i am lord voldemort • Tom Riddle

XII

Tom hadn't lied: he wasn't afraid of Grindelwald, but that did not by any means mean he was reckless enough to potentially run into the wizard unprepared. No, if they met, Tom would need to have safe guards in place. As confident in his abilities as he was, he was too smart to believe he actually stood a chance against such a dark wizard with decades more experience. To complicate matters, Grindelwald practically made a profession of outduelling and outwitting Aurors, so Tom had to think of something else. Something they wouldn't dare dream of.

He loosed an almost imperceptible sigh. There were important things to be done, yet there he was, sitting through possibly his thousandth Charms lecture. It was hardly his fault it drove him to distraction; he'd learned everything he'd ever need to know on the subject by his third year. Who cared if he could make baubles blossom from nothing or a gentle stream erupt from his wand? Sometimes, he wished he could go back to the days when every aspect of every class had seemed so new and exciting.

But he couldn't, so he settled on half-listening to their lecture on the Homonculous Charm, while putting on an award worthy performance of feigning disinterest in Rabastan's crusade to balance as many torn pages from their textbook atop the professor's pointed hat without her realizing. The trickiest part was managing to fly the parchment by the elderly witch without her noticing. Twenty-two minutes later, the stack came crashing down, because the point of her hat couldn't take the weight of half a textbook worth of paper, earning Rabastan a week's worth of detention. He didn't actually get caught, per say, but Professor Darrow took one look at his cat-that-ate-the-canary grin and decided to forgo any trials regarding his innocence.

Tom spent the rest of the period pretending to study his Charms text, which was, in fact, a book he'd stolen from the restricted section and rebound to look like the proper school required book, until, five minutes before they were to leave, a bizarre noise broke the monotony of Professor Darrow's drone.

A shout.

"Stay in your seats!" she commanded hastily, making towards the door.

No one listened. Tom, quick on the uptake, was out into the corridor before many had so much as risen from their seats.

"Someone get a professor!" Ephiriam Longbottom called  frantically from around the corner.

Within seconds, Tom had followed his voice to the source and found Ephiriam crouched in his hands and knees over the body of a seventh year boy. At first glance, the boy appeared to be dead, except his eyes were wide, his face frozen in a mask of surprise.

"What's wrong with him?" Tom asked, leaning in and bringing a hand to the boy's cheek. Completely rigid.

"I don't know- We were just looking out the window talking about the weather for the quidditch match tomorrow, when he froze and I bumped into him," Ephiriam explained in a rush. "Did you call for a professor?"

"No. Everyone within three floors must have heard you."

True to form, they were soon converged upon by dozens of curious students. Professor Darrow tried to fight her way through the barricade with little success.

"Out of my way! What is the meaning of this?" she demanded, still confined to the outskirts in part due to her short stature and feeble, very breakable make up.

"Woah, is he dead?" a audacious Hufflepuff girl asked, nudging him with her shoe. "He looks pretty deceased."

"I don't think he'll be playing in the Ravenclaw-Slytherin game this Friday, at any rate," another contributed.

"He's not dead," Tom cut in, brows furrowed.

"Bummer," Rabastan said. "He's a actually pretty good beater. It would be nice to thin down the competition."