Fighting Fate // Mattheo Riddle ♣️

Chapter Thirty-Three - OWLs

Word Count: 2,910.

Warnings: None.

The day before the OWL's were set to take place, I found myself back in the school library, Herbology books splayed out in front of me. Students of Slytherin House had decided not to study that night, throwing a party of sorts. I hadn't joined them, quickly fleeing the Common Room to escape the noise.

The Herbology books sat open in front of me, depicting the plant called Devil's Snare, but I wasn't looking at it. My attention was, instead, back on Credence's journal.

My memory is fading. Not just current events or blackouts in time but memories of my childhood have started to leave me. It was not the most pleasant time in my life, but she seems to feed on my happiest memories.

Instead of taking the memory of the pain of my mother's punishments, she takes everything in between, causing me to draw blanks when I try to remember something good about my time in New York.

If I hadn't told my father everything about my childhood when we were first reunited, I do not think that I would even notice the changes in my memory. That is the scariest part of the situation.

My father, in his attempts to comfort me, has told me that there is no need to remember the past, only to make better memories in the present.

I then asked him why he owned a pub and was not a philosopher. He didn't answer me.

"And here I thought that you were studying," Mattheo's voice drifted through the library.

I looked up, finding that somehow, I was the last person left in the room. Looking up to the clock, I found that I had been here a lot longer than I had originally thought. It was now almost 9pm. Curfew.

"I was," I replied as he approached. I closed the diary and my books in front of me, taking them into my arms. I stood. "And now, since the library is about to be closed. I am going to study in the Common Room."

"Don't you think that you've studied enough?" my boyfriend asked, leaning against the table I was standing at. "You're going to overdo it."

I shook my head, moving around a chair and making for the door. "I've got to get perfect on this Herbology exam or I won't get straight O's -"

Riddle caught my arm, turning me back around to him and bringing his arms around my back to keep me in place.

"You're going to do great," he told me, prying the books from me, including Credence's journal, and placing them down in a pile on the desk behind him.

"So you need to stop studying," he started, taking my hands gently and bringing them up to place them on his shoulders. "Stop reading that diary," he continued, placing his hands on my waist. "And just relax."

I let out a heavy sigh. "I don't know if I can."

He smiled. "I know ways to relax."

I took a finger from his shoulder, pointing it in his face. "We are not having sex," I told him sternly.

Mattheo only laughed lightly. "I was thinking more along the lines of sleep."

I nodded, feeling my eyelids become heavy as he mentioned the prospect of sleep. "That sounds nice."

Riddle sighed. "Come here," he told me, moving his arms tighter around me to bring me into a hug.

I brought my hands around his neck, returning the embrace tightly. Burying my head in his shoulder, I breathed in the scent of my boyfriend. Parchment, leather and that unknown smell that I loved more than the others.