Still Waters

Chapter Two

He sat in the Common Room that night, waiting for her. She thought he didn't know anything about her, but she was wrong. Tom Riddle knew something about everybody, usually something compromising.

He knew Christa Sanders liked to watch. He knew she was worn out and tired. And he knew she had skipped both breakfast and dinner that day.

So it was no surprise to him when the Common Room door swung open to reveal her, pheasant halfway to her mouth, looking shocked by his intrusion in her two-in-the-morning solitude.

They sized each other up. Then, agonizingly slow, he nodded at her. She couldn't tell if it was in greeting or just to acknowledge her presence, but she wasn't about to wait and find out. She nodded back briskly, and strode to the girls' dorms. Once she was safe inside her bedroom (as the only girl Prefect in her year from Slytherin, she had the privilege of an individual bedroom), she rekindled the fire and sat cross-legged on the rug in front of it.

Tom Riddle had obviously gone out of his way to wait for someone tonight. He was the type that went to bed around midnight, as soon as his Prefect duties were done. He had therefore delayed sleep by two hours tonight. No Slytherin below seventh year, other than her, dared stray out of the dungeons with Riddle as a Prefect. She knew the seventh years had had a party that night, that Lestrange had gotten completely drunk, and that they had all gone to bed at around one.

That meant that Riddle had waited for her for two hours.

The unsettling conclusion made her cold despite the fire. He wanted something, but what could he possibly want from her? She was not in the Game, she couldn't do him any favours, and he had many adoring and morally ambiguous girls around him all the time in case his interest was purely physical. She didn't dwell on that last hypothesis much; she didn't want to imagine what it would be like to touch him. That road led to insanity.

~*~

At twelve o'clock precisely she put her book bag on a Library table, determined to catch up on her homework so as to avoid detention. Slughorn had been quite displeased by her performance last class, and she had twelve inches due tomorrow on the use of common herbs in rare potions. She hated Potions with a passion, but as a Slytherin, it had to be her priority.

She had just set the parchment and ink on the table when she felt she was being watched. She ignored it for a while, flipped through "Herbs and Fungi" until she found a promising-looking page with an assortment of weeds drawn upon it, but found she couldn't concentrate with that annoying sensation, like water dripping down her back agonisingly slow.

Her head snapped to the direction from where the staring originated. Her features went through an alarming selection of expressions: anger, incredulity, shock, and fear all showed on her face for the briefest of moments until she clamped them down. She nodded at Riddle, he nodded back, and then he sat down at a table in the far end of the library with his Restricted Section book, not sparing her another glance. His cronies watched the exchange with interest.

It took her half an hour to comprehend the first phrase of the text, and she only managed to write two inches of the essay before double Herbology. She cursed Riddle all through the class, and exhaustedly returned to the Library at six to finish her work.

~*~

Getting her food straight from the kitchens at some ungodly hour of the night had become somewhat of a habit for her. She would creep through the Common Room, nearly run through the dungeons, take the food, and tiptoe her way back in a matter of minutes.

She hadn't had a bite to eat all day, and she had only slept three hours the previous night. She dragged herself back into the Common Room with the only thing she could stomach, a pheasant, and with every intention of being asleep within ten minutes.

Her plans were interrupted by a dark figure standing by the tapestry entrance.

"Lumos," she whispered. The tip of her wand glowed softly on the floor. The light pulsed upward to reveal the face she least wanted to see: Tom Riddle.

"Take a walk with me," he said, quietly but distinctly.

Out of sheer mindless tiredness she obeyed, and found herself walking down a darkened hallway with Riddle. The situation seemed unreal enough for her to indulge in munching on her pheasant, something she would never have done normally around other people. It was rude.

"What do you see?" he asked.

She swallowed a morsel. "What do I see, where?"

"When you look at me."

She shuddered, and he noted it. "I see sixth year Thomas Riddle, Slytherin Prefect and top name of the Slug Club. I foresee Head Boy Thomas Riddle as of next year." She took another bite, careful not to look at him.

"That's what everybody sees, but you don't look like that, do you?"

