The weekend dragged by slowly.
Avalon only left her room once to take a shower, otherwise sitting curled up in her bed while Zelda kept her company. Over time, it became easier for her to speak, and she eventually told her roommate everything that had happened on that godforsaken night.
It helped to talk about it, and thankfully, Zelda was a phenomenal listener. So, they talked, cried, hugged, and sat together as seconds turned to minutes turned to hours turned to days.
There wasn't a word adequate enough to describe how grateful she felt to have Zelda in her life. She valued their friendship more than she could ever dream of describing. In a time where her isolation was her only constant, it was nice to have someone who grounded her-- who reminded her that she mattered to someone.
After the first night, Avalon insisted that she felt okay enough to sleep on her own. But, for the first time in ages, that night... she finally had a new nightmare.
Every time she closed her eyes, she saw green.
Green eyes.
Green magic.
It was always green.
Come Monday, she had deep-set circles forming beneath her tired eyes from lack of sleep. Getting out of bed was hard, but Zelda made sure to bring her breakfast and coffee-- with cream and sugar, of course-- to help make it easier.
She dressed herself slowly, making sure her sleeves covered the purple bruises littered along her wrists, but avoided looking into a mirror the entire time. Her own reflection felt foreign to her. She didn't want to see it.
She dreaded going to class. The thought of having to come face to face with him made her skin crawl. Zelda had told her that he was in the hospital, but that had been days ago, and she hadn't heard of him since.
Word had spread that Lestrange had 'fallen off the moving stairwells.'
Apparently, it was some massive freak accident caused by 'his excessive alcohol consumption.'
Fury. Dark coffee eyes. Furious.
She knew better than to believe that it had been an accident.
It didn't make sense to her. It didn't make sense why Riddle would have stepped in, or why his eyes would hold so much rage, or why he would try to take care of her after. It didn't make sense how he seemed angrier at Lestrange than he had ever been at her, even when she had invaded his mind, even when she had dueled him, even when she had brought up that he was a half-blood.
She didn't know what he had done to Lestrange, but she didn't doubt his involvement in the boy's hospitalization.
But, why?
That was the question that had been on her mind all weekend.
Admittedly, finding the Horcruxes had not been a priority for her over the past few days. But, as she thought about Tom, she couldn't help but admit that he had complicated things. Whether she wanted to accept it or not, he had confused her.
And for the first time, thinking about having to kill him almost caused her to throw up again.
"Are you ready, love?" Zelda asked, breaking her out of her thoughts.
Slowly, she nodded, picking up her book bag and walking out the door, her roommate at her side the entire way to class. When they arrived, they made sure to sit right in the front of the room, as far away from where the boys typically sat in the back.
Riddle and Rosier arrived together a few minutes after. She could feel Riddle's eyes trying to catch hers as he walked by her and Zelda's table, but she made sure to keep her gaze down, focusing on her book until she heard the two of them take their seats far behind her.
She could feel her heartbeat in the back of her throat as she waited to see if the third boy would show up. She waited and waited and waited...
But class started.
He was nowhere to be seen.
Merrythought taught a lesson about Merlin-knows-what. Avalon wasn't paying attention-- she couldn't. And she couldn't shake the feeling of Riddle's eyes drilling holes into the back of her head all throughout the class, either.
Despite usually being one of the first people to raise his hand and answer the professor's questions, Riddle was uncharacteristically quiet as the lesson dragged on. Even Zelda was silent, leaving Merrythought forced to call on random students as the two most vocal pupils kept to themselves for once.
Avalon's eyes focused on the hourglass in front of the room. It felt as though time was passing in slow-motion, each grain of sand falling down like a drop of sweet molasses. It nearly drove her mad.
Though, eventually, class came to an end. She didn't have to pack her things back up-- she had never taken them out of her bag to begin with.
She stood by and waited as Zelda neatly packed her notes before the two of them started to leave the class.
"Hendrix," she heard Riddle's voice call out. She knew that she would have to face him eventually, but she couldn't do it right now. Not now. Not there. She quickened her pace and kept walking. "Avalon!" She heard his footsteps approaching and soon enough, he had strode in front of her, blocking her path. Zelda looked between the two of them, ready to intervene if needed, but Avalon remained expressionless as she looked up and her eyes met his.
