06 – Alumnus
April 1943
Hermione was out on the patio of Ruth's Patisserie – in addition to becoming a cat lady, it seemed little Ruthie was also taking the entrepreneur route – languidly nibbling on a funny little croissant with orange marmalade in its center that was simply out of this world when Ruthie came tearing out of the building flailing with a letter in hand.
"It came! It came, it came! OH! Persephone, they've accepted you!"
She paused with her fork halfway to her mouth and looked quizzically at Ruth. "What came? Who's accepted me?"
"Your letter!" Ruthie said with wide eyes as though the girl was absolutely bonkers. "Your Hogwarts letter!" When Hermione gave her nothing but a blank stare, Ruth gasped. "Have you never heard of Hogwarts?"
Hermione hid her amusement behind another bite of pastry. "Hog-whats?"
The older witch looked as though she might faint. Ruth came to Hermione's table and plopped heavily into a seat across from her, taking the girl's hands – fork and all – into her own. "Oh, child. Hogwarts! It's a most brilliant magical school. Every family with a little witch or wizard hopes to be accepted to it when their time comes and Persephone, they've accepted you! Surely you had something of the sort back in America!"
Hermione, fully in her Persephone visage, tilted her head in a birdlike fashion. "Of course. There were a few, actually."
"So then you know! It's so exciting, isn't it?" Ruthie practically gushed, squeezing Hermione's hands.
"Aunt Ruthie," she started and the witch turned a sappy smile on her, "how did they 'accept' me if I never applied for entry?"
"Oh." Ruth looked away sheepishly and focused her stare on their joined hands. "I sent them a letter the morning after you arrived."
Hermione smirked and she watched the woman's face with her next question. "What prompted you to do that?"
The witch's eyes glossed, pupils dilating oddly as she answered. "I…don't know. It felt like the right thing to do. A young girl like yourself shouldn't be cooped up with an old bat like me all day when you've still a couple years left for your education yet."
After the words stopped, the silver shimmer to Ruth's eyes faded away and she was looking to Hermione again with that brilliant, cheery smile. "You'll just love it there! Me an' your mum went and it was wonderful!"
"I'm sure." She extracted her hands finally and went back to eating her pastry, more than satisfied by the hold her magic had on the woman. "When am I expected to attend?"
"Next week!"
At this she feigned shock. "Next week?!"
"Yes! They made an exception for your situation and have invited you to attend through the remainder of the term to get acclimated." Ruthie's face scrunched as she thought about something. "You would technically fall into the end of the fifth year here…I wonder if they will have you take your O.W.L.s…that wouldn't be very fair though…" She brightened again so dramatically the turn nearly gave Hermione whiplash. "Oh but don't worry! It'll be fine! We'll head back to Diagon Alley and get you all the things you need. They sent me the full list and while you are living under my roof you will have full access to the family vaults for whatever is required. If you're anything like Evie, I'm sure you're brilliant enough to pass with flying colours, if they should test you!"
Hermione smiled, a genuine one, though not nearly for the reasons the other witch would have guessed, and she reached out to pet Ruthie's hair. "That sounds perfect, Aunt Ruthie. It's just perfect."
Ruth beamed at her with the strangest sense of accomplishment pulsing through every inch of her body.
. . . . .
Abraxas and Mulciber were playing a game of exploding snap while Lestrange did that looming thing he did from his seat on the train. Tom had opted to sit alone across the aisle where he could still keep a watchful eye on his idiot minions but actually have the potential to get some work done. A handful of his books were spread out on the table, one stacked on another, stacked on another with pages all open to topics about charming or enchanting inanimate objects and the shelf life of the magic used to bind the spells to them.
The train whistle sounded, a loud, sharp sound that made all the students in the cabin look up. Tom sighed and began a methodical way of shutting each tome. "Come along, time to make sure everyone is in uniform before we reach the school."
Mulciber gathered the cards and declared himself the winner of their challenge on circumstance - much to Malfoy's displeasure – while grinning cheekily and moved to gather his robes and Prefect badge. Abraxas scowled but did the same. The three of them, once outfitted, moved from their cabin back through the other cars with a slew of other Prefects, checking and announcing to each set of students in their respective nooks to begin dressing for arrival.
Abraxas had been left with the very last set of cars to go through and had already had to break up a handful of snogging couples with a stern threat of point deductions. Still irritated from the sass the last compartment gave him, Abraxas jerked open the final compartment door and started his usual terse command to get changed, stopping abruptly at the sight.
