The Raven

I sat outside and waited for them to come out. Nyathera walked out by herself, but paid no attention to me when I called her name. Algie stood next to my right and stared down until I stood up and looked him in the eye. He sighed and asked me, “Have you no shame?”

I laughed at his absurdity.

Algie shook his head and started to walk away from me.

No one walks away from me.

They’ve denied me the tiniest bit of conversation; they won’t keep pushing me around.

I grabbed my wand and shot a curse his way. He screamed and crumpled to the floor, and somehow, someway, Nyathera appeared by his side before I walked the ten feet to him. She stared at me with horrified eyes before she dropped to his side. She rolled him onto his back and cried out at the sight of the dark lines zigzagging and tainting his usual pale skin. She tried to heave him into her arms, but she couldn’t manage it, so she levitated him and ran to the hospital wing.

I probably should have stopped her, stunned her somehow, left him to rot, but I couldn’t budge my desires for the opportunity she finally presented to me. I ran after her and watched as Madame Pomfrey checked out Algie. I slowly walked up to the bed, but Nyathera turned quickly on her heels and snatched my face by my chin. Her voice sounded like honey dripping from a hive in spring, her words sounded like the stingers. “Leave. Ask Dumbledore to help him.”

She let go of my face and I stumbled back a few feet. I never planned on what I would say back to her, I always figured she wouldn’t want conversation, just to tell me a few things to get me out of her hair. All I could do was nod and oblige.



Dumbledore’s class has been dismissed until Algie’s health improves. Nyathera has stayed by his side, at least, that’s what I’ve heard. The Ravenclaws haven’t seen her; she hasn’t been in any of the classes, or at any of the meals. Regardless of the fact that I haven’t been able to find out anything about her, Binns sent me to the front of the class.

“Well,” he droned, “Please enlighten us with your research, Mr. Riddle.”

I couldn’t figure out what to say about her. I did my best to ramble about what I’ve seen of her over the weekend, but that wasn’t much. I couldn’t tell them the sound of her voice, for that would expose what actually happened to Algie. I couldn’t tell them she walks as if gravity refused to bother with her. Could I tell them that she cries for hours without pausing to breathe? I gulped and quietly sighed as Binns spoke.

“You didn’t do your work? This is a first, Tom.”

“I don’t know about her, sir, I don’t know what she can do.”

Binns started to speak, but the door to his classroom squeaked open for Nyathera and slammed shut behind her. She drew in a deep breath, her exhale sounded like a low whistle, but she smiled anyway, “I can do anything, Tom.”

I awkwardly laughed, “Is that so?”

She nodded, “You just have to let me near.”

I awkwardly laughed again. The whole class was on the edge of their seats with curiosity, and my curiosity was also overwhelming. I shrugged and replied, “Alright.”

Her smirk sent a chill deep into my spine. She slowly walked to the front of the class and didn’t stop until she was mere inches from me. “If you’re letting me near, tell me those secrets, Tom.”

I looked at her confused, “What?”

She harshly cut me off with her determined whisper, “The secrets that you don’t want to tell, the ones that you’re scared to reveal.”

I laughed at her.

She grabbed my face and squeezed my cheeks with her unnaturally hot right hand. Her fingertips burnt the flesh of my cheeks as she bitterly whispered, “You need to hear yourself, Tom. How can you know a single thing about me when you can’t even listen to your own thoughts?”

I went to slap her hand off of my face; the pain became overwhelming, but she squeezed my face even more, brought me down to her own face, and kissed my open mouth. My knees started to shake, not because I found the moment oh so romantic, but from actual weakness. They gave out, but she kept her firm grip. Our lips weren’t moving, this kiss wasn’t right.


[Third Person POV]

Demonically dark lines and swirls appeared on Tom’s cool skin, as if the Devil himself currently inhabited it, as if Tom was a vessel instead of a human. His usually pale, pink lips transitioned into a light green and his breath, spaced too far from each other, sounded like slowly breaking glass. Professor Binns sent a student for Madame Pomfrey then told the rest to stay seated and calm down. He rushed in front of Nyathera and half shouted, half asked, “What did you do?”

She drew in a deep breath; her natural colors flew back into her body, making her shiver. She looked at him with drowsy eyes, “Dumbledore couldn’t help Algie and Madame Pomfrey couldn’t even diagnose him.”

Binns asked again, “What did you do?”

Nyathera slowly exhaled, enjoying it as if she knew it to be her last. “I took it from Algie and I gave it to the God forsaken creature that cursed him.”

Nyathera and Binns stared at each other until Dumbledore rushed in with the confused student barely behind him. Dumbledore grabbed Nyathera by her right arm and pulled her down to Tom. Dumbledore rolled Tom onto his back and shouted at Nyathera, who sighed and rolled her eyes while straddling Tom’s lower abdomen. She looked at Dumbledore and said, “I won’t harbor it again.”

Dumbledore angrily roared, “THEN PUT IT IN YOUR HANDS!”

Completely unaffected by his tone and urgency, Nyathera, “I’ll hold it, I won’t absorb it.”

Dumbledore shouted without words, then looked at the nearest student and ordered him to go find Professor Beery for some Devil’s Snare. Nyathera lifted Tom’s shirt to reveal an overabundance of hideous lines slowly wrapping around his bones and arteries and organs. She slowly dug her nails into his fleshed and howled with absolute pain. Tom’s breaths became sporadic and loud while the thick, dark lines were sucked from his body and completely tainted, maybe even filled Nyathera’s hands. Her body started to shake while she screamed from the hot pain from her fingertips to her elbows. Professor Beery almost broke down the door while running into the room. He tossed a burlap sac of Devil’s Snare into the air; Dumbledore magically froze it in the air and release the Devil’s Snare next to Nyathera and Tom. She thrusted her upper body into the pile and drove the nails of her frozen-in-place hands into the Devil’s Snare, which stopped withering and squeezing, froze in place, steamed then suddenly cracked into hundreds of chunks.

Tom’s body violently shuddered, his torso thrusted into the air, and the sound of his desperate lungs sucking air back into his reborn body matched that of a black hole trapping a galaxy. Nyathera was bucked off of him; she rolled a couple of times before puking onto the chunks of Devil’s Snare and standing up. She groaned before looking at Dumbledore. He rose from the floor and said, “You don’t have to do it again.”

She shook her head; her voice was scratchy, “I won’t do it.”

He raised a brow inquisitively.

Nyathera pointed to a violently healing Tom, “He’ll keep ailing the students.”

Dumbledore’s voice switched to a concerned father, “Will you stop helping them?”

Nyathera shook her head again, “Just him.” She turned from him and walked away, but stopped at the doors of the room. She rested against the closed door and looked over her left shoulder at Dumbledore, “I’ve been through enough. I’ve suffered through enough. Algie is the only one I have left. If I have to sacrifice a monster to keep Algie alive, then so be it.”

She walked out.