Bookbinding ( Tom Riddle x Myrtle Warren )

Chapter 3: Jelly

Myrtle's fifteenth birthday dawned a dull pigeon-grey. Rain lashed at the windows of Ravenclaw Tower as she ripped open her presents, ignoring the snide, giggly comments the rest of the dormitory made about how many sweets - and especially how many Muggle sweets - there were mixed among them.

In the bathroom that morning, she examined herself in the mirror to see if she looked more grown up, prodding at the skin of her face - which she always thought was the same colour as old cream, instead of the perfect mother-of-pearl of Tom's or Olive Hornby's - with stubby fingers. The pad of fat on her cheekbone moved as she did and she sighed. It looked like being fifteen wasn't enough on its own to remove her resemblance to the moon or a sentient clock or, and this was Olive's favourite, a pig in make-up.

What it had done, oddly, was make her care slightly less about that fact than she had when she was fourteen.

She pinched her own chin and reflected on the fact that, since term had started three weeks ago, she'd only cried once - and that was for the very sensible reason that Peeves had thrown a marble bust of Socrates directly at her head and knocked her clean out.

(She had come to in a pool of her own blood to see Professor Dumbledore roaring at him and Olive bent double with laughter at the top of the stairs.)

'It makes you wonder why they say he's so resistant to doing anything about Grindelwald,' Tom had deadpanned, eating all her grapes as she lay in bed in the hospital wing, the two of them dissecting the scene of Peeves trying to deflect Dumbledore's spells with a conjured walking stick.

'Maybe he likes Grindelwald,' Myrtle had said. 'Maybe he fancies him.'

Tom had looked horrified. 'I'm going to get Madam Poultice. You're delirious.'

                               ***

The ceiling of the Great Hall was a threatening, rolling squall as she assembled herself a birthday breakfast of kippers and bubble-and-squeak - her dad's favourite, which would have to do in lieu of a birthday cuddle from him - surrounded by chattering classmates who were already beginning to stink of wet dog.

The rest of the girls in her year sat slightly further along the table, making sure she knew that they were talking about her by throwing frequent, and exaggerated, looks in her direction. Myrtle poured sugar into her tea and glared back, although her glasses were too thick to achieve the desired effect. It probably just looked like she was gawping vacantly at them.

Or maybe not? She felt a brief surge of power when Olive's face suddenly shed its smug cruelty and assumed an expression of utter, fly-catching disbelief.

'Good morning,' said a soft, familiar voice, several inches above her left shoulder.

'Er - hello,' said Myrtle, dropping her fork with a nervous clatter and immediately putting her elbow into a gooey plate of fried eggs. Tom twitched in the way she was beginning to learn meant he was trying not to laugh, and she decided to tell him off for that very firmly later (although he wouldn't listen). Why wouldn't she be discombobulated? This was the first time he had ever left the Slytherin table to talk to her.

'Happy birthday,' he drawled, handing her a bundle of parchment, which contained a Transfiguration essay he had agreed to look over after a week of nagging, after Professor Dumbledore had said that the argument was 'weak' and that she needed to start 'working harder if you wish to get a good OWL, which I expect from you. As a Muggleborn, you have a duty to achieve the best results you can, in order to prove to those who try to divide our world along ridiculous notions of purity of blood that one's birth has no impact at all on the strength of one's magical talent.'