"He's staring over there again," Mattheo grumbled at breakfast. He angrily stabbed the eggs on his plate. He apparently didn't like Tom's attention being elsewhere. Tom normally didn't care about others' existence. His brother was his only and even Mattheo tested his patience sometimes. No, Mattheo was usually the only one who could keep Tom's attention without being killed.

Until Evelyn.

She was sitting on the other side of the table, her nose in the same book she was reading the night before. He should know; he watched her all day. The bruises on her arm had faded but she still walked with a limp. The sight made him frown, though he didn't say anything. Yet, at least. She would be healed soon; he was determined of it.

Tom wasn't sure why she drew his eye. After all, he had never even known she existed before. Perhaps it was her sad eyes, grey like the sky after a dreary day, and her melancholy aura, the air heavy around her like the air of a funeral. Or perhaps it was the bruises on her arm, the way they made him feel fiercely protective over a pretty girl who was too vulnerable to defend herself from her attackers. Perhaps it was the way she didn't fear him, speaking to him as if he was a regular wizard boy. Or perhaps, and much more likely, it was the bond that had formed between them, a bright cord of a relationship that he had never seen. The cord held power, Tom was sure of it, but why? He didn't even have that connection with Mattheo, his own half-brother. So why did he have it with a random witch? And what did it mean?

Until he could figure it out, until he could harness the bond's power on his own without Evelyn, Tom would have to be patient. No matter. He had laid his plans for power from the moment his father perished—again, to a bloody infant; he would probably never get over it—and had waited almost twelve years for it to come to fruition. A few weeks while he figured out the mystery behind this girl would be easy compared to that.

"Do you think there's a ghost or something we can't see?"

"Questioning your older brother is going to get you killed," Theo retorted. "And I get all your cigarettes if you are killed." Even at thirteen, the boy had a problem.

Evelyn seemed to have no idea she was being watched. He wasn't surprised. She didn't notice him yesterday and he was rather good at remaining undetected, lingering against the edges of the room like a shadow unseen. His father had always taught him to command presence in whatever room he entered but Tom found silence rather useful sometimes. Times like no, when all he wanted to do was watch a pretty girl eat breakfast as he figured out her every habit.

Not pretty. She's not pretty. Beauty is a useless notion. But he was lying. Evelyn was beautiful, completely. He had never seen a girl quite like her. She naturally drew his eye, even doing something as simple as eating toast. He was glad she was; she didn't eat at all yesterday much to his dismay. Why do you care? He didn't care. She was a means to an end, a powerful pureblood woman with a strong connection to his powers. Once she was sorted out, she would be out of his life as quickly as she came into it.

"You can have my cigarettes if I die if I can have all your girlfriends when you die." That doesn't even make sense, Mattheo.

Theo scoffed. "I don't have 'girlfriends' and I never will."

Why is she sitting alone? Why was she always sitting alone? It was almost as if people avoided her more than they avoided him, which was saying something. Evelyn was intelligent, polite, pureblooded, rich, beautiful. He knew that within just five minutes of being around her. So why did people act as if she wasn't there?

Tom's mind instinctively reached out to hers as if it were second nature to him. But he found that Evelyn didn't care that she was alone. She hardly even noticed it. She's used to it. Has accepted it. He continued to weave through the web of her thoughts, noticing with a startle that his conversation with her was the first one she had with someone not a member of her own household in months.

And that was when his mood dropped.

He saw everything. He saw how her grandparents not only abused her but purposefully kept her isolated. Her own cousins didn't realize she existed, her mother was gone from her life since birth, her father was dead, and Evelyn was forbidden from leaving the house unless it was to go to Hogwarts. She snuck out to visit her father's graveyard at the risk of being beaten by a Quidditch club and even then, she was talking to a stone. Her grandparents were ashamed of her existence, so much so that they tried to completely erase it from everyone's minds, including Evelyn's. She was so used to being alone and forgotten that by the time she reached Hogwarts, she blended into the shadows and turned away anyone who tried to speak to her. Why, he didn't know. But Tom was determined to find out. Perhaps the key to unlocking his power with Evelyn Black came with unlocking the darkness of her past.

"Do you think we can say anything while he's not listening?" Malfoy's voice sounded in the background.

