Opia
March 17, 1945
Tom lay awake while Rosemary slept in the crook of his shoulder. He had been watching her for what felt like an hour (if not more); she looked radiant in the illumination of the moonlight flooding through his window. For what was surely the hundredth time, his mind drifted through the events of the evening prior.
First there was the Knights meeting, which he considered to be largely successful after discovering the potential of Brocklehurst and putting Davies in his place. But that was nothing compared to what he had seen at the party: Rosemary's impressive duel. And even that paled in comparison to their drunken game later that night, which he certainly enjoyed more than he had anticipated.
He hadn't really even taken her seriously at first, as he was well-aware that she was quite drunk. He thought she would fold after about five minutes or so of their game, but Merlin had he been mistaken.
"Do your worst, Miss Horton," he had told her.
A tiny smirk appeared on her face and she abruptly pushed him into the nearby armchair in the corner of his room. "There's just one rule," she said, her voice still sultry and teasing. "No touching unless I tell you to. Think you can handle it?"
He rolled his eyes, but donned a smirk of his own. "Don't flatter yourself."
By this time, she had finished unbuttoning her blouse and dropped it to the floor. She leaned forward to kiss the side of his neck in the spots she knew drove him crazy, allowing him a plentiful view of her cleavage. She would have to do better than this if she had any chance of winning, he thought.
Her lips continued up and down his neck and across his jaw as she slipped out of her skirt, revealing a pair of lacy knickers that happened to be his favorite to see on her. He could already feel himself hardening at the sight of her half-naked body and swiftly attempted to take his mind elsewhere so that he could assure his win against her.
But this was for naught, because she suddenly reached out and grasped his hand while half climbing on top of him, brushing his finger just slightly against the bottom of her knickers.
Her body heat radiated off her, so much so that he could feel it through his clothes. "Oh Tom," she whispered seductively in his ear.
This, along with the realization that a wet spot had already begun to form on her knickers, was enough to send a shiver down his spine and make him just a little harder. Still, he could resist her; there was no way that she could beat him. He scoffed internally at her misguided belief that he couldn't control himself with her.
Suddenly, as if she had heard his thoughts, she stood, walked to his nearby bed, and sprawled herself onto it. He wasn't sure what exactly she was doing, until he watched one of her dainty hands trail down her smooth stomach and beneath her knickers.
He bit the inside of his cheek to avoid giving any noticeable reaction to her very naughty behavior. This became significantly more difficult when she locked eyes with him and slid off her knickers, then continuing to touch herself.
"You're making a fool of yourself," he just barely managed to say, for the first time wondering if she just might win at this little game after all.
The smile she sported in the wake of this comment was nothing short of devious. "I'd wager that at least one part of you would disagree," she said, looking down pointedly at his trousers.
He sighed internally, disappointed at the betrayal of his own anatomy.
Thankfully, he was afforded a momentary reprieve when she suddenly decided to change strategies once again and hopped off his bed, sauntering toward him. He knew his relief would be short-lived, however, as he watched her hand travel in the direction of his zipper. He caught her wrist just in time and she looked at him in amusement.
"What's wrong, you don't think you can handle a bit of touching?"
He couldn't exactly say 'yes', so he was forced to release her hand and allow her to do as she pleased. Rosemary reached into his trousers and fondled him lightly and balled his hands into fists to once again avoid giving her the satisfaction of reaction.
"I'm impressed," she said teasingly. "But I bet you'd fold if these clothes weren't in the way."
"Try me," he forced himself to say as he stood and stripped his clothes to the floor. In the meantime, Rosemary unhinged her brassiere and tossed it aside, baring the entirety of her gorgeous body to his hungry eyes.
Her lips met his and he was careful not to kiss her back, though it took an enormous amount of willpower – and even more so when her fingers wrapped around the base of his bare cock and began stroking him up and down. His inner urges screamed at him to touch her everywhere, but he continued to fight them with every ounce of energy he had.
