Notes: And now we're on to plot... or something like plot. Or maybe just something. Thanks for reading.

WARNINGS: sexual content

30. All This Away, and Me Most Wretched Make

Draco isn't particularly sure which part of England he stands in. He isn't even sure it's England, although he doubts the Order would have safehouses on the continent.

Wherever they are, the sea is a distant memory. Windswept moors stretch as far as the eye can see, desolation personified.

He hurls a diffindo at a boulder—the only interruption in the landscape for miles—and relishes the catastrophic explosion.

It's petty to take his frustration out in such a juvenile way. Draco no longer gives a damn.

He's in bloody free fall and no matter how much he scrambles to haul himself upward—or at least stop his descent—he keeps sinking.

His mother waits in Azkaban. By this time, she likely knows her husband is dead. She does not know her son killed him. He has no interest in telling her.

It doesn't actually matter right now. He can't go anywhere until the Order clears him and that isn't going to happen until the lot of them decide Draco isn't going to revert to his Death Eater ways. It's a decision that could come tomorrow or in ten years.

Once again, his life is out of his control.

At least this time, he's on the right bloody side.

He sets the field in front of him on fire. It doesn't catch; the damp moor snuffs out the flames in mere moments.

The ground crunches behind him and he swings around, wand raised.

Tom halts, hands rising. "Don't shoot."

Lovely. Draco's pulse thunders in his temple as he takes in the other boy. Tom wears his usual leather jacket and dark jeans. His boots are caked in mud, a product of the damp earth that stretches for miles. His hair sweeps gently over one azure eye and his lips are set in a grim line.

He looks like a model on the cover of a Muggle magazine as he stares into the grey depths of the horizon. A bloody poster child for teenage angst.

The effect is magnetic, making all Draco's blood rush from his brain. He forces his gaze out to the blurred horizon. Anywhere but the boy beside him.

"What are you doing out here?" Tom sounds genuinely concerned.

Draco just barely resists growling low in his throat. "I wanted to be alone."

"So you could destroy the countryside?"

So he could bloody breathe.

Something deep in Draco snaps. He hisses and slashes his wand. It's a simple spell, nothing Tom won't be able to parry with the mere bat of his hand.

But instead of blasting harmlessly into the grass, yet another scar of his aggression upon the landscape, Tom hisses and drops to his knees.

Draco lets out a panicked yelp as he collapses beside the other boy. Tom's jacket is torn in a ragged line across his chest and Draco can see brilliant scarlet welling below.

Tom stares down at the wound, frantic eyes fractured by shock. When he does nothing to heal himself, Draco acts.

"Episkey," he murmurs, tracing the line of the bloody gash. Tom's pale flesh knits slowly together.

When Tom still does nothing but stare, Draco mends his clothes as well.

His knees are damp now, the chill of the moor seeping into him, but he doesn't dare rise. Tom's eyes have gone hollow and his strong frame shudders far more than the chilled ground warrants.

Draco edges closer. The other boy doesn't so much as blink when he places a hand on his arm. Draco trails his fingers over the supple leather of Tom's coat until he reaches the column of his throat. Tom's pulse flutters like a trapped bird beneath Draco's fingertips. He traces the line of Tom's neck, then his jaw.

Still no response.

The chill that creeps down Draco's spine has nothing to with the damp ground.

He eases forward until his forehead presses against Tom's. The other boy's gaze is horribly vacant, as if he were removed from his body in the blink of an eye.

Draco's exhale is an uneasy shudder.

"Talk to me, Tom."

The muscles of Tom's jaw spasm, but he says nothing.

Draco presses closer, until their breath is one. Five minutes ago, this position would have oozed sexual tension. Now Draco feels only mounting terror singing through his veins.

"Please, Tom. You're scaring the bloody shit out of me."

Tom shudders, as if plunging into the depths of an icy sea. When he speaks, his voice is a foreign, broken thing.

"I thought I understood… I thought it would be worth it."

