Disclaimer: Hilarious.

A/N: Ah, it's been awhile. I'm in my final year of the IB programme and my final exams are coming up very soon, so I apologize for the long wait but I hope you understand.

Pretending To Live

Chapter 14: Intermission

"Okay," I said. "Let's talk Horcruxes."

I stared up at the ceiling of the Hospital wing. It was very late—perhaps just past midnight, judging by the chimes of the clocktower—and yet I was wide awake, having been woken rather viciously by the intense, dry burn in my throat.

Earlier, Madame Laroche had informed me that I had landed myself in my favorite section of Hogwarts because some potion apparently didn't agree with me, leaving me with painful raw patches on the inside of my mouth and throat. She'd warned me that the damage could've been much worse and that I was lucky that someone was there to force me to cough up the rest of it before it had gone any further. Then she'd force fed me this thick, stinky cream that eased the pain but made my eyes sting and left a glass of water on the nightstand next to me.

Now, as I fumbled blindly in the darkness for the glass, I felt the tips of my fingers catch on something, followed by the sound of crystal smashing into the marble floor. I groaned.

"Reparo," someone muttered and I quickly sat up.

"Ridduh?" I half mouthed, half grunted through my swollen throat.

"Here," I heard his voice closer to my bed and guessed him to be sitting in the chair beside the bed.

"Wadduh."

"I'm sorry?"

"WADDUH."

There was a pause. Then silently, he used his wand to pour a thin stream of water into the repaired glass and handed it to me.

"Thanyoo."

"The potion was a failure."

"No shik," I said. "Try aguhn."

Riddle exhaled impatiently. "Shall we start from the very beginning then? Or perhaps from where we left off, if you would like to explain to me how we can break into the teachers' private stores for the fifth time this month without detection?"

"Dunn haff to," I held out a piece of paper to him. "Here."

He frowned and read my hastily scribbled notes. When he had finished, his eyes flicked up sharply to my own.

"Bored," I said, understanding his unspoken question.

He looked back down, scanning the paper intently. I grunted by way of asking his opinion.

"Well, it's not out of the question," he said finally. "A few adjustments will have to be made, however. I don't know where you got the idea of crushing the Sopophorus bean, rather than cutting it…"

I scribbled on another piece of scrap paper and handed it to him. Trust me.

He read it and gave me a long look.

I scribbled again. Or not.

As he was about to leave, I grunted to get his attention and passed him another note. When I met your future self the night of Slughorn's party, he told me that in his present I wasn't doing well. I think we've reached that moment in your timeline. I haven't lost hope, though.

"Good," Riddle said. "Or else this would be a waste of my time."

"Ridduh!"

He turned again with some exasperation.

I held up my empty glass. "Wadduh."

We'd been working together for just over a fortnight now. Each day, he would use the First Locket to stop Time and then we would continue our work in the Room of Requirement. My Corpus potion by day, his Horcruxes by night. I served as the willing guinea pig for several of our test potions, which often led me to slight to moderate injury, or uncomfortable side effects. Riddle could normally fix them, but once or twice I'd ended up at the Hospital Wing, claiming the questionable excuse of the 'stomach bug' to my friends. This uneasy workload combined with the mountains upon mountains of homework left undone made me constantly tired and I developed the unfortunate habit of falling asleep in class. Usually Draco would kick me awake, although he still refused to speak to me, twat that he was,

I'd like to say that my partnership with Riddle grew more comfortable over time, but then again…it was Riddle.

"You will retrieve the first set," Riddle commanded, referring to the lengthy parchment between us that listed the various ingredients we needed. We were in the Library and he'd stopped Time again so that we could look through the books without being disturbed. Unfortunately, this meant that we were once again surrounded by the living statues of frozen students. "Asphodel, goosegrass, and so on… these are all ingredients that can be found in the teachers' private stores. Do you think you can procure them?"

I chewed on the end of my quill. "No problem."

He leveled me with a stare. "Then I suggest tomorrow afternoon. The teachers will have a staff meeting and Slughorn has a regrettable tendency to forget to seal the room when he's in a hurry."

The next day, I stormed into the Room of Requirement, my hair and clothes singed and in some places still burning.

"Did you get them?" Riddle said lazily, not even looking up from the parchment in front of him.

"You think?" I said angrily, removing the bag hidden under my sweater and tossing it onto the desk. "Why didn't you tell me about the booby traps?"

"I wanted to see what you would do," he said calmly. "Obviously, I cannot work with someone as incompetent as, let's say, Mulciber…"

"The first one nearly took half my hair off!" I said furiously.

He smiled thinly. "How did you get past them?"

I sat down and kneaded my forehead with my knuckles. "I threw the caretaker's cat in," I muttered, "to set off the rest of the alarms."

"Inelegant," Riddle acknowledged, "but resourceful."

"So did I pass the test?" I asked sarcastically.

