CHAPTER 188: NO MORE ’LOONY’

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The first-years collectively exhaled when they heard Tom’s words.

So he just needed them for something. For a moment, they’d been terrified he was about to punish them.

This year’s crop hadn’t been around for the spectacle of Tom putting every prefect in their place, but the story was impossible to keep quiet. Too many had seen it with their own eyes.

And now the weight Tom carried with him only grew heavier by the day. Among the first-years, Astoria was the sole exception—everyone else was afraid of him.

"Who are your year’s prefects?" Tom asked.

Two students shuffled forward at once. Astoria leaned in and whispered an introduction.

"The girl’s Celeste Rowle—my roommate. The boy’s Caspar Bulls."

Tom gave a small nod. "Relax. It’s nothing serious. You all know Luna Lovegood from Ravenclaw, don’t you?"

"Loony Lovegood?" one girl muttered before she could stop herself.

Tom’s head turned. Just that glance was enough to make the girl clap her hands over her mouth, terror flooding her face as if some primeval beast had fixed her in its sights.

"I don’t care what you called her before," Tom said evenly. "But from this day on, watch yourselves."

His fingers tapped lightly against the armrest, each rhythm somehow syncing with their own pounding hearts, forcing them to hang on his every word.

"Lovegood did me a favor. That makes her my friend. Nobody calls her Loony again."

They nodded frantically. When Tom’s fingers stilled, they felt as though they could finally breathe again.

"Also... I’ve heard she doesn’t get along too well with her dorm mates."

"That’s true," Celeste offered quickly. "I even overheard Melrose making fun of her last week. She hid Lovegood’s slippers. Took days before Luna found them."

"Then we’ll start with her," Tom said softly. "Bullying my friend is the same as bullying me. Hard to believe anyone at Hogwarts is dumb enough to try. I should probably..." He coughed lightly, then smirked. "Forget it. I’m a merciful person. Blood on the floor gets messy."

A few students ducked their heads to hide the looks on their faces. Merciful?

Wasn’t this the boy who’d once slammed a professor into a wall so hard they had to be pried out, then whipped him half to death afterward?

"I understand," Caspar said quickly. "We’ll warn the Ravenclaws, make sure Miss Lovegood is treated fairly."

"Wrong," Tom corrected him. "Not warn. Retaliate."

"Lovegood doesn’t need fairness. She needs the pests buzzing around her to stop."

Caspar broke into a cold sweat. "Retaliating against a girl is one thing, but if the professors catch us—"

"Then they can come to me," Tom said flatly, cutting him off with a glance. The boy fell silent, heart thundering.

"If it costs you points, I’ll earn them back. If it’s detention, Filch usually handles those—I’ll have a word with him. And if your Head of House gets involved, tell them it was my idea. Professor Snape is... a reasonable man."

"Any other problems?"

"No, sir!" a round-faced boy blurted. "I’ll make sure those Ravenclaw girls start running the other way when they see Lovegood!"

Celeste chimed in, "They’re all cowards. A few lessons and they’ll give up."

Tom’s smile returned. "Good. Spirited. What’s your name?"

"Orion Robert Patterson," the boy stammered.

At that moment, Zabini leaned in. "Tom, he’s... let me think... the son of my fifth stepfather’s brother? That makes him my cousin, doesn’t it?"

Tom’s eyelid twitched. Zabini’s family trees always managed to grow in the strangest directions.

Still, he gave a curt nod, then repeated his promise: he would take responsibility. If older students tried to interfere, the first-years were to bring in older Slytherins for backup.

With that, he dismissed them for breakfast.

If there was one thing Slytherins excelled at, it was bullying. Even their youngest picked it up naturally. Raised from childhood to believe in pure-blood superiority and entitlement, most saw no reason to respect anyone outside their circle.

By midmorning, Melrose and the girls who usually tormented Luna were in for it.

Before class, Celeste deliberately shoulder-checked Melrose and stood there cursing her out for five straight minutes. When Melrose’s friends tried to intervene, other Slytherin girls shoved them aside.

In class, her seat was stolen. Her potion kit was swapped with subpar ingredients, her cauldron ruined.

At last, Slytherins dropped the pretense entirely. They told her to her face: this was deliberate. She and her friends would keep suffering until they stopped bothering Lovegood. And if they dared try again, the payback would be tenfold.

Melrose couldn’t make sense of it. Since when did "Loony Lovegood" have Slytherin’s protection?

By the end of the day, her eyes brimmed with tears.

"Put those disgusting tears away," Astoria snapped, glaring down at her. "Where was this pitiful act when you were tormenting Luna? What you’re feeling right now is only a fraction of what you made her go through."

