A/N: hey, sorry this one took so long, I was having technical difficulties and also suffering from a horrible combination of laziness and piles of work. So not much free time, I admit (actually a lot of free time, just most of it was spent watching ST: TOS :p). Sorry. I know this chapter doesn't make up for it, but please tell me where to improve it!
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 snarl.
"You'll regret that. Rest assured that this year will not be pleasant for you. I could have forgiven your earlier indiscretions on the train, but now that chance has gone." He growled.
Kayleigh looked him straight in the eyes and forced a laugh even as her insides churned in apprehension. "Like I need you, Riddle. Who says that I even wanted a chance for you to forgive me?"
"Your pupils told 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? My pupils were talking to you? Without my knowledge? I didn't even know they could do that!"
He rolled his grey eyes exasperatedly, before replying, "No you prat, your pupils dilated. They didn't actually say anything."
"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.