Sometimes, Nikita doesn't dream of people without faces and clicking cameras and flashing lights until he's blind - sometimes he dreams of sleeping bears with sharp teeth and white-black claws and bowing and bowing and kissing the floor because he bows so deeply, applause roaring like the dark, angry sea, and drowning in a lake out of notes and sounds and commitments but he isn't able to swim to the surface because there's nothing corporal to suffocate him except himself.

And when Nikita bolts up in his bed, his fair hair even lighter because of the cold sheen of sweat covering him, his finger tips are tingling, the phantom sensation of playing piano, tickling the sleeping bear and drowning in music.

He despises it.

Nikita doesn't want to have to do with music that comes out of him anymore, he's dried out long ago and there's never been much passion in his playing anyways. Whenever reading in critiques that his playing is robotic or mechanic or whatever, he's silently agreed because for him it's been like this, he hasn't ever played with real emotions except anger and such - however, his father's been ranting about the "obvious need for cultivation" and "the missing taste and ears" of those "dog-fucking bastards". 

And then Nikita's had to practice more because they might be right and Vasili couldn't let his son's success go because some think, he has a poor way to create atmosphere.

And Nikita's practiced and practiced and created atmosphere over atmosphere, finding out carefully how to touch the bear's claws to not wake him up but produce the right tone colour, abuburn, cerulean, scarlet, pitchblack.

However, there've always been people who like a certain way and dislike the other, no matter if it comes to music or painting or acting or laughing or loving. There'll always be somebody to criticize you, you can count on them.

However, Nikita only has to count on his father because there aren't any critics to judge him anymore - either because they're dead because of war or Nikita's simply vanished from the music world, hiding in the shadows of Hogwart's dungeons.

Nikita Pavlov's sudden disappearing after the last concert he's ever given to the very moment is a big mystery in the world of music, just as popular amongst those who love the rotten air of secrets like the Elgar Enigma and the riddle around Mozart's death.

Has Nikita Pavlov been kidnapped?

Killed?

Died due to war?

Has anybody seen him? You, you, you? Nobody?

Nobody.

And his father? Vasili Ilyich Pavlov? Who's been a world-known pianist himself? 

No? You don't know him?

The one, who's had to retire after loosing an arm!

I've known that you know him!

In England, you say?

England like in Great Britain? What's with good old mother Russia?

Oh, living in his deceased wife's house, I see.

But nobody sees Nikita, at least nobody who'd know that he is (or has been) a widely-known pianist, bar his father of course.

Even though Vasili ins't going to see his son this often anymore too because Nikita's going to turn seventeen in a few days and after finally being an adult wizard he wants to live his own life and not the life his father has wished to live.

Vasili has wished for much and got less than nothing.

He's practiced piano to eight hours a day even though he still has had to work at a richer man's house (where the piano's been), fulfilling his duties, working in the kitchen, chopping vegetables. Fortunately, his boss and patron has been adoring Vasili's playing, supporting the boy, even paying music teachers for him - imagine the talent he's possessing.

And Vasili has wished for a better life.

He's got a bit of it, though. He's been touring, sniffing the glamourus air of high society and getting addicted.

We all know where the addicted end.

On the street.

And Vasili has got a worse life.

After wanting to prove himself, he's had to quit his career because you can't play the piano very well when you merely have five fingers left to play.

Nikita's never got an answer when asking for the missing flesh and lost bones and bygone opportunities - at least if you don't count slaps. If you do, Nikita's got all answers he's never wanted.

But being hit isn't that unusual, not only because war is spreading angst and desperate anger, cloudying minds with hellish fog, but also because it's a usual methode to raise children, sugar for the good ones and blows for the bad.

It seems as if Nikita's been a bad child, too curious ("Otets, where is your second hand?"), too lively (But I've been sitting on this piano bench for already thirty minutes now, otets!"), too interested in things which aren't music ("Look at this bird, otets, isn't it cute? I could watch it the whole day long!").

