Hey guys! Sorry this chapter is kinda short but oh well it's still a chapter none the less. Lol. I hope you enjoy it!

What have you done now?

Why, why does Fate make us suffer

There's a curse between us

Between me and you

I still wasn't sure exactly what just happened back in Professor McGonigal's office. Either Tom told the headmistress that he would go to Azkaban or I just had a stroke. Something deep in my gut was telling me that it was the first of the two options. I squeezed Tom's hand and side glanced to look at him. His face was hard and serious like he was on a mission. He gave me a look from the corner of his eye and managed a small smile but still, he did not say anything. At that moment I realized the extent of what he had just done and became shockingly terrified. Tom was going to be sent to Azkaban and there was nothing I could do to stop it. We continued to walk down hall after hall until we made it back to our common room. Tom opened the door for me and I stepped in. Not even waiting to hear the door slam shut behind us, I started yelling at him.

"What the bloody hell is wrong with you!? Do you want to go to jail for the rest of your life!?"

"Hermione-" He tried to sooth me but I kept going.

"Do you have any idea what this means, Tom? Do you? They could kill you if they wanted to! The dementors could preform the kiss and there would be no one around who could stop them or who would even want to! Do you have any idea what you have just done!?" I rambled on. Out of breath, I stopped and stared at him. He looked at me with no fight in his eyes, totally defeated. He ran his fingers through his brown hair and sighed.

"Hermione I-" He came forward to put his hands on my shoulders but I put my hands up to keep him away from me. He looked hurt but I was feeling too much pity for myself to care. I took a deep breath and thought over what his going to Azkaban would mean. It would mean that there was a good possibility I would never see him again. It would mean that he would be subjected to more evil in there than he would if he was with me. It would mean that I would be alone again and I wasn't sure I could go through that, not this time.

"What have you done now, Tom?" I questioned in a whisper. His mouth dropped open and he came to wrap me in a hug again. This time I allowed him to, not knowing when we would be able to hold each other again after today. I began to sob into his chest as he stroked my hair and whispered that everything would be alright. I shook my head. "It won't be." I told him. He pulled me away from his so he could see my face. "It won't be okay when I'm alone again and you'll surrounded by Death Eaters. It can not be okay, don't you see that?"

He pursed his lips and shook his head 'no'. "All I see right now is you Hermione and right now everything is okay because we are together." He sighed. "I don't know what is going to happen tomorrow, all I know is we have today and we have to make the best of it."

I bit down on my lower lip and tried to wrap what he just said around my mind. He was right, I knew that but I wished that it was not true, what he was saying. Admitting that we were losing each other was like admitting that I that every day I lived was simply one day closer to dying. Depressing, but true.

Tom embraced me once again, pulling me close to him and rubbing his hands soothingly up and down my back. I leaned my forehead onto his chest and just breathed slowly. In. Out. In. Out.

Moments passed before we moved. "What would you like to do today? The world is our play ground today." Tom said followed by a pause and a very uncharacteristic smirk. "Well, technically the Hogwarts grounds are our playground." He chuckled at his own joke.

I scuffed at him. "I think I'm starting to miss the old Tom, at least he didn't joke about things that weren't funny." I muttered under my breath.

Tom frowned. "Hey, don't be like that. Can you just be happy? Please? If not for you, at least for me?"

I looked up into his smoldering brown eyes and gave into his request. Letting every little horrible thing that was going on just leave me with a bit of peace for a while, I smiled at Tom and went over to grab his hand. I entwined my fingers with his. "Let's stay in. There's something I want you to try."

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We sat cuddled up on the floor by the fire hours later. A large, red blanket was laid out on the floor with us on top. A few multicolored throw pillows were stacked up to support our backs as we sat. I grabbed another marshmallow from the half empty plate in front of me and placed the white piece of sugary fluff onto a long skewer. Putting the marshmallow into the fire, I began to laugh again.

"I still cannot believe you have never had a smore." I shook my head at Tom as he chewed carefully on the last bit of his third treat.

"I don't usually eat things with strange, unnatural textures or fattening sugars. They are unhealthy for you."

I laughed again. "Tom Riddle, the health nut? Who would have known?" I laughed again. "Well you lived on the edge a bit Tom and I think it payed off in this case." I laughed, Tom would never admit it but he was in love with smores, at least that's what I thought. I eyed the spot on his lips were a piece of the gooey marshmallow was stuck. One side of my mouth pulled up into a smile and I reached up to wipe away what remained of his smore. His hand reached out and kept the hand I had on him in place. I was automatically sucked into his deep gaze and I stayed there. He had kind eyes, I saw that now and I loved it. Keeping eye contact, I leaned in, about ready to kiss him when his eyes flickered to the fire.

"Hermione?" He nodded in the direction of the fire place. I looked when he indicated and saw that the marshmallow had been in the fire the entire time and now it was completely black and covered in flames. Feeling like an idiot, I scrambled to get the black, charred fluff out of the fire. I tried to blow it out a few times but the air would only feed the flame more. Tom laughed, grabbed the skewer from my hand, and blew the fire ball out like it was the easiest thing in the world. He wrinkled his nose at the gooey blob, picked it off the tip of the skewer, and placed it on the plate. Grabbing a napkin, he said "Promise me while I'm gone that you will not eat this junk."

I pursed my lips and looked up into his eyes again. "I promise." I whispered. Tom sighed sadly and the next thing I knew his lips were on mine. These kisses were not gentle and sweet like they were the night before but rather passionate and urgent. One of his hands went to the back of my neck, pressing my face closer to his while the other explored the length of my back. Returning the same, desperate kisses I wrapped both arms around his neck and ran my hands through his hair. One hand found a fistful of hair and grabbed hold of it. Tom sighed into my lips and he pulled me onto his lap so I was straddling him.

