Archive of Our Own ^beta

I. SOBBING WITH SPITE

Myrtle is sobbing in the way that only a thirteen-year-old girl can. She is sobbing with spite, aware of the pathetic sight she makes with the tears pouring down her face, aware that her poorly-muffled moans and snorts of misery cannot help but make any kind-hearted person in the vicinity feel immensely, ridiculously guilty at their inability to comfort her. There were some Hufflepuff girls in the toilet earlier, knocking on the door and begging her to come out and talk to them about it - "Please, Myrtle, we want to help." She ignored them. They gave up after a while.

Myrtle fully intends to keep sobbing until Olive Hornby is sorry. She removed her ugly glasses after they began to get fogged up, and is clinging to them with a deathgrip that is starting to bend the frames out of shape. She slumps dramatically against the locked door of the cubicle, and thinks how mean everyone is, and wouldn't it serve them right if she just died of misery in here. Maybe if she killed herself. The pleasant image of Olive Hornby, overcome by remorse, proclaiming guilt with heartfelt tears at Myrtle's funeral, serves to distract Myrtle enough that she almost stops crying completely. Only with a concerted effort does she manage to get the tears going again, and now they are nothing like as dramatic as she would prefer: the best she can manage is damp eyelashes, repeated miserable blinking, and an occasional pathetic sniffle.

Then she notices the effect her misery has had on her glasses frames, and is so distracted by the difficulty of bending them back into shape that she stops sniffling completely. Absolute, unaccustomed silence falls on the third-floor girls' toilet for the first time that afternoon.

Myrtle is too absorbed in her task to hear the first footstep. The boy who has just entered is too absorbed in his own thoughts to notice the slight sound of her breathing.

Tom's heart is racing, though the only sign that shows on his face is a faint smile, of a kind that would severely unnerve most of the people who know him, and terrify outright those who know him well enough to know what it means.

Fortunately - or perhaps unfortunately - there is no one who knows him that well.

Tom has found the Chamber of Secrets, and with it, something else: a sense of purpose, a link to his ancestors. He is not the first to find the Chamber itself: Slytherin has had many heirs over the course of a thousand years, and some of them were nearly as brilliant as Tom himself. Tom knows. He has studied the history section of the Library more thoroughly than anyone else in the castle, with the possible exception of Professor Binns.

Tom is, however, the first to find the heart of the Chamber - the 'horror within'. The Basilisk - the King of Serpents - has confirmed it. And the creature obeys him. Tom has gazed equably at Professor Dumbledore's back in Transfiguration, and thought about power, and birthrights. He has come to some interesting conclusions that he only wishes he had thought of sooner.

Words from the orphanage school come to him, incogruously. I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul. A certain kind of madman would laugh manically. Tom merely smiles a little wider. He is not aware that he is insane.

His second-hand shoes click on the stone floor of the third-floor toilet. He doesn't have to think about what he's saying or how he's doing it; the hissing words of the summons flow from his mouth as swift and smooth as honey. In the measured cadences of a password nearly as old as Hogwarts itself, he opens the Chamber and calls his servant forth.

In the brief silence that follows, Tom hears two sounds: the distant rasp of scales on stone, and a sudden indrawn breath close by. He wonders who has caught him, and how they guessed. It does not matter very much. The Basilisk is coming.

Myrtle, still locked in her cubicle, swells with righteous indignation. That was a boy's voice. Boys aren't allowed in the girls' toilets. It's against school rules. She jams her glasses firmly on her nose. They are lopsided still; she looks ridiculous, but she will not have a chance to glance at the mirror and right them. She turns to unlock the door, and then pauses. She looks awful when she cries, all red-eyed and puffy-faced: she doesn't want a boy to see her looking like that. Especially not if it's one of the older boys. She grabs a piece of toilet paper and uses it to wipe her face.

Then, secure in her knowledge of the rules - boys aren't allowed in the girls' toilets, it's embarrassing, he ought to use his own - she unlocks the door and steps bravely out of the cubicle, turning to face -

- yellow eyes.

Tom actually does laugh, when he sees who it is: a Muggle-born third-year from his own house, of negligible importance. He doubts she was even aware of the significance of what she heard. He dismisses the Basilisk, closes the Chamber and, as he walks casually away from the scene of the crime, begins to think about how to stage this. He has the Third Floor East patrol tonight; the Prefects are supposed to draw lots to see who does which nighttime patrol, but Tom offered to swap his with Minerva McGonagall, who was only too glad to exchange the unpopular route for one closer to her own house. He was planning to release the Basilisk for a little while, but that is now clearly out of the question. Tom does not take risks.

It is dinnertime. Tom strolls towards the Great Hall and gets caught up in the flow of students headed the same way, absorbed in the ebb and flow of mealtime gossip. He catches a snippet of conversation between two third-year Hufflepuff girls as they whirl past him, and smiles as he considers the implications and possibilities.

Olive wants her friends to call her Livia, but it isn't working.

She tries to think of a polite way to remind them as the meal progresses, but nothing comes to mind. Emelia is telling them all - again - about how Prospero Peachtree tried to kiss her behind the greenhouses. Sophy, who was there, is corrobating. Olive, personally, would rather kiss a toad, but the other girls all giggle and glance archly down the table to where Prospero is determinedly ignoring them all, his cheeks flushed red.

