Chapter warning: explicit sexual content.
Ron shakes his head, looking livid. "There's nothing here," he says shortly. "We went gravedigging for nothing."
Hermione is incensed, too. Did Tom lie? Or has Lord Voldemort moved the cup since he created the locket horcrux?
She's so reluctant to put the locket back on, no matter how much the cursed wound beside her heart might throb painfully. The first time she summoned Tom, she had to tear the horcrux from her body with all the force in her hands. The second time, she had to cut it out of her skin. If she summons him a third time, she's not sure she'll be able to remove it.
It's a shame she didn't fuck him. She doesn't know a lot about sex magic, but if she had enough self-control (and actual control) to not let him come inside her, surely it wouldn't be too dangerous? Hermione stares at the Welsh lake by Helga Hufflepuff's resting place, thinking, once again, of sitting on that evil fucker's face, of the trickle of sweat she saw on his temple as she swept his hair to the side to whisper threats into his ear.
The logical, sane part of her knows, if a Dark magic demon has become so fully realised in the living world that he is now sweating, this has gone too far already. But the rest of her just wants, so badly, to lick him and feel the salt curl in her mouth.
She shouldn't have tried sleeping with Ron. It only made her wanting for Tom worse. Ron's attitude had gone from bad to worse after her lacklustre performance, and after her insistence they not try again a second time – they were scarcely on speaking terms right now.
Harry wasn't particularly verbose, either. Aside from the brief flickers of practical, tedious conversation with Ron and Harry, the most conversation Hermione had these days was with herself. Herself and the locket horcrux she refused to put back on, instead holding it in her gloved hands after it started to blister in her fingers when she held it for a few minutes in her bare hands.
It is – easier to imagine, what Tom would say, when she holds the locket. Hermione holds the horcrux close (not touching) to her chest, and the ache in the cursed wound eases a little, and what Tom might say in response to her important questions flows faster through her mind: Did you lie? Where might the cup horcrux be, if not in Lake Vyrnwy? There's no turning back if I summon you again, is there?
The rain turns to sleet. The air gets cold with the arrival of winter, with the bleak depression of not finding further horcruxes setting in. Hermione can't sleep; or if she sleeps, she wakes feeling even more tired than before.
And then one morning, her and Harry wake to find Ron is not there. The horcrux sits innocuously on a plastic folding table as Harry rages at, Hermione is quite certain, the wrong person.
"Unbelievable. Fucking Ron," Harry spits, packing up the tent with the clumsy, jerky movements of someone who is deeply upset.
Hermione is angry, too. Furious and aggrieved beyond anything she ever thought she would know as she holds the horcrux and screams at Tom silently. She can practically feel his evil smile against her ear.
"Maybe the locket got to him," she dares to suggest.
"We all hate it," Harry dismisses. "But I guess not defeating the greatest evil Britain's ever seen before Christmas wasn't good enough for Ron – even though he NEVER had anything to suggest, no –"
He's too hurt to hear the truth in Hermione's words, to see the way she holds the horcrux like it's the most precious thing in the world. Perhaps it's for the best. Because Hermione agreed with one of the last things Ron said to them – they were wandering around in nothingness. With no further clues on where to find the remaining horcruxes, they were in a purgatory of homelessness and muddy, drudging camping. There was only one source of possible further locations, and it lay through Hermione's destruction.
But if they were dying anyway, Hermione rationalises, she may as well get something for her life in return.
It's probably performative, but Hermione draws up the most stringent runic circle she can, cut into the dirt and built out of pine branches and leaves. It's likely going to be the last time, she doesn't need to keep any unusual tricks up her sleeve to surprise Tom with after this. All the cards can be put on the table, so to speak.
But this time – finally, and so contrarily – when Hermione loops the locket chain over her head, Tom appears and merely puts his hands in his pockets. Amongst the rage at his serenity and the irony, Hermione wonders if he regrets making a part of his soul wear a stiff suit for all eternity. She hopes in some way he feels uncomfortable. It's the very, very least this evil bastard deserves.
"I thought that might get your attention," Tom says evenly.
"You're going to pay for killing Ron," Hermione replies softly. "I promise you."
"So he did do it, then?" Tom asks, the mild surprise in his tone sounding like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. "He had a stubbornness to him, so I wasn't sure."
"Fuck you," she tells him, not wanting to let him know she wasn't actually sure. If she has any favours left to beg from God, she wishes with all her heart once Ron walked away and put space between him and the horcrux, he walked back to his family and not off the side of a cliff. "Will it be worth it, when I kill you?"
Tom breaks into an easy, heart-breaking grin. "Oh, come on, now – you're not going to kill me," he says. Far too confident given she's already told him how many times she (well, Harry) has done just that.
