A/N: Sorry this took so long, I've been focusing more on my original work and I've been neglecting my poor fanfictions! That and the approaching exams, I'm a little stressed out... But hopefully now with the Christmas holidays I should be able to update more often (I hope)... And in case you're wondering why Kayleigh seems to flip flop from hitting on him and taunting him- have you ever liked a guy that was a total jerk to you so you go from being a jerk back to trying to make him like you? Anyone? Well anyways, enjoy? If possible *sigh*
When Kayleigh reached the door however, the man she had been eyeing whispered something to his group of followers and they disappeared into the enormous train.
Oh no you don't. She thought petulantly, very annoyed that her prey had escaped her grasp. Coming to an immediate conclusion, she opened her compartment door confidently and strode down the long aisle in pursuit of the object of her affections.
She found him near the front of the train lounging elegantly with his long limbs crossed neatly, his friends gazing adoringly up at him. Kayleigh herself in fact, had to shake her head sharply to quell the look of adoration spreading across her face as she basked in his obvious confidence and good looks. She plastered a bright smile onto her face and knocked once on their compartment door before striding in.
However, the combined glares of each member of the compartment shattered all of her fake confidence and she became immediately self-conscious, unaware of the state she was in due to the lack of mirrors.
Oh shit, how did (do?) they talk back then... now?
"Er, prithee! Dost thou knowest where... yonder Riddle breaks?" she asked, her copper skin flushing heavily as the compartment's entrants' glares turned into stares of confusion.
"Are you looking for Tom Riddle?" the attractive one asked, an amused drawl the only hint that he was affected at all by the girl who stood in front of him.
"Er, yes." She said, trying to keep her gaze steady as he looked at her.
"Of course she is!" one of the other occupants laughed. "All of the girls are looking for Tom!"
"And, of all of the girls I don't believe I've met you," said the attractive one. "And you look a little old to be a first year."
As the others howled with laughter Kayleigh felt her shyness melt away at the indignation she felt.
"Yes, and you look a little old to be behaving like a spoiled prat!" she snapped, immediately regretting her words as all wands were drawn on her accompanied with growls.
Am I in a room of dogs? She wondered idly, her gaze still on the man in front of her. He held up a hand to stop the hexes on the tip of everyone's tongue and stood up elegantly, moving as smoothly as liquid as her circled around Kayleigh like a vulture eyeing up a dead carcass.
"And who are you to judge me as spoiled?" he asked smoothly and softly, but with a cutting undertone like a feather pillow filled with shards of glass.
"Kayleigh Quieras, a transfer student from Mexico." She replied haughtily, her nose high in the air.
"Muggleborn?"
"No!" she said indignantly. "How dare you insult me like that you filthy little half-blood!"
Within seconds she had a wand at her throat and a furious man (yet still oddly attractive, even with that interesting red gleam in his grey eyes. Mmmm... grey eyes like morning mist and molten silver... Wait! Get a hold of yourself woman!) with his face mere centimetres away from her own.
"I don't know where you get that idea Miss. 'Quieras', but you'd better dispel it at once, lest you find an unfortunate accident befalls you very, very soon."
"Oh please, I get death threats daily from men twice as threatening as you, so no need to wave you wand all over the place, it's very unbecoming." She scoffed as she resisted the urge to close the small gap between them and kiss his totally-should-be-illegal-I-wonder-if-he-wears-lip-gloss-pink lips.
Those particular lips were pulled back into a malicious smirk, which just served to make him even more attractive and cause Kayleigh's stomach to do weird little flips.
"I disagree; I find that I'm quite a big threat, especially to pretentious little girls like you."
"Oh? I disagree to your disagreement." She smirked right back at him, tossing her head and feeling very dissatisfied as her usually long locks simply bounced in their current state.
"And I disagree your disagreement to my- oh this is just bloody ridiculous!"
