on fire, bone sore
ii. take everything
The thing about Tom, she sometimes reminisces, is that his touches aren't always just integumentary. She may never stop feeling him in her skin. Like a curse that lingers long after a finite incantatem, waiting to find its end through mush, marrow and bone; like a laceration that spills her insides onto flat surfaces for him to examine at his leisure.
A graze of his finger, a displacement of her breath.
A slide of his hand, an unbalancing of her gut.
Years may pass and continents may separate them, but she may never stop feeling him like a bullet lodged deep inside her chest.
And that damning boy will never stop looking at her like he knows exactly what he's doing.
.
.
(a bit over five hundred and something days earlier)
Hermione hears three things: a howl, a thud, and the violent crash of the Whomping Willow.
Everything green around them shivers.
"That's a bastard of a tree, isn't it?" Harry remarks glibly.
"It might not have worked." Hermione worries the bottom of her lip. Her teeth scrape dried, chapped skin onto her tongue. Salty. Tinge of blood. Disgusting. It's a terrible habit, but she can't find two cares to rub together; she is wrung out like a sponge and hasn't slept in days.
"It'll work," Harry says with all of the confidence she doesn't have. But Harry's always had remarkable faith in her abilities.
He settles back onto the grass, crosses his ankles with such insouciance that she can almost forget that it is just past midnight, they have hours to go, still, and her entire future hangs in the balance.
Hermione tucks her shaking hands into her robes and attempts nonchalance too. "How's yours going, then?"
"Eh." Harry makes a face. "At this point I'll be happy just to pass."
"And Ron?"
Harry gives her a sidelong glance. "You're stressed enough. Sure you want to know?"
"No," Hermione decides after a beat. "I don't. So. Your research is all set?"
"I think my shield's strong enough. Everything bounced right off. Haven't tested it out with an Avada yet, though."
"Good," Hermione says absently, eyes intent on the Whomping Willow. "Good. What will you be testing it on?"
Harry yawns. "Snakes."
This time, Hermione makes a face. "Harry."
"Hermione," Harry chastises in much the same tone. "You're testing out a highly volatile, notoriously cagey potion on our DADA professor. You don't get to lecture me on ethics."
"Or lack thereof," Hermione argues. "I got Remus' consent. He is an adult, he is of sound mind, he can make his own decisions; he has been made fully aware of the risks, the threats to his—"
"Well I guess I'll just have to draw up an NRA for my snakes to sign, won't I?" Harry stretches back onto the grass, stares up at the night sky. "Might be tricky seeing as they don't have hands. Do you think verbal consent counts? Do Parseltongue-to-English dictionaries exist?"
"Stop being so …" Hermione falters, trying to find a suitable adjective, then gives up, scrubbing her hand down her face instead. "This project is very, very fucked."
"Agreed," Harry says with a nod. "Bad enough we still have to sit for N.E.W.T.s. Heartless—no, pure fucking evil, in fact— the DME. Subjecting us to this much academic agony on top of an already agonising academic year. Playing fast and loose on what we can and can't do." Harry sighs. "But then again morals are all made up, anyway."
Hermione peeks at him through her fingers. "You sound just like - " she stops short.
"Just like?" Harry turns his head, forcing her attention.
"Never mind," Hermione mutters, and drops her hands. She turns back towards the Whomping Willow, deliberating. "It's been a while. I don't hear the usual screaming."
"The haunting, mind-breaking, blood-curdling wails of transformation-induced delirium," Harry corrects.
"That, too."
Harry props himself up on his elbows and tilts his head, listening, just like her. "You don't think?"
She strains her ears. Bar the Whomping Willow's exuberant interpretative dancing, they hear only silence.
"It either worked," Hermione whispers, "or I just killed our professor."
"Do you think the Wizengamot would make an exception for murder, if performed in the interest of academic expa—OUCH!"
"I need to listen," Hermione hisses, categorically not admitting to smacking her best friend to avoid a debate on subjective morality. She can't stomach it at the moment.
Rubbing the back of his head, Harry grumbles, but acquiesces.
They wait in silence.
A few more minutes pass, until they hear a scraping. The Whomping Willow freezes in the midst of strangling an unfortunate bird, and then they see Remus Lupin emerge from the gnarled, twisted roots. He drags himself to his feet and steps around the dead bird, pale and weakened in the moonlight, but miraculously, miraculously alive, free of his usual scrapes and bruises.
Hermione gasps, clutching at Harry.
The entire world seems to tip over.
Her stomach lurches upwards only to tumble with a splat against her tongue.
"Miss Granger," he calls, giving them a warm if not delirious wave, which they belatedly return. "I think you just earned yourself an Outstanding."
And with that, their Defense professor collapses to the ground.
Harry starts to get to his feet but is understandably distracted by Hermione rolling over and vomiting the contents of her guts onto the grass.
"You," Harry says, eyeing her still-retching form, "have a really weird way of celebrating, have I ever told you that?"
.
.
(six hundred and something days earlier)
Her hand is steady as she stirs her potion with her wand, countering every turn with a sharp flick towards the centre of the cauldron.
She is breathing, she is focused, she is absolutely on the verge of a breakthrough and absolutely not on the verge of a breakdown.
Pounded aconite stills sears even through her dragonhide gloves, and she holds her breath as she carefully sprinkes it in.
And then all she has to do is wait for the potion to turn umber. Which it does, much to her relief.
Checking her egg timer – Slughorn had masked his sniff at something so muggle in his lab with a painful-sounding ooh – she carefully ladles a small amount of the potion into a glass vial and places it on the table, hoping against hope that she had stirred it correctly, that it won't curdle.
The potion remains smooth and liquid and very, very umber.
Hermione almost cries.
She reaches for her notes and scribbles down her observations, allowing herself to feel a short reprieve from her anxiety brought on by months of inconsistencies and failure.
"Marvellous, Miss Granger," Slughorn breathes. He squints an eye, sniffs her cauldron. "On the right track, it seems."
He turns, leans down to inspect her myrrh, currently still pickling in carrow spider ichor.
"What are the acid levels for this?" Slughorn asks, noting its viscosity.
"I bumped it up to seven percent," Hermione answers, still giddy even as her eyes blink at her professor blearily.
"Seven?"
"At five percent, pathogen growth was still detected," Hermione says, mechanically at this point, "and Khepri wrote in Myrrh and Trematodoses in Wizarding Egypt that acid levels raised gradually, and in miniscule amounts, should eventually hold off on any degradation."
"Too right you are." Slughorn winks, wagging his finger, and with a quick 'ten points to Gryffindor' crosses the room to check on Tom's progress.
(They are the only two Seventh Years doing research advanced enough to merit use of Slughorn's personal potions lab. It was a room that had mystified many a student, and after Slughorn had allowed them its use, Tom and Hermione had enjoyed trading conjectures of what they might find there.
"I bet it's luxurious to the point of indecency," Hermione says as they'd headed there the first time. "Silver finishing everywhere, lots of tacky but well-meaning ornaments. All gaudily Slytherin."
Tom made a face, but agreed. "If his office is anything to go by, he'll have a wingback chair too, for brewing—"
"A massive wingback chair—"
"—overstuffed – leather, obviously – charmed to hover at the right height to stir and chop—"
"Hover?" Hermione tilted her head. "Whatever for?"
"He's not going to be standing all day, is he?" Tom said. "Look at him."
They were too right, because nestled in a corner of the room was the very armchair from their imagination, leather as expected, and Slughorn used it to scour the long shelves groaning under the weight of vials and bottles of various shades and sizes. He was all too eager to float them whatever ingredients they needed, which tipped itself into their cauldron as long as they gave clear instructions, and once, even offered Hermione the seat.
Hermione, determinedly not thinking of arse-dents, had politely declined.)
She hears Slughorn boom praises and platitudes and looks over her shoulder to peek at Tom's progress, but ends up entirely distracted.
Unlike her, he hasn't removed his robes, but hours of fiddling and stirring and jotting and (in her case) floundering seems to have at least gotten him to unbutton it and loosen his tie, albeit only slightly.
Her fingers itch to tug on it, pop open his top button, fist some creases into his shirt, because how dare he look so—so assembled when she is very much undone, unwound, unbalanced by her own damned research.
As if heeding her unwarranted fantasy, Tom straightens up and stretches – his shirt goes taut against his chest and he absently adjusts his tie, effectively tugging it looser—
Hermione turns around so quickly she knocks over her inkwell.
"Shit!" she cries under her breath, gathering up her notes with one hand whilst her other rights the upended inkwell, but the damage is done: her notes are drenched in black, ink pools over the table and drips over the edge and onto the floor, her white shirt is speckled, and Tom's hand is covering her shaking one—
Tom's hand is covering her shaking one.
