Deal with the Devil

Chapter 30

They were in the abandoned classroom each working on something for one class or another when Tom thought to ask. "Elena." Her head snapped up, eyes pulling out of the land of academia to refocus on him. "Have you ever had a prophecy about Grindewald?"

She looked taken aback, but answered promptly, "Not that I know of." The girl stared into the distance with her lower lip sucked into her mouth as she thought. After a moment, she said carefully, "I think, maybe I have." At his questioning brow, she continued, "My early prophecies? The ones drawn on the walls. I remember a man with fair hair and strange eyes. One was black and one was white. I remember because the walls weren't white, and I'd used so much of the color that flecks from my crayon were piled on the floor. There was one where he was amid this black swirl, just standing as it engulfed everything around it." She shook the memory from her head and turned her attention back to Tom. "I think it was him, from what I've seen in the Prophet. I haven't the faintest what it means."

Tom considered her and what she'd told him. He hadn't deemed anything other than his own rise to power important enough for the girl to prophesy, but that had clearly been a mistake. There was a Dark Lord currently on the move, and who knew what else was going on in the world or would happen that would warrant a vision.

"Have you had any other visions lately?" Elena shook her head, and he sighed. "I want you to tell me everything you can remember. Write it down and give it to me tomorrow. Every prophecy, mind you."

"Our agreement was only pertaining to those about you."

He stared at her baldly, caught between wondering at the audacity and amusement that she was finally showing a bit more fire again. "Not anymore."

Elena exhaled loudly but went back to her assignment.

His pet seer seemed a bit better, more like herself. While Tom appreciated the unhesitating obedience she'd developed and relished the way she quaked when he touched her, it was bad for his reputation to have his girl acting like a kicked puppy. Moreover, a part of him enjoyed her as she was. He'd found through trial and error that people who learned to obey were far more useful than those forced to submission.

Smirking as he thought of the way she'd felt beneath him on their little date, he swept his fingers up her arm, traipsing them down her back, over her side, to settle on her thigh. Elena stiffened, but didn't react otherwise.

He'd always had a gift for sniffing out truth, reading it in the eyes of others; Elena was no exception. For all her protestations, she found him attractive, just as nearly every other woman (and not a few men) who'd seen him since he hit puberty. She would eventually give in, even knowing how he thrilled in violence and subjugation.

As his followers finished their work and drifted out, his hand teased over the material of her skirt. He drifted higher, closer to her center, luxuriating in the warmth there. He rubbed small circles on what he could reach of her inner thigh, pressed tightly together as her legs were. He could tell the girl was nearing the end of her revisions, and he signaled to Nott and Avery that they should take their leave.

Elena looked up from her work as the two stood. "Done already?" she asked.

"Er, yeah," Alfred muttered. "I'm a bit tired. I'm at a good stopping place for the night." Nott nodded beside him.

"Oh, maybe I should get to bed as well," she said.

"Don't be silly." Tom pressed his palm into her leg. "I see at least three paragraphs that need revising, and this is due first thing in the morning."

Elena scowled at him before remembering herself, face smoothing into placidity. She nodded and turned to the two leaving Slytherins. "Goodnight, then."