"I don't know, she just did," Avalon grumbled, speeding her pace to try and keep up with Riddle as they made their way towards the Room of Requirement.
"That doesn't make any sense," he said, the frustration evident in his face. "How did Shacklebolt already figure out how to turn the goblet into a fox? I doubt that Lestrange gave her any help."
"No, she's been working alone," she said. After abruptly leaving Xavier the night prior at the Quidditch party, Avalon had been worried that he would be upset with her today. But when she saw him in classes, he was back to his usual self-- spinning her around the moment he saw her and placing a kiss on her cheek every chance he got.
"Then how did she finish the project?" Riddle asked, persistent.
"How many times do I have to say I don't know before you get it through your head?" she groaned. "We have to figure it out. We have less than two weeks before it's due."
"You think I don't know that?" he snapped back, stopping when they got to the entrance of the Room. The door appeared as they arrived, Tom having conjured it just in time for him to open the entrance and motion for her to enter as soon as they reached the wall.
When she stepped inside, she saw the usual setup that they always had-- the couches, armchairs, table... but a small addition atop the side table near where she usually sat brought a tiny smile onto her lips.
A record player and one singular record.
Riddle was already walking towards the table where he always sat, dropping his things atop it without another word, but she was busy examining the record atop the player. She felt a tiny bit of pride as she picked it up and noticed that it was a copy of Vivaldi's Four Seasons: the same one she had played for him earlier.
Usually, when they came to the Room, she would conjure the record player once they arrived and he would make it abundantly clear that he didn't want to listen to her 'muggle-music.' They would bicker back and forth for a few minutes before he would give in and allow her to play it, but only if she played Vivaldi.
But, this time, it was already there. She bit back a smile before looking towards him. He wasn't paying her any attention, his head already buried deep into his book as he glanced between the words on the pages and the coin placed before him. It took a few moments for him to notice her watching him, and when he looked up and saw her grinning, he raised an eyebrow, confused. "What is it, Hendrix?"
"The record player."
"What of it?"
"I didn't have to conjure it today. It was here when we arrived," she observed, a slight smile playing on her lips.
"And?" he asked. "You were going to conjure it one way or another."
"I think you secretly like my music," she said, her smirk widening as he rolled his eyes. "Admit it! You actually enjoy it."
"Without the music, I'm forced to listen to you incessantly tap your foot, or your quill, or the table. Unfortunately, this is preferred," he grumbled, but his words did nothing to change her already made up mind. She had decided that he didn't hate her music nearly as much as he wanted to let on. Never in a million years did she think Tom Riddle would be listening to muggle music, but here they were. "Are you going to do any work, or just stand there?"
She walked to the record player and put the album atop it, her smile never leaving her lips as she placed the needle onto the vinyl and began playing the music before making her way over to the table, sitting across from Riddle as she pulled out her wand and began focusing on the coin before her.
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Riddle twirling his wand between his fingers. She had noticed that he had a tendency to absentmindedly weave it through his grasp when he worked, perfectly managing to balance it throughout his touch as he twirled it with ease.
He had several habits that she had picked up on through the long days she'd spent with him in the Room: he tugged at his hair when he was frustrated, he spun his wand constantly, and he had to smooth out any bent corners on the pages of books he read.
Despite his horrific attitude, when they were alone together, she still caught glimpses into his inherent normalcy. If she didn't know any better, she would almost forget that this was the same boy who would one day go on to become the most dangerous Dark wizard that had ever lived. As she watched him twirl his wand between his fingers, he seemed just like any other student-- he seemed almost ordinary.
Sometimes, she found herself thinking about how much of a waste he was. A waste of a life that would otherwise be filled with so much potential. Riddle was capable of a lot, she would give him that. He was capable of being charming, he was capable of intellect beyond most students' abilities, and he was capable of doing the right thing-- he had proven that to her when he took her side at Hogsmeade. It was a shame that he would lose himself to the dark.
A complete waste.
Little time had passed since Hogsmeade when she'd not had the dark-haired boy on her mind-- it was hard for her to stop thinking about why he had been so ready to jump into battle alongside her. She found herself wondering what Tom Riddle could have become had he not been destined to stray so far from his own humanity. He was a brilliant wizard, there was no denying that, and she couldn't help but think about how he could have made an amazing addition to the Order...
Of course, without Riddle, there would be no need for the Order to even exist. And she kept reminding herself that he was the reason for all of the pain she had experienced, all of the loss she had dealt with, and all of the hurt she had been through.
And, yet, despite all of that, he had still aided her in combat. Perhaps it was only to save face-- letting her fight alone would have surely harmed his perfectly crafted facade of a personality. And if there was one thing she knew, it was that he would do anything to protect his reputation.
Or maybe, he was merely looking for an excuse to be able to let go of all his usual restraints and be able to truly unleash his potential in battle. He had looked so at home in the middle of the duel-- maybe he had only wanted a reason to allow himself to be freed into a warzone without the confines of a classroom setting.