"You and your followers always underestimate me," Hermione muses, turning her wand in her fingers thoughtfully and wondering which enchantment to trigger first. "It's probably my greatest advantage. Diffindo."
She slices along the palm of her right hand, cutting through the painted hieroglyphs there, before moving the wand back to her main hand. "Ainhiaris," she commands. The magic courses down her arm, along the damp blood dripping down her wand and fingers, and the magical force hits Tom like gravity on Jupiter. His body falls to the forest ground, his elbows pointing up where the human instinct threw out his hands to stop himself hit the ground face-first, and Hermione tries to enjoy the sight as much as she can, knowing how heavy the price was to see this.
"Where else would you put the cup, Tom?" she asks loudly, crossing her arms. He spits, laughing amongst the mud and fallen, rotting leaves.
"Oh, that's what you're mad about," he says. "That makes more sense. I knew you didn't care that much for him if you only slept with him the once."
"Can you bleed in this form?" Hermione wonders aloud, anger thudding so loudly in her ears it sounds like a wild wind. She walks closer and kicks one of his arms out, making him fall completely to the ground on one side. "Shall I pull you apart? Where else would you put it?"
Something in his smile is bitter. "Don't you think I would tell you if I knew? I need to destroy them too."
Hermione freezes up. Tom stares up at her, triumphant under her forced binding.
"Ah, so you didn't know that. Why, we got off on the wrong foot for nothing," he sneers. "There can't be more than one Dark Lord in this world. I will not allow it."
"Then why did you make so many horcruxes?" Hermione asks, distracted by the cognitive dissonance in his grand plan for immortality.
"Because there must be one, always, to rule over this place," Tom says as though it's obvious, rolling his eyes. "I have gone further than anyone on the path to immortality. I wasn't to know my consciousness would split."
Hermione shakes her head. "You couldn't have guessed that would happen? Jesus Christ, Tom," she says, exasperated. But a thought comes to her, and Hermione frowns, even more confused.
"But then, if you want to destroy the others, too - why were you so reluctant to answer me last time I summoned you?" she asks, brain seizing on a few enticing possibilities as to why Tom might have wanted to play coy. Tom blinks and looks away, and she can't help it; a satisfied, warm smile reaches her face.
"I know you fucking love this," Hermione says thoughtfully, carefully placing the edge of her shoe under his jaw. "Even if you wish you didn't. But was it just to be contrary? Why change your mind now?"
"I – I do not answer anything under compulsion," Tom replies eventually, as Hermione runs the edge of her shoe under his jaw threateningly.
"And yet, you did," she says, quietly but clearly. "Don't make me ask again." She aims her wand at where his left arm joins his torso, hoping it will hurt if she dismembers him in this incomplete form.
Tom's throat moves under her shoe as he swallows, and Hermione's never felt more desperate to fuck him as the answers fall unwillingly from his lips. "Hogwarts. Gringotts. Possibly – where the Potters lived."
Three shining new possibilities to defeat Voldemort, and a gorgeous demon literally under her heel. For a life careening towards oblivion anyway, it's a rich price to achieve. "You think Godric's Hollow too, then," she muses, thinking of Harry's desire to visit.
"The Potters lived in Godric's Hollow?" Tom asks, his eyes widening. Hermione sighs.
"Definitely there, then," she admits out loud. Oh, but she hates being wrong. Hermione removes her foot from Tom's chin, and now they both look disappointed. A laugh bubbles up in her throat.
"Oh, so you did want a kick in the head," she says wryly. "Well, I think your honesty does deserve a reward. Iifraji."
She drops to the ground beside him after releasing the trap on him, grabbing his face as he starts to try and stand and kissing him hard. Her nails dig into his neck, but disappointingly, no blood leaves the cuts she makes in his skin – it is only her own blood that stains his neck. Probably a truly terrible idea, to get her blood anywhere near him, let alone inside the wounds she's clawed into his throat. But Hermione has been committed to bad ideas ever since she, Harry and Ron tore this cursed locket from Umbridge's neck.
Tom's tongue touches hers and Hermione can't help but moan slightly into his mouth. It's truly unfair that someone so evil was blessed with looks like this. What were the gods thinking, when they put Tom Riddle together.
She pulls back and slaps him hard. "Eat me out," she orders, watching the bloodless blush rush to his cheek as she pulls off her shoes. "If you make me come good enough, maybe I won't kill you tonight."
