Tom Riddle and the Pure-Blood Prince

The Blood-Tester

"What are you doing?" Eileen said tentatively.

"Relax....I'm just going to ask you some questions."

"That's all?" she said confused. "What are these chains for then?" The chains were wrapped very loosely around Eileen, she could easily slip her arms out of them. She was smart enough, not to try though.

Riddle put his wand back in the inside pocket of his robes. " Don't get smart with me. To see how well you do under pressure. I want you to fit right in with my group."

She nodded. At least she thought she understood the reason Riddle was doing this to her.

Tom pulled a chair up and sat about five feet across from her. "Which subject of study do you like most at Hogwarts?"

"Um...potions. I know I don't have an ability like you when it comes to it. Slughorn says you're a natural Tom! But I have to practice to get it perfect. Maybe I'll open my own apothecary in Diagon Alley. Last term I was able to make veritaserum."

Riddle smiled and nodded. "Potions certainly is a respectable branch of magic." He had only brought up this light topic of conversation, to get Eileen to start talking.

"I hope you never used veritaserum on anyone. You would be breaking quite a few rules," with a hint of a threatening edge in his voice. Yet it wasn't that Riddle disapproved if Eileen broke the rules. He was elevating the conversation to a higher intensity.

"Of course I haven't!" she said, feeling mortified. "I only gave it to Slughorn, and he was pleased with it," she said more to herself. She was starting to feel a bit guilty about brewing Veritaserum, when the Ministry of Magic had such strict guidelines for it's use.

Riddle who could smell guilt a block away, pressed her further, "What school rules have you broken?," he looked straight into her eyes. Eileen felt like she was being x-rayed.

She was annoyed that he wanted to know this. But Riddle had several reasons. One was to learn just how ruthless and cunning she could be for him.

"None at all!" she said with a bit of defiance. "Except the slightest," she faltered, when she realized he would see right through that lie.

"You are going to tell me everything significant in regards to this. You've committed at least one serious infraction. If not more...Now tell me about it." Riddle took his wand out, and aimed his wand at the chains. They coiled upwards and wrapped themselves more fully around Eileen's arms and wrists, yet it still wasn't uncomfortable.

Eileen barely registered what he had just done. It was not what she was focusing on at the moment, rather it was a guilty conscience. She struggled to think clearly as she was becoming emotional. With shame she reported, " I hexed a girl so she would have warts on her face...because she kept saying to everyone that I was ugly."

A low, awful laugh was suddenly issuing from him as he said, "Did you get caught?"

"No, because I confunded her to think that she was ugly, and so she thought that was true, and also that she had caused the warts." Eileen felt even more shame, admitting to Riddle how many people thought that she wasn't that attractive. She wanted Riddle, an extremely handsome boy to think she was pretty, yet it was impossible to know what he had thought of this tale or for that matter her looks. Riddle did not even care about the humiliating experience she had just divulged. He only cared, that the worst thing she had used was a confundus charm. It wasn't dark magic, but at least it was a complex, difficult charm.

"Have you ever modified somebody's memory?," he inquired.

"No. I never had a reason to, Tom."

"Not even to a muggle. I highly doubt that," he sneered.

"No, I swear. I hardly ever see-," she started to rant. She was feeling like he was trying to get her to admit some horrible crime.

"What do you think of the muggles?"

"er....they're ignorant and...full of themselves. The stuff they use to make-up for magic, just shows how they really are...inferiors." This was Eileen's true opinion, she was not making it up to please him.

"You hate them....you want to hurt them," Tom said explosively as he took his wand out again and tightened the chains considerably. He was doing this as a sort of mind-game. He was pursuading her to think in a new way.

"N-no. I do not hate them. Oh! Please Tom." The chains were now much tighter and were starting to dig sharply into her skin, cutting off the circulation of her blood. Tom waved his wand again and Eileen felt something ice-cold, like a knife slicing through her chest. It was a hex used to make someone freeze on the inside.

"Yes you do....," he said in a firm, authoritative voice. "Say someone in your family was marrying a muggle. You would hurt that muggle, make sure they wind up dead."

Eileen flinched. "I'd try to stop the-the engagement."

Tom said, "You'll do more than that to them. If I ever tell you to torture a muggle – you will do it!," he said the last four words in his commanding voice.

Tom waved his wand again and this time Eileen felt the coldness go away and another hex upon her. It was a trickling hotness that seeped up her chest all the way to the top of her jaw.

"Yes, but how can I?"

