Loyal | Tom Riddle

14: First Names

There was a different type of air that hung over Hogwarts the following morning -- a heavy, desolate cloud that blocked out even the weakest rays of sunlight, preventing any happiness from flourishing in the castle grounds below.

And that was just the way Tom Riddle wanted it.

He laced his hands together behind his head, leaning back as he surveyed his untidy domain (that was actually the unused classroom). Eleven stone faces stared back at him, waiting.

"Excellent work," he praised them. "Excellent work, all of you."

A ripple of relief ran across the room in the form of slouching shoulders and relaxed jaws.

"Yet we are not done; we do not rest now," Tom reminded his subjects as if he was a professor chiding his students for celebrating Easter break, which was usually when the heaviest loads of homework were assigned. "We still have much to do, don't we?"

"Yes, my Lord," eleven voices replied dismally.

Tom paused for a moment, smiling a bit -- and just a bit -- at each of them. "You are dismissed... but Travers, Malfoy... I'd like a word with you two."

Nikolai and Abraxas wordlessly exchanged nervous glances, rising from their seats and approaching their Lord. With deep bows, they waited to be addressed again.

Riddle let a minute tick by, an excruciating sixty seconds where two boys were struggling to resist the temptation of straightening out their spines as they trembled, still in a bow.

"You may rise," Tom announced quietly, the ghost of a smile flickering across his lips.

"You," he said, nodding at Malfoy. "Well done, very well done. We shall see to that preposition you presented so long ago."

Abraxas was dismissed with a lazy flick of the hand, which also played as Nikolai's signal to move forward.

Tom's face hardened immediately, becoming unreadable. "You, Travers, you disobeyed my orders."

"Please forgive me, my Lord," Nikolai begged, looking up at the boy with the icy demeanour lounging like a king.

"I do not forgive," Riddle said in a clipped tone, raising his chin. "Nor do I forget, Nikolai."

The boy closed his eyes slowly, his mind flashing back to that awful night. He'd overdone it. He wasn't supposed to push him so far, all the way to his breaking point--

"Mudbloods are fragile things," Tom continued coldly, "which is all the better for us and our mission. But we have rules here, Nikolai, rules that must be followed unless we wish to arouse suspicion."

"And those that break the rules..." he trailed off, toying absentmindedly with his wand. "Let's just say that they are punished most severely."

✧ ✧ ✧

Arabella awoke to find herself in the infirmary with not a soul in sight. She sighed, narrowly avoiding knocking over a neatly arranged row of well-wishing cards as she reached over to turn on the lamp besides her bed, casting an orange glow around the deserted hospital wing.

She puzzled over why she was even there in the first place; she felt fine -- no broken bones, no pounding headache, no odd ailments of any sort. Confused, she tried to remember what she had last been doing before she was brought to where she was stuck until Madam Goodfellow appeared at her bedside.

Dumbfounded that the last thing she could recollect was leaving the common room -- what for, she didn't know. Perhaps she had gone to Potions and brewed a sleeping draught by mistake, or maybe the dizzying aromas of the North Tower had exhausted her during Divination.