The Head Boy's Secretary

Vic: Thanks for telling me you read it.


Below are some scenes I’ve been wanting to write for a very long time. But I am really only just getting started! I still don’t know the full trajectory of the story line.


Chapter Fifteen: Magic Most Evil


It was drafty and freezing like a mausoleum. Alice was inside the secret chambers of the Restricted Section at an unusual hour. She was completely confident Tom Riddle would never show during normal class hours, and proved to be right….

She wandered around at perfect liberty to study everything, stuffing her eyes with wonder as if at a museum.

Shivering, she drew her schoolrobes tighter and flipped through some of his favourite books that he often perused.

It was gruesome, ugly and shocking what Alice found there. It scared the daylights out of Alice’s innocent mind. She had never imagined that a human being could invent such activities. Activities that were degrading, cruel, dehumanzing. It did not matter what they were yet, only that they were one thing. There was only one eponymous word for such deeds, ‘evil’

And then by chance she happened across a book of which Tom Riddle had produced extensive private dialogues, an exegesis of analysis.

“Magic. Moste. Evil.” Alice whispered it to herself. The words sent a chill down her spine. So this is what the secretive, morbid genius was after! Something was hidden, she knew it! It was buried beneath the leaves of these books. The answer was inside them, she knew it.

Alice could only understand a few things. It was creating something and destroying another. Worse, it was about killing people and getting from it the utmost pleasure. It was the only way to create some type of “thing” that destroyed something else.

Alice wandered around some more, looking over the objects, some more and reflected on the character of Head Boy Tom Riddle. He clearly had a monstrous obsession and Alice believed it to be with death. She was right in a way. She saw he feared death....and prehaps he feared his very soul? Alice contemplated the question of Tom Riddle's soul for a moment.

The obsession leaked into his other studies. Curious that the room was this slovenly right now. It was so unlike him to make a mess unless something was totally preoccupying. Curious that his secrets turned out to be so terribly wrong. Curious that a plain black notebook was always by his side on the desk. But when Alice opened it, she found it devoid of content. Every page of that notebook was blank, but there was a stirring of magic. Alice could sense it.

Alice lost herself in trying to decipher what it all meant. She paced up and down, hands clasped behind her back, deep in thought. How could she convince Master Riddle to no longer use her as Secretary? Alice wanted to be free of the boy who was like a monster, that had her shackled to this job that wasn’t even real.

Doing this, Alice had to cut class, but it was worth it, if only to find out what he was.

The teachers gave Alice dentention and conveniently Alice asked for a time that did not conflict with Riddle’s schedule. They were not harrowing detentions just the usual tedious tasks such as lines or extra essays on conduct. Her teachers never put students in the dungeons. It was only Apollyon Pringle who enforced that to students that got in his way and were the greatest cause of mischief at Hogwarts. Not our sweet, dear Alice.

Alice continued to burn with desire in the need to know what Tom Riddle, Alphard Black and all those boys did when alone. It was only just the beginning of Alice comprehending the gravity of danger involved with for for want of a better word, this ‘person’ named Tom Riddle. And luckily Alice possessed the foresight to re-arrange everything to exactly as it’d been left.

One day she went skiving off classes for a second time in order to sneak to the Restricted Section.

She rifled through a cabinet and found a familiar object, besides bottles of gangrenous looking potions. Unlike the green mud-like potions, this one was blood red.

Alice held the red bottle in her clammy hands. “The Clitordectomy Curse,” was written in finely curved script on the label.

Alice dared to uncork it and took in a whiff. It smelled of rotting flesh, a putrid dank smell that made her think of death and decay.

As if sensing the former appendage it began to itch down there again. Tears came to Alice’s eyes, as she realized the horror of what he’d done.

He’d stolen her clitoris, the source of female pleasure. With it, he’d made a curse and replaced it with the artificial one. Futhermore, the bottle was full to the brim with Alice's blood.

Alice mourned this loss, more tears sprang to her eyes, and she noticed that stimulating her vagina made her twinge with the most painful, erotic desire.

It wasn’t normal masturbation. But Alice wasn’t sure of this as she didn’t masturbate.

Taking down her knickers, Alice sat and examined herself. The markings were still there, etched into the pelvis. It was the markings of an ancient, evil curse. ‘Oh, why did he do this to me!’

She decided to try something desperate. It was dangerous, but maybe if the blood was drunk the curse would dissolve? The curse was certainly already there inside the body of the girl. The markings proved it, and so did the painful itching and burning coupled with unusual sexual desires.

She felt compelled to drink her blood, for she knew it was her own. It couldn't be that bad. But it tasted horrible and dead. She downed the entire concoction however. No such luck. The curse stubbornly persisted.

Alice magically restored the bottle to a full measurement of the blood and hesitantly placed the bottle back on the shelf. Alice was tempted to destroy it. She wanted to smash it, smash it into a thousand pieces so that Tom Riddle couldn’t keep that piece of her body forever. But Alice knew he might kill her! And she wasn’t even joking. She knew he had an instinct for murder, and what was worse a lust for all things deathly.

Alice helplessly clung to herself, hugging her bosom. There was a chance he would re-attach the lost appendage wasn’t there?

