Hierarchy of Need [t.r]

Chapter Twenty Four

Just as a sigh of relief passed her lips, his eyes shone and there was a flash of green so bright that it made Delilah squint her eyes.

He had recognized her, and he killed her anyway.

Her head spun before she saw what happened next, and she collapsed with the weight of shock and sleep deprivation on her shoulders.

She awoke with a scream, looking around her frantically before she came to realize she was still in the Room of Requirement, slumped over a stack of books uncomfortably.

Did she really just hallucinate?

Her hand rose to the back of her head, but there was nothing there. Merlin, she really needed sleep.

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A hand waved in front of her and she blinked a few times, snapping out of her trance. Aleksander was crouching down beside her, a look of worry on his nice features.

"You alright, love? You've been zoned out for," he looked at his watch and raised a brow, "three hours." Delilah swallowed, her mouth was awfully dry and she felt exhausted. She'd been replaying what she saw on repeat in her head, trying to piece her mind together into one coherent thought.

"Yeah I'm fine, just been distracted lately with the Ministry plan." The lie rolled off her tongue easily and he hummed in understanding. "About that," he began, taking a seat next to her on the rug. "My brother said he can get us into the Department of Mysteries, but actually getting into the Ministry itself is on us. He'll be waiting at the entrance of the Department. But he needs a time and date... is Riddle still involved in all this?"

She didn't want him to come, she really didn't. But Dumbledore thought otherwise. In fact, he seemed rather adamant on Tom joining her. How could the old man be so sure Tom and Voldemort weren't the same?

But as she sat and allowed herself to mull over it, and dissect the situation in front of her, there did seem to be a strict dichotomy.

Voldemort is a mad man, not even a man. He'd destroyed that part of himself into something unrecognizable. His love for power became his greatest enemy, and his longing for immortality crushed whatever humanity he had left.

Tom is an eighteen year old boy, who's incredibly intelligent, charismatic, had an inflated ego, arrogant, stubborn as hell, and he had a terrible temper. And when his control broke, that's when suggestions of something darker and more dangerous broke through.

But there were moments, moments that separated him from that creature. And by god, Delilah was latching onto those for the life of her, almost as if they were her life line. All to convince herself he wasn't the thing that killed her and so many others.

That he really was just a teen boy, in search for something greater yet is completely unaware of how catastrophic that something is.

Delilah latched onto the moments when they would bicker, bouncing ideas or insults off one another, as if they've known each other for years and had been able to reach an equilibrium. The moments when they danced together, whether it was on a ballroom floor or in the snow.

When he balanced a wand on his nose just to appease her, or his constant teasing. When he gave her a rose, and healed her cuts.

She knew it wasn't his fault when she had started to bleed out everywhere. But her anger at him for reading her mind clouded her rationality of that predicament afterward. Delilah could now recollect him coming to her attention the moment she started to show signs something was wrong.

How he kneeled down at her side and brushed her hair out of her face. And she remembered him sounding worried. Tom Riddle never worried.

She remembered him picking her up, cradling her to his chest and rushing her back to the manor, and he almost looked frightened at the sight of her.