Disclaimer: Anything you recognize etc...

A/N...I hadn't meant this to be the thirteenth chapter, but it has worked out that way. Weird...

Thank you to those who reviewed my last chapter, hope you will continue to tell me what you think...cause it makes me happy. ..: )

Oh, and thank you if you are still here after twelve chapters. This was meant to be a short story...one more thing that didn't work out, I suppose! Hope you are liking the tale so far.

Please mind the M rating...

Part Thirteen

The Thirteenth chair

Some nights later, I was in the library, at my usual table in the furthest corner away from the librarian's desk….. near the restricted section.

Over my book, I could see Madam Finnelly approaching.

"Tom, dear," she simpered. I was in a foul mood and had to try hard to avoid actually curling my lip. She nauseated me to the very core of my being. Sickly sweet. Ugh.

"Tom, dear," she repeated. I pasted on a smile, and looked up, waiting politely.

"The library's closing now. Ten o' clock!"

I gaze at her with my very best endearing expression, wide eyes, with just a touch of nervousness. Nice puppy.

Bloody woman.

"Could I have…just five more minutes……please………..Miss?" I asked, in my most charming of tones. I knew what the answer would be.

She looked around to check there were no other students, then winked at me roguishly.

"Just for you, my dear, five minutes. But only five! A clever boy like you needs his sleep!"

I winced inwardly as she reached down with painted pink talons, pinching my cheek. Dear Tom Riddle. Such a model pupil.

When I closed the door of the library behind me, half an hour later, I had no intention of going to bed, though I supposed I should make a pretence of it.

In the dungeons, Abraxas and Evan were arguing again, about Rosier's sister's honour, I presumed, laughing to myself. Oh, the irony.

Why Rosier even bothered was beyond me, it was common knowledge that his sister was the school slut.

Vittorio Zabini, meanwhile, was lolling on Malfoy's bed in his pyjamas, swigging Firewhisky out of the bottle, and regaling Mulciber, Dolohov and Nott with expansive tales of his own prowess.

"Out, Zabini," I ordered, as I came in.

Zabini sniffed and rolled his eyes dramatically.

"Goodnight to you, too, Thomas."

"Out. Now." I repeated.

He strolled at a leisurely pace towards his own dorm, but instead of leaving, he lounged against the doorjamb, grinning, and prepared to resume his conversation.

I raised my wand towards him and he backed off a little, hands raised, and said:

"You should find yourself a girlfriend, Riddle. Make you less…uptight, if you see what I mean….OUCH!"

The door slammed in his face. Smugly, I slid my wand back inside my sleeve amidst a faint chorus of "Bloody hell, Riddle…"

"Anyone else?" I snarled. "No? Then shut up and go to sleep."

Nobody said anything. I pointed my wand to snuff out the lamps one by one and lay back, the pillow cool on my hot cheek. My mind drifted, and I realised with an uncomfortable lurch that I had been thinking about Laura running her fingers softly through my hair….kissing my forehead….

My head ached.

O O O O O

I must have fallen asleep for an hour or so, because when I woke, all was silent in the room. I felt around on the floor for my shoes and crept out.

In the next dorm, Zabini was asleep too. I managed to purloin his invisibility cloak without too much trouble, and slipped out of the dungeons.

I reached the seventh floor corridor without meeting or hearing anyone. I walked the length of it, slowly, looking for any sign, searching for the slightest indication of a hidden entrance, scrutinizing every portrait.

I did not, of course, know exactly what I was looking for, but there were signs-I knew-by now…..a brick out of place, a hole in the wall that could be enlarged……unusual statues, or peculiar markings on an everyday object, but I found nothing.

Perhaps-I thought-perhaps Dippet or even….Dumbledore had discovered the room first, and sealed the secret entrance? The text I had found in the mouldering, dusty tome had merely described it as ' The rumoured Coming and Going room' and that could mean anything…

I wondered briefly if it could really be the Secret Chamber I had been looking for ever since I had learnt that I was related to Salazar Slytherin, in my first year. Salazar Slytherin's legacy……..but why would it be here, on the seventh floor near the towers? It didn't make sense. No. It had to be something else.

I paced the corridor three more times, and so caught up was in my search that I didn't hear the soft footsteps turn into the corridor behind me.

"Tom?"

A hand on my arm, and I swung round, the shock of seeing her like an electrical charge.

"What are you doing up….and here?" said Laura.

For a moment, I couldn't say anything. She could see me, of course, the silver eagles glinting accusingly, treacherously, in the light of the lit sconces against the rough stone walls.

Her hair was wet, it had obviously been raining, and a misty droplet still shone above one ear.

She was wrapped in her thick blue cloak, with black riding jodhpurs underneath. All her clothes were covered in mud.

"I'd ask you the same," I said, breathlessly, at long last.