After what felt like an hour of this torture, but was likely only a few minutes in reality, she climbed up onto the chair and straddled him, her delicious opening hovering directly above his throbbing member. If only he could reach out, grasp her hips, and bring her down over his cock…that was all he wanted.
"Do you want me?" she asked him teasingly.
It was all he could do not to abandon their game altogether, throw her on the nearby bed, and wreak havoc on her sensuous body. But his pride wouldn't allow it. He didn't trust himself to open his mouth, so instead he said nothing.
Tom sucked in his breath sharply and felt himself twitch as she lowered herself just enough so her wet opening brushed against his erection. "Do you want me?" she asked him again. His hands gripped the arms of his chair so tightly that his knuckles turned white. Still, he managed to stay silent.
"And now?" She slid about an inch onto him effortlessly due to her outrageous wetness.
Tom gasped involuntarily and looked into her eyes, those gorgeous deep blue pools. Before he could stop himself, he said "Yes."
She grinned, clearly quite pleased with herself, though her tone remained just as darkly sensual as it had been at the beginning of her game. "Tell me, then. Tell me you want me and that you were wrong – that you can't resist me. Beg for me."
He locked his jaw. "You know I'm not going to do that."
"Don't be a poor sport," she cooed. "You know it's true…"
He shook his head stubbornly, but let out a small, uncontrollable groan when she pulled herself off of him. She gave him a pointed look and he sighed in defeat. "Yes, Horton, I want to fuck you."
"Say my name."
He expected himself to balk at her continued string of commands, but found himself oddly transfixed. He could have resisted her any other night, he told himself; any other night but that one, given what he had witnessed in the Slytherin common room and the extremely odd feelings it had given him. "Rosemary." His voice was just above a hoarse whisper. Those three syllables felt foreign on his lips; after all, he had not said her name aloud since things had ended between them. But what came out of his mouth next, once again without his consent, sounded even more foreign: "Rosemary, I want you." His voice was inexplicably tender and an awful feeling settled within him at this realization.
What had she done to him?
They stared into each other's eyes for a few long seconds, her face unreadable, until she pulled her body against his and slid once more onto his cock – this time all the way. The fucking itself was a complete blur given his level of arousal. He knew that they had eventually found their way to the bed and that she had remained on top of him. The image of her lowering herself over his cock again and again had been completely burned into his mind. The sensuality she displayed was bold – so much so that he had to keep reminding himself that this was Rosemary and not another girl. For at least that night, she was no longer his submissive plaything; she was a gorgeous dominatrix. And he loved every second of it.
There was a part of him that wanted to wake her for another romp now that he was all hot and bothered again, but he resisted. She looked far too peaceful in her slumber. In fact, he found that he was rather content with simply watching her, but not only because she was beautiful; there was something that calmed him about seeing her bare chest rise and fall in deep breaths.
She didn't stir until the hazy light of dawn filtered through his window. He began stroking her hair, somewhat hoping that she would wake up so he could look into her blue eyes. But something inside him made him stop, telling him that she would likely leave soon after waking. He was puzzled by his thoughts on the subject. Why did he suddenly care whether she stayed or went?
Regardless, it seemed as though the fate of that morning had already been sealed; she rolled onto her side toward him before looking up at him with sleepy, squinted eyes. She rubbed them and began to sit up, a disturbing feeling of disappointment spreading over Tom as he realized that she was likely to be gone not even a minute later.
Or not, perhaps; as soon as she reached a sitting position, she groaned in pain from what he assumed was an enormous hangover and quickly returned to the way she had just been lying beside him.
"Long night?" he asked her with a smirk.
"Something along those lines," she muttered before looking up at him with a surprisingly mischievous look. "Though I could be asking you the same; it's not often that Tom Riddle loses, after all…How is your pride faring?"
