A/N: Thanks for the response to last chapter! I was excited to bring Tom back into the mix. Sorry for the delay in getting this chapter out - I was caught by ffnet's login issues yesterday. You can follow me over on tumblr (nauticalparamour) where I post sneak peeks, story updates and answer questions! Huge shout out to lanamarymack for alpha/beta reading this chapter.
Please let me know what you thought of chapter nineteen and be on the lookout for chapter twenty!
Hermione did not knock when she opened the front door to the Notts' townhouse, something she had grown accustomed to. Normally no one was ever home and when they were, it was just Theo. But not tonight.
She stopped dead in her tracks when she realized that someone was sitting in the living room, face lit up by the flickering blue light of the tele. The man was older, but he also looked just the same as she'd remembered.
"Oh, Mr. Nott. I'm sorry, I should have knocked," Hermione said, awkward and unsure of herself. Did Alfred Nott know about the budding relationship between her and Theo or did he find it peculiar that his next door neighbor had decided to help herself into his home.
He grunted, not bothered by her sudden appearance. "It's just you, then. Hermione Lestrange," he said. "Step in here so I can get a good look at you again."
Hermione flushed, but did as he bid and stepped into the dark of the living room. She felt his eyes rove up and down her body, studying every inch of her and deciding if she was worthy. In turn, Hermione let herself look at him.
Theo did not take after his father in many characteristics, except perhaps the shade of his hair. He had his mum's eyes and easy smile. And, while Alfie was of a slender build, Hermione got the impression that it was due to his age and not simply the body type that Theo had inherited. Alfie's hair had long since gone grey, as had his moustache, though his eyes remained as sharp as ever.
She remembered Cora Nott and how beautiful she was and Hermione wondered how they could have ever come to be married. How could a woman like her have ever permitted this man to rut away on top of her? A contrary little part of her was glad that Cora had been able to get out and leave him, even though she knew how much it hurt Theo to have been left behind.
"I can see why my son likes you," he said with a laugh.
Hermione crossed her arms over her chest, hoping that it gave her some protection from his gaze. "Um, I actually came here to see Theo," she said, unsure of herself. "Is he in tonight?"
Alfie nodded. "He's up in his room," he said. "You can go right up."
She was glad to have his permission to go, unnerved by the way that his gaze lingered on her. She followed the familiar steps up to Theo's room and threw the door open without alerting him.
Theo looked surprised to see her, though he didn't jump when she saw him, seeing as he was fully dressed. He was sitting at his desk, a new pile of books sat on top of it, that Hermione couldn't get a glimpse of.
"Hermione?" he asked. "I thought that you had work tonight."
That reminded her of the whole reason that she'd come over. "Um, about that," she said, looking down at her feet. "I quit. Or...I was fired? I don't really know exactly."
"What?" he asked, her story not making any sense. Walking over towards her, he wrapped an arm around her middle and guided her to sit on his bed. "Can you start from the beginning?"
Hermione bit her lower lip. "Tom came to visit me today while I was on my break. He...made me a proposition and he told me that I no longer have a job with Scabior. So...I don't really know if it's like I quit or I got fired or what."
The word 'proposition' had caught Theo's attention and he became delightfully jealous at whatever sort of dark thought had popped into his mind. His fingers found the delicate curve of her jaw and turned her to face him, his blue eyes staring into her own. "What sort of proposition?" he asked, his voice dangerous.
She fought off a smile. "Not the sort you are thinking of," she told him. "But...can we go somewhere and talk about it? Anywhere but the neighborhood?"
Theo nodded, looking relieved to hear her assertion. He stood from the bed and grabbed his leather jacket, throwing it over his shoulders. Grabbing her by the hand, he led her down the stairs, stopping when they reached the living room.
"Hermione and I are going to dinner," he told Alfie, who's eyes were still glued to the flickering television in front of him. He didn't wait for a response from his father, instead pulling her out the front door after him.
He must have sensed the way that she relaxed once they were outside because he was apologizing once they were tucked away in his car. "Did my dad say something to you?" he pressed, putting the car into gear a bit harshly. "Fuck, I'm sorry."
She wrapped her arms around her middle and shook her head. "No, he just - he just said he could understand why you liked me. And maybe leered a little bit," she said with a frown. "Honestly, Thorfinn and Antonin were worse."
His knuckles went white on the steering wheel, obviously annoyed to hear that anyone had been making her feel uncomfortable. "What did they say?" he asked, his even tone belying the anger simmering underneath the surface.
Hermione suppressed a little smile. "Don't worry. Mum and Dad set them straight. You don't have to go off defending my honor or anything," she promised.
