Parallel

11. Riddle's Collection

There was a moment of elevated silence as Riddle stayed unmoving, seemingly processing Eve's words. She in turn stared at him with bated breath, her heart pounding, awaiting to see if he'd believe the one lie that would determine whether or not any of her next words would affect the trajectory of his suspicions at all.

I'm a Seer.

The asinine, insane, absurd, and just about every other synonym for crazy lie had come to the forefront of Eve's brain while she'd been in Charms, watching Sophie float above her like a crystal ball.

And that had been it—crystal ball.

Eve knew she needed to be of some use to Riddle if she wanted him to even keep her around in the slightest, and what better way for her to ensure that than to make him believe that she could feed him information regarding the future? His future?

She knew it was insane to try and fool Riddle with such an out-there lie, but the moment she'd thought of it, Eve knew that it'd be the best thing she'd be able to come up with. For the first time, she could leverage her unfortunate time-traveling predicament to her advantage—if Riddle was doubtful (as she knew he most definitely would be), Eve had true and genuine knowledge about him that most likely no one else knew about him, and she could feed him harmless pieces of true—or false—information about himself or people around him that he didn't know she possessed—as long as they were harmless and wouldn't actually give him real insight into his future as Voldemort, of course.

Plus, she'd already made it this far with numerous outlandish lies. One more wouldn't hurt, right?

In present time, the classroom was silent as Eve waited for Riddle's reaction.

"A Seer," Riddle repeated. His face was unreadable, which Eve couldn't tell was good or bad, but his gaze on her at this point was electrifying, like he was holding her down in her seat by merely his eyes.

"Yes." It took all her willpower to let out that single word with a steady voice.

"And what," he said slowly, "is a Seer doing at Hogwarts?"

Eve exhaled loudly, both to force any shakiness out of her voice and to make it seem like she was mentally preparing herself to spew a block of information. She paused for a moment, as if readying herself, and then said—

"Grindelwald's forces are hunting me. They know what I am, and if I fall into Grindelwald's grasp, he'll use me to look into his future and prevent his future mistakes."

She waited for Riddle to react. Even though he would become a Dark Lord himself in the future (the Dark Lord, in fact), he wasn't one yet, and her story was probably something he wasn't hearing everyday.

"How do you expect me to believe your words?" asked Riddle, clear skepticism coloring his words as they cut through the air sharply. Although he'd barely shifted, he was looking at her with undisguised dubiousness, his eyes sharp and unyielding—as if to convey:

If you're lying to me, I'll kill you.

Eve gulped, pushing that morbid thought away quickly. She'd seen his lack of belief coming. After all, even back in her 1997, the subjects of divination and clairvoyance were still heavily-debated conversations, so it wasn't a surprise that the ability of prophecy was considered fraudulent by most in 1944—even enough for Tom Riddle to meet it with skepticism.

Which was ironic, really, seeing as he would be the one who ended up trying to murder one single boy for years because of the words of one singular prophecy.

"I know that you're of an important lineage," Eve said abruptly, reveling in the slight look of surprise that graced Riddle's features at those words, "and that you go by a different name."