Author's Note: SURPRISE! Another update! And so soon. I quickly wrote this chapter in the past couple of hours. If you can't tell, I'm rather excited about this fic. I hope that you enjoyed the first chapter and enjoy this one as well. I'm not sure when I will update again, but it should be soon, whenever the inspiration strikes. Happy reading!
CHAPTER TWO
By nine o'clock, Hermione had showered, dressed, braided her hair into a messy plait, and gathered her journal and other supplies to make the trek down to the beach. She hurried into the kitchen and slathered some marmalade on a slice of bread, poured some of her already-made tea into a thermos and tucked it into her satchel. With a sudden start of realization, she quietly crept over to the kitchen window and peeked around the edge to glance down at the flowerbeds. Tom was gone, and so were all of his gardening tools. Good, she thought, no need for an awkward confrontation then.
To be truthful, she had frequently wondered about Tom while on her way to the family estate. Her mind retreated to the multitude of scattered memories of her too brief vacation that summer fifteen years ago, and she had reflected upon what had become of him. She knew that with her family's wealth her grandmother could have easily said the word to provide Tom's father with the finances needed to send Tom to university, but Hermione could not see Tom pursuing a more—lucrative, she supposed—career. During her stay, she recalled Tom teaching her the names and traits of the countless varieties of shrubs and plants in the gardens and the proper methods of trimming hedges, while she would instruct him on how to correctly identify the types of seashells along the beaches. After continuously watching him and even helping his father treat and manicure the landscape, Hermione could only picture him doing, well, gardening.
She could distinctly remember his wavy, dark brown hair, which was almost black in color, and the way that his equally dark eyes glistened when he would teach her about the different species of flowers and shrubs that he and his father would plant in the gardens—
She remembered the way their hands felt intertwined, sticky with perspiration from being joined together too long, and she could also recount the way that same sticky hand rubbed her mass of curls in an attempt to be comforting during the storm that night in the boathouse.
She remembered the thrill of excitement that surged through her when her parents would hand her the letters addressed to her in a shaky, spidery script and remembered how her fountain pen would glide across the surface of her stationery at lightning speed, eager to have it placed in an envelope, stamped, and delivered as fast as humanly possible.
She wondered if Tom remembered too.
And as she watched him from that same window in the early hours of the morning, his muscles rippling and tightening with the exertion of yanking weeds from their wrongful places, she wished that he would. She had seen the way his brows snapped together and how his full lips pursed in the intense concentration of his work, how he would wipe the slight sheen of perspiration from his forehead with his handkerchief, the way he ran his large hands through his wavy, almost black hair—
She had to admit to herself that he was handsome. She had always thought he was. Even when she was simply five-years-old, she had thought that Tom was special. There had been no other boy like him, no one to match him, and she could certainly not forget those piercing dark eyes that seemed to follow her wherever she went. His appearance had not been drastically altered; he had simply become taller, more lean and muscular, more manlier. Maybe she had told him when they were together that summer, maybe she hadn't. But now, Tom Riddle was truly a sight to behold. Just by thinking of him, her cheeks warmed with a rosy red blush.
After a bout of daydreaming at the kitchen window, Hermione decided to head down to the beach and begin her research, hoping to find an ample amount of specimens to begin studying. She laced up her boots, threw her satchel over her shoulder, and walked through the entryway of the house and out the door. Compared to other locations along Three Cliffs Bay, the pathway to the beach was short and relatively easy to follow without the possible threat of tripping and falling down the jagged jetties. Since her family's trip, Tom Riddle Sr. had kindly constructed a petite, wooden bridge that allowed visitors to simply step across it and over the rocks to the sandy dunes of the nearby beach.
