A/N: My sincere apologies for the delay on this chapter! I hope you enjoy it. :)
Nothing was cleared up by the time Hermione slumped into the carriage to return to the castle. She steadily ignored the younger students who shared the carriage, who were seemingly intimidated by her. Normally Hermione would have tried to be friendly, but she didn't have the mental energy for that now.
Draco kept bubbling up into her thoughts, and she had to admit what she felt—jealousy—but she pushed it away. She needed to deal with Tom. She had promised to talk to him tonight in the common room, and though she had promised much more between the lines than mere conversation, she intended to at least keep one promise.
Hermione hopped out of the familiar carriage first, hurrying up to the castle. Her need to see Tom was distinct from how she felt earlier: it was not lust; it was not love; it was a fierce urgency, a desperation to confront him and feel the things she had felt before, partly for him and partly because without those feelings it was as though she were less herself.
She intellectually understood that this was not his first murder; why should her heart feel differently? Why should it shut him out, and so suddenly?
"Tom." His back was the first thing she saw after stepping through (stumbling through, really) the portrait hole that led to their common room. Even as she said the name, just saw his back, even, her heart fell. Looking into his eyes made her want to break down into tears. They were the lively gray, the fire that she rarely saw; and when she did, she knew it was just for her. But she felt nothing. It was like her nerve endings had been burnt off while she was sleeping. Instead, the feelings had just disappeared while she was awake. It must have been because of Abraxas. He was different than the others. He was a person, someone she knew, not someone she had always known as a ghost or had simply heard about. He was a person.
Tom was kissing her as her thoughts raced, but it wasn't even a distraction. It was nothing. And the nothing didn't last long. "Hermione?"
She shrugged helplessly, feeling tears well up in her eyes—again. "I don't know, Tom."
"You seem different."
"I am." She nodded, slowly, calmly.
"What's going on?"
"I can't tell you." Tom couldn't know Abraxas had died. Earlier today, maybe her emotions might have overtaken her, but now, if anything, her emotions led her to the same conclusion as her head: Tom can't know. It would put Draco in unnecessary danger.
"What happened to telling me everything?"
"Offers don't last forever." And neither did we.
"What about earlier?"
"I was caught up in the moment."
"And now?" He was stone cold, like when she had gotten back from break, but somehow worse. Less emotional. They matched, except she wasn't acting.
"I'm not."
A spark; something shifted in Tom. "I said I wasn't giving up—"
"There's nothing to give up on."
"Say it again." Tom grabbed the sides of her face forcefully and yanked her face up to his so that he could look directly into her eyes.
She said it again. And he went to his room wordlessly.
"There's nothing to give up on." Tom had begun to distrust his ability to read when Hermione was lying, but he had to admit to himself that it hadn't failed him yet. And every inch of him told him that she was being truthful. There was nothing between them anymore as far as she was concerned. There was nothing to give up on. He had stared into those brown eyes and they betrayed nothing.
But something about the interaction had bothered him. There was something familiar about her eyes, as though he had seen them before. Tom shook his head forcefully as if to clear it. Of course you've seen them before, you've known her for months now, Tom scolded himself. But still there was a part of him that told him those eyes were familiar from something else—someone else.
And how could he square tonight with what happened earlier? He could feel such a depth of emotion from her just hours before that appeared to have just been cut off. Hermione as much as admitted that—when he asked what was going on, she implicitly admitted there was something when she said she couldn't tell him.
And so Tom was back to square one: find out what Hermione was hiding. Everything, down to whatever happened today. Because he wasn't giving up. Even if Hermione truthfully didn't think there was anything left, Tom knew differently.
Dorea was no Legilimens, but she could see her success with Hermione by her facial expressions in response to Dorea's questioning. Hermione was too thrown off by the sudden change in emotions to disguise her shock, or her complete lack of feeling when it came to Tom. Given her openness during the rest of the conversation, Dorea felt she could trust that emptiness. It was real.
The plan had worked, but it only truly worked if no one ever found out. If Draco found out, his happiness would be marred. If Hermione found out, she would fight against it, and destroy her happiness along with Draco's. As for Tom—he would destroy everyone, and their happiness.
Dorea had heard about Legilimency; she had spent enough time around talented dark wizards to know some who could do it. Because she was shrewd, Dorea knew that Tom did not know how yet. If he did, he would have used it on her. But there were some people in her life that could do it; and if they could, Tom would learn. He was too bright not to.
But Dorea was determined that Tom's talents would not ruin her plans. She was not naïve enough to think that Tom would never wrest the information from her brain. Dorea was already on his radar. Her plan had never depended on Tom's lack of ability, for then it would be doomed to fail. It depended on the depth of her penchant for secrecy and sacrifice: she was the only one that knew. And she would take the information to her grave.
