Ron Weasley took his Defense essay back from Hermione and squinted at the corrections she'd made. "Are you sure?" he asked.

She just looked at him and he sighed.

"Tell me about this guy you got dumped on you," Ron said. "Two Slytherins up there; that has to be the worst. Is he as bad as Malfoy?"

Hermione leaned back in the couch in the Gryffindor common room and considered what to say. "He's nothing like Malfoy," she said at last. "He's like cut crystal or something; he makes Malfoy look like some kind of plastic copy of what it means to be Slytherin."

Ron's eyes widened. "He's worse?" he asked in obvious disbelief.

"He's subtle," she said dryly. "He's smart but he doesn't rub your nose in it like Malfoy does –"

"Or like you do," Ron said.

"You want me to proofread your essays?" Hermione asked. "Because I do have other things I could be doing."

"Sorry," Ron muttered. "What else?"

Hermione thought about the curses Tom Riddle had launched at her. She'd had to really work to fight him off, work harder than she ever had before. Neville had gotten to her because she'd made a mistake and he'd been afraid to really push ever since. Theo wanted to beat her but was careful about not using things too Dark lest she rat him out and ruin his future. This Tom Riddle, though, had barely skirted the bounds of 'nothing lethal' and she was piqued he knew things she didn't.

More, she was fascinated he knew things she didn't. Where had he learned all those spells?

If she were to touch all his sharp edges, how much, she wondered, would she bleed?

"I get the feeling he's a pretty powerful wizard," she said at last. "And he's polite, so polite he could be planning to knife you in your sleep and you wouldn't be able to tell from the way he talks to you."

"Sounds like a real charmer," Ron said with a snort, shoving his essay back into his bag. "And you have to share a dorm with the both of them. That's not fair to you."

Hermione shrugged. "When has Dumbledore ever been fair? He can hand this problem off to me and go back to whatever his current research project is. I'm sure he's got some new article on yet another use for dragon's blood or some such coming out in a journal that's more important than actually managing the school."

"Snippy," Ron said with a frown. "Dumbledore's a great man, you know. You'd not be liking the world if he hadn't defeated Grindelwald."

Hermione closed her eyes for a moment before gathering up her bag. "Yeah, I hear that a lot. Thanks for reminding me."

"Hey," Ron said as she stood up. "That wasn't what I meant."

"I'm sure," Hermione said. "I think I'll go back to my nearly private tower and work on my Arithmancy. McGonagall assures me I'll need a good N.E.W.T. score in it to get an internship in any field next year, especially when I'm competing against people like Nott."

She ran into Riddle in the hall and he fell into step beside her. "Something wrong?" he asked.

She glanced at him. "You ever just want to tell someone to bugger off?"

"Yes," he said, "but I've found that doesn't accomplish nearly as much as a quick dose of agonizing pain."

She laughed at that.

"What happened?"

"Oh," she sighed and jerked her bag back up to her shoulder. "Some people just forget to say thank you. I can't tell if it's because on some level they think it's my job to wait on them and help them out all the time or because –"

"They're just rude arseholes?" he interrupted her.

"Yeah."

"Manners," Tom said offering her his arm with a formal flourish, "Manners are important."

She made a bit of a self-conscious grimace at the extended arm but when he resolutely held it in place she put her hand on his arm and let her escort her back to their dorm. Outside the door he stopped at said, "I had fun dueling you, Hermione. We should do it again."

She ducked her head a little. "I promise not to cheat next time."

"Oh," he said, "don't promise that. I'd be so disappointed."

. . . . . . . . . .

Tom slid into the routine of the school, attending classes and 'studying' with Hermione Granger at night while he asked her seemingly idle questions about students and teachers. Draco Malfoy had sneered at him at first and, cornering him over breakfast one morning, had finally asked why he was wasting his time with filth. Tom smile started benignly and slowly hardened until the blond squirmed under his gaze. "Miss Granger has been very helpful to me," he said once the blond had looked away. "Maybe you'd like to join our study sessions?"

