𝖒𝖚𝖉𝖇𝖑𝖔𝖔𝖉 ~ 𝕋𝕠𝕞 ℝ𝕚𝕕𝕕𝕝𝕖

TWELVE || LOST

For the second time that day, I woke up on the ground somewhere unfamiliar. Scratch that, I knew where I was - lying on the seventh floor!

Memories came flooding back.

Prefect duty, Malfoy, the disappearing room, the Knights of Walpurgis, Riddle, the Cruciatus curse... Obliviate.

It didn't work, though.

I was finally free, and Riddle thought I knew nothing. Beaming, I hurried back to the Hufflepuff dormitories, and tapped the rhythm onto the barrels.

"Penny! Penny! You won't believe what happened during patrols." I exclaimed, poking her.

"What-do-you-want-Evelyn? Leave me alone, I wanna sleep!" She mumbled, turning around.

"No seriously wake up. This is really important." I said solemnly.

She groaned and sat up, rubbing her eyes. "Okay... What?"

"So you know I had to patrol tonight, right?"

"Yeah."

"Guess who it was with!?"

"I don't know... Tom Riddle?" She laughed. "Nevermind, you don't have such good luck."

"..."

She suddenly perked up.

"Wait, you're with Tom freaking Riddle for the rest of the bloody year? I'm so jealous! What did you talk about? Did anything interesting happen? Did you kiss -?"

" - Trust me, the last thing that we did was kiss. Anyways we were walking, right? Then I saw Malfoy - yes Malfoy - dart into a corridor on the seventh floor. I followed him because you know me - always taking points off of annoying Slytherins! When I got to the place I last saw him, it was a dead end. I went all Holmes ('Ugh, get over that already!'), - never - and guess-what-guess-what!?"

"What!? Tell me!"

"Where there used to be a plain wall, there was now a d-"

I stopped. If Riddle found out I had told Penny, I knew he would find a way to contradict the rumour. He would lie. Almost every teacher would believe him, no questions asked. Penny had a loud mouth, and she had never kept a single secret in her life.

In the back of my head, I knew that Riddle would kill me if anyone found out about the Knights.

What scared me more, though, were the visions. I may have been hallucinating, but whatever they were, they weren't just a meaningless nightmare.

Who was Voldemort?

.

.

.

For the first time in my life, I was constantly poring over tens of books at a time in the library. I snuck into the restricted section a good seven times over a span of three weeks, receiving at least twenty detentions.

Penny started ignoring me after week number two, because I was completely neglecting her. I hadn't attempted to apologize yet, because I wasn't finished.

I needed to know!

It would all be worth it though. Barely acknowledging my schoolwork, I spent hours looking through translations.

I found out that in French, Voldemort means flight of death. Fear of death. Purge of death. Immortality, in other words.

Who was the baby with a scar? Why did it look like a lightning-bolt?

I studied disformalities and blemishes caused by dark curses. There was nothing about a scar shaped like that.

How about the snake-man (?); I could tell he was at least partly human. He was holding a familiar looking wand, but I couldn't quite tell where I remembered it from. Everything was so... so - frustrating.

The snake-man, Voldemort, the random objects, the baby, the wand, immortality... Riddle - how were they all connected?

I flipped through Magick Moste Evile, hoping to find something about anything by then.

I yawned loudly as I kept reading. Checking my watch, I sighed. It was late. The library was closing soon, and not even a disillusionment charm would save me from the wrath of Madam Pince.

I skimmed through a page describing a spell that would turn you inside-out, and tried not to look at the ridiculously detailed sketch of the process beside it.

Then, I saw it. It was written with a red underlining at the top of the page: Immortality.

Finally!

"Of the Horcrux, wickedest of magical inventions, we shall not speak nor give direction -" Seriously? Godelot would write all about spells that plucked off your nails and turned you inside out, but wouldn't tell me about a measly - what was it called again (?) - Horcrux.

What was so wicked about immortality?