Lost | Tom Riddle ✔

Chapter 97

Alexa hissed as she turned on her right side. Sudden pain that shot in her right wrist had forced her to open her eyes.  She shut her eyes tight as brightness evaded her vision. Putting her left hand over her eyes, she opened them again to look at her surroundings. She blinked her eyes one too many times to make sure what she was seeing was not her imagination.

There, standing in front of her was her cousin - Adrian Winters.

"Hey!" She greeted uncertainly, as she tried to sit upon the comfortable bed. She saw him looking around them and wave his hand as he muttered a silencing spell.

"Hey," Adrian replied mechanically. "How are you?"

"I could have been worse." Alexa smiled tightly. Adrian's determined gaze on her forced her to look around and see that they were in the famous Hospital wing of their school. Even in the situation that she was in, she couldn't help but appreciate how nicely those green-coloured, old-yet-maintained privacy screens contrasted against the signature white-coloured beds with sheets and bedpans. She blinked as she did her best to recollect her arrival in that unexpected location.

"Good." Adrian's reply forced her to look back at him. She grew more impatient and uncomfortable with each passing moment of awkward silence that enveloped the two pupils. 

"Wait!" As if just realizing something, she snapped back to reality. "Where is Tom? Where is everyone else?"

"Tom is with Professor Dumbledore. I don't know about everyone else, but Professor is taking care of some matters." There was gloominess when the eleven-year-old spoke and Alexa wondered if there was something that he was hiding from her. She was about to voice it out, but the boy silenced her before she could speak. "I am not here for them right now, Alexa. I am here to get some answers. And only you can give them to me."

Alexa clutched her comforter to her chest. The intensity and determination in the kid's eyes informed her that the dreaded conversation was here. And there was no running away. Not this time. She nodded her head as she looked at her lap.

"You told me that we are no siblings," Adrian spat, "why did you lie to me?"

"I didn't," still not meeting his eyes, Alexa spoke in a barely audible voice. "I never lied to you."

"Yeah, you did!" Adrian accused. She was lying to his face. "You told me we are no siblings. Then tell me Alexa," he spat her name as if it was some venom, causing the girl to flinch back, "why do we share the same woman as our mother. Why Sienna Winters is the mother of both of us?"

"Because she is not my mother." Alexa felt guilt eating her conscience, as she spoke her next words. "She is my aunt."

"This means that we are cousins," Adrian stated the obvious. "Then why did you lie me? Why did you say that your father had no brother when I asked you?"

"My father had no brother. Aunt Sienna was his sister. I didn't lie," Alexa repeated quietly and closed her eyes waiting for the storm that was about to come.

"And you couldn't have corrected me? Do you think this is a joke?" Adrian sneered. His eyes flared. When he got the permission to meet her, he had schooled himself that he won't lash out on her, especially when she just woke up from her concussion after three days, but this girl was impossible. "I spent 8 years of my life going from one orphanage to another wondering why have I got no family. And you blow away the first chance that I got to finally find my origins?"

Alexa trembled again. Her sin caught up to her. She had no idea that she had snatched a mother from a boy all those years ago. If not for Tom, she wouldn't have even found out that her aunt had a son - a family of her own.