Astraya didn't know how long she lay there, gasping for air, her heart beating a mile a minute from the intensity of the chase. She listened for passing footsteps, for one of them to open the door and find her, helpless and disoriented by the potency of the Draught. But no sound came, as if the room was isolated from the rest of the castle.

Slowly, she lifted her head, which felt heavier than usual, and flattened her palms on the polished floor to raise herself up into a kneeling position, grimacing at a shot of pain in her knee. Rolling up her trouser leg, she blinked hazily at it. A dark bruise was already blooming, accompanied by swelling and a few drops of blood where the skin had been peeled off.

Locating her wand, she muttered, "Inflatio sanateur." The swelling immediately went down, the bruise fading from black to a faint greenish-yellow, the blood disappearing.

She looked around the room. Her vision was still blurry, and her head felt as if she was on a roundabout, but the dizziness lessened when her panic started to ebb away. The room was a large, empty space, with a fireplace at the end facing the door, a small fire crackling gently. Torches hung on the walls, and there was a small table with something that looked like a small crystal bottle standing on it.

She shuffled over to it, and squinting slightly, she picked up the bottle, her clammy hands slippery on the cool glass. She unstopped it, her nostrils flaring as a sharp smell drifted from the pale blue liquid. It didn't hint at any particular scent, just a clear, piercing aroma.

Elucidation Elixir. The antidote to Befuddlement Draught.

Without thinking, she threw back the bottle, taking a healthy gulp. For a minute, nothing changed. She closed her eyes, and when she opened them, her vision was sharp was once more. She could see the room clearly, make out the shapes of objects easily. When she stood up, her head didn't spin or pound, and she had no trouble keeping her balance.

She looked down at the small bottle she still clutched in her hands, then back at the room. What was this place?

She was sure the door had not been there when she had first turned the corner. She would have seen it, desperate as she'd been for a hiding place. It had appeared suddenly, and she'd bet it vanished once she was inside, seeing as how on-one had even tried to enter the room to look for her.

Then there was the Elucidation Elixir, exactly what she had needed to set her mind straight. It was as if this room had come tailored for her needs.

Soon, the wonder began to abate, and anger took its place. It started to build slowly in her chest, then spread all over her body, making her blood boil and her pulse pound in her ears.

What would have happened to her if she hadn't managed to slip into this room at the last minute? Riddle would have been free to carry out whatever malicious scheme he'd had in mind, and she would have been powerless to stop him. And even after the effects of the Draught had worn off, who could say she'd even remember what happened? Maybe they had planned to modify her memory, or Confund her to forget what they'd done to her.

Slamming the bottle back on the table, she snatched her wand from the ground and stormed towards the door, flinging it open forcefully, not caring who she was going to find outside—

And found herself face to face with Tom Riddle.

Tom had not expected to find Astraya in that room. The room he thought he'd been the only one clever enough to discover. He had suspected, but he'd dismissed the thought as ridiculous, only to be confronted by her exit from that very room, the one he'd thought hidden from everyone but him.

After Astraya had left the Great Hall, Tom, Nott and Avery had gone to wait in a deserted room deep in the dungeons that they used to carry out some of their… schemes. He hadn't expected them to take more than a few minutes. After all, the brat was confused and disoriented and not in the best condition to defend herself. He'd brewed that potion himself, making it as powerful as possible, and he had seen it beginning to take effect before she'd even left the Great Hall.

But they'd taken at least half an hour. When they'd finally appeared, they looked worn out and fearful, probably because they'd failed to carry out Tom's orders.

He'd glared at the three of them. Mulciber was clearly afraid but trying to put up a brave front. Lestrange was pale but stood straight-backed, without cowering. Rosier was clutching his injured shoulder, which looked as if it had been burned by some sort of acid, and trying his best to keep the pain and fear from his face. Even Nott and Avery, despite not being the ones to fail in carrying out Tom's orders, were apprehensive at the growing signs of Tom's rage.

