Author's Notes: My lovely reviewers, thank you! To forceuser1456, Maelys, blueforest, Wren, moonlights desire, The Enchanted Teakettle, All-American Vampire, Autumn Faery, larken27, twighunter, Firithnovwen, LavenderBrown77, LovinLovegood1, Nimbus B, Hope of Freedom, KrazieChickadee, Kiki, Aarzu, thanks so much for your reviews.
Disclaimer: I do not own anything in the Harry Potter universe; JK Rowling does.
Recap of Chapter 22:
This was not what she had planned for, and it was the last way she wanted Tom to find out about her past, and his future. It had all gone so wrong, and she felt extremely guilty for letting it go on so. She could not blame Tom Riddle if he never forgave her; she had lied to him repeatedly, made up things, been sent to kill him, for heaven's sake, and had deceived him all the while. Her web had caught up with her, and now she was losing the only man she could ever love.
'This is so twisted,' she sobbed hoarsely to herself. 'So wrong…' She cried for another two hours, at least, until she exhausted herself of tears and feeling.
Chapter 23
Unmasked
Honora's rational mind took over, after she cried out her emotions and got them out of the way. The truth was out now, the equation reduced to simplicity. There were only two options left: Tom would forgive Honora, and change his evil path. Or, he would take his old road, and Honora would have to kill him. This last thought still caused a wrench of pain inside her, but she knew it was her own fault. I shouldn't have started caring, she thought. That was a stupid thing to do, Crowley.
Now, she would wait for Tom Riddle to show his true colours. She would accept him or kill him, one or the other. Black and white.
She withdrew from her group of friends, and spent a large amount of time in the library, with the appearance of studying for her NEWTs. Most often she would sit at a table and stare down into her open Transfiguration book, the words a blur, her mind turning over other things. Damaris seemed to sense that Honora and Tom had quarrelled, and kept leaving Chocolate Frogs for Honora to find. It cheered her a little bit, but not much. The gossip-prone Ravenclaws also noticed that their Head Boy and Head Girl no longer sat together in class, and even Willow stopped mentioning Tom and his good looks (at least when Honora was present). Honora only ever saw Tom in the Great Hall, or in passing, or across the room in classes, and he studiously avoided meeting her eye.
For her part, she was miserable. No one knew how much, for Honora kept smiling, and going about her duties, and doing her homework, but inside she was wretched. All she wanted was for Tom to notice her pain and make it all better. Normally she would have built up some gumption, and talked to Tom herself, but the truth was that she was still afraid of him. She was not sure what he was going to do; he was already unstable and the entire 'girlfriend is a time-traveller' thing may have pushed him over the edge.
Exactly two weeks after their falling-out, Honora noticed that she and Tom were scheduled for a night patrol. She groaned inwardly. It felt too soon to see him, speak to him, be near him. And five hours of walking the corridors! Honora was dreading it.
However, when she walked into their Head common room at ten o'clock in the evening, Tom was nowhere to be found. Honora waited for half an hour, and decided he was not going to show. Well, someone has to do this patrol. Grabbing her wand, she left the common room and decided to walk the rounds all by herself.
The castle was entirely deserted this late at night. Honora walked down empty hallways, past echoing classrooms, occasionally pulling open broom closets or pushing past tapestries to look for students. The murky black gloom of the corridors pressed in around her, as she walked alone with her thoughts. There were no distractions now, no books to keep her mind off of Tom Riddle, no classes or friends at this late hour.
She shivered. It could have been her imagination, but Hogwarts seemed darker than usual this night. Her illuminated wand did not do enough to dispel the shadows. With a sigh, Honora headed down toward the dungeons. It was a rabbit-warren of stone corridors, disused classrooms, old offices, and storage spaces. She knew her way to the Slytherin dungeons, but that was the extent of her geography. Every other time she had been down here, Tom had been with her to show the way.
Tom. An annoying little tear glittered in her left eye, and she wiped it away fiercely.
