Chapter Text
Tom, to her absolute disgust, had been asked by more than one disturbingly curious male classmate whether the clothes Professor Evans wore were common among Muggle women.
They were not, of course. Professor Evans was, in fact, a truly strange amalgamation of absolutely shameless and disruptively non-feminine.
Abraxas' haughty drawl momentarily filters through the pulse of Tom's burgeoning headache.
There was nothing delicate about the woman, Tom thinks, as she fights the urge to roll her eyes at Lucretia Black's high-pitched giggle in response to Nott's blathering, scrutinising Professor Evans sitting with knees inappropriately far, revealingly apart, on Prewett’s desk.
Lucretia bumps her shoulder with Tom's, white blonde curls bouncing artfully. “–Don't you think, Tom?”
Tom has little to no idea what the others were discussing, preoccupied as she is, with cursing Professor Evans for the recent turn her thoughts had taken. She should be listening, she knows, even if just passively. It's just–, this has been much more difficult lately.
Tom was usually better at keeping up with her classmates' wiles. It was vital to maintain peripheral awareness, to know where she should position herself in arguments to maximise favour.
But by the look of frivolous, flushed brightness to Lucretia's face, she thinks it likely doesn't matter whether she knows the contents of this particular discussion of theirs anyways; thinks it's perhaps better she doesn't, in fact, for if she did she would have to seriously reconsider her sanity. Or her life choices, leading her to associate with them, at the very least.
So, she raises her eyebrow in a move that she has perfected – conveying the appropriate amount of patronising and rebuke, to leave her opposite flushed with having dared to bother her with such a nuisance.
It works, as it always does. Like a charm.
Tom turns back to the scene in front of her and promptly feels the prickle of irritation under her skin again. She swears she'd see everything, were she to look… The woman wore trousers, for Salazar's sake. Trousers! Clothing made of material that bunches and stretches to leave little of her shape a secret. And to add insult to injury, her robe is opened at the front, tie distractingly loose, attire altogether unprofessionally untidy.
Tom cannot help the slight sneer that creeps into her usually composed expression.
Their defence professor is engaged in a lively debate, limbs flailing around, assuming space that was usually reserved for others, tone opinionated, thoughts stubborn.
Does the woman not know that half the reason she was able to sit there, in the break between their double defence class, and freely discuss with members of both Slytherin and Gryffindor House, was that her clothing garnered far too much attention? Did she not know that the other half was made up of the favour, which all students seemed to have for her. A favour that was not one borne out of respect, but rather of disgustingly obvious interest? Was she not able to parse the barely hidden insults, buried underneath awkward compliments?
A quill snaps – an unanticipated victim of Tom’s anger. She stares down at the two halves, before casting a non-verbal Reparo. Good quills were expensive.
There is an uproar of raucous laughter in front of her, likely led by Evans, yet Tom turns away from it deliberately. She does make a habit of not looking at the woman too closely, cautiously hesitant for a reason she is yet unable to name.
It is a matter of principle. Evans is below her. It is a matter of pride.
Yet even she, who bestows Evans comparatively little attention, has been able to discern the mirth dancing in the woman's eyes whenever someone’s gaze strays and stays for too long, or too low, to be appropriate. She had seen the slightly patronising uptilt of Professor Evans’ lips at yet another acknowledgement of her undeniable power, despite not having been raised by wizards. Or the mild acknowledgement the woman gives those, whose words are less forthcoming.
No, Tom thinks, with a viciousness that she is careful not to show on her face, the woman must know; must be well aware of the Slytherin’s interest in her as a Mudblood-curiosity, as much as she is of the remaining male student body’s fascination with her uncaring, almost accidental lasciviousness. And that is somehow even worse.
In fact, Tom is positive that Professor Evans is keenly aware of the convoluted opinions of Tom’s classmates, and yet does nothing to rectify her public perception.
She wonders how her year-mates had so far not cottoned on to the fact that they were a source of amusement to professor Evans.
Were this Tom, she’d have made sure to make them pay back every slight with tears and blood ten-fold.
But Professor Evans is simply, and irrefutably, infuriatingly calm about it all.
It makes Tom’s teeth ache with the tightness of her jaw, and the skin of her palm bleed back to life upon unclenching them, her own perfectly-upkept, pleasingly almond-shaped nails having left crescent moon indentations in the soft skin of her palm.
