To Revive a Soul || Tom Riddle

7. The Chamber of Secrets

Eleanor felt a warm touch against the back of one of her closed fists, and through her blurred, tear-stricken vision, she found Reinhard, who was looking at her with a knowing gaze. She ripped her hand out of his, for once not wanting an ounce of comfort, and buried her face in her arms.

It was too much.

All of this. She had just seen Myrtle. Had just cheered her up. And then she was dead, in the same spot Eleanor left her... hours, perhaps even minutes after.

She hated herself. She should've insisted on walking Myrtle back to her common room, should've stayed with her a few moments longer.

She could feel Clarence's penetrating stare on her. "How dare you cry for her," she heard him whisper under his breath.

She looked up at him, absolutely enraged. "You think I did this?" she asked him, almost raising her voice but deciding against it. She couldn't cause a scene, not when Dippet was speaking.

"You never showed up last night," he spat. "And after what you did to the Gryffindor, I have no doubt."

"I didn't kill anyone, Avery. Get that through your thick skull," she said murderously, her head twisting in anger.

"Then who did?" he asked, raising his eyebrows as if her current state didn't shake him in the slightest. "Because all the evidence points against you and Lestrange, darling."

And then it hit her.

Dippet had said that Myrtle's death wasn't connected to the petrifications, but she knew that Tom was behind those, and she knew that Myrtle, too, was born from non-magical parents. She looked at him, sitting five seats down from Reinhard, and he was jotting something down in his notebook, the world closed off from him.

He had done this.

Whatever was in that Chamber had done this, and Tom was its leader.

Did he know he had framed her? Did he care? She wanted desperately for breakfast to be over so she could confront him.

But something told her she shouldn't. Deep inside, something told her that Tom Riddle was more than the sly, clever boy she had taken him for. There was a presence in him that Eleanor had only seen in her life once before: something much darker than she could ever anticipate.

But she looked at him, saw his complete disregard for the girl who had just been killed—by his hand, Eleanor suspected—and she knew that Tom Riddle was no longer a mysterious, perhaps twisted boy.

He was dangerous. He was cold-hearted and incredibly dangerous.

He shut his notebook when food appeared in front of him, and when he looked up, he caught her gaze. She stared back into those icy blue eyes, and he smiled slyly at her, apparently able to see clear as day that she knew what he was up to. He grabbed a muffin and held it out to her, almost toasting it, and winked in her direction before turning back to Abraxas and taking a bite.

~•~

She sat in the common room with Reinhard after breakfast, notes spread out on the coffee table in front of them, but neither able to focus at all on their studies with the rumor going around that they had killed Myrtle. It was a miracle that Dippet hadn't called them into his office for some form of interrogation, but they were counting their blessings as it was.

"You were right," she said softly, breaking the silence as her quill trembled in her hand. "Leaving last night was a bad idea."

He sighed, setting his own quill down and shuffling closer to her. "Eleanor, don't think for a second that this is your fault."