The Three Tithes, it should be noted, is an excellent place for tasks of all nature, such as but not limited to debunking notorious crime syndicates, meeting antisocial clientele with questionable criminal records and peculiar digital requests, and buying overpriced lattes, all at the same hole-in-the-wall. Harry entered the slightly dingy cybercafé at 3:00 after soccer practice to find Hermione sitting in her usual spot in the back corner of the hangout, glued to her laptop like a bee to honey, and waiting for her cup of chai tea to cool off as she dawdled. She looked up when she heard him sink into the dull red leather chair across from her, a sharp frown contorting her already uncommonly severe features at the sight of him.

"At long last, the elusive Harry Potter bestows his celestial presence upon me," she said in less-than-sincere (if not snarky) greeting, although Harry was five minutes early, and she'd told him she didn't have to leave for Azkaban until four. "I was beginning to think you fell into the subway tracks," she added, blithely sipping her chai. Froths of hot steam curled around her snub nose, blurring out the constellation of freckles there and creating the second-long illusion her dark eyes were luminous as light bulbs for a heartbeat. Then she put down her chai, and her eyes were normal brown again.

"Thanks for your heartwarming concern for my well-being," he said sarcastically, although possibly a beat too late. Pretending to be annoyed but clearly enjoying the banter, Hermione rolled her eyes and closed her laptop, twisting in her seat to root around in her messenger bag, which she had slung across the back of it, until she had found a beat-up manila folder that looked like it had spent the better part of its lifespan under a couch, and thrusting it at him.

"My dad's old case files," she explained at his questioning look, gesturing impatiently for him to open the possibly moldy folder. He did, though not without reluctance. "I stayed up all last night reading them all," she said, as he picked curiously through the papers inside. Some were laminated legal documents of deeds and construction permits, others handwritten notes reread so frequently the creases where they had been folded and opened were worn tissue-soft.

He could imagine with surprising ease, Hermione poring over these case files deep into the hours of night and morning, her curly hair even more wild and frizzed than usual from being repeatedly pushed out of her face, and her father's old notes scattered around her like a hoarder's nest of information, she pondering every nuance and possibility. Then on second thought, Hermione was probably far too organized for inconvenient nests of notes to be lying around her bedroom for perusing in stock piles, and had typed all of her theories on Detective Granger's case files into her laptop days ago for practicality.

"Everything Grindelwald said was true," Real Hermione was saying excitedly, when Harry dragged his eyes away from the case files to look back up at her. "The messed up construction at that high school, the shady businesses, threats, loansharks… and there's more." She lowered her voice, so he had to lean in to hear her over the background noise of the café. "All of the findings lead back to one source," she said in hush. "Guess who."

"The Noble Blacks." She nodded. He glanced down at the files in his hands – no, not just files. Answers. Real, concrete proof all of his suspicions for the past six years were more than him hanging onto the past, that their speculations weren't ludicrous but based on actual fact. He wasn't crazy. He wasn't conjuring wild theories and magical, far-fetched stories to cushion the blow of his parents' premature death. He was right.

He was right.

"I know this school. Raven Claw Prep," he said suddenly, and Hermione jerked around the folder to see what he was talking about. Her brow furrowed as she read the article he already had. "My cousin Dudley goes there, but-" He snorted. "-he's a complete pothead." Dudley was also one hundred and fifty pounds overweight, and preferred his fists to his vocabulary, which was limited to pussy and skinnylittlemotherfucker. Aunt Petunia adored him, which explained a lot about his mental state.

"He is?" Hermione asked, with more eagerness than Harry had thought the fact his douchebag cousin was a pothead could spur. "Here, look at this," she commanded and opened a packet within the folder, flipping through the pages of highlighted notes and marked print-outs until she found what she was looking for. She indicated a note scrawled in chicken scratch in the margin of a newspaper clipping. "Long list of suspensions, mainly because of drug dealings, smoking on campus, etc. Drug supply coming from the gang?" she read."See! Someone's supplying the kids there – or at least was – and my dad knew it. Plus, I bet you it's still going on, which means this entire set-up was bigger than threats and crappy construction. The gang is selling marijuana to kids all over the tri-state area."

