A/N: It's next day's Arithmancy class…dun dun dun!
A/N: I think this is a shorter chapter. Oh well. It's important. I think we're nearing the end of the obligatory fluffy introduction. Time to get our hands dirty…(cackles gleefully)
A/N: Severus—I HATE YOU!!! Even if there's no reason in this chapter, DIE! Tom Riddle, on the other hand, I like you! Stick around a while!
Chapter Six: 1941 (once again!)
Slowly, fearfully, Minerva lies back against the pillow again and falls, after a short time, into deep slumber. Her dream for the time being forgotten…
* * *
1:00: Arithmancy, Prof. Hypatia; 4th years
Professor Hypatia, the old Arithmancy witch, was about as compassionate and understanding as a Hungarian Horntail in brooding season. Still, she wasn't unreasonably wicked: if you kept your head down and did your work and got to class on time, you were safe…most of the time. But tardies to class were one of her pet peeves. Which was why, when five minutes into the class period had turned up no Tom Riddle, Minerva began to despair of seeing him that day.
She'd planned it all out: she'd quietly approach him after Arithmancy class, ask him to walk her to the library or wherever…and
—well, alright, she hadn't planned it that far, but she'd planned it. These things were supposed to be better off the cuff, right? But Tom Riddle wasn't here today. She briefly wondered if he was sick, but he'd looked perfectly fine this morning…
Professor Hypatia had them calculating the name-numbers for several randomly-chosen names as a warm-up-to-the-new-term exercise. This was typical third-year work, so Minerva, who had taken pains not to fall out of practice over the summer, was finished quickly. Glancing up to the front of the room and finding the professor absorbed in her roll-marking (better safe than sorry, as the adage ran), Minerva put down her quill and opened Tom's copy of Hogwarts: A History. After about ten minutes, Hypatia walked around to check their work and formally began class.
They were five minutes into a lecture on name-numbers by key word when the classroom door creaked open behind them. Minerva joined the rest of the class in turning around to look—no one interrupted one of Hypatia's lectures.
It was Tom Riddle.
He closed the door behind him and walked forward among the rows of desks—toward where Professor Hypatia stood at the front of the room, a very disgruntled expression on her face. About halfway there he looked down and began searching in his bookbag. He straightened, now at the front of the room, with a note in his hand. He held it out to Professor Hypatia.
"From Headmaster Dippet."
Minerva held her breath, and imagined she could hear the rest of the class following her. Hypatia took the note, glanced over it, looked up at Tom (unmoving, eyes on the professor), looked down at the note again, then up at Tom with a very sharp and unpleasant expression.
"Very well, Mr. Riddle. Sit. You'll have to get notes for the beginning of today's lecture from one of your classmates."
Tom sat down in an empty desk, still cool and collected, pausing only to smile at the girl sitting beside him.
Minerva's heart jumped. Because, wonder of wonders, the only empty desk in the room had been next to her.
Hoping no one had seen the flush in her cheeks, she turned very quickly back to her notes and scribbled down something as Professor Hypatia began to lecture again.
* * *
Tom was already started down the corridor to the library by the time Minerva made it out of the Arithmancy classroom. She hurried after him.
"Hey, Tom!"
She half expected him to not turn around, but to her relief he did, pausing long enough for her to fall in step beside him.
"So…" she began and trailed off. Oh, this was wonderful. "Off the cuff" and straight into the toilet.
He raised an eyebrow down at her. Not coldly, nor with any special encouragement. But friendly and familiar. Minerva was emboldened.
"Would you…walk me to the library?"
He smiled. "It looks like I'm doing that already."
"Sure you are. But officially."
He walked a few more steps, looking like he was considering her words. Then, suddenly, he spun around, dropping to one knee with a mock flourish.
"Minerva McGonagall," said Tom Riddle in a voice loud enough that several people in the hallway turned to look, "will you take my arm and allow me to, officially, walk you to the library?"
Had she not been frozen in a state of shock, Minerva might have cursed a hole through the floor and jumped in. Her cheeks burned, and she felt the eyes of every person in the hallway—it might as well have been the whole school—on her. Tom continued to gaze up at her, eye contact unbroken, with an expression that had morphed from grandiose to interested.
Minerva was torn. If she rejected his offer now, of course, it was like rejecting him outright. But yet…here…the middle of the hallway…had he really had to do this?
Oh well…all things considered, there was nothing for it. Minerva braced herself, took a small step forward, intending to lean down and accept quietly—quite suddenly Tom took her outstretched hand and pulled himself to his feet, to where his mouth (he was quite a bit taller than her) was level with her ear.
"That's official," he whispered. He paused slightly. "Meet me in the Muggle literature aisle."
He pulled back, gave her a controlled smile, turned heel and walked swiftly toward the library.
Minerva quickly surveyed the hallway for anyone who might prove a problem in the gossip department, and found no one. Apparently, as embarrassing as the performance had been for Minerva, few others had taken notice beyond its beginning. In fact, the only other Gryffindor she saw was a second-year she'd met only once (lost on his first day of classes his first year, ended up in the dungeons, chased about by the Potions Master's live pet bicorns) named Rubeus. She tried to control the flush in her cheeks, brushed down her robes, and continued down the hall to the library, not meeting Rubeus the bicorn kid's eyes. Because he actually was staring at her, and quite closely. She shook her head and continued on to the library.
