The next day, in the harsh evening sun, it's Hermione's turn with the horcrux again. It feels like a regular necklace in her hand, now, compared to the ticking before she opened Pandora's box. Does that mean something? Is Tom…sleeping, now, in there?
Possibly he hadn't wanted to try the same trick on Ron, Hermione thinks drily.
She sets the locket on the grass and gets to work. Distraction charms balanced to hopefully mean Ron or Harry's gaze slides past if they venture out of the tent, but should be cut through if she screams. Circles in the mud underneath the pine needles she cleared away. Backup runes painted onto her bare skin, into the circles dug into the earth. Locking and tying and trapping.
It's a lot more tolerable than normal date prep, Hermione reflects. It's not like the suit-wearing, soul-sucking demon in Slytherin's locket will care she's wearing an ugly plaid shirt and grass-stained jeans, or is without her shoes.
He had seemed more interested in taking her clothes off last time, anyway.
Hermione exhales, trying to control the tension building in her as she unbuttons the first few buttons on her shirt and loops the horcrux chain back over her head. The locket falls against her chest just as quickly as last time, almost like a magnetised pull into the cursed, rotting wound it is creating against her sternum. But she at least manages to not fall over this time, when Tom pulls himself into this world through her, tugging at the collar of his shirt.
He immediately sneers at the runic wards he's been summoned within. "You think these can hold me?" he asks, voice dripping with condescension.
Hermione doesn't answer. She just waits. And as Tom doesn't do anything except get an even angrier look in his eyes while he fidgets with his stiff looking sleeves, she smiles, satisfied.
"I wasn't sure," she admits. "But I'm glad to see I was right."
Tom's eyes drop to the locket, burning into her chest. "You like to feel clever, don't you," he eventually says.
"Even though I'm a fool," Hermione agrees, pre-empting his insult. "One of the ways we're alike, I think."
He's so easy to make angry. Tom strides towards her, hissing into her face. "You could never be like me," he breathes. "You disgusting animal."
"Ah, found out about my heritage, then?" Hermione asks, rolling her head as she stretches her back to stand up straight. "Well, it wouldn't be the first time a half-blood felt comforted by it."
It's too fun to do this. The vision of Tom is actually shaking in rage. It's like playing chicken with a speeding freight train.
If the wizarding world falls because Hermione was having too much fun teasing a soul fragment of a young Lord Voldemort –
"Anyway," Hermione says, trying to focus on the task at hand. "I have a proposal for you."
"Obviously," Tom replies, rolling his eyes briefly before his hands are reaching for her. "Useless, lusting –"
"Where would you put the cup?" she interrupts, stepping to the side to avoid his touch. He pauses.
"What?" he asks. All false politeness and misunderstanding.
"Helga Hufflepuff's cup," she repeats. "If you tell me where it is – I'll let you go."
Tom blinks, with his stupid, distracting long eyelashes. "Let me go?" he asks.
For two of Hogwarts' top students in the twentieth century, this conversation is really dragging, Hermione thinks. If only Tom could get over himself and not try to hedge every single answer he gives.
"You can just presume I know more about your horcruxes than you do," she suggests. "If that makes this easier."
Tom is too quick for her, this time – his fingers are under her chin, tilting her face up so he can stare into her eyes at point-blank range.
"…You're not lying," he eventually says - thoughtfully, even as something under his left eye spasms with rage. His eyes are dark brown today, she realises, not blown out black with low light and lust like the first time she summoned him into this reality. Is it because she has a better grip on her hormones today? "But how could that come to be?" he ponders.
How could someone so intelligent be so stupid, Hermione wonders. "You opened up hell over Britain," she tries to say forcefully, but it comes out on a quiet breath, her body betraying her physically. "You can't be surprised some people decided to fight back."
That makes him smile, and a shiver is in the base of her back as Tom leans over to whisper in her ear. "I am, actually," he replies, lips almost in her hair. "Every time."
Fuck him and the goosebumps he brings. Hermione tries to shove him away but he only grabs her left wrist, curling it into his hand and resting it against the locket and blood on her chest.
