Disclaimer:

This is a present for forthy, since it was her comment that inspired it. I have no claim or ownership of any of the characters herein, and I only hope that I have not bent them all fantastically out of character.

Part One: In which our heroine meets our hero.

It began in the dead of night her very first year at Hogwarts, her very own deepest secret that she would defend to the death if any were to somehow find out enough about it to confront her over it. She was a very strong and self-sufficient soul with the rarest vibrant intelligence that unfortunately many of her peers seemed to lack, a gifted student with a knack for knowing just what someone else had done wrong with a spell, potion, talisman or magical whatsis. It was just bitter coincidence of course that her strength led her to feel at times utterly inadequate and deeply insecure of herself as a person.

Unfortunately intelligence was not enough to make Hermione Granger many friends and twelve was an awkward enough age for any girl, let alone a magically gifted one. This fed her insecurity though she ever presented confidence no matter how false it felt to her heart, and she strove to be the very best academically. Sadly this often led to misunderstandings as she tried to help her fellow classmates and more hurtful things said behind her back – and worse.

But of all those things said only one made her cry on a regular basis, that horrid epithet of mudblood. She would never cry in front of those that called her this, she never wanted them to think that she was not proud of her muggle parents and heritage. But in the dark the tears would come and she had learned to cry very quietly so that none could hear her. At least so she thought, until she first heard his voice.

It was hesitant at first, the voice of a boy her age sounding soft and almost disused like the voice of someone speaking from inside a very dark well.

"They bullied you again today, I heard them. Don't cry, my Hermione. You're better than all of them, they'll see."

Don't cry, he'd said it like it was the simplest thing in the world and for once she felt her tears dry before her pillowcase was soaked. She whispered back into the dark and wondered for a moment if she was dreaming until she felt the skim of knuckles on her cheek to wipe away the moisture that still trailed there.

"It just makes me sad that they don't understand. I have so much I would help them with but they never ask. But I want to help so I try anyway, and then they hate me."

There was silence and for a moment she was afraid that he'd gone, not that she was sure he was there to begin with! Then he gave a slight sigh and in the dark she could sense that he shook his head just a little.

"If you ever need to cry go ahead, I promise I'll be here. But I have to go now, he watches me too closely for me to be out long."

This piqued her interest immensely and she hoped that it would not only be her tears that might draw him to her side so that she could ask him questions. Over the next week or so she let herself make notes of what questions exactly that she would most want him to answer and quite properly annoyed her fairly new friends Harry and Ron by not sharing her list with them no matter how much they pried.

It was her list. She added to it, kept it close, and hoped he might visit without her being as upset as the last time but trust Draco Malfoy to ruin that opportunity to experiment! He was the most vicious of her bullies and while she had no trouble standing up to him to his face once she was alone the weight of his words never failed to make her cry. It was as if the pure-blooded wizard knew exactly what to say to hurt her worst.

Unlike the first time she had sobbed aloud once before clapping her hand over her mouth to muffle it and curled up on her side in misery. She didn't even feel him sit next to her, until he leaned over to brush her brown hair away from her face to whisper in her ear.

"It was Malfoy again. I'll fix him for making you cry Hermione. You'll see."

She didn't know how he knew about what had happened, though it was making her think that he must either be a student here like she was that was especially good at concealing himself or a ghost. But she desperately needed the comfort he offered as awkward and hesitant as it seemed, and she turned to curl against the shadowed form to finish her tears. She almost felt the surprise in him at this, the initial tension and then the relaxation as his fingers of shadow combed out her semi-tangled locks. She swallowed a sigh and then fought to get out one of her many questions for him. She was Hermione after all and how could she let it go?

"What's your name?"

She spoke in barely a whisper because she was almost afraid that he'd just leave for asking that question as it was the most important on her list. Just when she thought that he would leave her or simply stay silent he spoke.

"It's S … Tobias. My name is Tobias."

She wondered at his stutter but nodded and as he comforted her she finally relaxed enough to sleep, and in a sleepy voice told him that she rather liked Tobias. The sense of wonder she felt from him at that she would file away to think of later, but for now the fact that she had at least one ally just for her was enough.

No one was more surprised than she was at the events of the next day though she couldn't find fault with what happened. Draco had been mouthing off in class but unlike previous occasions the Professor of Potions Severus Snape leveled a dark gaze at the boy and told him in no uncertain terms that if he did not have something worthwhile and related to potions come out of his mouth in the next ten seconds that he would have a detention. The class nearly as a whole gawped at the uncharacteristic action; Snape was the head of Slytherin House and as such expected to back his fellow Slytherins.

Draco did not surprise the Professor with his failure though the Professor surprised the boy by actually enforcing his detention. If there was one thing that Snape despised more than someone defying him Hermione was certain she didn't know what that one thing would be, and she did have to admit she got great personal satisfaction from watching Malfoy's comeuppance. She even managed a rather cheeky grin at the blonde boy on her way out of the class, and she didn't even care at that moment that she would most likely pay for it later.

Pay for it she did though she grudgingly had to commend Malfoy on his patience since it was years later that he struck back. It cost him a punch to the face of course but that was well worth it too though it meant that his actions against her would merely become more venomous. It had been months since she had seen Tobias but after she had been shaken by the hex so badly that day he appeared to her that night. His visits had become sporadic but no less treasured and his shadowy embrace soothed away her pains far better than anything Madame Pomfrey might have conjured up.

