Rosie ⎮ Tom Riddle

Eleven

Falsehood

  "Rose, there's a letter on the table for you, I picked it up from the owlery this morning with my stuff." 

  Rosalie looked up from her pile of books from the sofa, first looking at Lily with a look of surprise then to the table in front of her, which did indeed have an envelope with her name on it. Before letting go of her things she scanned the letter over, almost immediately recognising the handwriting.

  Lily was fixing her hair in the mirror by the fireplace, curling plaits through her hair effortlessly. Rose took one more look at her to make sure she was fully occupied before pushing her schoolwork to the side and leaning over to grab the letter.

  The seal wax of a 'G' on the front of the letter confirmed Rosalie's suspicions. She held the letter in hand, tapping it against her fingers with thoughts flying across her mind.

  What did her father want? 

  She knew what her father wanted.

  He wanted an answer, he wanted his daughter to come home. He probably never even intended Rosalie to stay so long, the task was simple, not complicated.

  Find out if Tom Riddle was a threat; he was.

  But if she told him that she'd be told to kill him and be brought straight home to live under her father's conditions, to be groomed to become just like him. It was not the cards she wanted, but the cards she was given. 

  A few nights past, Rosalie had resolved to rid herself of Tom Riddle, not as a mere pawn in her father's twisted game, but the answer to her own freedom. The puzzle of it all was still incomplete, yet she sensed that Tom Riddle was the key to something profoundly important. As her gaze fixed upon the fireplace where Lily stood, Rosalie swiftly directed and released the envelope into the flames. Mesmerised, she observed as the paper charred.

  "Why'd you do that?" Lily looked down with a perplexed composure, her eyebrow raised.

  "It was just junk."

---

  "How about this one?" Rosalie came out of the changing room in a short white dress, frilly and pretty with blue colours splashing against the canvas of the material. 

  Lily, however, didn't like the look of it. She shook her head on the stool that she sat, waving her hand at Rose. 

  "No, doesn't work. It makes you look washed out." 

  Rosalie emitted a groan, tilting her head back in annoyance. The rejection of the fourth dress by Lily seemed to be pushing the limits of her tolerance, Rosalie was sure her head would soon explode from sheer boredom.

  She walked back into the changing room, reaching for the final, dark green dress that Rose had picked out herself by the darkness of the colour. Rosalie took it off the handle, first pressing it to her body to get a glimpse of what it would look like.

  "I hate him, I can't even hold it in anymore Lily." Rose exploded, dropping the dress onto the chair beside her. She spoke to her friend through the curtain, her head exploding with thoughts of Tom that she had desperately been trying to repress.

  "Yes well, you talk about hating him every few minutes, Rose." Lily yelled from outside the dressing room, hearing the flick of a magazine follow her words. Her boredom of the topic wasn't a comfort to Rose.