London, England
1936

Tom Riddle, as it turns out, isn't in the library for books.

Knowing fully well that she is spying, Hermione doesn't dare make a sound while the strange boy gets comfortable. He sits down in a lumpy blue armchair, taking out a notebook from under his arm (she sees now that the notebook is actually a sketchbook), and digging around in the pockets of the customary grey tunic all the children wear. The same tunic she wears now, she reminds herself.

Tom Riddle takes out three pencils and a pencil sharpener.

Laying them down carefully on the low, pock-marked coffee table before him, he selects one and looks around the room. He's searching for something, although she doesn't know what – and after a minute, he lumbers up to hover in front of her. Hermione stiffens. She clutches her knees to her chest, trying to shrink where she hides behind the bookshelf, but her feet are prickling with invisible needles from the lack of blood flow for two hours. To her relief, the boy never looks down. He selects a book seemingly at random. Dropping it on the table hard enough to make Hermione wince with pity for the book, Tom Riddle sits again and puts a pencil to his sketchbook. Remembering what that girl Martha said about spells and witches, Hermione half-expects the boy to start hissing like a snake or something. But he does nothing of the sort. He only... draws the book.

For two hours.

Hermione stays with Tom Riddle the entire time. She can't very well walk out now without giving herself away. Better to keep hiding and cramping behind the bookshelf, she thinks to herself, on the chance that Tom Riddle truly is a wizard. She worms down to the floor into a semi-comfortable sprawl. Opening Great Expectations, Hermione loses herself in Dickens until she completely forgets the stinging in her numb feet and the sound of Tom Riddle's pencil scratching the likeness of a book. Midway through the enormous book, she glances up to find Tom Riddle is still drawing. He hasn't moved except to sharpen the pencil from time to time with a butter knife he must have nicked from the eating hall. She catches him chewing on his eraser when in deep thought. He makes a funny face, as if the taste of rubber and lead is like to poison, but he doesn't take his mouth off the grubby eraser even so. Hermione wants to ask him why on earth he chews on those dirty things, but he might hex her and Martha did say he was scary, so she keeps quiet.

She wants to see his picture, too.

Hermione closes Great Expectations, decided, and hops out of the dusty stacks.

"Hello!" she says, lifting her chin and embracing the full enormousness of her hair by striking what she hopes is an impressive pose. Hopefully, it will scare the ghoul Tom Riddle.

At the interruption, Tom Riddle's head snaps up and he jumps like a cat, nearly ripping a line of lead straight across his drawing. He just barely catches the pencil at the last moment, sending a dark glare sent her way.

He's definitely not scared.

Then he says the same thing everyone else had – except slightly differently:

"Who're you?"

The difference between him and them, Hermione reflects, is that there is a sharp command in this boy's voice, one that cannot be reckoned with and makes her lose the faux bravery she's mustered in mere seconds. She flushes. "I'm… I'm Hermione Granger," she says, with less certainty than before.

He sneers at her. "Go away, Hermione Granger." He says her name as though it is a curse. Huddling into the armchair like a crab into its hole, Tom Riddle continues to draw as if she isn't there. His eyes snap intently between the book and his sketchbook – and then her, too, when she doesn't budge.

"I said go away," Tom Riddle hisses at her. "I don't want you here."

Hermione frowns. Nobody else wants me here either, so it seems, she thinks hopelessly, remembering the boys from breakfast who threw gook at her hair. It had taken an hour to brush out.

Tom Riddle looks unmoved by the tears in her eyes. "Would you get out already? You're breaking my concentration."

"Concentration?" Hermione repeats doubtfully. "Concentration of what?"

"My drawing," he replies, through gritted teeth.

"Oh, can I see then?"

Please, please let me see.

"No."

She is silent for a moment. Finally, she says, "I can see why no one likes you."

Tom Riddle glares at her balefully.

"What? I'm only telling you the truth." She tucks her Dickens' novel under her arm, the way he did with that sketchbook, and she goes to him, looping around the back of the armchair and valiantly sneaking a peek at Tom Riddle's picture before he can throw his scrawny arms over it.

