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.
7th june, thursday, undisclosed hour of the day
(vignettes)
..
.
The first she'd been called a Mudblood was when she had barely been ten years old.
She'd been alone, making her way into the Great Hall for dinner when two very tall and very intimidating girls had shoved past her, hissing the word in such a violent manner that Hermione had felt it like a physical blow across the face. She hadn't known its meaning or its history, only that it sounded very much like a very, very bad word. It had left an awful taste in her mouth and it had taken all her strength to continue her way into the Hall when what she really wanted was to run right back to their dorm rooms.
She'd taken her usual seat between Ron and Harry and the question had fallen right out of her mouth before she could think twice,
"What does Mudblood mean?"
The twins had looked up first- head snapping in such an abrupt manner that it had made her flinch and the entire table of Gryffindors - loud, raucous and uncaring Gryffindors had fallen silent, gazes shifting, people turning. She'd been the centre of all that scrutiny but nothing in her demeanour gave any of her fear away. Her spine had been ramrod straight, her mouth so pleasantly curled that it was almost odd and she'd been confident enough back then to look around the table as if to assure everybody that she would not take the question back.
Harry sat frozen beside her, clutching a butter knife as if wielding a weapon and Ron had turned to look at his older brothers with those wide, wonderful eyes as if searching for the same answer. There had been some muttering, especially among the Sixth and Seventh Years - brows furrowed, mouths curled and Hermione had seen someone's face so caught in fury that it scared her all over.
So much power in a single word.
She remembered George Weasley's exact expression when he spoke to her - fierce and protective, like the older brother he had become ever since she first visited the Burrow.
"Did someone say that to you, 'Mione?"
Fred's eyes had been flint and he'd turned in his seat to look right at her, leaning forward on the table in an oddly threatening manner- she'd known even then that the threat was not to her but to whomever they thought was harassing her. Hermione had felt that flash of intense discomfort again - felt the force of the word as those girls had said it to her and she'd shown nothing to the Gryffindors, shrugging as if to shrug the memory of it off. Someone had laughed and the tension had dissipated when Ron dropped some mashed potatoes on his trousers. Harry had been awfully quiet, like an icy pool of disappearance but then, he did that often. He left them, even as he sat right beside them and Hermione had not questioned it.
George had asked her again after dinner, when they were all walking back towards the dormitories - when nobody jumped out at her and said ugly things.
"Is someone bothering you, Hermione?"
She'd been on the edge of something - a cliff, a kind of bridge and her answer would have sealed her fate, would have fixed something that day, all those years ago. She could have been upfront, could have admitted that two Slytherin girls had laid the word out before her like a sick curse, could have widened the ever-growing rift between the two Houses, could have allowed them to see her weakness even as she did not seem to know it. But she had not. She'd reached forward and pressed a soft hand to George's arm, shaking her head. Smiling brightly, her face like a bloody lamp, illuminating the hallway.
The relief in George's gaze that night - like some kind of shadow lifting the darkness from his eyes - lingers with her to this day.
Reminds her of Fred Weasley. Found dead in a ditch near Camden Town with his throat slit open. In his last hours, at the impossible age of twenty, defending people like her. Rallying support for the Mudbloods in the area in the wake of recent murders. His killer walking free, out there somewhere, unapprehended by the authorities who could care less for a "respectable pureblood" gone astray. Reminds her that she should have said something that night - should have pointed out exactly who had said that to her, should have sought the balm when it had been right in front of her.
She had made a choice, however and the wound only grew.
The slurs became common- littering passing comments thrown her way whenever she was alone. Short hisses under people's breath when they saw her. Haunting their eyes as they looked at her. Echoing in the library, catching her always when she was alone. Each time, the sheer violence of it dimmed and as she stumbled across its meaning in a conversation with Harry late into one night, it did not feel like suffering. No, it had felt like fate.
