Sacred Silence | A Tom Riddle Story

32: Enemies of the heir.

'I wasn't on duty, but I had received a tip about one of the Ravenclaw students leaving the common room at night. I wanted to wait up and see what would happen, but.. I fell asleep. When I woke up it was far past midnight, so I decided to do my usual rounds to see if someone was indeed out.'

'And your usual rounds involve the girls' bathroom on the second floor?' Headmaster Dippit questioned, with a suspicious look in his eyes.

'Well, it's a popular hideout because it's been out of order for so long, you know.' Shiv replied coolly. Tom was so fucking lucky it was her who had found him.

'And you didn't see anyone else there? Just the girl?' Professor Dumbledore asked her. He hid his suspicion better than Dippit, but it was most certainly there.

'Just the girl,' Shiv answered.

The two men looked at each other, trying to decide what to do with her story. They had made her retell the whole thing over and over again, asking different questions every time. What time was it? Did you see anyone? Why were you out? Was she still warm?

It made Shiv uncomfortable, but lying was something she had grown up with. You would think she got it from her dads side. Dorian was mean, manipulative, and had no trouble lying to his friends and family. Nevertheless, her ability to twist the truth mostly came from her mother. Shiv had spent years watching Sera tell lie after lie with a straight face in order to dodge her husbands outbursts. It became second nature to keep your face completely neutral and tell someone what they wanted to hear.

'Tell us what you saw one more time,' Dippit ordered. He was obviously trying to catch her in a lie.
Was it because of her family? Her brothers and parents had all attended Hogwarts. All expect for her mom had left with.. questionable reputations. Cillian was still infamous at the school for setting a first year on fire on the last day of his 7th year. The boy lived, and Dorian paid his parents enough to make everyone at the school agree that it was an 'accident'.

And so, she went over the story one more time. The tip, her usual round, Myrtle on the floor, no one to be seen. She used as little detail as possible. She needed to match her story up with Tom before she said anything that could get them in trouble.

She had once again connected herself to him the worst way.
There were multiple reasons why she had decided to step in and help Tom instead of letting him face the music the way Merlin had probably intended.

For one, if her dad found out she had the possibility to help Tom and didn't, she would be punished beyond believe this summer. She was already in enough trouble for distancing herself from him these last weeks.
Besides that, and this reason was much harder to admit, she didn't really want to see Tom getting into trouble. Not because she felt bad for him, but because she wanted to know the whole story before anything else happened.

Murder. That was something big. She had guessed before that he knew how to cast Avada Kedavra, even suspected he had used it before on animals or something. But to cast it at school, at a student, out of seemingly nowhere? No, there was a clear reason. And Shiv had a strong sense that it had something to do with horcruxes. And that, that peaked her interest.
She didn't want to admit it, but after they started doing their research on them, she felt herself becoming drawn to the idea. She wasn't sure if it was something she would do herself. But it was magic so powerful and rare; how could she not be interested?

Shiv left the Headmasters office tired and with a head full of racing thoughts. She was so occupied that she almost missed it. She stopped dead in her tracks and slowly moved a couple steps backward. As she looked through the open doors into the great hall, her eyes focused upon the tall wall behind the teacher's table. There was something written on the stone in thin, cursive black smears.