the end, again - tom riddle

chapter six

A/N: Hello! The plot will start to pick up by next chapter, I just didn't want to shove too many things into one.

This story is also posted on A03 and I forgot that I can't list the warnings in the tags here the same way I do there. So, for now I'd like to warn for general mature themes including violence, language, alcohol/substance usage, and future smut. I'll add these to the first chapter too.

Thank you for reading!

Edited: 2/13/22

October 17th, 1951.

The rest of the month passed in a blur for Mara. Wake up, take a hangover relief potion, breakfast, teach, lunch, teach, dinner, drink, repeat. Over and over and over again until she could barely tell the difference between the days. She'd gotten up one morning to teach thinking it was a Thursday when in reality it had been a Saturday.

It wasn't all that bad though. She found a bar purely for witches seeking the...attention...of other witches, something she hadn't been able to find through the four and a half months she'd been in the 50's.

Well, she had that going for her and the new elf wine Abraxas had started sending her. She knew of elf wine, of course, but she had never felt particularly inclined to go out of her way to buy it herself. If Draco was hosting a dinner and was serving it, it wasn't like she'd say no. It just wasn't her favorite thing.

But Abraxas' had something in it that made her drunk and loopy after just four glasses. She didn't know where he got it from and she didn't care. She just knew that he had started sending her letters and once a week he'd send her a new bottle with an occasional invite to brunch with his wife. In fact, the wine he had sent her for this week was sitting on the small table in her room, daring her to have just one small glass before dueling club in ten minutes.

The wine cup was already out, too. She could have just a few sips.

But no. She couldn't. Today was demonstration day with Riddle. Today of all days should not be the day she shows up even the slightest bit tipsy to the club. And that brought her to another thought, the dueling club needed an actual name. All they had been saying was 'The DC' or simply 'dueling club'. Who could brag about the club with a name like that?

Sighing, she rose from where she had been laying on her bed. A walk would do her some good. It would help give her mind something else to do.

When she was in the courtyard, she relished in the still slightly warm weather the early autumn months had to offer. Soon it would be freezing and she would be wrapped in so many layers that she wouldn't be able to feel the wind on her face.

She hummed as she walked in a circle around the border of the courtyard, watching the students chatter and laugh as they did whatever it was they liked to do. There was a group of Ravenclaws spread out on the grass with pencils moving rapidly over pieces of parchment. She had seen them once before and watched as they drew the most magnificent pictures of whatever caught their interest. Some days it was portraits of each other, some days it was detailed images of the landscape, but most days it was whatever random image their mind was fixated on.

There was a group of Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors laughing so hard at something that she could hear it from the opposite end of the courtyard. One girl was having trouble breathing as she laughed, and Mara watched as she turned a deep shade of red. As she watched, she felt a prick in her mind as she thought about how similar the girl and Daphne looked when their face was red from joy.

In a secluded corner sat a pair of Slytherins that were always so attached to each other, it grossed Mara out sometimes. She normally wasn't one to be that professor who never let couples be near each other, but she found herself yelling at those two more and more for their very public displays of affection. It was not necessary for her to walk down a corridor in a good mood and leave horrified from the wandering hands and way too much tongue being used.