As she wandered deeper down into the dungeons, Honora thought she should leave a trail of bread-crumbs, just to find her way back. Then she scoffed at herself; she was Head Girl! There was no way she could become lost in her own school. It was ridiculous.
If only she did not have that prickly feeling on the back of her neck.
She had peeked her head into a grimy old classroom when she first heard the noise. A footfall, somewhere behind her. Honora whirled back, her wand in front of her, but saw only darkness. Had it merely been the old stones of the castle, settling? A draft of wind, whistling through? Or perhaps it had been a rodent, a ghost, or any other mundane source of noise. However, Honora's intuition insisted that she was not alone.
'Nox,' she whispered, extinguishing her light. If someone was following her, she did not want them to find her that easily.
Slowly she crept back the way she came, her footsteps echoing into the shadows, sounding terribly loud. Her breath came fast; she was afraid she was about to run into some dungeon-dwelling monster. A wild thought raced through her head that the huge Acromantula from the Forbidden Forest had somehow entered the castle and was hunting her. A panicky wave of fear rose up, only to be shoved back into submission by Honora's rational mind.
Then, she discovered it was something much uglier than an Acromantula.
'Lumos,' said a voice, not two feet in front of Honora. The light blinded, and Honora put her hand up and squinted. It was Olive Hornby, standing in front of her.
Honora felt a surge of exasperation. 'Hornby, what are you doing?' she sighed, her irritation clear.
Olive just smiled malevolently. 'I'm here to teach you a lesson.'
'Oh, really?' Honora sneered. 'Well, it's thirty minutes past midnight and you're out of bed. Twenty points from Slytherin.'
Olive giggled. 'Boys!' she said.
Out of the silent gloom, several cloaked figures materialised, wearing skull half-masks that concealed their faces. They stood in grave, sinister silence, and Olive brought out her own mask to cover her face.
Death Eaters, Honora realised in a cold wash of horrified panic. The paralysing fear trickled down her body, and she was unable to move, confronted with the worst nightmare of her childhood. It was no longer a game, no longer an abstract. It was real, right in front of her. Her mind raced with terror, leaping to new conclusions of doom with every passing second. With a shock of betrayal, she thought that Tom himself must have sent them after her. So this is it, she thought. It's over. I've lost, and Lord Voldemort has won. He's sent his Death Eaters after me, and now I'm dead.
With a jab of self-disgust, she also realised how much she had underestimated Olive Hornby as a rival.
The thought brought her back to reality. She pushed her panic aside and reminded herself that these were Hogwarts students, not full-blown Death Eaters, no matter what they looked like. And she was Head Girl. With her vision clear, Honora recognised Raoul Lestrange's swarthy complexion, Ian Avery's hooked nose, Antonin Dolohov's long face, Cornelius Nott's tangle of brown hair sticking up from his mask. They're just boys, she told herself firmly. Silly, stupid boys. And Olive Hornby, who is not nearly as pretty as you are.
Honora decided to play it cool. 'Nice masks,' she said, putting scorn into her voice. 'Now all of you, get to bed before you find yourselves expelled right before graduation.'
Lestrange stepped forward, grinning. His large teeth matched those on the skull mask, making him more intimidating then he should rightfully have been. 'Not so fast, Crowley. You see, you're not meant to live through this night.'
Another wave of apprehension. Honora swatted it away in her mind, and brought out her wand. 'Stop talking nonsense, Lestrange, before I curse you into next week!'
'Trying to be brave?' spoke up Avery. 'You're not a Gryffindor, so don't act like one.'
Honora was having an increasingly difficult time managing her fear. They may have been schoolchildren, but the gang of Slytherins was acting very confident. 'I'm Head Girl, and don't you forget it. Now tell me the meaning of all this!' she demanded.
'Expelliarmus!' one of the Death Eaters in the back shouted, catching Honora off guard. With a shriek of dismay, her wand was snatched out of her hand, and she fell backwards, hitting the stone floor with a hard and painful thud. The attack seemed to galvanise the others, and the group of masked Slytherins surrounded Honora, picking her up as she struggled, pinning her arms harshly behind her.