She looks up with a gasp, not realising when he'd crossed over into her space, and how fast he must have been, and how hot his skin is against hers, and she cannot breathe, and Slughorn is saying something she cannot register, and Tom is gripping her hand tighter, and she barely feels it, and the ink drips down onto her shoes, and her potion bubbles when it's not supposed to—
" … think she's having a panic attack, sir," she hears from somewhere outside her body.
" … works herself to the bone, that one – " says another voice.
" … not breathing, is she? …"
" … got just the thing, here — "
Her head is tilted back, a vial is pressed to her lips – "Open your mouth," someone says, so she opens her mouth, the room is very hot, she feels something cool and minty coating her tongue, she gags, something tightens around her neck, the room is very cold, the room swims back into view, and she blinks and blinks and blinks Tom's eyes into focus.
"Good," he praises softly, "now swallow."
She swallows.
Her senses flood back into her limbs, her mind clears, her thundering heartbeat stutters once then evens out, and she is all too cognizant of his hand around her neck. Of his thumb pushed against her lower lip, catching a dribble of escaped liquid.
"Messy," Tom notes with an amused quirk of his mouth, and she watches him pull his thumb towards that mouth – watches him suck the errant drop off his thumb.
She shivers.
Mistaking her reaction entirely – and thank God for that – Slughorn tuts. "I think that's enough for tonight, Miss Granger – you've worked yourself into a fit. You too, Mister Riddle; you've been at it for hours. I can't have my brightest students burning out this close to a breakthrough, not on my watch!"
"Excellent advice, Professor," Tom says smoothly, stepping away from her. "That's not your regular calming draught, is it?"
"Keen eye, m'boy." Slughorn winks. Again. "It's from my personal collection – a touch stronger than what you'll get from Madam Pomfrey; I keep these on hand for my Seventh Years for occasions such as these—"
Hermione avoids his fond but patronising glance, burning up from embarrassment now, and she clings to it, lets it ground her. She breathes in and out once, repeats the process, before forcing herself to smile at Slughorn. "Thank you, Professor, I – I don't know what came over me—"
"It happens, Miss Granger. N.E.W.T.s. affects even the best of us," Slughorn allows brightly. "Go, I'll sort out the mess."
She cringes at the word, and looks down mournfully at her notes. Mess, the best word to describe her once-immaculately detailed recordings, now a damp pile of ink and botched parchment.
She doesn't have time to grieve for long, because Slughorn nudges them out of the room after clearing the ink on her table. She pauses outside the door, hearing him putter about with their cauldron, buying time.
"You alright, Granger?" Tom prompts. He has her robe folded over and arm and her satchel slung over her shoulder, probably to save the leather from her ink-stained fingers. "Shall we?"
The way he's looking at her, for a still, distressing second she thinks he might damn the ink on her hands and reach out, gather her into his arms, brush her wet eyes shut, tell her everything is going to be okay.
Obviously, he doesn't do any of that.
He also doesn't hover, which she appreciates; just waits for her to draw in a breath – she is much calmer now, thanks to Slughorn's potion – too calm, perhaps, because when Tom slides his hand down the small of her back to guide her down the hall she doesn't feel a thing.
Oh, she thinks, both grateful and disappointed.
.
.
It's silly to think about it, even worse to remember:
The cold steel of his gaze burning the back of her neck, nightdark curls catching the glint of the fire burning low in Slughorn's lab, knuckles jutting out as he curls his hand around his dagger, pianist fingers arranging his chopped stems and roots into a neat pile—
Those very fingers buried in the back of her sweater, fingernails scratching through wool and cotton into her skin, his skin marked black as she gently pries them off of her when they get to their common room.
Her fingers around his wrist, his lashes splayed across sharp cheekbones as he studies the downturn of her mouth, how close they are, and yet how far.
She releases him, finger by finger; he steps away.
She emerges from her bedroom the next day to find him adjusting his tie in the mirror above the mantelpiece – when he straightens his cuffs she spies his wrist still adorned with her fingerprints, and wonders why he hadn't scrubbed them off.
.
.
(a bit over five hundred and something days earlier)
It's fifteen minutes to curfew when Hermione finally finishes dressing, and she takes her time going from candle to candle, humming as she blows them out.
Her limbs feel lazy and languid, the bath having unknotted the nerves in her neck, soothed the ache from her spine, silenced the cacophony in her head. Her bare feet pad across the gleaming white marble floor, and she wonders why it had taken her this long to finally utilise the Prefect's Bathroom.
(Probably her affront at how utterly useless the idea of a Prefect's Bathroom was. Why not a study? Why not a library? Hell, why not a billiards room? Something still communal without the awkwardness of running into your half-naked peers?
Why such unnecessary indulgence?
"You say that like it's a bad word. Do you not know how to indulge?" Tom had asked, resting his cheek upon his fist. His eyes, having flicked lazily from his book to her flushed face – how unnecessarily sensual he'd made that sound – suggest many things: one of them being his unspoken, I could teach you, if you ask.
She had not asked.)
She twists her damp hair into a frizzy knot at the top of her head, secures it with the hair tie Luna had gifted – a wreath of Butterbeer bottle caps, which she was all too happy to accept when she saw Ginny's: a scrunchie made of rabbit feet - and ignores the tendrils that fall around her forehead and neck, refusing to lie flat.
She sighs. Can't be helped.
Lavender will most likely chastise her for not detangling her curls – Just use the Sleakeazy brush I got you, Hermione, honestly – because that would take ages, potion-infused bristles or no. She definitely doesn't want to risk running into Filch.
It had been Padma who all but shoved her into the room, her eyes rolled exasperatedly. "A soak will do you good, unwind a bit. Maybe then you'll stop badgering us about our research limitations. Which, in case you've forgotten, is due end of the year," she emphasises with a snarl.
The only reason Hermione had even considered it is because, well – if Hermione had managed to rile Padma's Ravenclaw tendencies to over-prepare, she probably has a point.
And it had been a good soak, reluctant as she is to admit, pink and purple and blue foam caging her in wondrous scents and silky petals, deliciously hot, immensely comforting.
Turning all the knobs lining the pool had been fun, too, even though it reinforced her theory that the Prefect's Bathroom was probably Helga Hufflepuff's idea.
She doesn't bother with her tie or the top buttons of her shirt, but does check that it is properly tucked. That her skirt is straight, that her socks are pulled over her knees. Then she grabs – no, not grabs, she's relaxed, remember – her wand to rid the room of gently floating bubbles and jasmine-scented steam.
That's one less room for the Elves to clean up after, she thinks with satisfaction, and slips out of the room on jelly legs, looking forward to sinking into bed.
The lanterns lining the hallways have already been put out, so she follows muscle memory on her way back to the Head dormitory, her wand tip lighting the way.
Her gait is absent of its usual briskness as she walks on, and she's still humming - humming! to herself! - until she hears a set of footsteps somewhere behind her.
Her steps falter.
Peeves' new favourite thing to do was knocking students over and stealing their shoes to gallop them wildly about, and she hopes to God that it isn't him again - but when she raises her wand to illuminate the space behind her, she finds something decidedly more vexatious.
"Riddle," she grimaces, turning fully.
"Hermione," he says pointedly, his arm holding aloft his own Lumos-lit wand.
"Tom," she relents with a sigh. She eyes his crisp uniform, suddenly uncomfortably aware of how her steam-softened shirt is plastered to her skin. "I thought you didn't have patrols tonight."
"Last-minute switch," Tom explains easily as he walks towards her. "Seems someone stuck Goldstein to the table at dinner. He's with Pomfrey, regrowing the skin on his palms."
"Couldn't he just finite it?" Hermione asks. Secretly she thinks Goldstein deserved it for his unsolicited commentary of her wandwork in Transfiguration last week.
"Does he strike you as the sort of person who can think under pressure?" Tom smirks. "How he was appointed Prefect still eludes me."
Hermione doesn't want to agree, but she has to bite her lip to keep from smirking too.
"And what are you doing, flaunting curfew here of all places?" Tom continues, the light from his wand now illuminating her shoes. "We're far from the library, Hermione."
"Contrary to popular belief, I don't actually live there," she snaps. She fights the urge to take a step back as he comes closer. "I enjoy doing other things too, you know."
Tom comes to a halt, hand casually in his pocket, eyebrows rising in interest at the sight of her damp hair, her cheeks still blotchy from the bathwater hot enough for tea leaves. "Such as?"
