His Equal [Tom Riddle]

eleven

Kepi fell into step with Tom as Slytherin was escorted back to their common room. His eyes were trained on the backs of the students in front of him, making sure that not a single person took a step out of line.

The entire school had been called for a meeting in the Great Hall. Fiona Smythe and Myrtle Warren's untimely demises were announced publicly, and the possibility of Hogwarts shutting down was thrown into the mix of bad news. The latter especially concerned Kepi; while she missed her country greatly, she felt like Hogwarts was where she was meant to be for now. Set seemed to like it well enough, and she hoped that by the end of her time at this school, she would have a group of people willing to help her in her efforts.

"Tom."

"Yes?"  He pressed his lips into a line and kept his eyes trained forward.

"What did you learn from your prefect's meeting?"

"The same thing that you just learned from Dippet," he responded crossly. "Get back in line, Nassor."

"Do not speak to me like that," Kepi scoffed. "Riddle, I'm not blind. I saw you pull Dean and Pontius away for a little meeting - you clearly know something."

"Who's to say I'm not upset by the deaths of two mudbloods?" Tom replied, but he made no effort to mask his insincerity. Kepi rose a brow.

"So I'm to teach you all of my secrets, yet you won't tell me one of yours?"

"That's the nature of blackmail, Nassor."

"But Hogwarts is going to get shut down!" Kepi protested petulantly.

Tom clenched his fist at the reminder. His basilisk had only been successful at killing one person so far, and now the school was going to be shut down. Rubeus Hagrid's acromantula would be taking the blame sooner than he'd have hoped ... to say that he wasn't happy would be an understatement. 

The line of Slytherins reached their common room, and once Tom ensured that they had all gone inside, he turned to face Kepi. "Look, Nassor. I don't want Hogwarts shutting down either, but we have students killing themselves, people getting petrified, and now a murder. If you have any information to help the case, let me know, but if you don't, shut up."

Kepi was fuming. She knew that Tom had more information, but he clearly didn't trust her enough to reveal anything. Not that she blamed him, of course - she didn't really trust him either. But seeing as the current events were directly related to her future, she wanted to be in the know.

"Fine, Riddle. Whatever." She huffed, making her move to enter the common room before an ice cold hand gripped her wrist.

"The circumstances of Fiona's suicide were curious." He remarked, eyeing her with a blank expression. "Killed herself with no warning, in the middle of a board game with her friends."

"Must have been feeling awfully upset about the recent events." Kepi ripped her arm from his hold. "Goodbye, Riddle."

**

Tom stood over the body of his Basilisk, who had collapsed on the floor. It wasn't dead, but rather sleeping - for the foreseeable future.

He huffed in frustration, shoving a hand into his robe pocket and pulling out his only prize from his very arduous Chamber of Secrets experiment: the pinky finger of Myrtle Warren. He had harvested it from her dead body while Abraxas distracted the healer, who was inspecting the Ravenclaw girl's cause of death. Myrtle Warren was absolutely useless to the world alive, but at least her corpse could serve a purpose.