"And the gang we are speaking of is the Noble Blacks, right?"

She nodded. "Absolutely. It explains why Chief Grindelwald wants Riddle in jail, and why he's keeping an especially close eye on him. He didn't realize the Noble Blacks were behind all of this dirty business until after my dad died." Although her expression didn't change when she talked about her father, Harry recognized saw something torn and small flash in and out of Hermione's clever eyes almost too fast to be seen – but he saw it and he knew. He'd seen the same thing in the mirror himself often enough to recognize it.

"Why does Grindelwald want you to know all of this again?" he said. He'd been astonished when Hermione told him the Chief had actually answered her questions yesterday, and dirtily thrilled by the truth behind her father's enigmatic death. It wasn't that he was glad the man was dead – he wasn't sick – it was only the triumph of adding another puzzle piece to their growing collection, that sense of rightness getting bigger the more he learned about the nefarious Noble Blacks, expanding whenever Hermione came up with a new solution or idea that he never would've thought of on his own, seamlessly clicking together into the mystery, becoming clearer to them with every passing day...

The pieces were starting to come together at last. They just had to keep pushing harder to complete the entire puzzle.

"I think Grindelwald was hinting at me to pick up on the case where my dad left off," Hermione said slowly, her eyes thoughtful. "I know it's unlikely," she snapped at his expression, which Harry quickly tried to school into whatever would make her stop glaring daggers at him. She sighed after a minute. "But now that I know what happened to him," she said, voice soft, "and how similar his murder is to what happened to your parents and Sirius… I can't turn back on the Noble Blacks now. We have to find out why our parents and Sirius were targeted, and-" She broke off abruptly, gaze burning at what was left of her chai. Harry frowned.

"And…?"

"You don't have to do it," she said, the words mumbled into mush as she ducked her head and fidgeted with the cords of her sweatshirt. She pulled one end so the other shortened and scrunched the collar of her sweatshirt, before switching to the other side, and then repeating the process. "It's…dangerous." He scoffed. As if he didn't know that already. She scowled.

"Well, it is. And crazy. And impossible. But I want to bring the Noble Blacks to…to justice somehow, even if that's insane." She swallowed. "I mean, they're an entire organization who have probably gotten away with way more murders than we know about and worse. I don't know how I would get the evidence or even begin to use it, not to mention without getting caught and going out the way my dad did, but-" Her babbling cut off. She looked at him, desperate for reassurance. "I need to fix this. Somehow. You know?"

Don't say yes, Harry told himself, clenching his hands around his kneecaps under the table in a physical but futile effort at self-control. For God's sake, you've already got her in this much trouble by helping you. Don't agree. Do. Not. Agree.

"Yeah, I know," he burst out, and nearly clapped his hand over his mouth right after. What the hell?

"Really?" He nodded. Hermione grinned with relief and Harry blinked, surprised at the display of all her white teeth. He looked away, driving his fingers through his messy hair and thinking fiercely of Ginny's pink lips and Christmas and that he needed a haircut and cookies and soccer practice.

"So?" Hermione said expectantly.

He blinked at her. "What?"

Her expression melted from anticipative expectance to annoyance. She crossed her arms. "You weren't listening," she accused.

"Yes, I was," he said, flustered.

"No, you weren't."

"Was too."

"Was not."

He opened his mouth, then closed it. "I just remembered- I told Ron I would meet him to see a movie soon," he said abruptly, standing up and nearly upending the tiny table. Hermione caught her tea barely, raising her eyebrows at him in bewilderment. "Sorry," he muttered. Redness stormed over his cheeks. "Um. Sorry." He'd already said that. Shoot. "See you tomorrow."