"I knit socks for the Elves." She does her best to ignore his scrutinising gaze and focuses on the tight knot of his tie, snug against his jugular notch. "I'm in the international wizarding schools pen pal programme. I partake, on occasion, in watching Quidditch—"
"With a wand to your throat, I'm sure," Tom agrees affably.
"I'm a bit of an amateur geologist too," Hermione continues forcefully, "I groom my cat. I spend time with my friends. I have hobbies! And I'm in societies! I enjoy - stuff, and - you know," she gestures vaguely, glaring at his stupid Windsor knot, "things."
"Something tells me you're not in the literary club," Tom says. "Understandable, S.P.E.W. keeps you busy."
"First of all, it's S.P.E.W., not spe—" Hermione stops short, her spiel triggered by habit more than anything. Frowning, she blinks at his tie. "Wait. You said it correctly."
He must be rolling his eyes. "I partake, on occasion, in being correct. Unlike you, I have never missed curfew."
"I've still got eleven minutes." Her cheeks heat up. She crosses her arms.
"And the trek to our dorm takes eight, but you've got to account for the temperamental staircases, so that adds another two minutes. By your standards, you're late." He pulls his hand from his pocket, turns it towards her damp hair. "But I am glad to see you finally make use of our bathroom. I myself find night-time baths invigorating."
Somehow, the thought of Tom doing anything that involves him being outside of their school robes catches her off-guard. Much less doing something that removes him from his uniform completely—
"Padma thought it would do me good," she says stiffly, cutting the thought short. "To relax. Or something."
"She had the right idea." Tom inclines his head in amusement. "Macmillan looked ready to hex you when you suggested he change his research questions entirely."
"We only have less than half a year left," Hermione half-shouts. It echoes in the empty hall around them. "We need to take this more seriously!"
"As you love reminding us all," Tom says. His voice contains none of the ire or sarcasm or downright hatred she sometimes hears from the rest of their classmates whenever she brings up their N.E.W.T.s.-mandated thesis. If anything, it sounds almost fond.
That can't be right.
She drags her eyes from his tie to his face.
He's looking at her neck. It flushes traitorously upon acknowledging his gaze.
"Huh," he says, softer now, and he's close enough that she can see the texture in his hair.
"Hm?"
Tom frowns faintly. "That's distracting."
He sweeps his gaze across her collarbones.
She watches the way his lips shape around his words.
His eyes rest on the red scattered on her cheeks. "What did you use?"
"What?" she asks. Pretends her voice isn't as breathless as it sounds.
"Which tap?"
"Huh?" she asks intelligently.
"You smell," Tom pauses, "different."
"Different?"
"Nice," Tom clarifies.
Her blush deepens. "Oh –"
"Wait, no." Tom holds up a finger. "Don't tell me."
Tom leans in.
She stiffens all over.
All her distress about her half-formed thesis proposal flies from her mind, the usually endless chatter in her head freezes except for thoughts like, Is he going to -? and Nope, nope, no, absolutely not -, and Close, too close too close too close—
Tom leans in, his jaw inches from hers, her lungs constrict with a sudden need for oxygen, her wandlight flickers –
Tom stops, his jaw a devastating distance away from grazing any of her curls, yet the column beneath her ear prickles, prickles, prickles.
Her neck is hot with his breath as he hums a note of approval, and she doesn't know why it makes her toes curl in her shoes, why she has the sudden need to fist her hands into his robes. Doesn't know why, despite her good hour of soaking in the flowered bath, she feels rather unclean all of a sudden. "What are you doing?" she asks without breath.
"Forming a hypothesis," Tom murmurs as he straightens up. "Floral, citrus, gold. Narrows it down nicely."
He has an inscrutable smirk on his face and she wants to smear it off with her hand. Wants to feel the bite of his teeth against her heartlines. Wants him to lick the centre of her palm. She clenches her hand into a fist instead.
"What are you talking about?" she demands, if only to drown out the sound of her overly loud heartbeat in her ears.
Tom nods once to himself, and then his smirk melts into a smile, the picture of innocence. "I'll let you know when I figure it out. Now hurry off to bed like the good student you are, won't you? I'd hate to dock points."
She hates his smile, how indulgent it looks.
She hates how damp her skin feels, sweaty, sticky, an absolute waste of a bath.
She hates how perfect studious Tom Riddle, shirts charmed creaseless, shoes polished to blind, the parting of his hair ruler-straight, is looking at her like he's got a hand up her skirt—
An impossible, impossible thought.
She has to force herself to look away, clearing her throat.
"Petition as hard as you can, but you still can't dock points from me, Tom," she says, as witheringly as she can muster, but all he does is chuckle.
"It's the thought that counts. Good night, Hermione," Tom says in reminder, walking backwards down the hall. The walls grow darker the further he goes; she can't make out the separations in the stone.
Only when she's sure he's rounded the corner does she press her hand to her neck. Where, for those few ruinous seconds, his gaze had lingered.
Her fingers flinch against her throat.
Hot as a fever.
"Fuck," she whispers.
.
.
The thing about Tom, she recalls absently, is that he takes such pleasure in her undoing, looks up when she answers like he's committing to memory her every word only to deconstruct her arguments with a flippant remark, annotates her essays like he has a personal vendetta against her evenly-spaced margins.
She doesn't ask for this – doesn't ask for his attention, doesn't invite him to her study table, certainly doesn't initiate note-passing in class—yet as he brushes past her on their way out of Greenhouse 3, he slips a folded piece of parchment into her hand like they've had years of practice.
She reads the note when she's in the privacy of her bedroom.
Tap three, tap seventeen, tap forty-two, tap eighty-six, writes his illustrious script.
She doesn't want to imagine how long it must have taken him to turn every single one of those faucets, how his brow must have furrowed in concentration as he samples each scent, how his shirt must have gone translucent from the steam much as hers had when she'd turned all those knobs, how he must have gone feral in delight as he claims yet another piece of her—
She crumples the note.
Falls back against her pillows.
Stares at her ceiling, concentrates on controlling her breathing, tries not to think about what he might be doing just a room away. Tries not to think about him wearing her scent like a second skin.
Tries to ignore the dull ache between her thighs.
Fails.
.
.
The next morning when she sees him, she stares resolutely at him— no, she stares resolutely right through him.
The fact that he doesn't look at all bothered shouldn't aggrieve her so much, but it does.
.
.
(five hundred and something days earlier)
Despite sharing a dorm, Hermione doesn't really see much of Tom, preferring to spend her free hours in the library, or her old Gryffindor common room.
She thinks maybe it's something to do with how utterly bizarre it is for her to see him do normal human things. Like yawning as he reads by the fire, snacking – snacking! – on chocolate frogs as he edits his essays, walking around with a half-eaten apple as he sorts his bag for the day's lessons, tugging his tie loose as soon as the day is over.
There's only so much she can take of that.
Her unwelcome reactions to his various states of dress are, however, easy to overlook when he's being a prat.
The library having closed for the day, Hermione had dragged herself back to her common room with an armful of books to find Tom elbow deep in his own work. His robes were off and he had been divested of his tie. Tapping his quill against his folded cuffs, he sent her a weighted stare, and she responded with one of her own, and her arms were just about to give out when he wordlessly pulled out the chair beside him.
They don't do this often.
Study together, that is.
He points out, rather rudely, her tendency to mutter to herself as she reads. She tells him that his habit of pacing the room in thought is just as much an annoying distraction.
"Is that why you always sit facing away from me?" Tom asks, his smile a curling tease.
"Oh, it absolutely pains me to do so, considering how enthralling the sound of your stomping is when I'm trying to read."
Tom frowns. "I don't stomp."
"And I don't yammer," she counters.
"Agree to disagree," he says, and that was that.
The night wanes on and she is now leaning over the table, triple-checking her methodology. Tom slides her research proposal back to her and goes to pull a textbook from their shared bookshelf. "A modified Wolfsbane?"
"Existing Wolfsbane mitigates, but doesn't cure, symptoms of lycanthropy," Hermione explains through a stifled yawn. She doesn't know why she explains, he knows all of this already, but Hermione is never without her preambles. "Werewolves can maintain their sense of self, but transformation is still very painful. I aim to create a potion to ease that pain – or at least the baseline for one. I'm also looking into improving the flavour too, since Re—Professor Lupin says it's unbearable to drink."
"That," Tom slides the book back onto the shelf, "is ambitious of you."
"You sound impressed." Hermione rolls her eyes. "Do try to contain yourself."
Tom moves on to another shelf, sighs at how this one is arranged, and says, "Quite Gryffindor of you, too, to ground your research in altruism."
"I'm sure you didn't mean for that to sound like an insult." Hermione circles a keyword with unnecessary violence. "But do go on."
