Author's Note: Well, this chapter might feel a bit short. The writing process for this one was kind of rocky. I also don't think I like it very much, and usually I'm very happy with chapters after I finish them. It might be because I just finished a really good book and now everything is meh by comparison, in which case you all won't have the same view. Or it could be something else. More on that at the end.

But at least I am on time with when I said I would update!

"I can't believe it was Hagrid all along. You were right about him." In an empty classroom, Charlotte was perched on a desk, Herbology textbooks stacked behind her, with Tom leaning back against another across from her.

"Maybe he didn't intend for the attacks to happen," he said.

"How could they not be intentional if he was the Heir of Slytherin?"

"Maybe he wasn't. Maybe this having anything to do with Slytherin was a misunderstanding. Maybe, like you said before, there is no Heir of Slytherin at all, or if there is, this wasn't his work." He frowned. "But regardless, it was a terrible thing for him to bring a giant spider into the school, and try to look after it like some sort of pet. No one with sense would do anything like that."

Charlotte nodded. Tom had known all along that trouble would come of having Rubeus Hagrid around, while she had made some defense for him. She thought she ought to listen to him more in future. "And what did he do when you tried to take it away?"

Tom snorted. "Tried to protect it. He jumped on me, pushed me over." He reached his a hand up and touched his fingertips to his face. "I got a nasty bruise, but Madam Beauregard took care of it." Charlotte leaned forward, balancing on the edge of the desk, and placed her hand on his.

"It was very brave of you," she said in a whisper. He smiled a little bit, taking her hand as he dropped his from his face. He stood up and came towards her.

"I thought about you," he said softly. "I wanted you to be safe. Remember how I said I wouldn't let anything happen to you?"

"You mean on the night Owen Rochester was petrified?" She asked, specifically avoiding saying 'the night we were caught'.

"Mmhmm," he said embracing her. "I had to keep my promise," he whispered, leaning the side of his face against her head.

"Well I do feel much safer now—thanks to you." She leaned back to look at him. "It's strange, I was thinking about you, probably around the same time, thinking about how I was afraid Hogwarts would close and— all the consequences of that. I hoped that somehow it wouldn't happen, although I didn't believe it was likely that it would be averted. And at the same time you were doing just that. It seems kind of… miraculous." He didn't say anything, but smiled as she spoke.

"There's been something on my mind since our conversation on Sunday when we left the Great Hall," she continued.

"Oh?"

"It left me wondering about... you and I, in the future. Is it just the idea of a Muggle family that you find unappealing? Or—" Tom had been leaning forward and now cut her off, putting his lips on hers.

He moved his mouth next to her ear to whisper, "I love you, Charlotte. And what I know right now is that I want to be with you. Don't ever doubt that." He specified nothing about the future, but that was understandable; they were too young to make commitments like that. It wouldn't have mattered if he had.

But the words 'don't ever doubt that', she took them to heart; never doubt his love. She wouldn't. "I love you too, Tom," she whispered.

Letting go of her, he moved to sit behind her on the desk. He wrapped his arm around her waist and she fell back across his lap. A chair slid towards them, beneath Charlotte's feet for her to comfortably rest her legs on. She smiled up at Tom, her head on the stack of books. "What about family aside from me? There's my relatives, and…" she felt herself blushing; she didn't know quite why she was saying it, but she had to finish the sentence now. "The family we could have."

She'd glanced away as she spoke; when she looked at him again, he was staring directly ahead of him, his forehead creased and a flash of anger fading. He must have been thinking about his own parents leaving him in that orphanage. She should have been more sensitive in bringing up this subject. Trying to think of what to say, she instead practically breathed a sigh of relief when, the storm cloud over him clearing, he turned back to her and said with a laughing smile, "I'd say we're a bit young to be thinking about that, don't you?"

She gave a small shrug. "To be considering having children, yes. But to imagine whether we might want children, I don't think so."

He continued to smile, but his eyes showed a more complex response. More emotions than Charlotte could read. He wasn't keen on that idea either, that much she could tell. He dropped his gaze and his smile. "You've never imagined yourself as a father?" she asked, hoping she had misunderstood his reaction.

