Chapter Text
“Draco. Draco,” Pansy hissed, grabbing his ear when he didn’t immediately turn around.
“What? That hurts,” he complained, clutching his ear. “You almost pulled it off!”
“Did you see that?” she asked, ignoring his pain entirely. “I think they just sorted a Mudblood into Slytherin.”
Draco had not seen that, having stopped paying any attention at all after Pansy had been sorted. Crabbe and Goyle had already gone to Slytherin before his own sorting, so he hadn’t cared what other first years were joining them. He looked up now, seeing a boy walking off the stage to silence. He had dark hair parted neatly to the side and a serious, sullen face. When he came closer, Draco saw that his robes were a little faded and frayed. Hand-me-downs, or worse, they could’ve been from a second-hand clothes shop.
“Merlin’s beard,” Draco said. “Well, how do you know he’s a Mudblood?”
“Muggle surname. ‘Riddle’ or something similarly odd. Not to mention, I’ve never seen him in my life, have you?”
“Could be a half-blood,” Draco said reasonably. “There’s no way they’d let a Mudblood into Slytherin.”
Headmaster Dippet was prattling on, giving some speech about how the Forbidden Forest was forbidden—which really, Draco thought was quite self-explanatory. Riddle went and sat down at the far end of the table, ignoring the other children as they shuffled away from him.
He seemed to sense Draco's eyes on him and looked up, meeting his gaze and holding it. Draco stopped eating so that he wouldn’t risk ending the staring contest. He didn’t feel embarrassed about being caught. If there was a Mudblood in Slytherin then that was worth looking at.
“Stop that!” Pansy said eventually, whacking his shoulder. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Hush, I won’t blink first,” Draco said stubbornly.
The competition continued for an uncomfortably long time before he was distracted by Goyle accidentally upending a pitcher of gravy, spilling it all over Draco’s lap.
“Sabotage!” Draco cried, but it didn’t matter because he’d lost and Riddle wasn’t even looking at him anymore.
He caught up with him after dinner, when the first years were led from the Great Hall by the prefects. Pansy came with him, though she wore a sour expression on her face the whole time like she’d swallowed a lemon.
“Hello,” Draco said, having to take quick steps to keep up with him. Riddle was very tall, easily the tallest child in first year, and he had very skinny legs, sort of like a crane. “My name’s Malfoy. Draco Malfoy. And you are?”
Riddle’s gaze slid over him, cool and disinterested. “Tom Riddle.”
After some more incessant prodding, Draco discovered that Riddle was an orphan who knew nothing about his parents, not even their blood status.
Draco had always rather liked the idea of being an orphan. It’d been one of the make-believe games he’d played with Crabbe and Goyle when they’d been younger—a poor little orphan passed from one eccentric relative to the next.
Riddle got a cold, hostile look about him when he shared this piece of information. “You’re stupid,” he said, “and annoying.” Then he hexed a rat’s ears and tail onto Draco and punched him in the face.
When Draco went crying to Professor Slughorn, the fat fool laughed till there were tears in his eyes. “You mean to tell me this young Muggle-born performed a fifth year transfiguration on you on his first day at Hogwarts and then… physically assaulted you? My dear boy, there’s no need to cover up for the older students.”
Riddle looked up at him, dark eyes wide and innocent. “Excuse me, sir. What’s transfiguration?”
*
And so it would have been war if it weren’t for several factors. Firstly, Riddle was very clever and won a significant number of points for Slytherin. He wore a mild-mannered, polite mask around their teachers and most of their peers, and was thus well-liked enough that no one else was willing to support Draco’s master plans.
Secondly, they shared a dormitory. This was an important element to note, as it meant Riddle could climb into Draco’s bed in the middle of the night and threaten to string him up by his intestines—which he did, on two separate occasions. It would undoubtedly have been more if Draco hadn’t been so suitably cowed by the first few threats.
“It’s a truce for now,” Draco told him over the top of their cauldron in Potions class. Even though they’d been at war during those first few months of first year, they’d still partnered together in every Potions class because both of them had wanted a good grade and not to help any other Houses get points.
“Just admit defeat, Malfoy,” Riddle said.
