YEAR OF DAMNATION
IV.    First Chord

✶

"It's... a half circle? I reckon this means you've a bowl of soup in the near future."

"Oh, lovely. Things may be looking up for me... what flavour?"

     Something hearty, Dion hoped.

Seven dirtied teacups, a stack of books, and a broken quill were forsaken in favour of the arm's length of parchment flattened against the table of their nook within Section T. The sleeves of Sanyu's cherry red jumper were driven to her elbows in impatience. They had been in the library for ages to complete her tessomancy chart, which consisted of shammed results and theories pulled from compositions older than the castle itself.

Divination was a protrusive subject in its nature; Dion never cared for it. Her aversion came from an innate demand to avoid all things preemptive because the less she worried about the future, the plainer her life became. Perhaps tragedy waited for her in whispers of the stars, but when she craned her neck up, all she saw was a smatter of tender pearls gleaming against a black canvas.

Sanyu tilted her teacup this way and that, searching the blackish dregs for a sign. "Err, lentil?"

"Delightful."

With a defeated sigh, Sanyu let her head droop past her shoulders, calloused, brown hands splayed flat against the oak. Her royal blue nail varnish was chipped on the index finger, gold bracelets knocking into one another with a chime. "The rest of it's rubbish. I've divined Malfoy's imminent death for years now and he's still kicking."

     He deserved such mire. "Divine intervention will find its way and strike him down."

"Y... Yeah," she hesitated, thumbing at a coil of black hair springing from her short plait. "Er. Something like that, yeah."

Dion offered a small, reassuring smile for she hoped each of her wishes would be granted, should fate will it.

A strained one crossed Sanyu's lips until she barked out a laugh, and Dion wondered if she had said something wrong.

"Remind me to never get on your bad side."

"You?" asked Dion, "Never once." The very prospect alarmed her; a world where she viewed Sanyu as any less than splendid would be a vain attempt at life.

Reaching over the table, Sanyu took her cheek between her index finger and thumb and pinched. Dion slumped her head against the book laid in front of her, feigning a dramatic death at the hands of her most valued. Irony. Hilarious.

"I'd squeeze you 'till you popped, if I could."

"I would crumble." Dion lifted her head and brushed the mussed, ivory blonde strands out of her face, then picked at the loose threads of the button on her white blouson. She would have to sew that later.

"Why?"

Dion elongated an arm to shoulder height, glancing sheepishly at her bicep. Most table legs found themselves thicker.

"Eh. You get the point."

"Violent."

"It's out of love."

For a moment, they shared their amusement in silence, eyes glimmering in a way no other could grasp. If they held the stare for any longer, surely they would break out in giggles and Madam Harpis would chastise the girls into next week. Being the more sensible of the two, Sanyu's regard broke just behind Dion, toward the heavy, wooden doors of the library that groaned and clacked against one another upon entry.

Her expression turned sour. "Merlin's beard. Don't look now, here comes Beckham."

Dion did not want to believe it. She peered over her shoulder and winced at the boy that was, indeed, approaching her and Sanyu with a twitching smile.

"I said don't—"

Beckham Maharaj was slim and long and slouched like a blade of wild grass. He enjoyed unnerving Muggle things like microwave ovens and automobiles. His crooked, rectangular glasses sat atop his nose and he kept his eyes pointed down, only lifting his head when he nearly tripped over his own feet. He straightened his blue and bronze tie as he shuffled over, clearing his throat nervously once he stopped next to Dion and Sanyu.

"Hey, Dion," he stuttered out, narrow, brown eyes darting between the pair. His hands wrung in a repetitive manner.

"What am I, chopped liver?" grumbled Sanyu.

"And Sanyu."

"Hello, Beckham," Dion replied, leering at him out of the corner of her eye.

"How are you?" She wished she had responded sooner because then he said, "You know—erm, if you were a triangle, you'd be an acute one."

She stared at him with no attempt to muster up a response for that awful comment. She could not pass it off as if it were the slightest bit witty.

"An acute one—you know, erm, a cute one?"

"A little heavy handed there," Sanyu muttered through a cough.

Dion pretended not to hear her. "Thank you, Beckham."

"Yeah, of course." Grimacing, red flushed the dark tawny of his skin, noticeably deepening the rich colour. "I heard you joined the Alchemy Club? Cheers—well, sort of—Merrick said it was a bunch of Slytherins who're up themselves—and Riddle."

