"I think I'm going crazy Corwin." She said softly into her pillows.
Graves, lying next to her heard her and wrapped his arm around her. She felt his touch, attempting to be gentle and sweet but she could not feel anything but angry. The rage she had taken out in her mother's study, the meeting with her father, everything was building until she felt so small, lost in the tidal wave that was close enough to shore to crash.
They hadn't spoken about her statement out in the cold rain. Graves simply ushered her inside, helped her off with her soaked robes and wrapped her in some warm blankets. He cuddled her by the fire until she looked ready to sleep and he lifted her into his arms and carried her to bed. She lay there for the longest time without moving or speaking until it just needed to come out.
She could no longer run from the truth and it was her own damn fault for wanting to find it so badly. She knew now, knew just about everything there was to know about her lineage and she liked it very little. She opened her mouth to speak, closed it again finding no sound would come out and pulled her pillow over her face. She screamed into the goose down, and for some odd reason this release helped.
Graves pulled her arms off the pillow and slid the pillow away from her face. He looked at her with a cocked eyebrow and said "are you going to tell me what's going on?"
"Yeah." She sighed. "Just give me a minute. God this is so fucked up. Today's just been too much."
Graves gave her an impatient huff. "How is that different from any other day in our lives?"
She shrugged and said "well, since you put it that way." She sat up straighter and took her time to arrange the pillows and blankets into a comfortable position. She was dragging her heels even now and a voice in the back of her head finally yelled: ENOUGH. She sighed and started very softly. "Jeremiah doesn't go by his father's name. It was his mother's name, Leandre. His father was� is� Oh I'm so angry�" She said, clenching her fists and trailing away from the truth already.
"What are you trying to say?"
"All the crap he's done to Harry. It explains everything. It explains why I'm afraid of Harry and not him. I've never been afraid of him. He tried to kill me and I almost laughed. I thought it was funny. And now I think I'm going crazy, because I still think it's terribly comical."
"What's terribly comical?" Graves asked as patiently as he could manage. Nothing she had said so far made any sort of sense and he wasn't going to bother piecing it together until she finished telling him everything.
"None of this crap matters." She said, throwing a pillow at the wall. "Not my father, or who I thought was my father. Not this." She said, pointing to her chest where her scar still gleamed red. "Not even all the evil things he's done. None of it matters because I have the power to stop it now. The most terrifying part is that I don't want to. I should want to kill him, to end it but it's just not in me. I think I might be one of three people on this earth who could easily dispatch of him and I don't want to do it."
"You're talking about the Dark Lord." Graves said.
"Well yeah. You know. Or you did know. Unless they totally screwed you up with that memory charm. My father took his mother's name, Leandre. But his real name was Jeremiah Thomas Riddle. The Dark Lord is my grandfather Graves."
Graves inhaled sharply. He had known for some time, but hearing it from her mouth had hit it home. "You believe it then?"
"There's nothing to believe, it's the truth plain and simple. I've known, here, inside all the time." She said, pointing again to the scar covering her heart. "I just couldn't put it together because the whole thing was too terrible. I couldn't talk about it until now, I couldn't piece it all together and be ok with it."
"You're going to take it upon yourself to end this aren't you?"
She looked at him, sitting there amongst the scarlet bedding and pristine white sheets. "I would imagine that it's my responsibility as the last member of his line. I have to clear my name."