The girl had her back to him, the skirt of her uniform neatly draped over her hips and nicely rounded bum falling at the exact regulation length. Slim, tanned legs peeked from beneath her hem for only a handful of centimetres before disappearing again behind brilliant white colored knee socks that hugged her calves all the way down the longest, most perfectly proportioned legs he'd seen on a girl so petite. She was fixing the collar of her neatly pressed oxford when she finally turned.
"May I help you?" the girl said primly, smoothing her hands over the front of her gray pinafore until its pleats fell neatly over her thighs. Her dark eyes scanned over the boy standing in her compartment doorway with his jaw partially open and crystal gray gaze examining her figure. She took in his pale complexion, those piercing eyes, and his equally pale blond hair and sighed to herself.
So they really are all just that pretty.
Abraxas followed the trek her hands made with his eyes, watching them touch all along the modest swell of her breasts, past her tapered waist, and over her slim stomach then reach back up to pull the most unruly mane of hair free from the confines of her garment. He was so distracted by the way her deep auburn tresses bounced and coiled in some of the craziest curls in existence, falling around her face in a wild halo, that he completely missed the question.
The girl raised an eyebrow and cleared her throat softly, watching his glazed stare blink into clarity, focusing finally on her face. "May I help you?" she repeated.
Abraxas' mouth flapped a couple of times before the sound actually came out. "Ah-uh…uniform—"
She tilted her head to one side, blinked at him, then at herself, then back at him.
"Right. Changing. You are. Now."
"Are you alright? You're a little—" she motioned to her face. "-red. Would you like to sit down a moment?"
He coughed and dipped his head. "No uh…just. Just doing rounds, miss. Making sure everyone heard the alert to…change." Abraxas managed to pull a charming smile out of somewhere. "Carry on."
The witch smiled brightly, walked the few steps to the doorway and reached out to run her hand over the shiny badge pinned to his robe. His chest hitched noticeably and she noted that his breathing stopped abruptly. "Interesting…" Her face leaned closer to read the embossing on the badge. "'Prefect'," she said studiously then asked, "Like an officer of sorts for the school?"
Abraxas took a moment to realize she was asking him another question and stuttered at the way her fingers were rubbing across the filigree, occasionally brushing the fabric of his robes and effectively stroking his chest in the tiniest of circles. "R-r-right. Of-of sorts." When he was able to get his bearings once more – about at the same time she stopped rubbing the crest pinned to him and provided a little more room between himself and the heat of her delicate little body – he looked at her a bit oddly. It was almost as if something swirled in those deep pools of chocolate blinking up at him; he found it increasingly difficult to look away. "I don't recall seeing you around the halls. Are you a transfer?"
She straightened and nodded with another smile. "Yes. It's strange isn't it? Joining in the middle of the year." The witch sighed and gnawed at the corner of her lip some, tugging it between her teeth in a bit of a fret. "I hope it won't be too awful. I'm not very good when it comes to meeting new people and I didn't expect to move and this is—" She took a deep breath as if to calm herself as though she were frazzled. "Well it's just quite different from the school I came from."
Abraxas stared outright at the new visual stimulation of her lip biting – she had perfect teeth to go along with those perfect legs of hers. He swallowed and focused back on her face. "Beauxbatons?" he ventured a guess.
The girl laughed and it was as though a tinkling of very pleasant bells filled the compartment. She placed a dainty hand on his arm for just a second and moved back inside to finish getting changed; he gravitated toward her, moving past the threshold just enough to be considered "in" the compartment but keeping the door open so no true foul play could be afoot. She pulled down an ankle length set of robes with a boldly embroidered Hogwarts crest on the breast and went about fastening it into place.
"I'll take that as a compliment. Even I have heard of that school… no, I moved here just a week ago from overseas, from America."
"You're American?" Abraxas blurted dumbly before he could help himself, his jaw nearly hitting the floor.
He wasn't sure if he should have been put off or turned on by that, though while he was trying to decide he noted how she paused in her dressing once more and was giving him a look again. His skin prickled and his gut felt hollow and sickly at the thought of having offended her. Her hands fiddled with the hem at her pleats, giving him a barely there glimpse of another tiny portion of thigh, and he realized he was far from put off by any aspect of her.
He clumsily tried to recover. "I-I meant that your accent is brilliant, I never would have guessed!"