Draco cups Tom's face between his palms, searching the depths of his broken eyes. "What would be worth it? What's happened to you?"

"I tried to ignore it. To pretend I still had it. I told myself if no one knew, it was as if it hadn't happened at all."

Draco can't make any sense of Tom's incoherent muttering. "What happened, Tom? You know you can tell me anything."

Tom's stare turns feverish as he finally focuses on Draco. "Every bit of magic has its price."

Draco's guts tangle into knots. "What price did you pay, Tom?"

There's a rough laugh, like broken glass. "I thought I was powerful enough to overcome the toll. I thought I wouldn't have to pay. But even Death himself eventually pays."

Tom's smile is possibly the most disturbing thing Draco has ever witnessed. He unwittingly lets his hands drop away from the boy's face.

"Tom?"

"Ironic, isn't it? I set out to destroy the part of me that had become arrogant and thus, foolish. And in the end, I'm the fool. I can't escape my nature, no matter how much I try."

Draco takes a steadying breath and tries to put the pieces together. Tom's inability to defend himself against Draco's elementary attack. His ranting about payment due. His constant insistence that Draco perform the necessary apparation spells.

Harry's comment about Tom's choice.

The truth slams into him like a reducto.

For a long moment, Draco can't begin to process it, to understand a world where the Dark Lord would ever make that choice.

But Tom isn't the Dark Lord. He's a boy who's plumbed the depths of human suffering not as a tormentor, but as a victim. He's a boy who hides his emotions, but is beholden to them nonetheless. A boy who loves too deeply for his own good, but will take the words with him to the grave.

Draco's fingers curl into Tom's jacket, hauling him forward. The dark boy is slack against him, his ebony curls falling across Draco's tear-stained cheek.

Draco doesn't want to say the words. If he says them, it has to be true. If he doesn't, they can pretend a moment longer.

Tom hisses into his neck, a ruin of sorrow and primal anguish. A cat without its claws. A flower without its petals. A wizard without his magic.

"Merlin," Draco murmurs, a single broken syllable.

"Make it stop," Tom begs.

Draco knows he can't. This agony is something beyond his comprehension and far beyond his ability to repair.

"Does Hermione know?"

"No."

"You have to tell her."

Tom's face is pure chaotic agony when he pulls back, moisture clotting his sooty lashes. "I can't."

"You have to."

Tom's lips press and tremble. "Look at me. What can I possibly offer her now? She needs safety and stability. I can't even stop a first-year spell."

Draco certainly didn't see himself needing to convince Tom Riddle his love for Hermione Granger is enough when he stormed out of the safehouse this morning, visions of their lips pressing seared onto the back of his eyelids.

He sighs. Change. It is perhaps his only constant.

"She needs you, Tom, not your magic. Not the person you were. Hermione has no use for the Dark Lord. For that matter, neither do I. What we see in you, it isn't skin deep and it isn't dependent on your power." Draco presses his eyes shut and forces the next words past his lips, no matter the tiny rips they tear into his heart. "You love her more than anything else in this world. You wouldn't have given up your magic if you didn't. Trust that love and you will be more than enough for her."

Tom pulls back a fraction, his glassy eyes searching Draco's face. Draco has no idea what he sees. He likely looks as devasted as Tom.

The dark boy caresses Draco's cheek with the back of his hand. "I never deserved you."

Draco leans into his touch, unable to resist the familiar comfort.

"We have to stop, Tom."

Tom fractures further, his hand shaking against Draco's skin. "I'm scared, Draco."

It's something he never expected to hear from the other boy's lips. It's proof of just how far they've come. Of how important it is that they make this right.

"I'm falling for you, Tom." Draco gives a sharp shake of his head. "No. I've already bloody fallen. But I see how you look at Hermione. I'll find someone else, someday. But you? There will never be another Hermione Granger, Tom. Not for you."

Draco wants to be wrong. He wants Tom to need Draco as desperately as he needs Hermione. But he knows he is right.

