TORMENT (Harry Potter Sequel)

Chapter Twenty Seven

The orphanage was quiet. When Tom entered through the reception he found it empty. Distantly he could hear the other children but he couldn't find any adults. He walked around curiously. The corridors were still the same shade of grey. They were still just as clean as they always were but somehow the orphanage felt much more... dead. Tom had never really associated it with warmth or anything good at all really, but walking in here was still strange to him. Even if he wasn't allowed to do so, children still usually ran in the halls. There wasn't just silence all the time. This was very strange.

Tom turned down the corridor to go towards his room but then stopped himself. He tilted his head sideways and looked towards the room he knew which belonged to Dante. He walked over to it and pushed on the door. It swung open eerily, creaking loudly. The lights were off inside. The usually vibrant walls had gone back to bare grey- the wallpaper had been taken down. The room was completely empty of all stuff that could belong to Dante. If the room had a broken lightbulb, a way smaller bed, no window and was much smaller in size, then Tom might've even thought he'd mixed it up with his own room. As Tom looked at the barren, empty room, he found himself coming to a clear conclusion. Slowly he shut the door again and then started walking slowly back down the corridor.

Mrs Eve Myles was a widow and head matron at her orphanage in the City of London Borough. She must've been running it for 35 odd years now and was practically in her 60s. She was very happy with it. In a way it gave a chance to be with and look after the children she never had. She made sure to be kind and motherly to children and was popular with the majority of them. That made her very happy. But time was catching up with her and she felt its effects more and more as it went on. Her body was beginning to ache, she was finding it harder and harder to spend time with the children and she'd been getting some awful headaches recently. That was probably the strangest part about it. For around 15 years she'd been suffering from migraines which had kept popping up but now they were making her feel like her head was being put through a blender.

After another long day of work, she got up out of her desk and started walking towards the exit of her office. Before she could quite reach it however, the door burst open. Walking slowly (and clearly angrily), Tom entered the room. His rage was silent yet visible; like the grey clouds before a storm. His face was morphed into a scowl. Eve, the matron, took an unwilling step back.

"Wh-what do you want?" she said, trying to sound authoritative in the face of this giant. Her headache returned with full force.

"Where's Dante?" Tom said, through gritted teeth.

The matron turned to one of confusion, "Why would you want to know that?"

"Just tell me!" snarled Tom. The matron stepped back.

"N-no!" she said, still trying to sound in charge. Tom took a step forward.

"You're... scared of me."

The matron's eyes widened, "No, I'm not!" she lied.

"Why?" Tom asked simply, taking another step forward. The matron took another step back, "Why would you be scared of me."

The matron opened her mouth to say a snappy retort. But nothing came out. She, herself, was surprised by this. Usually she always had an answer for a question like this. But now she was doubting herself.

"Because you-"

"-Are a freak?" Tom interjected, predicting what she was going to say, "Is that it?"
The matron shut her mouth.

"I mean that's why you've done all this, right? Because I'm a freak!" Tom's voice wasn't even a yell or strained in any way. It was like a thunderstorm; the roaring booms that came from the sky.