An Otherworldly Experience (Tom Riddle Era)

Chapter Twenty

It hadn't surprised Elizabeth nor Lauren that Kelli was late. They guessed she had been somewhere doing her homework. But she would have been at most ten minutes late - as if Kelli would miss a Halloween feast. She loved Halloween way too much. But when she was fifteen minutes late they'd started to get worried.

"I'm gonna go find Kelli," Elizabeth and Lauren told each other at the same time. They smiled at each other before they both got up to find their friend.

They both walked to the end of their table before heading down the door. They went towards their common room and found that the floor was really wet after some stairs around the corner. It looked like some had been dragged away by something big.

Lauren felt a cold chill go through her, coming to a halt, she looked at Elizabeth and said, "I think we might need a professor."

"Why?" Elizabeth asked.

"It don't know, I feel really sick," Lauren said.

Elizabeth nodded and said, "You go get one. If something is wrong someone should get Kelli."

Lauren nodded and turned back around. Elizabeth continued down the steps and pulled out her wand to clean the water up as she got closer. She rounded the corner and dropped her wand. "Kelli?"

Sure enough, the body of Kelli was on the ground in the water. "Merlin no," Elizabeth whispered, running over towards Kelli and dropping to her knees in the water, checking if Kelli was alive. The look on Kelli's face wasn't one of fear or anger, it was set into the face of annoyed resignation.

Elizabeth felt a very light pulse. She wasn't dead.

Elizabeth could have cried of relief if she hadn't started to spout tears of horrified shock only moments before.

Moments later, Lauren and Professor Dumbledore had arrived on the scene.

Dumbledore assured them that Kelli was simply petrified and would be back to her full health, though at a later date.

"But who'd do this?" Dumbledore asked them both.

Lauren and Elizabeth both glanced at each other, both thinking that Kelli would think it was Riddle. "I . . . had a vision that Riddle could have been the one to kill her. Or spend a lot of time with her. But she's not dead . . ."

"You had a vision?" he asked.

Elizabeth got the feeling of minor dismissal from the Professor. Lauren nodded but very slowly. She'd noticed too.

"It did make Kelli very paranoid of Riddle - more so than usual," Elizabeth added.

"More than usual?" he asked, definitely not believing them.

"Yes. More so than usual. Yes, she liked him, she was his friend, and she knew him a lot better than we did. But we knew her. And he scared her. When Lauren told her about her dreams, she wasn't happy about hearing it. She was distressed," Elizabeth told him, sounding more and more distressed herself as she spoke. "We're not saying that it was Riddle, sir. But Kelli might have, but she's petrified and -and-"

Elizabeth felt pathetic for dissolving into tears by then - she wanted to defend Lauren, knowing that she was best believed, and she wanted Kelli to be awake.

_

Kelli opened her eyes. She was standing outside a house she had visited many of times in her dreams. Her house, her family house. But this felt exactly like when she first went to Tom Riddle-era Hogwarts.

Kelli looked down. She was wearing the same clothes as she had when she had gone, her pyjamas, her backpack was slung over her shoulders. Kelli pulled out her phone to see it was dead. It had been July 14th, on Kelli's birthday, when Kelli had been to Hogwarts. It appeared to be Halloween night and her house had no intention for trick or treaters.