The Good Liar

The Good Liar

    The Dawn

    You snap your eyes open, completely awake. To you there are no blurred lines between sleep and wakefulness. No wandering in the half consciousness when reality has not regained its hold on your mind. Either you are awake, or you are not.

    The others have not yet awakened. You lie still for a moment, and listen to their soft breathing. You are used to communal living. Indeed, that is the only form of living you have ever known. Though the Muggle orphanage was - is - much louder at night with the sounds of sleep. Only fools think that the sleeping are completely silent. You yourself know every intricacy of human sleep, from the restless wandering dreams to still unmoving blackness.

    Silently, you slip out of bed into the cold slippers. The need for quiet among people is a habit that has been ingrained in you from the earliest of youth. Habits are easily formed and difficultly broken, hence it is wise to ingrain good habits at the start.

    The stones of the Slytherin dungeons is cold and damp from the winter chills, but you do not bother putting on extra protection. The cold is only a small thing, and the body can be trained to overcome such minor discomforts. After all, if is not a matter of life or death, it is beneath your notice.

    You take your time leisurely washing yourself in the cold bathroom. The face that looks back at you from the mirror is white and pale, your canines gleaming sharp. Somehow the others seem to find you handsome. Indeed, there has been many offers, both overt and covert.

    You scoff at the mirror. At least your eyes can penetrate the mirror of your irises to peer into the darkness inside. All offers have been declined politely but firmly.

    You finish your morning ritual and return to the sleeping chamber. Still no one has awakened, and you look upon their slumbering figures with disdain. A day is too short to be spent in such unproductive activities. But you realize that you ought to be grateful, for the fact that you can spend more time to yourself instead of having to shut away the babble of sycophants around you.

    You dress yourself in your old robes, and note that the sleeves are becoming frayed at the edges. There have been many gifts from the others, but you have always refused. To accept would be to take on a debt. And a debt can be called upon for redeeming. In a moment of inspiration, the words of the renowned Shakespeare come to you.

    'Neither borrower nor a lender be.'

    You concede that the bard had the right idea. A pity he spent so much time mingling with the Muggles.

    More to the point, you have never given a damn about material belongings.

    The common room is freezing empty, the fire dead. Indeed, the glass that the house elves have not yet removed has a thin layer of ice on its surface. You stare at the empty fireplace, and it only takes a few words for it to be filled with flickering waves of red and orange and yellow.

    The coursing of magical energy in your veins is as hot and heavy as molten lava, yet at the same time as cool and light as quicksilver. Like sharp arousal, but for the fact that no man or woman can make you feel that.

    The magic is your only mistress.

    The magic is your only birthright.

    The Morning

    If there is something you hate above all others, it is incompetence.

    You can live with the foolish. You only need endure them so long as you must. Of course you will eliminating them when their time comes. After all, there is no cure for it. Neither stick nor stone nor magic.

    You can bear the lazy. Your patience needs only to last as long as it takes for you to rise above them. And grind their faces into the gravel, to teach them the folly of not sharpening whatever talent they possess. A dull blade cuts nothing.

    The weak? They are nothing.

    But incompetence? That you cannot tolerate. It is like a thorn under the thumbnail, gashing and gouging but impossible to pull out. Always there, always constant, always reminding you just when you're about to forget that it's there. It wears away at you like running a rough stone against a whetted blade.

    Of course, you could simple use your wand to take a thorn out, but it's the analogy that counts.

    And in that train of thought, the man standing before you is the farthest away possible from the cases you have been thinking. You stare at his brown beard and unrevealing eyes. He stares back.

    "How goes your project, Mr. Riddle?"

    "Nothing fancy, Professor Dumbledore."

    "Well, I am looking forward for more of your excellent work."

    "Thank you, Professor Dumbledore."

    Both you and he dance a cautious step around each other. You have garnered his mistrust, while he has garnered your scorn. But the grudging acknowledgement of each other's abilities is genuine. He will enjoy your work, just as you will enjoy his lessons. He is, after all, the most capable and powerful wizard you have ever met. Probably will ever meet.

    You know it for a certainty.

    The Afternoon

    "Thank you, Tom," she simpers.

    You fight down the rising bile and plaster a careful smile on your face. "You're welcome."

    She waits hopefully for anything else, but you turn your eyes back to your books, and she sullenly takes her books and her problems and her unsolicited desires away.

