Title: the heart plunges lower than night

Summary: "If your idea of seduction is trying to shag me with your mousy little eyes, Granger, then let me assure you that you are not going to get laid." A minor summer course in Literature turns out to be a lot more than Hermione expected. And it's all Tom Riddle's fault. (AU)

Pairing: Tom Riddle x Hermione Granger, Tom Riddle x Others, Hermione Granger x Others

Rating/Warning (s): (M) Explicit language, dark themes, sexual content

Disclaimer: There is no Magic in this story - it is set in the present time. Canonically, there is at least a generational gap between Riddle's set and Hermione's set but in my story, there is only a three-year gap between them i.e. Hermione is twenty years old and Riddle is twenty-three years old. Hogwarts is an elite prep academy under Headmaster Dumbledore and Durmstrang Institute is a higher level university run by a Trust. The terms 'mudblood' and 'pureblood' indicate economic differences, with 'mudbloods' being students from poor, lower-class backgrounds. There is large-scale discrimination and prejudice based on these lines of division. Everything else shall be revealed as the story moves forward.

Note: The story title is a line taken from the first verse of a William Carlos Williams' poem called These, published in Death The Barber..


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two: 4th june, monday (a late night excerpt)

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The only social media page in Tom Riddle's name that she finds is a sparsely-updated Facebook page.

It seems fitting that the enigmatic, all-too-mysterious Tom Riddle should have a persona that is carefully constructed through only one website, limited and far too challenging to grasp from just that one page. His profile picture - she notes - is a photograph taken in a heavily decorated Great Hall, in Hogwarts and she deduces from his ruffled hair, twinkling eye and formal suit that it's from his Graduation. Bellatrix is pulled up next to him, wearing a deep mauve dress that sets off the amber of her eyes, an impossibly happy smiling working at her lips. It's a lovely picture, Hermione concedes, letting her gaze linger on Tom Riddle's face just a moment longer.

If Ginny knew, she would throw a fit and Hermione knows that she'll have to tell the Weasley soon enough. It's only logical that she should - at the earliest.

She shuts the picture and clicks on the About section. Her eyes roam over the details there - only Hogwarts and Durmstrang are mentioned, without any home addresses or cities given. Hardly curious or odd - it's only consistent with the myth he's created so consciously around himself.

She recalls how she'd often found his name scrawled on the back of toilet doors - obscene things written below it; some accusations, some confessions. She remembers one particular day when she'd raced into a cubicle on the ground floor and slammed the door shut because Malfoy's cronies had simply refused to leave her alone. She'd found another inscription near his name, something that floats up to the surface of her mind now, almost haunting:

his name sits on my tongue for days / i want for nothing but all of him

She'd laughed at it then - what a load of pretentious bullshit. At the moment, however - as she clicks through the Tagged Photos, sifting through pieces of his life, she doesn't feel like laughing. It's almost ominous - like some strange kind of warning. It makes her cheeks warm too - that someone could feel so intensely about him. She pauses at a sunny picture of him, those two black-haired brothers, Malfoy and another unidentified, handsome boy. The tags help her put names to faces - the taller brother is Alphard Black, the shorter one is Cygnus Black and the unfamiliar face is a name she's only heard once before; Scabior.

Harry had mentioned it once, in a whispered accusation about a kidnapping and she remembers thinking how unusual the name had sounded. All of the five boys - guys? men? - are wearing swimming trunks and flip-flops and she notes that the picture was put up at the end of May. Fairly recent, then. They're standing on a white-sand beach with a dazzling blue water sprawling out behind them. It looks like a Cornish beach- a place she's only been to once, with Ron. Despite wanting to tap away to the next photo because memories are meddlesome, she pauses to notice that they all have a similar tattoo on their forearms - nothing she can make out too clearly.

It brings a soft smile to her face - a group of friends getting the same tattoo is nothing short of sweet, even if they're all probably stuck-up, insufferable Purebloods. All of them are lean and athletic and she can make out that Riddle's got more tattoos but since he's stood at the back of the group, the view is obscured. She glances at the matching tattoos once more, oddly curious and then clicks away.

