Tom strolled with purpose down the main corridor of the train. He hadn't been able to stop thinking about that first time all morning. About how she had made fun of him for being unable to control himself. About how what she had really been doing was daring him to control her. About how she had teased him for weeks, wanting something different, someone who made her feel like the one doing the chasing.

She always rode alone, and always in the same compartment. He walked in and immediately drew the curtains and cast locking and silencing spells so no straying eyes or ears could interfere. He wants a proper ending to this thing.

She slid up into a more ladylike posture on her seat while looking toward the door, but upon seeing it was only him, yawned and went back to the book she had been reading while drawling, "Come to get revenge for yesterday?"

"As a matter of fact, yes," Tom responds while walking toward her confidently. In a way, he had, just not on her. He picks the book from her hands and tosses it behind him on to the other row of seating. He grabs her wrists, pulling her up to stand in front of him.

"Go ahead then. I'll play along. After all, it is the last act of this little drama we have been working on," she says with a nonchalant smirk.

"I would like to play a game with you as a bit of a final farewell," Tom slithers, tone sharp. He drops her wrists. She attempts to pull them apart and away from the front of her body, only to find that he's cast a binding spell on them. She raises an eyebrow and glares in response, but doesn't interrupt. "Of course, it is up to you if you would like to play along. But I think you'll be very happy we did if you do."

He can hear a slight, controlled gasp escape her lips as he reaches up and runs a finger down her jawline. He smirks, "I am going to give you ten seconds to say no. And, if you do, I'll leave immediately and we probably will never see each other again."

She stays quiet, still glaring at him. He refuses to break eye contact as he waits. He lets a few extra seconds pass before he drops his fingers from her face and walks slowly, calmly behind her. "There are two hours left until we reach London. By the end of those two hours, one of two things will happen. The first is that I'll admit you deserved to be head girl and that you actually are the smartest student of our class. The second, and I think much more likely outcome, is that you will apologize to me for the way you've behaved all these years."

Her mouth is tightly closed, her eyes still defiant. He knows she won't reply to him, won't say a word or make a sound until she has to. It would kill her to admit he is getting to her, even without hardly touching her at all so far.

"See, you once teased me for my lack of control, once told me that anyone who deserved real magic could control it and, by extension, themselves. We are going to test out that theory on you. I am going to play with you. If you want to orgasm, you must obtain my permission. If you do so without it, you lose. I believe you already know my preferred title, so shall we begin?"

He runs his hand along the curve of her side. She jumps immediately, but then recoils. He doesn't give her a second to recover. He uses the other hand to pull her hair back, immediately attacking her neck with his lips. He waits until he can hear her breathing speed up before withdrawing entirely and just barely grazing her skin with his hands for a few minutes.

As soon as her breathing has recovered, he pushes her again. He pulls the buttons of her blouse apart, playing with her breasts roughly while pushing her back into him. Again, as soon as she looses control of her breathing, he withdraws, now rounding back to her front.

He repeats the pattern, barely touching her until she's nearly calm again, then, the second she is, jumping forward to kiss her as his fingers wander around her body.

This time, when he withdraws, he sits down on the seat. He reaches up and pulls her panties down slowly. Her eyes visibly widen when the next thing he does is loosen his trousers.

He grabs her wrists again, pulling her down until she's hovering on top of him. He reaches for her face with one hand now, twisting it to face him, the other holding her hips in place.

"Look at me," he commands. She doesn't follow his order. He squeezes her hip, hard enough that she flinches and obeys. He keeps their eyes locked together as he pushes her down on to him.

Her breathing is fast again. He thrusts his hips up slightly, just barely off the seat, and hears a gasp finally escape her lips. He chuckles under his breath, "Is there something you'd like to ask?"

"Is every bastard as cruel as you?" She spits out, clearly barely controlling herself and resenting him for that fact.

He does not give her the reward of a reaction, instead pushing her back slightly so that he can lean down and bite at her breasts while thrusting more vigorously. Her head falls back and he hears her moan audibly. He pulls his mouth away, teasing her now sore flesh with his fingers instead as he focuses.

She manages to mumble out between gasps, "May I?"

"You forgot something."

"Please may I?"

"Don't pretend, Vera."

There's a longer pause this time before she gasps it out, "Please may I my lord?"

He stops abruptly, loving the look of desperation on her face, "No."

She looks stunned, as if someone has never said that word to her before. With her life, perhaps they haven't. She is still catching her breath, still shaking at his every slight movement, when she glares at him, "No?"