"That's not fair!" he yells, while she smiles hugely in a smug, victorious way. "It's not finished, you idiot."

"I'm not an idiot. It's quite good though," she says. The drawing – or what she's seen of it in the short two seconds it passed her eyes – is… astonishingly precise. Precise down to the root-like fractures in the book's cracked spine. "Do you like drawing?" she asks.

"...Yes." Tom Riddle stares at her warily, as if he is loathe to part with this information. He seems to debate with himself. "You really think it's good?" he says seriously.

She shrugs. "Well, yes."

Tom Riddle smirks. He seems to see her in a new light suddenly, eyeing her up and down. Hermione hopes he doesn't comment on her hair. Her mother would normally braid it for her to subdue the frizz, but Hermione doesn't know how to braid and Mrs. Cole doesn't seem like the mothering sort. Hermione gasps when Tom Riddle's mouth curls upward, in the faintest impression of a smile. It is startling, that minuscule change in his pale, sullen features makes him look suddenly cherubic. She has never found any boy anything but disgusting or annoying before, but it occurs to Hermione that this boy is handsome. She is unsettled by the realization.

"I've never seen you here before," Tom says, snapping her out of her thoughts. He is chewing the eraser again. "You're new?"

"Yes." Hermione deflates a little at the reminder. "I've just arrived."

Tom nods to himself and stands, putting his measly art supplies back in his pockets and leaving the mess of curly pencil shavings on the table for someone else to clean. He wedges his sketchbook under his arm and sticks his other hand toward her.

"I'm Tom Riddle," he says, twitching a little at Tom, but otherwise pleasantly waiting for her to shake him.

Hermione beams. I knew Martha was wrong about him, she thinks, although this isn't really very true, and clasps his hand. A strange look comes over his face when she does. "I'm Hermione," she repeats.

"You've said that." Tom frowns. He stares at her hand, as if it is a bizarre artifact he has never seen before, and his eyes - so dark they are nearly black, not like midnight or the black of factory smoke rippling in the London sky, but as in the darkness of a windowless room at night; it is a vacuum of light that sucks the breath out of her - they slowly lift to hers, pausing on her smile. Martha's warning words come rushing back to her suddenly: He's a little funny in the head... He's scary.

Her smile falters and falls away completely, until Tom is just staring at her and she is nervously staring at his nose so she doesn't have to really look back. She would bite her nails if he wasn't still holding onto her hand. Finally, he breaks the long silence.

"I don't know you, do I?" he says, and he twirls his long, cold fingers through hers, tightening them like shoelaces. A boy is holding her hand. A strange boy, at that. Hermione is not certain if she should pull away or let him hold her.

"I... I don't think so. This is my first day." It sounds like a question.

"Oh." Tom frowns. "I just thought maybe that…" he trails off, then shakes himself. "Well, I'll take you back to your room, Hermione." He smiles in a shockingly charming way. Hermione finds herself blushing without knowing why. "And I can save you a seat in the eating hall, so you don't have to sit with those heathens," he says. "We'll have breakfast together."

"Oh er... Excellent. Thank you." She's both pleased to have made a friend and frightened by Tom's forwardness. "I think I'm on the second floor."

"Third," Tom says automatically. "Boys sleep on the second floor."

She turns read. "Oh. Of course."

Tom stares at her for another moment, then increases the strength of his hold on her hand in a way that makes Hermione blush again. He leads them out of the library.

They hold hands long after that.

Mrs. Cole, whose concern has always been highly preoccupied by one isolated charge of hers in particular, finds herself highly relieved. For in the duration of the past month, Tom Riddle – that one particularly worrying charge – has seemed to have undergone a great change of some sort, and it is all thanks to the very sweet girl Hermione Granger.