A blurry picture of Riddle with the Greengrass sisters, somewhere in Central London, late at night. Another blurry shot of him and Alphard, looking intensely at each other - from the little that she can make out. It looks as if these photos were taken with a film camera - expensive tastes for expensive people, she thinks bitterly. Anger flares in her stomach at that reminder and she shuts the profile page, mildly ashamed for having spent a significant portion of her time looking at photos of Tom Riddle. The enigmatic epitome of Pureblood supremacy, good looks be damned.

In the confused spirit of making one terrible decision after another and wasting even more time - somehow, just somehow - she winds up on Ron's Instagram page.


He dreams about the Orphanage.

All of it comes to him in fragments - as if he were looking through mirrors. At first, he sees himself - ten images reflected in ten glass rectangles, smoke curling at his feet and then the ground slips out from beneath him. He falls. Through a blanket of darkness, more awful and blinding than night. Cold streams in from the distance, rushing in to press against his throat with all the familiarity of a lover's hand. Black fades away, rushes off into grey clouds of smoke - thickening, growing, rising. There's only a hint of fear, a hushed murmuring at the back of his head.

Then the corridor appears, dimly-lit with that swaying bulb, the freshly-scrubbed wood glistening. Silence grows in the empty space as if it were alive and he feels it rushing in like the cold, right for the throat. A force pushes at the back of his head, fixing his gaze to his unpolished, muddied shoes. Another curling lick of fear, hollow in his stomach. His shoes are dirty. He is dirty. He shouldn't be here. He cannot be here.

When his legs start moving forward, he screams.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, oh GOD.

The whip comes out of seemingly nowhere, catching him right between his shoulder blades, soundless condemnation. Pain is brief and stinging, his body caught more surprise than by any real hurt. Then it comes back down on him, harder and he feels the skin of his back split open just as he yelps. Like a pathetic child. Warm blood trickles from the wound, wetting the thin material of his shirt but his legs just keep moving. Striding forward. One muddied shoe after the other. Leaving tracks.

Lash after lash after lash after lash after lash until he's sure that there's more blood on his back than there is skin - his knees are buckling, his fists clenched, his body falling forward in an awkward, oddly slow manner. But there are no tears, he tells himself. There is only that white expanse shutting everything else off in his head - growing and expanding, a curious unfeelingness, swallowing, numbing, reaching into him.

No tears. No more tears. His back is on fire and he thinks this is an ending of some kind, something final and permanent. He knocks his head hard on the wooden ground when he falls, unable to brace himself. A loud noise, somewhere inside him, somewhere beyond him.

A numbing swell of pain, dim and soft at the corner of his head. Reaching for him. Reaching inside. Blood pooling on his back, dripping down the sides of him, no sound, no sound, no pain, no pain - that silence has found him again, shifting like a real thing, electricity on his skin, feverish burn right in the centre of his brain.

"Oh Tom, what did I tell you about wearing those filthy shoes in here?"

He can't move - something has paralyzed him, perhaps fear - perhaps self-preservation but he doesn't need to look up to know this voice. He'd know it beyond death, he'd know it in his fucking grave - blood is trickling from his mouth and he realizes that he's bitten his tongue. Where is the pain?

"Tom," The voice seems to grow in stature, monstrous as it should be - as it truly is and the whip comes down, catching an older wound.

He bites his tongue again - mouth full of blood, dribbling down his chin, clenching his fists to contain the pain. Contain the pain. Keep it inside - tightly wound like any other secret. Quiet and threatening, all inside him.

"What did I tell you about those filthy shoes?" A shadow behind him, the cold rushing in, forcing his face into the wood - "You filthy-"

Tom jerks awake, panting.

Visions swim before his eyes - matronly dress illuminated by candlelight, frost lingering at the window, brown grass beneath bare feet, the lashings at night, the gruel by day. His throat feels tight and his chest is heavy as if something's pressing down on him. He swings his legs over the side of the bed, hands shaking when he raises to look at them in the blue light of morning. Trembling. He's fucking trembling. It's despicable.

Snapping at himself furiously, he surges to his feet and loses balance, as if he's been standing still in moving waters and now, suddenly there's a change in the currents. The constriction of his throat seems to increase and he catches the moon in the sky, a silver phantom before he's gagging, doubling over, legs week. Hard to tell if he's drowning or not - whether the tide has turned against him, whether he was ever as safe as he thought he'd be.

