"she was the type of person who'd explain how she was going to stab you in the front before she actually shoved the knife in... and you'd let her.
she'd probably even pass the knife to you so you can shove it in your own chest...and you would."
tom...
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p e a c e w a s something that Tom felt was especially difficult to find in others, but Evelyn was rare in the way that she could coax that feeling out of him. She knew just how to keep the days from flowing without much chatter at all. There was a comfortable silence that Tom found was easy with her. For days of the break, they would only talk in quiet whispers or quick teasing remarks. And it felt natural to Tom to have her there. By his side, just reading or studying or research.
He rose early to sit by the fire with her and went to bed late, wishing that he could ask her one final question. Tom had been so wrapped up in her that by the time his birthday arrived, he had forgotten to be miserable about it. He supposed there was a truth to the blind ambition of Slytherins, that once they set their mind on something, it was hard to pull them from it.
Tom got dressed for the day, the smell of something sweet wafting up from the Common Room below. He liked to think of Evelyn groveling over him just for the day and how, by his next birthday, there would be something different between them—either her utter devotion to him, or her complete absence.
There was always a moment, though, right in the hidden alcove of the stairs, that he didn't stop to think about that reality as he watched Evelyn without her watching him. He could see how easy it was for lesser wizards to want nothing more than a simple life, knowing that Evelyn would never wish for that. He dreamed of what it would be like to rule the world with her. Her fierceness being the divine meaning of existence, not just his, but others too.
It flowed off her in waves—the elegance of knowing you are powerful. He saw it in her every morning, no matter what she wore, but today, he saw it in the silk of her dress—the vibrancy of blood on an open wound.
She sat there twisted in her chair, her long golden curls cascading over the side of it. Her little black cat sat in her lap and batted at the pastry she had in her hand. There was a calculating, girlish gleam on her face that he found pleasant and yet so unlike her. It just proved to him how many sides of her there were, some that he would never see, he was sure of.
Even when she gave in to the cat and let it nibble on the pastry, there was a moment when the cat meowed, completely unimpressed, when he saw that wall give way. There, he saw the little girl who had never been able to care for an animal enough to want to feed it pastries. And then the cat turned its large eyes on him, and he was caught.
"Happy Birthday, Mr. Riddle," Evelyn smiled, and Tom knew he would never get used to the way his stomach bottomed out at such a small thing.
"I don't care that much for birthdays," Tom sneered as he tried to steady himself, straightening the lapels of his cloak. "I also don't care much about anyone's flippant use of my nasty muggle father's name."