So when it came out of Draco Malfoy's snobbish little mouth in Fourth Year, she had been surprised by how much it stung.
It's why she'd hit him. A full punch to the face, after having pulled her arm back. With the precise violence that had been inflicted upon her over the years of verbal abuse. She remembers the satisfying crack his head had made against the rock, his body jerking away from hers and his two goons, those insufferable bastards had looked on in absolute horror. A part of her had been terrified and it had looked down at her from someplace far away with such disgust that she had almost regretted it. Harry's reaction had almost made her regret it even more - there was something he had understood about power back then that she had not. Ron had laughed for a good ten minutes and given her a high-laugh, saying all the right words.
Malfoy's a fucking tosser. He had it coming. I'm so proud, 'Mione. I'd never pegged you for a violent sort of girl but Merlin, I'm impressed.
That had been the real beginning. The physical fights came out of nowhere - smack in the middle of Fifth Year when she'd been lulled into a kind of false security because nobody had said anything to her. No brushing past in the corridors. No scrawling notes left in her locker. No snide remarks made in classes. She should have known better but she'd fallen into this obtuse dream that it was finally over, that a word would no longer command power over her, that she could finally make something of herself.
Hestia Carrow had cornered her in a bathroom full of silver mirrors and blue tiles. She remembered thinking how beautiful the tile looked in the light before the Carrow girl had rammed her into the wall, long fingers threaded into Hermione's bushy hair. Mudblood, she'd hissed into Hermione's ear and left, the door slamming after her. Blood had trickled down the side of her face and the choice had unfolded before her once again. As it would continue to, many times over the next two years.
She remembers all the brawls in distinct, chilling clarity. The late night run-in with Pansy Parkinson that had left her with bruises the size of coins on the side of her waist. The humiliating punch that Goyle had managed to land on her face, at the direction of stupid fucking Malfoy. She'd made good use of Ginny's concealer then. Following the Yule Ball, her altercation with the Greengrass sisters that had left her beautiful, coral dress in tatters with tears so thick she hadn't been able to blink properly for minutes on end.
And that final horror in her seventh year, a perfect epilogue to her constant lies and covering-up of things. Walking right into a trap Draco Malfoy had laid for her. The two of them, alone, at the Astronomy Tower. That was the first time Hermione had feared for her own life.
Nothing happened. He hadn't so much as lifted a finger in her direction but she had felt it. A clammy fist around her heart, that awareness that something in Malfoy was no longer quite right and she could therefore be certain of nothing. She'd seen it in his eyes - something baffling and frenzied and she'd stepped back towards the railing of the balcony. Wind howled at them, around them and the moon hung limp and dull in the sky, two witnesses without voice. He'd just opened his mouth - forming that favourite word of his when Professor McGonagall had appeared, an oddity if there ever was one.
Harry had been livid and Ron - well, Ron had had murder in his eyes. She had been disturbed by their anger - women requiring male protection was an idea as abhorrent as Draco Malfoy himself but she'd realized something later when Ginny had tucked her into bed in an awkwardly maternal manner. Their anger hadn't really been tied down to some kind of patriarchal notion of protecting women - it was an anger she'd found in Ginny too. Ginny, with her pale hands, trembling with a hardening rage in the short set of her mouth, something that Hermione would continue to see over the years as they grew up.
The seventh year episode had more terrifying than times of physical damage, than instances of cruel verbal assault because there had been a kind of silent promise on top of that Astronomy Tower, the sheer violence that came from not having any inflicted upon her, but only suggested by Malfoy. She had stayed in her room for a week, unable to see how she could get to class in any dignified manner when just the idea of stumbling across Malfoy made her head hurt. How could that be explained to any of her professors? How could such fear translate into sense?
