Riddle's Riddles
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Chapter 26: What is love?
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"Love is a letter, not a long one, written in a vellum, very elegant, very pretty; it's a letter to congratulate when you read it, a letter of condolence when you finish reading it. If you finish reading it, put it inside a drawer and don't even remember to go look if it had a post-scriptum..."
- Machado de Assis
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"I beg your pardon?" Hermione gave Riddle a confused expression.
"You heard me, Granger!"
"Yes, I did... and that's exactly why I'm confused." She shook her head before looking at him again. "'What is love?' Why are you asking me this?"
"Because I'm curious...?"
"No, no... Why are you asking me this?"
"Because you're a girl..." he blurted almost automatically.
"As I said before, great deduction, Sherlock." The witch rolled her eyes and sighed.
"And, I don't know, aren't girls more familiar with this kind of stuff?" he said, appearing to be getting even more confused than her.
"Romance, you mean? Well, not every girl is, as you said, familiar, with romantic things." Hermione took a deep breath, looking at her own hands while trying to find a good answer for the Slytherin's question.
"What is love...? Well, I don't know, love is... love! I can't explain... It's when you have an affectionate relationship with someone else... You enjoy being near that person and want to see him or her happy. It's a great feeling that can't really be described with words..." The girl laughed when she saw the way Tom was looking at her. For the first time, she saw Tom Riddle looking totally lost.
"Of course it can be described; I bet I can find it in the library..."
"You won't find anything in the books, or at least not in the kind of books I think you want... I mean, there won't be an article about love in a spell book, you know?" She giggled. "Have you ever read a romance?"
"…Yes. Unfortunately, I had the misfortune of being raised by woman who loved those kinds of stories, and she practically forced me to read them when I was younger." The boy sighed, looking displeased.
"Which ones?"
"Only a few... I remember Romeo and Juliet, the myth of Eros and Psyche..." He shook his head and looked at her again. "But, as I said, they're silly stories with silly characters who act like idiots. I mean, who would ever choose to die over living without someone else?"
"That's love, Riddle," whispered Hermione, looking at the other student and almost feeling bad for him. "You know... It's almost funny to see Hogwarts' greatest student being so confused about something so simple..."
"It's not simple," he murmured, looking away from her and to his own hands, twirling his fingers and making it clear he was starting to get nervous.
"You're right. It's not simple at all; it's actually pretty complicated." The Gryffindor smiled. "But it's so casual, you know. The kind of thing everyone normal should know..."
"Then I'm not normal." He laughed a little.
"Well, that's not new to me." The girl followed him in the laughing. "You must be the oddest person I've ever had the chance to meet... Except, perhaps, a friend I once had, who used to believe in Crumpled-Horned Snorkacks."
"What, in Merlin's name, is a Crumpled-Horned Snorkack?"
"I have absolutely no idea."
They both laughed and Hermione saw Riddle's eyes catching the book she had left on the table. The boy stopped laughing and grabbed it.
"Magical Objects and Their Uses?" Tom read the title, raising an eyebrow. "Why do you want it?"
"I don't know, I was curious about... time-turners," she said, trying to sound innocent. The last thing she wanted was to be discovered by Riddle, but... What if he knew something useful about time-turners? Maybe if she gave him the chance to speak, he would supply her with good information. "They're curious little things, aren't they?"
"Complicated little objects, you mean," said Tom, opening the book and looking through its pages, finally stopping on a chapter where a simple looking time-turner was drawn on the top of the page. "Why do you want to know about them? Feel like traveling through time in the near future, Miss Granger?"
She laughed, nervously, before taking the book from his hands and putting it down on her lap. "I just think they're interesting."
"What do you want to know about time-turners?"
"General information. How they work, when someone can use them, what happen when they break..."
"When someone has enough bad luck to break a time-turner," said Tom, laughing a little, "Then the person will be in huge trouble. From what I know, one can only go back to his proper time using the same time-turner that he used to make his first trip or waiting for time to pass by."
"We're doomed..." Hermione couldn't help but whisper to herself.
"What?"
