An Otherworldly Experience (Tom Riddle Era)

Chapter Twenty Four

"Special services to the school my ass," muttered Kelli upon reading the plaque with Tom's name across it.

"Excuse me?" asked a Professor's voice, and Kelli looked back to see Dumbledore. He looked semi-disapprovingly down at her, but also quite curious.

"I've been told you know why that's ... rubbish," Kelli replied, not apologising for her language, instead changing it and looking back at the plaque. "Whether or not you believe it is up to you."

"Are you not friends with Riddle?"

Kelli tilted her head in consideration. "I enjoy his company, as he enjoys mine, but he is not my friend and I am not his."

"Does that not make him a friend?"

Kelli shrugged. "You should make new friends, sir. I'd start with Hagrid."

"I do believe Tom was behind these, too, I'm just very interested in why you think so," Dumbledore then said to her, explaining himself apparently.

Kelli looked up at him and said, "You'll figure that out yourself, I'm sure." With one last look at the plaque, she turned and stepped out of the trophy room after putting it up in there, out of the sight of anyone else. Kelli took it as a personal offence that it was ever in the Great Hall to begin with.

And she knew there was a charm in the trophy room that made it pretty difficult to take trophies out when they were already in there. She knew that because it was in Hogwarts: A History, not because she tried to take a trophy out. No, she did that after reading it to test the theory out.

Nothing really was the same for everybody. Despite Hagrid getting expelled, everybody was still on edge about getting attacked - of course, an actual girl died because of it. Kelli felt awful because she was meant to be trying to stop that from happening and one day she wasn't vigilant she got petrified and all this went down and she could do absolutely nothing about it. Sometimes thinking about it got so bad she didn't realise what she was doing.

On a usual day, studying was exactly what Kelli needed, but these days weren't that. Kelli spent way too much time staring at pages in the same spot in regret. It really had dawned on her at Warren's funeral. The odd thing was that a change had definitely been made. Warren wasn't a ghost. She died and that was it for her, that was just the end for someone who was supposed to be a ghost.

Was that comforting that she was content enough to not come back, or was it terrible because Warren would never exist again? Honestly, Kelli felt pretty disgusting, mostly because she still liked that evil monster. She looked at him, she still felt butterflies in her stomach because he was a solid 10, but she also felt disgusted because that solid 10 had a solid negative 10 personality.

Kelli groaned, letting out a string of swears under her breath, realising that it was dark and her candle had blown out already. She didn't know the time since she had gotten out of the habit of wearing a watch, but since it was nearing summer and it had been late enough before, she guessed she didn't want to get caught by anyone.

Of course, since she thought about that, someone did catch her out of bed. Professor Slughorn.

"Ah, how're you feeling Miss Watson?" he asked cheerfully, not bothered by her being out of bed, then he frowned. "My dear, you look awful. You might want to go to the hospital wing."

"I'm sure I don't, sir," Kelli replied with a slight smile. "I keep studying and forgetting to eat. I've got months of work to catch up on."

"Dear, I'm quite sure that you were ready to pass your OWLs in your second year here," he told her. "May I ask you a question?"