Year of Damnation, Tom Riddle

II. The Alchemy Club

YEAR OF DAMNATION
II.   The Alchemy Club

✶

Two bolts. A flash of blue, then white. Dion watched second-year Tom Riddle behind the wall.  Moss-dotted cobble obtruded the duel before her, one eye poked around the edge. She still remembered the acrid stench of owl feces. It burned, choking her sinuses, eyes watering despite the harsh wind beating against the Owlery.

Tom was on the ground before he could retaliate, a speck against the rolling landscape past the structures. Crimson splotches contrasted against the pristine white collar of his button up, pressed straight that morning by house elves, now crumpled. It trickled down his nose and his mouth with such fervor Dion could not tell from which it came.

His assailant, a young man no older than fifteen with subtle green and silver motifs across his uniform, laughed out of sight and bounded down the stairs. The sound resonated in a lasting way. It hung in the air. It caught the wind and lingered.

Tom held his chest like he was drowning; he pressed his cheek against the ground and sputtered and coughed into the worn stone. Edora would seize her chest and hack into a rag in the same way, blotching it a vile, mucus yellow. She was a sick girl. Tom would be fine if he just stood up.

That pressure in his chest was something Dion never wanted to become well-apprised of; choking on air and blood, clawing his way onto his feet. She had been the one on the ground countless times before. It hurt, and it hurt like she would never get up again. In her conscience, she had Sasha—dragging her to her feet, patting the specks of dirt off her back and seizing her by the flaps of her father's plaid wool jacket. Muggy summer days were wasted shooting spells behind the house in The Fens once his Trace wore off, he decided it necessary.

Yet, Sasha was Dion's, not Tom's. He had to stand up on his own.

He rose in a moment. It was no surprise when he turned around and pointed his wand at Dion. Arm quivering, it suddenly halted like a rubber band pulled taut. She remembered not quite grasping the situation; Dion's gaze lingered on his wand longer than necessary and, in retrospect, rudely, rolled her eyes at his performance of bravery. She thought he should straighten himself before anyone else saw the condition he was in.

An argument stalled in the anterior of Tom's jaw. Mutually, they understood this arrogance—he regarded Dion in the same light whenever they knocked her to the ground and slipped potions in her goblet at breakfast. Attacks against her were deterred by a handful of nasty duels; she got them back like Sasha taught her. No doubt, in later weeks, Tom learned to scare them off using the same tactics.

As outliers of their house, civility and example was all either had left to offer the other. The invisible thread that formed without so much a word uttered to the other.

Dion had forgotten the idea of a mutual sentiment with Tom long ago.

His lips trembled with a retort, and then, to her confusion, he rolled his shoulders back, arm falling to his side, and a serene calm snagged his muscles and wrenched them rigid. This would be the first of many times tranquil overtook him like a possession, the ghosts guiding him did not have billowing cloaks and translucent skin, but family crests and ties to the Ministry.

That was where their paths forked. As a blood traitor and a muggleborn in their house, they had much in common—until suddenly they were not a blood traitor and a muggleborn. They were a blood traitor and Tom Riddle.

He rose, she carried on. All that remained among them was green and silver and an apt for academics, she had not seen him look anything less than even since. Dion guessed she changed, too.