Dearest Tom,


Today, I am the happiest woman in the world, perhaps, and it is all because of you.


Tomorrow, I will be the most desolate creature in all of creation, and it will all be because of you.


Tomorrow may not be the day after today, or even the day after then, but it will always be one day away, looming ever closer, ever neare as the fragile bonds within my heart sever and die, until my strength fails and I can no longer bring myself to enchant you.



Today, you will love me as you love life itself.


Tomorrow, you will try to forget me.



Today, I have locked myself in the attic of our wonderful home… Wonderful, because it is ours, Tom, ours. Me and you. Together.


It is a dream I have savored for many years, Tom, so many years, and finally, it has come true.


Today, I feel as if the world is on my side.



Tomorrow, Tom, I will be alone. Tomorrow, I shall snap my wand in half to the image of your fading footsteps, drown myself in sorrow at the sound of your retreating voice, that voice that is like syrup to a rough and tumbled soul, that voice that is the voice of love.


You see, Tom, you brought into my life what I have never before had – the voice of hope. Even when you were with so many other girls, I heard it, softly whispering to me, telling me that there would come a day where I would be free…


Oh, Tom, I’ve come at last to that day.



Perhaps, months, years from now, my father will come searching for me, and he will kill us both, Tom, because you are a Muggle and I a traitor to my lineage. If only I would be blessed enough to die by your side, Tom. But I know that it is not to be.


It is I, Tom, who will eventually kill us. I, because of my weakness and my infatuation for you, who will pity your enchanted existence and free you in the hopes that you will stay with me, but I know even now that it is not to be. You will leave me, Tom, I know it – desert me for those prettier girls, and never give me a second thought.



You will try to forget me, Tom, and I know this. That is why I am writing this, and hiding it in a place you are sure never to find until years from now, when I am long gone from your life and from this world. You will find it, or perhaps your future wife will happen upon it – Maybe she’ll run to your arms, demand you tell her the truth while her heart fumes - with jealousy, or contentment that she stole you away from me. You will tell her you never loved me, and she will be content, but there will always be that mistrust there, planted from these words that I have written in such giddy bliss. If she knew me, she would never have worried.


But there is hope that you will find this, Tom, and you will remember all the happy times we shared, perhaps in anger at such trickery – maybe you have matured from that and will be able to look back and smile, remember the frail girl with whom you once shared all your life’s ambitions.


I hope you have a son, Tom, as you’ve told me so many times when we share our secrets you wished for. I hope you are remembered far past your lifespan, as you so violently hoped. I know I will remember you – wherever I am.



Tom, today I am queen of the world.



Tomorrow, I will be nothing more than a parasite upon the earth.


But tomorrow can wait until tomorrow.


I love you, Tom Riddle.



Your wife,


Your love,


Truly,



Merope Gaunt


- or, as I may now call her, Merope Riddle