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The next week was bizarre for Hermione. The rumors were sneakier this time, and not filled with shock. Girls gave her strange looks in the halls, and it took DeLisle Andra visibly whispering to her friend while staring nonstop for Hermione to finally wonder what the hell had happened. There wasn't anything on her face, surely?
But there were no jeers, no insults, no hisses like "I didn't know you had it in you, Mudblood," from Slytherins, like the time with Riddle's curse. As a result, Hermione didn't even know what was happening until the rumor somehow got around to Albus, and, for the first time since Hermione had arrived, he had a mildly disturbed look on his face as he spoke with her.
"Listen, Hermione," he said, "I heard from Jared Pippin that Tom Riddle asked you to the dance."
Hermione's jaw slowly dropped. "From Jared Pippin?" she said incredulously. He was in Ravenclaw, couldn't have been anywhere near the classroom where Riddle had asked her – how did he know?
"Yes," Dumbledore replied, unfazed by her shock. "Actually, pretty much everyone's heard at this point, except... apparently, you... but I -"
"Wait. 'Everyone's heard'?" Hermione said, and it clicked. That was why all those strange looks from all those girls! That was why they were acting so weird, why even Mina and Godric had seemed a little distant after Wednesday afternoon... well, more distant, that was. It was as if they were on their own planet, now that they had realized their desperate urge to be together every waking second. Every sleeping second, too, sometimes.
Why would Riddle want that rumor to spread? Maybe it had been unintentional? He had taken her aside, after all – it wasn't as if he had asked her out in the open, where everyone could hear. And, of course, now that R.J. had moved on, no one would want to talk about it openly, if they knew the whole story. How very sneaky the whole thing was.
If it wasn't his intention to spread rumors, though, then what purpose could he possibly have had in asking her? That must have been the reason. An angry itch built at Hermione's chest, and the proverbial storm cloud descended to hang above her head. What a petty way to get to someone! Well, she wouldn't entertain his efforts by letting something so small and stupid irritate her.
Dumbledore looked a little perplexed, and Hermione jerked herself back to reality. "Sorry, Albus, I – I just realized – never mind. What were you saying?"
He gave a slight frown again, and Hermione was really worried now. With Dumbledore, even a look of utmost calm could be covering a worry, so for an actual frown to appear on his face was like a wild scream of caution. "I just wanted to express," said Albus carefully, "that I have my worries about Riddle."
"Oh, so do I," Hermione said, waving her hand as if it was nothing, but Dumbledore raised one of his hands and she fell silent again.
"You two seem to be... friends, now, and I respect that, but someone so shielded is not entirely easy to trust, or to understand," he continued, and there was a hidden undercurrent to his voice that made Hermione think that he might be talking about someone other than just Riddle. And, yes, his next words confirmed that suspicion. "Hermione, I don't know much about you other than that you are a very powerful and very talented witch, and I would hate to see that go to waste if you make yourself associated with... well, with someone who is as potentially Dark as Riddle. He is in Slytherin for a reason, after all, and I've been keeping a small eye on him, and I think there is sufficient reason to worry when you are around him."
Hermione nodded earnestly, but she was a bit unsettled by the blatant mistrust of Slytherins in his words. That didn't seem very much like something the Dumbledore she'd known would have said... "I do know all that, Albus, and I wouldn't say we're friends," she chuckled, not letting any unease show. "But there are things I need to... to learn from him, so I hope you won't take it the wrong way if you see me hanging around him."
She said the words and then nearly kicked herself. That sounded terrible. That sounded like a very poorly disguised euphemism for Dark Arts. "Nothing bad," she reassured quickly. "Just... things."
Dumbledore didn't look satisfied. He let out a small sigh through his nose. "Very well," he said. "I trust you with your own life, of course." A small smile snuck its way back onto his mouth. "Now, if you'd excuse me – I have a lemon tart to tend to down in the Great Hall."
Hermione watched him go, holding back a sigh. She didn't want to fail Dumbledore's trust in her, but if she was going to break that trust just by being around Riddle, what was there to do?
She was actually quite proud of the way she had been balancing her life recently. She saw Godric and Mina at most meals and in the Common Room throughout the day, and then at other times she would bump into Riddle and hold decent fragments of conversation with the boy. It was a good way to build up their uneasy truce.
In any case, she had managed to find a delicate balance between associating herself with Gryffindors and being around Slytherins, which was proving to help her stop thinking so constantly about having lost R.J., and she gave herself a pat on the back for it. She and Abraxas had even made a sort of friendship, since he was constantly around Riddle and often got sucked into their conversations. He really was strangely easy to get along with, boisterous and rowdy, with just a hint of the aristocracy in his mannerisms that seemed to define Lucius Malfoy. Hermione wondered what had happened to Abraxas, that he had ended up raising his son so poorly...
