OF SERPENT AND ANGEL ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎➝ tom riddle ¹ | ✓ |

ELEVEN

Eliza rolled the tip of the quill in the fingers of her right hand as she stared at the empty parchment in front of her with dull eyes. Will was sitting next to her, Atha opposite them as they all worked on the piles of homework every professor was assigning in preparation for their N.E.W.T.s. The boy cast a glance at her, his amber eyes flickering from the void expression on her face to the unwritten Defence Against The Dark Arts paper.

"Eliza, is everything alright?" asked Will after clearing his throat.

The blonde forced her mind to focus on him, letting her green eyes move from the paper to look up. "Of course," she nodded, "everything's okay. Why wouldn't it be?"

"Just that you've now been staring at that parchment for half an hour which is usually the amount of time you need to finish an assignment," he said, still looking worried despite her words. "And you've been a little off since Saturday."

"I'm okay," Eliza said again, smiling at him quickly.

"You know," said Atha, sitting up in her seat across them and leaning over the table, "I'm going to have to agree with your boyfriend on this one. You don't seem fine."

It was true; she wasn't fine. Tom Riddle's words from the Three Broomsticks still seemed to echo in her mind as if it was an empty chamber. She was beginning to feel scared and uneasy whenever she was alone, which, being Head Girl, was quite a lot of the time. And she hated it. She hated feeling unsafe everywhere she went. Eliza had always been confident. She had always been one who shone the light in the dark, but now it felt like her light was fading.

But she hadn't told anyone of any of it. A small part of her, the one that was crippled in a dark corner as it rocked back and forth in agitation, feared that perhaps his words hadn't been empty. That regardless of how he had all the Hogwarts professors and most of the students wrapped around his finger, how he had an award for Special Services to the School, how he was both Prefect and Head Boy, that there was something dark and diabolical under his mask of no emotion.

She would be going about her day when suddenly she'd feel as if she had fallen into a lake of ice water and the hairs at the back of her neck would stand up. And she'd whip her head around and her green eyes would meet the brown ones of Tom Riddle and he would not break the contact until she blinked or looked away. And her mind would be unable to focus on anything but the unavoidable feeling of endangerment.

But still, the boy had made an attempt at talking to her since the Hogsmeade trip and the first half of the week had passed with no evidence that she should fear him. Yet she knew he was watching, she could feel his eyes on her whenever they were in the same room together. And it made her skin crawl.

And so, Eliza told nobody. She knew that Atha would only tell her that Tom was enjoying messing with her head and that none of it meant a thing. 'He saved all of us, remember? Frankly, I think you should show a little more thanks to him'. And William she knew would act rashly. He would do something that would only give Tom more reason to come after him. And she didn't want that.