Notes: Yay! It's here... the end. Or perhaps the beginning of something else entirely. Anyway, thank you all for going on this journey with me. I much appreciate it!

~*~ Seven: Happily Never After ~*~

She choked and a small geyser of red splashed across his face as he pulled abruptly back from her lips. She waited to feel the edge penetrate deeper. But the dagger tumbled to the mossy ground and Tom let out a blood curdling roar.

Hermione surged upward, the bonds no longer tying her to the sodden ground. She clamped a hand over her neck and stumbled to where her wand lay. She grasped it tightly in her hand as she pointed it at the throbbing pain in her neck. "Episkey." She repeated the spell several times for good measure before removing the pressure she'd applied. When another torrent of blood didn't immediately appear, she let out a sigh of relief and turned to face Tom.

He was on his knees, the dagger passing uselessly through his fingers as he tried to pick it up. Hermione jolted at the sight. It took a moment longer to realize what it meant. He was incorporeal now. The moon had reached its zenith.

"You ran out of time," she observed as she lifted his jacket—still very much real—from the forest floor. She slipped her arms into the sleeves and inhaled the scent of cloves and dark desire. He stared back at her from his prone position, eyes darkening to livid cobalt. "What happens now, Tom?"

"You tricked me."

"You would have done the same."

He gave up trying to retrieve the dagger and rose to fully face her. "I suppose I would have."

She pulled his jacket tightly around her and blinked up at him. "So why aren't you in Hell?"

He motioned toward her chest. Hermione still couldn't see what he'd etched into her breast. "What did you do?"

His lips twisted into a jagged smile. "It was both insurance and a back up plan."

"And what was the back up plan?"

He circled her slowly, ebony locks falling wildly across his feral eyes. "I made you my anchor. As long as you are alive, I can exist here as a ghost. But when you die—and you will die, Hermione Granger—the ritual will be completed and I will return in corporeal form to this world and you… you will go to Hell."

A chill shot down Hermione's spine that had nothing to do with the dank air of the Forbidden Forest. "When I die? You don't have to kill me?"

He stopped in front of her, all sharp edges and smug victory. "No. I would have preferred to return now… to not be trapped in this limbo, but it is still a significant improvement from my previous… accommodations. But as for your question, any type of death—magical, accidental, homicidal, suicidal—will complete our ritual."

"I hate you."

He laughed, dark and poisonous. "But you still don't, Hermione Granger. I made sure of that when I took you on this forest floor and taught you everything you will ever know about pleasure. I made sure of that when I danced with you. I even made sure of that when I kissed you and allowed you to delay the ritual. Because you will always be wondering, Hermione, if I didn't care. If I meant everything I said about you and me and why I chose you."

She hated that he was right. That even now she doubted the sincerity of his venom. He couldn't possibly be so scornful of her. Not after the vulnerability they'd shared throughout the night. Perhaps she could not hate him, but Hermione realized it was equally likely that he could not hate her, could not be as indifferent to her as he wished. They were both trapped in each other's compass now.

"So what will you do?"

He pressed a phantom kiss to her cheek. She could almost feel the heat of his lips, could still feel the ghost of his touch against every facet of her skin.

"Now I wait for you to die."

She smiled grimly up at him. "You're going to be waiting an awfully long time."

"You'll find time has little meaning to me, not anymore," he murmured. "I will have your soul."

"We'll see about that, Tom Riddle," she replied and then turned on her heel and followed the arc of the moon back toward the castle beyond the trees.

She did not look back. She could not bear to see his devastatingly handsome features again. To feel the weight of those eyes composed equally of luminous sapphire and deadly cobalt upon her. She could not bear to remember what she was leaving behind in that meadow with him. To acknowledge just how much she had lost, but also how much she had gained in the final hours of All Hallows Eve.

Her housemates were all safely abed by the time she finished washing the memories from her skin in the bath. She'd healed the scars of his carvings on her arms and legs, but couldn't bring herself to erase the marks on her torso, the proof that their intimacy had been real.

The mirrors were foggy, but she reached a shaking hand out to wipe the steam away from the glass. Her gaze fell on the letters carved just above her heart. They were backward in the reflection, but unmistakable. TMR. He had marked his initials into her flesh.

She grasped her wand from the shelf beside the sink and held it above the marred flesh. The tip shook violently as it hovered over the still oozing letters. She mouthed the word a hundred times. Then a thousand. But she couldn't say it. Couldn't summon enough intention to make the spell emerge from her wand.

Her wand clattered to the floor and Hermione followed in its wake. Her brittle façade collapsed and inhuman whimpers echoed through the empty bath. She pulled her knees to her chest and held fast, rocking against the shame and the horror and the grief.

It might have been an hour later or perhaps a lifetime, that she crawled her way to her knees and then clawed her way into a standing position. The steam had long faded and only her haunted features reflected in the mirror. Her knuckles were white where she gripped the sink, her legs too unsteady to hold her full weight. A shadow passed beyond her shoulder and Hermione's gaze snapped up. Unholy sapphire eyes met hers. She whipped around—unsteady legs be damned—but there was nothing there. She turned back to the mirror. But only her own dark honey eyes stared back from sunken hollows.

He wasn't here.

Or perhaps he was.

She shuddered and pulled her robe tightly around her shoulders. She would not let him win. Not today. Not even when she died.

But her fingers traced the shape of his initials against her skin and she knew that was a lie. He'd already captured her soul upon a bed of moonlit moss. And she didn't know if she could ever find the strength to hate him so completely, to have enough menace flowing through her veins to upend the ritual. But Godric help her, she would try.

"Hermione."

Her name was a whisper, little more than a murmur upon the wind. But his silken baritone was unmistakable. The sound crept over her skin like a spider's legs. She shivered violently, but refused to acknowledge him, turning instead to exit the bathroom.

An unbearable cold seared into her neck, down the line of her jaw and she knew he was standing beside her. That his unearthly hand was resting against her skin.

"I will always be with you, my clever girl." Tom's lips were an impossible burn against her ear, nothing like the heat of his earlier caresses. "Every moment in this castle, every embrace you allow a lover, every peal of laughter that leaves your lips. I will be there. You will not see me. You may even forget me for a time. But you are mine now and there is nothing you will ever do to change that. No amount of soap to scrub your skin. No number of books on ancient rituals or other magic. Nothing."

She was biting her lip so hard the taste of blood swelled in her mouth. Hermione took a deep breath and then another. He might drag icy tendrils of despair across her skin now, but he had no true power over her in this state. Tom Marvolo Riddle was nothing but an insubstantial memory now.

She brought her wand to her bloody chest.

"Episkey."

And then she walked out the bathroom door, paying no heed to the voice that murmured perilous words against her ear. Let him haunt her. She was Hermione bloody Granger and this was not how her story ended.