Darkness and Devotion - A Tom Riddle Story

The Healer

"He's staring over there again," Mattheo grumbled at breakfast. He angrily stabbed the eggs on his plate. He apparently didn't like Tom's attention being elsewhere. Tom normally didn't care about others' existence. His brother was his only and even Mattheo tested his patience sometimes. No, Mattheo was usually the only one who could keep Tom's attention without being killed.

Until Evelyn.

She was sitting on the other side of the table, her nose in the same book she was reading the night before. He should know; he watched her all day. The bruises on her arm had faded but she still walked with a limp. The sight made him frown, though he didn't say anything. Yet, at least. She would be healed soon; he was determined of it.

Tom wasn't sure why she drew his eye. After all, he had never even known she existed before. Perhaps it was her sad eyes, grey like the sky after a dreary day, and her melancholy aura, the air heavy around her like the air of a funeral. Or perhaps it was the bruises on her arm, the way they made him feel fiercely protective over a pretty girl who was too vulnerable to defend herself from her attackers. Perhaps it was the way she didn't fear him, speaking to him as if he was a regular wizard boy. Or perhaps, and much more likely, it was the bond that had formed between them, a bright cord of a relationship that he had never seen. The cord held power, Tom was sure of it, but why? He didn't even have that connection with Mattheo, his own half-brother. So why did he have it with a random witch? And what did it mean?

Until he could figure it out, until he could harness the bond's power on his own without Evelyn, Tom would have to be patient. No matter. He had laid his plans for power from the moment his father perished—again, to a bloody infant; he would probably never get over it—and had waited almost twelve years for it to come to fruition. A few weeks while he figured out the mystery behind this girl would be easy compared to that.

"Do you think there's a ghost or something we can't see?"

"Questioning your older brother is going to get you killed," Theo retorted. "And I get all your cigarettes if you are killed." Even at thirteen, the boy had a problem.

Evelyn seemed to have no idea she was being watched. He wasn't surprised. She didn't notice him yesterday and he was rather good at remaining undetected, lingering against the edges of the room like a shadow unseen. His father had always taught him to command presence in whatever room he entered but Tom found silence rather useful sometimes. Times like no, when all he wanted to do was watch a pretty girl eat breakfast as he figured out her every habit.

Not pretty. She's not pretty. Beauty is a useless notion. But he was lying. Evelyn was beautiful, completely. He had never seen a girl quite like her. She naturally drew his eye, even doing something as simple as eating toast. He was glad she was; she didn't eat at all yesterday much to his dismay. Why do you care? He didn't care. She was a means to an end, a powerful pureblood woman with a strong connection to his powers. Once she was sorted out, she would be out of his life as quickly as she came into it.

"You can have my cigarettes if I die if I can have all your girlfriends when you die." That doesn't even make sense, Mattheo.

Theo scoffed. "I don't have 'girlfriends' and I never will."

Why is she sitting alone? Why was she always sitting alone? It was almost as if people avoided her more than they avoided him, which was saying something. Evelyn was intelligent, polite, pureblooded, rich, beautiful. He knew that within just five minutes of being around her. So why did people act as if she wasn't there?

Tom's mind instinctively reached out to hers as if it were second nature to him. But he found that Evelyn didn't care that she was alone. She hardly even noticed it. She's used to it. Has accepted it. He continued to weave through the web of her thoughts, noticing with a startle that his conversation with her was the first one she had with someone not a member of her own household in months.