XVII
The Secret Riddle
Tom immediately got up and ran a hand through his black hair. His back turned to Evadne, he gazed out of his small window, his eyes alive with self-dutiful calculation. His mouth was thick and venomous with the silence of doubt.
After a couple of seconds of painful contemplation about what she ought to do, Evadne stood up and stepped into the small space beside Tom's narrow window.
He glanced down at her briefly. A weak wash of sunlight managed to permeate the London overcast, sending a golden beam through Tom's window that illuminated the specs of dust floating seamlessly like stardust in the air between them.
"That building used to be a hospital for pregnant women and children," Tom said.
Evadne's heart sunk in her chest. "When was the hospital bombed?"
"This summer," he said simply.
There wasn't a hint of emotion nor concern in Tom's apathetic voice.
Evadne looked on at the high mound of rubble and ash that she now knew to be the sanctuary and shelter of mothers and their children. Sadness transformed into spite, and spite metamorphosed into rage. What did any of these people do to deserve such an ill-starred life? What did the homeless men on the street do to deserve no food and no shelter? What did the orphans do to deserve abandonment and a lifetime of misery and neglect?
At that moment, it was an odd sort of catharsis for someone like Evadne, and so the rose-coloured glasses she donned customarily for her disposition quickly came off, replaced with something new and frightening — the birth of an indisputable abnegation for a "better world".
*
Evadne remained in Tom's bedroom as he went downstairs to interrogate his matron, Mrs Cole. She fished through his things, but there wasn't much in Wool's to satisfy Evadne's nosiness. She desperately wanted nothing more than to know more about Tom.
Curiosity killed the cat, she thought, tinkering with a few seaside stones arranged into a neat line on Tom's tiled windowsill.
But satisfaction brought it back.
Evadne took some photographs of a sunlit seashore from inside Tom's bedside drawer. She sat and stared absentmindedly at the tiled wall for a short moment. She held up one of the photographs from the pile in front of her, tilting her head to the side inquisitively.
It was of any ubiquitous English seaside – a rocky beach, lapping, foamy waves, children playing in the shallow water, seashells scattered haphazardly across the shimmering stones, women languishing in the English fascimile of a summer sun.
Evadne didn't think much of it besides connecting the stones on Tom's windowsill to one of these seasides in the pictures. Whilst Wool's was indubitably a dingy, miserable place, it seemed that before the Second World War, the matrons made the best of a macabre situation by taking the children on cheap trips to the seaside during the summertime.
Unable to be inside that small, broomcloset of a bedroom for much longer, Evadne took her coat out of Tom's narrow wardrobe and then clandestinely snuck out of the orphanage down the main stairs in lieu of the awkward, narrow maidservants corridor that Tom had initially taken them through.
She sat on a bench outside whilst children ran around on the dead grass a stone's throw away. They stole curious looks at Evadne, a dichotomy to their environment – she was very elegant-looking and of course, she looked different to everyone else, so it was customary for Evadne to garner a lot of attention and dubious looks from muggles in the city. After all, it was the forties, a conservative time rife with war and skepticism; a time when most citizens were white, and Evadne was not. She'd stand out anywhere in England.
She spotted a boy and a girl no older then sixteen conversing alone together. Curiously, Evadne wondered why they were not playing with the other children. As if sharing Evadne's curiosity, the boy and the girl – both pale and jaded-looking with lank, dirty-blond hair — glanced over at her, frowning identically. They both wore winter coats, scarves, and mittens.
They whispered something in each other's ears. Her hands deep in her pockets, Evadne readjusted her position on the bench awkwardly. They stood up from the lank grass riddled with snowdrops, and as they walked over to Evadne, their faces became a lot more distinct. The girl had dark-brown eyes whereas the boy had bright-blue eyes and a long, straight nose.
"I saw you earlier," the girl said, her voice dreamy and far-off. "You came here with Tom. I saw you from my window. You're very pretty."
Evadne smiled gingerly. "Thank you. And yes - yes, I'm here with Tom."
"Are you staying?" the boy pressed on at the girl's side, his tone a lot less airy and more demanding – authoritative and serious, but with an uncanny undercurrent of fear, Evadne noticed.
Evadne shook her head. "No. We'll be gone soon."
"May I ask why you're here?" the girl asked, sitting down next to Evadne.
Evadne's mind quickly conjured a believable enough lie. "Tom needs to speak to your matron Mrs Cole about his living situation next year. He decided now is the best time to do it, whilst we are on Christmas break and don't need to return to boarding school for another week."
"Right," the boy remarked bitterly. "Tom's finally leaving - and we still have another two sordid years left in this shithole." He and the girl exchanged sour looks.
Evadne didn't know what to say. Their energy was incredibly hostile. It felt as if they didn't like Tom, and just by Evadne being there with him, she was just as guilty by association.
"Amybeth Benson," the girl said, smiling, but the wry smile did not meet her small, dark eyes. "But you can just call me Amy."