Sanyu snorted, "So, a bunch of Slytherins who're up themselves."

Whatever casted upon Dion's face made him fumble his words.

"They... I heard—he said—some of them might... erm..."

Beckham's voice lowered to a mere whisper and his back hunched even further to get to ear level of Dion and Sanyu, both of whom glanced at each other wearily.

"That some of their families have ties with Grindelwald and his Acolytes. Just based on things he read in the paper—I trust him, he's got good instincts," he hissed, "just—watch out. If any of them give you grief, I-I'll have you covered, you know?"

As it happened, Dion knew of Merrick. He was a mediocre Quidditch player and his vocabulary was composed entirely of vulgarisms and unlettered phrases like, "Bob's your uncle."—not that she was one to clutch her pearls about it.

With utmost patience, a terse smile that surely looked more like a wince crept onto her lips. "Thank you, Beckham. I was not aware Merrick knew how to read."

"Err, best keep your voice down, both of you," piped Sanyu.

"Why?" Dion queried. She was motioned alongside Beckham further behind the bookshelf.

"Who knows who's listening. Weren't Nott's parents...?" Sanyu made a coarse throat-slitting gesture with her thumb that made both Dion and Beckham's faces screw up into cringes. "By Acolytes?"

"And Tom is muggleborn. They are friends."

No matter how many times Beckham failed socially, he just seemed to keep talking; he scratched the back of his neck and tried to shrug off the comment. "I-I dunno, maybe. That's just what I heard. Best to sleep with one eye open, you know? Two wars at once... it's hard to know who to trust."

Dion deadpanned. "If they begin scheming loudly in front of me, I will come straight to you."

"Well, certainly tell a professor first."

This was why she could not entertain him. He was terribly cowardly in every aspect he should have been courageous, and too bold in situations where less gall would benefit him.

"Of course, Beckham."

A long silence superseded her comment. Yet, desperate to continue conversation, he glanced at the watch bound to her wrist by worn, brown leather. "Nice watch. Mechanical watches are fun, you might get some more use if you've got one that's a chronograph, though. I've got a pocket watch—it's a single pusher chronograph with a pin set for the time. They use them in aviation for marking. Fascinating, isn't it?"

In all her life, Dion had never once looked at a watch and wondered if she would be better off with a chronograph instead.

Machinery elicited an intense squirming sensation within her; their metal tendons connected through bolts and screws, steel cage beating with an unforgiving life that did not see, think, or feel. Cold, spiritless things that decimated in moments—the watch, a mere offspring of it.

Part of her wished to express her utter contempt on the subject, but instead, because he was trying to be kind, she said: "My watch tells the time."

"Yeah! I—well, sure. Yeah. It does. Erm..."

"Real fascinating, Beckham," added Sanyu and gave him a sympathetic few claps on the shoulder.

As if he were made of glass and paper, the contact made the frail boy stumble. He chuckled awkwardly and readjusted himself, looking anywhere but the two girls. "Thanks..."

Her eyes grew dry whilst she waited for Beckham to continue the conversation, since she had no desire to do it herself, and her attention swept towards the entrance as the door's iron hinges whinged under the movement. A bustle of students surrounding Tom followed, more than solely members of the club, clad in blacks and browns and every colour stripped of saturation, besides Romulus.

The Knights of Walpurgis approached a table in Section S and booted a bundle of fourth years—well, Antonin booted them with a single starved-animal grin and a few choice words. Probably an insult. Or a threat on their life. They snatched their things and hurried for a table deeper in the library, checking over their shoulders to ensure he would not pounce on them the moment they turned their backs.

Smart kids, Sasha would say with a whistle. Although Dion was hardly old enough to remember, he used to play with Antonin's older brother, Artur, when the Seaver family were still respected purebloods. The boys raced through their grand manor, dangling off wenge bannisters and sneaking into the kitchen before dinner, wicking fingerfuls of sugary custard from desserts.

One time, when their mothers were too focused on gossiping over tea to watch the boys, Artur hurt Sasha. It was one vivid memory Dion could recall from that period of her life, she would have been around 7, Sasha, 15; a scream from the yard—two screams—Artur clutching his arm, blood in the shape of a circlet of teeth, staining the vast green, trailing in veins down his hand, his reddened, irritated knuckles. If she were a bystander, she would have assumed the red only belonged to him. Sasha's purpling, twisted nose and scarlet tinged teeth begged to differ.