Theo seemed to relax a bit with the knowledge that things had been handled, but she got the impression that it wasn't totally over between Theo and the other two. That tiny spark of jealousy at the thought of any one but him being interested in her roared back to life.
He drove them out of the neighborhood, looking for a place to get a bite to eat, since Hermione's earlier dinner had been left untouched. He ended up taking her down to the South side of town, near the football stadium. Once they parked, Theo walked her over to a bustling little pub where they were unlikely to be disturbed by anyone they knew.
Theo stopped at the bar to order pints and an order of fish and chips to split between the two of them, whilst Hermione looked for an open table. She found a tiny, two person both towards the back and slipped into one side, waiting for her friend to join her, pints in hand.
Hermione took a long pull from her glass, needing a little something to take the edge off of her nerves after the unusual night that she'd had already. She was confused and conflicted and furious and hopeful and she didn't know what to do about it. Sighing, she looked at Theo, his concern clear on her face.
"Okay, tell me about this proposition," he repeated, a dark look on his face. "Because if he...if he came onto you, that's not fucking okay. Not even if he is Tom Riddle."
Their knees were pressed together under the table in the confined space and Hermione could feel him tapping his foot, restless. It was surprising to hear his assertion. It was almost as if he was saying that she was more important than Tom Riddle. A foolish, dangerous thought from a teenager in love, but still, she was touched. She was not blind to the pull Tom had over everyone in the neighborhood, Theo included.
And her, it seemed.
"I told you, it wasn't like that," Hermione answered, finding a loose tendril of hair and spinning it around her finger, idly. Now that she and Theo were alone, it almost felt foolish to be acting like this. "He offered to pay my way through University, until I'm a lawyer."
"What's the catch?" Theo asked, knowing that there must be something. Tom wouldn't just do something like that out of the goodness of his heart.
"He wants me to become his lawyer once I'm done. Slughorn is retiring," she said, biting her lower lip. "He said he'd pay my wage and I could take whatever cases I wanted when I wasn't working on his."
"That sounds...that sounds way too good to pass up, Hermione," Theo said, swirling the foamy head around in the top of his glass.
"I know," she answered, feeling agonized. "I was ready to just turn him down flat, but then I started to think about...I don't know...how many people I could help that way. But, I don't like the idea of taking his money. And I don't like the way that he thinks he has control over my life. He just told Scabior I don't work there anymore - like he can just make my decisions for me."
"If you take the job, you are going to have to get used to that," he said, running a hand through his hair. "I mean, he'll be your boss. You'd be beholden to his money. He can't make you do something you don't truly want to do, but he can put a lot of pressure on you."
She knew that Theo was trying to counsel her, but hearing that was enough to remind her of all the reasons why she should decline the offer. "You are right. That's why…that's exactly why I have to turn down the offer," Hermione said, thinking it over. "And I don't want to think that I am getting any benefit from his money when I know how he comes by it."
Theo looked conflicted and reached out and grabbed her hand. "Listen, at least before you turn him down, talk to Adrian, okay?" he pleaded. "Gather more information. I doubt that Tom wants an answer tonight."
Hermione thought about his suggestion and found herself agreeing to it, though she doubted that Adrian was going to be able to change her mind. Seeing Theo's shamed expression, she wondered if he was offended by her refusal to accept money from Tom when she knew that he happily accepted Tom's money.
"What do…what exactly do you do for him?" Hermione asked, curious to know about what Theo actually had his hands in. Up until now, she'd wanted to remain in the dark, preferring to ignore that part of his life.
"C'mon, Hermione," he said, his gaze focusing on anything but her. "Don't ask me that."
"No, I—I want to know," Hermione insisted. "Tell me."
"You already know about the football," he said, furtively. "That sort of stuff."
"So you just pass on information about other people's movements, patterns?" she asked, not hiding the skeptical tone in her voice.
"Sometimes," he said, finally meeting her eyes again. "Other things too. When I started out, they just had me running messages from place to place. Then I started collecting money from some businesses."
"Don't tell me you've…you've intimidated people into paying for Tom's protection?"
"No, they'd already agreed to it," Theo said, shaking his head. "But I had to do some….intimidating at the beginning when someone tried to short change a kid like me. After that, no one has tried to get one over on me and now we just have a cordial relationship."
Theo looked at her, waiting for her to protest, but he made no apologies and offered her no platitudes to make the truth easier to handle. This was who he was and he wasn't going to pretend to feel badly about something he wasn't sorry for.
"What were you doing earlier this week? Dad and Rabastan had to go, too," Hermione asked, eager to hear more.
He shifted in his seat, uncomfortable to be admitting it, but trusting her nonetheless. "Helping Auggie. He found a buyer for some jewels," he said looking around the pub, for anyone who might overhear them.