"The person who breaks a time-turner is doomed." She smiled awkwardly, seeing the Head Boy's suspicious look. "But... How does one fix a time-turner?"
"Well, I've never heard of someone fixing one, but I believe there must be a way to do so... Maybe there are wizards out there who are masters in time-turners? Who knows...? But I bet it must be a really difficult task."
Hermione bit her lip, cursing herself for letting her time-turner break during their fight against the Death Eaters... If only she had been a little more careful, then they wouldn't be in this situation.
Then, she felt her face burn when she noticed Riddle was, once again, observing her with an intense look. She hated it when he looked at her that way, his eyes almost burning her skin with the intensity in them. Swallowing down the shyness that seemed to take over her every time she caught Tom's eyes on her, the Gryffindor looked at the Head Boy and opened her mouth to speak again, but stopped when she saw the red mark that showed the spot on Riddle's face where she had hit him earlier. Feeling guilty, Hermione stretched her arm, touching his cheek lightly and making the Slytherin almost jump, startled with the contact.
"I'm sorry about that," she whispered, noticing how Tom's body was leaning back, as if trying to get away from her. "Come on, I won't hurt you, there's no need to try to escape from me... I... I lost control, alright? I'm sorry."
"Yes, it was obvious that you lost it," said Riddle in a low tone. "But thank God it seems that losing your patience is a very rare event."
"Yes... Only a few people have had the pleasure to see me like that." Granger laughed, remembering the time when she made a bunch of birds attack Ron when he and Lavender Brown had the misfortune of finding her crying in an empty classroom. As the memory appeared in her mind, the girl couldn't help but feel uncomfortable... A lot of the time, she forgot that she used to have a life in another decade, but when those little memories struck her, Hermione remembered the Hogwarts she used to know, her former classmates, the war, her parents...
"Granger?" Riddle called to her, narrowing his eyes when he saw her eyes filling up with tears.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, wiping the tears off. "I was just... I was just remembering about my life before, you know, the war."
"I see." Tom looked at his hands once more, before looking at the Head Girl again. "What was it like? Before everything happened..."
"It was... normal. I mean, we had a family and friends, and lived our lives without troubling anyone." She gave him a sad smile. "We all lived around Ron's family, you see? The Purkiss... they were good people, always trying to help everyone and being kind to every soul that crossed their path. Mr. Purkiss was, I could say, in love with the Muggle world... Mrs. Purkiss was the kindest woman I've ever met," Hermione explained, concentrating on not calling Ron's family 'the Weasleys'. "Harry's parents were really nice too, and really brave... He also had a godfather who he considered to be a second father, as well as another friend of Mr. Pevensie who was Harry's 'third' father." She laughed. "And then there were my parents... Muggle dentists... Good people." She took a deep breath and blinked, trying to get rid of the tears that were now filling up her eyes. "What about you?"
"Me?"
"Yeah... Family? Friends? I mean, before Hogwarts."
"I didn't have any of them." His answer was short and direct.
"Come on, you couldn't have lived eleven years without a friend or something like that..."
"There was Mrs. Cole and Martha, but I don't think I can classify them as friends or family. They simply took care of me because I lived in the orphanage," Tom explained. "The other kids from that place... Well, they didn't think I was someone with who they wanted to be friends with."
"And your family?" Hermione knew she was risking entering dangerous territory, but went on anyway. "Did you ever get to know them?"
Riddle was silent for a few seconds, only looking down at his hands, at his fingers that were still twisting one another, showing off his anxiety.
"My mother died giving birth to me," he said. "My father... My father never showed up during my entire life. I don't know if he knew I existed or not."
"I'm sorry."
"I know he lived in a village in Yorkshire with his parents... and..."
"And?"
"That he was good at understanding people," the boy spoke, almost without noticing the words leaving his mouth. "What? No... No, forget what I said. I don't know if he was good at that or not." He shook his head and breathed deeply. "I never met him; I can't know what he was good at."
Hermione decided to ignore Riddle's debate with himself, believing that the conflict of information in his mind was happening due to fatigue, and kept looking at him quietly.
