Ophelia was beginning to get genuinely annoyed. "What do you care why I did what I did? My motives are hardly the point here."

Really, she'd have imagined the professor's would be overjoyed at the (mis)information that no beast's were still roaming the halls and preying on students. Never mind that it was an utter lie.

"I, for one, would like to know how you managed to injure yourself so gravely that not even our wonderfully talented nurse could remedy it." Dumbledore's tone was thoughtful, but his expression remained calculating.

"Casual spell misfire," Ophelia replied simply.

It was a weak argument, admittedly, except Albus Dumbledore wasn't the wizard she needed to convince. So long as Armando Dippet desperately wanted this little nightmare over with and nicely covered up, he'd be willing to believe anything that wasn't the truth, which suited Ophelia just fine.

"And the spell?" Dumbledore pressed.

"Just a little something I was working on. Obviously, it didn't work out." She sighed theatrically. "Back to the old drawing board."

"It wasn't an approved spell?" Dippet sounded disapproving and shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

"You caught me. That's why I didn't want to say in the first place." Dumbledore seemed liable to keep prodding at the bundle of growing lies until they unraveled, so she quickly added, "Look, there was nothing else in the bathroom. Right, Tom?"

Jus as she finished the sentence, Tom, who'd only just strode breathlessly into the room, locked his eyes with hers. Although she was certain he had absolutely no context as to what he was agreeing to and likely hadn't heard more than the last two words, he tore his gaze away and turned to the Headmaster.

"Right. It is just as she says."

It was almost troubling how well he could deceive his way through any encounter. He was truly a master at his craft. She wondered if he realized that it was his words that were his most powerful weapon, not his wand.

Ophelia forced her expression to remain unperturbed as she took him in.

"You heard them, Albus. This was all just a big misunderstanding," Dippet said, clasping his hands together and finding his way to his feet. "No need to cause a fuss. No need whatsoever. Let's leave her to regain her strength." She tried not to be too offended. It wasn't like she was some porcelain doll. The phoenix tears really did work wonders. "I actually have a few ideas I wanted to run through with you for the end of term feast..."

His voice trailed off as he turned the corner out of the hospital wing, leading a begrudging Dumbledore, who unceasingly watched Ophelia with his sharp blue eyes until he was out of view. She couldn't help but fidget uncomfortably under his scrutiny.

After they were gone, the air felt less heavy, and Ophelia, satisfied in her temporary victory, allowed herself a moment to reassemble. Impossibly rapid frames of her morning— the basilisk lunging, jaws snapping, bones breaking— played in the darkness of her eyelids. She locked them all away in the far corners of her mind, where they didn't seem quite so daunting, and forced herself to think forward.

"How?" Tom asked, the single word sounding more like a demand than a question. She hadn't even heard him walk to her bedside.

"You'll have to be more specific," she said, rubbing circles on her temple. What she saw when she at least looked at him made worry lines crease in between her brows. He'd probably never been in more disrepair, but that part seemed almost inconsequential compared to his expression. "Are you ill?"

"Do I look ill?" he asked queerly, and Ophelia couldn't begin to decipher his expression.

She shrugged, discomfited. "You look like you belong here more than I do."

"Ah, yes. That." He smiled at her then, only the slight curving of the lips, the same way a cat might smile at a cornered mouse, and she didn't feel at all comforted. "Tell me, how did you do it?" He leaned forward and his voice dropped down to a whisper. "We both know you should be dead."

"You could at least pretend to be a little more broken up about it." She folded her arms, pretending to be cross. "Really, I wouldn't mind a few tears." When he didn't relent she sat up straight and peered sternly at him like their professors were ought to do mid-lecture. "If you're so smart, you tell me, Mister Riddle."

"That's enough." He leaned closer, dangerously close, and Ophelia had to fight the urge to sink further into her pillows. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction of a tactical retreat. "You almost died a meaningless death— no person but myself would even know how or where— so I don't see what you find so amusing," he spat.

"To be fair," she said, reduced almost to a whisper herself, "you don't have much of a sense of humour."

"To be fair," he copied her tone, "you can't seem to answer a simple question."

She'd already prepared another taunting retort— solely because she enjoyed testing his blood pressure, but something held it back. Perhaps it was because she looked at him— really, truly looked— and saw things she couldn't explain, from a slight, almost imperceptible tremor in his fingers where they dug into bed, to the dark moons forming under his dark eyes, accentuated by the fraught light. Instead, she shrugged. "Fawkes."