Boys will be boys, their mothers chided, cut from the same cream and gold Koldovstoretz robes. A mere wave of the hand to rid the blood and a douse of dittany salve erased the moment from existence. They never found out who struck the other first.

A few months later, the members of Dion's immediate family were casted out as blood traitors for unrelated reasons. She could not help but think Sasha's brutality made it all the more easy for everyone else, except for the Dolohovs, she hoped it made it a harder pill for them to swallow. Or maybe it forced them to sharpen their teeth; whatever Artur was, Antonin became it tenfold.

She could never pinpoint their morals. Not well enough to understand why they did the things they did, anyway. Blood poured from the Dolohovs, and not their own.

"The Knights," she pointed out, voice lowered.

Beckham guffawed with an incredulous dip of his head. "The—? You seriously call them that?"

The tone of his voice miffed her, she whipped her head toward him and mustered up something like a glare. Although the insult was theirs, she could not help but bear it, too, for she saw no issue with the title.

"I—I don't want to be an arse, I just... it's strange there's an entire name for a couple of gits, you know?"

"They're strange," said Sanyu. "Don't think too much about it."

Kostya's voice tickled her sternum, like a distant cough she swallowed down. Nothing but a cacophony of murmurs, unable to pinpoint her words exactly, but she felt her displeasure. Upon her arrival, the wraith's power had been that of a passing thought in the company of others, now she was much livelier.

Dion's own offence came unanimously with her displeasure. If they thought the Knights strange for the name, they must have thought her the dolt that allowed them to wield it. She bristled in embarrassment and turned around to watch the fashionable group as Sanyu and Beckham's conversation drifted into next year's Quidditch World Cup.

Besides the Alchemy Club, Dion recognized the faces surrounding the table tucked within Section S: Abraxas Malfoy, Linnea Carrow, and Sorel Lestrange. Not Knights themselves, but friends of them. Abraxas had his head tipped back, mealy blond strands falling from his comb-over, hooting at something Tom said. It could not have been as funny as the roar of laughter around the table suggested. Even Tom's lips broke into a handsome, wry smile, arms crossed over his chest, leaning back in his chair. He echoed them with a finesse Dion cursed as it did not belong to her.

A familiar knavish curiosity prickled across her skin, burning to test him. To find, for every one of his victories, something he lacked. She swiftly stomped that thought out like water poured over a flame.

Madam Harpis shushed Section S once, but did nothing to silence the chorus. No one ever did anything of worth to them.

Without realising, she caught Romulus' interest, his heavy-lidded blue eyes surveying the way her eyes darted upward. Instead of ignoring her, or whispering mirthfully to Dorian at his elbow like the quirk of his pouty lips suggested he might, he grinned. For all the ways he fitted into the painting around him—a sea of black sleeves and sneers reaching, leaning, grasping for the table's attention—he stood out among them in his pale grey jumper, lilac button down peeking from the collar.

Like an all-knowing character during a play, smiling at the audience from the stage. The other characters continue their lives as they are, but the all-knowing character shares a little secret with the audience.

Dion thought of Kostya's guidance, direction to cast the light in which the Knights saw her. Both enthralled and a bit queasy, she smiled back at him with the same playful arch. She fleetingly glanced at Sanyu and Beckham to see if they had noticed, but they were still engrossed in their conversation. By the time her eyes shot back to their original position, he had returned to his conversation with Dorian as if nothing ever happened.

───────────

Moonlight poured through the bathroom window and reflected off the sink mirror in a light haze. Glass pane spacers slotted dark shadows on Dion's face, breaking it up into even, geometrical sections. Easy to plot, each feature highlighted clearly in the white glow. Her large eyes were jade and turned up at the corners, eyelids hidden under a fold, her nose small and flat, her lips... were lips. Pink and bottom-heavy. Freckles across her nose. A thin scar hidden under her bangs across her hairline. She was disgusted by her inability to detect her father's familial features.

These features melded onto her face to shape who her peers visually knew as Dion. But when she squinted, viewed the shapes as half-focused effigies, her reflection became an easy-to-understand abstraction.

She did not think she was ugly—simply, she had no thoughts at all on the subject. Contours made shapes, and these shapes made Dion, or rather, a husk of "Dion" that cradled the gulf in her marsh of a personhood. A false sense of security that lured people in until she overflowed, flooding. Too much water too fast. Dion always seemed to flood the best things.

