Three

  Infiltration

  The air was thick and hot in the Slytherin common room. The clock above the mantel clicked back and forth repetitively, the hands reaching to midnight. Rosalie took no notice of it, though her bodily clock was edging to tell her to go to sleep so she wouldn't be so tired the next day, as she usually was.

  The glow of the crackling fireplace cast shadows on the dark walls, they moved with the fire in a way that seemed to mimic the uncertainty plaguing her mind. Rosalie lay on her back on one of the black leather couches, the small of her back sticking uncomfortably to the material. 

  Rose's fingers traced along the letter she held on to, the smell of parchment filled the room as she looked over the seal, it was her father's, Gallert Grindelwald's seal.

  Some part of her never realised that he would actually check up on her while she was put on duty for this mission, but the other part of her felt stupid for thinking that. He had taken a risk, putting Rose out into the world trying to uncover the secrets of some sociopathic wizard. 

  Though she felt sadness and anger inside of her, she barely showed a thought on her face, she traced along the lines of the envelope for a few minutes, working up her courage to open it and see what he had said to her inside. 

  Soon enough Rosalie unfolded the parchment, reminding her of her duty almost automatically. Her father wrote to her of the secrets and responsibilities that came with her being at Hogwarts. How she needed to be quick and precise, and to under any circumstance, not be caught. That, she could assume, would end with her stuck at home, punished for the rest of her miserable life.

  Grindelwald also spoke of his success in the war, though how had gained that success, was a fact that he kept veiled and away from Rosalie, which she could thank him for.

  "With such success in this war, my dear Rosie, I can only assume that we will hold power in a short length of time." He wrote. Rosalie bit the inside of her cheeks at the words. 

  "I also harbour the hope that in time you will also come to find solace in our victories, and you will not get too used to attending that forsaken school." He continued to write. 

  Rosalie shivered to the thought. The strict muggle regime that her father planned was beyond anything she would ever want. It was a horrible image of prejudice and oppression, they were no different to terrorists.

  He relayed the weight of expectations he had set on Rosalie's shoulders, and how important it was that they new if Tom Riddle was a threat. 

  She already knew inside of herself that Tom was a threat, but the selfish part inside of her needed to stay at Hogwarts longer, to have a chance at a life she was never given.

  "One day you will become what you were born to be- the culmination of all my aspirations."

  "Much love, Father."

  Rosalie scrunched the parchment in her hands tightly, expressing her anger onto the paper. Without looking, she threw the paper behind her and onto the fire, hearing it crackling on impact. The paper curled and blackened.

  The act itself was a symbol of rebellion for Rosalie. In being so far away from her father, she had grown less and less scared of him, regaining the idea that she could live for herself along the way. 

  Who did Rosalie want to be? What did she want to do?

  As the last ember of the paper screamed, footsteps approached from the side of the boy's dormitories. Rosalie craned her head up slightly, ready to meet the intruder on this monumental moment of her decision to live for herself. 

  Tom entered the room, looking down at her with his usual air of suspicion, that didn't escape Rosalie's notice. He skimmed his eyes down her body, dressed in nothing but a short slip of a nightdress. His face tightened at the sight of her.

  "What are you doing up so late Evans?" He asked with poison, looking around the room as if it would tell him all of Rose's hidden truths.

  Rosalie, ever quick-witted, replied casually, "Just dealing with some personal matters."

  Again, Tom found himself drawn with curiousity for her. Her voice enticed him like a siren's singing, his body told him desperately to believe every word she said. His brain, ever calculating, said different. Tom was a man of following his head rather than his heart.

  So, Tom's skepticism lingered. He walked around to her to see her lying nonchalantly on the sofa, spread out like some museum portrait. He sensed there was more to her personal matters than she let on. 

  As he stood over her, peering down at her unmoving body, she began to remind Tom of something, or one night in specific when he had taken the steps to become the man he was today.

  It was a sudden plunge into an abyss of memories taken from only a month or so ago, the weight of the past crashed onto him with an unexpected force. A haunting vision of the night so many weeks ago etched into the darkest part of his conscious.

  The room transformed into the chilling moment he stood over the lifeless bodies of his dirty muggle father and grandparents. The air was thick with the echoing of their bloody screams, his mind completely indulged into that fateful night. The memory was a pained guest, a scar etched into the fabric of his soul.

  In the depths of his mind, he could still see Rosalie lying on the couch, looking up to him dearly, her form mirroring the positions of the long gone family that he was responsible for. Her arms lay above her head just as his father's did when he had begged for mercy- and Tom hadn't given it.

  The terror on his fathers face, the undoing of the world as he knew it before Tom, his only son, was the cause of his demise. The cruel irony of the resemblance sent shivers down Tom's spine. The past and present converged into a surreal moment, blurring the lines between reality and memory. 

  Tom could still feel everything he felt on that cold night. The intoxication of power that had consumed him, clawed at his heart strings again. The distant echoes of their final breaths, the accusations in their lifeless eyes, reverberated through the hallows of his mind. 