She let out a noise somewhere between a chuckle and a snort at the indelicate compliment and quaintly explained, "I was born here. As were my mum and dad, but we all moved when I was a babe. I don't remember any of it from before but...certain circumstances came about and, long story short, here we are." The girl gestured to herself with a cheeky smile. "You can take the girl out of Britain but you can't take Britain out of the girl, I suppose."
His eyes followed her motion again. His mouth dried a little. "Brilliant," Abraxas muttered.
"Oy! Malfoy! Get a move on! Meeting's startin' in five!"
Abraxas jumped at the sound of his name, stumbling back into the narrow walkway of the train car. He scowled to his left, catching Mulciber waving him on hurriedly, and eventually let out a dramatically agitated sigh. Sending an apologetic look back to the odd new transfer girl, he was finally able to muster a Malfoy brand smirk to flash towards her. "Sorry love, duty calls, you know?" He so casually brushed his hand over the badge she'd been fondling earlier and if it happened to catch the light and glimmer a hair more than normal in that moment, it was purely coincidence. "I'm sure to see you later, being a Prefect – officer type - and all. If you have any trouble or need help finding your way—"
"I'll look for you," she purred and it turned that suave smirk of his into a steadily widening, albeit lopsided grin.
"Yeh. . ."
"ABRAXAS! Come ON! MEET-ING! Tom'll go spare if you make Slytherin look bad!"
The last seemed to jolt Abraxas out of his daze and he apologized to the witch again before shutting her door and scurrying off in the direction of the Head and Prefects train car.
After it was clear he'd gone and was not heading back for any reason, Hermione extracted her wand from its spot within the folds of her robes and reset the altered confundus charm she'd set to trigger on the door. Once her makeshift ward had been refreshed, she sat back down to pull out the decade's current edition of Hogwarts: A History and catch up a bit with some light reading.
. . . . .
Hermione sat in the uncomfortably padded chair in front of Headmaster Armando Dippet's desk, doing her best to not fall asleep during his droning speech. Due to her strange admission, he had invited her to eat with him so he could go over the ins and outs of the school before releasing her into the start of the second term. It was all carefully orchestrated on her part, of course, and Dippet was decidedly less savvy in the ways of magical treachery than his successor, so he was a delightful pushover.
"Now, Miss Callaghan-"
Hermione sat up, blinking herself awake and alert with a patronizing smile on her face.
"-do you have any questions?"
Having not actually listened to much of anything he had said, she shook her head. "No Headmaster. Everything is very… self-explanatory, I would say."
"Wonderful!" The old man clapped his hands together and pushed off from his seat in an animated fashion. "Then there is only one task left to be done before you're able to retire for the evening." At her curious look, Dippet smiled warmly. "The sorting, of course."
"Oh, of course, the 'houses'," Hermione said sweetly as though she'd simply forgotten.
She watched the old man pull the ragged sorting hat from atop one of the many curio cases in the office, observing that it looked just as tattered as the one she remembered being plopped on her head in her first year. This, she was quite curious about. She wondered if, knowing the things that she knew now, what this wizened old hat would have to say about her this time.
The murky brown cap sank well past her brow, all the way down to the bridge of her nose, shrouding her in that familiar darkness.
"Persephone Callaghan. I've never heard of you…you weren't on the roster."
A familiar tone rasped in her head. The greeting surprised her and Hermione responded the only way she could think to, "I am a transfer, Sir Hat. I would not be on th-"
"No, no, no. That's not it at all. You don't belong here at all do you?"
Her jaw tensed and she didn't know what to say then.
"No. You don't. You're up to something Miss 'Callaghan'. Something very…complicated."
"I'm not sure precisely what you're referring to, but I would like to get some rest, so if you could hurry this up, I'd be much obliged." She retorted snappily to the bloody know-it-all hat.
The thing chuckled and hummed on her head then sighed. "Well you're very cunning, that's to be sure, but you're not a very good liar. Still, half-truths and evasion are valid tactics - Slytherin would suit you quite well. But there are dark times ahead…too dangerous, much too dangerous for a Muggle-born there…"
Hermione stiffened, somehow surprised that it was still able to peg her for exactly what she was, despite how easily she'd navigated all these other supposedly gifted witches and wizards. Of all the research that she'd done there was only so much about the magic and sentience of the Sorting Hat, and not a bit of it was truly helpful. The damned hat was a wild card in the whole operation. "What do you know?" It was more of a demand than a question.
The hat just chuckled again. "Everything and nothing at all, Miss Callaghan."
She grimaced.
"Well then, it's settled—"
"RAVENCLAW!" The Sorting Hat shouted, bouncing a bit on her noggin.
