AN: Thank you all for the reviews! I'm glad we're all together on hating Meredith. ;) A reviewerasked why Hermione couldn't just use her magic to manipulate Tom and the answer is the same reason why she magicked all the teachers except Dumbledore. Her magic (which will be explained later) can only be used on weak-minded wizards. For instance, if she tried manipulating Dumbledore he would sense it and overpower her, and then we'd have a big problem on our hands...
More on that in future chapters.
"I'm shocked," Meredith said, touching her parted lips in mock surprise. "The French whore is all alone with no one to protect her! What were your Gryffindor friends thinking, leaving such a fragile thing all alone?" She batted her eyelashes in a very Elfy-like fashion, but the effect was ruined by that cruel smile on her face.
Hermione gritted her teeth. "Listen, I don't know why you hate me so much-"
"No, you listen," Meredith interrupted, a snarl marring her features. "I've had it up to here with all the bullshit you're pulling. You've got boys trailing after you like lost puppies, you're whoring around with Tom Riddle – hell, I bet you're shagging Black, too – and Malfoy even had the nerve to tell me off for hexing you-"
"Don't you mean trying to hex me?" Hermione said sweetly.
"Not this time. You've got it coming, bitch," Meredith retorted, lifting her wand. "Dissendium!"
A jet of red light flew out the end of her wand and Hermione stepped aside, easily dodging it. "Meredith, seriously. I don't want to fight-"
"Flippendo!"
This jinx wasn't as clumsy as the first and Hermione had to raise her wand to deflect it. She shoved down anger. "Meredith, stop it now!" she shouted and flicked her wand at a poor body bind. Do not under any circumstances attack students unless absolutely necessary, Miss Granger, Dumbledore had said. Did this count as absolutely necessary? Did his rules even apply anymore? She'd broken so many of them already.
"Diffindo!"
OUCH! Hermione yelped, grabbing her stinging arm. Another spell started to form on Meredith's lips but before she had even done the wand movements Hermione's own spell was flying from her wand, hurtling the girl ten feet into the air before throwing her down so hard she couldn't breathe. Hermione walked over and gazed down at Meredith where she lay on a pile of dead leaves and grass, gasping for air. "Had enough?" she asked.
Meredith got to her feet, shaking with anger, and was about to fire off another hex but just then the Quidditch Pitch released thousands of cheering students migrating to Hogwarts. The game was over. "You're gonna pay for this, Granger," Meredith hissed and with one last dirty look she joined the crowd.
Hermione rolled her eyes. What a drama queen.
"Hermione, where the hell have you been?"
She turned around to find Minerva glaring at her, arms crossed over her chest, and a flushed, sweaty Augusta beside her. "Well?" Minerva pushed. "Did you find that necklace or what?"
"Necklace?" Hermione repeated, bemused. Minerva's eyes narrowed. "Oh…right! No, I didn't find it unfortunately."
"Uh-huh," Minerva said disbelievingly.
"Oh let it go, Minny," Augusta interjected, recognizing the look on her friend's face. "We won. Let's go party!"
Minerva stared at her for a minute and sighed. "Alright, alright," she conceded. "Let's go."
Hermione started to go with them, but stopped when Augusta turned back and, waving, shouted, "Catch you later, Hermione!"
She froze and watched them – and all of the other students – empty the grounds. That was right…she wasn't in Gryffindor anymore. She was a Slytherin now and by definition not allowed to Gryffindor house parties. Suddenly, an overwhelming feeling of aloneness engulfed her and she frowned under the rain, wrapping her arms around herself. She was a mess. Soaked, covered in mud, angry at Dumbledore for dying too soon and not telling her how hard this task really would be… Angry at herself for breaking so many rules so quickly.
She missed her real friends.
By midnight Hermione had already read 'Destruction of Dark Texts' two times over but still hadn't figured out what it was she did wrong. Hopefully Riddle would be able to figure it out. Riddle. Was she crazy to make a deal with him? Dumbledore had severely warned her against the young Dark Lord. It was better that she stay under the radar, he'd said, but fate seemed to have a different plan in mind and here she was, getting ready to meet Riddle so they could have a secret meeting.
What alternate universe was she living in?
She tied up her hair and patted her robe pocket, which was bulging from the book inside it. She intended to return 'Destruction of Dark Texts' since she had already destroyed several other library books. The least she could do was bring back one.
Hermione hurried downstairs and slipped out of the Common Room, stepping into the chilly corridor. Her eyes fell on a lithe figure leaning against the stone-brick wall, just outside the torchlight, and she nodded at it. "Tom," she greeted.
"Hermione." He smirked, the only part of him visible in the dark, and started walking. She fell into step with him.
"Where are we going?" Hermione asked.