A part of her felt like she owed him a thank you-- the rest of her refused to owe anything to the future Dark Lord. It was an odd feeling, to be indebted to the person who stole everything from her. And it was tearing her apart inside thinking about it.
"We need to talk," he said, a sense of urgency in both his tone and his eyes.
That was true, they did. But, she wasn't ready.
Not yet, at least.
She kept his gaze for just a moment longer before looking straight ahead and stepping past him. He began to try to follow her, but Zelda grabbed his wrist, giving him a stern look before saying, "She'll come around when she's ready."
He wanted to disregard Shacklebolt's words, but he chose to watch as the two roommates scurried out of the classroom, blending in with the crowd in the hallway as they began their descent down the castle grounds.
The two of them began their journey to their next class, walking in silence as the world around them echoed with laughter and chatter from their peers. Hearing so much joy around her... it was unsettling.
Her world had come crashing down three nights ago.
She had almost forgotten that the rest of the world had not.
"Ava!"
Orion pushed past several people in the halls, trying to reach Avalon and Zelda. She debated ignoring him-- admittedly, she wanted to.
She was doubting every single relationship that she had with those boys. If she had been so morbidly wrong about one of them, how could she know that she wasn't going to get hurt by the others?
The line between good and evil had never been so blurred for her before and it scared her near to death. Avalon had always taken pride in her judgement of character. For years now, her life had relied on her ability to know who to trust and who to not. She had survived a war, survived hiding, and survived every obstacle thrown her way because she knew who she could place her faith in.
Until now.
"Hey," he panted out as he reached them, the smile on his face contorting into a subtle look of confusion when he noticed her dark circles and bloodshot eyes. "I've been looking for you for days."
Zelda shot Avalon a look, as if asking if she should tell Avery to go away, but Avalon quietly muttered out, "I'll catch up with you in class, Z."
Her roommate nodded, but she eyed Avery suspiciously before saying, "I'll save you a seat," and leaving the two of them alone.
Orion's eyes narrowed on her as he took in her tired appearance. "How are you feeling?" She didn't know how to answer that, so she didn't. He noted her silence before he continued to speak. "I've looked for you at mealtimes, but you weren't there."
"I've been in my room," she muttered, her voice so quiet that it made him uneasy. She wasn't acting like herself, and it worried him.
"I haven't seen you in the Hospital Wing... I'm going to go check back up on Xavier after classes, if you'd like to join me." His eyes floated down to her hands before he gently took them into his own and pried her fingers out of her palms, unraveling them before she could dig any further into her skin-- she hadn't even noticed she had been doing that. "I know this must be tough for you, but he'll be better soon. Madam Bardot will-"
"I have to go," she suddenly said, pulling her hand away from his grasp and trying to push past him.
"Woah, woah," he called out, quickly blocking her path. His eyes were wide, as if afraid he had said something wrong. "What's wrong?"
He looked so genuinely hurt that she almost debated telling him everything right then and there, but she decided not to. It still wasn't clear to her who was and who wasn't a genuine friend to her-- as much as she wanted to push the thought to the side, she was even beginning to worry that Orion was only using her for some ulterior motive.
It was hard to tell.
Nothing made sense.
So, she just muttered out once more, "I have to go," and quickly walked away, ignoring him as he called out to her once more while she slipped into the crowd.
------
Three more days passed without any sign of Lestrange returning to class. This marked six days of him being in the hospital.
Six whole days.
She began to wonder what exactly Riddle had done to him. Broken bones could be fixed overnight-- his prolonged stay had to be due to something else, entirely. A small part of her didn't want to know, but a greater part wanted every goddamn detail.
It had been nearly a week since the party, but the memory still plagued her mind every time she closed her eyes. But, what was even worse was the way she constantly had to think about how she owed her safety to none other than Tom Riddle.
The man who killed her friends. The man who killed her professors. The man who killed her classmates.
The boy who saved her.
