Huffily Puffily || Golden Trio

It All Falls Down || xlviii

The night passed agonizingly slow, and in pure and utter silence. Every ten minutes or so, Tom got up to walk through the bathroom door and check the dormitory. He didn't retreat into the diary once, not even as his form began to deteriorate, and his voice caught a static tint to it. Any other time, she might have been concerned and asked him to take care of himself. But now, Lucy was too terrified to suggest such a thing.

"It's sunrise," Tom announced, walking back into the bathroom. He looked as tired as she was. "Lucy, I think you should tell a professor about this."

She stared at him, shocked. That had been exactly what she'd been thinking for the past night, but she didn't think Tom would have agreed with that idea. He usually preferred to avoid authority figures when it came to their business. It just went to show that this was an incredibly serious situation if even Tom Riddle thought it was too much for her and her older friends.

"I know," she muttered, and she reached for the doorknob.

Tom cleared his throat. "You may want to change before you find a professor— you look sort of..."

She looked in the mirror and understood what he meant. She definitely looked like she had been running through a forest all night. There were leaves in her hair and scrapes on her legs, not to mention the dark circles under her eyes. She looked back at him. "Can you wait outside and— and keep watch?" she felt bad asking it, since he looked so tired, but he only nodded.

"I'd have been insulted if you told me not to." And with that, he left through the door again.

She took the world's quickest shower, worried at any moment that someone might burst through the door to kill her while she was unprepared. She shrugged on her Hogwarts uniform, not even bothering with her tie, and clutched her wand tightly as she left the bathroom. She pointedly avoided looking at the carving on her headboard. She couldn't imagine ever sleeping there again. She couldn't believe she'd laid down on it last night, all the while someone might have been watching from the window.

Lucy found Maxine sitting in the common room with a few other prefects as they discussed patrols. She looked up at the younger student and frowned in confusion at her corpse-like state. "Rochester? Bloody hell, you look like shit."

"Thanks," Lucy said, without any humor. "Can you take me to McGonagall's office please?"

"I mean, it's hardly six in the morning— is there a rush?"

"Yes, there is."

Maxine exchanged another confused look with the other prefects, but she trusted the second year. She heaved herself to her feet and picked her wand off the armrest. "Alright, but you're taking the blame if she bites our heads off."

Their walk was quick, mostly by Lucy's fast pace. She glanced all around the corridors to make sure nobody was watching. Maxine seemed to catch on that something was off, and she also had her wand at the ready. Tom half walked, half floated along; his legs were beginning to lose their shape, and every so often his face broke off into wisps before reforming again.

Lucy was the one to knock on McGonagall's office door. It took a minute, but eventually McGonagall answered, a steaming mug of coffee in her hands. She squinted down her spectacles at Lucy suspiciously. To be fair, seeing her this early in the day was sort of like a bad omen.

"Can I help you, Ms. Rochester?" McGonagall asked, trying not to sound mean.

"Yes, actually," Lucy said. She had no idea how to word this, or if there was even a right way to word it. "Do you remember how someone's been trying to kill me all year by throwing me off a staircase? Well last night they broke into my dorm through the window and now I have something really creepy carved on my headboard..."