Tom gulps down misty air. "I can't lose you. I've lost so bloody much already."

Draco can't imagine what Tom must feel right now. To be stripped of his magic is inconceivable. "You won't lose me as a friend, just a boyfriend."

"You promise?"

Azure eyes sear into him, wide and desperate. In this moment Tom appears nothing like the Dark Wizard he once was. He is only a boy, lost and scared, reaching frantically for any comfort he can find. He no longer has the power to make the world bend to his will and he is just now experiencing the helpless anxiety that brings.

Draco cannot bear to deny him this.

"I swear." He presses a chaste kiss to Tom's trembling lips. "We'll find a path through this together. I promise."

Draco pulls the boy into his arms, settling his chin atop Tom's ebony curls. The boy with all his soul, but none of his magic collapses against him. The gray mists close in on them, the chill of the moors biting deep.

Draco no longer wants to burn the world to the ground.

He wishes he still did.

*BREAK*

Her back aches, the harsh line of the doorframe cutting into her shoulder. She could move. But if she moves, then she admits her vigil is pointless.

Hermione's not ready to give up on Tom or Draco.

Her head hits the wood with a dull thud, a hysterical giggle clogging her throat. Hope. There's a reason it was the last thing out of Pandora's box. It's more destructive than all the other evils combined. It works into a person's marrow and transforms them, twists them until the person in in the mirror is a desperate stranger.

She knows all too well its power.

Hermione held on to Harry too tight, too long and when she put her faith in him, in the hope of his rescue, she paid dearly.

Then there is the battered, broken sort of hope that pulled her from one day to the next in the depths of Malfoy Manor. She survived. She ought to be thankful for its herculean strength, for her ability to endure all varieties of horror.

But she isn't. She doesn't want to be here, with this broken body, with these memories that make her want to tear her skin from her bones. She thinks surviving might just be the worst.

And yet, there is still hope.

There is still Tom.

It hardly makes sense to her. Hermione certainly can't explain how he inspires her to hold on, to endure. He is a boy with a darkness in his veins and cruelty on his tongue. He is nothing to hope for.

Her heart doesn't care. Where logic once ruled her, suffering has made mincemeat of it. She is only raw emotion and the echo of pain. He may be a refraction of the purest evil, but he is her light.

Before, in Germany, she imagined her wounds closing slowly, calm knitting over agony. It was an illusion, a necessity. A choice to ignore what lay beneath.

Now that she has nothing but time to think, she understands she was merely surviving. She might not have had a cell around her, but she was still encased in fear and tension, in the knowledge that Voldemort and his cruelty lurked just around the next corner.

Her body learned to relax, to allow the touch of those she trusted to keep her from harm, but her mind was in simple denial. A denial that held right up until the moment she stood in this safehouse and realized there was nothing left to run from except the demons inside her head.

She knows Draco has no such luxury. He's escaped the frying pan only to be dropped into the raging fire of the Order's wrath. He will likely pay in some small measure for his choices, but she has faith he will survive their scrutiny.

She will fight for him. Not because he eventually saved her, but because he is her friend. Because in the midst of this madness, they toppled the barriers between them without a second thought.

Sometimes, she imagines a world without the war, without prejudice. Would they have found each other sooner, the two cleverest pupils of their year? Would his scars have been shallow enough for him to write his own destiny, separate from the Malfoy expectations?

They will never know.

But she will ensure he has a chance to chart another course during what is left of this life.

And Tom.

Hermione's breath catches, heartbeat stuttering. Tom. Where she has found freedom, he has entered into bondage. It's his choice, but that makes it no less true. She knows he could leave at any moment, could choose to take his knowledge and his power and wreak havoc in another corner of the world.

That he doesn't fuels the most pernicious of her hope.

She can't even be sure what she wants from him. But one thing is certain: she wants him here.

Her eyes fall shut, her head lolling against the door. She'll wait just a few more minutes.