Laura shook her hair out of her face and pulled off her gloves, adjusting the fat, badly knitted navy scarf she had stuffed around her neck.

"You're not stupid, Tom Riddle." she said.

She pursed her lips and followed my eyes down her mud splattered clothing, and I felt a sudden unbidden stirring in my groin.

"Do you think I sleep in these?"

I frowned. "I don't like to think of you sleeping in anything." I murmured, absently. The words were out , though, before I realised what I had said.

"What's that supposed to mean?" she asked.

"I didn't mean…." I heard a note of pleading in my voice that I did not like and hadn't intended.

"I'm sorry……."

She just looked at me.

"I need to talk to you," I managed eventually, after a painful pause.

She looked away. "I thought you said all you wanted to say on Saturday night, Tom"

It would, I thought, have been nice if I could have thought of something more eloquent to say; done something more fitting for the Heir of Slytherin himself than shuffle my feet and bite my lip and mumble that I missed her.

After a pause she said "It hasn't even been a week."

"I know. Maybe I'm addicted to you," I told her.

She laughed in spite of herself.

"Then we're addicted to each other, then, I suppose."

She reached up, and I felt the familiar softness of her mouth on mine. She smelt of cold and of wet air. I searched out her tongue, and slid mine against hers. She sucked gently on my lower lip, and I felt her hand sliding slowly up my leg.

"Come to bed with me," I muttered, into her mouth, now barely able to restrain the raw need I felt to feel her body, hot and wanting, against mine.

"Where? They would hear, if we went to your dorm," she whispered.

"I'll jinx them all to have you in my bed tonight." I said, fervently.

"Would you?" I couldn't see her face but I could tell by her voice she was smiling.

I nodded as she caressed me through my thin woollen trousers. I brought my hand up under her shirt.

" I have to go back," she said.

"Don't go," I said. "I thought you said you missed me?"

I felt her grin into my chest.

"I believe they were your words, not mine."

She broke away from me, though I tried to hold on. She kissed my cheeks like I saw her kiss her father's ..the French way, and then she hurried off down the corridor. I leant against a hideous tapestry of trolls, and caught my breath before heading, defeated, back to my own dormitory.

I put Zabini's cloak back in dormitory 5b and slipped into the cool sheets of my own bed.

I hadn't been lying there long when I heard the door creak and open, and light footfalls on the cold linoleum.

The small figure parted the hangings, and dropped a heavy cloak on the floor at the end of the bed. I could smell shampoo and lilies of the valley, and I could feel her hair, wet and freshly washed on my bare arm.

She slid her body over mine and I indulged myself with a long, deep kiss, both of us moving together as I divested her of her nightdress, before reaching lazily for my wand and casting a ward over my bed, with a silencing charm.

Then we were kissing again, only pausing when I managed to pull her over on top of me. She seemed happy about this arrangement, and I heard a faint sigh as she settled over my hips. I felt her bare breasts brush my chest as she leaned down onto me, running fingernails through my hair and over my scalp, making me shiver deliciously. I was more than ready for her by the time she reached down and eased me into her as she breathed out in one long, slow shuddering breath.

I closed my eyes, and grinned into the dark.

O O O O O

It was perhaps the most daring thing we had ever done, as Rosier, Malfoy, Mulciber and Dolohov all slept, oblivious, mere feet away.

Very soon, though, we were doing it virtually every night, in lieu of meeting in cold corridors, making love on cloaks thrown over stone floors in dilapidated tower rooms. The wards would hold, and as long as I could steal the invisibility cloak, we were able to sneak in and out of the common room as we chose.

I would walk her back as the sun was just rising, both of us under the cloak, as long as we had the cloak and the wards and Laura stuffed the bolsters under her own eiderdown lest the other girls notice her absence in the night, we were safe.

At the same time, though, the thought of the secret room still nagged at me. It had been forgotten that evening in the fresh excitement of sleeping with Laura again, but now I had her back, I dwelt on the room more and more, determined to find it's secret entrance.

It was because of Abraxas that I found it, three weeks after I got Laura back.

The snow had long since melted, and across the grounds, yellow daffodils and violet crocuses pushed skyward through the once-frozen earth.

I spent my time with Laura, and when I wasn't with her, I was thinking of her, not doing any the things I should have been doing. Not my lessons. But the other things.

She wrote our names on the biggest tree in the forest, with her wand, laughing. I gave her flowers on Valentines day. I was not paying attention, in the most dangerous of ways.

And I still hadn't spoken to Abraxas about what he had said. Vaguely, I wondered one morning across the breakfast table if he had forgotten his idiotic plans. I was fairly sure they would come to naught, much like his previous escapades.

But it was true, I hadn't found anywhere to meet, and I was on the verge of having to admit this fact when Abraxas caught up with me after Astronomy. We had been last out, Abraxas hanging around as Professor Vane lectured me on the drop in my marks, when he followed me down the deserted seventh floor corridor.

