Hi sweet readers, here is the first chapter of a potential Tom Riddle/OC tale. Let me know if I should continue and I wish you all the sweetest and most comfort of days. Much Love, Elodie.
As the rain thrummed and drizzled amongst the dandelions and grass, two curious Hufflepuff's sat underneath a patchwork quilt in their night-claimed dormitory. The air was cool – poisoned with that damp death-eater iciness that even these golden basements were not immune to. Both girls shivered slightly, their warm cups of hot coco doing little to warm them as they went about their forbidden night-time routine.
"Lumos." Cilka whispered, the tip of her wand illuminating the painful sight in front her as she worked. Placing her wand on her knee, Cilka's fingers were delicate against her friends arm as she healed her. The cuts were vicious and cruel as they flared an angry red, and although Cilka had seen much worse, she couldn't prevent the pain that festered in her heart. Dipping her fingers into the salve she had secretly made, she flicked her honey eyes up to her friend in sympathy. She knew it would hurt, and so her eyebrows crinkled together as she offered a small smile of encouragement.
Her friend hissed at the touch, pulling away slightly as the pain writhed through her arm and deep into her bloodstream.
"I'm sorry." Cilka whispered with a flustered panic, her salve-coated fingers quickly tracing each slash. "I wish there was more I could do, but with limited supplies and access to – "
"It's alright." Otilie whispered in response, her words coming out in an airy gasp as she scrunched up her freckle covered nose at the sting.
With her free hand, Cilka picked up her wand and gently placed the tip against one of the wounds. "Ferula." She whispered, feeling the pain-numbing magic seep into her friend's bloodstream. Ever since the school had been over-taken by death eaters – healing those who had been punished was against the rules. And yet despite it being punishable by the cruciatus curse, Cilka Daisi Desta did not care.
Brushing stray strands of light brown hair behind her ear, Cilka nibbled her lower lip as she finished mending Otilie's wounds. "It makes me sad." The words slipped from her with such genuine upset that it surprised her. And so, she couldn't help but pause, silently pondering her confession and how easy it seemed to escape her.
"What does?" Otilie asked curiously, picking up her cup of hot coco and sipping at it lightly.
Clika flicked her large honey eyes up to her friends, a sad smile barely revealing two dimples on her cheeks. Seeing the milky moustache that had formed over her friend's lip, she leaned forward and brushed away the foam with a dainty thumb….as if she were trying to prolong the moment where she explained herself. For despite the love and cinnamon glow that shone from Otilie's eyes, she couldn't help but be cautious, timid.
"How blackened the Death Eaters' hearts must be." She confessed softly. "How empty of all things yellow and sweet and lovely." Her words faded as she spoke, as she busiest herself by placing her healing things away in her charmed wooden box. "It makes me wonder if they have ever felt it before? That darling softness of love and joy. If they even know what it is, if he –" Her words faded as she spoke the rest silently in her mind. For despite how foolish it was, she couldn't help but feel sorry for, him. "I wonder," she began, closing her box as she now fixed her gaze on the intricate engravings. "I wonder what their hearts must look like." She flicked her eyes back to Otilie's once more, ignoring that soft discomfort that seemed to flicker in them. "If I were to hold it, how would it look? Would it be black like the tattoo they bare? Or perhaps some shrivelled thing that has yet to fully grow…like a plant that has been starved of sunlight. What do you think?"
"I think that you are looking too desperately for an excuse to explain their actions." Otilie sighed, her tone pinched with slight patronising as she took her friends small hands in her own. "Sometimes people are just born dark…and there is nothing that you nor anyone else can do to save them from that."
Cilka shook her head, a refusal so stained in her heart voicing true. "I'm afraid I can't believe such a thing."
"Oh Cilka, why must you always go searching for reasons that don't exist." Otilie chastised, releasing her friend's hands as she fell back against the pillows with an eye-roll unkind.
"Because they do exist." Cilka said. "People just don't seem to look for them. Individuals regardless of race or blood are too complex to be simply categorised into the good and evil. Doesn't that intrigue you? How we end up, where and why the way we do?"
"Cilka I…"
"No matter who we are we all experience that one emotion that seems to either be our undoing or our elixir that propels us into that sunshine hope. And that's pain. So, what is it in somebody's life that makes them go down one path over the other." Her busied thoughts slipped past her mouth so rushed and passionately. "We keep trying to find ways to defeat them, but what if that's not where the answer lays. What if it's in saving them instead?"
Otilie paused, startled by her friend's sudden proposition. "Saving them?"