"I look at you like everybody does, Riddle."

"Just for the record, who do you foresee as Head Girl?"

She shrugged. "Some say it'll be Lydia Gander from Gryffindor, but I know it's going to be Erin Longbottom."

"Quite right. About me as well; I talked to Dippet about it."

She nodded, not knowing what to say to this. She could smell him. He smelled of musk, mint, wine and pineapple. He had bought more of Slughorn's favours tonight.

"Look, I have to go back to my room. This conversation is entertaining, don't get me wrong, but I have to go to sleep or else I'll disgrace the House tomorrow in class by falling asleep and setting Slughorn's classroom on fire."

He smirked. "We wouldn't want that, now, would we? I'll walk you back."

The feeling of unreality almost put her in a trance. She was being walked back to Slytherin by Tom Riddle, and she didn't feel like shrinking away into a corner. She felt she must be alarmed by this turn of events, but she was tired and hungry and not really in the mood for thinking about it.

That night she dreamed of him again, and she found she hadn't slept better in months.

~*~

Rosier, Lestrange and Nott often caught Riddle smirking for no apparent reason, and scanning the crowd for someone. They exchanged questioning glances, but Lestrange shook his head and mouthed "Later", which effectively closed the entire deal.

That closure didn't last long. Christa Sanders passed Riddle and the group in the hallway on her way to the Library before lunch. She didn't see Riddle, but as soon as he noticed her, he steered so as to follow. They ended up not having lunch, but standing behind a bookcase, watching the girl's every move. She sensed their eyes on her, nodded at Riddle, and resumed reading.

She was already used to having his eyes trained on her.

None of the Slytherins noticed Erin Longbottom when she came into the Library to return a book. She smiled at the librarian and looked around for her friends, but her eyes were drawn to Tom Riddle instead. Just as she was about to walk over to him, she realised he was watching a girl.

Erin fled the room quietly. Tom hated hysterics in a woman.

~*~

Christa pushed some mashed potato around her plate, and then poked idly at the steak. She looked across the table at Riddle, who was methodically clearing the plate of food, and sighed. Of course, he never lost his appetite. He was too flawless for things like that.

She decided to follow his example and eat something. She speared a small piece of meat and chewed it thoughtfully.

Riddle had shoved a third-year out of his chair to sit across from her. This had triggered a chain reaction in his cronies, who shoved away more third-years to sit next to their leader. Riddle had started eating as if he changed seating arrangements (sacred to Slytherins, as it reflected rank) every day.

The rest of the table barely had a bite as they watched this. There was much poking, nodding and shrugging for a quarter of an hour, until they gave up and decided to play along. The end of the table closest to the door migrated closer to the middle where Riddle was. The younger students were exiled to the newly deserted seats.

By dessert, Christa found herself surrounded by all the popular Slytherins that had never looked twice at her until then. They didn't talk to her, because they didn't know how she'd react, but they watched Riddle closely. When he finished eating, he nodded at her, smirked a little, and left the table with Rosier, Lestrange and Nott.

"So, Christa, isn't it? I'm Ella."

"I know. We shared a room for four years." She felt an urge to roll her eyes, but she resisted. This was interesting.

The blonde admitted with an elegant shrug. "But we never talked much, have we?"

'Probably because I was less than furniture in the great scheme of things,' Christa thought. "Probably because I was so busy studying," she said.

Two tables away, Erin Longbottom was on the verge of crying. She was losing him. He had brought in an outsider.

~*~

Christa was in awe of Ella. She was beautiful, rich, powerful, smart, pure-blooded, but all she could talk about was Tom Riddle. As Christa nodded noncommittally Ella delivered a speech on the sheer perfection of Riddle. It lasted all the way from the dungeons to the fourth floor, randomly shifting staircases included.

"...so you see, there's simply no other boy in this school that is worth marrying."

Christa's eyes snapped to Ella. Was she being serious?! But if she knew so much about Riddle, she'd know how to answer her next question.

"There's one thing you haven't mentioned."

"What is that?" Ella inquired with the self-assurance of one who can do no wrong.