With a final laugh, one which makes Evans' head tilt backward and liquid spring to her eyes, the professor stands and makes to resume the lesson, the students scurrying to their respective desks.
Tom's eyes do not follow her narrow stature as their professor swaggers to the front of the classroom, cocksure and grinning with remnant amusement. Instead, she straightens her class' notes, her quill and her spine and focusses on the blackboard.
“Riddle,” Abraxas calls out as he, Nott and Mulciber lengthen their strides to catch up with her after her Arithmancy class. It pleases something hungry within Tom to see them scurry so.
There is a brightness in Abraxas' eyes and a flush to his pale cheeks that promises greatness. Though whether that will be great cunning or great stupidity, she cannot yet tell.
“We could ask Evans for permission!” He exclaims in a hushed voice once their close enough not to be overheard by passers-by. Mulciber's weak eyes dart away furtively, but no other student nor teacher is close enough to do so.
At Tom's silence, which they rightly interpret as a prompt to continue, Abraxas leans closer, as close as he might've stood before. “Think about it! I mean, true, Sluggy forba–”
“–The Mudblood will have no idea the things she is permitting us to do!” Nott interrupts, not quite as quietly. There is a little spittle of excitement frothing at his mouth.
Their plan dawns on Tom not without a wave of apprehension.
In the time she takes to examine the two boys indelicately playing at relevance before her, Abraxas comes to his senses and moves back and away from Tom, only just recognizing the casual intimacy of his stance. His instinctive weariness gives way to confusion, before the forced blankness settles across his pointy face. She turns back to Nott and Mulciber for she is not one to ruminate on grievances long past.
“By Salazar, calm yourself, Therbium” she says and Nott, too, shies away to an appropriate distance, chastised by her sharp tone.
Instead of deigning the two with an immediate answer, she lengthens her strides once more, the three knights falling into step behind her. It wouldn't do to come late to Evans' class. She has a reputation to uphold.
“Very well, we will get Professor Evans' permission for our plans on Samhain,” she says eventually. Nott practically vibrates out of his skin with the chance to outsmart Mudblood Evans, and Abraxas, too, though now dimmed, seems disproportionately excited. Tom herself does not particularly care for this ritual, but its importance is a concession Tom will be forced to make to her associates.
“I will talk to Professor Evans after class,” she says with an air of finality. The three behind her would likely bumble their way into a disaster, she thinks. “Frederic, you will join me.” She does not wait to see the boys' nod of understanding.
They round the corner that leads to the defence floor, to find a gaggle of Hufflepuffs blocking the entry to the classroom. They are like the sludge, clogging up the sink post dish-duty in the orphanage, she thinks with a wave of disgust.
“Tom!” calls out an overly familiar Amos Podmore. Pleasant smile affixed, she slows as the crowd parts for Podmore – Hufflepuffs being natural born followers – for him to lay a hand onto Tom's arm and squeeze warmly. There is tittering at their familiarity.
Tom wants to wrench the boy's arm out of his socket.
She can't do that, of course, and so she settles instead for finding Podmore’s warm brown, soulful eyes and sinks into his awareness for mere seconds. She spies his secret aspirations, his infatuation, his fears.
It is like her own private joke, she thinks as she withdraws moments later, honeyed smile already coming easier to her lips. A revenge she can enjoy now, and later, when it'll come to haunt him that he'd ever dared to meet her eyes.
“Good afternoon, Amos,” she says politely, with just the right amount of a smile to sweeten her reticence. The boy blushes under his sun-kissed complexion, too stupid to recognize his infatuation as the exploitable weakness it is. She mimics the widening of his smile and the softening of his stance. Podmore is useful, she reminds herself.
Mulciber, behind her, shuffles slightly. She tastes… amusement in his magic.
Luckily, before the inane boy in front of her, deluding himself into thinking they're friends, opens his mouth to humiliate himself further, the classroom door flies open to admit them to Defense. She sighs, before she graciously assumes the lead towards it.
Their little group passes through the gossiping herd effortlessly. Everyone's eyes are plastered to her back, by her careful design, but she hates, hates it, at this moment.
