Inseparable

CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

He blinked his eyes open and saw a blurry figure loom above him. He brought one arm up to clutch his chest. It felt empty inside ─ hollow. The ritual must have worked.

'Tom?' Venus asked, 'are you okay.'

'Yeah, sure. Never better,' he replied groggily.

Tom stood up on shaky legs and walked to the diary lying innocently on the floor.

He reached to pick it up, and when he did, he felt a small zap in his finger when he touched it.

The emptiness seemed to dull a bit when he was near the diary. Tom smiled an evil smile knowing that part of his soul was now in the diary. He was now immortal. He could never die.

'Thank you, Venus. You can go now,' Tom said.

He kept staring at the diary as he heard the sound of the basilisk return down the pipes and to the chamber. The rumbling of the stone sinks moving back in place was heard, and Tom knew that the chamber was closed.

Tom looked up and saw Myrtle's dead body lying on the floor. Oh, he thought, he almost forgot about her. He would have to do something about that.

Tom had to find something to blame her murder on. He took a minute to think. There was no need to panic. Just then, he remembered that there was a half giant in his year who had a fondness for strange creatures.

If he could persuade the Professors that Hagrid, he thinks that's his name, let loose a dangerous creature, they could be convinced that it was Hagrid's fault.

There had to be evidence of an attack. There had to be blood. Tom cast a diffindo to cut out some of the flesh on the side of her leg and then her side.

There, it was easy to think that the creature bit her leg, causing her to fall and then bit her side, causing her to bleed to death.

Tom slipped away from the crime scene. All he needed to do now was wait for the body to be found by someone who wasn't himself.

Tom found himself wandering towards the Griffindor tower in search of Hagrid. He cast a disillusionment charm on himself and waited for someone to walk out of the portrait.

When someone left, he snuck in the open door and walked up to the boys dorms. Thankfully they were all empty; the gryffindorks were outside to play in the sunset. Tom went to the room, which had a much larger bed amongst the other regular-sized ones.

Tom walked to Hagrid's bed and began to snoop around in his trunk for some sort of creature. He saw a couple of glass jars with small holes in the lids filled with fireflies, worms and beetles.

No, that wasn't dangerous enough.

Tom continued his search and found a larger container at the bottom of his trunk. In that one, there was a niffler running around.

No, he needed something deadly, which could bite an unsuspecting student. Not a rat that steels shiny things.

Tom decided to check under the bed, and bingo. There it was.

Under the bed there was a large crate. That was bound to have some sort of creature in it. Tom slid it out from under the bed and carefully peeled off the lid.

In the crate, there was a massive spider. Tom quickly cast a petrificus totalus to stop it from moving while he examined it.

It was too large and hairy to be a regular spider ─ it was a foot and a half wide. It had to be an acromantula, but it was way too small to be a fully grown acromantula. It had to be a baby.