Hermione didn't know what to think of the boy. He had seemed so charming, and kind in class. She couldn't possibly think of him as evil. And yet, there was this darkness in him. Hermione could sense it when she looked into his eyes. She knew without a doubt that he was capable of doing so much damage. But would he do it willingly? Hermione didn't think so.

Her thoughts went back to the conversation she had with him during Potions class. Sure, she had gotten detention for the first time in her life. But she couldn't help but be intrigued by him. He was such a mysterious person. When they started talking, she found herself unable to stop. She was captivated by his strange mannerisms. By the way he smirked when she asked him so many questions, but answered them anyway. She found herself wanting to know everything about the boy, but didn't know where these feelings came from. She couldn't understand why she was so interested.

She remembered the way her friends ambushed her right after they had left class, thinking that he had harmed her. Hermione scoffed at that. He wouldn't be stupid enough to attack her in a classroom full of children and the scariest teacher to ever walk the halls of Hogwarts. He was in Ravenclaw for God's sake! Hermione thought about all this as she went through her classes in a blur. Before she knew it, she was being dragged to the Great Hall for lunch.

Hermione was glad that it was lunch. She hoped that maybe some food would help her sort out her thoughts. However, things did not go as planned. The minute she took her seat, she was bombarded with questions.

"Did you talk to him?"

"How is he?"

"Is he evil?"

"Does he really smell like the sea?"

That last one was asked by Ginny. Hermione sent her a weird look, as did most of the others. Ginny held up her hands defensively.

"What! Luna told me!" she cried sheepishly.

Now that Hermione thought about it, he did seem to smell like a sandy beach next to the clear ocean.

"Okay! Hold on! How about Hermione just tells us what she found out?" Harry's voice cut in.

Hermione nodded gratefully and cleared her throat.

"Okay, so his name is Percy Riddle. He's really polite and charming. And yes, he does sort of smell like the sea. He seems quite studious and knows Ancient Greek. In fact, his books are all written in Ancient Greek. He is really friendly. His snake is feminine, and her name is Cyrena. He is a Parselmouth, and said that his snake is very wise. He was home-schooled by his mother. He's quite daring, and said that he had done things worse than talking in class before. And he doesn't seem evil. He's actually quite funny and intelligent," Hermione finished off, her eyes slightly glazed over as she remembered the boy.

Ginny giggled from beside her. "Oh Hermione! It seems like you have a crush!"

Hermione blushed a light pink and glared at her ginger friend.

"Shut up Ginny! I don't have a crush on him!"

"But I can't really blame you. He is the hottest guy here," Ginny continued, ignoring Hermione's protests.

Hermione huffed and looked away.

"So what do you guys think?" she asked her other friends, deliberately ignoring Ginny.

"I still think that he's a Death Eater," Ron grumbled.

"I agree with Ron. Tom Riddle was thought to be all charming too. No one suspected that he was up to no good. I say that Percy's probably the same!" Harry scowled.

Hermione frowned. Her friend wasn't usually so hateful towards anyone, so she couldn't understand why Harry seemed to simply loath Percy. They hadn't even met! But before she could say anything, her friends got caught up in a conversation about Quiddich, so she decided to just eat her pudding and ponder about Harry and Percy.

She knew that there was some explanation for why Harry was acting so hostile, but she didn't know what it was. Perhaps they had met before? She couldn't help but think that if Harry wasn't so hateful, then he and Percy would be great friends. Hermione sighed and shook her head. There was no use in just thinking about these kind of things. Instead, she decided to worry about what was going to happen after lessons.

She had detention.


The rest of her classes flew by, and Hermione soon found herself jogging towards Professor Flitwick's class. Her last lesson had been in the other end of the castle, so she had to hurry.

When she finally reached the class, she glanced at her watch and saw that she was two minutes late. She politely knocked on the door and opened it.

"I'm so sorry I'm late Professor!"

Professor Flitwick was shaking his head and smiling.

"That's quite all right my dear! I'm sure you had a very good reason for not being here on time, and you weren't even all that late! No need to fear!" he chuckled.

Hermione smiled gratefully. Professor Flitwick was one of her favourite teachers. He was such a lively man, despite his small size. And he was a very good teacher, while not being at all strict. Plus, he often praised Hermione for her work in his class.

It was then that Hermione finally noticed the other person in the class. Percy Riddle was lounging on for of the chairs near the back, flipping a pen into the air and catching it. He noticed her staring at him, and winked, giving her a mischievous smirk. Hermione quickly looked away and took a seat at the front.

"Well, I'm going to just nip out and grab something. You two can stay here. I'll be right back!" Professor Flitwick announced and briskly walked out the door.

Not a second later, Hermione heard another person sit next to her.

"Hello again Ms. Granger. You're late," the person greeted.

Hermione frowned and looked at him.

"How did you get here so early? You don't seem like a very punctual person," she asked.

Percy grinned impishly. "I had Charms as my last lesson."

Hermione nodded in acceptance and took out a book. It was one of her personnel favourites, "Magic Women and Their Fame". It was a book about all the famous women in wizard history. She was currently on chapter five; the chapter about Rowena Ravenclaw.

"What are you reading?" Percy asked after a few seconds.

"A book," Hermione replied shortly.

She could hear him chuckling softly before there were a few more moments of silence.

"You know, I thought you were going to interrogate me again. You probably won't get a chance later on," Percy idly commented.

Hermione put her book down and turned around to face him.

"What is wrong with you!" she burst.

She seemed to have caught him by surprise as he had a shocked look on his face.

"What do you mean?" he asked in confusion.

"I mean, why do you act like you want to be interrogated, and then just give weird answers!" Hermione scowled.

