She's said four words, but he's already angry. This is not the sweet, persuasive boy Ginny had told her about at all. This is the furious young man Dumbledore saw right through. He seems, in his magical form, to be a few years older than Hermione. He's a head taller and the hand tightening around her throat seems stronger than her's, even as it's still becoming corporeal in this world.
Hermione wonders just how big of a mistake she's made.
"How do you know that name?" he asks, staring straight into her soul.
"I know a lot about you," she whispers back. Hermione knows he'll hate that even more, but if there's one thing she gleaned from Harry's lessons, it's that her and Tom are alike in this way – driven by overpowering curiosity. And that will overcome the anger – she hopes.
One of his fingers taps on her jugular, considering, and then Hermione's hypothesis is proven correct before she passes out from a lack of air. His ever-firmer hands withdraw and she gasps for oxygen.
"Have we met before?" Tom asks, his tone suddenly gentle. Had that about-turn ever worked on anyone, Hermione wonders? He must think her a total sap. He can probably feel the lust, she thinks guiltily – all the pent-up desire falling out of her to summon him in some dark, pre-enchanted ritual etched into Slytherin's locket. She wouldn't be surprised if the energy of it beat through his magical form.
She might want to sit on his face, but what Hermione wants and what she knows she has to do are two very different things.
"No," she tells him stiffly, folding her arms. "I know of you." Hermione narrows her eyes. "Of many versions of you."
Tom has the audacity to freeze up, as though his horcruxes are a secret when one is burning into her chest, when he is summoned right in front of her.
"How can you have manipulated so many people when you're so obvious?" she asks him. It's not a sensible question to voice out loud, but she can't help it. Was Tom's persuasive ability all in his mask? Once it's gone, is he brought relatively more down to earth?
The fury is back in his eyes, but in a blink its gone and he's in front of her once more, fingers trailing goosebumps as he tucks her hair behind her ears.
"Some people respond better to a more direct approach," he says quietly, though his voice thuds in her eardrums. Hermione tries to throw his hands off, but she's too late. His fingers are suddenly in the hair at the base of her neck, and go from gentle to harsh in an instant, pulling her head to the side painfully.
If it was just pain she could pull through it and get him off her, but his grip on her scalp is too strong. Tom shoves a leg in between hers as he descends on her exposed throat, and then she can barely see or think straight any more, such is the blood rush to the head.
"How did you come to know my secret?" Tom whispers into her ear, after an unknowingly long moment of making her moan with his mouth against her neck.
Hermione blinks rapidly, a modicum of sense coming back to her as his mouth left her skin to speak.
"It's a long story," she whispers back quickly. "You won't hear it all if you kill me tonight."
That amuses him; she can feel the laugh thrum through his lips, through her skin.
"I've got time," Tom says. For her story and murder, she presumes.
His other hand starts flicking open buttons on her shirt. Yes, he must be confident he has all the time in the world.
"No you don't," Hermione corrects him. "I'm not alone."
That makes him pause. "Alone enough," he suggests, fingers trailing from the burning horcrux to her burning nipples.
"Fine," Hermione snaps. It's not like he deserves her warning that thirty feet away are the only other two people in the world with the knowledge and ability to kill him, too. Come to think of it, she hadn't told him that rather salient fact about herself yet.
It is her annoyed acceptance that finally gives him pause, pulling away and staring at her coolly rather than with heady murder lust in his eyes. He's a contrary little beast, Hermione thinks.
"Me and two others," she continues, something stupid in her feeling like he deserves a reward for taking her seriously. "The three people in Britain entrusted with the knowledge to kill you."
Now she has his attention. "Is that so?" Tom asks, lightly for a man (demon?) whose eyes glint like that. "And how did you come to have such information?" he asks, and Hermione briefly wonders if he'd not bothered to remember her name – he hasn't used it once.
She swallows. "The man destined to defeat you. He's my friend."
That earns her a full sneer, disbelieving and defensive as Tom crosses his arms and shakes his head. "No one can defeat me," he says. She snorts derisively.
"Yes, this is just the third bit of your soul I have come across in five years because things are going so swimmingly for you," Hermione retorts. The look on Tom's face gets even more sour after that.
"What happened to the others?" he asks.
"What do you think?" Hermione says in turn, crossing her arms over her open blouse. His gaze flickers and an evil smile is curling across his face again.
"Curious," he says softly, "that a witch with all the knowledge you claim just wants to be torn apart."
She expected he would know about her desire and be smug about it; the attempt to dominate through such embarrassment passes right through her.
"Hardly," Hermione tries to say loftily, but it comes out more as a croak. "The more I learn about you, Tom, the more interested I grow."
The distance between them evaporates again; his fingers are on her temples, pushing at the boundaries of her mind.
"Show me," he urges; she gasps trying to shake him out of her head, but he's already there – watching her vague disappointment as the Revealer shows nothing from his diary at thirteen; listening to his Death Eaters scheme to obtain the prophecy in the Department of Secrets at sixteen; seeing his memories in her head and her fingers inside her at seventeen.
It's the knowledge of his childhood that sets him off, she can tell – his fingers are back around her throat a second after he rifles through her recollection of brief sympathy for Tom being institutionalised as a baby.
"You presume to know me?" he hisses; Hermione's vision blurs. But really; this is the shade of an angry man in his twenties with delusions of grandeur. She's fought the men in their forties in his little gang and come away alive. She's not that intimidated.
But, perhaps this has gone too far for one day, Hermione thinks as the world closes in.
"I do know you," she rasps out. "Don't – look – if you don't – want to know."
The horcrux blisters against her skin, and Hermione decides to try one more thing before screaming for Harry and the emergency horcrux destruction plan. Tom is so focused on his rage he misses her fingers reaching up and wrenching the locket away from her skin, as fast and hard as she can. Skin and flesh rips away with the locket as he flickers out of existence once more.
The wound the horcrux leaves in her chest does not bleed for long. Within hours, the flesh is blackening over with dark magic; dead, burnt, and bubbled over her skin.
"I don't think it's a good idea to wear it," she brings herself to say to Harry when she goes back to the tent. But Harry puts it on and merely cricks his neck, frowning.
"Irritating," he comments. "But it's fine. Thanks Hermione."
No one had ever been so undeserving of Harry's gratitude as her, she reflects, digging around in her beaded bag for every Ancient Runes textbook she brought with her. If he knew what she had done, what she had thought listening to his lessons about Voldemort, Hermione knew he would never talk to her ever again.
But this isn't the time to feel guilty about it. There's research to do, because if she's going to put Tom's locket on again, she'll need a cage.