"Hermione?"

Her vision swims. Her neck screams in pain as she tilts her chin upward. It takes an inordinate number of blinks to realize Tom and Draco are staring down at her. She blinks again. They both look like Hell on Earth, eyes rimmed by red, skin sallow and ashen.

Hermione's on her feet in an instant. She sways, knocking into the door. She grips the doorhandle. "What happened?"

Draco lets out a rattling breath and Hermione's pulse spikes. Whatever it is, it's bad. The blond runs a hand through his windswept hair before stepping forward. He clasps Tom's shoulder, a gesture of solidarity and something deeper Hermione can't decipher. Sapphire and storm cloud gray eyes lock and hold. Tom seems to solidify, as if he is truly drawing strength from Draco's gaze alone.

The dark boy nods, subtle, but unmistakable, to his lighter counterpart. A thousand mysteries pass between them before Tom turns to Hermione.

His smile is paper thin, a poor imitation of his usual cocky confidence. Draco gives Hermione a lingering look she can't begin to interpret before he turns the knob of his door and disappears, leaving Hermione and Tom alone in the dimly lit hall.

Tom clears his throat, eyes flickering away from Hermione. "We need to talk."

"Okay."

Her pulse is a raging staccato. Tom's sudden reluctance to meet her gaze, his splintered confidence scares her more than any threat of violence could.

Tom nods toward the door behind Hermione and she turns the handle. They enter silently, the click of the lock behind them echoing off the barren walls.

Tom has done nothing to claim the space. They could be in any Order safe house, in any room. Hermione wonders if he ever truly had his own space, between his time at the orphanage and Hogwarts. It seems unlikely he ever had a room of his own before.

With that particular pang resonating through her, she studies him. He twists the onyx ring frantically about his finger as he bores holes in the floorboards between them.

"Just bloody spit it out," she says, voice softer than her words. "It can't be that bad."

Tom let's out a cracked laugh, his handsome features splitting into the picture of misery. His voice is rough, as if he has been screaming or crying for hours already. "I rather think it is."

Her heart threatens to smash through her ribcage. "Please, Tom, just tell me."

"I haven't said the words aloud," he admits softly. "I'm not sure I can."

She takes a step toward him and he retreats, slamming into his vacant desk. Hermione freezes in place, terror like lightening in her veins. She has never, not once, seen Tom Riddle retreat.

"God, Tom," she whispers. "Please…"

He squeezes his eyes shut. His hand goes unnaturally still, frozen on the dark ring.

"I… I made a mistake. Well, no, not a mistake. A miscalculation. I knew it was possible, but I imagined it was a remote possibility." He tears both hands into his ebony hair, an echo of Harry at his most aggrieved. "Or maybe I did know and I lied to myself. I don't know…" His eyes snap open and she's faced with a thousand shards of blue. "I lost it, Hermione. I lost my magic."

The breath goes out of her, as if his words are physical blows to her chest. Her brain can't wrap itself around this impossible truth. She croaks, "all of it?"

He nods miserably, ebony waves falling to obscure his ruined features. "All of it. Except perhaps the last few drops. I seem to still be able to see magical buildings, pass through anti-Muggle wards and that sort of thing."

"Merlin, Tom."

He lets out a sound halfway between a scoff and a laugh. "And you'd think I'd be angry, right? I've spent my entire life wanting to destroy the filthy Muggle scum who treated me like dirt, who are dirt."

Hermione doesn't dare move. She lets his anguished words land like blunted arrows upon a bed of hay, harmless despite their rancor.

"I should want to kill them, to kill all of you who led me here. I should find this fate worse than death. To become the lowest of the low? It should be unbearable." His mouth splits into a rotten grin. "But do you know what I feel right now, Hermione Granger? I'm not bloody disgusted. I'm not ravenous with rage."

He shakes his head, dark hair flying in a wild halo. "No, not a single one of those things. Instead, I'm bloody terrified. And do you know why? Because I'm frightened I won't be able to protect you without my power."