"How could you fail to Stun her and bring her to me?" he hissed at them. "She was drugged and unsteady; I saw how she looked when she left the Great Hall. How could she escape?"

"I'm sorry, my Lord," Lestrange muttered, eyes averted, "but she just disappeared. We had her cornered on the seventh floor. There was nowhere for her to go, and she didn't have enough strength left to run anyway. She turned the corner and hid there, and when we caught up, she was gone."

"We looked everywhere," said Rosier, holding back a wince. "But we couldn't find her. It was like she'd Disapparated."

"No-one can Apparate or Disapparate in Hogwarts," Tom snapped at him. "You obviously didn't pay attention." He approached them, looking into their eyes, one by one. He was sure his displeasure was reflected in his eyes, and he saw with satisfaction that even Lestrange lowered his head in submission. "I thought I'd made it clear just how important tonight is. How important it is to put that little brat who dared to challenge me in her place. But then you go and let her slip through your fingers, proving just how incompetent you all are."

As he spoke, an errant thought passed through his head. The seventh floor…

"Which direction did she go in?" he asked abruptly.

"W-what?" stuttered Mulciber, startled by the sudden inquiry.

"Which direction of the seventh floor did she go in? Where did she hide?"

"She went left," Rosier answered. "To the corridor with the tapestry of the dancing trolls. She hid there, and when we tried to corner, we found she'd disappeared."

Tom stiffened. It wasn't possible. How had she managed to discover that hidden room so easily? More importantly, why would it reveal itself to her?

He twirled his wand in agitation, not noticing the looks his followers exchanged at their leader's sudden change of mood. "Go back to the common room. The feast must be ending now. If anyone asks about my whereabouts, tell them I'm on prefect patrol." He raised an eyebrow as they stood motionless. "Go. Now. And I'll deal with you three later," he added in a voice soft with menace. Rosier and Lestrange merely pressed their mouths into thin hyphens, whereas Mulciber blanched visibly.

He left the room and strode down the dungeons, reaching the door in just a few moments. He built up an urgent pace, taking the steps two at a time, slowing down only when he happened on students making their ways back to their common rooms for their night. The seventh floor was quiet when he stepped on the landing, and he immediately made his way down the left corridor, his footsteps unusually loud in the silence.

He turned the corner, and stopped before a stretch of bare wall next to a tapestry of dancing trolls. I need the place where Astraya Sader is hiding, he thought firmly, eyes intent on where he knew the door should appear if Astraya really was hiding in there. But what if the room wouldn't open for him since it's already in use?

Seconds, then minutes, slid by and the door didn't appear. The wall remained a stretch of bare stone.

His shoulders relaxed slightly, and he shook his head in disbelief at his own folly. Of course she wouldn't have found the room. How could she? She must have found somewhere else to hide, or maybe even used a Disillusionment Charm. He turned to leave.

He'd only walked a few steps when the sound of a door opening and the click as it closed again came from behind him, stopping him in his tracks. He expelled a breath through clenched teeth as he turned around, knowing what he'd find.

Astraya stood there, her hair coming loose from the confines of its neat plait, her clothes dishevelled and torn slightly at the knees. Her eyes were narrowed into green slits and focused entirely on him as she closed the door. It immediately merged with the wall, its wooden surface transmuting into granite until it was impossible that a door had ever existed there.

"Fancy seeing you here, Riddle," she spat. She made a show of looking behind him. "Are your lapdogs not with you then? Did you finally decide to do your dirty work yourself?"

He gave her a cold smile, feeling his own rage simmering under the surface. "They just wanted to bring you to me for a little conversation. It was rude of you to refuse the invitation."

She snorted. "I'm sure I'll regret my ill manners later." She raised her wand. "But for now, why don't you raise your wand and duel me face-to-face, instead of that underhand stunt you pulled earlier?"

Tom flicked his wand at the corridor behind him, conjuring an invisible barrier that would isolate any sounds from the rest of the floor. "It would have been easier if you'd just come quietly," he offered with mock solicitude. "I would have at least left you alone afterwards."