Ron had been her most dedicated visitor, bringing her not only the occasional Chocolate-Frog but also various notes he'd filched off Ginny and Luna, thick sets of newspapers and soft, understanding conversation that steered clear of the Astronomy Tower. It was strange to her then that the boy who had often made fun of how much work she was doing all the time was now the boy who refused to let her sit idle, who fed her curiosity for hours with odd bits of information, who brought her paper after paper to keep her very much in the real world.
Harry visited sparingly - caught between a thousand other things and it was on one of his very few visits that he'd mentioned Malfoy. Hermione had known that if any of them would bring it up, it would be Harry. That was just the nature of their relationship - no hiding behind things, no obscuring or withholding, a saying of what was as it was.
He'd said exactly this: 'Mione, you can leave your room now. He's not here anymore. For a short, almost blindingly horrible moment, she'd thought Malfoy was dead. Her misunderstanding was rectified moments later, Harry's green eyes alight with the knowledge of what she'd been thinking. He'd even smiled (but the guilt was like a battering ram, taking straight to her stomach, making her feel sick) : He's disappeared from school. Nobody knows what happened.
She'd slept with that awful guilt in her gut for days, even as she returned to class and went through the motions of social interaction, homework and exam reading. She'd stooped to his level. She really was no better. Just as she was gaining some semblance of normalcy, newspapers carrying horrors had arrived, right before the exams. She remembers the Headline almost as well as she remembers the feeling it gave rise to within her.
UNNAMED GROUP HUNTS MUGGLES, KILLS TWELVE.
Harry had been a statue at breakfast and Ron's face was almost translucent. Ginny's hand had found Hermione's as they sat side by side, eyes glued to the terrifying picture before them. The Great Hall had felt oppressive then, like a deliberate means by which they had all been cut off from the real world. From the actual horror. None of the Professors were at the Staff Table out at the front. Not even the Headmaster. Tables and tables of students sat in stunned silence - the Division had been a distant reality for them. At most, it had been a trading of verbal barbs or a scuffle in the toilets or simply the refusal of certain professors to award certain students the kind of grades they'd deserved. That newspaper headline changed everything. It indicated something - something that went beyond the power of one word. It implied a darkness, a cruelty that would physically manifest itself in the destruction, degradation and discarding of life.
Hermione's heart sat in her throat, a suffocating knot. Even the Slytherins had been silent.
The memory of it all plays out in her head in a series of unrelated images, without any of the linearity or structure that one can only imagine and then attempt to impose on the mind. Hermione Granger might be one of the most intelligent persons of her age but even her mind must yield to the fractures of time, the sheer otherness by which her life comes back to her, like a dream-sequence in an absurd film.
She's on Tom Riddle's Facebook page again but it's not him that she's looking at. There's another picture from the beach she hadn't seen in her previous bout of searching and her gaze is settled on Alphard Black's lean frame. Wearing just a pair of swimming trunks - black and plain, unimaginative therefore by all standards - he's every inch the athletic, photogenic archetype male. There's a smile at his mouth, like a kind of shadow and the sea stretches out behind him, an undisturbed blue. There's nobody else in the picture - she wonders why Riddle might have posted this. Comments have disabled on it too - she can only see the number of Likes and Reactions.
Could he have meant what he had said to her about the Division? Him, a pureblood, openly telling her that the Division didn't matter to him? Either he was impressively manipulating her or he was trusting her because an admission like that could get him into real fucking trouble with the Pureblood Hardliners and there were quite a few in Durmstrang. That headline hadn't been a stand-alone, she remembers - there had been a series of attacks, a spate of hatred that one registered along with the body count. Why would he say that to her? What did he want from her?
She clicks on the 'Next' arrow, still surprised that Riddle has a public profile that allows her to do all of this. A photograph of the said boy appears - it's a black and white portrait of him between light and dark, shadows spilling across half his face and abstaining from the other half. There's a dentend vulnerability in the picture that makes her immensely uncomfortable. He's the well-known myth of Hogwarts, sure but he's also the unspoken leader of all those Purebloods and she's not sure if she can make out any pretense here, if she can gauge the mask from the man. She wonders who took this picture, why he posted it online, whether it's all an elaborate scheme to fit the stories.
