The first time she spies him is through velvet curtains.
The gaps between them are fiery red and flickering, as though the entire library has been set alight. But on second glance it is simply the fireplaces roaring with light, suffusing the room in almost unbearable heat.
His long fingers are moving expertly upon the strings of a long necked instrument, something she takes to be a guitar at first before realizing it is something she has never seen before, something as exotic and other as he appears in his strange loose-fitting garbs.
The music he produces is like nothing Hermione has ever heard before, at once sweet and suffused with longing. For a moment she believes she has stumbled upon a scene from an eastern tale, captive Scheherazade forced to entertain the sultan for a thousand and one nights in order to secure her life.
But then she blinks, and she is not peering into the pages of some exotic volume but merely dawdling in front of her home's library.
"Hermione!" Her father cries, and when she pushes the heavy doors open she is left eye to eye with the mysterious stranger, his expert fingers paused upon the strings and expression someplace faraway.
"Hermione," he cries again, getting off of his seat by the fireplace to place a light hand upon her elbow and lead her towards the stranger. "Come this way, my dear."
"Let me introduce you, Mr Riddle, to my daughter, Miss Hermione Granger."
The man, who doesn't look much older than herself, lays the strange instrument down upon the divan as he rises to his feet.
"Charmed" he drawls, with an accent that proclaims staunchly upperclass in spite of his strange clothing.
There is something about him Hermione can't quite place, something at once magnetic and dangerous. She almost daren't breathe.
Sir Granger continues,"Mr Riddle here will be staying on as a student. As you can see, my dear, he is already quite the Oriental scholar."
A flush rises to his cheeks, although Hermione can't tell whether it is due to embarrassment or the stifling heat of the room.
"You flatter me, sir" he mutters sheepishly.
As the two of them start speaking in low tones Hermione drifts towards the tea tray laid for three, but all the while she cannot shake off the feeling that, across the room, a pair of eyes are watching her, as uncompromising and merciless as a hawk.
The library is empty the next evening as Sir Granger and Mr Riddle, the new graduate student move off to Sir Granger's study to continue their discussion of ancient cults and ritualistic sacrifice, which they had been so enthusiastically in the midst of across the dinner table that very evening. Thus far she has not caught Mr Riddle in the daytime even once—she is told by her father that he keeps quaint hours, 'a carry over from his insomniac undergraduate days' and sleeps through the whole morning all the way into the afternoon, only taking his breakfast privately in his room once he wakes.
But then again, who was her father to judge another for his peculiarities?
Hermione knows what the majority of people thought of her father of course, that he was an eccentric at best, utterly mad at the very worst. And if she were being quite honest with herself, she could not exactly blame them. Ghosts and werewolves, skin-changers and elves. What a load of nonsense. To think that her father, once an eminent professor of anthropology at no other than Cambridge itself, could fall so low as to waste him time in studying in his retirement fairytales such as the likes even children would hardly believe! Truly, it beggared belief.
Hermione huffs as she gingerly turns the pages of the manual of physics before her before breaking out into a smile at the familiar calculations of bodies, earthly and heavenly alike, launched and falling, stationary and orbiting. Was there anything so beautiful as the pondering of such objects, their movements and interactions with one another, anything so very useful?
For as much as Sir Granger could recite the one hundred uses of dragon's blood from memory, so could Hermione calculate, to the hundred thousandth decimal place the impact in energy that might be produced with the collision of a moving object with another.
It was an eccentricity her father disapproved of.
What use is there for a young woman of your excellent birth to know such things, my dear? He would often complain with a roll of his bespectacled eyes.
As much use as there is in knowing the evolution of dragon mythos father. She would quickly retort before proceeding to bury her head within the pages of her book once again.
And to think he now had a student to talk such rubbish with! Hermione could not remember the last time her father had had the privilege of a student before. Perhaps back in his tenure days, when his interest in anthropology had not extended to such…Unusual degrees. But even then he had been something of an oddity amongst the university colleges she knew, someone whose lectures were at worst jeered at, and at best avoided.
"What, pray tell, are you reading, Miss Granger?"
The voice reaches her, as though one spoken through miles and miles of water. She is startled out of her concentration to find Mr Riddle peering down at her from where she is perched upon the bottom rung of the library ladder. To her mild surprise, he is dressed 'normally' today, if a bit formal in his three-piece suit.
Wordlessly she lifts the book up for his perusal.
"The New Text-Book of Physics: An Elementary Course in Natural Philosophy," he recites as he cranes his neck to get a better look at the title. "Quite the hefty read for a lady wouldn't you say?"
"I wouldn't know" she huffs. "I have no trouble with it."
"I take it you're not interested in your father's work then?"
Hermione snorts, an unladylike sound that would have made Sir Granger frown had he been there. "My father," she begins. "Is not in his right mind."
"And what does that make me?"
His tone is neutral, perhaps a tinge of curiosity colouring it. She peers up at him, silently observing for a moment, reading the lines of his face. There are no creases or wrinkles to be found upon his smooth, white visage, not even laugh lines. She mentally traces the dark eyes, the high forehead, the plump, almost feminine lips…
He is undoubtedly beautiful. For some reason this observation hardens her against him, as she might feel against a child who possesses finer toys than she.
"Misguided" she finally speaks before lowering her gaze back down to her book with the hopes that it will hide the flush she feels creeping down her neck.
He nods—a rather impersonal movement. "It was not the path I would have thought I would take either. My father, though it is true I did not know him long, was scientifically inclined himself. Not a 'man of science,' for that is different, but high-minded. Principled" he pauses, the spark in his eyes drifting away as though the siren call of memory is too strong. "It was…Difficult for him to believe anything he did not see with his own two eyes."
"He sounds like a sensible man" she sniffs. "What happened to him?"
"He died," Tom Riddle replies—almost casually she finds, as though she only asked him about the weather.
"Oh. I am…Sorry. What killed him?"
There is a strange look in his eyes that Hermione cannot quite place. A cold fire burning.
"Faithlessness" he states simply.