She pulled at her cheeks, letting the smidge of fat spring back into place, balled fists falling at her sides before smiling with her teeth. Small and polite so her face did not pinch like her mother once scolded her for. It showed her teeth in a friendly manner, to comfort the nervous and placate the malicious, but it faltered easily and fell back into her terrible, wide-eyed resolve. She wondered what she looked like when she truly smiled; Sanyu said it was cute, but sometimes Sanyu said things just to hear them outloud.

If she rewrote her appearance, she would be a cat with tea cream fur, pointy ears, and a little pink nose. Though, another part of Dion wanted her outsides to match her insides, maybe then people would understand her with a single glance. Soul seen, she would be a dull blade. A scribble with teeth. Halved potential.

She backed away from the mirror and continued with her rounds.

Once a playground of students when the sun was up, the seventh floor corridor became an empty gallery of lives frozen in time; subjects of paintings returned to their quarters, eyes closed and shoulders rounded, sleeping soundly. Black iron lanterns held candles weeping with wax—few were lit, just enough to ward off the darkness while she swept for any students who strayed from their dormitories.

After poor Myrtle Warren was found cold and lifeless in the girl's bathroom the year prior, elder students refrained from venturing alone at night though the perpetrator had, according to Dippet, been caught. First years did not feel the lingering gaze of death, its power diminished, but never gone from those who lived it that long, long year.

Dion syphoned a breath and found herself pacing, wand clutched in her fist until her knuckles went white as the glow emitted from its tip. Shadows licked from flickering flames, kissing her ankles and taking shapes of hunched old women in mounds of cloak trailing behind her and tall, arborous creatures trying to lead her astray. It seemed the older she got, the more she feared the Babayka and Leshy with their ever changing forms.

She pointed her wand outward and scuffled faster, humming a soft hymn she did not remember the name of while she passed Barnabus the Barmy's tapestry for a second time.

Nights like these, she took refuge in the Room of Requirement where the Babayka could not get her and the Leshy were tempted by other unfortunate souls.

"Is something the matter?"

His voice sent Dion's stomach lurching, her breath caught in her throat as a gasp and she spun around, though she already knew the perpetrator from his smooth baritone alone. "Tom."

He was as he always was: statuesque in his beauty, approaching Dion with a fluid grace, as if every stride were choreographed. Dim yellowish light flattered the shapes that made his delicately chiselled features, inkdrop eyes reflecting warmly like bonfire sparks caught in an updraft. The prefect badge pinned to his uniform caught the cool glow of her wand, blinding her momentarily, and she put her spell out with a hot-faced recoil. When she peered at Tom again, his lips were curled with a knowing ease, as if she were threads in a pattern he had already mastered.

The poise in his subtle smile was misplaced—a mug set next to its coaster, staining a coffee ring on the table. He had already insulted her once. She wondered how quick he would do it again.

"Disappointed?" he asked with a tilt of his head.

"No. No..."

"You've been pacing."

"Oh, dear... it seems I have." Dion rubbed at her eyes, shoulders falling. "I thought you took the other half of the floor."

"Indeed. But I happened to hear you dragging your feet—initially, I thought the first years were up to no good again," he paused, glancing at the blank wall across from Barnabus the Barmy and his dancing trolls. "Thankfully, it's a simple misunderstanding."

Tom's eyes, as attentive as they were, spoke louder than his words. He knew about the Room of Requirement. She knew he knew. He knew she knew he knew. If he did not acknowledge it outloud, neither would Dion.

"How unfortunate for me..." If she moped enough, maybe she could steer him away out of sheer obnoxity.

"No need to lament. Why don't I accompany you for your rounds tonight?"

    There went that plan.

"I suppose that would keep me alert."

"Very well, walk with me."

The silhouettes casted on the walls were not as frightening with another, even if her goosebumps sprouted unfortunately in the presence of whom the other was.

Tom was Tom, in all his perplexing not-loveliness, but he was as much of a Knight as he was someone Dion once understood. Her gaze flickered up to his face more often than she could play off as accidental, so she averted her ogling to the candles and their winking flames. They created fantastical images to eyes already longing to be somewhere else, and she raised her hand and chased the shadows in airy waves of her arm, like a serpent over water.

November would come soon and winter would burn terribly white this year. She smelled it in the air and saw it in the birds; when she watched the world, it spoke to her in ways the people could not. Kostya told Dion to channel that when she interacted with the Knights.