    You lift your eyes to stare at her retreating back. You give credit to those wise enough to ask for help when they need it. An extra point for coming to the best, while they are at it. Her total score makes her undeserving of the air she breathes or the space she occupies.

    At the thought, you tilt your head a little to take a better look. From your Muggle lessons at youth, you estimate that she must occupy at least two hundred pounds of mass. Rather loosely packed mass. The thought makes you smirk.

    But not on your face, of course. Your face is all that you have trained it to be, before the silent mirror.

    You look around the library, quiet in the thin afternoon sunlight. There are only a few students working at the tables scattered throughout the immense library. There is a peace and quiet that you sincerely appreciate. Noise and activity is much overrated these days.

    But the quiet is soon broken. You detect the rush of oncoming voices heading to the library. The afternoon classes are over, and the library becomes crowded with the influx of fools. Not coming to broaden their horizons and their petty intellects, as much as they need it.

    Instead the library becomes just another parlor for them to play out their small tricks and work on their little romances and tragedies. You look around hopefully for the singing chorus and the women tearing their hair and pounding their bare chests. After all, there is enough action for a full length Greek drama.

    You are sorely disappointed.

    You swallow your disappointment and gather your books to retreat into the bookshelves. Still, the library is a good place to gather insights into their minds, as little as they are. So you sit among the fountains of knowledge and listen to their petty squabblings.

    "Did you know that...."

    "...she doesn't...."

    "The next...."

    "Even if they don't...."

    There is not an intelligence conversation if you could distill the whole of them together, and you smile.

    The Night

    You whisper at the snakehead fountain. The stones start parting without a sound, widening to the gaping hole on the floor. You look around while waiting, and you are amused to note that the fact that this place makes you a little uneasy. While you may have been raised at an orphanage, there were a few things ingrained in you that you have been unable - or unwilling - to shake off.

    You wonder what sort of wry humor made Salazar Slytherin put the entrance to his Chamber of Secrets in a girl's bathroom. While you admit to its cunning, there are just some things one simply doesn't do.

    Spying on the girl's bathroom is one of them.

    You allow your imagination run away with you, but draw the line and stamp down firmly at the thought that the great Salazar Slytherin may have been a voyeur. Or - Merlin forbid - a disgusting old lecher.

    But even you cannot suppress a titter at the thought.

    You jump into the entrance and float down to the bottom, piled thick with bones of intruders. You casually kick a likely skull out of the way as you head down the dark tunnels. You are reminded of the Muggle sport you sometimes played at your orphanage. The others were quite awed by the power and accuracy of your kicks. All you had to do was to imagine that it was the head of your father.

    It is dark, but you have no need of lights. You know each and every nook and cranny of the place like the back of your hand. You unerringly walk up to the looming stone sculptures behind the small lake, and the torches flare to life in homage to its rightful master.

    To be perfectly honest, it is too grandiose for your tastes. You have never felt the need for such boisterous displays. They indicate the need to cover up for some inadequacy.

    You have none to hide.

    But you understand the need for appearances. Sometimes what one sees can be as important as what really is. Which is why you have not made any modifications to the chamber.

    Apart from the fact that it would be impossible to do without shifting the foundations of Hogwarts itself. Even you are not fit for the relocation of a working castle in a single night.

    At least, without waking everyone up.

    It is pleasantly humid and warm here. Just the right conditions for a snake. It occurs for you to wonder whether Salazar Slytherin had a hand in the temperature control here. Then you wonder why he didn't apply the same for his own dungeons. There is hardiness and the tempering of steel. Then there is stupidity. You have always voted against the latter.

    You are just in time, as usual. The basilisk is about to awake from her hibernation. You wonder whether it is another ability you possess, this timeliness, as the true heir of Salazar Slytherin.

    You shake your head, putting the thought to your growing megalomania. You wonder when you will completely lose perspective on the realities of life. You conclude that it will be when you are bereft of rivals.

    You make a mental note to aggravate Dumbledore at every opportunity.

    You admire the great shape lying asleep before you. The dull scales, gaining color and vibrancy with each moment. You can see the body start to rise and fall, and hear the hissing breath grow louder and louder. You move behind her head. Even you do not want to look her in the eye. At least, not yet.

    Thinking of the things to come, you allow the corner of your lips to curl upwards. The others call your smile angelic. You simply continue to let the lips curl.

    After all, you know it to be a sneer.

The End.