butterfly effect, tom riddle

39. | past

Maverick looked around the room anxiously in case anyone was listening, but everyone was too busy comforting Olive to care about whatever it was he wanted to tell me. He gently pulled me into a distant corner of the common room, away from everyone else.

"The Dark Lord has moved on to the next phase of his mission," he clarified excitedly, his brown eyes wide with admiration. "He's starting to actually purge the school of Mudbloods. He killed Myrtle—and she's only the first."

My heart sank to the pit of my stomach at those words, and I almost felt nauseous from the sickly merriment in Maverick's eyes. I liked Maverick—I truly enjoyed his company, and apart from Antoinette, he was the only person I considered a friend here—but at moments like these, he reminded me that he was a death eater, like the rest of his friends. Like the rest of the people who had murdered my mother.

I wanted to slap him.

I wanted to shout at him, scold him with the most colorful swear words I knew, blast him across the room with a powerful Stunning Charm—but I knew I couldn't. I had to tame my rage, and being in Maverick's presence wouldn't help.

"All right," I said with a forceful nod. "I think I'm just going up to my dorm, I'm tired."

"Okay," Maverick said, although there was a spark of worry in his brown eyes. "Are you okay, though?"

"I'm fine," I assured him through gritted teeth. "Just tired. See you."

And with that, I spun on my heel and practically stomped upstairs to my dormitory. Since everyone else was downstairs, listening to Olive, my dormitory was vacant.

I expelled a sigh of frustration and threw myself down on my bed, staring up at the ceiling of my four-poster bed broodingly. My anger was slowly starting to subside, and now I could finally focus on what all this meant.

Maverick and the rest of his death eater friends thought that this was simply Tom completing his duty as the Heir of Slytherin, but I knew it was so much more than that—Tom was using Myrtle's death in order to create his first Horcrux. A further step into the world of evil—a further step into becoming the vile Dark Lord that the Wizarding World would grow to fear and hate.

My mission clearly wasn't going as well as I thought it was.

But there was still time—creating a Horcrux is a tiresome, time-consuming task, something that Tom definitely cannot accomplish now, while he's supposed to be completing his Prefect duties. No—he'll do it later.

Tomorrow, maybe. Yes—tomorrow. There was probably no need to worry about it now. Tomorrow, I would wake up earlier than everybody else and wait for him in the common room, and dissuade him from creating a Horcrux.

The thought sounded agreeable enough to me, and I felt my eyes closing. I was so, so tired...

Thoughts of Tom left my sleepy brain, and my mind turned blissfully blank...I was drifting off into the pleasant world of dreams.

•

The next morning, I woke up to an empty dorm. My dormitory was bathed in sunlight, and the entire atmosphere felt...somehow otherworldly.

I rubbed my eyes sleepily and looked around, before my eyes landed on the bed next to me—and I realized I wasn't alone, after all.

There was a girl sitting there, with her back to me. A river of wavy, light blonde hair trailed down her back, and I knitted my brows in befuddlement—how did she get in here?

"Antoinette?" I piped up, nonplussed but overjoyed by her presence. "How did you get in here?"

Antoinette whirled around, and I realized I wasn't staring at Antoinette at all, but at myself. Bow-shaped lips, blue-grey eyes...