London, England
1941
She still hasn't got any breasts.
Hermione frowns at her reflection. At least, she's finally grown into her 'buck teeth,' so Billy Stubbs can't call her Beaver anymore, she thinks to herself encouragingly. Not that Billy is here. He ran off a while ago, didn't he?
She hates her hair.
She wishes it was straight or less big or…or something better.
She sighs.
Moving out of the tiny dorm, Hermione completes her chores. She has morning duties, so she can finish quickly and doesn't have to worry about meeting her daily quota for the rest of the day. She abandons the third floor and heads down to the second, where the boys sleep. She and Tom always meet there.
Hermione walks past the bleak-looking dormitories and goes up to Tom Riddle's room, surprised to see the door cracked. She hears sounds from inside. Sex sounds. She stops and roughs a hand through her thick hair, glaring at the door. Is Tom seriously shagging somebody in there? He's never done that before, but there's a first time for everything she supposes…
She glances around and peeks in.
She regrets it immediately.
Because Tom isn't having sex with someone – oh no, it's not that. It's entirely different, actually, and it burns an image into her brain that will stain the retinas forever.
Tom is masturbating.
She springs away and her face goes hot as a burning skillet, while she hurries off and internally screams and screams. Oh my God. She did not see that. He is not doing that. She has not just seen- Holy, oh my – Except she did see. She still does see.
Tom, on his bed with both eyes clenched shut and flushed face twisted into a grimace. He had his…his thing out and his hand was around it, going up and down fast. He was panting really heavily. He was sweating too , if she recalls correctly.
Stop thinking about it!
She's got to distract herself. She's got to go read or do some extra chores or-
TomTomTom-
Hermione puts her hand to her forehead. She could have the scarlet fever for all her blushing. She isn't going to be able to look him in the eye for a week.
She really isn't.
And so for the next five days, she does something very ridiculous. She avoids Tom like he's a lethal carrier of the black plague. She goes to meals after everyone leaves. She stays away from the makeshift library. She convinces Mrs. Cole to give her extra chores that are 'coincidentally' the exact opposite times of Tom's and will put her far, far away from the boy in question. Mrs. Cole is happy to comply and separate the two. Their closeness has always made her quite nervous.
Tom notices – obviously.
Every time Hermione passes him in the hall or at the chapel, she can taste his anger on the air, electric and choking like the dry summer air. But he can't say anything. Because whenever he sees her, there are others around. Witnesses. So he keeps quiet and glares at her from afar, with accusing eyes and dark scowls that make him look like a handsomer version of Heathcliff.
Hermione feels bad.
And then she feels stupid for doing this in the first place, but she just can't talk to him. Because she can't get the image of him doing that out of her…
She hits herself on the head with the broom she's sweeping the lobby with. Hard. It doesn't help much.
It's Saturday and eight days since she's talked to Tom when Hermione is walking down the hall, exhausted from all the added chores she's taken over and wanting nothing more than to climb into bed. Of course, this is exactly when Tom Riddle decides to attack.
She goes into the broom closet to put away her supplies. When she goes to the very back, the door soundlessly shuts behind her and the room is plunged into darkness. She whirls around, a scream ready on her lips but stifled by the hand that flies over her mouth like a waiting mouse trap. She inhales sharply. She tastes cool skin and acrylics.
Somebody pulls the string suspended from the ceiling and the light bulb above clicks on.
It's Tom.
Hermione sighs, relieved, but then remembers the last time she saw him and climbs out of his grip fast. Tom grabs her before she can get too far though, his dark eyes wrought with a suppressed fury and merciless. He shoves her up against the wall by the collar of her uniform and Hermione panics, because he looks dangerous, hurt, angry-
"What the fuck, Hermione?" he snaps. "Why the bloody hell have you been avoiding me?"
"Sorry." She's ashamed. Her face is flaming. "It's just that I…um…I…"
"Spit it out."
"I saw you," she blurts. "By accident. I saw you…doing stuff. Six days ago. Down there." She points with her finger. She avoids meeting his eyes.
Tom is silent for a while. Then he says, eyes still threatening to glare holes right through her head, "What stuff?"
"M…ma…" Her tongue won't work. She tries again, blushing so hard she could set flame at any second. "Masturbating."
