Darkness and Devotion - A Tom Riddle Story

The Classroom

Alone. That's how Evelyn would describe the weeks after Halloween. Completely and utterly alone.

She didn't realize that when Tom said she wouldn't be going anywhere, it didn't mean that he also wouldn't be going anywhere. It was to be expected. Tom lived in the shadows. In his mind, in his room. It made sense that he would disappear back into the darkness from which he came as soon as being in the light was no longer convenient.

Evelyn kept her word. She stayed in his room at night; he had somehow found somewhere else to stay in the meantime, leaving her feeling alone in an unfamiliar dormitory deep within the heart of the dungeons. Tom wasn't keeping an eye on her, at least not that she knew of. Her eyes searched for him in every room and yet she always found nothing. No Tom. No shadows.

"Little Dove, you forget that a part of my mind lingers in yours. I always know where you are, what you're doing, what you're seeing. Even when I cannot be with you, a part of me is."

Evelyn had yet to see that part.

Unfortunately, the departure of Tom also brought the departure of his brother. Mattheo had gone back to his rowdy group of thirteen-year-old boys, seemingly released from his babysitting. Even though she missed him terribly, she didn't want to complain. He should be with his friends. He shouldn't be hanging out with a depressed seventeen-year-old with no friends. 

Still, she missed the boy.

Evelyn made her way to potions class, skipping past the Great Hall, though that didn't stop her from peaking inside to see if a certain someone was inside. He wasn't, though Mattheo was, chatting away with his friends. Evelyn sighed and kept walking. She never felt like eating anymore. Not that anyone would care if she ever did. That would require noticing she was missing and even Mattheo didn't do that anymore. Whenever she saw the mounds of food on the long tables, she felt like she was going to hurl. She had gone her entire life without such a spread... it felt wrong to eat it now. She didn't know why.

No one was in the classroom, not even Slughorn. Evelyn just took her seat at the edge of the room and waited. Waited for this class to be over, for this day to be over, for this year to be over. For everything to be over. For the world to be blissfully silent, nothing heard but the occasional sound of leaves on a falling grave.

She missed her father. How was that even possible? Regulus was as much a stranger as any other wizard. And yet he wasn't. He was the man she talked to when she found herself unable to crawl through the throes of life anymore, the father she allowed herself to hope she would see again, the wizard who died in a way she still hadn't figured out. He was more than a stranger. He was in the blood running through her very veins. He was in the soft black waves framing her face. He was in the high cheekbones gaunt as if neither of them had ever quite had enough to eat. He was in her, in the girl who desperately longed to meet him.

Perhaps soon, she would.

Evelyn didn't know her purpose. Did she ever truly have one or was she just the result of a myriad of coincidences, each one of them a mistake that longed to be corrected? Did she just consume oxygen, feeling day by day as it slowly left her lungs with every breath that wasn't meant to be taken?

She wished she had a father. She wished she had a mother. She wished she had anyone. Now, she had no one. Just the empty words of a man who pretended to care and a cousin who pretended to be her family for a few weeks. 

The potions classroom was still empty. Evelyn found a spot on the stone across the room and stared at it. She hadn't felt like reading lately. She hadn't felt like doing anything. Doing something reminded her of the fact that she felt like nothing, of the fact that she had felt utterly empty from the moment Tom cradled her cheek, only to leave the moment she fell asleep. Reading reminded her of a world she didn't exist in, words on a simple piece of paper that were just as easy to erase as she was.