They are a group of six: there are seven Slytherin girls in their year, but Myrtle has never been one of them and never will be. Olive sometimes - not very often - feels sorry for her; mostly she just dislikes her. Emelia and the others are now whispering about something else: all of them stare searchingly at Olive, apparently waiting for a comment.

"Sorry, I didn't hear," says Olive.

"We were talking about your H.D., Olive," says Emelia, with a wicked, dimpled grin.

Olive grimaces. "Livia. What do you mean, H.D.?"

The girls all shriek with laughter. "Heart's Desire, stupid! Weren't you listening?"

Olive feels herself going red. "I don't have a Heart's Desire. I don't know what you're talking about."

More laughter. "Liv-i-a is blush-ing," Emelia sing-songs. "Not that I blame you, or anything. I mean, he's..."

"Dreamy," puts in Sophy, emphatically. "And so romantic! Did you know, he's an orphan? All his things are second-hand. He's so brave."

Emelia snickers. "You should have been in Gryffindor, Sophy. Anyway, Olive, we were just saying how you ought to go and thank him for all his help with Transfiguration. If you see what I mean."

"I can't," says Olive. "I mean, I... he's a fifth year. He's got OWLs and things, he's busy. He doesn't want me hanging around him. I can't just go looking for him."

Emelia's eyes suddenly sharpen as she focuses on something behind Olive; the other girls fall silent. "That's all right," she says. "It looks like he's come looking for you."

Olive barely heard a word of what Tom said; she was too busy thinking he's talking to me he's talking to me oh my goodness Tom wants to talk to me. She just managed to gather the gist of his words, which was that he'd like to have a word with her in private after dinner, if that was all right with her. She mumbled a non-comittal 'all right' which didn't even come close to revealing what was going through her head. After Tom had nodded and smiled and gone, she had ignored Emelia's jealous glare and the other girls' awed ones.

Now they are talking. It isn't going at all the way Olive has imagined.

"I just wanted to know how the Transfiguration went. Was it all right?"

"Pretty much. Thank you for your help. I couldn't have done it if you hadn't explained it all to me."

He smiles kindly at her. "Well, as a Prefect it's my job to see that the younger students do the very best they can."

Olive's heart sinks. As a Prefect... there is nothing special about this at all. He's just doing his job.

His voice cuts through her thoughts. "And there was something else... it's about one of the girls in your class. Somebody Dobson. Martine?"

"Myrtle," says Olive. She thinks: why does he want to know about her? She's just an ugly little Mudblood, and immediately feels guilty for thinking the word Mudblood. Her parents say it all the time, but you're not supposed to anymore.

"Myrtle," agrees Tom. "I heard from a couple of Hufflepuffs that you were quite nasty to her earlier today... she got quite upset. And I don't recall seeing her at dinner."

"She was probably off sobbing her heart out in the toilets again," says Olive, with what she almost immediately realises is unneccessary vitriol.

"I see," says Tom evenly. Olive knows at once that if she ever had any chance at all, she just lost it. "Well. That seems a little hard on the poor girl. And then there's this whole Chamber of Secrets nonsense going on... personally, I think there's nothing in it, but no one should be left to wander about the corridors alone. Just in case. Don't you agree?"

Olive's mumbled affirmative is barely audible.

Tom pauses, and allows the girl to squirm for a moment. Finally, he says - oh, so gently, so kindly - "I think you should apologise to Myrtle. Don't you?"

Olive nods, staring at her hands in her lap.

"I have to go on patrol now. If she's not back in the Common Room by quarter past eight, I want you to go and find her."

He is already certain that she will leave her apology as late as she possibly can; there's still a good chance she won't do it at all. He waits, watching her carefully. He can be patient. He only needs her to look up once.

She looks up. He meets her eyes, reaches out, and takes her hand.

"Thank you, Livia," he says softly. "You're a good sort. I'd like to be better friends with you."

Her eyes widen, and an incredulous, happy smile spreads across her face. "I - I'd like to be better friends too," she says. She glances down at their joined hands, and snatches hers away as if burned. "I suppose - I suppose I'll see you later," she babbles, and very nearly runs out of the abandoned Transfiguration classroom.

Tom watches her leave dispassionately. Then, true to his word, he goes on patrol - third floor, east corridor. It was, he thinks, almost too easy.

Olive passes the rest of that evening in a happy haze, right up until the moment when she glances at her watch and realises it is twenty past eight and there is still no sign of Myrtle. She doesn't want to apologise. She doesn't like Myrtle, and it's not as though she said anything that wasn't true. But it was Tom who asked her, so she begins the long hike up from the Slytherin dungeons to the girls' toilets on the third floor east corridor. "Myrtle!" she calls as she reaches the toilets. "Myrtle!" and she pushes the door open and walks in.

There is a pause. Tom, at the far end of the corridor, turns the corner and counts the seconds in his head. One, two, three -

The scream begins. The portraits sit up, startled, demanding to know what's going on. Tom draws his wand and sprints down the hallway towards the sound, casting the spells which summon the teachers and the rest of the Prefects as he runs.

He is given twenty-five housepoints for quick thinking, and a further fifteen for the high-level Soporific Charm he uses to prevent Olive's hysterical screaming from interfering with the teachers' cordoning-off of the area. "Excellent practical use of magic, Riddle," says Professor Dippet, later.

"Thank you, sir," says Tom.