'Let me go!' Honora shouted, kicking and lunging at her captors.
They merely laughed and told her to shut up, as though it were some school prank. They took her into an abandoned room containing only a dusty table, some chairs, and several stacks of old textbooks. Depositing Honora on the floor in front of the table, the Death Eaters surrounded her in a circle, arms crossed.
Desperate to retain some dignity, Honora scrambled up and held herself as tall as she could. 'That's enough,' she snapped. 'One of you, tell me what your intentions are, right this instant.'
'Hornby, Rosier, go stand watch. And cast a Silencing charm on the door,' Antonin Dolohov ordered, ignoring Honora. The two left, and the wooden door slammed closed behind them. Now only seven Slytherins remained in the room, all boys.
'Where's Tom?' Honora finally asked, fearful of the answer.
'Lord Voldemort was not able to make it to our little practise session,' Lestrange stepped forward. He moved up to Honora, his black eyes gazing at her with fanatic glee. When she heard him use the name Lord Voldemort, Honora winced, grasping that they really meant to kill her. Otherwise, they would not risk using the name of their leader so openly.
Lestrange brought his face even closer, and with disgusting swiftness he pulled Honora's hair back away from her face. With a snarl, he licked her, his tongue, coarse and dry, scraping its way up her cheek. Honora pushed down a nauseating sickness, her face growing paler by the minute.
'Not so friendly, are we?' Lestrange rasped in her ear. 'Well, come on, boys, let's teach her to be nice.'
A moan of terror slipped from Honora's lips. She cursed herself immediately for showing weakness…but this was the stuff of every nightmare she had ever had. Worse still was the knowledge that she had failed utterly; she would be killed this night and Lord Voldemort would rise as powerful as ever.
'What should we use first?' Avery tittered nervously. 'Cruciatus? Imperius?'
'I don't know, stupid,' said Cornelius Nott. 'It was Dolohov's job to plan out the torture.'
Lestrange, still pressing himself up against Honora, turned slightly. 'It's obvious what she's afraid of,' he said with a dry-throated laugh. His hand grasped her hair again. 'Let's have a little fun with her, before we kill her.'
'We're supposed to practise torture curses,' Dolohov said, pulling on Lestrange's robes, tugging him back a little bit. 'I say we try the Cruciatus curse, until she begs to die.' Dolohov brought out his wand.
At that moment, when she saw Dolohov's cold eyes, his wand tightly gripped in his fingers, the urge to do something hit Honora with blinding force. She screamed. She yelled louder then she ever had before, with all her might, praying that someone, anyone, might hear her. She screamed and screamed, until Lestrange shot a Silencio at her, abruptly cutting off the shrieking sound, leaving Honora's face eerily contorted in a silent plea for help.
With a flourish of his wand, Dolohov yelled 'Crucio!' and the jet of light shot out to strike Honora down.
Clenches of pain ran through her veins, but it was not as bad as Honora had expected. She realised that Dolohov had not gotten the curse quite right and it was weak. She gritted her teeth and bore it as well as she could, unable to make another sound.
Then, the door opened, and Tom Riddle stepped in.
His eyes took in the group of his Slytherin friends, Dolohov's face screwed up in concentration, Honora on the floor in the throes of a weak Cruciatus curse.
Honora looked up at Tom from the floor, the pain of his betrayal far worse than Dolohov's puny attempts at torture. Tom gazed back down at her for a moment, his jaw clenched, and he did something she did not expect. He whipped out his wand, and yelled 'Expelliarmus!' at Dolohov.
Abruptly, the waves of pain subsided for Honora, and she sat up, staring. Looking at Tom's face, she wondered if this entire meeting was a complete surprise to him. He was wearing his school robes, no mask, no black cloak. Behind him, Honora could make out someone's feet, toes up as if lying on the floor. Hornby or Rosier, she figured.
'What's all this?' Tom asked, addressing the Death Eaters. His voice was like ice and Honora knew he was furious.
