"To-om!" Peggy called out from across the courtyard, jumping down from the steps she was standing on to skip over to him and Abraxas.
"To-om!" Abraxas mockingly repeated, earning himself an Impedimenta Jinx in the ribs.
"Hello, Peggy," Tom greeted her, watching her eyes slide to a now collapsed Abraxas in the snow. "Don't mind him."
"Did you have a good Christmas?" she asked, pulling on his hand. "It was ever so dull in Devon…I couldn't wait to come back to Scotland."
"I'm sure," he replied blandly. It had been a fantastic break thanks to Hermione's genealogical discovery, but there didn't seem to be any reason to discuss the details with Peggy.
"Edith and I were thinking of getting drinks in Hogsmeade this weekend, if you're interested?" she asked, fiddling with a pin in her hair.
"How kind. Isn't that thoughtful, Abraxas?" Tom said. They watched him pick himself up off the ground, shaking snow from his robes and staring back daggers.
"Of course," he spat back, quite unconvincingly. Peggy was unperturbed.
"Great, we'll meet you at the doors at 3pm this Saturday," she said, and with a brief peck on Tom's cheek she was gone.
Abraxas was back on his feet. "You can't be serious about Corbyn," he complained. "I thought the cold sobriety of January would have shaken loose any Firewhisky ideas from December by now."
They continued on their way to History of Magic. "Perhaps that's why she continues to suggest alcohol," Tom said.
"Just bizarre, Tom," Abraxas said, shaking his head almost sadly. "And you have proven heritage now! You could find a much more suitable pureblood girl."
"I must say, I wasn't thinking of blood purity when Peggy said she could put her ankles behind her ears," Tom replied, making Abraxas visibly shudder with revulsion.
In truth – the sex was not great, but Tom wasn't about to give Abraxas the satisfaction of knowing that. He could know later, if Corbyn ever crossed him and the only reputation she cared about needed shredding. Tom was starting to suspect the concept of sexual pleasure was yet another idea the world had lied to him about, like love and trusting another human being. But for now, the annoyance Peggy brought Abraxas, and the interesting and flexible ideas she suggested, outweighed the costs of associating with her.
Tom looked up from the description of when exactly you needed to kill a bull to hold the fragment of your soul in its stomach while you waited to perform the next stage of the magic to tie your being to the earth, to see Hermione chewing her nails fiercely.
A disgusting habit of nervousness, he thought with some revulsion, as she bit her fingers while staring at her book. The obligation of her gifted genealogical knowledge hung over him again, still annoyingly present. A passed-off assignment wasn't sufficient, he supposed. Tom sighed as he cricked his neck and stood up to wander over to her. A more direct hand over Hermione's education needed to happen at some point, he supposed. Almost two years into Hogwarts was as good a time as any.
"What do you need help with," he said, looking over her shoulder as she started. "Boggarts?"
"Oh – Tom – yes, I've been invited to Professor Merrythought's third year class practical," she said, following his gaze back to the Defence textbook.
Merrythought down too, now. "Good work," he said, connecting the dots between her remaining fingernails and the class subject matter. "Why are you worried about it?"
"I just – I'm not sure what form my boggart will take," Hermione said, pulling on her fingers, eyes narrowing as she tried to explain. "So it's hard to imagine what I might visualise for the counter-spell."
"The curriculum spell is nonsense," Tom sneered, remembering the blathering they had to endure about facing your fears from Merrythought a couple years ago. "You know, I can destroy a boggart before it can shapeshift," he informed Hermione smugly.
Hermione gasped. "Oh wow! Really, Tom? That would be so much better – what's the spell? How do you do it?" She grabbed her muggle notebook and quill, ready to take notes.
"Er," he said blankly, recalling the Twll du curse he had summoned in Merrythought's old Defence classroom, and the tedious interrogation of where he had learned to manifest a black hole that had followed.
That classroom was still out of commission, last he'd heard. It was hardly Tom's fault he was so magically powerful. In fact, he would have thought the teachers would have encouraged such strength, but Merrythought had merely shaken her head wearily when he offered to remedy the event horizon crumbling away in the old fourth floor classroom. Dumbledore, too, had looked at him too shrewdly, whispering away to the Defence Professor before the next class in the new classroom on the second floor -
He blinked. Hermione was looking at him expectantly, quill dripping ink blots on the page.
"I'll tell you – another time," Tom replied, wondering how many moments had passed gormlessly between them. "You need to demonstrate the by-the-book counter-spell for Merrythought."