The boy clenched his jaw, as if reluctant to say his name to a stranger.
"Dennis," he muttered, his hands in his pockets. "Dennis Bishop."
"Evadne Verlaine. It's lovely to meet you both. So are you friends of Tom's?"
Dennis scoffed. "Hardly."
"He doesn't have any friends," Amy said.
I already gathered that much, Evadne thought snidely. It was bloody obvious. No one at Wool's treated Tom in the same manner he was respected and admired back at Hogwarts. No wonder he hated coming back here; everyone he had grown up with was hostile towards him.
And Evadne realised it was because they saw Tom for who he was - not the model student and bright individual he painted himself to be. He'd obviously started at Hogwarts in 1938 with the overall objective of self-reinvention. Overtime he must have realised he was different from other wizards and witches, he could talk to snakes, and he was the Heir of Slytherin, after all, things that all seemed to childish and inconsequential now that they were back in London, their homes before they were whisked away to Scotland, far from the misery of impending war and the reality of being orphaned with little prospects.
Everything that had occurred so far that school year felt like a song unsung; a far off, undreamt dream, waters that had not been tread, a scar awaiting its opening, a leg waiting to be bruised.
Dennis grinded his teeth together. "Let's go inside," he said to Amy, her teeth chattering in the brisk mid-winter air.
And so Amy got up without another word, uttering a polite goodbye.
*
Evadne arrived back to Tom's room to find him waiting for her with his coat on.
"Is everything alright?" she asked, tentatively closing the door behind her and leaning against it.
He nodded. "Mrs Cole told me all she knows. There's nothing much else... I cannot conjure answers out of an abyss." He glanced down at the floor for a brief moment.
"What is it?" Evadne asked softly.
He looked up at her. "I don't know."
"You don't know...or you don't want to say?"
He didn't say anything.
Evadne sighed. "I had an odd conversation with these two orphans," she said.
Tom all of a sudden looked alert. "Who?"
"Their names were Dennis and Amy."
Tom clenched and unclenched his jaw, staring at Evadne blankly. Her eyes darted around awkwardly.
"I bet they spoke highly of me," Tom mused darkly.
"Do they have any reason to hate you?" Evadne asked. She raised her dark brows. "They seemed very... um, hostile."
Tom shrugged. "We're all a villain to someone. Also, I must add that Mrs Cole knows you are here with me. Some of the orphans spotted us and told her I am with a "strange-looking" girl. She thinks we are courting, so if we happen to see her on the way downstairs, play along with it."
Evadne raised her brows. "Strange looking?" she reiterated, incredulous.
"Their words, Evadne – not mine."
Evadne scoffed. "They're acting like they've never seen a non-white person before," she remarked snidely. "Is everyone here racist, rude, and hostile with bad manners? And why would you not deny it? We are not courting."
"Trust me, it sounds a lot less peculiar if things look that way." Tom sighed. He then arched a dubious brow, closing the distance between them. "Are you that opposed to courting me?" he asked, tilting his head to the side with a smirk.
Evadne rolled her eyes. "Perhaps if you were the last man on earth then I'd consider it - but honestly I'd rather throw myself into a pit of fire."
"That's harsh."
"Customary for you, then," Evadne quipped. "You branded me."
"I recruited you into my noble cause."
"Yes, without my permission."
"You asked me to persuade you, remember?"
"And you asked me to call you My Lord," Evadne mocked wryly. "What, do the rest of them call you that, or something?" It was utterly ridiculous.
"Amongst other things," he said.
"Like what?" Evadne reduced her voice to a soft whisper, glancing up into his eyes. She gulped.
"My Liege."
Evadne laughed and Tom returned an uncanny crooked grin plastered on his face. He had an air of mischief about him, Evadne could see it dancing across his eyes, as if he was thinking things he ought not to have been thinking.
*
Evadne had always been mistifying to Tom. She'd consumed his thoughts these past few months like a fiendfyre since initiating their fifth year.
Over the years, a part of him always wanted to get to know her. Perhaps it was Tom's uncanny penchant for arrogance that held him back from forming an alliance with Evadne in previous schoolyears, or perhaps, equally enough, it was the Verlaine witch's own shyness and lack of interest in making new friends that contributed to the matter.
Now, none of that mattered.
They were something more than friends. What they shared was not friendship, but mutual admiration and fear for how things would be if they ever became enemies.
After all, Tom was not the sole Heir nor descendant of Slytherin. Evadne carried his gifts, too. Evadne was smart, Evadne was knowledgeable...but was she cunning?
Tom did not yet know. He couldn't envision Evadne being the calculated type like he was.
Then again, Tom could be naïve in his own ways, because he was playing Evadne's game, and still, as he gazed down at her leaning against the door with a playful simper, he wholeheartedly believed he was the sole puppeteer holding all the strings in an intricate web of lies and deceit.
When the mind becomes obsessed, it filters everything else out to find that one thing everywhere. In Tom's case, the object of his obsessions were Evadne Verlaine, and his own wizarding lineage.