Hierarchy of Need [t.r]

Chapter Twenty

Looking back down the hall at Slughorn's door, nearly twenty minutes passed and she laughed dryly. "What the fuck am I doing?" Shaking her head, she stood up and began to walk away. Why'd he ask her to leave if he wasn't coming out? Was he just annoyed by her presence? That didn't seem too far fetched, the more she thought about it.

Just as she reached the stairs to the dungeons, someone took hold of her arm and whirled her around. A scream nearly left her mouth as she found Tom holding a finger up to his lips. He looked oddly haunting with the low lighting of the hall, the green flames from torches casting shadows on his face. He almost didn't seem real, like a phantom.

"What took you so long," she bit out, shrugging off his hold. Tom shoved his hands in his pockets and began to walk down the stairs. "I couldn't very well leave right after you," he turned and looked up at her, realizing that she was still at the top of the stairwell. "Think of the scandal."

An unwelcomed image sprung up in her mind, and Delilah nearly fell down the stairs as she came to realize what she just pictured.

Tom Riddle kissing her, in this very staircase, her back pressed against the cold stone.

She suddenly felt very hot and her cheeks were undoubtedly flushed, where the fuck did that come from? Shaking her head, she began to walk down the stairs as he turned to continue. "Why'd you want to leave?"

Watching him dig in his pocket, Tom pulled out a cigarette and lit it, casting a small orb of a dim orange light around him. "You clearly looked miserable, those dinners are exhausting."

Delilah bit at her cheek, she thought she was hiding her boredom rather well. But leave it to Tom to see right through her. "I was actually having a good time." A light chuckle left his lips, smoke coming out as he did so.

"You can read lips, not minds Riddle." There was a pang in the back of her skull but she ignored it. Delilah instead focused on her annoyance at him for that stupid image in her head, it wasn't going away. He didn't have a say in the matter and she realized she was being irrational, but the warm feeling in her stomach was incessant.

Tom gave her a rather smug look with an eyebrow raised, lifting a hand to pull his cigarette away from his lips. She watched as a cloud of white poured from his nose and disappeared into the air. "Shut up," Delilah muttered. She needed to get away from him if he was going to walk around acting like, well, like that.

She still hated him, but Delilah could never refuse the notion that Tom was attractive. His personality often ruined that, however.

"Slughorn said we're to serve our detention tomorrow," he said after they entered the common room. Her brows furrowed before she remembered their incident while dueling. That felt like so long ago. "Doing what?"

"Cleaning the trophy room, it's better than grading papers for him. Honestly, this school is filled with idiots." Tom ran a hand through his hair and threw his cigarette into the fire, watching as it curled up and burned in the flames.

He felt Delilah come to stand next to him, her arms crossed as she too, gazed into the fire. "Why'd you really ask me to leave?" Her voice was quietly spoken, just barely heard over the dull crack of logs. Tom bit at the inside of his cheek, wishing she didn't ask so many questions. That'd make everything so much easier, though admittedly less interesting.

He asked her to leave because of Aleksander, the little shit wouldn't take his eyes off her. Something about the new Ravenclaw didn't sit right with him.

But Tom would never tell her that of course, she'd probably scold him, rant about how he was acting possessive or what not. And Tom was possessive, he could admit that, but he came to terms with the notion that no one could ever own Delilah Pontmercy a long time ago. She'd cut them a smile each if anyone ever tried.