In Horace Slughorn's defence, he couldn't have known that all this would happen. All he had wanted to do was play match-maker between his two favourite students, Tom Riddle and Artemis Potter.
...
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-----------------> "OH, NOT YOU TWO AGAIN!" A sharp voice rang through the air, effectively snapping Tom and Artemis' eyes open as they quickly attempted to sit up, only to bang their foreheads together, both of them a tangled mess of limbs from where they had fallen asleep on the cold floors of the Astronomy Tower the previous night sometime during the dancing.
Artemis blushed heavily as she stood up while Tom's head was hung low, not meeting anybody's eyes and not allowing them to see the flush he sported on his cheeks. The faint rays of the bright sun could be seen through the windows and the sound of Minerva Mcgonagall's impatiently tapping feet could be heard in the morning silence as she fixed them under a disapproving glare.
"Well?" She prompted. "You both -prefects, that too- stayed past curfew in the Astronomy Tower and not to mention, slept together."
"-beside each other-"
"-and this isn't even the first time I caught you both doing something inappropriate!" Minerva continued, ignoring Tom's correction of her phrase. "So, what do you have to say for yourselves?"
"Twenty points to Ravenclaw and Slytherin for promoting inter-house unity?" Artemis offered lamely, earning herself yet another glare by the Gryffindor prefect.
"Thirty points will be taken away from Ravenclaw and Slytherin for inappropriate conduct." She announced. "Thank Merlin it wasn't one of the younger years who stumbled upon you two." Minerva primly turned on her heels and left.
Artemis turned to Tom. "Well, that went well."
"Splendidly well," Tom agreed, his cheeks pink.
------> 0o0 <------
The rest of the day passed by as uneventfully as one could expect when in the middle of a crisis. Two more muggleborns had been found petrified, one of them being a first-year from Gryffindor and the other a sixth year from Hufflepuff.
Thankfully, none of the Ravenclaws had become a new victim and they intended to keep it that way, none of them going anywhere alone and staying in groups that contained at least one pureblood.
Artemis, along with her friends, spent the majority of the day in the hospital wing, sitting on a chair beside Roman's bed and helping Ignatius force Bilius not to starve himself with worry.
Nearly an hour before dinner, Artemis and Reginald exited the infirmary. Headmaster Dippet had announced an early curfew for everybody earlier that day, and the pureblood prefects were sent to make sure that nobody was out alone at night.
"We need to apply a Homenum Revelio spell or something, just in case," Artemis told him, prompting Reginald to give her a quizzing look.
"Why?"
"Well, there's this one student who Tom and I keep catching out of bed and he applies a silencio and an invisibility charm on himself, so it'll be hard to spot him," she explained.