*
Draco found a more suitable enemy in Potter, who was smug and annoying and had been put on the Gryffindor Quidditch team in first year even though he didn’t deserve it at all, just because the Transfiguration professor, Dumbledore, had no respect for school rules. Potter was a better choice because he didn’t win Slytherin any House Points and he couldn’t get into their Common Room, let alone share their dormitories. Also, in Draco's experience, Potter was limited to retorts such as “get lost, Malfoy” and had never once threatened evisceration.
Bullying Potter was just as unpopular with Pansy as bullying Riddle had been, as she only enjoyed being mean to girls. However, Crabbe and Goyle were excited by the new plan, as they were both a bit afraid of Riddle—despite him being a twig relative to them—because he fought tooth and nail and seemed to learn a new awful hex every week.
*
Riddle was quiet and unobtrusive, spending most of his time in the library or wandering the edge of the Forbidden Forest. In classes, he offered answers to questions frequently enough to endear himself to teachers and prove his intelligence, but not so frequently to be obnoxious like that buck-toothed Mudblood Granger.
Riddle had no friends in his House, mostly due to Draco’s feud with him and the general disinclination for eleven-year-old girls to befriend the opposite gender. Theo, ever kind and genial, would've extended his friendship, but he'd witnessed Riddle bringing in bludgeoned rodents to hang off Draco's four-poster and had been terrified of him ever since. Zabini spent most of his time sweet talking the merpeople, and it seemed even Riddle found him odd.
Every so often, Crabbe and Goyle seemed to forget that they were supposed to be following around Draco, and started following around Riddle instead. When Draco demanded to know what was driving their traitorous actions, the ever tactless Goyle shrugged and said, “I don’t know, Malfoy, he’s just nicer than you?”
“Nicer?” Draco spluttered. “Did you not see him punch me in the face unprovoked? Or hex Zabini with boils so bad he had to stay in the Hospital Wing for a whole week?”
Crabbe chuckled as if those were admirable things.
“Yeah,” Goyle said, “but Riddle doesn’t make me feel like an idiot when he helps me with my homework, you know?”
*
Draco delved further into these claims and discovered that while it was true that Riddle was helping Crabbe and Goyle with their homework, it was part of a plot of his to extort them out of their money.
“I know what you’re up to,” he said over the top of their cauldron during their next Potions class. “Taking advantage of Crabbe and Goyle and stealing their money? That’s just low.”
Riddle looked at him as if he thought he was terribly stupid. “I’m tutoring them for money. It’s entirely transparent, I assure you.”
“Crabbe and Goyle don’t need tutoring!” Draco said hotly.
“Don’t delude yourself. Vincent can barely read,” he said, adding the Ashwinder eggs in three neat batches. “All your lot are rolling in galleons. They won’t notice the difference.”
Draco began the thirty-seven clockwise stirs even as he continued to argue with him. It wasn’t true, what he’d said about them all being wealthy. Draco, Nott and Zabini were, but Crabbe and Goyle’s families had been cluelessly squandering their fortune for almost as long as the elusive Gaunts. They were probably giving him all of their allowances.
“Well, why don’t you tutor them for free? It’s not in House spirit to be draining the vaults of your fellow Slytherins. Besides, I’m rather certain that it’s against school rules.” Riddle got that ‘I want to use your organs for party streamers’ look in his eyes and Draco hastened to add, “Not that I’m a telltale.”
That wasn’t true. Just the previous week he’d challenged Potter to a midnight duel and then informed Filch of it instead of showing up. Riddle had overheard him boasting about it and had called him a coward. Draco had retaliated by calling him a Gryffindor.
“Why would I do that?” Riddle sneered. “Out of the goodness of my own heart? I don’t think so, Malfoy.”
That was true enough. Draco wouldn’t tutor anyone out of the goodness of his own heart either. He would do it to prove his intellectual superiority though, but Riddle didn’t seem to need the validation. He looked annoyed more than anything when the teachers complimented him on his excellent work, even if he hid it well.
“Stop asking them for money,” Draco insisted. “I’ll pay for their tutoring.”
And thus, quite without meaning to, Draco found himself bankrolling Riddle’s life. It was only four years later that Riddle let him know that he’d been charging him five times what he’d been charging Crabbe and Goyle for their tutoring. Draco had never thought to check.
*
Second year was much the same as first. Riddle came back from the summer holidays taller, skinnier and grimmer. Draco came back and boasted loudly of all the travelling he’d done with his family and did his best to pretend he wasn’t already very homesick.
