The Snake Pit || Mattheo Riddle

Chapter 18: A Friendly Update

Alone in a long corridor, Octavia stood. It was so cold. She was shaking, vision blurring. Distant cries of pain echoed to her. A reverberating sob. And she was running. But it wasn't fast enough. Her limbs were heavy and as hard as she tried she wasn't getting closer. The corridor grew longer, the lump of a boy sprawled on his back spitting blood. He was screaming now. A long piercing wail. She fell down, crying.

On her knees, over his bloody body. He looked to her with wide eyes, tears cutting through the blood on his splattered cheeks. She pressed her hands into his wounds, trying to staunch the blood. She was yelling for help. It echoed, with no response. A weight in her chest like she hadn't taken a breath in an age. A chill running the length of her spine. She looked up.

Shrouded in its dark cloak, a shadow swaying with the wind. She was crying. Begging them to help. But the darkness under the hood watched her without eyes. It looked through her. It shook its head. And pointed to her hands. She followed the chilling gesture. In one blood-soaked hand Octavia held something long, sharp and smoking with a black fog. A knife, covered in the Ravenclaw's blood.

Octavia was shaken awake, the large blue eyes of her best friend hovering over her with a crease in between her brows. Her body like lead. Octavia's head was heavy, the fog clearing and turning into a swarm of angry bees, as Daphne and Pansy spoke to her in blurring voices. She rubbed at her eyes, sitting up, their voices grew tenfold.

'Merlin, what happened to you, O?'

'Why is there blood all over your hands?'

'Are you ok?'

'What happened?'

Octavia groaned and flopped back into the embrace of her warm bed. She hadn't showered last night, she'd planned to, or at least wash her hands. But instead, she collapsed onto her bed, and stayed there, too exhausted to move or to sleep. She just laid there listening to her dorm mates breathe. Guilt was crushing her. Because all she could think of was that she'd wished she hadn't found the Ravenclaw boy. Wished she had nothing to do with it, because if the Slytherin's had it hard before, it was about to be hell.

Daphne and Pansy hadn't ceased their questioning. She supposed she should have been surprised they hadn't heard about it already, but the Slytherin's were pariahs at Hogwarts. Interhouse communication was not going to happen at this rate.

Octavia sat back up, looked to her two friends, the guilt coming back with vengeance. A weight in her stomach. The pain in her head shifting to behind her eyes. The slightest tremble of her lip. A deep ache in her chest. And then she was crying.

The other girls stopped their chatter immediately. Watching Octavia look at her stained, red hands, sobbing. She was trying to talk, to explain, but her words just fell into shuddering breaths.

'Oh, honey,' Daphne sighed, enveloping her friend in a tight hug. Octavia's shoulders sagged into her. Her body convulsed with the pitiful sounds. Octavia's head throbbed. A roaring heat in her cheeks, tears drying as soon as they fell. Pansy's dark eyes were wide and concerned; she sat down next to the pair on the bed, and stroked at Octavia's hair. The soft gesture just made her cry harder.

She was a mess. She felt guilty for wishing she hadn't found the boy, guilty for what she had brought down on her house, her friends and home. The guilt weighed her down but the dawning humiliation of sobbing into Mattheo Riddle's chest, made her jittery. And the look he gave her afterwards, awkward and pitying like she was an injured animal he had no business encountering. She wanted to die right there. But mixed in to all of that was fear. She didn't know what was to come. Was Mattheo going to be sent off the Azkaban for his involvement? The Headmistress believed them but what would the Aurors think?