The Pretender | Tom Riddle

23| do him a favor

23| do him a favor

     Seren laid fully awake now. Tom was still in her bedroom but this time he took position sitting next to her resting body with confusion written all over his face. He had never felt more out-of-loop than he did right now. He'd known if her dreams. He'd see how they left her. Yet he couldn't help but feel so utterly clueless as he sat waiting for her to at least sputter one word out to him that would help him understand everything better. Her hair was still went from her bath, soaking her new pillow without a care. Bastin and a couple elves had, very quietly, switched out her sheets to new and clean ones, yet now they soaked with her damp hair.

"Who's Harry?" Tom asked finally finding his voice to speak out on what he really wanted to know. It wasn't the first time he has tried to connect the name to Seren. During his very, bad snooping, visit to her bedroom when he found the price of parchment with the name written down, questions rose within him. Who was Harry? It was something that rang through his mind like a bell ringing every second.

She didn't answer him, pretending that her sluggishness was making her unable to produce any coherent sounds. But Tom knew better. No. Tom knew Seren. And when she didn't want to say something, then you were going to have to really work hard to get it out of her. So he wondered if right now was not the right time. If maybe he could catch her off guard with the question and force it out of her. Not tonight though. Not when she was tossing and turning in bed to the early hours with sweat covered her soft scent and a sickness in her stomach that made her ill.

Silence fell over them after his question. The only light coming from the large glass windows, the fireplace being long forgotten. He wondered if she felt a chill, goosebumps raised on her skin answering his question almost instantly. "You should leave, Tom," she said. Tom stopped his own thoughts. Letting her words sink into him, he looked to her again waiting for her to continue or at least explain why.

"I don't want you," she clarified, "in here tonight."

I don't want you.

He repeated the phrase in his mind. She meant to sound incomplete, like she had fully intended to finish the statement about him being in her room. But he was anything but stupid, and he knew that pause was calculated down to where to cut the phrase off. Her smell of vanilla filled his nose as he back away slowly from her. He wasn't going to argue, or ask why. He knew why. It had something to do with her dream. Something to do with that Harry person. And so he has now decided that he is going to despise Harry. Any thought that crossed his mind about the boy would be fueled with rage. Because as hard as he tried, he couldn't understand why she was pushing him away while at the same time basking in the moments where he let her in on his secrets.

He stood tall, peering down at her for only a moment as she kept her eyes trained on the small crack under the door. She couldn't bare to meet his eyes. She had just seen him command someone to kill an innocent boy. An innocent boy who had absolutely nothing but be in the wrong place and the wrong time. He had done nothing. From the looks of it, he was just proud enough to partake in whatever game they had done. To just make the man who stood by his side in the beginning proud. And she hadn't even gotten his name. She couldn't even feel sorry for him properly because she couldn't tie a name to the Hufflepuff boy, who according to Harry, was a Hogwarts champion too.

Then, the mention of her name. The smallest sliver of what was known as her. How could he even think of it at a time like that? Had she really been alive long enough to see Harry even the smallest glimpse. The boy she had unwillingly grown attached to because of all the chaos in her head? How did she look during that time? Was she just as horrible to look at as Tom? Did she even make it that far? Did she agree to join his side? If she did agree to join his side, then does that mean that what she was seeing of Harry meant nothing to the future her? That even though she had seen all the evil Tom had done, she still chose to join him?