All she has to do is keep a death grip on her wand, Hermione reasons, as Tom's hands start running across her body, pushing her down and unbuttoning her jeans, as he whispers that she definitely won't be killing him if that is her measure of continued worthiness to live. If she has to unleash an uncontrolled Fiendfyre that burns down the entirety of Glenmore Forest Park because Tom makes a grab for her wand, or tries anything he shouldn't – fine. She's dead anyway, Hermione thinks. Already going to hell. She might as well enjoy the ride, lying half-naked in the cold mud and spiky pine needles of an ancient Scottish forest with handsome, evil Tom by her side.
"I wonder if you are any good," Hermione says, her tone as doubting as she can make it when her breath is ragged under his hands and kissing, staring up at the pine trees reaching into the sky. "I bet with looks like yours you got away with being terrible in bed."
Tom hovers above her navel, stopping a trail of kisses to give her an insulted look. "I'm good at everything," he says shortly.
"Well, we'll find out, won't we?" she replies witheringly, propping up on her elbows to stare him down. But the effect is somewhat ruined as he wraps a hand around one of her thighs and starts kissing the inside of it.
Hermione winces – partly because it feels fantastic, partly because she can feel his stubble on her skin. She was totally fucked if he was so realised in this world that she could feel he made this horcrux approximately twelve hours after shaving.
"How bad can it be," Tom hums against her skin, "when I know you've thought about this for years?" And then his tongue is inside her, and Hermione felt the coldness of Scotland fall away, elbows giving way as her entire body hits the ground painlessly.
"Oh, fuck," she whimpers. Every feeling is compounded by the horror of how corporeal he's become in the land of the living – the heat of his breath, the slide of his wet tongue from her entrance to her clit. Distantly, Hermione realises he's laughing, but she's too far gone to care. The only thing she's trying to focus on now is holding her wand, somewhere above her head, her other hand scrambling to hold onto Tom's hair between her thighs.
Her eyelids are practically glued shut with how complete and fine she feels – it's like floating, the pain of the real world completely numbed. A muscle is spasming in her leg and Hermione shudders as Tom grabs it, her body tensing underneath his cold grip.
"Tom – fuck –" she gasps, and he pulls away, flicking her clit with a pointy finger and yanking a scream from her throat.
"Don't use that name," he says sullenly.
"Shut up," she huffs. "I'll say whatever name I damn well – ah –"
Her scolding falls away with his tongue back on her clit and two fingers moving inside of her. His grip on her thigh clenches so hard it hurts.
Well. The name can be let go, Hermione supposes, feeling generous under the blissful rhythm of his fingers and mouth. It's not important to the matter at hand, which is an itch building inside her for years finally being scratched. She clenches onto her wand so hard the fingers in her fist shake as she moves under him, her other hand fisting in his stupid, perfect hair as she chases the pressure.
"Don't stop," she realises she's saying - begging. Comprehension is fading in and out with waves of pure, mind-blanking serenity. HOLD THE WAND, she desperately tries to remember, her nails dragging across his scalp with her other hand. "Don't – fuck –"
She screams as he suddenly digs the fingers wrapped around her leg in and scratching hard, just as he curls his fingers inside her and pulls her towards him from the inside out. Hermione seizes around him, both hands flying to her face and legs wrapping around his head as the orgasm shudders through her, thudding in her head like a devastating migraine. The wand is thankfully still in her hand, held against her forehead as she shakes through the release.
The minute her sense starts returning to her, Hermione scrambles away, wand back in her tightly clenched fist and aimed at him. Tom's eyes narrow and he laughs, watching her wand carefully as he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.
"It won't help to aim it here," he says, indicating to himself with a slick finger. There's crescent marks in his neck where she's clawed into him, and mud on the knees and sleeves of his suit, and it makes her want to jump on his cock immediately, which is the most unhelpful reaction to have after only moments ago coming under his fingers and mouth. This is even worse than when she tried to get him out of her head in the Hogwarts bathrooms, Hermione realises – but she shouldn't be surprised, really, that there is absolutely no salvation here.
He points at her chest, where the horcrux is beating away. "You'd have to aim it at yourself, I think you'll find. Are you going to try removing it now? Because I'm not sure you can."
Her breath is returning to a steady state. "I knew that before I put it on," she tells him, as loftily as someone who is half-dressed can. "I'm under no illusions."
Tom balances a thoughtful finger against his jaw as she shoves herself off the ground, pulling her jeans back on and struggling with her shoes. "Interesting," he eventually says, as Hermione re-ties her shoelaces while holding onto her wand with some difficulty. "You would throw your life at removing the Dark Lord's soul tethers. And a base level of release."
"What if I told you the sex was a bonus?" Hermione says, making Tom honest-to-god snort, looking away to hide his laugh.
If it's all an act, it's very convincing. It's cruel that he is this charming, even when she knows how terrible he really is.
"We are…aligned," she decides to explain, buttoning up her shirt over the hideous locket as he regains his composure. "For at least a few days. If you want to help me destroy the other horcruxes, I'll accept."