Headmaster Dippet clapped then plucked the hat from her head to set it back on its shelf. Hermione blinked owlishly several times at the sudden reappearance of all the light in his office at once.
Ravenclaw, Hermione mused bitterly, likely the house I should have been in in the first place. Perhaps if I'd never met those blasted boys in the first place, I wouldn't be a slave in the future. She frowned then. Or I would have just died much, much younger because Harry would've had less than a clue. Hermione ignored the dull pang of things clenching in her chest at the thought of her past – or future, as it were – and concentrated on her task at hand.
"Brilliant! I knew – knew – ever since I received your transcripts Miss Callaghan. There's simply no other place you would fit more perfectly than Ravenclaw. It's just simply wonderful!" The old man continued gushing, taking his wand and waving it at her uniform so that a proudly embroidered crest appeared over her left breast. "Come along now, I've kept you quite late this evening talking your ear off, it's only right I see you to the tower."
"Tower, sir?" Hermione asked offhandedly, gathering her robes and quirking a brow at the blue and bronze striped tie that had found its way to her pile. She followed the headmaster out of his office while picking lint from her skirt and trying to convincingly feign interest in anything else the blathering fool had to say.
"Ahhh, yes, child. I hope you're ready for a bit of a jaunt. Ravenclaw tower is one of the highest in the entire school. It has an excellent view of the lake and Forbidden Forest-" He turned to look at her over his shoulder. "-which, if I didn't mention before—"
"Is forbidden," she finished for him as politely as she could, "No, you did mention it, sir, at least once."
Or fifty times. Merlin-bloody-Christ.
. . . . .
The return feast had come and gone and the first day back to classes was full of the usual hustle and bustle. The hall had already settled into its usual noisy din and, as was typical, Tom's not-so-merry gang of individuals was back at his side.
Merlin will I be glad to not have to spend breaks with these idiots soon. Better still than the orphanage, I suppose. Tom flipped another page in the book he was reading, endeavoring to ignore the moronic chatter around him.
Across the table Rosier and Malfoy sat and spoke about Quidditch and other things entirely uninteresting, to his left Nott and Mulciber discussed women, and Lestrange sat to his right simply shoveling food into his maw, apparently barely recalling that he also required oxygen to sustain himself and could not live on mounds of potatoes alone. Tom sighed, resisted rolling his eyes, and instead sipped some juice from his goblet before returning to his research.
He was content to drown out the drivel his gang was going on about, allowing himself to sink into the simple pleasure of memorizing pieces of text that would allow him to add the final set of spells to his diary and make it a nearly sentient thing. It was fortunate that Flourish and Blotts had a copy of the book he'd needed to garner the knowledge to do so.
His concentration stuttered for a moment at the memory of his unpleasant encounter with that equally unpleasant witch and he sneered in the general direction of his book. The baseline standard of manners must have been lowered when he wasn't looking because he was in the presence of that woman-that girl-for all of barely ten minutes and she had managed to insult him at least a handful of times.
Honestly, was informing a woman of her place in the hierarchy of the world not a thing anymore?
Nott and Mulciber's chatter stopped abruptly. Their yammering on and on about this witch or that one was always a constant set of white noise to every conversation that it had become commonplace. It was a thing that you never even realized was there until all of a sudden it wasn't. The absence of it was noticeable enough that even Lestrange stopped funneling vittles into his gullet and looked up and over at them – that got Tom's attention.
Rophelius Lestrange blinked dimly when he realized the other two had not actually stopped chattering, just taken it to a much, much lower level and were now muttering and pointing in the direction of the teachers' table like two excited little girls.
"'Ey!" Rophelius snapped, "Oi! You two! Whatever you Nancies are pointing at, cut it out. Last thing we need is someone like that Dumbledolt to see you pointing, or talking, or having a bloody independent thought. He'll come and take points or give a year of detentions before we even get the first bell."
"Perhaps you can look and point then, mate. No danger of an independent thought there if you happen to get caught," Nott snapped defensively.
Lestrange, the larger of the two of them, sneered menacingly and began to get up with a clear intent of something quite physical to follow when Tom, sounding terribly bored at their posturing, stopped him.
"Stay seated, Rophelius. I daresay that you dragging Nott along the table by his ear would draw a bit more attention than some girlish tittering about whatever it is they're on about."
The scowling, too big for his year boy gave Nott one last vile sneer before plopping back down onto the bench heavily to resume his brutish feeding.
