Jukebox Plays: My Skin, by Natalie Merchant

Chapter 4

If he had known that being Head Boy was going to involve running errands around the castle for most of the evening, Tom Riddle decided that he might have been forced to turn down the job. Currently, it was ferrying a remarkably flimsy crate full of particularly volatile healing-type potions from the dungeons up to the Infirmary- as a personal favor to one of his least favorite teachers. Slughorn, the pandering little toad, and his excuses that he couldn't trust delicate potions of this nature to the rigours of the Floo network. Oh the things he did to keep up his sterling reputation.

Libya was contentedly tucked away into her corner of his bedroom, having labelled the Head Girl as throughly unsuitable to share the same air with either of them. He wasn't entirely sure weather it was her taste in strawberry scented lipgloss, (lathered on like engine oil) or the fact that she had obviously bought her way into the position. Maybe it was her annoying cheerful, "Hiya Tommy!" that had made his teeth hurt with it's insincere saccharine sweetness. Either way, she would be requesting new dorms soon enough, he would be sure of that.

The Infirmary always smelled like antiseptic, the same clinical sterile smell that seemed etched into every memroy he had of hospitals- Muggle or magical. The rows of impersonal white sheeted beds, lined up like soldiers on review. The folding curtains on wheeled rails, the only thing passing for privacy in this place. In a few weeks, the bedside tables would be dotted with slowly fading flowers, and empty boxes of sweets brought by friends, and those who wanted to be more. And the windows would be shut, but open to the sun, trying to dispel the fear that would grip the patients when they woke in the night.

Gracefully moving over to the office by the door, Tom tapped on it lightly with his foot. He didn't dare balance it on one hand, the crate really was of the most shoddy workmanship imaginable. He was sort of dimly surprised that it had managed to survive the trip up the stairs at all. After a second tap on the door, he could only assume that Madam McAllister was out of the Infirmary at the moment.

Setting the box down on a nearby table, Tom was about to leave for the comfort of his dorm, when a bed at the far end of the long, narrow room caught his eye. Greyish white screens were pulled tight in around the bed, no light or movement disturbing the almost tomblike stillness. It was the same aura that surrounded the stairwell as that Myrtle girl had been taken out on a stretcher. The feeling that something had gone terribly, terribly wrong.

The sun had long since set below the horizon, and he could make out the first stars through the high casement windows lined high up the walls. Elongated shadows and patches of light turning the floor into a striped mosiac of shades. A sort of preternatural stillness that filled the entire room, his own curiosity driving away what human nervousness might had been urging him to turn away. That maybe, just maybe, he didn't want to know what was behind that screen.

But it was pointless to wonder, because either way, Tom didn't feel those twinges of nerves. His cool, measured movements held an almost mechanical grace; his writing freakishly regular, if beautiful to look at. An automated man with a face like one of the depictions of the saints. There was one woman at the Orphanage that would cross herself whenever he passed her. Mouthing his own words to the evening prayers, no place in his soul for devotions to a God that either hated him, or just didn't exist. He was leaning towards the latter.

His pressed, but slightly worn, black school robes swished softly around his ankles, sounding louder in the still of the Infirmary. There was a small gap in the shadowy screens that had been pulled around the bed. He had to give his eyes a moment to adjust to the even deeper shadows within the enclosure, and longer yet when he realized that the young girl he saw lying there was nobody he had ever seen before.

Her skin was the color of bleached bone, reflecting the pale silvery moonlight like the flesh of a corpse. Her hands were folded on her stomach, the sleeves of the hospital gown trailing down to nearly cover fingers that were too thin. Her cheeks were hollowed as if by pain or long illness, a fragility that he had only seen once before in his life. Her hair curled into tight spirals that fanned out around her face like a dark halo. And not a breath of movement, as still as death or patience she lay there.

Tom Riddle could count the number of time in his life he had been moved to crave something which was illogical. He could count them on one hand, and still have fingers to spare. But in that moment, the desire to touch her was almost painful to resist. To see if she was even still breathing, this creature that lay here looking so peaceful. To know if her skin had been touched by the icy chill of death, a sweet Snow White in her coffin.

Pulling away from his place at the edge of the screen, Tom turned on his heel. His footfalls sounded with muffled thuds against the stone floor, and only just in time. As he passed through the Infirmary doors, he was met by none other then Madam McAllister herself. Brought up short by her cheerful smile, hauling himself back to the reality with a brutal jerk.

"Ahh, Mr. Riddle, pleasure to see you again." She greeted him, tucking her bag of simple cures under one arm. The usual first year nonsense of upset stomachs and students too nervous and scared to sleep. A few years practice had taught her that it was easier to visit each of the houses seperately, quickly, then wait for the scared little ones to make their way through the dark hallways to her.

His reply was as curteous and cool as it every was, showing not a flicker of anything in the dark grey pools that were his eyes. "Good evening, Madam.. I see you have a patient already. Transfer student?" He asked with nothing more then civil curiousity in his voice. The matronly woman shook her head, shrugging the bag to the opposite hip.

"No, that's the funny thing- she just sort of popped into the Great Hall a few hours before the train arrived. We're not really sure how she got there, to be honest."

If anyone had ever in their lives taken the time to really watch Tom Riddle, they would have noticed that his footsteps as he left the Infirmary were maybe, just a shade, faster then usual.

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