Hermione nodded and looked away. "I – I suppose you're right," she said, sounding disappointed as she laid her quill down again. And as she did, Tom suddenly realised the opportunity that lay in this uncomfortable school-mandated exploration into one's inner fears. Forced false trust would be a strong foundation on which he could build a rapport for Hermione to do his bidding in a few years.
"But – I'm curious, Hermione," he said with deliberate, aggravating gentleness, tilting his head to the side in feigned interest. "What is it that you fear?" Something abstract, from the sounds of her difficulty imagining the form the boggart might take.
She pouted, pink embarrassment crossing her cheeks as she stared at the floor and folded her arms in discomfort. "I – I don't want to say," she said stiffly. "I told Cynthia and she laughed at me."
Perfect, Tom thought, appreciating whoever the thoughtless Cynthia was for making this an even more sensitive psychological wound as he leant closer. "I would never do that, Hermione," he said, the falsest hesitation in his voice, hand out to ostensibly flick through her Defence textbook as he crowded her. "You can tell me."
Her big, dark eyes turned to him, and Tom could see the defences fall away. She was only a girl, he supposed. They were the most susceptible to a flicker of charm. Perhaps doing his bidding in a single year, if she proved useful or the need arose, he mentally amended.
"Well – ok," she gave in easily, taking a deep breath. "It's – I'm a failure, I'm the worst student Hogwarts has ever had – I can't do magic – they say I'm a filthy muggle and I have to leave." She said this all very fast, looking somewhere past his elbow as the words tumbled out of her mouth.
Tom frowned. She didn't seem to be lying – the fast confession, the scarlet stain of humiliation on her face. And yet –
"But – that's ridiculous," he said shortly, uncertainty overcoming the charming veneer and making his words plainer than he intended.
"Yes, that's the spell," Hermione nodded. "But I'm not sure –"
"No," he interrupted, shaking his head at her. "I mean – your fear is unfounded." How dumb was Hermione for wasting her fear on something that would never happen? Fear was terrible, and ridding oneself of it was the only way to go through life, but Tom's fear was at least rational.
Besides, it was - rather difficult, to remove oneself from the always present, always uneasy threat of exploding ordnance. The Germans liked to throw all manner of new and increasingly advanced explosives at Britain in fits of war production munitions, as the war stretched out endlessly, encompassing the continent and swallowing up Britain too –
"You – you think?" Hermione asked, interrupting the spiralling loop of loud fire and suffocating rubble in Tom's head. He stared at her, feeling his pulse leap erratically in his neck, the strangeness of the cold winter library suddenly turn stifling. As the crashing terror in his ears, in London, did not stop as Hermione blinked at him with her stupid doe eyes in the library, in Scotland, Tom had to admit:
This plot to dig into her subconscious had not gone as planned.
"Yes," Tom said shortly, pulling the collar from his neck as though that would help his oesophagus not clamp shut of its own accord. "What, so - Professor Dippet rescinds your Hogwarts invitation or something?" he asked. It was less a clever, dismissive summation of her absurd terror than a croaking question, as his mind cast around for something in Scotland to cling to, rather than fall into the pitfall in his mind that contained the thudding Underground.
Hermione gasped, hands flying to her mouth. "Oh – that will be what the boggart shapeshifts to, won't it!" she exclaimed, clenching her fingers to her palms. "That – that makes so much sense! Great, Professor Dippet…I can work with that. Thanks, Tom."
He didn't know how that had helped, but the room was starting to spin, so it was unimportant. Tom stumbled out of the library and found the nearest bathroom, dunking his head under a running tap. If he could just will himself to not throw up, to mentally force sense to return to his body that ran uselessly rigid with pathetic, paralysing fear in quiet, far away Scotland –
It was Hermione's fault, he thought viciously, for making him think about it when there was truly no need. There was nowhere better to ignore the horrifying realities of the war than a far-away magical fortress up the isle, but her stupid Defence assignment had tripped a loose thread in his mind and unravelled it. The extremely natural aversion to death that Tom knew everyone had, crawled into his bones in a peculiar way – persistent.