And for every hit he's received, Nikita's hit the keys twice, hitting right notes and wrong notes, right, right, right, wrong-

Oh, Nikita! Why don't you play what stands written in front of you?

Oh, Nikita! Aren't you able to read the score anymore?

Oh, Nikita! Why don't you ever make anything right?!

But, otets! Aren't mistakes human?

Why would you want to play like a human when you can play like a god? Always aim for gods and never for mortals, Nikita.

Well, Nikita's never aimed very high, only high enough to satisfy his father, what is very high, indeed, but there's always more space to improve and if you want to be a god you have to get perfect but not only at one thing but everything, no matter if playing or smiling or luring people into dark corners to charm them and veil their minds with your mere presence and get them to see one as royalty even though there's filthy blood rushing through your veins.

Gods have to be perfect and Nikita Pavlov is anything but perfect.

Nobody is.

But Tom Riddle is the nearest individual to be a god.

Tom Riddle has never aimed lower than for gods, and even this isn't always high enough for him. He wants always more than there is on his plate of life and because he has nothing; only himself, his ambitions and his talents, no matter if it comes to faking smiles or speaking parseltongue or playing violin.

Not that many'd know of his abilities to lure and charm and play.

However for most people, Tom Riddle is a mystery they crave to understand, his puzzling person is just as interesting for those who love to dig in the pitchblack moor of enigmas as the arcarnum of future or the question about the existence of the Chamber of Secrets.

Oh, have you seen Tom Riddle today? I've neither, what is he doing?

If I wouldn't know better, I'd say he is a bit strange? He never tells anybody anything, you know?

Why I'm in love with him? Because he's a hot riddle, I mean, look at him! He could be a model or a serial killer and nobody'd know but still adore him!

In fact, he indeed is kind of a serial killer after murdering Myrtle Warren and his remaining family paternal, what leads to a total of four corpses in his cellar to be discovered.

Oh, well, if somebody should ever be on the way to descend into Tom's cellar, he'd just hide them a floor deeper or bury them somewhere to never be found - after all he isn't dumb and has a reputation to maintain.

Because Tom Riddle is Hogwarts' golden boy, having perfect grades and perfect looks and perfect manners, more followers than a shark teeth and boys and girls swooning over him like flies over dead flesh. 

However, he can count on nobody, there's only him and there always has been and he is sure that it will always like this.

It's his past, present and future.

Not that Tom'd care, after all he knows that he is more talented and responsible and better in general than his follower, not to mention that he doesn't trust anybody completely. Sometimes not even himself.

However, he kind of trusts his music that streams out of him and one, who doesn't know Tom's disability to feel, would say, that the boy loves it dearly.

It is just amazing to him that these sounds are produced by him, something so natural and beautiful. But the aspect he admires most about his music, next to how it seems to stream out of him like a waterfall, crystal clear droplets in vicious murkiness, and how high his level of skill is, is how honest his music is to him.

When Tom listens closely to his music, past the sirring E-string and the few notes that aren't completely in tune, he can hear his violin whispering stories into his ears, tales of abandoned children and death all around them and snakes hissing calmingly and pure hatred rushing through veins.

And Tom's also dreaming of these, of being alone in buildings filled to the brim with people and them turning slowly into dust, blown away of wind and time,  of walking over fields full of dry grass, dead grass, death everywhere, snakes hissing their greetings and winding around his bare legs and oh, master, and of swimming in a pool of boiling blood, its scent not metallic but full of red-glowing loathe, Satan sitting next to him, watching him bath.

And sometimes he dreams of endless corridors, filled with corpses and corpses and corpses, children and adults and venerables, blood staining his shimmering black shoes when stepping over them, continuing his way, of sitting in a throne out of spider silk, crying people sticking to it until they turn into crying skeletons, their dead smiles directed at him, of playing chess against god with the devil on his side, susurrating malicious instructions into his ears and stroking his inky hair gently while God is trembling in angst.

Because the good don't always win.

And now smile, Nikita.