"The library."
"Oh good, I have a book to return."
She could almost sense him rolling his eyes at her. "That's what you're worried about? Not unleashed Dark magic and getting caught roaming the castle, but books?" he scoffed.
"What do you mean 'unleashed Dark magic'? What do you know that I don't?" she said sharply.
"Do you really want me to answer that?"
"Oh, shut up," she muttered. It was much easier to talk to him in the dark when she couldn't be intimidated by any death glares or his archangel looks. "Answer the first one."
"I don't take commands, Miss Granger."
Now she rolled her eyes. "Ok, ok. Please answer the first question."
They were at the library now and he opened the door, stepping back to let her through. She hardly blinked and led them to the very back of the library, where Riddle lit a few lamps with a wave of his wand and sat down at a table. She joined him after leaving her book on the librarian's desk.
"Well, like I said before, you messed up the ritual," he began, giving her a severe look when she opened her mouth to interrupt. She shut it. "The books weren't properly destroyed. Now, their physical forms are gone but their essences are still here-"
"…in the Forbidden Forest!" she finished. Of course! He raised a brow. "Sorry, continue," she added hastily.
"As I was saying, their essences are hanging around, and how lethal they are depends on what type of and how many books you used. What books did you use?"
"Just some texts on Dark spells," Hermione said, averting her eyes as if she were embarrassed – and to avoid Leglimency.
He stared at her for another minute before finally saying, "I still don't understand why you would want to destroy some books, but if they were Dark spell based that would explain why they acted so violently last night."
At this, Hermione perked up. "So how do we get rid of it?"
Riddle shrugged. "That's why we're here." He paused and added with a mischievous smirk, "In fact, think of it as a…group project."
She scoffed. I'm doing a group project with Lord Voldemort. Fabulous. "Well, I'm going to go 'research,' if you need me." She waltzed off into the Restricted Section and let out a sigh of relief when she didn't feel his eyes on her anymore. It would take some time to get used to that intense gaze of his.
Thirty minutes later, she returned with twenty huge tomes floating in tall stacks around her. She pointed her wand at their table and the books landed there gently, billowing clouds of dust into Riddle's face. He coughed and scowled, looking up from his own text to glare at her. "Did you really have to check out half the library?"
"I'm nothing if not thorough," she replied sweetly and sat down across from him, grabbing the book closest to her and starting to skim the pages.
They read in silence, the only sounds in the library coming from their steady breaths and flipping pages. Hermione's eyes started to droop after an hour, but when she looked up Riddle looked as alert and focused as ever. Was he even human? She huffed.
His eyes flicked up to meet hers and he cocked a dark brow. "Something wrong, darling?" he said, voice thick with sarcasm and smooth as laden honey.
"Just tired," she said, rubbing her burning eyes. "Can we call it a night?"
"Sure…since you can't seem to handle staying up past bedtime."
She shot him a dirty look and waved her wand, sending all their books zooming back into place on the shelves. "Unlike you, I'm not an insomniac. I like sleep."
"Don't be ridiculous, I'm not an insomniac," he scoffed.
"Uh-huh." She flicked her wand. "Nox," she cast and they were plunged back into darkness.
"I've never heard of that spell before," Riddle murmured from right behind her and she yelped, whipping around and shoving him. Or what she assumed was him, at least.
"Don't sneak up on me like that!" she hissed, further enraged by the whispery sound of his laughter. "Would you stop that?"
He did, so abruptly she wondered if he'd disappeared altogether. She couldn't see anything and all she could hear was the sound of her breathing. She swallowed. "Er…Tom?" she whispered.
"Yes?"
Oh good, he hadn't ditched her. She slumped in relief. "Which way is the exit?" she asked. She knew the library front, backwards, and side-to-side…just not in the dark. She was as blind as Trelawney without her giant specs in the dark.
She jumped like a cat when she felt his hand wrap around hers and a snort came from the blackness, near her ear. "Relax, Hermione. I'm just answering your question," he murmured and proceeded to pull her through the library, around tables and somehow dodging every stray book on the floor.
"Do you have this place memorized or something?" she whispered, grabbing his robes when she stumbled over a rug.
"If I said yes..."
"To spare your feelings, I wouldn't reply," Hermione replied, allowing herself a grin. Now that she thought of it, she was having more fun sneaking around the library with Riddle than she ever had with Augusta and Minerva. Weird.
He chuckled. "You've never done that before."
"Don't be such a baby."
"So now I'm an insomniatic baby," he said gravely. "I never thought I could learn so much about myself in one night."
She shrugged. "I'm only here to help."
They finally found the doors and Riddle pushed them open, walking through with her. It was slightly less dark in the corridors, where torches threw flickering lights into the air and scattered wobbly halos across the stone floors. Still eerie, but better.
