unhinged ↠ 𝐭𝐨𝐦 𝐫𝐢𝐝𝐝𝐥𝐞

nine

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He'd always try his best to chase away my nightmares, little did he know they were mostly featuring him

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Kitioma Hadlee

"Kiki, eat this," Gabriela says while handing me a biscuit she stole from the kitchens.

I snuck out-well, not really snuck, rather, walked-of Tom's room after stealing the black book. I escaped to the quidditch match because I figured that would be the best place to avoid him.

Gabby has thought I've been in the medical wing all this time; she knows nothing about Tom.

I sigh and grab the bread, nibbling on the side. Gabby smiles encouragingly as we watch the match.

I really do hope Gryffindor wins, but it doesn't look to good right now. Most of the Gryffindor players are hot headed men, and nearly all of the females on the team don't even play the game correctly, but who am I to speak?

I realise I finished the biscuit and look down at my hand in confusion. "What the-"

"Hey, you finished it!" Gabby beams proudly, wrapping me in a tight, warm hug. "I'm so proud of you!" A soft smile appears on my lips as the warm feeling of belonging comforts me. "Do you want any more?"

"I mean, I don't want any but I need to eat," I mumble. Gabby hands me a bag full of food, and I know by now to not even question where she got it from. I take out small crumbs at first, my stomach rejecting them, but I force them down. Gabby looks over ever-so-often and gives me encouraging smiles.

Slytherin scores a goal, the Gryffindor keeper runs face-first into the pole. Gabby groans and all of Gryffindor with her. I laugh as the keeper tumbles off of his broom into the muddy field down below. Gabby elbows me and goes, "Hey! That's out team you're laughing at."

I snort and point a piece of cheese at the keeper. "No, I'm laughing at the keeper over there being an idiot."

Gabby snickers at the Slytherin team as they run into one another, laughing at the Gryffindor keeper, then shove each other for falling. "God, this is the most chaotic quidditch match I've ever seen."

I shake my head. "Ah, Gabby, I'm going to have to bring you to America to show you muggle football and hockey, it's so much more chaotic than this."

She laughs, and I smile softly, feeling the best I have in weeks.

But then I feel someone's eyes on me. I turn around, gazing around the Gryffindors, searching to see who's eyes burn holes into my back.

A flash of blonde hair.

A blue tie

Sam?!

I cough on the cracker I was eating, it getting stuck in my throat. When I look up, the boy is gone.

"Kiki, you ok?" Gabriela nudges my shoulder and I turn back around, still distractedly looking over the sea of heads.

"Oh, uh, yeah. I just...thought I saw someone I knew," My words are absent-minded, and Gabriela gives me a confused look.

"Who?"

I shrug weakly. "Sam?"

Her face goes white. "That can't be possible, no one has seen Sam in days."

"Seen...him?" I say slowly.

"Yeah, they say he just went missing from the common rooms. It was right after he talked to you, too," She chews on the inside of her pale white cheeks nervously. "Some of the teachers say there might be a new threat, but I only know because I hang out with Marlene, and she's a prefect."

"Yes, I realise Marlene is a prefect, she's been blabbering about it for weeks. But Sam? Missing? That doesn't seem like him," I say, my words coming out tumbled and rushed. "Yeah. Totally. Hope he's ok!"

Gabby's eyes narrow. "Kiki..."

"Yes?"

"You're hiding something from me, aren't you?"

Oh nothing, just the fact that some psycho named Tom Riddle is after me because of my pasts and killed my ex-boyfriend for trying to curse me, even though it was my fault he tried anyways.

"No, why would you think that?" I say carefully, staring her right into her eyes.

"Because you stutter when you lie," She mutters.

I elbow her, forcing a laugh. "Please, you've only known me for five months, you don't know what I'm like when I lie."

Gabby frowns, brushing her brown hair away from her face. "How can you say that? That's almost half a year, of course I know what you're like by then, or I would be a bad friend."

"I'm not calling you a bad friend!" I exclaim.

"I never said you were!"

"Well you implied it!"

"I did not imply that! How could you say such a thing?!"

Gabby gives me a shove, to where I tumble off of my seat and down into the stadium floor. "You're being a bitch."

"How am I-"

"Just leave. No one wants you here," Her words are like knives cutting across my skin.

All my life I've wanted to be accepted. The boarding school and orphanages didn't accept me.

I should have know Hogwarts would be the same.

"Take it back," I say coldly, standing up, throwing the bag I was holding at her. "Take. It. Back."

She gives me a sneer, a cold, hard look that makes my heart ache with betrayal. "No. It's true. I don't know what the hell has gotten into you these few weeks, getting into trouble, going to the medical wing and faking injuries for attention-"

"You think I faked these?" I yell, pulling down my shirt collar to show the bruises on my neck. "How can someone even do that?"

"People talk, Kitioma, and right now," She sneers shallowly. "You're the talk of the whole school."

I frown and hiss back, "At least I'm well known for something, unlike you, who's going to die alone and forgotten."

Gabriela's face flickers with hurt, but by now, I'm done. I brush off my robes and spin on my heel, storming out of the stadium. I feel eyes following me, since me and Gabby did create quite the scene, but I hold up 'the finger' as I walk off. People start whispering and gasping, pointing at me in the stadium.

As Gabby said, I'm the talk of the school.

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