For what seemed like the hundredth time in the past day, his words poured out of his mouth before his mind had a chance to stop them. "Well, if I had to lose at something, I suppose there could be worse things…" She looked up at him in disbelief, probably just as appalled as he was by his response, and he scrambled to recover, but panicked when he realized nothing came to mind.
'Fucking hell, what is wrong with me?' Tom asked himself in pure disgust.
Rosemary seemed to recover from the shock of his comment long before he surely would. "I may have to stay for a while, if you don't mind. I think I may be ill if I stand up."
"Okay," Tom said weakly. It was a response that was pitiful in comparison of his typical capacity for banter with her, but he was far too relieved that he hadn't answered with something along the lines of "Of course I don't mind" to care.
"Thanks," she smiled up at him, a sight that gave him an oddly familiar feeling in his stomach that he couldn't quite place. Then she closed her eyes and groaned again, burying her face against his chest. "Distract me," she begged him suddenly. "Make me think about something other than this headache."
Tom knew he didn't owe her anything and certainly didn't need to oblige her, but that didn't mean he didn't want to – especially if his reluctance to help convinced her to leave (though this also served as yet another, equally puzzling example of his recent inexplicable desires). His first instinct was to suggest another bout of sex, but doubted that she was in the state to partake in such an activity. Perhaps Occlumency? They had discussed meeting up that weekend sometime for another lesson anyway…
He suggested it to her and she gave him a skeptical look. "Last time, you gave me a headache while I was practicing."
Tom rolled his eyes in slight annoyance. "Only because I was trying to test your bounds. But concentrating on clearing your mind should help somewhat. "
She hesitated, but eventually said "I suppose it's worth a try."
He turned his body toward her, their faces just inches apart. "When you're ready, then."
"Ready."
Tom entered her mind and was reminded at how impressively far she had come after only their first lesson. However, just as he was about to test her a bit, the barrier to her thoughts she had constructed abruptly faltered and he suddenly found himself in the Horton mansion, watching a much younger Rosemary and Markus Avery playing a game of Witches and Wagers on the floor of Basil's study. They also appeared to be in the middle of an argument.
"It'll be fine, Rosie. Don't be such a baby."
"I'm not a baby," she snapped. Tom grinned – even as a young girl she was feisty.
"Yes you are," Avery taunted her in an annoying, sing-song voice.
"You heard my father – we're not allowed," she crossed her arms over her chest. "It's the new model and they haven't finished testing it yet."
"I heard him telling my father about it – they've done most of the testing, just not all of it. The last few aren't even important , we'll only be gone for five minutes. They won't even notice. Come on...I'll tell everyone I meet at Hogwarts you're a baby if you don't."
Rosemary looked hesitantly toward the corridor outside the study. "Fine," she sighed.
Avery gave her a pompous, satisfied look, dashed across the room, and mounted the broom. "Well, come on," he told her when she wavered.
She gingerly mounted the broom behind Avery and grasped onto his waist as they suddenly zoomed out the open window. Tom strode to the window and watched them from there.
Rosemary looked terrified, and for what Tom thought was good reason. It appeared that Avery was trying to frighten her as much as possible – they climbed higher and higher, zigzagging through branches of nearby trees. After a few minutes of this, Avery looked satisfied and began to lower the broom to the ground when it suddenly stopped about twenty-five feet above the perfectly manicured green lawn.
He smacked the handle in frustration and the broom responded by attempting to buck them off, sending Rosemary into a nearby tree. She screamed as her small body was battered against a succession of branches as she fell toward the ground and she appeared to be unconscious when she finally reached the grass.
Well, that certainly explained her aversion to broomsticks.
She shuddered as he exited her mind. "It was as painful as it looked, believe me."
"Avery's a wanker," Tom said shortly.
Rosemary laughed, a sound that made him feel oddly pleased with himself. "Yes, he certainly is at times. I was at St. Mungo's the entire week before starting Hogwarts. But the Healers did an amazing job and I admired them so much; I knew as early as then that Healing was precisely what I wanted to do."