She is the first to enter the room and, so, sees Evans waving away a lingering scent of spell-work with a wild wave of her hand. The movement should have lacked the coordination to work any magic, but within a fraction of a second, the room is cleared, the palate of Tom's mouth tingling with the freshness of the air.
Tom's classmates do not even notice it.
Evans sighs contently, before her eyes fall onto them. She grins widely, but her eyes do not linger on Tom at all. Tom sits down primly onto her usual chair. It shouldn't feel like a slight.
The idea is not half-bad, in theory: Slughorn had forbidden any rituals on H–, Samhain, with this specific one in mind, of course – a necromantic ritual that had perhaps been a practice not severely frowned upon several centuries previous, when the wizarding community had still actively been hunted by muggles, but definitely was now. It was an obscure ritual, a secret even between pureblooded families – and for good reason, Tom was willing to admit. Too strong was the pull for the sentimental-minded. Not that it had any hold on her.
Though as long as he didn't know of it, the Slytherins could instigate a gathering without explicit purpose. And no other less well-versed professor could rat the fact that they had gathered this particular night out to their head of house, if they had been given permission by one of their colleagues.
“–and, please write that foot-long assay on five creative uses of the Protego!” Evans claps to finish the class. She is indelicately draped across the front of her desk, wand tucked loosely in the back pocket of her trousers. “Don't forget, Mr. Galaghan,” she shouts after a raucous Gryffindor, who promptly turns pink and mumbles some weak excuse.
As Tom is taking her time packing up her things, Mulciber's gaze finds her. Her almost imperceptible nod is the go-ahead.
He is not the only one to notice her signal though. Behind her, Lucretia leans over to where Abraxas sits and whispers, non-too quietly that it is “such a pity” that they let “uneducated, and unaware Mudbloods teach in the hallowed halls of Hogwarts” – she is very fond of her clever alliterations – and Nott, three desks away, always least refined, mumbles, “Filthy bint, thinking she can teach us, when she knows nothing about the wizarding world and things of real power.” Tom hears a boy to her left snort indelicately, caught unawares by Nott's crassness. Even Abraxas, usually collected, sneers haughtily.
She can't help but arch a condescending eyebrow at Nott, hiding the ever-familiar rage at her classmates’ entitlement.
The sentiment is shared between most Slytherins, though, and so Tom inclines her head in silent acknowledgement at Lucretia.
Privately, she thinks that they don’t know things of real power, either.
Sometimes she wonders what has happened to the ancient house of Slytherin to have it come to this – children posturing about outsmarting their teachers.
But, nonetheless, she stands, composed, yet in their service, and Mulciber falls into step behind her.
She feels the weight of her classmates' gazes as they turn to leave the classroom, shooing out any straggling Gryffindors.
Professor Evans has returned to her seat, instead of further misappropriating her desk, and is bowed over some paperwork.
At Tom's clearing of her throat, the woman's head tilts up, surprised, before an easy grin warms her features.
“Miss Riddle, Mr. Mulciber, how can I help you? I am going to assume it's not trouble with the coursework,” she says, arching her brow at Tom ever so slightly.
Tom, instead of visibly preening, pushes back the stubborn curl of her fringe. “No professor,” she starts, “of course not.”
Evans leans back in her chair now, crosses her arms over her chest, faintly amused.
Tom is undeterred. “We have a favour to ask of you, instead –,” she begins and proceeds to spin a tale of traditions, house unity, and morale. She glosses over the fact that Professor Evans calls the day Halloween and even does so, too – she is after all famously a Halfblood, herself. “–our esteemed Professor Slughorn is somewhat –,” she clears her throat delicately “–superstitious, you see, and thus would prefer us to not celebrate this day in any which way –,” she allows for a weighty pause for affect and finds Professor Potter's eyes; does her best to appear earnest and a bit embarrassed on Slughorn's behalf. The faint amusement fades from Evans' expression. “–and so, we felt like we could find empathy in nobody else but you, professor.”
Evans is staring into Tom's eyes. It would be a moment to make use of through Legilimency, she thinks briefly, but dismisses the notion instantly – even if Evans is not known for strength in the mind arts, she is also not commonly known for wandless magic, yet Tom knows she is capable of at least some, even if her technique appears to be unrefined.