"Hermione, when you said you lost your family to…a Dark Wizard…earlier, did you mean Grindelwald?" Riddle asked after a few beats of silence.
Hermione tensed and bit her lip. She knew that playful banter wouldn't last long. "Yes," she finally said, a lie but hopefully not a transparent one.
Luckily, Riddle seemed to believe it.
"Is that why you moved here?" He looked at her. "To escape?"
"Yes, my parents were in Germany working with wizard friends of ours against Grindelwald and he found them and... murdered them, including the rest of my family which he found soon after," she said slowly. "I was at Beauxbatons at the time and it was deemed unsafe for me to be there, since he'd probably come for me next-"
"A teenage girl?" Riddle said, surprised.
"Yes," she said ominously, more weight in her words than he'd thought her capable of. "You'd be surprised at what Dark Wizards would stoop to."
"Anyway," she continued after a pause. "I was transferred here since Hogwarts is a lot safer and…that's that. I'm hiding out." She shrugged.
It was silent again and she was sure he wasn't going to speak, but a few halls away from the Slytherin common room he did, speaking in a voice so low it was almost lost under the sound of their footsteps. "My mother died when I was born."
Hermione looked up at him, not so much shocked at the information but the fact he told her, and glanced away hastily when she saw he was gazing emotionlessly ahead of them. She swallowed, aware she was treading on shaky grounds. "And your father?" she asked cautiously.
He tensed and she knew that'd been the wrong thing to say, but there was no taking it back now. She stiffened in return and waited for him to turn on her and say "Crucio!" but instead, a hiss of air escaped Riddle's clenched teeth and he replied curtly, "I don't have a father."
Hermione blinked at the venom in his words. More surprising than them however was that she understood what he was saying. She couldn't believe it, but she did. She even...almost sympathized him. It didn't make any sense considering he had killed nearly everyone she'd ever known or cared about and it was terribly ironic, but there it was. For this Tom Riddle, this young Voldemort, she felt sadness.
Not remorse though. Never remorse.
"Why did you burn the books, Hermione?" he said abruptly, turning those black eyes on her, and they were burning with curiosity. "Does it have to do with Grindelwald?"
"I can't tell you," Hermione repeated. "For the record though, no, it doesn't." Before he could ask another question she added, "Can we please resume the Spanish Inquisition tomorrow? I'm beat." To emphasize her point, a huge yawn escaped her, contorting her face as she stifled it in her sleeve.
Riddle's brows drew in frustration for a split-second, but then the emotion was gone – tucked away behind another layer – and he was smiling at her again. It was unnerving, Hermione thought as she stared into his suddenly void eyes, how easily he could hide his true feelings. She never knew what he was really thinking.
They arrived at the dungeons and Hermione rapped the stone bricks with her wand before he could, uttering "pure blood" with more than a little bite. The wall slid back to reveal the empty common room and Hermione paused, glancing back at him unsurely. "Are we going to meet tomorrow?"
"Yes, at midnight." Riddle smirked. "Can't wait to see me again?"
"Like I said, you are ridiculously overconfident and egotistical," Hermione said, shaking back her hair like a regal lion or some sort of queen. "I can hardly look forward to more of your self-directed compliments."
His eyes narrowed. "And I'm hardly looking forward to more demeaning comments and academia-themed lectures, you brat," he retorted, lip curled.
They were both lying.
Hermione grinned. "Well, since my presence seems to be such a burden to you I suppose I'll go now," she said. "Goodnight, Mr. Riddle."
She started to pull away and he tightened his hand around hers, stepping close enough to make her tense up. "Without giving me a goodbye kiss?" he taunted. "How rude of you."
What? Hermione stared at him, shocked, and gasped when his hand trailed down her back. "Dizzy?" Riddle asked, a smirk the size of Great Britain on his face.
"I'm just sleepy," Hermione snapped.
He cocked a brow. "And a little touchy, apparently."
They stared each other down. After a moment Hermione stood on her toes, smoothing her hands over his chest, and leaned into him. He stumbled back a step, surprised, and tensed when she put her warm mouth on his ear. He stayed still, waiting to see what she'd do next, and tilted his head toward her when her eyelashes tickled his cheek.
BANG! She hexed him into the hall with so much force he fell on his arse and from inside the common room Hermione howled with laughter at the enraged look on Riddle's face. She wiggled her fingers at him. "Goodnight, darling," she giggled a second before the wall slid shut.
Tom cursed.
AN: The next update is on Christmas and miiight involve a showdown between queen bee Meredith and Hermione. Please review and tell me what you think of the chapter so the next one can be even better! Happy Holidays!