Disclaimer - This wonderful world belongs to JK Rowling & Co

A/N - Thanks so much for reading and reviewing! This chapter is fluffy and (': I think we've been waiting for this moment. I have at least. Such quiet. Much peace.

Seven

Hermione assumed that Tom had a successful few days with Konig when he walked into the parlor and sat down next to her, allowing no space between them as he drew an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close to him. She turned closer, ignoring the wide-eyed stares of the few people in the room as she drew her arms around his waist and turned her face up to him. Their noses brushed as his lips found hers, cool and firm, even if only briefly. She pressed one more kiss to the corner of his mouth before he pulled his mouth away, watching as the smallest bit of recognition sparked in his eyes before he let his head fall into the back of the couch.

Konig sat down opposite them, watching them with a never ending gaze that set Hermione on edge.

"How are you?" Tom asked quietly.

She pressed her face into his collar, inhaling deeply before saying, "I missed you."

Hermione pulled her face away then, looking at him to see a small smile on his lips. She smiled, too. "I had to spend time with wizards who only wish they were you."

Tom hummed warmly. "I'm home now," he murmured, his body relaxing at the admittance.

"For now." She rested her head on his shoulder and met the stranger's eyes as she said, "I don't remember you."

Tom's fingers pulsed against her shoulder, more in warning than in threat, but it did nothing to deter her.

"Were you there, when I was?"

"I was there with both you and Burke."

She flinched into her husband, her head lifting to get a better look at the man across from them. She glanced at Perseus to see that he was looking at him as though he'd grown an extra head, and wasn't sure what to make of it.

"We need the room," Tom announced, however emptily, his head still tilted back on the couch.

As the few Knight's who'd joined her that evening left, she said, "Burke, you stay," reaching over to trail her fingers over the swell of Tom's throat.

He caught her fingers with his free hand, a smile gracing his lips as he turned his eyes away from the ceiling, looking at her so amusedly that Hermione found herself questioning who exactly she was dealing with. He kissed the tips of her fingers before holding them to his heart. "I missed you, my love."

Heaven help me, she thought to herself, a helpless sigh escaping her lips as he looked back at the ceiling.

"If you stayed like this," she murmured, her nose brushing his jaw. "I could love you forever."

His thumb brushed her knuckles soothing, humming thoughtfully. "You'd hate me if you knew what it took for me to be so-"

"Sated?" She suggested. "You can hate the world, my love, I only ask that you come home tender. Present. Not like you have been."

He tilted his head, neck rolling in a way that shouldn't have been attractive, a secret smile on his face. "You got it, my love."

She pressed her face into his shoulder, inhaling deeply before looking to Perseus and asking, "Do you remember this man, Burke?"

Perseus met her gaze steadily. "No."

She got the feeling he wasn't talking about Konig.

"However, I was a bit distracted during that time, my Lady, and it is quite a blur. It seems...more so, even. Now."

Hermione nodded slowly, looking away from her old friend to lay her head back against Tom. Perseus was right- as time passed, it was hard to make sense of her time away. The only thing she was sure of was that it happened, that Perseus had meant a lot to her -too much, really-, and you'd already done it.

Her arms tightened around Tom, and he responded by pressing closer to her, his own arm tightening familiarly against the back of her neck. He bent his elbow, fingertips grazing her jaw, and she felt herself fall more and more in love with him. If outings with Konig- she met his eye, watched as he unashamedly watched them- meant that he would come back to her, she decided that she would deal with it.

"I saw what it did to you, being away from him. What my father expected from you all, it wasn't right. Which is why I came here."

She could have sworn his eyes -so bright and so blue and so Grindelwald- told her to stop asking questions. Everyone wanted her to stop asking questions, which was weird and disorienting and she wondered, for just a second, if she was in the right place.

There was a possibility that she wasn't, because this man claimed to remember her and she had no idea who he was, and everything felt as though it was resting on the edge of the world, as though one wrong step or thought could leave her empty and lost and-

Tom tilted her jaw, meeting her gaze. His other hand lifted, fingers brushing her lips as he said, "Leave. The both you."