Hermione made her way across the bridge and landed on the familiar sandy shore, her boots crunching with the impact. The tendrils of hair that had loosened from their plaited position flapped in the slight current of wind, the chill of the briny air nipping at her face, and Hermione smiled at the sea, feeling the electric surge of familiarity coursing through her. She had missed it after being stuck in the urbanized city for so long, and she had missed the peacefulness and the sound of the waves lulling her to sleep at night. Most of all, she had missed being able to survey the different tide pools and the creatures within without being hounded by her fellow colleagues and professors—this was her beach, her tide pools, her ocean.
She selected one of the larger pools to observe first, and gingerly laid her bag atop one of the rocks jutting out from the sandy surface. From her satchel, she extracted her leather-bound journal, filled with countless pages of her sketches of various specimens, and her packet of graphite pencils. Most of her colleagues preferred using cameras to photograph their collections, but Hermione always opted to hand draw hers, as that had always been her method of choice; she smiled in remembrance of her grandfather, a renowned botanist, who had often showed her his private collections of journals with hand drawn sketches of plants and flowers.
It was then that Hermione began her search for Nucella lapillus, commonly known as the dog whelk, identifiable by its small, spiral-shaped shell. She scanned the relatively clear surface of the tide pool, taking time to gaze reverently at the groups of pink-shelled shrimp clustering near the rocky crevices and watch as a lone hermit crab fumbled its way through the sandy bottom. Her pupils dilated with never-ending fascination as a school of minnows hovered in a forest of seaweed, flowing and rippling with the current, and next to the fish, Hermione noticed the telltale shell of a lone dog whelk nestled in the corner of the rocks; she immediately grabbed one of the large mason jars and a small net to collect the whelk for further inspection. She removed the lid of the jar and let in a small amount of water and set the jar on a nearby rock; with the net positioned in her tight grip, Hermione lowered it into the water towards the whelk, angling it underneath in order to successfully collect it. However, she soon felt the familiar tug of the mesh pulling against one of the edges on the rock.
Great. A snag.
Huffing with impatience, Hermione stuck her other hand into the water, groping to find the snag and free the mesh of the net. Between trying to see into the slightly murky water and fumbling for the snag, Hermione failed to notice the grouping of barnacles nearby—
"Ow!"
Hermione yanked her hands and newly torn net out of the water, immediately grasping her left hand, which now had a fresh cut on the tip of her index finger. She watched as blood pooled along the pink slit, and hastily reached into her satchel for something to cover it. From the noise of rummaging through her belongings, Hermione didn't hear the crunch of footsteps hurrying along the beach until a familiar form dropped to his knees in front of her, reaching out to take her bleeding hand; Hermione let out a startled squeal and fell backwards onto the sand.
"Sorry, Hermione, I didn't mean to scare you," said Tom as he offered her his hand to pull her back up into a seated position.
"Tom!" she screeched, half in fear half in agitation. "Don't do that to me! Where the bloody hell did you come from anyway? I didn't see you in the garden, I thought you had left—"
He smirked at her, reaching into his pocket and removing a pad of gauze and some tape.
"So you were watching me from the window, weren't you?"
He gently took her hand and fastidiously cleaned the abrasion while Hermione sat, completely dumbfounded, in shock at being caught completely unaware by Tom Riddle.
"I certainly was not, I was trying to see the visibility of the tide pools and monitor the weather," she blustered, trying to control her breathing and recover. Tom's brows knitted together in concentration as he fastened off the gauze, placing the tape back in his pocket. "Why are you even carrying around that stuff anyway?"
He smirked again.
"Well, one can never be too careful when digging through the pools," he commented. "After my first incident, I think I learned my lesson."
Hermione blushed with the sudden onslaught of the memory. He had remembered.
"Well, yes, I suppose," she stammered quietly, gazing down at her bandaged finger, cheeks flaming.
Tom flashed a crooked smile at her, and plopped down on the sand beside her, rolling up the sleeves of his shirt. The waves of his hair trembled in the breeze, and Hermione had to resist the urge to run her fingers through it as Tom had earlier. Instead, she dug her hand further into the sand.
"So tell me, Hermione, what have you been doing these past—what, fifteen?—years?"
