FIC: The counsel of the wicked (Tom/Minerva) 4/13

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Title: IV. The counsel of the wicked
Character Pairing: Tom Riddle/Minerva McGonogall
Prompt: The counsel of the wicked
Rating: PG
Word Count: 904 (I am undergoing wordiness rehabilitation.)
Summary: A little night conversation, of a sort.
Author's notes: 'Blitzen' is 'lightning' in German, hence 'Blitzkrieg' as 'lightning war,' and apparently one of Santa's reindeers. The Maginot Line was a spectacularly unsuccessful set of fortifications built by the French after WWI, prompting an English proverb.
Link to Prompt Table: Table


IV. The counsel of the wicked
Minerva wound a slightly unsteady path away from Gryffindor tower. Merlin, she needed to think! She hadn't felt quite so woozy since she had pilfered the spare bottle of Glenfiddich from her father's desk and had an experimental glass or five. Shaking, blue from the cold already, her hands shoved themselves into the pockets of her dressing gown the moment they weren't required to hold her upright. The castle walls were a Maginot line against the wind: not a stone in the stronghold out of place, yet the tempest ripped through it anyway.
"If you're looking for that wayward troublemaker of yours, 'Nerve, follow the reindeer hooves. He's probably trying to enchant one to fly. God knows he needs it, no broom'll take him."
A slightly disturbed laugh cracked through the corridor.
"I wonder which Blitzen he'll find first: the mammal or the lightning? It's all blitzkrieg these days, even in England! Well, the royal family are all Jerries, what do you expect? Democracy?"
"You're drunk, Riddle," she accused, sure of the voice, if not the state of its owner.
"Pot meet kettle. You're not so sober yourself, Minerva. At least I haven't been reduced to stating the obvious."
"If you don't mind your words, I will transfigure you into a pot, then we'll see who is the pot calling the kettle black!" she retorted, accent rendering her slurred words nearly unintelligible.
"What are ye doing up this late, ye wee bairn?" her antagonist mocked.
"I needed a walk to clear my head," she snarled.
Minerva was just sober enough to avoid walloping him about the face. An English rose was she not, as much as she spoke like one normally.
"Oh, I know you aren't," he murmured.
A warm breath gusted past her ear. She gasped involuntarily and clenched the wand in her pocket. Bloody legilimency.
Thomas Marvolo Riddle didn't step from the shadows, she fancied. He simply materialised into thin air the same way his warm laugh did. It coaxed, entreated, equal parts darkness and light, and a flash of something terribly wicked.
"If you were I would never hit you back!"
Another ripple of laughter. Gods, what would the professors think, should one of them come along? Hogwarts' luminaries drunken, disorderly and half-dressed, looking for all the world like they were trying to find a dark corner in which to--
"Walking, are you? You liar. Testing one's Animagus skills in your state is hardly wise, my dear. And aren't we branching out tonight, my little thistle? Deception, intoxication, envy, I would never have though it possible to tarnish that shining exterior of yours!"
He smiled suddenly, stepping towards her.
"But what does it matter? I'll manage eventually, I just need to find the right...words."
He was still smiling.
"What are you doing breaking curfew?" she ground out. "Monster frightened away by that shiny Prefect's badge? Avoiding that limpet-like tart on your arm all evening?"
Oh, if only he had asked, the coward! All that time they had spent over the summer and that fool hadn't worked her out. She would have seen no shame in attending the Ball with him, no matter how many others might whisper about him as an English hayseed with a patrician name and a plebeian manner.
At least he was no longer smiling.
"I...Oh, it's stupid. Humiliating, even! I, I, the--"
He turned away, bone and muscle lifting the outline of his evening robes in a shrug. Minerva saw nothing suspicious in the gesture, no checked blurting out of an unguarded secret. Marvolo composed himself.
"That portrait before the Slytherin common room is off for the night. Gone quicker after midnight than a Tommy being chased by the Afrikakorps."
He muttered something rather ungracious about what exactly the portrait of Salazar Slytherin was doing and with whom. Minerva erupted into giggles.
"You're locked out!"
She started wobbling back to her warm bed in Gryffindor, still snickering. Let Thomas Marvolo be abusive to someone else, as usual. He burned too brightly, his barbs too quick and sharp and accurate.
His fingers shot out and grasped her shoulder.
"Minerva. Let me come with you."
"No."
"Dumbledore's precious Gryffindors won't rat on one of their own."
"No, no, no! Where am I going to put you? And if your next words are 'inside you,' then I will be the first student expelled for murder!"
He laughed.
"I follow you, put on a Vanishing Charm when we reach the tower and float over the stairs instead of setting the alarm off. You exile me to the chaise longue, ensconce yourself in the bedroom and wake up unmolested in the morning. What harm can it do?"
She scowled. Hades, he really had thought of everything.
"How do you know I even have a chaise longue?"
He smiled.
"That Head Boy you've been avoiding all year is a Slytherin. If his quarters are anything like yours--"
"Fine."
"I expected a fight," he commented.
That slight, confused frown did make his eyebrows move in a distinguished manner. Oh, stop that, she scolded herself. Having no desire to balk halfway into her exercise in stupidity, she seized him by the sleeve and dragged him in the direction of Gryffindor tower.
"I'll have one ready in the morning."