Eleanor felt a warm touch against the back of one of her closed fists, and through her blurred, tear-stricken vision, she found Reinhard, who was looking at her with a knowing gaze. She ripped her hand out of his, for once not wanting an ounce of comfort, and buried her face in her arms.
It was too much.
All of this. She had just seen Myrtle. Had just cheered her up. And then she was dead, in the same spot Eleanor left her... hours, perhaps even minutes after.
She hated herself. She should've insisted on walking Myrtle back to her common room, should've stayed with her a few moments longer.
She could feel Clarence's penetrating stare on her. "How dare you cry for her," she heard him whisper under his breath.
She looked up at him, absolutely enraged. "You think I did this?" she asked him, almost raising her voice but deciding against it. She couldn't cause a scene, not when Dippet was speaking.
"You never showed up last night," he spat. "And after what you did to the Gryffindor, I have no doubt."
"I didn't kill anyone, Avery. Get that through your thick skull," she said murderously, her head twisting in anger.
"Then who did?" he asked, raising his eyebrows as if her current state didn't shake him in the slightest. "Because all the evidence points against you and Lestrange, darling."
And then it hit her.
Dippet had said that Myrtle's death wasn't connected to the petrifications, but she knew that Tom was behind those, and she knew that Myrtle, too, was born from non-magical parents. She looked at him, sitting five seats down from Reinhard, and he was jotting something down in his notebook, the world closed off from him.
He had done this.
Whatever was in that Chamber had done this, and Tom was its leader.
Did he know he had framed her? Did he care? She wanted desperately for breakfast to be over so she could confront him.
But something told her she shouldn't. Deep inside, something told her that Tom Riddle was more than the sly, clever boy she had taken him for. There was a presence in him that Eleanor had only seen in her life once before: something much darker than she could ever anticipate.
But she looked at him, saw his complete disregard for the girl who had just been killed—by his hand, Eleanor suspected—and she knew that Tom Riddle was no longer a mysterious, perhaps twisted boy.
He was dangerous. He was cold-hearted and incredibly dangerous.
He shut his notebook when food appeared in front of him, and when he looked up, he caught her gaze. She stared back into those icy blue eyes, and he smiled slyly at her, apparently able to see clear as day that she knew what he was up to. He grabbed a muffin and held it out to her, almost toasting it, and winked in her direction before turning back to Abraxas and taking a bite.
~•~
She sat in the common room with Reinhard after breakfast, notes spread out on the coffee table in front of them, but neither able to focus at all on their studies with the rumor going around that they had killed Myrtle. It was a miracle that Dippet hadn't called them into his office for some form of interrogation, but they were counting their blessings as it was.
"You were right," she said softly, breaking the silence as her quill trembled in her hand. "Leaving last night was a bad idea."
He sighed, setting his own quill down and shuffling closer to her. "Eleanor, don't think for a second that this is your fault."
"Does it matter if it's my fault or not? The whole school thinks I'm a cold-blooded murderer. No one will even speak to me."
"I will," he told her, trying to comfort her but doing a miserable job. "You know, don't you? Who it was?"
She nodded. "I have an idea. But I'd be an idiot to tell Dippet without evidence."
He turned away from her, out the windows that looked into the Black Lake. "You don't have to tell me. It's probably best I don't know."
Eleanor shrugged. "You probably already know."
"Why's that?"
"Because—" She went to answer him, but the sound of the common room door opening caught her off guard, and she didn't need anyone hearing their conversation. She met the eyes of the very person she didn't want to see but knew that she had to get to the bottom of this. "I need to talk to you," she said quickly, standing from her spot next to Reinhard and approaching him.
He looked at her, his face as expressionless as a rock. "There's nothing to talk about."
"Bullshit, Riddle," she warned, narrowing her eyes.
He glanced past her at Reinhard, his face not faltering. "Get out."
Reinhard scoffed. "Excuse me?"
"Get out, Lestrange." There was something that flashed in him when he said that, something that intimidated the living hell out of Reinhard and made him push past Tom to get into his dormitory. Tom's lip upturned in a smirk as he looked back at Eleanor. "I already told you, Tippin. There isn't anything to talk about."
"It was you, wasn't it?" She watched his jaw clench. "The Chamber. The basilisk. Myrtle. That's all you."
He looked around tentatively, as if he was worried someone was listening in. "Say another word and I'll set the basilisk on you."
"So you don't deny it." She could tell she was getting under his skin, frustrating him to no end. And that made her giddy inside. "How did you do it?"