He looked over at her expectantly, that same dark gaze piercing through her, charismatic and begging her to spill her entire life story to him. She simply stared at him, for how long she did not know, just looking back into those eyes, searching for other signs of remembrances, signs to show her that he had remembered every moment of that summer, just like she had.
"Well?" he asked, watching her curiously, further causing her heart to flutter irregularly and her cheeks to redden.
"Oh, yes," Hermione sputtered, turning her attention to the white-capped waves. "Well, it certainly has been busy."
He nodded in understanding, turning his gaze towards the lapping waves of the sea as well.
"Yes, I believe father mentioned that you were attending university," he nonchalantly noted. "And I'd bet that you're studying marine biology, am I right?"
Hermione smiled and nodded, and in return he chuckled and flashed another grin at her. Even though she had been dreading a confrontation, she found herself unable to resist Tom's charm. That same charm still worked the same way it had years ago.
"Of course," he said, "it only makes sense. I can still remember you lecturing me after I had nicked my finger on the edge of those barnacles—something like, "I told you Tom, they were dangerously sharp, now look at yourself"—well, Hermione, look at yourself now!"
He immediately laughed, and Hermione promptly swatted him on the shoulder with her free hand.
"Shut it, Tom!"
His laugh was terribly infectious, deep and melodious, and Hermione found herself stifling a chuckle as well. Her nervousness was rapidly dissipating, and she was quickly finding herself to relax into the shores of the beach, scooting ever so closely towards him. He hadn't changed—Tom still had that magnetic personality that drew Hermione towards him. She couldn't fight it—she felt as if she were her five-year-old self again, eagerly waiting to see what she and Tom would do next. She found herself wishing she could take his hand, just to see if it felt just as she remembered it—
She glanced over at him, and noticed that his brows were once again knitted together in that same form of concentration, staring into the horizon as if he were searching for something unknown.
"Hermione," he started in a more serious tone. She immediately snapped her head towards him, once again meeting his darkened gaze. "I would be lying to you if I said that I didn't miss you. You know I rarely had many friends to begin with, but that summer—I won't forget it, I promised myself I wouldn't, and I haven't."
She dumbly nodded at him and his admission, trying to find a reply. She had missed him too, even more so when their correspondence had come to a halt. She had become so consumed with schoolwork and the ever present need to excel in her academics and please her parents; she had left the stack of letters behind along with the lingering memories of the boy who had spent nearly everyday with her.
"I remember it too," she replied quietly.
His eyes flashed with something—happiness possibly?—upon her emission.
"You do?" He asked. She nodded again. "I do so very well. I can still remember how terrible you were at trimming those hedges, and I remember telling you that you would never amount to much if you didn't learn how to do it properly—"
Hermione found herself smiling at the memory, listening intently to every word Tom was saying, watching how his eyes flickered with amusement at his animation of the various stories and recollections.
"—and you and that little journal you carried around, I remember you showing me all your drawings of the shells and the crabs, crude, of course, but vastly better than what I could have done. Not to mention that night in the boathouse, I had no idea you had such a prominent fear of thunderstorms—"
His gaze soon returned to find hers, his eyes searching once again—
"And I remember holding your hand because you were scared," he started, in that same serious tone, "you were scared, and I remember our hands were sweaty but I didn't care. I didn't want you to be scared. Ever."
Hermione gulped.
"Well," she spoke, "I don't think I'm scared anymore."
Tom smiled at her.
"I should hope not," he returned, glancing down at her hand tucked into the sand in the empty space between them. She found herself unprepared when he hoisted himself up from the sand and stared up at him.
"How would a cup of tea and some sandwiches sound to you, Hermione?"
Her heart fluttered at the thought of spending more time with him. She watched as he glanced down at her and offered his hand.
She gratefully took it, and he lifted her onto her feet with ease. She smiled brilliantly, and he did so in return.
"That sounds lovely," she agreed.
Tom smiled and clasped her hand, leading her up the dunes and towards the bridge.
His hand was still sweaty.