Thorns

A/N: Yet another in-progress story, this stems from my desire to foray into a different style from my usual writing; in essence, I wanted to write something a bit more serious than the comical approach that I took to "Just Let Me Wake Up Already." That being said, this is my attempt at writing an extremely dark HG/LV-TR romance, and finding even more ways of slipping around the pesky "time travel" boundaries.

Rating: T (…for now…maybe xD)

Summary: When a young Hermione accepts magic lessons from a stranger through the Room of Requirement, she has no way of knowing that the two are living in different times. Her knowledge becomes his greatest weapon; his obsession becomes her nightmare. HG/TR-LV Angst/Horror

Just a heads up: Yes, this is going to be getting dark. The "horror" genre is simply a guess at where this story is heading, as I delve into the psychological connection between the two as Tom/LV becomes more and more obsessed with his pupil. That does not mean, however, that there will not be romance! There will, it just will be of the darker sort. That being said, this is not the place for my fluffy fare from my other works. I'm trying something different, so if fluff is what you want, don't read this! Simple as that ^ ^

Disclaimer: I do not now or will ever own HP. So get those lawyers off my back, will you? They're heavy.


Chapter One: Sealed

There will be time to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create—The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T.S. Eliot.

Friday, 14 June, 1994

Hermione shivered slightly, but whether it was from the cold or the adrenaline still screaming through her veins, she didn't know. Just…not even days ago, she had helped save a man's life.

If one would think about it, she had been doing the same thing only two years before, and even the prior year in discovering the name of the creature that had been haunting the halls of Hogwarts. But, she agreed, it felt so much better to play an active role in the saving of lives, because, really, if one saves a life, then one ignores entertaining the idea of their death.

Like most other people of her age, Hermione ignored the idea of 'death' completely. Death was something that happened to other people, something one read about in newspapers or saw reports on television about natural disasters or madmen on killing sprees. Death wasn't something that interfered personally with the life of a teenager if they could help it; because really, who wants to think about death when one has lived so little of their own life?

It was the last evening of classes; school would be closing tomorrow morning and all of the students of Hogwarts, Hermione included, would be going home for the summer. She was on her way to the Great Hall for the end-of-term feast, and had a sneaking suspicion that Gryffindor would once again win the House Cup. Her natural modesty would not let her seize credit for the victory, but she knew that her valiant efforts over the year were a main contributing factor to the large number of points her House had achieved.

She walked a bit faster; if she was late, the twins would certainly steal her seat.

She was not intentionally late—she was never late if she could help it—but she had requested a special meeting with her Head of House, Minerva McGonagall. Truthfully, and Hermione loathed to admit it, she found that the strain of keeping track of so many classes had been beyond what she would ever want to cede herself to.

Turning in her time-turner was one of the hardest things she had ever done, yet certainly the most liberating. She loved all of her classes, make no mistake about it, but Hermione Granger was not a piece of rubber to be stretched so thin till just centimeters before its breaking point. She loved learning, but she hated the way that her numerous classes demanded her time until she felt like she was obligated to keep reading and attending class. Learning should never be about an obligation, it should be deliberate because one respects the acquisition of knowledge.

Her feet tapped out a quick rhythm on the stone floors of the seventh floor, tucking her robes further around her body from the draft that always seemed to permeate through the building. It was unusually cold for June, but she looked on that with optimism, hoping for an extended Indian summer when school resumed.

Her hair, loose and flapping about her face as usual, bounced on her shoulders as she slowed her pace to brush a few strands out of her eyes. She continued rubbing at them, unsure if her vision had cleared or not; certainly this was something different.

There was an archway…no, a door appearing in the side of the wall!

Well, this is unusual, was the sole thought that flew through Hermione's mind at seeing the thin lines of black mortar crisscrossing across the surface of what she had always assumed to be a blank wall. The sandy color of the stone slabs contrasted sharply with the dark color of the outline of the doorframe, embellished and decorated with depictions of runes and pictograms, abstract shapes and lines, geometrical repeating patters over drawn columns and arched inscribed bricks. Such fascinating detail on a completely flat surface!

With difficulty, she tilted her head away; she really was late.

Hermione bit her lower lip in thought. Did she have the time to investigate? A magical doorway was interesting enough, but doorways only achieved that title by leading to somewhere, acting as a bridge between one space and another. It would be a grand practical joke, she thought sarcastically, to have a fake doorway leading nowhere.

