i am lord voldemort • Tom Riddle

X

Ophelia couldn't bring herself to read any further. What did that make? 936 deaths total? 936 murders?

Something between guilt and undiluted horror squeezed at her stomach, no matter how she tried to digest the feeling. The more she worked to force air down her throat the harder it became, until her head began to swim, as the expression goes, though it seemed more like drowning. Her lungs felt both too full and too empty at the same time, her skin too hot, her thoughts too heavy.

Was it only a few days before where she and Dumbledore so confidently declared Grindelwald didn't harm without reason? What possible reason did he have for this most recent atrocity?

"Excuse me," she managed, climbing heavily to her feet. There was a dull thud of her textbook colliding with the ground, and then she was out the door.

The Slytherin Common Room being in the dungeons had never much bothered her before, but the dimly lit corridors and warmth smothering walls that seemed to press in at every angle stole the last remaining breath from her lungs. When she reached the end of one corridor, she merely pushed back against the wall and ran a different way without rhyme or reason.

I need out. Out. Out. Out. Out. Out! OUT!

Then, out of nowhere, a large figure stepped backwards from an empty classroom and, too late to slow down or to avoid him, she crashed face first.

It was like running headlong into a brick wall. Big hands reached forward to stabalize her, not at all taken aback by the collision.

"Alrigh' there?" Rubeus asked, cocking his head to the side. "Yeh don' look so good."

Ophelia blinked away her momentary confusion. "If I look as good as I feel, I must be quite a sorry sight indeed."

His eyes lit up with mischief. "I got jus' the thing. You'll love 'im."

His massive hand engulfing most of her forearm, he pulled her back into the room he'd just exited.

"Him?" she asked distractedly, despite everything she'd only just learned. Rubeus had such a disarming quality, it was hard not to humour him.

"Come on," he cooed. "Come on out, Aragog."

First, there was one horribly hairy leg poking out of the box on the shelf. Then, if that weren't bad enough, there were eight. The creature, an altogether monstrous black spider with too many eerily intelligent eyes, scuttled up Hagrid's arm until it rested comfortably on his shoulder.

It clicked his disconcerting pincers together beside Hagrid's ear and Ophelia got the uncomforting impression that it was whispering to him.

"No!" Rubeus scolded the arachnid, confirming her theory. She'd never less liked being right in her life. "You can't eat her, either. Aragog, we've been over this. She's our friend."

Aragog gave her a look with his many eyes that left serious doubt as to whether he shared Hagrid's feelings on the matter.

"Rubeus... what is that?" she asked tentatively.

"This," he indicated the spider, "is Aragog. An acromantula. Hatched him from a little egg. Wouldn' believe the trouble I wen' through ter get him, too."

"I think I can," she said dryly, not taking her eyes from the spider. "Hello, Aragog."

It clicked its pincers. "Hello, Hagrid's friend."

Hagrid beamed.

"I don't suppose the professors know he's here?"

"They wouldn' understand." Hagrid waived a hand evasively. "He's harmless, like a puppy."