Tom has been glued to the girl's side since she first arrived at the orphanage six weeks ago, and he always plays the part of her perfect gentleman. He helps her make a plate at meals and puts napkins on her lap. He sits next to her in the chapel on Sundays and shares his copy of the Bible with her. He walks her to her room (and well, everywhere), and whenever the two are seen, they're holding hands and whispering to each other. The whispering worries Mrs. Cole, but she is sure the little pair will eventually grow out of it.

The truth of this dynamic is a bit different, however.

"Tom, where are we going?" Hermione asks, as Tom drags them away from the assembling children and back upstairs. She recognizes the route quickly and realizes they're headed toward Mrs. Cole's office. "Tom! We're going to miss the orientation-"

"No, we're not," he says, in his usual self-assured way. Tom never has a worry in the world. "Only you are."

"Why?" she says, bewildered, but has to wait for an answer when they grind to a halt.

In front of the boiler room.

"Because you're going to wait for me in here," Tom explains in a secretive, excited whisper that clearly indicates he's been thinking over this plan for quite some time. "I'll go downstairs with everyone else and while the parents are here looking, you can hide up here."

"But I don't want to hide," she says.

Tom's smile falters, quickly transforming into a heavy scowl. Hermione steps back at the arrival of his temper, which she's speedily learned is shorter than a burnt fuse, but Tom won't let go of her hand.

He never lets go.

"Well, you're going to," he says, furiously. "I planned all this out. You can't just not do it-"

"Of course I can," retorts Hermione hotly. "Besides, I want to meet the parents."

He stares at her.

"What?" she says. She's nervous.

"You…" He closes his eyes, pausing. Then his dark eyes slowly open and bore into hers. Hermione tries to look away, but somehow can't – Tom Riddle's eyes have an uncanny way of never letting her go. Magic, a part of her whispers, but her brain knows those things don't exist. Tom is simply magnetic when he widens his eyes like that, like he's a beatific angel dropped straight out of heaven.

Or a pretty-eyed demon from hell.

"You actually want one of those rich snobs to adopt you, Hermione?" he whispers incredulously.

"They're not snobs."

"Sure they're not. They just all think they're better than us and come here to get our hopes up, to laugh at us because we haven't got any family or money, and then leave."

"But…but I thought they might want some of us," Hermione says in a small voice, hurt and astonished.

"That's what all the new kids think." Tom's eyes soften at her disappointment and he squeezes her hand, reassuringly. "I'm the only friend you've got, Hermione, remember? And since I've been here so long, I know how these things go. Trust me," he says. "You don't want to go down there."

She bites her lip – he'd told her the third day they started being friends that when she bit her nails it irritated him, so this was the new and improved version of the habit – and nods slowly. "Alright. I… I'll stay up here, I guess?"

"Great." He kisses her on the cheek, opens the door to the boiler room up, and shoves her inside. It's dark and cramped. Musty-smelling. "I'll be back in a few hours," he promises, and shuts the door and locks it from the outside.

Hermione shivers. It's scary in here and there aren't any light switches. She sits down on the chilly floor, leans back against the boiler, and tries not to think about the ominous wails coming from the pipes for the next two and a half hours.

She hopes Tom comes back soon.

London, England
1947 – present

"Errrmeeahne, get ze new orderrr of bonnets pour Miss Black!"

Hermione looks up from her sandwich with a long-suffering sigh. This is supposed to be her lunch break. Not pretend-to-be-Madame-Pomfrey's-lapdog-while-being- paid-minimum-wage break.

"ERRRMEEAHNE!"

Or maybe it is pretend-to-be-Madame-Pomfrey's-lapdog-while-being- paid-minimum-wage break? Hermione jumps up, crams the rest of her ham-and-cheese in her mouth, ties on a stylishly-cut apron, and jets out of the backroom. The sleek seamstress shop she walks into is a myriad of feather boas, thread spools, and snobby older women dressed like teenagers. She offers polite, helpful smiles and shimmies through the clothes racks, to the other side of the store where the storage closet is.

She hates the storage closet.

It's cold, stuffy, and dark even when she turns on the overhanging light. She despises all closets. They remind her too much of…him.