"Ok." Hermione was looking at him like he'd just declared he was flying to the moon on a cheese-powered jetpack. He forced a smile at her – it felt stiff – and her eyes un-narrowed slightly. "Hogsmeade Square at twelve o' clock, right?" she asked, unconsciously tracing the lid of her steaming tea.

He nodded, his smile felt slightly more genuine now. "Right." She nodded back and reopened her laptop, leaning over the bright screen to tinker with whatever complex hacker mojo occupied her free time when Harry did not.

Harry walked out of the Three Tithes as fast as his legs would carry him, only breathing normally again once he was on the next street. Something was very wrong with him, he thought as he quickly sent a text to Ginny, asking her to meet him at their usual spot in an hour. Exhilaration poured through his veins at the discovery of the case files, the advancement of the mystery possessing him like a soul-sucking entity, so that he could hardly think of anything else for the rest of the day, even as Ginny nestled her head into his shoulder after an hour of fumbling and rushed kisses, tracing her peach-colored nails in tingling circles down his arms. But despite his efforts, his mind was elsewhere, with the Noble Blacks and Cygnus Black, wondering where fate would take him - and Hermione, he supposed - next, and if she had made any new discoveries in his absence. He wanted to be back in the Three Tithes again, to talk about the Noble Blacks with her as he could with no one else, and he cursed himself for being stupid enough to leave her early.

Ginny was kissing a nice soft path down his chest, slinking her long body to the floor in front of him. Harry didn't remember how she got there. He tried to pay attention, to clear everything out of his mind, like an eraser to paper.

Something was definitely wrong with him.

That, or something was very right.

There wasn't a plan. In fact, there wasn't even an outline of a plan. All Hermione had was a hunch to go on, and an objective she had no idea of how to achieve. The objective was ludicrous: by a miracle, deconstruct the infamous crime family that had arranged her father's – and countless others – murders for decades with some old case files. Her only connections to the Noble Blacks were the theories Dad left behind, what little cryptic information Chief Grindelwald felt like giving her, and Tom Riddle Black.

Hermione had a vague idea of where Riddle stood in the hierarchy of the Noble Blacks. Her idea was based on the way inmates – and even some guards – treated him at Azkaban. He was treated as if he was a dangerous, temperamental animal to be tiptoed around… but also respected. Rude, though never rebuked (except by Dumbledore, who didn't count, since the whimsical doctor seemed to operate on another mental scale entirely). He had control. He was used to being important. Powerful.

And as Fate would have it, he had all the answers to Hermione's questions.

The Azkaban group session was uneventful. Dumbledore posed insightful questions, Cuss swore, Crabbe and Goyle looked intimidating, Twitch clenched and convulsed in the corner of the circle, Dolohov acted like a pervert, and Riddle sat as far away from everyone in the room as humanly possible without sinking into the floor. The latter irked Hermione, as her earlier efforts to arrange the seating strategically beforehand had been nulled the minute Riddle walked in the room and swept right by the empty seat beside her. Out of the corner of her eye, she'd watched Riddle drag his chair to the back of the room and sit down, wanting to leap to her feet and yell at him for being such a theatrical brat and ruining her plans without even lifting a finger.

It would be so much easier if Dumbledore just let me strangle him to death, she thought, heaving an internal sigh.

Dumbledore opened session soon after that, but Hermione couldn't find it in herself to concentrate today – inevitably, her eyes were repeatedly drawn to the back of the room, toward one inmate in particular.

Now that she knew the Noble Blacks were responsible for Dad's death – and that by association, Riddle was too – she couldn't stop staring at the young mobster. Wanting to do unspeakable things to him. It wasn't the usual kind of unspeakable things teenage girls wanted to do to gorgeous, rogue older guys, either – the acts she envisioned were decidedly violent, involving her trusty Taser. And the sight of Riddle's face put bile in her throat rather than a typhoon of butterflies.

Killer, she thought fiercely, whenever human instinct told her his grey-blue eyes and hard jawline were beautiful, or if she caught herself mindlessly wondering at what the tattoo too small to read scrawled on his left wrist said. He's a cold-blooded killer.