At least his grand plan to rid himself of this suffering was coalescing. Underneath the skin and flesh that could be harmed, lay the magical core (the soul, if one insisted on getting all Old Testament about it), and with murder and human transfiguration and Dark arts at his fingertips, a failsafe could be created. And then…
Tom stared into the mirror over the sink, water and sweat and bile trickling down his chin. And then. Surely after he had formulated and safely hidden away a horcrux, the cacophony of Göring's Luftwaffe and any damnable new fighter bombers that Junkers and Focke-Wulf and Dornier Flugzeug-whatever could dream up would quieten. Like the sobs of a snivelling orphan would recede into silence after the apex of terror and influence Tom was asserting had passed. He was certain. What was the shallow horror of harm to the body, compared to the security of knowing his very self was tied to life? It was nothing, it would be nothing, the physical terror would evaporate – why would it not, in the face of such irrefutable logic and powerful magic? His plan was brilliant and without flaw – he just had to put it in motion.
The blade had her little Riddikulus counter-spell and the smallest leap into intermediate magical study to contend with, and he had a victim, an anointed bull, and a suitable artefact fitting to hold a fragment of himself to find. Tom sighed, Scourgifying water and vomit off the edges of his sleeves. In a funny way, the professors hadn't been wrong about fifth year being more challenging.
Even amongst the incessant pollen of spring, the irritating scent of lavender announced Peggy before she could. Tom turned around to deal with her, and realised with immense displeasure she had her hands outstretched for him.
"Oh, boo," Peggy pouted, folding the arms that were mere seconds from being torn from her body. "I was trying to sneak up on you."
Do not murder a woman you are romantically associated with. "Whatever for?" he forced out as politely as he could stand, trying to smile through gritted teeth.
"You're always in the library, Tom!" she said, leaning over in a way some men must find compelling, Tom presumed, because it otherwise looked ridiculous. "I was thinking…it could be fun to check out the Restricted Section." She peered in the windows to the library wing.
"Have you ever visited the library in your life?" he asked.
"Once, in first year," she replied easily. The unabashed honesty was…something, he'd give Corbyn that.
"Or maybe," she whispered, suddenly in his ear, "I could keep you company while you revised. Under the table?"
It was Tom's turn to shudder now, visions of a Polyjuiced Hermione skulking around his ankles. "That sounds ghastly," he replied. Tom felt Peggy flinch, the rather enormous sense of relief as she withdrew from him.
"You –" she started, but the rejection choked out anything else she had to say. Tom generously gave her a moment – he didn't want to have this conversation again, when she could be sent on her way now.
"You can tell me straight, Tom," she said, head held high, eyes glassy. "If you'd prefer we part ways, you can say so."
He stared at her. "That would infer there was a way to part," he said, turning and walking into the library. Really, there was no time to waste with someone like Corbyn. The full case file on Marvolo Gaunt's hearing had finally arrived from the snail-paced archives of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Tom could feel it; there was his fate waiting in that small village in Yorkshire. Waiting for him to find it, to claim it as it belonged to him.
"Stop doing that," Tom snapped at Hermione, who was once again chewing on her fingers like an animal as she stared a hole into a Charms journal. "Look – if you have a question, just ask. Gnawing at your hand like a hungry cannibal isn't going to help you find the answer."
Hermione dropped her slimy hand from her mouth. "You mean – I can ask you? If I can't figure something out?" she asked uncertainly.
Memories of her incessant questioning in first year ominously lurked, but if it was that or try to ignore Hermione devour herself with worry like an ouruboros over extra Charms reading –
"If you've exhausted your other options," Tom caveated, not wanting to return completely to the chorus of 'whys' he had sufferingly endured in her first few months at Hogwarts. "What is it this time?"
"Well –" Hermione started, pointing her sticky fingers at a diagram in the journal she was studying. "Miller writes in the October quarter issue of Charms Today that in his study of Cheering Charm experimentation, four counter-clockwise circular moves for the intermediate part of the charm is too many and results in hysteria. But I don't understand why it causes hysteria when the focal point of the charm is in the chest – surely hysteria is triggered in the mind?"
"It's a two-way response. The warm feeling in the chest isn't the only part of the charm – the intermediate element of the charm includes the circular wand movements, and they increase monoamine neurotransmissions." Tom looked past her at the books stacked up on her table in the library – all intermediate references and academic journals. "Aren't Cheering Charms covered in third year?"
Hermione nodded, a small smile creeping up her face. "I'm doing third year content in Charms, Transfig, Potions and Defence now," she rattled off proudly, counting the subjects on her shredded fingertips.
"You didn't say!" Tom said, the surprise in his tone quickly turning accusatory. "That's all the core classes."