Hermione shakes off chills, steps inside the dim space, and grabs a cardboard box off the highest shelves. She's back outside in the comforting busyness of the shop in seconds. She locks the door with a smart click of keys, heaves the incredibly heavy box of fancy hats onto her hip, and doubles speed when Madame Pomfrey screeches for her again. She hates closets.

She hates her job even more.

London, England
1936

Tom draws everything.

Hermione likes to watch him draw. It's quite a gift, she thinks, to be able to create something out of nothing, and Tom's skill never fails to amaze.

But Tom is arrogant.

Although he hides this trait from everyone else but her, you can see his swollen ego if you just look for it. For instance, Tom always smirks when she oohs and awes at his pictures, straightening up a little like the gents they see walking around London when they go to chapel for Sunday service. He soaks up her compliments like a sponge. He knows exactly how lovely he is and how to use his angel eyes to get his way.

And he uses his angel eyes often.

After a while though, Hermione grows accustomed to Tom's talent and simply sits next to him reading while he draws into his sketchbook. He has about twenty-one of them in his room, hidden in his wardrobe under a flappy board. He won't tell her how he got the sketchbooks, but they're always brand-new in the beginning.

He lets her look through all of them. But only when he's finished.

That day, Mrs. Cole takes the children to the park for a healthy spot of fresh air. Tom draws the fountain and the trees and a sister and brother having a picnic and an old woman crying on the bench nearby. His pictures look like photographs. He still makes a displeased face when he chews the end of his pencil.

Hermione trails her fingers through the fountain water from where they sit on the stone ledge. She's already finished her book, but Tom is still drawing.

The onyx bottom of the fountain is covered in a shiny, rippling sheet of pennies and fat goldfish that blink at her blearily. Billy, Eric, Sean, and Peter are scooping the dripping wishes into their pockets while Mrs. Cole's head is turned.

Hermione shakes her head, turning away, and twists over to get a peek at Tom's newest sketch – but instead, she plops right into the fountain with a grand SPLASH!

Tom whips around, stunned to see her floundering and sputtering in the water, and Billy Stubbs and his cronies laugh themselves silly at the sight of Broomhead Hermione Granger bottom-down in the fountain. Shocked, amused giggles from other spectators add to Hermione's humiliation when she stands up and the back of her soppy grey skirt is wet just so it looks like she's had an… an accident.

Even Tom cracks a smile.

Quickly, Hermione grabs the stone boot of the heroic-looking gentleman centered in the fountain and uses it to haul herself out, stumbling and quivering with suppressed tears. She stubs her toe on the siding as she takes off running, leaving puddles and wet footprints in her tracks. Laughter follows her and Mrs. Cole gives a gasp of surprise when she sees Hermione rip past, with such speed that the brim of the matron's sunhat starts in a flutter.

Hermione finally arrives in the safety of a meadow. She collapses against a weeping willow, hiding her face in her knees and sobbing. She hates the boys for laughing at her. And Tom! How could he think it was funny? She thought he was supposed to be her friend, to be on her side, to help her out of the fountain or… or… or something.

"Hermione?" the boy himself shouts out, from somewhere far away.

Hermione doesn't want Tom to find her. She hides her face in her uniform's grey sweater sleeves and huddles up at the base of the willow tree, sniffling.

The sounds of footsteps refill her with dread all over again.

Tom always finds her.

"Hermione?" he stage-whispers, still chuckling, and creeps over when he spots her. She hears the grass crunch under his feet. "What's wrong?" Tom says, tugging one of the hands free from where they clench her elbows and twisting it with his. He puts his chin on her knee when she doesn't say anything and she peeks a glance at him, but then regrets it immediately.

He has his angel eyes on.

"What is it?" he says, tracing the frown on her mouth with a curious finger – as if he's trying to draw the multiple contours on her lips by pure touch. "Tell me, Hermione." The command in his voice is so effective she starts to answer without meaning to.

