It hadn't surprised Elizabeth nor Lauren that Kelli was late. They guessed she had been somewhere doing her homework. But she would have been at most ten minutes late - as if Kelli would miss a Halloween feast. She loved Halloween way too much. But when she was fifteen minutes late they'd started to get worried.
"I'm gonna go find Kelli," Elizabeth and Lauren told each other at the same time. They smiled at each other before they both got up to find their friend.
They both walked to the end of their table before heading down the door. They went towards their common room and found that the floor was really wet after some stairs around the corner. It looked like some had been dragged away by something big.
Lauren felt a cold chill go through her, coming to a halt, she looked at Elizabeth and said, "I think we might need a professor."
"Why?" Elizabeth asked.
"It don't know, I feel really sick," Lauren said.
Elizabeth nodded and said, "You go get one. If something is wrong someone should get Kelli."
Lauren nodded and turned back around. Elizabeth continued down the steps and pulled out her wand to clean the water up as she got closer. She rounded the corner and dropped her wand. "Kelli?"
Sure enough, the body of Kelli was on the ground in the water. "Merlin no," Elizabeth whispered, running over towards Kelli and dropping to her knees in the water, checking if Kelli was alive. The look on Kelli's face wasn't one of fear or anger, it was set into the face of annoyed resignation.
Elizabeth felt a very light pulse. She wasn't dead.
Elizabeth could have cried of relief if she hadn't started to spout tears of horrified shock only moments before.
Moments later, Lauren and Professor Dumbledore had arrived on the scene.
Dumbledore assured them that Kelli was simply petrified and would be back to her full health, though at a later date.
"But who'd do this?" Dumbledore asked them both.
Lauren and Elizabeth both glanced at each other, both thinking that Kelli would think it was Riddle. "I . . . had a vision that Riddle could have been the one to kill her. Or spend a lot of time with her. But she's not dead . . ."
"You had a vision?" he asked.
Elizabeth got the feeling of minor dismissal from the Professor. Lauren nodded but very slowly. She'd noticed too.
"It did make Kelli very paranoid of Riddle - more so than usual," Elizabeth added.
"More than usual?" he asked, definitely not believing them.
"Yes. More so than usual. Yes, she liked him, she was his friend, and she knew him a lot better than we did. But we knew her. And he scared her. When Lauren told her about her dreams, she wasn't happy about hearing it. She was distressed," Elizabeth told him, sounding more and more distressed herself as she spoke. "We're not saying that it was Riddle, sir. But Kelli might have, but she's petrified and -and-"
Elizabeth felt pathetic for dissolving into tears by then - she wanted to defend Lauren, knowing that she was best believed, and she wanted Kelli to be awake.
_
Kelli opened her eyes. She was standing outside a house she had visited many of times in her dreams. Her house, her family house. But this felt exactly like when she first went to Tom Riddle-era Hogwarts.
Kelli looked down. She was wearing the same clothes as she had when she had gone, her pyjamas, her backpack was slung over her shoulders. Kelli pulled out her phone to see it was dead. It had been July 14th, on Kelli's birthday, when Kelli had been to Hogwarts. It appeared to be Halloween night and her house had no intention for trick or treaters.
Kelli ran towards her house and tried her key on the door. It didn't work. So Kelli pounded her fist on the door until she heard the latch unlock and a mumble.
The door opened and she was greeted with the face of her Mother, initially looking almost pissed off.
Kelli then watched that face melt off her face and tears. Kelli immediately went for a hug. If it was 2017 still, then Kelli hadn't seen her Mother for a lot longer.
"Where've you been my baby?" Mum kept repeating, holding onto Kelli with a death grip.
Kelli knew the feeling well and knew when she couldn't say something. So she said nothing.
Then Mum called out for Dad, who came in a hurry when he had heard, "Kelli's come back home."
After what felt like too short a time for the parents and long enough for Kelli, the police were called and they were at their house very soon. Kelli was going to enjoy this, she was sure.
Kelli felt like she was going to have to be extremely patient with her parents. Because it had been over three months since they'd seen Kelli - never expecting to see her again. And for Kelli, well, it had been longer, four years. But Kelli had a better distraction. While she had missed her parents every damn day, she knew they were alive. But her parents, they had their jobs, their passions once, but it seemed that once Kelli had gone they went with her.
Kelli felt truly awful for them.
"Miss Watson, can you tell us what happened to you?" asked the police officer, a kind looking blonde woman, small and petite. Kelli had asked that her parents weren't with her - of course, they were upset, and a minor technically was unable to do that, but apparently, in cases like this, it could be done.
Kelli supposed that they thought she was abducted. "I went to bed and woke up somewhere, in an orphanage where everyone acted like they'd known me my whole life. I don't know, I don't remember it all that well. I lived there for months, hated the matron, went to sleep and woke up outside my house."
Well, she remembered it exactly well. She had gone to bed in her own bed, woken up in an orphanage who knew who she was like they'd known her her whole life. But she couldn't tell them too much, not because she didn't want to but because she physically could not do anything about it.
"How would you describe the orphanage?"
"Old. Really old-fashioned. The 1920s, I'd even date it. Matron was a real b- awful person. Kinda like she was the 1920s."
"You don't seem to be upset talking about this," the officer told her.
Kelli smiled gently and looked down, before murmuring, "I'm sure I'll be back. It wasn't genuinely awful, but I understand that it's awful for my parents and for anyone else who knows me. I can guess it's awful for two of the girls I met there that I'm not there."
"If you can tell us everything you know about it, maybe we can stop it. That you know that they're safe."
Kelli shook her head and got to her feet, walking to her charging phone. It may have been a few years since she'd used it, but it wasn't hard to get her password and get on her phone. The Slytherin logo, the house that Kelli had aligned herself to because she'd never thought herself a Hufflepuff, met her eyes.
Kelli wanted to swear at it. Because of Tom Riddle. Without bothering to look at them, she cleared all her notifications.
"You look upset."
"I feel upset."
"Why's that?"
She looked at the officer and said, "Because I'm in love and I'm pissed off about it because he's a piece of shit human whom I'm sure tried to kill me before I got home."
"What was his name?"
Kelli practically snorted as she continued to stare at the snake of the Slytherin symbol.
"What's funny about that question?"
"What do you know about me?" asked Kelli, finally looking up but not locking her screen. She then turned the screen towards the officer.
"Your parents say you did enjoy Harry Potter. I think that's Slytherin symbol? Voldemort was in that house, I think."
"You'd be right," Kelli told him. "Because his name is Tom Riddle. And that also happened to be Voldemort's real name too. And here I am. The Harry Potter enthusiast, in love with an evil shit called Tom Riddle who I'm sure tried to kill me. And I thought I was a Slytherin. The fucking irony, don't you think?"
And she couldn't even tell the officer the whole truth. The officer just looked confused, as if she thought Kelli had dreamed that up. Kelli would've thought so too.
"I'm tired," Kelli said. "It's late. It's very late."
"Before I go, I think counselling-"
"Probably is best for me. If you think it'll help me open up, please do. Because I want to be able to tell you everything I know but I can't bring myself to say it."
The officer gave Kelli a sympathetic smile and said, "I'll be by tomorrow, about 11 am. Is that alright with you?"
"And even if you can't make it, feel free to send a less nice looking person, I have to admit you remind me of Elizabeth. The same kind of kind face, you know?"