Tom controlled his own look of distaste at the way Lestrange went back to piling food into his mouth and tried to get back to his book before the long trek to potions.
The hens were whispering more avidly now and it was their strange sense of urgency housed within their low, yet still annoyingly audible murmuring that finally set him off. "For Salazar's sake, what are you bloody yammering about?" Tom snapped.
His tone was so suddenly loud – for Tom, anyway – that it made all of the crew sit up straighter. The two being addressed paled somewhat and the others did this funny sort of thing where they sat at attention while dutifully averting their eyes and general body language until they were called upon, if at all.
Tarquin Nott's gaze shifted sideways again to the professor's table and then back just as quickly. His mouth opened and closed a couple of times before he finally got a sound out; he mumbled. Nott flinched - Tom hated it when people mumbled.
Tom narrowed his eyes. "Say again?"
It was polite enough, but Nott knew better. He bowed and cowered as best he could at their table without anyone truly noticing and making a scene. Tarquin kept his eyes locked onto the space on the table in front of him and cleared his throat before speaking again. "The girl. We were talking a-a-about th-the girl, Tom."
"A girl?" A dark eyebrow went up in an entirely unamused fashion. "All yours and Mulciber's obnoxious whispering over a girl still?"
"Th-the girl…My Lord." Nott added the last in a formally informal attempt at any sort of forgiveness for irritating the other boy. They were to keep his proper title to themselves for the most part for now, but so long as there wasn't anyone very close and listening, Nott knew that Tom preened under the acknowledgement. Maybe it would make the punishment later less severe.
Tom let his eyes run over Tarquin Nott and his funny cowering. If the boy had been a dog, he would have his tail so firmly lodged between his legs it would fuse itself there. Hell, he'd be wallowing before him, belly up in a puddle of his own urine. The latter thought made him scrunch his nose.
How funny, thought Tom, finally moving to shut the book he'd been reading from all this time. The idiot annoys me over breakfast and he's running so scared now that he's stuttering. A very slight smirk tilted up the corner of his mouth. It's not the world yet, but…
"The girl?" Tom repeated slowly after an awkwardly long pause. The group of them shifted in their seats in response. Tom sighed boredly, but asked, "What girl? Which of these dull witches are you so infatuated with now? Which of—"
"Tom! Tom! There you are, my boy! I have someone I'd like for you to meet!"
Tom's jaw snapped shut, the back of his tongue pressed strongly to the backs of his teeth – he also hated being interrupted. Breathing in and out once smoothly, Tom turned in his seat to greet his Head of House, his "model student" mask falling into place – and then it up and fell off.
The old, portly Professor Slughorn was scooting towards their table with one arm hovering in the air behind the little witch he was ushering their way. The top of her head barely came up to the professor's chin and her small form was draped in the full Hogwarts uniform: stark white oxford, gray fitted and pleated Ravenclaw branded pinafore with a matching house tie-fuck, she even had the glossiest, most regulation and uniform-like shoes he'd ever seen; it was all fitted and tailored to just the perfect, most proper look he never even thought was possible.
And it was all on that girl, that Persephone.
He did well schooling his features quickly once more before they drew too close.
Of course that obnoxious twat is here. Why wouldn't she be? I've only never seen her around anywhere before this past week, so it makes all the sense in the world for her to be here.
Tom stood for Persephone's arrival, earning a chuff of approval from his professor.
"Tom," Slughorn began merrily, "This is Persephone Callaghan! Miss Callaghan, this is Tom Riddle – he's the lad I mentioned to you back there."
Tom started to extend his hand to the girl until he realized that she was still looking at the surrounding walls and the magical ceiling overhead. His eye twitched at her flippant behavior. Clearing his throat, he tried again, "Miss Callaghan, what a pleasure." The flat tone of his voice indicated to those who would listen that he was anything but pleased. "How surprising it is to see you again."
Persephone suddenly, sharply, yet somehow entirely innocently turned her attention to him. Her eyes roamed over his person with thinly veiled disinterest and she asked politely with a beautifully patronizing smile, "Have we met before?"
If he had been anyone else, he would have been startled by the way she was smiling at him. It wasn't that it was pretty, or serene, or pleasant to look it – it was none of those things, not to him – it was that she was doing that thing again.
She was doing as she'd done in the Alley when her whole demeanor changed far too fluidly from the snappy little tart to a pleasant girl with an easy, lovely smile that reached every last centimetre of her face - except, he noted, for her eyes. The rest of her looked pleased and placid and lit up with juvenile naïveté, but her eyes were hard and dark and cold and full of recognition.