Malfoy had muttered something about being busy but he'd shown up the next night, sneering at Hermione and doing the equivalent of baring his throat to Tom.

Coward, Tom had thought with disgust. You didn't even try to stand up to me.

Hermione, however, had hissed, "Malfoy? Really Tom? What are you trying to do?"

He'd wrapped an arm around her, one she'd rapidly shrugged off, and said, "I'm just trying to make friends, Hermione."

She'd snorted but hadn't made any further objections to the growth of their study group.

Theodore Nott was the next person to join. He sat next to Tom one morning and, while reaching for some toast, said, "I think you probably knew my father when you were in your own time. Thoros."

Tom nodded. "I did," he said. "It's strange, though, to think that the boy I was planning mischief with just a few weeks ago now has a son my age."

"Mischief?" the Nott boy looked over at him. "Interesting word choice."

Tom smiled. Thoros, it would appear, had been telling tales to this son of his and the son was intrigued. All Tom said, however, was, "Well, things change."

"There is a truism, however," Nott said, "that the more things change the more they stay the same."

Tom gazed at Theodore Nott over their toast and tea and waited for the other boy to look away. He didn't, just smiled back with a slow, toothy smile. "I usually go over Potions and Arithmancy with Hermione Granger at night in our little common room," Tom said. "Maybe you'd like to come to?" He waited a single beat before adding, "Unless you have an issue with that."

Theodore brought his glass to his mouth and took a sip, still not looking away. "Granger's a talented witch," he said. "I'm surprised she's got the time to do her own work, however, what with dragging Potter and Weasley behind her and picking up Malfoy's slack."

"She does seem to let people take advantage of her," Tom agreed. "Some day she might start to get resentful of that."

"When that happens the world better look out," Theodore said. "In the meanwhile, I'd love to come and get the benefit of her insights into Arithmancy, however. Yours too. Only a fool turns down an offer that could benefit him out of some antiquated prejudice. Or scruples."

And so Theodore Nott joined them. He and Hermione never openly acknowledged their history of extra-curricular dueling but the presence of the lanky dark-haired boy seemed to make her relax. Tom watched them together and confirmed that they had zero romantic feelings for one another but that they worked together with the casual respect borne of long familiarity with one another's strengths.

He noted his pleasure that Hermione didn't seem to have interest in anyone with clinical detachment.

. . . . . . . . . .

One night, after several shots of a purloined bottle of firewhiskey, Hermione Granger tilted her head and looked at Tom curiously. "I wonder what's different," she said,

"Could you be any less clear, Granger?" Malfoy drawled.

She tossed an annoyed look at the blond. "Well, pointy and pale, go whinge to your father that you can't follow me."

"Sod off," he suggested and poured himself another shot.

"As much as I hate to be classed with Malfoy," Theo said, "I'm also not sure what you mean."

"Tom here," she said, waving a hand toward the boy. "He fell into the future. Was he supposed to run off and marry some nice girl and have children that now don't exist? Die tragically in a carriage accident that resulted in the driver slowly becoming an alcoholic out of guilt and now, having not killed anyone, that driver is instead a file clerk at the Ministry."

"A fate worse than death," Tom said. "I hope to never run into that file clerk."

Theo was now looking speculatively at Tom as well, a much darker glint in his eyes than the idle one in Hermione's. "Yes," he said. "I wonder what he would have accomplished in our past if he'd lived his life in proper fashion, not skipping years."

"Clearly, I'd be running the world," Tom said, taking a very small sip of his own glass. "Or off in a cottage with a bunch of kids."

"Or dead in a carriage accident," Draco Malfoy said, throwing back his shot and reaching for the bottle to pour himself another one.

"I vote for running the world," Theo said.

Hermione leaned her head back against the side of the couch she was sitting on. "Well, no time like the present to run the world. Going to start a political career, Tom? Work your way up to Minister of Magic?"

"Maybe," he said. "Do you think I should, Hermione?"