Outside, we could hear the other students in the grounds on break, shouting and laughing. I glanced out of the window and could see Laura in conversation with Apollonia Malfoy, who was laughing at something, and I felt a jab of paranoia.

"So, what have you got, then?" Abraxas was saying, eagerly.

"What?" I enquired, coldly, looking down at him

Abraxas rolled his silver eyes.

"Our meeting place. It's been weeks, Riddle. Have you forgotten?"

"I have other interests than your requirements, Abraxas, I am afraid," I replied sarcastically, and continued to walk away down the corridor.

"Riddle, wait," Abraxas said. "You must know somewhere. I know you go out at night. Where do you go? You must have somewhere."

I stopped and turned, next to that ridiculous troll picture, I noted, and pointed my wand at him, smiling icily.

"You had better forget that particular piece of information, Brax. Or I might have to make you."

"Don't you dare!" Abraxas clapped his hands over his face in panic. "Don't you dare mess around with my head!"

I chuckled. "Don't mess around with me, then, Abraxas. You have to sleep…. sometime."

We stood still, my eyes locked on his silver ones, for a long moment. But Abraxas lowered his first, as I knew he would, acquiescing silently to my unspoken order.

"So….we still need somewhere…" he said, in a whisper.

I nodded, curtly, pacing back and forth in front of the gaudy tapestry.

"Go away, Abraxas." I instructed. " I need to think. And besides, Slughorn's inspecting the dormitory this evening, so tidy your stuff. You can do mine, too."

He nodded, and walked away down the corridor. I called after him.

"Malfoy!"

"Yes?" he replied, blond hair hanging over forehead to frame his sulky expression.

"Stay out of the trunk. Or else."

It was not until the hem of Malfoy's expensive robes had whipped around the corner and out of sight that I turned around and saw the door in the wall.

I knew it hadn't been there a minute ago, opposite the portrait I had been leaning against while I threatened Abraxas. But now there it was, shining polished and just proud of the wall.

Laura would have urged caution, though I doubted she would have been able to resist opening it for long, either. Abraxas would have been worried, and Nott would have been scared.

But I was not Laura or Malfoy or Nott. I took out my wand, and holding it aloft and in front with Gryffindor bravery, reached out for the cold, brass doorknob.

It turned, and I strode straight into the room in front of me.

Silence. Just that, absolute silence. The room I found myself in was dark, and windowless.

There was an eerie green light coming from somewhere I couldn't see, and I could hear the faint drip of water, like a leaking tap, echoing on the stone floor, though I could not see where it might be coming from. Quickly, I scanned the room.

In all four corners, mouths open as if ready to strike, marble serpents reared and seemed to hiss and spit, their cold, inanimate bodies twisting around Grecian pillars that stretched floor to ceiling.

The ceiling itself stretched some eighteen feet up and was covered in cobwebs and ugly plaster angels, their cracked noses and dirty faces obscene and leering, like gargoyles, in the gloom.

I looked away from them, turning my attention to the only furniture in the room, for between the marble serpents, under that horrible ceiling, there stood a circle of twelve ordinary black iron chairs.

Standing between these, at the head of the group, with six seats either side, was the last chair.

This was, however, anything but ordinary, for though it too was wrought of black iron, it was as a throne would be, arms finely wrought and set with polished black stones, intricate twists and sweeps of metal, and serpents, again-a seat worthy of Slytherin himself, and perhaps, I imagined, it really could have been.

Indeed, all looked set for a meeting. But who would be meeting here, in this serpentine room, in secret?

I realised then what the magic was, must be, and why the room never opened before when I looked for it. It was my conversation with Abraxas that had made it happen, I had walked across this stretch of wall at least three times as I wondered where we could meet. And here it was.

The Room of Requirement, truly living up to its name.

O O O O O

I mentioned it to no-one until I saw Abraxas alone the following day. I didn't even mention it to Laura, she might ask difficult questions and anyway, it wasn't something I wanted her to know about and thus there was no need for her to be involved. This is what I told myself, firmly. A part of me wanted, absurdly, to confide in her Abraxas' plan, ask her to come, even ask what she thought about it, but I crushed my weakness, and when I went to meet Abraxas in the seventh floor corridor after supper the next night, I went alone.

"So, who else have you invited?" I asked him, without introduction.

"Avery," sniffed Abraxas, "Dolohov, Rosier, Mulciber, and Nott, obviously, and Raziel Lestrange is coming with Zabini and Griffin from the other dorm."

"Made up with Rosier, have you?" I sneered, but Abraxas gave a slight inclination his head, and stayed firmly on topic.

"Some of the sixth years….Yaxley and Emiliov, oh, and Jenkins from the seventh."

"Jenkins?" I spat, appalled. "He's a halfwit."

