Chapter 9 Apple Pie

"The Philosopher's Stone is either kept by Nicolas Flamel, or it's in the hands of that guy, Dumbledore. You are suggesting that I take the Philosopher's Stone from these two people."

"It's just one Just a suggestion. Reliable information: The Philosopher's Stone is hidden in the corridor on the right side of the fourth floor of Hogwarts."

Two figures whispered in the darkness.

A person's voice trembles in an environment where he can't even see his fingers.

"Are you sure that the castle's defense is

no worse than that of Kunlun College..." Another person whispered in his ear with a smaller voice.

The figure was trembling.

"It's really unexpected... I will bring another person with me. I always need one person to do something..."

"It's up to you. I just want to get what I want. Soul-solidifying fruit, you promised..."

A silver The fruit was quietly put into the man's hand. There was a sinister and eerie laughter in the darkness.

"As you wish. But I'm curious if your so-called good brother knew that you did such a thing for a soul-fixing fruit..."

She was drowning in intermittent dreams from which she could not escape, as if she could hear clearly. He heard two whispers, but seemed to hear nothing, and then he was chased down the long corridor again. The long, dark corridor seemed to have no end.

She was so tired. She didn't want to run away so weakly again. No one will help her, she has to make her own way.

"Xiaoyu, never use your abilities on ordinary people at will. You are still young and your temperament is undecided. Once you develop a habit, your path will be ruined."

"Hurry up, catch that freak!"

A book fell on the ground. It hit her head and it hurt.

"I hit that freak! Freak, don't run away if you can!"

She stumbled and ran through classrooms, with pairs of indifferent pupils reflected on the glass doors of each classroom. There were classmates of the same age as her, as well as teachers from the school.

She continued to run forward. What disgusted her here was not just the unfounded malice. She was extremely disgusted with the entire seemingly vibrant campus. At the end of the corridor stood a handsome little boy. His black eyes stared straight at the thin figure running down the corridor.

"Is this you? So weak, so incompetent..."

His voice didn't sound like an eleven-year-old child: "Why don't you fight back so that they don't even dare to hate you anymore, but only tremble..."

She can't do this. Grandpa doesn't want her to embark on such a path. Fear, control, and power are not something she can easily resist, and she will not let herself fall into the endless pursuit of these things.

Mu Yu kept falling, and the scene in front of him collapsed bit by bit. When Mu Yu came to her senses, she was already standing in the dark room of Wu's Orphanage.

Tom was standing in front of the small window, looking at the bustling crowd below. Mu Yu no longer wanted to think about why she bumped into Tom in her dream.

In any case, he is just an obsession, a wandering soul.

Mu Yu sat quietly on the only chair in the room. She raised her head slightly and looked at the dilapidated ceiling above her head, which was already covered with moss due to its age and disrepair.

Just standing and sitting, for a long time, only the noise of cars and horses outside the window and the slapstick of other children in the orphanage came into the deathly silent room.

"I want to go out for a walk." Tom turned around and walked straight to the door. "I want that thing from last time."

Mu Yu did not pay attention to him immediately. After studying the ceiling, she seemed to be interested in the street downstairs again. The sky is still dark, always covered with a layer of haze that makes it difficult to see through. London, which had not been bombed, seemed to be a bustling metropolis. Pedestrians hurriedly crossed the road, newsboys waved newspapers in their hands, and gentlemen sat elegantly in outdoor cafes, sipping fragrant coffee and chatting.

As real as Diagon Alley.

Tom waited impatiently at the door. He had never learned how to wait for someone. But without Mu Yu's thing, he wouldn't be able to get out of the orphanage now.

Mu Yu finally stood up from the chair, and she returned to her usual gentleness, which made Tom even more angry. He knew that this was not her true face, and she would still put on this disguise to him from time to time.

"Okay."

They were still walking casually through the streets of London. This time they went in a different direction. The streets below them were lined with shops, and the pedestrians walking through them were all very well-dressed. It was obvious that this street had not been exposed to artillery fire. If you ignore the beggars along the street, it will look like you are in peace.

They walked silently on the busy streets. Mu Yu was very interested in the buildings on both sides of the street, and Tom clearly saw the raised corners of her mouth. She was in a good mood.

He thought of the scenes he had seen, the little girl blocked in the bathroom, the blood constantly emerging from the sink, the figure running in the deep corridor...

She had once brought deep fear to people.

Everything is Mu Yu's story. He could only scratch the surface. It was this little bit of fur that made him want to stop, and he wanted to explore more pieces about Mu Yu. This gives him an eerie sense of excitement.

