was in my cabin and didn't hear anything. But... I remember a young man who didn't seem to Over 17, he's wearing a weird black robe and yes, a silver green tie and looks like he's been out for a long walk."

"Then someone bought the house. It was the nicest house in the neighborhood. But they moved out shortly after, saying they thought there were ghosts haunting the place. I've never met its current owner...  , as if the guy bought it for tax reasons."

"Thank you, thank you very much," said Nora.

She remembered Tom's speculations about his parentage.

"My father was supposed to be a wizard and my mother was a Muggle." He said wearily, as if he was deeply ashamed that he had a Muggle mother. "She died at the door of the Muggle orphanage because of difficult childbirth .”

"She was your mother," Nora had taught him then, solemnly. "She died to give you life."

"Oh." Riddle sneered.

In fact, Nora already knew.Mrs. Cole of the orphanage would call him an "unfamiliar white-eyed wolf" when she was angry.She pointed at Riddle's nose with trembling fingertips: "You—I knew I shouldn't keep you—you little devil, you took your mother away at birth, and you didn't even have a tear!"

The surrounding children gloated and watched.Riddle turned his back to Nora, who was hiding and eavesdropping, but she could imagine the expression on his face, contempt and indifference, which would annoy Mrs. Cole even more.

"You just wait." Tom said to Nora, "I'm different from them...I'll let them see this, sooner or later..." He narrowed his eyes: "I think my strength must be From my father. I have a different blood..."

It's just that he mentions his father a few times.Nora knew he had longed to see him, but she wasn't sure if it was a child's longing for a father, or a desire to have the strength of her own blood proven.

Nora felt compelled to go in and see for herself.

The long-abandoned old house is full of dust, and the carpet smells musty.

In the warehouse, she found a portrait.Maybe someone who moved in later didn't throw it away out of respect and piled it up with a pile of clutter.The light of the wand illuminates the figure in the portrait.

Dark hair, dark eyes, handsome, pale.The only discrepancy was that the Tom Riddle she had known had never looked so arrogant and rich.That was the expression of a spoiled young master.

The only truth has come out.

The lights went out, and Nora took a few steps back, crashing into someone's arms.She was not so surprised.

"He's your father," said Nora, and she turned, looking into Riddle's eyes through the darkness, "but you killed him."

Riddle didn't answer her.

"You not only killed him, you also killed your grandparents, and then put the blame on your uncle. You killed all your blood relatives with your own hands!"

"Because they don't deserve to shed the same blood as me." Riddle said coldly.

He approached the portrait, waved his wand, and the face on the portrait was instantly reduced to a heap of ashes.

"I told you, I always thought my mother was a Muggle and my father a pure-blood wizard," he said softly, "but it's just the opposite."

"Did you kill him just because he was a Muggle?"

"Isn't that enough to constitute a reason?" Riddle asked back as a matter of course.

He smiled, but there was no smile in his eyes.Nora thought she was looking at a puppet.He has black pearl eyes, but no emotion.

"Of course, getting rid of him was just a matter of course." He said unhurriedly, "It was also on that day that I finally confirmed my identity—the heir of Slytherin, the last and only heir."

Nora stepped back, her back against a large, dusty cabinet.

"Be patient, Nora, this is a very long story." Riddle said softly, "My mother is called Merope Gaunt. I saw her from their memories."

"A dull, incompetent, squib."

"In order to maintain the purity of the bloodline, the already fallen Gaunt family had to adopt some special measures, such as—————"

Nora couldn't see Riddle's expression clearly.She listened to him casually, even mockingly, tell the sad story of the mother he had never met.

"And poor Merope, she didn't want to stay in that 'home' full of poisonous snakes and madmen, and give birth to her own ugly brother's child. But Gaunt was only part of her tragedy, her real tragedy was love Fucking a Muggle who's good for nothing but looks."

"Yes, Mr. Tom Riddle, my biological father." There was obvious sarcasm in his tone, "In order to get him and escape the fate of marrying her brother, she eloped with Mr. Riddle."