It takes fifteen minutes for the gagging to dissipate and for him to take a breath that doesn't make his chest hurt. Fuck. He hasn't had these fucking nightmares in months now. His hands are still trembling. He presses them to the sides of his legs, straightening so that he can look out of the three-window view. Pale moon smiles at him mockingly, at safe distance. Everything, always - at safe distance.

He wonders if it's because he's been sleeping alone again - if these tricks of his mind know exactly when to come for him, if these hallucinations sense his vulnerability and make their way out to the surface. He wonders, he does. For a few stuttering seconds, it is hopeless. He is doomed. He feels the whip at his shoulder, a ghost without form. He hears the voice, a monster in the dark. He can smell the polish of the wood and it makes his head spin. Fuck.

Breathing out deeply, he steps closer to the windows and can spot the faintest trickle of light at the horizon, indicating the beginning of yet another day. His cigarettes are lying by the bed but he doesn't move towards them. Simply steps forward again so that he can look out over the street - deserted and cold, unborn at this time of day. He estimates the time to be somewhere between four and five A.M. Glancing back at the bed, he realizes that he's not going to get any more sleep. Fleetingly, he thinks of calling Alphard.

But he doesn't have the words - he barely has any breath. Everything seems to be fast disappearing around him, just like the smoke in the dream. His eyes drop down his arm to the tattoo and trace the familiar, reassuring serpent. This is a fight against a familiar enemy - against the most personal and intimate enemy. His own mind. His fingers come to rest on the serpent, trailing over the curves of it and he reminds himself as he's always done,

[ this is the pain of becoming. all snakes must shed their skin ]


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two: 5th june, tuesday (fuller pictures)

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The morning of the second day sees all the students seated in Room Number 7 at exactly quarter to ten o'clock.

The division between Purebloods and Mudbloods is distinct, clear and unimpeachable - the former set lounges at the back of the class, dressed in dark colours and the latter group keeps to the front of the class, on the right. Spaces between them are filled with the inbetweeners themselves, what many people call the Half-bloods. There's very little mingling with the back of the class - all the middle and forward groups chatter excitedly amongst themselves.

To the extreme right is the small Hogwarts group- Neville, in a wickedly floral shirt and Luna sitting beside him in an equally absurd outfit that is at least seven different colours, along with Seamus and Antony who are both deep in conversation with Hannah Abott. Hannah's hair is much shorter than it was in school- tinged with green at the tips and Seamus has a noticeable tattoo at the side of his neck.

Hermione's sitting directly behind Neville and Luna with her arms folded across her chest, determined to go against all of her instincts to look back to where they're sitting. Hours of stalking have rendered her over-familiar with their lives and she doesn't know what to make of it.

She remembers a little too clearly how she'd spent a good sixty minutes - at least, after all her Tom Riddle research - on Ronald's Instagram. Halting over pictures of him and Lavender Brown. Sinking into that awful, numbing sensation of being cast side. Holding back tears. Wondering what to call that desperate urge to crawl inside herself and never come out. She'd fallen asleep in a numb kind of stupor.

She'd woken up -however- with remarkable energy propelling her into taking an early run. It's this energy that loosens her shoulders today, that allows her to sit back in the chair and just enjoy being with familiar faces without any of that fear. Some part of her knows that this moment is just one of many moments in time but she's savouring it - all of yesterday put away.

When Professor Snape strides in, impeccable in a two-piece dark navy suit, the class drops into a sharp silence. He's got his briefcase with him today - she can tell by the tightness of his jaw that he's probably come straight from some kind of an official meeting. Snape has never liked those tedious events - she's noticed that much in the three years that he's taught her. He sets his case on the table with an audible thud and turns around to face them. Face schooled into that impassive mask. Eyes sweeping across the room imperiously.

He clears his throat. "Miss Parkison," He barks suddenly and there's some mild chatter before a demure Yes is heard from the back of the class.

Snape's face is immovable as his gaze shifts. Hermione watches, stomach knotting in anticipation. That's as bizarre as an opening to a lecture goes, she thinks.