Tom caught those cold, dark eyes as he took one of her hands and went through the motion of bowing handsomely over it. He watched her long enough to see the black of her pupils begin to bleed into the deep chocolate pools of her irises only to squirrel back away to their proper place before they would do it again.
"No. No, of course not. My mistake. It is a pleasure to—" He paused, seeing the colors in her eyes shift subtly once more. "—meet you, Miss Callaghan."
Persephone's lips curved upwards much more fully than before.
There it was again.
A piranha, he thought, a piranha before feeding time perhaps. Still and quiet and eerily aware of everything around her but with nothing to indicate she was truly watching or listening.
"No, no Mister Riddle, it is a pleasure to finally meet you."
"Finally?" For some reason, she looked somehow even more amused at his question. That alone made him want to scowl.
"Oh yes," she replied brightly, sending a warm look towards Slughorn. "As the Professor mentioned, he's told me quite a bit about you this morning already. It's almost as though I already know you!"
At that, he finally did scowl, though it was brief and hardly noticeable to anyone aside from the one it was meant for. Tom turned his stare onto the professor now with a boyish grin. "All good things I hope?"
Professor Slughorn let out a hearty laugh and clapped the young man on the back. "Only good things to tell! Miss Callaghan here will be joining us at Hogwarts for the rest of the year to get acclimated to how we do things before returning to finish out her final years of her magical education! Very exciting. She was the top of the class at her last school according to her transcripts, so naturally, you came up!" Slughorn leaned in towards the boy with a conspiratorial grin. "If she'd been with us from the start, my boy, she'd be giving you a run for your money for that spot."
"There are still two years and some change yet, Professor," Persephone chimed in good naturedly and Slughorn laughed at her tenacity and cheek.
Tom's gaze narrowed at the same rate his tight lipped smile widened. "Well I, for one, am pleased that you've seen fit to make Hogwarts your home for these next couple of years. I can't begin to tell you how refreshing it will be to actually have someone even remotely close to catching up to me." His attention shifted to his minions who were doing a poor job of concealing their rapt interest in the conversation taking place; they all found something terribly intriguing in their porridge after that.
"Wonderful! That's m'boy!" Slughorn beamed and somehow ignored completely the snide remark. "Always so welcoming to new students, even if their situation might be a bit… unusual."
"I do try, sir."
"And you succeed! That is why, dear boy, that I know you'll be able to help Miss Callaghan this morning."
Tom looked at Persephone, half expecting her attention to be wandering again, nearly surprised to see her staring at him intently with her head just barely tilted in a quizzical fashion. "Of course, Professor. How ever may I be of assistance?"
"Well, due to the suddenness of Miss Callaghan's arrival, it has been a bit of a challenge and compromise getting her worked into classes."
"Is she not attending classes with the rest of her house and her year? I'm afraid I don't understand, Professor." Tom grimaced, feeling as though he knew exactly what was about to come his way.
"Quite alright, quite alright. The answer to that question is, of course, yes and no." At Tom's inquiring look, Professor Slughorn hooked his fingers around the edges of his lapels and rocked on the balls of his feet. "As I said, hers is a bit of an unusual situation, joining us as she is. We have a rather large class size overall for this year – as I'm sure you're aware – and where she can, Miss Callaghan will be attending with Ravenclaw. But there were a few subjects that are much more hands on that really can't stand for many more bodies in the sessions without losing valuable instruction. It is with Miss Callaghan's best interests in mind that we – the scheduling committee – thought it better that she attend the sessions with the lowest individual head counts so she may truly experience a proper time of it here at Hogwarts. We'll have more time to correct the issue for the subsequent years, but it's an immediate fix that will work well enough!"
Tom was silent for several seconds as he processed this information. Slughorn kept referring to it as an "unusual situation" and each time the hairs on the back of his neck prickled; if he narrowed his eyes any further they'd be shut. "Forgive my incessant questioning, Professor, but where precisely is it that I may… 'be of assistance'?"
"Ah, my apologies, Tom. I would very much appreciate you looking after Miss Callaghan today in Potions and Defense Against the Dark Arts. You know, show her to the rooms, partner with her if you need. Her other class times and sizes will work fine for the content, however these ones in particular are a tad overfull already. Somewhat of an oversight on our part, I'm afraid." Slughorn added the last part bashfully.
