A/N: I will continue to update this story this year. Sorry this took so long. It's unforgivable. I had a baby and things got away from me...
Chapter 3- Who are you?
Hermione is so startled that she drops the kettle full of near boiling water, splashing her legs and feet. Before she can scream in surprise or pain- she's not quite sure which- a hands darts out from the dark and settles over her mouth.
"Ah, ah, ah," he whispers in her ear, his warm breath against her wet hair sending a shiver down her spine. She struggles against him and he wraps his other arm around her middle, pinning her arms to her side. Hermione can feel every inch of him pressed against her back and she fights the urge to vomit, her eyes watering as she breathes heavily out of her nose.
She doesn't want to die.
"I've been searching your house, ," he breathes and her breath hitches. "I know, it's uncommonly rude of me, but I must admit I was curious about you after our little interview last week." Her palms are sweating furiously and she's panicking. This is not how this was supposed to go, Hermione thinks. She could bash her head against a wall for all the time's she's thought that since showing up in the past. But it's obviously much too late to change anything now. Hermione is undeniably grateful that she keeps everything of value in her beaded bag. She glimpses it out of the corner of her eye, hanging next to her jacket on the coat rack by her door. She squeezes her eyes shut and lets out an almost relieved breath. "I wasn't able to find anything of interest to me. Not even a single newspaper clipping. No photographs, no identification. I've already been to the Prophet to ask about you. Imagine my surprise when I was informed that they had no record of a Ms. Pennyweather ever having worked for them. Which begs the question," he leans in even closer, his lips barely brushing the shell of her ear as he hisses, "Who are you?" He pulls his hand away from her mouth and tangles his fingers in her damp hair, brutally tightening his fist before yanking back so hard that she screams and her knees buckle.
"I won't ask again, sweetheart."
Her face is hot and her eyes wet. Hermione bites her lip, squeezing her eyes shut.
It's just a dream, It's just a dream-
He yanks her head back again, until Hermione is forced to look up at him from her spot on the floor, her knees burning. She's in hot water, literally and she can feel her skin getting tighter, the feeling like something is bubbling beneath the surface making her chest and neck hot. It feels like she's boiling from the inside out.
"Please," she begs, not even really sure what she's begging for.
"Tell me," he demands.
She struggles to identify the emotion churning in her gut- something like drowning, she acknowledges wistfully. Those few panic filled moments of flailing, kicking and choking and don't fucking breathe, before you finally, blissfully give in to the near hypnotic pull of completely surrendering yourself to the water and the waves.
She swallows tightly, her eyes falling shut as she lets out a staggering breath. Riddle collapses to his knees behind her; she can feel the solid planes of his chest carved out against the naked skin of her back before he's pulling her down and pushing, pushing her shaking body into the floor. She opens her eyes and stares at the black spots dancing across her ceiling, too shadowed in embarrassment and anger and how fucking dare you- to realize that he's thrown a damp, fabric covered knee over her waist to straddle her.
He takes her chin between two soft, slender fingers and- she fucking knows, of course she does- that he's trying desperately, frenetically, to meet her eyes.
"Don't," she demands between clenched teeth.
Riddle simply clucks his tongue and Hermione can see the disturbing pull of muscles in his cheek that lets her know that he's enjoying every twisted, agonizing moment of this.
"Tell me who you are," he hisses.
She tastes bile on the back of her tongue.
"Fuck you," she spits, face absolutely glowing; stunning in its unbridled, unrestrained anger.
"Promise?" he whispers, just as cruelly and as equally undone in his apparent rage.
She feels the wet, hot slide of his tongue against her cheek before she screams.
She scarcely has a second to think, to breathe even before he pulls her up by her hair only to roughly slam her skull down against the linoleum covered concrete floor.
Bright spots dance beneath her clenched eyelids but through it all, Hermione can see the shape of his face- planes and slopes and curves and shadows in a shade of black more deep and fathomless than midnight- leering over her.
"Your fear is intoxicating, you know," he breathes. "I'm so tired of having to pretend, you see." Hermione feels the warm, slip-slide of tears coating her cheeks, her jaw clenched tight.
I'm scared, she's saying, but I don't want to be.
I hate you, her body screams, I still fucking hate you.
"Nobody knows any better," he continues in an enthralling, sibilant hiss, "But this," he cups her jaw, fingers digging painfully into the sensitive flesh of her cheek. "I've missed this- this sort of stunning, near-erotic display of fear." He leans in close, his lips nearly brushing the hot, reddened skin of her ear. "No one is supposed to know any better. But you do, don't you Granger?"
Her pulse jumps, she can hear it pounding beneath the too thin skin of her wrist and throat
"How did you-" she begins, but she knows instantly what a stupid, utterly pointless and inspid line of question that is. Of course he knows, she laments and, how could he not? Constant vigilance has failed her thus far, she admits bitterly.
"I know a lot of things," he admits with an unfairly cruel, handsomely crooked smirk. She tries to suppress her own when she realizes that that is probably all the he knows of her person.
It doesn't stop Hermione from smartly realizing that her circumstances could change in a matter of moments. She decides she would rather not outlive her usefulness.
"I happen to know a lot of things too, Tom," she supplies breathless, fighting the overwhelming urge she has to press, to push, to writhe and scream and fight.
"Oh," he breathes, his eyes alight with something she can't discern, but that nevertheless makes her feel uneasy, to say the least. "Of that I have no doubt."
And then he's up and reaching; his hand outstretched toward her shivering, sprawled out body, his eyes cold and dark and, and...
She takes his hand.
He lets her change in her room.
She glances longingly at the bathroom door, where her discarded wand lay, dangling precariously over the edge of the porcelain sink. She shuts her eyes and turns towards her bedroom, swallowing a nervous sigh as she rummages through her drawers, looking first for some clothes, and then for something that can help her out of this unfathomable situation she's found herself in.
She finds nothing.
She slips into a long silken nightgown and a robe, trying- in vain she hastily realizes- to preserve that image he has of her. But she knows it's fruitless. She's no more a reporter from the 1940's as he is a saint. Still, she finds comfort in the routine.
When she emerges, Riddle is sifting through her bookcase, trying and failing so abysmally at looking disinterested that she wonders if she's ever worn the same expression on her face.
"Magick Moste Evil," he breathes delightedly, and Hermione represses the shiver that forces its way down her spine. "Interesting." He turns from his perusal of her bookshelf in order to look at her fully, and when he sees her, she can tell that he tries to hide his disappointment. As though he where waiting for her to don the clothing of her time. She tries to imagine standing before Tom fucking Riddle in a a pair of muggle jeans and a sweatshirt.
Ridiculous, she wants to say aloud, but she fucking knows better, doesn't she?
She cinches the robe tighter around her waist.
"There are things I think we should discuss," He replies easily, pulling his fingers from the spines of her books in order to unstopper her decanter and pour both of them a reasonable sized glass of firewhiskey. He hands one to her without making eye contact and she's grateful for the reprieve. She takes the glass. But she knows without a doubt that she won't be drinking it.
"So," he beings, casually, falling gracefully into the cushioned armchair near her fire-place. He looks, for all the world, like a casual dinner guest. Not, she thinks disparagingly, like an uninvited, megalomaniacal tyrant.
Because that's exactly what he is.
And fuck, she should not have to be reminding herself this early into her mission.
She massages her temples.
"You're a tyrant," she replies flatly, drinking the entirety of her firewhiskey in one fell swoop. The burn is enough to distract her from the impossibility of the situation in its entirety. She is not, she urges quietly, internally, drinking firewhiskey in her flat in 1947 with Tom Riddle.