Hermione exited the doors of Hogwarts into the snow, turned left to go around the side of the school, and was completely taken by surprise.
"Arigulum Dagia!"
Before Hermione knew it, she was pinned against the wall, her feet high off the ground, and Araminta Meliflua was standing in front of her, looking almost confused. "You know, I heard something interesting today, Mudblood," she mused aloud. Oh, no.
"Really, Araminta?" said Hermione, pasting a bland smile onto her face. She strained for her wand, but her hands were pressed flat against the wall by Araminta's spell and unable to move more than an inch in any direction. Araminta had her wand out, and the pure black rod was held up against Hermione's neck.
"Yes. I heard you've been sticking that ugly face of yours where it doesn't belong," said Araminta softly, "so I've been thinking about rearranging it for a while, now – and I'm just wondering which of your eyes would look better pasted in the middle of your forehead instead..." Hermione's stomach filled with fear at the words. That type of thing was very Dark magic, and if Araminta tried it and something went wrong, the results were potentially horrific. "It shouldn't hurt, if I do it right, but it will be more than a little grotesque to look at. You know, I did tell you to stay away from Tom, but I suppose a little handiwork on my part should nudge him in the right direction."
Araminta sighed, and the almost-puzzlement on her face grew. "I don't know how you've managed to spread word around that Tom asked you to the Christmas Dance, because the very idea is ludicrous, of course, but I've got to hand it to you, Granger – when you want someone, you do work very hard to -"
"Araminta?" called a male voice from around the side of the school.
Hermione let out an involuntary quiver of relief, and yelled "Here!" before Araminta could stop her – maybe it was Abraxas, or even Revelend or Herpo – someone who might help her get out of this mess. There was no saying whether Riddle would help her, if presented with the opportunity. Hermione suddenly remembered how he had just watched Araminta hurt her last time... but things had changed. If it were Riddle, after all the decent, the bad, the just-plain-weird that their relationship had been through, Hermione felt like he would help her this time... maybe.
Then Eliot Vaisey appeared around the edge of the school. Hermione's heart sank. She didn't know anything about Vaisey, other than that he had kept levitating frogs into Godric's dormitory, and that didn't bode well.
Worse, Araminta had just said, "Silencio," and jabbed her wand at Hermione, so there would be no more cries for help.
"What are you doing?" asked Vaisey, bafflement wandering across his broad features. Damn, Araminta had chosen a good spot to attack. They were in a tiny dip of an alcove next to a huge jutting pillar, so Hermione was in the shade and very hard to see from afar. It would look like Araminta was just standing alone against the side of the castle until one was very close.
"Oh, hello, Vaisey," Araminta said, with a very insistent leave-me-alone nudge to her voice. "Just taking care of some unfinished business."
Vaisey walked towards them, and suddenly noticed that there was a person pinned up against the wall, about two feet off the ground. He looked a bit surprised. "Who's that?" Vaisey asked, pointing to Hermione.
Araminta pursed her lips. "Just a Mudblood; don't worry about it."
A strange look passed across Vaisey's face, then. Hermione swallowed with difficulty – the restriction of her limbs seemed to be creeping up her body from her extremities, as if she was being frozen to the wall bit by bit.
"Oh. Is that... what's-her-name, Granger?" the boy asked, running a skinny hand through his light brown hair.
Araminta rolled her eyes in frustration. "Yes, Vaisey, it is. Don't you have to go oil your hair or something?"
She lifted her wand again, but before she could do anything, Eliot interrupted again. Hermione's heart thudded hard – waiting for something terrible to happen was never good; the inevitability might actually have been the worst part of Hermione's experiences with torture in the past –
"Actually, no," said Vaisey. "I was, um, coming to find you, because Tom – well, he – I – he wanted to... to ask you about, uh, something."
Araminta's wand hand dropped. That got her attention. The girl turned to face Vaisey. "Really?" she said, her voice breathless. Hermione rolled her eyes feebly.
"He's, er, in the common room," Vaisey said, swallowing and gesturing jerkily. Hermione wondered why he was being so awkward about it. Then her mind snapped to the fact that Vaisey had called Riddle 'Tom'. That was... bizarre, to say the least – why had Vaisey seen fit to toss around Riddle's first name like that?
If it were anyone else, it wouldn't have been a big deal, but Riddle's name was definitely a big deal. If Hermione were a Death Eater, or whatever the school version of that was, she wouldn't have risked calling him Tom if there were the slightest chance that he could think she was getting flippant and familiar. But there was an odd glint of fear in Vaisey's eyes, one that Hermione didn't fully understand.
"Thank you, Vaisey," Araminta said, and turned back to Hermione, her expression slowly morphing back into slight distaste. "As for you, you can just wait for a quick second until I get back. Vaisey, come on."