“Well if that's so –,” Evans rubs her chin, expression unreadable.
Tom's pulse speeds up despite herself.
She should have this in the bag, she thinks. Evans should be easily fooled. Evans is fooled by weak Hufflepuff excuses and Gryffindor deception. Mulciber, next to her, is relaxed already, clearly certain that the woman will allow them this. She did a good job. This should have worked, should have been easy. Does Mulciber not realize that–.
“Sure. Meet up”
The elastic band of tension stringing her taught, snaps. It was all in her head then. Evans knows nothing.
Tom hides the relief that courses through her in a grateful nod. What a stupid worry to have had.
“Have fun, house unity and all.” The woman waves her hands about jovially, “Don't do drugs, kids!”
Mulciber wrinkles his nose at the clearly Muggle turn of words, and Tom, too, is dumbfounded by the professor's indelicate phrasing.
For but a moment, Professor Evan’s eyes catch Tom’s in what seems to be a slightly different shade of affability, with just a hint of too much teeth. The expression is gone so fast, Tom will later wonder if she had seen it at all. The woman stands energetically, as she seems to do everything, and steps around her desk. She smiles at Mulciber warmly, before her eyes fall on Tom and –,
–And fall away once more.
Something childish in Tom rebels at being denied her due, so she turns and strides towards the door to leave behind the uncomfortable feeling. Behind her, Evans chatters animatedly with Mulciber, who answers rather stiffly, Tom thinks, trying and failing to tune the conversation out.
She steps aside for Evans to open the door to her classroom.
Professor Evans has placed a tanned hand on Mulciber’s upper arm.
Tom turns to face the opening door.
“Oh! You have an entire court awaiting my permission, I see,” Professor Evans says, sounding surprised. But there is a wry twist around her mouth when her eyes meet Tom's for but a moment. Her hand has left Mulciber's arm.
Tom had not, in fact, expected her fellow housemates to fail so spectacularly at obfuscation. So, she hides her anger in a masquerade of good-natured humour. “We simply knew you'd be sympathetic to our course, Miss,” she says, the words’ sweetness cloying in the back of her throat.
“Well then, they'll be happy to hear, I've given my consent in the name of house unity and merriment!” Evans laughs lightly, oblivious, as Tom cannot be, to the jeering smirk on Nott's ugly features.
Tom pastes on the most beautiful, the most charming smile she can, to prevent Evans from seeing precisely that.
“More immediate merriment first, perhaps,” the woman says, simple, as she is. “Let me accompany you all to Dinner.”
Tom hides her superiority in the strategic mildness of her smile, as she gestures for Professor Evans to lead the way.
Their professor turns, smile wide and warm, and Tom dismisses the stiffness in her spine. The woman is ultimately harmless. She doesn’t matter in the great scheme of things. Whatever Professor Evans does understand of Slytherin politics, it is not as if she had so far ever attempted to stop the ridicule of her person. Samhain is only a few days thus, and Professor Evans will reveal her hand until then, she is sure.
The day of the ritual, there is a nervous jittery energy among those who know. And as they are wont to do, her classmates cover it with entirely too much posturing for Tom's tastes. Not that she minds people knowing of one’s talents, but she does, in general, prefer one's flaunting to be backed by ability.
As the Slytherins surrounding Tom file into the Great Hall that evening, its decorations flaunting an appallingly muggle understanding of the holiday, Tom cannot help but let her eyes run across the teacher’s table. Professor Evans had neither taken any measures against the rather uninformed consent she had been tricked into giving, nor had she seemed to take offence at or even particular interest in the increasingly obvious ridiculing of her uninformedness in the days leading up to today.
But Professor Evans, it seems, has chosen this particular day to be absent from Dinner.
“Perhaps she’s fallen ill,” Lucretia says in an uncharacteristically observant manner, as she daintily takes a seat at Tom’s left.
“My younger sister said she had cancelled today’s lesson,” agrees Yttria Bilstone, from a few seats away.
Tom fills her plate with just the right amount of food. It doesn’t matter – one professor sick means one fewer professor traipsing around inter-Slytherin matters they shouldn’t know anything about.
