Lost | Tom Riddle ✔

Chapter 82

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Tom received many confessions in his almost seventeen-year of life experience.

He had been a beautiful child. He remembered the first confession he received. Well, a confession of a sort. It was from an orphan muggle girl who had transferred to Wool's not a long back. Quite bold considering her age and an era. If Tom remembered it correctly she was nine then. A year elder than him. Since she was new, she hadn't heard the rumours that trailed the young wizard. He recalled her wearing a white frock. Her hairs had been tied in two small ponytails. The small girl had blushed a lot as she practically thrust a rose in his hand and started fidgeting her fingers in anxiety. Tom remembered getting disgusted by her muddy clothes and shoes which was definitely the result of her activities to grab hold of that flower from a nearby garden in the middle of the rainy season. Being the asocial kid that he was he remembered how she had drenched the floor of his room with that mud and how he had to spent his evening getting that cleaned. However, the thing that annoyed him the most was when he felt the sudden wetness on his fingers that day. The thorns of that ruddy flower had prickled his tiny, delicate fingers. Tom liked the sight of blood, but not when it was his own. He remembered throwing the flower at the girl. He recalled his satisfaction when she had left his room crying since the thorns that had prickled him earlier had tangled themselves in her hairs. She had completely deserved it. For hurting him. For trying something which was way out of her limits.

Tom had been a handsome teen. In the early years of his life, being how perceptive he was, he realized that harshness of the people depends upon the appearance of the offender. They say to never judge the book by its cover, but in the store, they do pick the book which has a flashy and explicit one. That's how he had gotten away from his antics most of the time. His aristocratic features and charming persona was so enticing that everyone was ready to kiss the ground he walked on. Before he found the source of his good looks, Tom had always been grateful to the way he looked most of the times, but he was always ridiculed when this came with the baggage of its own. The girls never left him. He was always surrounded by them like bees around a pot of honey. The patheticness of witches disgusted him more than the stunt pulled by that nine-year-old girl. It had taken Tom a lot of time and efforts to reach where he was today. And everyone was impressed with his results. Especially girls of his age. 

He remembered the first confession he received in the magical world. In his third-year, Penelope Johnsson had given him a bag of cookies as a gift. Tom remembered narrowing his eyes in suspicion before sniffing the biscuits the Hufflepuff had given him. When he had smelt nothing but chocolates, he had placed them in his trunk. He had placed a charm to preserve them till he went back to that orphanage. Hogwarts had plenty to offer, unlike the place he grew up at. Why waste any food? He remembered him laying on his bed in his room one afternoon that summer and clutching his stomach as he suffered the cramps after eating those cookies. He remembered drinking bitter muggle syrup to cure it. It was not until his fourth-year, that he realized the side-effect of preserved food with contamination of poorly brewed love-potion is stomach-ache. That was one of the reasons why he had marked the black-skinned girl as his first victim after freeing Basilisk. He wasn't targetting east Asian Yamada that day. He wanted to extract an act of impending revenge on her friend. The whole experience with those cookies had made Tom realize that his ignorance towards love potions was not benefitting. Also, after that experience, Tom made sure to dump any such gift he received from anyone the next instant. He would rather starve than suffer the torture of expensive muggle medicines ever again.

Tom shuddered at both of these experiences. Love. A four-letter word had haunted him more than the death itself. He didn't know why but an idea of love had always unsettled his nerves. It made him afraid and unsure. Two things he didn't want for himself.

Tom placed his hands on his thighs. His legs though bent from his knees as he sat on the ground of the room of requirements were shaking. His breaths came out shallowed and laboured as his eyes looked at the door of the said room. Nothing prepared him for that moment. Not even years of being a victim of an infatuation of horny females prepared Tom to face an actual love confession. Nothing prepared him for the girl who had just run away from the room after baring her heart out to him.  

A part of him was angry at her for fleeing. He still remembered how she turned pale after realizing what she had done. Her eyes had rounded at the same time turning into their violet beauty. Her hairs had started turning to the shades of white, the colour of mortification. The shock from her confession made him lose his hold on her and stumble back. She had taken this exact opportunity to free herself. She had stumbled and even fallen down a few times as she ran. It was as if she couldn't flee faster. He wasn't sure how he felt about her acting like he was some contagious disease. If anything, it was she who had spilt her guts. 

A big part of him, however, felt grateful when he lost his ability to stand tall and strong the moment she left him alone. He would have been embarrassed to let her see him this defeated. He didn't want her to see the effect only she had on him. Salazar! He didn't want to see the effect only she had on him himself. 

S*it! Absolutely f**king s*it! He cursed. 

Get the f**king grip you fool, he ordered himself. 

Did it work?

No. 

Well, not for at least the next half an hour.

At least not until anxious Anthony found him sitting in the same position.

Tom didn't know how to feel about that either. He remembered not being in his current prospect ever.

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