"Mister Goldstein," He commands with a turn of his head towards their group and Hermione has to will herself - once more - not to flinch.

There's more chattering around the class, whispers of what is he doing and are they in trouble doing rounds through groups as the two named students rise to their feet by their desks, perfectly decorous, awaiting further instructions.

"You two are paired for the duration of the next one hour," Snape explains finally, putting to rest all of the questions rushing through class conversations. "Each paired set of students must go to the Library, pick up an excerpt from any literary text that seems relevant to the course's brief. After coming to a conclusion about which text is best suited to th-"

"Sir," Pansy cuts him off and it's as if the class collectively takes a sharp breath.

Hermione throws restriction to wind and swivels around in her seat, like countless others to look at the first student who has probably ever interrupted Severus Snape. Some part of her wonders why on Earth Pansy Parkinson would make the poor decision of cutting in like this. It seems as if the rest of the class is hyper-aware of this mistake too and low murmurs ripple through the students, like muted fire.

Pansy's wearing a set of grey - long, flowing pants and a matching short top that highlights her delicate waist. Her sleek bob only flatters her sharp, attractive face and her mouth is pressed in a firm line, no aspect of her reflecting any kind of hesitation or second-thought. Her back is ramrod straight, her eyes meeting Snape's in absolute confidence. Hermione spots the older of the two brothers - Alphard Black - shaking his head, muttering confidentially to Astoria Greengrass and there's a strange look on Draco Malfoy's face.

There's no Tom Riddle there, nor Bellatrix and she feels both the barest flicker of disappointment and the twinge of anxiety.

"I cannot be partnered with...him," Pansy says finally, in a quiet and controlled manner, jerking her head to emphasise the distaste that is carried in the tone of voice.

Snape is stone, he reveals nothing. When he speaks, it is like having a wall speak. "I believe I made myself clear yesterday itself when I said that I will not be questioned by any of the students before the first week is out," There's a buzz in the classroom, all eager eyes lapping up the strange display before them. "And as for Mister Goldstein," He points to the blonde boy before looking back at Pansy. "...he is your partner for this assignment."

Pansy looks like she might say something more - might even make her reasons more plain but Astoria's fingers slip around the girl's wrist and tug her down. She sinks back into her seat after a brief searing locking of eyes with Malfoy, then the Black and Hermione watches their silent communication, as does the rest of the class in mild awe.

"I'd thank you, Miss Parkinson," Snape says in the same montone, his eyes fixed to her. "...for not wasting my time like this ever again,"

The warning hangs in there, obscured by the tone of his voice and then Snape's rattling names off some mental list, pairing Pureblood with Mudblood, Halfblood with Mudblood, Halfblood with Pureblood if one were to look at it that way- leaving severe scowls on some faces, furtive glances here and there. Paying absolutely no heed to the reaction his students seem to be having to his blatant disregard for the norm, he continues in his drastically empty voice.

Find a text you think is relevant. Take a part of it, if it's prose or the whole of it, it's poetry. Discuss it with your partner. Put both your thoughts down on paper. Submit.

When Hermione's name is called - almost at the end, she fights away the urge to shut her eyes. She watches Snape instead and catches her partner's name just as she catches his gaze - Alphard Black. Of course she'd end up with one of them. Her heart is ramming in her chest and she watches the tall, dark-haired boy makes his way through the classroom to her. His face is unreadable, closed off to any scrutiny or analysis and Hermione feels so awfully out of her depth that she thinks her knees might give in.

Luna gives her shoulder a squeeze before she walks out with her partner - a lovely girl from Beauxbatons and Hermione tries not to feel too badly about it. She'd take anyone over them. She hasn't forgotten the kind of treatment she was given at Hogwarts, by Malfoy and the others and it takes all of her strength to keep her standing there by the desk, waiting for Alphard Black.

He's dressed in a white tee-shirt and grey track pants, cutting a striking figure in the room, despite the semi-casual nature of his outfit and he comes to a stop near her. Pretty - yes, pretty, really - features in a perfectly unreadable expression, he regards her seriously for a moment and then sticks out his large hand as if to initiate a handshake.