"It's not, in Herb-"
"Digging in the weeds does not count as magic, Hermione, no matter what this school says," he sniffed. "When will you finish third year content?"
"If I could practice magic during summer, it would be before September," she grumbled. "But as it is illegal – I estimate I'll finish the third year curriculum before the end of this year."
"Where do you live?" Tom asked, recalling a vague memory of Abraxas saying she lived in London too. The Malfoy drive for inane gossip did come in handy, sometimes. If it was somewhere with a magical location nearby, the Trace could be avoided with little effort. It was the single good thing about the seventh circle of hell that was Wool's Orphanage – it's close proximity to Whitehall and the Ministry of Magic meant that the muggle-associated chain of the Trace was easier to escape.
"Croydon, in South London," she said, fiddling with the edge of the journal page and folding it over and back. "Um – do you also live in London, Tom?"
Tom glared at her. "I live here," he said, gesturing a vague hand at the castle. "As do you. But – yes, in summers, I am cast out to Lambeth."
Hermione nodded, looking away under his irritation. "Oh, so we're both from South London," she remarked.
Tom snorted. "Technically, I suppose," he said. Croydon was an hour's train from Inner London – practically provincial as far as he was concerned. "You're nowhere near a magical location, though. You're right, you're out of luck for practicing magic over the summer."
She bit her lip. "It's – it's so unfair," Hermione said, gritting her teeth. "All the students from magical families get to practice unofficially all summer. Hazel and Margaret brag about it constantly. Just because I'm Muggleborn, I have to put my practical education on hold."
The tribulations of being a Muggleborn felt further and further away with each passing day for Tom, now he knew what waited in Little Hangleton for him. "Well, you're already ahead of the rest of your year, aren't you, doing third year content," he said, not bothering to keep the boredom out of his voice as he inspected his fingernails. "In any case – once you're finished covering third year, you'll finally be ready."
The anger left Hermione's face and scrunched up shoulders. "Ready for what?" she asked, eyes wide and blank.
The future and Hermione's destiny glittered. "Ready for me to teach you important magic," he announced. And like always, Hermione did not disappoint: her sharp inhalation of breath and starry eyes made Tom feel the thrill of fate almost as much as she surely did.
"Important – oh my goodness! Tom!" Hermione jumped up with excitement, dropping her charms journal. "Really? You'll tutor me?"
"There's an entire world of powerful magic this school does not deign to put on the curriculum," he said quietly, looking around in case anyone was nearby that shouldn't be, ears pricked up for words not meant for them. "Aren't you lucky, that I'm so willing to share my knowledge with you?"
"Ye – yes!" she confirmed, nodding so much her hair bobbed about, curls bouncing away. "Oh, Tom – that would be incredible. I would love that! Thank you!"
"Well, I'm sure you'll find –"
"What kind of magic?" Hermione asked, bouncing up and down and interrupting him in her uncontained excitement. "Oh – Professor Dumbledore said I can't do human transfiguration until fifth year, but –"
"Lies," Tom said smoothly, hissing ambition quietly into her open ears. "Once you've mastered the basics, why shouldn't you learn whatever magic you wish? He's just trying to keep it from you." Like the books on Dark enchantments of the soul that were increasingly issued and misplaced around the Restricted Section, to his and the librarian's frustration.
Hermione grinned broadly, all teeth and merriment at the magic Tom promised to unlock for her earlier than the authorities planned to. "I can't wait, Tom," she said emphatically, fists bundled up in glee. "I'm so excited!"
"Yes, well – keep it down, won't you?" he said, looking around again before leaning in to stare at her very closely, to impress the importance of secrecy into her unmoulded brain. "It's – important, to keep this sort of thing quiet. You understand?"
Hermione nodded. "Yes," she said solemnly, chin determinedly up and eyes full of fire for learning. Tom stood back up straight again, satisfied.
"Good," he stated. Two years of close tutorage would be more than enough time to prepare his weapon to act on his behalf after he left Hogwarts. Possibly even before then, if Hermione proved promising. And if there was one thing Hermione had done, Tom had to admit, time and time again – it was meet his exacting standards.
"- says he's not going to pass, Tom. Fifty galleons in it if you can scrape him an Acceptable in Transfig."
"Lestrange is insane if he thinks I would even entertain the notion of tutoring him," Tom said flatly, normally precise handwriting becoming blotted as the evening stretched on and the enormous mountain of final research assignments due by morning continued to loom like Everest. "Fucking hell, who has the time –"
"Like Rousseau wants to study," Abraxas snorted, balancing his wand on his fingertip as he annoyed Tom at this critically busy moment. "You can become rather singularly minded when under pressure, you know."
