A/N: Thank you all for your reviews, favorites and follows after last chapter! Huge thanks to lanamarymack and Angela 007 for alpha/beta reading this chapter! You can follow me over on tumblr (nauticalparamour) where I post sneak peeks, story updates and answer questions.
Please let me know what you thought of chapter twenty-one and be on the lookout for chapter twenty-two soon!
When she returned from Scotland, Hermione wanted to do nothing more than climb into her bed and sleep away the rest of the weekend and the first half of the week. Maybe then, the events of the previous week would be scrubbed from her memory.
Despite her insistence that she not take any more cases at Hogwarts again, and Becker's suggestion that he go instead of her, Undersecretary Switch had been unyielding in giving her all of the paltry assignments that Hogwarts was incapable of handling themselves. On the surface it seemed that either Hogwarts had a very devious muggleborn student who was charming muggle objects to wreck havoc or incompetent staff that couldn't be bothered to handle the issues in-house. As a result, she'd been there at least once a week since Halloween.
But in reality, Hermione knew what was really going on. This was all Albus Dumbledore's doing.
She wasn't sure why, but the wizard seemed to have taken a particular interest in her, despite how uninteresting she tried to make herself seem. He always found ways to single her out and press her into discussions about Dark Magic as well as her relationship with Tom Riddle. This would lead to frustrating comments on how she knew it was wrong and that Tom Riddle was her enemy.
All of his insistence, however, did little to sway her. She wasn't going to give up her lover or her new friends. It was preposterous to think that they could ever be enemies when she and Tom were so alike, so in sync with one another. If anything, Dumbledore's whispered accusations only made her dig her heels in deeper.
So then, why was she avoiding Tom, calling off dinners and lazy weekends with one another? It was because she'd discovered something, something she didn't know how to even begin feeling about.
But, Tom could not be put off forever.
When she got his note requesting that he come over with take away for a relaxing evening, she had been powerless to say no. Even though her stomach twisted with worry - would he figure it out as soon as he looked at her, this secret that she was keeping? - she couldn't help but look forward to his arrival.
Tom stepped through the fireplace only a few minutes later than he said he would be, carrying a paper bag with their dinner. It was so utterly domestic that she felt a lump form in her throat. Oh Merlin, she was in awe of how fiercely she loved him in such a short amount of time. She wanted this all the time, every night, but she had a sinking feeling that she'd somehow ruined everything.
"Tom," she greeted him breathlessly, wrapping her arms around his trim waist, letting her face press against his chest. She breathed in his scent, wanting to catalogue it in her memory forever. "I'm so glad that you're here."
"Are you?" he asked, pulling away. "You've been doing everything that you can to avoid me the last two weeks."
Hermione searched his face for some hint that he was just joking with her, but instead she found real hurt in his eyes. "It's not that, I've just been so busy. Switch has me traveling basically every other day, and then when I get home, I'm just so exhausted," she tried to explain.
"Yes, you've been traveling a lot," Tom agreed. "I've heard that you only just got back from Hogwarts."
Hermione felt her heart skip a beat, wondering how he knew that. Her face scrunched up in confusion, wondering why he would need to know that. "Have you been spying on me?" she demanded.
"Have you been spying on me?" he asked back, taking a step closer to her.
She stepped back, wanting to preserve the distance between them. "What?" she asked, stunned that he would think that. "What on Earth would give you that idea?"
"I don't know, maybe your continued interactions with Dumbledore, a wizard who makes no secret how much he hates me. You've breezed into my life almost as if you were perfectly designed to catch my attention," he said, his voice going even lower in his annoyance. "Did Dumbledore tell you how to pique my interest? How to wrap me around your finger?"
He stalked forward, closing the space once again, until he was pressed against her, looming over her. Hermione was shocked, wondering where all of these ideas could have come from. "Tom, I don't understand," she said, unable to meet his eyes when they were looking at her with such suspicion.
Tom grabbed her chin, forcing her to look back up at him. "Have you been running up to Scotland to tell all of my secrets to that wizard? Have you been fucking me just to wrench out any detail you could out of me? Have you been pretending to care about me?" he questioned, relentless. "Is it all an act?"
"No, it's not all an act Tom. I've never felt this way about anyone," she promised, needing to convince him that she hadn't betrayed him.
"You don't deny it," he said with a sneer on his normally handsome face.
"Of course I haven't been spying on you," she spat back, hurt that he could think that about her. "And if I was, it sure as hell wouldn't be for Albus Dumbledore."
"Then why all the meetings at Hogwarts?" he questioned, still not convinced.
"I don't know. They keep requesting me and Switch keeps sending me. I've asked them not to, but he won't relent. Philip has even offered to go in my place," she said, needing him to understand. "I think that...Dumbledore has taken a renewed interest in me, since he found out that we'd crossed paths. He's only grown more relentless in the past month. It's like he's keeping an eye on me."
"But why you?" Tom wondered, some of his anger beginning to dissipate. "Why would Dumbledore want to follow you around?"
"I don't know," Hermione answered, unsure of the answer to that question herself. "When I was at Hogwarts, he was far happier to see the back of me on the way out. He wanted absolutely nothing to do with me. He was rude, almost. But now that I'm with you, he's suddenly interested."