This time she let him draw her up into his lap and closed her eyes as she nestled under his chin, cataloguing his changes over the years as she always did. He had aged with her which made her believe that he was no ghost after all, though what or who he truly was remained uncertain. Part of her still believed that since he was no ghost and knew intimately what went on at Hogwarts that he must therefore be a student, but why had he never come forward to her? Was he afraid she would reject him? Did he have something against Harry or Ron?

So many questions, so few answers though he did upon occasion answer one or two from her beloved list. Yet she would often ask him to talk to her if only to hear the comforting sound of his voice, and sometimes she could almost catch a hint from his tones and inflections of who her Tobias might be during the day. But what boy could ever be so compassionate and dare she say loving towards her? He had never said a cross word to her in all the years he had come to hold her and wipe away her tears until soon after the Yule Ball that she had attended with Viktor Krum.

She and Ron had gotten into a vicious fight because it seemed that all along he had harbored some secret idea that he liked her. Yet he had never outwardly said so until Harry had implied that she had actually kissed Viktor. She hadn't though Viktor had wanted to, he was handsome enough she supposed but the whole thing just hadn't seemed right. Examining this later she was almost aghast at her conclusion on why that was, though her inner revelation was set aside at the magnitude of what Ron said.

She could hardly believe it because not even Draco Malfoy had ever hurt her in the cutting fashion that Ron had. She hadn't kissed Viktor or anyone else but Ron wouldn't hear of it and Harry's words hadn't helped either. For once she actually cried in front of someone that could see her clearly and had to run away. Hermione felt heartbroken and betrayed by her friends because they wouldn't believe her when she told them the truth. She locked herself in her room until nightfall, skipping dinner in favor of a fitful nap. Some inner sense told her that Tobias was not coming and that caused Hermione to spiral lower in her upset and grief.

But that inner sense had been wrong after all she found, when she woke to feel herself pulled into his lap and cradled as gently as always. His voice was hitched this time as if he had been shedding his own tears and this alarmed her, but not as much as his words.

"If … if you don't want me to come to you anymore, I will stay away."

There was an underlying sense of loss to him that she could feel as his actions belied his words, his arms tightening around her even as he told her she could send him away.

"If you would prefer his kiss I can't blame you. He watches me too closely and I can't be with you all I wish."

There was silence for a moment, his heartbeat in his chest loud to her ear where it pressed there. It came to her that he was cross, if not with her then with Ron or Viktor for being what he could not be. Hermione couldn't speak as the conclusion she came to earlier rose up in her again to overwhelm her good sense and cause her to do something that might just lead her into disaster. She shifted in his lap, her hands moving to run down his arms to his elbows, the lithe musculature evident to her touch as it was never to her eyes, his lean form shivering slightly as she did so, waiting for her pronouncement of his fate.

She tipped her head up to look at his shadowed profile, as always she could almost see his features but then she closed her eyes and brought up one hand, fingers so nimble in casting magic or stirring potions trembling as she let them run over his face. He had a lean face which would match his lean form, his nose seemed a bit large but not ridiculously so, and his cheek was smooth and pleasant under her fingertips. She gathered her conviction then as tightly as she could and dropped her fingers to his mouth, but only long enough so that when she raised her lips to his she wouldn't have the embarrassment of a miss.

His lips were a bit thin but supple and warm and parted just slightly as he gasped with surprise. Then he returned the surprise with one of his own by kissing her back, but this was not the kiss of a callow teen. There was sorrow and longing in that kiss, the passion of a man denied any comfort who was terrified that what little he had would be torn away. It shook Hermione to her core and reinforced what she had realized just that day. Tobias was not just her comforter, he was her first love. When the kiss broke as it must she clung to him and whispered in a stunned sort of voice.

"That was my first kiss, Tobias."

The sound that came from him then was that of an animal that had been wounded but then miraculously healed and his arms held her to him as if it would kill him to let her go. His lips pressed to her forehead and she heard the tears hidden in his voice as he thanked her. Thanked her, as if what she had given him was salvation and not a silly witch's first kiss. He told her she was his beautiful Hermione though that made her snort quietly; she was no one's vision of beauty though she felt after the Yule Ball that she was passable enough. But for the moment she let him say so and lay with him stretched next to her, his shadowed arm a weight over her waist as she drifted to sleep, the heartache of the day faded with the wonder of the night.

She was a Seventh year when he told her that he might not be able to be with her for much longer. Things were becoming too dangerous and he was afraid that his enemies would trace him back to her and kill her. He would have no reason to live then and he couldn't bear the thought of her being more hurt than she already had been just by being who she was and being friends with Harry. Hermione begged him not to go and told him what she felt, pleased gently when he held her and told her that her feelings were not unreturned. So she took a leap of faith and did what her heart told her to do, making sure that her first kiss was not the only first that she gave Tobias.

The next morning when she woke alone she should have felt a bit ashamed at what she had done, but she couldn't muster that up. For once her inner strength and her insecurity drowned each other out and she felt whole. She also felt a strong determination that she would find out what was keeping Tobias from her side and defeat it, and she believed that the first part of that would be to finally find out exactly who he was in the waking world.

AN: This is intended as a three part one shot.