She gave him the same mocking smile he'd offered her, and shot a spell the minute he'd raised his wand. He deflected it but found himself assaulted by a barrage of rapid-fire spells, fuelled by Astraya's burning anger. Their kaleidoscopic beams made black spots dance over his eyes, causing him to blink rapidly to clear it. It gave Astraya the perfect opportunity. Black vines sprang out of her wand, wrapping strongly around his wrists, their sinewy surface coarse on his skin. Two more fettered his ankles, and one curled towards his throat.

Baring his teeth against his semi-sentient manacles, he hissed, "Incendio."

The vine reaching for his throat reared back as flames alighted across it, filling the corridor with hazy orange light. He felt a brief searing heat as the ones around his wrists were set afire, but it was gone as they instantly retreated. As if sensing the danger, the ones entrapping his feet loosened and, regaining free movement, he immediately acted.

Slashing his wand in the air, he whittled the flames into long, blazing whips, undulating towards Astraya, who was unfazed. Displaying the same immense skill in Transfiguration she had in their classroom duel, she waved her wand, and the flames turned into a light misty spray the minute they touched her, dampening her hair and clothes and leaving her virtually unharmed.

Abandoning the showy magic, she muttered a spell he didn't recognise, and so he dodged. A sizzling sound hissed on the ground where he'd stood, bubbles fizzing around a small patch of damaged surface. It looked as if acid had been splashed on the ground. He looked back at Astraya with a raised eyebrow. "Same spell you used on Rosier?"

She responded by casting the same spell once more. He stepped out of the line of fire, but cast three different protective spells, trying to gauge just how strong the spell really was. It was almost certainly Dark Magic.

The acid ate through both protective shields, and slammed into the third, gradually eroding it as it had the others. But this seemed to use up what was left of its power, and it faded.

It was definitely a Dark spell.

Not wanting to be outdone in his most proficient field, he shot a spell he'd learned last year, which he'd used on one of the Gryffindor boys who'd mocked Slytherin. Secretly, of course. It streaked for Astraya, whose exertions at the beginning of the duel, not to mention the chase she must've given his friends earlier tonight, seemed to have worn her out. Her chest was rising and falling rapidly, her face flushed, her eyes wide and glazed. She skirted to the side, but Tom's spell caught her ankle. She let out a hiss of pain, and Tom used that moment to land the blow he intended to end this duel with.

"Asinisa Segnus!"

He'd never used that spell before. He'd thought it too grisly to pass as a mere accident, even to practise on his followers, not without knowing the counter-spell. The book he was recently described it as a 'grotesque spell whose effects centralise inside the body of the target, without causing apparent physical damage. This spell induces a rapid thickening of the blood's viscosity, slowing its pace in the veins effectively and creating a state similar to paralysis as it spreads through the target's body.'

Tom had thought the description intriguing, and seeing it in action was even more so. Astraya dived clumsily to the side, her damaged ankle hampering her, but he cast it again without giving her time to recover. It made contact with her left hand silently. Like the book said, there was no obvious indication that it had done any damage. But Astraya's eyes widened, mouth opening in a silent gasp, face contorting as the sensation coursed through her veins.

Tom watched intently as the effects spread from her hand and up her arm, which was growing heavy and limp before his eyes. He stepped closer to her as she crumpled to the floor, presumably because the blood had started to slow in her legs, and stopped a few feet away. She lifted her gaze to his, and he was almost surprised at how much defiance and anger was still present in her eyes. He felt a ripple of excitement trickle down his spine. Putting this defiant brat in her place was going to be the most satisfying triumph he'd had at Hogwarts.

"I'll make it stop if you give up," Tom said softly. His wand was steady as it kept fuelling the spell's steady path through Astraya's limbs. "Just say you're sorry you ever challenged me, and that you'll tell me everything I want to know, and I'll stop this right now."