Not satisfied, Astoria whipped out her wand and sent a Hex into Melrose’s stomach. The girl crumpled to her knees with a cry, collapsing to the floor in pain.

The classroom went still. Even the Slytherins flinched.

Astoria Greengrass had always been the picture of soft-spoken gentility, a delicate girl who spoke in quiet tones and floated through the halls like a porcelain doll, especially when she was near Tom. No one had ever seen her lose her temper. No one had dared to make her angry.

But today she was furious. For so long, she had believed Luna’s troubles were nothing more than snide comments or harmless pranks, the sort of thing Luna herself never complained about. Astoria, as a not-quite-friend, had never felt it was her place to interfere.

Then Celeste had told her the truth.

And Astoria realized just what kind of life Luna had been enduring.

A lady is always a lady. And Astoria, raised under the endless love of her mother and sister, was still very much a daughter of privilege. She was well-mannered, but that didn’t mean she was without a temper. Now that her anger was loosed, the aura of someone used to getting her way radiated off her like heat, suffocating to stand near.

"Remember this," she said, her voice cool and steady. "This is only the beginning. The next week will be your nightmare."

She tucked her wand back into her robes, didn’t spare Melrose another glance, and swept out of the room with a small entourage of Slytherin witches trailing behind.

Astoria hadn’t threatened. She hadn’t blustered. She had simply stated a fact. And Melrose’s life quickly became hell.

Her robes tore mysteriously in the halls. Her shoes vanished, only to reappear slimed with Flobberworm Mucus. In class, her cauldron mysteriously cracked and collapsed in a cloud of smoke.

It was so blatant that everyone noticed.

Some older students tried to step in on her behalf, but they were quickly shut down by Slytherins of the same year. Desperate, Melrose turned to Professor Flitwick for help. But detentions and point deductions meant nothing to Slytherins, and complaining only made her situation worse.

At any other school—or even in Gryffindor or Hufflepuff—this kind of bullying would have already sparked an all-out house war.

But these were Ravenclaws.

Disunited as ever, they weren’t about to stick their necks out, not when it didn’t affect them directly. And by now it was obvious why Melrose was being targeted. She and her friends had gone after Lovegood. They just hadn’t known Lovegood was under Riddle’s protection. They’d picked the wrong victim and were paying the price.

Cho Chang, for one, certainly wasn’t about to speak up for them. Once she realized Tom was behind it all, she considered the matter closed. In fact, she found Melrose’s behavior disgusting.

Tom himself only chuckled, dismissing it with a shrug. Every house had its rotten apples.

...

That week, Tom’s attention was largely consumed by wringing more secrets from Lil Voldy. A few drops of dragon’s blood onto the diary had brought Voldemort sputtering back to life.

But when Tom pressed for more of Slytherin’s legacy, the Dark Lord tried to bargain.

As if Tom would indulge him.

He simply borrowed a bit of Blaze’s unicorn blood and smeared it across the diary’s pages.

The effect was immediate: the diary hissed and smoked as if it were burning alive.

Unicorn blood was potent, pure, and repellent to dark magic. Voldemort himself had once relied on it to survive. But a diary wasn’t a man—it was a cursed object. To something that foul, unicorn blood was like poison.

The Dark Lord crumbled instantly, coughing up concessions along with a new flood of knowledge. This time, Tom made sure to press hard enough that the yield was worthwhile.

Among the scraps Voldemort disgorged was a treasure trove of Slytherin’s work on poisons.

Not potions, not compounds, but spells and magical transmutations—conjurations of pure magic that became venom.

To Andros, it wasn’t much use. But Grindelwald’s eyes gleamed. The principles hidden within those transformations were worth their weight in gold.

Tom didn’t bother studying them yet. He was more interested in keeping Voldemort under pressure. And just let Grindelwald dig through the theory. Tom would take the refined results later.

---

By Friday, the castle was buzzing.

Tonight, the long-suspended Dueling Class was set to reopen, and students were practically vibrating with anticipation. Everyone expected a showdown between Ravenclaw and Slytherin, though no one knew if Melrose and her friends would dare step onto the platform.

At breakfast, owls swooped in, dropping the usual bundles of parcels and newspapers. Nearly everyone read the {Daily Prophet}—with little entertainment in the wizarding world, the paper was half news, half gossip column.

But this morning, a particular article caught every eye.

Not just students. Even professors lowered their papers and looked toward Tom.

On the second page of the Prophet, just beneath the front-page story, ran a bold reprint of an essay.

The author’s name was printed in clear, elegant type.

{Tom Riddle}

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