Tom and Abraxas worked together on the charming and wardwork for Hermione's necklace. Tom was mostly focused on looking through tomes borrowed from the Chamber of Secrets while Abraxas double-checked the Arithmancy and Charm-theory needed to ensure the necklace would remain intact despite the volume of magic Tom wanted to imbue it with. Flynn was alternating between taking notes on Divination for Hermione and finishing his own assignments in the subject.

On the wall, Hermione and Harry were partnered up in Potions.

Tom was partially right about her behavior patterns. She seemed to blend the reserved respect she gave her teachers with the cheeky familiarity she maintained with her friends in his presence. But there was still something else, some variable he hadn't uncovered that subdued her interactions with him more than others.

He also noted that both Harry and Hermione sometimes stole glances at their Slytherin friends from across the room, though neither of them brought up the subject of switching houses again.

"They need to abandon Gryffindor," he muttered. "But she wouldn't listen if I told her too."

"You don't normally condone insubordination," Abraxas said carefully. "I'm surprised you let her get away with so much."

"When she's less fragile, I won't," Tom said. "But for now, she's a glass cannon. I can't afford to lose the advantages she presents."

Abraxas and Flynn silently disagreed with his logic. His motivations seemed far simpler from their perspectives. Though they doubted Tom would ever own up to the sentimental motivations even if he was aware of them.

"Keep an eye on her, will you?" Tom said suddenly. "I need to check the library for something. Maybe even go down to the Chamber… this ward magic is going to be complicated."

"We'll let you know if anything happens," Flynn swore.

When the door shut behind Tom, Flynn and Abraxas immediately ceased working on their respective projects.

"This is a travesty," Flynn said. "She's clearly holding a torch for him. He's bloody blind to how much he fancies her."

"It's no help that she's seemingly aware that he considers her a tool, even if it's obviously more than that to us," Abraxas agreed. "Poor thing's self-esteem can't be faring well."

"I wish we'd been here to see her interact with us in her time," Flynn muttered. "Tom said we were annoyingly chummy with her. But I'd love to see how his older self is around her."

"Subdued, surely," Abraxas guessed. "Even if he ever clues into the fact that he adores the little witch, surely he can't change much about her perception of his feelings until it happens naturally. If he ever gets his head out of his arse."

"It's Tom," Flynn said. "The bloke's only shagged a witch or two purely for context and claims he was disappointed the few times he mentioned it at all. Surely he'll encourage her affections elsewhere. I doubt she'll be able to stomach his tastes."

Abraxas shrugged. "I'd be surprised if she couldn't, actually, with how high-strung she is? All that control has to give somewhere."

"Tom's a bit too keen on torture," Flynn muttered. "She'd be better suited to one of us or our grandchildren, surely. Less sadistic, more power play."

Abraxas' pale brows rose. "Flynn. He'd kill us."

Flynn's cheeks flushed. "I know. But my grandson appears to be her type. He should let someone care for her, if he's going to half-arse the job."

"You're not wrong," Abraxas said. "But I think he'd sooner kill anyone else who dared to love her than share her attention."

Flynn frowned down at his books, a protective and affectionate worry sitting unpleasantly in his chest. He was just as powerless to protect her as he'd been powerless to help his baby sister, despite being older and theoretically more capable of taking action now than he was in his younger years. Nevermind that Florentine's early demise had been entirely out of his control in every capacity when he was a child.

"He doesn't deserve her," Flynn said bitterly. "And I hope part of him fucking knows it."

"I'm holding out for Draco and Floren," Abraxas muttered. "Or even Theron's boy, just because Tom would fucking hate it. She's a strong little thing, muggleborn or not. And it won't be long before someone in her time starts to find that intimidating cleverness and power attractive too."

"Fingers crossed for my grandson," Flynn said. "Or whoever will be a bigger blow to Tom and his precious fucking ego."

"You like her too much," Abraxas said, smirking. "And she's not even blonde."

"I have taste, Malfoy. Even your prejudiced arse can't deny she's what our parents consider good stock."

They shared a bitter sort of grin. "He's going to ruin her life, isn't he?" Abraxas asked.

"Only if she doesn't ruin his first," Flynn said with a sigh. "I can't believe he didn't immediately consider that he could be her Knight of Pentacles. He's a fucking Capricorn."

"Sometimes Tom is the most brilliant mind in Britain and sometimes he's the biggest idiot on the continent. He can't win all the time."

"Poor bastard," Flynn said.

When Tom returned, there was a spark in his eyes and a book under his arm. "We can imbue my ancestral wards into the necklace," he said. "It won't give her all the associations of being properly bound to the family but it will allow us to bind more protective magic into the necklace since many of the charms can be rooted in the main family ward instead of the metal and gems."