"He must have been a good man," she said, not even noticing she was speaking as if she knew Tom Riddle Sr. was already dead. "And your mother must have been a good woman. I know you haven't met any of them, but it does no good to judge them without knowing what made them make their decisions..."
Riddle narrowed his eyes while looking at her for an instant, before sighing and asking, "What do you want to do after leaving Hogwarts?"
"What...?" Where did this question come from? she wondered. "I don't know; I haven't stopped to think about it yet. What about you?"
"I'm going to go back to the orphanage until I find a job and somewhere else to stay."
"Are you going to apply for the Ministry?" she asked, even though she already knew the answer.
"No, I don't think I would fit into the Ministry." Tom laughed. "I wanted to teach... Defense Against Dark Arts, here at Hogwarts."
"Professor Riddle." Hermione laughed, imagining Riddle in a set of Snape's robes, walking up and down Hogwarts, terrorizing the students. "I kind of feel sorry for the poor students..."
"Yes... I actually have other plans for the future, but becoming a teacher is the closest thing to reality I have until now."
"Riddle, I'm sorry by the about change of subject but... What was the reason you asked me about love?"
The Head Boy looked at her for a moment, trying to find a good answer for her question. Why did he get interested into the subject? He had always thought that love was something that weakened people, and made them act like idiots... Then why the sudden interest in the feeling anyway?
"I don't know, Hermione," he answering, noticing the slight look of disappointment on the girl's face.
"Oh, I see..." the girl said quietly, noticing that it was the first time Tom had called her by her first name. "I just happened to remember another definition for love."
"And what is it?"
"Love, Tom, is a feeling that is much easier to be felt than to be explained."
Saying that, the girl gathered all her courage, and leaned in, kissing the Slytherin's lips carefully, feeling his body stiffen before he started trying to back away from her. Tom feared physical contact, she noticed... Apparently he felt uncomfortable with it, unused to the touch of another person. Trying to make the boy stop backing away, she pressed her lips against his with a little more pressure. After a while, she finally felt his body losing its tension and his hands reaching her face, caressing her cheeks gently before holding her head in place as he kissed her back.
Riddle stopped kissing her for a moment, looking at the girl's face as if trying to understand what was going on inside her head. Hermione couldn't help but notice the difference in that Tom Riddle from the one she was used to see... This boy didn't have the strong and cold eyes, but confused and curious blue eyes that seemed to understand what they saw; this Tom had his cheeks painted with a light tone of pink which gave him a much more innocent look...
Before she could ask him if there was anything wrong, Riddle's lips touched hers again, and Hermione couldn't help but feel satisfied as she felt a tiny smile against her mouth.
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A/N: Well... I'm not dead. I always say that, but okay... As always, school is taking all my time. When I'm not at the anatomy lab, I'm at class... and when I'm not in any of these places, I'm at home, organizing my notebooks and studying D: Anyway, here is chapter 26 :D I remember that when I first wrote this chapter, I had to go around my friends and ask them how they would describe "love", because I simply couldn't describe it :/ So, yeah, thanks all my friends who helped me with this simple-and-yet-complicated description.
1- "Except, perhaps, a friend I once had, who used to believe in Crumpled-Horned Snorkacks.": I always wonder how Tom would react if he met Luna... it would be interesting :D
2- Tom talking about his father: the poor guy is already mixing dreams with reality. What he said about Tom Sr is, obviously, what he learnt about him in his dream...
3- Tom and his fear for physical contact: I don't know if fear is the right word... But.. I can see Tom being that kind of person who simply can't feel comfortable while being touched by someone else. You feel like getting away from that touch not because it's hurting you or because it's insinuating anything... it's just because you feel uncomfortable with it :/
4- "Love is a letter...": again, more Machado de Assis. I loved this description of love... makes so much sense '-'
Now... A few days ago I noticed that I had disabled anonymous reviews in my stories. Ha, yeah, I just noticed it now... But I fixed it :3 So, if by any chance you are reading RR and you couldn't leave a review because of that, now you can :D
As always, thanks everyone who reviewed last chapter and thanks Shadow6116 for beta reading the story.
Reviews are always great, you know that :3
Ari.