eleventh hour [t. riddle]

ii.

september 1944

Heavy is the head that wears the crown.

That was the proverbial nonsense constantly touted by envious inferiors, wasn't it? All great leaders were supposed to struggle with their power— fighting not to let overconfidence and limelight fan the flames of narcissism. It was supposed to take time to find the perfect balance in a leadership role. Rulers needed to fight for respect.

Ismene did not.

Being head girl was actually significantly easier than she had thought it would be.

There was a certain kind of power that came with being head girl. People looked at her differently and talked to her differently. Professors gave her privileges that she hadn't even known were available to her.

Days went by almost leisurely, in some aspects.

There was no need for her to put much effort into her schoolwork, considering that it was simple enough to bore her. She was lightyears ahead of the rest, leaving her plenty of time to do whatever she wanted.

Ismene spent time exploring parts of the castle that somehow, through her six years at Hogwarts, she had never come across.

Passages, corridors, false walls— the founders truly spared no expense in ensuring that no one would ever be able to hold all the secrets of the castle.

Not to mention the prefect bathroom. The shared bathroom in Ismene and Riddle's dorm was nice, but it had nothing on the prefect bathroom. Now that she was the head prefect, essentially, she and Riddle got first priority when it came to choosing when they wanted to request it. She also got any leftover time-slots that none of the other prefects had wanted.

Other privileges were a bit more private.

The texts that Ismene was finally permitted to read in the restricted section were both horrifying and fascinating. Madam Imelda did not much care if Ismene stayed in the section past curfew, but always forced the student to leave once she was tired enough to go to bed. Imelda had warned Ismene that being in the restricted section was both a blessing and a curse. The forbidden knowledge had a habit of hypnotizing students and subsequently desensitizing them to gruesome spells with gory effects. It drew witches and wizards in, cultivating an obsession with darker forms of magic, some of which were barely legal.

It didn't matter. Ismene had seen worse, both in the present and the future. Ismene had done worse.

Being the center of admiration and attention wasn't the best part of all this, but it wasn't something she actively disliked either. She had a few sycophantic prefects who looked up to her in hopes of becoming the next head student. She found that she liked having people around who would do practically anything she said, but simultaneously found it annoying and repulsive that they seemed incapable of thinking for themselves.

Her brother seemed to be keen on avoiding her, as well as ensuring that his friends avoided her too.

He dodged her in corridors, especially when his other Slytherin classmates were around, and ducked his head at any moment that she entered a space he was inhabiting. Corinn laughed every time.

It was a peaceful experience with little variance. It was predictable and boring, and that was all anyone could hope for in times of war.

Yes, this was brilliant. She liked it far more than she thought she would.

In fact, the only part that she actually disliked was constantly having to look over her shoulder for Riddle.

Ismene had always been far ahead, academically speaking, than the rest of her class. There was a certain passive-aggressive competition that Ravenclaws participated in even before they were sorted into the house. It was a mixture of who could be the smartest, most stuck-up, or whatever other idiosyncratic nonsense that Ravenclaws felt the need to compete over. Ismene, now head girl, was the reigning champion by unanimous consensus.