The young wizard's jaw ticked and he studiously avoided looking at the girl who he could still feel looking at him. Of course, he repeated his earlier thoughts, of-fucking-course. The two bloody places where I need her to be the least and I'm stuck babysitting her rude, arrogant, bitchy—
"Professor, I'm sure I can find my way well enough."
Persephone's voice, wary and meek, snapped him out of his ever growing anger and he was sure he was glaring now.
"Nonsense, child!"
"No, it'll be fine – I'll be fine." Her eyes shifted back to the quietly fuming wizard, though if you weren't looking, you would certainly miss his very slight displays of his feelings on the suggestion. "I would hate to be a bother and put you out, Mister Riddle. That is certainly not at all why I came to Hogwarts. Please feel no obligation to me, I will find the rooms on my own—"
"Nonsense!" Slughorn said again, smile faltering.
"Nonsense is right," Tom said all of a sudden with a very firm note to the words that appeared to startle her. He made sure she was looking at him, staring with that strange gaze locked onto his own before he continued. "Don't be ridiculous, Miss Callaghan. The Professor is quite right in bringing you to me. I would be happy to assist you throughout your stay here. You shan't find a more thorough guide and partner than I, and I would loathe to leave you in the hands of someone less capable."
Professor Slughorn expression went back to "beaming". "Excellent Tom! I knew I could count on you. I've got to go prepare for class this morning. See to it that you both get there in one piece for me, will you?"
"Of course, Professor. You can absolutely trust me."
"Brilliant!" Slughorn flashed a lopsided grin and nodded to each of them in turn. "I'll be off then. See you soon Miss Callaghan, Tom."
Both teenagers bid the man farewell with Tom staring hard at his back until he was well out of sight beyond the doors to the Great Hall. The boy took a deep breath as if steadying himself for something quite unpleasant before he finally turned back to the petite witch.
Persephone raised a thin eyebrow at the rigidity of his back.
After what seemed like ages, Tom finally turned back to her and motioned towards the Slytherin table where his followers were still pretending that they weren't listening to every single syllable of the conversation happening less than a metre away from them all.
"Would you like to sit with us for the remainder of the meal, Miss Callaghan?" Tom asked, "Unless, of course, you'd prefer to dine with your house."
She looked to the bench, took in the head count of boys sitting all around Tom's vacant spot, and smiled. "Oh, yes, please. That would be splendid."
Once the lot of them were all more or less formally acknowledged into existence, there was some awkward shuffling. They all, save for Lestrange, rose briefly from their respective seats until they were introduced. Persephone cooed a bit at recognizing Abraxas; he flushed, she fluttered her lashes, Tom glowered.
Persephone finally settled into a spot at the table and only after that did the boys seat themselves once more with Tom taking up the place next to her between her and Rophelius.
Tom reached to his side to retrieve a plate that one of the others had neglected to fill in lieu of idle morning chitchat and placed it before his new and infuriating anchor. He was about to begin filling her plate for her and serving her a standard of things: toast wedges, eggs, sausage, all the usual, when her arm reached past his to do it herself. He bristled and felt the muscles at the corner of his eye twitch.
. . . . .
Breakfast continued on, with most of Tom's gang doting attention on the new girl.
Malfoy, who had insisted under several hushed breaths to Rosier that he must not have had a good look at the witch at the Alley because he certainly would not have ignored this one, was being significantly more charming than he'd managed to be on the train; he only sputtered once when she reached over and touched his hand during a laugh they all shared over some godawful joke Nott had made.
Nott himself grinned and quipped and began taking mental tallies of the times he said something even mildly racy or laced with innuendo that made Persephone blush. She would smirk a little, her cheeks would pink, and she'd bat her lashes and look off to the side. Every time she did it – four times now – Nott felt his stomach tumble and his chest flutter and he would quickly rifle through his mental stores to figure out how to make her do it again.
Tom had tried shooting them dark looks to get their fawning over the stupid witch to stop but for some reason, it wasn't working. He'd even made direct eye contact with Nott and the man hardly noticed. It was strange. It was unusual. It was wrong. Tom had been stealing glances out of the corner of his eye at the girl, trying to figure how her presence at the table had suddenly made his entire group a gaggle of daft idiots – more so than usual. There was something that wasn't right, with this witch. Maybe she was part Veela? That might explain the way they were all practically slavering over her… he would need time to ponder it and find out what it was. Until then, though… He took a solid, too-firm bite from the apple he'd been working on since the conversation had dissolved into some sort of mating display amongst his minions.
