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 was adopted a while ago, didn't he?

She hates her hair.

She wishes it was straight or less big or…or something.

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 and frustration 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 dried 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, so 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. 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." It's a mortified whisper.

"Oh." He doesn't look nearly as affected as she thought he would. He considers her, arching a brow. "And that's what made you avoid me for a week?"

"Well, yes."

"That's it?"

A small nod. Goodness, Hermione thinks. When he says it like that it just sounds stupid. But then it kind of is stupid in retrospective, she realizes.

"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." She smiles slightly. "Quite a lot."

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," sooths Madame Pomfrey. "I am layzing everryzun off."

"B-b-but why?" Hermione sputters, bewildered.

"Becauze we are simply not getting enough custahmers," says her boss. Madame Pomfrey twists the keys in the lock of the shop Hermione has faithfully worked at for the past two years, for the very last time. "I am sorry Errrmeanzee, but zere is nozing I can do. Zerre is no l'argent."

No l'argent? How can there not be any money? Hermione thinks frantically. She catches Madame Pomfrey's fur coat swathed arm before the French woman can walk away and her old boss looks back at her, surprised.

"Oui, Errrmeanzee?"

"I…" She gathers herself and 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. "I would 'elp you if I could. You 'ave been a wonderful workerr, truly. I am going back to Paris now, 'owever, to live with my son. I suggest you find yourrr family, too-"

"I don't have any though," she says morbidly. "I haven't got anyone."

"Well… ze other girls found worrrk downtown…"

"Really?" Thank God. "Where?"

"In ze…ah…Knockturrrn Alley."

Hermione deflates. "Prostitution?" she whispers. That'sher option now? To sell her body or let it die in the street?

Madame Pomfrey sighs. "Perrhaps, for you, zherre is something I can do. I will contact you shorrrtly" At that moment, Hermione is kissed on both cheeks by Madame Pomfrey, who has flagged down a cab and bid her adieu. She watches the fabulous woman hurry away into the yellow car. She frowns. What does Madame Pomfrey mean by zherre is something I can do? And how is she ever going to go to school now? To get an English degree? How is she going to pay the Dursleys? How is she going to live?

Well, she isn't going to become a whore.

She'll die first. Literally.

Hermione bites her lip and looks around at the busy dark street. There's better work out there, surely. She just has to find out where to look. She just has to make a plan. She just has to wait for Madame Pomfrey to contact her.

She tightens her scarf and hurries away into the night, too.

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 blinks. "We draw naked gents, too. Sometimes they're really old. All wrinkly." He makes a face.

"Why?" she says in bewilderment.

"To learn – or so they tell us." He shrugs a shoulder and strides over, lying down on the bed with her. He slides his hand up her nightgown, on her bare back, and traces circles centimeters away from her bra strap. He wriggles close. "What do you dream about, Hermione?"

"I don't know." She plays with a stray thread of the pillowcase while he waits. "I never remember. My parents, sometimes." My dead mother.

"There's a type of art just for dreams." Tom's eyes glow like excited, thrilling lanterns. His enthusiasm is contagious and she finds herself grinning with him. "It's called surrealism. One of the best surrealists is Salvadore Dali."

"He's the one with the twirly mustache?"

He nods.

She laughs. "How interesting."

Tom smirks and sidles closer. "It is." He puts her mouth against her ear, speaking there in a secret whisper: "I'm going to be famous one day, Hermione. People will adore me everywhere."

Hermione smiles. "I know, Tom."

That seems to satisfy him. He pulls back, to put his head on her pillow where they're so close their noses touch. Tom breathes in when she breathes out. She stops smiling when he kisses her, softly. She closes her eyes when he braids his fingers into her hair and rolls over her, to steal air and replace it with his lips. He circles her navel with his thumb. He kisses her lazily. Just because he wants to.

Just because.

"Swear it." Tom is impossible to say no to. Up against his archangel looks and earnest, girl-lashed eyes, Hermione doesn't have a chance.

He always gets his way.

Tom smiles at her like a faery up to no good, lips crooked to the side in a mischievous smirk. Dark eyes sparkling. "Swear it," he repeats. "Swear yourself to me."

Hermione shifts and wraps her arms around her knees, trying to worm her way out of the subject. But Tom's too overbearing to be evaded. She tries anyway.

"Why?" she asks, facing him. He's less than an inch away from her. The wooden roots they sit inside are like a natural throne, but the tree hasn't gotten any bigger in the years they've come and gone here. They have though. She has to sit between Tom's mile-long legs to fit in – a factor the older boy doesn't seem to mind at all.

She remembers crying here when she was nine, but can't remember what for.

