#clearly no

Lydia's eyes trailed lazily across the platform, settling on a giggly blonde clad in Hufflepuff colors next. Eve looked as lovely as ever, hanging off the tall dark-haired Slytherin. Those two had such a stark contrast between them, both in their appearances—his dark complexion against her fair skin and lush golden locks— and personalities—the literal sunshine and hurricanes princess and the intimidating half-giant with the heart of gold. Yet they fit perfectly together, like two puzzle pieces. And then, right next to Ogimundu Lydia spotted his cousin, Natty, who walked hand in hand with Vanessa. Her beautiful, sweet Vanessa. The two girls pushed the trolley full of suitcases and bags together.

The scene made Lydia's heart swell with emotion. She didn't know what awaited her and her friends out there—she never was a big believer in Divination, and neither did she have a skilll for it. Perhaps, future was better left alone, she always thought, a little bit of mystery made it all much more exciting, though also much scarier.

But one thing the redhead knew for sure: all these people whom she found her solace in, these wonderful girls who became her found family, they made her feel like she could take the whole world on. Lydia wished for that fleeting moment to last forever.

That was until the door of her compartment slid open with a dull thud, and a familiar voice cut through the silence. "Ah, don't tell me you will cry over your last train ride, birdie."

Lydia didn't give him an answer. She didn't even glance in his direction as she kept watching her friends finally boarding the Hogwarts Express. She hoped the bane of her existence, who took the form of a dark-haired human boy for some ungodly reason, would pick on a cue and kindly sof off, but of course, he didn't. He wouldn't be the bane of her existence otherwise, would he?

Instead, the boy settled right across her and stared out of the window, an expression of utter boredom and contempt on his annoyingly pretty face.

His next words amused Lydia more than she was willing to show. "You better keep your promise, Parkinson, and keep your mouth shut," he said with that same distant look, but she knew better, of course.

"What makes you think I'd start talking now, after almost two years? Or do you think I suddenly have a death wish?"

Lydia remembered the unnaturally hot Sunday in the middle of September as if it was yesterday. Their 6th year has just begun. The rumors of what happened back in June still echoed through the castle in hushed whispers, but life moved on, and so did students and the professors alike.

Lydia stared out of the window. It was excruciatingly hot, and Professor Binns and his monotone mumbling about the Second Goblin Rebellion was just as excruciatingly boring. It was then that she noticed a familiar swoosh of the Slytherin robes and the flash of dark hair in the courtyard. Lydia hated how easy it was for her to recognize him, even in the sea of other students. Honestly, it pissed her off.

But she also noticed how he strided with determination and purpose, as if he had places to be; where—Lydia didn't know just yet, but it was about to change.

"Curiosity killed the cat, my sweet darling," Lydia's aunt would often tell her when she was but a little girl.

"But satisfaction brought it back!" The little redhead would always chime back with a toothy grin.

Nothing much changed since then. To Lydia, curiosity had always been a blessing, but even more often than that a curse in disguise.

Quietly, the Ravenclaw girl sneaked unnoticed right under the ghastly professor's nose, and once she stepped out from the constraints of the classroom, she darted toward where she saw Tom just a few moments ago.

Why do you care, a pesky little voice in the back of her mind asked as she walked the castle grounds.

It is just curiosity, she blatantly lied to herself.

Her footsteps were soft, muffled by still fresh grass, and so Lydia remained unnoticed for a moment longer as she stood at the border of the Forbidden Forest and watched with great interest as the Head Boy kneeled down and talked—she could only assume that's what he was doing since she heard nothing but weird hissing noises—to what appeared to be an adder.

If someone would have seen her back then, standing in that secluded corner, staring down at the boy and the snake in his hand, they would practically see the clogs turning in her head. Lydia was not a stupid girl. She was the Ravenclaw, after all, and she was sorted to the House of Wit and Wisdom not just because of her unruly curiosity that always led her into the most ungodly predicaments. No, Lydia Parkinson was too bright as she was too curious for her own good.

It didn't take her too long to put one and one together. Only a Parselmouth coud have opened the Chamber of Secrets that led to an unforunate demise of Myrtle. Hagrid was innocent, Lydia never doubted it, and besides, he was no Parselmouth. Tom Riddle, on the other hand..

"What are you doing?" She tilted her head to the side as she watched with inquisitive eyes as the Slytherin laughed at—or was he laughing with?—the hissing adder. It was unsettling to see him like that, so genuine, so unguarded. It made Lydia's stomach flip.

Tom's head whipped to the sound of her voice, and she saw that familiar carefully crafted aloof façade again, a mask of disdain and resentment. He was not happy to see her. He never was before, but especially so in that moment. They skipped their usual banter that bordered on outright insults being thrown into each other's faces and got straight to the point.

At least Tom had decency to not insult Lydia's intelligence by denying what he did. It was easier and faster that way, so he could move right past it all to the part that mattered: threats and promises of feeding her to the basilisk. A not entirely unpleasant idea, he had to admit, to see the annoying Ravenclaw prefect be devoured by the monstrous snake and her bones spat out afterward.

The pictures of her impending doom that Tom painted in great detail made Lydia laugh so much that she almost choked on her tears. He wanted to hex her right then and there. And through all their heated conversation, the adder kept hissing as it slithered in the grass.

It was her curiosity speaking when Lydia demanded to know what the adder was hissing about. The girl was stubborn as a mule, too, and from the years of head butting with her, Tom learned it hard way to know when it was not worth picking a fight. So he told her, reluctantly, everything that adder told him: the little intricasies and secret lives of highland snakes. She listened, fascinated, enthralled almost, and for the first time ever, she didn't interrupt Tom even once.

Somehow, they came to an agreement. A fragile declaration of temporary peace. Lydia would keep his morbid secret but only as long as he agreed to help her with her own secret, a baby hippogriff by the name Cinder.

The train started, metal screeching painfully,

And the sound ripped her from the past and threw back into the present where the pair of the tar-black eyes was boring a hole in her head. She shifted awkwardly in her seat.

"I asked a question, birdie."

"Which was?.." She tilted her head to the side, one of her little antics that always reminded Tom of a puffy, grumpy looking owl, with her big intense eyes that held the keys to the secrets of the world.

"Do you have a death wish?"

"Not now, no," she drawled after a moment of contemplation, "But I'll make sure to come find you once I do."

He laughed, and so did she, as if it was some inside joke shared between two friends.

Of course, she would come and find him. It'd be too naive, too optimistic to think that Lydia Parkinson, the most annoying girl known to humankind, the girl who, Tom was sure of that, was sent on Earth with the sole purpose of tormenting him, would ever leave him alone.