Surviving Fate // Mattheo Riddle ♣️

Chapter Ten - The Vanishing Cabinet

Word Count: 3,030 words.

Warnings: None. 

"Here it is," Draco called out, pulling a large sheet away to reveal the object we were looking for. The Vanishing Cabinet.

"Are you sure?" Riddle asked him, approaching the towering structure.

"Positive. I saw the twin in Borgin and Burkes. This is it," the blonde replied.

"Alright. Let's figure out exactly what's wrong with the thing so that we can narrow down the search for the repair enchantments," Riddle ordered. "Then we can head down to the library and look for spells to use."

I watched him as the Slytherin began to examine the cabinet in front of him. I had never seen him like this. Giving out orders. Orders that made him sound like someone else. They didn't sound like his words, the steps he told us to follow. They seemed like a script. As though he was repeating something that someone else had said.

I laughed lightly at my own thoughts. If that was the case, were any of his words true? Or were they all prewritten?

"Something to say?" Riddle asked me, turning around.

I shook my head. "You just... you sound like someone else."

He perked a brow. "Someone else?"

"You're ordering us around like we're your obedient servants."

"I'm doing what the Dark Lord has told us to," he tried, voice becoming rougher.

"You forget that not all of us want the same thing as him," I replied.

"I don't want the same thing –"

"So what is that you want Riddle?" I cut him off, asking a question.

"To survive," he told me after a moment's hesitation.

"Guys, I don't think it's the best time for an argument," Draco spoke up.

I turned my head to Draco. "You're right, and if I have to watch this guy ordering us around any longer, I might snap at him," I told my cousin.

Riddle hadn't torn his gaze from mine, and I brought mine back to the Slytherin. "I'm going to the Library."

"Good idea," Draco told me. "You can get a head start on spells for repairing this."

I nodded slowly. "Is that alright... sir?" I asked the boy in front of me.

"Lyra," Riddle started, taking my arm gently.

It happened again. One minute, I was in the Room of Requirement and the next my world was submerged into darkness. Moments later, I was in Malfoy Manor.

Riddle sat with his father at the long table in the house. Voldemort was talking to him.

"You must spy on the girl," he told his son.

"I cannot," Riddle replied.

"And why not?" The Dark Lord's tone turned bitter.

"She'll notice," he told the man before him, bowing his head. "Lyra is inquisitive. She is already starting to notice that there are things I don't tell her about. Things I cannot tell her about."

"All you have to do," Voldemort told him. "Is tell me where she is and what she is doing. I need to know who she is with and if you know who they are or not. That is all."

"I don't –"

"You will do it," he snapped, Riddle jolting in fear. "Or you know what will happen."

From beside me, Nagini moved her way up the table, snapping her fangs at the boy I knew.