Chapter 6
1938
It starts in a bathroom. The second-floor girls' lavatory, to be precise.
Little Tom hasn't had his growth spurt yet. As an agile twelve year-old, he can sneak around corners without being seen. Sometimes, many times, he doesn't want to be seen. He has learned the secret passages by heart. He knows how to make himself invisible. He likes to spend time by himself and think, away from his noisy schoolmates. What he likes most is to eavesdrop. He always tries to listen in on older people's conversation, teachers and students alike. Tom Riddle knows the value of information. He's still too small to subdue those who are bigger than him and he has not learned enough spells to ensure their obedience. The best he can do is bide his time and watch and listen. Stash the hallway whispers like galleons in a vault.
Lately, though, the whispers haven't only come from teachers and students. Lately, the whispers have come from the walls. Little Tom is alarmed, at first. Walls are not known to whisper. These whispers are different, though. Commanding, but also inviting. The creature behind them seems to know him, seems to know that he likes to listen. The whispers follow him to class, follow him to meals, follow him to bed.
Come find me…come down and find me…come down to your lair…you have not visited in such a long time…
Little Tom does not understand. He is frightened, but he rather enjoys the feeling. He likes being scared, because he senses there is a great power at Hogwarts that has singled him out.
At night, he tosses and turns between the sheets. The nightmares aren't really nightmares. He's not the one getting hurt. The brilliant amber eyes stare at him through a small mirror. The gaping mouth is full of sharp knives. He turns his head and the creature turns his head too. He shuts his mouth and the knives disappear. His bed suddenly feels wet and cold, but he is running hot with a terrible fever and the icy stone beneath him soothes his nerves. He crawls through the sheets like wet tunnels and rubs his flesh against the corners. He slinks through layers of dirt and grime, but always comes back clean.
He wakes up, each morning, in a pool of his own sweat, his body overexcited. It feels almost like a romance, a forbidden tryst with the unknown.
It takes him weeks to figure out where the whispers in the wall are taking him.
One evening, after dinner, he follows the voice as it slithers up to the second floor, down an empty corridor. The hissing grows stronger as Tom nears the girls' lavatory. But then, it is drowned out by human voices, muffled, but still audible. He can hear two girls talking. Fighting, rather.
Tom quickly adopts the familiar pose of the eavesdropper. He scurries closer to the double doors. They have been magically locked with a slightly more advanced spell, but Tom manages to break it on his third try. He slides his fingers gently over the parting and the doors give way. He sneaks a look inside.
"…been trying to help you, Myrtle! That is all I've ever tried to do!" the angry voice berates.
The first girl is standing with her back to him. For a moment, all he can see of her is a mane of wild, tangled curls that reaches down to her waist. Then, a few more details emerge. A sweater has been tied haphazardly around her waist, covering half the length of her skirt. He can see a red "H" sewn on it.
The other girl is facing him. Though she seems younger, her appearance makes her look old before her time. Her sour face is contorted in a nasty snarl. Her lower lip trembles and her eyes are wet with unshed tears. Riddle vaguely recognizes her: a miserable Ravenclaw who always hangs about the dungeons, waiting for the older Mulciber brother to come out and talk to her.
"Why? Why do you think I need your help? What makes you so much better?" she sneers.
"I don't think I'm better. But I know what it's like to be an outsider, and I'm telling you that no matter how much you mirror his hateful attitude, he will never see you as an equal. He will only keep treating you in a way that makes you feel worse about yourself –"
"Oh, very rich coming from you!" Myrtle jeers, fighting back tears. "You're telling me off about Mulciber, while you have Potter and Weasley wrapped around your little finger."
"It's not like that at all. Fleamont and Septimus are different –"
"No, they're not! You're simply jealous because they only see you as the know-it-all friend who helps them with their homework. It's pathetic."
"Myrtle –"
"Can't you see? They're only friends with you out of interest," the other girl talks over her. "Face it, Hermione, you're not their equal either. You just pretend you are."
The girl called Hermione is clearly rattled by Myrtle's words, to judge from the slight shiver that runs down her back and unsettles her curls, but she remains calm.
"You're obviously hurting, Myrtle, and I can understand your frustration, but you don't know what you're talking about. You're angry with Mulciber, not me. My situation is very different from yours."
Myrtle opens her mouth and closes it. A dangerous little smile suddenly dimples her cheek.
"You know what? You're right. Our situations are different. I may be a Muggleborn, but at least I'm not a pathetic Mudblood whore."
