Myrtle sprinted down the hallway, trying to fight the tears stinging her eyes. If she could just keep it contained until she was out of the corridor, out of sight from the eyes of her vindictive, heartless peers…

She didn't know why she'd thought he'd be any different. He was a pureblood, a Slytherin, engaged for God's sake! And she'd let herself forget all of that, just because he'd been the one person in this whole damn castle who'd been willing to listen to her dumb obsession with ancient runes, and then actually comment back. How could she expect him to forget his family obligations, the expectations for his future, and his house pride, just because they'd had a few enjoyable academic discussions in secluded corners of the library?

It was her fault, really. Despite belonging to the house known for its intelligence, she'd been a fool.

She wouldn't cry where anyone could see. He couldn't know how much he'd affected her, would never know how he'd made her hurt. She'd go away, hide, and cry to herself, let out the pain where no one could hear her. Then the gossips wouldn't pick it up, he wouldn't hear talk of the pathetic Mudblood, poor moaning Myrtle, crying her eyes out once more. Right now, the fact that she could at least hide her pain from the one who'd caused it was the only relief to be had for the aching wound in her chest.

After far too many twists and turns of the corridor she finally reached the far too familiar refuge she'd been seeking. Myrtle flung herself headlong into the bathroom and ran straight into the open door of the stall on the end. There she sank to her knees, snatched off her glasses, and leaned her head against the toilet before finally allowing her tears to flow. She was not a graceful crier; her bout of grief was comprised of loud, uncontrollable wails that shook her shoulders as she completely broke down. To fuel her despair, her mind ran through the images of the whole incident, over and over again.

She'd let it get to her again. Every single time one of her classmates sent her here to wash the porcelain with her tears, she swore to keep them out. And every time, they found new ways to get inside her head. But this time—this time it was even worse. Somehow, he'd managed to get inside her heart.

She shouldn't even have liked him, let alone fallen for him, even just a little bit. He was always so rude, so callous and condescending. They'd shared classes for five years and not once had he shown a redeeming facet of his personality, not to her. Not until they'd been assigned that damn Ancient Runes paper, when they'd been going for the same reference book. She had been caught up in her own head, so excited by the argument she was formulating that she hadn't been paying attention to her surrounding, and their hands both reached for it at the same time. He must not have been paying attention either or he'd never have actually touched her, a Mudblood, and when he saw who it was he'd snapped his hand back, as if burned, and opened his mouth to make a scathing remark—

If only he'd gotten it out, none of it would have happened. But the librarian, the only person in the school who ever really talked to Myrtle, had come upon them just then and no doubt realized that Myrtle was about to back off, to defer to his status as a bully and just let him have the book. So the well-intentioned but annoyingly meddlesome woman had decided to proclaim that the two of them would share the book, right there in the library where she could keep an eye on them.

So she'd sat next to him and endured his glowers and sneers and tried to be polite about asking him to turn the pages when she'd needed to. Because they were being watched by an authority figure, he'd had to keep his vitriol to himself. But when she'd done something different in her work from what they'd done in class, he couldn't resist trying to tell her off for getting it wrong and calling her stupid for skipping a step. At that point, she'd had enough and she knew she was right because she'd spent weeks improving the complicated method the teacher had shown them, running every problem twice to be sure it was correct and she was not stupid. Not when it came to Runes.

And after she'd explained it to him, had show him how it worked and watched him try it again and again in an attempt to prove her wrong and not succeeding, she bore witness to something she'd never thought she would see. One of the Slytherin purebloods who had made her life a living hell every year since she'd been eleven was oh-so-begrudgingly impressed by something she had done. He maybe had a bit of Ravenclaw in him, because his curiosity got the better of him and he started asking about how she'd done it. As he pressed her for more and more details and slowly started to comment on the brilliance of it, Myrtle had realized something:

he loved Ancient Runes, too. Maybe almost as much as she did.

That one conversation hadn't magically fixed everything, of course. After that night they'd gone back to their respective roles, where she tried to stay out of his way and he acted like she wasn't worth his time. It was only after a couple of weeks that she noticed a new pattern: while all the other students, including those he called his best friends, were just as horrible as they'd always been, he'd stopped joining in on their cruel taunts. It was… odd, and she wasn't sure what to make of it. And when they had their next Ancient Runes exam, the two of them finished a good thirty minutes before the rest of their class. As he walked back to his desk to collect his things and leave early, he'd caught her eye and nodded slightly. She'd nodded back.