The candle light flickers, throwing his features in a chiaroscuro of light and shadow. She is suddenly aware of the sound of rain upon the window panes of the library, a steady beating like that of her heart: thump thump, thump thump thump thump.
"Good evening, Miss Granger" and with an elegant bow he leaves the room.
It is difficult to have a stranger in the house. Especially one as odd as Tom Riddle.
For he is odd, and not just for his penchant for eastern dress or music. Hermione looks around the breakfast table at his empty seat as she is spooning her porridge. When she inquires after him Sir Granger peeks over his silver spectacles and informs her that the young man "has a liking for sleeping in late." And indeed, it is no earlier than five in the evening before she sees him next, and even then he does not exchange greetings, merely traverses the long corridor separating the library from Sir Granger's study with even step.
"I wouldn't know, miss" her maid replies curtly, a bony stern-visaged woman in her forties by the name of Ruth Randell when she asks her whether she has seen said young man during the day at all.
"Although," she goes on, pressing her already thin lips together as though she is already saying more than she ought as she yanks the hairbrush down through her thick curls, "I have heard the young sir keeps his doors bolted all day, not even letting in Janet to tidy up. Not a peep can be heard from within, it is like a crypt of the dead."
"Ridiculous" Hermione mutters, knowing well her maid's secret liking for the shocking. "He is flesh and blood like you and I both."
But when she sneaks to the east wing of the manor one morning she finds it is as Ruth has said: the sturdy mahogany doors of the Red Room are bolted shut, not even a mouse stirring in the walls to break the silence. And when she spies the chamber from the grounds the same morning upon her daily morning walk she finds its windows shuttered.
The poor fellow must be quite the insomniac she ponders to herself, still unconvinced that there is anything supernatural behind the situation in spite of her maid's overactive imagination.
This overactive imagination is a trait that does not belong to her alone. Hermione has found in her many years living in the Granger manor (her whole life really—she was brought there as a mere infant) that Northerners have quaint manners as well as beliefs, with a penchant for superstitions of all shapes and sizes. While she could turn the other cheek to such talk whenever it did crop up in the village, she was much more disapproving of such rubbish being circulated amongst her household staff, the disciplining of which inevitably fell to her, since her father would not bother condescending to such tasks.
Hermione remembers a particular incident that had thrown the servants into a frenzy only a few months ago: a little brown shadow flitting between the wooden beams of the kitchen that had turned out to be a trapped sparrow.
"Kill it!" Joseph, one of the manservants had cried, to which Leah, the scullery maid had protested she didn't want the wretched thing to touch her.
By the time Hermione had even understood the reason for the commotion ("Sparrows miss! Terrible luck they are!") it was too late: as if sensing a sympathetic spirit the sparrow had descended from its hiding perch and alighted upon her shoulder, an omen that had brought the whole kitchen into silence for its ill portent.
"Terrible, terrible" Joseph had simply muttered to himself like a broken record. "Terrible luck I tell you…Ill omen this is…" But when, after a brief discussion amongst themselves, a sacrifice had been agreed upon from amongst one of the newer manservants (for they had all barely dared to look at the creature, let alone remove it from its newfound perch upon her shoulder) it had been Hermione's turn to throw a fit. She would not by any means allow the task of breaking the poor thing's neck to take place.
"But miss," Leah had whispered to her with fearful watery eyes. "Don't you see you are in danger?"
"Hogwash. Utter hogwash" she had replied with no little anger. To think of destroying a poor creature, and for no other reason than idiot's superstition! She would not allow it. She most certainly would not.
In the end she had managed to capture the bird off her and put it in a small cage. That evening on her usual walk she had taken the cage with her, and released the creature by a crop of woodland still on the property.
Nevertheless, it had not done anything to quell the fears of the household staff. Fears that now circled around some horrible fate that awaited her, as supposedly inevitable as the sun's rise in the morning.
She would be lying if she said it did not irritate her, infuriate her at times, but she also tried to show sympathy to those under her charge.
Because they were alone. They were as isolated as it was possible to be while still remaining in England and without sanity they would all be lost to the wilderness.
It is such memories Hermione dwells upon in the stable, as she grooms her favourite horse, a grey thoroughbred she had seen grown up from foal. As she works into a certain rhythm with the strokes of the brush her thoughts go to so many miles of uncultivated heathland and beyond. Beyond to the mountains and villages she has never seen in her life except maybe as a small infant. She dreams of worlds beyond, countries where strange tongues are spoken and stranger customs practiced. In spite of her affection for the horse before her, she had not ridden a day in her life. She was forbidden to do anything much besides attend to the books in the library and converse with the servants—the former of which generally tended to offer topics of greater fascination than the latter.
"Care for an extra pair of hands?"
Once again her thoughts are interrupted by a familiar voice, and before she can retort she feels pale slender fingers upon the back of her hand, guiding the brush over the horse's already glowing coat.
"A fine beast" Tom Riddle nods, and the animal huffs as if in response, its breath white against the early morning chill. "Does it have a a name?"
"Smoke" she replies after a beat, drawing her hand from under his—it is icy to the touch, and his fingers twitch in response, a slight motion, before he clenches them into a loose fist.
"Do you ride?"
She gives him a sidelong glance before moving onto the mane.
"No," she replies curtly. "I am forbidden" she sniffs.
She can sense the lines of his body pressed up behind her bodice, hard and cold, as though he is carved marble. She expects some show of propriety after her curt response, but to her surprise he only presses the matter closer.
"And why is that? Weather not permitting this time of year?"
"No," she replies archly, pausing with some significance, hoping he will drop the subject. But he shows no indication of intending to do so. She sighs.
"My father" she says. "He is quite strict on the matter."
"Why would that be?"
He is like a constable with his questions. Hermione finally drops the brush into the bucket at her foot and turns to face him. He is watching her expectedly, one brow arched.
"I believe—He is of the mind that it is for my safety."
"Safety…What could be safer than the feeling of the wind upon your cheeks? The sense of freedom of a good steed and fine weather?"
