12.16.02

The boy he's been seeing smells like dust and oranges. You can smell it on Percy afterwards, and you think this boy must be in Gryffindor. They like to fuck in the Gryffindor part of Hogwarts, and you'd suspect that it was Wood, but Wood's too stupid to pull tricks like these. Also, Wood reminds you of sweaty socks and Quidditch muscle, which Percy might like, but this is an entirely different matter already. Cedric might be a possibility, and Percy's certainly made sheep eyes at him before, but you don't think it's Diggory.

The boy likes to turn Percy's collar up, then unbutton it because you always see Percy smoothing down his collar after you suspect that they've been together -- Percy, wiping his lips off on the back of his hand, those pale little lips swollen berry red from kisses and teeth. Percy touching the wings of the collar, Percy smoothing them down when he thinks you're not looking or running a finger along the inside collar, close to his neck, as you imagine this boy must do. Once, you even caught him with them turned up about his ears and his shirt unbuttoned all the way down to his collarbone and his tie on the floor. Percy had been sprawled against the wall, and when you rounded the corner, breathing hard because you thought you were finally going to catch the little fucker, Percy had turned around to look at you slowly. He looked like he was a little drunk, pupils still dilated, and it took him a moment to figure out your name.

The two of you have never moved beyond his hand on your knee and your hand on his cock through his pants. The two of you have been together since finals period last year, when he kissed you in the library.

After a while, you figure that Percy doesn't do the decent thing and dump you because the boy's much younger than he is. There aren't any boys like that in his year or the year underneath, not ones that Percy likes, and for a while, you almost think it's Potter, but the times are all wrong. Whoever it is fucks Percy during Quidditch practices, and it's not like Oliver Wood would let his star seeker go missing from practice like that -- also, you like to think that Percy's a better person than to fuck a twelve year old boy. It must be some other boy in Gryffindor. God knows it's not one of your Ravenclaws because you've been keeping extra close tabs on them ever since this basilisk thing started

One night, you come back from your rounds a little late because of disciplinary problem between two third-year Hufflepuffs, and you find Percy vomiting up oranges in the prefect's bathroom. It's noisy and undignified, and it looks like Percy hasn't been eating anything but oranges for days, there's such a pile of it. It takes two full flushes to get all of it out of the bowl, and you pull the chain for him because he's too weak to get up off his knees immediately afterward.

"That is so fucking weird," you say to him as you hand him a little cup of water you've transfigured together out of some toilet paper. It's very thin, and a little wobbly, but Percy gives you a grateful smile when he drinks from the rim.

"I don't know what you're talking about." he says, then manages to get up onto his feet and spit into the washbasin. He says casually, like he's admitting to preferring one brand of shampoo to another, although even that's something that Percy gets worked up over, so this calmness is something else, particularly when he's just spent the better part of a hour throwing up over and over until he was putting bile on top of the churned-up fruit. "I just like oranges a lot. Never enough of them to go around at home, so I palmed a couple extra at dinner."

A few days later, you notice him palming almost half a dozen into his wizard-exapanded pockets, so when he turns to talk to the other Ravenclaw prefect, you take the orange lying next to his wrist and put a tracking charm on it. Percy's so absorbed in arguing with Robinson about whether Altaeus Methicus was a Hufflepuff or a Gryffindor that he doesn't notice the little sigil glowing on the underside of the orange before he tucks it into his pocket, and late that night, when he's had time to go off and see that boy of his, you follow the track up to the top of an old-disused tower. There are something like eighty-four of them at Hogwarts when the full moon isn't out -- eight seven when the moon's full, and it's not really a surprise that they'd use a tower for their assignations now that you've started being more suspicious. It's not like they haven't fucked in the rest of the school.

You make sure that Percy is safe back in his Gryffindor room, and since you have the late patrol tonight, you go up and push open the door at the top of the stairs. There aren't any lights on, only a copper lantern banked low and running on a short candle so all the shadows are set funny.