There was a soft thud and the door opened. The time had been forgotten! Somehow despite being in a decrepit, cramped space all morning, Alice had lost herself.

Alice dared not face him. But exclaimed boldly, “Why Master Riddle! You have the presence of a ghost! I didn’t hear you coming down the hall…”

“Right on time. Four o’clock on the nose. Is it not?”

Alice turned and looked up at him, nodding.

He was consulting a handsome, gilt fobwatch that swung off his waistcoat. He spoke, charmingly. “My movements are timed as that of the planets.” Every movement he made, every tiny movement somehow always moved him closer towards one selfish goal or another.

Alice tittered nervously, and pretended to laugh.

Tom Riddle didn’t miss a beat. He looked on with a superficial smile. Something was out of order, but he knew not what exactly.

“What were you doing? Well, Miss Alice?”

“I-I….If only I could understand! Riddle. You’re a riddle! A secret I must unlock. I wish to understand my Master.”

She had just admitted she was curious about him, which was a very dangerous thing to do. But Alice wasn’t exactly lieing and so the great Legilimens that he was, the Head Boy wasn't compelled to investigate further. Besides he did not believe she could come close to guessing about horcruxes. He knew she must have been snooping, but unwisely he chose to ignore it. To him, it was like just meaningless antics and she could never be taken too seriously.

But Alice must be very careful now because her master was a meticulous, organised personality. He noticed when the slightest thing was out of place. And so it was inevitable that soon he would know the knowledge she seeked. Soon he would learn that Alice Whitman knew the knowledge, the objects he was after, and the things he seeked!

But on that prosaically dull, and quiet afternoon Alice kept her head smartly bowed. She intuively knew that with a single glance from his eyes, he might see that she knew his horrific secret.


*


The day of Alice’s fifteenth birthday came. Today she decided it would be the hiatus. She’d been longing for a vacation from Secretary duties for two months now. Foolishly, she chose that whatever punishment her master doled out, it was worth skipping an afternoon to be with friends.

Alice and a group of friends mingled together in the courtyard. Alice was happy to be part of the crowd, and her friends had all remembered she was fifteen today.

Alice was a quiet girl, and didn’t speak much for she was more of the listener.

She watched them playing a good game of Exploding Snap, lazily. And she listened to the willow trees rustle in the Clock Tower Courtyard.

It was a Saturday afternoon, and Master Riddle had told Alice to be there for cleaning, and some important account work. But Alice had disobeyed.

But for now Alice would sit back and relax. She'd worry about getting punished later. Together in the blustery March weather, they wiled away the time.

Alice and the group of friendly Ravenclaws started back going up the clocktower steps.

A boy ran to the ledge and shouted, “Slytherin Perfects are crossing below! Come here, guys!”

They all rushed forward.

Standing by the railing, Alice saw five figures marching across the courtyard. They were cowled over in heavily hooded robes.

The Prefects were more likely to don full uniform. Their backs were turned and so it was impossible to see the badges by the time Alice had a look.

Impulsively, Alice’s male friend spat at them. He didn’t miss, but succeeded at pelting one with a plumseed. It spattered onto the perfectly, pressed and starched schoolrobes. A purple stain appeared along with the yellow muck of saliva.

The children on the ledge laughed, Alice amongst them giggling the loudest.

Feeling spunky Alice shouted, “I’m next.”

She found the seed in the plum she was eating and spat it down below. It hit the hooded one in the center. Dead center.

There was a ripple of joyful laughter and they congratulated Alice and regaled how several upperclassmen had been teasing Ravenclaws lately. This was revenge.

A bell chimed in the clocktower, echoing. Time seemed to slow down.

From below, Alice saw the figure in dead center turn. The hood was raised, and a visage revealed. The lineaments of that handsome yet hideous face was actally grinning. The beauty of it was alarming.

In his robes, the Head Boy was at once like schoolmaster and vicar to Alice. The authority figure. And he had looked straight at her.

As if from afar Alice heard another girl squeal, “Oh my goodness. It's the Head Boy with those thugs always following him like puppy dogs!”

The other’s laughed but not Alice. In fact, her heart pounded.

One friend saw Alice’s terrified expression. “Cheer up! It’s not like it was the Headmaster. It's only the Head Boy.”

Alice did not waver gazing down below. She watched her master depart silently with his entourage, and longed to tell her peers what was the matter. To her he was not, "only the Head Boy." But the Imperius Curse forced reticience as if this was a monastary demanding to keep a Vow of Silence.

“Oh, please! Of course it wasn’t Dippet,” another intevened. Alice was barely listening now.

“But Robbie Skylar missed him remember? Dippet marched him up to the Seventh floor to his office, reprimanded him. Threatened to use the cane. The doddering old tosser!”

Some kids laughed. Alice didn’t. She berated herself for being so foolishly sure that the Head Boy would stay holed up in the library. Alice wondered why he'd be out. Had he been looking for her? Perhaps....

“The cane,” she whispered aloud. Nobody heard. What if Riddle caned her for the third time? But no he wouldn’t. He’d do something much worse. Alice could be sure of that.

Alice feared what he’d do. But it was more than that. She feared simply being alone with that evil presence.


NOTE: ‘Magic Most Evil’ is indeed the Horcrux book. Will Alice discover everything? No, of course not but she is coming close.