Her Dark Artifice [t.r]

Chapter 4: The Whispers in the Walls

IV

IT WAS A LITTLE OVER A WEEK INTO THE FIRST TERM, AND TOM RIDDLE SLINKED into the Girl's Bathroom like a wraith. Begrudgingly, he discerned a young, lithe female student with brown pigtails leaning over a single sink amidst the grand edifice of sinks situated in the centre of the bathroom and let out a huff of exasperation. The student was crying, her weeps and snuffles echoing throughout the empty space.

"It's after-hours," Tom stated, in a voice so loud and a cadence so smooth it could have been mistaken for pressed velvet.

The girl didn't listen, or perhaps she simply hadn't heard over the sound of her own pitiful wails. Tom inched closer. Judging from her wire-rimmed glasses, Ravenclaw robes and bluntly-cut, dishevelled pigtails, she could have only been none other than Myrtle Warren.

Tom rested a reluctant hand on the Warren girl's shoulder as he leaned in close. "Miss Warren."

Myrtle looked away, embarrassed. She wiped her red nose with the back of her robe. "I-I'm sorry, Tom."

Tom rolled his eyes behind her back - there was always an issue with the Warren girl, even on the first-day back at Hogwarts, she was either getting bullied by Olive Hornby or intentionally targeted by Peeves as he'd grown to realise just how sensitive and susceptible to cruel jibes and jests the young Ravenclaw was.

"I understand something may have happened," said Tom in a honeyed voice, "but you cannot be here after-hours. It is against school rules, and as a prefect it is my duty to report rule-breakers or to - and I hope it shall never come to this - punish them myself."

Tom noticed - and revelled - in the way Myrtle froze like a prey creature and seemed to cower beneath his towering frame like a shadow drowned out by a glowering light.

"Are you going to punish me?"

"Not today, Miss Warren."

Myrtle cast a fleeting look up at Tom. He stood like an apotheosis, as if the hapless muggleborn Myrtle Warren were his inferior, the uncomely subject to a false, kingly presence.

Like a petrified dormouse, Myrtle scurried away out of the Girl's Bathroom without another word.

He raised his wand.

Lumos, he thought.

At the sight of the serpent engravings around the sink, Tom lit up like a glave. How had he overlooked it all these years? It was hidden in plain sight. He looked on with pure adulation then spun on his heel to cast a quick, non-verbal silencing charm on the bathroom and a jinx to prevent any other wandering students from entering until he had done what he was there to do.

*

Tom Riddle arrived at the prefects meeting considerably later than the rest. He entered the charms classroom used as a makeshift meeting room sporting a coy smile, brushing his dark hair out of his face.