Parallel

9. Crystal Balls

Eve made it through the first half of the next day relatively Riddle-free.

He'd been mysteriously absent at breakfast, along with the rest of his future Death Eaters—probably meeting in some random dark room in the castle secretly, Eve didn't doubt, though she still couldn't imagine Avery or even Rosier in that group.

But that was a whole different trail of thought she could investigate into at another time.

Then, in Herbology, a Patronus in the shape of a mole rat had ambled into the greenhouse at the beginning of class, and Dippet's warbly voice had bounced off the glass walls, asking if my dear boy Tom could come up to the Headmaster's Office for official Head Boy matters, whatever that meant.

The last Eve saw of Riddle was him stepping out of the greenhouse, his robes billowing and dark hair casting shadows onto the carved, pale features of his face, and then he'd been gone.

The lack of Riddle since then had been unexpected, but not unwelcome; after all, Eve hadn't realized just how big of a ball of dread crushed her stomach every single time she was about to step into a room and anticipated seeing Riddle inside until she'd seen his empty seat at breakfast and had felt like flying with glee.

Sure, she'd just conceived a Riddle-thwarting master plan—again—in which he played a pretty large role, and she needed to actually be in his vicinity to carry it out, and nothing would be achieved if she wasn't actually near him, but. . . .

If Eve had to be honest, she hadn't really realized just how much she needed a break from bumping into the bloke every ten minutes and to get her mind off the name Riddle for one second. Her poor brain the past week had just been cycling between either worrying about Riddle or planning about Riddle, and the temporary distance so far was a well-needed reprieve she hadn't known she craved until she was currently experiencing it—even if it was only for a few hours.

And—the past week?

When the realization that it was now Friday had hit Eve in the morning, it had taken her a moment to process the fact that she'd officially survived her first whole school week here in 1944, a fact that seemed surreal given everything that had been thrown at her already in this time; it honestly felt like a whole month had passed instead.

Now, as Eve sat in her second Ancient Runes class of 1944, frowning down at the parchment of runes in front of her, she felt a welcomed spark of familiarity—after all, translating runes in class was a repeated activity she would do all the time with Hermione in class back in her time.

I guess rune translations don't transcend time, she thought wryly, writing mannaz next to the word intelligence and watching in satisfaction as a checkmark appeared next to her translation on the parchment.

Sitting next to her currently, however, was not Hermione like Eve was used to. Instead, to her left, Logan had his head bent over his translation parchment, his dark-brown waves falling over his forehead and his gray-blue eyes scanning the paper as he focused on marking down the rune for protection.

On Eve's right was Grace, who—as she'd mentioned to Eve in their last History of Magic lecture—actually was in this class and had apparently been sitting in the back of the classroom last lecture next to a Gryffindor classmate. She'd pulled a chair up to Eve and Logan's table at the beginning of class and was currently rapidly tapping her quill against the desk, brow furrowed in concentration.

Luckily, after Wednesday's rough lecture, today, Professor Dunne—who reminded Eve of Molly Weasley in her moments of non-teaching—had only assigned for them group practice with translating the runes they'd previously learned. The classroom was filled with content chatter, with low tones of discussion and the scratching of quills emanating from the small groups of students scattered throughout.