And they did, disappearing as though they'd never even been there.

"Is this real?"

His brows furrowed. "Why wouldn't it be?"

"I was dying," she told him. "When I got back here, I mean. I was dying and," she pressed her face into his shoulder, realizing that he didn't know she'd seen Abraxas before he found her in the woods. He didn't know that she'd been given an additional serum. She couldn't out her own brother that way.

"I tried to go home," she explained. "I remember trying to. It worked, I think. Or, it could have all been a dream, because I woke up and realized that...that I couldn't survive in world without you in it."

"Konig said he found you sleeping in the woods, when we were reunited," he told her, resting his cheek against her hair. "You were not yourself, but you were not dying."

"I was," she told him. "I was not immortal then."

"And, you are now?" He questioned, his voice a mixture of curiosity and amusement.

She tilted her head up, allowing their eyes to meet. "I have felt immortalities empty, cold embrace."

Tom blinked, momentarily stunned, before smiling and laughing handsomely. His lips brushed her cheek. "Let's go to bed, my love."

"Could we stay here, actually?" She pushed him so he'd lay against the arm of the couch, spelling it more comfortable against his neck.

"You mean to sleep here?" He asked, sitting back up.

"I want to be close to you," she told him, watching the disgust on his face soften.

He sighed, standing up. "The Dark Lord and his Lady," he mumbled, half smiling at her. "Sleeping on the couch in their reception room."

"We could go to the library or your study if you want. Hell, we could sleep on our bedroom couch-"

"Or in our bed," he suggested, offering her his hand. But, he lead her to the library, where he opened a door -really, a part of the wall- she'd never noticed before to reveal a small room, containing a harsh looking wooden desk and a worn couch. There was a wardrobe in the corner, as well as a narrow doorway she could only assume led to a bathroom. It was cold, but there was a fur blanket thrown over the back of the couch that led her to believe that he had spent quite a bit of time in this room.

She looked to him for explanation, watching as he shrugged out of his robes, hanging them in the closet before gesturing for hers. "I preferred this space while you were away," he hold her, unbuttoning his shirt and hanging it in the wardrobe as well.

"I imagine it must have been quite lonely," she murmured, transfiguring her dress into a nightgown.

Tom considered her, then. His head tilted and eyes appraising. "Sometimes," he recalled. "Other times, it was easier. Less space for you not to exist in." Thoughtfully, he added, "I hadn't realized how accustomed to you I was, how dependent, really, until you were gone."

She watched as he transfigured his trousers into softer fabric, still considering her before finally asking, "What house were you in? Before."

Before, she repeated mentally. Over and over again even as she said, "Gryffindor."

He hummed thoughtfully, closing the space between them and taking her face in his hands. He kissed her lips too softly. "That suites you."

"I thought I made a good Slytherin," she frowned.

He took her hand and they laid down, Tom pulling her into his chest as though they'd done this before."We are so young," he murmured. "Do you forget that sometimes?"

"Yeah."

"We should be drunk at a bar," he commented.

Hermione laughed.

"That's what you would be doing, isn't it? In the, what is it-"

"Nineties. It's the nineties."

"Merlin. I'm sure that was...actually, if I'm being honest, I cannot imagine it. Or you, there."

"We were on the brink of war."

"With Grindelwald's supporters?"

She turned her face up to see that he was looking at the ceiling. His fingers drew through her hair. "With Death Eaters."

He didn't react. At all. His fingers continued through her hair as though he's told him it was a grey day in London.

She slipped her hand beneath his shirt, feeling his warmth beneath her palm. "With you," she continued.

He kissed her forehead.

"You killed my parents."

"Fuck," he murmured, his fingers massaging her scalp.

Her eyes fell closed. "You killed my best friend's parents, too. That's why...Hermione Granger's task was to get to know you. To learn. I'm sure Dumbledore knew that I would never leave, I'm sure they both knew, but," she sighed.