"Did you ever tell you parents that?" he found himself asking her.
She laughed, hollowly this time, a sound that failed to fill him up like her previous laugh. "Of course." Then she said something he certainly did not expect: "Let me show you."
He nodded and eagerly entered her mind once more, but quickly realized the pathetic nature of his excitement. What was he, some addict looking for his next fix?
Once again, he found himself in her home, though this memory was a few years more recent judging by Rosemary's slightly more adult-like appearance. Basil's voice came from behind an open copy of The Daily Prophet. "What courses are you planning to take this term, dear?"
"Potions, Transfiguration, Herbology, Charms, Defense Against the Dark Arts, Ancient Runes, and Arithmancy," she listed off quietly.
Her mother regarded her in surprise. "Merlin, Rosemary, do you really think it's a good idea to stretch yourself so thin? When are you going to find time to spend with Markus?"
Tom watched her roll her eyes at her toast, a gesture that went unnoticed by her parents – which was probably for the best. "I need to take them."
"For what, exactly?" he mother asked incredulously.
Rosemary looked up at her, an air of challenge in her voice. "To become a Healer. Well, technically Ancient Runes and Arithmancy aren't required, but I believe it will give me a stronger application to St. Mungo's for training."
Her mother rubbed her temples. "We've been through this, Rosemary. You are not going to become a Healer."
"It's my life," said Rosemary with a glare. "I fail to understand why I can't spend it the way I please."
"Perhaps you're too young to understand," sighed her mother, a statement that made Rosemary's face flush slightly red in a way that Tom knew meant irritation. "Don't you have any idea how despicable it is for a pureblood lady such as yourself to take employment? You will tell the entire world that there was no suitor that found you eligible – I will not permit my daughter to sully her family's name in this regard."
"Evelyn," Basil gave his wife a slightly disapproving look, but a harsh glare from her in his direction quickly quieted him. It was an odd exchange to witness, given that Tom had been under the impression that Basil, not Evelyn, was the one causing problems for Rosemary in the Horton household.
"Do you think I should be able to do what I want with my life, Father?" Rosemary asked Basil sweetly, now having identified the weakest link.
Basil was quiet for a moment, clearly weighing the consequences of whichever alliance he chose. Evelyn continued to glare at him with a look that indicated he was unlikely to be welcome in the bed they shared for at least the following week or so. He choice was unsurprising: "Your mother is right, dear, though she might have used kinder words," Basil gave his wife a pointed look and Evelyn's face softened in response. "You wouldn't like being a Healer anyway. They have hard lives, Rosemary. The pay is decent, but they work long days with few holidays…you wouldn't even have time to raise children."
Rosemary noticeably shuddered at the word 'children', though her parents didn't see. It struck Tom in that moment that this was a topic they had never discussed when they were together, which was a bit of a relief as he had never given it a thought before. But now that he was thinking about it, the idea sounded truly awful. His only real interaction with anyone significantly younger than him was had been with the first years, which irritated him constantly with their pestering questions upon their arrival at Hogwarts.
But they were someone else's children; what would having his own be like? Probably just as irritating, he thought. On the other hand, though, he would have the opportunity to mold the blank slate of their thoughts and teach them anything he wanted to, which could be extremely valuable. Of course, this was all completely irrelevant anyway as having children would require him to settle down, a possibility he had completely ruled out. But if he did, he would obviously want someone who matched his intelligence, charm, and good looks. Someone like Rosemary Horton, perhaps…
'What is fucking wrong with me?' he wondered again.
He quickly pushed all of these disturbing thoughts from his mind, turning his attention back to Rosemary's memory.
"It's an honorable profession," her father continued, "but I don't believe you understand what you would be getting yourself into. Everyone has a place, dear, and compared to the majority of the wizarding world you're quite lucky. You have the opportunity to lead a life of ease rather than overworking yourself like everybody else."
"But I don't want to just sit around, I want to do something."