Vaisey swallowed and stumbled after the girl, who had yanked on his arm so hard that he had nearly fallen. He shot a last glance back at Hermione before vanishing around the corner with Araminta.
Hermione strained, but the only part of herself that seemed to have any sort of free will anymore was her face. The Silencing Charm that Araminta had used had been strong, and blunt, and would keep her from being able to make any sort of sound for a while. What would happen after Hermione lost the ability to breathe in of her own volition because of this freezing curse? Would she be able to keep breathing? What if she suffocated, right here, at the hands of a jealous witch, right next to a window into the Great Hall?
But no. Hermione's eyes flew back to the corner. Eliot Vaisey was hurrying back around it, alone this time. "I managed to get rid of her," he said in a low, quick voice, and flicked his wand. Hermione floated off the wall, suddenly in complete control of herself again, and she let out a small murmur – her voice was back, too. She was involuntarily impressed by his wandwork – nonverbal, and that couldn't have been removed by a simple Finite Incantatem. "You'd better run, before she gets back. Actually, now that I think about it..."
He stuck his wand back in his pocket. "Here, hex me," he said, holding out his arms to display his chest. Hermione was looking at him as if he had an extra head.
"What..." she started, but he interrupted.
"Just do it!" he hissed. "She'll get... suspicious, I don't know; just use Petrificus Totalus or something."
Hermione didn't need to be told again. The look of alarm on his face was really quite strange, but she cast the spell on him, whispered, "Thanks," and hurried away.
Why on earth would Eliot Vaisey, a completely random Slytherin, be worried about the wellbeing of a Gryffindor of Muggle descent? Especially when said Slytherin had been predisposed to childish acts of Gryffindor-hatred in the past? Hermione couldn't understand it at all. She walked down to the Quidditch pitch and ascended the stands slowly, watching her breath puff out in front of her. She frowned, blowing her hair out of her eyes. Why was everything she thought she knew about Slytherins going to hell these days?
She looked around the stands, and found that she was not alone. On the opposite side of the pitch sat... someone. But it couldn't be Riddle, even though it looked exactly like Riddle, because Vaisey had just said that Riddle was in the common room, wanting to speak to Araminta.
Hermione stood up and walked through the creaking wooden stands, shooting glances over at the boy sitting there, but the closer she got, the more he looked exactly like Riddle.
Finally, she sat down next to him, and said, "What are you doing out here?"
He looked up from the book he was reading.
"Any reason I shouldn't be here?" he asked, looking a bit affronted.
"Well, yes, actually," said Hermione, "because Vaisey just told Araminta that you were in the common room and wanted to speak to her."
"Oh, he did?" Riddle said. He didn't look surprised, which was, in itself, unsurprising. "That's interesting."
Hermione pursed her lips and glanced away. That wasn't an adequate response. Why would Vaisey lie and risk the wrath of Araminta, seemingly just to help Hermione? That didn't seem like it could be his only motive.
"Why would he say that?" Riddle mused aloud, looking out at the Quidditch pitch. Now confusion did color his dark eyes. "Moreover, why were you just standing there watching?" He turned those eyes on her, amusement replacing the confusion. "Espionage, perhaps?"
"No," she mumbled, looking away. "Araminta was actually threatening to rearrange my face at the time. But, the way I see it, why would Vaisey lie just to help me?"
She didn't really know why she was telling Riddle her entire thought process, or why he would even care in the first place, but he was looking vaguely interested. He even carefully marked his page and shut his book. "Rearrange your face?"
"Literally and figuratively," Hermione said.
Riddle tapped his foot agitatedly on the wooden bench in front of them. Hermione stared blankly at the three silver hoops on the home end of the pitch. "I mean, I'm very grateful to Vaisey for doing it, though," she admitted. "Araminta had this curse on me that froze me to the wall. Not exactly pleasant."
"She's not exactly pleasant," Riddle replied quietly.
Hermione faced him. "Then why do you continue to let her dangle off you, if you have no intention of returning her feelings? That's a bit mean, don't you think? Also, that type of thing doesn't exactly seem like the sort of thing you would entertain. Or, well, suffer."
He smirked. "I have an image to maintain," he sighed, and turned to meet her gaze. Hermione felt that familiar shock of looking him straight on, that pleasant and yet completely inappropriate tingle in her fingertips.
"Great," she said, "but could you tell her to keep my image essentially the same? She was talking about putting one of my eyes in the middle of my forehead."
"Oh, she couldn't do that spell," Riddle said, as if he knew exactly which one she was talking about. Which he probably did.
Hermione shrugged. "She's good at wandwork, despite what my friends insist. It's just that she can't seem to work nonverbally."
"Araminta," Riddle sighed, "has a bit of a problem with overconfidence. She tends to overreach her abilities and make small errors that turn out... direly."
Hermione snorted. "Well, then, she'd probably just end up cutting my eye out altogether. Although she could ask you for some assistance, since you're so experienced."
