Title: Quiet Moments at Hogwarts

Author: Meissa6

Summary: A collection of reflections from characters who never stepped into the spotlight.

Disclaimer: I do not, nor will ever, own Harry Potter, or any of its characters and plots.


From Elise, a Slytherin student in 1942

She sat in the farthest corner in the room from Tom Riddle and his gang of followers that were growing in numbers with every muggleborn petrified. Except for the few half-bloods that were raised around muggles, and the rare muggleborn attempting to blend into the walls, everyone was crowded around that end of the common room.

She didn't come from a particularly wealthy family, and though she was a half-blood, born to two half-bloods, her parents weren't particularly renowned for anything that would fall under Tom Riddle's radar. Her father was a talented woodworker who built houses in other countries for the needy, and her mother was a clothes designer who could sow any garment you brought her into something beautiful.

Elise herself wasn't particularly powerful either, but she wasn't horrible enough to draw the scorn of her housemates. She was average in every way. She had a promised place at her mother's shop if she so desired it when she graduated. She would probably take it.

Elise was perfectly content being average. She was a Slytherin at heart, of course, and longed for greatness, but, to her, greatness meant a loving husband, two or three beautiful children, and a stable career that she adored.

She didn't want to rule the world. To her, the world seemed perfectly alright the way it was.

She flipped through the Potions book she had borrowed from the library in preparation for the coming up exam. She knew she would score well, but it was doubtful she would continue on to the NEWT level course. Professor Slughorn was a kind man, but he expected only the very best from his students. And that was fine.

Elise was alright not being among the best. In fact, she thrived in her normality. Nobody ever looked at her oddly in the halls or made fun of her when her tie was astray. She didn't need to be perfect because she wasn't the one in the spotlight.

People like Tom Riddle fought to keep up an appearance of power and perfection, but it had to be lonely being at the top. It had to be hard to constantly put up a front to your peers.

She flipped the page, refreshing her memory on how to brew a boil cure. A few feet away, the fire crackled loudly, and the group crowded around Tom Riddle burst into laughter. She didn't look up, flipping the page again.

Her mother had once considered a marriage proposal from a young man from France. Her father had built the young man's father a home, and as thanks, the young man had sent a proposal to Elise. She couldn't remember his last name anymore, since the letter had been sent years ago, but she knew his first name.

Charles. He was ten years older than her at the time, but the proposal would go into effect the day of her seventeenth birthday. Her mother had honestly considered the proposal; Charles was much wealthier than them, and with Elise being who she was, there would doubtfully be another.

In the end, they had given Elise the choice of whether or not to sign the proposal. She, being a ten-year-old with no previous inclination towards boys, had refused, and that had been that. Charles had vanished into obscurity, and she had gone to Hogwarts, free of any sort of contract.

She wondered if Tom Riddle had any such proposals. Surely, she thought, he must. He was the sharpest student in their house, and probably the school. She hadn't seen him give any acknowledgement to any of the girls constantly fluttering around him, either.

Not that she was really looking, but it was hard not to stare when he walked into the Great Hall with ten or so of his peers following him like young pups.

She couldn't see Tom Riddle as the marrying type, though. Rumor had it that he was an orphan, abandoned by his mother on the steps of a muggle orphanage when he was just an infant. Was that why he was so intent on slaughtering the muggleborns?

The thought had slipped through Elise's mind without hesitation, and though she'd never considered the possibility before, it made too much sense now. Why else would his group of friends grow every time a muggleborn was found in the corridors?

She ought to tell someone – possibly the headmaster? Or perhaps she should go to Dumbledore, the Transfiguration professor? He'd always been one of the few to see through Tom Riddle's ploys. Even the headmaster wasn't immune to his smiles.

She closed her book, intending to rise and leave the common room in the most inconspicuous way possible, when she suddenly decided against it.

She had always lived her life in anonymity; why should she ruin that for Tom Riddle? If the professors hadn't caught onto what Tom Riddle was doing, why should she be the one to inform them?

Besides, it's not like anyone was dying… no, the muggleborns were merely being petrified. In a few more weeks, the mandrakes would be ready to heal them.

She stood up, nodding to a few of the girls in her year as she passed them on the way up to her dorm, unaware of the pair of dark eyes that followed her as she crossed the room. The dorm was still dark, as the other three occupants were still downstairs, studying or hanging onto Tom Riddle's every word.

She pushed him from her mind, focusing on getting ready for bed. She carefully tucked the book in her desk drawer before she climbed into bed. Her calico cat leaped from the top of her wardrobe, landing next to her on the bed, purring.

She fell asleep easily, the thoughts of Tom Riddle and petrified muggleborns cast from her mind. When she woke the next day, she had forgotten all about her revelations from last night. In fact, she had even forgotten about the book in her desk, but should she have remembered, she would have noticed that it was gone.

And when the attacks against muggleborns stopped mysteriously a few weeks later after the death of a Ravenclaw muggleborn, she thought nothing of her previous connection of the events to a certain Slytherin prefect.

She faded into obscurity just as quickly as Charles Hendz had five years prior.