The reaction is swift. So swift that Tom does not understand how Hermione did it. One moment, Myrtle is calling her a whore, the next the snivelling girl is raised into the air and slammed against the opposite wall with a heavy thud.
Tom's lips part. He had not even seen her draw her wand.
Hermione's hair almost crackles with electricity as she takes a few steps forward.
Myrtle is held up against the wall. Her eyes are wide with fear. Her feet scuff against the tiles, trying to find purchase. She whimpers.
"I want you to think carefully about your words and actions, Myrtle," Hermione speaks very calmly, although Tom can hear the rage boiling underneath. "I want you to think about who your friends and enemies really are. I've always tried to be a friend."
Hermione gently lowers her an inch, but not enough for the girl's feet to touch the ground.
"Do not make me your enemy now," she warns, flicking her wand menacingly.
Myrtle growls under her breath, a hateful look in her eye, but she is not stupid enough to bait the lioness. She lowers her head.
After a few moments, Hermione lets her go.
Myrtle does not wait for the older girl to speak. She pushes past Hermione angrily, running out of the bathroom and almost colliding with Tom in the process. He stands back in time.
Myrtle's whining follows her down the corridor and eventually dissolve into silence. Tom nears the door again.
Hermione is leaning against one of the sinks, arms on each side, staring into the mirror.
"I shouldn't have done that," she murmurs softly, pulling back her curls.
"She deserved it," Tom speaks out. He hadn't meant to. He really hadn't, but there is something about her that demands a response, like fuel to kindling. He cannot resist.
Hermione looks up, startled.
Her chocolate-brown eyes widen. She had not expected an audience.
Tom tries not to blush as he withstands her gaze. There is something both gentle and scouring in the way she examines him.
He gives her a small, disarming smile, the kind that always makes the adults around him coo in appreciation.
The tension in her shoulders slackens. She smiles back.
Tom feels wonderful warmth pool in his belly. No one has smiled at him like that, or at least, he cannot remember another occasion.
They stand like that for a few moments, until Hermione lets go of the sink and walks towards the exit. Towards him.
She passes near him. Tom opens his mouth. He wants to ask her about the spell, but Hermione lifts a forefinger to her mouth and presses her lips against it in a show of silence.
No, it's more than that. She's looking at him expectantly. She's asking a favour.
This is an understanding.
Tom lifts his own forefinger to his mouth and nods.
Hermione gives him one last smile before she vanishes down the corridor.
Tom shivers as he stands there with a finger pressed to his mouth, almost like a kiss.
After a while, he lowers his hand. He walks inside the girls' lavatory.
He stops in front of the sink where she had rested her arms. He touches the chipped enamel. It still bears a trace of her warmth. He looks in the same mirror.
Come down and find me…the creature whispers invitingly.
Tom swallows thickly. A pang of hunger like no other seizes his entire body.
Yes, I have. I've found you. And he thinks about the older girl with static in her hair.
In a sense, the creature led him to her, and she led him to the creature.
A few moments later, his eyes land on the snake outline on the side of the faucet.
Little Tom sits at breakfast, sandwiched between his hare-brained housemates, and stares across at the Gryffindor table. He stares and stares.
Hermione absentmindedly stirs the teaspoon in her tea as she turns another page of her book. The chatter around her doesn't seem to bother her. She is ensconced in her own private world.
What is that world like?
He follows the motion of her fingers around the spoon. He thinks about her mouth and her smile and the pact they sealed.
He keeps wondering if she'll look up, if she'll notice him.
She does not.
It burns him a little, but in a pleasant way. It is like the whispers in the wall, torturous but seductive.
He hasn't told anyone what happened in the bathroom, and neither has Myrtle, from the look of things. She must be scared of Hermione.
Good. She ought to be.
He wants to make Myrtle just as afraid. He wants to make everyone in this school balk at his presence. He wants to be just as powerful, more powerful. Hermione would notice him then, wouldn't she? More than that, she'd see they have something in common.
We both hide our rage, we both make it small, but it's not small, he thinks, as he watches her.
Hermione smiles at something Weasley tells her. She rolls her eyes fondly and passes what looks like an essay over to him. Weasley squeezes her shoulder and makes a big show of thanking her.
Tom's lower lip curls in distaste.
She must be a good friend to those in need. She tried to help Myrtle because she saw a kindred spirit, someone like her, but she was wrong there. Myrtle did not deserve her friendship. Those two boys don't either. They're far too stupid. She is wasting her kindness on them.
He can be kind too to those who deserve it. He can appear friendly.
He clears his expression, unclenches his fist under the table.
Yes, he can be like that, if she wants him to.
