destruction | t.m.r

chapter seventy seven.

People are incapable of not caring.

Even Tom Riddle has shown that a person that hasn't felt a single caring word in most of his life could care for another.

It was dawn the next day, tomorrow we are to battle at Hogwarts. It was a calm and beautiful morning, everything seemed to be in slow motion. The rustling of sheets at my side only made me realise that this could be the last calm morning, because as of tomorrow everything could change.

"You look troubled." Tom commented next to me, he was nude only the thin silk sheets protected his body from the morning air. "Of course I am, you're not?" He seemed calm, too calm for my liking. Even if he most of the time doesn't react he must be at least a bit anxious about what is going to happen.

"No, I planned this for far too long to be scared of what will be. I know how this is going to plan out." He was a picture of confidence, his eyes were sharp as he spoke the words. He will win no matter what, but at what cost?
"Fine, tell me then what will happen after you kill everybody there?" Asking the question I leaned closer to him, his eyes were of dark green, so dark that I could see my reflection in them.

"I do not plan to kill everybody there."  His words made me tilt my head to the side in confusion. "Who will you spare then?" Only one person came to my mind.

"Slughorn, of course if he will want to join us."

Horace Slughorn was the closest thing to a father figure Tom Riddle ever had and Tom was his favourite of all.

"He's afraid, he won't come here." That is the truth, I heard it with my own ears. Just before the day I drowned in the Black Lake I stumbled upon Slughorn in a library.

He was sulking over the desk in the farthest corner, never have I seen him like that, broken and just utterly sad.

So I asked him, "what troubles you professor?", he was startled by me of course, "oh Merlin's beard, I didn't hear you coming." My steps were loud and they rung clear through the room, but he was so deep in this thoughts he didn't hear them at all.

"I'm sorry for interrupting, but you just seemed so alone." Was it wrong that a student wanted to give a professor a shoulder to cry on? Horace Slughorn was always a gentle and humble man so seeing him like this makes me want to draw circles on his back.

"I'm Miss Rowe and it's not about friendship that I'm alone, but because of my thoughts are far too much to handle so I must confine myself in solitude." His mind was a sea and every thought was just a droplet of water.

"Can I know your thoughts?"

He gave me a sad smile, which was not because he was too afraid to tell me his troubling thoughts, but only because they had to do with the person I thought about just as much.

"The boy, Tom asked me a question which I do not know the right answer to." His put his head in the palms of his hands, as if it weighted a million kilos.

"What's the question?" I asked in a serious tone because it sounded like it was of importance.

"He asked me if I would leave this," with a wave of his hands he showed around Hogwarts, "if it meant that we could be together after school."

What shocked me more was not that Tom asked this question, but because it sounded so inviting, sad and lovely? From this question I learned that Tom except me had another person close to his heart and it was not another girl or one of his friends, but a profesor who was like a father to him.

"Do you want that professor?" Now the silence fell around me, why would he want to be with somebody that wants to take over the world in wrong ways, not that you can take the world in good ways of course. He knew what Tom was like and he still cared for him.

"No, I do not want to be and think like him. How can I speak my thoughts when he got the things from me most haven't? I'm truly ashamed of who I became because of him." Ah, there it is!

There is the trule face of Horace Slughorn, the man who only wants to live a carefree and boring life!

"You can not tell him that."

"I can't, I fear the outcome far too greatly."

So, now lays a question over the Riddle manor.

Will Tom Riddle kill Horace Slughorn?

"You know me Myra and you came. Why shouldn't he?" Tom asked in a hushed tone, we were outside by the cherry tree.

"You got more of me than you ever deserved," my hand plucked the leaf and made it fall to the ground, "and more than I will ever give again so without you I was nothing and here, I'm everything I ever was and will be."