Only a sicko would shoot his uncle in the head and claim innocence. Self-defense, her butt.

Riddle glanced up, saw her staring, and raised a silver-dotted brow. She scowled back at him, pointedly turning around to face Dumbledore. Out of the corner of her eye, however, she saw the outline of his mouth widen with amusement.

"No, I don't think happiness is the goal here," Dumbledore was saying thoughtfully, in reply to a question from Dolohov. "In my opinion, happiness has never been something we can really achieve, for as soon as we reach it, we grow bored and happiness becomes something new and unreachable again. It's the flaw of mortality. Happiness is always unattainable, forever changing, evolving into something else – or maybe it's just a feeling that comes and go like any other. Sadness, remorse, pity, guilt, pride, triumph…" he listed.

"I'm not asking any of you for emotion, however. What I really want to see come out of all of you, as a product of our weekly meetings, is perspective. Your own perspective-" Dumbledore paused, glancing past the listening inmates and away again. "-and no one else's," he finished weightily.

A thoughtful pause ensued. The peaceful silence was broken, however, when Crabbe volunteered an ignorant comment, and the group quickly dissolved into numerous side conversations and debates. Riddle sighed loudly, rolling his eyes from his isolated corner. Hermione felt exasperated too. Dumbledore's positive psychology wasn't getting very far; their discussions had been going in circles for days now.

When session ended, Hermione was disappointed she hadn't had a chance to talk to Riddle again. She cleaned up the room with Dumbledore mechanically, thinking. How could she get Riddle alone without arousing suspicion? The only time she ever saw him were the three days a week spent here in the therapy group, there was no other opportunity to single him out if Dumbledore didn't have any more partner activities planned. That is, unless…

"Dr. Dumbledore," she said suddenly, distracting the doctor from a note he was jotting down on his clipboard. "Yes?" he responded after a moment, looking up and straightening his glasses, which were either perpetually crooked, or only appeared to be so due to Dumbledore's equally crooked nose. On any account, the doctor's fiddling didn't make much difference.

"Is the invitation to the cafeteria still open?" Hermione asked, striving for nonchalance, although she had the suspicion she entirely missed casual and only appeared gawkishly awkward. "Because I didn't bring anything to eat," she said, "and I'm – uh – getting kind of hungry…"

"Yes, of course," said Dumbledore, arcing his wispy eyebrows in an expression of benevolent surprise. "You could pick something up there and eat in the staff room, if you'd like-" he started to offer, but she interrupted him.

"That's alright," she said quickly. Too quickly, judging by the inquisitive look Dumbledore gave her."I' mean, I'll just eat there, I don't want to get too far away from the filing room, since I'm going there right after and I've got a bunch of work to do anyway," she blabbered, biting the inside of her cheek to stop herself from further word vomit. She knew she was acting strange, but couldn't seem to stop herself from it any more than she could wish her hair magically straight.

She'd already tried the latter. Multiple times.

"Well, if you prefer that," Dumbledore replied, shrugging. "If you change your mind, just ask one of the guards and they can bring you to the staff room – or even to my office, if you'd like to join me and Fawkes."

"Fawkes?" she questioned.

"My pet bird," he said solemnly. "He's a cross breed from South America. One of the last of his kind."

Hermione cocked her head, processing. "Oh, er, well…thank you for the invitation. I'll keep it in mind."

The guard waiting outside took her to the cafeteria without complaint at Dumbledore's request, a part of Azkaban Hermione had only been to once before and in passing. Shortly later, they arrived at a mess hall similar to the cafeteria at Hufflepuff High – at least, similar save for the hordes of overgrown men covered in tattoos crowding the linoleum tables, and haggard-faced security guards blocking the doorways and wielding heavy-looking nightsticks.

Hermione more or less convinced herself she wasn't nervous despite her increasing heart rate, and joined the lunch line winding in front of the inmate-staffed kitchen, glancing around the vast room for a sign of artfully styled black hair or an egotistical smirk. By the time she checked out, she hadn't seen either, to her frustration.