"Shut up."
"Your threats are empty, Riddle," she said, amused at the way he was counting to ten in his head to keep from pulling a knife on her or something. "How? Why?"
He grinned madly. "The famous Heir of Slytherin has no trouble taming a little snake," he said quietly, fiercely. The way the words fell off his lips with such clarity and ease made Eleanor tremble. "This was only a matter of time, Tippin."
"Is that what this is about? You being the damned heir?" She would have gone on, but Tom whipped his wand out, flinging a spell at her that knocked the breath out of her lungs, and she sputtered up air.
"Don't you dare say a word of that. Not here, not where people can hear you." She finished her coughing fit, turning to see him already on his way out of the common room. "Come with me," he said, and Eleanor could tell from the mere tone of his voice that this was not a request.
This was an order.
She followed Tom out of the dungeons and through massive twists and turns of staircases and corridors before arriving at the one place she wished she never had to see again. "Why are we here?" she asked him, her voice low.
He stepped inside, ushering her in behind him. "It's a shame the little Mudblood chose this room to wipe her tears in—"
"Don't you dare speak about her that way!" Eleanor shouted, a curse bellowing out of her body at Tom from the sheer anger in her heart. Turned away from her and not expecting it at all, he was thrown forward and landed on his stomach. He twisted around, propping himself up on his elbows.
"Here to fight me, are you?" he spat, standing up and towering over her. "I bring you here and that's your response?"
"You brought me to the place where she was murdered."
"No," he said, a sly grin tugging at his lips. "I brought you to where it all began." He spun on his heel, holding out his hand to the large circle of sinks in the bathroom and hissing out incoherent words.
Parseltongue?
When he finished the incantation, the sinks spun downwards with a loud creak, twisting and spreading apart. Eleanor watched in horror as they formed a staircase down into a black void. Tom stood before the staircases, his body still.
"You're a Parselmouth," she said, her voice no louder than a whisper.
"I am, indeed." It seemed that the validation was all he was waiting for, and he started down the staircase, only pausing when he didn't hear footsteps behind him. "You can come down, too, you know. As much as I despise you, I'm in no mood to strike you dead."
She followed him down the staircase, cringing when her shoe set itself in a pool of water as she reached the bottom. It was pitch dark in the chamber, and the only light she saw was from the tip of Tom's wand, illuminating his face only the slightest bit. "Why are you trusting me with this?"
"I don't trust you. I need a witness."
"A witness for what?"
He stopped in his tracks. "If you ask one more question, you can forget about this."
She almost laughed. "It's not like I wanted to be here in the first place."
He rolled his eyes, continuing his trek through the sewer-like passageways. "Letting you help me in the Restricted Section was the worst mistake of my life," he muttered, quietly enough that if there had been any other sounds in the chamber, Eleanor wouldn't have heard it.
He soon stopped, and Eleanor noticed that his wand was now lighting up a large carving of seven snakes, each reaching out and locking whatever was behind them. Tom held his hand out again, letting the Parseltongue do the work for him as the locks opened up one by one. The serpent door swung open, and Tom turned to her, grinning from ear to ear as he walked backwards into the room. "Welcome, Eleanor Tippin," he began as the world around him took shape, "to the Chamber of Secrets."
A terrifying chill ran up her spine at the way he said that, but she refused to take her eyes off of his. He broke their eye contact, turning around and calling out to something within the chamber in Parseltongue: the basilisk, Eleanor realized. "Riddle, what are you doing?"
He paused. "His eyes will be closed. You're safe." He walked further into the chamber, clearing the way for Eleanor to take her first good look at it. The corridor was lined with statues of snakes, and at the end of it sat a large, foreboding statue of a man's face, the long hair of his beard billowing behind him in graceful waves. It was the face of Salazar Slytherin, Eleanor noticed, and she eyed Tom warily.
He looked oddly at home in this chamber, as if he had been here thousands of times in his life, when in reality, it had only been some seven months since he would've even known he could get in. But she also knew that if she were to see the true him—this despicable character he had tried so hard to suppress—she would see it here.
Her breath caught in her throat when a large gate sat at Salazar's mouth opened, and a long, grandiose serpent slithered out, its eyes clenched tightly shut, just as Riddle had asked of it. It was perhaps the first time in a long time that Eleanor had felt pure terror. One mere second of looking into its eyes, and she'd be dead on the floor. This was the monster that had petrified seven students.