"I dunno, let's try... Tom, I kissed your girl last—"

But Mattheo couldn't even finish his sentence before Tom's hand was harshly gripping his throat, cutting off any circulation. Mattheo just smirked, used to his brother's antics at this point. "You kissed her?" Tom growled, turning his dark eyes to the boy he could barely tolerate.

His brother just smirked. "Nah but I'm glad to see you didn't correct me on the fact that she's your girl. You were too busy being jealous." Damn it. He was right. Tom wasn't even remotely annoyed with the idea of Evelyn being "his girl". All he cared about was the fact that Mattheo even dared to insinuate that anyone—anyone but him—could touch her.

Malfoy laughed. "Ha, ha, he got you there." Tom fixed him with a deadly glare that suggested the white-haired boy would be next if he didn't shut up. And they weren't related so Tom wouldn't go as easy on him.

Draco gulped. Theo was much smarter. He didn't try to test the older boy.

"Hey," Draco said as he realized who Tom was staring at. "That's our cousin, Matt."

"It is?" Mattheo gave Tom a weird luck.

"Not Tom's cousin. Yours. Her father is Uncle Regulus. Y'know, our mother's cousin? That makes her our second cousin, I think." Mattheo's second cousin, not Tom. Because only Tom had a muggle mother because his father was too prideful, wanting a son exactly like him, even in lineage. She was probably dead somewhere, killed after Tom was born and she had served her usefulness. Most people assumed that Tom's mother was a pureblood and he let them but he knew that his father wanted a powerful half-blood just like him. Mattheo... well, Mattheo's existence wasn't planned like Tom's was so his father didn't care whether he was a half-blood or not.

"Ohh, isn't he dead, though?"

"Mhm-hmm," Malfoy hummed. "Mother says that she's not allowed outside of the house because she's weird."

"She's not weird," Tom growled under his breath, catching the eye of every third-year boy surrounding him. He couldn't help it; he couldn't stand listening to Evelyn being insulted so brazenly. "Her grandparents are just improper caretakers."

"If she's not weird, then why is she alone?" Draco's retort found himself with a wand to his neck and a dark wizard very close to hexing him into disappearance. Tom had done it once and he was more than willing to do it again. But why? Why are you defending her? Why does your blood boil whenever someone even dares to insult you? He didn't know the answers to any of those questions and that bothered him.

"Relax, bro," Mattheo said calmly. By now, he was used to his brother threatening every single person that dared to cross him when he was in a mood. "Malfoy's just a git who doesn't seem to understand the idea of respecting the girl the Dark Heir has claimed. If he was smart, he would shut up."

He seemed to emphasize a few phrases to Malfoy, who was smart enough to nod along. "D-definitely!" he stuttered. The boy was far too desperate to save his skin. Cowardly. "Just a stupid git, that's me! You know what they call me, 'Draco-the-stupid-git-who-actually-finds-his-cousin-not-weird-at-all-Malfoy.' It's a handful so they usually leave out the middle name but it's there!"

Draco's ramblings seemed to be enough to save him from Tom's wrath. Either that or it was the fact that Evelyn had stood up from the table and began to walk out of the Great Hall.

Tom took his wand away from Draco's neck—noticing the way the boy breathed a huge sigh of relief—and turned to the table. "If I hear any of you speaking ill on Evelyn Black again, you will wish it was my father dealing with you and not me. Do you understand?" The boys remained silent and nodded with fear in their eyes. "I said: do you understand?"

A chorus of "Yes, sir" and "Yes, Tom" rang out across the table. Satisfied for now, the tall, dark boy left the room and followed Evelyn into the corridor.

Her nose was stuck in a book, the same one as before. She didn't even notice the man lingering in the shadows until he emerged, startling her once again. "We meet again," he called softly.

She tensed and turned around, meeting him with those grey eyes that had haunted him for two days now. "Tom," she said softly. He liked the way she said his name far too much. He pulled on the strings of their connection and found that she was somewhat happy to see him again, though she was more surprised than anything. "What can I do for you?'

"Come here," he said in a deep voice. Her eyebrows furrowed ever so slightly. If he didn't know her, hadn't memorized her expressions in the days he had known her, he wouldn't have noticed it. Evelyn, for the most part, kept her face completely blank. She was difficult to read. Without the bond, he might not have been able to read her at all. The only true source of emotion was her eyes: always sad, always on guard, even now as she stood in front of the boy who not only talked to her but healed her.

