i am lord voldemort • Tom Riddle

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"I used to think I was good at ancient runes, but apparently I've been lying to myself. What does this even mean?" Rabastan complained, pushing away the text in heartfelt disgust. "Who's even bothered about what the Ancients had to say anyway? Couldn't have been that important, because they are all dead."

"You must be the only idiot in this castle foolish enough to think Ancient Runes would be an easy O.W.L," Tom said in a bored voice, not sparing him a glance.

"Should have taken Muggle Studies with me." Avery shrugged from his highbacked lounge chair, where he conspicuously sat with not a single book, nary even a pamphlet. "Easiest class of my life. Doubt I've spent more than a total of nine minutes conscious in that classroom all year."

"It doesn't matter if you take the easiest class offered if you still fail all the others," Fenella muttered under her breath, though it lacked her old conviction. She'd grown subdued, Ophelia noticed, in the weeks following their scuffle, and Ophelia couldn't help the slight twinge of guilt she felt whenever she noticed.

When Rabastan began to bait Fenella into another argument, Tom pushed fluidly away from the table the three shared and moved to sit beside Ophelia on the couch.

"You've certainly made yourself comfortable," he noted, looking from her face to where her legs stretched along the soft, emerald upholstered cushions, leaving room for no others.

"Maybe I just like testing your patience,"she challenged, straight faced. "I want to see how irritating I have to get before you send me away and decide I'm not worth the trouble."

Tom, not at all impressed, ordered her to make room, to which she responded by turning back to studying her Ancient Runes textbook with far more success than Rabastan. At least, until she felt her lower half being lifted and looked back up to watch Tom slip onto the couch beneath the them.

"And you say I'm contrary," she sighed, turning a page.

Gradually, she felt a growing discomfort in the back of her head, until she finally gave in and turned a fraction to subtlety look behind her. Fenella, seemingly oblivious to whatever Rabastan was gesticulating across the table, stared blankly at the place where Ophelia's legs laid over Tom's. Realizing how it must look, Ophelia promptly jerked away, but luckily the abrupt movement was covered by Knott slamming the door open into the dungeon common room and swaggering in, a copy of the day's Prophet in hand.

Tom snapped his silver lined book closed with a sense of finality. "I pray, for your sake, there's a good excuse for this disturbance."

Leaping down the three steps at the entrance and falling onto the arm of Avery's armchair, he tossed the newspaper onto the low, dark coffee table between. It slid across its glossy surface, eventually landing on the ground where Ophelia had just planted her feet.

The headline made her blood run cold:

Grindelwald Strikes!

The paper was in her hands without any conscious thought to make it so. She read:

April 5, 1943

In the midst of the muggle war on the continent, Grindelwald has finally made his move. In a skirmish with Belgian aurors, he unleashed an explosive spell in conjunction with an unknown number of his followers. 17 aurors perished in the attack, as well 11 other ministry officials and 9o8 muggle civilians including 209 children known to be present in the town of Mortsel, Belgium at the time.

Obliviators from nearby countries are working round the clock to preserve the Statute of Secrecy by altering the memories of survivors. The official story: A failed Ally bombing on a munitions factory.