Mulciber, who had been so keenly hanging onto every word being spoken since Slughorn had drawn up to their table, saw the telltale signs of Tom's irritation peeking through his normal stony faced disposition. It was extremely odd, not to mention somewhat rare, to see Tom so visibly annoyed, and he'd already begun fearing for the new girl's well-being. Ever since he'd seen this one in the Alley, he'd been thinking about all sorts of lewd kinds of things he wanted to do to her and it had only gotten worse after she'd actually sat down – he couldn't very well do any of that if she was a corpse then, could he?
Well, he supposed, he could, but that wasn't really his cuppa.
Naturally, being the valiant individual he was, Mulciber piped up before the witch could say anything else to irritate his Lord and took his turn at her attentions. "I'm sure you'll like it here very much Miss Callaghan. I know you have Tom here to help you about the school, but please feel free to call upon me at any time."
Persephone smiled shyly at the boy, placing a few dainty fingers over her mouth until she finished chewing and swallowing a bite of toast. "Please, call me Persephone. The other makes me feel terribly older than I am."
"Persephone," Mulciber repeated, "it really is a beautiful name. Like the goddess, right? It's very fitting."
Tom snorted.
The whole table seemed to quiet at such and ungraceful noise coming out of the boy that typically operated with so much poise and propriety. Even Persephone, who'd 'only just met him' turned to look.
Tom didn't even seem to realize he had let out such an unremarkable sound until he felt the stares of everyone on him once again. He raised a brow and then shrugged, finishing his bite of apple. "Mulciber, perhaps you should cease your attempt at courting Miss Callaghan before you lodge your foot snugly down your throat."
Mulciber's complexion didn't seem to know if it wanted to pale or flush at the comment and he seemed utterly clueless.
"Is it not an appropriate name?" This came from Lestrange who had been very actively not participating up to that point.
Bolstered by the opportunity to embarrass both Mulciber and the little tart at his side, Tom shrugged again. "I suppose it all depends on the lady's take on it. If she enjoys the insinuation that she is the feared and dreaded Queen of the Underworld and delights in wearing the mantle of the goddess of death, queen of the shades, known for fulfilling all the wretched curses placed upon the souls of the dead, then I dare say she would be most flattered. Tell me, Miss Callaghan," he addressed her formally in what some others might call a petulant manner, "do you find yourself to be flattered by such an insinuation?"
When Tom glanced to his side again hoping to see the witch brimming with anger – or, at the very least, bubbling with mild irritation – he instead saw the beginnings of a smirk creeping onto her face. It was a much more genuine expression than he'd seen from her all morning and, as much as he loathed to admit, it surprised him.
Persephone caught Tom's eye and quirked an eyebrow of her own. She ran her finger along the edge of her goblet and, for the first time since she sat, focused her full attention on him. Her tongue ran along the fronts of her teeth before she smiled a smile that actually reached her eyes. "I suppose," she said softly, "it depends who is asking."
To say he was surprised again at the change in demeanor would have been too strong a word; "intrigued" may have been better. Tom looked at her again and it was another different woman sitting before him. It wasn't the snotty witch who refused his assistance at the book store. It wasn't the naïve and nauseatingly daft flirt that he had the unfortunate task of carting around with him for a portion of the day. This woman – and he did mean "woman" – had a very different air about her all of a sudden.
"Me. What if I'm asking?" Mulciber interrupted whatever exchange was happening between his Lord and his target, caught in the embarrassment of Tom's offhanded dressing down.
Persephone's stare snapped to the large man, seeming to have almost forgotten he was there. When she spoke again, the flirtatious lilt to her voice had dissipated and all that was left was amused question. "You're Mulciber, right?" The man started to grin but before he could speak, she went right on. "Mulciber. God of the forge, fire, and in some cases, male fertility." Persephone took him in, as though seeing him for the first time since she actually joined them. "Tell me, Sir Mulciber, is your name fitting as well?"
Mulciber blanched and looked at the others with clear question in his eyes but the only one that seemed to understand was Tom. Reluctantly, he looked at his leader who had plucked up his goblet and was chuckling behind the lip of it as he sipped.
Tom paused in his drink to lift his cup in a small toast to the witch at his side. "Club footed and weak with the fairer sex? Well, at least one of those, to be sure." He smirked at Persephone, acknowledging credit where credit was due and he watched those lips of hers curl into a smile and her eyes dart down and away as a peppering of color rose to her cheeks.
Intriguing, Tom thought, taking in this very different woman.
She was trouble, he'd decided, but he could not deny that she was, in fact, very "intriguing".