Abraxas perked up at the idea. "So instead of balancing everything within the metal, we root your family's wards as strongly as possible and anchor the rest of the spellwork to the ward…"

Flynn blinked at both of them. "...Isn't that the same warding theory that goes into engagement jewelry?" he asked. "Both families ward a piece of jewelry to protect either side of the engaged couple."

"Yes, yes," Tom said, rolling his eyes. "That's the original purpose of such magic but it's not a requirement for the spells to work."

"Fair enough," Flynn said carefully. Abraxas only just managed to hide a smile as Tom started digging through his belongings for the necklace box.

"We need to finish her hair scarves too. Today, preferably. Her first Hogsmeade trip is soon. She may want to look nice for the occasion."

Abraxas and Flynn didn't utter a sound as they got to work, though neither was able to wrap their head around an obliviously thoughtful Tom Riddle.

Still, as the three cleverest boys in their year, the charm work was more tedious than difficult. Some of the protective charms required precise, shallow runes to be carved into the silver along the back of the coiled snake. Tom had taken extra care carving the necessary symbolism into the underside of the teardrop-shaped emerald, though the wand-made etches bled away upon completion, leaving the perfectly clear green stone humming faintly with magic.

The headbands were a cakewalk by comparison, even if the magic required for Tom's vision was almost as complex as the necklace. The magic was lighter, less dense than all the protections they'd built into the silver and rows of tiny emeralds. The satin strips were just as pliable as the spells worked into them. When all was said and done, there was even room for a few wishlist charms to be worked in.

Surely it wouldn't hurt to make a witch's hair accessories cut and tear-resistant. Stain-resistant. Self-cleaning. Tom even ended up telling Abraxas to work in anything else he thought his mother would recommend.

Flynn, inspired by hazy memories of wanting to help brush his sister's golden locks, ended up suggesting the final charm - painless detangling. Just in case the self-styling charms weren't sufficiently protective should she be in a rush on a bad hair day.

"Once we've given these to her, I had an idea for how we can review for our DADA O.W.L while also helping Dove be ready if she faces any trouble while we're gone," Tom told them. He'd wrapped the necklace box in the hair scarves and tucked them into the pocket of his robe for safekeeping.

"Alright," Abraxas said. "Teaching her the material, I'm guessing?"

Tom rolled his eyes. "No. I've been doing that since the end of her second year. I meant dueling practice. Her Defense professor last term was a fraud and she's mentioned how uninformative his 'dueling club' was. I also got the impression that heads of houses aren't required to teach dueling anymore in her time."

"Merlin," Flynn sighed. "Have they just given up on teaching muggleborns and halfbloods wizarding culture entirely in the future?"

"Seems that way," Tom said. "But I'm not letting her have that disadvantage, Dumbledore be damned."

When are you coming upstairs? Tom wrote as she and Harry were packing up their things. They'd finished brewing a few minutes early and Professor Snape was feeling charitable enough to let anyone who completed their potions efficiently have a few minutes' head start towards lunch. I have something for you.

The words were innocent enough, but Hermione was immediately suspicious. What did you do?

Whatever do you mean, Dove?

Tom Marvolo Riddle, my best friends are mostly boys and primarily Slytherins. You're up to something and you barely care to hide it.

You always think so ill of me. If you must know, I didsay you deserve a reward for becoming a parselmouth so quickly.

She felt her cheeks heat. I chose a reward already.

And I found another one at Hogsmeade.

Her stomach flipped. Tom had gotten her a present at Hogsmeade? Or, a more shocking thing to consider: Tom thought about her outside of their time together, writing in the diary, and her extra lessons under his wing?

If he was anyone else, she'd be asking Tracey if he might be flirting with her. Not that boys tended to flirt with Hermione at all, but given Tom's...Tom-ness, she knew whatever gift he'd found was either purely practical or taking the piss. She wouldn't be surprised if he'd simply bought a calendar and marked her birthday in extra bold ink.

I have to eat lunch first, she told him. She wasn't particularly hungry, but she'd start getting lightheaded in a few hours if she didn't eat something while she had the chance.

I'm about to send Flynn to the kitchens for snacks. What do you want?

She huffed quietly and rolled her eyes, gaining Harry's attention. "What's the matter?" he whispered.

"Tom's being dumb," she whispered back. "I might go upstairs early."

Harry nodded as they made their way quietly out of the classroom, having received their nod of approval from Professor Snape before they slipped out the door.

"Will you be cross with me if I abandon you for lunch?" she asked him once they were on the stairs. "Tom's excited about something which can only mean he's being an almighty prat but he wants me to meet up with him badly enough to send poor Flynn to get food from the kitchens for us."

Harry snickered. "Late birthday present?"

Hermione almost tripped on the stairs. Surely that wasn't what Tom was on about?

