— — — — — —
Tom sealed the door shut and added a layer of soundproofing before he walked toward the girl's nonstop screams.
Cassandra kept retreating until she finally curled up in a corner. The proud, haughty girl from yesterday was gone. Her face was pale and terrified.
"Don't come near me…" Her voice trembled on the edge of sobbing, but it didn't stop Tom.
With a soft thunk, Tom set a chair down and sat, stretched out a hand, and petrified her again.
This time it was just a plain Petrificus Totalus, only locking her body in place, not the deeper, stranger curse from before.
"You cry till you run out of tears. When you're tired, we'll talk. I'm not in any hurry. Thanks to you I can skip classes today without feeling guilty," Tom said as if he were utterly at leisure.
Cassandra buried her face and sobbed like the world had ended.
Tom knew a thing or two about calming people down. Women of all ages were emotional creatures who could easily get lost inside their own worlds and logic. Nothing you say during that spiral will sink in. Any attempt at reason gets twisted into accusations and feeds the emotion even more.
So the best tactic was to let them vent, wait for rational thought to reclaim the upper hand, and then talk.
What do you do if a person won't calm down and won't accept apologies? Run. Better to flee than to be driven mad.
Sadly, Tom was forced to stay here.
...
After some time...
The room became strangely quiet: a pretty girl huddled in a corner and cried, while a handsome boy sat a few feet away reading today's paper.
Although Cassandra's thinking was flawed, she was not stupid. Seeing Tom make no further move, her panic eased a little. But when she realized he had no intention of apologizing or comforting her, a fresh wave of grievance rolled in and she cried even harder.
Crying will tire anyone out. Cassandra scolded Tom in her mind between hiccups, and eventually fell asleep.
Tom stared at her. He had forgotten that crying often leads to sleep. He had miscalculated.
"Women. You really can't expect their next move."
"Next strategy: Adapt."
Watching her sleep, he made a decision: if you sleep, I'll sleep too.
...
Morning
Cassandra opened her eyes slowly, then... blinked. The room seemed taller?
She then realized she wasn't on the bed but on the floor with only a thin mat beneath her. Looking up, she saw Tom Riddle sprawled on the bed, snoring lightly.
You can laugh when you're speechless, and that's exactly what Cassandra did, the sound half laugh, half sob.
Now that she'd calmed down, she figured the professors must have forced Tom to apologize. Well, this was a strange kind of apology.
Did he know how much psychological damage being hung on the wall for half an hour had caused her? The idea of that story getting back to Ilvermorny made her feel like dying.
"Awake?" Tom yawned, rubbing sleep from his eyes, and casually released the Petrificus Totalus.
Cassandra scrambled to her feet and tried the door, but it wouldn't open.
"Don't run. We can talk before you go," Tom called.
"What is there to talk about with that attitude? You didn't even apologize," she snapped.
"Who said I was here to apologize?" Tom cocked his head, puzzled. "My job is to make sure you can go to class normally, not hide in here like a coward."
"I'm not a coward!" Cassandra shrieked.
Tom yawned again. A chair scraped over behind her. "If you're not a coward, then explain yourself. Start with why I should apologize."
"You think I was wrong yesterday?" she asked, taking a breath without sitting down. "It's just I was weaker, you ambushed me. I lost, so I don't get to argue about right and wrong."
"That's a refreshingly useful brain for once," Tom said, amused. "So why did you pick a fight with me yesterday?"
"Because I wanted to," she said stubbornly, lifting her chin to meet him. "You're a year younger than me, and you're not from the wizarding world. What right do you have to judge anyone?"
"Because I have the power," Tom answered calmly.
Tom began to lecture. "You use your background to think you're above others."
"No." Cassandra corrected him. "It's not that I feel superior because of where I came from. It's because I'm better than the others. Listening to me is the right choice. I'm better, smarter, stronger than all of you."
"All right, then tell me why I don't seem stronger than you." Tom leaned forward. "Let's start with the basilisk. You should know I killed it. That's recent news—there's no way you haven't heard about it."
Cassandra turned her face away in embarrassment. "I thought it was a rumor. A second-year killing a basilisk? Impossible. You were involved, but I thought your role couldn't have been decisive."
Tom laughed. "I take back my compliment. Your mind is stuck in its own little world. You live in a bubble."
"You have no right to call me that!" Cassandra protested. "This news defies common sense. Even Professor Graves and Professor Caruso didn't believe it. We all treated it like a joke."
Tom sliced through her logic. "But they didn't come after me. You did, and because of you, Graves was dragged into it."
