"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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e v e l y n h a d drilled into him that the most crucial part of his task was to blend in. Little Hangelton made it easy to go unnoticed. It was a wretched town filled with miserable people, and even in summer, it was covered in a thick, cold fog.
He thought the cloak would be overkill, but there wasn't a single person who wasn't covered head to toe in furs or coats. His hood covered his face, so even if one of the townspeople stopped in their rush to get inside somewhere warm, nobody would see who he was clearly.
He didn't dare use his name when he checked into the inn at the edge of the god-forsaken town, and he didn't dare use a whisper of magic. No one must know he was here. Not even Evelyn, who he wished with all his heart he could send a letter to. Just one telling her he had arrived, that the plan was in action. One that begged for reasons why she hadn't said goodbye to him. One just to read her response.
The smart part of his brain told him he was a fool. The cruel part of his brain told him he was too weak to even think of her. The part of his soul, however, that was filled with Evelyn wanted to know if she cared that he was following her advice.
Tom had spent most of his first night sulking, and in the morning, he decided it was not worth his time to think about her. He needed to focus, and hopefully, this next Horcrux would eliminate any more of this soft Tom that his last had created.
He only needed to listen to her advice this last time, and then he could spend his final year at Hogwarts entirely focused on his future plans. But, as he slipped out from the inn on his second day, he knew, subconsciously, there would be no end to Evelyn unless she were dead. The more Tom thought about it, the less appealing that idea seemed to be.
Why would he want her dead when he still followed her every instruction? He was to stay in town for a couple of days so when the murders happened, there would be no suspicion placed on him. He would leave the morning before the night of the murders, and he would not return again.
The second thing Evelyn had told him to do was to make sure he purchased something. It would be rather suspicious if a traveler were to stay a few days and not enjoy the town. He needed to buy something expensive, to show that he was not just a soldier returning from the muggle war. He was too intact for that to be the case.
And the most important thing, that Evelyn hadn't had to remind him about was not to be recognized. He looked too much like his father, or so he assumed. He had never seen the man, but Evelyn had told him he hadn't gotten any of his mother's family's looks.
Tom walked around the town and knew that Evelyn would have liked it, even in its continuous grey state. Most of the town was made up of antique shops selling old muggle items. Evelyn would have loved the one selling weapons and the other selling clothes.
One held books upon books that made Tom curious enough to stop in, but he didn't get a single thing. It made him unbearably angry looking at the books that didn't move. The worthless information that would have been made better with magic involved. Tom sometimes wished he could pick up a muggle book again to read for enjoyment like when he was a child, but reading what muggles called fantasy would be like reading lies about himself. He knew Evelyn would read one just to make fun of it, but then he remembered the Room of Requirements. Evelyn had collected thousands of books, and he was sure that she could read every book in this shop and keep reading because she loved the power of knowledge. If Evelyn hadn't been so cunning and so ambitious, he was sure she would have been a Ravenclaw.