"You weren't sincere enough."

Her eyes narrow further, a mean look on her face, "I am going to make you cry one day Tom Riddle, if it is the last thing I do on this planet."

He thinks this is probably not the moment to inform her that she already has. Not her exactly, with the mirror, but close enough.

He settles her back down on his hips before letting go and pulling his hands back behind his head. He doesn't say a word, but she knows the message. He's forcing her to put herself in this position, to decide if she wants it badly enough that she's willing to beg.

She starts moving up and down, her breath quickening again immediately. Her head falls back again, her eyes slipping closed. She mutters, "Oh, merlin."

He grips her chin, pulling her head back up, and whispering, "Look at me."

She refuses to open her eyes. He reaches out, squeezing her breast, and growls, "Look at me. I want you to remember where this pleasure comes from."

Her eyes slip open and she suddenly moans, "Please … Please may I … my lord? Please … Please … my lord?"

"Your request is…" He smirks, leaving her waiting for an answer for a few precious seconds, "granted."

She shivers and then stills. A moment later, she stands up, her legs barely able to hold her as she attempts to fix her hair and clothes. He smirks again, giving her a minute of false comfort to calm down. He can barely hold back himself, but he knows he can't end the game early.

"On your knees," he orders once her breathing has returned to normal somewhat. She looks at him with surprise. "I didn't say the game had ended yet, and you didn't object to playing along."

She smirks and sinks to her knees in front of him, thinking she knows what's next. He falls behind her, grabbing her hips and shifting her so that she's facing away from the seats. He slips into her again without a warning. She bends over, using her elbows for leverage. His hands begin to move up, grabbing her breasts again. Finally, he pulls her hair again, forcing her back up. The darkened skies outside turn the window into a sort of mirror, and the way he's holding her forces her to look at it, to see how he is using her.

She gasps and stutters, "Please …"

But his other hand moves down to her most sensitive spot, teasing it just enough that she shivers again before she can even get a second word out. At feeling her pulse around him, he lets himself go too, a slight moan escaping his lips as he lets them fall over again. He slips out of her, rolling on to his back against the floor and pulling her to lay on top of him.

He's surprised when she moves forward and kisses him, her hands moving up to run through his hair. She pulls away slightly to whisper, "I hate you. And I apologize. I am sorry, it's just… I really am sorry."

They lay there for a few minutes, silent, bodies still arched together. She sighs as she sits up and pulls her bag down off the seat. She pulls a makeup bag out to fix her lipstick. She looks at her neck in the mirror and then it strikes her to look down at the top of her breasts, "Fuck, you left marks."

And there is reality again. He sits up on to the seat opposite her and watches as she pulls out her wand to heal the bite marks on her skin.

She says, "So, I suppose this is goodbye. I don't think we'll be seeing each other again after this, given that you already have plans and I'll be in another country."

"When are you leaving?" He asks, staring out of the window.

"Tomorrow. It's odd, thinking that this will be my last night in the house I grew up in," she responds. She pauses before turning to him and asking, "Would you like to come? I know you've probably got some evil plans to attend to tonight, but I hate being alone at that house."

"I'll come. I've got no plans for tonight," Tom says, because saying the word goodbye was a hell of a lot easier in his head.

Tom collapses on her bed next to her, regretting the fact that the euphoria is wearing off already. Another hour ticks off on the mental countdown he's keeping. He draws her closer.

"Why do you always wear this silly thing?" Tom says, fingers running along the gold chain at her neck, picking up the golden vial at the bottom. "What's even inside it?"

Vera looks annoyed as she mutters, "Please don't touch it."

Tom's hand doesn't move as he responds, "It must be important to you."

Vera smirks, deciding she will annoy him in return, "Dante gave it to me."

"Do you think you'll come to actually love him eventually?" Tom hisses, his bitterness barely hiding behind the surface of his words.

"I would prefer not to broach the subject."

"Then just answer the question."

She rolls her eyes, "It's complicated."

"What's so complicated about it? There are only two possible answers."

"Exactly."

"You cannot possibly not know if you can love him or not."

"I would prefer if we did not talk about my husband, thank you."

"He isn't your husband yet."

"Husband, fiancé, what difference does it make?"

"I wouldn't sleep with someone who is married."

She laughs, "Why the bloody hell not?"

"It wouldn't be right," he responds with a shrug. Or at least that is what he's been telling himself all this time to make her eventual departure bearable.

"And what's so different about this?"

"Will you sleep with anyone else once you're married?"

