O R P H I C. [Tom. R × Reader]

33. "You Going to Class?"

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"We've got an hour before class. Are you going to attend classes today?" Tom asks as we enter the Slytherin commons.

"Do we have to?" I ask, desperately hoping he'd say that class wasn't important today.

"I am." He smirks, pushing me by the small of my back to his room.

I set the plate of still warm food on his bedside table before flopping down onto his mattress.

"That's not fair" I grumble.

"I'm not the one that decided to go for a camping trip on a whim" Tom teases, nudging me over so he can sit at the edge of his bed, back slouched over as he runs his hands through his hair, me splayed out behind him.

"Shut up."

"Tell me about it" He turns slightly to let his gaze loom over my face.

I decide to start just after I saw what he'd written in the notebook, not wanting to bring it up.

"I was stressed, partially drunk, and most definitely not thinking straight and Juniper wanted to go for a walk. So I went to the forest because that's where I wanted to go. I followed some old train tracks and a few trails and eventually found Xander in a
mirror—"

"—His name is Alex" Tom interrupts.

"He prefers to go by Xander, which I will respect, because I'm not a bitch. Anyway, before I was rudely interrupted, I broke him out of the mirror, and we found an abandoned greenhouse area thing and slept the night. The next morning, we left as soon as the sun rose, we ran into this cute bunny thing, but Xander wouldn't let me touch it, and sure enough it turned into this tall ugly man who proceeded to taunt Xander as a 'mirror prisoner' and then decided that he wanted to duel us. Juni tried to protect us, biting him, and of course—his venom is fatal, but since death by boomslangs lasts three to five days, the bunny man was still okay, aside from being blinded with pain. He threw the killing curse at him and so I... I-I.." I trail off, hesitation settling into my stomach as I remember what I did.

I used two unforgivable curses, and that was after being encouraged by something Tom had said before he tortured someone who abused me.

I don't want Tom to have the satisfaction of knowing that something he said made me thirsty for vengeance. I don't want to see the smug expression when he realizes that he indirectly made me hurt someone. kill someone. Though he did deserve it..

"You what?" He asks, his gaze pressuring me, pushing me down under his expectations. I stuff a fork with a chunk of nice, warm chicken, dipped in gravy into my mouth, using the time-wasting movement as an excuse so I can think of something to tell him instead of the truth.

"I knocked him out then shoved him into Xander's mirror, repared it, then destroyed the whole thing. I don't know what it did, but I hope he won't be coming back any time soon" I mumble, swallowing the food.
There's a moment of silence as I casually avoid meeting his gaze. I can feel his burning stare. Does he not believe me?

"You killed him." He says. As though realizing something, my gaze widens. How could he know that? He wasn't there! How does he know that I killed him??

"W-what??" I inquire, panicking. He smirks at either my reaction, or the fact that I killed someone. Which one? I'm not sure.

"If you put him in the mirror, fixed the glass, then destroyed the whole thing, it acts sort of as a wormhole, it's a window to a small-spaced dimension. You terminated his very existence. He would have compacted and then exploded" Tom explains, seeming ecstatic.

I let a long sigh, as I let my head fall back onto his fluffy pillows. He doesn't know that I killed him. He doesn't know, I misunderstood. But wait...

How the fuck does he know how the mirror works? And it seems that just the fact of knowing that I killed someone made him smug, although, I'd imagine it'd be a great deal worse if he knew it was because of something he said.

"How do you know how the mirror works?" I look up, studying his expression.

"... I studied it last year" He replies, looking down at me then away again. I watch him for a few seconds. He's lying. After another moment of silence I look away.

"That's cool. Sounds like a fascinating concept" I reply, sitting up and finishing my plate of stolen food.

"Yeah it was. I enjoyed reading about it" He glances at me before standing.

"I'm going to get changed. Your uniform is still here. I cleaned it for you. Are you going to class today?" He asks, pulling his shirt off and for a moment I can't move as I stare helplessly at his beautifully toned and faintly scarred back before he turns around, smirking when he sees where my gaze is fixed.

"A warning would've been nice" I break my gaze away, towards the window.

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