Midmorning

i. twenty days

I hadn't yet planned my demise. I wasn't sure how I wanted to do it. The Muggle routes were always the hardest to take—an incision across two arms, straight down the middle, tearing up a vein; a head below water, seven minutes in heaven; a lit match, flames ripping at every organ—

             The list goes on.

             Witchcraft allowed me to die in peace, to rid myself of the pain even after I'd disappeared. Avada Kedavra really sounded much more like a blessing than the curse it was. No pain at all, just death? I had debated this way of going far too often.

             But I deserved pain, so I kept debating.

             Yet after having this thought pierce my mind every moment I was conscious, you could only imagine how I felt when Tom Riddle stood there, eyes ravenous, lips dry with the crackle of breeze, ready to kill me. A possibility was that he tortured me first, but the Killing Curse was flat on his tongue and I could already hear it flick off against the grating pressure of wind.

             It must've been my desperation giving me this impression, for he only paused and lowered his wand ever so slightly.

             'Does death not concern you?'

             Did I not look concerned?

             I cleared my throat. 'Should it?'

             'It concerns most.'

             The air was stale with dead prey the predators had littered across the forest, thick with the leaves and the mud garnering anywhere beneath me. There was the chance of anything finding me here, be it a unicorn or a centaur, but instead it was Hogwarts' golden boy.

             This bullshit school never ceased to amaze.

             'Won't you do it, then?' I asked him, the pencil I was drawing with rolling against the parchment. The circumstance must have confused him—rarely anybody had any courage to even look at this forest, save for sitting there at three in the morning to sketch using a lantern's dim light. It had become an unbreakable habit, a wasted personal tradition.

             Riddle's wand went completely. 'What's the point?' he fired back, agitated at the lost time. His mouth opened to elaborate, but nothing left it.

             So I pushed him.

             'Still a kill, isn't it?'

             And by this point he had already spun on his heel, but he paused and turned again. Our mouths took polar opposite directions, mine up into a cheap smile with his twisted into a frown. In the pivot of only so many muscles, our stances on death alone had been poised between us, an impossibly opaque barrier.

             His gaze sharpened. 'Not one worthy.' And he resumed his expedition back to the castle and he was too far to grasp onto his robes so my voice was the only quick means of attention. 

             'No.'

             And he stopped again. I think this second interference alone made him homicidal.

             'No?'

             'Well, why not?' and my words were tripping like a drunk crossing the road, 'If you were going to, you may as well.'

             I'd never seen so much bewilderment plague someone's face. He didn't seem to understand it, and for someone with praised grades, it was certain the void in what my intentions were bothered him more.

             Riddle twitched with rage. 'Why should I give you what you want?'

             'Because you want to kill me, and so do I,' I told him. 'Don't we both win?'

             'Is your brain that numb?'

             And it was an insult to my intelligence but I bit: 'Not numb enough. When I'm dead—because you'll kill me—it will be.' I didn't give him time to reply. 'I didn't think you were the one who killed Myrtle Warren two years ago, so count us both surprised.'

             I supposed death was his greatest threat, the one that tore heartstrings out before they could be played, because he faltered. To my knowledge, Riddle never faltered.

             'Not a word of this, Valois.'

             'Or what, Riddle?' Because death did not scare me, 'You won't kill me. You could torture me, but what for?' And because none of it scared me at all, 'You know you're out of options.'

             He had stretched beyond his endurance. It was strange to see Riddle's strict composure slacken like this, my hazy vision clear when I studied his mannerisms—worked jaw, a quick study of every setting—and then the lantern's flame licked up this façade, an entire sunset pooling on his cheeks. Nothing personal, I studied how everyone carried themselves—but it was hard to register such a true demeanour as a lie.

             'My options haven't found a limit,' he finally said. It was too vague, either secrecy or perfidy.

             But before I could argue thrice, he was gone.