“My dear students, Tom–!” meaty hands find their way to both Tom’s and Lucretia’s shoulders as if they belonged there. The blonde girl either does not mind or hides it better than Tom does, because it takes a second for Tom to deliberately loosen her spine in response to the liberties Slughorn takes, before she peers up at the big-bellied man smiling down at them paternally.
Tom abhors the potion’s teacher. He veils his vileness behind mutual profit.
Infuriating her most though, is, that it is a mutually profitable situation. She is reliant on his good graces. The connections he has will aid her in her career.
There will come the day she’ll no longer have to tolerate those who think themselves superior, who take from her dignity, because they believe they are owed something in return. There’ll come the day she can slap away uninvited hands on shoulders and repay these indulgences in pain and blood.
“–how are we all this Samhain night?” this, he leans in closer to whisper. His breath, smelling of garlic and pumpkin hits her. Tom’s smile widens a fraction.
“Exceedingly well, Sir! Enjoying the abundance of pumpkin-flavoured food and drink.”
He chuckles, patting her shoulder genially. The man does not outwardly appear suspicious, but Tom is not the only Slytherin, who has noticed the faint narrowing of his intelligent eyes, or the distrustful purse to his thin lips.
“Well, well,” Slughorn says, his probing gaze finally leaving Tom’s. “I would have loved to have elected students as company for a more private Samhain dinner, as your esteemed families surely are, this night.” Tom daintily pats her mouth with her napkin. “– Yet, as you surely know, times are changing, and as traditions are eclipsed by modern thought, certain traditions have become sullied by more… ill-meaning magic, which is better not to be associated with…” he trails off.
Tom wonders briefly, if Grindelwald had already been in need of a potions-master in the British Isles, or whether Slughorn was just employing an abundance of caution in his allegiances. Perhaps he genuinely tries to protect his students from their overinflated sense of security and purpose – she does not know, and neither does she particularly care. Her more politically influential peers want to conduct the ritual, and as such, Slughorn’s simple prohibition will not prevent them from doing so.
“–After all, we have classes tomorrow, don’t we?” Slughorn says, jovially. A warning. Perhaps she needs to lay it on a bit more thickly, then. “Bright and early, my dear students, bright and early! I expect only the best of you, as always!”
Tom affects a most solemnly trustworthy nod, and finally the hand leaves her shoulders.
“Traitor!” Nott hisses at the retreating figure.
As the others draw the ritual circle – a mildly complicated array of runes drawn with blood and salt – she spots the youngest Black, Orion, who had been dragged here by his older cousins to attend for the second time in his undeserving existence. He appears cautious and afraid, as they all do, the second time. In addition to that though, he quietly, pathetically, sniffles – a younger squib brother that had been ostracised from the family, disposed, and never to be spoken of, Rionach Carrow had speculated – and Tom feels once more glad that she is alone, that she is above it all. Glad that she’ll never be subject to such weakness.
It's curious she thinks, with more than a little derision, that this ritual is the sole instance where traditional purebloods allow themselves to mourn for family members that shouldn't exist, that have been erased from family trees and memories. This ritual alone, indiscriminate, as it is, calls for the ghosts of all loved ones, ties by blood pulling on souls the strongest, has been accepted as an instance, where family eclipses magic and honour.
It's curious, how Black is allowed to weep for a squib brother this night, and this night alone, when the entirety of his House denies the dead boy's past life any other day. How these ties are accepted as an inevitability this night, every year.
She had, years ago, worried, what it said about her that she had no one that would come to her, as she called out, though she knew plenty who had died. She had felt so different to everyone else, who seemed to be caught in a web of familial strings and affection.
There had been a strange yearning in her heart, then.
The first time she had attended her classmates’ Samhain ritual in fourth year, she had shamefully even invented a story of a friend, whom she had pretended to have seen. The girl she had thought of had been an enjoyably wicked child, with whom Tom had spent just under a year sharing a room, until returning from her third year to be told that there hadn’t been enough space in the bunker.
Nowadays, that yearning has long died, and she no longer makes up pretend stories. Nowadays, she is beyond questioning, untouchable. Her knights, certainly, wouldn't dare do so. For she had shown them what she did to those that dared defy her. She had shown them real power. Tom sneers at the preparations around her. Real might. Not this sentimental drivel.
When they are finally done, bickering over the execution, Tom takes her seat at the head of the seven-pointed star. Closes her eyes.