"Thank god you're an idiot," she says, scrambling for some sort of control again. "If you were wise then we would all be fucked."
"Like you're not fucked already," he replies, and now his eyes are glittering.
Hermione points her wand at her bare right foot. "Yanhani," she casts at the rune painted there. From that rune to the carefully painted lines and circles painted around them, the entire secondary trap lights up as it activates, bending the demon's back and letting Hermione step away.
"I asked you a question," she says, trying to breathe steadily as her heartrate returns to normal.
"Fucking cunt," Tom spits at her.
"It was stupid of me to expect you wouldn't be a beast, I suppose," Hermione says, shaking her head slightly. "I have to admit, Tom – I'm disappointed. You know, another fragment of you was a lot smarter than you've been so far. You must hate playing the sensitive boy, I guess."
He stares from his forced bow with loathing and curiosity, she can tell. "All you school girls are the same," he sneers, quite haughty for a man forced to submit.
"Do I look like a school girl to you?" Hermione asks, voice and eyes lidded with disdain and power. "Do you know how many of your pathetic followers I've beaten?"
A question she can't stop mulling over rises to the surface; she can't help herself, the desire to confirm her suspicion is so persistent. "Do you even remember my name?" she asks. He probably thought he would have killed her by now. Hermione bets he didn't even bother to remember it after he asked it and didn't recognise it. His first question was probably less about 'who are you', and more 'what are you'.
"You just want to hear it," he says, not answering her question. "Why give you the satisfaction?"
A giggle forms and bursts out of her throat before she can control it. "Ah, goddammit," Hermione says ruefully, folding her arms and shaking her head at the handsome demon cowed before her. "And you're funny, too. It's a shame about the absolute megalomania."
She crouches down to get close to his face, like he did to her earlier. "Answer my question, you useless fucking shade," she whispers, wondering if she can make him sweat in this form. "Or I'll kill you like we did the last horcrux."
He swallows and she desperately focuses on his eyes, not letting herself get distracted by how it feels to watch his Adam's apple bob. Hermione brushes his hair away from his ear, like he did to her, and oh GOD there is a bead of sweat trickling down his temple, almost making her lose all her senses. She hadn't thought he could sweat when he wasn't fully fledged in this world; the temptation to know how he tastes, to watch his reaction if she wiped it away with her thumb and sucked, is almost too great. But she steels herself, ignoring it to lean in.
"Screaming and breaking apart," she whispers into his ear. Maybe it will get to him halfway as badly as he got to her, too? "For a man who fears death, we've killed you so many times." Hermione can't help it; she reaches out and runs a pointy fingernail across his throat, up that simply unfair jawline to circle his ear. He's less here than the first time, with his presence bound by her trap, but the amorous heartbeat under his skin thuds all the same. "Masochist," she hisses. "There won't be any of the Dark Lord's secrets left by the time –"
"Her tomb," Tom finally replies, interrupting. "Lake Vyrnwy in Wales."
Hermione stands up, triumphant. Reckless on the new power she's found over him. "I look forward to finding it," she replies, releasing the magic on the rune holding the trap together. Wondering if he might spring into action and end both their suffering for them. But Tom merely collapses to the ground, the edges of his form fading from view.
So we live another day, Hermione considers. Not what she expected. His submissive streak is quite the delightful surprise. She wants to dig at it further, but rationality is kicking back in too quickly to indulge that particular stupid wish.
Now for the matter of removing the locket from her chest. She isn't an idiot; she knows she has only one, maybe two more times left to use the horcrux before the magic in it curls into her skin and muscle and bone more permanently.
Hermione grimaces and points her wand at her chest, as Tom finally looks up, eyes widening as his gaze falls onto her.
"Diffindo," she casts clearly. The blood spurts, the pain rips across her chest, the locket falls to the forest floor, and Tom and his exhausted, wanting, surprised form vanishes again.
About as close to slow dancing as this Tomione fic is going to get lolol.