I gasped slightly at the very sudden action that seemed so unlike Tom but I didn't complain one bit. We kissed until the urgency had gone and all that was left was sweet tenderness. When our lips finally parted both of us were completely out of breath. I leaned my forehead down to rest against his and giggled slightly. Tom put his hands on either side of my face as he took deep, gasping breaths. I smiled.

"I don't deserve you." He finally whispered.

"That's too bad because you are stuck with me."

One corner of Tom's mouth curled up and he kissed me softly one more time. I finally climbed off his lap and sat next to him. I let a very large yawn escape my lips as I looked up at the clock on the mantel. My eyes widened at what the numbers read. "It can not be one thirty in the morning, can it?"

Tom furrowed his brow and reluctantly looked up at the giant, ticking clock. He frowned. "I suppose it is."

Panic struck me in the deepest regions of my chest as I realized that the time we had remaining with each other was drifting away from us at a rapid pace. Tom laid down on our makeshift bed on the floor next to me and placed a hand on my lower back. "Love, it's okay." He tried to reassure.

I gazed down at him and just shook my head, not wanting to say anything more on the subject, not tonight, not ever. I looked up at the clock one more time and saw that two more minutes had passed since I last checked. Desperate for Tom's touch to reassure me we still has some time left, I laid down next to him and placed my head atop his chest. He pulled me closer to him with one strong arm and wrapped the other around my waist. Tom began to stroke my hair which made me grasp onto his shirt even more in return.

"You shall be fine without me, Hermione. There is no doubt in my mind." He said quietly into my hair. I shook my head against his chest.

"You're wrong."

"Love, you are so strong. You have gotten through much worse, you will get through this." He told me.

I didn't say anything in response, just burrowed deeper into the warmth of his body next to mine.

My eyes reluctantly began to flutter closed as exhaustion took over my mind. I fought it as hard as I could and it worked for a while, that was until Tom began to stroke my hair again.

"Sleep, it will be alright. Just sleep, my dear Hermione." He whispered into the top of my head. I mumbled something about not being sleepy but I don't even think all of the words made it out of my mouth. I drifted off to sleep, the last thing I heard before the blackness took me was Tom's gentle voice telling me he loved me.

I woke up the next morning on the floor, wrapped up in the large, red blanket. Surprisingly it was very comfortable. I opened my eyes and saw that the fire had long since gone out and the sun was back in the sky. I looked around the pile of blankets, expecting to see Tom but he wasn't there. I was alone. I shot up right so fast that I blacked out for a moment. I had no clue what time it was or whether Tom was still here. Please, let him still be here.

"Tom!?" I cried out.

"I'm right here, love." I whipped my head around to see that he was lounging in a large upholstered chair behind me. He was dressed in a pair of black dress pants and a white oxford, per his usual, and his hair was no longer astray as it had been last night, thanks to my fingers running through it.

I sighed and began to relax into a comfortable numbness that allowed me not to feel the pain that his leaving was causing me. "How much time to we have left?" I asked nonchalantly in a monotone voice.

Tom smiled a small smile down at me. "About five minutes, I think."

I nodded my head solemnly. I wanted to run to him. I wanted to cling to him and plead that we run away, leave all of this behind us and start something fresh and new together but I knew I couldn't do it. If I said those things it would only make it harder on Tom and I couldn't bare that. I wanted this to be as easy for him as possible.

"Hermione, before they come there is something I wish to tell you." He got up and came to kneel next to me on the floor. He took both of my hands in his large ones and captured my gaze. "Thank you." He said sweetly.

I was confused and it showed on my face. I wasn't exactly sure what he was trying to say but tears formed in my eyes anyway, causing my vision of him to go blurry. "Thank me? For what?" I asked in a broken, shaky voice.

"For making me human." He explained. "For helping me realize there is more to life than power. For showing me that good is so much better than the bad side of things." He paused and looked down at our hands. "For loving me despite what I had done to you or what I will do to you in my future. You looked passed the flaws and saw something in me that I didn't see myself until I met you."

"Tom-"

"You changed me for the better, Hermione Granger and I love you."

A choked sob escaped from deep in my chest and more tears rolled down my cheeks and fell off my chin. "I love you too." I managed to say. He leaned in a kissed me. Pouring everything I had in me into it, I kissed him back fiercely. Only a brief second passed before a pounding on the door sounded. Tom pressed his lips hard against mine for a fraction of a second more before pushing me gently away and walking over to the door. He opened the portrait and the Minister of Magic along with at least seven Aurors burst through the opening. With wands pointed at Tom, they surrounded him. Tom didn't even act like he was going to fight but still they looked on at him with fear in their eyes.

"Tom Riddle, you are to come with us and we shall escort you to Azkaban. " One of the Aurors said.

Tom shrugged, indifferent. "Very well, sir. I am ready to leave when you are." The men continued to look at him with skepticism and their wands poised and pointed straight at Tom's heart. The Slytherin just stood there with his arms folded tightly across his chest. Gosh, I wished he would have run.

"Alright, then. Mr. Riddle if you would please." The man motioned for the dark haired boy to walk out of the room and through the portrait. With one fleeting loving look back at me that nearly ripped out what I had left of a heart, Tom left me followed by the rest of the Ministry men.

The portrait swung closed behind them with a light click before the large room fell completely silent. Still numb, I laid back down on the floor and wrapped myself tightly in the blanket, however, I remained with a cold, stinging feeling in my chest. Not knowing what else to do, I sobbed and cried harder than I had ever done before in my life. I was alone again and I had no idea how I was going to be able to go through this kind of pain again.

One more chapter to go guys! I hope you have enjoyed the story thus far. Thank you for reading!