The Head Boy's Secretary

For the person who calls herself Alice: (or maybe you are an Alice)! Thanks for the review.




Continuation of….


Chapter Eleven: The Blood of True Believers


Alice crept by with the tact to keep her head down. She sensed intuitively that there was a way of just looking at her, that just one dark, scorching look at her and he’d know. Of course that would be Legilimency. He must not discover that she’d seen what transpired earlier this afternoon.

Riddle did not look up. He said flatly, “Your work is laid on the desk.”

Alice occupied herself with it for awhile. It was the usual balancing of accounts. The trustees and school governors made the accounts. Yet it had always been tradition for the Head Boy to check the figures on expenses. And of course, this duty had been relegated to Alice because Tom Riddle had much too many important things to do than check menial figures.

There was another knock on the door.

Riddle spoke to her right away, clearly knowing what the call was for. “Miss Alice, Do go to the library please…I have a list of books here. I must have them in my study for tomorrow.” It was a chance to get Alice away from him. Alice sensed that she wasn’t wanted.

But it was true that he really wanted the books on the list of reading material. She stood in front of him so he could cast the invisibility spell. But Alice knew she was being sent out so that the Head Boy could be alone with a boy, a member of the gang.

She could feel Riddle’s presence behind her as she departed. In awe Alice looked at the cloaked and hooded figure. She longed to know the students that were in his gang. If only she could see his face. Of course the boy could not see her either.

But she caught a glimpse of a strange insignia. It complemented Riddle’s skull clasp. It was the very skull clasp that in her imagination still taunted her long after the Head Boy’s punishments. Instead of a skull the follower had a snake lapel pinned to his robe. Alice pondered this. And this would turn out to be a key clue later….

If most of them were Pureblood, she reasoned, than the bulk of them must be Slytherins. So that eliminated three quarters of the student body.

Off to the library she gathered the books. At least she didn’t have to lug them around. She levitated the pile with a simple Wingardium leviosa.

The whispering followed her down the corridors like last time. Alice felt chased. The books knew that somebody that shouldn’t be there was perusing them.

She was the haunt of the Restricted Section. Alice thought she was like the Gray Lady, the demure and secretive ghost of her House.

Alice opened some of the books; to be sure she was getting Mr. Riddle the correct version of the manuscripts, books and other texts.

To her horror, she found silver stains that turned out to be something wicked. At first she thought it was a new fangled ink, a silver colour she hadn’t heard of.

She touched the silver blotches and felt a chill creep through the bones of her hand. It was exactly like when a ghost passes through you. It trickled through the veins and up her arm. It felt like murder….

She saw that what she had believed to be ink were actually bloodstains. The knowledge washed over her: this must be from the Slytherin ghost, the Bloody Baron. Apparently he must have had an interest in the Dark Arts in life and had kept up this interest even in death….

And what was more Alice had the distinct impression that the Bloody Baron’s proclivity for the Dark Arts had a link to killing. Clearly, a branch of the Dark Arts was about killing people…Murder.

It was curious. Curious that young Mr. Riddle had an interest in the very same subjects …. Alice filed and stored it away in her memory. It was something she would use later to piece together the mystery of what he was….

As expected the boy who followed Riddle’s gang was long gone.

When she stacked the books in neat little rows upon his desk, she spotted another book. It was a very famous, rather infamous tome.

“You’re reading, Mein Kampf?” and Alice instantly regretted adding, “Isn’t that a book for muggles?”

For the first time Tom Riddle looked genuinely embarrassed in front of her. Colour rose in his hollow cheeks and he stared at the cover. It was a subtle white-covered copy – no picture of Adolf Hitler there.

Tom Riddle stewed in shame, looking oddly vulnerable for once. He’d not taken it out of the Restricted Section but had rather stolen it from a muggle bookseller, whilst at his orphanage in London.

Alice had the nerve to flip through the muggle’s memoir. She saw it was in German and so could not comprehend more than the title. She only knew of the title to be in English, ‘My Struggle.’

Riddle got over himself, and elucidated. “I have discovered this man has similar ambitions to that of my own…”

Alice interrupted, “Master, don’t even think it! How can you say that? You’re not twisted! Daddy said he is a bad man! Now Hitler’s taken over Germany and half of muggle Europe. He’s hurting muggles. Those books should be burned!” It was afterall, 1945 at the height of Hitler's reign of terror.

Alice had worked herself up in her ranting against the current German chancellor, who happened to also be an evil dictator. She clutched her chest, close to her heart.

Riddle was deep in thought, rubbing that peculiar ring on his left middle finger. Alice really started to wonder about that. The ring must revolve around an obsession. With something. It seemed almost monstrous. Alice would never know it, but the way he rubbed that ring was sometimes in remembrance to being the Heir of Slytherin. It was proof of his Pureblood heritage and it made him practically a king.

He went to a dog-eared passage.

As he spoke he rubbed the ring again, and took on the air of a lecturing professor. “Blood mixture and the result drop in the racial level is the sole cause of the dying out of old cultures; for men do not perish as a result of lost wars, but by the loss of that force of resistance which is continued only in pure blood. All who are not of good race in this world are chaff….”

Alice shivered. The way Riddle read the passage with his calm, harmonious voice and the way he explained it rung so…true. It was scary how pertinent those words could be for the magical world.

Riddle cocked his head strangely, and his eyes glinted meanly. Alice didn’t like the way he looked at her at all. “Purebloods, Alice…Only Purebloods matter. It's the same way in our world, isn't it? Can you guess what this means?”

