the seven virtues [tom riddle]

chapter thirty-two

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

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Ivy Trouche was a fragmented piece of the most illustrious pulsars in the sky, and in her golden splendor, she rivaled the moon, almost as if she was a full-fledged star that demanded lunas to orbit around her. There had always been such quality to her—the force of gravity bowed to the witch. Attraction worked until everyone spun around only to please her with a centrifuge rotation. Even as she rose out of the shadows, her form crystalline and dream-induced, Riddle still felt the same aura pulsate, akin to dagger glints scraping at his skin.

She had been alive once—glorious as the incandescence of grand chandeliers over marble tiles, her voice made of viscous nectar and every move a feathered touch. Now, Ivy had been reduced to nothing more than a footnote in someone else's story, a portrait on a family tapestry that would one day burn as all perishable things did.

And her form was a phantasm, a shadow of what she had once been. It was as if her whole body had been coated in a lacquering substance, something that made the former witch seem worn. Ivy's forehead furrowed as she shot Riddle a trademark scowl—noxious and bothersome.

"What a snug, little place you have got here, Riddle," jeered Ivy, "Certainly better than the one you threw me in."

Tom scrunched his nose, already provoked by her high pitch and disdainful tone, "Help me get out of here, and I will make sure you do not return to purgatory."

"And how exactly will you do that?"

The boy moved on the floor, chains clanging against the metal bedpost as he strived to stand up. Riddle glimpsed down at his wrists, noting the injuries as his joints screeched from wear and tear. His inky coat covered his form, and underneath a wool sweater barely managed to shield Tom's body from the coldness of the cell. It had been shredded around the shoulder, the sleeve barely hanging from a few threads.

"Let me worry about it," aloof azure eyes settled on the spirit, and in them, surged fanaticism unlike she had ever seen. Tom was not sure what Ivy had seen from her purgatory, he doubted it was much, and he intended to keep her out of the loop. She was a self-righteous person, and if she found out what Riddle's end plans were, Trouche would not hesitate to leave him behind.

"I do not trust you," puffed the witch, "And how did you even get here? How did you call me? I knew you were up to no good, Riddle. I could smell it off of you like potent sewer leakage, but this..."

"The fewer questions you ask, the easier it is for me not to lie to you."

"Because that is reassuring."

"I am not here to offer you comfort, Trouche. How I reached out to you matters little. Point is—we can help each other. Call it a pact of mutual interest, if you must," muttered Tom, already working on freeing up space around the cell in order to perform necromancy. First, he had to convince the other Slytherin to help him by deactivating the magic-constricting barrier.