She tried not to think about it, telling herself that one good action did not negate the horrors he would one day commit under his next name. But that excuse was becoming a lot harder for her to rationalize nowadays.
She was sitting at the Ravenclaw table at dinnertime with Zelda while her roommate spoke about homework assignments. Avalon was only partially listening, but Zelda didn't mind-- she was just glad to see her roommate finally leaving their dorm.
Her plate of food remained untouched before her, and she had to be reminded to eat on several occasions before she would reluctantly shove a small morsel into her mouth and return to staring blankly at the space before her.
For a moment, her gaze trailed up and she caught Riddle's stare. He didn't look away when their eyes met. In the past few days, she had constantly caught him looking her way, but that's all he did. He didn't push her to speak to him, and he seemed to be giving her space, which she definitely needed. But, every time she looked at him, she felt a pit of nausea rise into her stomach. She couldn't look at him without thinking about her mission... and that made her feel sick.
She lost her already absent appetite.
Quietly, she stood up. Zelda stopped mid-sentence, watching her as she got to her feet. "Are you alright?"
Avalon nodded absentmindedly. "Yes... I'm sorry. I just want to go back to our room."
"No need to apologize, love. Do you want me to come with you?"
"It's alright. I think I just need a little time to myself," she admitted.
"Of course," her roommate smiled. "I love you, I'll see you back in the room after I finish dinner."
"I love you, too. I'll see you there," she said, forcing a soft smile before making her way out of the Great Hall.
With most of the students busy at dinner, the hallways were empty as Avalon made her way towards the stairwell. She absentmindedly hummed Vivaldi to herself as she walked, just loud enough so she could fill her ears with anything but the sound of the silence.
She began to climb up the stairs, making her way towards Ravenclaw Tower, when she noticed the sound of footsteps coming down.
Their gazes met for only an instant as he walked down the stairs and she went up, but in that moment, it felt as though time came to a halt.
Empty. Green eyes. Soulless.
He looked away almost immediately and continued his descent, the muscles in his jaw twitching ever so slightly, yet he kept his mouth shut and walked without saying a single word to her. Still, she paused on that stairwell, suddenly frozen in her own thoughts.
He had looked like a walking corpse.
His eyes were sunken, his cheeks hollowed out and skeletal, and his skin devoid of any hint of color that had ever graced his features.
She couldn't shake the image of his eyes out of her head. Those eyes... she would know those eyes anywhere.
Those were the eyes of someone who had been tortured under the Cruciatus Curse.
She had looked into Hermione's eyes for months and seen the same thing: hollow, vacant, absent.
Hermione.
The brightest witch, the brightest mind that she had ever known-- destroyed by Voldemort and his fucking followers.
Her body whipped around just in time to see Lestrange slip into the shadows of the hallway, turning a corner without ever looking back to meet her gaze... and she felt her breathing growing heavy.
Hermione.
The strongest friend she'd ever had-- destined to a fate even worse than what Lestrange had to endure.
Hermione.
The first friend she ever made at Hogwarts, and one of the last people she had to watch wither away before her eyes.
Avalon couldn't help but clench her fists as she stared at the spot where Lestrange had just slipped off into. A sense of newfound purpose entered her once more as she thought about her friend back in her own time.
Hermione's fate rested in her hands.
All of their fates rested in her hands.
And she wasn't going to let a spoiled wealthy bastard come between her and her mission. She wasn't going to let herself be weakened by a pathetic boy and his selfish nature. She had been through war and survived. She was a survivor, then, now, always.
And she was angry.
She was fucking angry.
Author's Note
This honestly might be the most reasonable time Kat and I have finished a chapter in ages. 1 am? Not too shabby considering we are back with yet another daily upload! I hope y'all are enjoying the story. You've been going OFF with the comments recently. 700+ comments on chapter 27 was INSANE. Thank you thank you thank you from the bottom of my heart!
In the spirit of the holidays, we're going to try and make sure to keep giving y'all constant updates, so stay tuned for more of Tom and Avalon's story in the near future. We love you all so much! Until next time, xoxo Daffy