One short bob of the head from each of them. That was enough to make everything change.

He started seeking her out. At first it was only when their Runes homework was exceptionally difficult, but then more and more, simply because they developed that habit of discussing the class. He eventually discovered which corner of the library she liked to hide herself away in and started to set himself up there too. There, they could sit and talk, sometimes for hours on end without another soul to observe them. And the conversations they would have… he would become so alive. He would cast aside the callous veneer he'd kept up for as long as she'd known him and became an intelligent, passionate young man with a thirst for new understanding and a penchant for leading her into lengthy, heated debates. She thrived there, tucked away in the stacks and facing off with an intellectual equal.

For once, despite the teasing and the exclusion and the constant bullying from all the other students in the school, she was happy. And she thought that he might have been happy, too.

And then the attacks started.

People started turning up in the hallways, stone cold and motionless. First a muggleborn Hufflepuff in the year below them, then a muggle born Gryffindor in the year above. The third attack, on a Ravenclaw first year that Myrtle actually knew, was accompanied by a mysterious message written in blood: The Chamber of Secrets had been opened. Rowena only knew what was actually happening.

The rumors held that it was somehow connected to Salazar Slytherin, so she thought that maybe he would know something about it. And thinking that they'd crossed the line into a friendship of sorts, and that they could talk to each other about things, she asked.

And he snapped.

He went on a terrible rant, spewing forth the sorts of hateful nonsense about people of her blood that she hadn't heard since they'd started associating, not from him. At that time, she hadn't been able to hold back her tears at his sudden betrayal. She'd fled then, too, to this very bathroom stall. Alone and miserable, she'd sobbed for a good hour before a bewildered Hufflepuff third year tapped her on the shoulder and said that there was a boy outside asking for her.

A part of her had wanted to ignore him, and honestly she should have, but for some reason she really didn't like, her heart sped up at the thought of him coming after her. So she'd picked herself up and splashed some water on her face, and then gone out to face him. He'd looked rather alarmed when she exited, probably not expecting to witness the state she'd been reduced to. But he'd apologized, said he was wrong and didn't mean it, and she forgave must really have been stupid, but when he looked at her, so contrite, she couldn't help but want what they'd had before to come back.

It had been dinner time so no one else was in the corridors, and he'd offered her his hand to walk her back to her dorm. She'd taken it. Warm, soft, solid, slightly larger than her own, rubbing small circles into her thumb. She had felt the ghost of his touch for the rest of the night.

And then, strangest of all, he'd asked her not to go into that bathroom anymore. Wouldn't even say why, which she found rather strange. But still, she'd promised.

Now, as she was once again sobbing pathetically on the cold tile floor, she realized that she'd gone back on her word, but she couldn't quite bring herself to care, because so had he. He'd said it wouldn't happen again, but then Lestrange had come up and started tormenting her, and he'd been there too, and she'd looked to him for help and Lestrange had looked to him for support—

And he'd chosen to save face rather than save her. It was clear enough to her now what his priorities were. He would be her friend only as long as no one knew, but never when it actually counted. Why would he risk his reputation? That's all they really cared about in Slytherin. As the well of tears finally started to dry up and her sobs quieted to pathetic little whimpers, she came to the grim, miserable realization that that aspect of him would never change. Whatever might exist between them would never be more important to him than upholding the life he'd been born into.

For her own sake, she had to let him go.

Just after she dried her face with the sleeve of her robe and put her glasses back on, she heard the bathroom door open and close, and the sound of footfalls steadily approaching her. They sounded heavy and masculine, and her traitorous heart lept at the thought that it might be him, come to apologize—it's what he'd done last time, and who else could it be? But no, she couldn't forgive him so easily or he'd never change, and she didn't want to find herself here again; she was growing rather sick of being miserable in this bathroom.

So she squared her shoulders, lifted her chin and pushed her way out of the stall. "You know you're really not supposed to come in here—"

It wasn't him. Tom Riddle, the Slytherin Prefect from her year, was standing in the middle of the girl's loo with a sinister smirk on his face.

"Good evening, Miss Warren. Are you aware that it's close to curfew?"