"Damocles Belby is clawing out of his grave with the express purpose of shaking your hand."
"Quit being riddle-y, Riddle." Hermione lowers her quill. "Out with it."
"Your organising clearly needs work, but you're not unclever." Tom shrugs. He seems to find a promising book and flips to its appendix.
"Wow," Hermione says scathingly, "thank you for that generous compliment. Go on, I know there's a 'but' at the end of that."
"I'm trying to avoid an argument here, Hermione." Tom rests the heel of his foot on the base of the bookshelf while he flips pages. "I'm being thoughtful."
"Uncharacteristically so."
"Well, you know me," Tom licks the tip of his thumb before turning another page, "hate to be predictable."
"That's unsanitary. And I am perfectly capable of having a discussion without – what did you say last time? - without dissolving into—"
"Histrionics?" Tom suggests, failing to hide his smirk.
Hermione blows her hair out of her face.
Prat.
"Don't be chivalrous now, Riddle," she sniffs. "Finish your sentence."
"Is your own work that unfulfilling that you're willing to waste precious study time?" Tom raises his eyebrows at her. "You broke down last week when Binns extended class by four minutes."
Okay, that one hurt. "You're just filled with observations of me, aren't you?"
"I am duty-bound to observe my fellow peers." Tom grins, pointing his thumb at his robe hanging from the peg by the door, where his badge can just be seen. "Head Boy, remember?"
Hermione gestures wildly around the room. "Hello? Head dorm, I am here too."
"And these bookshelves serve as an excruciating reminder of that, every single day – "
"Forget," she huffs, "about the bookshelf. You're clearly stalling—"
Tom lets out a long, despairing sigh and snaps the book shut. "I understand you're no librarian, and I don't expect you to shelve like one – "
"Look here, Riddle—"
" - but if you're going to make a mess out of our books I at least expect some sort of indexing system."
"Listen—"
"Do you want me to look, or to listen? My faculties are a bit overtaken at the moment, absolutely bogged down by this colourful arrangement—"
Hermione brandishes her quill at him. "I want you to answer my bloody question!"
Tom shoves the book back into its slot. "Fine."
"Fine?"
"You limit yourself," Tom says abruptly, looking at her with such enmity that she is, for a moment, stunned. And then he turns his head to glare at the bookshelf as if it had just spat on his shoes. "See, I am willingly walking into a trap at your behest, but my one, singular request of you always falls on deaf ears—"
"How am I limiting myself?" Hermione demands. "Wolfsbane, as you well know, is already notoriously difficult to brew and the slightest deviation of ingredients will result in disaster for the drinker. What I'm doing is—"
"Hardly original, is it?" Tom cuts her off with a snip. "I don't know who told you the path to success was to think lazily, but they were wrong. And possibly on acid."
Hermione's jaw drops.
"Hardly orig—" she starts to say, and then: "Lazy thinki—" which she also halts, before spiralling into: "Oh, and I suppose your research is so inventive, supremely original, absolutely never ever EVER been done, never mind the fact that very few thoughts, ideas or perspectives are original, they're just an existing concept that has been polished, embellished or reglazed."
"I thank you for that compliment," Tom says over his shoulder, his eyes still trained on the shelf as if he'd like to wrestle it into the hardwood floor.
"I wasn't—" Hermione sucks in a breath and stretches her fingers out, presses her hands to the table. She is fine. She is calm. She is level-headed. Her next sentence comes out almost normal-sounding. "You consider your work to be invention, not innovation? I have a follow up question, don't worry."
"Thank you for assuaging my concerns, for a terrifying moment I thought you were going to let this rest," Tom grunts, lowering himself onto his haunches to pry a sliver of a book from a particularly cramped row.
Hermione takes another deep, calming breath, and asks placidly, "What's your research about?"
"Should have led with that," Tom says, straightening up.
She violently massages her temples. "Riddle."
She is going to murder him in his sleep. Strangulation is preferable. His tie was right there, hanging. Or maybe she could get creative with his Head Boy pin—
Tom chuckles. "I'm researching death."
Hermione starts. "Death?"
"Conquering it," he amends with a tilt of his head.
"Like immortality?"
Tom nods. "Like immortality."
"That's been done," she says immediately.
"Not the way I'm doing it."
"And debunked," she reminds him reproachfully.
"Nothing like waking the dead then, right?" He waits for her laugh, and when he gets none he says, "That was a pun, and it was clever because it's relat—"
She cuts him off. "One could argue that easing a wolf's transformation has already been done, just not the way I'm doing it."
"No, you're," he gestures to her with his book, "building on an already-existing potion, whilst I," he points to himself, "am looking to 'debunk' a 'debunktion'."
He might as well be air-quoting.
Hermione scowls petulantly. "That's not a word."
"I'm feeling inspired tonight, maybe I'll go about debunking that too."
He really is an insufferable bastard, she thinks with a mighty heave of a sigh. But then something scratches at her brain.
"When you say 'not the way you're doing it' –" Hermione hesitates. "If not in a Nicholas Flamel way, in what way then?"
"A way that requires a bit more …" Tom bobs his head, "… soul-searching, shall we say."
"You mean like a … "
Tom stares at her, waiting.
There was no way.
There was no way.
"Horcrux," she whispers.
There was absolutely no wa—
He nods.
Without warning, Hermione feels her entire body curl in on herself and shudder.
The way he suddenly smiles at her holds a shocking amount of warmth for a topic so terrible. "Clever," he says, and she shudders again at the fondness she hears.
"How do you expect to do all of," she refuses to say aloud what little she knows of Horcruxes, "that without absolutely destroying yourself?"
Tom laughs then, high and delighted. "Hermione, you do think highly of me."
Hermione blinks. "You're laughing."
"It's funny."
"What's funny about –"
"A purely academic interest in the dark and the unknown? To carry the fundamentally worthwhile burden of pushing the boundaries of understanding, to convert the unknown into the known through the power of inquiry?" Tom smothers another bout of laughter. "No, nothing funny about that. I'm laughing because you think it's anything more than that."
Hermione's pulse stutters, and then, reluctantly, resumes in its normal pace.
Tom watches her face, holding his hand to his chest mockingly. "How evil do you think I am?"
To her utter horror, she blushes. "It's – no, you misunderst—I just. Your topic. Caught me off-guard. It's not exactly," she pauses, captures her lower lip between her teeth, "conventional."
"Well." Tom's eyes flick to her mouth, then back to hers, and then goes back to what he's deemed the impossible task of finding the book he needs. "I'm not unclever either."
Hermione sighs. "Is it as bad as Magick Moste Evil makes it out to be?"
"You mean from its single, uninformative line about how one musn't go looking into Horcruxes?" Tom tips his chin towards the neatly-clipped sheaf of parchment by his open textbooks. "See for yourself."
She grabs his proposal and scans her eyes over his abstract, frowning. Then she flips to his methodology, clears her throat, and begins reading. "Step one, extract a soul from a—" She chokes, her knuckles turning white. "Riddle, this involves murder."
"Only a little," he says reassuringly.
Hermione gapes. "Oh, that's alright then—"
"And that's not the hard part, really," he tells her, really and truly as if murder wasn't the hard part, "the harder part is figuring out how to keep the soul stabilised in 'womb-like conditions' within the stomach of a month-old bull carcass, but I've got a lead with some versions of 15th century stasis charms."
Hermione stares at him, mouth opening and closing without sound, and then she flips another page of his proposal and continues reading with a huff. "You said earlier—just an academic interest, right? You're not planning on actually –" she grimaces, "actually splitting a soul." Her eyes widen the more she reads. "Christ," she swears.
"No, the ritual clearly states you need to call upon the spirits of—"
"CHRIST," Hermione swears again, flipping to another page. "This is fucking horrific."
Tom hides a smile behind the turn of a page. "Think I could get an 'O' for this?"
Hermione squeezes the bridge of her nose. "Riddle, you're an absolute glorified madm—"
"Tom," he corrects sharply.
Hermione blinks. Lowers her hand. "What?"
"If you're going to damn me," Tom says simply, "I'd prefer you use my given name."
Hermione stares at him. Slowly, she says, "You never answered my question."
He waits expectantly.
"Tom," she finishes.
He smiles something wicked. "Which was?"
She groans. "You're not going to be splitting a soul, are you?"
"We've covered this, Hermione."
"Let's speak hypothetically then. If, say, the Department of Mysteries does deem your research worthy of vocation, and you're allowed all its resources, would you experiment with splitting a soul?"
Tom shakes his head, still smiling. "Not a soul, no."
Eyes narrowing, she asks, "You mean, not just any soul?"
