Chapter Text
The Things I'd Give to Stay ; Tom M. Riddle
—the story about the girl he could not break
by yezurel
It is said there once was a creature born of wind and ash, as fragile as crystal and yet impossible to break.
She swelt in a garden where all things bloomed and faded in a single breath; she spoke with the withered flowers and listened to secrets that even Time did not dare to utter.
Then, a shadow saw her. A shadow with eyes of fire and a tongue of ice.
He knew not how to name her, for she answered to no name. He knew not to posses her, for she belonged to no one.
He sought to bend her. He sought to understand her.
And when he could do neither, he loved her.
But the love of the shadows never comer without a price; and the garden—and all that once bloomed and died—never grew again.
It is said that some names are condemned to darkness long before the world ever hears them spoken.
Tom Riddle always knew he was not like the rest. Orpahned of love, forged in fear and pride, he learned to hide his fractures behind an impenetrable perfection. No one looked beyond the mask. No one truly wished to.
Until Ivy appeared. Like a constant murmur in the stillness.
She was not light, nor was she shadow. She was something else entirely. Something he could not posses, nor break, nor fully comprehend. And yet, he tried.
What grew between them was no tale of love, but a silent battle between what they were and what they might have been. She, with her fierce delicacy, seemes to wordlessly defy all that he held true. And he... he was the abyss over which she leaned, unsure whether to fear the fall or offer salvation.
But the old stories do not warn that even the purest thing can be used as an anchor or a weapon. To love one such as Tom Riddle is no promise—it is a sentence.
At times, love does not redeem. At times, ir only reveals what one has spent a lifetime trying to bury.
This is the story of Ivy—the girl he could not break. And of the echo she left behind, even after her name was erased from history.
〔i. The Quiet Before the Hunger〕
"And in her silence, he felt the first tremor of longing"
︶︶︶︶︶︶︶︶︶༉‧₊˚.
Before the world was set to the torch. Before his name became the breath of winter.
There was an age when Tom Riddle wore the guise of a golden heir—elegant, poised, and bound as tightly as the silk-spun lies that lulled Hogwarts to sleep. Ambition was his only sun, and it knew no horizon. Then, she arrived.
Ivy. She of the ghost-quiet step and the gaze of ancient things. She fell like a flaw across the silvered glass of his destiny—a mirror that would not grant him the reflection he so carefully craved.
She offered him no worship. She offered him no fear. She offered him only understanding... and that was a far deeper wound.
In this first dance, the masks have not yet shattered, but they begin to weep. He watches her as one deciphers a dying language, caught between the hunger to own her and the urge to unmake her. She, burdened by the hollow silences of a mother who taught her that love and men were but different names for sorrow, finds in Tom a mystery more luminous than terror.
And when the veil is torn, there is no returning to the light.
〔 ii. Even Stars Fall When Touched by Flame〕
"I have loved in stars too wild to hold, and they burned me."
︶︶︶︶︶︶︶︶︶༉‧₊˚.
Love, when birthed in a wasteland, does not bloom; it devours. And the hairline fracture of the soul widens, at last, into a bottomless chasm.
Tom Riddle is no longer the golden phantom who wore the mask of men. The shadows he fed have turned their hunger upon him—yet, in the gathering storm, the name of Ivy remains the only anchor. She is the mystery he cannot solve, the sovereign spirit he cannot tame. She, who asked for nothing, held the keys to his every kingdom. In the hushed cathedrals of his heart, he begins to believe—just for a heartbeat, just for her—that there is a road back from the dark. That a 'tomorrow' could be earned.
But a bridge cannot be built from the shards of two broken worlds. And love has no power to redeem a king who cherishes his crown of thorns.
When Ivy is stolen by the wind—by betrayal, by blood, by the cruel weaving of the stars—the last embers of his humanity turn to ash. The mercy he almost touched becomes the cold blade of his undoing: the world gave him only loss, and in return, he shall give the world to the flames.
〔 Echoes of Now — All That Was Left of Her Was Silence〕
"And even now, her absence makes the air tremble."