He watched her though his lashes as she pondered the question, giving it more thought than he had expected her to. "You," she said at last, "are manipulative, brilliant and you have only a passing interest in the truth." She began to grin at him, clearly becoming charmed by the idea he'd set before her. "Politics is clearly the place you belong."

"Brilliant?" he asked her. "You flatter me."

She just took another drink and rolled her eyes. "Don't dig for more compliments, Tom."

"You ought to watch your mouth, Mudblood," Draco Malfoy said, watching Tom out the corner of his eyes.

Theo groaned and tossed back a drink and stood. "That's it. I'm leaving. I don't want to get blood on these pants. Draco, it's one thing to toss your idiotic insults around in public but in private could you at least try to keep up?"

"What do you mean," the blond blustered.

Theo glanced at Hermione, who was ignoring the minor confrontation, and said, "No one who matters cares about that shite anymore, Draco."

"Who matters?" Draco asked.

"The people in this room," Tom said, toying with his glass. "The clever. The powerful." He looked from Hermione to Draco. "The connected, assuming they live long enough and are clever enough for those connections to be useful."

Theo tipped his head to Tom and said, "Later," and Tom nodded, a quiet dismissal even Draco recognized.

"I'm going to go read," Draco said and, standing up, started toward his door.

"I think you're forgetting something," Tom said quietly.

Draco spun on his heel and looked at the pair still sitting near the bottle. "What?" he demanded.

"An apology to the lady for your rudeness, of course," Tom said. "Courtesy, Draco. It's what separates us from the masses." He took a sip. "You really shouldn't even insult the lowest worm but one would hope a Malfoy would be smart enough to recognize it's a bad idea to antagonize a predator."

"Granger isn't a bloody predator," Draco Malfoy said.

"You're wrong," Tom said, "or you will be, but I wasn't referring to her." He looked at Draco over the rim of his glass while he took another sip and, after a long moment, the boy muttered a sullen apology, laced with an excuse about too much alcohol, and slunk away.

"I'm surprised his insults don't bother you more," Tom observed, leaning back in the worn couch after Malfoy had disappeared off into his room.

"Oh, well," Hermione shrugged. "That's our Malfoy. He just goes for the laziest insult he can come up with. He goes after Ron for being poor, any girl who doesn't look like she has an eating disorder for being fat, and me for being a Mudblood. Usually. Sometimes he prefers to attack my hair." She raised a hand to her wild curls and fluffed them in a parody of empty-headed feminine vanity. "It's hard to take him seriously."

"Your hair?" Tom said, tossing a contemptuous expression at Malfoy's closed door. "He doesn't like your hair?"

Hermione laughed. "Well, it is a bit much."

Tom shook his head. "Your hair is your best feature," he said quietly. "You've managed to make the rest of you look like the rule-abiding good girl everyone thinks you are. Hogwarts Head Girl with her regulation length skirt that she never rolls or hems, her sensible flat shoes and her neatly ironed blouse. Everything about you says you're studious and responsible and trustworthy except that hair."

"What do you mean," she asked, nearly mesmerized.

"Your hair, Hermione Granger," he said, "tells the rest of them to fuck off. Your hair does what it wants and looks amazing. Your hair is wild and uncontrolled and, sometimes, when you're dueling, it nearly sparks with the power you've got within you." He reached out and took one riotous curl in his fingers and turned it back and forth. "Some day I hope you'll let the rest of yourself be as free as this hair." He released her hair and smiled at her and watched her throat bob as she swallowed.

"No one's ever put it quite like that before," she said at last.

Tom shrugged. "It's easy to miss the steel at your core. Everyone just sees the good friend who does the homework and locates the missing books, the good Head who makes sure everything gets done despite Malfoy's tendency to drip his lazy privilege on the floor and his expectation you'll always come after him and mop it up." He stood up. "I'm going to bed." At his door he turned back to look at her, still sitting on the couch he'd just vacated, one hand at that hair of hers. "It's okay to tell people 'no', you know. It's okay to go after what you want."