Tom froze. "I beg your pardon?" he asked, tone polite and sharp as a surgeon's scalpel. But Abraxas was unphased.
"Do your mind magic, Tom," he said, leaning in to speak quietly. "I'm sure that won't trigger any of Dippet's Anti-Cheating measures."
Tom returned to scrawling the conclusion of what he sincerely hoped was the last foolish Herbology essay he would ever suffer to write. "Hrm. An entire curriculum memory implant?" he said sceptically. "I don't know if I've the time to deal with Lestrange having an aneurysm." Though the idea of him bleeding out under Tom's wand was, he realised, a satisfying picture to consider, blood falling from his nose as his eyes rolled up into his head and the life left his pathetic human body…
The worst case scenario was quite intriguing, actually. And potentially useful – he needed to split his soul before returning to the loud hell of wartime London anyway. If it killed Lestrange -
"A hundred galleons," Tom said, rolling up the scroll for Beery and shoving it in his bag, reaching for Advanced Neurological Charm Theory. "Common room at…1am," he said, checking his watch. "Wait, what do you get out of this?" he suddenly asked, suspicious of Abraxas go-between.
But the Malfoy heir merely shrugged. "I'm merely being a thoughtful friend, Tom," he said, eyebrows falling as Tom stared at him, distinctly unimpressed. "Fine. I want to watch."
"You can keep a look out," Tom corrected. And if everything did end in tears and he killed the eldest Lestrange heir, a Sacred Twenty-Eight alibi would be invaluable. "Now if you'd kindly get bent, I have two more essays to churn out for Lewis and Dumbledore."
"Pleasure as always, Tom," Abraxas sighed, and he finally stood up and left Tom in blessed, library silence –
"Tom!"
He groaned, loudly and at length, turning to that incredibly obnoxious, familiar hiss in his right ear –
"Good grief, Hermione," he said, staring at her wringing fingers, torn hangnails and bloodied, slimy gouges in each nailbed. "I was joking about the cannibalism."
"In a Hiccupping Solution, when you –"
"I told you to stop doing that," he said, talking over her stupid study question. What good was a blade that had chewed off their entire wand hand by the time it was ready to strike?
She bit her lip, looking down at her hands and putting them behind her back.
"When you add the baneberry stem, should you –"
"I'm going to pretend you didn't just assume I lack object permanence," he said, voice dripping with disapproval.
"Well – I'm sorry it – I know it bothers you – I try, Tom!" Hermione exclaimed, voice turning shrill. "I'm trying – it's a bad habit, I know it is, it's just that the exams –"
"You need a better bad habit," he diagnosed. It was nearly curfew anyway, and Hermione looked mad with exam stress, bags under her bloodshot, wild eyes and oozing, bloody fingers. He sighed, waving his wand to pack his bag and return his unissued books in two complicated, non-verbal movements. "Come along."
Tom dug around in his bag for the cigarettes Brown had (probably purposefully, on reflection) left with him, as Hermione struggled to shove all her books away by hand.
"What's the spell you do to – return the books?" she asked. Her breath was halted as she jumped off a shelf she'd climbed with all the grace of a South American spider monkey to shove an enormous ingredient reference back in its proper place.
"I'll give you maybe two questions," he told her, feeling like a malevolent genie handing out wishes as he headed to the exit. "Do you want that spell, or the questions that will be on one of your silly second year end of year tests?"
Hermione ran after him, her bag thumping loudly as they left the library and Tom headed for the nearby western loggia of the castle. "Wait – it's true, Tom? You know what will be on the end of year exams?"
He snorted derisively, fishing out two gaspers and lighting them with his wand. The content barely changed from year to year; in any case, Hermione likely knew it all anyway. "Which test do you want, Hermione?" he asked, holding out a lit Woodbine along with academic dishonesty and false hope.
Her hesitation was perfunctory, the sort of pause people took as though they hadn't already made up their mind, in order to continue to pretend they were good people, really. Hermione gave him one doleful look, a moment of tension in her shoulders that were slightly up around her ears, before tentatively taking the lit smoke with her disgusting bitten fingers and putting her ambition into words.
"The Charms test," she said, staring at the sun setting over the lake and choking on the high-tar nicotine that Brown must have uplifted from her father or some hapless uniform on home leave.