Before she can keep clicking forward, her doorbell rings.
It's past midnight. Who would be at her flat at this hour? Irrational fear sets in just as she moves the laptop off of her lap to put it down on the sofa. Fuck. She gets to her feet steadily and makes her way to the bookcase to her left, right near the door. The bell goes off again and Hermione has to bite her lip to keep herself from cursing fruitlessly. All of her lights are on so she can't pretend to not be home. Stealthily, she stops by the bookcase and picks up the hockey stick Ginny gave to her the moment she'd moved into the flat alone.
Feeling and looking ridiculous, no doubt, she stops at the door and wishes that the blasted fucking thing had had a keyhole. She probably wouldn't have been this paranoid if she hadn't been thinking about those attacks. She feels like a cornered child, having to do something she really doesn't want to. Taking a calm, steadying breath that doesn't do all that much for her, she unlocks the door and much like ripping off the band-aid, yanks the blasted thing open.
"Harry?!"
"You seem very interested in that Mudblood that Draco doesn't like,"
"You noticed,"
"I notice everything, Black,"
"Right,"
"Do you plan to fuck her?"
"..." A beat of silence. There's a smirk on one face and a grimace on the other. Cigarette smoke obscures everything, night like a cold blanket, minutes tickling without hurry.
"So what if I am?" A defensive edge to the voice. "Are you jealous, Riddle?"
"I thought you didn't devalue women, Black," A darker smirk, something wild in the eye.
Frustrated sigh, followed by a muttered fuck off.
Tom continues, cigarette between fingers, "I ask only because I don't want you to be jeopardized," A tone of concern. Real or not?
"Fuck off, Tom," Alphard snaps irritably, surging to his feet and stalking over to the large, ceiling-to-floor windows that overlook all of the city in its majestic, ghostly spread. "You only care about the Assignment,"
Some shuffling behind him and then Riddle is right behind him- real, warm physical presence, a body at a distance but so close and when he speaks, Alphard struggles to keep his cool.
"You know that isn't true, Black," Tom's breath brushing against the back of Alphard's neck. Smoke curling between them, only centimetres apart now. On the edge of it. The brink.
"You may be able to manipulate everybody-" Alphard spins around with his awful, enviable grace, his beautiful face caught in a sneer all too similar to Malfoy's. "-but you can't manipulate me, Tom,"
The acidic rendition of his name is not lost to him but Tom only steps forward, such that their bodies are now brushing against each other's, their faces mere inches apart. Nothing unfamiliar for the two of them - a long history to it even - and Alphard's eyes are prettier in the dark than Tom would like to admit. There's a halting sense of something between them - electricity and fear, toxic mix. "Can't I?" Tom murmurs softly, letting his fingers trail up Alphard's arm only to stop at his throat.
Fingertips at his pulse, the intent of both harm and pleasure unmistakable. Cigarettes forgotten, eyes only for each other - a broken record on replay. Alphard's pulse jumping at movement, fingertips cold against his warm skin. Fear in every breath, disguising the want. No leaning in, no giving into - the distance held, even if it's only an illusion. Tom's tragedy of a face - angular, intimidating and devastating, no question, no answer. Only a picture. This picture. Moments spilling between them, promise after promise, horrors shared over the years.
Just as Tom moves, dipping his head as if to make for Alphard's throat with his mouth - hunter with prey - Alphard jerks away, shoving past Tom's solid, warm body with a force that scares him. His heart is hammering and his head spins - from want and fear and everything that threatens him from the inside. It's hard to remain steady on his legs but he turns deliberately, his face a storm.
"Don't toy with me, Tom," There's no acid to this, only a bitter warning.