"Hey," His voice is mellow, almost timid and there's a smile in his eyes that throws her off. "I'm Alphard Black,"

She has the ridiculous urge to say, Hello, I've seen your abs and quashes it effectively by putting her hand in his, opening her mouth to offer her own name when -

"Mr. Black, this is certainly not the playground," Snape admonishes from behind them, his tone mocking. "Take your handshakes elsewhere - or better yet, take Miss Granger to the Library and surprise us all with some responsibility,"


Black turns out to be shockingly silent (no slurs, no dirty looks, no shoves) and Hermione is almost sure that pigs really have started flying or perhaps, more realistically, the damn boy is possessed.

He doesn't speak all that much - not until they make it to the bookshelves and she reluctantly admires his evident dislike for small-talk. The silence between them is not uncomfortable - only new and it falls away when they both stop at the Literature section, right beside the Classical Literature section. The decidedly less populated part of the library - a space with as many as four floors, almost too well-stocked. Her sanctum. Her safe space. The only place she knows better than The Burrow.

"Granger," His voice cuts into her reverie and she's pulled back from slipping into a memory-coma related to Ron. Her eyes flicker up to his and she feels oddly exposed. "You'd gotten a very far away look on your face just there,"

She flushes faintly, stepping back to lean against the shelf, grateful for at least that familiarity. "Sorry," She mutters, looking down to the row of books, wondering what might best suit Snape's brief.

He doesn't speak again for a good ten minutes as the two of them peruse the shelves from different ends. At some point, she feels her self-consciousness leaving as she's tugged into the all-too-familiar and all-too-consuming world of books. Her fingers trail over the spines, spotting name after name - Shakespeare, Marlowe, Bacon, Johnson, Webster - and she crouches down when she catches sight of John Donne - The Major Works: including Songs and Sonnets and Sermons sitting between two critical essay books. She pulls the book out, flipping it open to the introductory pages. Nodding to herself, she thinks that this could do.

Just as she turns to face Black, he too turns and they're both holding a book each, looking odd and awkward. His face is unreadable again, as if he might be working through internal conflict and she is just trying hard not to say something insipid about all the pictures she came across last night. She is also trying not to be afraid - he is Malfoy's friend after all. It's almost as if he's heard what she's thinking because he looks right at her, with something odd in his gaze - a question, maybe.

Hermione's never liked eye-contact, it's invasive but she does not look away from him. He clears his throat and speaks finally,

"Some of us don't care too much about the Division. Some of us don't care at all," He tilts his head, his brown eyes never leaving hers for even a moment. "It is an arbitrary distinction that holds no weight for me, personally." He gives her a strange smile and something about it strikes her as very sad. Some part of her wonders what he was like at Hogwarts. "I judge people by intellect, by merit, by character,"

While she's standing there gobsmacked, he's turned back to the shelves. The most logical conclusion she can come to is that Black is most definitely possessed. It is far more comfortable to settle for that explanation than to think that he might actually mean something by what he's said. She stares at his back for a good minute, noting how his hair curls at the top of his neck, how his shoulders droop forward as he bends to a lower shelf, how he seems so much like Harry.

Alphard Black. Intensely close friend of Draco Malfoy - the ace bigot and master bully of Hogwarts. Confessing that he is capable of looking beyond the Division. A laughable plot to unnerve her, at best. She's not going to be manipulated. Hogwarts and Durmstrang have raised her. Taught her. She is no fool. She is no fool. As she turns back around, discarding the Donne book because that's the most cliched option -

something cold and quiet settles in her gut - the furious child rearing its raging head, freezing a resolution in her. Pretty boys with pretty pictures. With the ugly surface running deep. She remembers. She knows. Alphard Black can smile at her all he wants - she's not falling for it.

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Hermione doesn't make a show of her suspicions, merely lets them sit in the back of her head, a constant reminder to be vigilant and aware. There's no denying that they have interesting conversations about the texts they want to choose - he suggests Romeo and Juliet ("these violent delights have violent ends") and she reprimands him for selecting the most obvious thing. He turns down her suggestion of one of Donne's sonnets, despite professing a deep affection for the man's penmanship and she has to remind herself that he is not to be trusted.