"I swear," she groaned. "If that's what this is about…"

Harry gave her a confused sort of grin, waiting for an explanation.

"I didn't tell him about my birthday," she mumbled. "Present Tom knew so it didn't seem necessary to tell the other one. And comparatively, older Tom is…more inclined to connect with certain people? He almost has proper friends. The younger only has lackeys."

Harry snorted. "Lackeys and you. You don't let anyone boss you around, no matter how smart or powerful they are."

She shrugged. "He does treat me differently than the rest of them it seems. He's usually only bossy if he's teaching me something. Otherwise, he's instructive."

"Treats you differently in a good way or a make-me-hate-him way?" Harry asked. She shot him a small smile and bumped their shoulders together at the protective edge in his voice.

"I think it's a respect thing," she said. "He thinks I'm almost as smart as he is and nearly as powerful. Similarly capable. So that puts me on some weird pedestal."

"Sounds arrogant," Harry quipped. "I think I like Lord Riddle better."

Hermione gave another light shrug. "Don't let that one's social graces fool you. He's still just Tom. Even if he grew up while he was waiting for time to overlap again, he's just Tom. I can't really explain it."

"Siri—" his features pinched briefly. "Dad says Riddle's just got one of those personalities, you know? The out-of-touch genius type."

Hermione chuckled. "Emotionally out of touch is definitely the younger. He doesn't really see any value in sentiment. Just power."

"How can he be friends with you and not value sentiment at the same time?" Harry asked. "Bit of a conflict of interest, that."

A stone, cold and heavy, settled in the pit of her stomach. "Easily," she said, trying to keep her voice neutral. "We're not friends."

They'd reached the Great Hall corridor but were still quite a ways from the entrance. Harry stopped dead in the mostly empty hallways until she turned to face him, his jade eyes hard.

"You hang out with him as much as you hang out with me," he said. "Sometimes more. What do you mean you're not friends?"

Hermione shuffled uncomfortably on her feet, trying to ignore the flush rising into her cheeks and the ache in her chest. "Tom doesn't have friends," she said. "He has his Knights and...a pupil, I suppose. But we're not friends. He detests the word, even."

While she understood Harry's growing fury, she wished she knew how to assure him that it didn't matter. Well, it did matter to her, but it shouldn't and certainly didn't matter to Tom the fifth year.

"So he's an arsehole," Harry said through grit teeth. "He's teaching you because he finds you clever but he doesn't even bloody care?"

Hermione took a slow breath to ward off the beginning tickle at the corners of her eyes. If she let herself cry now, she'd never stop, never mind being able to face Tom. And she knew how much her tears annoyed him when she couldn't hold them in or came to the room after having been upset.

"No," she managed to say shakily. "He's just a prefect and I'm just a third year he didn't expect to be genuinely clever."

"But Lord Riddle has literally called you his friend to me!" Harry hissed. "I have the letters, 'Mione, from when he was writing me about Si- about dad. Anytime he mentioned you or referred to you he'd say our mutual best mate or our clever friend."

"Well, yeah," Hermione said carefully. "He is my friend, eventually. He didn't say when his opinion changed, just that it was a permanent change."

Some of the indignant wind in Harry's sails fell away, but he was still clearly displeased even when he grabbed her hand and started walking back towards the Great Hall.

"I definitely only like Lord Riddle then," Harry said darkly. "And I officially will be bothered if you make me suffer lunch at Gryffindor by myself to humor some prat in the past."

"Harry," she admonished, if only out of obligation.

She was smiling when he shot her a look. "Convince me he bloody well deserves any more of your time and company and I'll be happy to change my mind."

Some of her unhappy coldness was driven away by his words and the surety he spoke them with. Enough that she threaded their fingers and gave his hand a fond squeeze.

"I'll stay," she told him. "If it really bothers you that much."

"Of course it does," Harry insisted. "Blimey, does Draco know? How has no one else made a fuss about this yet? It's unbelievable, Hermione."

"Now you're just stroking my ego," she said, blushing again.

"I'm trying to understand how you put up with the arse if he hasn't even decided if you're worth being friends with. What a prat. Honest, Hermione, and we think Ron's got his head up his arse."

A giggle left her on accident, before she could even consider stopping it.

"I can never introduce you now," she managed to say, still laughing. "He'd have a fit being compared to Ron. I've explained that whole situation. He absolutely loathes Ron and thinks we should switch houses before 'his stupidity becomes contagious.'"

Harry snorted as they entered the mostly empty Great Hall. The tables were set, but empty of food, so they took their usual seats.

"Well, I can appreciate his opinion on that issue," Harry allowed. "But sharing my best friend with some prick who doesn't even appreciate her properly still makes me want to hex him. And to think I've been assuming he fancies you this whole time. Ugh."

