In Divinations, Professor Onai partners Hermione Birch with Yvette Wilkens, Head Girl. They sit together at a card table by the edge of the room, one table over from where Tom sits with Malfoy.
Wilkens is a half-blood in Ravenclaw. Her long blonde hair shines green under the stained-glass windows of the North Tower. She has round full cheeks that turn ruddy when she is embarrassed, which is a constant occurrence. Tom finds her annoying and needy. He often catches her staring at him with a hungry expression. Tom knows she has been infatuated with him since their second year. Malfoy tells him that the only reason she tried for Head Girl is because she is desperate to be his girlfriend.
Tom has no interest in her. He despises her lack of self-respect.
Wilkens makes nice with the new girl, pouring her tea as she prepares to read her tea leaves.
"It says you're going through something. A dark corridor?" Yvette pauses to reference the text. "Or maybe a big tunnel?"
"Hmm," the girl considers, "I don't think I am?"
They smirk at each other. The girl reaches over for Yvette's teacup but accidentally knocks it out of its saucer. The thin china smashes into fragments when it makes contact with the floor. The brown liquid pools like muddy water beneath the girl's feet.
Tom is struck with a wicked idea, and casts a reparo from where he sits. The girls watch the ceramic shards find each other, unexpected pieces aligning flush and unblemished right before a small cyclone of scattered tea leaves settle into the bottom. Yvette's head swivels towards Tom, and when he meets her gaze, he winks. Yvette is as red as a tomato, and quickly turns back around to stare unseeingly at her repaired teacup.
The girl notices the interaction. She does not seem pleased.
"So…" she begins, and Tom is listening with all his might. "You and Head boy?" She raises her eyebrows for effect. Yvette blushes harder and looks down, before smiling and nodding minutely. Yes.
Tom is enraged. Lying bitch.
The new girl smiles back briefly before vanishing the repaired teacup. Yvette almost lunges in her seat towards the now empty saucer. Tom thinks she probably wanted to keep it as a reminder of the incident. Fool. The new girl just smiles at her again, a cold grim satisfaction in the line of her mouth. She conjures a new cup, almost identical to the one she destroyed. She pours tea from the kettle still sitting on their table, and invites Wilkens to drink again with a wave of her hand.
"I couldn't possibly use the broken cup to read your fortune," she explains, "The leaves were artificially arranged." She pastes on a saccharine smile. Wilkens—oblivious fool—accepts this. She drinks the tea.
The girl's eyes narrow.
xxxxxx
At mealtimes, she sits alone. Malfoy insists he must sit with her to make up for Mulciber's bullying today, which enrages Mulciber. It almost comes to blows. Tom snaps at Malfoy to chase skirt on his own time, and that seems to quiet him. They sit on the edge of the table closest to the Great Hall entrance, near Nott and Avery.
No one pays attention to her. In fact, two sixth year girls sit on either side of her and begin to speak to each other as if she is not there. They have malicious smiles on their faces. One of them reaches over the girl's plate and pilfers a chip. She smacks her mouth as she chews, as if to taunt the new girl.
She pretends not to notice, and pulls out her Charms textbook. She begins reading between bites of her sandwich. Tom is annoyed that she feigns studying at this moment. Anyone in her position would feel humiliated and desperate. Tom wants to punish her for trying to pretend she does not care she is being bullied and ignored by her own house, by her juniors, no less.
He decides to teach her a lesson of his own. He writes a note to a third year named Pravus Carrow.
I heard the new girl likes jam.
He folds the piece of parchment into an elegant crane and puckers his lips to blow air under its paper wings. Tom watches it fly gracefully into Carrow's open napkin. A pretty piece of magic. As soon as the boy reads the note inside, it bursts into flames, quickly consuming itself without a trace of smoke. Carrow seems surprised and glances up at Tom, his eyes seeking direction. Tom casually stretches, his face turned toward the girl's vicinity, before turning back to smile at Carrow.