"The phoenix?" His shoulders slumped and he lowered to the floor, on his knees, long fingers still entwined in the coarse white sheets, like he was fighting off the urge to tear them apart.

"How many other Fawkes' do you know?"

"I should have thought of that myself," he cursed, more to himself than anyone else. "Phoenix tears. Of course." He muttered another muted curse, more foul than the last. "As always, your precious Dumbledore comes in to save the day."

She raised a brow at his petulant attitude, and jokingly said, "It's not like it was his tears that have healing properties. Anyway, you do remember the last time you badmouthed Dumbledore, right? Or should I hit you again to remind you?"

"How could I forget," he uttered, not falling for the bait. "No one's ever had the nerve to slap me before."

He stared distantly out the window, probably remembering, wondering how they got so far from that brief encounter.

"Get up, Tom." He didn't move, didn't so much as look up, so Ophelia tried again. "Come on, please?"

This time he did spare her a glance— an irritated one that said plainly, who do you think are to order me around?— but rose unsteadily to his feet anyway.

"Happy?" he glowered.

"Almost." Readjusting herself so that she only took up half as much space, she patted the free patch of bed and blankets, and demanded pointedly, "Sit."

Tom watched her suspiciously, as though she thought her motives less than pure. "No."

"Don't be dramatic. I'm not about to steal your virtue or anything."

"Why."

Ophelia spoke to the ceiling in a Merlin would you believe this guy sort of tone. "You look liable to fall over any second, so stuff your absurd pride and sit down."

At the last word, she lunged forward with every intention of latching onto his arm and dragging him over. What actually happened was this: she underestimated the distance, overestimated her balance and current strength, and began to fall over the side of the bed without completing her goal.

Tom, realising what was about to happen even before she came to the conclusion herself, stepped forward warily. "Hold on, don't—"

Too late; she was already rushing to meet the floor, forcing Tom to bridge the gap in a rush to prevent her crashing to the ground face-first. Gripping her shoulders, he sighed, "You're a greater danger to yourself than your uncle ever was."

Before he knew what she was up to, he was the one falling, being pulled down next to Ophelia, until they were side-by-side. She laughed, "All is well that ends well."

"I refuse to believe you planned it this way," he said, a hint of defeat in his voice.

"Believe what you want," she said dismissively. "I still got my way. You lost. And," Ophelia squirmed further away, pushing the blankets from herself to him, "Why are you so cold?"

He stiffened, but only for a passing second. "I can't control the weather."

"It's not the weather. It's you. You're like ice. Maybe I should ask the nurse to brew a Pepper-Up Potion after all."

"You're fussing. Stop," he ordered sternly, batting away her attempts at suffocating him in a comical amount of blankets and sheets. Ophelia got the feeling he wasn't actually annoyed and rather, deep down— very deep, mind you—enjoyed the fussing, and even if he didn't, she enjoyed finding exactly where his last nerve was, so it was a win-win. "You're awful excitable for someone who nearly died only hours ago."

"Key word here being almost."

"You still shouldn't have gone down in—" he paused, checking for eavesdroppers "—down there all alone."

"And would you have agreed to stop the creature with me?" Ophelia asked, waiting for an answer and entirely unsurprised when he stayed silent. She smiled grimly, satisfied. "That's exactly what I thought. I'll need to rethink my plan, since I think we can both objectively say my last attempt was a failure."

Tom looked incredulous, shaking his head. "Don't waste your time. I already took care of it."

Ophelia wasn't sure if she heard correctly. "You took care of what?"

"Our rather large problem," he said darkly.

"You— you killed it?" she hissed, so low that even if the nurse had been standing a foot away with her ear poised to overhear she wouldn't have been able to discern a single word.

"No," he said tritely. "I put him to sleep."

Ophelia leaned back against the metal headboard, it's sharp edges digging into her back. "Huh."

Tom leaned back, too, to search her expression. "I must say, I expected a little more than just 'huh'."

"Are you sure you actually did it? This isn't just some lie so that you can carry on with your nefarious schemes?"

He rolled his eyes. "I don't scheme."

"Okay, now that's a lie."

"I plan. I use what I learn to my advantage. There's a difference."

"Look how well you lie to yourself, too. Remarkable."

"I do not—"

Just then, Rabastan strode through the open doors, confident and with a blatantly unrepentant grin. "This is cute. Am I interrupting a moment? I feel like I'm interrupting. Well, too bad, because we," he drew triangle between them with his hand," have plans."

Both pairs of eyes immediately snapped in his direction, but neither made to move. Tom pinched the bridge of his nose, sighing.

"We do?" Ophelia asked, skeptical.