Tom nods his agreement. "Not just any soul."
"Seeing as it's unlikely just anyone would volunteer as a test subject, you'd do it to yourself, wouldn't you?"
"Hypothetically…" Tom deliberates, eyes dancing with amusement, "yes."
"Tom," Hermione says quietly.
"Does immortality not intrigue you, Hermione?" Tom beseeches, and appears surprised when Hermione doesn't answer back.
There was an ugly pause. It was so long and so ugly that Hermione loses all feeling in her hands. Tom's proposal flutters down to the table.
"But we're speaking hypothetically," Tom reminds her, carefully. There is something stirring beneath his good-humoured expression. He hasn't looked away, all his objections towards her organising system forgotten.
"This isn't something you can do with just armchair theorising," Hermione states blankly. "I mean. I'm sure you could, you've always been good at extrapolation. But - that's why I asked."
"Well," Tom says slowly. "Now you know."
Another pause. It's only awkward this time. Hermione looks down at the row upon row of his neat penmanship before her. "How'd you even get all this information, anyway?"
"Wrote to my uncle. One of the Peverell brothers – our distant ancestors – held claim over some presumably-missing texts from Herpo the Foul, which now lies in our vaults. He was most willing to send me any references I might need, if I promised to not come home for Christmas break." Tom shrugs. "Difficult choice, I had to compose myself before I could write back of my resounding sacrifice."
Hermione tilts her head. She has never heard him sound so – so bitter. For a moment she can only watch him.
"Stop," Tom snaps suddenly. "You pity me."
"No," she lies. Wait, not a lie, no, she feels—
"You feel sorry for me."
Her cheeks flame. "No I don't!"
"You're thinking, Poor Tom, unwanted and unloved, his presence not even welcome on the day celebrating the birth of our son of God, Jesus Christ himself—"
"Tom," she pleads, "I consummately did not—"
"And now," Tom continues, "you feel absolutely wretched about nagging at my research topic, don't you? The only thing I can find solace in amidst the internalised trauma of my neglectful childhood?"
Hermione snaps her mouth shut.
Tom's lips twitch.
Her eyebrows unfurrow.
"Oh, you arse," she breathes, dropping her forehead onto the table. "You're terrible. Awful. You are evil."
Tom snickers. "You certainly seem to think so."
"And after all that! Your research is super avant garde and sure to turn heads, confound and enrage scholars and thinkers alike, But you don't think my topic is unoriginal." She lifts her head. "You think it's worse. You think it's," she sighs, and she doesn't know why her voice sounds so small, "boring. You think I'm boring."
Tom finally gives up his battle with the bookshelf and stalks towards his chair, sitting down and gathering her hands in his in one fluid movement. "I don't think you're boring. I think you're brilliant. But I also think you're ruled by emotion. You're letting your feelings of whatever gross injustice in the treatment of Elves fuel your career motivations."
Hermione starts to protest, but Tom places a finger over her lips. "Look, I read your original manifesto for S.P.E.W. – edited it when you weren't looking, in fact – and all that bit about narrow-minded, spineless speciesist politicians, I found that rage fascinating." Tom leans closer, trades his finger for his thumb. She is not focused on this, she is listening to him.
"I just think," Tom continues, looking like he's given this much thought, "that it's also limiting. Your good heart deems it a cause worthy to fight for, but you could be fighting for it your entire life and people will still struggle to remember your name. Add to that the circumstances of your birth. Your blood. They will underestimate you," he cradles her chin, sounding so gentle, "because you fight for a cause outside of yourself."
She listens, mesmerised by the low timbre of his voice.
"You'll never be able to affect real change. Real change," he says, running the pad of his thumb across her lower lip, "lies in power. The ability to influence hierarchies, traditions. Your wanting to treat an ailment of a miniscule percentage of wizarding society will hardly do that. It would be a shameful waste of your intellect. But if you put your mind to it—I know you could think just as unconventionally as me. Can't you see that, Hermione?"
It was the way his voice caressed her name.
Her lids fall shut.
"So you see us as equals?" she murmurs.
Tom doesn't say anything. She opens her eyes lazily.
"I don't know why my desperately-faught-for opinion matters to you so much –" Tom starts to say in that way of his, but at her frown he presses his lips together before saying evenly, "I do. At least academically."
Hermione feels – something – swell up inside her.
Until Tom continues: "Which is why this," he turns a palm towards her research chapters scattered around her, "is invariably disappointing to me. You have the mettle to conquer impossible questions and unreadable books and just - knowledge itself, and you choose to gamble away that Gryffindor spirit in a bottom-pile department in support of creatures who abjectly want nothing to do with us?"
Tom's thumb presses down against her lip. She could bite the tip of it, she can taste the salt of his skin against her tongue. She swallows. Tom watches her throat.
"Like you said," she says hoarsely. "I've got a good heart. And Gryffindor spirit. I happen to think those are worth preserving, even if it means never being invited to state dinners."
Tom's mouth tips upwards. "Must we always have to agree to disagree?"
"All that said," Hermione says, ignoring him, "I think I'd be heartbroken to see that go for something as mundane and fleeting as power."
"Not if you can never die," Tom murmurs.
Hermione stares at him for a beat, before licking her lips. Her tongue scrapes over his fingernail. His grip on her chin tightens.
"Agree to disagree?" she finally says.
"Agree to disagree," he sighs and releases her, sounding almost mournful about it.
.
.
(four hundred and something days earlier)
If it's one thing she won't miss about her schooling years, it's Slughorn's tenacity in conjuring up any excuse to throw a party.
"I don't know, Hermione," Lavender mumbles through a mouthful of pins, "Graduation is fair game, don't you think?"
Hermione winces, but doesn't protest, to being prodded with Lavender's wand as the pins dissolved into fine, fine thread. She keeps her mouth shut as Parvati carefully applies lipstick to match her dress – a smoky burgundy, made from a material that floated as much as it fell, charmed to resist creases and stains and all other party hazards, with a high slit that ended somewhere in the middle of her thigh. Hermione had allowed Lavender to drape and pin and tug and fuss over the dress because her final year project was on Transfiguration and textiles, after all.
("Not something to do with Divination?" Hermione asked, dumbfounded.
Lavender smiled coyly. "Divination's always going to be there, isn't it? Nobody's in a rush to do ground-breaking work. But beauty standards are ever-evolving, and parties will live on forever, and this - this is what people are going to remember long after all those legislations you want to pass have passed. Not something a room full of stuffy people have decided on, but how well they wield themselves doing it. Now, how do we feel about something backless?"
Hermione shifted uncomfortably, bit her tongue, and agreed to Lavender's design.)
She steps into heels and helps Parvati with her hair – her own had been tamed into submission under Lavender's critical eye and pointed use of the neglected detangler – and in her old common room they all gather in front of the fireplace and let Collin Creevey take an unhealthy amount of pictures.
And then she is half pushed, half dragged, to the Great Hall.
At the entrance she brushes shoulders with Malfoy, whom she ignores as categorically as he ignores her, but returns Nott's short greeting, even embellishes hers with a wave. She drinks too much alcohol and steps on too many feet when she is invited to dance; raises her cup high when Harry initiates a toast; remembers to applaud dutifully at the end of Slughorn's weepy speech and cheers after Dumbledore's spirited one; turns a blind eye when Ron, Seamus and Dean sneak out halfway and return red-eyed and giggling; when she is pushed on stage for an impromptu Head speech she smiles and pretends there isn't bile rising in her throat, pretends that it doesn't incense her when everyone cackles uproariously at Tom's speech and chuckles politely at hers.
She accepts a dance from Justin Finch-Fletchley, who is high born enough to step smoothly out of the assault of her pointy heels, and when he spins her she sees Tom through the crowd, talking to a Slytherin she doesn't recognise. He doesn't look like he's even contributing to the conversation, since his eyes are roving over her with solemn appreciation.
Then his eyes catch hers. It's too late to look away now.
Justin sways her. Tom takes a gulp of his drink.
Justin releases her only to spin her closer, his arm catching her waist. Tom lowers his cup.
Justin leans in close to make a joke about Slughorn's ice sculptures. Tom's gaze burns.
Justin loosens his grip when the song comes to a close, and Tom promptly detaches from the rather one-sided conversation and stalks towards her.
Justin leaves her side, saying something about getting drinks, and Tom moves closer.
Hermione stays rooted to the spot, bobbed and swayed by the crowd, and Tom moves closer.
Hermione's hands grow clammy, her dress feels, all of a sudden, too tight, and she can now see that Tom isn't wearing black as she'd thought, but a shade of green so emerald – so dark, unappreciated in the hazy golden lighting of the makeshift ballroom.