They fall into companionable silence and Hermione waits for the inevitable slur, for the impending shove but nothing happens. They decide on poetry, in the end. An excerpt, they agree politely, would be tougher to write about.

Alphard points at a collection of Poems for the Dead and she pulls out a compilation of Yeats' poems that makes him pause. They hover over their selected titles placed on one of the desks- there's Byron and Coleridge, an anthology of contemporary American poetry, a small book of translated Italian poets, there's Dylan Thomas, some Pablo Neruda - a poet that makes them both uncomfortable due to his self-confessed rape of a Sri-Lankan woman, they share a look about that - and some Emily Dickinson on the side.

The two of them finally settle on Donne's Batter My Heart sonnet - one of Hermione's favourites, something they'd both been taught at Hogwarts. It's a faintly erotic, religious and violent piece and their written explanation takes up this intersectionality. She lets Alphard do the writing and stares at the side of his face, wondering if he really did mean what he'd said about the Division. At that moment, Astoria Greengrass passes by them - in pale blue and with an upturned lip, blatantly ignoring Hermione's presence and Alphard looks up just as the blonde flashes a full, almost suggestive smile at him.

When he smiles back at her, Hermione's resolve returns. He did not mean anything by what he had said.


Tom Riddle walks into Room Number 7 just as the clock strikes half-past eleven.

Snape glances up at him - briefly acknowledging the boy, saying nothing - before looking down at the book he's reading. Tom almost wishes that the professor would chastise him. Almost. Shrugging instead, he makes a beeline for the back of the classroom to his favoured seat by the windows. There's a view of the flower-beds from a particular that reminds him of so many different things that he almost never sits there. He'd always avoided it when he'd had classes here during his undergraduate course.

Today, however, feels different to him - as if the very fibre of his mind was altered by that dream. He sits down in the damned chair, setting down his leather bag on the dask and stretching his legs out in front of him. He can sense Snape's eyes on him - curious, almost worried? - and Tom thinks maybe he should've taken another set of showers in the morning to dispel the nightmare from his person. It feels like he might be wearing it, even now. That's the only reason Snape would look so much, and for so long.

Ignoring the older man's silent, unspoken question - what happened? - he looks out of the window and admires the white tulips there, tall amidst the insistence of grass. He doesn't know how long he looks out for, just that the ache right in the centre of his chest begins to ebb away and people start trickling back into the class, in odd pairs, involved in conversation. He tears his gaze from the tulips and leans back in his seat to watch the crowd rush back in.

Those Hogwarts' juniors of his - some Mudbloods, some Purebloods, stream in first with Beauxbaton students. He recognizes some of the faces - if not from school and university, then the parties and one too many smiles are thrown his way. Pansy appears with Cynus, laughing in that alluring way of his and Tom spots Draco in the crowd, pale head all too noticeable. Astoria is right by the door, talking hurriedly to some girl with long, black hair and then he sees Alphard, striding in with that other Hogwarts junior, the Mudblood that Draco had it in for...the one Snape had rebuked yesterday. A face to which Tom cannot put a name.

Griffin? Grover? Something like that, anyway. A Mudblood is of no interest to him.

Astoria and Pansy sit down near him - he hadn't realized they'd made their way over already - talking quietly to each other before the pale-blonde girl turns to look at him, a questioning look in her eye.

"Do you suppose she's pretty, Tom?" She asks finally, chewing on her bottom lip as she jerks her head discreetly in the direction of Alphard.

He lets his gaze flicker to the girl, disinterestedly but she's obscured from view now and he shrugs. Pansy fills in instead, sneering in her fashionably mocking style, "Yes, she's pretty.." Her eyes are razors. "...for a Mudblood."

Tom doesn't have the energy to shrug again, nor fucks left to propel him to say anything so he just looks down and Astoria reaches out to squeeze his shoulder affectionately. He has to fight the urge to flinch - not that because the gesture is unfamiliar or unwanted but because the night is still there, wrestling for his peace of mind, wanting to spill a secret or two, needing to ruin him forever. He can feel it thrumming beneath the surface of himself and he wishes that Bellatrix were here.

Fuck.