Tom's still facing the windows - the nightscape suddenly neither beautiful nor enamouring, only some kind of cardboard picture without value. He can't tell what he's feeling - there's some kind of anger, an unreasonable sort of sentiment that makes it hard for him to even swallow. He can feel Black's eyes drilling into his back, demanding a response, expecting it. The fire of it is discomforting - this is what comes from familiarity, from knowledge, from caring. Tom chooses not to turn around, bringing his stub of a cigarette to his mouth to take a final, silencing drag. Expelling smoke with a soft breath. A ghost again. Nothing at all.
Alphard mutters another fuck you but Tom can't bring himself to feel anything. He shuts his eyes, sick of looking beyond the window, of seeking something he can't put a name to - Alphard's footsteps recede into silence eventually and Tom drops the cigarette, crushing it beneath his shoe.
He wills himself to feel something - anything that isn't this but there is only silence inside him, no sign of shift or sorrow, no sense of guilt or betrayal. Just a shocking quiet. He steps by the table and throws himself into the couch, shutting his eyes to recentre his concentration. The meeting is this Saturday - that's barely a day away now. What can he do till then? What is productive for the cause?
Quite randomly or suddenly, he remembers the question that Astoria had asked him two days in class. Do you suppose she's pretty, Tom? About that Mudblood girl. All of them seemed to be obsessed with her - in varying degrees, right from Alphard's unusual interest to Pansy's abject disdain of the girl, from Draco's unbalanced hatred for her to Astoria's dislike of her. Bella's the only one who can't bother to give a fuck - mostly because she has hardly attended classes and has been rather out of sync with the rest of the group. He'll have to check in with her soon - they all need to be there for Saturday, after all.
What is it about that girl? There must be something to her for Malfoy to have held a grudge for so long. Tom makes a quiet, mental note to take Malfoy out for a drink tomorrow and get something useful from him. Refusing to spend even a moment of his time thinking about what had just happened with Alphard - he would deal with it later - he reaches for his laptop and pushes it open. His search for information has to start somewhere. Even if it's somewhere small and juvenile.
As his Mac turns on, he whips out his phone and types out a message to Parkinson - the only one out of the lot who would text him back swiftly at this hour, besides Alphard of course. His message is sent and delivered in a few quick seconds. Anything to keep himself up all night, really - anything to keep the nightmares at bay. He won't risk anything at all tonight, especially with Black staying over. The very last thing he needs is for anybody but Bella to know what's happening to him. Clamping down on his thoughts before they scuttle off towards the fucking Orphanage - a demon left undefeated - Tom leans back into the sofa and waits for a reply.
Still, untroubled waters. He is the surface only. A solidity unlike any other. Quiet and without movement. Untroubled, of course. He has everything he needs, he has everything he had ever wanted. Unwittingly, his eyes betray him and trail down to his forearm, to the tattoo there. There isn't a lot of light in the room - only a lamp somewhere far behind him that casts more shadows than anything else but he can make out it's outline. Dark against his pale skin. Permanent. Sealing his fate. Something to be proud of.
His phone buzzes, lighting up briefly and he taps the message to open it. A smirk comes unbidden to his face - now he has a name. A starting point. A means of satisfying his curiosity. A way of making sure nobody is compromised. He opens the web browser on his laptop and types hermione jean granger into the search bar. Presses Enter. Smirks again.
The two of them are splayed over the sofa, years and years of comfort between them. She's given Harry an old, loose t-shirt she'd found in her cupboard because she refused to let him sit around in his work clothes. Coffee is steaming in two white cups on the table beside them - recently made - and he's turned on his favourite lamp, the blue one by the window, before throwing himself on the sofa by her. Light is mellow and aquatic around them, bathing them in an odd kind of nostalgia for their shared childhood. It feels almost like they're swimming.
