Found It
Natalie somehow woke up feeling the calmest she’d felt in a while. Which was immediately suspicious because how had she even fallen asleep last night? From drinking? But she didn’t even have a headache from the amount of alcohol she’d consumed. Which was even more suspicious. . . .
“What the fuck,” she muttered without opening her eyes.
Someone snickered.
Her eyes flew open and she made to scramble up but found herself restrained, which only made her want to panic more.
“Calm down,” said Tom Riddle and she froze, gawking like a cornered animal before slumping down on top of him and burying her face in his neck as his arms wrapped around her.
“Where am I?” she finally mumbled, noting he smelled like foreign lands and long journeys. But now she understood why she felt so calm. Sore, but calm.
“Your bed in the house in Ireland. Nice decor, by the way. I like the green. It’s very tasteful.”
“Thanks. I redecorated it. Mom was killed downstairs. So was my father.”
“Ah. I’m assuming the place didn’t look like a magical demolition zone back then.”
“No, it could have. Mom did dodgy shit but hid it,” she found herself overcome with giggles, tilting her head so her cheek rested on his in order to regale him with a childhood tale. “One time. . . one time, right, she somehow found a unicorn in the woods behind the house — no, shut up, don’t fucking ask how — and she wanted to see if it would give her some of its horn for her potions making, and. . . .”
He curled a few strands of her hair around his fingers and tugged. “And?”
“Nevermind,” she grumbled and hid her face in his neck again. “I just remembered what the dumb Muggle did when he saw it. But, anyway — how’d you know it’s a disaster in here? When did you search the place?”
“Do you not remember giving me a tour of the house last night?”
“Uh, what. . . .”
“It was the worst tour I’ve ever been on. You nearly destroyed everything you pointed at.”
“As long as those stupid steps are gone,” she groaned, rolling over and laying beside him. His arms followed, one slipping under her head, the other playing with the ring hanging around her neck. Somehow the only thing she still had on from last night. “They’re destroyed, right?”
“Yes. I’m surprised you remember that.”
“I told myself to,” she muttered, blinking up at the ceiling. She’d enchanted it to look like the sky. Right now it was pale peach as a sun dawned on the east side of the room. But an enormous crack ran through it, splitting the morning sky in half.
“Who did that?” she lazily asked. “Me or you?”
“That one was me. You challenged me to a duel and then halfway through became too distracted by taking your clothes off.”
“Did I win?”
“No, I definitely won last night.”
“Not fair. You were sober.”
“I was certainly not sober being around you.”
“Oh. Yeah, I'm a mental bitch when drunk.”
“Or just an aggressively temperamental one. You tried to ‘somersault down the stairs’ — which you then destroyed — and kept whining about the columns.”
She closed her eyes and moaned. “Oh, shit, the columns-”
“I fixed them.”
Her eyes flew open and she craned her neck to look him in the eye, observing that he was in fact, telling the truth. “Oh. Good. You are useful, then.”
“I will not be repairing the rest of the house. You destroyed it. You can fix it.”
“Ha — I do that everyday,” she sneered, ignoring her own nihilistic humor before closing her eyes and clapping her hands together above her. “Watch this.”
There was a rumbling, what sounded like the scraping, dragging, and bouncing of objects, a low keening noise, a distant surprised squeak of a house-elf, and then silence.
“Fixed,” she opened her eyes, dropped her hands, and peeked up at him. Then pointed at the ceiling above them where the crack remained. “That was yours, though. So you can fix that.”
“Fine,” he smirked and retrieved his wand from where he’d apparently kept it hidden under a pillow. He flicked it and the crack closed, the warm rays of the charmed sky melting over the ceiling.
“Also fix every single bruise on my body and get rid of how sore I am,” she demanded and he scoffed.
“Half of that is your fault. Bumbling up the steps like a drunken buffoon-”
“Hey!” she snapped at him, growing taut. “I was a drunken buffoon last night.”
“Then why are you arguing?”
“Wait, how much of that did you see?”
“All of it.”
“Oh. Great.”
“It was fabulously entertaining. Besides the fact I felt I might die.”
“I was talking to the column about killing it, not you.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“Oh, you mean, like — oh. Yeah. Oops.”
He tugged on her hair and grew sarcastic. “Yes, someone got a bit out of hand last night.”
“Maybe you should have died last night.”
“That would be massively inconvenient for you.”
“It. . . would be — what?”
He smirked and picked up one of her hands, threading his fingers through hers and squeezing. “Last night, the first thing you said to me was that my being in Albania was, and I quote, ‘massively inconvenient for you. Almost as inconvenient as the steps’ existence’.”
She snickered, now trying to squeeze his hand harder than he was squeezing hers. They were silent for a moment as they struggled against each other with this.
“What did you say back to that?” she casually asked while maintaining the pressure against him.
“That it was massively inconvenient for you not to be in Albania with me.”
Grinning, she squeezed harder against his hand until he grunted and flung himself on top of her to gain better leverage in the fight they had descended into.
“Cheater,” she muttered but hooked her leg up and forced him off her, rolling on top of him now.
