07 - Riddles

April 1943

Intriguing, while a word that was certainly fitting to describe the strange young witch to a tee, was certainly not the only thing that was beginning to come to Tom's mind when he would think of Persephone Callaghan.

Intriguing.

Bossy.

Sarcastic.

Snarky.

Rude.

Infuriating.

All were quite good at describing the girl.

Tasked with the unfortunate mission of getting her to and from Potions in the morning and Defense Against the Dark Arts after lunch every day, Tom was having to spend an utterly unreasonable amount of time with the wench.

For the day following their first classes back since the Easter holiday – the day after they'd been "reintroduced for the first time" – he'd tried to simply send her off on her way to the next class after Potions. That was met with a not quite scolding by Professor Slughorn.

"I believe Miss Callaghan's next class is Transfiguration, Tom," Slughorn had said, "Is that not on your way to your next as well? Perhaps you can see her to it, make sure she arrives soundly. As I'm to understand it, there are no moving staircases where she came from."

No, he'd thought irately. No, it's not on my way at all. In fact, my next class is Herbology and very not on the way. Tom wasn't fooled by the genuine concern for the girl, though.

Slughorn had his eye on her. He very much wanted to collect her for his little shelf, but he had some kind of internal code for his prize pieces. He wouldn't influence them directly to pad marks or success or anything of the sort – not in the conventional sense in any case. To his convoluted mental rule set, influencing her success must have included the act of "making sure the transfer student actually gets to where they're needing to go" and, clearly, that was right out. Slughorn could absolutely, positively, in no way, influence his next collection piece.

So he would have Tom do it instead.

So Tom did. And he was late to class.

Tom despised being late for anything.

The next day, he'd sent the witch off on the arm of Abraxas, who seemed quite eager to assist, much to Mulciber and Nott's jealous disappointment. Perhaps he'd cycle them out; let them be late to class. He had appearances to uphold. He couldn't invite an entire mess of tardies to his name for nothing but a mildly attractive face and a girl that seemed like she consisted of three different personalities at least half the time.

The girl's marks really must have been phenomenal for the Professor to be slavering over her as he was.

If anyone asked him, he just didn't see it. She did decently well in potions, he could admit, but her casting in DADA was rubbish. Still, she was top of the class behind him and a clear leap and bound ahead of his own minions that had more than a few after hours chances to practice their wandwork, but she still wasn't that great.

Not in his opinion.

And honestly, if the girl had her hand in the air to try and answer questions any more often than she already did, he was certain her fingers would drop off from lack of circulation! Those she always somehow got right, even if her performance in class didn't always hold up to such a swotty image.

So, yes, Persephone Callaghan was indeed, "intriguing" but not nearly so much as she was "bothersome".

. . . . .

Another week or so later, Slughorn had them working in small groups.

Tom's typical group composition would consist of the boys that masqueraded as his equals during the course of a school day, and this session was truly no different – save for the addition of his very own personal thorn, Persephone Callaghan, of course.

Sometimes eccentric with his curriculum, Professor Slughorn had gotten away with the explanation that this assignment was a test to gauge where everyone was falling for the coming exams at the end of the term. Tom had a suspicious feeling that the man was fishing for opportunities for Miss Callaghan's supposed prowess to manifest itself. It was that, he was sure, that caused the man to assign them the rather difficult task of brewing a perfect Draught of Peace. There was no grade on this one, Slughorn had said, simply a test to identify where everyone stood for exam time.

Tom, his crew, and his tagalong were gathered around one of the large lab tables with a cauldron, a set of tools, and ingredients in front of each of them. Most of the boys were focusing hard on their texts to try and memorize the ever important order of the ingredients, Tom was leaning casually on his stool with his blazer neatly folded over his school bag nearby and his sleeves tightly cuffed to his elbows looking hard at Persephone. She had yet to bother even cracking open her book, and instead was leaned forward, hair tied out of her face by way of a blue and bronze striped hair scarf, and was busy knolling.

