The Head Boy's Secretary

This is one of my favorite stories and I will never abandon it. I am determined to get through the plot. However, I had real life to attend to, but am getting a break until February. Below is the prelude to the climax! It is going to be really exciting!


Chapter Twenty: Magic and Religion


It was like the mind was stuck at the bottom of a well. The final and most vital information just couldn’t be drawn.

Alice Whitman sat near the others. These were normal students with no connection to the Head Boy. Alice was different, and something just wasn’t right about that Tom Riddle.

Inside was a compulsion to do something. Alice had nearly gotten to the heart, the very bottom of the mystery. Now the mystery of Master Riddle and who he was could be comprehended. 'He isn’t quite human' she thought. Alice’s mind had already worked out that he wanted to kill, but Alice thought it was a desire he hadn’t met yet. But upon a crucial discovery, she would find out that boy was that wrong! He was indeed a murderer already.

Alice abandoned the library books on Fourth year Pre-owl standard spells. She was due to Riddle’s cold and secluded study in an hour.

The Standard Book of Fourth Year Magic slammed shut. Months of sneaking through his papers, always careful to put everything back, it was all becoming clear. Intuition said that now was the time to act.

Master Riddle had taught the Disillusionment Charm to his Secretary well. This granted access into the Restricted Section, as the librarian wouldn't be able to see anyone under the spell.

Alice hated approaching the study. Flashes of unpleasant memories sifted through her brain. A deep cavern, and empty treasure boxes, with wizened green bodies that looked like deformed dolls.

Furiously the Ravenclaw shook her head and quickened her step. She must be out of her mind.

Reaching the upside down cross, it was an uneventful trespass. The gloomy passage was as always illuminated with candles.

“How odd,” she said aloud. There was a peculiar whiff of incense. Alice’s feet kept down the path and then there was something there that would make her stop dead.

Blood on the stone floor, gleaming in the luminescent lights. Almost black was this puddle of blood. It shone dismally in the shadowed corridor.

Alice turned in the opposite direction. The Head Boy’s lair was right nearby, but Alice felt she must plunder down the next passage.

A rising surge of dread rose up in the girl’s throat. More and more puddles of blood. But as ever there was an insatiable, near morbid curiosity.

It must be Tom Riddle's concierge that donned the masks. And there was a strange connection she felt for them.

From afar was unearthly, enigmatic song. It was like men of a certain high rank of a church, demonstrating their worship to the Savior.

Alice thought of the men or boys in the masks some more. She could not remember the night she was taken to the boathouse and met the prostitutes. That night had been wiped away, but not completely eradicated. For it could never be quite taken from the unconscious.

The blood grew thicker, the puddles deepened. The music ebbed and then flowed again.

At last, there was a glorious and grisly sight to behold!

The singing men were in a large, spacious room the size of a small cathedral. They were raised off the floor, gliding. Their bare feet hovering well above the ground. Cowled over in black robes, they looked subdued and detached from reality, all but for their melodious voices. On their heads they wore cone-shaped hoods.

But upon reflection, Alice quickly surmised it was a scene akin to one from another of her favourite books called 'Dante’s Inferno'! Yes, it was like Hell.

There was another group below the drifting singers.

Dozens of naked bodies cloyed at each other on the ground. They were the source of the blood. They hacked and cloyed with knives, not wands. More blood spilt, but they laughed like it was the utmost carnal pleasure. Flesh to flesh was torn, appendages of feet, legs, fingers, ears and arms amassed in piles. Even with missing limbs the strange people hobbled. They wiggled and fought each other energetically. The enchantments supplied a strange, unnatural, most unholy vigor. This was advanced Dark magic for sure.

Alice could not believe how wrong and immoral this was. She put a shocked hand to thin lips. If there was any noise, even a peep they would see the newcomer.

Finally, Alice spotted her employer. The Head Boy, Master Riddle had his backed turned. Thank goodness! He was leading the procession, which was luckily not heading toward the columns.

The visceral scene of cloying monstrous naked bodies played out. Heart pounding Alice darted behind an edifice, a rotund Roman column. All that she dared, was to sneak only a peek with one eyeball.

She studied the forms, spilling more and more blood with their sharp knives. But they never died. To her horror, she surmised they were students, probably abducted from their beds, and enchanted to attack each other and somehow forced to enjoy it! Alice prayed they would return in one piece. She did not know they were chosen. Each and every one of them, for the sole reason for being Mudbloods.

The brotherhood went up and down in lines, chanting in Latin over and over again, oblivious it seemed to the depravity below their feet. The Dark Order was a hegemony of power, a most secretive fraternity. Alice thought she was probably the only outsider to ever witness these rituals.

And at the front of the queue, was the Master, Tom Riddle. The powerful timbre of his voice rung out, magnified several times. He was controlling them like puppets on a string. The long yew wand poised in the air like a musician conducting an orchestra. The other hand swayed a pot with smoke coming out. So that of course was the source of incense in the corridors.

He was the Alpha, totally in charge. And they were obligated to accede. He the head, and they the synchronized body. The line went down in perfect formation and in the ceremonial robes flowed. They were all such sickly goons! Alice could not dare look at those masked faces, for it stirred an odd passion and made her pelvis burn again, like flames that would never die.

Below the gliding followers, Mudbood sparred against Mudblood. Each with a dagger, for their wands had been temporarily taken from them as humiliation. They slew their flesh off with excitement. There was no agitation at wounding each other; and smiting their flesh. In fact, they seemed excited by the possibility of dying by mortal wounds. And blood was everywhere with excitement in the air. It was a bloodbath; a violent entertainment and they seemed to enjoy it immensely.

Yes, this was like the languishing bodies of sinners in 'Dante’s Inferno', forever holding company with the demons and beasts of Hell. Those poor victims! Alice couldn’t help but be sorry for them. Yet there was something extraordinarily mystical about Riddle’s following. It was a fusion of magic and religion.

The bodies ceased their frenzied play and lay like empty husks. The life force, the power and magic had been sucked away from them.

Finally, Alice tore her gray eyes away. For she had a mission tonight, and the time was ripe to get the key to uncover what exactly Tom Riddle was. This wasn't evil. This was beyond any pre-conceived notions of what people knew as 'usual evil'.


NOTE: I am going to get busy planning the climax.