"Because I want to hear you say it." Tom tucks a frizz behind one ear, bringing her back to reality when the stubborn lock boings right back into the helpless mass wreaking havoc all about her head. "Pretty," he says and chuckles in an extremely endearing way. He's trying to get his way. To break her resolve. She knows it.

It's still so hard to say no though.

"Come on, baby." Tom uses a voice made of untold promises and secrets black like shadow. His arms cocoon her, chest rising and falling against her back. "Tell me."

Hermione sighs. "Tom, you're being ridic-"

"Come on. Say it."

She rolls her eyes up to the tangle of green and spindly braids above them, to the pollen strolling through the air like they're putting up a parade. She can barely see the ocean blue sky up above them. There isn't a cloud to see for miles around. Tom studies the varying shades of brown in her eyes while she studies the wonders of summer.

At last, she says, "I promise I'm yours, Tom."

He flashes a perfect, brilliant white smile at her. He's so handsome it hurts. Hermione flushes and wishes that she could be prettier for him, that she could look less utterly average next to him. Tom sighs and catches one of the little white fairies tap-dancing toward them, snapping two dexterous fingers around the darling thing and holding it out to her. She takes the pollen tuft carefully.

"I love you," he whispers in her ear. "More than anything else. And one day, I'll marry you and we'll have a big house and kids and be happier than hell, Hermione." He slips the ring he always wears, the one that belonged to his long-dead grandfather, onto her prim finger. He kisses her cheek.

"Maybe," Hermione says, smiling.

She lets go of the white fairy and Tom picks up his sketchbook, propping it on her raised knees and reaching around her to draw the meadow they sit in. He keeps his chin on her shoulder, breathing steadily. She watches the paper easily come to life under his hands. She sees the world through his eyes in the only way she knows how.

In his pictures.

A while later, Tom gently shakes her, and Hermione opens her eyes with a startled jerk. She looks around, bewildered to see their meadow washed dark blue with dusk. "It's time to go back," he says. He's made four sketches while she slept.

She rubs her still-waking eyes. "Did the others already start to go?"

"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's envious of his grace.

Tom catches her looking and grins. "I drew you while you slept," he says randomly.

Hermione blinks. "You did?"

He hums.

"Can I see?" she asks, curiously.

Tom smirks and shakes his head.

She's affronted. "Why not?"

His face darkens. He's annoyed – whether with his drawing or her, she doesn't know. "I couldn't get your eyes right," he grumbles.

Hermione giggles and he sends her a filthy look, so she shuts up.

She keeps laughing on the inside though.

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're perfect for each other.

Neither of them know it.

"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 social outcast.

"I don't want you to go." Hermione feels her ringed hand inside his, small and safe. Tom lifts his other hand and cups her cheek, giving her a kiss. She can feel his happiness. His happiness at getting to go 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's the coldest it's ever been out there.

Hermione stares out the frosted pane at the street beyond the orphanage's eating hall, beyond the barb-wire fence guarding them, at a concrete road coated in a slick sheet of ice without a soul on it. No one would dare go out in this weather. It's dangerous. It's ruthless. It's Christmas.

But Christmas hasn't brought Hermione anything good in years.

She tugs at a loose thread on the drab grey tunic she wears. Her birthday was in September, so she's fifteen now. Tom will be sixteen in less than a week. The only difference between this uniform and last year's is that the pant legs are half an inch shorter, she reflects. With the war in full blast, there isn't any money to be spared for an orphan's wardrobe. For anything besides weapons and tanks.

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. Someone once said that to Hermione. Who was it? she wonders.

The double doors to the clean but dreary cafeteria suddenly swing open and she looks up – the only kid who does – and she sees Mrs. Cole with a tall, pale handsome boy behind her standing in the entrance. Her heart skips a beat. She blinks twice, hardly daring to believe it.

He's back.

She stands, a huge smile stretching her lips instantly when Tom glides in. He's wearing the usual garb, but with slightly broader shoulders. His eyes are all wrong though. They crackle and sting a silent storm – one that only she can see. They snap to hers and make her smile drop.

He's furious.

Tom sits down without a Happy Christmas, without a word, without a sound. He glares slowly at the kids around them and she wants to know why he's back so early, what's happened to make him so angry. She knows better than that though. When Tom's like this, it's better not to say anything at all, so she just eats supper and reads the book she brought, Anna Karenina, while Tom snaps the pencils filling his pockets to pieces and grinds his teeth. He's good at keeping most of his emotions inside. He's always been good at that.

She can tell he's itching to touch her.

He'll have to wait until their alone though. Part of her is relieved they aren't alone right now.