"I'm afraid…He is not of the same mind."
Tom has paused, waiting for her to go on.
"My mother was…Frail you see. She was prone to illness, and died giving birth to me. Ever since then, my father…"
"—Has been overcareful."
"—Has sought to protect me from the world" she corrects, somewhat vexed.
"…And has thereby entombed you alive, leaving you to form mere dreams life. A Plato's cave of the imagination."
She is suddenly angry. Who does he think he is anyway, lecturing her about what life may or may not be? Whether she has or has not lived one?
"And what do you know about it? Just because you have had the opportunity of squandering your family fortune on extravagant foreign travels? That does not give you the privilege to preach to me about what life may or may not be!"
Tom is staring sidelong, where, through the slightly ajar doors of the stables and past the wimpy snowflakes twirling in the wind hues of early dawn light can be seen on the horizon. A muscle in his jaw flexes.
"You know nothing about me" he replies in a low voice, clearly intent that the subject be dropped. But it is Hermione's turn to be insistent.
"I know you are the only son of an ancestral family" she says, thinking back to the few tidbits she had been able to glean about him from her father. "I know your mother died, much like mine, at a young age. And I know you believe you are alone in the world, free to do as you please without anyone to answer to" she is unable to keep a hint of envy from colouring her voice in the last part of the statement. In her more spiteful hours in the wake of some annoyance or argument on her father's part she, too, has often dreamt of such a fate for herself. When she looks up Tom's eyes have darkened.
"You have no idea what you are talking of."
"Then what is the truth, Mr Thomas Gaunt-Riddle?"
She uses the name at a moment's impulse, having spied his spidery signature amongst the papers in her father's study—some correspondence between he and her father prior to his arrival at the manor.
…I am looking forward to your esteemed tutelage.
Your servant,
Thomas Gaunt-Riddle.
Suddenly she finds herself slammed backwards into the wall of the stable, her breath knocked out of her. When she uncloses her eyes his face is inches from hers, twisted into a mask of fury.
"You know nothing about me" he repeats in a hiss. "And neither does your dearest daddy." For a moment their eyes remain locked, and it seems as though he would like to say more, but all of a sudden his face is illuminated by a ray of light cutting across his eyes like a bright band—dawn light that has trickled past the doors and lighted, soft as a feather across his features.
Tom Riddle freezes.
And then—slow as that of a cat's—he blinks.
Hermione is unprepared for the way he jumps back, away from the light, as though he has been burned, and indeed, when she searches for his face amongst the shadows at the back of the stable she is shocked to find that the patch of skin across his eyes has turned a bright red, as though he has suffered from a bad sunburn.
"Mr Riddle?" she calls hesitantly, taking a step forward.
But before she can reach for him, he has turned on his heel and disappeared through the stable doors—quick as a shadow, and just as quiet.
That is the first night Hermione Granger dreams of blood.
In her dream she is at a feast, at a manor house far larger and infinitely finer than her own, with handsome varnished furniture and glittering candelabra upon the walls. It is a dining room, and the long table is stacked with food—at first glance she cannot believe how very much food there is. Everything from steak and venison glistening with fat to delicate sweetmeats of all shapes and colours, heaped and nearly overflowing across silver platters. Equally delectable sauces are arranged around silver goblets already filled to the brink with fine wine and brandy. It is a table set for fifty, and yet Hermione is the only one seated upon it, at the very head of the table with a dozen glimmering pieces of cutlery upon her elbows inviting her to get started.
And she does want to get started. She has never felt so hungry in her entire life, and when she reaches for a fork she happens to glance at her arm—beneath the ribboned sleeve of the fine silk gown she is wearing it is nearly skeletal in appearance. Indeed, the gown she is wearing is much too loose for her—she has nearly disappeared inside its folds. It makes her afraid to realize how little there is of her, and she turns her gaze back towards the feast before her. Her mouth salivates, and she nearly chokes on the goblet of wine at her elbow as she throws back the liquor with heady pleasure. Soon she is attacking the bread, still soft and warm, shoving entire morsels down her throat as though she has not eaten for months. She guzzles the cranberry sauce; the duck and the venison is gone within seconds. Hermione feels herself become more and more bloated with each bite, but she does not care. She is somehow convinced that this is her last chance—that she has just been plucked from death's door and dumped unceremoniously before this feast, this last feast, and that if she does not exert one final effort, she will perish forever.
Suddenly, there is a cough and Hermione snaps her neck up, her attention finally drawn away from the food to the opposite end of the table which is not as empty as she had initially believed.
For, seated upon the other head of the table, is no other than Tom Riddle.
In a red velvet dinner jacket he is dressed as genteel as herself, but, unlike herself, he is not attacking the food before him. His plate is arranged rather sensibly with a selection from the table and he is in the midst of cutting into a rare looking piece of steak, his movement smooth and leisurely. As though sensing the pair of eyes upon him, he suddenly looks up, meeting her gaze steadily with his own.
"Oh, Hermione" he tsks. "What have you done?"
When Hermione follows his gaze down to her dress her stomach turns. The fine fabric is soaked through with blood. She snatches the napkin before her and takes to trying to soak it up, only for the napkin to come back red. She stills in the motion when she catches a glimpse of herself upon the polished glass of a goblet.
Her mouth and hands, even her hair, is drenched entirely in blood.
And then Hermione sees it: the liquid in the goblet, the bread and sweetmeats, even the steaks and venisons. They are mere window dressing. There is no food upon the table—the insides of everything is oozing thick and red blood.
Her stomach lurches violently. She tries to push her chair back, to get away from the grisly display but it is no use. Despite all she has consumed she does not have a morsel of energy, and her wasted muscles refuse to move her body.
She twitches like an insect upon her handsome mahogany chair, eyes falling shut with fatigue. The last thing she is able to notice is a polished pair of gentleman's shoes approaching her side of the table.
"What ever shall I do with you?" The voice croons softly.
And then the world tilts, and she is gone.
Tom Riddle is not at dinner that evening.
