Four
Hermione Granger was not happy.
She'd been at the library up to her nose in books for hours and all she had for her efforts was a background that was ambiguous at best.
She sighed, pushing back the last of the formidable stack of art books she'd brought over to her favourite table by a large, sunny window. Whenever she visited the main library in London she went to this table; it was secluded enough to be private, well away from the noisier music and teen sections of the library but close enough to the windows to be well-lit and cheerful. It was a long, oak table made of solid, heavy wood that made her think of log cabins and cozy winter afternoons.
Okay. She could do this - what did she know so far?
Tom Riddle Jr.
Born on New Year's Eve 1977, grew up in an unnamed orphanage in London before becoming discovered at fifteen by Dumbledore, the leading art curator at the time. Disappeared some time in 1997, declared dead August 1997 when blood matching his DNA was found splattered across his studio in London. No familial or romantic relations known, sold his paintings for ridiculous amounts of money, kept out of the spotlight as much as possible.
In short? Tom Riddle was, well, a riddle.
Hermione chuckled to herself at the last thought, pushing her bushy hair back into a messy ponytail as she stretched out her neck and shoulders. They were sore from the hours she'd spent hunched over various rolls of parchment - for some reason she'd always preferred the antique feel of parchment over regular paper.
She was about to shut the last book - a collection of newspaper articles from 1997 - when a single phrase caught her eye - When asked what his inspiration was for perhaps his most famous painting, Avada Kedavra, the devilishly handsome Riddle merely smiled charmingly before saying simply, "Hangleton." You can be sure this reporter made sure to ask for his number, and...
She stopped reading after that; this reporter - Rita Skeeter - was annoyingly cocky and biased, injecting so much unneeded drama into her articles that even the most trashy of soap operas couldn't hold a candle to one of her pieces. But Hangleton - that had potential. What - or who - was Hangleton?
Maybe it was a childhood friend, a spurned lover, a parent - it could be anyone.
No...but from his paintings, Riddle had hardly been the most social of people - charming, yes, but he didn't seem like the sort of person who would establish lasting connections with anyone. She could hardly imagine that someone harboring that much rage would willingly spend copious amounts of time with others...
Maybe it wasn't a person at all!
Ton...that sounded like something a town's name would end with. She frowned, leaning over to haul the large encyclopedia closer to her. She opened it with a heavy thud, rifling through its contents until she'd reached the "H" section. Well, there was a small town called Hangleton, but it was in northern Brazil, but somehow she couldn't imagine the warm, lively tropical environment inspiring the aching emptiness of Avada Kedavra.
Wait - there was a small italicized phrase under "Hangleton."
See also: Little Hangleton (p. 146, vol. 3)
Anticipation coursed through her veins as she hurriedly located the third volume of the set, flipping it open quickly to the page. There! Little Hangleton, England!
With an excited (and muffled) yell of triumph, she stood up, pushing the wooden chair carefully back underneath the table, and stretched, her arms spreading wide and reaching towards the white ceiling. The sunlight was dimming now, the sun beginning to glide downwards as the air cooled and the bright blue sky becoming shot through with swirls of pink, scarlet, and orange.
She could hear the comforting hum of air conditioners and the whir of the printer spitting out paper, the distant shouts of the children downstairs in the kids' section, the soft whispering that paper makes as it kisses fingers -
She loved the library. It was her sanctuary, the place where she truly felt like she was home.
After a final shake of her shoulders, she collected the pile of art books - she'd gleaned all she could from their contents - and brought them back over to the narrow bookshelf where she'd gotten them from. This area of the library smelled like old, musty books, the old fluorescent lights dim at best, dully lighting the rows of crammed in books bound in fraying covers.
She moved easily through the aisles, dodging that one oversize book that jutted out in the row between the cookbooks and gardening books, and moved over to the small section where the town records and original documents were kept. Hermione knelt, her knees pressing softly against the navy carpet, her fingers brushing the paper folders gently as she searched for "L."
There!
A small folder was wedged between two larger ones, the typed words "Little Hangleton" barely legible through the caked-on dust that hugged the cream paper. She carefully extracted the folder from its place, coughing slightly when a bit of dust got caught in her nose.
Hermione swiftly flicked through the contents, a grin sliding onto her face when she saw that it held the census for the town and population records. Yes! This was it! She hugged the folder to her chest and stood, moving to go back to her table.
She stopped by the information desk on her way back, smiling a greeting at Cho Chang, the pretty librarian who had been in her year at Hogwarts.
