the moon is no door ↠ Tom Riddle

43

For the entire day until her last class, Saffron's stomach was tight with nerves. Her mind continued to twist and turn with all kinds of scenarios. Maybe Tom was going to tell her that he didn't like her after all. Maybe he was going to say that he no longer wanted to talk to her. And, even if he did have feelings for her, what was he going to say?

It was extraordinarily difficult to imagine Tom Riddle asking anyone to be his girlfriend. But, then again, Saffron would have previously struggled to picture him willingly kiss anyone. 

He hadn't been there for breakfast or lunch and he ignored her in the classes they had together. But, finally, she was finished with classes for the day. She said goodbye to Lionel and Rory and headed straight for the library where she found Tom by himself with several books and pieces of parchment paper in front of him.

"Hey," said Saffron, sitting across from him. She hadn't been this close to him since he'd been taken back to his orphanage. He looked more natural in his Hogwarts uniform—his grey blazer with his house's emblem on it and a tie with Slytherin's colors.

Tom looked up at her, his features perfectly unfeeling, which sent another shock of anxiety through her system.

"Good afternoon," he said, gesturing for Saffron to sit across from him. She did this as she gave him a displeased look. Good afternoon, he'd said. She'd hated his insincere, polite voice since their first year, but she'd never hated it more than at that moment.

"Good afternoon," she said, exaggerating the posh way he'd said it and then pretended to take a sip from an invisible cup of tea, sticking her pinky out to mock him.

Tom studied her. "What are you doing?" he asked, an eyebrow quirked judgmentally.

She waved him off. "You asked me to come to talk to you. So? What is it?"

Instead of answering right away, Tom started to shuffle through his papers and books. Saffron's chest was sore. This clearly meant that it wasn't them he wanted to talk about. It was worse than rejection and she couldn't help but feel a bit angry.

"To be able to find a cure for the curse, I need to know precisely what the symptoms are. Your great-uncle's book had scant details. Knowing exactly what I'm trying to cure could make the difference for whether or not this potion will work," Tom said and Saffron's anger deflated in her stomach like a sad balloon.

She sat back into her seat and crossed her arms over her chest. "Okay. So, starting from the first indications, right?"

Tom only nodded his head.

"I was about seven when it began. I think I suspected something before it started happening. Not even because of my Sight, but because she and my dad were acting strange and reserved for a while—more than usual, that is. Anyway, the first thing I remember noticing was when she started having a lot of trouble sleeping,"

As Saffron spoke, she watched Tom hurriedly writing notes on his parchment. Occasionally, he'd glance up at her, but continued to look completely stoic.

"I know because, when I was little, I used to sleepwalk a lot and she would always be in the kitchen or the living room in the middle of the night and be the one to take me back to bed. But, neither one of my parents admitted to Soren or me there was anything wrong until she started forgetting things. She'd forget where she put her keys or her wand and stuff like that. It was so out of character for her—she was always sharp, never misplaced things before.

"It was a slower progression through the next year when I was eight. She started to act a bit differently. Quiet. She wasn't exactly cheery normally, but she was never subdued. She would spend hours and hours in her office. My dad would tell us she was researching something, but I never knew what, even if it was true. Then, she started to—this sounds really mean—but get dumber. Since I started primary school, she would help me with my maths homework but she started to forget how to do it. Which, you know, I was eight, so it wasn't exactly complex. Long division and fractions and the like. And, you have to understand, my mum was incredibly intelligent. Before that all started happening, she could have been a university maths professor if she so wished."