"Oh." He doesn't look nearly as affected as she thought he would. He considers her. "And that's what made you avoid me for a week?"
"Yes."
"That's it?"
A small nod. Goodness, Hermione thought. When he said it like that it just sounded stupid. But then it kind of was stupid, in retrospective, she realized.
"Don't do this again." His voice is softer than melted butter. His eyes are hard as ice. "You never try to get away from me, Hermione. Got it?"
"Yes," she mumbles.
"You're mine, so you can't just do whatever you want and expect to get away with it." Tom puts his hand around her neck and pulls her close, some of the tightness in his shoulder lessening when he touches her. Hermione puts her hand over his. Their fingers click together, leaving her throat. "Don't do that to me again," he says quietly. "I thought… I thought that you'd…"
"You thought that I what?" she questions.
"Nothing. It doesn't matter."
She frowns. "I think it matters."
"I just thought that you'd left me is all." He shrugs a shoulder and traces the shape of her lips with his fingertip, lightly. "And I missed you."
"I missed you too."
"Did you?" he whispers.
"Yes."
Tom's eyes hood and he leans closer. Teasing her lips with his. "Kiss me."
"Tom…"
"Don't you know how much I love you?" He cups her cheek. He bends over her, crowding and pushing until her back hits one of the shelves. Their foreheads touch and she sees his eyes are desperate. "I love you more than anyone else ever could," he says urgently. "You need me. More than anything else in the world. Right?"
Something in Tom's gaze makes Hermione feel terribly sad, terribly lonely, terribly lost. She swallows. "Right."
Tom goes silent and his fingers make ticklish patterns up and down her side, idly. There's a twisted, mutilated thing in his heart, and it's beautiful in the way that a destructive thunderstorm is gorgeous. It obsesses over her. It obsesses over himself, over everything wrong with the world. It sends his mouth moving soft against hers.
Hermione's eyes drift open and closed at the sensations Tom creates. His breathing is heavy and his nose smooshes into her cheek. She runs her fingers through his soft hair. Tom makes a guttural sound in the back of his throat and rolls his hips into her belly slowly – and she realizes he's turned on.
At first, she doesn't know what to do as Tom works himself into a panting body over her. She watches him for a while, watches the furrowed jet-black brows and bead of sweat on his upper lip, the knife-sharp cheekbones fluttering with labored breaths and clenched perfect teeth. When he sees her staring, his eyes go black with lust. He doesn't look away.
Tom goes slow, but grinds deep and deliberate so she feels every inch of him. She has to find something to hold onto when he adjusts her so it's their hips that meet, and she grabs his shoulders and tries not to get swept right onto the floor. Somewhere between here and there, her breaths have gotten slow and heavy too. Tom closes his eyes and digs his fingers into her back, where they've snaked under her shirt and given her goosebumps. His lips seal over the corner of her jaw, kissing gently. He breathes her name. He hits her right there and she jumps, accidentally smacking hips with him.
Tom growls like an animal.
A shudder travels through him and Hermione knows what's happened. She stares at Tom, stunned, as he slowly comes back to himself. He looks sleepy, like lust in human form. He kisses her sweet, like she's some sort of a drug he's not adamant to wheedle off of. His favorite drug.
"Kiss me back," he murmurs. "Kiss me like you've missed me, baby."
Hermione hesitates, pushes her lips against his, and twirls her tongue back and forth. He tastes good. Like…like spearmint toothpaste, she guesses. He smells like acrylic paint and sketchbook paper under that posh cologne he and all his Hogwarts friends wear. His raven hair feels so very smooth when she softly brushes her fingers through it. She keeps her legs wrapped around his waist. Her kiss is shy, but tender.
Tom smirks, settling into her. He sucks on her bottom lip and washes her mouth with his tongue. He makes her tingle inside.
London, England
1947 – present
"You're laying me off?"
"Oh, c'est pas grave, Errrmeanzee," Madame Pomfrey says soothingly. "I am layzing everryzun off."
"B-but why?" Hermione sputters in shock.
"Because we are simply not getting enough custahmers. Someone bought the store, an American." Madame Pomfrey locks the door to the shop that Hermione has faithfully worked at for the past two years. She sighs. "I am truly sorry, Errrmeanzee, but there is nozing I can do."