"You all laughed at me," she mumbles, pulling her face away from Tom's hand and scowling. Tom immediately slips his nimble body through the two tree roots she sits between, slumping down against the tree trunk and putting his fingers back on her face. She's so mad his touch feels like boiling-hot oil.

"Why didn't you help me get out?" she demands. "And would you quit doing that?"

"I didn't laugh," Tom says in his quiet, serious tenor. "And I'm mad too, you know. They shouldn't have laughed at you."

She tears up some blades of grass viciously.

"I promise I'll make them pay." His hand drops from her face to crumble up a dead leaf sitting by them, squashing it and opening his palm to reveal papery crumbs he pours over her grassy shrine. "Billy and Eric and all the rest of those dolts."

Hermione bites the inside of her lip. She doesn't like the way Tom says I'll make them pay. It makes her nervous. "I don't want to get anyone in trouble," she says warily.

Tom shrugs. "I'm going to do it anyway."

A knot of squeamishness coils in Hermione's belly and she looks at Tom, worried. He's smiling though. He's smiling a smile that reminds her immediately of Peter Pan, of a faery boy who does nothing but make mischief and play with pirate swords.

Tom is nothing like Peter Pan though.

They're in chapel, wearing their Sunday-best, when it happens.

Hermione is following Reverend Richard's sermon obediently, reading along to the lines of the Bible and voicing them when Reverend Richard bids them to. Tom sits beside her, as he always does, holding the open holy book between them in one hand and holding her knee with the other. His eyes aren't on the holy text though, where they usually go so he can pretend to read with everyone else and mouth the verses.

No, they're watching Billy Stubbs today.

Hermione only turns away from the reading when Tom's hand unconsciously tightens on her leg, distracting her. She looks up at him, about to ask what it is he wants, but stops when she sees he's watching someone. She looks over to see who.

She bites her lip, because she remembers Tom's promise to… to make them pay.

Billy Stubbs, Eric Whalley, Sean O'Sullivan, and Peter Kowsakowski open their Bibles one by one. Each of their faces go white as sheets when they see what has been placed inside just for them. Tom's face goes twisty with something Hermione can't find a name for.

The bullying boys have been given their own circles of hell.

Eric Whalley, who unfolds a square piece of paper, finds an intricately-drawn picture of himself in the third circle, dripping blood and being ripped limb from limb by Cerberus the three-headed dog. It is illustrated down to the very last minute detail, to a string of Eric's goopy flesh dribbling from the beast's slobbering jaws. It's terrifying.

Next is Sean O'Sullivan, in the fifth circle, half-drowning in a lake of mud. Choking on the soupy dirt. He's surrounded by rabid sinners, tearing at each other and naked.

Peter Kowsakowski lies in a flaming tomb, while screeching Furies lash whips at his skin and have their serpentine hair sink fangs into him. The spraying blood is eerily accurate.

And Billy Stubbs, the leader of the crew, lies in the very last circle. He has been given demon wings, which catch and flex in a phantom wind, and his body is forever frozen in a vast lake of ice. He has three heads, swollen and grotesque, crying and contorted painfully. Each head has another head gripped in its mouth, squashed between long sharp teeth and screaming. They are the heads of Eric Whalley, Sean O'Sullivan, and Peter Kowsakowski.

This last piece is utterly disturbing.

It's even more incredible.

Hermione stares on at the drawings in horrified amazement, recognizing the scenes from Dante's Inferno with a burt of nausea.

Tom recognizes the fear in Billy Stubbs's eyes when the boy crumples up the horribly beautiful drawing, shoves it in his pocket, and sees him staring. Billy looks away hastily.

Tom sits back, satisfied, and mouths the words to the verses.

Hermione has never been so sick in all her life.

She closes her eyes, moaning softly when the doctor Mrs. Cole has called over replaces the thermometer he's put under her tongue with a cool washcloth on the forehead.

"She has a temperature of 105 degrees and a slight stomach bug," she hears him tell Mrs. Cole, who makes a noise of concern through the blurry fuzz in Hermione's ears. "Give her these antibiotics and wait on the fever. It should sweat itself out by tomorrow. If it doesn't, call me and I'll come back right away."

