A/N: This chapter was actually pretty good when originally written, so I shall just go over it and fix all the awkward phrasing and run-on sentences that I know are abundant in this chapter. I was a big one for the awkward phrasing and run-on sentences when I wrote this.
Which was four years ago. Whoah. Time… Going whoosh.
Cassie sat cross-legged on her green quilted bed and absently polished her prefect badge. Her fingers pushed her smudgy rag around the badge's shiny gold letter 'p', her face wrinkled into an expression of gentle concentration. As she rubbed, her thoughts delved deeper and deeper into the deepest recesses of her muddled brain. The deeper she thought, the deeper her frown etched itself into her face, until she was outright grimacing in an odd pouty way. She felt misused and lethargic, and she was accidentally taking out all of her anger into an over-zealous polishing session.
The blue clock on her bedside table hummed happily when it reached the hour of six o'clock. It completely broke her well-disciplined concentration, and her eyes widened in fury at the tiny 'bleep!' sound her little alarm clock sang at her. It had no right to be making happy 'bleep!' noises! For a moment, she contemplated throwing its content self into the fire-place, but her fury quickly subsided when she realised that she was currently waging war with an inanimate object. Shaking her head bemusedly at the depths she had fallen to, she snatched her prefect badge and roughly attached it to her robes.
She rose to her feet, standing on her bed and giving a great cat-like stretch. She despaired a little that her hands were nowhere near the ceiling, even standing upright, tippy-toed on her bed. Giving a distasteful yawn, she jumped to floor.
Dinnertime.
She jumped down the moving staircases two at a time, suddenly remembering her promise to her best friend Kelly to eat supper together. Thinking idle thoughts as she made her way hastily down to the wafting scent of delicious food, she rounded the corner, using her momentum to hop down the few remaining stairs.
It happened before she could even think.
Her foot suddenly twisted beneath her, slipping on the glassy marble staircase. With a great shriek of surprise, she was launched through air. She sailed towards the ground at an alarming speed, managing to catch her foot on the stone floor and crash right into a student ahead of her.
The student gave a grunt of surprise as they were thrown forewards, thudding to the hard, cold floor in a tangled mess.
The student she'd crushed fell on (as she realized quickly) hisfront, limbs stuck out awkwardly, while she landed on his back, her arm somehow becoming tangled with his. For a moment they lay there in the middle of the Entrance hall, not moving. Around them, less sophisticated students roared unchecked with laughter, while the snooty ones only shook their heads at her clumsiness. Cassie gave a little moan of embarrassment.
"I'm sorry...", she muttered pathetically, "I'm really, really, reallysorry...".
She rose to her feet as quickly as she could, feeling a sharp, piercing pain in her ankle and almost falling back on top of him. She winced and held her ankle in her hand as the boy she'd knocked over got to his feet. Once fully upright, he turned to her and gave her a half-irritated, half-amused look.
Coldness swept through her body as she realised who she was looking at.
Riddle smirked at her.
"I bet you did that on purpose."
The coldness that had taken over her body turned to boiling fury. She glared daggers, mentally wishing he'd drop dead of some foreign disease.
"Well, then, I'm not sorry", she bit back, "that was my retaliation against your existence."
He raised his eyebrows, and continued to flash that condescending little smirk of his.
"Really? To me, that seemed quite accidental."Cassie scowled.
"Well it wasn't. It was a planned operation from start to finish. Now, get out of the way. I've got better things to do right now. Like eat, or jump off a bridge."
With both tiny hands on his chest, she went to shove him away roughly. However, on the account of his being both two times as large as her and two times as strong, she only succeeded in promptly ricocheting awkwardly off of his flat chest and back onto the floor again. She felt like screaming. Her face burned red and she jumped to her feet. He gave her a winning and phony smile, before stepping to the side in a vain, gentlemanly fashion, gesturing for her to proceed.
She did so with haste, stalking off into the great hall. She clenched her fists tightly as she heard peals of laughter at her expense following her like a taunting demon all the way through the doors.
Kelly Abbott wolfed down the food they'd brought out with them to the lakeside as her Slytherin friend ranted. She was halfway through her chicken, half listening, when Cassie suddenly jabbed it violently with her fork.
"...and he's an ugly bastard that should go to hell with all those other spawn he hangs around with." She growled. Hatred and anger and all those other prickly emotions were radiating off of her in waves. If the food they brought with them hadn't already been cooked, Cassie could have used her aura to burn them.
Kelly looked at her friend with a bored look, desperately trying to pry the offending fork from her waiting chicken.
"You done yet?", she asked blandly.