“Yes, Master. You’re going to take over the Wizarding world!”

“Perhaps. I do hope it goes as well…Someday.” Riddle chuckled. “I must do it before the Purebloods die out – I must be the one to preserve the greatness, the might of magic and our kind. Our race.”

Alice dared not disagree. But she had a feeling that like Adolf Hitler, Tom Riddle would go about it by destroying muggles too. It was frightening the kind of truths ‘Mein Kampf’ had, and that they were even relevant to witches and wizards. And here was a noted similarity with Hitler and our villain, Voldemort.

But after that the Head Boy grew tired of his intellectual banter with Alice, who was really just a Half-blooded, powerless girl who happened to be his “secretary.”

Writing messages again, Alice’s mind worked with a fury at understanding the gang he’d created. It must be related to wanting to read Mein Kampf!

Alice finished writing them later. She took out her hair ribbon – a pink polka-dot and tied the bundle of memos.

She was glad it pleased her master. She would do anything to act sweet to him if only to prevent unleashing those desires he had. Alice thought whatever desires they were, they always required her to be in pain. She wondered if the desire and the pain must be forged together all the time….Was this what it meant to lie with a man?

Always the pretender, Riddle beamed at the ribbons. “Oh, Alice you’re a dear!!!”

Alice laughed girlishly, feeling almost flirtatious.

And Riddle only coddled her further. He tussled her hair and patted the smooth skin of her hand.

Alice even shocked herself with how she responded. She stooped down from where she was standing over him at his chair, and pecked him on the cheek. It was something she always did for father.

But the sweet moment passed all too soon. Alice was set to the hard labor of cleaning the fireplace. Alice did not enjoy this in the slightest. It made her cough and sneeze, and it made her dirty, and smelling like swine.

Surrounding the hearth was beautiful ornate paneling, which she tried to look at to feel better. She wondered if the Floo network operated through here – but alas it did not. It was unused for centuries, and Riddle did not want people to discover his hiding place.

Beside the fireplace was the net of interlocked skulls that Alice had polished and cleaned of cobwebs last time. They seemed to be watching her as she worked. They kept her paranoid and on alert, as if sensing danger…

Finally, Riddle dismissed her earlier than usual. Alice was secretly relieved. The fireplace had been an exhausting job. She was so tired. There was no energy left to contemplate who the boys were.

“You will come here tonight….Be here at midnight, Miss Alice….,” he surveyed her sternly, looking straight into her gray eyes.

“Do not be late. Midnight.”

“Yes, Master,” she assented. She was surprised he wanted her here then. It was most unusual. But something told her that another rule of associating with the Head Boy was that she may not be curious. No questions, and therefore perhaps…no lies.

“And be sure to be clean tonight.”

“I will,” said Alice assuredly. She stared at her callused hands. The hands were red and wrinkly from scrubbing and sweeping the fireplace. She was ashamed to be dirty. Inside she felt dirty too and bad.

Riddle conducted her to the door, hand pressed firmly at the small of the back, to guide her out.

“I can’t go! I’ll be caught and punished for sure! I’ve heard stories of students out at those late hours – caught by Apollyon Pringle and taken to the bowels of the castle, the dungeons. They still have the marks!”

Alice’s knees knocked together. She wasn’t so devoted as the Head Boy’s Secretary to be brave enough to take a whipping because of him!

“You won’t be caught,” said Riddle confidently. “I know all about the prefect's and teacher's schedules. I’ve already changed the patrol. On this night, the patrol is different….”

Alice suddenly realized with a sickening realization that whatever was planned for midnight it was planned out meticulously. It did not make her feel safe.

“You will leave a quarter to midnight. The path from Ravenclaw tower to the library will be unoccupied.”


****


“You summoned me, My Lord?”

“Yes,” said Riddle in his coldest, highest voice. He sounded all-powerful and absolute. He felt and seemed older than his eighteen years.

Alice had left two hours ago. He decided that tonight he would wait. Wait here until he had her at midnight.

A follower stumbled into the room, in abject terror.

“Well, Alphard....Are they nearly ready? Will we have enough prey by Sunday?”

“My Lord I don’t know!” He squeaked.

“Then send them these messages, of warning….”

Riddle indicated the pile of parchment tied with a pink polka-dot ribbon. Alphard grabbed it in haste, eager to leave his master’s study. Once again they were written in the cult's secret code, and so Alice had no idea what was going on when she wrote them, even after reviewing Riddle's garbled note of instruction.

“Oh, yes My Lord…I am glad to be the courier. I will get them to them all by morning.”

The ribbon reminded Alphard of girls. As he was twelve, at the onset of puberty he’d recently discovered to his innocent delight how much fun they were to be with. The bow had a slight scent of cheap perfume…It was a girl’s!

“Whose r-ribbon is this, Master?”

“Just give my messages to the recipients, Black!” screamed young Voldemort. “Don’t ask questions! That is the first rule to being in my Dark Order.”

Alphard apologized profusely and was lucky to escape retribution that night…But Alice wouldn’t be so lucky.

The twelve-year-old Second Year stole away, traipsing sinuously down the corridors and out the library. Like a hunting dog, he wanted to sniff out the owner of the hair-ribbon. He was hot on Alice’s trail….

And soon he would know. For once long ago, when the others sacrificed their blood for the Master… a girl came in to do paperwork.