"Now you, young lady," the doctor says, tapping her nose and rousing her from the spell she's semi-drifted into. Hermione blinks at him groggily. "You rest and get better. I don't want any rough-housing or messing around or anything of that sort. You're on bed rest. Got it?"

She makes a vaguely humanoid sound, which seems to work, because he finally leaves her alone.

Then the doctor is gone and Mrs. Cole tells her to feel better and that she's going to make sure everyone stays out of her room for the entire day and that she'll bring her lunch up soon. Hermione nods. She is asleep before the door slips shut.

She dreams of Mum and Papa.

Some odd number of hours later, Hermione opens her eyes to find a pair of hands changing the warm washcloth on her head for an ice-cold one. She sighs at the sickle-sweet relief and Tom's face swims into focus, hovering over hers and creased with concern.

I thought no one was allowed in here, Hermione thinks distantly, but is too tired to ask Tom how he got in. Tom always finds ways to break the rules. To get to her.

"How're you feeling, Hermione?" her friend murmurs, tracing a finger down her too-warm cheek and frowning. She shrugs, stirring when he slips into the cot with her, under the sheet she lay sweating on top of and reaching over to fluff her pillows. She's been given extra since she's sick.

"Better?" he asks.

Hermione yawns. "Yeah."

"Good." He settles in, then turns alert and anxious again in a flash. "Wait. You hungry?"

"A little..."

He grins deviously. "Good. I brought you chicken-noodle soup. Mrs. Cole said that'd make you feel better."

"Mrs. Cole let you in?"

"'Course she did." And he bats his thick girl lashes at her, pulling his angel eyes – which are very impressive and never fail to sway Mrs. Cole, or any other female. Hermione smiles a bit.

"Here, have some," Tom commands, spooning some of the soup out from the bowl steaming in his lap and blowing on the liquid before bringing it to her mouth. She blushes – which does nothing to help her condition – and mumbles thanksbefore taking a sip.

"I'm full," she complains when the soup bowl is half-empty. "And tired."

"I'll read you a book to help you sleep." Tom slurps the rest of the soup down and jumps up, grabbing a dog-eared paperback he must have brought off the bedside dresser. Hermione becomes a little more alert at the sight, trying to see the cover.

"Which one is that?" she queries, when she fails to find out for herself.

"Wuthering Heights." He pauses. "Girls like romances, right?"

"Well, yeah, but just 'cause I'm a girl don't mean I only read Emily Brontë and sappy stuff-"

"No, that's 'cause you're you," he says in correction. He doesn't give her a chance to puzzle over this though and wriggles back in the cot, plopping his head down next to hers and holding up the book so they both can see. He flips open to the first page, starting up. "1801–I have just returned from a visit to my landlord–the solitary neighbor that I shall be troubled with…"

Hermione is fast asleep within two chapters.

Tom sees she's drifted, moves around so that her head rests on his shoulder, and keeps on reading.

It's the first field trip of the year.

Hermione is excited. The whole orphanage is excited. Tom says he knows a place they can swim in, a place the other kids don't know about that's all his. He'll let her go in it though. So long as she doesn't tell anyone else about it. She agrees.

The bus ride to the beach is sweaty and tight, and the other children laugh and point out the windows, while Mrs. Cole fans herself at the front of the bus with a magazine and chats with the driver. They all wear rather saggy bathing suits under their grey tunics and have beach towels. It's hot in July.

Hermione sits with Tom. He holds her hand and tells her all about the seaside. She listens closely.

When they all get there, they squelch out of the bus's narrow doors like juice squeezed out of a ketchup bottle. Children go springing in all directions, tangling themselves in washed-up seaweed and tearing off through the sand before Mrs. Cole has a hope of rounding any of them up for safety instructions. The matron watches them all go, helplessly, and takes up her post near the surf with a resigned sigh.

