Catharsis [Tom Riddle]

Chapter Nineteen

Tom watched Avalon leave the room just a moment before he shoved all the books on the table onto the ground with an angry push. His breathing was rapid and shallow as his fervent eyes scanned the room.

The bloody record player was buzzing out a subtle line of white noise, but the sound was deafening to him: it only made him think of Hendrix. He flicked his wand in its direction and it went flying off the table, clattering onto the ground with a loud thud as it broke unevenly across the newly scratched floor.

Watching it crack to pieces fueled an odd combination of satisfaction and uneasiness within him, and he wasn't sure why, which only made him angrier. He slashed his wand through the air and the chairs at the table were strewn across the room, landing brutally against the bookshelves along the walls and sending dozens of books crashing to the ground.

He felt like an animal gone berserk, but he had lost his desire to contain himself.

Never before had he allowed himself to run so rampant. And at that moment, he didn't give a damn about holding back.

He had spent years carefully crafting a calm and collected persona-- a flawlessly designed facade that he had used to charm everyone around him into doing as he wished. Time had turned him into an expert actor and he had become quite good at using that to his advantage. There had not been anybody that he had met who he'd not been able to control.

Until he met Hendrix.

This girl came out of nowhere and with no warning, and yet, in the short period of time that she had entered his life, had already managed to mangle any sense of control he thought that he had. She possessed an unbreakable tenacity that was not prone to manipulation. It was as though she saw through every persona he tried to portray and instead saw him for exactly what he was: and even he wasn't entirely sure what that was.

When he had pressed the knife to her back, he had been overtaken by a relentless need to finally wipe that bloody smile off of her face. And, that was the first thing he thought of. It had been almost instinctual, and it bothered him how she was able to get under his skin so much that he lost control of his usual self-restraint when he was around her.

She tore down everything that he had been building up throughout his entire life-- and he fucking hated it.

But, what he hated more was the feeling of disquietude that lingered in the pit of his stomach when he felt her freeze at the feeling of his knife on her neck. He had thought that he would feel satisfaction-- he had finally gotten her to crack under him. She was horrified, and he could sense it from the way her body trembled beneath him.

So why hadn't it felt like a victory?

Avalon paid no mind to the students in the halls as she scrambled through the castle, desperate to get as far away from the Room of Requirement as she could, hot tears of frustration falling down her cheeks as she briskly walked through the castle's dark corridors.

The space was abundant, yet she felt suffocation creeping into her lungs, anxiety overtaking her weary heart while she fumbled towards the Great Hall. Her fingers grappled frantically with her collar, her tie suddenly feeling as though it were choking her as her heart beat like a raging war drum.

It was still dinnertime, and she suddenly felt an unwavering need to go towards the place she thought might house some of her friends. Her fingers were still trembling as she shoved her way past other students, bursting into the Great Hall and looking around with fervent eyes.

She spotted Zelda sitting at the Ravenclaw table, but to her side sat Jane. The two of them were laughing and smiling and looking at each other with such an untainted sparkle in their eyes that she didn't have the heart to tear them apart. Her eyes kept scanning the room, this time straying towards the area where the Slytherin boys typically sat. Xavier was nowhere to be seen, though she knew he had detention with Merrythought as punishment for skipping class again-- not that Lestrange was her first choice for comfort, anyway.