"No, but that's more a matter of reputation and social status. The legal consequences of such a risk are simply too great once all the official vows have been made. I don't pretend to have my moral compass perfectly aligned."

"So you won't ever love him?"

"Why would you think that?"

"Because he isn't enough for you."

"Is one person really enough for anybody?"

He wants to tell her that she was enough for him. That when he breathes her exhale in he feels alive. That when he finds her eyes looking into his, he feels worthy of living. That he never believed this feeling existed either, until he let himself become wholly caught up in her. But he knows he could never say such things, because he knows how she would react to them.

Tom had never had a place to call home, but he had made a home inside her. It was when she was with him that he felt safe enough to drop all that he was, all that he was becoming, and be the teenage boy he had been all along. So he had been content to just breathe her in while she was there, content to accept the situation as it was – as temporary and confusing as it could be. But that doesn't mean he doesn't want her to stay. He knows that if he could choose, she would never leave. If he had to make a choice about the rest of his life right now, and he could just have her stay with him in this room forever, he would leave everything else behind for that. And that was exactly why he knew it was a good thing she would not give him that choice.

Instead of answering, he changes the subject, "Promise me you won't ever tell anyone what I'm going to say next."

"I promise," She says, and he feels her hot breath on his shoulder.

"I'm going to miss you."

She smiles, "Me too. At least I can say that I knew the Heir of Slytherin."

He looks away from her, wondering if she knew all along. Wondering if she really knew in fifth year, when he'd opened the Chamber, or whether she had just been teasing him then.

"The things I've done...they don't bother you?" He whispers

She shakes her head, "I don't agree, but I can't pretend to care."

"I don't want us to talk about that. I'm still Tom Riddle tonight."

He kisses her, pulling her over him. He wants her again, he wants to be inside of her, to be all she thinks about at that moment, to belong with her.

Afterward, he wraps his arms around her and watches her fall asleep. As he's sitting there looking at her, he can't help but to focus on her necklace again. That stupid thing dangling off of her neck all the time. He had noticed it before, but it had never really captured his attention more than momentarily. Now, he couldn't take his mind off it.

When he was sure she was sound asleep, he reached out and unlatched the necklace from her neck. He carefully twisted the vial open until he found the little note inside. After pulling it out and reading it, Tom simply burns the note, closes the vial, and puts the necklace back on her. He doubts she ever opens the vial anyway, but he doesn't want her to have it. He couldn't give her something like that. And anyway, she wouldn't accept it even if he did.

To Tom, the world seems a very unfair place at the moment.

Vera wakes up, slowly stretching her limbs before glancing over at the still-sleeping boy next to her. Truly a boy, because for once he does look like one in this light, not like an already harried, already misanthropic man.

She moves to get up, but then she catches sight of their hands in the middle of the bed, barely overlapping. She realizes that, other than the boy whose ring she's wearing, Tom is the only person she's ever fallen asleep with. In fact, he was the first.

She tries to stop herself but her eyes land back on his face and she starts to wonder how the boy she had once tried so hard to push away had become the person she was probably the closest to. She had grown up with Dante, but he didn't know her as Tom did. How had someone she hated so much from the very second she met him become the person she'd let in? Of course, she tried to convince herself, the fact that she was here didn't mean she didn't still hate him. After all, she remembered every mean thing he'd said to her, every time he'd called her undeserving and dumb and just plain spoiled.

But she couldn't find it in her heart to want to hate him anymore. He had believed in her more than most people she knew, even if he'd never admit that. They wouldn't have been enemies for so long if he hadn't. He wouldn't start a fire in her like this if he didn't.

She knew most people at school would have done nearly anything for an hour alone with her. If anyone had found out, the buzz would have been about how lucky he was to be chosen by her. Yet she recognized that the same could be said for herself – Tom Riddle didn't even have one real friend, and here he was trying to charm her. Trying was perhaps the wrong word, given the position they were in right now. Still, Tom, even more than herself, was not someone that tried for other people.

Her realization of her own smile makes her slip back into seriousness. She does not like him. She's too smart to like someone like him. Liking someone like him would ruin her whole reputation. It doesn't matter how charming or gifted he is. He has nothing – no name, no wealth, no family connections. She's here because being with someone so wildly out of the realm of possibility is exciting and fun and much less dangerous than being with someone like Orion who might think they have enough status to steal her away. She's here because Tom is who he is.

Aside from all the repercussions, they'd implode in a second if they really took this seriously. Anyway, she would have imploded before finishing the year if she didn't have someone to have a bit of fun with, so there was really no harm in it. He's smart. She's smart. They both know the way things are, the way things have to be.