    Get your head out of the clouds! Edora yelled somewhere distantly. Dion imagined she would have been pelted with a snowball or a filthy, wet rag had she had the means to.

Tom must have observed her slow drift from the conversation because he suddenly began speaking. "Is there something troubling you?"

"No. Not at all." Her nose twitched.

An innate lie, she had told it more times than she told the truth. She thought if she said it enough, it would become fact, but it proved to only make her feel worse. Right now, it felt like an itch her nails caught and scratched too hard.

He raised his brow in an inquisitive, yet impersonal fashion, the kind people used when examining the price on a loaf of bread only to be sorely dismayed. Long ago, they knew better than to fool each other with pleasantries, maybe she reminded him of that, too.

Everything came spilling out no matter how hard she tried to stifle it.

"I lied. I was thinking about the club. And Sir Garfield—he has been steadily growing more round, I believe someone may be feeding him without my knowledge—but mostly the club."

"Which?"

Dion blinked at him.

"You're in the Duelling Club as well, aren't you?"

How could such an obvious statement make her feel so small? Was that a talent of Tom's or a result of her own modesty? A few weeks ago she may have answered the latter, but now she was not so sure. The urge to prove herself took over.

"Alchemy Club." Dion dropped her arm and gave him a tentative peep from under her lashes. "I have gone through readings regarding alternative methods of immortality, erm, well, barring the Philosopher's Stone."

"I was under the impression Dolohov's question pertained to the method of which Flamel acquired the stone itself."

"It did." The bite in her own voice surprised her. "I simply refuse to believe that he did something so heinous as Antonin implies."

She abandoned her gaze to find someone that did not look so intrigued by her, but all the subjects of paintings remained fast asleep.

The shame of cleaving herself open in front of a person so revered stung in the back of her throat until she went cotton-mouthed. Tom did not say anything, so she continued to speak to recover from the brashness of her conversation. Nothing good ever came to those who let the anger linger, Dion could attest to this.

"Forgive me for that outburst... I would rather not taint my views of other alchemists. Forget I mentioned it, please," she added before he could interject.

The optimism was a comfort to none but her past. Even then, it hardly stuck.

"Don't apologise."

"It was unseemly."

Tom offered a thoughtful frown. "I found it tame compared to other... tendencies of yours."

"My... tendencies...?" she spluttered.

"You're seldom known for outstanding conversation, Seaver."

He had a point and managed to insult her again in the same breath. Once an accident, twice a revelation. Tom Riddle was far from the amiable person he staged to be. Dion wondered if, somehow without her knowledge, he held this animosity for her all these years. She wondered, too, if it was odd she felt emboldened by that thought.

"Nevertheless, there's innate madness within alchemy. All the greats have gone mad; asserting your morality will only disillusion you to the truth and impede on your understanding of the material," he continued.

"It does not have to be that way."

"True innovation often requires a willingness to dabble in madness." A jab at her morality and the commencement of a game Dion never cared to play, by the way his lips curved finely.

Embittered by his sudden interest in terrorising her, she grumbled back, tucking her arms around her middle. "Does that include you, then?"

"Does it?"

"Still debated."

"No." He paused purposefully. "You don't believe I'm mad."

What did he know of her assessments? Tom knew a little girl hidden behind the Owlery telling him to wipe the blood off his mouth, hexing the girls that pulled her hair and boys that tripped her down stairs. She wanted to tell him to clean himself up again, lest someone caught him in the utterly compromising position of being rude.

Dion breathed in sharply through her nose. "You have your compulsions." She paused, too, and decided to lay out the cards of her judgments for him, uninterested in a game of double meanings and guessed intentions. "I believe you are peculiar."

Something flickered in Tom's eyes, his chilly arrogance vanishing. The game was not fun anymore. Dion could hardly say she had played at all.

"Interesting conclusion. Might I ask, how?"

"I figured you would have expected it, since you know so much of my beliefs."

He stared ahead again, muscle jumping in his jaw. "Well? Share your alchemic findings."

As it seemed, the only person allowed to enjoy their victories was Tom. Nonetheless, she gave him what she had. "Taoists believe in a form of internal alchemy achieved through yoga and meditations. If you perfect their techniques, you merge with the rhythms of the Tao and end the cycle of birth and death."

"However."

     Prat.

"However... It is a secluded practice. The only way to confirm would be to... erm, devote myself to years of initiation."