Her relationship with Abraxas Malfoy had never been the same after she had slipped up that first and only time and told him that there was no one for her on the other side. That she was alone.
He had looked at her with a bewildering mixture of fear and pity. He had thought she was broken.
She had torn that memory from his mind.
Nowadays, the security of the knowledge that there would be no one to greet her makes her feel predominantly powerful and, perhaps, furious.
The latter emotion comes to her too easily, these days, she vaguely muses as she attempts meditation to pass her time. This might be a good moment of calm to fortify her Occlumency shields. Sometimes she worries the Horcruxes might have… but, no. She dismisses the thread of worry that sometimes creeps into her consciousness. Traditionalist irrationality is a valid cause for fury.
And this particular secret would die with Malfoy's subconscious, never again retrievable.
She feels a peaceful curl tug up her lips at that thought.
The group of them trudge back into the castle, all preoccupied with their own thoughts. Too caught up in their fickle sentimentalities to notice the figure cloaked in darkness on the top of the staircase leading to the castle’s main entrance.
All, except for Tom Riddle, that is, who had not re-lived a by all accounts harrowing meeting mere minutes prior.
There is something eerily unfamiliar about Professor Evans tonight though. It's subtle, Tom can't quite place why – but Professor Evans’ cloak seems to harbour the late night’s shadow this night. It seems to cling to her, to the hollow of her cheeks, seems to live in the black of her unruly hair, in the sunkenness of her eyes. She looks unnaturally pale, in the cool of the moon’s light.
Tom doesn’t know what the dead look like, but if she didn’t know better, she would have pegged her to be one of the remnants of the veil between the living and the dead thinning on Samhain.
“Professor,” Tom acknowledges, which serves to alert the others to the woman's presence, voice as even as she can manage, given the fact that the group surrounding her had been caught being out of bed to do something entirely illegal. Tom's housemates make a pitiful show of attempting to hide a collective flinch. It would be amusing if it weren't so pathetic, or so dangerous. It's a fortuitous fact, now, that the professor catching them is Muggleborn and has little ability to know of what magic they could have dabbled in.
The woman’s eyes glide over the group of Slytherins barely able to suppress their anxious shuffling. Her eyes have a faraway quality. She seems to not truly see any of them. Tom grits her teeth, prior peace of mind whisked away by the wind. Why is she so bothered by Evans’ lack of attention?
She refuses to attempt a show of contrition.
Professor Evans rubs her wrist in an absent-minded manner. Her eyes clear a little. “Calling the dead is dangerous business, as you all should be more than aware of. Especially on Halloween,” she says, admonishment curiously absent, an unanticipated warning tangible, though.
Next to Tom, Lestrange chokes on his spit.
…
Alright. Professor Evans knew of the type of magic they had dabbled in.
Just how much does she know about these traditions? Does she know what they imply? Does she know just how dark the magic, in which her associates dabble, is considered to be?
Suddenly, Tom feels the gravity of Evans' gaze settling on her straighten her spine. Tom can't help but feel uncovered, uncomfortably seen. The pads of her fingers find her wand. Her heart hammers in her chest, abruptly. Why is she so–? No. There is no reason for Evans to single her out. Beyond having been the one to ask for permission, Evans does not know anything incriminating about her.
She deliberately loosens the line of her spine. Innocent people, she had observed, rarely stood with this level of rigidity. And beyond that, she had nothing to hide. Not from Evans.
There is a questioning tilt to the arch of the woman's brow, before the gaze moves along once more. And, despite herself, Tom resents the woman for giving her attention – one, which is owed to her – away to the pitiful creatures behind her, with a passion that catches her unawares.
There is a collective awkwardness in the group around Tom, many of them still rattled by the night, the uncomfortable awareness of being caught red-handed undeniable. This ritual being something that, while not sufficient to threaten expulsion, could kickstart investigations into uncomfortable familial traditions. Investigations, to which no pure-blooded family would like to be submitted in the current political climate – Grindlewald's promises both too tempting and too outlawed in Wizarding Britain, for ambiguity in political positioning to not be deleterious.
At least in this, Tom can breathe calmly. She has no family to taint with implication.
