For the Greater Good || Tom Riddle ||

Chapter Sixteen: The Love Potion

Gwen returned to her Common Room not long after she was graced with an answer from Tom and slipped undetected into the girls' dormitory.

Surrounded by the velvety blue and bronze curtains of her bed, she stared out into the darkness as if to test her eyes' ability to see something that wasn't quite there. She wasn't sure if she was searching for an enigma or if she was simply so tired that she was delirious from lack of sleep.

It had not been that far from the truth when she told Simon earlier that day that if she did not close the dormitory window, the room would be flooded with a dastardly chill. Sadly, Camila, Ruth, and Loucille had forgotten to close the glass-paned window after coming home from Hogsmeade.

Now, an icy breeze circulated around the room, and even though Gwen tried to stifle it by shoving one of her floral printed handkerchiefs in the crease of the windowsill, it still was uncomfortably cold. 

In the past, Gwen would've called herself a pansy for feeling the chill of the Scottish autumn. But she had grown used to warm days spent on the sweeping grounds of Hogwarts. The blizzards of northern Norway were a thing of the past.Gwen couldn't help but shrug on her warmest pair of pajamas and curl into her mattress as she pulled a thick wool quilt over her body.

But she could not fall asleep.

Tom's face was imprinted on the black of her eyelids whenever she closed her eyes. His voice rang in her ears like a phantom menace that wanted nothing more than to torment her.

"But you have to split your soul."

It repeated over and over again in her head.

He did not explain the process of creating a horcrux any further and she didn't dare ask. She left soon afterwards, when the room had grown quiet but so filled with tension and unasked questions that she thought she might explode. Gwen decided that she would return to the Room of Requirement herself and read Secrets of the Darkest Art.

But now she lay in her bed, in the middle of the night,  her mind was running rampant with thoughts.

She was a Parselmouth. What did that mean for her?

A terrible, nagging feeling sank its tooth into her gut. She despised every second that she experienced such dreaded emotions, but she always struggled with ignoring the pestering feeling of misery and whatever else it was she felt inside of her heart. It was an utter infection of anguish that seemed to just overtake her body.

It was as though boulders were weighing down on her rib cage and pressing every gulp of air out her chest. She continued to stare upwards, into the nothingness of the top of her velvet canopy that she couldn't make out in the darkness of the room. Her eyes were unblinking, burning from weariness and exhaustion.

Finally, when she had decided that she had tossed and turned for the last time, she grabbed her wand from under her pillow and cast the lumos spell. A soft, angelic beam irradiated from the tip of the crooked piece of hawthorn wood, shedding her canopy cocoon in just enough light to see.

Adjusting her position, Gwen leaned over the side of her bed, pushed back the curtain, and picked up the book the librarian of Hogwarts had gifted to her quite some time ago.

It was a fairly new book, in great condition, and didn't look like it had been read too many times. The green cloth cover featured an illustration of small mountains with pointed peaks at the top of the book cover, and whimsical dragon lurking at the bottom of the page. Small, plain script made it known that it was called The Hobbit.

Gwen stayed up until dawn, flipping through the pages of the book. As she read about the itinerant wizard, Gandalf, and the miraculous journey of a band of dwarves and a creature she never heard of before called a Hobbit, she felt more and more awake and lively. She was excited to find out what happened next with the Hobbit's secret, powerful ring that was capable of magic. She wondered if it was a horcrux.