She doesn't know what to do if he'll ask her to dance.
Say yes, that would be the polite – no, the right thing to do. The socially-acceptable thing to do.
Tom meets her in the middle of the ballroom.
She'll say yes, she decides, and turns her face up to look at him, opens her mouth to say something inconsequential, something like "hi" or "you look nice"—
He doesn't stop.
He walks right by her.
Hermione blinks.
Before she can quite stop herself she's already turned to follow the line of his shoulders through the crowd, and watches as he side-steps people to sweep out of the Great Hall.
She turns back slowly on her heels and sees Justin approaching with two flutes of something sparkly.
And then, with no rhyme nor reason, she walks completely the other way, out of the hall as well.
.
.
Though the day had been brilliantly sunny, a chill had enveloped the castle and the grounds come nightfall. Despite the warming charms imbued into centuries-old stone, Hermione still shivers when she ducks into their dorm.
Their bookshelf is empty. Tom would disagree and call it her bookshelf, but he'd still helped her pack them all away, without magic. They hadn't spoken at all, even as Tom took apart her system and arranged them to his liking in their new temporary home in her trunk.
He is standing in front of the fireplace, staring blankly into the fire. The harsh lines of his silhouette start to blur around the edges as she takes a step forward, waiting to be devoured by the softly-rolling flames. The face of the mantel clock is open, a crystal bottle is out, and a glass of something honey-amber is in his hand.
"Tom," she acknowledges him like she's surprised to find him here, like she hadn't all but stomped her foot when the staircase she'd needed had decided to wander around elsewhere. "You left early."
Tom pulls his eyes away from the fire and takes in the sight of her standing by the portrait hole. "I don't know about you," he says levelly, "but the thought of leaving the one place I've ever considered 'home' doesn't inspire much celebration in me."
She walks into the room, drops her beaded bag onto the table they use to study. "Oh."
"Yes. Oh." He takes a measured sip of his drink, surveying her with eyes that seemed to suck in all the colour from the room. "What's your excuse?"
"If I had one, I would have offered it." She shrugs, stepping out of her heels. The ground seems to rush to meet her and she steadies herself, curling her toes into smooth stone, where countless Head Girls before her had stood before.
Tom's mouth twitches behind his glass. "Careful, Hermione. I might start thinking you enjoy my company."
"Let me have some of that," she says in lieu of a response. She pads over to the edge of the fireplace, pulled by some unknown force, does not waver even when his magic crackles against hers - and holds out her hand.
"You've been drinking all night." Tom quirks an eyebrow. "High tolerance?"
"The highest," Hermione replies. "Not many know that about me."
Tom inclines his head. "I'm honoured."
"The drink," she prompts.
Tom laughs quietly and stretches out his hand. Her fingers graze his as the glass exchanges hands, and she does not shiver. She does not.
She expects him to release the glass, but he doesn't – he merely steps closer, slides his hands down from the glass to wrap around her wrist, gently cradling it as he tips the rim towards her waiting lips, careful not to knock against teeth.
Slowly, slowly.
Slowly enough for just a drop of whiskey to spill onto her bottom lip. Her tongue darts out to catch it. It burns as it coats her tongue, numbs the roof of her mouth. His thumb comes to rest over her pulse as he coaxes her to tilt her head back.
"Can you take that?" Tom asks silkily. Everything about him tonight just seems to slide right off him. She wonders if his robes have been charmed to be impenetrable, untouchable, just like her dress.
She nods once.
"It's agreeable," she confirms, tasting her lips again.
Something spreads across his lips. Not a smile, not exactly, not with that look he has in his eyes. They skate over her face. She doesn't know what he's searching for.
"Have you heard anything about your research?" she asks. His grip is steadying, she feels nothing but his skin against hers. It's peculiar, she thinks, how little everything else matters right now.
"Slughorn has sworn to personally deliver it to the DoM this weekend," Tom answers, a bemused tilt to his mouth. "Bringing along yours, as well, but your department is quite the detour."
She ignores his jibe. "Is that where you're headed after all this?"
"That would be very predictable." Tom rubs a soothing circle against the inside of her wrist. He's tainted her perfume. She wants to bury her nose to her wrist and smell what has become of it.
She pulls away from the glass, just a little. "Can't you ever just say yes or no?"
"You've got a point," Tom concedes with a charmingly sheepish grin. "This is rather predictable of me, isn't it? Drink some more."
He sidles closer, his other hand coming to curve on the back of her neck, his thumb stroking her jaw in a way that makes her part her lips wider. Whiskey tips into her mouth, gathers in her throat, and when his fingers skirt her nape she allows the liquid to slosh against her teeth, before swallowing wetly.
Tom pulls her wrist towards him – her elbow rubs against his stomach, he slides his palm up her wrist to cover her fingers as he turns the glass – places his lips where hers had been, and drains the rest of the drink.
She's pretty sure she can feel her heartbeat in her fingers. Wonders if it beats against his palm.
"I think—" Hermione gathers up air in her lungs, and lets out a quiet, quiet secret. "I think I'll miss you. This. You challenging me, me pushing you. All our … " she bites her lip, allows a smile to slip though, "spirited debates."
"That's one way to put it," Tom permits mildly, smiling back now, something genuine and beautiful. "I think I'll miss you too, Hermione Granger. If only there were a way for us to keep up in touch."
"You'll write me?" Hermione blinks. "Really?"
"As long as they're as strongly-worded as your manifestos," Tom replies. It's light, teasing. But his eyes shutter at the damning hope that he must see blooming up her cheeks, something wary. She is never this transparent, but then again he is never this giving. "My work is never better than when you've thoroughly insulted it. I suspect your critique will hit harder when it's branded in your ink."
"I'll pull no punches," she grins. "My letters will be so uncompromising you'll regret even suggesting this."
Tom tugs her closer. Her dress rustles against his knees. She can taste his breath, mint and whiskey and a bitter sweetness that curls on her tongue. "You really think so?"
He doesn't wait for her answer. He directs their hands to set the glass down on the mantelpiece, before curving his body behind hers so fluidly it takes her a second to realise he hasn't let go of her at all. Their joined hands presses against her chest, his other hand splays across her stomach.
She stiffens. Within the asylum of her bedroom she had imagined him doing this, once – she'd imagined it to be comforting, maybe even soothing, but this. This is not a comfort. This is a caging. She does not feel unburdened. All she feels are the hard lines of his body pressed against her back. His chest pushes against her shoulder blades. He lets out a breath, she sucks it hungrily into her lungs.
"Tom," she hisses, her toes digging into the tips of his brogues, "I didn't say you cou—"
"I'll remember to ask next time," he promises, dipping his nose to her ear, breathing in deeply, humming contentedly, the sound of it almost obscene. Her thighs rub together of their own accord.
"Tom—" she tries again, but her protest is shoved aside to make room for a gasp; Tom is – Tom is pressing his lips to her neck. No. He's kissing the side of her throat.
"I relish your ripostes," he breathes into the juncture between her shoulder and neck. "Drives me to the point of madness, really - " he nuzzles her neck and she has no choice but to tilt her chin up to allow him further access, "- the amount of times I wish I could just shut you up. You are a perplexing lesson in restraint."
"Not right now, evidently," she gasps as he suckles on her earlobe.
"Not right now," he agrees darkly. His voice feels like a blade against her skin, like it has teeth. "I don't think anything could stop me right now."
"If you take this from me," Hermione manages through a shiver, "I'll want something back."
His hand clenches around the fabric against her stomach, once, before inching downwards, where her dress meets her thigh. "Tit for tat?"
She turns her head. Her nose brushes his. Something in her gaze must compel him to look up: his lashes feel silken against her cheekbone.
"With you," she confesses unhappily, her voice so soft he can only hear because he is pressed so firmly to her, pressed right into her, "I need all the leverage I can get."
Tom laughs, his lips so close to hers, too close. The urge to cross that final distance, to lick his mouth corner to corner, is intoxicating. Sheer want jolts down her spine. The heat of the fire doesn't even touch her. "I can be generous. Take what you want."
"Everything," she groans, ripping her wrist from his hold, pushing his hand down to where she needs him. It disappears between her legs, but instead of finding her ruined knickers it begins a slow descent down. For just a ghost of a touch, it chafes the inside of her thighs.
"Do you know," Tom begins in a rasp of an exhale, "how long it's been since I've been able to sleep properly? How difficult it is to ignore the fact that you're just a room away?"