Hermione walked to a half-empty table. She'd started to sit down when a deep baritone voice suddenly spoke up from behind her, stopping and nearly startling her into dropping her tray. "Yo Granger."

Turning around, Hermione registered the powerful presence of the inmates from group, Crabbe and Goyle, with surprise. The enormous men towered over her like high-rise buildings, staring down at her phlegmatically. "Hi," she said, bemused, and painfully aware of her lacking muscle mass as she gazed at the strained bulges rippling underneath their vomit-colored jumpsuits. "Do you…er, need something?" she said slowly.

"Not us," Goyle said.

Crabbe cracked his neck loudly. "Voldemort does," he added.

"Who?" she said, a split second before remembering who Voldemort was. Riddle. "Never mind." She shook her head, frowning at them. "What does he want?"

"To talk to you," said Crabbe dumbly. With a nod of his chin, he indicated something behind her. "He's sitting over there."

Hermione turned around and had to hunt the tables of orange suits for a moment before she finally found a small round table in the center of the mess hall. Sitting around it were more inmates from group therapy: Cuss, Twitch, Dolohov, and – of course – Riddle. There were two unattended trays on the table as well, which she presumed were Crabbe and Goyle's. Why do they all sit together? she thought, eyes narrowing at the oddity of it. She doubted the inmates had all bonded over Dumbledore's lessons in life philosophy.

"And what am I supposed to do? Get up and walk over to him?" she asked, annoyed despite the fact she had been about to do just that five minutes ago. But it was different when she was going to Riddle of her own accord, than when the self-entitled bigot was ordering his giant minions around to come get her. Who did he think he was, the Queen of Long Island? Lazy... She didn't bother to finish the thought.

Crabbe and Goyle didn't seem to know what to make of a teenage girl's rearing indignity. Once again, Hermione was reminded of Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum as the giant men looked back and forth at each other in searching confusion before answering her. "Well, yeah," Goyle said at last, scratching his egg-like head. "I think that's what he said."

Hermione glared at him. Crabbe cleared his throat, looking uncomfortable after a stretched minute in which she didn't let up. "Are you going to-?"

"No," she said, sitting down and picking up her limp hamburger. "If he wants to talk to me, he can come here." She shot them what was either a snarky smile or fierce tooth bearing, daring them to contradict her. Crabbe and Goyle left, glancing back at her a few times in confusion as they went. Ignoring the stares from the opposite side of the cafeteria, she ate her meal with satisfaction that wasn't caused at all by the lacking beef quality of her burger, although that smugness decreased as soon as she realized she had just butchered the perfect opportunity to talk to Riddle by running her mouth again.

Then ten minutes later, he appeared.

"Stubbornness is a highly unattractive quality," Riddle informed her, sitting on the bench across from her without invitation. His straight face was ruined by the amused quirk of his Cupid bow lips and the strange glint in his silver flint eyes.

"Then it's a good thing I'm not trying to attract anyone," Hermione replied, spearing a boiled shrunken carrot the color of sewer water and popping it in her mouth without breaking eye contact. She wasn't giving him an inch.

"You couldn't, unless you time travelled back to the 1960s." At her questioning look, he tapped his own perfectly waved black hair and explained, "Afros were in style then, no?"

Her eyes narrowed. "I'm sorry, I was under the impression you wanted to speak to me – and I was assuming it wasn't about my hair," she said drily.

"You assumed right." Riddle folded his hands and leaned forward, annoyance flashing across his face when she automatically slid back. "Please Granger, I'm not going to knife you in the cafeteria," he snorted, glaring at her with frosty silver eyes until she reluctantly moved back. Glancing away from her and surveying the mess hall tactfully, he casually said, "Look. I know you've been asking around about me-"

"You do?" she said, startled.

