An Otherworldly Experience (Tom Riddle Era)

Chapter Eleven.

Kelli closed the door behind Katie who had started with a, "Magic? You go to a magic school, Kelli?"

"Yes. Tom and I do," Kelli told Katie, Tom looking at the letter with interest.

"Well, Tom's kinda mean, I don't really care that he does."

Tom scowled at Katie and Kelli laughed. "He's not that bad."

"Well, he keeps you away from the rest of us. So he's mean," Katie told us. "So it's true? I've been accepted into your school?"

"Unfortunately," drawled Tom, lifting up his blankets and getting under them.

"You're supposed to be a perfect," Kelli told him off.

"You're the Hufflepuff."

"Oh, is being nice above your ambitious ways?" Kelli taunted. He didn't respond. "Loser." She'd have called him something else if there weren't an eleven year old in the room. He shifted so that he was watching but he didn't speak. She felt a small victory.

But Kelli took a seat on her bed and said, "Katie, just like me, you're a witch. You can do magic."

"Can you show me?" asked Katie.

Kelli nodded, pulled out her wand and charmed some of her things to do a dance, as much as a piece of paper and a pen could.

"That's so cool," Katie whispered in total wonderment. "I'll be able to do that?"

"Probably."

Tom then cleared his throat. "Time's up." On cue, the bell rang for everyone to get back to their rooms.

Katie gave Kelli a pleading look, asking with her eyes.

Kelli pat her head, brushing her hand through her hair and said, "Sorry Katie, the big bad Wolf has spoken."

She pouted, shot probably a glare at Tom and left the room, shutting the door behind her.

"Loser?" he asked after locking the door, sitting up.

Kelli, having never looked away from him once he kicked Katie out of the room, smiled.

"And I thought you said you and I were not friends, Watson."

"I'm not your friend and I can't rely on you, why would that mean we're friends?" asked Kelli. "I'm comfortable enough around you." Kelli looked at the ceiling. "I think I have Stockholm Syndrome."

"What?" he asked, frowning. "You're sick?"

Kelli kept a straight face. Of course, Stockholm hadn't been formally named until the 70s - it hadn't happened yet. "Are you concerned for me?"

"I'm always in the same room, I don't wish to also get sick," he replied easily.

"You're in the wrong position, o' captor," she replied, before getting into bed and under the covers, turning away from Tom.

"Tom, it's probably a lot better if you tell Matron Westbrook about Katie," Kelli told her roommate after a week, though half expecting him to say no.

Which he did. "No. Why would I want to allow someone-"

"So help me, Riddle, I will cut your mouth off in your sleep if you say something about blood purity," Kelli snapped.

Tom sneered at her. "You wouldn't dare, Watson."

"I'd dare to do a lot if it meant keeping your mouth shut about your unnecessary bigotry," she shot back at him, reaching for biscuits she had snuck up from downstairs. "Anyway, you have any idea why Matron Westbrook would force you into my room?"

"Why is it that you speak as though you've never had formal education before?" he asked, changing the subject.

She pulled a biscuit out and asked, "Why do you speak like that's all you've got, you creep?" She took a bite out of the biscuit - it could've been better.

"Back to calling me 'Creep'?" he asked, taking the packet upon realising she'd snuck them past him.

"Obviously it was you," commented Kelli, going back to their conversation of their room arrangements. She sounded really bored. "Matron wouldn't want any more parentless children running around here."

"Oh please, an infant wouldn't stay here for longer than a day."

Kelli really did enjoy teasing him. "Are you telling me if I had a child with you, you'd let Slytherin's Heir get adopted out to some muggle family?"

The look he gave her was quite pained to say the least, then he said something unkind, "As if I'd have a child with you, you're a muggleborn."

Kelli wanted to reply with, 'And you had a muggle Father' but that'd go too far. "I guess. What do you want out of life?" she asked him, changing the subject into something that may or may not be lighter.

"I want to be Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts," he told her.

She tilted her head. "You don't want to leave?" she asked him.

"Why would I? It's my first connection to the Wizarding World."

"That's kinda like saying you want to stay in orphanages because they were your first connection to the world," Kelli pointed out. "Kinda lame."

"Why won't you understand my view? You've been introduced to this, our, world through Hogwarts," he told her.

"Because that defeats the purpose of what they're teaching us," Kelli replied with a frown. "They want to teach us how to survive when we enter the real world. And I want to know as much about the world as I can, not by just reading books, but experiencing it for myself. I want to be properly introduced into the world, not to a section."

He was silent for a long pause. "That sounds almost poetic. I can . . . understand that."

Kelli smiled and told him, "And on the off chance you don't get your job, how about you joining me?"

"Why would you ask me?" he asked her flatly.

"Well, maybe I can convince you that Hogwarts shouldn't be your world," Kelli told him brightly.

He stared down at her for a while before looking away, then threw her the cookies she'd snuck up. She shot him a bright grin.