The sun's balmy. The saltwater is so tangy-strong Hermione can taste it.

"So where's that special place?" Hermione whispers in Tom's ear, who grins and whispers back "Follow me. I'll show you."

He still has her hand, so when she nods all Tom has to do is pull her along the coastline.

They weave in and out, to dance around seashells and rocky ocean clutter, to laugh and skip away from the tide when it charges up like it means to get them. The farther away they get from the others, the tighter Tom's hand around hers becomes. He's real excited. The sound of laughter behind them is quieter now.

"Here it is," he finally announces, spectacularly, and slips them around the jutting crop of a cliff that soars high above them. On the other side is a small pool, not big enough to be a lake, but not small enough to be a pond either. It's perfect.

It's theirs.

"This is…so…so…" Hermione searches for a good adjective. Finally, she impressively settles with "Exemplary" and Tom is very smug. He takes off his uniform, until he's down to his swim trunks, and Hermione does the same. They go swimming.

They play games for what feels like hours, splashing and pretending and shouting out. Hermione doesn't go in very deep, because she can't swim, and Tom teases her for it. He shows off and goes to the very center of the pool, doing a backstroke and all sorts of flips, shaking his dark hair free of water when he comes back up. Hermione floats in the shallow end.

When Tom gets bored, he climbs out and dries off, grabbing the sketchbook he's brought and retreating far off to drier land in search of better scenery. Hermione blows bubbles into the water with her nose.

Loud laughter startles her.

"Looky here, Amy!" the voice of Billy Stubbs cries, and Hermione turns around to see the pimply-faced boy stumble in. She fills with dismay when she sees Amy Benson (who isn't half so bad, but has a big crush on Billy and always picks her nose like she's digging for treasure) follow him. Why are they here? This is supposed to be her and Tom's spot. Only theirs.

"Look what I-" Billy Stubbs stops yelling like a Neanderthal when he sees her, bobbing in the pool and staring at him. A big glare replaces his smile. "What are you doin' here, Broomhead?" he demands.

Hermione scowls. She hates that nickname. Broomhead. It's not even clever.

"Well, Broomhead?" Billy says again, taunting her now, and Amy has arrived and laughs at her. Hermione goes red.

"You shut your fat mouth, Billy, or I'll make you," she threatens, to which Billy scoffs and marches down the slope toward her. Hermione struggles out of the water, straggly hair dripping and looking much like a wet cat whose fur has been rubbed the wrong way. Amy scampers after Billy like the lovesick goon she is.

"Oh yeah? How you gonna do that, Broomhead?" the boy sneers. "You gonna poke me in the eye with that giant ugly hair? You gonna bite me with those beaver teeth?"

"They're not beaver teeth!" Hermione shouts, because they're really not. She knows her two front teeth are slightly-overly-large and everything, but they've been that way since she turned six and her Mum and Papa told her there isn't any tooth fairy. They also explained that she'd be getting grown-up teeth to take the place of her baby ones, which would look too big until she grew into them.

She's still growing into them, obviously – but Billy Stubbs is too thick to get that.

"Watchya gonna do, beaver?" Billy mocks, pulling back his top lip so his teeth seem larger and making a disgusting face at her. "You gonna munch on some wood and make a dam?"

"Don't say that word," she snaps, in a fashion that is decidedly Mrs. Cole reminiscent, and Amy giggles.

"She's such a wet blanket," Amy says and Billy sniggers, agreeing. Hermione blushes. "What d'you think you are, the Queen?"

"No, I-"

"Ooh, better be nice, Amy," Billy interrupts loudly, eyes going big. "We're in the presence of the Queen-"

"Quit that!"

"Oh yes, yes, your ladyship." Amy is laughing herself silly, while Billy makes lots of bows and a show of worshipping Hermione and her 'great ugly bush of hair.' "Does your ladyship have any requests? Shall we get you a new barber, or a big piece of wood you can snack on-? Aw, looky, Amy! She's cryin' like a wittle baby. Oh, your ladyship we are so, so sorry-"

"You'd better be."