Suddenly she stopped leaving.

"What's wrong?"

Tom Riddle followed her gaze and saw a well-dressed little girl across the street standing in front of the dessert shop window. Next to her was an equally well-dressed woman, perhaps the girl's mother. The little girl tugged at the hem of her clothes and looked at the exquisite desserts in the window for a while, then at her mother, obviously acting coquettishly.

"Are you leaving?" Tom Riddle asked Mu Yu impatiently. He turned his head as if he was seeing something dirty.

Mu Yu, however, kept standing where he was. The little girl's mother knelt down and touched the girl's head, seemingly trying to comfort her. The little girl pouted and pulled her mother's collar reluctantly. The woman seemed to have nothing to do with her, so she stood up and took her hand into the dessert shop.

The aroma of icing sugar, refined in the oven, gradually spread into the haze-filled air of spring London.

She doesn't even know who her mother is.

If her mother hadn't died...

would she have been so gentle?

Her mother would take her for a walk at the foot of Mingyuan Mountain. They would pass by her favorite bun shop, and she could act coquettishly towards her mother like this girl.

Grandpa and mother are always different.

Her mother would hold her when she was most helpless, guide her gently, and stand firmly behind her.

Mom...

she forcibly held back a tear before it fell. She didn't allow herself to cry.

"Are you going to cry?" Tom Riddle came closer to observe her carefully as if he was interested. They had never been so close before, so Mu Yu couldn't help but take a step away. "You're going to cry because of this."

He raised his chin, full of ridicule and disdain.

However, Mu Yu was not as embarrassed as he imagined. She was extremely calm, as if the tears just now were just an illusion: "It's not difficult to admit something, Tom."

She also looked in his direction: "Why are you I don’t even want to look at it.”

The softest words could always arouse his fiercest anger.

"You..."

Before he could finish speaking, the aroma of the dessert stirred his stomach. Of course, the orphanage will not give these homeless orphans special exquisite food. What they eat most is almost moldy potatoes and black, dry bread. Even so, we often have to fight for a bite of bread.

"I'm hungry." Mu Yu ignored his hesitation at all. She pointed to the dessert shop in front of her: "Do you want me to get you something?"

"No need." Tom's face was expressionless, and the roots of his ears turned redder.

Mu Yu seemed not to hear, she said to herself, "What do you like?"

Tom lowered his head and did not answer.

Mu Yu continued to mutter to himself: "Then apple pie will be good." She casually made a simple magic formula in mid-air, and Tom watched in fascination as she drew intricate and difficult-to-identify traces in mid-air. When he came to his senses, a warm piece of apple pie was stuffed into his hand.

The owner of the dessert shop was still busy, and no one noticed that something was missing from the shop.

The alluring aroma of cane sugar lingers on your nose. The piping hot dessert seemed so unreal in his cold palm. Just like Mu Yu.

He has always taken food from others, or used his own abilities to get food. No one would give him anything, he was used to it.

"It's time to go back." Mu Yu faintly felt that her soul was being pulled again, and she pulled Tom with her. The girl's hands were as cold as his, and even because he had just held a freshly baked apple pie, his hands were a little hot. This wasn't the first time he held her hand. The last time was when they faced the bombing and death together.

The girl's skin was so delicate that he could feel the thin calluses on her fingertips. Everything about her is like a huge mystery.

Mu Yu led him through the alleys quickly, and they were soon running. He also felt that Mu Yu's body was becoming more and more transparent. Is she leaving again?

The long street seems to have lost its end. They were still running along the streets at first, but then Mu Yu, perhaps because he thought it was too slow, jumped between rooftops with him.

Gray-white buildings rise and fall in front of the eyes, and the sky mixed with the same color seems to turn the world upside down. The towering spire and square roof of the church are all condensed into an understated thin line in one leap.

He unconsciously held her hand tightly. At this moment, it seemed that only the person next to him was three-dimensional and real.

When they finally returned to the room in the orphanage, Mu Yu was almost transparent. She smiled and looked at the boy who was still holding on to the apple pie: "Looks like I'm leaving again, so, see you next time."

The sweet applesauce filled the cold and small room little by little, and the apple pie The warmth burned the coldness. The moment Mu Yu disappeared, she heard a childish voice. Different from the cruel temptation in the dream, this is the voice that truly belongs to eleven-year-old Tom.

"Since it's not difficult to admit something, then why not take revenge on them? There's nothing wrong with toying with them."