"Right answer," he remarked, smirking as she coughed dreadfully on the smoke. "Getting second again in Charms would not do. Movement, antithesis, and a surprising amount of light phasing and colour changing material from first year," he told her.
"I – I wouldn't have thought to cover – first year material," she croaked, wiping tears from her eyes after coughing for so long.
"Fundamentals are important," Tom replied, watching out of the corner of his eye as she grimaced before dragging on her smoke again. Her determination was ahead of her ability, it seemed. "Don't make yourself sick," he warned her. The entire point of this exercise was to try and replace one repulsive habit with a slightly more tolerable one. It would be a complete failure if she threw up.
Hermione nodded, twiddling the cigarette between her fingers. "Papa says smoking is bad for your teeth," she commented, shaking off ash. "But – you're right, it's not good to bite your nails."
"You'll hardly pass your exams if you've bitten off so much dexterity you can't write down your answers," he remarked, Vanishing his half-finished smoke, as he watched her in his peripheral vision. The tension and shaking in her hands was obvious. Really, like Hermione had anything academically to worry about, when she was already doing third year material. She did like to waste away on pointless ideas, he thought, remembering her particularly stupid boggart assignment from earlier in the year.
"Who's your competition?" Tom asked. Hermione looked at him with unhappy shock, and he rolled his eyes at her genuine shock. "Your concern is rather obvious," he informed her.
She nodded briefly, grabbing her elbow with her free hand to stop from fidgeting. "Cynthia," she said tersely. "And Margaret Nott." A name so distasteful and stressing the smoke was back at her lips, the choking on the tobacco smoke resuming.
A dim memory lit up in the back of Tom's head, a forgotten plan to set Hermione in good stead for the prefect badge from September. That had been rather a while ago, Tom thought, and he hadn't done anything about it since. "Nott…that's a Slytherin, right?" he asked, Abraxas' droning wizarding genealogy kicking something in his memory. She nodded stiffly, jaw stuck out in rigid anger.
"She's – quite good. At Potions and Transfig."
"Really," Tom remarked. The Memory Charm to remove a year's worth of material would be simpler than the spell to put an entire O.W.L.'s worth of information into Lestrange's neanderthal skull. "I wouldn't worry about it," he said, aiming a kick at her ankle. "Come on. It's past curfew." He had a few hours to either learn a Memory Implant Charm or deal with Lestrange's melted brain stem, and from the way Hermione's bloodshot eyes watered, she had already ingested enough nicotine to keep from biting her wand hand for several days.
Tom had to stand on a bench in the Great Hall to find Hermione, one of the many tasks on his list sprung to mind as the entirety of Slytherin house were gathered to eat ham sandwiches for lunch. Every Slytherin except one, apparently, who he finally located on the other side of the Hall, amongst the swotty eagles.
"Do you ever sit with your own house?" he grumbled, poking Hermione out of her seat and gesturing for her to stand on it like he had. "No, stand on it."
"Why would she?" an annoying voice piped up; Tom turned and saw Small Abraxas, regarding him with a twisted smile as Hermione pulled herself to standing. "The Slytherins treat Hermione like dirt. Present company excluded, of course."
He frowned; hadn't Hermione put this to bed when she pulled off her elaborate Polyjuice kissing scheme? "I thought you sorted out the girls in your dorm?" he asked her; staring at her at eye level now she was standing on the bench.
"It's everyone in Slytherin, Riddle," Small Abraxas said scathingly. "I thought you might have noticed –"
She suddenly fell forward into her food, eyes watering. A fellow student must have hexed her, which was all the attention Tom felt was worthy of wherever that insult was leading – the truth in it was more important than the slander.
"Everyone?" he asked Hermione again; she folded her arms, a humiliated tinge of red across her face revealing the truth better than any verbal response.
"Why am I standing on the bench?" she asked, looking away.
Back to the task at hand, or he'd never make any progress on taking over the world and making it kneel. "Which one is Margaret Nott?" Tom asked, jerking his head towards the Slytherin table. At this question, Small Abraxas stood up on the bench she was sitting on too, scanning the Slytherin table.
"Blonde curls, those squinty eyes half the purebloods have. She's – there, in the middle," Small Abraxas said, pointing at the girl in question. Hermione nodded as he looked to her for confirmation; like he'd take anything from her annoying friend at face value.
