The Snake in the Waters [Tom Riddle]

Chapter 2 - [Dead Girl Walking]

Scotland, Hogwarts 1943

Three weeks have passed since the evening on which a bloodied, half-dead girl stumbled into the great hall. None of the professors said a word about the incident and they did not answer the questions that were asked by brave students.

In the first few days after the incident, the entire student body did not talk about anything other than the mysterious injured woman. But Halloween was just around the corner and the girl was slowly being forgotten.

The prefects were always very busy the evening before the holiday. Gryffindors, in particular, liked to play pranks on their classmates. So the young man spent most of his evening sending the cheeky students back to their beds and dismantling their traps.

He was removing a spell in the corridor outside the hospital wing when he heard faint voices slowly approaching him. With his wand out, he got ready to catch another group of marauders.

But as the voices approached, he realized that one of them belonged to Professor Dumbledore and the second to a young woman he had never heard before. That piqued his curiosity. Who is his Transfiguration teacher talking to? There were no young teachers at the school and the nurse's voice sounds scratchy from smoking a lot.

The young man waited to see if the couple came around the corner, but suddenly there was silence. The professor and his company had stood still and stopped speaking.

The boy did not move from his place in the corridor and listened for a few moments. But he heard nothing more.

Confused, he took a few steps before he could look around the corner.

The corridor in front of him was empty.

There was no sign of Professor Dumbledore or the person to whom the woman's voice belonged.

Had he just imagined it?

Not satisfied with the situation, he continued down the corridor from which he had heard the voices. He found nothing. But if he had looked closer at the floor, he would have found the crumpled wrapping of a Sherbet lemon.

***

The black-haired Slytherin prefect failed to find and remove every single prank spell and trap the night before Halloween. He watched with a little satisfaction as students' feet stuck to the floor and they had to take off their shoes or were splashed with paint.

In order not to lose his good image, he helped the students who could not free themselves or clean themselves.

So, he slowly made his way from the Slytherin common room to the great hall. Everything was already prepared there for the feast.

Thousands of bats fluttered on the walls and on the ceiling, others rushed over the tables like long black clouds and made the candles in the floating pumpkins flicker.

The black-haired student sat down with his peers at the long green and silver table and waited patiently for everyone else to sit down as well. He only listened to the conversations of his classmates on the side.

The Quidditch season is about to begin and in their very first match they play against Ravenclaw, who has been winning the house cup for years. But this year Slytherin had a new seeker that they had high hopes for.

But the young man was not interested in Quidditch.

Rather, he wondered why not a single professor was present in the great hall. Usually they are already sitting at their table and watch as one student after the other walked through the gates and looked for their seats.

Tonight, the raised table was empty.

The other students around him didn't seem to care.

It took a while until all the students arrived in the great hall and were seated. Only then did most of the students seem to notice that not a single professor was present.