He closed his door behind him with a soft click and stood, listening, as she crossed the room and stood on the other side of the barrier between them for several long minutes before she walked away and to her own room.

. . . . . . . . . .

The next person on Tom's list to consider acquiring was Neville Longbottom. Powerful, at least according to Hermione Granger. He watched the boy – man, he supposed, albeit barely - from afar. He was friendly, cheerful, a bad dresser, and clumsy. He moved like someone who'd suddenly grown a foot and lost 20 pounds and wasn't sure how to navigate the world in this new body. In Gryffindor, the land where everyone was expected to be an athlete, he suffered eye rolls and unkind mutterings from his Housemates because of that. It didn't help that he seemed to be chronically unable to remember things and was constantly forgetting the password to his common room, the homework assignment, or where he'd left his bag.

If Hermione hadn't told him Neville was her other dueling partner he'd never have given the man a second look. But this clumsy, forgetful goof had, apparently, landed a curse on Hermione that neither of them had been able to heal and, assuming she played even halfway fair when she dueled him, Hermione Granger knew how to heal quite a few very nasty curses.

He was watching Longbottom one morning when Theodore Nott slipped onto the bench next to him. "Who are you studying today?" he asked. "Which of the innocent Gryffindors are you watching to discover the fissures in the bedrock of his soul in order to tap your little chisel and make him yours with a few casual words?

"The ginger," Tom lied easily, putting away – at least for now – Theodore Nott's open acknowledgement of his manipulative side.

"Weasley?" Theo snorted in disdain. "He's so brittle you'd break him. The youngest boy in a family of talents, he's the one who's never been good enough, never quite measured up and while the girl is embarrassed by their poverty he's absolutely humiliated by it." Theo shifted on the bench and reached to get a pitcher of juice. "You can always tell what a person's main insecurity is by what Draco uses to go after them, you know. He's a right prat, that one, but he's got a sixth sense for sniffing out weaknesses."

"Granger doesn't seem that bothered by his name calling," Tom said, eyes still on Longbottom.

Theo stopped what he was doing and turned to squint at Tom. "Is that a joke?"

Tom looked back.

"She hates it," Theo said. "She used to bury herself in the library to try to learn everything she could about wizarding culture. I think the swot's actually memorized Hogwarts: A History. She works ten times as hard as everyone else so no one can ever tell her she's not as good because of her birth." He snorted at Tom's expression. "Why do you think she throws herself against me and Neville both with the dueling? She has to be the best, always. She has to prove she's better than a pair of, well, 'inbred aristocrats' is what she's called us when she's in a snit."

Theo laughed at the twitch he saw on Tom's cheek. "So enamored of her you missed that, huh?" He looked back toward the Gryffindor table. "No, the one you want isn't Weasley. It's the boy next to him. Neville Longbottom. Connections. Power." Theo pulled some toast onto his plate. "And ridiculed because he's a disorganized mess."

"I'll keep that in mind," Tom said, taking the pitcher from Theo and filling his own glass. "Thank you."

"I live to serve," Theo said dryly.

"As long as you get power in the end?" Tom asked, his voice just as dry.

"Well, we all have the little fissures in our souls," Theo said. "I just happen to know what mine are."

. . . . . . . . . .

Tom had Hermione tell him the Gryffindor passwords, a secret she divulged with a slight cock of an eyebrow but no other comment, and he waited for the right opportunity and the day he found Neville Longbottom standing outside the portrait that barred the way to his own dorm, fumbling to remember the password, he just said it under his breath.

The boy froze and looked at him. Tom smiled back and Neville, eyes narrowed, turned to the Fat Lady in the frame and repeated the phrase.

"About time," the woman grumbled, and swung open.

Neville didn't go through, however. He just looked at Tom. "How did you know that?" he asked at last.

"I know a lot of things," Tom said as he eyed the boy he was considering acquiring.

"You're Hermione's friend. That time traveler," Neville said.

Tom laughed, a warm sound no one ever realized was practiced. "I'd like to think I'm her friend but I suspect I'm more in the way of her project: get the boy out of time to fit into the present. I'm a bit of a square peg in your round holes."

