.


He says, 'Oh, baby girl, you know we're gonna be legends,

I'm the king and you're the queen and we will stumble through heaven.'

Halsey – Young God


She didn't know how he'd found her room, but found herself uncaring as she took in the faint rose dusting the porcelain sharp cheekbones, illuminated only by the lamp by her bed. His eyes were serious, and as dark as the devil's.

She stepped aside to let him in.

As he wandered around her room, his open curiosity reminded her of how he'd been at home in Wales, a contrast to the pleasant but impenetrable armour he wore at Hogwarts. She watched him as he picked up the old inkwell on her desk, ran his fingers gently along the painting of the Dearborn castle that she'd hung on the wall, as he examined her books, and how he avoided looking at her unmade bed, still warm from where she'd left it to answer the knock at her door, hours after she'd left the Ravenclaw celebration. She hadn't been quite asleep but the mist of dreams had been pulling at her mind nonetheless.

"So this is what nepotism gets you." His voice cut through the hushed silence of Hogwarts at night, soft and yet too loud, illicit and bold and reckless.

"I have bad dreams sometimes. We thought it was better not to disturb the others." She didn't deny it though; Dumbledore had got this sanctuary for her after all. And now Tom was in it, and she could hardly breathe for excitement and fear. "You shouldn't be here. We could both get in trouble."

(She didn't ask why he was there. She didn't tell him to leave.)

He ignored the warning, and crossed the room to her, taking her hand instead, and pulling her to sit with him on the little sofa. He was so beautiful in the soft light, and she was aware of every aspect of him, every particle and fibre, the surprising warmth radiating from his thigh so close to hers, the electric ripple where the side of his hand was still just brushing her own, how his dark hair was slightly tousled at the back, the tension in his neck, the way his eyes lengthened into a frown that didn't mar the bow of his lips.

"You were captured, weren't you? I realised you must have been when we were at your house. That's why you learned to fight." It wasn't a question.

She remembered the Snatchers, Fenrir's rank breath, lying on the floor of Malfoy Manor; the screaming agony of it all.

"And tortured," she agreed, calmly.

His eyes tightened, meeting hers and she was surprised at the depth of the rage beckoning from the shadows there, at how she reacted, heart leaping with unbidden pleasure at the wrath in him for her. She added, before he could speak again, "But those people aren't… here any more. And I'm stronger now."

He looked like he would take the world to war for her, just for a moment, but there was no one here for him to kill – except his own future self. She pushed that thought aside. Let him think she'd killed them all, her captors. It didn't matter.

To her surprise, he smiled.

"You certainly are. Strong."

He paused and it weighed between them, the air growing as hot and still as it does before a summer storm.

"I don't know how to do this, Hermione." It was stark and blank and unfumbled; a confession unburdened by pride. "As you well know, I have no yardstick by which to measure the normal affections of a man and a woman. All I know is that you're magnificent and you're mine, and I will kill anyone who touches you."

"That," she replied, "is not very romantic, despite what the books say."

But it was, and the power he'd given her thrilled her. He'd kill for her, really kill for her. Will, he'd said, not would. Had, in fact. They'd stood shoulder-to-shoulder in a quiet wood and killed two men, one each. She pushed the thought away.

"No, I will punish those who wrong me myself. I am not yours," she said, "I'm my own self. I don't belong to anyone, anywhere, any time."

"Liar," he replied, and leaned in, lips hovering over hers for a moment that felt like an eternity, the storm around them beginning to boil, silent thunder rolling up across her shoulders, lightning teasing the bare skin of her legs where her nightgown ended, before his lips brushed hers as soft and silken as a spider's web, clinging to hers until she was trapped and melting against him, eager and willing, and he poured into her like a hurricane. His hand was iron rough in contrast, pulling her closer and closer, desperate and bruising.

"You're not angry?" she asked, pulling away reluctantly, head spinning. "That I beat you, in front of everyone?"

His lips lifted even as he frowned.

"Oh, I am," he told her, "but… I've never wanted anything as much as I want you. Besides, I'll beat you next time. In the final."

"Probably," she agreed. She didn't care about winning the contest. She'd just wanted to see him at her feet, and she had. She wondered if he'd been drinking. "You're not normally this candid."

"I am… experimenting with a new tactic. Besides – you're the only one in this place, perhaps in this whole world, that measures up to me. I've always known I was extraordinary, but I never expected another might be."

She hit him, and his eyes glittered with a savage joy at the reluctant laugh that spilled out of her.

"You," she exclaimed crossly, "are the most arrogant man I've ever met. There are so many wonderful, special people in this world. There's more to life," she realised she was repeating her younger self, but ploughed on regardless, "than books and cleverness. Bravery and compassion – those things can make someone far more special, Tom."

"Show me, then."

"I will," she promised, and kissed him again, kissed him as though there were no future or past, just that moment in the shadowy hours in her isolated room at the top of the tower.

.

.

Her hands on his skin and her mouth on his mouth lit him up in the dark, burning through him, until his mind was quiet and there was only the touch and taste of them creating together where they joined, lips and arms, his hand tangled in her thick dark hair, the bare skin of his chest against the softness of hers.

He could taste her like a joy he'd never known, pushing the world away until he could breathe for the first time, panting and shallow and desperate and raw. The press of her body on his, the sharp jut of her hips through the thin cotton like a knife that cut him open, beckoning him closer; he who hadn't longed for closeness for so long it was a half-remembered dream of childhood.