Hermione sits silently at the dinner table, watching her father drink his soup with relish. Fragments of the previous night's dream still float around in her mind, and she idly pushes her own soup around in her bowl, of half a mind that its contents are going to turn red and gooey should she try to consume them. Her stomach turns.
"Not hungry, my dear?"
She shakes her head. After a pause she inquires after Mr Riddle.
"I have not encountered him all day, but then again, he is such a late riser. Poor fellow suffers from insomnia, as I hear."
He goes on eating, evidently not seeing much cause for alarm. But Hermione recalls the look upon his face at the stables only the day before and bites her lip. He had appeared to be in great pain in spite of the relatively weak light. And then she recalls the appearance of his windows, shuttered against the morning light, his insomnia. She had heard tell of some individuals with unusual photosensitivity. Could he perhaps be such a one?
It is only after she ponders this line of thought for a little while longer and her soup has become noticeably cooler than she decides to abandon the scheme of eating altogether. As she passes by the several large gilded mirrors hanging upon the walls of the dining room after having excused herself she hardly notices how wan she appears in their reflection.
The cigar smoke curls swirls as it rises up.
Hermione observes the patterns it makes on the moulded ceiling with eyes raised. From her position upon the leather studded armchair she can observe the gentlemen from across the room: Sir Granger, Tom Riddle as well as Ambrose Richmond—no other than her fiancee.
They stand tall by the roaring fireplace, glasses of brandy in their hands with the exception of Sir Granger, who has elected to remain seated. A more dignified position, he had teased before settling into the armchair, the twin of her own, with a huff.
Her presence, she knows, is tolerated only so long as she can keep as quiet as she can. For cigars and smoking jackets and brandy swirled in intricately cut glasses—this is staunchly masculine territory, and such territory does not take kindly to trespass.
She swallows down the injustice of the situation with a sip of her own drink—a herbal tea, for she has been feeling decidedly off as of late—and attempts to divert her concentration back to her book. A botanical manual this time—on local plants and herbs of the region, of varieties both harmful and beneficial. Nevertheless, one ear remains poised with the conversation across the room, and she soon finds herself reading the same sentence several times without registering the meaning.
Ever since Ambrose had stumbled in through the main doors shaking the snow out of his hair the atmosphere in the manor had lightened considerably, as it tended to do during his frequent visits as longtime family friend.
Hermione recalls the first time she had met him, when she was herself only a young girl of eight or so and he already a man grown at twenty. At that time he had had no title besides the son of a local earl she knew, but now, ten years having passed and he having inherited the title from his father—now deceased—he was a man of both eminent standing and reputation in the district.
And soon to be her husband.
Hermione recalls the first years of their acquaintanceship, when he had endeavoured to maintain a jolly-older-brother figure, squeezing into her hand a clandestine toy (her favourite: a porcelain doll with blonde curls) or some sweets whenever he happened to stop by at the manor. She also recalls the handsome figure he would cut in his dark tails at the balls when she, at fifteen, was finally old enough to attend, dazzled in spite of herself at his good looks—slightly rugged from his penchant for open-weather sport—and his manners—polished, ironically, in spite of it.
Miss Granger, he would offer her, with a bow at the edge of the dance floor, a white gloved hand and her heart would skip a beat in spite of herself.
But that was all a long time ago, and whatever infatuation she had once had with him had been just that—an infatuation, and one that she had never imagined would be requited.
That was until two years ago.
Hermione remembers the manor garden—now only a dried up husk of itself—bursting into bloom with spring. He had found her, watching the birds from a wrought iron bench by the lilacs and had got down on one knee…
At first she had been besides herself with joy. It had been like a dream come true, a fairytale such as the kind she had never quite believed in, come to lay itself at her feet. He was her first love, and a dear friend of the family to boot. What more could she want?
"—Exactly what I'd expect from a Cambridge man myself!" Ambrose cries, slapping Tom Riddle on the back of his well-tailored smoking jacket, earning a small smile in response. "Why did you not say so earlier?"
"I did not think it would be so relevant" Tom Riddle replies in a soft voice Hermione has to prick her ears to make out.
"Do not underestimate Northumberland, sir. We may not all be scholars of Sir Granger's calibre but we are not all as dull as you might think us!"
"I certainly have no intention of making that mistake" he retorts, and, for only a moment, as though fully aware she is listening in, his eyes land upon hers before flitting back to the man before him.
Hermione feels her cheeks burn as she lowers her gaze back to the pages of her book. Why was it that she seemed eternally doomed to feel like a silly child in his presence, and he—infinitely older, wiser, more experienced?
It was true he had seen something of the world. She bites down the pure unadulterated envy at that thought. To see something beyond the moors of the north of England had been her dream for as long as she could remember. I will show you the world, Ambrose had promised her that spring in the garden, his kiss light upon the knuckles of her fingers upon which he had alighted a diamond ring, impressive even to her inexpert eyes. We shall go traveling together, and had she possessed any further doubts on their union they had been dispelled with those words.
It was almost enough to make her forget—
Tom Riddle suddenly flits his gaze between the two of them, and Hermione has the uncanny sensation that he has read her mind, seen much more than he should have.
When she finally slips out of the room, book tucked under her arm, she is not prepared for the voice that follows her.
"Retiring so soon?"
She turns on her heel to find Tom Riddle's eyes burning into her own.
"I am tired" she sniffs, only to find just how true it is. It is as though she has not slept for days; her eyes droop and her limbs ache for rest. She must work to stifle a yawn in his presence.
"Will Mr Richmond not hanker for your presence?"
She narrows her eyes. "Mr Richmond must pray excuse me for tonight."
"—If I may be so bold…" He takes a half step closer to her, and Hermione finds she has to raise her chin ever so slightly to maintain eye contact. "…Relations between Mr Ambrose and yourself are not so smooth at the moment, are they not?"
She stares. "Now that is too bold."
But he is undeterred by her tone.
"Tell me, Miss Granger. If I were now not flesh and blood such as yourself, but a genie capable of granting your most heartfelt desire…What would you wish for?"