This time and space was gradually moving away, and Mu Yu lowered his eyelids.

She understood the pleasure of that, but the people closest to her didn't want that for her. She could never forget her grandfather's disappointment that day. That kind of disappointment pricked her like a needle from time to time. Such pain was also the only way for her to get rid of that pleasure.

Tom couldn't possibly understand.

Because he doesn't even have his only relative anymore.

Mu Yu was startled when she woke up. Tom was standing in her room, looking through her bookshelf with great interest.

"What are these words?" Seeing that she was awake, Tom asked confidently, without any apology for breaking into other people's rooms.

"How could you..." Mu Yu couldn't hide his surprise.

"I came here after I fell asleep." Tom saw the green lake outside the window: "Is this Hogwarts?"

Mu Yu jumped out of bed, and she stroked the rows of books: "This is the Hogwarts you want to come to. Watts."

"You can touch the entity." Mu Yu saw Tom passing by the rows of thick books, looking at the yellowed papers that she picked up and put aside with interest on the first day of school.

"You can touch it in the orphanage," Tom shrugged, focusing more on the paper in his hand. "Are you making a treasure or a weapon?"

There was no trace of the child's pure curiosity in the question. Full of greed and desire that should not be expected at this age.

How could he tell what this was?

Mu Yu grabbed the paper and upon closer inspection, he discovered that there were words on it. Unfortunately, it was so old that many of the fonts had long been blurred.

"Resurrection...medium..."

Even if you try hard to identify it, you can only see these two words, but the amount of information contained in them is undoubtedly huge. Does grandpa know why there is this thing in the family's book collection

? He has never revealed a word about the Mu family to her.

He really wanted her to live a normal life.

Mu Yu's turbulence of emotions was caught by Tom, and for just a moment, all her thoughts were covered up under her gentle appearance. Tom suddenly felt annoyed.

"We should be friends." He approached Mu Yu. He seemed very unaccustomed to the word and didn't have much emotion when it came to it. The word was no different to him than a tool.

Mu Yu turned around and she smiled gently at Tom. She was always so gentle, as if nothing deserved her attention, including him.

Friends

"I have no friends, and those who are my friends will not end well."

"Don't do this in front of me. We are all the same kind of people."

"Why do you think we are the same kind of people?"

He leaned closer, He is obviously an eleven-year-old boy, but he always gives people the feeling of being gloomy and cruel: "I have the answer to the question you asked last time. The power I want is the power to avoid death."

Mu Yu let out a sigh Laughed out loud. Her laughter was clear, but anyone could understand the contempt in it: "The power you are pursuing is to avoid death. So what is the difference between you and other people who are struggling to survive?"

She pointed to the sky: "The death we see, It is brought about by war. But if you can control war, the real power is the power of life and death, the power of controlling people's hearts. With such power, you are the only eternal god. At that time, death is nothing. It's a pawn on your chessboard."

Tom Riddle sat on Mu Yu's bed. He looked at the deep lake and was obviously deep in thought. Mu Yu was quietly flipping through a book on his chair. He suddenly looked up: "This is the power you want to pursue."

She put the paper back on the bookshelf and said calmly: "No."

This time it was Tom who taunted her. He did not hide his naked sneer at all, and tried to grab it with his hand. Mu Yu: "You're lying again. You've been talking about the way you want to seek. Don't you understand yet? That way is already in front of you."

She put away her smile, looked into his black eyes, and said word by word: "It's different. I'm not allowed to go down that path again, absolutely not allowed."

She had tasted the feeling of controlling people's hearts, and even the small attempt made her want to stop. She forced herself to stop pursuing power and fear, and forced herself to cover up her inner emotions. Falling is easy for her, falling is the magnetic field that attracts her.

Tom continued browsing the rows of books on the bookshelf nonchalantly, but said firmly and forcefully: "You will."

Mu Yu packed up his things in silence, obviously not intending to continue this topic. Just as she was about to push open the bedroom door, she stopped before she could go around the winding corridor in the basement.

The fire that had been burning all night had just been extinguished, and the cold air in the early autumn morning couldn't wait to take advantage of this opportunity to fill the basement. It was undoubtedly a torture to get up from the warm bed to go to class at this time, and the empty lounge was in full swing. It provides the soil for shady gossip to flourish.

"Xiao Di, you should stop talking to her. Pansy and the others don't like this. You know the consequences of offending Pansy."

The voice sounded like it was a good friend of Daphne.