Her smirk matched his, and they both looked across the Quidditch pitch. "I don't think I would put that curse on you if given the chance," he commented quietly and impersonally, as if talking to himself.
Hermione shot him a glance. It was one of those strange comments that nearly seemed to be verging on the edge of nice, but then the inherent nature of the words just made the idea ridiculous. "Oh, really? Thanks ever so," she said sarcastically, looking away again. "Of course, a good Crucio is never amiss, is that right?" Her words were filled with mock cheeriness.
He glanced back at her, a strange look on his face. "Actually, I do almost regret doing that," he murmured, and Hermione's head whipped around to look at him.
"Regret? Tom Riddle? Surely not," she said quickly, her heart beating rather faster than usual for no apparent reason.
"If only for the reason that it seems that you completely distrust me, now," he added quietly.
"There's a reason it's called an 'Unforgivable Curse', you know," she mumbled.
"What happened to all that beautiful and oh-so-naïve second-chance philosophy?"
"It's on Christmas vacation."
"Excellent way to celebrate the holiday spirit," Riddle commented with an almost-smile.
Hermione grinned. The quick-paced banter was something she had grown to appreciate, if nothing else. As long as she kept herself from saying anything too personal, the almost-preying edge seemed to wear completely off of the nature of their conversation. This was ironic, she mused, given that the only reason either of them could be speaking to the other was due to what they wanted to get out of them. Merlin knew she was just inexplicably curious about his private thoughts, nothing he would ever make known to her voluntarily.
"So," Riddle said, "why was Araminta attempting to curse you this time? Did you do something particularly Mudbl – Muggle-reminiscent?"
"Nice save," said Hermione dryly. "And, no, actually – odd how this works out – she actually heard that you asked me to the dance, and thought that I made it up."
Suddenly, there was tension in the air. Riddle placed his book next to him and stretched his legs out, resting his dark head lazily on the bench above him and looking up into the air. "Do tell."
"According to Albus, 'everyone knows' about it now," Hermione huffed. "I don't see why it matters."
Poor choice of words, there, Hermione. "Oh, really?" he said, and there was a strangely resentful edge to his voice. "So your rejecting me doesn't matter, even though for all you know I could have been agonizing over it and planning it in intricate detail?"
"It didn't seem intricately detailed," Hermione said defensively. "You know what I mean, Riddle – it's a dance. It's frivolous. I wouldn't think you'd care about something like that. I don't even know why you asked me in the first place."
He mumbled something that she didn't quite catch. She glanced over at him. He was staring into the blue sky, which was reflected in his dark eyes, giving them a strange clarity. "Didn't mean to offend you," Hermione continued. "I would have thought that such a social event was beneath you, actually -"
"Now, why would you think that?" he asked, closing his eyes. He looked peaceful.
"Well, such an academic as yourself doesn't usually give himself to such pursuits," Hermione said wryly.
"You mean such an academic as yourself?"
Hermione frowned. "No. Such a one as yourself, because for months now you've kept resolutely attempting to perfect this potion – which, by the way, you still won't tell me what it's for – and the first time I even met you, you were sitting in the library for twelve hours, and even now, when it's so near Christmas, you sit outside, alone, reading... what is this... 'Twilight Seduction.'"
She put the book back down, and then did a swift double take. "Wait, what?"
He scowled and sat back up. "That is private, Ms. Granger." He tapped the cover, and it swiftly went blank.
Hermione stared at the book. If that had been a fake cover, it had been a very embarrassing one to choose, that was for sure. There had been a picture of a pretty witch on the front cover, winking suggestively, held in the arms of some overly-muscled Fabio type. What the...
"Why on earth are you reading a romance novel?" Hermione laughed. Her eyes widened in delight as something happened that she had never seen before – Riddle's alabaster skin flushed a furious red. "Merlin, you're blushing!"
"I am not!" he said fiercely, and tucked the book inside his robe, a huge scowl erupting on his face. Hermione couldn't keep herself from letting out a sort of triumphant cackle. "Shut up," he ordered, but his face was still bright red and his eyes were boring a hole in the stands.
"It's okay," she hummed cheerfully, "every man has his secrets."
And, just like that, the blush faded away. "Yes," Riddle said, turning to look at her, completely composed once more. How did he do that so easily? It was actually unsettling, the complete control he had over every part of himself. "Care to tell me yours?"
Well, that was a lot more up-front than he usually was. "Uh," Hermione said uneasily, the smile running from her face like water, "no."
"Shame," he sighed, and for a second she thought he was going to curse her, so she gripped her wand handle tight, but he just stared moodily into the opposite side of the stands. Her heart fluttered in relief. "Why?" he asked suddenly, looking back at her, and Hermione could see true quizzicality in his eyes. She sighed.