He bribed his way onto the Slytherin Quidditch team, as they never accepted anyone younger than fourth year, and showed off the new brooms Father bought in the Common Room. Riddle didn’t look up from his books even when Draco spoke very loudly in his direction about all the cutting-edge features the brooms boasted.
Eventually, when Draco put the broom away and came over to actually do his homework, Riddle looked up and asked, “Is it true Weasley cast a non-verbal slug vomiting spell on himself today?”
“Well, it wasn’t exactly non-verbal,” Draco said, trying to sneak a look at his answer for question three. “He said ‘eat slugs’ before he cast. Also, he didn’t mean to cast it on himself.”
“‘Eat slugs’?” Riddle repeated. “That doesn’t sound like any incantation I’m familiar with.”
“Maybe it’s a Weasley family secret,” Draco said dismissively. He turned to look through his bag for the chocolates Mother had sent him to school with. They were missing, but when he straightened back up, he saw that it was because Riddle had stolen them and was already halfway through the box.
*
It was also during second year that Draco discovered Riddle was a Parselmouth.
He was flying around the Quidditch pitch in large, lazy loops when he noticed him prowling about the edge of the Forbidden Forest as per usual. Curious, Draco swooped down, hovering high over the trees so that Riddle wouldn’t notice him unless he turned and looked directly up.
Riddle crouched down beside a rock and stayed there. Draco couldn’t hear or see much from where he was, so he drifted down carefully.
He was… hissing at the rock. Or rather, at the little green snake that was sitting on the rock. And the snake was hissing back. As Riddle continued to converse with it, other little snakes began wriggling out from the underwood, drawn by his voice. Orange, yellow, green; Draco watched fascinated as they congregated around him.
It did not occur to him that all the snakes facing his direction plus their ability to communicate with Riddle meant that he’d be soon informed of Draco’s presence. Thus, it was an unpleasant surprise when Riddle turned around and hexed him off his broom.
“What do you want, Malfoy?” he said, approaching with his wand held aloft. Draco had always thought it was a mean-looking wand—long, white and gnarled.
“Why didn’t you ever say that you were a Parselmouth?” Draco asked, scrambling to his feet. He dusted dirt off his elbows and knees and began picking leaves out of his hair.
“Parselmouth?”
“It means you can talk to snakes.” He gestured at the snakes to prove his point. The snakes stared at him with beady black eyes. It was a little unnerving.
“Never came up,” Riddle said, which really meant he’d been waiting for the most advantageous moment to share this particular piece of information. He pushed his dark curls out of his eyes and scowled. “Dumbledore didn’t tell me there was a name for it.”
“If Dumbledore were any slower he’d be going backwards,” Draco said crossly. “But don’t you see, this means it’s obvious who your mother’s family is!”
“What?” He lowered his wand. “Get to the point, Malfoy.”
“The Gaunts are the only magical family in Britain that are still able to speak to snakes,” Draco said. “That’s because they’re direct descendants of Salazar Slytherin.”
His gaze flickered, went distant. “Slytherin’s heir,” he murmured, almost to himself.
Really, the Heir of Slytherin ought to be a pureblood, Draco thought, but he didn’t say that because he hadn’t forgotten the late night threats of evisceration.
“You know what this means?” Draco said. “You can find the Chamber of Secrets!”
“What’s that?” Riddle asked. He was beginning to look annoyed. Draco knew from sharing every class with him that he hated having to reveal his ignorance on a topic.
“It’s rumoured that Salazar built a room that only his heirs would be able to find.” Draco lowered his voice dramatically. “Father says that hidden inside is a beast that’ll wipe the Mudblood scourge out of Hogwarts.”
“Sounds like Salazar was a pleasant man,” Riddle said dryly.
“He had the right idea,” Draco said.
*
Riddle and Draco spent the next few weeks immersed in everything they could find about the Hogwarts founders, the Gaunts, the Slytherin bloodline and the Chamber of Secrets. The last of those had unsurprisingly few books dedicated to the topic, and they had to be very careful to not leave any record of their research.
“I’ll see what the Manor has about it,” Draco promised as they stood outside the horseless carriages. Draco was going back home for Christmas but Riddle was staying at school.
“See that you do,” Riddle said. His tone was firm but he hardly seemed to be paying attention to Draco at all, eyes fixed on the empty space in front of the carriage where the horses would’ve been secured. It was almost as though he was seeing something that wasn’t there.
“It’s magic,” Draco said, following his gaze.