"M-Mr. Riddle!" she stammered, instinctively taking a step back into her stall. "I'm- I'm sorry, I thought you were someone else."

"Yes, I'd figured as much," Riddle replied, taking a few steps towards her and then stopping, all the while keeping his off-putting smile constant. "But that's beside the point. Pray, tell, what brings you here? What with the recent attacks, I would think you'd have more sense than to run off to obscure corners of the castle late at night."

Myrtle glanced around, trying to find some means of escape, but Riddle was standing directly in the path to the door. She'd never really talked to Tom Riddle before, he was always so far above her in the pecking order, and while he'd always seemed charming and genial from a distance, up close he gave off a strange vibe. It didn't help that the sight of the Slytherin crest on his robes reminded her of someone else, someone she really didn't want to think about right now…

"You're quite right, Mr. Riddle," she finally said, deciding to start inching to the side to maneuver around him. "I really should be heading back to Ravenclaw tower. Thank you for the warning, goodnight!"

He took a step to the side to remain standing in front of her. "Going so soon? That's a shame. I have a little… project I was going to ask you to assist me with," Riddle said, flashing her a smile that showed off all of his brilliantly white teeth.

Myrtle blinked at him. "What…what could I ever do to help you?"

"Well you see, there's this theory I've come across, and I've been looking for someone to help me test it, but up until now no one has been quite… secluded enough."

Myrtle wasn't sure what he was talking about, but every instinct she possessed was telling her that she had to get away from here. "While that does sound intriguing," she said, increasing her efforts to get towards the door, "I'm afraid that it is rather late, so if you still want help in the morning I can—"

Riddle suddenly reached out and grabbed her wrist, preventing her from her escape. "I'm afraid I was a bit too polite with my wording. You're not going anywhere, Miss Warren."

Myrtle tried to wrench herself free, but Riddle's grip was like iron. "What are you doing!" she said loudly. "Let go of me!"

Riddle just kept smiling at her in that deeply unsettling way of his. Then, most bizarrely, the Slytherin boy started making strange hissing noises under his breath.

Myrtle paused and stared at him, bewildered. "What… what's going on?" She couldn't help the way her voice trembled just a bit. He smirked at her and kept on with his hissing. She tried twisting free again, to no avail.

Behind her there was a strange rumbling noise, and she looked around just in time to see a passageway opening up in the wall next to the sink that had never worked. It revealed a dark hole that looked like the gaping maw of a beast waiting to swallow her up.

"What is that?" she squeaked, looking back at Riddle. He wasn't looking at her; instead he was staring at the passageway with a devious grin on his features.

"I've called it now. It's coming. Then we'll see if what all the books say is true."

"Look, Riddle, I don't know what's going on here, but you're starting to frighten me!" Myrtle said, resuming her efforts to free herself. "If you don't let me go back to my dorm this instant, I-I'll scream!"

Riddle glanced at her, smirking. "Oh, scream all you want, you pathetic little Mudblood. No one can hear you."

She knew what he said was probably true. The fact that no one ever came around here was part of the reason she liked to retreat to this bathroom, but that didn't stop her from trying. So she took a deep breath and then let out a loud, futile, ear-splitting scream that only caused Riddle's smirk to widen.

"It really won't be a shame when you're gone," he said after the noise had died down, his voice casual and unconcerned. "And this'll make you so much more useful to me than you ever were when you were alive."

"What in God's name are you..."

As she spoke, she heard the sound of something massive moving about within the passageway. She whipped her head around to get a look at what was coming. In a flash, Riddle's hand that didn't have a death grip on her arm snatched away her glasses, turning the world blurry.

"Give those back! I need them to see!"

"I'm afraid these will get in the way of my experiment," Riddle said. She could make out his blurry form carelessly throwing her glasses to the ground. "Now do me a favor and look in that direction for just a second, and then we can be done."

He pointed towards the passageway, and she automatically turned to look. A heartbeat later, she saw a pair of large, eerie yellow orbs staring up at her from the darkness.

And then everything stopped.

—0—

The tragic death of a student shook Hogwarts to its core. And while to the rest of the school Tom Riddle presented a facade of deep pity at the death of Myrtle Warren, to his followers he simply smirked and said, "It's not as though anyone is actually going to miss her."

And everyone listening to him agreed, except for one.