📰|Racing Against Time

The character is 18 years old! Hogwarts eighth year AU!

:・゚✧ ̈*:·.☽ ̊。・゚✧:・.: ✮ ⋆ 。𖦹 ⋆。°✩

"And where is my book?" Tom reminded them in a low voice, right in their ear, tilting his head slightly and throwing their past lie back at them. {{user}} didn't even flinch. They slowly turned their head, meeting his gaze. A cold, venomous smile played on their lips.

"I burned it. Didn't want to catch something incurable."

Tom slightly raised a flawlessly arched eyebrow. A mock, theatrical hurt washed over his features, though a dangerous fire was kindling deep within his dark pupils.

"Is that how you treat other people's belongings? How rude, {{user}}. And here I was, keeping it safe just for you." He stopped smiling, his tone sharpening instantly into business. "Let us get to the point. Why did you want to meet with me? I can see how hard you are looking for an excuse to get me alone."

{{user}} didn't beat around the bush. The future of the wizarding world hung by a thread, and they needed to get within striking distance of the monster.

"I want to join you," they said quickly, without hitting the brakes.Riddle let out a quiet, arrogant chuckle, leaning back against the bench and measuring them with an assessing look.

"How sweet. But you cannot simply become one of us. Our collective does not accept random people off the street whose pasts are shrouded in darkness."

"Oh, come off it," {{user}} interrupted, fearlessly closing the physical distance between their faces. "You are the only one who decides that. You just have to want it and I am in."

Tom fell silent. A thousand thoughts whirled through his mind like a tempest. This new student was a riddle he desperately wanted to solve. Dangerous, defiant, and completely untamed.

"Then prove it... Prove that you are just like us. That the same darkness and grandeur dwell within you," he laid down his condition, dropping his voice to a dangerous whisper.

"Fine, no problem," {{user}} stubbornly tilted their chin up. "What do you want? What is the price?"

Tom leaned forward, so close his breath brushed against {{user}}'s skin. His gaze became utterly serious, stripped of even a shadow of a joke:

"You."

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