(Hogwarts Houses) Drabble Club – Prompt – "Tell me what it is you need."
stubbornness
Hermione drew a sharp breath when spidery fingers brushed her shoulder. She resisted the chill threatening to run up her back and fought the urge to look back. It would mean he achieved what he wanted, which was something she certainly wouldn't let him enjoy.
"Hermione." The smooth baritone was, as usual, delectable to her ears.
From the corner of her eyes, the bushy-haired seventeen-year-old could see the pale, sculpted face of Tom Riddle. Wetting her now-dry lips, she pointedly ignored him. She swore she spotted the corners of his mouth twitch.
Suddenly, Riddle reached out a hand, and his fingers ghosted over her cheek. Hermione visibly flinched and jerked away. With a pale expression, she snapped, "What do you want, Riddle?"
Clearly amused, the future Lord Voldemort slyly shrugged. "Just wondering if you were done with homework."
Hermione didn't miss the way Riddle's eyes shrewdly assessed the material laid out in front of her. Though he caught her researching time travel the first week she'd been thrust into the 1940s, she wouldn't let anyone—much less him—find her with anything to do with the particular subject ever again. So currently, Hermione was instead taking notes on Occlumency, a branch of magic she'd certainly need when facing teenaged Lord Voldemort.
Having seen what she was working on, Riddle innocently smiled. "Got things you need to hide?"
"Doesn't everybody?" she sniffed, keeping her composure.
"But the Hogwarts library is rather lacking in that department, I'll warn you."
"I can tell," Hermione grimaced. She'd hoped maybe the Restricted Section had more books on the art form than when she'd tutored Harry with looser regulations set by Headmaster Dippet. But no such luck.
"I can teach you," Riddle suggested quietly, eyes gleaming with amusement.
"No thank you," she spat.
With a roll of his eyes, he sighed. "Oh Hermione, I never thought you'd be one to deny perfectly good knowledge out of pure spite. I thought you were a lover of knowledge," he taunted. "Tell me what it is you need. I'll grant most anything to get on your good side, though I don't even know why I'm on the wrong one in the first place," Riddle drawled.
"I don't need anything from you other than to leave me alone." However, she did vaguely wonder what it would be like to learn under a wizard considered to be one of the most brilliant and powerful in her time. But she quickly waved it away.
Hermione met Riddle's steady gaze head-on, ignoring the quickening of her heart rate. Finally, he broke it with a smirk. "Suit yourself."
But of course, things were never that simple, she knew. Just what he'd do in retaliation was the main question here. She only hoped that it wouldn't last long and that she was on the victorious side.