"So is Dolohov." Malfoy sniggered.

"We can practise on Dolohov." I sneered "And Jenkins too, if he steps out of line. So-twelve?"

"Thirteen…." Abraxas trailed off uncertainly as he tried to keep up. "Thirteen, including you."

O O O O O

The room was, of course, exactly as it had been when I had seen it last.

Armed with detailed instructions of how to find our meeting place, the other boys duly arrived at the appointed hour, and soon, the room was full of the dull buzz of conversation, hushed and guilty.

Abraxas stationed himself at the centre of the proceedings. Indeed, it did not take him long to assume what he clearly thought was his rightful place in the chair at the head of the circle.

The other chairs filled one by one. I turned my back on Abraxas and examined a tall mahogany bookcase in the corner, picking up a tome and flicking through it idly. Abraxas gave me a meaningful look that I chose to ignore the meaning of.

"Aren't you going to sit, Riddle?" he said, finally, sounding irritable and nervous, in about equal parts.

"I'm quite comfortable here, Malfoy." I said coldly.

Abraxas looked for a moment as if he was going to argue, and then decided against it. Instead, he began to talk, in a pompous tone, about his plans for the new group.

"You see," he blustered, though not quite as convincingly as he would no doubt have liked.

"I'm really, well, after the summer, in Father's private library, you know, quite the expert on Dark Arts. He's got stacks of this stuff-see…"

He produced several small books from under his cloak and laid them on his knees.

"This one tells you how to jinx really effectively. And this," he fumbled for another book,

"Tells you how to use Dark curses to best effect….I doubt any of you will have done any…except….(he glanced very briefly in my direction) well, anyway. Durmstrang learn the Dark Arts. So why shouldn't we?"

A murmur of assent went around the room. Abraxas smirked, and sat up a little straighter.

I stayed in my corner, propped against the bookcases. And I watched.

O O O O O

Later, I would consider the events of that first meeting, and the events that followed it.

Abraxas could not hide his weak mastery of the Dark Arts for long,leaving me free to showcase my own considerable talent against his poor basis for comparison.

My marks were once more up to scratch, and so too was my drive and ambition, since Laura had come back to me that night, and those marks told their own story to the other boys.

So it was not long before Abraxas found his fragile grasp upon command slipping through his bony fingers, into my ready hands. This was, of course, exactly what I had planned all along.

It happened, though, quite suddenly, one night. Evan Rosier was arguing with Malfoy again. I heard raised voices echo around the bare walls of the secret room, but had barely looked up in time to see the now familiar sight of the two of them facing off, wands drawn in each others faces.

Rosier let loose a string of profanity and curses, sparks flying from his wand, all narrowly missing Malfoy, who dodged, and proceeded to flourish his own wand unnecessarily at the shorter wizard's forehead. Their duelling skills were almost embarrassing.

"Petrificus totalis!"

With no sound save for an odd sort of strangled gasp, Rosier crumpled to the floor. Abraxas stared at it briefly, then said loudly:

"Who did that? Which one of you did that spell? I'm in charge here and it's my duel, see?"

Nobody looked at me. They knew quite well that it was I who had petrified Rosier, as they had all been watching, and were still doing so, waiting with dreadful anticipation of what was to follow.

Slowly, I raised my wand again, and stepped forward into the centre of the room, with a small, ironic bow.

"If you feel like that, Abraxas, be my guest. It's still your duel."

Silence. Then, one of the older boys sniggered, and the chant of 'fight' went up. Soon, the other boys had formed a rough circle around us, dreadfully eager to witness Malfoy versus Riddle.

In the split second before I raised my wand higher, I wondered what Laura would say to me if she could see me now.

"Crucio!"

A collective gasp went up.

O O O O O

When Abraxas came round, I had already finished healing the small graze on my left wrist, where a minor curse had glanced off.

He hauled himself up, clearly with some difficulty, expensive robes coated in grime from the dusty floor of the Room, and leant heavily on the high backed, wrought iron chair in the centre of the room that he had claimed as his own.

"Don't tell Polly," he mumbled. And then his eyes met mine.

Eventually, he spoke again. "What was that for then, Riddle? What is it you're after? There is something, I know it."

I smiled at him, quite genuinely, I thought , which for me, was rare.

"Only my rightful place, Malfoy. I lead. You……." I looked aggressively around the assembled company of other boys from the fifth form to the seventh,

"You follow."

"Unless there's anyone else who wants……a fair competition?" I offered, raising my wand again.

There was no sound. Nobody moved. Nobody spoke. Until the sudden scraping noise of Abraxas pushing back the huge, iron chair.

He walked slowly, deliberately away from it, and stood in front of me.

"You win. You lead."

I walked back through the circle, absorbing the silence of shock and awe. Every face was fixed upon me, and every mouth was silent, as I took my place in the thirteenth chair.

To be continued...