After the conversation with Tom, Hermione was drained, but there was something else she needed to do. And off she went, headed for the Slytherin common room. As Head, she had passwords to every common room (except Ravenclaw; it was assumed a Head from any house could solve the riddle, though).
"Regius," Hermione said breathlessly. Reluctantly, she was let into the bustling common room. Everyone looked up to see who the intruder was, and most eyed her unabashedly as she confidently strolled up the stairs to the boys' dormitory. (The girls' dormitory entrance was marked by an intricate design of a poisonous flower, so she assumed the other side was the boys').
She hesitated; which room was Draco's? She hoped for the best and tried to final room, opening the door tentatively.
Draco was sitting in his bed, facing the door. He was the first to see her and couldn't hide his shock. Avery and Lestrange turned and leered at her.
"Abraxas. A word?"
Draco merely nodded, following silently behind her as they walked past the stunned faces of the Slytherin common room, down the dark corridors surrounding said room, and up the many staircases to the seventh floor. Draco didn't ask where they were headed. It was obvious.
Hermione did the pacing in front of the room. It seemed only appropriate, as she had led them there. Her thoughts were jumbled, so she wasn't sure what the room held until she opened it.
It was a bleak gray corridor, notable only in the seemingly innocuous bulletin board. The remarkable thing wasn't the board: it was the insignificant items hung on it, that altogether made it clear that this was the corridor from their sixth year at Hogwarts. And it was also the corridor where they had first kissed.
"Hermione, what is the meaning of this?" Draco asked, seemingly annoyed at his companion.
"I just let the room do its magic," Hermione said simply. She felt like she were seventeen years old again, in many ways, mostly in the warm feeling she had right now from Draco. It was steady and consuming, rather than fleeting and attached only to their memories. She loved him again, somehow.
"Why here?"
"It was where we first kissed."
Draco snaked his arms around her waist, exhaling deeply as their foreheads touched. She reached out and touched his chest to feel his heart pounding erratically.
"I know that, Hermione," he whispered. "Salazar, you think I don't know that? Why here? Why are you torturing me?"
"I'm not trying to torture you," Hermione responded in a soft voice, brushing a longer hair away from his pointed cheekbone. He didn't respond, waiting instead. Hermione took a deep breath in before she said what she need to say: what Draco needed to hear. "I love you."
"I know, but—" Hermione silenced him with an ungraceful thumb over his lower lip.
"I'm in love with you."
It was like she had pressed a button to activate Draco. Suddenly, her legs were being lifted by each of Draco's hands, wrapping them around him and slamming her against that bleak gray wall. His lips trailed the portion of her chest left exposed by her thick v-neck sweater, whispering incoherently before his fake blue eyes met her brown ones as he said, "in case it was ever unclear, I am madly in love with you, Hermione Granger."
Hermione pulled Draco into a fierce kiss. The strange mix of salt and peppermint was like a drug that she never wanted out of her system.
Tom was never a person to sit idly by when he wanted something. That's why he went to find his favorite person to practice Legilimency with—or rather, on: Abraxas. But when he entered his old stomping grounds, he received more curious glance than he was accustomed to.
Brushing them off, Tom walked up the steps toward the last door at the end of the hall for the seventh years' room. When he opened the door, however, he found only Avery and Lestrange.
"Where's Malfoy?" Tom asked gruffly.
The two exchanged a look that Tom did not like. "Tell me now."
The two of them stumbled over their words for a minute before Tom lazily bound them each to a post on their respective beds. "Perhaps I was unclear. Tell me where he is." The thing is, Tom already knew the answer. But it still hurt when each told him that he had left with Hermione.
What did she see in Abraxas? And how in Salazar's name did his follower find enough courage to defy him after facing near death? What was he missing?
As his questions mingled with each other, multiplying as if breeding, his need to practice his craft grew. He casually, silently flung a bed in front of the door, coupling it with a simple locking charm to ensure no one would disturb him.
"Avery. Lestrange. Both of you have displeased me tonight," Tom spoke coolly. "Yet I can be very forgiving." Tom intentionally hovered over the last word, intentionally speaking it like a threat. He could see that both men received the message. "I am going to push into each of your minds, one at a time, and I want you to push back. If you do not, I will punish you." Avery looked deeply uncomfortable, swallowing and writhing nervously.
Tom turned to him first. "Legilimens!" He could taste his fear immediately. Pathetic. Tom wordlessly performed the Torture Curse. "What did I just tell you, Avery?" Avery was spitting up blood, coughing too much to respond. Tom repeated the Torture Curse. "Speak when I address you, Avery."
"Yes, my Lord," Avery choked out.
"What did I tell you?"
"To fight back."
"And did you?"
"To the best of my ability to fight against you, my Lord."
"Liar. I expect more, Avery—Legilimens!" And that is how the night continued. Tom turned to torturing for punishment to torturing for fun as the night wore on, painfully aware of Abraxas's conspicuous absence from his dormitory.