Because the others give them weird looks when he holds her hand in chapel, when he kisses her eyelashes and puts his chin on her knee. Mrs. Cole hates that they act the same way as they did when they were small children. Touching and holding hands and whispering in each other's ears. She hates Tom's fierce protectiveness of Hermione Granger. He won't even let the matron herself speak to the girl without his direct supervision. He's like a guard dog with a mean bite, wordlessly intimidating, always watching for the smallest sign of a threat.

Most of all, everyone wants to know what it is that Tom Riddle whispers to Hermione Granger. Everyone wants in on the secret.

There isn't any secret though, Hermione thinks, pulling away from the tales of Anna and her tangly love endeavors for a moment. There's nothing at all.

She glances at Tom. Or is there?

She doesn't ask. Tom would never tell anyway.

Tom hasn't touched a piece of paper in days.

Something's happened, Hermione thinks, again and again. She's so worried she gnaws her lip until it's chapped horribly and burns like fire. Something bad. What's happened, Tom?

She has to know.

Kiss. Kiss. Tom inches his lips up and down the back of her neck while she reads, arms tight as boa constrictors where they coil around her stomach. His legs are folded-up like tree roots and keep her inside, close to him, where she'll never get away. He blows on her skin where he's got it wet with his tongue so he can watch goosebumps spring into visibility. Playing with her gives him satisfaction, especially when he's bored. She tries to ignore this.

Kiss. Kiiiisss.

Her eyes flutter. She realizes it, shakes herself, and keeps on reading. But the words slip and slide now.

Just like Tom's lips.

His arms leave her for a moment and there's rustling. Then Tom is back against her, bare-chested and lifting her nightgown so she feels that bareness against her back. Breathing hot in her ear. Sucking her earlobe into his mouth. Hermione's breathing hitches and her eyes roll back. She feels something new, down below. Between her thighs. A little ache.

Tom's hand shoves her book to the floor, comes over her hip, and flips her so they're face-to-face. His eyes demand everything from her. She can feel how much he wants her. Staring at him, Hermione thinks Tom was born wicked.

She stops him before he can reach for her clothes.

"Tom, what's wrong?"

He raises a brow. "Besides the fact you're not naked yet?"

"You're sad." Tragically sad. Hermione tentatively traces her thumb along the noble outline of his jaw. He doesn't stop her, so she cups his cheek fully and looks him in the eye. It's like getting to touch a Bengal tiger. It's heart-racing. It's terrifying. "I can tell," she says.

He smirks. "Oh?"

She nods.

Tom's smirk fades. He jerks his head away, because he hates it when she catches him pretending. He hates showing her what he really is. He hates what he really is.

Whatever that is.

"What's happened?" she queries. He doesn't answer, but continues to leer at the ceiling. "Come on, Tom." She pats his cheek, trying for lightness. "You can tell me."

His jaw flexes. "Later," he says, quickly, and Hermione realizes he talks so fast because his voice is rough like sandpaper. Tom hates crying more than anything. He'd never cry in front of her. He'd never let himself look so weak.

"Do you… do you want me to hold you?" she asks.

Tom meets her eyes with swimming black ones that dry the instant he blinks. He's craving her touch and her eyes and he nods stiffly.

They lay down shoulder-to-shoulder. Then Tom – six foot two now and most definitely no longer a virgin – wriggles over and puts his head in the crook between her neck and shoulder, sighing quietly. Wrapping around her like a clingy spider monkey. Mumbling all the misdeeds the world has done him into her ear. Turning into a child for the night. Fitting like a jigsaw piece.

"They expelled me," he finally says hours later, in a cold flat voice that's nothing like Tom Riddle's suave timber. It's the voice of hatred. Tom's fingers skim up and down her spine possessively. Hermione feels the rage inside him quake and roar, large enough to swallow the storm.

"How come?" she says curiously.

"This little brat found out I was a scholarship student and decided to tell everyone in the whole bloody school. All my friends…abandoned me." He pauses, and she knows he's going to tell her the real reason he's been banished. The bad thing. "So I had to make her pay, Hermione. She ruined my life."

"Who?"

"Myrtle something. It doesn't matter now though, does it?"

A violent chill goes through her.

Tom pouts. "What are you looking at me like that for? I'm not the bad guy here. She turned me in, remember?" His voice drops to a mischievous murmur. "And it's not like Dumbledore could find enough evidence to really blame me. Only enough to get me kicked out."