"Hey Cho!" Hermione said. Cho looked up, a surprised expression appearing on her face when she saw Hermione. Her dark eyes widened, and Hermione winced - right, she'd forgotten that everyone expected her to still be lying comatose in her flat. Parkinson had made sure that everyone knew about her collapse at work. Hermione shifted her weight uncomfortably, casting a longing look at her beloved table, whose end she could just make out through the corner of her eye. This was a bad idea. She wasn't ready for the inevitable pity, she couldn't face thi -
No. What was she thinking? She was done with this wallowing, down with this cowardliness that would make any Gryffindor ashamed -
So she forced her trembling fingers to still and kept her smile firmly in place, waiting for Cho to collect herself. She didn't have to wait long.
"Hermione!" Cho exclaimed. "I haven't seen you in such a long time! How have you bee-er, sorry, I suppose you haven't been that well..." her voice trailed off, and an awkward pause soon followed.
Hermione wished desperately that she had never come up to the desk to say hello.
"No, I'm fine. I thought I'd return here - it's been long enough, anyway," Hermione finally said, forcing a casual note to run through her words. Her mouth began to ache from the strain of keeping up her wide grin, so she allowed herself a slightly smaller smile - well, she just hoped she didn't look too psychotic -
"Right...well, glad to see you back here. We all missed you, you know," Cho continued. She leaned forward, lowering her voice conspiratorially. "McLaggen's been here six times looking for you - the poor bloke's got it bad," she whispered.
Hermione resisted the urge to wince again - she'd gone with Cormac McLaggen to one event at Hogwarts and had regretted it ever since. The bloke was arrogant and condescending, and his lack of common sense made Hermione want to scream at times -
She changed the subject quickly.
"How have you been?"
Cho leaned back against her chair, her face brightening.
"Great, actually - Hermione, guess what? There's this mystery guy - no one knows who he is," she said in a hushed voice. Cho, though wonderfully bright and efficient, was a gossip. Hermione cast another longing glance at her table - she still needed to alphabetically organise all her notes - before turning her attention back to Cho. She owed at least this much to her; Cho had always let her check out books that technically weren't supposed to leave the library, and Hermione was forever grateful for that (there was only so much research she could do in the few hours the library was open).
"Mm?" Hermione murmured. She didn't know what else to say, really. She'd never been good with girly gossip or talking about blokes. Most of her friends had been blokes, with the exception of Ginny, who having grown up with six brothers was hardly the girliest of people anyway.
"He comes here every night like clockwork - comes just as the sun sets, right around now actually, and stays until the library closes. He started coming a week or two ago. He never initiates a conversation, but when I offered to help him he was achingly polite. He doesn't check out anything, just gets a huge collection of books over to his - well, yours, too, I suppose - table and pores through them. He's just as bad as you, really. Hermione. He is gorgeous. He's the most beautiful bloke I've ever seen, and you know how I adore Cedric-"
Her voice trailed off in a sigh, her eyes gazing somewhere in the distance as her red lips curled into a soft smile.
"Er...he sounds amazing, Cho, really. So sorry to have to end this, but I have a load of notes to copy and -"
Hermione let her words trail off when she saw that the librarian was hardly paying attention. With one last awkward wave, she turned tail and practically ran to the sanctuary that was her table.
"Finally," she muttered to herself, yanking the chair blindly from its place and settling down with a less-than-graceful oof. She slammed the folder down, clumsily fumbling for a roll of parchment, already poring over its contents with her other hand.
Where was that roll? She blindly fumbled around the wooden surface with her right hand, pushing past various pens and books in her pursuit for the roll.
She flicked past the first page of the folder with her left hand, her eyes quickly scanning the paper's contents.
Little Hangleton.
Population: 1200.
It was about a three hour's drive north from London. It was so small, practically a village, really. After briefly examining the town map, she flipped to the next page, her right hand still searching for that roll -
Where was that parchment? She could have sworn she'd had another roll right next to that book on modern oil painting -
She huffed in frustration when her hand knocked over a pile of carefully stacked paper - she'd spent an hour organising that one! - but still stubbornly refused to look up from the folder. She was on the portion listing the families living in the town. The names were tiny, almost illegible due to its smeared ink and minuscule, messily scrawled writing. She leaned forward so that her nose was practically touching the paper, her eyes squinting as she moved past the "G"s in search of the "R" section.
No, not Gaunt...
Grover...Haverford...she flipped to the next page, a triumphant grin lighting up her face when she saw "Riddle" on the top of the second column.