She is taken aback by the change of topic and is unable to hold back the scoff that escapes her lips. "You are no genie."
"How can you be so sure?"
"Because," she emphasizes the syllables around her lips, somewhat ticked off by the inanity of the question "genies and magicians and good fairies…They do not exist. We each must make our own way in the world, without such miraculous aid to guide us."
"And God?" He replies, more quietly now, sober as a priest. "Does He exist?"
There is a quaint tension in him, as though he is a wire live with electricity. She bites her lip, intending to speak, but finds she cannot produce any words. He takes another half step forward, closing what little space remains between them.
"Because I don't believe He does. But if he did…Could He forgive me for what I have done? Or rather," he leans in to the shell of her ear, until his voice is a mere whisper "what I am about to do?"
There is a brief moment of silence, and then, without warning, she shivers.
"Goodnight then, Miss Granger" his velvety voice murmurs in her ear, and before she can say anything in return he has turned on his heel and left the hall.
She walks ahead, parting through the snow and throwing up a fine powder with each step. From behind follow Mr Riddle, as well as Ruth, only a few steps back, and even through her back is turned she can feel her sharp hawkish eyes upon her back, always surveying for any signs of impropriety, as she has no doubt been strictly instructed to do so.
It would not do for us to be seen alone together, Tom had leaned in to whisper conspiratorially in the manor courtyard before they had set out for the walk. Nothing more than an evening stroll, really, and the kind she was wont to take after dinner. Only today she had extra company.
She continues down the narrow road—more of a beaten-down track—through the open moorland made noticeable only by the narrow wooden pickets along the side. Despite how bundled up she is—in a muffler and thick petticoats—she cannot help but shiver against the blustery wind which shakes the thin dry branches of the trees in the distance. In the horizon the sun is a mere pinprick as it is about to set, a dim glow of purplish orange like a match almost snuffed out.
There is the crunch of snow, and then she and Tom Riddle are strolling shoulder to shoulder, Ruth Randell trailing behind.
After a few minutes of silence, Tom Riddle tries to jostle her out of silence.
"I never did inquire as to when the wedding would be."
"We have set a date for this summer."
"A joyous occasion. You must be looking forward to it."
She swallows, and finds that rather than her soon-to-be-husband it is thoughts of her father that fills her head, her father's money troubles, to be exact.
For the House of Granger had been diminishing almost since her very birth, and all as a result of a series of ill-considered financial investments of her father's part. In fact she could recall almost four times when they had been forced to sell Granger manor itself—their last property of note. Though their lifestyle might appear luxurious on the outside, it was a far-cry from the many properties and carriages they had once enjoyed—or rather, her mother and father had as a young couple, before she was even born.
She knew it was terribly crude to marry for money. And yet, marriage to Ambrose could be the god-send that could clear up her father's many debts, dissolve any dangers of losing the estate—the only home she had ever known.
Was love really that important after all?
"I have no comment on the matter."
He shoots her an odd look, as though she is a particularly difficult mathematics problem he is trying to untangle.
"Oh? I would have thought a well-born groom was every lady's dream."
"That depends," she merely sniffs, not eager to elaborate on the situation. The snow crunches under their feet as they continue on their path. At their heels, Ruth blows her nose loudly—whether it is code or not, she cannot tell.
"On?"
She shoots him a sidelong glance, only to find out his face is animated, fascinated in what she has to say. Feverish, she catches herself thinking. It is almost as though he has caught an illness.
There is a brief silence as she considers whether to elaborate or not. When she sneaks another glance at him and finds the same expression has not faltered, she sighs.
"On whether the gentleman is worthy of the title."
"And Mr Richmond is not?"
There it is again: he is like a constable, hounding her with his questions. She cannot fathom why he should find the answers of such interest.
"Oh dear," he finally mutters to himself with a conclusive note when he finds her unwilling to respond. "Lover's tiff."
"It's none of your business" she snaps, and then, guilty at her harsh tone: "I would simply like to keep the matter private."
"Of course…" he trails off.
Soon he has started whistling, a short repetitive tune that reminds her of country fairs and fiddlers as he keeps apace, gloved hands buried in the pockets of his long coat, whose thick lining and mink collar Hermione eyes with mild envy; it has been so long since she has been able to afford any decent clothing, and what little she has has already had to be mended twice, thrice, even four times over. She had chosen her stockings with care that day unlike the case with most days, picking out the fine wool ones imported from the south from out the heavy wooden chest she kept locked up with her best things. And she had certainly not done so on account of the infuriatingly well-dressed man next to her.
The sight of the building coming up below the hill before her interrupts her thoughts, and Tom's pace falters a beat as he notices it at the same time as her. Less of a building and more ruins, really, the old St Michael's chapel still stands tall with its stone walls and tower in spite of missing nearly everything else—the lone remnants of the once proud church that once stood in its place.
Tom whistles a low whistle. "Speaking of weddings…" he trails off with a smirk.
Hermione ignores the quip. "It once belonged to the neighbouring village of Lowick, but one bad harvest too many eventually turned its people away to more propitious settlements. Now only their church remains, and no one to use it."
"Ainwick they've gone to mostly, nearly 30 miles south of here" Ruth chimes in, no longer satisfied with the charade of invisibility. "Decent folks, they were. My great aunt Mary and her bunch once resided there, before they were driven out. No jobs for the menfolk and the women and children sitting hungry at home. It's a good thing they did move on too, because the harvest hasn't returned a season since."
She notices Tom's eyes have glazed over as he listens to her maid chatters on, but when he speaks he is all politeness.
"I would love to see it."
"Oh, I don't know about that. It is quite unsafe, from what I know."
"I am quite certain Miss Granger would like a look at the place as well" he faces her with an arched brow, arms behind his back.
"I've never seen it either..." She trails off. "It was always forbidden…"
"Well, Ms Randell? What do you say? I will be with Miss Granger of course—keep her safe."
