April 18th, 1944
Lina's ears rang with white noise. Her heart sluggishly pounded in her chest. She followed Tom through the winding corridors of Hogwarts like a shadow, struggling to keep up with his long legs outpacing hers. She didn't know where they were going. Still burned into her retinas was the terrible and agonizing image of Samuel's lips devouring Olive's. Lina's heart twisted and turned with a sharp feeling of heartbreak and betrayal. She couldn't get the singular memory to stop bouncing around her brain; pounding helplessly against her skull, begging for her complete and undivided attention.
Tom stopped once they had reached the doors leading outside to the empty Clock Tower courtyard. The sun had set nearly an hour before, and now moonlight shone down from the evening sky and cast the grounds in a eerie sort of glow. Lina followed him outside as Tom approached a bench obscured by a tall stone wall. No one walking by from inside the castle's corridors could see them now, unless they decided to actually go outside for themselves and have a look around. If tonight was like any other evening, Lina might've found herself thoroughly nervous and wary about this fact, alone with Tom Riddle once again. But with her heart hurting miserably and emotional exhaustion beginning to settle in, this time she couldn't find it in herself to care. She ungracefully plopped herself down on the bench, glaring down at her shoes. Tom followed, though situating himself much more elegantly than her in his seat and his face still frustratingly stoic.
"I don't know what to make of you, Tom." Lina blurted, her lip quivering. She tore her bloodshot eyes from her shoes, instead locking her gaze with his in an abrupt display of reckless confidence.
"What do you mean?" Something unreadable tugged at the corner of his lips, but it disappeared just as quickly. Annoyance began to bubble up in Lina's mind. How could he act so oblivious?
"You're just...you're confusing. You...You never say a word to me for all of six years, and then suddenly you 'want to know me'?" Lina asked incredulously. She knew she probably shouldn't be saying all of this to Tom, but with her mind now completely and utterly fried by the events of the evening she couldn't presently find it in herself now to keep her thoughts to herself.
"And...and the way you look at me! Like you know something I don't...I just, I hate it, really. You make me feel-"
"I make you feel...what?" Tom interrupted, amusement creeping into his tone. He cast a soft, knowing smirk Lina's way, his dark eyes never leaving hers. Lina swallowed the lump in her throat. The dream from the evening before began to swim through her thoughts.
"...I just wish you'd be clearer with your intentions, is all." Lina said quietly, neatly avoiding his question. She looked down at her shoes again.
A moment of silence passed.
"...It may surprise you to know that I don't know what to make of you either, Lina."
Lina looked at him again, dumbfounded.
"You have potential...yet you squander it on pursuits beneath you. On people beneath you." Tom continued. "Like Ryder. Blubbering over a Mudblood doesn't suit you, Lina." His voice was tinged with obvious disgust. Lina flinched.
"Sam is...he was my boyfriend. And you shouldn't call people that, Tom." Lina scolded, but her voice was quieter. Intimidated.
"They're impure, Lina." Tom spit back, undeterred. "So is Warren. You surround yourself with those who can only dream of being like us, Lina. Think of what you could accomplish if they weren't holding you back."
Us? Lina thought to herself. If she remembered correctly, Tom himself was a Half-blood. She didn't know much about him, that much was true, but she knew from overhearing silly gossip around school that he grew up in a Muggle orphanage and was not Pure-blood. His blood supremacy remarks all seemed faintly hypocritical to Lina. Not to mention wrong.
