Parallel

10. Confessions

Her words echoed in the otherwise empty corridor, wrapping around the air and settling like a blanket of tension, suffocating the silence.

Riddle's features were calculatingly blank as he tilted his head, an infuriating lack of emotion inflicting his voice. "We need to talk?"

Despite his projection of uninterest, Eve stood her ground, adrenaline thrumming through her veins. She resisted the urge to twist her fingers as she ground out, "Yes, we do."

He merely looked at her as he stayed silent, a nonverbal prompting for her to elaborate. It infuriated her how he could command her without even opening his mouth, but a small part of her also knew that his lack of movement or rebuttal also confirmed that his act of disinterest was just that—an act.

He'd been waiting for this, and she knew she had his undivided attention right where she wanted it.

"I have something I should confess to you," Eve continued steadily.

She watched with almost morbid fascination as something akin to satisfaction finally seemed to pass and settle over Riddle's expression, and the angle of the light shining in through the nearby windows made the glint in his eyes look more accidental than natural as he raised an eyebrow.

"Lead the way," he said simply, stare fixed on Eve.

Okay, this is happening. Eve barely registered herself nodding as she turned, trying not to inhale too noticeably as her feet began to automatically move forward. A second later, the even steps of Riddle's shoes began to resound from behind her, signaling his movement.

Eve's mind was running at a mile a minute. She'd considered bringing him to the Room of Requirement for a second before discarding that idea immediately. She couldn't risk being the one to inform Voldemort of an untraceable secret room in the castle that bent to the caller's will, and hell knew what would happen if she locked herself in an unknown, undetectable location in the castle alone with him.

Instead, she started towards the one place that came to mind when she thought of somewhere that was private but not completely isolated. Time seemed to rewind as her surroundings blurred and her feet carried her past numerous corridors, down the Grand Staircase, and all the way towards the staircase that spiraled directly down into the dungeons.

Obviously, going with Riddle to the dungeons—where he'd attacked her last time—seemed counterintuitive, but Eve needed a relatively-isolated area to talk to him that wasn't some random, empty classroom in an abandoned wing of the castle that she was unfamiliar with, and she knew that the classroom connected to their Potions classroom by the mutual supply cabinet was almost always empty. Plus, it was the middle of the day, and Slughorn currently had his fifth-year Potions class going on right next door—if anything went wrong, she wouldn't be alone in case Riddle tried to harm her.

She was acutely aware of Riddle footsteps behind her as they descended down the steps, the even echoes of each one matching the rapid beat of her heart.

Neither of them had spoken since they'd started walking, though it wasn't like Eve knew what to say anyway. He hadn't made any effort to walk beside her, seemingly content with following her from behind, and she didn't want to confess just how unnerving it was to practically feel his stare burning into the back of her robes.

Plus, she knew that what she was about to try could completely backfire.

For once, she'd been alert in History of Magic—not because of the lecture material, no (although, at one point, Binns had made a semi-interesting comment about the portrayal of the Salem Witch Trials in Muggle history), but because she couldn't shake her mind off the idea that had been budding since the words crystal ball infiltrated her head earlier in Charms.