But, no matter how much she thought about it, she could never truly shake the knowledge that he had, whether she wanted to accept it or not, directly put himself in the line of a Killing Curse to protect her. She could ignore it all she wanted, but the fact of the matter was that she owed her life to Riddle.
How ironic, she thought to herself with a laugh. After Voldemort nearly being the cause of her death for years, he had finally done something good.
Her thoughts were interrupted when she felt her wand fall from her fingers and drop onto the table. She hadn't noticed that she had absentmindedly been attempting to mirror the way Riddle twirled his wand between his fingers. His eyes just barely glanced up at the sound, and a subtle smirk wrote onto his lips before he asked, "Copying me?"
She felt her cheeks flush as she narrowed her eyes on him, scoffing, "I didn't realize only you were allowed to twirl a wand."
A light laugh escaped his lips before he returned his attention back to the book before him, speaking without meeting her eyes when he said, "The key is to never let it get past your index finger."
She rolled her eyes and flipped the page in front of her, scanning the words and hoping to find new secrets hidden amid them that could help her crack the secret of the spell they were attempting. A few moments passed, but her curiosity got the best of her when she picked her wand back up and quietly tried twirling it again, this time not letting it go past her index finger.
She tried to bite back the smile on her lips when she succeeded, but as he paused from his reading to steal a glance at her, he was still able to catch a glimpse of the satisfaction written across her face.
With a newfound sense of accomplishment, she pointed her wand to the coin and attempted to turn it into a living creature, once again, for what felt like the millionth time.
But, this time, as her wand moved through the air, two tiny bird feet sprouted out of the little golden nugget and began scrambling around the table in lopsided circles. Her eyes widened as large as they could humanly go and her jaw dropped near a meter onto the floor as she stood up, her chair flying backward in her fit of elation, and she began pointing excitedly at the moving object. "Holy shit," she said under her breath before repeating loudly, "Holy fucking shit!"
He opened his mouth to scold her for her vulgarity, but then his eyes landed on the hybrid lifeform she had created on the table and his dark eyes locked onto her as she clapped her hands together, her face bearing a grin so wide that he was sure it was making her cheeks hurt. "What did you do differently?" he asked sharply, watching as the coin ran around on the table before them.
"I-I don't know," she said, still smiling to herself as she basked in her improvement.
"What do you mean you don't know?" he inquired, trying to mask the annoyance in his voice.
"I didn't really do anything differently," she admitted as she bent down and propped her chair back up. "I'm not sure what changed."
"You have to have done something different," he pressed. "Just think about it."
"I am thinking about it! I swear I didn't," she said, the smile wiping off her face as she crossed her arms. "Maybe it just needed practice."
"Are you insinuating that I haven't been practicing?"
"Merlin, you take everything the wrong way," she grumbled, pointing her wand at the coin and turning it back into its inanimate form. She could see him wracking his own brain over the fact that he hadn't been the one to have made the discovery, it was written all over the way his fists were clenched and his lips were tightly bound into a subtle downcast frown. "Just be happy that we made some progress." He rolled his eyes, tugging at the ends of his curly hair as he forced his attention back to his book. She continued, "You really can't handle being second best, can you?"
When his eyes met hers, they were strewn with a fury she had rarely seen him expose. "Excuse me?"
"You're such a narcissist that you can't fathom the notion that I was the one to figure this out, correct? The thought of me being able to do something that you can't is beyond you."
"You can't even begin to fathom the things that I am capable of doing. I advise you speak to me with some respect," he hissed, slowly rising from his seat as he spoke.
She leaned forward, placing her hands on the table between them, her gaze unwavering as she met his coffee eyes and smirked, the words dripping off her tongue as she scathingly said, "There's nothing to respect."
The moment the words left her mouth, Avalon felt her body fly backward as a silent force propelled her back into her chair. Tom slowly made his way over to her side of the table, bending down just slightly when he was standing behind her chair so he could speak into her ear, his voice low and threatening. "It wasn't a suggestion."
She sprang back to her feet and spun to face him, her angry face inches from his when she snarled, "Then was it a threat?"
"I don't think you want to find out," he said, his cruel smile growing as he looked down at her.
"I am not afraid of you."
"Then you are a fool."
"Or perhaps you're just not as intimidating as you think you are," she grumbled, beginning to turn her back to him once more when she felt him grab her, his hand grasped tightly around her neck as he held her against him from behind. A shiver ran down her spine when she felt the cold drag of a knife being pressed to her back, its blade just barely grazing her skin as he ran it up the back of her uniform. For once, she didn't dare struggle against him as her slightest movement only made him press the conjured blade closer to her flesh.
Her fingers began to tremble and her knees grew weaker and weaker as her head spun with the memory of the hours she had spent lying face-down on a dark wooden floor as her screams rattled the walls every time her flesh was torn once more by the Death Eater's blade. Yet, this time, there was no Death Eater.
Only Tom Riddle.
His voice was so cold that it terrified her when he spoke. "Aren't I?"
