Notes: Thank you for your continued support. Please stay safe.

~*~ Ten ~*~

Hermione kept the truth hidden as the weeks melted into each other, October chills claiming the lingering vestiges of summer. Leaves crunched under boots and the sun sank lower every day, heavy as her soul. She'd thought it would be a burden, but not a knot in her gut that never quite disappeared. She'd thought the heated moments would drive the itch of unease from beneath her skin just as they fulfilled her need to connect. But no. In the heat of the moment she might forget everything but those sinful lips dragging across her aching skin, but as soon as Tom was gone, the torment would begin anew, fueled further by whatever forbidden tryst she'd just experienced.

Malfoy clearly knew something was wrong. She'd been distant and overly moody from the moment Tom had thrown her completely off course, but Malfoy hadn't asked. That very fact never failed to send dread coursing through her veins. Did his lack of curiosity mean he already knew? And if so, why hadn't he confronted her yet? If not, why wasn't he prying? He'd been so adamant about her learning Occlumency and it didn't seem natural that he would suddenly ignore her completely. So she spent evening meals boring holes through his unnatural midnight hair, trying to see into his brain. Of course, Hermione was aware that staring at someone's head didn't lead to any real knowledge of their thoughts, but she wasn't about to attempt any sort of Legilimency on him and simply asking any sort of question was even more unpalatable. Hence the staring. She stared at him and Aurelia stared at her, judgment heavy in her honey eyes.

"I believe we have an appointment in the library, Miss Gable?"

The dulcet tones of Tom's baritone sent shivers and heat cascading through her. Hermione swallowed as she glanced over her shoulder to where he stood, an elegant dark brow raised in silent question. Right. They had a proper excuse to spend some time together since they'd been paired together for a DADA assignment the previous day.

Malfoy tilted his head, dull eyes scanning the length of Tom before pivoting to stare at Hermione. "You didn't mention anything, Gable."

"Wasn't aware you were her keeper, Mallet," Tom replied, smug grin tugging at his full lips.

Hermione sent him a cutting glare and the smile faded, leaving only a self-satisfied glint behind cobalt eyes. Malfoy didn't bother to look at either of them, fiddling instead with the empty bowl of stew in front of him. "No, I most definitely am not."

Hermione kept her focus on Malfoy even as she began to gather her things. His eyes were a tempest of icy daggers as he stared down at the remains of his dinner. Her pulse hammered at double time as she backed away from the table, bag in hand. He had to know. That was the only possible reason for such a reaction and yet he still hadn't said a word to her about Tom. Hadn't said much of anything at all in the past few weeks.

"Hermione," Tom murmured from beside her, his hand coming to rest at the base of her spine, eliciting a very different jump in her heartrate.

She shook her head, willing Malfoy out of it, as she turned to face him. "Sorry, he's a bit more ornery than usual these days."

Tom guided them out of the Great Hall, his lips dropping to the shell of her ear. "I honestly couldn't give less of a shit about Dacian, Hermione." The statement was punctuated by a drag of his lips down the sensitive skin behind her ear.

Hermione barely stifled the moan his ministrations evoked as they turned the corner toward the library. She could feel the amused huff of air as he clearly noticed her struggle. She swallowed forcibly and took a small step away from him, giving her the space she needed to reign in the mouthwatering effect he always seemed to have on her.

"We have an actual project to work on, Tom. The rest will have to…" She glanced up through her lashes to meet his hungry stare and immediately regretted it. She looked resolutely at the stone wall beyond him. "Will have to wait."

He let out a hearty chuckle, but didn't try to persuade her otherwise as they traveled the rest of the way to the library in companionable silence. She'd already gathered the needed books before dinner, so it was only a matter of perusing the material, which they would likely make quick work of.

He might be fated to be the next Dark Lord—a fact Hermione wasn't entirely convinced of anymore—but Tom Riddle was certainly not unintelligent. After spending the better part of a month with him, albeit mostly with his tongue down her throat, Hermione was absolutely sure of that. When they were paired in a setting that required wit and reasoning, he was sharper than the Ravenclaws, often first to reach the answer and usually in a unique way that had the professors fawning over his every word. She hadn't wanted to be impressed by him; she really hadn't wanted to find the very taste of him addictive or the scent of cloves arousing, but she was helpless against the tide that was Tom Riddle. Helpless in a way that scared her, that electrified her and that would perhaps destroy her. She wasn't naïve enough to pretend the ending wouldn't be a bitter one for her, but every moment that gave sweet satisfaction instead of empty despair, she would take, would cling to until the pain faded, until her soul was merely cracked instead of cleaved.

The scratch of Tom's quill against the parchment in front of him brought her back. Hermione didn't remember sitting down at the edge of the restricted section, a fact that likely should perturb her, but didn't. By the second year of the war it hadn't been uncommon for her to find herself in a location without truly remembering how she'd gotten there. It seemed a facet of how her mind coped with the inexorable stress of combat. Now perhaps she was merely a school girl day dreaming of her handsome beau. Hermione shook her head as a bitter taste consumed her mouth, like she'd stuffed it full of Galleons. She could not be so deluded as to believe that.

Tom paused, angling his fathomless stare toward her. "Are you okay?"

Her mouth still felt full of metal, acrid and wrong. "Yes."

"Don't lie to me." The words held the hint of chill behind them, but his expression was soft, his eyes a brilliant sapphire.