"Sounds like someone's cranky, need a nap?"She asked innocently, batting her eyes and vainly hoping he noticed her lashes like many did back home.
"No I do not need a nap thank you very much." He growled softly.
"Pity, maybe we could have taken one together." She said, sending him a lustful look that he deflected with a sneer.
"All the more reason for me to stay awake then."
Kayleigh felt her chin lift higher into the air as her hair bounced around her jaw as if it was feeling her indignation as much as she was. "Jerk."
"It's been said." He smirked confidently, putting his wand away.
"I'm not surprised." She muttered, glaring at the man as her usually impeccable posture shifted into a comfortable slouch. "Frankly I'm amazed this many people can put up with you."
"Yes, well you have no idea who I am."
"I know you're not a pureblood, and therefore not worth my time anyway."
"And how do you know that?" he asked raising an eyebrow.
"Because even if you have the same general features as a Black, your cheekbones and jaw are too effeminate to be a Black's, and the only other possible family you could belong to with your face are the Malfoy's but they're notorious for their blonde hair." Kayleigh answered smugly, straightening up again. "And so you're either a half-blood or a mudblo- muggleborn."
"I see you're very familiar with British purebloods for an immigrant."
"Well that's just more proof of your status; all purebloods are trained to recognise every pureblood family immediately. Anyone of importance should know that."
"She has a good point." One of the other's in the carriage said, the rest nodding their head thoughtfully.
"She's wrong!" he hissed furiously.
"Or you're just in denial," she trilled, her most annoying and cocky smile plastered on her face.
"Get out!"
"Fine, fine! Are you PMSing or something?"
His face took on an unfortunate purplish hue as he refrained himself from blasting her head off as she waved her manicured nails at him and disappeared with a doubly pleasant and condescending "ta ta".
After several deep breaths the dark-haired boy sank down into his seat once more and conversation returned to its natural flow- namely the attractive one talking and bad-mouthing muggles and/or muggleborns while the other listen attentively and (in some cases) take notes. However the flow was once again interrupted when the door slid open and a now-familiar head poked through.
"Hey, I never did catch your name, Mr..." Kayleigh said through the gap in the door.
"Riddle, Mr. Tom Riddle." The one named Tom smirked as she paled considerably and swallowed hard.
"Ah. Good day then. Mr. Riddle." She said as her head disappeared from view and the door shut slowly and quietly, hiding Tom's smirk from view.
So much for first impressions.
And with that thought Kayleigh walked over to the nearest wall and began banging her head against it until she was suitably dazed and out of it enough to temporarily forget the conversation she just butchered.
Well, this is gonna be a fun year.
Kayleigh's year started to go downhill the second she stepped off the train. Where everybody else was wearing the greys and black of the Hogwarts uniform she was still in her conspicuous baby pink and brown dress, and garnering some very strange looks from passersby. She floundered on the train's platform, not knowing exactly what to do or where to go. She caught sight of a vaguely familiar face and she sighed in relief, heading towards him.
"Hagrid! Hagrid I need your help!" she cried, pushing her way through the crowd and heading towards the half-giant. However she stopped short when he turned around quizzically to face her- he was young, probably still a student!
"Can I help yeh?" he asked in that voice that had always grated on Kayleigh's nerves. She shuddered slightly (Learn how to speak English properly you great oaf!) and then shook her head.
"No, sorry, I thought you were someone else." She commented airily, as if there were hundreds of oversized thirteen year olds named Hagrid wandering around in Scotland. "Sorry to have bothered you."
She span on her heel quickly, her face an unpleasant shade of red due to her worry and increasing nervousness as the carriages drove away, pulled by the same invisible horses as in her time.
"Do you need any help?" asked a sarcastic, aristocratic voice from behind her. She shuddered slightly as the speaker's warm breath brushed over the exposed skin on her neck, but in a completely different way from when she was speaking to Hagrid. She turned around with her best disdainful stare on her face as she turned and faced the attractive boy from the train.
