Chapter 62- You and I

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All the important scrolls Frankie had been carrying in soon came crashing to the floor, as she got caught in his mystified gaze. She gasped, noticing the lack of weight in her arms, and quickly broke away before she managed to get a good enough look at him. Surely, if she'd looked at him for just another second longer, she might've recognized the ghost of Tom Riddle. Although, they'd last seen each other nearly seven years ago now, for Tom at least, it felt like seventy years had passed between them. The twenty-nine-year-old Frankie looked about the same as she had always. Her large hazel eyes might've been a bit faded with time and her wild wavy hair was now miraculously contained in a loose bun at the nape of her neck, but ultimately, she looked identical to the girl in Tom's memories.

She bent down to scoop the mess back up and they continued to stare, making no attempts to help her. Tom was bewitched. It had been so long since something managed to catch his genuine interest. Dumbledore was simply curious. Although, it surely had been his intent plan for Tom to quickly leave without being able to see her, he couldn't help but be intrigued. What would he do? After scoffing at the concept of love, here it was back to haunt him. For the first time in a long time, Voldemort had an urge to flee. To get out as swiftly as Dumbledore clearly wanted him. Forget about the Sword of Gryffindor and finding a hiding spot for his Horcruxes. She was a toxic pathogen to all the evil he had culminated. He was not ready to face her, of all people on this damned earth. Tom Riddle, however, kept Voldemort planted firmly to the spot where he stood. He apparently wasn't going anywhere.

"Are you alright, my old friend?" Tom inquired, finally offering a hand to help her up. She took it, letting the scrolls just simply tumble to the floor again, and got caught up in his gaze and his charming smile. They were familiar to her. However, she had burned them all out of her mind with the intent of forgetting that boy he was. It was clear in her expression that she was having trouble figuring out where she had seen them before.

"Friend?" Frankie replied, sounding more than a little confused. "I'm terribly sorry—have we met before?"

"Why don't you recognize me?—It's Tom..." he replied, with a painfully forced laugh. Voldemort could not lie to her under Dumbledore's watchful eye. However, oddly enough, he did not want for her to hear his new name anyway. Voldemort had just gotten angry at Dumbledore for calling him by his old name, then suddenly she shows up and that's who he was again. The plain, ever-so-commonly named boy: Tom Riddle. It seemed that she still had a mental hold on him that he'd once foolishly been convinced to believe was love. Alternatively, he still wished to protect her from the many evils of the world, including himself. Voldemort couldn't deny that she would always mean a great deal to him, no matter how much time passed between them. He wouldn't call it love though. Not anymore. He wasn't that foolish.

Frankie just continued to stare at him, which was something he didn't quite understand. She knew who he was. Why wasn't she fuming in anger, or slapping him across the face in a vengeful passion? Her rage should've literally been cursing him out the castle door for what he did to her. The man she had dearly loved had left her to raise an army to overthrow their world. He was a dark wizard and had broken their final promise. Certainly, as Dumbledore's apprentice, she was well informed in Lord Voldemort's movements. It couldn't possibly be that he was keeping her in the dark too, after all these years. "—Oh, that blasted memory of yours. It seems you've forgotten me already."

"Of course, I haven't forgotten you. It's just been such a long time. You look different." she answered, to much of Tom's surprise. She probably felt silly for not recognizing him earlier. Of course, dead people don't come back every day. She really knew nothing about him. To her, Tom had just left her there a long time ago with a promise he'd come back for her someday and promptly died. Which was frankly a lot better than the truth. Tom quickly thought of how he could roll with this angle much better and started branching new lies to tell her. However, he pulled the breaks and stopped his own train of thought, with a hot, angry thread of logic.

𝕬 𝕯𝖆𝖗𝖐 𝕷𝖔𝖗𝖉 𝖎𝖘 𝕭𝖔𝖗𝖓 | 𝑇𝑜𝑚 𝑅𝑖𝑑𝑑𝑙𝑒 |Where stories live. Discover now