"It just happens sometimes… I lose time." Saying it aloud made her feel as crazy as it sounded. She half expected Tom to shoot back his chair and flee the library.

He merely stared back at her. "Because of the war."

"I… I think so." She'd never talked about this, not even with Harry. "It started… during the war."

Tom shifted, his hand trailing the length of her jumper-clad arm before twining with hers on the table. "There are things I know you will not speak about, that I imagine you attempt not to think about. The effects of those things are beyond your control, and likely mine. That you are here—with me—is all I require of you."

"You don't think I'm insane?"

His fingers traced enticing patterns on the sensitive skin of her wrist. "I've told you before, you're beautiful. What you've endured undoubtably changed you, but you are all the more beautiful for it. I will never judge you for your scars."

It was everything she craved to hear, each word a balm against the pain, the pernicious press of despair that had taken up permanent residence about her heart. "Thank you."

He nodded, raising her hand to trace fire across it with his lips. "Always," he murmured against her skin. As he lowered their clasped fingers, his features morphed, making him brutally handsome but edged in danger, entirely different from the boy who'd spoken such soft words of reassurance. "They want to kill you."

A chill skated beneath her skin and she pulled away from his steely grip to tangle her hands together. It seemed an odd thing for him to say, considering the amount of killing war entailed. Hermione frowned at him. "That is half the point in battle."

"No," he shook his head, ebony waves falling loose to curtain his crystalline stare, "that's not what I mean. I mean the point of this war is to kill people like you. To kill Muggle-born witches and wizards. That must be a terrible thing to face every time you… fight."

For a moment she couldn't breathe. "What?"

"I'm not an idiot, Hermione. The last Gable to attend Hogwarts was only ten years ago. Unless they used a time turner to create offspring, that isn't your name." He didn't seem the least bit upset by either her lie or her birth.

"You don't hate me?"

For once, Tom looked startled, the usual unflappable composure shaken for an instant as he stared across at her. "Why in Merlin's name would I hate you?"

"I lied…" He merely raised a brow in response. She sighed, acknowledging that lies were something of the norm in Slytherin. "I'm a Mudblood."

One of his eyes twitched and his lips went thin as the word fell from her lips. "Don't say that. Don't ever use that foul word to describe yourself again."

Hermione nearly bit through her tongue as surprise slammed her jaw shut. This was Tom bloody Riddle, she might be letting his hands do damning things to her in the dark corners of the school, but he was still the boy who became Voldemort. She hadn't talked to him about blood purity, so whatever view he currently professed was the one he'd had before they arrived in the past. And based on his response to her use of the slur, he wasn't the bigot they'd all assumed him to be.

"But…" she tried to remember the conversations she'd overheard in the Slytherin common room, sure she remembered any number of damning statements made to his fellow pupils.

"If you're thinking of all the malarkey I have to spew to get Malfoy and rest to fall in line, don't make the mistake of thinking that isn't simply a means to an end. Power can't exist in a vacuum. I need those sods, but do not mistake that need for like and certainly not for belief in their narrow and quite frankly idiotic beliefs. You and I are two of the most powerful people I know and neither of us is Pureblooded."

If kissing him had tilted her world upside down, this shattered it entirely. He wasn't a hateful bigot, a monster who believed in blood purity above all else. So what had happened? What had taken his means to an end and twisted it until it became a battle cry on the lips of silver-masked terrors? How had Tom Riddle gone so utterly wrong?

She stared into hypnotic sapphire, trying to see. "What about Myrtle?"

Tom flinched, gaze shuttering before opening back to her with liquid pain cutting through. "It was meant to scare them, to keep them in line. I was only a fifth year, how was I to control the seventh years? I needed to scare them."

"From the whispers I've heard, you did." Honestly, she hadn't heard much from her housemates, but Tom seemed to accept she had some knowledge of the events of the previous year. Hermione wasn't about to tell him she knew he'd framed Hagrid, but it seemed that all of Slytherin, at least, was perfectly aware of who exactly had opened the Chamber of Secrets.

"I also accidentally killed a girl and sent the oaf who used to be groundskeeper to stand for my crimes." Tom worried his bottom lip for a long moment before releasing a shuddering sigh. "Not my finest moment, but it's nice to tell someone, finally."

Hermione couldn't have looked away from his desperate stare if she tried. Her pulse fluttered at the base of her neck in a frantic staccato of anticipation and… arousal. She could not possibly find what he'd done arousing and she realized quickly that she didn't. It wasn't the facts that made her palms clammy or her skin tingle; it was the confession. That Tom Riddle had admitted to her the full extent of his crimes, that he had bared some part of his twisted soul to her excited her. She swallowed, mouth suddenly bereft of moisture.

"Why tell me?" Her voice was barely a croak.

"Why hide from you?" Tom countered, a strong hand pulling her to him, settling her on his lap, her knees splayed to either side of his hips. Nothing could stop the tremble that wracked her frame as her skirt rode up, as the heat of him seared into her core. His lips were temptation personified as they bit and sucked their way to her ear. "Can't you feel what lies between us? Can't you feel how right this is? You're utterly mine."

If she'd had even half her senses, she might have protested such a possessive statement, but she had none of them. Instead she let the remaining ache of reality be chased away by his hands, by the clever sweep of his honeyed tongue, by the promise of oblivion. She was so lost in the moment that even the eyes glutted with tempestuous storms boring through her meant nothing at all.