He threw me another one of his indecipherable looks. "We'll see."

On the other hand, Riddle seemed to be in a better mood these days. At least, he wasn't trying to kill me, which was always a plus in my book. In many ways, it was just like our Potions classes—we researched what we needed to do and he explained it to me four or five times until I finally understood it. I knew I needed him more than he needed me, and he knew it too.

And so we both knew that I wasn't telling him everything about his Horcruxes.

"So… how am I doing in the future?" The girl in the golden dress asked awkwardly.

"Badly," Riddle said, watching the shock register on her face. "I don't know how much longer you'll last."

She twisted her fingers together. "You…really don't mince words, do you?"

"Drink the potion. Slughorn will be looking for you at the party."

"How do you know I'm from that time?

He eyed her the poofy yellow garment that she wore with distaste. "You're still wearing that ridiculous dress."

"Well I like it…alright, I'm gone." She threw him a dirty look as she held up the flask to her lips. "Riddle, this better not kill me…"

"I assure you, it won't." He smiled thinly. "Immediately."

The grin disappeared from the girl's face, much to his satisfaction, and she cleared her throat. "I'll see you…around then."

He turned away and heard the ripping sound as she was removed from her occupied space. Minutes later, the door to the Come-and-Go Room opened and the same girl entered, although this one was dressed in the school uniform and moved more slowly. She was obviously tired as she made her way to one of the long benches of the room and sat down, resting her head in her hands.

Riddle felt a sudden surge of annoyance. "You neglected to mention the color of the potion."

She looked up, and there were deep circles under her eyes that matched his. "Sorry, I forgot."

"Don't waste my time, Ariadne."

"Right."

He regarded her for a moment and stepped over, setting a flask of the potion the cauldron in front of her. "Drink."

She held up the glass. "To my good health and your long life, Riddle."

"Something on your mind, Ariadne?" he drawled.

She didn't reply for a moment as she traced absent patterns on the palm of her right hand. It was only when Riddle looked closer that he noticed that she was tracing a pair of jagged white scars cut deep into her palm and the insides of her fingers, something that he had never noticed before. He narrowed his eyes. "What is that?"

Her eyes flicked downwards and she placed both hands flat on the table. "I was buttering a bread roll and my hand slipped. Did you get the starthistle and spleen?"

He noted the abrupt change in topic but didn't say anything. "Yes, this morning."

Ariadne visibly brightened. "Oh, really? That's fantastic. I thought it'd be tricky to find."

"If you knew the Hogwarts staff half as well as I do, Ariadne, then you'd know that there was nothing tricky about it." He saw her quizzical look and elaborated. "Professor Glenborough happens to use it in her skin cream."

Her eyebrows lifted impishly and she grinned. Professor Glenborough was the young and attractive Arithmancy teacher who was widely rumored around the school to favor Riddle particularly amongst her students. "And I suppose you just stumbled across the bit of information, eh?"

Did she just wink at me? Riddle wondered. "You suppose."

She yawned, and stretched out her arms behind her head. "I hope you didn't go rifling through her lingerie drawers searching for it, Riddle—"

"Of course not," he said, affronted.

"I don't think she'd mind, on second thought."

"Neither do I," he said darkly. "Is everyone as vulgar as you where you come from?"

"Germany, you mean?"

"You don't have much of an accent," he said flatly.

She considered that for a moment. "All our books were in British."

Riddle's mouth twitched and he turned back to the cauldron full of potion. He felt her eyes on his back but allowed a short silence to pass before she spoke.

"You don't ask questions as much," she observed quietly. "Is there a reason?"

"I suppose I've lost interest," he said dryly. Ariadne raised her eyebrows and he smirked, crossing his arms over his chest as he turned to face her. "Let's just say I know my questions will be answered eventually."

She opened her mouth to say something—but frowned, seeming to be distracted. Abruptly she jumped as if electrified, her fingers flexing convulsively over her wand. Her eyes rolled slightly in her head and then Riddle watched intently as she snapped out of her strange trance almost as abruptly, although pale and breathless.

"What is it?" he said.

She stared at him as though startled to see him still standing there. "Nothing…it's nothing."

Later, when Riddle had long left the Room, Ari clenched the wood of her wand, still warm from its frightening electricity from earlier. Like before, when had first successfully used magic in the Grimmauld Place what felt like had been lifetimes ago, she'd been hit by a wave of déjà vu so strong it made her knees buckle and her breath to shorten. She'd heard voices—no, just one. And she knew that she had heard it before but yet, even as she yelled out in frustration, she could not for the life of her remember from when she had heard it.

And in this world, wasn't that the most important thing?

"Sit down. I will answer all your questions…eventually."

A/N: Short, but sweet? Hope you enjoyed! We are rapidly approaching the beginning of the third and final arc of the story in the next chapter. Thanks for reading and as always, don't forget to review!