"His blood."

Ella raised an eyebrow. "Goes without saying that he's pure-blooded."

"Are you sure? How much do you know about his family?"

"Nothing in particular. But, honestly, how could a Mudblood be so powerful? He must be pure-blooded. Anything else would be simply unnatural."

What had started as an attempt to stop Ella's tirade had become, by this point, gnawing curiosity. Who was Tom Riddle before he came to Hogwarts? And more importantly, why hadn't the most socially inclined pure-blooded girl in the school heard anything about his supposedly old pure-blooded family?

~*~

Popularity did wonders for a girl's visibility, but it didn't work for someone who used invisibility as a weapon.

Christa was stopped on the hallway by Slughorn. The next two minutes were a blur, but at the very end of their conversation, she had accepted an invitation for the next Slug Club meeting, in a week's time.

She needed to buy some crystallised pineapple and learn to smile for hours at a time.

~*~

Tom Riddle felt his plan was going perfectly. Slughorn had been convinced to invite Sanders to the next meeting. Knowing Slughorn, he'd already gotten a confirmation.

All he had to do was wait for her to realise she needed help, and he, Tom Riddle, Slughorn's favourite, was the one she had to ask.

Meanwhile, weak little Erin Longbottom would prove to be a nice distraction. If only life could always be like this.

~*~

He shoved her roughly against a wall of the damp dungeon hallway. Erin hissed with pleasure. He grinned.

"I see your preference for slightly violent illicit trysts hasn't changed," he commented lightly as she worked on unzipping his trousers.

"Just when the tryst is with you, Tom," she replied, voice thick with desire. His hand was suddenly gripping her shoulder tightly, fingers digging under her ligament. She winced, but stood still.

"You're not having trysts with anyone else, are you, Erin?"

"Of course not. You know I'm all yours," she said quietly.

"Keep that in mind. I'm free, you're not."

"Of course." He let her go and she went back to undressing him. Erin Longbottom was fully aware of the fact that she would be Head Girl next year with Tom Riddle as Head Boy. She really, really needed to stay on his good side.

He watched her intently. For her sake, she'd better have honed her skills in certain areas, lest he found another distraction. Being Tom Riddle, "distractions" threw themselves at him constantly.

~*~

Christa had mentioned lightly at lunch that she enjoyed having late, frugal meals instead of big dinners. What she hadn't considered before was that she had said it in the company of people who mooned over the more popular students, such as Blair Boot, a short, shrewd fourth-year Slytherin who had bribed an older student for a seat close to Christa and Riddle.

So it was a surprise to Christa when, at eleven that night, Blair and two of her closest friends (or allies, as the situation called) came into the common room with a plate of cucumber sandwiches and a kettle of tea. They sat down close to the fire, almost closing Christa off from the rest of the room.

"Here," Blair said, holding the plate out to Christa. She raised an eyebrow questioningly, Blair and the other girls smiled, so she took one of the sandwiches warily and cast a few quick tracing spells on them. One of the cucumber slices, the only crudely cut one, glowed blue. Christa's eyes started glowing coldly.

"Care to explain this, Boot?" she inquired almost gently.

Blair bit her lip, unsure how to respond to this, so she broke into her widest, most insincere smile. "I just wanted to have a nice, honest girl talk. I'm sure you can understand that." Her voice was so sickeningly sweet that Christa had to catch herself from flinching. Besides, she didn't know "girl talk".

"So you decided to slip me food drenched in Veritaserum?" Christa's eyes could've frozen the lake, squid and all.

Blair stopped acting and sighed. "It's not like you'd volunteer answers."

"What do you want to know so badly that you put yourself an inch away from expulsion?"

"Why was the House structure modified to gravitate around you?"

"That's private, if you don't mind. Or if you do mind, well, that's just your bad luck, isn't it?"

Blair bit her lip. She was hovering over the edge and she knew it: expulsion, or worse, Riddle's wrath. "Is Riddle giving you the time?"

Christa casually moved the tip of her wand so that it pointed straight at Blair. "I could put you under a curse right now and no one would blame me. You know that. So why do you act like a goddamn Gryffindor?"

