A dangerous game

Chapter five

Tom Riddle was looking at me with his intense blue eyes. I held the contact for approximately a few seconds, because I had to look away from his eyes. Even though I was not looking at them anymore, I could still feel the burn from his eyes moving over my body, it made my cheeks heat up.

How come that this boy had such an effect on me even though we never even talked before? It made me feel uneasy and it felt like I had lost all control and balance that I had just regained.

I started eating the food that was still left on my plate, some mashed potatoes with gravy. I saw that Lily and Kaia were already done with eating and they were waiting for me to finish. I grabbed my spoon and ate the food as quickly as possible without choking.

I did not dare to look at Riddle while eating my food. When me, Kaia and Lily were all done, we stood up from the bench and started walking towards the door leading to the hallway. I looked back once and saw that Riddle was talking with Josiah. I did not know if I was disappointed or happy that his eyes were not on me anymore.

We walked towards the common room and there we said goodbye to Kaia. She slept with different girls which was disappointing cause it would have been so much fun together. I changed into my pajamas and got into bed.

I grabbed the book from my nightstand called 'defense spells that every girl should know' and started reading. I tried to focus on the words but after thirty minutes, I could not concentrate anymore and the words got harder to read with each page. I put my bookmark between the pages, slammed the book shut and put it on my nightstand.

I let my head fall against the pillow and tried to go to sleep. From a young age, I always had trouble falling asleep compared to my classmates. I tossed and turned till I felt the exhaustion creeping into my body. Then I saw those fierce blue eyes again, before I descended into darkness.

The next morning I woke up because Lily was shaking me awake. "Ruby, please wake up, we have to get ready for the first day of classes." I rubbed my eyes and the world slowly started looking clearer till I saw Lily already in her uniform. She was standing next to my bed and looked at me disapprovingly.

Lily woke up a whole hour earlier than me so she could get some schoolwork done. I don't know how she did it, because I always felt incapable of doing anything in the morning. I stood up and tried to keep my balance. I put in my uniform and walked to the great hall in a daze.

Lily was pulling me forwards by holding my hand and pushing through the crowd that was forming before the doors. We got closer and then we heard raised voices saying spells.

Me and Lily looked at each other and we nodded. It was time to find out what was going on there. We managed to push through the other students to where the voices were coming from. There was cheering and booing around us from other students who were looking at the fight with interest.

A fight at Hogwarts was common but normally it did not attract such a big crowd as it did right now. I wonder who were the sources of all this commotion. At the center of the circle were two students who were throwing hexes at each other at a rapid speed of movement: Tom Riddle and Severus Snape.

This surprised me a lot. That Tom Riddle was in trouble again, that did not surprise me but that he was fighting with Severus Snape was quite odd since they were friends after all. Josiah was standing in the middle looking lost and he looked like he was not quite sure what he was supposed to do.

This was very unexpected because everyone knew that they were best friends. Why did Josiah not immediately start firing spells against Snape to help Riddle?

"You never listen to anyone else. All you care about is saving and protecting yourself' Snape shouted at Riddle while he deflected a stinging hex that Riddle shot Snape. "Expelliarmus" Snape said.

Riddle easily shot back another spell at Riddle. "Titillando" and Snape started laughing from being tickled by invisible forces. It was disturbing to see someone laughing while they didn't want to. Snape's laugh was high pitched and sounded estranged from someone who looked so bored and disinterested all the time.

Riddle then went for the kill since Snape was defenseless now. "Petrificus Totalus" Riddle snapped and Snape's whole body went still. His arms and his legs were snapped to his sides and Snape was unable to move. His face looked pained.

Riddle walked up to Snape and whispered something in his ear. Snape's face turned white and he nodded solemnly. I wondered what Riddle had said to Snape to frighten him so dearly. Snape looked at Josiah for a second but then looked away.

Riddle muttered something under his breath and held his hand out for Snape to grab it. He helped Snape get back up to his feet. "If you have a problem with the way I run things, you can just come talk to me instead of challenging me to a duel in front of the school." Snape nodded his head again but his eyes said that he was somewhere entirely different.

Riddle seemed more dangerous than Ruby first thought. She was going to be careful if she still wanted to find out what his intentions are and more importantly answer some of her questions about him. What was he doing in the forbidden forest all alone in the middle of the night?