"Hello you," she said in her most polite yet insulting tone (perfected from five years of being around Hufflepuffs). "I'm perfectly fine thank you, why don't you go run back to your little lapdogs. They might get lost without you."
"Well it seems that you're getting lost without me. If you wanted I could show you the ropes around here." He offered in an incredibly charming tone, and Kayleigh would have said yes if she hadn't caught sight of the evil glint in his eyes and the slight pull of his perfect lips as he spoke.
"Well that's very kind of you," she drawled. "But I'm perfectly fine finding my way around by myself thank you."
However this seemed to be the wrong thing to say as his face quickly transformed into a frown and back again, his expression blank but with an undercurrent of sadistic amusement.
"Well then, I'll leave you to it. Good luck finding your way around in a foreign port such as this. I wish you all the best." He said, taking a short, mocking bow, his eyes challenging her to react.
Kayleigh looked him straight in the eyes and forced a laugh even as her insides churned in apprehension. "Like I need you, Riddle."
"You may not need me, but you want me." He smirked, crossing his arms over his chest and drawing Kayleigh's eyes to the muscle on his arms hidden behind the thin fabric of his dress shirt.
She continued to stare mindlessly for a while until a sharp cough brought her back to the present... past, whatever. She looked sheepishly back into Riddle's face as he cocked an eyebrow and smirked. She blushed furiously before she remembered what exactly he had said earlier and she frowned.
"Wait, what? I do not want you, that's ridiculous! Where did you even get such an absurd notion?"
He rolled his grey eyes exasperatedly, before replying, "Well, disregarding everything you said on the train that pointed to that rather obvious conclusion," Kayleigh flushed as she remembered her actions on the train, "your pupils have dilated quite a lot since I've arrived."
"Ah," she replied knowledgably, nodding her head gently. "What does that mean?"
He simply scoffed and turned away, walking a little way before looking around and stopping. All the carriages had left and the two were stuck at the train station.
"Guess we're walking together." Kayleigh said brightly as she walked up next to him. It wasn't her first time missing the carriages, in second year she had attempted to get into the boats again, and after a long argument with Hagrid realised that the carriages he insisted she was supposed to take had all left.
"I think not." Riddle snarled, and pushed her away. It wasn't his fault that she tripped, it wasn't his fault that she lost her balance so badly, and it certainly wasn't his fault that she rolled down into the lake, but that didn't stop her from whipping out her wand so fast it seemed like her hand hadn't moved and screaming out the first spell that came to her mind.
"Aguamenti!" she cried, shaking a water lily out of her hair. She scowled up at the sopping wet boy in front of her and didn't even notice him bringing out his own wand in retaliation until she was hit by his spell.
"Rictusempra!" And with that one word she fell back into the lake, laughing and gasping for breath she couldn't find under the water's surface. Slowly her lungs filled with the murky water and she struggled to breathe, the laughter still attacking her and causing her to breathe in yet more water.
Her vision blurred and her chest and head ached horribly, and she vaguely realised she was dying only a few hours into her job.
I've probably failed the world. She thought moodily, her vision clouding over entirely with black with her mouth still curved into a reluctant grin. All those people who died... They're not going to be saved, all because I'm an idiot.
She drifted off into unconsciousness, her body still seizing with unbidden laughter, and realised with sudden clarity how much she wished she were dying at home surrounded by her friend and family. Everything surrounding her became nothing, the water plants, the stones and clumps of dirt, the small fish darting out of her way; none of it existed, it was not truly there. The only thing that existed was Kayleigh's fleeting conscious thought and the swirls of magic that flowed through her, carrying her soul into another realm.
Her body hit the ground with a soft thump and displacement of sediment which shimmered around her like the finest of fairy dusts. And then the lake was still, perfectly void of movement in a morbid respect. Perfect, that is, until a rather large displacement of water at the surface sent ripples through almost the entire lake, and a torpedo-like object to the bottom.