The arrival
The air in the chamber, usually thick with the scent of ancient stone and potent magic, now carried a faint, unsettling whisper of something else. Something wrong. Tom Riddle, a man who considered his very existence a honed weapon, found his composure fractured by the simple, impossible presence of a parchment square on his desk.
It was unmarked, ordinary, yet it had bypassed every intricate ward he'd woven into his sanctuary.
He picked it up, the paper cool against his fingertips, and unfolded it. The words, stark and black against the pale surface, felt like a physical blow.
‘The gurgle of her last breath, a sound lost to the ages, echoes still in your mind. The way her eyes, wide and terrified, reflected the horror you unleashed. You believed yourself unseen, infallible. You were wrong.’
The memory, buried deep beneath layers of calculated indifference, resurfaced with a sickening clarity. Myrtle’s final, choked gasp, the slick, humid air of the bathroom, the cold, reptilian gleam in the Basilisk’s eyes.
He had convinced himself it was a necessary sacrifice, a stepping stone. Now, someone, impossibly, knew.
That was impossible, he had not meant to kill the girl but she had been in the way and she made nice sacrifice to make his horcrux.
This was worrying, Tom knew that only Dumbledore had suspected him for the death of Myrtle, he remembered her only being a 1st year if memory served him, however he was getting old so that may not be accurate.
Whoever this was didn’t leave a magical signature and had somehow managed to get into his own chamber that he had in the slytherin castle.
The wards did not alert him of the intruder who somehow managed to get in and out undetected meaning this person was a danger who he needs to find and eliminate. He heard the clock tic and realized it was almost time for the death eater meeting to begin and sighed, he would have to look into this problem tomorrow and begin making as plan.
As he walked out of the room he didn’t notice the glowing green eyes in the dark right corner of the room.
——————————————————————————
Two nights later, another letter arrived, slipped beneath his door like a venomous serpent.
The letter had simply appeared on his desk, he had only left his seat for a moment. He went to grab a file from one of the cabinets in the corner, as he walked back he noticed a new piece of parchment in the middle of his desk that hadn’t been there a moment prior,
He picked up the parchment and unrolled it with a wary gaze, as his eyes scanned across the words.
“The first tear in your soul, the agonizing rending. Did you feel the recoil? The violation? Did you pause, even for a moment, to consider the price? Or was your arrogance too vast to allow doubt?”
The question hung in the air, a phantom accusation. He hadn’t slept. He’d paced the length of his chambers, his mind a whirlwind of possibilities, each more disturbing than the last. Dumbledore? Unlikely. A follower? Impossible. He had ensured their loyalty, their ignorance. Yet, the letter existed.
How had the letter appeared so randomly in the middle of his desk, he had only turned his back for a minute max.
That’s when it hit him, the person who wrote the letter must either still be in his chambers or gotten out relatively fast. He casts a few charms to detect if any witches or wizards had recently been in the room as well as a few detection spells for magical creatures in case this wasn’t a magick person at all and rather the magick of something most charms couldn’t detect.
To Tom’s surprise nothing came up and his eyes narrowed in suspicion something was definitely at play here that seemed to go undetected by his spells.