"We do," Rabastan confirmed sagely. "And if you two don't hurry up, we'll miss our chance."

He tugged the sleeve of her robes and dragged her from the bed. She looked back at Tom, who merely seemed resigned and rose to his feet with far more grace than her stumbling fall. In the corridor just outside the hospital wing, Rabastan peered around corners before guiding them along, checking if the coast was clear.

Ophelia shrugged herself out of his grasp. "Wait! Where are we going?"

"This is a kidnapping. You don't get to know," he retorted, shushing her and looking frantically around to make sure her raised voice hadn't attracted the wrong sort of attention.

"I at least need my wand." She patted her empty pockets, as though expecting it would be there. Of course, it wasn't. To herself, she wondered, more frantic, "Where's my wand?"

She hadn't left it in the chamber, had she? The bathroom? Had it fallen somewhere as they dragged her to the nurse?

"Here." She turned and Tom dropped the polished vermillion redwood inti her palm before she was entirely ready to catch it. "Though... I recommend you wash it."

Unbidden, an image of her wand— and by extension her hand— throat deep in the Basilisk's yawning mouth flashed across her vision. She fought the urge to fling it away, just imagining all the Basilisk juice and blood coating it's seemingly glossy surface. Only when she noticed Tom's self-satisfied smirk did she curl her fingers around its hilt and pocket it.

"We both know I wouldn't have touched it without cleaning it first," he amended. "But I did rather enjoy your look of disgust."

Oh, I'll show you a look of disgust, she thought, rolling up her sleeves in what she hoped was a threatening fashion.

It wasn't.

Tom raised a single, lazy finger to his lips and stepped around her, around Rabastan, too, so that he was leading. They crept carefully through the corridors, moving at his discretion and pulling back whenever someone spotted a member of staff. The clandestine nature of their creeping really made Ophelia begin to question her own judgement in following, especially considering all the chaos the day had already brought. But she continued on, curiosity piqued. Really, doing something foolish didn't feel quite so bad at the moment. The idea of a distraction was liberating, so she didn't fall short when they eventually joined up with a much larger assembly of Slytherins in front of the statue of the egg-shaped Gregory the Smarmy.

"What are you waiting around for? What if you're all seen?" Tom barked.

"We decided to wait until I brought you here," Rabastan said, feeling blindly around the base of the sculpture until he grazed something Ophelia couldn't see and pulled.

The statue slid forward just enough to provide a thin gap, barely wide enough for a single person to slip through. The inside must have been larger than it first appeared, however, because at least five others sidled through before Tom took Ophelia's hand and guided her in. The chilly temperature of his skin that she had noted not that much earlier seemed to smother her own warmth.

The hole, it turned out, was less a room than it was a tunnel. After about a half hour of walking, avoiding the scuffles of the others ahead playfully shoving each other around in the dark, Ophelia trailed to a stop.

"This... er... we aren't..." she struggled to find the words as a dawning comprehension flushed her brief shot of reckless courage from her bloodstream. "We aren't within Hogwarts anymore." It wasn't a question. She could feel it in her bones, as though there had been a tangible shift in the air. She hadn't left the castle grounds since she arrived in her third year and the thought of being elsewhere was both thrilling and terrifying. Ophelia couldn't meet his eyes as she said, "You know I can't go, Tom."

Out of her periphery, she saw him run a hand through his hair and look towards the others growing further ahead, gauging how much they could hear. "It's only Hogsmeade. We sneak off each year as a sort of tradition. We've never been caught and nothing bad has ever happened, outside of Avery being chased from the Hogshead with a broom." He continued, softer, when she didn't speak or move, "Nothing will happen. I swear."

"You can't promise that."

"Stay close by and I do."

"Oi! What's the hold up back there?" Rabastan called back, a distant glimmer of light indicating the rest of them had reached the exit.

"Will you let your fear rule you?" Tom challenged. "What happened to your brave words about not needing a protector? Maybe you haven't grown out of that terrified child running from her problems after all."

It was a low blow; he must have known it, but it steeled her resolve enough to ignore the foreboding pooling in her stomach and take a fresh look at the world for the first time in years.

She had grown, didn't he see? Sometimes she barely even recognised herself anymore. Sometimes, she wasn't sure if she actually wanted to.

A/N

There was a bit of a wait for this chapter. My bad. These last two weeks have been hectic. In retrospect I should probably wait until I get more than an hour of sleep to edit and post this BUT I just wanna check it off of my list of things to do at this point. There's only 13 more chapters left, if things go according to plan, though. Almost there.