Tom's scream of frustration echoed in the Chamber of Secrets as the boy exploded yet another conjured target in his fury. He hated Seraya Cassedy. Hated her for making things so complicated. Of course she of all people just had to know Occlumency and that smirk she had flashed at him as he had so desperately tried to invade her mind...absolutely infuriating. Tom was close to dropping all efforts of figuring her out and just killing her, it would definitely save him a lot of stress and headaches.
However, there was this small voice inside him that told him killing the girl would turn out to be a most regrettable decision. Tom had decided to follow his gut-feeling regarding the matter of Miss Cassedy and would refrain from murdering her, for now. The pent-up feelings had led him down to the Chamber of Secrets once more where had resumed to blowing off steam. The basilisk was watching him from the moth of Salazar Slytherin's statue and occasionally it would give a snarky comment when one of his spells didn't connect in the way he intended.
He had previously asked the great snake about petrification since a basilisk's eyes petrified its victim if looked at indirectly, but it had claimed not to know of a possibility that it would remain permanent. None of the books in the study had been of any help either. Whatever magic had been used to petrify the boy was neither a known form of dark magic nor parselmagic. Tom had never in his entire life not been able to get to the bottom of something and the fact that this random girl had just popped up and remained an utter mystery made him feel extremely useless.
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Finally. Finally, she had done it. It had taken her several weeks of preparation and multiple attempts but at last Seraya had been able to perform one of the more complex forms of parselmagic. She had managed to turn into a snake-form at will. Now that she had the know-how, the process seemed rather easy. Parselmouths merely had to internally speak to the snake in their magical core and free it of its bindings.
Using another parselmagic spell, Seraya had figured out that the snake she could now turn into was a crossover of a basilisk and a coastal Taipan snake. Rather fitting, if she was honest. Not only was her new body about five meters long but her fangs produced a highly poisonous venom that contained an exceedingly potent neurotoxin that would cause her victims to have hemolytic and coagulopathic reactions. Adding to that, if she decided to lower her second pair of eyelids, she would be able to make use of the deadly stare of a basilisk. Quite incredible really.
It made the young witch wonder what snake Tom Riddle would turn into. Oh, what a laugh it would be if he were to turn out to be a small and harmless snake such as an Egyptian Sandboa. Amusing indeed. Feeling quite accomplished, Seraya left the Room of Requirement, too consumed in her success to be aware of her surroundings. She came to a sudden halt while the door to the Room vanished into the wall behind her as she looked straight into the face of Claudius Lestrange. Shit.
Seraya looked at the tall slender figure in absolute horror. How could she have been so careless? Riddle and his followers were already suspicious that she was up to something, seeing her leave a secret room would not aid in making them assume otherwise. "Lestrange," Seraya tried to look less conspicuous as she mustered up the courage to talk. "What brings you to this part of the castle?" "Let's just skip the friendly small-talk, Cassedy. What was that door you just stepped out of? Where did it go?" Straight to the point it seemed.
Seraya was raking her brain for a plausible excuse but nothing seemed to rectify spending time in a room nobody knew of. "Door? Lestrange, I believe you're mistaking. I came from an empty classroom just one corridor further. Sometimes I go there to practice some spells." She tried to sound convincing, she really did. Claudius Lestrange was having nothing of it. He sounded furious as he retorted: "Do not take me for a fool, Cassedy. I know what I saw. What are you playing at, huh? What are you playing at you weird little freak?"
Crash. Within a millisecond all windows along the corridor had shattered covering the ground in sharp shards of clear glass. The air grew uncomfortably cold and the torches on the walls blew out with a sharp hiss as Seraya tried to regain control of her emotions. "Never, ever call me that word again," the girl hissed, the anger making her body shake harshly. Lestrange looked extremely frightened and cowered away from the stinging cold of the atmosphere surrounding the Ravenclaw witch.
Knowing that she would probably do something even more stupid if she didn't leave now, Seraya turned away from the fearful Slytherin and ran. Her destination wasn't important as long as it was far away from Claudius Lestrange, otherwise she might just kill him like she had killed Rubeus Hagrid. It happened to be the Astronomy Tower her feet led her to. Gripping the railing she looked at the school grounds many meters beneath and tried to calm her frantic breathing. It took her several minutes to force the anger to leave her system and with it went the cold atmosphere that had surrounded the young witch.
Thinking clearly once again, Seraya realized she had made a grave mistake. Letting the Lestrange boy go when he would obviously run straight to Tom Riddle to report to him like a good follower had been plain dumb. Granted, if she had stayed to try and 'Obliviate' him she would have killed him in her fit of anger. It had been a lose-lose situation. Either let the boy go and let him talk or kill him and be forced to stage yet another tragic accident that resulted in the imminent death of a student.
She was fucked, as people in the States so eloquently put it. Utterly fucked. Had the Lestrange heir not said that word, the only thing he would have been able to tell Riddle was that he had caught Seraya leaving a secret room. Now though, the shattering of the windows, the sudden creeping cold. " FUCK", she yelled loud enough for the creatures in the Forbidden Forest to hear. Her day had been going so well before stumbling across Lestrange. In fact, the first month of her time at Hogwarts had been rather successful and now it was all starting to crumble.
She had to kill a kid, she had used a parselmagic shielding spell openly during class and now she had lost control of her emotionally bound magic in-front of Tom Riddle's goony at that. Seraya sincerely hoped that Lestrange had at least learnt a lesson and would now refrain from calling her that word. Truthfully, the girl wasn't sure if she would be able to run away from it if there was a next time. The last time somebody had called her a freak they had ended up petrified in a healing institution where they would spend the rest of their miserable life. Talk about karma...
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Today had perhaps been the best day since the start of term, in Tom's opinion. At last he had something on her. Lestrange had made his way to the Slytherin common room right after the incident and had hurriedly told Tom to look at his memories. Not denying that request, Tom had watched in astonishment as Lestrange's encounter with Seraya Cassedy replayed before his eyes. Tom must have seriously underestimated the girl's power, as the windows shattered at her mere fury. After all this time it was finally time for him to have a conversation with Miss Cassedy.
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Madness- T.M.R.
Fanfiction"There is no good and evil, only power and those too weak to seek it." "You're wrong, there is only madness and those too scared to admit it."