"Let's say I just gave you the order, with no other instructions. Think what magic to use," Riddle favored giving hypothetical situations to his new servants.

"Maybe..." Eileen, wanting to get this over with spat out as fast as she could a poor answer, "a stinging hex?"

Riddle shook his head and jabbed his wand into her chest over her heart, to intensify the heat.

The pain felt shocking for Eileen, "I don't know Tom. The cruciatus curse is illegal," she pleaded.

"Not in my circle. There it is acceptable, actually a regular practice...as normal as breathing," he whispered.

He let her relax a bit, loosening the chains, so that were not unbearable anymore. He even lifted the searing charm. He wanted to lull her into a false sense of security, to see if she had learned what he expected of her to think of muggles.

"What the ministry thinks does not matter. When I rise to power, the wizarding world will know my word is law."

She smiled feeling admiration for him again and her desire to get some approval and affection from him burst in her heart, so that it felt pleasantly warm.

He waited a few more seconds than asked, "So... do you hate muggles?"

"No..but I will Ow!" After hearing "no" Tom had instantly raised his wand, tightened the chains and then put the searing charm back on.

"Yes....I hate muggles!" she cried.

He kept the chains tight, but took the charm off her. He leaned forward sitting closer to her and asked, "And if I tell you to torture them you will?"

An ominous silence filled the air. Eileen answered meekly, "Yes, I'll do whatever you say."

Tom smiled an awful smile, feeling satisfied. "Good...." He simpered. "When the new term starts and I call for a meeting you will be initiated. But first there is something else I must get from you for your ceremony."

"Wh-What?" she bawled. She wasn't sure she could take anything else tonight.

"Calm down. Taking a bit of blood never killed anyone," he said sardonically. To him blood-sacrifices were absolutely necessary to begin the application of practicing the dark arts.

He took something out that he had brought to the library, because he knew he would use it on her. It was a silver instrument, with a frame like a spider, with four legs, as sharp as needles. Then he took out an empty test-tube, with an opal in it for a stopper.

"Do you know what this is?"

"My family owns one," Eileen said with knowledgable confidence. "It is a blood-tester. We use it to see how pure someone's blood is. You don't-"

"I got it from Rodolphus Lestrange, who has one in his family, as all the pure-bloods do," he said as held it gently in his hand and set the test-tube on a nearby table. In his other hand Riddle held his wand, as he undid the chains.

Eileen instantly rose. She did not want to sit in that chair ever again. She walked away from it, backwards still facing Tom.

There was a mechancial hinge, that Riddle wound up. Once he was finished winding it, Riddle grabbed Eileen's left arm and put the instrument in the palm of her hand. It scuttled up her forearm, disappearing under the sleeve of her robes. Riddle pulled up her left sleeve up, and they watched as the blood-tester drew it's four legs into her consuming her blood, and storing it in it's center.

It hurt, but Eileen did not yell this time. Her pain threshold was now a little stronger. And she was not disgusted by it either. She had seen, this little silver instrument sneak up guest's arms at her house when her parent's had set it on wizards, whom they wanted to analyze the magical geneology of their blood.

Within a minute it was finished. Riddle took the instrument. He turned the hinge the opposite way, to empty it and poured it into the small bottle, which filled to the top. Eileen was looking into Riddle's blue-grey eyes as he filled the bottle so efficiently. She felt a desire to receive affection from Tom, now to make up for the preceding unpleasant interactions.

"Let's go, it is nearing mid-night. We were here long enough," Tom said.

"But- But Tom wait." She suddenly held his hand, looking up into him, hoping he would kiss her. Tom squinted, a bit surprised. He did not force her hand off of him, rather he started to squeeze her hand hard, like a vice.

Eileen stood with just a few inches apart from him, and said sincerely, "I'm scared Tom. I'm afraid you're going to kill me. Please promise me you won't!"

Riddle gave her a hard, and calculating look. He spoke in his superficial glibness, "Eileen you are worth too much. I have no plans to kill you ever."

Although he hated to, he gave her what she wanted. He figured that perhaps she did deserve an award for passing the tests he gave her. He pushed her down on the table, and kissed her lips, roughly and briefly. Then he backed away from her and said, "It's nearing midnight and I have other things to do." That other thing, really only meant to sleep.

Eileen felt a sense of satisfaction. Maybe Riddle would fall in love with her. True, she knew he would be intensely possessive and completely dominant, but it would make her feel good. That first kiss, was just the beginning of him wanting to be close to her, or so she thought.

In a few minutes, they arrived at the common room. Eileen bade Tom good night, who did not return with a reply.