"A level of despair is reached, where people are willing to die to punish their tormentors." ~ William Kammeraad
September 15th, 1943
We had a most difficult summer, induced by us having to go back to Madam Westyn's. And let me tell you, I would rather eat poison than go back to that Godforsaken place.... Unfortunately, being here at school is no piece of cake either. If I hear one more of those idiotic girls saying Tom was "oh so brave for capturing that monster," I'm going to pull every single piece of hair from my scalp out.
---
"Ohh, Tom is so brave!" the girls would coo.
Every day since she'd arrived back in school she heard the same spiel in the corridors over and over again: "Tom is very brave!" "Tom is so cute!" Hearing all of this made Miriam want to retch. And if that wasn't bad enough, stories on how he had captured the "culprit" grew more fantastical every day.
"I heard he challenged him to a wizard's duel!"
"No! I heard he wrestled him to the ground and was able to summon the Ministry of Magic to school property!"
"You are all way off! Nobody can just Apparate onto school property! Not even the Ministry of Magic! Don't you ever read Hogwarts, A History?"
"Hearing all this makes me want to vomit!" Miriam grumbled darkly that evening in the common room, downing her fifth butterbeer of the night. "If only they knew the real truth!" she exclaimed, slamming her bottle on the table, causing it to spill over. "If only they knew that it was really Tom who killed Myrtle and set loose that monster! They'd all be singing a different tune!"
"Maybe you should tell Dumbledore?" Marcella imparted.
The idea was a good one, but she had serious doubts about it.
Would he believe her?
Though being back at Hogwarts was certainly a welcome change from living at Madam Westyn's, she couldn't help but still feel the sense of sadness every time she entered the castle. It was almost as if, secretly, it knew that there was a student that would never be setting foot in there ever again....
All thanks to my worthless brother, she thought bitterly.
Things between the two of them had changed drastically. No longer did she wish to speak to the "bloody murderer," so she ignored him whenever they were in the same room together. Though she wasn't speaking to him, that didn't prevent her from looking in on him with her magic book whenever she felt like it. One such evening, once her homework had been finished and safely put away, she quietly went up to the girls' dormitories and pulled out her book.
"Show me Tom Riddle."
A figure began to appear on the pages.... The scenery was blurred in the background as the image cleared and Miriam watched Tom pace back and forth. He was speaking into the air.... He turned around and began walking back to a table where a quill was standing straight up on an open page in the book. Every word he spoke made the quill skate across the pages gracefully.
"Only Dumbledore seems to think Hagrid is innocent," Tom said, the quill continuing its little skate across the open book's pages. "He persuaded Dippet to keep Hagrid and train him as gamekeeper. Everyone has fallen for the ruse that Hagrid had opened the Chamber and not me. Though there seem to be some that thought otherwise... Dumbledore and my sister Miriam. Because of the events last year, Dumbledore has been keeping an annoying close watch on me, and I've only been back to school for two weeks now."
Tom continued to pace back and forth, causing Miriam to wonder if he was going to wear a rut in the floor soon.
"With his insolent meddling, I've decided to not open the Chamber again while at school...."
She slammed the book shut. Every time she heard Tom mentioning the events of the previous year, her blood went cold and the feeling of bitterness coursed through her veins. Right at that moment, she decided that first thing the next morning, she would certainly talk to Dumbledore.
September 17th, 1943
I never got to see Dumbledore last night. I ran into Tom, and I think he read my mind, for almost instantaneously, he seemed to know that I was going to Dumbledore's office. He stared at me, his eyes penetrating my mind.... Then he did something I never thought he'd do....
---
"You tell anyone, especially Dumbledore about what you know, and I swear I will make you and your friends... and your darling little Henry pay!" he threatened, narrowing his slightly red eyes to the point of slits. Miriam gulped and shook her head.
"No! I wasn't going to see Dumbledore –"
"Liar! I know you're LYING!" he shouted, his face scrunched up as he rounded on her, his narrowed eyes ablaze. "You don't think I'm serious... or capable, do you?"
Miriam stayed quiet, too afraid to say or do the wrong thing in front of him. Tom forcefully grabbed her by the arm and dragged her through many hallways, obviously in search of something... or someone.
"Tom, you're hurting me!" she exclaimed, trying to wiggle her arm away from his iron-tight clasp, but it proved futile as his grip only stiffened more. She looked down at her arm, Tom's hand leaving a large hand print in its wake.
"You'll see," he mumbled.
He led her down one hallway, and just so happened, he found the person he was looking for.... Henry was slowly walking along the hallway, his face in a book, entirely unaccompanied. Tom let go his tight grasp of Miriam and walked toward Henry, cornering him into the wall. Miriam watched, with an acid feeling in her stomach, as Tom raised his wand at shoulder length to Henry.
"Crucio!"