With a roll of her eyes, Hermione laid her head on his shoulder. They were in dire need of a subject change, especially since the faculty and the rest of their schoolmates would be arriving soon.

"Have you written your dad back yet?" she asked. While Harry still tripped over his tentative new moniker for Sirius, she got the sense it was purely a result of anxiety and the unfamiliarity of the word on his tongue. As far as she could tell since he started testing out the title, Harry needed to take that step forward with Sirius. Permanently.

"About calling him 'Dad'?" Harry asked, suddenly sheepish. "No. I told him I was still thinking of stuff. Which is true."

"He's not going to be offended by you asking, you know," she told him gently. "I doubt he'll say no either. Didn't you say he told you he considered you partially his son already when you were a baby?"

"Yeah…" Harry muttered. They both glanced towards the door. A dull roar could be heard echoing towards them. The rest of the school was about to descend upon the Great Hall. "It just...makes me feel dumb to ask him."

Frowning, Hermione wrapped her arms around him. "I won't pressure you, but you should talk to him. I think he'd want you to talk to him about it and give him the chance to say yes, at least."

Harry sighed, but leaned into her side-hug and kissed her cheek after letting their heads rest together a while. "You're right. I'm just being a coward."

"Self-preserving," she corrected quietly, loosening her grip as their classmates started to file in. She didn't need anyone else teasing them about their friendship again. Not when she was still a bit sore over Ron's comments.

Harry shot her a weak grin. "We are just watching out for our own necks, aren't we?"

In nineteen-sixty-three, Tom gave the wall a hard, unreadable look that made Flynn and Abraxas keep quiet.

Tom didn't believe in coming second to anyone. Even as he watched Hermione quickly glance up at the staff table to verify Dumbledore's absence before pulling out their diary. Even as he watched her write words that made something unpleasant burn in his chest: I'm already at lunch with Harry and he's not keen on being left alone given how Ron's been lately. I'll be up shortly though.

He knew the words were true, though the context of them didn't match what he saw. She hadn't lied outright, but she'd lied enough to justify his opinion of his own espionage.

Tom shook the annoyance from his mind and went back to scribbling notes for how to approach dueling practice for her, Abraxas, and Flynn in a way that wouldn't get any of them injured enough to cause suspicion.

Still, Harry's words floated around Tom's head, going in and out of focus like the cheap televisions buzzing between stations at the orphanage. Stirring up long-buried memories of his time at Wool's prior to finding out that he was a wizard.

Convince me he bloody well deserves any more of your time and company and I'll be happy to change my mind.

Dove was probably right about it being unwise to introduce them anytime soon, despite sharing an annoying protectiveness for the same witch. Tom didn't think that meeting would end well given his usual methods of encouraging other orphans to stop concerning themselves with what they thought Tom deserved.

But he'd have to dwell on the conversation he'd overheard another time. He hadn't spent his free time sans Hermione charming a bunch of fabric and the little snake necklace just to present them in a way that negated their other intended purpose — helping him fix whatever was making her so bleeding melancholy all the time...

The uncomfortable burn in his chest hadn't fully faded by the time she finished eating, their lunch thankfully uninterrupted by the Weasley brat this time, but it had lessened enough for Tom to ignore it.

A/N: Welcome...to the *beginning of Tom's Emotional Awakening* administration! (There was no way to make this Hamilton joke actually work, I tried everything. But I left it in anyway so you could all laugh at the failed joke and it'd still be funny... that's how that works right? :) )

Okay. Hi. I'm failing at the update during the first week of the month thing...but at least I haven't missed a month! lmao. It's been wild recently, and I have it on good authority that at least a few of us have been having a really trash-tier week...so even though 40 isn't perfectly polished (and will likely be re-uploaded as a result, which I'll announce on my socials and in a note at the top or something) I'm gonna update tonight while I have the time. I think we could all use some dopamine and serotonin, so hopefully I can provide a little something. :)

52 is being a pain but...you know...it's about 40% written? The other 60% of the chapter is all like...one scene split into three perspectives and my brain just wants to procrastinate it... there's also a ton going on life-wise right now lmao. I imagine that's also to blame. But the backlog continues! :/ ... :)

Don't let mercury retrograde get you down (it's getting me down, like a lot, but it'll be fine...just a few weeks...) and don't forget that I'm around on Twitter and Tumblr (more the first one than the second, these days) as "-at-mulattokitten" and "-at-littlemulattokitten" respectively. Twitter is a great place to learn about stuff I have in progress behind the scenes, and I usually do a poll once a week or so for some reason or another, though often to get an idea of how certain fic ideas will be perceived. So if you want to participate in those, I can't wait to see you over there 3

Love you guys 3 xoxo Let me know how you're doing in the comments, yeah? I think we all need some extra emotional support this week.