"Yes." He frowned at her interruption. "But I can answer some of your questions…in return for a few answers from you. I thought we could have a little questionnaire for fun." He smiled, but the effect was decidedly more cunning than reassuring. He looked like a cat planning to drown the canary in his bowl of cream. Albeit, a very attractive cat with obnoxiously high cheekbones.

Hermione also had the eerie premonition she was the canary in this scenario.

But his proposal was too good to be true. Riddle was "allowing her" to ask him questions? Not only questions, but the very questions she thought she would have to stealthily slip into conversation over weeks of side comments and intricate planning, only able to finally gain information from after hours of strain and careful scheming. Now, all she had to do to get answers was to in turn answer his questions.

Except Riddle might not answer her questions truthfully.

Except he most assuredly wouldn't.

Still, Hermione knew the opportunity was too good to pass up on – and what could Riddle possibly ask her that mattered? She hardly had anything to hide, except for an almost police record, and regionally popular antivirus program. "Deal," she said, and before he could say it, "Me first."

Riddle looked irritated he had been beat, but he nodded and waited for her. After a moment of thoughtful deliberation, she asked, "Do they work for you?"

His dark brows slanted, the chip of silver in his right brow gleamed at her like a coin. "Who?"

"Them." She pointed at the table Riddle had just vacated, where Cuss, Twitch, Crabbe, Goyle, and Dolohov sat. He glanced over his shoulder, iron eyes narrowing when he saw the four inmates she spoke of. Turning back around, he fixed her with an indecipherable stare. She didn't so much as blink. "Do they?" she pressed.

"No. They're friends." He didn't break eye contact, but she knew a liar when she saw one. She hid a smug grin.

"Alright," she said slowly, tapping her chin. "What about-"

"My turn," Riddle interrupted, and he didn't hesitate before demanding, "Where did you hear that name? The Noble Blacks."

"I didn't hear it, I found it."

His gaze sharpened. "Where?"

"One question at a time," she reminded, wanting to cackle evilly when Riddle appeared to restrain the urge to strangle her. This was much more fun than she'd originally imagined. She asked, "Is your father Cygnus Black?"

"Foster father," he corrected, with surprise. He seemed to be both puzzled and perturbed by her interest in his ancestry. Suspiciously he said, "How do you know about Cygnus?"

She shrugged, tracing a crack in the table, and hyperaware of his gaze on her all the while. "Family history research. I came across the name by chance," she lied, putting emphasis on family when she most definitely shouldn't have. If her pride was a fault, her aggressive need to best people at everything was going to be the death of her, she thought.

Riddle raised a brow. "Are you saying you think we're related?" he said, grinning.

She scowled. "No- and you already asked your question," she said snappishly. He lifted his hands in surrender, blinking innocently. "Why were you eavesdropping on Dumbledore and I yesterday?" she shot out, pleased to see Riddle taken aback by her demand. Take that!

But Riddle quickly recomposed himself, clearly a master of enigma, replying, "I wanted to see if you two would talk about me." He looked at her through his long, spider-leg eyelashes with barely concealed cockiness. "And you did. Why was that, by the way?"

She wavered before answering. "Curiosity isn't a crime."

"Really? Because you sound awfully defensive." His eyelashes fanned, long and spiky as raven feathers against the slightly unhealthy pallor of his face, and he slyly traced a slow circle on the back of her hand with his finger before she could yank it away. The touch shocked her, although not as much as Riddle's next words. "Have a crush, Granger?" he murmured.

"You wish," she snarled.

Riddle snickered, the sound low and ill-used, like rusted bike chains. Subconsciously, he licked the point of his canine tooth as he weighed her. "Whatever you say, sweetness."

"Don't call me that."

"Fine, Gremlin then."

Hermione growled through her nostrils. He winked at her.