The book fell out of Henry's hand as he fell to the floor, shaking and crying uncontrollably with pain. He screamed and withered on the floor, grabbing his head, his face contorting with agony. From where she stood, watching this horrific act, she was frozen in her spot. Her breath quickened as she watched in utter horror as her boyfriend lay screaming on the floor. Tears were swelling up in her eyes as she helplessly watched.
"Tom! Please..." she cried. "STOP!"
Tom, apparently, wasn't through with his torture of Henry. With his wand raised once more, his mouth curving into wicked smile, he prepared to bellow the words "Obliviate!" Miriam gasped "No!", startling Tom and causing his word to sound slightly muffled. A small relief of hope swelled within her. Since the spell wasn't said properly, it wouldn't have the full effect as if he said it correctly. Tom looked jeeringly at Henry, gave Miriam a say-anything-and-die look, and then sauntered off, leaving Henry nothing more than dazed, confused, and whimpering in pain on the floor. Miriam quickly rushed off toward the nurse's office and grabbed Michellina, hurriedly explaining to her what had just happened. But she didn't explain that Tom had caused it. Together they rushed down to where Henry still lay.
"Oh dear," Michellina mumbled as she examined Henry. His pain seemed to have subsided as he was no longer wincing on the floor, but he still appeared out of touch with reality. "Did you happen to see who did this?"
"No," Miriam lied. Though she wanted desperately to tell her everything she knew, she held her tongue. If Tom could use an Unforgivable Curse so freely on Henry, then Tom could certainly kill him if he found out she confessed. Not to mention her....
As Michellina conjured a stretcher and levitated Henry onto it, and left while Tom's words reverberated through her head.... "You tell anyone, especially Dumbledore about what you know, and I swear I will make you and your friends... and your darling little Henry pay!"
~*~
Weeks went by, and Henry slowly started to improve under Michellina's tending, though his memory of the attack (and the attacker) was still lagging. And though the pain of watching him suffer tore her up inside, it was no match for the pain she was about to intentionally inflict upon herself and Henry.
"Henry, we need to talk," Miriam sighed morosely, sitting beside Henry who sat up in his hospital bed.
"What?" he asked, managing a small smile for her.
"I... I..." she began, having a difficult time saying the words as they hurt her too much to say them. "I... I think we need to start seeing other people," she said, not meeting his eyes. Henry looked at her, the anemic smile slowly fading from his face. "Haa haa," he replied, thinking it was all just some joke.
"No! It's not a joke! It's...it's...."
What? Not safe to be around me? she thought. She couldn't very well say it like that, but somehow she needed to allude to that fact.
"Don't you love me still?" Henry asked.
"I do, I really do!" she exclaimed. "It's just... I think we need some time apart."
Because my brother is a lunatic who goes and hurts people close to me, simply for the fact that I found out he opened the Chamber and killed Myrtle.
Henry sighed deeply. He looked away and faced the front doors of the infirmary, apparently deep in thought.
"I wouldn't be doing this is I didn't think it was necessary," Miriam whispered, her eyes becoming wet with tears. "There's so much more I wish I could tell you, but I can't. Just please trust me on this," she whispered.
"I wish I could remember who attacked me," he said, changing the subject, but still looking away from her. Miriam rested her head in her hands and sighed heavily. She didn't know how long she sat there like that, but eventually she got up and noticed that the sun was starting going down.
"Goodbye, Henry," she said, finally breaking the long silence between then. Kissing him on the cheek, he continued to stare ahead while she quietly left the infirmary. Her heart was broken in pieces, and she cried all the way back to the common room.
~*~
Those next few months were nothing short of brutal for Miriam. When things were finally starting to look up for her, the fragile ground gave away, causing Miriam to once again be left to pick up the shattered pieces of her heart.
"Oh the little pieces falling, shatter.
Shards of me,
Too sharp to put back together.
Too small to matter,
But big enough to cut me into so many little pieces.
If I try to touch her,
And I bleed,
And I breathe,
I breathe no more..."
November 10th, 1943
I don't know why I'm writing in here again. It's not like my life has improved or anything. Quite the contrary, really.... The only good thing to have happened is that Henry is now out of the infirmary....
---
Tom, obviously thinking he had won their battle by forcing Miriam to keep quiet and in turn making her break up with Henry, didn't make him any happier. He still acted as though nothing had happened between the three of them.
Though it had been some time since she had broken up with Henry, Miriam still didn't feel any better. Her life had recently taken a nosedive and though she tried to stop it, she couldn't help but feel that something much worse was coming. Her new state of depression slowly began taking its toll on her. She hardly talked her friends, barely ate anything, and her eyes started to get bags under them from lack of sleep. The breaking point came when she was passing by a group of Hufflepuffs near the entrance to the Gryffindor Tower, coming back from a bad day in Potions class.