"How would I know what a father is like, seeing as I've never had one?" He didn't say it as icily as she would have imagined, but there was a bitterness there.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have—"

"I'm not hurt, Charlotte," he said, before she could finish her apology. "Don't say or think any more on it. I'm not as sensitive as you assume." He acted so strong, but she wanted to know what he truly felt. "You've imagined yourself as a mother, then?" he asked quietly, after a pause.

"I've never thought that I wouldn't someday be a mother. And, being my parents' only child, I feel a responsibility, as strange as that might sound, to continue the family."

"I don't think that sounds very strange," Tom answered gently, leaning on his arm to be closer to her. "Your family has history, a bloodline—you don't want to lose that." Charlotte nodded. Tom was studying her face and she knew she must look troubled to him; she wanted to preserve her family's legacy and she wanted to be with him, but she could not have both in exactly the way she wanted. They'd never spoken about this, even though she was sure he had to be aware it would come up eventually, if they stayed together and things became more serious. It wasn't truly that serious of a relationship yet, but she didn't see reason to assume it wouldn't evolve. They already cared so deeply for each other, and given time…

"You're thinking that you can't have me and maintain your pureblood family tree, aren't you?"

She sighed. "Yes, and I don't know what to do about it."

"You—we don't have to do anything about it right now. It doesn't affect us at the moment. There's no reason to worry about it."

But there was something she hadn't told him yet. "It might affect us soon," she said.

"Meaning? This summer, with your parents? Your mother seemed to like me, well enough to invite me to visit. And your father, from what you've told me, wouldn't mind as much as she would."

Charlotte sat up. "I haven't explicitly mentioned that you aren't a pureblood, so it's very possible her view will change when that fact becomes known."

Tom straightened back up too. "She knows my name and, I believe, you told her where I live. Surely they've worked it out?"

He was right, but his assumption still rested on unstable ground. "I wouldn't be so certain of that." She twisted around to face him. "There's always been an unspoken understanding that I would marry another pureblood; that's true of most every pureblood family. I don't think they would anticipate that I would go against that. I didn't anticipate it. Yet here I am."

"But I haven't asked you to marry me. I don't see what the problem is." His usual calm demeanor was fading.

"The problem is they'll say I'm wasting my time on you. And I would have to agree with them because I would be better off loving someone else, who I could feasibly spend my life with." She didn't want to get hurt; she didn't want to put herself in that situation, having to lose him but still loving him. The house of cards was already built, however, and there was no dismantling it, gently, without knocking it down, unless Tom made himself unlovable somehow, which she didn't imagine could happen. She was feeling incredibly conflicted; something she'd lived her whole life accepting was now problematic and yet she was clinging to it. Suddenly, she burst out, "It's really a silly thing—blood purity. It's not even measurable, not really, and it doesn't seem to have any effect on one's magical ability. But you know what's mad?" She almost shouted this. "I still think I would feel guilty and upset with myself if I was the one in my family to throw that legacy away." She looked at Tom, feeling like she had betrayed him. To her surprise, he was gazing back at her with a sympathetic smile.

"I would feel guilty for being the one to make you do it," he said slowly. "It does seem like a wretched thing—to be the one to break that tradition after who knows how many years…" His eyes were still on her, but they weren't looking at her, weren't seeing her. He seemed upset, both angered and saddened. Charlotte hated the thought that he was feeling this way because of her. He shook himself out of whatever thoughts he had been having, refocusing on her.

She reached for his hand. "It's easy to forget you aren't pureblood; you act like one of us, you think like one of us—sometimes you seem more pureblood than I do," she laughed. However, even as she made a joke out of it, she felt upset by this, wanting to live up to expectations.

Tom smiled. "I take that as a compliment. Thank you." He watched her expression as she felt her regret and then said, "But you are meant to be a magnificent, pureblood lady—and you can be, I see that. You will make your parents proud of you, and all your ancestors before, if they knew." It was so easy to believe when he said it.

She leaned closer to him. "And you? Can you be the exception to the rule?"