“Sure,” he said dubiously.
Pansy stuck her head out of the carriage window then and said, “Stop trying to get Draco to stay behind, Tom. He doesn’t want to be your friend!” She burst into high-pitched giggles, joined quickly by Tracey and Daphne.
Riddle didn’t look impressed. Rather, he looked as if he wanted to hex Pansy into a million pieces. That just wasn’t done. You weren’t supposed to hex girls, even if they were awful.
Instead of doing anything truly barbaric, Riddle smiled pleasantly at Pansy and said, “I hope your brother’s Mudblood mistress gives birth to a healthy baby.”
“How did you know about that?” Pansy squawked. Tracey and Daphne’s scandalised gasps could be heard from within the cabin.
Draco winced. Confirming the gossip was not the best way to go about handling it.
“I have my ways,” Riddle said mysteriously. That meant Professor Slughorn had accidentally let it slip to him. “I’ll see you in January, Malfoy.”
Draco watched him retrace his steps back up the hill till Crabbe dragged him into the carriage through the window on Pansy’s orders.
“If you wanted to stay at Hogwarts instead of coming skiing with me then you should’ve just said so,” Pansy said, crossing her arms. She was looking out the window and blinking rapidly.
Draco had sort of forgotten about the skiing in the Alps part of his holidays, but it was alright because he’d be back at the Manor for Christmas and would have plenty of time to send the elves through the library. “Of course I want to go skiing,” he protested.
Pansy didn’t look any happier and he didn’t understand why.
*
It wasn’t until third year that Riddle found the Chamber of Secrets. All their research was for nought as it turned out the location of the entrance had been moved during the controversial 18th-century plumbing Muggle-isation.
Draco had been in the middle of explaining to Professor Merrythought why it had been perfectly reasonable for him to hex Weasley while his back had been turned, because Draco had been helping him practice constant vigilance against potential dark wizards. Really, he thought he ought to be praised for nurturing other students’ abilities in Defence Against the Dark Arts.
Riddle had slipped between them, smiled politely at Professor Merrythought and complimented her on her new additions to the curriculum till the old bat had entirely forgotten about giving Draco detention.
“Why would you let yourself get caught hexing Weasley?” Riddle asked as they hurried away. “Idiot.”
“It wasn’t on purpose!” Draco protested.
“Whatever. None of that matters. I’ve found it.”
“You have?” It came out a squeak, but so did at least half the things he said with his thirteen-year-old vocal chords.
“Yes, and you wouldn’t believe where.” He shook his head. “I’d never have found it if it weren’t for Parkinson moaning about that tap that never works in the girls’ bathroom.”
“I remember,” Draco said, because how could he not? Pansy complained about it just about every day.
Riddle stopped out front the second-floor girl’s bathroom and pushed open the door, frowning when Draco didn’t immediately follow him.
“What’s wrong with you?” Riddle asked. “Hurry up.”
“We can’t go in there!” He lowered his voice to a scandalised whisper. “That’s the girl’s bathroom.”
“I noticed,” Riddle said and grabbed him by his tie, dragging him through the door.
Mercifully there were no students inside. Draco spelled the lock and cast an Augmenti on the floor under the door to be especially safe so that it would look as though the bathroom had been closed due to a leak of some sort. None of this appeared to have occurred to Riddle. He’d crossed the room with single-minded focus and was inspecting the taps.
“Come look,” he said in his usual demanding way.
Scratched onto the side of one of the copper taps was a little sketch of a snake.
“Have you tested it yet?” Draco asked, not daring to come too close.
“I opened it but didn’t go in.”
That meant Riddle had waited for him. It made Draco feel flattered and warm inside until he looked up at the mirror and saw that said warmth had turned his cheeks pink.
Fortunately, Riddle was too focused on the promise of the Chamber of Secrets to notice. He bent before the tap and hissed something at it. The sink began to move, sinking down out of sight and leaving a large gaping pipe in its place.
“Um,” Draco said, peering dubiously down into its shadowy depths. “I don’t see a ladder.”
“Scared, Malfoy?”
“No…” he said unconvincingly. “But we don’t know what’s down there. What if the monster’s really hungry and is just waiting to eat us? I think I should get Crabbe and Goyle.”
“For the beast’s appetiser?”
“That’s not funny!”