Harry has looked better, what with his dark circles and the suspiciously slimmer bent of his shoulders making for a very tired and haggard look. It's been almost an hour since he turned up at the flat, unannounced and staggering and Hermione is almost proud of how much calmer and at ease he looks now, after sparse conversation and long silences. She's always shared silence with Harry, like some kind of ritual - a confirmation of their familiarity with each other.
She shifts back into the couch, shifting her legs so that they don't get in Harry's way. A part of her is grateful that his feet don't stink because they're right by her stomach. "Will you now please tell me what's going on, Harry?"
It sounds sadder than it is meant to and it makes him sit up a little, his eyes infinitely alert behind those round glasses of his. He doesn't look like the boy from Hogwarts anymore - she berates herself mentally for wanting him to.
There's a grimness to him now - something that none of her hugs or her gift packages are going to get rid of. Something that even Ginny hasn't been able to understand and hell, they've been dating almost four years now.
He chews on his bottom lip for a moment, looking frighteningly young. "It's just this case we're working on,"
She also sits up a little because it's hard to have a serious conversation when half your body is sinking into the couch. "Tell me about it?" She flinches internally at how tentative that sounds.
Harry's face is unreadable and he looks away towards her kitchenette with a seriousness she's only ever associated with the oldest Weasley brother, Charlie. It makes sense that the two of them should have similar mannerisms- they work together, after all. It's just disconcerting. He shifts again, silence stretching between them and picks up a cup of coffee. Brings it to his mouth, blows over the black steaming liquid, takes a sip. "You know I can't talk to you about cases, right?"
She senses his disagreement with his own statement and pushes her luck. "Harry," She leans forward, putting a hand on his arm in a manner that is all too familiar to the both of them. "Hey, listen," His face jerks, eyes meeting hers. "You know you can tell me anything without worrying about….discretion and conflict of interest. You can trust me, Harry, like you always have,"
There's something in his eyes that makes her think that he might just relent. That he'll give into this request after months of badgering and finally reveal what it is that is eating away at him. Because he looks strained - even in this garb of comfort and home, he looks like he's not really here. He looks -
"I didn't mean to barge in tonight," He says finally and the window shuts, the door locks, the house off-limits to her.
She quashes the uneasy bitterness that swells inside her, swallowing thickly and looking away. "I'm only worried about you," Her stomach knots. "We all are,"
There's a small chuckle from him - a mirthless sort of sound. "I know and I would tell you in a heartbeat, 'Mione," He sucks in a shaky breath and she sees him running a hand through his messy hair. "But I can't."
She takes this in stride, picking up her own cup of coffee from the table and taking a long sip. A shiver runs through her entire body - the liquid warming her throat, rushing that odd energy into all parts of her, relaxing her. Without looking up, she asks the doomed question in a small voice, "How has Ron been?"
If she looks up, she might see pity and she cannot stand being pitied. Better to look down at her lap, at her cup of coffee, at anything but Harry.
He clears his throat and stretches his legs out again and she can tell that he's making the purposeful, deliberate effort to keep everything casual so that she doesn't cry. He knows her. "Are you sure you want to-"
"Has he sworn you to secrecy too?" She snaps before she can stop herself and his legs tense beside hers.
"'Mione," He says softly - finally and then his hand has reached forward to settle on hers. "He's pretty good. It looks light he might get selected into the team he wanted, finally. He's also moving out of the Burrow,"
She ignores how hot the inside of her chest feels - how claustrophobic and tight. "Oh,"
Harry hears the sorrow before she does and he's pulled her into a hug before she can say anything at all. His arms come up around her - like all the other times before - and he smells so much like all the old things they loved that she starts crying. Toothpaste. Firewood. Faint sweat. He holds her patiently, saying nothing because they share silence like they share their childhood, without fuss or pretense, without any fanfare. It feels alright, just for that moment - she doesn't need to pull on steely reserve or give a fuck about the Division, doesn't have to worry what might be said or who might be watching, whether this is weakness or strength, nothing. She sobs into his shoulder and he holds her, he holds her because he can, because he will and because this is what it means to love someone really.