"He must think that you are a weak link," Tom said, darkly. "He must think that he can use you to get to me."
Hermione didn't know if that sounded logical, but she supposed that there must be some sort of link between the two, seeing as Dumbledore hadn't given two cares to who she spoke to until it was Tom. "Well, I'm not," she said firmly. "I don't care if I have to quit my job, I'm not going back to the damned school again!"
That seemed to placate the wizard, who knew how much she valued her job and the independence it gave her.
"So I've told you all that," she said pointedly. "Are you going to explain to me how you knew I was there in the first place?"
"Abraxas saw you there. He was there for a Board of Governors' meeting," Tom answered tersely.
"Malfoy," she growled softly. "I should have known this had something to do with that little ferret." She felt her ire rise when she thought of how Malfoy had nearly turned Tom against her. But then, Tom had to be held partially responsible as well. "How could you believe anything he says about me? You know that he doesn't like me…that he'd like nothing more than to get me out of your life. Maybe…maybe you think that would be easiest, too."
She hated the way the tears welled up in her eyes when she imagined Tom picking Malfoy's accusations over her, but she couldn't stop them either.
"Never," he said forcefully.
"How can you trust me so little that at the first whispered word you come and question me like this?" she demanded.
Tom struggled to find the words, his mouth opening and closing until he settled on what to say. "Well, you haven't made it the easiest to trust you, either, Hermione," he said finally. "After such closeness, such intimacy…you've suddenly gone completely cold. You've pulled away without a single explanation."
Hermione's eyes dropped, unable to keep his gaze while she thought of her secret. She knew that this wasn't something that she would be able to keep to herself forever. She might as well tell him now, instead of prolonging the inevitable, even if that meant the end of their relationship.
"The truth is, I have been keeping something from you," she said, barely able to swallow past the lump that had formed in her throat.
"Tell me," he demanded, once again tilting her face up to meet his eyes.
She bit her lower lip. His face was completely unreadable. "I'm pregnant, Tom," she explained, her voice barely higher than a whisper.
She waited with baited breath for some sort of reaction, but he gave her none.
"What?" he asked.
"I'm pregnant," she repeated, her breath quickening. "I checked several times. At first I just couldn't figure out how it happened — we are always so careful with the Charm. I couldn't think of one time we skipped it — but then I remembered that first time, at Samhain, that we all left out wands at the table and so we couldn't have done the Charm then, so that must have been it," she explained the words rushing out of her.
Still, he didn't say anything at all, didn't give her any hint of what he might be feeling.
She could feel the tears in her eyes slip down her cheeks. "I understand if you don't want anything to do with me anymore, but…" she took in a deep rattling breath. "But I can do this on my own if I need to, don't ask me to—"
Before she could finish the thought, he was cutting her off with a kiss. When he pulled away, she could finally see that he was smiling.
"You can't get rid of me that easily, Hermione Granger," he said with a broad grin.
"So…you aren't mad?" she asked, feeling completely broadsided. If she was honest, this was the exact opposite sort of reaction that she was expecting.
"Not at all," he answered. "On the contrary, I'm finding myself quite taken with the idea."
"I thought…I thought you'd be furious," she said softly. Knowing what she knew about his own upbringing, she'd assumed that he wouldn't want anything to do with raising a child.
"I must say I am quite intrigued at the possibilities of what our child will be like," he said, before using his large hand to palm against her still flat stomach, perhaps looking for some flutter that was still too small to be sensed. "We are both people with extraordinary abilities."
"And you don't mind that I'm…that I'm muggleborn?" she asked hesitantly. There was no secret in the sorts of views that his friends held about muggleborns and while they tolerated her now, she wasn't sure that having a child with one was going to be celebrated. She was never entirely able to pinpoint Tom's thoughts on the matter either.
"What?" he asked, almost as though he'd forgotten that she was a muggleborn. "You are…you have more than proved your worth magically, Hermione. There is no denying your power. I can't think of anyone I'd rather have a child with than you. There is no one better matched to me than you."
The affirmation that he was feeling the same way that she was was enough to have all of her worries fly out of her mind. How had she ever been worried to share her news with Tom? It was unexpected, yes, but they would figure it out together.
"I can't lie and say that this doesn't change things, though," he said, suddenly serious. "I've been talking a lot about leaving Borgin and Burke's, but I think now the time has actually come. I need to do some thinking."
Hermione nodded in understanding. Of course things had to change. There would be a baby now. That would change everything.
Tom appeared to be on a mission, already thinking of tasks that he needed to accomplish. Hermione bit her lower lip, still feeling unsure. "You promise you aren't mad?" she asked, hoping that the bubbling excitement she was feeling was shared.
Tom gave her a crooked smile, his fingers pushing a stray bit of hair from her face. "I am not mad. I am…surprisingly happy about this unexpected turn of events," he revealed. "I look forward to seeing what we can accomplish with you by my side."
Satisfied, Hermione melted against him, all of her worries washed away. She sighed when he pressed his lips to hers, an intense feeling of belonging taking over her.
