In Horace Slughorn's defence, he couldn't have known that all this would happen. All he had wanted to do was play match-maker between his two favourite students, Tom Riddle and Artemis Potter.
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--------------------> TOM RIDDLE WAS DETERMINED. Ever since Artemis Potter had realised that he wasn't gifted in the art of answering riddles, she had been teasing him nonstop about it. Thankfully, she had the decent courtesy to not expose him in front of others, but whenever the two of them were alone, she was hardly one to waste an opportunity to call him, "Riddle-Who-Couldn't-Answer-A-Riddle" or any other such long, hyphenated moniker in association with that.
Tom loathed the title he had been bestowed with, almost as much as he detested the girl who gave him that name.
He had to get back at her, it was the only way to get her to stop because he knew that it was a direct equation with Artemis Potter- the more you told her to stop doing a particular thing, the more she was going to do it for the sole reason of annoying you.
Tom had to find out something that she wasn't good at so he could taunt her back with a hyphenated title of her own as a retort.
The unfortunate part was, he didn't know what she wasn't perfect at. She was almost as attractive as him and nearly as smart as well.
Luckily, however, he overheard her telling that mudblood friend of hers (can her poor choice of friends count as a flaw?) that she was horrid in chess, a strategic game that Tom happened to be brilliant at.
So, of course, he was going to set up a seemingly coincidental event which would eventually result in both of them to engage in a battle of the mind.
The opportunity presented itself that weekend when Artemis and her friends -the mudblood, the flirty half-blood and that olf of a halfbreed- were walking around in the courtyard. Tom made sure to stand beside where two girls, one a Ravenclaw and the other a Slytherin, were playing chess before he waved her over.
"Artemis!" He called out, making her turn and search for the source of the voice. Upon spotting him, her lips curled into a predictable scowl before she said something to her friends and made her way over to him, the three idiots almost dutifully following her.
"Yes, Riddle?" She asked in an almost bored tone that left Tom internally seething even though he kept a pleasant smile fixed on his face on the outward.
"I've handed our Astronomy report to Professor Mably." He told her.
"Okay..." She said slowly. "Is that it?"
"Yes." He replied shortly, prompting her to give him a strange look that he couldn't exactly place.
"I'll get going then," She said, turning to leave when one of the girls playing the game called her name, making her turn once again.
"Yes, Emily?" Artemis asked with a kind smile on her face.
Emily, a small girl wearing a Ravenclaw scarf huffed, pointing a finger to the other girl she was playing with, who Tom knew was a first-year in his own house, Adelaine. "Tell Ada that Ravenclaw is the best!"
