December 1944 - The Truth
A dozen kids were massed on the second floor, their shadows reflecting against the walls in the flickering light. Some were chatting but most were silent, a pout disfiguring their faces as they leaned against the wall. None of them seemed particularly ecstatic to spend their Saturday night in detention, but so was the Head Boy who had copped with the responsibility to oversee them.
He walked down the corridor, his quiet presence enough to hush the conversations, and his dark eyes scoured the group. Much to his satisfaction, no Slytherin was in the dock, and it was with a subtle air of disdain that Tom unlocked the classroom's door for the kids from other houses.
He took the register, the list creased from the people who had carried it before him: Slughorn, who had professed having dinner with the Headmaster, and the janitor, who had wished the detainees' help to dust the trophy room but an unfortunate accident had thwarted his plans. Thus leaving it to the young man to watch over the kids who had broken the school's rules in the past week. Something Tom would have usually delegated himself, to the Head Girl, or some younger prefects of his house, if he had not seen in such a chore the promise of a sudden opportunity.
He handed in the designated tasks, a hundred envelopes to seal, some cauldrons to scrub, before he peeked at his watch. It was almost time, he thought as his eyes lingered on the box that poked out of his bag. He drew in a sharp breath, a nervous finger fidgeting with the list he still had in hand while he glanced at the empty desk on the front row.
"What did you think?" scoffed a voice in his head.
"That she'd come?"
After ten good minutes of peeking at the door that he had left ajar, he closed it with a spell, and sternly scolded two boisterous First Years before he took away some house points as well, for good measure.
Time passed, incredibly slow, seconds feeling like minutes, and minutes feeling like hours. The girl's absence made it all worse, and Tom began to wonder on who was the suffering the most from the detention: the misbehaving kids, or him, who was stuck supervising dull students who did not deserve his precious time...
The Head Boy pulled his Rune textbook out of his bag, to forget how despondent he felt, and yet, none of the complex signs managed to pull him out of his own thoughts.
"You failed" was how he had informed the girl of her fate the past evening, while she was sitting in his room. He had been quizzing her since the beginning of the year, a weekly test of arduous questions that aimed at preparing her for St Mungo's.
"What do you mean I failed?!" she had snapped back at him with a glare before she had snatched the piece of paper from his hands. She had stared at her answers, her beautiful features hardening with each recorded mistake.
Five out of fifty, a disqualifying score for the Entrance Exam.
"Your questions are misleading" she had retorted with a sulk.
"Quizz me again"
She had let the parchment fall on his desk, crossed her arms in a demanding fashion. It was in such moments that Tom noticed her elitist upbringing, as if Annabel expected things to go her way, and it often triggered that part of him that made him want to prove her otherwise.
"No"
She had scoffed.
"You cannot blame me for your lack of assiduity. You would have passed if you had not spent last Sunday procrastinating"
Oh, that look she had shot him then. He had held her gaze, unimpressed by her impertinence, and they had stared stonily at one another for a while, each of them sitting on the opposite end of his desk like two duelling wizards.
A week ago, Tom had caught the girl lazing around in the Great Hall, a board game spread between her and their friend Alastair. The programme he had given her that week was heavy, and fairly advanced for a high school student. Yet, he had assumed that she would succeed, providing that she'd invest the necessary amount of time and energy in it, for she had done well so far, and passed each of his test with flying colours.
Yet she had failed, which had forced him to remind Annabel of their agreement, some sanction that ought to be imposed for her behaviour not to recur.
It seemed providential somehow, because after books and flowers - and back massages - Tom started to run out of ideas for compensating her successes.
"We have a deal, remember?" he had pointed out.
"If you succeed, you get a reward, but if you fail…"
He had stopped there, his words lingering like an unspoken threat while he had pulled a box out of his desk drawer. He had placed it in front of the girl, the package about eight inches long, and with a tilt of the head, he had asked the girl to open it.
She had done so with a dark look, only to clench her teeth in disapproval once she had peeked at the content of the box.
"I'll be watching a detention tomorrow night and I expect you to join" he had simply indicated before he had stood up, and grabbed his jacket from the backrest of his chair.