Cassie glared at her, which drew a long and annoyed sigh from Kelly.
"Yes, yes, I agree with you, he is a complete and utter bastard. Now, can I pleasehave my chicken?".
Cassie roughly removed her fork from Kelly's pierced foodstuff. Her friend gleefully continued eating, but spoke through her full mouth. Bits of chicken fell everywhere, and it was altogether a rather unattractive sight.
"Well, you can't deny...he ispretty hot.", Kelly paused. "Actually, he's a smokin' hunk of man-meat."
Cassie wrinkled her nose in distaste, a habit of hers.
"Remember when I told you about how someone could be attractive on the outside, but not so pretty on the inside? Well that's why I think Riddle is ugly. He's a complete and utter bastard."
Kelly shrugged.
"Who cares? He's hot!".
With a cry of despair, Cassie let her body fall backwards onto the grass. She rubbed her temples with her fingers and asked the Gods helplessly why they'd sent her such a shallow person to be her best friend.
She walked down the dark spiralling staircase for eternity. It never ended; but instead it went further and further down into the depths of the earth as though it were slowly leading her to the farthest circle of hell. She was cold, and shivered in her clothes. Looking down, she realized that she wore only her thin white night-dress. She regretted not bringing warmer clothes. For a moment, she stopped on the marble stairs and tried to think of why she was letting herself be drawn farther and farther down.
A feeling interrupted her and begged her, pleaded with her to follow it. Uneasily she continued on her way, the feeling radiating from deep inside her as though answering to a far off call. Eventually she came to a point in the staircase where it evened out. Here she met the figure of a boy, clad in all black. He was not facing her; instead he was looking down into the dark pit where the stairs continued to go. His left arm was outstretched and perched upon it was a tiny serpent who gazed at her without ever looking away. Its hypnotic gaze caused her to lose her footing, and she was tumbling, tumbling, tumbling down the never ending stair. The boy clad in black caught her.
But his eyes were red.
She felt her mouth open to scream, but sound refused to escape. His lips curled into a smile that was not a smile, but a cold, disused thing that curled like a knife around her very being. His voice started to say something-
Cassie lifted herself vertical from her comfortable bed, her body doused in sweat. She was panting, and tears were streaming down her face. She felt more cold than she had ever felt in her entire life. After giving herself a moment to breathe, she spun a sigh of relief that nothing was going to hurt her, and that she was not on the never ending staircase with the boy who did not smile, and that it had been simply a bad dream brought on by continuous anger. She groaned quietly, and flung herself back into her blankets, covering herself up.
There was not much point, however, in attempting to go back to sleep. Her dream haunted her, even in her waking hours, and the generally gloomy atmosphere of the Slytherin dormitories were not helping matters. She needed to get up and get a breath of fresh air. She raised slowly like the dead from her bed, trying not to disturb her fellow dorm-mates in the early hour of the morning. She scratched her messy, frizzy mass of hair absently, and collected her things from her trunk. This morning, she would use the prefect's bathroom and the prefect's fabulously large and inviting bath tub. Taking care to grab her shoes, she tiptoed out of the room, and out of the dormitory.
She met no incident on the way to her destination, and soon Cassie was drying herself off and towelling down her hair. She took extra care to tame her curls into nice, pretty waves, and pinned them gently in place. Realizing then that it was the first trip of the year to Hogsmeade, she smiled at her reflection and pulled on her stockings and her favourite tartan knee-high skirt, and over that, a comfy pink sweater.
People were arriving sleepily now into the large bathroom, greeting her with yawns and quiet 'hello's. She greeted them happily, letting the cool, crisp air rejuvenate her nightmarish dreams. Slipping on a pair of thick black boots, she made her way back to the Slytherin dormitories. As she made her way quickly across the common room, she spotted something of hers lying on a table across the way. Without hesitation, she made a beeline for it, realising it was her lost homework from the day before. As she gathered it up, a male voice rang out quietly behind her.
"You have number six wrong."
She turned to the speaker, knowing already who it was. She put on her best Slytherin sneer and coldly looked over to him. Tom simply raised an eyebrow.
"Thank you, kind sir, for the help", she said, her voice pretending to be sweet while secreting acid.
Stuffing the homework in one of her sweater's deep pockets, she turned to the entrance. As she stepped out, she could have sworn she'd heard a soft sigh.
Kelly is really a fair-weather friend. She's also kind of shallow, and tends to ditch Cassie. But Cassie tends to be rude to Kelly and can be really patronising. She kind of thinks Kelly is stupid, too, which doesn't help. But they're BFF Jills. I promise.