  The desire for control, the insatiable hunger that had driven to commit the unspeakable acts. Yes, Tom knew they were unspeakable, but the welcomed the feelings with intensity. The room's walls seemed to close in on him, and the flames that cast as shadows from his past taunted him. His pulse quickened along with his erratic thoughts.

  For a moment he stood between those two worlds, one where there was a beautiful woman on his sofa taunting him with the ghosts of his past, and one that was stained with blood and made him lust for that sense of power it gave him.

  As he forced himself return to the present, he tried to shake the shadowy vision that he had once decided to completely bury.

  Tom brought the conversation back to Rosalie. "Personal matters? You're a woman full of secrets." He continued to look down at her, her exposed collarbone teasing him effortlessly with her skins glow.

  A mischievous glint sparkled in Rosalie's eyes, and Tom despised it. He despised the not knowing, the mystery beneath her skin.

  "Well you know me. Always one step ahead." Rosalie rolled onto her side as Tom sat on the coffee table, his hands lent over his legs.

  "Ah, but the fact is, Evans, I don't know you. Care to spill anything?" Tom tilted himself to face her properly, Rosalie remained an enigmatic puzzle.

  She leant closer to him, sitting up slightly and grasped onto his tie. Rosalie bit her lips as she tugged at it, fixing it for him as he stayed exhaustingly still.

  "I think you'll trust me sooner than you think." She said, still playing with the tie.

  Tom, maintaining his facade, countered, "Trust isn't something easily earned, Evans."

  Rosalie let go and stood up between his legs, his head at the height of her stomach. She looked down at him, feeling a sense of power flowing through herself that she hadn't held around him before.

  Her eyes twitched around Tom's face, "You'll see. I'll give you a reason." She remained undeterred, her proximity unrelenting.

  Tom soon got tired of her power play and stood up as well, leaving a little less than two inches between them. Rosalie breathed into Tom's chest.

  Tension between them lingered, whoever spoke first would either win or lose, and neither knew what to choose. Tom cleared his throat, looking out to the window.

  Rosalie remained in her position, looking up at Tom with unrelenting eyes. "I want to be in your club, Riddle." She said.

  Tom's face furrowed, leaving a set of wrinkles atop his forehead. "It's not a club." 

  Rosalie smiled, tilting her head. "But there is one, a club. As you've so kindly admitted."

  "You had already figured as much, Evans." Tom said to her quickly, in an irritated manner that let him forget their proximity.

  Rosalie lifted her eyebrows in triumph. "And I would be a great addition."

  Tom laughed at her, his breath on the top of her head. Neither backing down. "And yet not a welcome one, you're intolerable and untrustworthy."

  Rosalie couldn't deny him on that, she had given him no reason to trust her. It was something that she would have to plan to do without Tom's knowledge of it. He was a snake, ready to poison her at the slightest show of weakness or danger.

  Rose grabbed Tom's tie again, this time holding it closer as she held herself to him, only mere centimetres away from his face.

  "You will trust me soon enough. I swear to you." 

  Tom lifted an eyebrow in curiousity, he desperately wondered how she would do such a thing. Rosalie Evans was even more feisty than he had originally thought. It warmed the inside of him to know of her danger, she was an interesting girl.

  Finally, Rosalie walked away from him without another word or another glance. She entered her room down the hallway and shut the door behind her, leaving Tom in his own pool of thoughts- and to the rather large and surprisingly hardened object in his dress pants, much to his own disgust.

  As Rose closed the door behind her, she leant against it as support for the conversation she had just held. Holding back any sense of fright around Tom was a harsh and tiring process, because he was well and truly frightening. 

  Now alone in her thoughts, Rosalie found herself yet again fighting for her heartbeat to return to normal. She hadn't quite realised the breath she had been holding. She placed a hand over her heart, looking up to Merlin.

  Rosalie knew that her next step was to calculate her next move, to find some way of gaining Tom's trust, no matter how hard the quest was. Rose had to be rid of the idea that Tom would ever fully trust her, but she believed that he had the possibility of harbouring respect and the tiniest amount of trust for her if she played her cards right.

  Rosalie walked towards the window, which looked out under the Black Lake. She leant against the frame and went over it all in her head, frame by frame to try and figure out the missing piece. She held the weight of her father's expectations, was entrapped in the cryptic nature of Tom's world, and the tapestry of her own ambitions were knitted together in a complex manner. she pondered her next move in this game of chess.

  Her mind was a battlefield of strategies and uncertainties. How was she supposed to make Tom Riddle, the most suspicious man she had ever encountered, allow her into his inner circle? It came to Rosalie that she would have to start in a reverse manner.

  What did Tom Riddle trust the least?

  She thought about it in her mind for a moment. Rosalie thought about the speech he had given William, Ben, and Coriolanus in the disappearing room a few nights ago. Trust, secrets and lies. 