Hermione thinks frantically. She catches Madame Pomfrey's fur coat swathed arm before she can walk away and the woman looks back at her, surprised.
"Errrmeanzee?"
"I…" She takes a deep breath, looking to Madame Pomfrey beseechingly. "I need this job, madame. Please."
"I'm sorry." And Madame Pomfrey seems to mean it, as she regards Hermione and sympathetically pats her hand. "For you, thereis something I can do. I will contact you shortly." Suddenly, she is kissed on both cheeks by Madame Pomfrey, who disappears the second that a cab stops beside them. Hermione watches the fabulous woman hurry away with a frown. What does Madame Pomfrey mean by zherre is something I can do? And how is she ever going to manage to afford school now? How will she pay the Dursleys? How is she going to live?
Overwhelmed, Hermione bites her lip and looks around at the busy dark street. Everything will be alright. She just has to make a plan. She has to wait for Madame Pomfrey to contact her. Pray that her life doesn't crumble to ruins around her very ears.
London, England
1941
When Tom sneaks into Hermione's room at night to talk and tell stories and look out of the window to make fun of the people below, Hermione has to shove the reminder that he's going back to Hogwarts soon down, down far away. It's not something she wants to think about. Not when he's here now. Not when she's so happy.
Tom twists away from the window he's been staring out of. The streetlights below cast a halo around his head, illuminating it. It's ironic, because the light makes him look like an angel when he's not one at all. He's anything but that.
"We draw naked girls at school, you know," he says, in his usual shocking way. Hermione looks at him in surprise. "We draw naked gents, too. Sometimes they're really old. All wrinkly." He makes a face.
"Why?" she says in bewilderment.
"To learn the finer art of human anatomy – or so they tell us." Suddenly, he throws himself down on the bed with her, putting his hands behind his head. "What do you dream about, Hermione?" he asks abruptly.
"I don't know." She plays with a stray thread of the pillowcase while he waits for a better answer, the real answer. "I never remember my dreams," she admits. "My parents are in them sometimes. ...I think."
"There is a new type of art just for dreams." The fervor in Tom's voice is tangible. Hermione looks up and smiles at the excitement in his black eyes. "It's called surrealism. One of the best surrealists is Salvador Dali."
"Is he the one with the twirly mustache?" she says, amused.
He nods gravely.
"Ah... How interesting." She tenses when Tom quickly rolls onto his side, propping his head on his hand to smirk at her. "It is. Do you want to know a secret, Hermione?" She nods and he leans in closer, so that she can't help but want to close the rest of the distance between them. But he doesn't kiss her. He says, "I am going to be famous one day, Hermione. People will adore me everywhere. Children and their parents will know my name, and children will tell their children about me. I will be better than Picasso and Dali combined."
Hermione stares at him for a while. Finally, she replies, "I know it, Tom."
That seems to satisfy him. He pulls away from her and lies down on his back, but Hermione's bed is so narrow that no matter what they do both their shoulders are touching. They do not say anything, and she doesn't even remind Tom that he has to leave before Mrs. Cole wakes up and starts her morning routine of checking rooms. She has never had this feeling before with Tom. It is the feeling of fear... Fear that he will go away, or rather that his dreams will take him away from her one way or another.
I will be better than Picasso and Dali combined. But what will Hermione be? Where does she fit into that picture of worldly fame and fortune?
The answer is as clear as it is painful.
She doesn't fit in it at all.
"Say yes," Tom says, needling her with his dreamy eyes. Hermione shakes her head resolutely and he snorts in disbelief, turning away from her.
The problem with Tom Riddle is that he is impossible to say no to in the first place. Up against his archangel looks, Hermione never stands a chance. But she is tired of all that. Tom always gets his way and they both know it.
But not this time, she thinks.
When she looks back at him, Tom is smiling at her again, like a faery up to no good. His lips crook to the side in a mischievous smirk when she scowls at him, as if she isn't impressed. "Don't act so cold," he says, running his hand over her bare leg. It is so hot in the park that Hermione decided to forego stockings for a day, and the breeze on her skin feels like freedom. She is regretting that choice now.