Percy's eyes widened before he began to laugh. Hermione huffed and stood, intending to sit somewhere else.

"Wait! I'm sorry! Hermione wait!" Percy gasped as he grabbed her wrist.

Hermione froze. Her mouth dropping open in shock as her wrist was clutched in a warm hand. Her stomach was doing that funny caving-in thing it always did whenever Ron touched her. She could feel a thousand shocks running through her veins. Percy seemed to realise that something was wrong, and got up, hesitantly letting go of her wrist and and walking around to face her instead.

"I-I really am sorry Hermione. I wasn't laughing at you. Honestly," he apologised with an uncertain smile.

Hermione shook herself out of her frozen state and quickly ducked past him. But before Percy could follow her, the door slammed open, causing him to dive into the nearest seat.

"Ah! Sorry about that! Hope I didn't scare you!" Professor Flitwick chuckled as he walked in; his head was barely visible behind the large stack of about six books.

Percy gave him a friendly smile and shook his head. He snuck a glance at his fellow pupil and saw that she was once again occupied with that book of hers. Meanwhile Hermione was busy hiding herself from the only boy in the class. Professor Flitwick was a man, so he didn't count.

Hermione was in a state of confusion. She couldn't understand what had just happened, but she intended to avoid Percy until she did. Little did she know, that when she did, she would just want to avoid him even more.


The rest of detention was pretty uneventful. Hermione found herself extremely happy when it was over. She had managed to run off before Percy could catch her. She was lucky that he didn't know the castle all that well yet. She hurried down the halls towards the Gryffindor Tower, where she knew her friends would be waiting.

And sure enough, the moment she arrived at the Gryffindor common room, she was ambushed by a group of babbling teenagers.

"Wait! Stop! Guys! Let me sit down for a moment!" Hermione yelled over the noise.

Her friends grudgingly shut up and they all trekked over to the armchairs and couches.

"Okay. So know that we've all sat down, how'd it go?" Ginny asked eagerly.

"It went fine. It was quite uninteresting actually. I spent the entire time reading," Hermione answered with a slight frown.

Ginny looked slightly disappointed.

"So wait, you didn't get anything out of him?" Harry scowled.

Hermione's frown deepened.

"Harry," she began, "I really don't understand why you hate him so much. It's not like you."

"Why I hate him so much!" Harry spluttered indignantly. "Do you hear yourself! He's Voldemort's grandson! Hermione! He's the grandson of the man who killed so many people!"

"But you don't know if he's like his grandfather or not!" Hermione argued. She didn't know why she was defending Percy, but it was too late to back out now.

"Hermione. He's a Riddle. They're all the same. Bloody evil pricks the lot of them! Worse than the Blacks or the Malfoys! He's evil! There's no doubt about it!" Harry growled.

"Harry! You're judging people based on their family heritages! You didn't like it when Sirius had the same done to him! So what gives you the right to judge others based on their families! What is wrong with you Harry!" Hermione yelled.

"That boy is the grandson of the guy who killed my parents! My family wasn't allowed to live! So why should his! Voldemort doesn't deserve any love! Any happiness! He's been tormenting me, my friends, and their families every single day! Voldemort doesn't deserve to have his family alive and happy and safe!" Harry spat out, his eyes glowing with hatred.

That's when it clicked. Hermione suddenly realised why Harry hated Percy so much.

"You're jealous!" she stated in surprise.

"What!" Harry snapped.

"You're jealous that Voldemort got to have a family while you didn't. So your transferring all your hate on Voldemort to Percy! That's why you act like you hate him so much! You don't actually hate him at all! You just hate his grandfather! Oh Harry!" Hermione explained, her voice much softer now.

Harry looked at her in shock and slumped back down into an armchair.

"W-what?" he stuttered.

Ron reached out and patted him on the shoulder.

"It's all right mate," he muttered reassuringly.

Harry gulped uneasily and abruptly bolted up.

"I-I need to go think about this," he mumbled before running out of the room.

The others were still frozen in their armchairs.

"Perhaps we should go to bed now," Hermione suggested after a while.

She was tired, and so much had happened that day. The others nodded their heads absent-mindedly, still caught up in their thoughts. Hermione sighed and went up to her dorm. As she got in bed, the only thing running through her mind, was the fact that tomorrow was going to be interesting to say the least. She just hoped to enjoy her sleep while she could, because something big was coming.

She could feel it.


YES. I AM A HORRIBLE PERSON. I'm SORRY!

I realise that it has been ages since I last updated, so I would like to sincerely apologise for that. But I do have a few valid excuses.

1) I have moved around a good bit in the past year, and moving from Ireland to England was the biggest move. And as you all probably know, the education system in England is a bit different to the education system in Ireland. So I have been working hard to catch up to my fellow classmates these past few weeks, and really didn't have the time.

2) Really big exams are coming up and I'm panicking because I need to do well, but I still have a load to catch up on. Like a year's worth of studies. So yes, I'm spending all my time on that.

3) I might have been procrastinating a little and obsessing over Youtubers like Dan and Phil, and Pewdiepie...

So anyway! I really am sorry! And I know that this really bad chapter doesn't make up for it, but I'm going to try and update more often.

Oh, and have I mentioned that my parents have banned me from , so I'm doing this in secret? Well you're welcome!

I gotta go now. I'm taking a huge risk here. My laptop is at stake! So if I've made any mistakes, then please tell me. I wrote this in a hurry.

Please fav/follow/review! And check out my other stories! They're all pretty crap, but what have you got to to loose!

LOVE YOU ALL! XOXO

(please don't kill me...It's TheLightInTheEnd's fault!)