If she squinted hard enough she could almost make out the impression of a doorknob! She was sure of it now, it looked three-dimensional!

Hermione lingered before the door, unsure whether to approach it, torn between her curiosity and the hunger pangs that had recently begun to beat within her stomach.

She took a few more steps to the right, putting herself slightly out of center with the door's wall. She looked back at it again, as if daring it to open, or move, or do something else to cement her belief that it could never, ever be anything but a wall ever again.

She blinked, and felt a twinge of what only could be called fear shoot through her body like liquid ice; was the doorframe really vanishing?

Hermione felt her empty stomach fall with the lost chance for knowledge, for an answer to the posed question of what the doorframe even was, why it appeared only there—for she was sure she would've seen it before had it appeared elsewhere in the school—and, for that matter, why it appeared to her, for she had never even heard of such a thing as a doorframe emerging out of a wall! It's ridiculous, her hunger-focused brain had started to say, but she had to wryly remind herself of the recent truths that anyone else would call ridiculous.

It's as ridiculous as magic, she thought stubbornly.

The doorframe was almost completely gone now; maybe it was timed? The analytical part of her wanted to defend, but no logic in her mind could justify what she had just witnessed. If she told anyone, anyone out there, at dinner possibly, that a door had come out of a wall and then disappeared, what would they say?

They would tell me that its only my imagination, she thought sullenly. They had no problem imagining doors, and she was given a real one!

She walked the five steps to the now blank wall, and hesitantly reached out her fingers, brushing them against the slightly rough stone surface. She didn't know what she expected, and found it ironic and somewhat anti-climactic when all she felt was the texture of the stone. No doorway; it was as though it had never existed.

Her eyes widened considerably when she heard the bell toll the hour for the feast to begin, and she took off running in the direction of the staircases, hair flapping on her back and shoulders, not even giving the doorway of chance a second thought in her haste.

She would put the instance from her mind, but she would always remember the wall with that same feeling of ominous promise, a sealed box of knowledge and suffering, the joys and sorrows of both encased within its mutable lines.

However, she was not the one holding the key.


Wednesday, 14 June, 1944

Tom Marvolo Riddle stared in unmasked awe at the sight around him, both impressed and proud at the intensity of the magic in the place he called 'home.'

He was alone, of course, as he almost always was, in the middle of patrolling when he'd first discovered the arched doorway. He had been curious when he initially saw it—he'd recognized the runes on the door as 'eo' and 'anhelo,' meaning 'voyage' and 'intuition' respectively. He was more than suspicious of such a combination; for all he knew, the door could transport people outside of the castle, and he had no way of knowing what would be waiting for him at the other end. He took the risk, took the chance, deciding that if there was something potentially dangerous at the other side of that door, he was more than capable of taking care of it.

Imagine his surprise when he found a nearly empty room; dark, and with one solitary armchair and a cloth-covered table, upon which rested a pristine first-edition copy of the book, 'Elaevating the Darke Soule.'

His mouth had curved up into a smirk, surprised at how the strange room seemed to be giving him exactly what he wanted. He had been having trouble locating books on Dark Magic, and bringing them into the school itself had proved to be hassling and quite unnecessary, if the room was any indication. Upon opening the book, he had been delighted when he was blasted with a curse so foul it had almost caught him off guard. He dispelled it easily, even more intrigued by a book that obviously wanted to judge the characters of its readers. If they could get past this, then clearly their dark soul was ready for elevation.

This time, however, Tom was faced with quite a different sight.

Tall bookshelves rose up before him, stacked to the brim so high that he had to crane his neck to see it all. The shelves were heaped with what Tom could only describe as junk; really, who would want a broken china baby doll or a twenty-year-old outdated transfiguration textbook?

The layers of dust surrounding everything in the room almost seemed as thick and thorough as snow, and Tom irritatedly fought the urge to sneeze upon inspecting the numerous objects in the room.

This surely was different from what the room normally produced. He had been heading to Potions class, carrying a set of magically enchanted scales when he had carelessly dropped them after colliding around a corner with a tactless fifth year—it was only the fact that the student was not in his house that saved them from a particularly nasty hex—but the hinges on one side of the scales were irreparably broken. Tom had picked up the cracked pieces, wishing for somewhere to put them; there was no reason carrying around broken apparatuses. Apparently, the room agreed.