Lestrange stepped forward. 'We could tell how much trouble she was for you,' he said, gesturing at Honora who had now stumbled up into a standing position. 'So we thought, as a gift, for you, our Lord,' he bowed slightly, 'her dead body, after we had practised our techniques on her.'
'Yeah, after Dolohov was finished, Lestrange was going to really show her a good time,' Avery laughed nervously. 'You know his specialty.'
'Indeed I do,' Tom said, regarding Lestrange with a critical eye. 'As a gift for me, you said?'
The Death Eaters all nodded eagerly.
'Well, you've hardly given her a fair shot, have you? Where's the fun in that?' Tom nodded at them. 'Give her her wand back.'
'But, my Lord Voldemort…'
'Give it to her!' Tom commanded.
Honora accepted her wand, full of questions. What was going on? Tom had stopped the torture, but now he was acting like it was a good thing. Her confusion overruled her fear and she turned her face toward Tom. 'What is this about?' she asked, her voice small.
Tom just looked at her inscrutably.
With a flash of sudden rage, Honora was sick and tired of these Slytherins and their twisted games. Lestrange had groped her, accosted her, licked her for heaven's sake, and Dolohov had used the Cruciatus Curse on her. I'll show them unforgivable, she growled in her mind.
Suddenly she knew what she had to do.
With a wave of her wand, Honora created a prolonged Stunning spell that curved through the air in a crackling arc of red light, knocking over the Death Eaters one right after the other. If she had not been in danger, she would have found the effect funny. Having sprung herself into positive action, Honora felt her instincts kick in and she waved her wand like a madwoman, binding Dolohov in ropes, transfiguring Nott into a cactus, giving Avery a bad case of boils. 'And you!' she hissed, as Lestrange struggled to get up from the Stunning spell. He was the last one unaffected, except for Tom Riddle who stood watching, an odd look of approval on his face.
Honora shook her head at Lestrange, and twirled her wand in her fingers. 'What you would have done…' she said, her anger lowering her voice an octave. She whipped around to face Tom. 'And you would have let him!' she shrieked. 'Petrificus Totalus!'
The spell shot towards Tom, an expression of total protest and shock frozen on his face as he fell, stiff as a board, up against the wall. Unable to move, his gaze stayed upright, taking in the scene.
Honora turned back to Lestrange, who drew his face into a sneer beneath his skull mask. 'You're just a stupid girl,' he mocked. 'You think some fancy wand-work can match the Death Eaters?'
'Fancy wand-work?' Honora was angrier then she had ever been in her life. This little slime of human being had the gall to touch her, and make fun of her? Worse still, Lestrange had stolen her precious locket; he was the very reason she and Tom had quarrelled! Red, murderous rage coursed through her blood at the thought. With fatal calm, she moved around him.
Then, with a gentle swish of her wand, Honora murmured, 'Imperio.'
Lestrange's face grew slack, his eyes blank, shoulders slumped. Honora felt an addictive burst of power; in that moment she had total control over another human being, control over someone who had hurt her tremendously. She laughed giddily, her pale eyes glinting with domination.
From the corner, Tom had pushed off the Petrificus, and brandished his wand. 'Honora!' he whispered.
She turned impatiently to him, and halted when she saw his face.
Tom's brow was creased in worry, although a funny glint lurked in his eyes that might have been pride. 'What are you doing?' he said hoarsely. 'That's an Unforgivable, you could be put in Azkaban!'
'Oh, you're one to talk!' Honora laughed unpleasantly. 'You saw what they did!'
'I didn't know what they were up to! I swear on Merlin's grave!' Tom crossed the room and clasped Honora's free hand. 'When you weren't in our common room, or anywhere else, I went looking for you.' Tom looked down at Dolohov, bound from head to toe in coarse ropes, and anger flickered across Tom's face. 'Just let Lestrange go. I'll take care of it.'