"Right. Sit with your own house in future," he reprimanded, heading back to the Slytherin table and keeping an eye out for Nott. One could hardly become the Blade of Slytherin if they spent all their time gossiping with Ravenclaws. He'd have to remind Hermione of the importance of following your destiny…
It was easy to pull Nott aside into an empty classroom after lunch, Confunding Rosier's ugly kid sister that was walking with her, and Silencing Nott until he could safely Imperius her away from the busy corridors.
"What subjects are you good at?" he asked, half to himself as he flicked through her head – looking for grades, instances of Hermione being beaten in a test.
"Transfig and Potions are my best subjects," Nott replied blankly, while Tom tripped on a recent memory as his mind's eye focused on Hermione and summoned relevant memories from Nott. A bloody fist fight, a sobbing Hermione clinging the side of her face, where angry hives squirmed under her skin and a satisfied Nott stood triumphantly over her –
"Not anymore," Tom said. He'd been planning to remove her memories carefully, but it seemed any amount of magic this beastly girl had was merely an obnoxious funnel to creating misery for Hermione. A family so obnoxious they wrote the guide on the Sacred Twenty-Eight could manage to spring for a summer tutor, surely. "Obliviate."
Her face blanked, and Tom wondered whether she'd be able to scrape a passing grade in anything in her end of year exams. Two twelve year olds' grades to keep an eye on now, he supposed. How annoying. "You'll stay clear of Hermione," he instructed her. "And you'll tell your nasty fellow students to do the same, if they know what's good for them."
"Yes," she replied blankly; and with a Confundus Charm for good measure, Tom let the mind control go and sent two years of wasted magical education on its way.
"Honestly, Tom, Sluggy'll have you set up with your own office in whatever ministry department you damn well please," Abraxas drawled as they wandered back to the Slytherin quarters, fairly pickled on Firewhisky.
Tom blanched. "All that bureaucracy," he commented doubtfully. He still wasn't sure about Slughorn's insistence the Ministry was where he should go after graduating. Yes, the power of the state was required for his plans to rule over Britain, but why grind away from the lowest rung of the Ministry instead of seizing it later with superior power?
"Not in Enforcement," Lestrange said, exchanging looks with Tom.
"Who's running the Auror Office these days?" Tom asked. Depending on their…agreeableness, that might be a worthwhile place to start his ascent. Easy access to Official Secrets and inside information on what all the other challengers were doing…the Ministry wouldn't suspect the next Dark Lord coming from within the Office, either. It would be rather satisfying to murder your boss and take his job, Tom had to admit.
"Cole Elffire," Abraxas replied, the pureblood spider web of Old Family connections ready as always.
"Elffire?" Avery repeated; even in the darkness of near-midnight, his leer was obvious. "Even easier, Tom. Haven't you already worked your Gryffindor magic on his daughter? Just persuade her to tell him to take you on."
"There's an Elffire in Gryffindor?" Tom asked.
"Judith Elffire?" Abraxas said incredulously. "In our year?"
"Wait, you fucked Frigid Judy without even knowing her name? Are all the Gryffindor girls like that, you don't even need to learn their names before you fuck them?" Avery asked, a pure, lust-based wonder in his voice. "Shit, we should have skipped Sluggy for the Gryff party."
"Think that's a Riddle special," Lestrange said drily. "But they are pretty fast. If you can bear to dip your dick in the mud."
"Brown's half-blood. And Elffire's blood is pure, obviously," Abraxas rattled off, a walking encyclopaedia on blood purity. "But good luck turning Brown's head, she's been mooning over Tom for months. And unless Tom's been keeping secrets, I don't think he or anyone has slept with Elffire. She's halfway respectable so I don't think she'd put out."
"Turn Brown loose, Tom," Avery said, jostling Tom as they entered the common room. "Or maybe I'll take her off your hands. Bet you haven't found the clit yet."
"What a claim to make when I, unlike you, actually sleep with girls, Avery," Tom replied, shaking him off. "But please – do try to convince Shirley of the power of your virgin fingers, it would be a great foray into comedy," he finished viciously, as Abraxas and Lestrange cracked up into jeering laughter. Someone small moved by the fireplace past Abraxas, and Tom recognised the outline of enormous, curly hair as Avery, Lestrange and Abraxas stumbled towards the dorms.
"Hermione!" Tom exclaimed, walking over to the coffee table she was standing by. "Don't often see you in the common room."
"N-no," Hermione replied, twisting a booklet in her hands and staring at her feet. "Uh – wait, what?"