"There are things that I can't tell you." She had said that line in her mind a million times, preparing for when he asked her that very question. "And there are things that hurt too much to tell anyone," she added, but she had not practiced that one, or even thought about it beforehand, and there was a true pang of pain in her heart as she said it, a true rush of memories that stung their way through her mind's eye.
"Oh."
"And you? How about the mysterious Tom Riddle? Why don't you let anyone know who you are?" she asked, her heart thudding loudly, not believing her nerve. This was something that she actually wanted to know, something that interested her, not just a pleasantry. She fiddled with her white wool gloves as his intense gaze scrutinized her once more.
"The same as you," he said quietly. The same as you. So little of an answer, there. So little to go on. Things I can't tell you – well, obviously, like murdering his own father and grandparents. But things that hurt too much to tell anyone? What could those be? Hermione was struck with a new wave of curiosity. Even if he did just hack up a bunch of lies, she wanted to know what he would possibly admit could hurt the infallible persona of Tom Riddle. What would he not be able to think about without hurting? Could he even hurt at all?
Suddenly, Riddle let out a small, mirthless laugh. "We deserve each other," he mumbled, and the words shocked Hermione right to the core. We deserve each other? No. That wasn't true. Just because she was secretive, didn't mean that –
Her mind suddenly recalled the conversation with Albus, earlier that day. I don't know much about you, Hermione. No one did, here. R.J. had expressed that. Mina had expressed it, too. For all most people knew, she could be torturing someone right now. For all they knew, she too had been a mass-murderer in her past life. Merlin – was this the price of secrecy, this overwhelming doubt that now filled her mind? How could she know that Mina and Godric trusted her at all; how could she know that R.J. had been able to trust her? Even Albus Dumbledore, the most trusting person she knew – that glint of doubt in his face –
Hermione looked back at Riddle. "I suppose we do," she answered softly.
xXxXxXxXx
"Listen, I just don't like him."
Hermione laughed. "Is there any sort of reason?"
Riddle didn't crack a smile; he was dead serious. "Yes, there is," he said. "He's so... closed-up. He won't let anyone know what he can really do; he just sits there and smiles."
"Oh, so, exactly like you? Except for the smiling part," Hermione said.
A dark look came across Riddle's face. Apparently, when it came to Dumbledore, he wasn't open to joviality. "I just would think it better if you were to stay away from him, that's all," he said. There. That wasn't too suspicious, and she couldn't really question his reasoning if his cover was that it was 'just a gut feeling' about Dumbledore.
The girl's face was nearly amused, a smile threatening to tug at her pink lips. What was amusing about this situation? "I'm not joking, you know," he said quietly, in his favorite you-are-soon-to-die tone of voice. She stopped smiling. Good. But now indignance made its way onto her expression, that haughty indignance that was always plainly apparent in her hazel eyes.
"Look, Tom, it's none of your business who I hang around," she said.
"Yes, it is, when they despise me," Riddle countered, tossing his hair from his eyes arrogantly.
"You don't know he does."
Riddle glanced over at Dumbledore. "I can guess. He's not hard to read." That was true; the open mistrust on young Dumbledore's face was always incredibly easy to see.
"Well, I like Albus. He's a nice person, and I don't see any reason why I can't be friends with him," Hermione said. "So... so... so there."
Riddle felt anger growing in his chest, but it wasn't for the girl sitting next to him. It was for that calm-faced Dumbledore, sitting and sort of watching and silently judging. What did she see in him that she needed to be around? Of course, she wouldn't know that Dumbledore had been his Transfiguration Professor and had seemed to dislike him from the very start. The old-man version of the boy had always seemed prejudiced against him, despite the fact that Riddle had been a brilliant student and had known it, too. Even now, when Dumbledore didn't even remember anything after the very earliest part of the 20th Century, he still disliked Riddle, without any reason.
A murderous look swelled across Riddle's face.
Hermione rolled her eyes. "Oh, come on, don't look like that. I'm sure he doesn't dislike you as much as you're convinced he does."
"No. I'm right."
"Of course you are," she sighed. "Tom Riddle is always right."
"Glad you're catching on," he replied. There was something nearly reassuring about her sarcasm, which Riddle didn't understand, and he didn't like the feeling. He should not have had to glean any sort of reassurance from anyone, ever. He was a lone pillar; everyone else was just an inconsequential floor tile.
Granger really was brilliant, though, which was an extremely attractive feature in his eyes, a feature which had the potential to raise her above the muck of the rest of humanity. The more they spoke, no matter the subject, the more he felt as if he might have found an intellectual equal, one who was not Albus Dumbledore, one who didn't hate him without reason.