And for once, she had nothing to say back.
"That man in your memories..." he began as he dragged the knife up her back until it rested on the nape of her neck. She couldn't see the sadistic smile that had etched onto his lips, but she could hear the pleasure in his voice when he finished, "He missed a spot."
She wanted to scream. She wanted to shout at him at the top of her lungs. She wanted to turn around and punch him in his sorry face.
She wanted to blast a flash of bright green right into his chest.
But she was frozen.
Her heart was beating so rapidly in her chest that she could nearly feel it in the back of her throat. There was an uneasy pit of nausea in her stomach, but she couldn't even focus on that-- all she could focus on was the blade pressed to her neck. She hadn't ever expected better from Riddle, and yet still, he had found a way to disappoint her.
He pressed the blade harder and harder against her skin and smiled to himself when he finally saw her body tremble beneath him, her terror evident in the way she was shaking against his touch. Just as she thought that the blade was going to pierce into her flesh, she felt its pressure disappear from her body as he stepped back, drawing the knife away from her before he said, "Seemed quite intimidated to me."
Her words still failed her-- she was shocked into a silence. No matter how hard she tried to wrap her head around what had just happened, she could not believe that he-- even he-- could possibly stoop so low. When the blade left her skin, her fear left with it and was instead replaced by a rising pit of anger that began to burn with the force of a million raging wildfires.
"You're all talk, Hendrix," he laughed as he held the knife in his hands, glancing between its silver blade and her neck. "That's your problem, isn't it? You're incapable of keeping your mouth shut, even when it's in your best interest." He paused for a moment before he spat out, "That's probably why you were given those bloody scars in the first place." He noticed the way she clenched her fists and how her entire body tensed when he talked about her scars. She always froze whenever he spoke of them. And, today, he wanted to press her until she was at her breaking point. "Maybe if you could control your own emotions, your back wouldn't be so-"
Before she could even control herself, she turned around, shoved him back, and shouted, "I have them because of you!" She watched the smile linger on his lips as he awaited her outburst. A flash of panic struck her as she realized what she had just said, and she quickly began to backtrack her own words when she added, "I got them because of people like you and your friends who believe in the disgusting fucking ideologies that drive your pathetic life."
It was as though a lightbulb finally went off in his mind as he connected the dots.
Traitor... It finally made sense.
"So you're a blood traitor?" he said, amusement in his tone as his satisfied grin grew wider with the knowledge that he had finally gotten her to spill one of her own secrets. The only time he could see her true colors was when she was angry-- and at that moment, she was harboring so much rage within her that he could practically see her eyes darkening in real-time as she stared him down. Finally, whether she wanted to or not, he was getting her to tear down her own walls and give him peaks into who she truly was.
"I know muggle-born witches and wizards who are ten times the person you will ever be," she snarled, her hazel eyes livid as she glared at him.
"You were carved for those beliefs and yet you still defend mudbloods?" he hissed. "Are you really that dense?"
She couldn't help but laugh, and the sound of it almost caught him off guard. "Dense? Dense?!" Her laughter rang through the room, the sound maniacal and crazed as she narrowed her eyes on him and snarled, "You're a half-blood preaching about blood purity, and yet I'm the dense one?" She saw his grasp tighten on the knife he was holding, the veins on his hands becoming more and more prominent as his hold on the sheath became stiffer. For a moment, she swore she saw his coffee eyes flash crimson as he stared daggers in her direction. His jaw was clenched so hard that she knew it must be paining him to hold his tongue, but at the same time, she knew there was nothing he could say.
He was angry-- and she wasn't even done yet.
"You're so bloody insecure about your own damn self that you've pushed your self-hatred into a hatred for all muggle-borns and forgotten that you're just like them." She rolled her eyes, beginning to walk to the exit. The tension in the room was growing to become too much for her and she didn't want to stay in his company for a second longer. "Do you honestly think your own friends would accept you if they knew the truth about you?" As she got to the door, she placed her hand on the knob before momentarily looking over her shoulder and adding, "It'd be a shame if they found out, wouldn't it?"
Tom didn't even think about his next move-- it happened before he could register what was happening, driven by an insatiable fit of pure rage. His arm shot out and he threw the knife at her, a wave of seething anger coursing through his body as he watched it rip through the air and lodge into the door, just inches away from Avalon's head. She flinched when the blade struck the wood, her breathing uneven and unsteady as she glanced back at him and hissed, "You missed," before opening the door and storming out.
Tom was left alone in the room, his fists clenched so tightly that they were growing white with each passing minute. As an unsettling quiet settled around him, the only sound that punctured the air was the white noise of the needle reaching the end of the record, enveloping him in nothing more than his rage and the lingering ghost of Hendrix's scathing words.
~~Author's Note~~
Surprise, surprise, I'm back! Hope you enjoyed this chapter, lots of Tom content today. Keeping y'all fed even though its nearly 2 AM right now. Love you all! Thanks for the support and until next time, xoxo Daffy