When he saw the doorway appearing, he quickly ducked inside, already building an excuse in his mind for his absence from his potions class. Head Boy duties sounded plausible, and Slughorn was always more than ready to excuse him for any 'special' project he might make up.

Tom quickly set the broken scales down on one shelf; magically-enchanted ones were expensive, he noted with distaste, and once broken could never be repaired. He would have to obtain a new set from somewhere…or someone.

Hmm, he thought idly. Abraxas Malfoy has been bragging about how easy Potions is for him, perhaps he is so good that he no longer requires scales to do his work? He smirked as he continued down the shelves, curiosity more than anything propelling his desire to see everything that this form of the room had to offer.

It was some kind of irrepressible urge that kept him walking; Tom felt uneasy being led through this hall of lost history, inspecting each object with the same careful scrutiny he gave everything he encountered. Each discarded book made him wonder why it was abandoned; each broken chair or tray made him guess what had led to its neglect.

Tom was someone who prided himself on his immaculate knowledge and logic. He knew exactly who he was, and he could trace his lineage back to the times of the founders of Hogwarts. Anything he did not know, he made an effort to find out, and quickly. Unsolvable puzzles were either regarded with mild curiosity and gently explored, or destroyed if they failed to keep his interest. Everything was given an equal opportunity, but these abandoned, lost, purposeless items…

They were nothing, they were useless. They had nothing to offer him, and their presence alone cut the promise from anything in that room that still lived and breathed in the potential of history.

He shook the thoughts away, instead gazing at a tall marble statue, next to a large basin that seemed to be made of the same marble. He had seen books here, old books that had long been banned or thrown out of publication that might be useful to him. This place had plenty of hidden knowledge, he decided, it was just buried under the dust.

Yes, he thought. Just like with the room's other form, he could definitely use this to his advantage. A room of things; what's wrong with adding to it? It was almost as though the school itself believed in him, giving him all the tools he'd need for his plans for his own future. He had been given the Chamber of Secrets—he would never forget the day when the basilisk called to him and he had first ventured into the cavern of his forefather's creation—and the day he discovered that doorway experienced a very similar feeling.

The moment was frozen in time, hanging over him with all the hushed anticipation of a breath, with each object in the room waiting for him to use it.

No…not quite.

Each object in the world sat waiting patiently for him to call upon it, single it out for honor by acknowledgement, and today this room had the honor, this doorway to which he believed he held the one and only key.

He was given all the tools for his success. He believed it was already it in his pocket, he had already won; he just had yet to accept his trophy, his medal. Nothing less than first prize.

He left the room, sure of how to call it back when he'd next need it. The doorway disappeared behind him, slowly receding back into the unremarkable stone.

Tom's own last days of school were upon him. He grinned easily at the thought of the many things he'd accomplished over the years. He'd made the most of his time at Hogwarts, that was for sure.

He glanced back at the empty stone. He had not known about it for long, its magic had almost escaped his notice. Such potential, a room like that contained. He would release all of it, and control it perfectly for his own means.

The room always obeys the will of its occupant, even if that person does not know themselves what they want. It sends them what they truly require. What they need.

Tom's requirements were not beyond its reach.


A/N: Important Notes! This is just a "teaser" chapter, as I don't intend on continuing on with this story until I get much farther with my other in-progress works. I just want to get this idea out there and see what people think about it. So, if you put this on alert, don't expect the story to pick up constant updates till around Christmas. So why, then, am I putting it up now? I love exploiting all kinds of symbolism, so a Halloween date really appealed to me^ ^

This is a completely different style for me, but I'm really looking forward to seeing where this idea goes. This is the first time I've ever written Tom/LV as a straight-out "villain," and make no mistake about it he will be a villain xD

If anyone is wondering about the relevance of this first chapter, this is just to set the stage. The next chapter will jump forward one year, and I will also be alternating chapters between Hermione and Tom's POV to keep the suspense going. I've also decided to put this into the HG/TR section because Hermione will know him as 'Tom,' even though when the story really gets cracking he'll truly be Voldemort in mind.

I am currently beta-hunting for this story, I really think I need a beta not so much for grammar purposes but to keep my plot and timeline in order, as I plan on jumping around through several different years, in both Tom and Hermione's times. If anyone's interested, let me know!

Apologies for the long author's notes. As always, reviews are greatly appreciated! and Happy Halloween to everyone!

~Kako