They should be standing in the empty common room, taking advantage of the early morning when no one is around to whisper, not noticing that the person they are talking about is standing quietly in the corridor a few steps away.

"A person who grew up in the East..." Daphne's friend was still persuading her. She mumbled over a word in a very low voice, "A boring person who does nothing but read books all day long is not the same as us at all." "It's not worth investing so much time and confronting Pansy."

"I..." Before Daphne could say anything, a crisp knock on the iron railing broke the silence of the common room, and the two of them replied in panic. When they looked over, they found that the person involved was standing behind them, and they didn't know how long they had been listening.

Mu Yu did it on purpose.

Her expression was as usual, and when she saw them, she still showed the same perfect smile that she had practiced countless times, as if she didn't hear their discussion at all: "There is still more than an hour before the spells class, I didn't expect you to get up so early. "

Daphne kept twisting her hands, as if she wanted to explain something, but was dragged towards the auditorium by her female companion. The two finally regarded Mu Yu as nothing.

Mu Yu was not surprised by this result, and completely ignored the undisguised glances around him that were mixed with excitement, anticipation and gloating.

She has always been like this, indulging in her own mask, and no one can peel off the disguise and see even a little bit of the truth.

Tom was naturally angry, but even he couldn't tell whether this anger came from the frustration of being unable to tear off the disguise, or from the anger that her disguise was so indifferent. No bias. Ban's mixed anger spawned a new desire. He should be closer to her. It would be best if her world could only accommodate him.

He will never lose, let alone fail.

It wasn't until he walked through the courtyard to another tower that Mu Yu seemed to realize that something was wrong around him today.

The courtyards on all sides cut the gloomy sky into square pieces. Thick dark clouds kept gathering and squeezing in the squares, making the usually bustling courtyard feel inexplicably dead.

Her eyes seemed to be bright in the midst of the dead air: "You are still there," she played with her wand and only glanced at the people who were fooling around and preparing to go to the Charms class, her mask-like smile seemed to Only then did a slight change occur. "You see, I have been working very hard to blend in with them."

The wind lifted her hair, and before it fell, Riddle caught her, as if she could catch it in this way. Just now the mask suddenly shattered. He kept curling the soft hair in his hands: "Perhaps blending in is a mistake in the first place," he continued as if integrating into the instinctive induction, enjoying the smoothness of the hair in his hands, "You don't belong to them, blending in with mediocre people is for you. The blasphemy of talent, you are a fool to teach you like this..."

This sentence should have touched her taboo, and she brushed him away. The fragments that had just passed by under the pretense were quickly reorganized and repaired, and another piece was spelled out. A brand new flawless mask.

The distance between them became far again.

The gloomy sky finally seemed to be unable to bear the accumulated clouds, and huge raindrops poured down without any warning. Mu Yu cast the anti-humidity charm before the raindrops even hit the ground.

She only hesitated for a second, but still chose to close the estranged distance again, so that the spell completely covered the two of them.

They share the same spell to block raindrops, and it feels like they have truly entered a world shared by only two people.

It's a pity that the inside is not very beautiful.

Riddle was still concerned about her alienation, and the patience he had finally raised was shattered by her actions. He originally wanted to walk out of the spell's coverage, but in the end, he didn't know whether it was because he was greedy for this superficial approach or was worried about something. He still chose to stay where he was, looking at her coldly and without saying a word.

That disgusting orphanage only taught him how to wait for others to bow and surrender.

Mu Yu vaguely understood what he was thinking, but he also felt angry. She could tolerate the subtle temptations of this temporary partner, but she couldn't accept him knowingly stepping into the restricted area in her heart.

Strangely, they walked forward in the rain as if relying on each other, with an unprecedented condensation lingering between them. Mu Yu walked faster and faster, and it wasn't until he entered the tower that the annoyance that arose out of nowhere dissipated a little.

"I've never tried pulling out my tongue before, I don't mind trying it now." In front of him, Mu Yu never deliberately suppressed the violent and cruel surges that should have long ago dissipated in the depths of his memory.

As soon as she opened her mouth, she realized something was wrong. She was now alone under the overextended anti-moisture spell.

He disappeared too suddenly.

Mu Yu rubbed the hem of his clothes fiercely, as if he was using it as a substitute. Such movements were extremely fast, and she never allowed indulgence beyond control. In just a few seconds, she straightened her clothes and walked towards the classroom with impeccable appearance.

The rain outside the window hasn't stopped yet, and maybe it won't stop all day.