How could you, Tom? Hermione's stomach knots and she searches Tom's dark eyes, but only to find nothing telling there. He hides his secrets too well. "What did you do?" she demands at last, although she thinks she already knows. Flashes of Billy Stubbs and his dead rabbit Babbity whip through her mind in horrible flashes. Her palms sweat.

Tom snickers and rolls on top of her. His eyes glow in the dark like a cat's. Reflecting the city lights outside so they look metallic and flat, like an animal's. He grins slowly, gazing down at her. "Now why would I tell you that, Hermione?"

As soon as Hermione hears a knock at her window, she jumps up and opens it to see Tom hanging on the eave down below, panting from the climb up and exhausted from the secret job he keeps up at a pawnshop called Borgin & Burkes. He's got a backpack slung over one shoulder. She throws down a hand and he grabs it, scrabbling into her bedroom fast.

He catches his breath for a few minutes once he's in, dropping his backpack on the floor and wiping off sweat. He's grinning. He says, impressively, "I quit."

"Why?" Hermione asks, bewildered.

Tom shrugs. "I made all the money that I wanted to make." He peers out her open window, down at the dark street below, and he takes a deep breath of the crisp night air. It's April. Thus, it's rainier than usual and everything in London is covered in a fine spray of mist just to prove it. Hermione goes up beside Tom when he waves her over. He automatically winds his fingers through hers.

"What's the backpack for?" she says.

"It's got my money in it," Tom replies, "and a few other things."

Hermione nibbles her lip. "Are you ever going to draw again?"

Tom smiles like Peter Pan. "Naturally."

She nods. Secretly relieved. Outwardly, just as nonchalant as he is.

"I need you to do something for me," he says suddenly – softly – and turns to face her. "I need you to make sure Mrs. Cole doesn't leave her office tonight."

"Why?"

"Just do it for me." Tom reaches into his pocket, pushing past pencils and extracting a cig and lighter. He lights up. Hermione turns her head away. She hates the smell of nicotine.

"Will you do it?"

She rolls her eyes. "Of course I will."

Tom looks at her sideways. He's dashing as a black knight in burning armor. He flicks his cig out the window, where it hits a furious passerby down below.

Hermione averts her eyes, looking up at the night sky and stars. "Where are you sneaking out to anyway?"

Tom shrugs. "Around."

She nods.

He's still looking at her. He gives her a hand a tug and keeps tugging until she's up against his side, where he puts his cold hand under the back of her shirt and makes her jump. "You're freezing," she says, surprised. He snickers.

Whispering in her ear, he retorts, "You're hot."

Hermione blushes and he nips the skin under her ear, turning her head toward him so he can kiss her mouth. He opens her lips with his and sweeps his tongue inside, pushing her up against the window sill. She gasps and grabs his shoulders, holding on tight. She prays Tom won't drop her. She moans when Tom firmly rubs his fingers under her skirt.

He smirks. "You're definitely hot here, baby."

Hermione bites her lip and moves against his hand, seeking relief. He laughs and pulls away. Leaving her hanging. Again.

He always does that.

She curses herself for falling for the same trick again.

"Make sure Mrs. Cole doesn't leave her office," Tom tells her again, eyes no longer wicked but serious. Hermione scowls at him.

"Why should I?" she says, cross. He can be such a jerk.

Tom pouts at her. Blast, Hermione thinks, because he's got his angel eyes on and she can feel her anger melting like hot butter already. Bloody angel eyes…

"Please?" he sings. "For me?"

She's going to regret this. She just knows it.

"Oh whatever." Hermione huffs and gets up, walking over to the door so she can sneak out to the matron's office. Tom catches a lock of her hair, stopping her before she can get too far.

Hermione looks back at him, irritated. "What?"

Tom blinks innocently. "I only wanted another kiss." He steps closer and she can see the tiny smirk that's curling his perfect mouth, that's hidden behind his cherubic façade. She doesn't react when he pecks her lips. "Kiss me back," he commands.

"No."

Tom grins. "Come on. You know you want to." He weaves his fingers through her hair and hums into her mouth, tickling it.

Hermione yanks herself away. "Stop it, Tom," she snaps.

He rolls his eyes. "Whatever. It's not like there aren't other willing parties," he says, and this last comment is a blow that hits her hard. She stares at Tom, anger replaced by stunned hurt.

"You…you wouldn't." She tries to smile, like it's a joke, but fails miserably. She searches his cold eyes. "You wouldn't cheat on me."

Tom's brows rise. "Cheat on you?" he repeats, amused. "How can I cheat on you? We're not even together."

Hermione stops breathing. The ring on her finger burns like flaming coals.

"I…" She clears her throat, because her voice is cracking. She looks away quickly. Tom is just saying this because he wants to hurt her. She's seen him do it to other people. She knows him. She knows how he is.

