An Otherworldly Experience (Tom Riddle Era)

Chapter Twelve

"Katie, in about half an hour, we're going to get books," Kelli told Katie one morning just as they were finishing up with breakfast.

"She's only giving such short notice because it was planned for next week," Tom muttered bitterly from her left.

Kelli hadn't needed to call him by his chosen name because she'd spent half the morning chewing him out before he realised that she wasn't going to give it up, otherwise it would have been a very long day and a much longer rest of the holidays.

"Well you don't need to come," Kelli commented.

Matron Westbrook passed them and gave Tom a look that voiced her disagreement with her statement.

"On the contrary," Tom replied, shooting Westbrook a glare behind her back, "I say I do."

"So make sure you're ready and downstairs in half an hour, okay," Kelli said to Katie, seemingly annoying the other teenage boy at the table who had been quite salty all morning.

"Okay," Katie grinned before running upstairs to get read, not without sending a particularly pointed glare at Tom. Kelli couldn't help but laugh a little.

"A Gryffindor for sure," he commented gruffly as they headed up to their shared room. "Brave of her to be pulling faces like that at me."

"I believe she would be a Ravenclaw, she's not wrong to," quipped Kelli smugly.

"Oh, I'll enjoy watching you getting into heated debates with Snow," Tom replied. "I'm sure she'll come back and love you like she does now."

Kelli poked him in the side and said, "Fine, you win this round."

"I should be winning all of them," he replied. "I'm much more cunning than you are."

"I kill your responses like badgers kill snakes," she told him as she stepped through the door to their room.

His eyebrows appeared to have knitted together. "I would not attack you."

"You do it verbally a lot," Kelli replied, frowning. The conversations they had been having had started taking odd turns recently.

"You hardly get offended."

She put a hand on her chest. "If I wasn't offended, why would I argue?" She still wasn't offended.

"Because you prefer teasing," he answered. "You say very odd things and change the subject when you are offended or feel you might say something offensive."

"So you've been analysing me?" she asked, going to the door and closing it and taking her coat from the back of the door.

"I've told you before, I do intend to use you," he replied as though it were a very normal everyday thing for him to say.

Which it was but that didn't help him. "I see," Kelli replied, pulling her coat on and looking over at the mirror and adjusting things. "I don't know if I've called you this before, but you're creepy."

"I feel I've heard you call me that a few times," responded Tom boredly.

"Oh, must be because it's true," Kelli retorted, before looking at him. "Are you ready?"

"We've been in the room for two minutes," he told her flatly.

"I'm excited to see Elizabeth and Lauren," Kelli practically whined. "Be nice to me."

"You were hardly nice to me this morning."

"I'm never nice to you."

"You reap what you sow," Tom replied.

Kelli's eyes narrowed and she rolled her eyes. "Whatever."

Twenty six minutes after heading upstairs, they went down. Or at least she went down after breaking out of her room out of the sight of the control freak of 'yOu SAid hAlF HoUR'. Solid spongebob meme that Tom wouldn't understand.

It was an intense two minute fight of curses (the usual leg locking spell, to be frankly honest) and counter curses before the door kinda just broke off because she'd fell onto it a tad too hard. Weak doors - she wasn't all that heavy. She hoped. Nah, there was no way, especially after Hogwarts. The stairs, man, the stairs. Not to mention, she didn't really eat that often here because she still managed to get into trouble, just less trouble than before.

Kelli was a shit and there was no denying that for Matron Westbrook.

"I cannot believe you made me stay back and fix the door," he told her bitterly.

"Gender stereotypes, we're in the muggle world," Kelli responded extremely giddily. She wanted to add a profanity to the end of that statement, but the eleven year old was already waiting for them.

"Wait, there's no . . . girls do stuff too?" Katie asked, literally looking as though all her hopes prayers had been answered.

"Hell yeah," Kelli replied.

"Well, apparently, you still enjoy making me do the hard work," Tom told her, very coldly.

Man, Kelli thought, looking at him, he's trying to keep up a reputation here. "Obviously. Now let's goo."

"Goo?" he asked.

"Shut the hell up and get out the door."

His eyes narrowed like she was going to regret saying that too, just not here right now. Kelli took note of it, gave an apologetic smile before she left, taking Katie's hand so she wouldn't get lost. Because World War II was still going on and had yet to end and now was not a good time to be all that trusting of the strangers.

"Why are we going into some dingy pub?" asked Katie as they stepped through.

"It's the entry to Diagon Alley, at least from the street," Kelli explained, leading her through the pub and around the back, pulling out her wand and gaining entry.

Kelli watched the way that Katie's eyes widened in amazement - something Kelli was even just a little bit jealous of. Because while entering Diagon Alley for the first time was amazing, she'd never felt the same amazement because Kelli had already known at least a little. Her own amazement was to how the world translated from page to her life.

But she'd never had the full introduction. Maybe that's why it was so easy for Kelli to want to leave Hogwarts when she could.

"First, we're going to Gringotts, the wizarding bank. Because we don't actually have money, the school has an account for students like us," Kelli explained to Katie. "We just need to get them. We do have to deal with second hand books, but really, it's not too difficult to work out of like second hand muggle books."

"So people haven't written all through them?"

"Well, probably someone has, but magic can remove it," Kelli responded. "It'll be great, don't worry."

"Are you really good at magic?" she asked Kelli.

"I suppose," Kelli replied, "but I'm always practicing magic, you know?"

"I think I'll be really good at it naturally," Katie said, "I've been able to do magical stuff for years now."

Kelli smiled and said, "I've got a couple friends who are extremely talented. I've got one friend, Elizabeth, she's really good at brewing potions. And another friend, Lauren, she's practically seer material - she's seen the future really accurately."

"You can learn to tell the future?!" Katie asked, her eyes as wide as saucers with general excitement.

"Yep," Kelli answered. "But first, to the bank."