A/N: Sorry that I've been completely MIA these past 9-10 months... It feels good to be writing again, so I hope you enjoy this chapter! I've had the first half of it saved as a draft for ages, probably almost an entire year now, but I've finally become satisfied enough with it to finish it out. Please vote and comment! ❤️
(And as you can see, I've changed Arabella's face claim yet again. It is now the lovely Josefine Frida Pettersen -- maybe you recognise her from Skam!)
"Buttered toast? I thought you preferred marmalade," Abraxas commented genially as he seated himself next to Arabella in the Great Hall, which was today illuminated by gentle sunbeams.
"What does it matter?" she mumbled, taking a bite of her breakfast. Her movements were slow and lethargic, as if sleep had not yet released her from its hold.
The Slytherin sighed, his smile having vanished from his face, and rested his chin upon his fist, studying her carefully from his new vantage point. His grey eyes narrowed slightly as realisation dawned on him.
"You're . . . you seem better," he noted, a slight tone of disbelief evident in his voice.
"You say that almost as if it were a bad thing," Arabella muttered, dabbing at the corners of her mouth with a napkin.
Malfoy back-pedalled quickly, insisting that wasn't what he had meant by his words, earning himself an eyebrow arched in challenge. "Tell me what you really meant by it, then."
"I don't know . . . You're distant." The flaxen-haired boy stirred his morning tea anxiously, bracing himself for the impact of her tempest to make landfall on him.
To his surprise, she said nothing. She digested his statement with an unusual amount of consideration, without an instantaneous reaction. Frankly, it frightened him even more than the temper that he considered himself to be well-versed in ever had. There was something so off-putting about the way she sat there like a statue, carved of stolid stone and frozen amid her thoughts, her deliberate scrutiny.
When she finally spoke, he was almost taken aback by surprise that she had even decided to reply at all. Over the past few weeks, he had become well-acquainted with her silence, with the unspoken words and indecipherable messages she left behind for him to stress over, desperately trying to find the meaning of all her actions, the reason for her sudden, abrupt coldness that made the dreariness of Scottish winters suddenly feel warm and inviting.
He held his breath, hoping for some insight, for the light to strike through the dark clouds she'd amassed about herself like a cloak.
"I like how you're worried about me all of a sudden," she said coolly, malice bristling behind her otherwise flat monotone. Her eyes flashed with a trace of some inscrutable emotion as the words escaped her lips.
And, suddenly, that hope was shattered. It broke like a thousand stained-glass windows after a night raid -- shards of beautiful, tinted glass raining upon the ground as all the emotions of the world: the muted blue of misery, the fiery amber-red of fury, the soft gold of tender warmth and fond memories. As each fragment made contact with the floor, its colour was leeched away into the unfeeling grey of cold stone, of rubble and desolation and destruction, until the vibrant hues bled dry had arranged themselves amongst the debris as lifeless shards of glass, colourless and plain and devoid of the very life and meaning so artfully breathed into it, the art that gave it life and meaning and the capacity to steal the breath of all who cast their gazes upon it.
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Loyal | Tom Riddle
FanfictionArabella Travers and Tom Riddle have never been remotely civil with one another, even though her twin brother Nikolai is one of his so-called friends. As their fifth year at Hogwarts unfolds, so does the drama, the mystery, and the descent into Dar...