"I don't help anyone," Tom says coolly.
"Of course you prefer to work alone," Hermione agrees. "But that might be rather hard to do when your only way into this world is through me."
He doesn't have anything to say to that, of course. Hermione glances back towards the tent where Harry is sleeping. "Will Harry be able to see you?" she asks. "Because I'm not Imperiusing him. If he can, this is ending tonight."
"No," Tom says hurriedly.
"But of course you would say that," Hermione replies, nodding towards him seriously. "Can you flicker out of this reality?"
"Not from you," he admits. "Not now. But I'm well practiced at hiding from Potter."
Hermione remembers – Harry merely cricking his neck as he put Tom's locket on like it was almost nothing, compared to how it immediately started burning a vortex into her chest.
"If you're lying, I won't hesitate," she warns him.
"I know," he says. "You're focusing on the wrong thing. He's going to ask where the locket is."
"It'll be fine. I've done much more complicated Memory Charms before," Hermione replies. Tom's eyebrows rise, disappearing under his askew hair that she's ruined with her desperate gripping.
"Have you?" he asks. Hermione purses her lips.
"Yes. I'm the best student in my year at Hogwarts. Or I was, before I left to hunt you down," she says. Tom frowns at her.
"Why are teenagers tasked with destroying the Dark Lord?" he asks. "What is Dumbledore thinking?"
"You should know age doesn't preclude magical ability," Hermione chides, side stepping his question as she realises he doesn't know yet that Dumbledore is dead. No need to bring that to Tom's attention. "How many people had you murdered by eighteen? How many horcruxes created?"
Tom stares at her, hands tucked into his pockets and eyes so hooded she can barely see them. "Ronald Weasley did not have any remarkable magical ability to speak of," he says.
Anger flares in Hermione again. "Better than most of your Death Eaters," she spits.
"If you think magical ability is the only criteria for selecting followers, you have a lot to learn about seizing power," Tom replies easily.
"I don't need to know anything about seizing power," Hermione retorts, walking up to him and staring up into his face. "All I need to know is how to take you out." But Tom is unmoved.
"You would be a good soldier," he says, staring back without blinking, hands still as casually in his pockets as ever. "If only you weren't so inconsolably gripped with curiosity and desire."
There's nothing more to say, after he describes the truth so plainly. Hermione turns and walks back to the tent, Tom following a few paces behind. She hesitates outside, going over the spell in her head and taking a deep breath.
"I can -" Tom starts.
"No," she interrupts. Like she's giving him her wand. "You are not taking my wand. How thick do you think I am?"
Tom looks away petulantly, not answering her. Perhaps it's for the best. Hermione doesn't need to hear from Tom Riddle that she's an utter fool. She already knows she is.
Harry is asleep when she enters the tent, trusting and defenceless as Hermione points her wand at the back of his sleeping head. She can feel Tom's gaze on them; looking at Harry, at the back of her head. Dark eyes to the centre of her chest, where an immovable Dark object now perpetually burns, running her down to nothingness as Tom claws his way past death out of her skin.
"What else are you doing?" Tom demands, watching her wand move much more than is needed for a simple Memory Charm.
"None of your concern," Hermione replies quietly, tying off the hidden memory and binding it to her Patronus Charm. He's not satisfied with that answer, and his hand is on her shoulder. She twitches with anger at his presumption, and with her magic still stronger than his, he retracts it. Tom's beautiful, long pale fingers jump off her shoulder blade and hover above it instead. Like she's a piano he isn't sure how to play. Maybe she is.
Hermione gets up, leaving Harry behind to walk out of the tent and speak more freely. "This tie works both ways," she says, feeling Tom follow her – he must be bound to stay close to the horcrux, she supposes. "You cannot drag me to hell and climb out on my shoulders. Maybe that worked on other witches. I swear to you – it will not work on me."
The moment she could not cast a Patronus – that is when Hermione assumes she will be past the point of helping Harry, and would need to be destroyed along with the fragment of Tom now attached to her being. Who knows how long it would be. A few days? A few weeks? But every night she will cast her otter, circle it around Harry's head while he sleeps, and the moment she cannot or will not do the purest magic she knows of, the hidden memory in his head will unlock and he will know her crimes. Know what needs to be done.
But Tom only smiles at her determination, perfect white teeth and amusement lighting up in his face. "Climb out of hell?" he asks, shaking his head slightly. He runs a finger lightly under her ear, trailing down her shirt to where a hidden gash burns, the horcrux locket no longer needing to be held in place by its metal chain as her smouldering skin clings around it. "I don't think so."
Author's note: It's definitely not all about to end in tears guys.