"Yes." A wistful note so sweet and wide-eyed escaped her without pause.
"And how would you suppose one would do that? Introduce them to apple pie, cinnamon rolls and banana cake?" She quirked an eyebrow, mischief twinkling in her eyes as a smile pinched her lips upwards.
"Well, after all as the Hufflepuff writer Virginia Woolf herself said, "one cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well."
Otilie pursed her lips at Cilka's words. "So, you're saying we end the war through feeding the death eaters?"
"Well…it's worth a try, don't you think? I mean, I could try my hand at dark magic but I'm afraid I'd just miss and accidentally hex a squirrel who was minding it's pretty own business." She crinkled her nose as a smile so soft and sweet bloomed upon her. Otilie leaned forward and tapped her friends nose once, a moment so small and yet significant. It was an undermining gesture, a gesture to belittle and Cilka couldn't help but shiver at the undercurrent of it. "I'm saying," Cilka began, knotting her small fingers in her lap. "That maybe we could save them through trying to understand. To maybe give them something that they have not yet had – not yet felt."
"And what is that?" Otilie asked.
"Love." The word slipped from Cilka in one dulcet breath, her lips remaining parted as she waited for her friend's response. But the word hung between them, unanswered and unexpanded on.
"I think," Otilie began after those heavy moments of silence, "I think we should go to sleep. It's getting late." Cilka watched as her friend pulled the patchwork quilt from them, draped it around her shoulders and leaned forward to kiss Cilka's forehead. "You're tried sweet girl. Thank you, for healing me. For everything. But now you should sleep."
"Of course, Otilie." Cilka replied, feeling the weight of the bed shift as Otilie got off and padded her way to her own. Cilka watched as Otilie reached for one of the copper bed-warmers hanging in-between each bed and placed it underneath her covers. "Sweet dreams." She whispered, dimming her wand and laying back on her bed – her long light brown hair spilling around her in delicate waves.
She couldn't bare it sometimes, how people looked at her. Ever since she could remember, people had placed her in that box, that bird cage as if to keep her safe and sheltered. A part of her could understand why they saw her that way, as fragile. She held the doe eyes of the vulnerable and a physique so petite and soft. She was pretty and bore the features of an innocent – of the sweet and helpless day dreamers. And perhaps she was, perhaps she was little and that, but in her heart beneath that the exterior she was so much more.
Turning to her side and brining her quilt underneath her cheek, her heart ached within her – that heart she kept so hidden and safe from others. It ached within her, ached with pain and wounds that refused to heal. She bore a life that she kept hidden, kept underneath that cloak of simplicity because she was so scared to let others in, to let people see what she carried and truly was. Lost. Alone.
She sometimes wished that someone would look at her and see past her eyes, that they would knock upon her irises and unlock that rusting door to within. She wished that someone would see her, would know – know that sometimes it is the happiest people who carried the heaviest burden, the most innocent seeming who were in fact the most ruined and experienced in life's woes. But every wish of such, every time that longing drifted to the seams of her lips – it remained silent and unanswered.
As Cilka lay in her bed, as she listened to the soft sounds of sleep from the girls in her dormitory – she closed her eyes and thought of him. Not Voldemort – no. But the boy that was before him. Tom, Tom Riddle. She couldn't help the way she felt, that curiosity that itched at her heart as she thought of him. He was the biggest ponder of her mind, always slipping into her thoughts and taking shelter there at night. She wanted to know more, wanted to know how he became the way he was now – the reason behind this dark ruin.
Cilka couldn't help but feel sorry for him, couldn't help but think there was more complexity and threads that wove his broken heart. Because she knew, she had convinced herself of that – that he was broken, that something in his past, or something that his past did not have, broke him. She knew pain too familiarly, knew the depths it may drive one to – the fork in the road of softness and ruin. He chose left, chose ruin and it made her heart ache. Made her squeeze her eyes and suppress the tears that culminated there. He had never experienced love. Someone to care. Someone to soften his heart.
Everyone around her was so blinded in defeating them, matching fight with fight, blood with blood. But maybe, just maybe as she confessed upon this moon, maybe instead of such they could save them by understanding. By giving something, they may have not had – giving him something.
She knew she couldn't do anything to help him now. Knew that this war was far beyond her. Because those looks were true – she was little and petite, soft and untalented with such spells. Her interests lay in the magic of healing, of magical creatures and art. She was no use in this war, no value or help. But if she could find a way to change things, if she could slip back in time before Tom Riddle's heart succumbed fully to that pitch fate – just maybe…just maybe, she could soften his heart.