Fighting Fate // Mattheo Riddle ♣️

Chapter Seven - The New Kid

Word Count: 2,642.

Warnings: None.

Deciding not to go to the next class, I made my way up to the Astronomy Tower. Two steps had been taken towards Hagrid's and the thoughts of the meta morphing dog had riddled its way inside my brain, turning me around and away from the forest.

I had lost track of how long my eyes had been locked on one spot. From the top of the Tower, I had the same view of Hogwarts' grounds that I would from the Divination classroom. Just from a different angle. I couldn't fix the exact amount of time I had been in the highest point of Hogwarts but it was long enough to miss the rest of my classes and enough time had passed for darkness to encompass Hogwarts. The stars shone through the clouds.

It must have been a Animagi. There was nothing else, to my knowledge, that would explain a dog turning into a man so easily. Werewolves couldn't transform at will. I knew that for a fact, and even if they could, no werewolf was that small. Harry had seen a black dog following him around. It must have been it. I knew what Animagi looked like, so why was I so doubtful about this man?

Sighing, I leaned against the cold railings of the tower. Is he innocent? Is he here? What is he after? Sirius Black has escaped. The questions were endless but there was only one that repeated itself. One that seemed to stick out. Did he remember me? 

"If you're going to jump, you should hurry it up," someone spoke, their voice breaking the tower's silence. I jumped, turning around quickly, my hands leaving the railing. "It'll be sunrise soon. You don't want someone walking by, do you?"

Standing in front of me was the new kid. The guy Theo had been with yesterday. The boy was leaned against the wall of the entrance to the tower, his hands sitting in pockets on his legs.

There were two things that stood out about the boy. Two things that I noticed. First, it was his scars. His face was littered with tiny white lines. There was one placed across his cheek, much smaller than the others. It was old and had clearly been there a while. Another was sat on his lip. If I couldn't see the clearly healed skin around it, I would assume the scar was a busted lip. This one, like his cheek was small, old, only noticeable when looking directly at it. The third scar was old too, like the rest, but it was much bigger. Much more painful. It fell across his nose diagonally, the ends reaching just below the space between his cheek and his nostril and at the edge of his eye, just missing the eye itself. This scar was bigger, not as compact as the others, but from the whiteness of the skin, it was clear that it wasn't new. It reminded me of Moony's scars, but it looked to have been too deep of a original wound to match Lupin's scratches.

The next thing I noticed was his eyes. They were a dark brown, being almost dark enough that you couldn't see his black pupils without looking at them directly. But it wasn't the colour of them that caught my attention, it was the light in them. You could tell a lot about a person from their eyes. Mine were a dull grey. A colour that had dulled years ago, its light barely noticeable anymore, but whoever this person was, they still had light in their gaze. His eyes still sparkled with adventure. With joy. With hope. I liked it.

"No, I wouldn't," I replied, leaning back against the railings, "But I'm not going to jump. Not thinking about it either."

Kicking off the wall, the boy settled himself beside me, assuming my previous position, looking out at the stars. 

"You're Mattheo, right?" I asked.

He sighed, nodding his head, "Mattheo Riddle at your service." Straightening, he bowed exaggeratingly.

Giggling shortly, I questioned his name, "Mattheo Riddle?" I asked, "as in..."

"The Dark Lord?" He sighed. "Yes. He is my father."