His eyes watched her arranging first her smattering of ingredients, then her brewing tools, and following that some of her writing supplies into neat, squared angles perfectly in the center of her workspace. The others didn't seem to notice or care necessarily; Tom raised a brow. "Miss Callaghan-" And she looked up to him with a mildly irate look at being disturbed. "-Professor Slughorn has ranted and raved quite a bit about your achievements in—I'm sorry, where did you say you were from?"

"New York," she said dully, a short quill rolling between her fingertips with its feathered tines tapping at her chin as though she was musing about its proper spot in the scheme of all the right angles of the world.

"Right. New York. So, I must say that, particularly after all of the Professor's praise, I am very eager to see what sort of education they provided you in-" He gave her another look. "-New York. Would you care to lead us in the instruction of brewing this draught?"

The question caused five stares to turn his way and an odd tension crept into the air among them. Tom never relinquished control, not truly. The fact he was asking for the witch to take charge, even though grades were of no matter in this instance, was less than savory.

Let us see, Miss Persephone, what lies you have been spinning.

She smiled at him, the same kind of ones that never reached her eyes—the kind that all of his minions received. Persephone straightened and placed her quill down, though her hand twitched a little when she knocked one of the objects she'd aligned earlier out of place.

"I would not," she said plainly.

The bland refusal made those five sets of eyes zip back to the girl in astonishment.

No one refused Tom Riddle.

They shot back to Tom now, waiting for his reply with obvious expectations.

Tom's head tilted back a hair and he recalled his suffocating distaste for this rude witch in that instant. "Oh, but Miss Callaghan, I am most astonished by the praise surrounding your abilities and think that our team here could benefit from your experience. I must insist."

His followers gaped.

Persephone nodded amicably and resumed her knolling, dismissing him with her body language before ever replying. "And, alas, I must continue to refuse."

The puckering of the boys' arseholes were nearly audible with the way Tom stiffened at her side.

The handsome, dark haired, dark eyed boy ran the tip of his tongue along the insides of his teeth and leaned forward, pressing his fingers to the table so firmly that the tips of them all turned white. Tom exercised an insurmountable amount of self-restraint as he opened his mouth to speak only for her to decide that would be the absolute perfect moment for her to continue in his stead.

"I believe, Mister Riddle, it would perhaps benefit one of the other members of our team more than I to have more of a hands-on role in the creation of the draught." Persephone sat up again, nudged the tip of one quill to be more neatly parallel to a cauldron stirrer, and smiled at Tom. "While I do appreciate your offer, it is still undetermined if I am to sit these exams at all." The witch sat primly on her stool then, slipped a finger carefully between sections of the back of her text and opened it exactly to the introductory page for brewing a Draught of Peace. Her other hand casually moved to cover that of the boy next to her, Tarquin Nott, and she turned that pretty smile onto him instead. He grinned when her lashes fluttered at him. "I would hate to take away the opportunity for any of these gentlemen to diagnose their strengths and problem areas. I feel it would be most selfish of me if that were to occur, don't you agree?"

Tom Riddle stared hard at the side of her head, mentally ticking off the ways he would enjoy punishing her for her various infractions up to that point. He wasn't sure exactly how many seconds had passed but he knew he spent each and every one of them by breathing very methodically – in through the nose, out through the…clenched teeth. Finally, he swallowed and fixed her with his own charming show of teeth, the smooth timbre of his voice betraying nothing of his irritations. "Of course, Miss Callaghan. You bring up a valid point." He turned cold, hard eyes onto Rosier, ignoring how Nott was still grinning like an idiot under the girl's gaze, and rumbled out his next command through those still grit teeth, "Silvas, perhaps you can do the honours of leading us in our instructions today?"

The boy sputtered under the angry gaze of his Lord and dipped his head, flipping the pages clumsily back to the start of their section. "Y-yes Tom."

Tom's crew - plus Persephone - worked through their individual brews together with Silvas leading the instruction of order of ingredients. They were nearing the end of their period and their cauldrons were all full of shimmering white liquid while other tables had failed long ago in showers of angry colored sparks and pungent aromas. As other students were already working to clean up their spaces, Tom's table was putting the finishing touches on their brews. The earlier tension amongst the occupants of the table had been replaced with a distinct sense of intense concentration – between the boys anyway.