"Is that what you think I do: 'just sit around'?" her mother demanded, her temper showing on her face much as it did on her daughter's. "You ungrateful little –"She cut herself off suddenly, took a moment to collect herself, and then continued in a voice that sent a chill down Tom's spine. "I swear on my mother's grave that you will learn your place, Rosemary Alana Horton. And you will not sign up for at least two of those classes."
"Fine," said Rosemary distantly, which was probably the best course of action in Tom's opinion after hearing her mother's surprisingly chilling voice.
The memory began to fade away and Tom exited her mind once more.
"See?" Rosemary sighed at him. "I ended up enrolling in all of the classes anyway, as you know, but I had to be very careful about hiding it…especially when our O.W.L. results were sent out."
Tom nodded as if he understood, but he didn't. It wasn't as though he had parents to speak of. And though he loathed the muggle-infested orphanage in which he was raised, at least he didn't have anyone to tell him what he should and shouldn't be doing.
But then he looked into her eyes once more, marveling at the apparent ease with which she had just bared her mind for him. She trusted him quite profoundly, so it seemed.
And suddenly, everything clicked. He did understand her. In fact, he knew in that moment that he understood the depths of her that no one– not her parents, her closest friends, nor Cramer– could even dream to comprehend. And clearly she understood him too, at least to some capacity; otherwise she would have been one of the many others to merely fall under his complete control. Quite the contrary, actually, she was the only one even remotely capable of putting him in his place.
But any power she had over him was perfectly balanced against his. They were, above all else, equals. She may have proven the evening prior that he was unable to resist her, but he knew that the opposite was true as well. They were drawn to each other effortlessly, as though by an infallible rule of nature.
He knew now that his inexplicable feelings over the past day were far more than a mere desire for her to join the Knights or to continue bedding her on a regular basis. Although his stomach twisted unpleasantly at the thought and he had scoured his brain the last eight or so hours for any possible alternative, he knew there was only one logical conclusion:
He, Tom Riddle, was still in love with her.
'Fucking hell, not this again.'
None of this would have happened, he thought, if he had just kept his distance from her. Why hadn't he kept his distance? But this made him wonder: even if he had wanted to, would he actually have been able to stay away from her? Was it humanly possible for him? Tom desperately wanted to believe so, but it seemed obvious in that moment that the magnitude of his connection to Rosemary was far beyond the scope of his personal control.
He suddenly felt foolish for even attempting to move on as it appeared that he was simply doomed to endure the torture of wanting her. But did he want her just because he couldn't have her? Or did he actually want to be with her?
He did. Of course he did, though he certainly didn't want to admit it. But wouldn't that hold him back in fear of losing her again?
'No,' he told himself; things had changed, if what he had witnessed of her in the past few weeks was any indication. Furthermore, it wasn't as though she had shown any disapproval over what he had been putting the Knights up to recently. It made him wonder: if she was faced with the same choice today as she had been in October when Tom finally taught Cramer a lesson, would she still betray Tom all the same? Or would she stand by his side? It was an intriguing and slightly disturbing question. But Tom was fairly certain he knew the answer.
It was then that he knew: one way or another, Rosemary would be his again. She had to be. He understood now, that anything else would just be wrong – against nature, even. They belonged together.
"Was it the infinite sadness of her eyes that drew him or the mirror of himself that he found in the gorgeous clarity of her mind?" ― F. Scott Fitzgerald
Ooooh snap. Comments? Predictions? I'd love to hear from you.(:
Thank you to Blerb, RosiePosie15, Lady Ravanna, x2leoj, Oksanallex, Mrs. WaylandOdinsonBlack, CharlotteBlackwood, Guest, and marly4077 for your reviews!
Oh! Before I forget, this is why I chose 'Opia' as the chapter title:
Opia - n. the ambiguous intensity of looking someone in the eye, which can feel simultaneously invasive and vulnerable.
Lots of drama awaits - we're not even halfway through Part II, after all - stay tuned, my friends.(;