But Ruth has squeezed her lips into the thin line Hermione knows well, and she has just turned to tug on Tom's arm and lead him back the way they came when, almost by magic, something shifts between them. Slowly, by degrees, Ruth's eyes glaze over, and then, to Hermione's shock, her maid actually smiles.
"Well, I don't see the harm in it…So long as you are there to accompany her, Mr Riddle."
Tom's answering smile is brilliant.
"Lovely. We won't be long."
It is Tom's turn to lead her forward towards the ruins, his hand gentle upon the crook of her arm. Hermione replays in her head all the words of caution and beratement she has received over the years over her curiosity regarding the chapel—or anything at all, really—only for it all to suddenly vanish. When she turns her head to take another look at her maid waiting patiently upon the hill, she finds the same insipid smile upon her thin face, as though frozen.
But Tom is already nearly at the chapel's entrance, or what remains of it, and she hurries to keep up.
The place is even more decrepit up close, and she has to watch her feet to avoid stepping on broken and crumbling stonework. The snow has started to come more thickly now, replacing the soft flurry that followed them upon their heels with sticky clumps. She imagines the roads would be all snowed in by the morning: a frightening vision of isolation.
Tom stands poised and waits for her at the edge of the entrance before disappearing inside the rubble itself like a shadow.
"Wait for me!" she cries, jumping down from a particularly high piece of rock near the entrance. When she makes it through the same gap in the wall through which he entered, she is met with utter darkness before her eyes adjust.
She takes in a sharp breath.
Beautiful.
Through the broken and decrepit roof the last rays of sunlight are streaming down, creating a soft halo upon the flagstone floor. Snowflakes filter through the same broken patch in the roof and dance in the ray of light as though they are bewitched.
The whole scene reminds her of something out of a snow globe. Pristine; perfect.
Tom, she notices, has seated himself in the dark corner of the church, on a broken and rotting wooden pew that still remains in the nave, insensate to the beauty with his eyes closed and hands clasped as though in prayer.
Perhaps ignoring her footsteps, or perhaps in too deep of a reverie, he remains frozen and facing the altar, which still remains in place as spotless and unharmed by time as though its worshippers will stumble in through the doors any minute.
After a few more minutes of silence, Hermione having seated herself in turn on a pew in front of Tom, he finally deigns to speak.
"Are you not going to ask?"
"Ask what?" Her voice is rusty from disuse, and she clears it.
"You don't find it strange that I should pray, given what we spoke of yesterday?"
"That you don't believe" her voice echoes in the empty church.
"There is a word for people like I, of course. 'Heathen,' I suppose you could call us. My grandfather was the worst of them all, of course. Didn't attend church a day in his life, would perform these rites on certain days of the calendar, days Christians consider the most holy. Spells and incantations, animal sacrifices. A Pagan to the bone."
"And yourself?" Suddenly she wishes she could turn around, look at his face. "Do you believe like he did?"
"I never really knew my grandfather, if you must know. At least…Not until it was too late" A beat, and then he says quietly: "I was raised an orphan."
Now this was new. She runs the information by everything she already knows about him—intelligent, independently wealthy, suave—and finds it does not fit.
Unable to help herself, she pivots upon her seat, resting her forearm against the scratched-up back of the pew to take a look upon his face. But his features are smooth, undisturbed, impossible to read. She waits for him to go on, and eventually he does.
"I was found abandoned on the steps of a church much like this one. An infant; unable to defend for myself. It was charity that brought me up, and the nuns never made me forget it" he gives a staccato little laugh whose cruelty takes her by surprise. "I have the scars to show for it."
"But you didn't stay with them forever" she says, to spur him on from the private grief he is now indulging himself in—finally the vestige of some emotion raw upon his features.
"No," his voice is ice cold. "They made sure of that."
His eyes are far away, lost once again inside his private grief. Hermione rises to her feet, takes a few steps towards where he is seated until she is towering above him, his face level with her waist.
"Show me."
By inches, as though coming out of a dream, Tom rolls up the sleeves of his fine coat. Hermione has to catch her breath at the sight.
Scratches. Cuts of all shapes and sizes. They mottle the flesh of his forearms, either faded to a pale pink or white scars against his otherwise luminous skin. Hermione brushes her fingers against them, soft as a butterfly. Tom tenses in response, his hand twitching once before he can stop it.
"Who did this?" She finally chokes out.
"As I said," he drawls. "The church has not exactly been kind to me."
They remain in their relative positions for a few more minutes yet, ignoring the dying of the light, the soft voices of birds in the trees calling one another back to their nests.
And when Tom places his hand upon the pulse of her wrist, his fingers as soft as her own as they still rest upon his forearm—she lets him.
When they finally make their way out of the chapel the sun has set, casting the moorland into a swooning indigo. She is slightly surprised to find Ruth in the same place they left her, shifting the weight upon her feet but otherwise unchanged.
"Enjoyed yourselves?" she asks with not a hint of irony, still something strange about her eyes that Hermione cannot quite place.
"Indeed" Hermione replies as they set out back home.
Tom Riddle does not speak to her again for the rest of the way.
It is snowing again.
Hermione watches the flakes flutter down from between slitted eyes, large as doves as they land softly at her feet. Their path through the sky is ceaseless—it is as though the flakes are multiplying in the very air before her, birthing sister flakes of slightly different shape and design before they make their way down to the ground. The whole scene is blurry, as though she is witnessing it through greasy glass, or as though she is in need of spectacles, and she squints, releasing a sigh of satisfaction when the picture clears, becomes crystal sharp.
It is snowing—no.
With a start, as though recollecting herself from a reverie, she realizes it is not snow she is watching, but thousands of sheets of paper a-flurry in the air and descending light as feathers upon the floor. And she is not outdoors as she assumed but in her father's library, the familiar fireplace and the large globe of the world within her line of sight.
She blinks once again, clutching her arms against the sides of her torso and bunching up her long white nightgown in the process (was it just her or was there less of her lately, the fat seemed to simply be melting off her bones.) And then she sees it—the edge of one of the rolling ladders, leaned up against a tall bookshelf from which more 'snow' seems to be fluttering than the rest of the room. As she watches, the ladder approaches closer and closer until she can see the tall figure upon it.
