Not Broken, Not Yet | Tom Riddle

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Eighteen

It's just like the last time when someone died... The words echoed in my head over and over again as the shatter around me continued. My friends talked amongst themselves, everyone trying to figure out what had happened, who was missing. The room buzzed, but I found myself sitting completely silent.

Next to me Aiden looked grim. The ever present smile on his face had vanished. He was but a ghost of the man I'd come to love. When he noticed my look he pulled me towards him, holding me towards his chest as we both looked into the fire. We didn't say anything. For what was there to say?

That night we all went to bed late. Very late. And I highly doubted a lot of us actually managed to get any real sleep. Not with everything that had happened. Not with all the unanswered questions that still lingered in the air, eating us up slowly as the night went on without answers. Even Julius seemed on edge. As he lay next to me that night he didn't even purr. He simply lay there, looking out over the room wearily as he breathed slowly. My forever guardian.

It was a mystery to all. A mystery, and a secret guarded by the prefects and professors. But as secrets often are, it quickly spread. The very next morning, the supposedly well guarded knowledge, was all over the school. Its ghastly details shocking every student whose ears it passed.

Agnes Williams was dead.

Her body, if the rumours were to be believed, had been found in Hogsmeade. The details concerning the state of her body had varied wildly. The first version had her found in an alley with her throat slit from ear to ear. Another story claimed she'd been found decapitated, her head on a spike in the ground - something Aiden quickly pointed out wouldn't be likely considering the ground had been frozen for weeks. According to a third she'd been found torn limb from limb in the snow, and a last one claimed she'd been stabbed in the back in the woods and left to bleed out in the snow.

What all the stories had in common was one peculiar fact - Her death had not been one of magic.

Instead each and every story painted her death as a bloody and gnarly event. A far cry from the previous year's clean petrifications and sudden death. It didn't seem right. Yet just the pure horror of it put the Chamber of Secrets on everyone's lips all over again. Agnes Williams, Prefect or not, was a well known muggleborn. The very same kind that had been targeted just eight months prior.

Panic quickly erupted in the castle. Letters soon began to fly to parents and each and every muggleborn could be seen keeping close to their friends, never going anywhere without company.

It was strange seeing the school I'd come to love like that. So different from the place that I'd come to consider home. My place of safety. It had become a place of fear in just a matter of hours, its shadow clear on all faces, except one.

Riddle was as calm as ever. His cold gaze wandered over the Great Hall at dinner with almost disinterest. And it was then I remembered it. I had seen him the day before, hours before news of Agnes' death had spread. I had seen him, and a few of his cronies wander off into an alley. Combined with my already conflicting feelings regarding the pale man it possibly stirred my suspicion even more. Something about him didn't seem right. And not just the fact that I kept seeing his face sometimes when I kissed Aiden. No. There was something else. There must have been. The other possibility simply was too embarrassing to admit.

Suddenly those two dark eyes turned on me. Meeting mine across the room, digging deeply into my very soul before I looked away, mortified that I'd been caught staring at Riddle out of all people. I blinked several times before looking back at my still empty plate and my friends who talked in hushed voices.