  And then she had it. Tom hated liars, he hated anything that was uncertain and anything that could put him at risk of being found or killed. It was a fair enough notion to suggest- and it made complete sense.

Rosalie settled on a plan, consisting of a calculated frame up of someone he thought that he trusted. Someone that she could use and make Tom trust her and not them. She would entangle Tom in a web of deception.

  But her intricate scheme demanded the sacrifice of an unwitting participant. She traced the curve of her chin with he fingertips, watching the green and blue water slap into itself. 

  The soft glow of the moonlit room embraced her like a confidant, whispering secrets only the night could comprehend. Rosalie's eyes flickered with determination as she visualised the outcome of her plan, and the dangerous path to it between shadows and truth.

  Rosalie thought of her father, and how she had came here in the first place. If she were to tell Tom that someone had been spilling his secrets to Grindelwalds followers, and she pinned it to someone, when he went searching for answers, he would find it to be right, and that, in fact someone had spilled his secrets.

  It was an evil plan, but something Rose saw as necessary. She needed to know what happened within Tom's inner circle.

"Rose? What are you doing up?" A small and quiet voice asked from beside her. Rose looked down at Amy apologetically. The girl yawned quietly and stretched, her blinking eyes pulled her back to the land of the awake.

  "I'm sorry Amy, I didn't mean to wake you up. I was just thinking." Rosalie whispered back, not wanting to wake up Lily as well.

  It was no use now, Amy was up and ready to talk. She sat up on her bed, leaning against the wall as she looked at Rosalie with curiousity. 

  "What is it, really?" Amy asked more seriously. 

  Rose looked down at her, questioning her motives. A sudden wave of feeling like Tom washed over her.  It was tiring to be so distrusting of everyone.

  "What is it about Tom that makes him so dark?" Rose looked at Amy with a wall of wondering backed behind her blue eyes, the intent went so deep it scared Amy like it did when she looked into Tom's eyes.

  Amy looked away from her, unable to bare the intensity.

  "Some people say he has no soul. I don't think that, I'm sure he can change if he really wants to... Some people even thought he killed that girl last year- but after Rubeous was-" 

  "He killed someone?" Rosalie interrupted her, with the immediate notion that if there was even a question that Tom had killed someone, it was probably true.

  "No, of course not. Tom's a nice person." She tried to persuade Rose but her mind was already swayed.

Rosalie looked out of the window, wondering how much deeper this pool of mysteries could go. To figure out the true extent of Tom's darkness, she would have to dive into his heart and soul.

--- 

Tom Marvolo Riddle had undoubtedly killed that girl last year. 

  The sun was low in the sky, casting long shadows across the field where Rosalie reclined in the long grass. The same field had greeted her just a few weeks ago and had become a familiar haven.

  In her hands, Rosalie cradled a book, its pages flittering in the gentle breeze. The cover bore the weight of many stories, but today, it was just a backdrop to the thoughts swirling in Rosalie's mind. Her eyes swung from word to word, absorbing the tales within. 

  Yet, her focus was like always, inevitably drifting towards Tom Riddle. The grass beneath her was turning slightly bothersome. Rose resisted the urge to scratch her back, instead playing with the grass and letting her senses become engulfed in the smell of the earth.

  Since the conversation she had had with Amy, the chamber of secrets was all she could think about. Hearing that it had been pried open the previous year was all too suspicious for Rosalie to overlook. A girl- Myrtle, had met her end. Petrified and then slain by an unknown beast.

  It sounded like Tom Riddle alright. Rosalie couldn't escape the ominous feeling that, like ink on paper, Tom's name was written all over this dark chapter of history.

  Finally, Rosalie closed the book, sitting up, she looked all around her to the sound and sight of nothing but nature. It was something she dearly welcomed. Her sundress flapped against the gentle breeze as she stood up, taking a short path towards the Black lake.

  When her wandering led her to the edge of the lake, she noticed that the water mirrored the sky's colours, a range of orange and blue all mixed to create a symphony. In the near distance, the castle stood against the horizon as a beautiful silhouette. 

  The trail she had followed revealed a secluded entrance to the lake, obscured and overtaken by willow branches that looked to dance with the wind, its leaves flying off along with the breeze. The secluded spot created an intimate space where nature met the allure of the unknown water. 

  Rosalie felt the wind against her skin, and she made a spontaneous decision, fuelled by a desire to break free even further from the life she once had. Her clothes dropped to the ground like the leaves, leaving her bare, beautiful, and open to the world, and the cold beneath her feet was a sensation she hadn't felt in a long time.

  With an understanding of what complete freedom could feel like, Rosalie stepped into the water, the lake embracing her in its coolness. Her skin gradually became used to the soothing temperature. Every movement she made created a painting of ripples on the lakes surface.

  From afar, Ben Avery watched with great caution and intrigue, unknown to Rosalie as she lay herself further into the water.