Written for Week Four of 'sortinghatdrabs' - an amazing new(ish) Live Journal community, check it out! Winner of Second Place.
Ship: Tom Riddle&Moaning Myrtle
Prompt: A storm
Word Limit: More than 200 words
Completing a Task
He wasn't watching her, precisely.
He merely found himself noticing certain things she said, things she commented on to various professors.
Found himself noticing her as she walked down the hallways, usually pressed against the rough stone walls to avoid collisions, accidental or otherwise. The way she could sit in the middle of a crowd – nose buried in a book – and not one person would make an attempt at conversation. Or, indeed, even notice that she was occupying the space next to them.
She wasn't anything like him; a polar opposite, really. She was short, ugly, and rather pudgy. She had not one friend. No students talked to her at all, except when taking out their frustrations on an acceptable source – Moaning Myrtle.
Though the Sorting Hat had proclaimed her a Ravenclaw, she didn't seem to have much common sense. She never, for example, seemed to understand that the insults thrown at her were not personal, merely born out of petty teenaged angst. He said, she said situations, entirely dramatized.
He never mentioned these observations to any of his allies. They would jeer and suggest that Myrtle had spiked his pumpkin juice with a love potion, looking at him anxiously to determine if this was the correct response.
No, Tom Riddle realized that his … thing – Tom shuddered – was not conceived from any romantic notions. There was just something about the pimpled, spectacled girl that caught his eye. Something about her that made him feel an odd sort of emotion, one that he'd never quite recognized in himself before. Pity.
It was somewhat strange, Tom realized, to feel such an emotion. And certainly not beneficial; not to himself and not to his cause. It would be easiest to simply rid himself of the feeling, before it got anymore out of hand. But how to go about completing such a task?
One year later, as Tom Riddle stared down into the blank eyes – unflinching, despite the clearly audible storm raging outside the walls of Hogwarts – of a deceased Moaning Myrtle, he found a distinct sense of irony hovering about the scene. The first person he'd ever killed. The first person he'd ever felt such a disgusting emotion for.
He supposed that was how someone would go about completing such a task.
Quite effectively, too.
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