Not having noticed her enter, Tom Riddle continues on his task of stripping the bookshelf of the documents it holds, loose leafs of paper fluttering down with the effort. Silent as though she is truly walking upon snow, Hermione approaches and picks up one of the papers from at her feet.
On Vampires and Trans-humanism. Blood Rituals of Prehistory.
She must have finally made a sound as she parts her way through the white piles at her feet because suddenly Tom freezes upon the ladder, swivelling his head to one side as though listening intently.
"Miss Granger."
"Mr Riddle" she states with equal flatness.
"It is rather late for you to be out of bed, is it not?" He drawls, still not having made a move to get down from the ladder.
"That depends. It is rather poor form to be burglarizing the library of an esteemed professor, is it not?"
And then, he finally turns his head outright, steadily meeting her gaze with his own.
"Oh, Hermione…" he smiles, a patronizing little quirk of the lips that looks almost sweet upon his features. "Who says you are awake?"
The next thing she remembers is a sharp pain upon her neck, followed by soft sheets tangling her limbs. Deep sleep.
When she wakes next morning the library is immaculate.
There had been a time, Hermione was told, when she had been seriously ill.
Bedridden for weeks at a time, a slew of doctors running circles around her, throwing one diagnosis after another, none of them quite sticking with her symptoms, the least of which included extreme fatigue. In the end the plainest of the surmises had won out: a severe case of influenza that had taken hold of her. She will need to be given lots of fluids, the doctors had concluded, as well as generous rest.
Or so she had been told. She had been five years old at the time, though had retained no memories of the incident.
But what had stuck with her was the label of delicate—she was barred from taking long walks or exercising or doing anything more strenuous than lifting the pages of a book to turn them, in essence. As a child she had scorned this label, and, indeed, still did so. She had hardly gotten ill since the incident with the exception of the occasional seasonal cold, so what was the use for all the restrictions, the eyes of her maid constantly glued to the back of her neck, ready to report back to her father any particularities of rule breaking?
She was not reckless for her love of strolls away from the manor, upon the miles of moorland that surrounded it, nor was she reckless for her hankering for adventure, her desire to see the rest of what the world had to offer beyond those said miles, however well-trod and beloved they may be.
It was a pleasure Sir Granger was anxious to take away from her, she knew. One she had to constantly put up a fight for.
She is tending to her winter roses in the garden when her recent bout of ill health finally catches up with her. Only Ambrose is present to catch her fall.
Being sick is different this time around.
Oh, the slew of doctors is the same, the hundreds of diagnoses thrown around.
What is different is that, this time, she is not expected to survive.
It is not a fact they tell her outright, but she can read it on the concerned faces crowding around her nevertheless. The servants, when they speak, do so in hushed voices now, as though the slightest disturbance might push her over the edge.
Cocooned within the covers of her four-poster bed, she feels as much of an insect as those that surround her in her room, radiant butterflies and fuzzy caterpillars and glittering beetles pinned and displayed scientifically in a plethora of frames and cabinets constructed specifically for her use—a hobby of hers once, a way of playing at being a naturalist.
Little had she known she would end up becoming an object in her own collection.
Alarmed by her feebleness and her lack of colour, the doctors order leeching, convinced that it is her body that is poisoning her, that the delicate feminine interlacing within her has become corrupted somehow, begun to come undone, that she is essentially rotting from the inside. How can she explain to them her suspicions when they are so convinced that they are right, that the real source of the problem is not within, but without?
She cannot quite explain it—a rare phenomenon, one that makes her want to scream—but she feels as though she is leaking. Leaking through her dreams.
For she has continued to have them, every night since he arrived. Terrible dreams, horrendous dreams, dreams where she is not only feasting upon the insubstantial but where she is the feast herself, being gorged on alive by insect and beast alike. The details of the dream might change—sometimes her bored alive by the horns of some monstrous stag, sometimes dissolving almost atom by atom upon a matrix of detritus and dirt—but the theme remains the same.
Frenzied consumption: the specimen fighting back. The topsy turvy nightmare of the naturalist come to life.
A month into the dreams and half-crazed from the never-ending variations upon the theme, she is no longer able to help herself. Rolling over in bed, she locks eyes with Tom Riddle seated upon a chair by her bedside. Her constant and uncomplaining nightly visitor, and recently, she and he have started to keep similar late hours.
"Mr Riddle…" she manages to wheeze out, unable to stop the few tears beading at the corners of her eyes. She feels so weak that even speaking that much is a chore. Mirrors have been forbidden in her room since her sickness began but she does not need them to sense just how skeletal she is now, merely skin and bone.
"…Help me" she chokes out, the tears now sliding down her cheeks. "I am so weary of dying."
"Shhh" he merely replies, upon his feet and crouched over her limp figure in the bed like a large spider. And, unlike the others, he actually speaks the words out loud.
"It will all be over soon."
A week into his visits by her bedside, Tom Riddle discovers the truth.
In a moment of inattention, the physician has forgotten to button up the back of her nightgown as he was checking her vitals, and her back remains open and exposed as she lies on her side, not enough time to cover up before he walks into the room.
"Who did this to you?"
She knows by his tone that he has recognized the scars and bruises for what they are (always at her back and torso—those particular places where no one else would know how to look.) Feels the particular brand of affinity pass between them for a single moment, like a ribbon tying them together.
She no longer has the strength to lie.
So she tells him everything—about her father's debt and the doll with the porcelain body and blond curls and how kind and almost fatherly Ambrose had been to her at the beginning, doling out fortune after fortune always to save them from the brink of ruin, and only for a small price after all. She tells him about the first night it had happened between them, when she was only fifteen, and then the next and the next and the next after that.
So long as you keep your mouth shut it will be fine, he had told her. But in the end that hadn't been enough. In the end he had wanted to marry her.
