Broken Wings / tom riddle

Chapter 9 - Centaurs

The night was beginning to grow dark and misty. The other students were changing out of their uniforms and getting ready to relax in their common rooms, Briar wanted to join them but she had a detention to attend to. The last week had been exhausting for her, school wise and social wise. Ever since news spread about her dating Aleks Avery she was no longer the weird orphan girl that everyone avoided, but the weird orphan girl that everyone wanted to know.

People Briar had never spoken to before were coming up to her and asking her invasive questions. In classes, strangers were attempting to sit next to the faerie and make conversation. She was dating a popular socialite, what did she expect? But still, she was uncomfortable with all the sudden attention she was receiving.

Briar headed out of the common room to meet Slughorn for her detention. The night was chillier than she expected, she hoped she would be serving detention inside tonight, out of the cold.

When she arrived at Slughorn's office he greeted her cheerfully.

"Hello my dear, tonight I've got a very simple detention for you, not too hard no, you will be helping me brew some more elixirs for the infirmary. We seem to be running a bit low." the old wizard said as he handed her a list of potions she needed to brew, there was quite a few, she knew she would be here for a while.

Briar headed to the potion shelf to grab the ingredients, and she began brewing her way through the long list. Slughorn loved to talk, he kept going on about some of his old students, Briar zoned out, there are only so many times she can hear a wizard brag about his exclusive connections in the wizarding world.

About an hour had passed and Briar had put a large dent in the extensive list. "May I please use the bathroom sir?" she asked politely.

"Of course dear, but don't be too long I want to be out of here by midnight!" Slughorn replied to her.

Briar left the potions classroom and made her way to the girls toilets. There was a large puddle of water that laid in the entrance to the bathrooms. Peculiar she thought, as she used her wand to clean up the puddle on her way in.

She came out of the cubicle and walked closer to the sink taps to wash her hands, a tiny snake symbol on the side caught the faerie's attention.

"Lumos," she said bending down to inspect the symbol further, why would there be a snake on the taps? She allowed her fingers to trace over it lightly as she stepped back and observed the sink as a whole. It was quite an obscure way to build a sink, it looked out of place, just a circular pillar in the middle of the bathroom. Briar whipped her head around to face the cubicles, she could of sworn she heard a high pitch cry coming from one of them, as she began to walk back towards the area to inspect it a voice made her jump.

"What are you doing here Emeralds?" Tom spoke firmly with authority.

"Using the bathroom, what are you doing in here? Can you read orphan? It says girls," she spoke to the boy reciprocating his annoyed tone.

Tom pushed the girl to the wall, wand raised to her neck as he had done once before. Briar knew Tom was violent, but that never seemed to stop her from wanting to provoke him.

"Despite my many warnings it appears you still have chosen to ignore them. Either you're incredibly bold or incredibly daft, but considering you've seen what I've done to your boyfriend and you still chose to to insult me I would think it's the later," he hissed at her.

"Those scars on Aleks' hand, you did that?" Briar asked.

"Hmm, incredibly daft it is," Tom snickered at the girl.

"Slughorn is expecting me, if I was you I'd let me go so I don't have to explain to him what took me so long," Briar said to Tom.

Tom released her from the hold, her back still aching from the cold rigid wall.