“Alright,” Evans says almost mildly, “it's not like I had never not been caught out of bed back when I had still been a student–,” As if that had been the worst of their offense. “–Get inside, you lot, and into your respective dormitories. I do not want to see any of your faces out of your beds for a minute longer!”
“Actually,” she considers the wane faced group of students, “–a little detour to the kitchens and a polite request for some chocolate might not go amiss. But it's your beds, right after!”
Tom is subject to more than one dubious gaze, as her classmates can hardly fathom their incredible luck, or rather, their teacher's incredible stupidity. She can almost hear them spit trite about Mudblood ignorance. And were it not for the metallic tang on the back of her tongue, the distressing hum of certainty that the professor knows exactly what they’d been doing and what it means, is letting them get away with it, Tom would agree. Yet, the awareness of it thrums in her blood like foreboding.
And just as she had somehow known, as Tom tries to pass by the unassuming silhouette of the woman, has already taken two steps past her, has chided herself for being superstitious, has beaten her breathing into a calm submission–, “Tom. Stay behind for a moment, will you?” rings out.
Her heart is a lump of lead in her stomach once more.
She nods assenting at Walburga's confused and worried gaze over her shoulders, before she turns to see the professor scrutinizing her, once more.
The shuffling of the others fades into silence eventually.
Professor Evans seems to debate something and, with another twist of a hand around her wrist, she steps close. Her gaze seems near probing, and Tom abruptly wishes she'd spent even more time perfecting her Occlumency. Though after that initial panic abates, she notices an absolute lack of Legillimency. The woman looks solely with her eyes.
It doesn't relax Tom much. She still feels so, too, seen.
“Are you okay?” The woman asks, and Tom can barely suppress the urge to turn to where the others had left to, in sheer incredulity. She is positive that she looks the least shaken, is the least shaken, in fact. Because she knows she is.
Because, as every year, she sees no one on Hallowe–, Samhain night.
And, actually, Evans' expression is less worried and more curious.
Tom straightens in attention, offended to be perceived as weak, as this easily shaken. “I'm fine,” she grits out, tone verging on impolite, before she reins herself in, “Apologies, Professor,” she dips her chin to affect contriteness, “I clearly am more affected than I'd like to admit.”
Evans, across her, hums, vaguely affirmative. “Meeting lost loved ones leaves traces,” she says as though the statement is a fact experienced by herself, as if Harry Evans had been roped into these kinds of rituals as a student, too. And while she says this with more factual neutrality than worry for Tom, her eyes look haunted for a few heart-beats. Lost to Tom.
Tom instantly craves the woman’s attention like a missing limb.
Then she has it once more. It's as addictive as it is irritating. Irritating, since Evans' lip curls up in vaguely mocking interest, “Do you see people then, Tom?” She asks, a veritable bomb of a question, almost as if she knows the answer already.
And Tom flaunders. The obvious response should be yes, of course, but–, but she somehow craves knowing what Evans' answer to the truth might be instead.
Would she be appalled on behalf of poor, orphaned Tom Riddle and offer genuine support, and a shoulder to cry on? Evans certainly has the bleeding-heart inclination for it. Or would she smile, knowingly, cruelly amused, as she sometimes seems to know of Tom's true self better than even her friends. Would she commiserate? Is Harry Evans alone in this world, too?
Tom, all of a sudden, hates all of these possibilities and craves them all the same. She wants to monopolize the woman's attention, almost as much as she wants to seem beyond reproach.
This impulse to give into temptation, to try and see how Evans would react to an actual truth is idiotic and reckless, and not at all cunning – the way she knows herself to be.
And so, she tips her head in precisely that angle, the one that makes her look innocent and trustworthy and safe. One that hides her jagged edges and her fury and her truths behind the soft lines the fire light of the torches paint across her cheeks.
She spins a tale, a beautiful tale, one of Slytherin ancestry and found family. One that hints at greatness while being inoffensive, one that places her in a long line of destiny without exposing her wider ambitions.
With a few well-placed words, Professor Evans’ eyes dim as they lose interest beyond the perfunctory, and she knows she’s thrown the woman off her trail.
Why does she feel like she has lost the possibility of some… potential? She prefers this after all.
After a few generic well-wishes, Tom’s mouth feels ashen as she strides towards the Slytherin Common Room. Alone.