Tom and Persephone had already completed their potions and the turquoise liquid was cooling before bottling.

Persephone was clearing her space, preparing her vials when Tom leaned a bit over her cauldron and sniffed. She didn't shift her attention, merely spoke softly so that only the pair of them could hear, "May I help you, Mister Riddle?"

He shook his head and went about cleaning his own brewing area. "I suppose at least a portion of the rumours are true," he replied in a similarly low tone.

She snorted. "Rumours. Fact." Persephone shrugged as she began ladling. "Sometimes a person might find it surprising exactly how much truth exists in a rumour. It's really merely a fuzzy line between the two sometimes, don't you think?"

Tom was ladling as well, though the suspiciously knowing lilt to her question caused his eyes to tighten. "Perhaps…" was all he said and continued.

Any further discussion between them dropped off when a hurried curse came from beneath Mulciber's breath across the table, followed by the sure signs of burgeoning panic from Abraxas Malfoy to his left.

"Buggering hell! You were supposed to reduce the flames before adding the hellebore! Fucking—shite!"

Persephone and Tom's heads both snapped up from what they were doing to shift their attention to the now angrily roiling cauldron in front of the large boy. She gasped and immediately started shoving the boys away from the pot.

"Get away! Away from the table!"

Tom sneered at Mulciber who was too busy looking bug eyed at his potion, which was now sputtering and appeared as though it just may be on the verge of exploding from the cauldron. "How many bloody times did Rosier read the last steps and you still—" he cut himself off, the growing frustration of the boy's incompetence taking the back seat to needing to find a neutralizing agent for the pot before the whole thing erupted in a fantastic display of third degree burns and unexpected shrapnel.

The classroom was already abuzz with growing excitement. Things so very rarely exploded at Tom Riddle's table and, while his housemates would never admit it to his face, they were quite eager to see it happen. Nobody else had gotten as far as they had with the draught, so their ill effects had been less than impressive. But to botch up the liquid right at the end after all those ingredients had been bubbling and brewing, well… they were quite eager.

Tom's group had mostly dispersed and taken shelter from the unstable potion with Rosier running to retrieve Slughorn from the other end of the labs where he'd been closeted away organizing ingredients. Tom and Persephone, however, were in a frantic search to keep the concoction from exploding molten hot liquid on everyone that would rather spectate than do anything useful.

The two were combing through some of the nearby shelves frantically with nothing to show for it when the old portly Slughorn came crashing back into the main room calling for their attention and waving a pale greenish blue chunk of rock at them.

Persephone's wand flashed out with an "Accio Brucite!" and the crystal came flying across the room at breakneck speed. She snatched it out of the air, waved her wand over it, and it splintered into dozens of smaller chunks. In one smooth movement, she dropped the broken Brucite into the cauldron and the liquid devoured it in its scalding waves. It lessened the draught's violent rolling, though not nearly enough, and the witch let out a funny squeaking noise before shielding herself behind a woefully bare arm.

With a raucous BOOM the liquid spewed from the confines of the cauldron, showering the unoccupied half of the room with a burning hot putrescent green fluid. The other half of the room, however, appeared to be blissfully protected by a wall of textbooks, all floating side by side, opened so their covers dropped lengthwise and the warded, "splash resistant" covers of the potions books absorbed the brunt of it instead of the students.

Professor Slughorn, wand out and the apparent culprit of the makeshift shield, turned wide eyes to the pair of students closest to the explosion. "Mister Riddle! Miss Callaghan! Are you two alright?"

Persephone, trembling lightly from the surprising rush of adrenaline, cracked open her eyes and found that she'd been pressed tightly into a firm chest clothed in an obnoxiously spotless white Oxford. She swallowed and lifted her head from where she'd ended up in the arms of Tom Marvolo Riddle and blinked up at the boy who, for once since the first time she laid eyes on him, had let his mask slip around her to the point where, if she had not already known what this boy was to become, she would have been extremely unsettled.