“Seriously?” he rolled his eyes and they continued rolling over and over, each one flipping the other off only to find themselves underneath the other again. Their hands remained locked together in furious competition, the ring around Natalie’s neck bouncing between them until they came to the edge of the bed and she unknowingly flipped them both off.
“Ow,” she whined as they landed on the floor in a tangle of sheets and limbs.
“You did this,” he accused as she twisted out from underneath him.
“Shut up,” she said, draping herself in one of the silk sheets like a poorly wrapped Roman toga, sitting up and crossing her legs on the floor. Tom just moved so his head rested in her lap.
She ran a hand through his dark hair and narrowed her eyes at him. “It’s longer.”
He rolled his eyes like a god judging a pitiful mortal. “Yes, hair grows when you don’t cut it.”
“Longer than it was at school.”
“So glad you noticed.”
“I like it.”
“So glad I have your favorable opinion.”
She snorted as his relentless sarcasm. “Shut up. . . wait a minute — how did you find this place? It’s Unplottable. Not to mention the absurd amount of anti-detection charms I invested into it. You can’t get here unless you know-”
He smirked up at her, tugging the sheet off her shoulder until he revealed the ring hanging from her neck. Holding it between two fingers and twirling it around before letting it fall back onto her bare chest.
“Did you think I would just let you walk around with this?”
“Wow, thanks for being so trusting-”
He rolled his eyes as if she had deliberately misunderstood his words. “The ring isn’t the only thing I want to know the location of,” he reached up and grabbed hold of her chin, tilting her head downward and gazing into her eyes. She felt a brief brush of Legilimency and their minds and memories of the past month tangled themselves together.
“You found it,” she raised an eyebrow.
He tore his gaze away and looked past her. She glanced over — on the table beside the bed lay a delicate silver tiara.
“Found it just yesterday,” he said as she pushed him off her lap to run over and inspect the lost Diadem of Ravenclaw. She gently picked it up to weigh it.
“I thought it’d be heavier.”
“It’s a diadem,” he snorted, climbing over and plucking it from her hands. “It’s supposed to be worn on your head.” He placed it on her messy blonde hair and tilted his own head as though studying how it complemented her sheet-toga and flushed skin.
“How do I-” Natalie began a snarky comment but ended up screaming. A piercing bolt of pain shot through her head; she batted the Diadem off and jumped onto the bed, trembling like a cornered animal. Tom managed to catch the Diadem before it fell to the floor, looking at her in bewilderment.
“It. . . it started whispering,” she said, eyes wide. “Not that I heard it but — I felt it. . . .”
“It’s supposed to have powers,” he said, studying the innocent-looking tiara in his hands. “Helena Ravenclaw stole it in an attempt to surpass her mother. What was it saying?”
Natalie shivered and pulled the sheet tighter around her. “It wasn’t English. Sounded like Latin. I picked up on a little — something about the acquisition of wisdom and knowledge. . . but. . . .”
“But what?” Tom was fascinated.
“It didn’t feel. . . good,” she winced, rubbing a hand over her forehead. “I don’t think Rowena Ravenclaw had, um, benevolent intentions when she made that. . . .”
Tom ran his thumb over the jewel in the center of the diadem as though it was now speaking to him. “Of course. . . .”
“Yes,” she stated this with so much conviction, Tom glanced over and knew she had the exact same thought process he had just experienced. He smirked as he read precisely what he was thinking in her eyes.
“Rowena wouldn’t make the Diadem to just immediately bestow wisdom and knowledge upon anyone who wore it,” she began, sheet slipping from one of her shoulders as she leaned forward, enraptured by their simultaneous realization.
“That completely contradicts the beliefs of Ravenclaw house,” Tom picked up the vocalization of the train of their thoughts.
She nodded, eyes shining. “To make something that would instantly grant the wearer wisdom — why would Rowena want that? It’s the equivalent of cheating.”
“If anything,” Tom placed the Diadem back on the table. “Its existence would weed out those seeking wisdom for foolish reasons. The greedy, the envious, the weak.”
“And borrowed wisdom — well, that’s not true wisdom then, is it? Borrowed knowledge, borrowed morals, borrowed values-”
“Living on another’s experiences. Usurping what they’ve come to understand, depending on another-”
“Like a parasite. Leaching off the wisdom, knowledge, philosophy, power of another.”
“Never truly living or learning yourself.”
“Never truly becoming yourself.”
“And the founders were educators-”
Natalie grinned in triumph. “Why would they want that?”
“Exactly,” he chuckled, eyeing the Diadem with something like amusement. “Helena Ravenclaw was a fool for believing that stealing the Diadem would allow her to surpass her mother.”
“All it would have done is drive her mental,” said Natalie, settling cross-legged on the bed and tilting her head at the twinkling Diadem. “She envied her mother so much-”
“-that she betrayed her out of spite and stole her mother’s most revered object.”
“Then why did the lie spread that the Diadem bestows wisdom to anyone who wears it? I only had it on for a second but thought my brain was going to explode.”
Tom smirked, sliding onto the bed next to her. He tilted her chin towards him and kissed her until neither of them could breathe. When they bowed to the mandate of their lungs, he said, “you know why.”