To the Muggle Lit. section, to be more precise. Tom was already there by the time she arrived.
"Glad you could make it," he said nonchalantly, not looking up from the bookshelf he was searching.
"How very singular to find you here, Tom," replied Minerva, watching as he continued to search the shelf. As if he hadn't come to talk to her.
"Yes, isn't it?" He turned around now, and gave her a genuine smile. "I was afraid my…performance…in the hallway might have scared you off."
She allowed a sardonic smile. "It very nearly did. What were you doing? I would gladly have come with you—"
"No you wouldn't."
Minerva opened her mouth in outrage—
"—well, you would have come, but it wouldn't have been gladly, and we would be here talking just the same, but you would be constantly looking over your shoulder." He looked up. "Why?"
He seemed to adore straight talk. So be it.
"Because you're a Slytherin," Minerva said evenly. "And the same holds for you," she began again, seeing that knowing smile on his face. "Care to be seen with a Gryffindor?"
He smiled slightly. "No."
Minerva was hurt, but she'd said nearly the same thing about him, after all.
"We're cowards," said a voice, and Minerva didn't realize until a second or so later that it had been her own.
Tom's eyes shifted slightly, down to the floor, then back up to Minerva's face. "We are. So be it. Did you ever think"—he raised his eyebrows—"that perhaps that Gryffindor courage, that bold chivalry, that thoughtless pursuit of danger—was overrated?"
"I get it," said Minerva. "You don't like Gryffindor."
His smile became wider. "Do you?"
"Better than Slytherin."
He rolled his eyes.
"Do you like Slytherin?"
"Better than Gryffindor."
This was getting nowhere.
"So what are you getting at here?" Minerva asked. "You've already said that you don't want to see me. What are you playing at with 'meet me in the Muggle Lit. section'?"
"Who said anything about not wanting to see you?"
She paused. "You."
He shook his head. "You Gryffindors and your courage."
"Enough with the Gryffindor-bashing," said Minerva testily. "And what are you getting at?" If it turned out to be how it sounded…her heart thumped a bit more strongly. "Give it to me straight."
"Straight." He looked at once more alert. "Here it is straight: I want to date you. But I don't want any of the other Slytherins to know." He gave her a challenging look. "And you?"
Minerva thought of Adriana and Paul yesterday morning at breakfast.
"I like you," she said, looking into his eyes (so dark brown), "but I don't want any of my friends to know."
He nodded, smiled, and the tension was broken. "Good. So we're in accordance. And nobody else has to know, after all; it's just us who are involved."
Minerva shook her head. "You know, this flies in the face of everything my house stands for."
Tom grinned again. "I know. That's what I was saying: did you ever think that your house could be wrong?
"Think about it: all this talk of bravery…does it really mean anything? Seriously now. Examine your house's stance on bravery and tell me one time when there was an actual concrete situation in which to practice it—'be brave, be courageous, blah blah' and all that. Empty words. All the former Gryffindor professors—yes, even Dumbledore," he added, seeing the look on her face, "Do they tell you exactly what they mean by it?" He paused. "No. Because they don't know what they mean by it. It's an empty phrase, a cliché."
Minerva, who felt a need to get some kind of input into this conversation, said, "Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." It felt good to say it. And depending on whether or not Tom had ever studied Shakespeare, he would either think her very scholarly or very good at coming up with aphorisms off the top of her head. In any event, it felt good to be here, cheerfully bashing Gryffindor with a somewhat kindred spirit.
Maybe she hadn't been meant for Ravenclaw, but she didn't have to like it.
Tom smiled appreciatively. "So you could call me a coward. I would be proud to be called that kind of 'coward,' because I'm smart. And I know that all the 'bravery' in the world can't make the impossible possible." He stepped forward. "Namely—"
"Acceptance of a Gryff-Slyth love affair," she finished for him. He looked down in surprise and pleasure.
They were standing toe-to-toe, face-to-face, nose-to-chin if you really wanted to get particular. So Minerva, emboldened by the irreverent conversation, raised herself up on her tip-toes to bring them to the same height, and gently touched her lips to his. He acquiesced willingly, and they stood…
Hearing approaching footsteps, Minerva quickly broke the kiss and turned away to the bookshelf, where she picked up a book at random and began skimming its pages. She heard Tom do the same behind her. The heavy footsteps paused, then hurried away in the opposite direction. Minerva breathed a sigh in relief and turned around to look at Tom again.
"Excellent," he said, replacing a worn copy of Tom Sawyer.
"We should do this more often; we're quite a good team," said Minerva, glancing down at her copy of Huckleberry Finn. She replaced it next to Tom's book.
Tom caught her eye. "I agree."
She grinned.
* * *
There is another funny thing about time: though an ocean, its water droplets change. Its people transform. Was Tom Riddle a good child when he kissed Minerva in the library?
Only he can know that. And the answer does not matter anyhow. The current moves on. And the child now, for one, is still a child…
* * *