But it still stings.

"I'm gonna go," she finally says.

Tom snorts. "Go? Go where? I didn't say you could go anywhere."

Hermione makes to walk past him, blinking her stinging eyes rapidly, but he snatches her back. He grabs her chin and his beautiful face is in hers, twisted with fury. "Don't walk away from me," he hisses.

She glares at him through angry tears. "Let me go."

"No."

"Let me go, Tom!" she shouts and his eyes go wide, darting to the door and back to her.

"Be quiet-"

"No, not until you get off me, you pompous idiot-"

Tom sneers and clamps his hand over her mouth to shut her up. She keeps on yelling into his palm, throwing punches at him that he deflects effortlessly. He pulls her into him, pinning her arms between his hard body and her soft one, muffling her enraged screams. He stares at her with those cold eyes, jaw taut and temper thin like a fraying cord. At that moment, Hermione truly believes he doesn't feel anything at all. He's a monster. Her best friend is a monster and - oh God - does she hate him.

"I'm leaving, Hermione," Tom says quietly. "I can't stay here anymore."

Hermione freezes. She breathes hard and he slowly pulls his hand away, watching her cautiously. She looks down at the floor, at her ratty shoes and their untied laces. Two tears wriggle free and plop onto the dull wooden boards. She sucks in a ragged breath and it comes back out as a sob.

She doesn't know what to feel. Should she be relieved because he's going? Yes, she should. But she's not. She only feels terribly lost and empty.

Seeing her cry, Tom smiles. He smiles because he's gotten to her. He's gotten what he wants. Her pain makes him feel invincible. Hermione looks up and her eyes dry at the sight of his expression, which he quickly schools into a mask of false empathy. But she's already seen how he really feels. What he really is.

Tom touches her wet cheek. Hermione stays still. "You know I love you."

She says nothing.

He pulls her into him, wrapping his long arms around her. Kissing her on the head. "You're sorry, aren't you?" he murmurs. "For making me mad?"

The hairs on Hermione's body are standing on end. She nods slowly and feels hollow inside.

He whispers in her ear. "Now when I kiss you, you'll kiss me back."

somewhere in the Atlantic
1947

Now when I kiss you, you'll kiss me back.

Hermione launches out of sleep, gasping. Her heart pounds away like a miner's hammer. Sweat drenches her back.

You'll kiss me back…

It's the last thing he ever said to her.

She touches her lips. They remember his. Tom's lips on hers, though, are nothing but a ghost she wants to forget. Nothing but illusions in pretty, silver-tongued wrapping. Because that night at the orphanage, while she'd sat around watching Mrs. Cole's office door and made sure their matron did not come out, Tom had snuck out with his backpack. And he hadn't come back.

Ever.

Hermione remembers spending the next day worrying herself sick about Tom, wondering if something bad happened to him, feeling helplessly guilty when Mrs. Cole didn't see him in the eating hall or in his bedroom or in the makeshift library and finally went searching for him. Feeling crushed when she heard Mrs. Cole and the other helpers discussing runaways.

She'd been betrayed.

She had been used and discarded, like a toy someone had grown bored of.

Tom said he'd come back for her, but he never did. He just took his kiss and left her there, in an orphanage where no one talked to her and kids called her slut freak witch you shameful whore behind her back. She remained there for another three years, until she aged out and found work at Madame Pomfrey's. It's been six years since she's seen him.

I don't miss him, Hermione reminds herself fiercely. I have no reason to miss someone like that.

She shakes herself of these haunts, pulls her hair back into a ponytail, and stands up in the swaying cabin. The ship she's on raises and bows over the rocky waves recklessly. She's leaving England and all her bad memories with it. She's said her goodbyes to the Dursleys (who were very much relieved to be rid of her, naturally) and she's bought a one-way ticket to her new home.

She has no idea how she's going to go on from here.

But there's a promise in the place she's headed. It lies in a mysterious host, a customer of Madame Pomfrey's former shop who lives overseas and was informed of Hermione's struggles by her once-boss. Madame Pomfrey, through letters, has assured Hermione that this host – a Mr. Malfoy – is very generous and more than happy to let her stay at his home until she can get back on her feet. So now all Hermione's hopes rest on the address Madame Pomfrey has given her.

She peers out of the foggy window, wiping away the condensation to examine what lies outside. It's too dark to see much besides rolling Atlantic and pitch-black depths. The deepness of water terrifies her and she moves away, sea sickness crashing in on her body for the fourth time since she boarded. How close are they? she wonders.

She'll have to wait for morning to find out.