A/N: Silly Tom. Wouldn't know emotion if it smacked him soundly on the cheeks.
Cassie examined herself in the mirror. Her eyes squinted critically, scanning her scrunched face for any imperfections that could plague her. She stared deeply, practically pressing her forehead onto the cool glass and picking absently at a reddish spot on her nose. After deciding that her face wasn't going to do a lot of changing whether she stared at it for hours or not, she stepped back and examined her hair instead. Black, rather messy, and pulled back in a trademark pony tail. Unremarkable enough. Her uniform was pressed and her prefect badge nicely polished and only a slight coat of tanner spread on her pasty skin. With a huge effort at making herself feel marginally confident, she gave herself a grin...
Which would have initially worked wonders had a piece of breakfast not been glued to her front tooth.
Failing miserably at trying to bring on confidence, she picked the black-something from her tooth, scowled, and walked out.
Cassie wrote on the top of her page in her small, cramped writing; "June 11th, 1944."Then, where most people would begin to write their feelings, secrets and desires, she drew a blank. It was a week since Tom had oh-so-suddenly decided that Cassie wasn't worth his time. An ugly scowl made its way to her face, her cheeks reddening spectacularly and her brow contracting brutally.
"Tom Marvolo Frickin' Riddle is the most arrogant ponce that I have ever met ever. I hope he falls off of high cliff and impales himself on the jagged rocks below..."
Aside from the general shock of what he'd done, anger had miraculously replaced Cassie's despair. Something inside her changed that Sunday morning that she woke up, realizing that he was just a boy, and if he did that he obviously didn't care about her anyway. Instead of the empty pit of sadness that usually plagued her after an argument, anger flared up like a dragon inside her. She didn't need him, she never did!
"... and the black-scaled rabbit-creatures with their poisoned sharp teeth chew through his foul-tasting sinew and the dragons of hell wrap themselves around his trouser-area and drag him by his little-""What are they going to drag him to hell by, now?" asked a female voice brightly just beside her ear.
Cassie jumped into the air, scattering her papers and spilling her ink all over the castle steps.
"MERLIN! Kelly, what in Jesus' best undershorts are you doing sneaking up on me like that?" Cassie gasped, swatting her friend less-than-lightly on her forearm. Instead of causing a 'reprimand' effect, she only succeeded in causing her friend to burst into strange little giggles that were slightly alarming to listen to.
"Well...Torture by laughter is better than nothing, I suppose..." Cassie muttered lamely as her friend proceeded to fall to her knees, clutching her stomach.
Cassie waited. Kelly still laughed. She waited some more. The laughter didn't cease.
"Oh, shut your trap, will you!" she exclaimed, clamping a hand over Kelly's mouth. Her eyes bulged like a fish's, and she desperately tried to rip Cassie's hands off for fear of suffocation.
Deciding that murdering Kelly at the present time wasn't exactly a good idea, she grudgingly let go. As Kelly wheezed and spluttered, Cassie grumbled: "So you finally decided I wasn't as scary as everyone told you?"
Kelly immediately looked guilty.
"I'm sorry..." she whispered, "It's just that everyone was saying that you were the cause of all these petrifications and all... And I knew it wasn't you, but for some stupid reason I couldn't bring myself to talk to you..." she finished lamely and gave Cassie a miserable look.
"Alright..." she sighed, "but please stop believing all the rumours you hear. You have a tendency to follow them without question..."
Kelly's grin was as bright as sunshine.
"Okay, I'll try!" she swiped her wand briskly and all of Cassie's scattered possessions cleaned and replaced themselves back into her bag. With a flourish, she put her want inside her robes and extended a hand to Cassie, who took it with relish.
"You know..." said Kelly, as they walked away, arm in arm, "You didn't have to call me Jesus. Kelly will do just fine."
Inside the corridors, it was dark and dank. The flames in the brass torches flickered and cast ghostly shadows on the stone walls, making creatures that sprung from the imagination seem real. Cassie walked hastily, wanting sorely to finish her prefect rounds, for once again, she found herself in the same corridor with the same bathroom where she'd found a frozen little girl lying on the ground and staring at whatever unseen horrors she'd seen. Shivers constantly tickled her spine, and cold sweat spread all across her body. She was beginning to feel sick, and wanted nothing more than to run away. But she couldn't do that, she was a prefect and needed to finish her rounds.
Besides, she rationalized, I'm almost done. Just have to take a quick peek in that bloody bathroom, then I can leave.
But the closer she got to the bathroom door, the slower and slower she seemed to walk. Freezing, icy cold seemed to be breathing itself all over her gooseflesh skin, causing her to shiver even more violently than before. She could always run now...
But then she heard something.
A terrible hiss and spitting, spoken by something even more terrible:
A human.
She could tell from the voice that is was male, and that it was emanating from the very girls' bathroom that she'd investigated on that sick night.
Although he senses screamed at her to go away, she walked forewards anyways, each step feeling like lead, each step clicking in a nearly sinister way, and then she suddenly found herself standing in the middle of the bathroom, staring at the dark eyes and pale face of a boy she knew well.
Tom Riddle's eyes widened hungrily.
A/N: Ooh, like we didn't see that coming! : O Review, or I'll send an army of hell dragons to wrap themselves around the trouser areas of all the males in your families. Sorry for the painfully short chapter as well. 3