Tom's eerie and venomous glare was fixed on Mulciber's brawny form who looked more than sheepish at botching an unmarked assignment. The boy looked terrified. Tom's hands were digging into Persephone's shoulders, the press of his wand jabbing into one of them where he was clenching her so tightly in the face of his barely contained temper that it was sure to leave a mark.

"I think we're fine Professor," the witch said shakily.

Hermione – for it was Hermione and not her other persona now – found herself caught in her fascination of the young Dark Lord at such close study. She'd determined she had definitely become attuned to dark magic after so many years in captivity and there, in his strangling, harsh grip, Hermione could feel his energy licking at her skin with an intense familiarity. It made her throat constrict and something less than unpleasant tickle a distracting set of nerves throughout her body.

Standing, even in the circle of his unkind arms, staring up at the strong cut of his jaw, his dark eyes flaring, mouth that could spout honey and venom in the same breath turned up in a sneer, and his magic so tightly controlled yet somehow insatiably wild all at once, she understood in an instant how so many had fallen to his promises early on.

This little charismatic enigma of a young man was naturally unnatural, and she would be a liar if she had said it wasn't mesmerizing.

Hermione observed as his anger towards his minion deflated and settled beneath those dark, murky orbs for later and she couldn't help but think that he'd at least had far more control over himself in his younger days than the insanity so many had witnessed after his "rebirth". Her immediate determination was that splitting one's soul still left a person a person where being reborn in a brand new body from within a vat of muck left them… decidedly less.

"Tom? My boy? You're alright?"

Slughorn's persistent questioning finally made Tom Riddle refocus his attention to the nearest thing – the small witch in his arms. When he glared down at her, his realized proximity to her startled them both. He quickly removed his hands from her shoulders and in doing so the reflexive shield he'd called forward flickered and faded with the barest glimmers of light.

"Fine, Professor. Thank you." Tom nodded to the barrier of books that was finally bobbing along back to their respective spots on the lab tables. He glanced over to his cronies who were doing their best to inspect what he was doing so close to Persephone Callaghan while at the same time attempting to disappear into thin air, or at least from his stare. He snorted, giving the witch the most even tempered look he could muster. "Maybe next time you should consider shielding yourself with more than just an arm and dulcet cries as a backup plan instead of storing all your faith into a handful of crumbled stone."

Hermione took a step back and blinked at him – the long, slow kind – before she chortled in an almost mad fashion. He frowned at her mirth, and harder still when she pointed her wand in the direction of the pot and flicked her wrist to cancel the densely formed magical half dome she was able to get into place before everything had exploded.

Tom Riddle watched thickened globs of potion drip from the lab's table to its floor. He watched that along with a much smaller, much more concentrated version of the shield that he had snapped into place around them dissipate at the sound of her finite. His grimace deepened when he realized that while he had shielded mostly himself and also her, she had forced the concoction back in on itself with her magical "lid" giving the Brucite several seconds longer to be liquefied, consumed, and as a result, at least partially neutralize the volatile draught.

"Give that handful of stones a little more time to shatter and melt, Tom Riddle, and you may be surprised at the outcome." Hermione flashed him another small smirk, summoned her belongings to her side from their spot beneath ground zero and shouldered her bag.

Tom sneered but found himself drawn to the way the color in her haughty stare shifted when she spoke and he felt a chill wriggle its way down the length of his spine in a teasing caress. The thrum of her magic came knocking, sweeping over his arms, tapping at his door all warm and friendly and eager – and just like that it all fell away like someone had snapped a set of shutters closed with a foundation rumbling finality. With it went the entrancing color of her irises, and he saw the dark swirls of espresso and garnet bleed back into a warm, pleasant chocolate shade.

"Thank you," she said stiffly, awkwardly, blinking several times before looking away. "For the gesture."

Tom Riddle watched her leave even as people were coming back to him now. They gathered nearby, they were talking to him, either fawning over his bravery or were his followers begging for just a light punishment later for embarrassing him.

Whatever the hell they were talking about, he really couldn't be bothered to care.

Distracting, Tom thought. Distracting is also a good word.