𝕬 𝕯𝖆𝖗𝖐 𝕷𝖔𝖗𝖉 𝖎𝖘 𝕭𝖔𝖗𝖓 | 𝑇𝑜𝑚 𝑅𝑖𝑑𝑑𝑙𝑒 |

Chapter 36- Have You Seen Myrtle?

The fresh summer air began to slowly drift in as it became June. Although, no student at Hogwarts could properly enjoy this beautiful breeze, as everyone felt their lives were in mortal danger. Thanks to Tom, the school year was an absolute, chaotic hell. No month went by quickly and breezily. He'd managed to fill everyone within the school with immense fear and mass paranoia. People were being attacked in one of the most safely guarded places in the wizarding world and no one could explain who or what was responsible for it. Tom was not even being remotely suspected. After all, who would suspect the smart, charming, young prefect? Since, he didn't have any more familial research to fill his spare time with and felt he no longer needed to study for the upcoming O.W.L.S, Tom spent most of his time trying to weed out all the muggleborns for the Basilisk. Being a prefect, it was even easier to get the information he wanted, and he was able to work around the new restrictions in a snap. It was almost too easy. Tom had even started to write threatening messages on the corridor walls in red paint after an attack, just to have a little bit of thrill in all of this.

"Mudbloods, you will all perish...!"

It was kind of stupid. The messages were an unnecessary risk. He knew that he shouldn't treat the matter like a game, but it'd been so long since he'd been able to stretch out from under Dumbledore's grasp. It'd been even longer since he'd been out of Frankie's. She often held him back from being that boy with an uncontrollable urge to cause havoc and make people just as miserable as he was. Although, he certainly had a hatred for muggleborns, this tyrant rampage was more of an excuse to indulge in those destructive tendencies he'd been forced to suppress for their sakes.

Despite all the warnings and the blatant signs of foreboding danger, instead of closing down the school, the teachers had put the school on a strict lockdown for the past few months. There were no more trips to Hogsmeade. No wandering the castle alone without a teacher or prefect. Students were confined to the dorms most hours and there was very strict after dark security to make sure no one was in the corridors after eight o'clock. They were probably hoping to trap the culprit in the school and, on the off chance it was a student, make it difficult for them to operate around such tight restrictions. But little did they realize, they were actually sealing the grim fate of every muggleborn student there. The castle was vast, but there was nowhere they could possibly hide from him and the Basilisk if they weren't allowed to leave.

However, despite the lockdown, if you were clever enough you always found a way out. Especially, if you had somewhere you needed to be on Sundays.

                                                   ─── · 。ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

"There was another attack yesterday."

She had said that and yet Frankie was blatantly disregarding the new restrictions that were supposed to keep her from being attacked right at that very moment. Of course, it's not like she was under any threat, even though she was currently shoulder-to-shoulder with the culprit this very moment as well. The two were sunken down at the base of the tree on their normal Sunday walk. They had not yielded one since the new rules had been invoked.

"Really? You don't say? How dreadful..." Tom remarked, trying too hard to sound rather clueless. He was attempting to hold back a secret little smirk that was growing on his face. Tom knew very well that there was an attack yesterday. Not only was it in a buzz around the school, but he was the one who had ordered it. He'd recently discovered that Nero Lawson, a Hufflepuff in their year, was a Mudblood and had made plans to eradicate him immediately. It just took one whisper to his precious pet and Nero was gone.

Well, that was how it was supposed to go anyway. The truth was that Tom had not actually killed any muggleborns yet. The Basilisk eyes were supposed to kill anyone who ever met its yellow gaze and yet all these Mudbloods were just ending up petrified instead. Tom would have loved to investigate, but it was not like he could be at a crime scene as it was happening. He couldn't risk getting caught. It wouldn't just be a simple slap on the wrist, he'd be sent to the wizard jail. He wasn't about to spend his whole life in Azkaban for listening to a monstrous snake.