"Let's cut the crap," she said suddenly, having had enough, and straightening. Riddle sat back, smiling like he'd just won some sort of game – and who knew? Maybe he had. "I know all about your little organization," she declared, "and what you did to your uncle-"

"You've got theories, and not a grain of evidence to prove them," he corrected lazily, waving his elegant hand carelessly. He was so unconcerned by her threats that he even reached over and stole one of her French fries off her tray. Hermione's mouth opened and shut as he chewed it, going on, "Evidence is what you want, but you're stupid to think you'll be getting that from me, or anyone else. People have been at this game far longer than you have, Troll Doll. You can tell your boss that, and thank your lucky stars I haven't already arranged your murder-" His voice lightened ironically. "-yet, that is."

Furious he'd called her stupid, Hermione grit her teeth and reigned in many curse words. Something else Riddle had said had tripped her up. Your boss.

Boss? What was he talking about? she thought, bewildered. Did he actually think she was part of some…some gang, like the Noble Blacks?

Huh. She could do something with this.

"Why not?" she asked, batting his sneaky fingers off her tray before he could kidnap more unsuspecting fries. Riddle scoffed.

"Because I'm not impulsive," he replied haughtily. "There are worse things than instantaneous death, and the price to pay for traitors is very high, I'll have you know – and painful."

Hermione had no idea what Riddle meant by traitors, but she gathered that either someone must have betrayed him, or the Noble Blacks were betraying somebody else. She didn't understand, and Riddle must have seen the confusion flicker across her face before she could hide it, because his expression suddenly changed from gloating to rapt. He leaned forward, searching her eyes intensely enough to make her heart skip more than one beat, and Hermione swallowed, cursing inwardly.

"What?" she said nervously, restraining the urge to pull back. His beauty was dizzying this close, and the waves of threat rolling off him ten times worse. He was so close to her, in fact, she was worried he was either about to kiss her or bash her head in.

"You don't know anything, do you?" he said abruptly. He sat back and his sharp jaw jutted with anger, he hissed, "Who the hell are you? Are you even anybody? Or are you just a- an actual volunteer?"

Feeling highly awkward, Hermione shrugged one shoulder. His nostrils flared.

"Listen…Granger, I'm going to tell you a secret," Riddle started, so softly and quietly she strained to hear him. As she leaned in to listen, she had the sudden image of Little Red Riding Hood bending closer to the Wolf dressed as her grandmother, drawn in by the Wolf's false, sweet voice. What big teeth you have, Grandmother… Yes, my dear, all the better to snap your twig-like bones and tendons in my mouth with…

"I'm not a normal guy," said Riddle, almost generously. For once, Hermione had the feeling he wasn't being arrogant, but telling her the truth. "You can't trick and manipulate me, because you're feeling particularly nosy, or because you think I'm too stupid to catch onto you. I have the ability to kill you, personally or indirectly, and as I see fit." His eyes hardened, suddenly more ice-blue than grey, and whatever remained of Hermione's naïve triumph, curled up and died.

"I don't care how high and mighty you think you are," he sneered, glaring at her. "In fact, I don't care about you at all. All that matters to me is that you know where the two of us truly stand – and that you mind your own business. Trust me, Granger, you don't want to know the things I've done, nor what I'm willing to do to those who…irk me. You are starting to irk me."

Under the table and her impassive staring, Hermione's hands curled into fists.

Riddle's death glare disappeared, he smiled plastically at her and got to his feet. "Consider this a friendly warning, Granger," he said chipperly. Plucking up a few more of her fries, he calmly strode away from the table, and Hermione watched him go, every inch of her prickling with heat.

If she thought she despised Riddle before, it was nothing compared to the thundering rage and hatred she felt now. The jerk deserved whatever sentence the judge served him – and she fiercely hoped it was the right one. Life-long. Top imprisonment. She was going to do everything it took to make sure his High and Mighty Self stayed behind bars, until his grandchildren were nothing but dust in the earth, broken graves.

Riddle would be begging for mercy by the time she was through with him – and he wasn't getting any friendly warnings from her.

AN: Chapter 10 is complete! Hurrah! Thanks to everyone who read and reviewed again, and please leave me your beautiful thoughts down below. ;) Next chapter: Hogsmeade Ave.

Kisses!
ImmortalObsession