︶︶︶︶︶︶︶︶︶༉‧₊˚.
Decades have dissolved into the dust of time. The boy is long since dead; the monster remains. And yet, even the hollowed can remember.
Harry Potter has tasted the dark. He has made his dwelling within its shadow. But when he uncovers a story forgotten among the frayed edges of the past—a name absent from every scroll and gilded frame—he understands that not all which is shrouded is hidden in shame. Some secrets are kept as shrines.
In his hunt to unweave the remnants of Voldemort’s soul, Harry finds a Horcrux of a different breath: a relic hallowed by silence, guarded with a tenderness that bleeds. Through the shards of broken glass and the ghosts of sealed memories, the silhouette of Ivy takes form—she who stood upon the precipice of the Dark Lord’s destiny. She who, without wand or dominion, was the only true wound in his immortal soul.
And as Harry reaches for the man who once breathed beneath the malice, he discovers that even in a heart turned to stone… there may be the salt of mourning.
✦Who We Were, Before the Ruin✦
Before the world was given to the flame,
Before love was reduced to ruin,
There were names.
Some were whispered on the lips of longing,
Others, cursed in the hollow of a sigh.
All left their scars upon the skin of history.
-ˏˋ⋆Ivy Elwood⋆ˊˎ-
INFJ | Slytherin | Silence
──She spoke in quiet revolutions and vanished like smoke before anyone noticed the fire.
"I am made of soft things that were told they were too much."
✦ IVY – The Moon
The Moon does not scream. She whispers. She bathes the world in light without ever truly revealing its heart. She offers the shelter of her shadow, trembling even when she seems most still upon the firmament. Ivy was a creature woven of that same contradictory thread: fragile, yet enduring; tender, yet untameable; haunted by fear, yet capable of staring into the abyss without a tremor of the lash.
From her earliest years, she learned to distrust the sun—it was too violent, too absolute. She sought sanctuary in the hidden places, in the dust of ancient scrolls and the sigils of forgotten ages, where she might shine without being consumed. Her mother taught her to dread the nature of men, but Ivy chose to listen to the world with her own quiet soul.
Ivy did not allow herself to be ensnared by Tom. She saw him. She understood him. And in her purest form, she showed him that not all things are meant for dominion—that some things exist only if they are left to breathe.
But the Moon is also the mother of fear. She is the darkness that, for all its beauty, can lead the traveler astray. Ivy was a beacon, yes, but she was also a reflection. And when she was torn from the sky, she did not fall with a roar; she faded as dreams do upon waking—slowly, leaving behind a ghost of a feeling that can never be erased.
The Moon does not die. She only hides. And he searches for her still, in every shadow he dares to meet.
-ˏˋ⋆Tom M. Riddle⋆ˊˎ-
INTJ | Slytherin | Fury
──He was born of shadow and named himself god.
"If I cannot be loved, I will be feared."
✦ TOM – The Devil
The Devil has no need for screams. He seduces. He speaks in the language of whispers and the bitterness of unmasking truths. He is the mirror of the soul’s deepest dusk: that which we crave but cannot fathom, that which we fear to lose and so, in our trembling, we destroy.
Tom was the child who found no faith in goodness, for no hand held it long enough for his eyes to catch the light. He was the youth who learned that only power could make him visible, worthy, and feared. And when at last he brushed against something otherworldly—a gaze devoid of judgment, a presence that did not flinch—he knew not how to cradle it.
Thus was forged the strongest chain of all: not the iron that binds another’s throat, but the one that coils around one's own heart. Ivy was no salvation. She was a fracture. A glass that reflected the vastness of all he could not feel, and the wildness of all he could not tame.
The Devil does not hate love. He dreads it. For love yields to no master; it cannot be dissected, nor can its essence be bound in a vial. And Tom knew not how to love without the hunger to possess, without the desperate urge to preserve his own reflection for eternity.
That is why he lost her. That is why he lost himself.
The Devil smiles behind his mask of dominion, but he does not forget. He never forgets. For even in the heart of eternity, he still hunts for the ghost of what he once believed was his.