Neville thrust out his hand and Tom took it. "Neville Longbottom," he said. "Any friend of Hermione's and all that. And thanks. I was starting to worry I'd never remember it and I'd have to wait for someone to let me in and I'd rather not deal with another week of razzing about how I can barely remember my own name. How can I pay you back?"

"Are you coming in or not?" the Fat Lady grumbled but both boys ignored her.

"Duel me?" Tom asked. "For fun, of course. Granger's busy, my work's all done, and I'm bored."

Neville began to grin. "You really want to?" he asked. "I'm pretty good, despite the password stuff."

Tom grinned back. "You think you can take me?"

"See you in five," Neville said. "I have to drop my stuff off back in my room."

"Where?" Tom asked.

Neville looked at him. "If someone's been telling stories, you already know where."

They grinned at one another, two boys circling like wolves. They continued circling when they met behind the old, broken building and launched curses at one another for five minutes. When they sat down at the end of their five minutes and Tom repaired some slices he'd gotten into Neville's shirt they both began to laugh.

"I can see why Hermione's been talking," Neville said after he put his wand away. "You must keep her on her toes."

"She's good," Tom admitted. He looked at the other boy who was, it would seem, a keeper. "So are you."

Neville shrugged. "At some things." He picked at a cuticle. "Not so much at others, as you noticed."

Tom snorted. "The password bullshite? Just write them down."

"It's against the rules," Neville said.

"So?" Tom Riddle looked at the boy sitting next to him; honestly, people and their concern for rules. It was baffling to him. "Don't get caught. Don't let yourself look and feel like an idiot when a simple thing like keeping notes will solve the problem."

Neville sighed. "I just… you know what Aurors are, right?" Tom nodded and the other boy continued. "Well, my parents are, uh, the best. Like, really the best and all I ever hear when I was little was how I had to live up to them. And I don't. Not at all. And it's worse because what they do, it's not just tracking down Dark wizards and Dark magic, you know, but that's the core of it all and the shite I'm good at - like this dueling - that's what they try to stomp out. Transfiguration? I'm worthless at it, can't turn a bird to a cup to save my life. Give me a dark curse, though, and I've got it." He huffed out a tired little sigh. "Can't exactly get a N.E.W.T. in illegal curses though. And I'm great at applying ideas across disciplines. I could bore you for hours about how you can transfigure growing conditions in a greenhouse but no one cares about transfiguring dirt into a different kind of dirt."

"Why would you want to turn a bird into a cup?" Tom asked with an exaggerated role of his eyes, one that fairly honestly reflected his inner exasperation; who wept over shite like transfiguration when he could master Dark curses with ease? "I've never quite understood the point of some of the classroom assignments. Just go buy a cup, for Merlin's sake. But adapting like that? That's brilliant." He stood up and brushed some non-existent debris from his trousers. "It's too bad your family doesn't appreciate what you can do; I think it's impressive as hell. You need to join our study group. You and Theo would get along like a house on fire. He's got some bee in his bonnet about using Arithmancy in conjunction with Runes to change spell-work." He held out a hand to help Neville up. "And Granger probably would like another Gryffindor. She's stuck with three Slytherins right now and I think she's feeling a little outnumbered."

Neville laughed as he got up. "You make it sound like I'm a pet you're getting her." He eyed the other boy. "That would be great, though. Thanks for the invite." He sighed "Sorry to dump on you, I didn't mean to."

You are a pet I'm getting her, Tom thought. A pet for her, a follower for myself. Be grateful you're so talented; given that your parents are such perfect Aurors your natural classification should have been target.

"Eh," was all he said. "Happens a lot. I think I've got 'confess to me' on my forehead or something. No big deal. Your neuroses are safe with me."

. . . . . . . . . . . .

A/N – Big, fluffy, sociopathic hugs to you all. A reminder (you know, shameless please for attention) that I'm on tumblr at colubrina dot tumblr dot c o m.