Hogwarts: a school of Witchcraft and Love (Tom Marvolo Riddle x F!reader)

Chapter 2-03

Attending a school as grandiose as Hogwarts had its perks, and one of them was the vast number of students that roamed through it. The bustling corridors were filled with hundreds of individuals scurrying to their destinations in an array of colors, mostly blacks and grays with accents of blues, yellows, reds and greens. This meant that locating someone you needed to speak with could be an utter nightmare, but the same could be said the other way around. It was easy to avoid people if you wanted to avoid them.

In your case, three boys from Slytherin that gave you trouble.

Thankfully it hadn't proved too difficult since only two of the House's classes overlapped this year: Transfiguration and Potions. With some clever conversation tactics with classmates or using Alyssa's guidance for quick escapes when needed, they hadn't had much success getting under your skin yet.

Save for Avery.

Whenever your Quidditch team decided to practice, you were forced into close proximity with him. As everyone knew too well by now, Gryffindor and Slytherin were like oil and water, they just didn't mix. Even on days when you had scheduled practices for a specific time slot on the field—which should have been yours without question—, they appeared. The start of each session wasn't spent productively, but rather wasted bickering between the Houses over who got possession of the pitch for several hours ahead.

This annoyance didn't seem limited by time either because it appeared like they deliberately showed up just to bother you and ruin your training regime. It was like the snakes made an effort every day to get in your way, to intentionally annoy you during what little free time you had left after studying tirelessly all week long.

But hooray, today was a practice-free day! No Slytherin snakes to be seen. Life was good, right?

Wrong.

"...And so it was because of this that the revolution..."

History, oh History. So much potential for adventure, excitement, and epic battles. But no, it had to be reduced to ink on paper and written up on chalkboards, making it dull, and even bringing yourself to attend the lesson was a chore.

If that alone wasn't boring enough, it was the teacher himself. Binns droned on and on in a voice that was so monotonous it was like listening to paint dry. You knew that you needed to try to focus on his words but it wasn't easy. You wanted nothing more than to lay your head on your desk and snooze like the other seventy percent of the class was currently doing, and the ticking grandfather clock in the corner of the room might as well be a lullaby to soothe you into slumber.

The only reason you didn't was because you were set on achieving good grades. You feared that if you missed any detail of what he said, you might not know the answer to a question on one of the upcoming tests.

And so you scribbled notes down on your parchment with your quill. You could even see the eyes of the Hufflepuffs droop closed, and they were the ones renowned for their hard work!

You wondered how Alyssa was faring. You did your best to be discreet in the way you turned your head around to look behind you. Sure enough, you only saw her red hair sprawled across the desk, indicating she, too, had fallen asleep.

But before you could turn back around, Binns appeared right in front of your desk like an apparition from beyond the grave. Startled by his sudden appearance, all thoughts about Alyssa and her sleeping habits vanished as he asked a question that caught you completely unawares.

"What sparked Muggles to rebel against wizards?"

He leaned in closer and placed his hands dramatically on your desk, an odd detail considering he should have sunk through it. But before giving you time to answer, he provided one himself with theatrical flair that jolted several dozing students awake.