Oh, wait. Yes, she hated him – too much to heal him, apparently – and this constantly-remembered fact made Riddle get a strange pang behind his ribcage, one which was not anger and was not frustration. It was something like disappointment, he had realized – disappointment that he had somehow lost someone who could have been something like a peer, could have been useful, and lost them without even having done something unspeakably terrible to them. Well, not that unspeakably terrible. Just two Cruciatus Curses, and those hadn't even been enough to scare her away from him – because, lo and behold, here she sat, speaking with him – so they couldn't be the reason she despised him so much.
Riddle was slowly realizing that being aware of his own emotions actually lent him a sense of power, like he was achieving a new level of absolute control. He had never been able to contain anger; any of his followers could have vouched for that. And he'd repressed anything else, or passed it off as entirely unimportant. But being around the Granger girl often gave him weird and unfamiliar feelings, and as he attempted to decipher them, he found that he was actually able to calm himself more reliably, to be more... relaxed. Not that relaxation was really something to work towards, of course, because it often made people lax in decision-making, et cetera – but it did feel nice to be able to be able to occupy his ever-busy mind with things other than what this feeling and what that feeling was.
He looked at Granger, who was waving back to Dumbledore, and another heated jolt ran through his veins. Riddle wanted to stop her from associating with Dumbledore, and he wanted to do it quickly, before Dumbledore had a chance to poison her against him completely. Besides, why should Granger waste her time on such a goalless person, a boy who was so content to sit there and do nothing? She could be doing many more productive things with her time. Or even just sitting and speaking with Tom, giving him more access to her personality.
Riddle discovered with sudden alarm that he sort of liked her personality, and he shoved the thought hurriedly to the recesses of his mind. No. If he... liked someone, that meant he would be disinclined to do awful things to them, and anyone who was acquainted with him on any sort of real level had to know that awful things were just a part of being in his life. Besides, his next plan for Granger was not one to be taken lightly.
He had been almost sure that she would figure it out, when she had seen the book he had been reading. Riddle couldn't believe he had been as careless as to leave the cover in plain sight – but she had thought it was a romance novel, and just the notion of Tom Riddle reading a romance novel had been so humiliating that he had found himself turning bright red, temporarily unable to suppress it for some reason. Well, humiliation was better than her discovering what the book actually was, anyway. Riddle allowed himself a quiet smirk – although he had this vague feeling he was forgetting something...
"So, what are you smirking about this time? Killed someone's pet bunny, or something?" said Hermione's voice, cutting through his thoughts.
Killed someone's pet bunny... that was a good guess. Riddle felt a strange buoyancy, rising up to his throat, an entirely unfamiliar desire – and it ended up on his face as a broad smile, a smile that showed his perfect teeth, a symmetrical, electric smile that crinkled at the sides of his eyes and lifted his cheeks.
Hermione stared openly. "Was that... did you just smile at one of my jokes?" she said, aghast. This couldn't be happening. It hadn't looked voluntary, either. He had genuinely found something that she had said amusing. Hermione had managed to amuse Tom Riddle. And that smile was... absolutely, embarrassingly stunning.
The smile slipped back into a smirk, and Hermione found she could breathe again. "I suppose there is a sort of quaint appeal in your rudimentary sense of humor," he said, and she laughed.
Riddle found that he had become accustomed to her laughing at his comments, and even that his comments had started to cater to her laughter. After all, making her laugh was good. It meant that she was enjoying being around him, right? And usually, people who were parts of 'friendships' enjoyed being around each other. At least, as far as he had observed in various case studies. So, in conclusion, laughter was a good signal, good for his 'befriending' motive.
He blatantly ignored the itching feeling that that was not the only reason he liked to see her laugh.
xXxXxXxXx
"Fancy running into you here," Hermione said, knocking on the door to the classroom and walking in before he had a chance to say anything.
"Did I say you could come in?" he asked with a small scowl on his lips. He was lying on a black leather sofa, playing with his wand, looking languid and dangerous.
Hermione conjured herself a bright orange chair and plopped down on it with a sigh. "Well, Tom, I supposed that the fact that I said I'd come visit you would be enough warning," she said, looking over at Riddle with a grin.
He was like an elastic band. She had carefully, carefully stretched him to his limit with her sarcasm and familiarity, and then kept stretching that limit, bit by bit – and now that he was all stretched out, she could speak to him as if he were a regular acquaintance. No – as if he were a friend. Hermione felt a vague sense of victory, which was odd. She shouldn't have felt like she succeeded by befriending Lord Voldemort. But then – he wasn't really Lord Voldemort yet, was he? Perhaps, in real life, if there had been someone who was willing to withstand everything about him to become familiar with him... perhaps he might have turned out differently?
He hadn't even done anything distinctly rotten in... how long? Well, she couldn't remember anything particularly vile since the maze incident, assuming that the rumors hadn't been a plot of his – but those were hardly even annoying, let alone evil. The feeling of victory was swelling by the second, and she looked over at Riddle with a smile. Handling him was a great intellectual task, but Hermione finally felt like she was used to it – and now, now, she could get to the good stuff. The psychological scarring and whatnot, if there was any. The motivations. The reasons. She ached to know. She burned to know about him.