Tom Riddle spends nearly an hour and a half looking for something.
There is no trace of her on the internet. No Facebook, no Instagram, no Twitter. There's not even a LinkedIn, the usual go-to for someone like her. But then who is someone like her? What does he even know, beyond 'mudblood' and 'hermione jean granger'? That is the frustrating part, the centre of it all - his lack of knowledge which irks him, unsettles him and is sure enough going to enrage him. He has never not known anything. The value of knowing is immense- it is the power by which he lives and abides. Well, fuck it. He has a lot more to worry about than some silly Muggle girl.
He's irritated that he can't even remember her from school. Hogwarts. That old grave of memories. Alphard and Bella and those Carrows. His remembrance of Hogwarts is in battered, blurring fragments. Not all of it makes sense. Not many names comes back to him. His intent to bury those things, those skeletons has done him as good as it has done him harm, he thinks. He shuts the laptop a little too furiously and lights a cigarette. Doesn't know all too much what he wants to do now. Gets to his feet and walks around the couch, enters the corridor that leads towards the extra room. Without thinking of it.
Sometimes Tom feels like the Ancient Mariner. With an albatross around his neck. He doesn't always think of himself as a fictional character or a literary figure - he's always scorned those plebeian aspirations but he finds himself thinking of the Mariner rather absurdly tonight. He can't recall where he first read it - only that it had cemented itself firmly in his mind, images of salt and sea, the water everywhere 'but not a drop to drink', the Mariner a solitary figure amongst company, the corpses, the parched throats, the echo of it. The loneliness of it, perhaps, had stuck with him through the years. He had always been an impressionable child after all.
Now he thinks of the illusion of the poem - that sense of guilt and heaviness, that distraught failure, the suggestion of horror. Sentiments he can identify and put to the images of his own life. Smoke clouds in around him just as he stops at the door to the room where Alphard's staying. It's open and he can make out the faint outline of Black in the bed, fast asleep, dead to the world. There's no movement, no hurry - only a calm peace in the room and Tom wonders what that might be like, to have that kind of rest at night, to not be ensnared by the mind. He blows smoke into the room, unable to move, unable to do much at all.
For a moment - just the briefest of all moments - he is tempted to go in, to lie down beside Alphard and sleep. He knows what it means to seek a body, to want its warmth, to need its company so much that to do without is to not do at all. It is weakness. He cannot be powerful if he is running from one bed to another, wanting to be held, wanting to be healed. His mind sits like a ticking bomb inside him - nobody's touch can reach that, nothing can fix that. Even if he submits to the urge tonight, even if he climbs into bed with Alphard only to sleep with someone's arms around him, they will come for him tomorrow.
And Alphard will not be there. No one will.
He spins around and strides out of the corridor into the living room again. Walking across the dimly lit space, he makes his way to his own bedroom. There'll be a bottle of something in there and some more cigarettes - substances strong enough to keep him up till morning. There's only a couple of hours to go and he almost wishes he didn't need something to keep him awake. If he could stay awake by the sheer force of his will. The unfairness of it makes him grit his teeth and he yanks open his bedroom door, frustrated beyond measure.
The room is dark and smells like pine - courtesy of Bella's gift. The smell has a calming effect on him and he takes a final drag of his cigarette, forcing himself to sit down on the edge of the bed so that he doesn't give in and find himself in Alphard's room. That kind of stupidity is something he'd left in the past. He cannot afford to do that now. He knows that the cigarettes in the study table's top right-hand drawer and the whiskey's in there too but his body is frozen, his legs unable to move.
The cigarette stub falls from his fingers in some fantastically slow manner and he feels that tug of sleep - that heady blanking out, the pull of it so strong that it is almost a physical force acting upon him. Every part of him is fighting now, struggling - rallying against the biology of his body, the clock that ticks inside him, another time altogether and he hates that he is tired, that he is weak. The darkness swims into his vision and he's out before he can say no, before his body can fight back.