Hermione thought through any newsworthy event, before she remembered a reported robbery earlier in the month. "The St. Martin emeralds?" she asked, referencing a well known boutique company who had a shipment of emeralds replaced with costume jewelry.
Theo nodded once. "We were just there to facilitate the deal," he explained. "I wasn't part of the original take. But my father was."
She was unsure of what to think of this. He was being honest with her, at the very least. "So you don't do any robberies or assaults?" she asked, needing to know that he didn't hurt anyone.
"No," he agreed. "And I'm not looking to move up. Not now anyway."
Hermione could relax to hear that. Would she prefer that Theo not be involved with Tom at all? Of course. But was what he did really that bad in the scheme of things? She wasn't sure that she could say yes. How could just standing somewhere or making notes of someone's movements really be that bad?
Something in her stomach twisted. This was a slippery slope of accepting bad acts. Watching someone's movements and reporting them back was bad when you knew that was setting them up to be robbed. This was why she shouldn't accept Tom's money. She had her mind basically made up at this point.
But she would hear Adrian out, like she had told Theo she would.
Her silence had unnerved Theo. "You're — you're not going to want to be with me anymore, are you?" he asked heartbroken. "I knew you wouldn't like it. The things that I've done. The things that I do. But I'm not going to apologize for them, not when I know I would do the same things again."
Hermione softened, reaching over and cupping his cheek, his five o'clock shadow scratchy against her finger tips. "Quite the opposite, Theo," she answered, unsure of what she was feeling herself. "I'm making up any reason I can to accept what you do because…because I can feel myself falling for you."
The admission shocked them both, perhaps neither one of them thinking that she would be the person to hint at something more than just a fling.
The self-satisfied grin that he wore was enough to make Hermione want to kiss it right off.
"Want to get out of here?" he asked, reaching for her hand across the table. The look in his eyes promised a naughty sort of fun that she'd looked forward to.
Picking up her glass, Hermione drank down what was left, before grabbing him by the hand and leading him out of the pub.
Once they were in the cold evening air, Theo couldn't keep his hands off of her. He wrapped his arms around her middle and pressed his body against hers, pressing kisses down the exposed side of her neck. Warmth spread through her body and it was hard to concentrate on anything other than the feeling of his lips. God, how she managed to keep one foot in front of the other, she'd never know.
When they finally reached his car, Theo twirled her around and pressed her back up against the cool metal of the door. Stepping down from the curb, he found a place standing between her legs, his mouth on hers in a desperate kiss, trying to put words into action. To show her how much he appreciated her admission.
Hermione wrapped her arms around his neck, holding him to her. Her fingers ran through the length of his hair, scratching at his scalp. He groaned into her mouth, his tongue slipping against hers in a sensuous dance that made her whole body throb.
His fingers were freezing when they snuck up under the edge of her shirt, cupping on breast in his palm. Gooseflesh erupted across her stomach and back, and her nipples tightened into hard little points. She knew it had little to do with the cold and more from the knowledge of what he could do with those wicked fingers.
God, she wanted him so badly, she didn't even care about the hard edge of the window digging into her back. Instead, all she could focus on was the persistent ache between her legs. Tilting her hips, she realized that she'd begun to rock against his jean clad leg.
Breaking away from his kiss to catch her breath, Hermione moaned at the feel of his lips on her exposed neck once again. She wanted more. "Please, Theo," she begged, barely able to focus long enough to get the words out.
"Get a room!" a voice called from down the street.
Hermione pressed her face into Theo's chest, embarrassed at being caught like that out on the street, clinging to him out in the open like that.
As always, Theo didn't share the embarrassment, confident in himself. Standing up straight, he sent the unknown man a rude gesture. "We're trying to!" he shouted back, finally digging the keys out of his pocket.
He pulled Hermione away from the passenger side door before opening it for her. Then he deposited her inside with a wink, before jogging around to the other side to join her.
"Sorry, I got a little carried away," he said, with a pleased look on his face. "It's not every day that your girlfriend says that she's falling in love with you."
"Girlfriend?" Hermione repeated with a laugh. "Am I your girlfriend now?" Despite spending so much time together, they hadn't ever talked about making things official.
"Of course you're my girl," he answered, putting the car in gear. "Everyone knows it."
She couldn't hide her amusement at that. She supposed it was true if even Tom Riddle had known about her and Theo. "Come on then, take me home," Hermione ordered in her bossiest tone. "If we hurry, we might still have an hour with one another before my parents get home." She didn't want to try Theo's house, knowing that his father was likely still there.
He didn't need to be told twice.