"Stop that." She swats his hand away, as if he is an irritating bug, but he only laughs at her.
"Why do you want me to?" she demands, facing him. "Why do you really want me to?"
He sits back slightly on the tree root he is casually perched on. They used to sit under the tree roots when they were children, as if it was a fort or secret cranny for them to play in. Tom found her crying there once. Although the tree hasn't gotten any bigger in the years they've come and gone to this park, Tom Riddle and Hermione Grangerhave. Now they have to sit on top of the roots, the only place in the willow tree that will fit them.
She remembers crying here when she was nine, but she can't remember what for. Something to do with tripping in the fountain.
"Because I care about you." Tom tucks her hair around her ear, bringing her back to reality when the stubborn curl bounces free the second he lets go of it. "Pretty," he says, chuckling at the shock on her face. Her, pretty? He must want something from her and she already knows what it is. To break her resolve. To make her promise.
She has become better at saying no. She likes to think this is true at least.
"Don't be so difficult, Hermione." He is using a silky voice, the one that he has slowly perfected over the years, so that no one with a weak heart or functioning eyes can say no to him. He reaches over to hold her hand. "I want to hear you say it. Please."
Hermione sighs sufferingly. "Tom, you're being ridic-"
"Say it."
She looks up at the green canopy of leaves above them, stalling an answer. She can barely see the sky through the branches. She can feel Tom staring at her intensely. "Oh fine," she grumbles. "I promise I'm yours, Tom, you idiot."
He flashes a perfect, brilliant white smile at her. He is so handsome it hurts. Hermione looks away, wishing that she really could be prettier. But her looks do not seem to matter to Tom. He has kissed plenty of beautiful girls, but Hermione is the only girl that remains a constant in his life. But for how long would he be content with her? She can't make him famous. She can't give him what he wants.
"I want you to have this." He slips off the black ring that he always wears, the one that belonged to his long-dead grandfather - or so he says - and he slides it onto her finger. He kisses the onyx stone. Her eyes widen in shock.
"B-but why?" she squeaks out.
He studies her face for a moment before answering. "I think you should have something of mine. That way I will always be with you and you can think of me when you see it. Don't you like it?"
"Of course I do." She examines the dark ring glinting on her finger, it is likely the closest she will ever get to having a piece of Tom Riddle's heart. "Do you want something that belongs to me?"
His eyes darken with something she does not know words for - which is saying a great deal, because Hermione Granger knows many words. "I only want one thing from you, Hermione. When you are ready to give it to me." Her mouth pops open in astonishment. He can't mean...? But he does mean that, doesn't he? He wants them to do the...the thing. She turns red and he looks away from her, pulling out his sketchbook very casually, as if everything is normal.
He begins drawing the meadow. She watches the paper easily come to life under his hands, seeing the world through his eyes in the only way she knows how.
In his pictures.
A while later, Hermione opens her eyes to find Tom shaking her awake. She looks around, bewildered to see their meadow washed dark blue with dusk. "It's time to go back," he says. He has put the sketchbook away.
She rubs her eyes, which feel sandy and sore from sleep. "Did the others already leave?" she asks drowsily.
"Not yet. But they're about to."
She nods and moves to her feet, waiting for him and linking their hands when he stands. They move in and out of the trees. She, stumbling over branches and twigs like an uncoordinated half-giant. Tom, moving swiftly as a wolf with night vision. She can't help but hate him a little for being so graceful.
Tom catches her looking and smiles. "I drew you while you were sleeping," he says suddenly.
Hermione frowns. "Why would you do that?"
He shrugs at her.
"Can I see it?" she asks hopefully. But he shakes his head.
She's affronted. "Why not? It's my face, I should be able to see what you've done with it."
She expects him to laugh at her theatrics, but Tom's face darkens. He seems irritable - whether he is cross with his drawing or her, Hermione doesn't know. "I couldn't get your eyes right," he admits.
Hermione giggles and he sends her a filthy look, so she shuts up. "You'll get them one day," she says, amused.
"Will I?" he asks glumly.
"Perhaps. If I am still around for you to keep trying."
He grins at her. "I think I can manage that."