He fascinated her in a way that no one ever had before, and she was on the road to being satisfied, to scratching that itch at last!
And she wasn't sure when he had changed, turned from Riddle into Tom... but it had happened, and he no longer objected.
Hermione let out a contented sigh. "Tom," she mumbled.
"Yes?" said his curt voice.
"Your fire is out," she commented. "Should I start it again?"
He gave a snarky chuckle. "Yes, because that would be incredibly useful, given the contents of the cauldron, Granger."
She sat bolt upright. She hadn't even thought to check on the potion as she walked in – she had been just a bit distracted by the way he looked that day, which was embarrassing, but very true. She stared into the cauldron. It was empty. Empty. Finally, on the twelfth of December, he had finished it.
"So... you succeeded?" Hermione said. The potion had sort of started to become a given, a project that would never get finished. After all, Riddle had told her that he had once spent a year and a half researching properties of a certain potion just to make it operate on a different time frame – it wasn't implausible that this could be something similar. "It's done?"
"Yes, Ms. Granger," he sighed, and a tight-lipped smile managed to make itself known on his face. "My potion is finally finished."
"So, where is it?"
"Safely bottled and stored," he chuckled, "far from where you could get access to it."
Hermione let out a low whistle. "Well, good job!" she finally said, and his eyes slowly opened, wandering over to her. He blinked and frowned a little.
"What?" said Riddle.
"Good job," Hermione repeated.
"Oh..."
She messed with her hair, scrutinizing his expression. She had come to know very subtle changes in the way he held his mask that were key to understanding what he was thinking. "Why are you confused? I just said good job," she said. The left side of his mouth had just the tiniest hint of a crease at its corner. That meant he was thinking harder than usual, which was a feat in itself, and which usually meant confusion.
"I..."
His mask unraveled, revealing the plain puzzlement behind it. "What?" Hermione asked.
He paused, and then surveyed a long index finger lazily. "I don't know why I feel inclined to tell you this, Granger, but no one – besides my sickeningly easily-impressed teachers, I suppose – has ever told me that I've done a 'good job'."
Hermione frowned. "But you're brilliant."
"I know," he replied flatly, and he rested his arms above his head on the sofa, observing Hermione with a calm eye.
"Well, aren't we modest," commented Hermione, with a bit of a smirk. Riddle's face didn't show any emotion at all. He just blinked calmly and his eyes traveled over Hermione's expression.
"That's one way to put it, I suppose," he answered.
"And another way to put it?"
"If I had to summarize in a word, I'd choose 'unappreciated'," he mumbled, his eyes flicking up to stare at the ceiling.
Hermione raised her eyebrows. Was this actually getting somewhere? Were they actually going to talk about Riddle's... feelings? She swallowed.
"I'm sorry," she said quietly.
No sooner was the word out of her mouth than a hideous snarl was on his face, and he was sitting bolt upright, his feet on the floor and his wand out.
"Don't you ever say you're sorry to me," he hissed. Hermione's wand was out too – her reflexes were still fully in action – and she was suddenly a nervous wreck, her heart going bang bang bang hard and recklessly and hopelessly. Oh my God – She hadn't heard his voice like that, hadn't seen this side of him since that first time he had cast Crucio on her. Just for a simple apology? Merlin, what was wrong with him? That animal rage in his eyes was positively terrifying—
"Why?" she found herself asking, her voice tiny and timid, and she could nearly see him absorbing the word, and his face changed like she had never seen it change before.
His hand opened slightly, seemingly of its own volition, and Hermione was alarmed to see his wand drop from his hand carelessly into his lap. Then his handsome features contorted until he looked positively agonized. His mouth opened slightly, a tiny black aperture between his full lips, his eyes filled to the brim with revelatory pain. Hermione stared at him, horrified by this new spectrum of emotion on his face. Was this why he had perfected a display that would conceal every feeling he ever had? Was this what he was hiding, all the time? His mouth opened a little more, and he let out an "I -"
His voice cracked embarrassingly, but for once he did not compose himself. He just swallowed and looked down at his wand, the hurt still in his stare, as if he were thinking why, why, why as he looked at that thin stick of yew.
His fingers quietly placed his wand on the sofa cushion next to him, and he looked back up at Hermione, that raw gaze tearing at her.
She felt like she was going to cry.
Weeks of nothing, and now this? This stricken transparency? Right then he looked like the single most miserable and – and, dare she think it – vulnerable person she had ever seen, and that included Harry at the height of his desolation and anguish, and that included Ron at the height of his fear and worry, and that included when she looked into the mirror and saw herself late at night, saw her own image haunted by constant nightmares of figures that would never die.