There's a boy standing at the end of the room, half-hidden in shadow, though you can see that he has pale skin and dark hair like Oliver Wood and nice clothes like Cedric Diggory. The oranges are lined up at his feet. Six of them in all, half a dozen, all peeled and split into halves. You can't see the peels anywhere, and you wonder if this is why Percy had looked a little ill after his rounds, why he'd bolted for the bathroom as soon as the Prefect's Meeting was over.

The one piece of peel that you can see, though, is on the floor in front of you. It's the bit that you put your tracking symbols on. It's lying on the floor, and they aren't glowing anymore. They look like they've been burnt into the skin, and the boy comes forward and looks at you for a moment, studying you just as you study him back. Then, he bends down and takes a slice of orange in his hands. Doesn't eat it though -- just holds it.

"Hullo," he says. The slice turns faintly yellow in his fingers when he opens his mouth, gets a little paler when he starts to talk. You notice this quality about him -- maybe it's just the light, but he seems to bleed the color from things. After he fucks Percy, Percy is always pale as the collar of his shirt, and the oranges that Percy had vomited up that night in the bathroom were a curious light color even though you could smell how ripe and sweet they were. "Penny, right?" the boy says, still smiling at you. "Percy's told me all about you."

You take a step closer -- he doesn't even flinch, not even when you know the light hits your prefect's badge and reflects it straight into his eyes. When you get a little closer, you notice why. He's got one himself, although it's old fashioned, and his uniform is old-fashioned too. Tie that hasn't been used in forty years, tweed suit that hasn't been in fashion for almost twice as long, and spit-shiny oxfords. That waved hair. You can see the back of the wall faintly through his fingers, and you wonder how he can be real enough for Percy to fuck.

"You're Slytherin. You're not real, are you?" you say then. "You're a ghost."

"Maybe," he says, turning his head to the sid, so the light reflects off his eyes the way it wouldn't for a normal human being. His eyes are a curious light brown color "Maybe I"m a ghost. Maybe I'm more.

He puts his mouth on yours, cool as night air but as dry as bone turned to dust. Out of the corner of the eye, you notice that the color gets sucked right out of the orange. It whooshes out form the skin of the orange, and you can see first his fingertips flush with color. Then his palms, then his wrist, and his tongue tastes faintly orangey.

You pull away and wipe your mouth on the back of your hand, then grab onto the wall for support.

"I like oranges a lot," he says, dropping the orange he's got in his hand and taking the next in line. "There were never enough of them to go around at the orphanage, so I had Percy palm me a few. You don't mind, do you?"

"You're Tom Riddle," you manage to say. You feel drunk, like the oranges have been fermented. Light-headed. Definitely light-headed; you can feel your fingers go slack when he pulls away to pick up another slice of orange. The first one is almost white, and he puts it down by your knee before getting a new one. "Slytherin prefect. Forty one through forty-five. Only orphan Slytherin to ever make prefect."

"That's right," he says and slides the slice onto your lips. It stings; there are cracks in your lips which weren't there a moment before, but you swallow, and he puts another one on your lips before he slides his hand up the inside of your thigh. His fingers are slick from the oranges. "All Ravenclaws know their Hogwarts history, don't they? Yes, that's right, Penny. My name is Tom Riddle. Tom Marvolo Riddle."

"Tom Marvolo Riddle," you say back to him, around the mouthful of orange. "Tom Marvolo Riddle," you repeat, as you watch him take a whole orange into his hands right before he slides his fingers into you, and you arch off the wall so that your clit bangs straight into his thumb. He gasps, you gasp, the orange in his hand pales so much that it turns yellow. It goes yellow as the gold in his tiepin. It goes as yellow as the stains on your mouth afterwards, as your prefect's badges, which he takes and gets Percy to Obliviate out of your memory.

It goes as yellow as -- you realize with a sudden jolt of the heart, two weeks later, right after Percy's fumbled Obliviate finally wears off -- it goes as yellow the bruises along your leg, which you've been trying to figure out for exactly that long. It goes as yellow as the parchment of the book that Hermione shows you in the library. As yellow as the eyes of the basilisk, looking at you from your hand-mirror.

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