"What for? Write lines?" she had spit, yet with a slight quiver in her voice, to which he had replied with "how perceptive of you darling" and a kiss on her forehead before he had walked towards the door. But when the young man had come back after his patrol, the girl was gone, and he had been seized by a doubt.
Was he going too far?
A knock jolted him out of his thoughts, and Tom's heart skipped a beat.
She came.
He did not glance at his watch before he opened the door with a spell, his gestures brisk, suddenly revealing his excitement.
But when the door turned on its hinges, no one else but Peeves stood in the corridor.
His heart sunk like a stone in his chest and he chased away the poltergeist with a cruel threat, his disappointment soon replaced by a scorching irritation.
He stared at the students with his jaw clenched, and when the detainees finally stood up in the scraping sound of chairs, Tom grabbed the box out of his bag and threw it in the nearby garbage bin.
—
The classroom was brighter than the corridor, and when the door opened, Annabel was blinded by the wavering lights. She stepped aside, to let the dozen kids exit the room, resisting the urge to flee despite the curious glances they were darting her.
"Is Riddle still in here?" she asked a First Year, and the latter muttered in ascent before disappearing down the corridor. Annabel pushed the door open, to find the prefect with his back turned to her. He was standing near a desk, collecting whatever work the students had been assigned during their detention.
"The detention is over" said the young man without granting her one glance, and his cold tone made her stomach twist.
"Go back to your dorm"
She considered leaving, head to the Ravenclaw tower where she knew her friends were having fun, but she mustered all the courage she could gather and stepped inside of the room.
She glanced around, noticed the empty desk in the middle, right in front of the dais, which she assumed was meant for her. She walked towards it, placed her jacket on the backrest of the seat and pulled out of her bag some parchment. She turned to the side, stared at the front of the room and accioed the box that contained the tool she knew she was expected to use.
The box was in the garbage bin, which surprised her, but Tom's back was still turned to her and gave nothing away of why it had ended up there.
She opened the small crate slowly, and pulled out a long quill, its shape as if to imitate the blade of a dagger. The tool looked just like a black quill, a torturous device that used the user's blood as ink...
She stroked the feather and readied herself, aware that her fingers were trembling.
"How many times?" she asked with a strangled voice, her eyes riveted on the desk before her.
Tom's back straightened, and he peeked over his shoulder, finally conceding her a glance.
"Go back to your dorm"
"How many times?" she repeated, louder this time, despite her wish to leave.
She wondered if he would stop her, hold back her hand right before she'd start. She wished he'd tell her that it was just a joke, that he only wanted to test her obedience, that the detention was humiliating enough as it was, that he was glad she came.
But oh, she could not have been more wrong.
"Ten"
She breathed in.
"Each" he added as he slid a note on her desk with the responses of the questions she had failed to answer accurately.
The girl swallowed, a lump growing in her throat as she calculated in her head.
Fifty.
She darted Tom a pleading glance, but all she got in return was the young man's tranquil look. And yet, behind his apparent placidity, Annabel sensed something stir inside of him, something she could not quite grasp. A darkness, like an abyss that opened, a black hole that threatened to swallow her.
Her heart began to race and she felt her eyes prickle as she lowered the quill.
She thought about the pain, and a sob escaped her throat.
"I can't" she whispered.
"I can't do it"
She started to cry when all of her previous fortitude left her. Face buried in her palms, the girl shed shameful tears that rolled on her cheeks and dampened her chin. She sobbed for a while, until she felt a grasp on her shoulders. The young man was kneeling next to her, saying her name while he rotated her chair towards him. He pushed away her wrists and removed the strands of hair that were glued to her face.
"Anna" Tom called again, his excitement gone as he dried her tears with his thumbs, a concerned frown on his forehead.
"Would you care telling me what's going on?"
—
The girl groaned, her fingers shaking from the strain of holding the quill.
"Take a break" said the young man, but Annabel shook her head.
Tom was sitting next to her, for he had deserted the dais after his fiancée's unexpected outburst.
"I'm almost done" she uttered between gritted teeth.
"Only five left"
She pursued with another sentence, aiming for a new line, but when she placed the quill on the parchment, her hand was seized with a cramp. The tool escaped her grasp and she let out a sigh before her eyes darted the petty quill a black look.