Still the expression did not drain. He didn't look like he could do anything to stop it, but his eyes were locked with hers as firmly as if their two gazes had been connected by steel threads, a silent, desperate, tortured plea in his eyes for something she didn't think she could ever, ever know or understand.
Hermione's heart raced. Merlin, this torrential silence. "Riddle, I -" The words whispered forth unbidden from her lips. She sounded like she was about to burst into tears, her throat choked with entirely unreasonable emotion. "Riddle, say something," she said frantically, taking in a deep breath through her nose.
It was as if he had realized he had gone too deep, and could not go back. Now he glanced from side to side, and there was nearly a tremble at the side of his mouth, and then his eyes snapped back to hers. More speech she could not suppress. He looked afraid. He looked terrified, like a little child. He looked like everything she had never seen him display.
She whispered, "Tom."
"Tom."
He bowed his head forward in seeming agony. "Leave," he said, and his voice was strained and whispery.
She toppled forward to her knees in a desperate attempt to see his downturned face, one hand outstretched in a silent gesture of I'm-here-for-you-I-care-talk-to-me but he clawed it away with a visibly shaking hand. "Get the hell out!" he said through gritted teeth, his voice strangled now. In those words was a cry threatening to break from his chest, that scream she had heard him scream when he had cursed himself, the cry of the defeated. And the wretched.
Hermione staggered to her feet, feeling like she couldn't blink, her eyes were so wide and staring, and before she knew it she had lightly placed a comforting hand on his left shoulder, letting it rest there for just a second before she strode from the room, the door a quiet click behind her.
She stopped outside, walked a little way down the hall, then placed her hands on the stone wall, clenching her eyes shut, trying to get the image out of her head of that expression– but the more she tried to suppress it, the brighter it burned onto the backs of her eyelids, unforgettable, irrepressible, unbelievable, as concrete and as real as the rock digging into her hand right now. Tom Riddle! How could one face show that much misery? That much hurt? That much everything? Hermione let out a barely-restrained noise of frustration for him, for his pain, for he who never let himself be himself.
She didn't know him at all. This boy, this man, who thought she knew so much about him – she knew nothing. Nothing at all. Nothing that mattered, anyway – nothing that mattered to her anymore. Not after that.
Riddle tried to bite back hot tears, but he found that he couldn't keep them from spilling over, so he just opened his eyes and let the floodgates wide.
Memories.
Racked helplessly with angry sobs, practically snarls, he dug his hands into his dark hair, pulling hard until that perfect sweep of darkest brown was tousled and chaotic, and he snatched up his wand with a hand and cast a Silencer on the room and he blew up a desk, blew up a chair, with a bang and a bang and an enraged beam of sparks sliced through the rest in a melting heat.
Memories.
Riddle lurched to his feet, his eyes red, his mouth wide in harsh gaping breaths sucked in one by one, not even attempting to calm himself. He demolished the desks with more fast-paced, terribly-cast spells, wand tearing through the air in wide, sloppy sweeps, and then he conjured a bookshelf filled with blank books just so that he could destroy every bit of everything with his bare hands.
Memories.
And when every plank of that bookshelf was splintered, and every book's silent page lay rent from its spine? Then, then, then it was over.
Riddle slowly walked back to the sofa, sitting down like a feeble old man, his nails torn and bloody, his hands roughly scratched and ripped, and he gently repaired them with his wand, tenderly, like he was healing a sick child, and he moved his wand over his face, and everything that might have betrayed the fact that he had just been sobbing like the dying with tears and mucus all over his face – it all vanished.
All that was left was a sort of redness to his eyes, but he closed them in tiredness anyway, and after a few minutes, he thought, upon inspection of his reflection, that those looked okay again too. Innocent language – innocent words. Okay, again, too. Okay, like just standing up after a bit of a fall. Again, like he had ever been standing in the first place. Too, like he was not alone. Too, like he could ever expect anybody to be able to help him back on his way.
And Tom Riddle slowly brushed his hair back into place, and it was then that he felt something on his shoulder, like a rash, like an injury – where her hand had ever-so-lightly laid itself, her delicate hand, her hand –
Riddle's mouth slowly opened a little, but he was too tired to think. He just curled himself up into as small of a ball as he could, and his fingers feverishly clutched at that spot on his shoulder. For some reason, he wasn't embarrassed to admit to himself that he was feeling a servile gratitude towards that place on his shoulder, the only place on his body that didn't feel deprecated in a rush of memory, memory, memory – the only part of him that felt like it could ever possibly feel okay again too.
This deadening feeling of self-loathing would pass, though.
It always ended up passing.
Tom Riddle always came out on top.
So with that knowledge in his pocket, Riddle clutched at the sofa arm beneath him and broke down again. And again, and again, until he scarcely believed he was still real.