The day Tom has to go back to Hogwarts, all the loneliness and melancholy of the months spent without him rushes back to Hermione in a flash. She holds him tight outside of the orphanage. Feels his chest go up and down under her cheek and tries to memorize the rhythm, to match her breaths with his. When she does, she finds they're already in tune. They are perfect for each other.
If only they were not so imperfect together.
"You won't even know I'm gone," Tom says, like he always does, and she looks up to find him smiling at her. She can't smile back. She doesn't want to go back to being the leper, the social outcast at Wool's Orphanage.
I know it's selfish of me, but I don't want you to leave, Tom. It isn't that I'm not happy that you are going to Hogwarts. It's only that I'm sorry to see you go. The words are on the tip of Hermione's tongue, but she beats them back when she feels Tom's ring digging into her skin when he squeezes her hand. She won't ruin his happiness. At least he is allowed to leave this sorry place, and one day, she will leave with him. Tom lifts his other hand and cups her cheek, giving her a kiss. She can feel his happiness radiating from him like body heat. He can hardly contain himself with joy at the notion of going back to Hogwarts, to all his friends and the teachers who adore him. At the knowledge she'll miss him and that she'll be miserable without him here. He loves it when she misses him. He'll never admit it, but she knows this is what he really loves about her.
How much she loves him.
London, England
the winter of 1941
It is the coldest Christmas Eve in London in years.
Hermione stares out the frosted pane at the street beyond Wool's eating hall and the iron gates covered in snow outside. Past them is the snow-steeped road. There are no cars or omnibuses today, for the slick sheet of black ice that has taken over the roads doesn't allow a soul to pass it safely. No one would dare brave this kind of weather. The winter is ruthless this season.
It does not feel like Christmas is tomorrow. But nothing ever feels right at Wool's.
Hermione tugs at a loose thread on her uniform, pulling on it although she knows it will only unravel and destroy her ugly grey sweater. She will be lucky if she receives another ugly sweater for Christmas tomorrow to replace the one she is destroying now. The sweater strains at her chest, either because it was mixed up in the laundry with the first-years uniforms, or because she has actually managed to grow the way that a woman should. It is about time that her body starts acting the way it should, considering that her 15th birthday passed in September. She can't help remembering that Tom will be sixteen in less than a week.
She wonders how the students at Hogwarts Institute fare in the middle of war. Do they run out of hot water, too? Do they dodge bricks flying out of the air like hellish bats as they race to the bomb shelter? Or do they make hot baths and uniforms appear out of thin air at Hogwarts like magic, war or not?
People don't have enough money to buy bread these days, much less enough to go to a pricey dentist to have their teeth checked. Who told Hermione that? Papa. It was Papa...
She snaps the thread off her shirt with her teeth.
The morose silence of the eating hall is suddenly broken when the doors swing wide-open. Mrs. Cole enters with a tall man at her side. He is wearing a white button-down under his fine wool coat, which does not have a single frayed thread or missing button in sight, and his tie is loosened under it, as if he was yanking at it the entire walk to the eating hall. Her heart skips a beat when she sees his face. She blinks twice, hardly daring to believe it.
Tom Riddle. He's back.
She jumps to her feet, ready to cross the hall and throw her arms around Tom the second that he is close enough. He had looked like a man for a moment, a strange and good-looking man that she had never met, but the sight of his face makes her feel sure of herself again. When he looks at her, the smile that was blooming across her face drops.
He looks furious.
Tom sits at the table beside her without a Happy Christmas, without a word, without a sound. He glares slowly at the children around them, as if he would like to pick them all apart with a knife, and Hermione is afraid to break whatever manic spell he is in. She wants to know why he's back so early. What happened to make him so angry? But she says nothing at all.
She simply eats supper and reads the book she brought, Anna Karenina. Tom snaps the pencils filling his pockets to pieces and grinds his teeth so hard that she can hear it. "You're going to ruin your teeth," she says, still every bit the dentist's daughter. He looks at her mutinously, but he says nothing.
He will tell her everything later. She knows it.
Tom Riddle hasn't touched a piece of paper in days.
Something bad happened at Hogwarts, Hermione thinks to herself, again and again. She is so worried for him that she gnaws her lip until it's so chapped that it burns like fire. Tom barely speaks at all, to her or to anyone else.
She is dying to know what happened.