Evelyn slowly walked over to where Tom was at the edge of the hallway, her body poised as if she was ready to dart at any moment. He allowed her to think that she could get away when in reality, he could apparate whenever and wherever he wished. Apparating within school grounds at Hogwarts was impossible... unless you were him.

She looked up at him with big eyes that drew him in. Deep, murky water, a rainstorm in a graveyard, a woman's laughter, dark clouds above the forest, the feeling of soft, warm skin, and grey eyes, piercing grey eyes that stared at him a thousand times over and over. The visions assaulted him. He forced his face to remain stoic even as a thousand questions came to the forefront of his mind, the main one being: Who are you Evelyn Black and why have you completely bewitched me with just one look?

"What is it?" she whispered, eyeing him up and down before returning her gaze to his. At that moment, it felt like something deep within him was coiled. The darkness of his power surged more the closer she came and he still couldn't figure out why. Something else within him surged. Something... foreign.

Tom disregarded it. This bond, this bridge between their minds, was completely foreign to him. It was probably just the tendrils of that whispering into his mind, his legilimency recognizing the woman it had made a connection with.

It was nothing, he was sure of it.

Tom reached out his arm. Evelyn recoiled and began to put distance between them but Tom stopped her, grabbing her wrist tightly so she couldn't get away. He noticed with a bit of pride the smoothness of her skin. The paste worked. He stole the recipe from the Weasley Twins and was up all night brewing the potion.

"Stop," he said quietly but firmly. He tried to put all of his charm onto his face, all of his soothing charisma into his words. You can trust Tom, he whispered into her mind, softly, like a conscience might be. Evelyn must have heard his whispers because she still eyed him with distrust but she no longer attempted to move away. It was interesting how she listened well to him without him needing to put some sort of compulsion magic behind his words. Is this another aspect of our bond? Perhaps it merited some more exploring. He wondered if he might be able to enter her mind even when he was not in the room with her. It was impossible, even for him, but their connection already seemed impossible.

Tom reached out once again, still maintaining a grip on her wrist. He laid a hand on her stomach and watched as she flinched when he reached tender skin. Her broken rib called out to him like a neon sign. He could somehow sense exactly where she was hurt almost as if he were feeling the pain himself. He willed his magic to flow into her, to heal her broken bone. "Emendo," he whispered under his breath more for her sake than for his. It was an easy spell—at least for him—so he didn't need words to do it. Actually, he was realizing with a startle that he could do it without a healing spell at all. It was as if his magic was pouring into Evelyn, warming the very places she needed to be fixed. Though he wanted to explore this part of their connection—just like he wanted to explore every other aspect of their bond—Tom realized with a frown that he didn't want to act on that curiosity. Because it meant Evelyn would need to be hurt and the idea of her hurt made him furious. Even now, thinking back to her bruised body, shadows threatened to overtake his vision.

She's fine. She's healed. She's here. And to his surprise, that had his darkness returning to the depths of his soul, satisfied with the fact that his arm rested on her stomach and his hand touched the bare skin of her wrist.

Evelyn was gazing up at him with wonder in her eyes, her lips slightly parted with shock. "Thank you, Tom," she whispered, using her free hand to feel where the bone was no longer broken. To his satisfaction, she didn't wince when she touched the tender skin. "How did you do that?"

Tom moved his hand from her wrist and gently grabbed her jaw, feeling the way her soft neck felt against his cold hands. It was intimate—far too intimate for his liking—and yet he couldn't stop himself. His mind and his body were at war with themselves, each fighting for what this connection might have meant. Power, screamed one part of his soul. Untapped power for you to take. But another screamed, Evelyn. Evelyn. Evelyn. EVELYN.

"Power comes to me naturally," Tom murmured. "Including the power to heal you."

Confusion flooded her eyes, though her face remained blank. "Why?" she asked. Her voice was like the melody of fallen stars; he couldn't help but look up at the sky whenever she spoke.

"I don't know." But he would. Soon.

Tom looked down into the girl's soft, grey eyes. They were both familiar and unfamiliar to a part of his soul, like he was finding something he had lost long ago. He couldn't stop staring despite the fact that a part of him knew he was being ridiculous. It's just a girl. A silly, pathetic, very pretty girl. Why are you being like this?

But Tom didn't pull his hand away. Nor did he want to.

"Tom?" she asked softly, looking into his eyes as if she were searching for something. He recognized the look in her eyes because he, too, was searching for something: the reason why he felt so pulled to a girl who meant nothing to him.

