"she was the type of person who'd explain how she was going to stab you in the front before she actually shoved the knife in... and you'd let her.
she'd probably even pass the knife to you so you can shove it in your own chest...and you would."
tom...
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t o m s t u d i e d her in the days that followed. He watched her and how she interacted with his followers. The way she answered the professors during class if she answered them at all. He didn't dare blink whenever she was close to him. He wanted to know who this new person was because no matter how hard he looked, this girl was not Evelyn.
She moved as if she was in a fog. She hesitated when spoken to, and she looked his way when she had missed a question completely. He hated that whatever she had seen, whatever she was not telling him, had affected her so greatly.
And he could tell, from her very first glance after they had been together in that round room, that as much as he had wished, she hadn't thought twice about their kiss. About a kiss that meant nothing to her. A kiss that he kept referring to, even though they hadn't, not really. Was he so desperate that a simple brush of her lips near his mouth was enough to send him spiraling? He felt extra foolish that for weeks after it had happened, it would not leave his mind.
With nothing else taking up his time now except Evelyn, it was difficult to get her out of his head. The cruel part of Tom laughed at her weakness and cursed his own. At least hers had been brought on by suffering and pain. His was brought on by stupidity. And she was always around him as if she had finally let herself be comforted by something and had attached to it. He had been that one. The one that had seen her at her lowest.
Now, every morning until evening, he saw her in its aftermath. They met in every spare moment to discuss his plans for the summer. To go over the real possibility of creating another Horcrux. Evelyn, even in her dissociative state, had extension knowledge on rare artifacts and how best to get away with murder.
Tom had already cornered Slughorn at one of the weekly Slugclub meetings that Evelyn didn't attend. She was invited, but she had mentioned multiple times that she didn't need to suck up to Slughorn every week for him to know she was his best student. Tom had rolled his eyes, but it had made it easier to worm secrets out of the professor, he would tell him anything when they were alone.
Ever since he knew everything that Slughorn knew, Evelyn had been insistent about their plans. Tom had been happy to oblige, he had never felt as close to accomplishing something so grand in all his life, even when he had found the Chamber of Secrets. He found it easy to share his dreams with her, and she found it even easier to tell him when an idea was impossible or just out of his reach. Evelyn, however, never shied away from his need for revenge and world domination.
She seemed to ignore any questions about herself since the incident; anything close to Grindelwald, Dumbledore, or her father was utterly forbidden. Even when her birthday came and passed in February, she still dragged Tom to the library to plan his next task, how exactly he was going to kill his family this summer.
One day in late April, right before exams, she showed up rather excited for their evening meeting. She had papers bunched in her arms, books upon books, and her quills on top. Tom watched as she gracefully plopped everything atop the table.
