Oh, Ophelia | Tom Riddle

Summer

Dear Tom,

My brother is driving me insane. He seems to have decided that the only reason I could possibly be happy right now is that I am sneaking you into my room. He keeps showing up at night, fucking one am, I am fast asleep and he yell A-HA, I nearly fell of the bloody bed. Henry just got a muggle car and will not stop talking about it. I really wish you had come to the end of year party, but I get it's not your scene.

Rosie is staying here while her parents are redoing the manor. Apparently the yellow from the last time was not the yellow Mrs. Halpert requested. My parents love her they say it's like they have two daughters. Right now she's trying to convince me to help her teach mum how to square dance. Don't ask.

I miss you like a lot which is something I never really thought I would be able to say about the great Tom Riddle. No offence. I got published! in witches weekly, I submitted a piece on my opinion on equal pay and they went with it. You were the first person I wanted to tell. I hope your summer is alright. I sent cookies with Herbert. What I had to go through to make sure no one else ate them as they cooled. Lets just say they were heavily warded. Also there is a picture of me finding a starfish at the beach. I don't know it was just a good day. I wanted to share it with you.

Love,

Ophelia J. Marigold

Tom must have read the letter about twenty times before Herbert the owl flew away. He was a very affectionate bird. Tom could have sworn when he had extended a wing he wanted Tom to shake it. He wondered if Ophelia had trained him to do so. There was a very real chance that she had.

The cookies smelt delicious he could understand why they would be so heavily guarded. He was happy that she missed him. For a moment he wondered what the J stood for. He mentally bet himself that it was Juliette. Tom glanced at the picture. She looked so happy. She was in a sheer sundress he could clearly see the yellow swim suit underneath. She was sitting cross legged and pointing at a starfish in a small puddle in front of her.

Tom slid the photo and letter into the journal she had given him for Christmas. Only then did he really notice how attached he was to the little Hufflepuff. How Ophelia Marigold had wormed her way into his heart. Wormed was not exactly the right word to use. She sort of slammed the door open.

He still had the golden ribbon, and he had kept the photograph of her in a flower crown. She had never addressed that it was missing. She was just so happy in it, Tom thought he had never seen a smile as wide as hers. She was easy to laughter. Something Tom adored about her.

For a boy who never really had the best of anything as a child, it was nice to have her for a change. She was the reason he could produce a patronus.

He sat on his bed and glanced around the small room. No one wanted to share with the evil Tom Riddle. He almost smiled at that. Since he had killed that damned bunny when he was nine they had all left him alone. While peaceful it was lonely. But this was his final summer at the Orphanage.

He had already completed all his summer assignments. He had already planned a trip to Little Hangleton, getting Mrs. Cole's permission was easy. She was afraid of him after all.

He placed the cookies under a floorboard under his bed. You could never be too careful with thieving little children who hadn't yet learnt their place in the hierarchy of the Orphanage.

He reopened the journal staring at the photograph of Ophelia. She kept running in circles in his mind. Sometimes, at night, when his will power weakened, he would wonder what his life might have been like had he met her when he was a child.