The small, upturned quirk of Riddle’s mouth made it clear that he thought it was, but he said nothing else on the matter, stepping up to the edge of the hole instead. “If you’re going to be a coward then just stay behind. But I’m going in.”
“Wait!” He rushed to the edge of the entrance beside him, appalled to realise that Riddle was genuine in his plan to just jump in without any safety tests or planning. “I’ll go first.” His fear of what lay in wait at the end of the pipe was overwhelmed by the embarrassment at the thought of letting a half-blood call him a coward and then take the risk before him.
“If you insist,” Riddle said easily, stepping aside.
Now that he was looking down into the darkness properly, Draco was having second, third and fourth thoughts, most of them regarding all the horrible ways in which he could die.
After a while, Riddle made an impatient noise and said, “I’ll go first.”
“No, I will!”
“Then hurry up. I’m not missing dinner.”
When Draco still hesitated, Riddle leaned forward and casually pushed him over the edge.
He screamed the whole way down, and would have screamed some more upon landing on a pile of small animal bones if Riddle hadn’t landed neatly on top of him, knocking his breath clean from his chest.
Riddle sprung to his feet easily, having had his fall cushioned by Draco’s stomach. “Come on, Malfoy,” he said.
They came to a wall with two serpents carved upon it, which Riddle opened with the same hissed Parseltongue. Beyond the wall was a very long chamber with a ceiling so high Draco couldn’t even see it in the dark, pillars encased in twisting stone snakes lining the walls. There was a queer greenish gloom to the chamber which reminded Draco of some of the stranger nooks and crannies he’d gotten into when exploring the dungeons.
Riddle strode on ahead, his footsteps echoing loudly in the cavernous space.
“Have you seen the beast yet?” Draco asked, following more slowly.
“You’d know if I had.”
They spent another half hour poking around the chamber, looking for anything that might be a dangerous beast. The cold and damp gave Draco a stubborn runny nose and his sniffles echoed almost as loud as their footsteps.
“Maybe it died of old age,” he said hopefully.
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
Eventually, Riddle stopped in front of the large statue of Salazar Slytherin. “Perhaps here,” he said. He narrowed his eyes and hissed up at Salazar’s distant stone face. There was a muted creaking but nothing else happened.
“What did you say to him?” Draco asked.
“The same as what I said to unlock the other doors: ‘open’.”
“Well, this one’s not a snake. Maybe you’ve got to be politer.”
He hissed again, this one slightly longer. Still, nothing happened but for some more creaking. The sound of distant stone shifting was beginning to become a bit ominous to Draco.
“What did you say this time?”
“‘Please open.’”
Draco pulled a face. “Maybe—maybe you’ve got to compliment him.”
“‘Oh, Salazar, you’re the best of the Hogwarts founders, please let me meet the Mudblood-eating monster, I’m your great-great-great-great-grandson.’ Is that what you want me to say?” he asked, words dripping with contempt.
Draco blinked. “Actually, yes. Try that.”
Riddle looked at him in that familiar way that meant he was questioning his intelligence, but he didn’t have nearly as much experience as Draco did with cajoling stuffy old paintings of pureblood ancestors.
This time he hissed for a lot longer, arms crossed, glaring up at Salazar’s stone face. It was obvious he thought he was just wasting his time. But then the statue’s mouth began to open, wider and wider, till it was a gigantic gaping black hole. From its depths, Draco could hear hissing, and then the sound of something large slithering up to the entrance.
Riddle’s brow creased as he listened to the hissing. Then, abruptly, he said, “Ah, Malfoy close your eyes.”
There was something in his tone that made Draco do so immediately, ducking behind Riddle for good measure.
Riddle hissed some more and the monster hissed back.
“You can open your eyes,” he said eventually.
“Are you sure?”
“I promise.” He was beginning to sound amused.
Warily, Draco took his hands off his eyes and peeked over Riddle’s shoulder. What he saw almost made him flee the Chamber entirely. “That’s a Basilisk,” he whispered, words tripping over each other in his panic. “Riddle, we’ve got to get out of here!”
“It’s fine,” he said, “she listens to me.” Riddle’s face was lit up with a sort of euphoric madness. Draco had never seen the expression from him before. The cruel joy twisted his features and, for a moment, he didn’t look very handsome at all.