This was the monster that killed Myrtle Warren.
It exchanged words with Tom, their conversation lost to Eleanor's lack of knowledge of Parseltongue. She couldn't help but stare at the snake as its body stretched up to the ceiling, at least a few dozen feet in the air. The only thing that finally pulled her attention away from the basilisk was the notebook that Tom had pulled from his robes. He set it down on the ground, his breathing heavy.
He backed up from it, turning to Eleanor with something wild gleaming in his eye. It was the first time she'd seen raw emotion from him, but she didn't like what she saw: nervousness, but in a kind of way that suggested Tom was about to do something she didn't want to understand. "Tippin," he called, and she stiffened at the way her name came out of his mouth. "What I'm about to do... don't stop me. If I'm writhing on this floor in pain, begging you to make it stop... you force me to hold out."
Her voice piped out in no more than a mouse's squeak. "What..."
"I haven't been entirely honest with you," he said, and Eleanor's face paled. "What I'm doing, this mess with the Chamber... it's not about what Salazar would have wanted. It's about what I want. I'm carrying out my duty as much as I am his." There was a mad tone in his voice, something that struck fear into the innermost parts of her soul. "But I can't do this alone, and you're the only one who knows about my heritage."
"What are you saying?" she asked quietly.
"In the coming months, when we begin our sixth year, this school will have a king. And you, Tippin... you will rule at his side as the only person who knows the truth. You do this for me, and I'll get you out of that little mess you and Lestrange got yourselves in last night."
She shook her head in disbelief. He knew. He knew everything about what happened. He had framed her, and he knew it! "I'm not helping you with your twisted games, Riddle."
"Have you forgotten about our vow?" he asked her, and the minute his gaze dropped to her hand, it began burning in an indescribable way. She cried out in pain, the scars on her hand flashing back into existence. "I wouldn't break it now, if I were you."
"You're blackmailing me into doing horrible things," Eleanor said, painfully aware that he already knew what he was doing, and only being reminded of one person.
"No, Eleanor," he purred, stepping closer to her, their faces only inches apart as he smiled darkly at the fear in her eyes, "you're going to be my first follower."
Follower.
"No," she responded, her skin thickening as she understood what exactly was going on here. "I'm under no vow to do what you say, Riddle. I'm only meant to keep your secrets safe. I've done that. What more do you want from me?" He didn't reply. He only turned away from her, stepping closer to the notebook that was dampening from the puddles of water on the floor.
"Like I said... don't stop me. Force me to persevere." And he took his wand out, kneeling down beside the book and touching the tip of his wand to it.
It took Eleanor a moment to recognize what he was preparing to do, but her memories soon swirled with agonizing pain, her screams echoing in her ears as she watched him lower his wand to the item most precious to him. "No," she muttered, her eyes widening. "No, Tom, stop!" His voice rang out quietly as he uttered the incantation, the Latin words flooding Eleanor's senses like thick Legilimency. She ran towards him, but she was forced back by a crackling shield that he had cast wordlessly over himself. "Stop, Tom, please, you're going to kill yourself!"
But she was too late. Tom Riddle withered to the floor, a scream erupting from the deepest pits of his soul. He twitched on the ground, his limbs cracking and twisting in an inhumane way. She was all too familiar with the way his body lashed out on its own, and she watched with wide, horrified eyes as Tom's body was overtaken with Dark Magic. How in the world had he even learned this spell? Where? From whom?
She tried everything to stop him, but no spell she could cast would break through that barrier he had put up. And she hated him, she truly hated Tom Riddle with every part of her being, but she couldn't stop the sobs from raking out of her as she watched someone go through this. Her face was damp with tears as she sunk to her knees, pounding furiously on the invisible shield to no avail. "Stop," she cried, but her voice was weakening. There was no stopping him. Not when he had already begun.
His body stilled for a moment, his wand still pressed firmly against the leather of his notebook. But then he screamed again, and Eleanor watched hopelessly as a blinding glow of light lifted from his body. Tom's hand clenched around his wand as he spurted out curses and groans of intense pain. The world had seemed to crack around Eleanor, the walls she had built up over the past eight years breaking down almost instantly the minute she saw Tom's soul leave his body, the minute she had to relive her time before Ilvermorny.
And as the light sank into the notebook and the space around them calmed, Eleanor's cries echoed around the Chamber of Secrets, filling it with a sense of dread that would spark poignant fear into the hearts of even the darkest of wizards.