Hermione's knees wobble and she collapses onto Tom's bed. Her lips part, but she can find no words.

Tom doesn't seem to notice her reaction. He's still caught up in his own misery. "Years of working to gain the power I needed to conquer the Wizarding world, to eradicate foul blood and now, I'm one of them and I don't even care." He extends his hands in front of him, turning them over. "I'm nothing but a bloody Muggle now and the only reason that bothers me is you."

Hermione finds her voice. "You aren't the same person who created that diary, Tom. You haven't been for some time. You can't compare how you feel now, to how you felt then. Or even how you'll feel six months from now."

"If I'm not him, then who the bloody hell am I, Hermione?"

So many things.

She tries to describe them. "You're brave and strong—not magically, but truly. You're a man who writes his own destiny, who refuses to be defined by his past. You're capable of such empathy, Tom, of such depth of emotion. You're nothing like the hollow beast we defeated. All you share with that evil creature is a face from his past and even then, you've made this one your own."

He drops to the bed beside her. This close it's clear his eyes are rubbed raw and his pale cheeks are stained by salty trails.

"I never wanted to be Tom Riddle. That's why I chose to be Voldemort."

"So chose something else again. Something better."

"And you expect me to simply be Thomas Devereux, Muggle?"

Hermione cups his face, angling his head upward until his eyes tangle with hers. "Would that truly be so awful?"

He shudders beneath her touch. "I don't know."

"Then find out."

Tom's eyes squeeze shut, his lips trembling. She trails her thumb over his bottom lip. His mouth parts with a gasp and his eyes snap to hers.

"Draco and I ended things. For good."

Now it's her turn to shiver against him. His chapped lips brush across her thumb and down the palm of her hand until they come to rest at her wrist. Her voice is a foreign, breathy thing as she asks, "what does that mean?"

He nips gently at her wrist and quivers blossom across her skin from head to toe. "It means…" he presses a petal soft kiss to her flushed skin, "that nothing stands between us."

His hand replaces his lips, rubbing enticing patterns across her sensitive wrist. "I may be bloody at sea when it comes to everything else, but you, Hermione, remain crystal clear."

It's exactly how she feels. Hope convulses dangerously within her fragile chest. "I can't promise anything, Tom, but…"

She takes in the mess of him. The lost and desperate gleam in his splintered gaze. The slump of his shoulders and the patchwork of tear tracks across his alabaster skin. The rough knots in his silken ebony hair. He is utterly undone and he is looking at her like she is his only salvation.

A barrier breaks deep within her, fear transmuting into something heady and warm.

This is Tom. This is the boy who has only ever put her back together, even when suffering was the price. The boy who has broken himself irrevocably for her.

It's her turn to pick up his pieces.

He lets out a shocked breath as she climbs slowly into his lap. His eyes are wild and wide as Hermione settles fully against him. Aside from the one moment with Draco at the shore, she hasn't been this close to a man since… before.

But Tom's heat doesn't frighten her, doesn't trigger any urge to retreat. She only feels delicious warmth spread from where they press together, singing through her veins in hot licks of desire. She presses further into him and he scoots back until her knees rest on the bed on either side of his hips.

She feels the tension in his thighs grow as he tries to hide his growing arousal from her. She grinds down on him and a moan falls from his lips.

"Don't hide from me," she whispers.

His hands come to rest on her hips, loose but thrumming with repressed power.

His sapphire eyes knit back together as he asks, "are you sure?"

"I'll tell you when to stop."

He takes hold of her, lithe fingers pressing deep into the contours of her hips. Hermione gasps when she truly feels the shape of him against the apex of her thighs. There's a moment of panic, but then she focuses on him, on the ecstasy that crosses his angelic features when they touch.

This is Tom and she trusts him with far more than her body. She trusts him with her broken soul, just as he clearly trusts her with the ruin of his choices. The intimacy between them is far deeper than the physical.