Cygnus drops him a friendly smile before sitting down behind Tom's seat and finally - Alphard makes his way over to where they're all sitting. Cygnus is talking to Malfoy and Pansy's flicking through her phone, pointing out one or two things to Astoria carelessly.

Just as the dark-haired boy makes to sit beside Tom, Snape rises from his seat to start speaking. His head is throbbing and he feels this nauseous wave of tiredness reach over across him - he fights this by whipping out his phone and turning to his iMessage inbox.

Got real real hammered last night, babe so i couldn't make it, readsBella's most recent message - sent to him sometime around 10 A.M.

There's a string of ten other messages that she'd sent him last night, through various stages of extreme inebriation and he's just about to scroll up when he gets a notification for a new message. From an unknown number. The meaning is made clear as soon as he taps the message open.

It reads: A new poison spreads. We require an antidote. This Saturday, at Diagon Alley.

He taps the Reply button and is just about to type out a response when Snape's barking voice calls out his name.

"Mr. Riddle!" The bitterness of his professor's voice does not go unnoticed and Tom sets the phone down on the table in front of him, without any hassle. "Yes, sir?" He prompts casually and he can feel those Juniors staring into the side of his face, trying to make something of him.

Snape purses his lips, the picture of annoyance and disdain. "I'd like you to give us one or two associations that we could be make between sex and death,"

Tom has known Severus Snape well enough to recognize his threats and lucky for them both, this is a course that Tom has had immense interest in for months and months. Tom tilts his head, pausing to think - drawing one idea into another, making sense of his thoughts before speaking, crisply and sharply,

"Sex and death are pivotal life experiences. While sex is something you experience yourself, your death is more often that which the people around you experience," He pauses, shifting his right hand down below the desk so that he can clench his fist, letting his fingernails dig into the palm of his skin - keeping him there, keeping the nightmare at bay. "They can both be regarded as a means of control. Whether we regard sexual practices like BDSM.." Someone guffaws, someone else clears their throat and Tom goes on, quiet and powerful. "..or analyze the violence of sexual assaults, the idea of control is important to both. We may further come to a more cliched conclusion...which is pleasure. Sex as an obvious means of pleasure and the act of murder as a possible way of deriving pleasure,"

He can feel all of their eyes on him - he's used to it, always has been and so, he looks straight at Snape instead. "Should I continue, sir?"

"Is that all of your opinion, Mr. Riddle?"

"For the moment, sir. I would require more reading to give you an adequate response,"

There's a pause. Astoria sniggers softly behind her hand. Cygnus and Pansy share a look. Those Hogwarts juniors are looking at each other questioningly. Tom can imagine the tulips fluttering in the wind, delicate and fragile.

"Thank you, Mr. Riddle. You were insightful,"

He finds himself nodding, almost mechanically - an action that appears only natural on the outside. As Snape's gaze travels to the other side of the classroom, to one of those Mudbloods, Tom whips out his phone and looks at the newest message again.

The response box flickers and Tom works on automatic, his fingers typing the words before he even thinks of them.

Diagon, 8PM. All remedies will be brought.


a/n: i'm working on getting together some kind of a syllabus for their course so that the literature i reference makes more sense, in the context of both tom's and hermione's stories. it's essential for what i have in mind also. some exciting things are coming up. what do you think of a possible club scene, where hermione sees something curiously erotic? give me your thoughts ! :::::: as a reply to the two guest reviewers who expressed discomfort about my portrayal of hermione, i'd like to just say that hermione is obviously not ugly. in fact, she's beautiful. however, as a 'mudblood', purebloods will often describe her as ugly or mousy or unattractive in order to put her down. this is the PUREBLOODS' perception, not actual fact. it's all about perception. just as tom riddle appears to her as some kind of divinely handsome man, please remember this is just HER perception. they're both immensely good-looking, at the end of the day. another point i'd want to make is that often when we're attracted to people, we think that they're "too goodlooking" for us or that we're somehow "unattractive" in comparison - it's insecurity at play and this will be there in the eventual tom-hermione relationship. hope this is clear :::::::: thank you to everyone who is reading this so far ! i'm looking forward to writing more! leave your thoughts with me, reviews are food, yum! :::::