His eyes chased the cross resting in the hollow of her collarbones. "A burdensome thing, devotion."

Her nerves sprang to life with anger, fists clenched at her sides.

Dion had seen his artistry of discreet and sharp contempt when he spoke to those who had earned his scorn. Students out past curfew, few straggling purebloods who had not been so charmed by him. The careful glances at one another, the double-edged statements mistaken for sincerity—was she not graced with this subtlety because he thought her a fool? She stopped in her tracks and turned to face him. He did the same.

"That was very unpleasant of you." she scolded; Not scathing, but firm. Not kind, but merciful. She refrained from everything she could have said.

Tom stared as if he had not heard her right. She frowned to tell him he certainly had.

"To think I would not notice—" A few noncommittal grumbles left her lips and she scuffed the ground with her shoe. "—your audacity..."

"I apologise. I'll make an effort to insult you with my utmost cleverness."

"Thank you." With a huff, she kept walking. "If you must pry, I am far from devoted."

Tom did not argue—his expression upsurged with cool satisfaction, like he understood something about her words she herself did not. She could have been worse. Could have insulted him into an early grave, but she held back because that was the nice thing to do.

There was nothing more to be said during their rounds. Her voice held finality she had not heard leave her lips since the summer of her fourth year. In all her strives of benevolence, he made her trip and blunder without so much as an effort, but she would not allow herself to be the victim of his contempt.

The corridors were empty as they trailed back to the dungeons, familiar passages nearly black next to the slivers of moonlight casting a blue vignette through the few windows that lined the lower levels. Tranquil, besides the soft rustle of Tom's robes and the occasional clang of dishes from the kitchen as the house elves prepared their breakfast for the following morning. Poor things.

They reached the common room in a few painfully taciturn minutes and Dion spotted Sir Garfield seated on a wool blanket, kneading his paws against the thick fabric. She hurried over to him and scooped him into her arms with a laboured grunt.

"What a good boy, keeping watch for those dastardly rats. They fear you, Sir Garfield. I am sure of it," she told him, pressing a kiss to his fluffy, little head. Surely, with those golden saucer eyes of his, he was the cutest cat in all of the universe. "Did anyone give you trouble today?"

Sir Garfield meowed.

"Yes... I assumed you would have dealt with them if that were the case..."

She rested her head against his chest, orange fur tickling her eyelids and the apples of her cheeks. Warm and alive and hers, his heart beat eased her tension. Sir Garfield loved her unconditionally, as did she to him.

Tom cleared his throat, reminding Dion of his presence. Not that she had forgotten it. She gave him a curt nod and crept toward the girl's corridor in a few back paces.

"I will go to bed now. Goodnight."

"Somehow, I thought you were exaggerating his physique," he commented, inclining his chin toward Sir Garfield. It was a biting remark she would ignore for the sake of her reputation, as the sudden urge to throw a cushion at him fizzled in an itch down her arms.

Through a frown of pent-up frustration, Dion replied, "Goodnight, Tom. Sleep well, lest the Babayka get you." And retreated down the corridor, into her bedroom where there were no games to be played and no creatures to follow her.

Behind the door, she set Sir Garfield onto her bed and her feet found themselves pacing without direction, keen on receding the tide of her monstrous wave of irritation. She had once been better composed than him. This thought made her skin feel one size too small, and to relieve it, she thrashed her arms about frantically. So hard, in fact, she tripped over her own feet with a faint squeal and hit the cold slate floor in a heap, wand clattering. She remained face-down in the dark, washed out of her frustration, now left ashamed and self-pitying.

Blankets rustled from the beds and a candle flickered to life. More rustling from another bed. Dion did not bother to move in her utmost misery.

"What was that?" asked Rosemary, words slurred together groggily.

The candle flicked off and Jean's voice whispered back, "Seaver's being odd again. Go back to bed."

One of them, likely Rosemary, groaned and rolled over, falling back to sleep.

Eventually, Dion crawled under her blankets when the smothering warmth called for her and lamented the fact that Tom Riddle was truly unpleasant, that he was capable of kicking down her carefully moulded exterior in a single sentence. He did so gladly.

She knew nothing under the weight of him. She feared he would leave her core sown and scattered for all to see. She feared she wanted to see the same of him, too.

{ ༺✶ } happy halloween... i've given you a fine treat, i'd say. mwhahaha. may all your evilest wishes come true.....

wc: 5102
girlpools / 2024