"There are plenty of idiots in the world," Tom added, "but I'm not going to go teach every single one of them a lesson unless they cross me. You, on the other hand, rushed in on nothing but guesses and your own assumptions and demanded to have your face put straight. Who's the fool here if not you?"
"You don't believe what a Hogwarts student says? Then why didn't you use Veritaserum or the Imperius Curse to confirm it?"
Veritaserum... Imperius Curse?
Cassandra froze. If she really followed Tom's logic, there'd be no need for a conversation—she'd go straight back to the States and into a magic prison for further education.
But on everything else, she had nothing she could refute.
"Who was it whispering in your ear about me?" Tom asked casually.
"It wasn't gossip, it was my father..." Cassandra answered instinctively, then stopped herself.
Tom frowned slightly. "Your own father set you up?"
"It's not what you think." Cassandra waved her hands quickly. Of course she understood what Tom meant. "My father... every time he sees your articles he explodes with anger. I heard him go off about it at home during the holidays, and that's when I started thinking you were just stirring things up for attention."
Her face dimmed. "He's a hardcore pure-blood supremacist. My mother's fought with him about it a hundred times."
"So he rubbed off on you too?" Tom asked.
Cassandra stayed silent. She did believe pure-bloods were more likely to produce talented wizards.
"Whatever." Tom shrugged it off. "That has nothing to do with me. Even Slytherins hate my guts nowadays."
"My job is to make sure you go to class normally. If you don't show up, Dumbledore won't let me go either."
"How am I supposed to show my face?" Cassandra was on the verge of breaking down. "Half the school saw you shove me into a wall yesterday!"
Just imagining walking through the castle with students and professors from all three schools staring at her made her want to drop out—not even go back to Ilvermorny, just vanish at home forever.
"It's really not that big a deal."
Tom's expression softened as he walked over to her. "You're just too full of yourself. Getting shoved into a wall? Plenty of people have had that honor before you. Malfoy, that relative of yours—he got it a whole year earlier."
"I even...."
Tom casually listed a few of his "minor achievements."
To Cassandra, it sounded like a myth.
He beat up an entire house's worth of students his first year, nearly killed a professor his second year and got him thrown in prison, planted Whomping Willows like crops just to mess with Gryffindor...
"How are you not expelled?" Cassandra asked before she even realized she was speaking.
"Perks of being a genius." Tom shrugged. "Besides, I never start it. I'm always in the right. And Dumbledore's a very reasonable headmaster."
"Like yesterday. He docked me a hundred points just to make a show of it. And it was you who mouthed off at me first."
"Can you not bring that up again?!" Cassandra snapped, her ears burning.
Still... his ridiculous bragging somehow made her feel a little better. Compared to everything he'd done, what happened to her didn't seem quite so earth-shattering.
Plenty of people were more miserable than her—she wasn't even close to standing out.
Still didn't mean this would ever stop haunting her. Embarrassment was embarrassment. Yesterday would forever be one of her darkest memories.
"I'm starving!" Cassandra suddenly yelled without a shred of dignity.
"Eat first, or class?" Tom asked.
"I said I'm starving!"
"Fine, fine. Pala!"
With a loud crack, the house-elf appeared.
"Bring me lunch. And Miss Vole's too."
"Yes, Master Riddle." Pala bowed and vanished.
"You have a house-elf?" Cassandra asked, surprised.
"I do, but not Pala," Tom said. "Pala belongs to Daphne. She takes care of a few of us here."
Soon, the table was packed with food.
"Eat," Tom said, grabbing a drumstick first. "But if you eat my food and still skip class, I'll make sure you're a hundred times more humiliated than yesterday."
Cassandra ignored that. "Riddle, what spell did you use on me yesterday?"
"Talent," Tom said smoothly. "Try to keep up."
"Do you always talk like such a jerk?"
"I talk to people the way they deserve, Vole. What do you think our relationship is?" Tom asked, chewing casually.
"Enemies!"
"Well, if we're enemies, why would I bother being polite?"
"You have zero gentlemanly manners."
Before the words even finished, his wand was against her throat.
"Okay! Fine! You have manners!" she squeaked, voice almost trembling. What kind of psycho pulls a wand over something like that?!
"Remember this—you can't beat me right now, so you don't get to argue."
Tom withdrew his wand lazily. "By your logic, since I'm stronger, smarter, and better than you, that means you listen to me."
Cassandra wished she could grab a Time-Turner, go back and slap her past-self unconscious.
.
.
.