"Did you hear about Diggory? I heard he's been seen with some Ravenclaw girl."
"Last I heard, he was dating somebody from the Gryffindor house. I wonder what happened between them? They always seemed so happy together."
"I dunno."
So, Henry has a new girlfriend, she thought bitterly. The stairs leading to the common room and up to the girls' dormitories seemed to take forever to climb; each step she took felt like it was breaking her heart all over again. Appreciative that the girls' dorm was empty, she quietly closed the door and slid down beside her bed... her words reiterating in her head: Henry has a new girlfriend.
The thought made her bitter as she thought it over, unaware that she had absentmindedly thrown her bookbag across the room - the contents spilling all over the place. Sighing, she began to gather the stuff up, mumbling to herself. Once the papers had been restored inside the bag, she went in search of her Potions bottle and her paring knife. They were lying next to the foot of Sophie's bed. She sighed again as she clenched the knife tightly in her hands.... Her potions bottle fell to the floor as she slowly dropped herself. Anger swelled through her as she thought of the cause of all this pain she felt: Tom. The stupid fool he is.
She could barely see straight, tears were starting to sting her eyes. Holding the knife, she brought her fingers up to the blade, letting it slowly cut her fingers. Not wanting the whole common room below to hear her cry out, she bit her tongue. Though it kept her from screaming, it unfortunately only contributed more pain onto herself. Looking at her fingers, which were now covered in blood, a small triumphant smile broke onto her face. No, she wasn't going to scream, she rather liked the pain. It was the only thing that muffled the anguish she felt in her heart.
Picking up the knife again, she gripped it tightly around the hilt, and slowly dragged it over her arm, leaving a blood-red trail behind it. Half-blinded by tears in her eyes, she continued cutting her arm, it now looking like a scratched and bloody zigzag roadmap.
Her hand eventually gave out, and the bloodied knife fell to the floor with a soft thump, leaving little drops of blood splattered everywhere on her and on the floor. She didn't bother to cover the wound up, she just let it continue bleeding, letting the evil blood that Grindelwald shared with her ooze out from her veins.
December 4th, 1943,
I haven't felt much like writing recently. Sophie and Marcella are deeply concerned for me, as I haven't been associating with them much this year. They know something's wrong - I've never told them exactly what happened between me and Henry, but they have a strong suspicion as to what occurred.
My arm and fingers have healed completely, only a small scar from what I did to myself remains behind. I was glad that it was winter, as the long robe sleeves, sweaters, and gloves covered the injuries. Sophie and Marcella would have been deeply concerned about me if they'd seen what I'd done to myself.
---
Days slowly faded by, and things weren't still weren't any better for Miriam. The rumors were indeed true... Henry did have a new girlfriend, a pretty Ravenclaw brunette. She saw them one afternoon in the library holding hands and looking very cozy together. Watching this filled her with anger, along with great sadness. In the back of her mind, she was deeply tempted to throw herself off from the highest point of the castle that night. Questions lingered in her mind as to whether she would actually follow through with it....
On one such afternoon, she decided to skip lunch and take a small rest outdoors. It had been several months since she and Henry broke up, but the pain still felt fresh.
Leaning back against a large oak tree, she looked around at her surroundings. The giant squid was doing laps around the lake, and down further on the lawns was Hagrid. He was standing there, talking to the head groundskeeper. Miriam turned her attention to him and watched as he turned around and wandered off into the Forbidden Forest with a crossbow in hand.
It still made her angry when she saw him doing arduous labor, and not in Hogwarts where he belonged, all because he was wrongly accused of opening the Chamber and killing Myrtle. Her brother was merely fifteen years old last semester, and yet, he'd single-handedly ruined the lives of three people: Hers, his, and Hagrid's.
December 9th, 1943
I've done something that I can't believe I just did.... I signed up to leave Hogwarts for the winter holiday. Owing to the fact that I need to get away from here for a bit, I'll be spending my Christmas with Sophie and Marcella. Sophie's family is going to the Swiss Alps, and she has invited me and Marcella to come with her. I really can't wait to go.
January 5th, 1944
The winter holidays are over, and classes have resumed once more. Tom, meanwhile, got stuck here for the winter holiday, and he wasn't too pleased to hear that I had left to go to the Swiss Alps with my friends.... HA! Serves him right.
---
Classes were even tougher now than they had been in the past. With NEWTs coming the following year, many of the teachers began preparing the sixth years early. Between being boggled down with homework, Miriam found her broken heart was finally beginning to mend after all this time.
It had been a rather dreary day - a dark overcast was plunging the school into an early darkness, and heavy rains had been pelting the school on and off since that morning. When classes were finished, she decided to go up to her room and read the new letter she had recently got from her relatives.
Lyrics used above are from the song "Breath No More" by Evanescence.