"Yes, Little Dove," he whispered. Why did she enchant him? Did she know some kind of powerful compulsion magic that he didn't know? Was her mother a veela, giving Evelyn some kind of siren call? The longer he spent with her, the more Tom found himself bewitched mind, body, and soul by this little woman with an air of darkness constantly surrounding her. How had he never noticed her before? In a sea of bright lights, she was the shadow he searched for.

But why?

Before Evelyn could ask what she was apparently about to say, they were interrupted by a stern voice. "No snogging in the hallways," Snape's slow, booming voice echoed from down the corridor. He stood there with his thick cloak and even thicker glare at where Tom stood with his arm on Evelyn's waist.

"Sir, we weren't—" Evelyn began.

"Miss Black, I suggest that if you do not want to lose your house points, you will keep your mouth silent." Tom frowned at the way she was being treated. She deserved respect. He would demand it if it wouldn't be provided willingly, even from his professor.

"Professor," Tom said coolly. He was always good at manipulating Snape. He was a fickle ally—his father never sensed the disloyalty that Tom did—but he was oh so easy to charm. "I was just checking on Miss Black's broken rib. You know how it is to take care of a woman, don't you, Professor?"

He stared into Snape's empty black eyes before silently entering into his mind. For a moment, he forgot how much effort it took. It was always too easy to enter Evelyn's but Snape, like every other wizard, took much more concentration. Leave her, his voice whispered. Again, it would appear as if Tom was his conscience, the little voice on the corner of Snape's shoulder guiding him throughout the day. Only he knew what it really was: sinister darkness entering and manipulating the mind to his will. He didn't care about morals or free will. Tom Riddle only cared about power and this was a way to seek it. Leave her and do not bother her.

Snape blinked a couple of times before curling his lip almost to the degree of his hooked nose. "Don't let it happen again, Miss Black. And Mr. Riddle, see to it that she is more careful in the future. We don't need Slytherins losing limbs this early in the year."

Tom flashed a charming grin, letting his dimple shine through his fake persona. "Of course, Professor," he said with a nod.

Let him think he's in charge. It was the easiest way to manipulate minds. Plant his idea into their head and applaud when they claim it as their own. Snape had just shown how too easy it was. He was supposed to be the most skilled Occlumens in the castle and yet Tom had infiltrated him as easily as strolling through the front door. That was how skilled he was. He could not only read minds but control them. He could bypass shields and plant visions without a sweat.

The Dark Heir. He scoffed. By the time he was through, they would wish that Tom remained only an heir.

Snape's thick boots echoed through the hall as he finally left. They watched him leave, Tom still never removing his arm from Evelyn's waist. He didn't want to so why would he?

They sat there in silence, neither of them moving or looking away from where Snape disappeared. It was completely empty, leaving them with their thoughts. In his case, they were thoughts that were far too dangerous. He couldn't afford to be thinking about a pretty girl at all.

Power. Evelyn. Manipulation. Evelyn. Authority. Evelyn. Control. Evelyn.

He scowled. It was time to rid himself of this girl. He didn't care about their connection. He didn't care about some flimsy, corded bond. All it was was a distraction, a detour from his goal. And he didn't care about distractions no matter how pretty they were.

. . .

"Tom..." Evelyn whispered, finally tearing her eyes from the end of the hallway. But when she looked in front of her, he was gone, leaving behind only a whisper of darkness and the feeling of warmth on her waist.

What do you think so far? Do you like the darker vibes and more mysterious stuff? Personally, I do but I'm not a reader. There will start to be another plot beyond their romance coming up soon but it's the subplot, not the main one. Please do let me know what you think in the comments, I really do appreciate it!

Also, I want to clarify a couple of things just to make sure everything is super duper clear:

- Tom's mental bond with Evelyn is similar to Harry Potter and Voldemort's. Voldemort had to be at least somewhat close to his victim to use Legilimency but he could enter and leave Harry Potter's mind at will. Tom can do the same with Evelyn but for a different reason. And if you're like "bUt tHaT dOeSnT mAkE sEnSe" that's the point. Tom doesn't understand it and neither do we at this point.

- This is a slower-burn romance but an instant attraction. Tom and Evelyn are drawn to each other very quickly BUT that doesn't mean the romance is necessarily instant.