"The common room," he said, gesturing around vaguely. "You're not often here."
"Oh. Yes," she said, tucking her hair behind her ears. "Well, it's not a very – welcoming…"
She trailed off, and Small Abraxas yelled from the seat she stood on in Tom's sudden recollection. He remembered finding Hermione across a sea of obnoxious loud students – on the other side entirely of the Great Hall, instead of where she had been Sorted with a grand prophecy – purely because some pathetic blood-mad Slytherins were trying to foist her off.
At the time, there were nine O.W.L.'s to perfect and a nasty twelve year old's ambitions to dash, so he'd put the implications of the whole encounter to the side. But now exams were finished and the end of year celebrating had begun, the dissatisfaction of it pushed it almost to the top of the List of Tasks to Become a Dark Lord, somewhere underneath finding his family in Yorkshire and creating the first of many, many horcruxes. The anger of the weapon intended for him being pushed away from its Slytherin destiny was such that it punctured the alcohol glow.
"You should," Tom declared. He was tired, he decided, of Hermione scurrying around to avoid offending inbred pureblood sensibilities. The time had come to put that behind them both. "You're a Slytherin. This is your common room." If she'd been hiding away in Ravenclaw tower with her obnoxious Miniature Abraxas, that needed to stop.
Hermione looked down at her hands. "Um, y-yes, I know Tom." She took a great, shuddering breath before continuing, voice fast and high pitched. "I – ah – I was just – deciding which third year electives –"
"Oh, yes," Tom said, taking the booklet out of her hands and shaking his head at the title. She had been at Hogwarts two years now – additional magical subjects beckoned. "And – no, you're not doing Arithmancy."
"O-oh, I thought-"
"Here," Tom said, steering her back to the couch she had stood up from, rummaging amongst the piles of booklets on the table. "Look – you need Runes, and – where is – Divination," he said, finding the relevant booklets and shoving them into her hands, collapsing back into a corner of the couch as the room spun around him.
"I – but – I thought – don't you need the Sight, to be any good at Divination?" Hermione asked.
"Divination is…big magic, Hermione," he told her, grander adjectives failing him while his brain chugged through a quart of whisky. "You need to understand it regardless. You need to get used to a trance-state…I mean, uh, it's not magic you can learn out of a book alone," Tom said, wondering if he could merely talk past his slip of the tongue. Who knew alcohol could make even a future Dark Lord so stupid? "Runes are important magic, too. Everything else is small magic, you can learn it yourself."
She looked between the booklets in her hands and him, a question in the tilt of her head towards him. "S-sorry, what? I – I think I missed that."
"Di-vi-na-tion," Tom repeated, annoyed despite the good fortune she had missed his honesty entirely at having to repeat himself. "And Runes."
Her expression fell, reminiscent of a Wool's ward being relieved of something that now belonged to him. "But Arith-"
"Christ almighty, Hermione," he groaned, leaning back to stare at the spinning ceiling, Mrs Cole's favourite blasphemous swears surfacing in a sea of whisky. Anyone would think he wasn't rescuing her from the tearful tedium of magical number theorem. "Just issue a book from the library and do mathematics in the weekend if you're that keen on it. It's not hard."
He tilted his head down to glare at her. His Authoritative Look was probably at 25 percent efficiency, he estimated, based on how nauseated the alcohol was making him feel and how the common room swam in his vision. But Hermione was already nodding - of course, even 25 percent of his Total Gaze was enough to make a lesser being bend to his will.
"O-ok. I'll do Runes and Div," she stammered out. Tom smiled at her easily.
"Good," he said, setting his jaw before shoving himself back up. "I'm going to pass out," he announced, to Hermione and the empty common room generally, and it was a rather Herculean effort to walk to his bed without tripping on the cobblestone floor.
Author's note: I love Peggy, may we all be so confident, you deserve way better than this psychopath babes. And I loved writing disgusting mostly-virgin teenage boys bragging about sex, thank you to my lovely husband for betaing that conversation for realism hehe.
Tommy Shelby get up on the chair . gif. I should mention the vague fancast ideas I envision for Mokusatsu Tomione: it's a young Cillian Murphy-esque pretty boy for Tom, and a blushing young Jessica Sula for Hermione :).
My sadness when I realised Tom didn't stab anyone this year! D: he was too busy with O.W.L.s, researching horcruxes and the Gaunts, girlfriends, and occasionally helping Hermione. Don't worry, that's about to be fixed in quick order.