'How can I trust you?' Honora was hysterical, half-mad. 'You, of all people, know what Death Eaters mean to me. You! Lord Voldemort!' Tears spilled out of her eyes, and she turned back to Lestrange. She knew she had to take the high road here; she had to keep her inner light shining, even now. For a brief moment, she closed her eyes, pushing down her wild desire for power, to cause hurt. Find the good, and don't let go.
Honora opened her eyes, filled with deep clarity once more. 'Apologise to me,' she instructed to Lestrange. 'Say you're sorry for what you have done.'
'I'm sorry,' Lestrange said obediently. 'I apologise. I'm very sorry.'
'Finite,' Honora released the Imperius Curse. 'And don't ever tangle with me again.'
Lestrange's eyes were bugged out of his head that she had used an Unforgivable with such power. He nodded, frantically. 'I am sorry,' he repeated, of his own volition.
Tom still gripped Honora's hand tightly. 'Please, just let me take care of them,' he pleaded, in a low voice that the others could not hear. 'I need to work some things out, but…' he moved his head, so his breath tickled her ear, 'I forgive you, Honora.'
She looked up at him sharply. 'What?'
'I said, I forgive you. I see what happened, and it's not your fault. In fact, you're everything I've been—' he cut himself off, with a shake of the head. 'I'll find you, soon, and we'll talk.'
Having been through an emotional and physical wringer, Honora could only nod her head. Was he lying to her? She did not know what Tom was planning, but at that moment all she wanted was to be out of that dusty little room.
Tom brought out his wand yet again, and released his Slytherins from their various curses and hexes. Then he waved his wand over them. 'Obliviate!' he shouted. Bright white flashes of light issued forth, giving each Death Eater a dazed look. 'Well, what are you all waiting for?' Tom said. 'Honora's seen your masks, now, and she thinks they're very nice. Now go back to bed,' he commanded, waving his hand.
The Slytherins looked at each other, and shrugged, filing out of the room.
'I don't want them telling anyone you've been using Unforgivables,' Tom said to Honora, with a sardonic twist of his mouth.
'Oh,' she said, 'thanks, I guess.'
'Now,' he brushed his lips across her forehead, 'I'm sorry about tonight. You can rest assured they will never step out of line again.'
'Tom, I need more of a guarantee than that!' Honora protested. 'I'm just so confused, and I don't know what to think!'
Tom looked into her eyes. 'There is something I want to ask you,' he said, 'but not now. You need to go to bed, and I'll find you soon. I promise.'
Unable to sway him into further assurance, Honora let Tom walk her up to the Ravenclaw portrait.
When they arrived, he put his hands on her shoulders, gently. 'I'm so glad you're safe,' he whispered. 'I couldn't bear it otherwise.' Spontaneously, he wrapped her into his arms, pulling her close, his hand stroking her hair in soothing motions. With a tiny shudder, Honora burrowed her face into his chest. She felt like crying again, not from fear or shock, but from relief and gladness that she and Tom were on their way back to normal.
Pulling away slightly, Tom looked down at her with ironic appreciation suddenly written on his face. 'You know, this is the first time in my life I've ever been worried about someone other than myself. I'm not quite sure how to handle it.'
Honora laughed a little. 'Me, too,' she said. 'And I'm glad that you worry about me.' As she rested there in his arms, staring at the dark folds of his school robes in front of her nose, she felt at home at last. 'Tom?' her voice of reason asked.
'Hmm?'
'How did you know to come to that room in the dungeon? It was awfully far away from everything. And they cast an Imperturbable Charm around the walls.'
Silence greeted her query. His breathing did not miss a beat, but his heart did.
'They must have cast it wrong,' he finally said. 'Because I heard you scream. I was on my way to the Slytherin dungeons and I heard you.' He distracted her by petting her head soothingly, softly. 'Get some rest, now,' Tom helped her inside the portrait-hole. 'Goodnight, darling.'
Honora blinked. He had never called her 'darling' before. 'Goodnight,' she whispered back, and leaned over to give him a light, tender kiss on the cheek. The last thing she saw as the door closed was Tom's face, his eyes alight, a tiny but significant smile playing across his lips.