When he wakes up the next morning, she's still in his arms but he looks around the room to see that she's awoken sometime that night and packed everything into her trunk, which is sitting at the foot of the bed. He wakes her up with a kiss, trying to ignore the pangs in his chest from knowing that she's leaving England forever in a few hours. She insists they have breakfast before both of them have to leave, hoping to put it off for a few more hours.

As she's finishing her coffee, she hands him a letter and says, "I know this might not be your kind of thing, but I wanted to invite you to my wedding anyway. You don't have to go."

He looks down at the invitation. The 22nd of July; a little less than a month away. It's hard to imagine that she will be married in a month. He folds the invitation and puts it in his pocket, but doesn't say anything. They eat in silence.

"Why don't you stay for a few more days?" Tom asks softly as she scoops out a handful of floo powder for each of them.

"If I stay for another few days, how long are you going to ask me to stay next time I'm about to leave?" He knows he wouldn't let her leave. A few days would become a week; a week would become a month; a month would become a season; a season would become a year. She laughs and shakes her head, "We both have to move on with our lives."

She looks around the crowd as she walks down the aisle. He isn't here. Of course he isn't. Like he would ever come to any wedding, let alone her wedding. She continues along the long path, looking at all of the faces that are staring at her.

She smiles as she finally sees Dante standing on the stage that has been set up right in front of the ocean. This had been their dream for the last two years, and finally they were actually here, at his wonderful villa by the Italian seaside, about to say their vows. Perhaps dream is the wrong word for the best version of a situation one does not want to be in, but it seems too awfully truthful to label it as anything else. As she steps up next to him, the Ministry official, who happens to be Dante's uncle, presiding over the ceremony begins to speak.

She's distracted from looking into Dante's eyes when something catches hers. She looks down at the crowd out of the corner of her eye and sees Tom just entering the ceremony, standing at the back. He catches her eye and nods formally. She looks back at Dante, who is still staring at her in her wedding dress.

After they take their unbreakable vows, the bridal party leads the guests toward the back of the villa, where the reception is being held in the splendid ballroom. Vera slips in to a side door so that she can change into her dress for the reception.

She's surprised when she opens the door to her dressing room only to discover that Tom is already waiting for her, leaning against the wall across from the door. She meets his eyes without saying anything before turning to the wall-length mirrors. Before she can grab her wand to undo the corset on the back of her dress, she feels Tom's nimble fingers pulling at the lacing.

"Tom..." she begins, looking at his face in the mirror.

"Please don't say anything," He whispers. She realizes that his dark eyes are filled with an emotion she's never seen in him before; perhaps it's sadness, perhaps it's regret, perhaps it's even love. He doesn't say anything else. There are no congratulations, no comments about how beautiful the ceremony was, nothing about the vows she wrote.

The dress slides off of her as he finishes pulling the last knot free. She feels his hand on her bare skin, sliding down her stomach and resting on her hips. His other hand sweeps her hair to the side and then his lips touch the back of her neck, softly kissing her skin. She feels herself flush as the butterflies appear in her stomach.

"I can't do this," she says softly.

"One last time," his hot breath hits her neck.

"Tom, I'm married now."

"And you were engaged before and that didn't stop you," he teases, his hands wandering further along her body. The hand on her hip slides down her right leg, his nimble fingers skimming along her thigh. The hand on her arm slides across to her stomach, wrapping around her and pressing her back against him.

"Tom, no." He steps away and she turns around. They stare at each other for a second before she leans up on her tiptoes and presses her lips to his softly. His arms wrap around her, holding her body against his as his lips take hers greedily, opening her mouth to allow his tongue inside. She presses her hands against his chest to show that she wants to stop, but he doesn't let her go, kissing her fiercely. She gives in and allows his hands to wander back down to her hips.

They both pull away to breath, and then they hear a knock on the door and Dante yells, "Vera? Do you need any help with your dress?"

Tom glances over at the door for a second before pressing his lips softly to hers. He pulls away a second later, his lips still touching hers as he whispers, "Goodbye."

He steps away and disapparates, the faint pop making her sigh. She touches her lips for second before blushing and looking back at herself in the mirror, her body flushed from the touch of Tom's hands.

"No Dante! I'll see you in a few minutes," she yells, finally grabbing her reception dress and beginning to change.

A/N: I don't feel the best about this chapter, but at least it is posted! Please do review to let me know your thoughts.