They all look up, stunned, and Billy Stubbs goes pale as a Dracula victim at the sight of Tom Riddle. Hermione keeps crying.

Tom's eyes are hard. "What did you do to her?" he barks, coming over and pushing Hermione behind him. He's tall for a ten-year old and towers over the rest of them. Billy flinches. Hermione's sniveling is the only sound to be heard for a tense minute that seems to last forever.

Tom's eyes slowly narrow. "You going to answer me, Billy, or do I have to make you?"

Billy glares at him. "I ain't afraid of you, Riddle." He spits.

Tom gazes at the wad of saliva bubbling on the sand, then raises his quiet stare to Billy. Amy looks afraid. Billy is in way over his head.

"No?" he questions.

"No." Billy shakes his head firmly. He grins.

Because he thinks he's won.

"Then let's settle this like men." Tom holds Billy's eyes as a serpent does a rabbit. Billy's own pet rabbit, Babbity, is safe in Amy Benson's arms and sleeping. He's an adorable white bundle with red beads for eyes. "See that cave over there? Mrs. Cole won't see us in it. We'll go there and fight it out."

Billy squares his shoulders. "Fine."

Tom smirks. "Fine."

So Billy leads the way, with Amy scampering after him looking worried and cradling Babbity. Hermione has stopped crying and Tom takes her hand, tugging her up the hill after Billy and Amy. Taking them even farther away from the original beach they were all supposed to be playing on. He doesn't talk. He only has that Peter Pan smile and the look of someone who's got a big secret.

Hermione isn't sure she wants to know what that secret is.

"Are you really going to fight?" she asks, once they're real close to the cave Billy and Amy have already disappeared inside. Tom shakes his head. "Then what are you going to do?" Hermione says, relieved and confused at the same time.

"Something bad." Tom looks excited just saying the word. Hermione blinks.

"Bad?" she repeats. "You mean, even more bad than the time you gave Billy and the others those awful pictures?"

"Much more bad than that." Tom grins. The smile isn't Peter Pan like at all. It reminds her more of Captain Hook.

Or of some other villain entirely.

They go inside the cave and everything isn't so clear after that. Tom takes them in deep, until it's so dark they can't see a single thing. He's definitely been here before. Amy starts to cry, sure they'll never get out again and be stuck here forever. Billy tells her to grow up. She cries harder.

Tom pushes Hermione in a corner. "Close your eyes," he whispers softly, tucking a frizzy lock of hair behind her ear. The curl comes free as soon as he pulls away though.

Amy asks where Tom and Hermione went.

There's a shove, a shout, and lots of heavy breathing. Hermione's heart pounds hard in her ears when she hears a sickening crack that makes her flesh crawl all over. She bites her lip, keeping her eyes squeezed shut just like Tom told her. She listens to the sound of sobs and terror-filled shrieks, of a pulling rope. She sees nothing but the dark. She hopes this will end soon. She hears her blood roaring like a train's wheels over railway tracks…

She nearly jumps out of her skin when a hand wraps around hers.

"It's me," Tom whispers into her ear.

Hermione gasps and flies into him, holding him tight. "Can we go, Tom? Please?" she says desperately. "Can you get us out of here?"

"Well, maybe…"

"Tom!"

"Ok, ok." He snickers. "Come on, hold onto me." He adds, mischievously, "Or you might get stuck in here forever."

Hermione shudders.

When they all board the bus to go back to the orphanage, word has already spread that Amy and Billy are missing. Mrs. Cole starts a search party with the bus driver and other chaperones that have come on the outing. The adults find the two children after two hours of looking, lost in a cave with a dead rabbit hanging from the rafters. They won't say what's happened no matter how hard Mrs. Cole pushes for answers.

But the other children know.

Yes, they know about Tom Riddle, and they know two things they'll never ever forget. One: something unspeakable happened in the cave that day. And two: unless they want the same thing to happen to them, they'll stay far away from Hermione Granger.

At all costs.