This, he learned, was power. The tiny gasp she made as he slowly trailed his fingers along the elegant precipice of her left collarbone, the hazy glow of her eyes, the dark flush on her cheeks, the way her lashes fluttered down to brush the faint freckle that danced on the upper edge of her right cheekbone.

"I have scars," she whispered, as her hands paused on the button of her nightgown, her robe a dark pool of velvet on the floor cast aside and forgotten hours or days or years before.

He realised, in that moment, when her body wasn't touching his but standing before him like a offering to the gods, how terrified he was. And yet, he didn't care; her voice told him she was scared too, and her body that it was a time to be brave.

"Show me," he said hoarsely, pushing her fingers aside and releasing the first button. She made him gentle, weakened him – and yet he felt like a god as she undid the second, the third and fourth and fifth and let the white shroud slip to the floor, bearing herself before him. She stood like an empress, and he drank in the curves and hollows of her body.

"What are you doing to me?" he asked in wonder as he knelt before her, and kissed her hipbones, her thighs, the secret places he'd hardly bothered to dream of before, marvelling at the landscape of her body, so unlike his own. He raged suddenly, at how weak he was before her, at how in that moment he'd have done anything she asked and gladly, grateful just for the touch and taste, how he was on the ground before her for the second time in a day and how he couldn't seem to care that it was the wrong way around, that he was Tom Marvolo Riddle.

She stepped backwards until her legs were pressed against the side of her bed, and he stood, awkward and half a pace away, and he thought she could consume me with her fire and her heat. And then he thought, perhaps it would be worth it.

And the other voice in his head, the one he could never quite silence, told him to take what was his. Before anyone else can, it said hissing and angry at the thought.

He moved forwards, pushing her back, less gentle now. The sight of her sprawling beneath him sent a shock of hunger through him, and he thought of wrapping his hand around her slender neck, of the power he had in that moment. He thickened at the thought, unbearable thought, and cast aside his unwanted trousers, the cool air a relief. He was aching as though he could burst, and he wanted to plunge into her, wild and conquering.

And yet, too, there was the wonderment of her, of how he might seem in her eyes, of the spaces still to explore, a whole continent of possibility.

Then he was on his knees before her, hardly aware he'd made a choice, her calves tangled over his shoulders, his mouth a prayer between her thighs, his tongue sharp as a knife, splitting her open. He did not, it had to be said, precisely know what he was doing, but she told him in her words and her sounds, in the half-gasp of yes, Tom, god, yes, the mewl, the soft cry, the surprising glimmer of tears in her eyes when he looked up, the burst of warmth in his chest as her fingers clutched at his hair. The sounds she made were earthy and human and he had never imagined he would relish anything so deeply in his bones as she came apart and, this he thought, is a far better revenge than torture.

.

.

.

Later, when he'd rediscovered again and again the power she had compared to his as her lips wrapped around him, when learned the agony and awe of such a thing, ripping her sheets in clenching hands, her dark hair spread across the pale hardness of his thighs, later they lay next to each other, and were quiet.

It was messy, this business of sex – or almost sex. He assumed the full act would come to much the same conclusion; the sheets still damp beneath him, the quilt a rumpled heap on the floor, the cool air catching their naked bodies up with time and place, returning them from the gorgeous torment of what had passed between them. Whatever this was had a name, perhaps, but he'd never learned a fitting word. Coarse words in the mouths of boys seemed unworthy of the woman next to him, and as he'd grown towards adulthood he'd been too consumed in other things to think much about it at all. Caught up in the pursuit of power and magic and he'd never understood that this simple thing, the most human thing of all, had all the beauty of the killing curse, the agony of the torture, the power of the imperius. Never understood how easy it was to be a god.

"I'm sorry," he said into the quiet space between them, "about Halloween."

"Be better," she murmured. "I believe that you can."

.

.

The dawn light crept through her window before she woke and he lay on his side and watched.

No one had ever beaten him before, at anything. Afterwards, Avery had been the only one who dared approach him in the Common Room. He hadn't said anything, but Tom had seen the bit of Avery that was just his Knight, and not his friend, saying are you as powerful as you think and instead of punishing him he'd smiled at the boy.

"Now," he said, his voice carrying, "you can see why she holds my interest."

And that was the end of it; the discourse decided. It was not that he was weaker than they'd thought, but that she was far stronger.

In the half-light, he remembered how she'd calmly put a man's severed hand in his companion's pocket, tied the corpse of his kill to hers, still living, and broken their wands before she sent them back to their master. He smiled at the memory. Equal, he thought, or as near to it as he could imagine.

She looked peaceful. He'd never watched anyone sleep before, and her eyes twitched fascinatingly behind the thin membrane of the closed lids. What was she seeing?

She slept beside him, tranquil and quiet, the soft huff of her breath steady. Trusting. He could kill her and slip away more easily than anything, pull her legs apart and finally enter that still-unknown part of her. He could slide effortlessly into her sleeping mind and feel the flavour of her dream, watch the scurrying, sped up film rushing past. But he didn't.

Be better, she'd told him, the first person to ever really see him, and believe there was more to him than brilliance and power, than cruelty and ambition. I believe that you can.

.

.


Thank you for your lovely reviews. Not quite the reaction you were all expecting, but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless. Special thanks to my beautiful pals frak-all and Gueneviere (both v talented writers in their own right) for their help.

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