Every few lines it was the same rigmarole, her sore fingers would let go of the quill and the latter would break away from her grip, and roam in the room freely, quick and unruly like a golden snitch. Until she would manage to catch it and resume to her writing of course, which made the sanction far more lengthy and humiliating than painful.
"A black quill? God Anna" had blurted Tom with wide eyes when she had confided into him that she had mistaken the tool with the latter, and she had been embarrassed then, by her outburst, and by the fact that she had doubted the intentions of her betrothed. And yet, even though the punishment he had planned for her would not lead to anything else than sore muscles, she did feel her face get hot when she would be running after the quill under the Slytherin's judgemental gaze.
Next to her Tom glanced at his watch, and he snapped his fingers before the quill obediently lodged itself in his palm. He handed her the quill with a jaded face and she thanked him, held it as tightly as she could despite the ache she felt in each knuckle.
With a great deal of effort, she managed to keep the quill still for the rest of the punishment, and when she finally placed the dot at the end of the last sentence, she felt a wave of relief.
—
"I'm proud of you" Tom said and he peeked at their reflection on his bedroom's window.
Annabel was sitting with her back turned ti him, near his desk where he had placed a bucket of ice cold water. Her hand was floating in the cool liquid, among ice cubes and medicinal herbs that aimed at soothing her aching fingers.
He brushed her arms, untangled her hair with his fingers while she rested the back of her head against his stomach and closed her eyes appreciatively.
"Thank you" she whispered with a faint sigh, and the Head Boy kept standing there, motionless if not for his hands that combed her locks.
"How do you feel?" he asked after a while, and he bent over the girl's body to gently grab her wrist. Drops of water ran down her forearm when he lifted her hand to inspect it closely, but just like he had expected, her skin showed no scar.
He dried her hand with a spell before he informed her that he had smuggled some analgesic out of the hospital wing.
"This should help" he announced after he pulled out the medication from one drawer, an aluminium tube from which he squeezed some yellowish ointment. Tom leaned against his desk before he grabbed the girl's hand once more to dispense his care.
With circular motions, he rubbed the balm in her skin, and he massaged each finger, lingered on each knuckle while he explained that her fingers would certainly be sore for the next two days, based on his own experience with the quill.
"You tried it?"
She suddenly opened her eyes, and darted him a stunned glance.
"Of course" he scoffed.
"I would have never subjected you to something I was not sure you could handle"
She looked down, as if to ponder over his words, and when he was done tending the girl, he slid the aluminium tube in her jacket's front pocket.
"Did you eat?"
She nodded, and pressed her injured hand against her chest with the other.
"Before I joined you"
Tom disposed of the water inside the bucket, and he wondered if her dinner was the reason for her delay.
"It was not why I was late" she clarified, as if she had read his mind.
"I just took time to make up my mind"
"To be honest, I ended up thinking that you wouldn't show up" he said, feigning a detached tone and the girl shrugged.
"Well, it's not like I a choice"
He darted her a side glance as he grabbed the container's handle, and he lifted the metal bowl to place it on a shelf in the back of his room.
"You would have cancelled the arrangement if I hadn't shown up"
His heart skipped a beat and he stopped walking, fearing for the first time that he might have mistaken the girl's fear for devotion. His heart constricted, and he was surprised to find out that he was hurt by the girl's assumption.
"Do you really believe that?"
His voice was parched, and he searched for her gaze but she was looking down, like embarrassed, as if her words carried some humiliating truth.
"I get it. We have a deal. You said so yourself. It's only fair that your affection is contractual"
It felt like a punch, the second one that evening. He understood that she needed to negotiate their agreement on her own terms, that being sanctioned in front of others was not how she agreed to be punished. He had been offended, but he had been able to set aside his disappointment. But when she had told him that she had believed that he would expect her to use some torturous device on herself was beyond his understanding...
And now, this?
He watched her for some time, his rational mind mulling over the girl's emotions he could not comprehend.
Was it possible that the promise of their marriage did not tame her doubts?
Did she not believe him yet?
"Anna" he uttered in one last effort.
He accioed a book from one shelve, a dark volume ornamented with silver threads.
"There is something I need to show you"