Suddenly, the book that Hermione is reading lands on the floor. Tom is standing next to her in the reading room, although she didn't hear him come in. His eyes are crackling with suppressed rage. "Tom, what is it?" she starts to ask, but he is pacing and does not answer her. Staring at him, Hermione realizes that Tom Riddle could be a very dangerous person if he wished it. He is good at being scary.
She stands in front of him before he can storm out of the room again.
"Tom Riddle. What is wrong?" she demands.
He raises a brow at her loftily. "Besides the fact you're not naked yet?"
"You are sad," she says, ignoring his attempt to distract her. She tentatively traces her thumb along the outline of his prominent jaw, it is the first time that she has touched him since he returned. He doesn't stop her, but he also doesn't move to encourage her, so she drops her hand and settles for looking him squarely in the eyes. It's like getting to touch a Bengal tiger. It's heart-racing. It's terrifying. "I can tell," she says.
He smirks. "You're wrong, Hermione. I'm not sad."
She frowns at him.
"I am angry," he says softly.
Tom's smirk fades. He jerks his head away, because he hates it when anyone sees him out of control. She knows it because she rarely sees his control on his emotions slip these days. He does not fall into tantrums or random bursts of rage the way he did when they were younger. His anger is different now. Quiet and hidden. At least, it is most of the time.
"Are you going to tell me what happened at Hogwarts?" she asks. He doesn't answer, choosing instead to leer at the ceiling. "Stop being a child, Tom. Tell me." She is becoming tired of his dramatics, the annoyance leaks into her voice without her meaning for it to. He looks away from her.
"Later," he says quickly. Hermione realizes belatedly that he speaks so fast and says so little, because his silk voice sounds rough as sandpaper. She has never seen Tom cry...
He meets her eyes with swimming black ones that dry the instant he blinks. It is as if she imagined it all, the gravel in his voice and his fists clenching and unclenching furiously as he fought to control it. But she didn't imagine it.
"Should I hold you?" she asks him. He surprises her by nodding in acceptance.
They sit in the musty old reading chair. She has to sit on his lap, because Tom is six foot two now and well over the weight of an 11-year old, but Tom buries his face in the crux between her neck and shoulder. He sighs in relief, his breath tickling her neck, and she bites her lip to stifle a giggle. Now is not the time for giggling. She carefully puts her arms around him in a hug.
They sit that way for a long time. She is starting to believe that Tom fell asleep when suddenly, he speaks.
"They expelled me," he says, in a cold, flat voice that sounds nothing like Tom Riddle's velvety voice. He sounds empty. Robbed of all happiness. He sounds as if he is a dam on the verge of breaking.
"How come?" she says tentatively.
The dam breaks.
"This little brat discovered that I am a scholarship student and decided to tell everyone in the whole bloody school. All my friends began looking at me anew, as if I am different from them, and not the good kind of different that qualifies me as their natural better. They looked at me like I was lucky to be there with them, like I..." He stops, panting with anger, and she knows that he is finally going to tell her the real reason why he was banished. The bad thing. "I had to make her pay, Hermione. She ruined my life."
"Who?" she demands.
"Myrtle." The name is a hiss on his lips. "Her name doesn't matter now though, does it?" he says bitterly.
She frowns. "It doesn't?"
"No." There is a queer smile on Tom's face. A smile that says I have a secret. Hermione shudders to think what that secret could be. "What are you looking at me like that for?" he asks, catching the look on her face. "I'm not the villain here. She exposed me first. I had to retaliate. It's the fault of Dumbledore that he didn't understand the importance of my pride." His voice drops to a mischievous murmur. "Of course, it isn't as though Dumbledore found any evidence to blame me. Only enough for suspicion, enough to expel me."
Hermione's belly is beginning to knot. "What did you do?" she whispers. Flashes of Billy Stubbs and his dead rabbit Babbedy hanging from the rafters in a cave whip through her mind in horrible flashes. Her palms sweat where they are gripped around his arms.
Tom smirks blithely. His dark eyes look reflective in that instant, the black irises shining with yellow city lights from the window reflection. "If I told you, I would have to kill you, Hermione." He winks at her and begins to laugh.
But Hermione feels too sick to laugh at all.