No convincing is needed.
Carrow ladles thick strawberry compote into his spoon, and hurls it at the new girl without preamble. It lands unceremoniously in her hair. Tom watches the thick jelly ooze down the side of her head like coagulated blood. The girl's eyes freeze on the page, no longer moving or reading.
Her hand carefully edges around the mess in her hair, staining the pads of her fingers a rich red.
She examines the evidence with a critical eye, and then brings her fingers to her nose to sniff before sticking out a wet tongue to taste.
It is obscene.
Tom is not the only one watching. Professor Merrythought storms over to their table and pinches Carrow's ear.
"I saw that with my own eyes, Mr. Carrow, so please spare me the excuses this time. Detention with me. Now."
Carrow gets hauled off by the collar of his uniform. Malfoy looks like he is ready to wet himself. Mulciber is openly laughing. He has a second coughing fit that day, due to the same person, but for an entirely different reason. Avery is slamming his back in order to "help" him. Nott is quiet.
Tom stares at the girl. He wants to hurt her. He is not sure why.
She watches Carrow get hauled off, her face vacant, before she packs her tome back into her bag. She still has compote in her hair. The girl leaves the hall. Her footsteps are not rushed and she does not have a sheen of moisture clouding her corneas. Indeed, she looks unphased. She acts as if she has strawberry jelly flung into her hair from across the dining table every day at Hogwarts.
Tom feels confident that can be arranged.
xxxxxx
The next day, Pravus Carrow wakes up with a horrendous rash on his face. He is practically crying. It makes Tom feel sick. There are oozing pustules on his forehead, cheeks, and chin. He apparently cannot help but to touch them, causing them to burst and bleed. He runs to Tom's room in the boys' dormitory for help early in the morning. He looks grotesque.
Tom does not have the patience for this.
"Go to the infirmary," he commands. He bites his tongue not to add, "and stay out of my sight, you disgusting oaf."
Self-restraint, he reminds himself.
Tom ends up walking Carrow to the infirmary. Everyone sees Carrow's face in the common room before breakfast, and there are shocked gasps and sounds of repulsion throughout the room. Someone even laughs. Carrow is humiliated. If he wasn't near tears before, he is now.
Without meaning to, Tom catches sight of the girl reading a book by the fire. She is the only one who seems not to notice the commotion. The way she is positioned makes it easy for him to see the title on the cover.
Pox, Purpuras, and Papules: a Comprehensive Review.
At dinner, the girl sits in the same spot with her Charms textbook. This time no one joins her. Carrow arrives looking skittish and nervous. He carefully avoids Tom's eye before sitting on the farthest end away from both of them, near the high table.
Tom figures even Carrow can deduce who is culpable for his current predicament.
Matron Consanos has managed to clear his cheeks and chin of the pustules, but Carrow still has large cystic spots on his forehead. They look inflamed and painful. Tom thinks they configure to form a shape vaguely resembling a strawberry.
He almost laughs and stares at the girl unwittingly for just a moment. He feels true admiration. As if sensing his gaze, she looks up and smiles. It is the smallest of smiles, barely a quirk at the edges of her full lips, but it reaches her dark eyes, illuminating them like a lumos cast in murky waters. They swim with a wicked playfulness, as if to say, what next?
Or maybe, who next?
xxxxxx
Tom avoids her after that. He tells himself he does not like her looks or her smiles. It bothers him that she thinks she can understand him. It is obvious she doesn't buy his carefully curated image—the way he wants to be seen: a model student, gifted, brilliant, polite, well-mannered. A gentleman. The next minister of magic.
No, she does not look at him that way Yvette Wilkens looks at him, like she is ready to fall into his mouth.
Instead, Tom catches her with the expression of a cat that has its paw on the tail of a mouse.
Tom is not a mouse. He wants to tell her that sometimes when cats play in unfamiliar gardens, they pounce on a tail owned not by the mouse, but by the snake that bites back.