He is gentle, careful with every caress and brush of his lips despite the building heat between them. Her sweatshirt goes first and she shivers until his lips find her skin and draw heat into her in an instant. Her fingers tremble on the zipper of his leather jacket and he covers her hands with his own, guiding them through the motion.

With their outer layers removed, Hermione brushes an experimental hand under his black tee. His abs twitch and flex at her touch, his eyes darkening to burning pits. She holds his charged stare as she guides the fabric up and over his head.

His breath hitches as she traces the contours of his chest. She has seen him like this more times than she can remember, but never has she had the freedom to explore, to feel his satin skin react to her caresses. She brings her lips to the ridge of his collar bone, relishing the soft moan that escapes him.

Hermione takes her time as she works her way down his broad chest and tight abdomen. That he is objectively handsome has never been a question, but knowing that he is hers alone changes everything. He is so much more than the sensual lines of muscle and angelic features. He is a promise of a future yet to be written.

Tom collapses back, bouncing against the bed as he surrenders to her ministrations. She drinks in his breathy pants and wanton moans like a traveler at an oasis. She wants to remember every moment of his surrender to her.

When she gets to his belt buckle, his hands press into hers, halting her.

"We don't have to."

She unhooks his belt. "Let me do this."

His gaze curls her toes. "If you truly want to."

"I do."

They work his jeans off, leaving only black silk boxers that do nothing to hide the effect she has on him. She runs a hand along the hem of the material and then the length of him. His hips jerk, but he keeps his hands fisted into the quilt and his eyes locked on her. The message is clear. She is in control here.

He lets out a broken, perfect whine when she slides the final layer down his trembling thighs.

Hermione smiles up at him, heat lacing the curve of her lips. Absolutely nothing about this reminds her of the Manor. Relief courses through her as she lowers her lips to trace his bobbing arousal. Tom's lips part, his eyes rolling back in his head.

She brings her hand around the base of him and begins to explore. She's only done this a handful of times with Harry and then her cheeks would flush with shame before she got terribly far. But Tom's reaction is too sensually wanton for her to feel anything akin to shame. He writhes beneath her, pale skin stretching over hard muscles, red lips parted by the pant of her name. It makes her feel powerful, a world away from embarrassed.

His eyes never leave hers, although sometimes she forces them skyward with a particular flick of her tongue or pull of her lips. Sweat begins to gleam over the sensual landscape of his body. It makes her want to taste every millimeter of him.

"I…" he swallows and tries again, "I'm going to…"

She smiles, her lips stretching around him as she sucks harder. A strangled groan tears from Tom's lips and his hips piston upward. She keeps her lips fastened to him even as her mouth fills with salty brine.

Her eyes water and she chokes a bit, but she swallows everything as she releases him.

Tom stares at her, gaze soft and warm like honey in the sun.

"Thank you," he murmurs, reaching to pull her to him.

She tastes the salt off his pectorals and the slope of his neck as she crawls up his sculpted body. His skin quakes beautifully at her touch.

Tom's lips are a hot brand as they consume her. He must taste himself coating her mouth. The thought makes heat claw between her legs, sharp and insistent. She straddles his hips, bringing his rekindled arousal to press against her throbbing core through her jeans.

He pulls abruptly away from their heated kiss. His lips are nearly as bruised and red as his swollen eyes. He shakes his head, dark hair sticking to his damp brow.

"Not like this. Not today."

Hermione can't help the frustrated whine that escapes her lips, despite knowing he's correct. She isn't even sure she's ready for that particular step.

His deep laugh vibrates him against her, sending delicious friction between her legs. His expression is pure wicked sin when he says, "that's not to say I won't repay the favor."

Hermione can't control her shudders as his agile fingers work the buttons of her jeans. He slides the zipper down and tugs the loose fabric until it bunches at her thighs. He doesn't bother to remove her jeans before he slides his fingers between her legs and teaches her the most detailed lesson in pleasure she's ever received.