Morals.
The bathroom seems different without Moaning Myrtle. It seems like every other bathroom in the school.
She waits there, in the evenings. She waits for him to work it out, to find the taps with the tiny engraved snakes on them.
She walks in on him one evening. He's studying the taps and looks up at the sound of footsteps.
"The taps in the boy's bathroom are broken," he says calmly, "I needed to wash my hands."
"Don't lie to me Tom."
"Why else do you think I'd be in the girl's bathroom? Not for the social scene, surely?" He looks around at the empty bathroom and laughs.
"Just leave it, will you Tom?"
"Leave what?" he asks sharply.
"It's a slippery slope to self destruction," she tells him. "Just leave it alone."
"I don't know what you mean."
"It wasn't noble work! It was sick! Pathetic!"
"You're muggleborn, aren't you?"
"Yes."
"Dangerous, letting slip that sort of thing when you know what's down there."
"I've survived it before."
"You know what it is?" Tom asks, suddenly breathless with excitement.
"You don't? I'm disappointed, Tom."
"Hermione, tell me!"
She leaves the bathroom, ignoring his demands that she tells him what's down there. She wonders if the curiosity will scare him away or cause him to make the leap sooner.
Probably the latter, but she doesn't see what she can do.
He doesn't sit next to her in Transfiguration the following day.
Myrtle. Poor Myrtle. Poor moaning moping ugly spotty four eyed Myrtle.
After dinner, which was quiet and had an overbearing atmosphere of fear, she drags Tom into an empty classroom, much to his dismay.
"You bastard!"
He slaps her, and she realises the insult must sting more with him than it does with others.
"Don't. Call. Me. That."
"I'm sorry," she says weakly, "I didn't mean -" she doesn't know what to say, and wonders why she's apologising. Perhaps because she feels sorry for him, having the childhood that he did. Does.
"I have steered clear of you so far, Granger. I could take a detour next time."
"I've survived that basilisk before, I can do it again. You don't scare me, Tom." Lies. "They're going to close the school. You'll have to go back to the orphanage, for good. You'll have to get a muggle job and live in the muggle world in a muggle house and wear muggle clothes. Ironic, no?"
"Shut up!"
"You're such a hypocrite, Tom. You're not even pureblood yourself!"
He slaps her again.
"Do that, just one more time," she threatens.
"Why? Do you enjoy it? Is that what makes you tick?" He walks towards her, backing her into the wall.
His body is so close to hers but not even touching. That's the painful part of it. She wants them to be touching, because that half inch between them feels like a mile, and she doesn't know why she wants to be that close to a man who has just killed an innocent student that afternoon but he's just intoxicating.
His mouth moves closer to her own, and she can feel his breath on her face. She moves her lips towards his and his hands caress her face, then hold her head steady.
"How sick are you," he murmurs into her mouth, his eyes boring into her own, "wanting to fuck a murderer?"
He moves away from her, mechanically, almost robotically, and he turns away, heading out of the door, leaving Hermione looking quite dishevelled, her heart racing with a mixture of fear and anticlimax.