But what he said seemed true enough; the Basilisk had its eyes shut when Draco finally dared to glance at its face. It was larger than he’d imagined even with his eyes shut and his terrified imagination running wild. The Basilisk’s body spanned at least ten feet in diameter and was long enough to stretch the whole back wall of the Great Hall. Perhaps waiting for Riddle’s instruction to eat Draco, it lay still but coiled with tension.
Draco chanced another glance at Riddle and flinched when he met his gaze. Riddle was watching him, dark eyes contemplative. Draco really hoped he wasn’t thinking about feeding him to the Basilisk.
“Tom,” he said, reaching out to shake his shoulder and then retreating, thinking better of it. He’d been right to think the use of his given name would shake the strange gleam from his eyes, though there remained some unnamed, dangerous tension between them.
*
They went to dinner after that, buzzing with excitement. Pansy caught sight of them whispering about Salazar’s gigantic nose and demanded they tell her what they were talking about.
“You wouldn’t understand,” Draco said, which set her off in a typical hysterical girl way. Bizarre.
After dinner, he did homework with Riddle and then went to sleep. However, Riddle’s plans were rather different.
He learnt later that Riddle snuck out after curfew and set about strangling all the roosters on the school grounds. Following that, he took the Basilisk on a little walk around the school. By morning, two Mudbloods and a ghost were petrified in the corridor by the Charms classroom.
He caught Riddle alone between classes on the fifth floor by a window that overlooked the Great Lake. “Subtle, you are not,” he muttered.
“I’ll feed you to the Basilisk if you even think of ratting me out,” Riddle said immediately.
“Graduated from stringing me up by my guts, then?” Draco asked. “Obviously I wouldn’t tell anyone. I’m sure you’ve got a plan for how you’d frame me for all of it if I did.”
That drew a small smile from him, though Riddle still didn’t look at him, eyes fixed upon the lake. “I’ve got two buckets of rooster blood under a stasis.”
“Good for you?” Draco wasn’t sure where this was going.
“I’m deciding what to paint on the walls. ‘The Chamber of Secrets has been opened. Enemies of the Heir, beware.’ Or something of that sort.” He leaned his elbows on the stone window ledge, gazing down at the Lake and the tiny students scurrying back and forth over the lawns.
Draco liked that idea. Make sure all the Mudbloods knew they should go running home to their Muggles and never come back to Hogwarts. He wanted to tell Father all about what they were doing. Surely that didn’t count as sharing the secret? He imagined being eaten by the Basilisk and decided he could keep it to himself.
“But Professor Dumbledore knows you can speak to snakes,” Draco said, suddenly remembering. “He’ll definitely put it together.”
Riddle frowned. “I’d forgotten about that.”
It was rather an important thing to forget, but then Riddle had also been ready to open the Chamber of Secrets without even locking the bathroom door. Draco suspected he often just followed his impulses and assumed the details would fall into place afterwards. It was a miracle that he’d notified Draco of what he wanted to paint on the walls before doing it. And that was likely only because Riddle had hoped to make him squeamish with the talk of blood.
“And wouldn’t you want to claim the Gaunt name once you turn seventeen?”
Riddle finally deigned to look at him. “That can be done?”
“Of course. You’d have to prove your parentage, though. But there are ways.”
“Hm.” Riddle still looked displeased, likely debating between terrorising students as the Heir of Slytherin, or gaining the social cache of having known Sacred 28 blood.
“It would improve your marriage prospects too,” Draco said.
Riddle laughed. “I’m not getting married.” He said it with absolute certainty.
That hadn’t ever occurred to Draco as an option. He supposed having the choice was one benefit of having no parents.
“Do you even dislike Mudbloods?” he asked as they went to Transfiguration. Riddle had always gotten along civilly with Granger. He was quite sure they regularly exchanged notes on extension materials.
“I dislike everyone,” he said.
Draco nodded. That sounded about right.
*
The terrorising of the student body continued for several more months until Dippet started talking seriously about shutting down the school.
“Why’d you stop?” Draco whined. “Then we would’ve got an extra long holiday, and they might’ve even cancelled exams!” They were sitting on Salazar’s stone feet in the Chamber, eating their lunch.
“I hate holidays,” Riddle said, face shuttered. He was petting the Basilisk as it lay on the stone floor in front of them. She snuffled sadly, having been despondent ever since Riddle had told her he wouldn’t be taking her out for any more walks.
Hating holidays was terribly strange, but Draco supposed it shouldn’t be surprising. Riddle was an utter swot, after all.