"Aha!" she exclaimed, lifting her head from the paper. At the same moment a smooth voice asked, "Are you looking for this?"
She jerked backwards, gazing with wide eyes at the bloke to her left.
Holy Harpies.
Was this the mystery man Cho had been talking about? It must be, there couldn't be two men that good looking in the library -
He was tall and lean, dressed in elegant black slacks and a simple white dress shirt with sleeves rolled up to reveal his forearms. A dark green tie was loosened around his neck, the silken fabric shot through with silver stitching. He had a roll of parchment resting on the palm of his left hand, his long, slender fingers just curling to brush against the frayed edges. When she looked up to meet his eyes, she couldn't help but notice his high, sharp cheekbones, angular jaw and sooty black eyelashes that curled downwards to just brush the tops of his cheeks -
A stray strand of dark brown hair brushed the top of his forehead, just kissing one dark eyebrow, dangling in front of an eye so dark a grey it was practically black -
"Is this yours?"
His words jolted Hermione from her reverie, and she flushed furiously when she realised he was looking at her with an amused glint to his dark eyes. How long had she been staring at him?
Suddenly she was annoyed at herself - honestly, she was acting like some hormone-driven idiot, not the intelligent person she was -
"Yes. Thank you," she said shortly, holding out her hand to receive the parchment. He raised an eyebrow but handed the parchment over wordlessly, his index finger just brushing hers -
Drat. She was blushing again.
She turned her back to him - okay, so maybe she was being a bit rude, but she had work to do and she couldn't get distracted - and sat back down, smoothing out the parchment with practiced ease and holding the edges down with the glass inkwell she used for her fountain pen.
"Not many people use parchment," came the idle observation from her left. She chanced a glance from under her lashes - he was sitting one seat to the left of the one opposite her and had a sizable stack of thick books piled neatly next to him. She frowned, feeling a bit territorial - this was her table. She had sat here for years without company, and Hermione had grown used to the peace her solitude had brought her -
Who was this usurper to think he could waltz in and distract her?
She huffed in annoyance, turning determinedly back to the folder. The tiny paragraph - more like a sentence, really - underneath Riddle was pathetically sparse, listing only an address. She copied it down with meticulous care, the comforting scratch of her pen against the thick paper soothing in its regularity.
When no more comments came from his direction, she relaxed slightly, her lips curving into a soft, satisfied smile as she efficiently flipped through the rest of the folder. Research had always had a calming effect on her. She'd practically lived in the Hogwarts library, trying to read as much as she could before she had to graduate and leave it all behind.
After rifling through the folder's contents three times, she admitted with a sigh that she'd gleaned as much usable information as she could. She'd managed to get Riddle's address and home value but not much else. What was his connection to Little Hangleton? Why live in such a small town? His home studio was in London - why go all the way to Little Hangleton?
She frowned down at the folder, its sparse contents mocking her.
With another heavy sigh, she rolled up the parchment carefully and added it to the stack of rolls to her right. She glanced out the window - the sun had set, the sky now awash in a deep, royal blue sprinkled with a dusting of incandescent stars. The library would be closing soon. Well, at least she'd found out some information - she had a town now, and an address. Maybe she could convince someone to drive her over to Little Hangleton over the weekend - she hated, no, was terrified of driving - or she could see if the Floo Network would take her there.
Her plan set, she stooped down to collect her books, struggling to balance the heavy tomes in her arms. She took a hesitant step - the topmost book teetered, slipping down in slow-motion to greet the ground -
A hand caught the book, and half her load was soon lifted from her arms. It was the bloke from before.
"Oh - don't bother, I have it," Hermione protested. The bloke waved her off, glanced down at the title of the topmost book - Hermione craned her neck and saw it was a particularly engrossing one on forensics that she'd brought out in hopes of finding out more about Riddle's death - and walked away swiftly in the direction of the science section.
Well. That was presumptuous. He might as well give her a pat on her head and stick her in nursery school again if that was how he was going to treat her opinions.
She glared his retreating back for another moment before scowling, any temporary infatuation dissipating as swiftly as it had come.
Cho could have her mystery bloke.
Hermione Granger was perfectly content with her books, thank you very much.
Besides, she had a task to complete. She had no time for distractions.
Author Note: Dear Merlin, life has gotten busy lately. I've been so overloaded - this is the first free time I've had in weeks! Thank you all for your patience.
And so Tom makes his first appearance! :) I have to say, it's very fun to tie in canon/magical references and try and incorporate them in a Muggle world xD As always, please review! All reviews are returned with a teaser of the next chapter :D