His teeth in her shoulder is the last thing she registers before his hand cups her through her knickers. He hooks his chin over her shoulder as he curls a finger into her, pushes the sleek cotton blend into her hole, the friction delicious but nowhere near enough. She expects him to push the crotch of her knickers aside, plunge his fingers into her cunt, make her forget her name. But it's Tom, he hates being predictable, doesn't he? Of course he'll tease and of course he'll bait. Of course he would give her only so much, tip of his finger pressing circles around her clit with pressure hard enough to bruise, but not hard enough to break through the fabric.
Her knickers are absolutely soaked. He could probably push his fingers right through the material and they would dissolve, she would be naked to him if he just bloody pushed, but he doesn't, damn him, he doesn't.
It's torture. It's perfect.
She whines.
He angles his head closer, their mouths close enough that they share a breath, and she wants to taste him, she wants to take—but he stops her from stealing a kiss with a lick of his tongue. She gnashes her teeth in retaliation, which only amuses him more. Funny, how he can laugh with a hand up her dress. He flattens his fingers and spreads her wetness all over her knickers, tracing the outlines of her throbbing pussy.
"So greedy," he coos into her ear, and – has his voice always been that deep? It's never that deep— "You'll have to be more patient than this, Hermione."
She drags their tangled fingers up, sucks his thumb into his mouth, and then bites down. Hard. Tom bucks against her. "You said—"
"I wasn't lying," he berates, kissing the top of her head. Breathing her in. She can feel his cock twitch against her as he watches her drag her tongue all over his thumb, parched for some sort of relief he isn't giving her. "You can have your way. After I'm done."
She snorts. "I somehow doubt that."
"I might surprise you yet," he laughs, frees his hand from her hold, and kisses her.
Where his hands had been rough and unyielding, his mouth is deceptively soft.
It does not pull at her breath, it does not drag a single sound out of her, yet the world tips over, her hair curls wilder, her fingers grasp at his hair, his cheeks, his jaw, as much of him as she can touch. His lips parts in invitation; she licks along the roof of his mouth. Their tongues meet and she shivers. It is a dizzying kiss. A disorienting kiss. Nothing about it makes sense. She wants more.
Tom pulls away. The strands of his hair slips from her fingers. There is a flush to his pallor, something that pleases her immensely. Not so untouchable after all.
"Patience," he murmurs. He needs to stop looking at her like that because it makes her want to kiss his face. His stupid, handsome face.
"You're telling me?" she says, and grounds her hips where she can feel his trousers straining against her arse. She thinks about turning around, shoving him down, freeing his cock and taking him into her mouth. She'll work him up with just her lips before she uses her tongue and her teeth. She'll batter her tonsils with his cock, coat him in saliva and need, until he leaks into her waiting throat, until she smears his mess all over her face.
Just the thought of it makes her drip all over his fingers, and Tom grunts. He slips his hand into her knickers. Her thighs quake at his touch, knowing where it's headed. "Do you want me to touch you here, Hermione?"
"You're fucking awful," she spits. She cries.
His finger taps against her poor, ignored clit. It makes her knees buckle. "Do you want me to spread you open and fuck you on my fingers?"
"I really," she hisses through her teeth, "hate you right now."
He paints his fingers with her slick, passing over her slit, and each time the tip of his fingers would nudge inside, causing her inner walls to clamp down in anticipation of his entry, only to be sorely disappointed to clench around nothing. "Do you want to see how long I can keep this up?"
"Fuck you—"
His finger finally, finally slides into her, down to the second knuckle. She lets out a devastatingly satisfied whimper.
Tom nips at her neck. "Do you like it like that?"
"Hngh," is all she can say.
"Do you want another finger, Hermione?" he hums in her ear.
"I want it to hurt," she says breathlessly, mindlessly. God, there is so much that she wants right now.
Tom brushes her hair out of her face and sighs fondly. She's managed to ruin his hair and bring a rise of heat to his skin. But the look on his face is so calm, so focused, that he might as well been reading the Prophet, even as he continues stroking her slick folds. "You're going to fuck me up," he mutters quietly. "Aren't you?"
She snakes her hand behind her to fumble with his zipper, shoves his boxers out of the way, wraps her hand around his cock—and hopes that's enough of an answer.
His mouth tips upwards.
He grinds into her hand with a groan that fills her chest deliciously, his erection thick and hard and heavy and already slippery with his precum. She rolls her hips back in response. Traps his cock between her arse and her fist, tells him she wishes her hand were her mouth. Tom's eyes fall shut and he bites back a moan against the knobs of her neck. Shame isn't even part of the equation. It – everything – is just—everything feels so consuming, and her knickers aren't even off.
He is practically holding her up by her cunt, sparks of pleasure shooting off from the contact, his palm hot and firm against her clit. He slips another finger into her and she drops like a coin. If not for his arms she'd be a writhing mess on the floor. She could fall straight into the fire and she would welcome it, if he just—
If he just—
"Keep going," she pants. Arches her back. Grips him harder, feels him shudder. She doesn't want him to crook his fingers, she wants him to go faster. "Don't stop."
She palms his cock as best as she can from the angle she is allowed. The sound of thrust and slick and desire and want fills the room. She digs her heels into the carpet, he noses the strap of her dress off so he may lick her, shoulder to ear. His top teeth scrapes against his bitemark, from earlier, and her whimper is lost amidst the sound of his fingers fucking into her.
"Yes," she keens wretchedly, and he moans at that. It almost makes her come.
He must feel her walls fluttering, because his fingers slide out with a crude pop, and with them trickle out her obvious desire to be fucked into the weekend. This, she has time to think, is a fantastic time to put Lavender's charms to the test.
"Not yet," Tom admonishes even whilst she loudly, desperately laments the loss of his fingers. His cock slips from her fingers – he's stepped away. "You'll come on my cock, or not at all."
Bastard.
"I was very close," she tells him witheringly, her hair sticking to her forehead. Tom wraps his hands around her wrists – urgh, his hands, so wet from her, she can smell herself everywhere around them – to bring them to the mantelpiece; taps them in silent instruction for her to hold on tight. And then he rucks up her dress around her hips.
Her heart is thrashing so hard she worries she might cough it up.
"Oh, Hermione," he says with a laugh, nudging her ankle with a corner of his shoe. Her legs part readily. "We should have done this sooner. There's not nearly enough time tonight for the catharsis you're desperate for. Although," he muses, stroking a hand down her back, chasing her skin even as she flinches away, "your frustration makes sense. You have no patience whatsoever, really explains the way you organise your books—"
"Are you fucking kidding me right now?" she snarls. "If I don't come at some point tonight I am going to take matters into my own hands—"
"I said," and Tom butts the head of his cock against her entrance, effectively silencing her— "Patience. There, that what you wanted?" He smacks his cock against her again, and her mouth falls open in a soundless whine. "Works better than a silencing charm."
"I will hex your balls off—"
He pushes his cock in. Just an inch. He stops. Expectation throbs in her clit. She bites her tongue.
"Good girl," he purrs. He wraps his hands around her waist, rubs soothing circles onto the dimple at the bottom of her spine with his thumb. His sleeves provide some kind of solace against the burn of his palms. "Always a quick study."
He pumps into her, in and out, but never gives her more than just the tip of his shaft. Every so often he would pull his cock out completely and drag it up and down her sodden lips, swirling her juices everywhere, making a mess of her. It's too much and still too little. She thinks she might spontaneously combust, especially when he slides his hand up to pinch her nipple with the sharp of his nails.
It hurts.
"God," she says in a shuddering breath.
"Tom," he corrects sharply and thrusts his cock into her, filling her to the hilt.
She can't fucking believe this. There are two perfectly serviceable beds a short climb of a staircase away – hell, the sofa is right there, and they're fucking against the mantelpiece. In their graduation party dress. She tells him as much, and punctures it with a glare over her shoulder.
"Oh, it's only –" Tom casually casts a wandless Tempus, not even breaking his strokes - and honestly, this arsehole – "Barely midnight. We've got time for that."
But his composure seems to be only an illusion, because his movements aren't as controlled anymore. He's pounding into her now, and she bites her bicep to keep from screaming. She wants to rub her clit, wants more, but if she lets go of the ledge they might just end up on the flo—
Oh.
There's a thought.
She lets go. Tom loses momentum. She frees his cock from her cunt – they both gasp – and knocks him to the carpet. But he is fast, too, so she ends up half-sprawled above him, her knee impaling his thigh. He is breathing hard, staring up at her like she's managed to get a point over him in class. He looks so irritated that she lowers her head, sucks his bottom lip between her teeth, watches his eye as she bites down and pulls.
And then she swings her legs over his hips and sinks down on his cock.
"Fuck," Tom snarls.
