The Boy Who Cried Wolf -- [Tom Riddle]

9 - Turnip Avenue

(TW - brief mention of starvation.)

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As Goldie attended her Ancient Runes class the following morning, she spent a portion of it staring at Rosier. He was pale and jittery, small pinkish dots surrounding his eyes due to popped blood vessels. A permanent anxiety was flooding his usually soft gaze, his hands squeezing his quill in a fidget.

She was slightly concerned for him, but she brushed it off as a bad hangover. He had been quite drunk the night prior, after all.

"Are you alright?" She had asked him as they were leaving class. "You seem troubled."

He immediately stiffened, glancing at her with widened eyes as he responded abruptly. "Yes. Just hungover."

She accepted the excuse with slight questioning for the moment, giving him a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. He smiled shakily. Over the following few days, he improved gradually, his usual colouring returning and his anxious fidgets receded slowly.

The fact improvement took days was what assured her it was not a hangover.

Unsure if confrontation was a good idea, she opted for watching from a distance instead. During mealtimes, he either gazed at his food or at Lestrange, and nowhere else. As he sat near the outside of the group, she figured that it was a person driving that unusual behaviour, preventing him from looking up into the group.

Riddle was the main suspect.

The other members of the group were occasionally glancing at Rosier with knowing looks. They all had information she did not, and it was displaying in their eyes and actions as concern. And empathy, in some cases.

Riddle had nothing.

With an absolute lack of care, he went about his days and conversations as per usual. Nothing out of the ordinary. Either he did not know what the rest did – which she found unlikely, given his tendency to micromanage every situation – or he himself was the information they knew.

Unfortunately, she knew she could not run wild on assumptions. It was still possible Ashon was ill or simply having a bad week, and automatically turning on the boy who was typically the most pleasant toward her was a bad idea.

So, for the time being, she filed her suspicions into her memory and offered Rosier healing draughts every morning.

By the time they reached Thursday of the following week, Goldie met with Ashon after Ancient Runes and informed him that she would go through with the plan for Azkaban, as ridiculous as it was.

Seeming oddly relieved, his tense form deflated, and he offered her a weak smile.

"Good." He responded, following her to a bench in a typically empty hallway. "Are you excited to see your brother again?"

She nodded. "I certainly miss him. He was usually the one who kept me safe when I got myself into dangerous situations."

"Goldie." He spoke lowly once she was finished reminiscing. "Can you cast a Patronus?"

Her silver eyes flicked to him at the question, appreciating his sense of danger. It seemed he was the only one who had it in the entire group, other than her.

Truth be told, she had been researching the Patronus charm for the past week as she had been making her final decision. As a young teenager, she had been taught the foundations of the charm to ward off the Banshees wandering the Irish countryside, thought it took quite some time. With that prior knowledge, plus extensive research done in her spare time, she had been able to conjure a fully formed Patronus.