"I am the exception to the rule," he repeated back to her.

It had been one of the worst—if not the worst—conversation he'd had with Charlotte to date.

Having a family—children, even. The problematic pureblood ideology. The entire thing oozing love. A whole slew of troublesome topics, some of them utterly revolting.

He started up another flight of stairs, on his way to the owlery now, just for something to do. He had no letters to send, but no one needed to know that.

Discussing hypothetical children wouldn't have been so bad—because obviously it wasn't going to happen; only she wasn't aware of that yet—except the Basilisk's awful speech rung in his ears as Charlotte spoke about it. The same suggestion the Basilisk had made, coming back to haunt him. When they'd spoken about history and family legacies, too, he'd been reminded of words he'd rather have forgotten: the Basilisk's presumption that through him Slytherin's descendants would cease to exist.

He passed by some Hufflepuffs on the staircase landing.

'You've never imagined yourself as a father?' He had implied to Charlotte that the answer was no; however, a memory came to him now—cloudy, unfamiliar, as though it came from another's life. But he was certain it had really happened, because he wouldn't have invented it for himself.

He'd once, perhaps more than once, while sitting alone at the orphanage, thought to himself, 'I would never let this happen to my child. When I'm grown up and I have a wife and she has a baby, I won't abandon it. Never...' That was a long time ago. A very long time ago. It later changed from when to if and then to Why? 'Why would I raise a child?'. But it had once been 'when', he supposed because that was what the world expected. 'When you become mummies and daddies...', children, even orphans, were told. But now he'd learned that the expectations of others were irrelevant; only his own will mattered.

He reached the top of the tower where the owlery was. Some other students were there, but they wouldn't bother him. He went over to one of the windows and stared out over the darkened school grounds.

There had been something else as well. The thought that his mother had done exactly what Charlotte described. Only she had allowed a muggle to be the father of her child, which was far, far worse. He'd had to keep all this confined to his mind, showing as little of it in his expressions as possible, because he couldn't tell Charlotte that he knew who his mother and her family had been. Thinking about this had been another reason the conversation had been particularly unpleasant—although he felt he could commend himself on making it not appear so unpleasant to Charlotte; he had been loving, sympathetic, engaged in their conversation, caring. When he heard others talk about love, he thought they were foolish and weak; when he heard himself talk about love, he knew that he wasn't.

He didn't stay very long in the owlery, not much enjoying the company of some several hundred owls, especially at night when they were more active.

He was surprised it had taken so long for the conflict to arise between Charlotte's love for him, a half-blood, and her pureblood family expectations. Yet for all the extra time he'd had to prepare, he hadn't come up with much to convince her pureblood ideology was right and that she could also allow herself to love him.

The approach he had taken earlier had been to make her feel absolutely comfortable with being pureblood, really see herself as part of something greater, and make that a part of her identity. That way she didn't begin to doubt it for his sake. He wanted her to believe it because it was the ideology he was seeking to promote—even though he didn't fully believe it himself. How could he? He wasn't pureblood, and yet he aimed to become an immensely powerful wizard, the most powerful wizard.

Power was all he wanted, but he needed an ideal to promote, for people to stand with him on, to allow him to take over. The logical choice was wizard supremacy; clearly, as demonstrated by the effect Grindelwald was having, that was a topic that could gain support. Everyone enjoys being told they're superior, that they have some right over others. The purebloods were already used to having this kind of aristocratic right, and were only too eager to listen to someone encouraging them. And if he couldn't convince Charlotte of this idea, how could he expect to convince others effectively?

Author's Note: What I think is a major contributing factor to the very lackluster vibe I'm getting from this chapter is Charlotte's inconsistency in her views on being pureblood. I should have brought that up sooner and more often. Plus in this chapter, I think I may have made her too aware of the flaws in her logic. Also I'll admit I haven't had the clearest idea of what she's thinking, where she's at in her beliefs about it, throughout my writing of this story. It could do with some work, for sure.

However, I have some very good (at least I think) things planned for upcoming chapters! Don't worry, I haven't totally lost the thread of the story!