Blair couldn't say anything. She just stared at the wand with alert eyes, a deer in the headlights. The crowd in the common room, all upperclassmen, were watching the exchange with interest.

"Explain yourself and I'll let this slide," Christa pressed.

Blair's - former - allies slid from their chairs and inched toward the stairs. Christa lifted her hand to halt them. "You two aren't leaving until I get answers from someone." They halted and one of them drew her wand and pointed it at Blair.

"Boot, you heard Sanders. You're not taking me down with you." Blair flinched. With two wands and all the eyes in the room trained on her, all she could do was accept the humiliation and hope she wouldn't be hurt too badly.

"I apologise, Sanders. I went a little too far in my quest to find answers."

"Get out of my sight," Christa said quietly. Blair got up and all but ran towards the stairs to the girls' dorms.

"Petrificus totalis," her other former friend said. Blair fell backwards with her face frozen in disbelief. The two girls pocketed their wands and left the room quietly. Christa spared Blair a disgusted look before returning to staring into the embers of the dying fire.

Rosier snorted with laughter at the other side of the room. "Look at her face!" he panted, pointing at Blair. All the other students started laughing cruelly. "She had that coming. How dare she try to slip Sanders Veritaserum?" Christa smiled idly, lost in a sea of serpents, and for the first time she felt she was one of them.

*

Lestrange (for Riddle) and Ella (for everyone else) became her unofficial guards after that night. They escorted her to classes; always sat close to her at lunch, chatted with her, put nasty jinxes on every Gryffindor who dared make a comment about Slytherin's new princess, and Ella even got Slughorn's permission to do her prefect rounds with Christa, despite being in different years and the same House.

The two of them were at the small back gates, checking for magical beasts and residual magic. The sky was starry at the edges, but heavy storm clouds hung over the castle and the Forest. The air smelled sharply of ozone and crushed, rotting plants from the nearby greenhouse.

"You know, my mother wants me to marry Lestrange," Ella said suddenly. Christa lowered her wand for a minute, waiting for more details, but none were offered, so she resumed her spellcasting.

"Do you want to?"

"He's as good as any pureblood, I suppose. But you know who I really want."

"You want Riddle. But everybody wants Riddle, Ella. He wants no one."

"He wants you," Ella said sharply.

Christa sighed. "How could you possibly know that?"

"He looks at you with hunger, Sanders. Not just mere want, but true, animal hunger. His eyes flash, but his face is always calm, so I don't think more than a handful of people noticed it." She sounded tired and on edge, and Christa thought about the stress of having to watch over her constantly with something like distant pity.

"Who did?"

"Rozier, Lestrange, that little Boot bitch and Longbottom. Nott is not the brightest crayon in the box, if you know what I mean."

Christa looked at her strangely. "I know what it means. It's Muggle. Where did you hear it?"

"Cassandra Lester-Goodwand. She has a crazy aunt who uses Muggle words when she's swearing, and she does that a lot, so it rubbed off on Cassandra." Ella shrugged that elegant one-shouldered shrug all the other pure-bloods had except Christa. She wondered if it was taught to them along with manners. Like a class, Manners and Mannerisms. Then she thought she was losing her mind for thinking about such shreds of idiocy.

"Mhm. Why did Longbottom notice?"

"She and Riddle have Prefect rounds together." Christa nodded. "They always end them against a wall, on top of a table, on the floor, and rumour has it they even did it on Dumbledore's desk once. They were caught at it, too. By Dippet, no less." Christa held back both a chuckle and a look of disappointment and Ella continued. "Longbottom is smitten with him, but Riddle couldn't care less about her. She's like furniture, or clothes. Only there for his use."

"That's just like him. It's almost infuriating."

"Almost?" Ella inquired gently.

Christa smirked. "Don't tell me you'd prefer him any other way."

"I suppose not."

They stopped talking and went back to checking for residual magic. Nott sneaked around a pillar, put a silencing charm on the sole of each of his shoes, and took off at a run to report back to Riddle.