Her green eyes lit up with a strong surge of rage that was utterly familiar to Tom: it was the same rage he'd felt on several occasions throughout his life. Her undamaged hand jabbed her wand in his direction with a shout of "Depulso!"

Tom was so surprised by this sudden attack that he found himself flung across the corridor just further than his original spot, his concentration broken. He could feel the spell ebbing away.

"Expelliarmus!" he heard her cry, and, stunned and frozen as he still he was, his wand tore out of his hand easily and straight into Astraya's hand. He stared at her, feeling how quickly their position had been reversed: he, on the floor, defenceless without his wand, and she, advancing toward him like a wolf closing in on his prey. Her strides were long and even, unhurried. It was the sort of calm that hinted at a deep, boiling well of rage underneath, like the quiet before a storm.

Astraya stopped right in front of him. He felt the tip of her wand dig into the soft area under his jaw, like a knife ready to slit his throat. He was still surrounded by a thick haze of shock; shock at himself, for having been defeated, and shock at Astraya, for defeating him. He couldn't even summon enough clarity of mind to feel afraid, seeing as how he was quite at her mercy.

She'd got so close his face was almost touching his. He looked up at her, and the wrath swirling in her green eyes recalled him to a coherent state of mind. He was conscious of the threatening pressure of her wand, his own clutched in her other hand. And strangely, absurdly, he was conscious of her breath fanning against his cheek, and of the upward tilt of the corners of her eyes, which he'd just noticed, thanks to the proximity of their faces, which gave them a feline slant.

"I told you the first night I arrived," she said quietly, "not to mess with me."

The pressure of her wand increased, pushing his head up.

"I could kill you right now, Tom."

The dangerously soft tone she inflected on his first name, and the direct, grim way she delivered her threat, made his pulse kick up and his throat tighten. He pressed his lips tight and glared at her, trying not to let her see how much the thought of his death scared him.

An expression flickered over her face, too fast to recognise, but it was one that made her hands tighten around both wands. She expelled a surprisingly shaky breath, her expression smoothing out into an unreadable mask. She straightened, and he let out an exhale of his own as her wand was pulled away, no doubt leaving a temporary red mark in its place.

"I'll let you off this time. But if you ever try something like this again, believe me, you'll be dead before you can even raise your wand."

A short silence as she paused to let her words sink in, then she tossed him his wand, which made a dull clatter as it hit the ground.

She turned away and walked without a backward glance, dispelling the barrier he'd erected with a simple wave. He heard the click of her shoes on the stairs, fading as she descended then disappearing altogether.

He sat there until he felt that familiar violence kindling at the pit of his stomach, and he welcomed it, letting it thaw the frozen shock still encasing his thoughts, letting it settle in his bones and seep into every pore of his body until it washed away the bitter, utterly unfamiliar taste of defeat.

I could kill you right now.

Those words scratched and clawed at the walls that had kept that dark, violent part of her sealed away as she made her descent from the seventh floor. Pain surged from her ankle every time she placed her weight on it, though there was no physical damage that she could see.

She stopped and muttered a healing spell. Nothing happened. She tried another one, then another, using nearly every one she knew before the pain lessened. She cast that one again and the pain was whittled down to an uncomfortable twinge. One more time, and she resumed her path down, her ankle good as new.

She'd been about to kill him. She'd felt that same uncontrollable aggression she'd felt the first time she'd killed a man, the mad rush of energy that came before taking a life. If it weren't for that one sentence that had floated through her mind, unexpected, triggered by a subconscious part of her mind, Tom Riddle would be lying dead in that corridor this minute.

You're not evil.

She squeezed her eyes shut, her breathing shaky and unsteady, her feet moving mechanically, taking one step after another without conscious knowledge on her part. All she could hear, all she could think of, was that voice, echoing in her head as if its owner was standing next to her, when she knew he was well and truly dead. Dead because of her. Did that count as another murder on her part? It felt like it should, but she was sure he'd have something different to say about that.

He'd trusted her so much, had protected her, shown her more warmth than her own parents, and in the end, she hadn't been able to protect him. She'd failed him.