"Yes, this is how you fuck," she chokes, vindicated, puts all her weight onto him until she can feel him all the way in her stomach. The stretch of her around him is almost too much, which means it feels absolutely fucking perfect. She's never seen his eyes so unfocused. He was quiet, before – quiet even amidst his taunting and punishing, but now, with her straddling him and rocking her hips like she wants to set them both alight, he lets out a broken moan against her lips. It's exquisite.
"Don't be claiming all the credit," Tom rasps, pulling at her hair, releasing it from its sleek hold. It bounces everywhere around his face. He has to spit her hair out of his mouth. "I'd say this is a solid team effort."
"Please shut the fuck up," she begs.
"I will not," he promises. And pulls her hair harder.
Her elbows frame his head. She starts to push herself up but he holds her where she is, scratches lines long and red down her back, lines that she's most certain she won't be charming away with a healing spell. She wants to live in her tattered skin, wants the evidence of his touch all over her. Evidence that Tom Marvolo Riddle can break, that she can break him.
His hip bucks up. They're close enough that she can rub her clit against his pubic bone, and it's so good she can't stop whispering in his ear how good he feels, inside her. Tom throws his head back, eyes closed, mouth open, and this is - his violet fingerprints on her hips, her blood under his nails, his helpless, stuttering breathing - this is the breaking of Tom Marvolo Riddle.
It's such a heady thought, and it's that thought that makes her clench all around his cock, makes her stomach swoop, makes her bite down hard enough on his lip to taste copper in her mouth, makes her vision white out, makes her gush all over his stomach, his trousers, spreading her mess all over him as she comes.
"Yes, like that, all over my cock," he instructs, eyes shut, voice like sandpaper, holding her down even as he fucks up into her in erratic rhymeless thrusts, "Just like that."
She screams into his mouth and he swallows everything.
His cock jerks, deep inside her – his chest heaves, he spits more of her hair out of her mouth as he struggles to control his breathing, but it's over for him. He loses himself in the incandescent pleasure of their joined bodies, empties his cock into her with one last agonised cry. She gobbles that up, it's only fair.
She presses her forehead into his lashes. They tickle when his eyes open. Detaching seems like an insurmountable task at the moment. She drags her nosetip against his, drops a kiss onto his mouth.
For a while, she can only stare at him, boneless and slick in his arms. Her dress, once cool and slinky against her skin, now feels unwelcome—stifling, compared to the smooth slide of his cock inside her earlier.
Tom slides a hand down, strokes her dress. "You look a mess," he rumbles, sleepy, pleased. "Your dress fared much better than you. Excellent craftsmanship."
"You look - " His side part is ruined, and there is blood and lipstick smeared on his mouth, yes, but he still has his robes buttoned up all the way to his neck. Bugger. "Not as unmade as I thought you'd be."
"You sound displeased." Tom smirks, dipping his fingers into the mess between them. Rubs it between his fingers. Flicks his tongue out to sample its taste and makes a sound of approval. She watches, mesmerised, despite wanting to curl up inside him and just die for a bit. "It's alright, we have all night."
Except neither of them move.
She raises a hesitant hand to brush his rebel waves away from his forehead. He kisses the inside of her wrist, surprising her.
Cautiously, she lowers her head to his chest. Counts his thundering heartbeat, buries her nose into the surge and fall of his chest, feels him soften within her. Tom, in turn, runs his fingers through her hair. She feels – entirely unburdened. Sated. Safe, too, stupid as it sounds.
Neither of them move. She's not sure what it means.
She does know that she somehow manages to fall asleep, lulled by his slow breathing.
When she wakes up she is on the sofa, tucked into a warm blanket. Her head is light and her throat is clear. She feels scrubbed clean, like a blade of grass on the first day of spring, not a crease in her dress. She lifts her knee and traces the shape of Tom's ministrations on her thighs. She looks around the still room, untouched yet by the slowly-rising sun. Her eyes stray to the ashes in the grate, and then the mantelpiece. The glass she and Tom had shared is gone, and so is he.
She doesn't know it yet, but it will be another four hundred and something days until she sees him again.
But that's just the thing – she doesn't know yet, so she settles back down onto the sofa to wait.
.
.
(today)
The thing about Tom, she furiously ruminates, is that she will never stop feeling him in her skin. She'd thought that her emotions would mellow over the years, but all they did was age and blister. If she listens loud enough, she thinks she can still hear the distant echo of her breaking heart. She makes sure not to listen.
Tom Riddle is a liar, because he never wrote when he said he would, because he never showed up to the reunion like Malfoy had reluctantly told her he'd responded – s'il vous plaiît – yes to, because he never once sought her out, and she can see he's strongly tempted to lie to her now.
Even on his knees, he is still compelled to lie.
So she waits.
She has learned how to wait. How to enjoy the simmer of discomfort that follows silence. Knows now, the power in it. She'd let Tom luxuriate for too long. He'd promised her everything, once, she will not apologise for coming to collect.
The fire crackles. Outside, an owl hoots a cautionary tale.
On a night this cold, everything with a heartbeat shivers – oh, but not Tom.
Tom is on his knees, and he is looking at her. He looks at her. Carefully, reverently, hands caging her to the sofa. And how bright his eyes look, like there is light in him still.
"Do you think you're doing me a kindness?" he asks finally.
"Either way, you get what you want," Hermione answers, no reproach in her tone. "One of these days, you're going to have to give me a truthful answer."
Tom chuckles. It is not a pleasant sound. "Difficult to give you a truthful answer when you're not asking the right questions, Hermione."
She stares at him.
He stares back, waiting.
There was – there was no wa—
"You can't answer, because you've already made one," she realises slowly. Something cold prickles in her chest. She holds a hand there, steadying herself. It's a tearing. It kind of hurts. "Haven't you?"
On his knees, hair a mess, tie gone, buttons undone, Tom gives one single measured nod.
"But you wouldn't be here – you know I wouldn't want to see you if you had," she also realises.
Tom nods again.
Hermione tilts her head and studies him. Reads the heavy lines of his brows. Examines the sharp turn of his jaw. The expanse of his cheekbones, the curl of his hair drooping over his forehead. His lips she'd once made bleed.
"Were you … " she pauses, choosing her words with care, "successful?
"'Successful' is not the word I'd use," Tom says, rueful.
Ah.
"So you failed."
Tom doesn't answer. Something defiant flashes in his eyes. Something angry. Something broken. She'll be kind, she won't make him say it aloud. And so she asks: "Are you going to try again?"
He looks her in the eye. Parts his lips. Closes them again. They're dry, she notes. Is he scared?
"I don't know," he answers, and it's the most honest and heartbreaking thing she's ever heard him say. She once thought she'd be filled with a perverse sense of gratification, but there's none of that now. Between her ribs, her own heart stutters awake.
"Okay," she allows without as much as a shudder in her throat despite not being able to remember how to breathe. "Okay. Come here."
Tom doesn't need to be asked twice. He isn't even surprised. She supposes it should irk her, how much he thinks he knows her, but doesn't she know him, too, somewhere deep in her marrow?
His hands move from where they had been braced around her to rest on her thighs. But he doesn't lean in yet, no. He smooths his palms across the flush erupting on her thighs, away from her socks, closer to the hem of her shorts.
He doesn't ask her Are you sure?, because that would be predictable. As much as she hates his deliberate, abject refusal to do anything that's ever expected of him, that's the only truth of him she can cling to.
Gently, she pries one of his fingers off her thigh and hooks it around her own. Solid. Warm. Real.
He curls his finger around hers in response, and they are wound together so tight it hurts.
"I'll take everything," he warns.
I won't be sorry, she hears.
"So take," she says with the last of her breath.
The look on Tom's face is one of utter triumph, and she finds no hesitation in reaching for his throat.
a/n:
credit for the vivid description of slughorn's wingback chair consummately goes to cocoartist, who conjured all that up faster than i could say "slughorn's private potions lab".
ok, so i'm really sorry about this fic. this did not go the way i'd originally intended. their thesis was supposed to be ONE THROWAWAY LINE in my original draft, but now i'm knee deep in 13k words. but i hope i made up for it with smut? (which, BIG UPS to akorah for beta-reading/bullying me into fleshing out the hogwarts-time smut, but also NOT BIG UPS because that was mostly why this fic went the way it did. originally, there was a lot more post-hogwarts stuff happening. oh well. this is a nice universe for me to explore, so i may be back - we shall see.)
anyway, thank you all for reading - i had a lot of fun writing this! i've got another tomione wip which is crack treated seriously, mostly - and in the works i have a theo/hermione oneshot coming up, if that's your thing. please let me know what you think!