"But how could the handsome and rich Riddle be willing to elope with the ugly and eccentric Merope Gaunt? Because Merope is a wizard, even if she is a squib, so she used a method that only a wizard can do - a love potion. "

"Finally one day, she herself was tired of the life of deceiving day after day. She confessed the truth to Mr. Riddle and begged him not to leave her for the sake of the child in her belly."

"You probably guessed the story after that."

Nora watched him silently.

Finally, old Tom Riddle kicked Merope away like a piece of garbage in the way.He fled back to Little Hangleton as if fleeing, and told his family that he had been cursed by a terrible witch, so he left without saying goodbye.

And Merope finally gave birth to the child at the gate of the orphanage.

"His name is... Tom Riddle," she said, and died of exhaustion, like a wild dog on the side of the road.

Merope Gunter, her fate was destined to be a tragedy from the moment she was born.She tried to fight, but even the way to freedom was so embarrassing.

"I read it all from his memory," said Tom, "and the funniest part is that she gave me that name, a stupid Muggle name. And Marvolo, it was my grandfather's name. "

"You say I don't know love." The wand was held in his long fingers. "That's a perfectly true statement. I never knew love, and I don't intend to. Do you understand, Nora?"

He called her by her name softly, as he had done so many times before.

"I understand." Nora said, looking at him in disbelief. "I can't understand anymore. But what I don't understand is, why me? Even at the expense of... modifying my memory."

Love makes people blind, makes people irrational, makes people feel lucky, and makes people have undue expectations.

"You have already remembered." He said calmly, "It seems that the last magic is not strong enough."

"Why me?" Nora repeated.

"I don't hate you, Nora, and I never lied to you about that," said Tom. "We've known each other for a long time, indeed, and I don't hate being with you. Gryffindor or Ravenclaw, you are the best choice."

"But sometimes your curiosity is too strong," he said. "Why do people always ask the bottom line? It's such an easy choice to keep the status quo and pretend that nothing happened." He looked at her fingers, and Nora knew He was looking at her ring: "Have you heard of the fairy tale? The three brothers who deceived the god of death. The only thing left in the Gaunt family is this ring, the ring of the resurrection stone, which I took back from my ignorant uncle It. Now you have everything you wished for."

"That's all fake. The resurrection stone can't really bring people back to life. They are already dead and will never come back." Nora's hand under the sleeve had already held the wand, and she looked at it vigilantly with the eyes of a stranger. Looking at him, "You know what I can't do, pretend nothing happened. Let me go, we are separated here. I can pretend that I don't know anything about what happened today, and I will keep it a secret for you."

Riddle shook his head regretfully: "Secret? Even the most powerful spell will fail one day, not to mention human promises."

"Fiery!"

It was the most powerful spell Nora could think of, the Dark Arts, and it was something Riddle had taught her at school.

However, standing before her was Tom Riddle, the genius who learned to apparate at the age of 14.The spell was gone before it touched him.

Then he raised his wand.

With a flash of white light, Nora lost her memory.

Nora, who escaped from her memory, was sweating profusely. Standing in the gloomy and dark old house, looking around, she always felt that Riddle was hiding in the darkness, looking at her coldly, and knew everything.

She still thinks too well of him.Even if the current Tom Riddle is not the lunatic who enjoys the wailing of others and treats Avada as a daily routine 50 years later, he is far from meeting the moral standards that "ordinary people" should have.

Reason told her that she should go to Hogwarts now and seek Dumbledore's protection.

But no.She didn't come here to survive.In other words, she should have died...

She holds the ring on her chest.

"It's all fake." She said silently, "You have to do what you should do."

When Nora returned to the apartment, Tom had already returned. He was sitting on the sofa, looking at a thick black bound book that looked as ordinary as a Muggle book.The arrival of Nora only made him raise his head slightly: "Finally came back?"

"I went to a place temporarily." Nora said, she brushed her messy hair with her hands, went straight to the bookcase, and reached into the mezzanine to fumble.

"You should have learned in the Defense Against the Dark Arts class that it's best not to look directly into other people's eyes." Tom closed the book and said flatly.

In the mezzanine?By the way, I touched it!Nora found the thin booklet.

"Did I tell you that Legilimency is one of my best spells," she heard Tom say.