Uh...This is more than tardy. This is like wishing someone a happy Christmas in July...I AM SO SORRY. But I got caught up with school and all this other stuff...excuses excuses...
Thank you Sailor, Sirius, Dance, Lucky, Alexlee, Brutal, and Hotaru for alerting!
Thank you Chini, Alexlee, and Katherine for favoriting!
Thank you Blackspade for reviewing, sometimes I think all my twists are predictable!
Keeper - hopefully this is one step closer for you to figure it out?
Missmusa- ha! he is a bit backwards
JB- Here ya go!
Jess- Thank you so much, you're awesome for reading it (this goes to all my othre readers as well!
Alexlee- The suspense better not kill you, or else you won't find out what happens!
Brutal- Thanks! sorry it's taken so long.
Harry was tired, too tired to be gallivanting in a memories tonight. He still had no idea what Draco was up to and he had an essay to finish, but Dumbledore did not keep any of this in mind while he called the meeting.
So instead of playing spy or working on the essay in a manor that Hermoine would approve of, Harry was standing in a dilapidated house for no apparent reason – Dumbledore had only said that Eleanor and Tom had graduated. They had already been in the house for three minutes without any action – He could only tell that it was a one story house: a kitchen and family room that were attached, a bedroom to the left of the kitchen and an office across from the room. Harry still had no idea where the bathroom was, it probably was in the bedroom, but he thought it would be inappropriate to ask Dumbledore if he could go exploring. The wallpaper was falling down slowly at the top of the walls and not all of the cupboards had hardware on them, or even the same stain. How this had anything to do with Eleanor, Harry couldn't even guess.
Another two minutes passed until Harry heard the front door slam open, it was another thirty seconds until he saw Tom and Eleanor walk out of the hallway that connected the door with the rest of the house. Tom looked exactly like the Tom he saw in Smith's memory, when he got Hufflepuff's cup. Eleanor, on the other hand, looked too beautiful to even be within a mile of the house. Harry couldn't tell if she had lost or gained any weight since the last time he saw her, the grey pea coat that was wrapped around her torso told him both that it was winter and that the hallway did not have a front closet. Her dark hair was still at her shoulders and the cold had forced the color of her cheeks to be tinted pink – Harry thought she should've stayed in the cold a lot more.
"Tom, I could have easily gotten food on my own." Eleanor stated annoyed, shedding the pea coat and placing it on the back of a scrappy chair that sat at an equally scrappy table in the kitchen. "You do not have to accompany me everywhere I go."
She was in a simple black skirt that reached her knees and a matching pull-over sweater – Harry decided she didn't put on any pounds, but at least none was lost.
Tom still had his robe on, though, and stood straight up beside the love seat that couldn't cost more than 50 pounds.
"I told you not to call me Tom," He growled, eyes slightly twitching.
Eleanor actually laughed a hearty sound that did not belong in the house just as much as Eleanor did not belong in the house. Her head had tilted back as she leaned against the table, her fingers slightly gripping the end.
"It is so amusing when you let yourself believe that after 12 years of knowing each other, and you forcing me to move in with you so that your plan can be played out," She lowered her head, and stared straight at Tom – the glint of joy still implanted in her eyes. "I will call you any other name but Tom – or worse, I will call you Lord Voldemort."
Her laughter began to be the only thing Harry could hear as the memory swirled around Dumbledore and him.
As the mist turned and turned, other voices filtered into his ear drums. Most of the time they were Eleanor's, her saying things similar to her statement that Tom did not have to go with her everywhere. Each time, though, it sounded less like Eleanor's tone, always more defeated and more like a plea, than a command. He didn't want to see her face utter these words, he didn't want to see her lose the confidence that she always had, the confidence that always stood up to Tom.
When the mist stopped swirling, Harry's stomach was caught in his throat. Eleanor stood, her wand arm sticking perpendicularly to her body, shaking slightly. Her hair wasn't any different than he saw in the other memory, and physically her face had not changed at all – but for the first time, Harry didn't think that Eleanor looked stunning. She was pale and her eyes did not blink at all, and he had a feeling that no blood was running through her veins at all, but he could not figure out what psychologically made him think that she was not gorgeous.
As he traced to point to what her wand was pointing at, he figured it out. On the ground laid a man, unmoving and a wand strewn near his ear. He was dead and Eleanor had killed him. Eleanor was capable of killing – of being just like Tom.
Tom had reached out for Eleanor's shoulder from behind her; a smirk looked too evil to belong to a human played upon his lips. Harry didn't know that it was possible to apparate in memories, so it was a surprise when he felt his naval being tugged on, and saw that he was back at the derelict house.
Eleanor hadn't lowered her arm. Her eyes still hadn't blinked and her blood still hadn't decided to move. The chairs at the table had started to knock against each other.
But Tom hadn't stopped smirking, and he walked around from behind her to in front of her. One hand moved from her shoulder and forced her wand arm down, letting his hand linger upon hers – that didn't make her budge.
"You did excellent, Eleanor" He said while his hand continued to trace up her arm. Her eyes flicked up to his. "Really excellent."
Harry could see the muscles of her jaw move, as if she was going to open it, but Eleanor never did. Tom took the opportunity to move closer to Eleanor, his hand had finally made it to her cheek. His other hand snaked off her shoulder to the back of her neck and he lowered his lips onto hers. It looked painfully stiff at first, and Harry wasn't even sure it was possible to be anything different that when kissing Voldemort (and that wasn't something he ever planned on thinking about anyways), until he saw Eleanor's own arms robotically grasp his back.
Dumbledore's hand on his shoulder told him it was time to leave.
"I AM EATING!" Ron screeched as soon as H muttered the word "snogging" at the breakfast the following morning.
"Real mature, Ronald" Hermoine scoffed. "It's not like you mind when you're doing to snogging."
"Oh right, like you enjoy the image of Voldemort stuffing his tongue down someone's throat." Ron had had enough of Hermoine's judging, Harry was sure, but he also thought that the blunt statement was unneeded so early in the morning.
Hermoine's green face told him that she felt the same way.
"So, did they…" Hermoine asked timidly, her voice barely above a whisper. "Did they,"
"Yeah, that's what Dumbledore said." Harry interrupted her, saving her from saying it. "Although how he found out, I don't want to know."
"Whaf did Iouf jufft ffay?" Ron said with a mouth full of bacon. Harry and Hermoine just gave him a stern look.
"Dumbledore said that it was his way of congratulating Eleanor and that she had actually started to love him while they were living out in the house. He was messing with her emotions so that she wouldn't stray."
"Stockholm syndrome," Hermoine nodded quietly.
"Doesn't make it any less disgusting," Ron muttered.