She faltered at the last steps of the staircase, clutching the handrail as she all but fell onto the landing. What floor was she on? She didn't remember.

Her vision blurred, her eyes hot and prickly, throat tight. She drew in a long inhale, closing her eyes tightly, then opening them with renewed resolve. Her vision cleared once more, and she realised dimly that her trouser leg was torn. For that matter, her hair and clothes were completely dishevelled. She couldn't go back to the common room looking like this.

She mended the tear with a simple Reparo, undid her plait and combed her fingers through her black curls once, then roped them back into a plait, tightening it until her scalp hurt. She straightened her clothes, looked at her appearance in one of the windows, and, satisfied, resumed her journey.

The sound of her shoes was abnormally loud on the marble of the Grand Staircase. The feast had long since concluded, and everyone had retired to their common rooms, leaving the Entrance Hall deserted, dying torches throwing tall, flickering shadows against the walls.

A faint murmur came from behind the concealed door of the common room, the watered-down chatter of the Slytherins who had yet to go to bed.

Green light spilled into the corridor as the door slid open noiselessly. The common room felt cold, in spite of the fire cracking merrily in the grate. There was a lull in the chatter, heads turning to squint at the newcomer, then, after confirming her identity, the conversation resumed its steady flow.

Astraya didn't see Cora and the others among the gathered students; they must've gone to bed. However, as she approached the door that led to the dormitories, she did see Riddle's gang congregated around the fireplace in their usual places. They were muttering furiously to each other, their gazes flickering to her as she stopped next to them. Rosier, she saw, was sitting stiffly in his chair, seeming to keep his shoulder from making contact with it. She gave him a smug smirk, which made his knuckles whiten on the armrests, and elicited a low growl from Lestrange.

When she arrived at the dorm, she was greeted by another probing interview from Cora.

"Where have you been?" she demanded the minute Astray crossed the threshold, leaping off the bed, where she'd been playing cards with Ophelia and Ava. Theo was snoring in her usual porcine fashion, bundled in her green quilts into a large, dark-haired caterpillar. "You've been gone for an hour!"

"I had a headache," Astraya said. It wasn't a complete lie. "I went to the hospital wing. Madam Rosanna gave me a potion to sort me out."

Cora's eyes narrowed. "And you needed an hour to drink a potion?"

"I got lost and couldn't find the hospital wing."

She sighed. "You could have asked one of us to take you." A slight pause. "That still shouldn't have taken so much time. What else did you do?"

Astraya tamped down the annoyance that rippled inside her. Now wasn't the best time to lose her temper, not when she was on the verge of becoming unhinged.

"I wondered around a bit after I left the hospital wing. I still haven't seen all of the school, and I thought it was a good opportunity to have a look when everyone was at the feast." She went to her bed and extracted her toiletries and nightclothes from her trunk. "I think I'll turn in. I'm feeling tired."

She went into the adjoined bathroom and shut the door, leaning her head back and closing her eyes. She let her back slide against the door until she sat on the cold floor, her stuff bundled next to her. Her head slowly dropped into her palms, and behind the closed curtain of her fingers, she finally felt the tears release, almost involuntarily, her hands muffling the ragged sobs.

She hadn't cried like this in a long time. In fact, she could count the amount of times she'd cried in her life on one hand. This sort of emotional outburst was just not like her. But the memories triggered by tonight's events kept replaying themselves, over and over, causing more tears to well up in her eyes and trickle onto her hot fingers.

She cried until her stomach hollowed and her bones felt weary. Her hands and face were wet with tears, their salty taste slipping between her lips onto her tongue. But her eyes had dried, no longer hot and prickly, her vision clear once again. The outlet of emotion had eased the tension inside her, allowing her to regain control. She felt much more like herself as she stood, wiped her tears and washed her face to remove the tracks of dried tears from her face.

When she came out of the bathroom after several long minutes, the only evidence of her meltdown was a slight puffy look to her eyes, and a residue ache that lingered in her chest.