Tom traces the scars at her back, the outcome of many a-drunken brawl and beating, with a hand as light as feathers. He is silent, and remains silent even after she has spilled the whole truth, facing the other direction where she lies because she cannot bear to look him in the face.
And then, without a word, he gets up to leave.
It will be the last time she will ever see him alive.
When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.
I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.
The funeral ceremony is a solemn one, and, despite the large congregation, with few tears shed. Perhaps it is the grey morning, perhaps the light drizzle sprinkling upon Hermione Granger's casket as it is lowered into the dank, slushy ground, but something has managed to shut up the grief of its attendants (amongst their number: servants and neighbours and distant relatives alike) as surely as if they were entombed into some crevice alive. The pastor says a few words, and then proceeds to read a poem by Christina Rossetti, his words dull and leaden in the air, the congregation listening with heads bent. The only noise in the small crowd is the sniffling that emerges, splintered and loud, from Sir Granger's chest.
"My child!" He moans, broken and pitiful as he buries his grey head into Ambrose Richmond's silk-clad arm. "My child, oh my child!"
The congregation soon clears, heavy feet dragging behind the moaning figure of Sir Granger, who, still unawares, walks roiling with the pain of the stomach tumour that is already preparing to take him to his own grave.
Once the crowd departs only one person remains by the freshly-lain tombstone (Hermione Granger / 1867—1885 / Beloved daughter.) With practiced solemnity, he gets to his knees and lays down a bouquet of flowers—crimson winter roses, fresh from the Granger garden. And then, with strange performance, he picks up a fistful of mud, slick and wet from the recently melted snow, and smears it slowly, deliberately all over the petals of the roses until they are dripping dirt, almost indistinguishable from the dirt already piled high upon the freshly dug grave.
"Haply I may remember," Tom Riddle mutters to himself, almost as an afterthought, as he gets back up from his haunches.
"And haply, may forget."
By the time he walks back to the manor, already planning his return, the drizzle has ceased.
Hermione awakens to darkness.
At first her senses are numbed, and it takes a moment for her eyes to adjust for her to realize the darkness is not darkness at all, but is punctured by small dancing flames of light: dozens of candles scattered around the chamber she finds herself in.
No—
It is only as she shifts her weight upon the stone slab that she realizes it is not a chamber at all, but a crypt—her family crypt. The shapes the candles are illuminating flicker and come into focus: the many stone coffins of once-deceased Grangers all lined up in a row.
It is only then that she notices him.
"Miss Granger," he remarks politely, rising to his feet from where he was seated upon another stone slab, the twin of her own, in the corner. It is as though he is merely greeting her upon the ballroom floor, and not finding her waking up cold and alone in her family crypt of all places. She opens her mouth to speak, only for the sound to die in her throat before it ever escapes.
Die—die—die—die—die—
She meets his gaze steadily as understanding dawns, mingles with memory.
"You—" she manages to choke out. "What did you do?"
He approaches her, eyes still locked with hers, gaze as soft and beneficent as a saint's.
But he ignores the question.
"Hungry?" He asks simply.
And though she has a thousand questions to ask, the only thing she finds escaping her lips is a quiet, but certain
Yes.
There is a blood moon over the House of Granger.
Hermione stands guard at the door to Sir Granger's study as Tom Riddle rifles through the papers and documents, upends volume after volume of obscure book before he finds the one he is looking for:
On Vampires and Trans-humanism. Blood Rituals of Prehistory.
Hermione gives a jolt as memory resurfaces. It was a dream, she tells herself, peering over his shoulder at the familiar title, but it had a seed of reality too.
For she knows now who to thank for her sleepless nights. For the nightly visitations that birthed the horrifying nightmares. He piercing through her mind as deftly as his fangs had pierced through her skin. And drained her, slowly yet surely extracting the life from within her.
"You wanted me to die" she had accused him, shortly after she had realized what he was, or rather, finally admitted it to herself what a part of her had suspected all along.
His eyes are razor sharp upon hers. "I wanted you to live" he had hissed out, pure poison, and unapologetic.
"Well, now you have what you were searching for all along" she remarks, her voice acid.
Over his shoulder, he shoots her a level look.
"But not what you came here for. Tell me, Hermione, are you going to finish him off, or should I?"
There is a beat of silence. Hermione realizes it is the first time he has used her Christian name.
Parting red velvet curtains, she leads the way into the drawing room where Ambrose Richmond awaits.
Huffs that give way to steam in the frigid air. The sound of hooves that grow more and more distant.
The horses have escaped the stables. Grey and white and pure Arabian black, they gallop riderless through miles and miles of moorland, their manes blowing in the wind as they go. They will travel forty miles that day before stopping to water themselves by a stream at the side of the road, and then another thirty the next day as they follow the sweet scent of distant grassland in the wind. It will be almost a week before they are caught—by a wandering journeyman who will not be able to believe his luck at chancing upon such prize stallions.
Unlike the beasts, however, Tom Riddle and Hermione Granger are hardly noticed as they wait upon a criss-cross of well-trodden roads nearly carved into the beaten-down moorland. A cross-roads for carriages, they wait for the next one to inevitably arrive and carry them away. Down south to warmer climates. Across the English Channel to the Continent and even further east, further beyond—
As a cab approaches Hermione spies herself in the glass windows: in a white frilly tiered dress, matching hat and umbrella in her hand she is in her Sunday best—and almost back to her normal weight to boot, no longer all sharp elbows and knees. In his velvet top hat Tom Riddle is no less dashing by her side. She knows how they will inevitably appear to strangers: just a couple of newly-weds eager to begin their honeymoon in Europe. It is, after all, not far short of the truth. For it was he who had turned her, he who had killed her, and thereby saved her life. This was a bond forged in blood, and one that would not be so easy to break.
What was it they said, Hermione silently wonders to herself, about the blood of the covenant and the water of the womb?
"Darling," Tom Riddle drawls, flashing her a blinding white smile, one that is characterized by unusually long canines. "After you."
And, without hesitation, Hermione takes his hand.