Darkest Desire - English

17

Liz didn't expect to wake up again. Especially not in a bed in the hospital wing.

She could have just arrived, because Liz was still wearing her wet clothes. Her head hurt so much that she would have preferred to lose consciousness again. But there were voices, insistently talking to each other; no longer Parsel and not Tom Riddle. But definitely Mattheo Riddle.

Liz opened her burning eyes - the after-effects of her spell and peered past the curtain.

Mattheo was also sitting on a bed and next to him was Dumbledore. "So you followed Miss Black?" the principal wanted to know.
"I wanted to give her something," Mattheo answered tonelessly. Only now did Liz see the destroyed diary on his lap. The black ink had soaked the pages and even Mattheo's hands were covered with black stains. Lost in thought, the young Riddle examined his dirty fingers.
What had happened after Liz lost consciousness? Had he collected the pages and tried to repair the book?

Mattheo pulled a crushed packet from his coat pocket. It must have been damaged in the struggle.

Slowly Liz realized that Mattheo really hadn't been a figment of her imagination. He had actually followed her into the Chamber of Secrets. At least that part of his story was true. Only he hadn't followed her directly, as he now portrayed it.
He must have known where the chamber was and how to enter it.

"You can tell them what happened. After all, it was you who defeated the Dark Lord." Liz flinched caught. Mattheo's voice was clipped as he stared at her. She could see in his face how he fought the desire to scream at her. Was he so angry because she wanted to lock the chamber? Because she wasn't a "real" Black after all?

And then it clicked. The way he was still clutching the diary. Before - Liz swallowed - before this incident, she had been aware of it. She had just repressed it over and over again. Mattheo was the dark lord's son, and she was just a renegade who had thwarted his plans. She had destroyed his diary.

Their eyes met and confirmed Liz's thoughts. Mattheo hated her so abysmally that he could hardly bear to look her in the face. Instead, he tossed her the crushed package. "Merry Christmas." But it sounded more like a curse than a congratulations. Without another word, he jumped up and left the hospital wing.

Liz went after him, but was immediately grabbed by the arm by Professor McGonagall. " You stay right here. Where do you think you're going?"

Immediately Liz winced in intense pain. Still her body felt sore and raw. As if she had spent the night on sandpaper. "I have to apologize to Mattheo," she stammered, unsure of how far she wanted to go in explaining what had really happened. "I'm fine, I'm okay," she interjected automatically.

"I'd like to see you try," the teacher snidely chuckled, thrusting her wand into Liz's hand. "Show me how you use Lumos and I'll let you go."

There was clearly something fishy going on. Lumos was such a ridiculous spell, one learned in the first year of school. Liz looked at her wand. Everything looked normal, no deep scratches. She waved the wand. "Lumos."

Nothing happened.

Liz repeated the spell three more times before the teacher gently took the wand from her again. Her nasty aura had faded and clearly given way to compassion. "Come on. Sit back down. I'm sure it will be easier for both of you to sort out the situation once you've had a chance to process what happened."

With a hand on her back, McGonagall pushed Liz back onto the soaked bed and with a wave of her wand, the teacher dried the bed and clothes and helped Liz lie back down.

"What happened?" asked Liz, who had never felt so lost in her life. Where was her magic? How could this have happened? Voldemort was gone, why hadn't her powers returned?

"I think," the principal came over to her now, "that you should rest for a while. From what Mister Riddle has explained to me, you must have lost a great deal of energy to this diary?"

Liz bit her tongue. Was that really the reason? Would everything really go back to normal if she just lay down and slept enough?

Something inside her told her that the teachers knew more than they were saying.

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A short chapter as transition to the next season :D