He is tempted to follow her to class and stop her in the middle of the corridor to tell her. He wants her to know what he's found in the lavatory.
Thanks to you, he'd say. Without her, he feels he wouldn't have found the Chamber, not really. Would she like to see it with him? She seems like someone who appreciates knowledge of strange, forbidden things. It wouldn't hurt her. Nothing would. The Chamber listens to him.
Childish fantasies, of course. He knows he can't really approach her. She's about to graduate. He's barely twelve.
He writes about her in his diary instead.
Hermione Granger, Gryffindor, best student in her year. Friends with Potter and Weasley. Muggleborn. Special, but not only because of her blood. Impressive wand casting. Fiery temper. Merciless when insulted. Wild, tangled hair. Kind, dark eyes…
We share a secret.
He doesn't get a chance to speak to her before she graduates. She leaves Hogwarts and he thinks he will never see her again, not until he leaves Hogwarts too.
All he can do in the meantime is gather knowledge. Listen and watch. Catch traces of her name. Tempt people into divulging information about her.
He knows that talking openly about her would be strange. Why would a Slytherin boy be interested in a Muggleborn witch? He's not, or he knows he shouldn't be. But he cannot forget her. There is, and always will be, something thrilling and forbidden and eerie about their moment in the bathroom. No one else has ever made him feel like that. There are other girls and boys he entertains along the years, makes them despair of his caress, but all the while he feels nothing. None of them really register, only her and her finger on her lips, on his lips, telling him to be quiet, telling him to keep this between them.
The first time he strokes his cock, he knows he shouldn't, but he thinks about the static in her hair and the way she slammed a girl against a wall. He comes all over his hands. He licks the seed from his thumb and smears the rest on the stone snake's eyes above him. The Chamber seems to roar with his desire. It wants her too. It wants not to be empty.
When the basilisk becomes too hard to control, when it demands flesh and blood to fill up that emptiness, it makes all the more sense to give it Myrtle. She deserves it.
He secretly hopes that Hermione will find out. Maybe she will read about it in the papers and remember Myrtle as the insufferable, snivelling girl who called her horrible names. Maybe she will feel bad for a few moments, but then secretly, deep down, she will not feel bad at all.
Maybe she will remember him.
1943
It is clear she doesn't remember him.
Perhaps the small memory of him is buried along with her other school-day reminiscences, waiting to be unearthed. But he doesn't want to rush it.
When he first saw her in the Great Hall after an absence of five years, his breath left his lungs. Lungs burn without air. He burned quietly for hours, pretending to be perfectly indifferent when Dippet introduced her to the students. He pretended not to know her when Malfoy asked him who the "bint" was. He pretended all the way to the Common Room, but when he lay down in bed that night he wanted to scream and gnash his teeth and tear Malfoy to pieces.
His anger surprised him. He was angry because – because the obsession was still there, because it felt like no time had passed at all since that day he'd caught her in that second-floor bathroom. He had never really surpassed the moment. It was a fresh wound, deliciously raw.
Had he known that it could be this easy, he would have killed Irma Pince himself. Lucky for him, she died of her own accord.
No, not luck.
Fate.
A divine intervention.
It has to be.
There is no other explanation for the unfolding events, ever since that day in the girls' lavatory.
Salazar led him to her and now he has returned her to him.
It's inevitable.
She may wear her hair differently now, she may affect maturity and wisdom, but that sweet, merciless rage must still be there, inside. Their secret understanding. That long-ago smile – the smile of naughty, ugly children.
What else could it mean that she has returned?
The very fabric of history – both Muggle and magical – has been set in motion for him and her to meet again.
The Heir of Slytherin is fated to remake the world, but he won't have to do it alone, will he?
Of course, the lioness is hard to impress, difficult to befriend. All worthwhile predators are.
He's tickled by her show of authority, captivated by that seductive sternness of the indomitable mistress. She wears it well. She is every inch the companion and ally he deserves.
Her stubbornness angers and delights him. She fills him with rage and desire, while she acts indifferent. But she cannot dismiss him. He knows she thinks about him too. He's seen it and felt it in the sting of her magic, in the strength of her wards, in her desire to catch him, in her desire to hurt him.
She's curious about him, she can't help it. She watches him, when she thinks he can't tell. Her eyes have betrayed her many times.
She doesn't know it yet, what they truly share.
But she'll find out, eventually.
"Mr. Riddle."
"Madam Granger."
He passes by her desk with a smile. It's meant to be, after all.
A/N: thank you for your reviews! I hope you found this chapter interesting!