"You don't think yourself Hermione Granger anymore?" He asked quietly.

"I'm Hermione Riddle, for one," she told him coolly. "But no, I do not. She made me this person, but I can't be her if I want to live here. And," she swallowed, "I'm staying, Tom. I can't go back. What happened, back at Hogwarts, I think it had to happen. Taking Malfoy blood reinforced who I was here but dying-"

Tom pressed her closer to him, then, and she felt his heart beating in his chest for the first time in a long time.

"Everything that happened be-before," she stumbled over the word and hated herself for it, "it allowed us to be here together. Right now. Like this."

It made you mine," he murmured. He was soft against her now, and they fit perfectly against each other. "Mr. and Mrs. Riddle." He began to laugh a moment later, and said, "I hate that name, actually. Yet here you and I are, in my father's home, baring his name. Forever."

"You could make it worth something. We could make it," she smiled against his neck. "You have to stop, though, Tom. You can't make anymore."

"What do you know?"

"I know you wouldn't be proud of what you become."

"But, you're here," he reminded her. "You're staying. Do you create that man-"

"Monster," Hermione told him.

His fingers stilled on her scalp. Forever seemed to pass before he finally said, "Monster," his voice heavy with exhaustion. "Have you created a paradox?"

It wasn't a question that needed to be answered. It seemed more like the next thing on his to-do list to figure out.

She closed her eyes, straining her ears to hear his heartbeat again. "Only time will tell."

.

.

.

.

They ate breakfast in his secret study, Hermione on his lap at the desk as they shared a plate of pancakes and a bowl of fruit. Tom asked her questions about her childhood, fingers under the shirt he'd changed her nightgown into, as she observed the bookshelves that lined the space.

"-and this boy," Tom was saying, watching her lips as she took a bite of a strawberry, "Viktor Krum. I take he was the one you were involved with before me."

"You mean sexually?" She asked, eyes fastening on him. She smirked when his snapped to hers. "It doesn't matter, but not really, no. He was just, he was quite important to me, actually. Your followers, the Death Eaters, they'd just attacked the Quidditch World Cup and it was the first time I'd really experienced what we were all afraid of and I'd honestly begun to hate Purebloods and then there he was," she shrugged, finishing her berry. "It's not important anymore, though."

Hermione reached for his hand and twined her fingers through his. "We need to finish our conversation from the other morning."

"I wasn't myself," Tom admitted, tucking his face into the curve of her neck. "I'm afraid I can't remember much before getting home."

"Because of your horcruxes."

He sighed tiredly.

"Don't, Tom. They're dangerous. I'll lose you to them if you're not careful. Don't laugh at me!" She let go of his hand, shoving him. "I'm trying to be good to you. I'm trying to do what's right and you just- you don't listen. You avoid me for days.

"In those moments, I want to kill you, I swear it. Because you want too much from me and don't give me anything that you don't want for yourself. Which, it should please me, really, but I don't want reformation the way you do. I don't want to control these men and their families-"

"What do you want?" He asked quickly, meeting her eye again.

"I want you to listen to me."

"I will do my best."

At his heavy gaze, she said, "I want peace and quiet. I want a better world than from where I came."

He took her face in his hand, pressing his lips to the corner of her mouth. "Done."

Her eyes had fallen closed, and the tenderness in his voice caused her to smile. Quietly, she admitted, "I want children."

"We'll have them."

She opened her eyes to find him watching her softly, a half smile on his lips.

"Anything else?"

"I want love."

He grinned, "I already love you."

"Tom," she frowned. "I want, probably more than you're able to give me-"

He brushed her bottom lip with his thumb. "I can and will give you everything you require."

"You and I have forever. It should be worth something and I just- it's naive, I guess, but, I want endless love, Tom."

"Hermione," he countered. "We'll make it."

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

What if I told you you'd already done it?

See you again soon!