Then he dreams.
He ends up in the Orphanage again. No muddy shoes this time, no long squeaky clean corridor. No voices, nothing. He's in a small room, lit only by a small lamp in the far right corner. He's sitting on a chair and when he tries to move, he can't. There are no ropes on him, no strings, no cuffs but he can't move. The fear climbs up his spine, thick at the back of his neck, knotting anxiously in his throat and then - someone appears before him.
He wants to look up to see who, he wants to identify this person but his head is bowed, his eyes fixed to his own two hands. The figure moves, formless, without scent or sound, closer and closer to him. An arm is thrust before his eyes, an impossible high-pitched scream spilling around him. Blurry only for a moment. It takes him a few seconds to understand that something has been scratched - no, carved into the arm. The wound is raw, bloody, the skin graphically cut. The scream continues and then he hears that voice from somewhere behind him. Cracking like a whip. Instructing. Forcing.
"Look,"
So he does. And the arm reads in scars: mudblood.
a/n: hello again, it's taken me a while this time to get my footing right. i rushed excessively with the previous draft and i wasn't satisfied with it at all. so here is an amendment that i am far more content with because it's building my characters and setting the eventual stage for when they should meet and interact, finally. i am IMMENSELY overwhelmed by the reviewer-response and insight this 'story' has received so far, you are all TOO kind and generous and WONDERFULLY intelligent for offering me your encouragement and your ideas. i'm ABSOLUTELY fahkin floored. drop a review if you've got something to say/ask/share. hope you're all staying hydrated and healthy, much love to you.
in response to specific reviewers:
1. G : i'm sorry for deleting chapter 3 - specifically the version you read. i was very excited about that idea but feel like it didn't have enough build-up so that chapter is long gone. hope you stick around to see where i go, however.
2. MsAriKari: the class prejudice is going to discomforting, yes. i think it might be an interesting exercise, to examine how we are as people and what we think about others, especially the idea of stereotypes and prejudice and how desire/love works in absolutely abysmal ways - how wanting someone who is at complete odds with what your morality/ethics are is a weirdly interesting thing in itself.
3. marcelyn167: can i just say that i am absolutely floored - DEMOLISHED by your long, wonderful, detailed, caring review? i'm 'shook' by how much you've written and with how much insight you've offered an opinion. let me begin by saying a MASSIVE THANK YOU for that gem, i woke up to this review and just felt like i could do anything ! i'm surprised to be recommended on a tumblr - wow! hermione's self-esteem is a bit complex because on one hand, she knows she could do anything but on the other hand, the repeated history of prejudice and physical violence has made her question everything about herself so ! there's going to be a lot of attraction between a lot of people, haha - hormones, my friend! you may be right! you'll be finding out about Diagon Alley meeting and tattoos soon enough, can't reveal everything just yet. thank you for bringing up the point about Tom's upbringing - things that happen to us in our childhood affect us for the rest of our lives, cliched as that might be but it's going to be very central to Tom's character. as for your Twilight forays, hahahahahha, those descriptions are so funny. It was such a terrible book. however, why i did want to explain my characterization of the two physically was to point out how in REAL LIFE we tend to think of crushes/people we're interested in as SO GOOD LOOKING and WAY OUT OF OUR LEAGUE - so hermione isn't ugly at all but simply insecure. your point about tom's description in the books is happily welcome! thank you so much, i hope you continue enjoying this story.
4. Auntleona0: what a perfectly worded review and that smooth little compliment at the end about teaching better than Snape! a girl is made happy by these things! i can only hope to work to meet these wonderful, high expectations you have of this story - i would hate to disappoint, really. i've been so enamoured by this pairing, i want to do right by them. thank you for suggesting anais nin! i'm slotting her right in. thank you for your review, let's see where this goes - killing or not.
