In Which Our Two Leads Meet
Tom Riddle was a handsome boy. Only in his sixth year and already breaking hearts. His artfully tousled chocolate brown hair, flashing hazel eyes and charming smile had tugged on the heartstrings of students from all years and walks of life.
But Tom seemed not to appreciate any of his admirers.
The purebloods he tolerated, allowing Bellatrix and her cronies to worship him from afar. The halfbloods he ignored, leaving many heartbroken students weeping in their common rooms. But the muggleborns he hated, turning down their gifts, sneering in their faces and laughing at their attempts to confess their affections.
There was a system to things. An order. A hierarchy. And Tom was content to keep it that way. Until he locked eyes with a girl from across the Great Hall during breakfast. She was sitting at the Ravenclaw table, laughing with her friends. When their eyes met her smile faded a little, she grimace and then looked away.
Well he never! He turned to Avery.
“Who’s the blonde Ravenclaw over there, laughing?”
The boy next to him glanced up from his bacon for a second, scanned the room until he found who Tom was talking about, smirked, then returned to his food.
“Isabella Tain. She’s a mudblood like the rest of her filthy friends.”
Tom recoiled. A mudblood! How disgusting. But he couldn’t take his eyes off the girl as she threw her head back and laughed with real joy.
After breakfast he left the Great Hall to go to Care of Magical Creatures. He walked the long winding trail through the Dark Forest (ironically named by the student body because of the large quantities of light that made its way through the foliage) and thought about the girl. He didn’t believe in love at first sight, but he couldn’t think of why he had looked at her after learning she was a mudblood. It went against every rule of society he had taught himself after charming the more knowledgeable Lestrange out of his books on the wizarding population when he first arrived at Hogwarts. He couldn’t understand why he was straying so far off the path he had set for himself.
Just as he was pondering her, the girl herself emerged from the trees beside him, seeming to not notice him at all. She up-turned her face to the soon-to-be-winter sun filtering through the trees, and kept walking like that, apparently just to enjoy the light. How strange.
However, talk as you might of her blood heritage or peculiarities, there was no denying Miss Tain was beautiful. Her honey blonde hair hung down to her back and her brown eyes sparkled with a warmth uncommon in Tom’s circle of friends. Her cheeks were rosy tinged against her tanned face and Tom couldn’t help but notice that her eyelashes were long and delicate as they caught the sunlight. You’d have to be blind not to notice how attractive she was.
Yes, physical attraction, that must be it. After all, he was a 16 year old boy, it was only natural. But as the days grew colder and colder, Tom began to suspect there was something a bit more than simple attraction at play.
He inexplicably began to go out of his way to spot Miss Tain. Which was ridiculous. But as much as he scolded himself or recalled the slight disgust with which he regarded all of her peers, he couldn’t bring himself to stop. He began to walk a little faster when he spotted her ahead of him on the stairs. He would peer through the trees before CoMC hoping to find her. He would take long walks around the grounds that always seemed to end up near Ravenclaw tower. A ridiculous amount of effort for a mudblood, really.
He began to notice little things about her. How she always tapped her fingers to her thumb when she was nervous. How she would lift her face to the sky when she left a room, to soak up the light. How she made faces when she read novels, inhabiting the skin of the characters, and then grinning self-consciously when she caught herself doing it.
And as time went on, young Tom Riddle found himself falling in love.
But one cannot pay so much attention to such a bright individual and expect them not to notice. And Miss Tain was nothing if not bright. Not for nothing had she been placed in the house of wisdom and learning. So the Ravenclaw noticed when she started bumping into Tom Riddle more often than usual.
Of course she had heard of his reputation. What muggleborn hadn’t? So for a time she ignored and avoided him, careful to make sure they were never alone in a room together, always kept her hand on her wand around him. As time went on though, she couldn’t help but feel that there was more than hate and malice in his stare.
She started noticing how he bent over his work, curling himself around it protectively, like he was scared someone was going to take it from him. How he always kept one eye on his group of friends and had once dragged Narcissa out of the way of a stray tree branch before anyone else had noticed it was falling towards her. How he glanced at his friends for a fraction of a second, slightly nervously, to make sure his joke landed, and how he always laughed uproariously at even the lamest of theirs.
There was no doubting he was handsome, but she started to notice his quirks and more admirable qualities. She began to feel a jolt in her heart when she looked at him, her voice began to catch on his name. So when she met the hazel eyes that stared unflinchingly at hers across the Great Hall one cold evening, she stared back.
Slytherin’s star student jerked his head towards the door. His face didn’t indicate any desire to harm her, but looks could be deceiving, so as she rose to her feet, bid good night to her friends and started to leave, her hand drifted to her wand.
Tom watched as the Ravenclaw left the Great Hall. He wondered briefly what on earth he was doing. She was a mudblood for Salazar’s sake! He should despise her! But by then he was in too deep to back out.
He excused himself from the table, saying he had potions homework to complete. No one questioned it. They knew he liked to be top of the class, and on good terms with the teachers. But all that was by the by and certainly not on Tom’s mind as he strode out of the Hall mentally rehearsing what he was going to say.
Isabella was waiting for him when he walked out of the ornate double doors. She had her arms crossed over her body, one hand nervously tapping on her waist, and the other resting on the wand he could see poking out of her robes. [Was she...scared of him?] He mentally shook himself, reminding his brain that all she had heard of him had come from the recipients of his jinxes, jeers, taunts and hexes. She certainly didn’t associate with his group of associates.
“Ah, Miss Tain. So glad you could join me.” [God! Why did he sound like a middle-aged business man?]
“What do you want, Tom?” she asked warily.
“Uh...” [Oh God Tom, pull yourself together man. She’s a girl, not a dementor.]
“I- er, just wanted to talk to you about something.” [Okay, not terrible but not amazing.]
“Well I’m here now, so why don’t you just say it and then we can go back to pretending the other doesn’t exist.”
[Pretend she didn’t exist! He didn’t think he could live in a world where she didn’t!]
“Why don’t we take a walk around the grounds while we talk? It’ll clear out heads a little.” [And hopefully give him enough time to think of a way to confess to her. He hadn’t really thought he’d make it this far to be honest.]
“In the middle of winter?” she asked dryly.
[Dear God she thought he was a weirdo.]
“Yes. It’ll be brisk and and um... refreshing.”
“Right... well we’d better be off then, or we’ll miss the curfew.”
And so the unlikely pair trudged off into the frosty grounds of the only place Tom had ever called home.
