Chapter Text
“Professor Dumbledore?” Hermione asks with apprehension as she enters the room. She’s hit first with the scent of roses, and her mouth is left ajar at the sight before her.
The floor was covered entirely with red rose petals. There are no desks and chairs in sight, and the place is almost empty of all furniture except for a velvet love seat in the centre of the room. Warm light is given off by the candles in the walls, where sprigs of holly charmed to glitter are also clinging to the walls. Her awe turns to horror however when she looks up at the streamers of mistletoe hanging down from the ceiling. There are over a hundred, at least.
She’s probably in the wrong location and had stumbled upon a student’s date night.
And there is no sign of Professor Dumbledore, either.
Hermione hears the door open behind her, and she turns, expecting to see her professor and be granted an explanation for the overly decorated room.
She had not in her slightest, however, expected to see Tom Riddle, in his bloody sleeping suit with his hair all messy at perfect angles. His pale face is ruddy from exertion, and a dark, shiny lock of hair fell above his eyes. She wishes, oh how she just wishes she could pull it away and make him fall apart—
“I’m surprised to see you here, Granger,” Riddle observes coolly, pushing the door closed behind him.
She starts, but straightens herself first and crosses her arms. Her feet feel too warm in their slippers, which was an annoying response from herself.
“I ought to be asking you the same question, Riddle, but first I want to know, where is Professor Dumbledore? He called for me here, if you must know.”
A perplexed expression crosses his face, and he looks down at a note in his hand, similar to the one she held. He looks up, assured this time.
“The note is fake, and if you can’t tell already, this is a set-up.”
She opposes his observation, which there was no proof for at the moment. “A set-up for what? How do I know you’re not lying?”
He sighs, flicking the note in her direction. She catches it and reads through. It stated that he had to come to this room for a secret matter by 12AM. And that was all. There is no mention of Professor Dumbledore, or any other professor, for that matter.
“So you just came up here because the note said to? You didn’t even bother to know who it’s from first?”
Riddle shrugs, looking over her shoulder and towards the room. “I was bored and had nothing to do.”
That was it? He was bored? Hermione really had to question how Riddle had even managed to obtain 13 O.W.L.s., his skills of perception seemed to be seriously lacking.
“You could’ve ended up participating in something illegal, you know,” she retorts, throwing the note back in his direction. He doesn’t attempt to catch and lets it fall to the floor.
He saunters over to her instead. “And? You’re not in an illegal position right now, aren’t you?” He circles her, and she doesn’t like how his presence reminds her of a hawk circling its prey.
“All alone, up in a classroom out of hours.” He stops in front of her, hands clasped behind his back. “With no teacher, no Professor Dumbledore to supervise you.” He tries to hold their eye contact, but she looks down instead because it felt less intimate. It doesn’t help, however, as she notes how his skin is exposed from the night shirt unbuttoned at the top. She swallows.
“Proper, dutiful, legal Miss Granger.”
She couldn’t—this all felt like too much, way too much, and she had to leave. Professor Dumbledore or not, she could not be present in Riddle’s company for any longer.
“And now, I’m legally about to leave,” she spins around and makes a run to the door to turn the handle.
The handle makes a rattling noise, but doesn’t open.
Cursing under her breath, she retrieves her wand and mutters an Alohomora. The doors remains locked. She looks back at Riddle, who remained standing where he was. He appeared just as confused as her, which she hadn’t been expecting. But still, one can never know what he wanted to show the world and what he tried to hide.
“What sort of tricks are you playing at, Riddle?”
His face hardens and he sneers at her, “I’m not playing at anything, Granger.” He walks over and
also attempts to open the door, but physically opening the door by hand and using spells fail him, too. He curses and bangs on the door, looking away.
Her fingers grasp at her forehead, trying to think. “Okay, there must be another way out. I’ll figure something out soon.”
Riddle goes over to the love seat in the middle of the room and sprawls across it, crossing his leg over the other. He gazes impassively at their surroundings. “Who set this up, anyway? It all looks so nauseating.”
“It was probably someone’s romantic idea for a date night,” Hermione contests, flicking her wand at the door lock and handle, trying different incantations, “not that you would know anything about romance. Since when have you ever been with someone?”
He stiffens, eyes narrowing at her. “Not your concern if I have or not, is it?” Leaning on his arms, he gives her a once-over and Hermione is tempted to throw a horn-growing jinx at his head. She almost does, before he speaks again.
“And how would you know if I haven’t been involved with someone, what makes you sure of that, Granger?”
Oh he was being an absolute buffoon to think that he could hide the status of his relationship from others. Everyone knew everyone’s business at Hogwarts, enemies or not. And Mr-I-think-I’m-so-perfect-Riddle, had not been with anyone, ever.
“It’s painfully obvious when you’re always sulking around in the library when all the couples in your year head over to Hogsmeade on their dates.”
Riddle then responds in a way that she hadn’t expected. He actually laughs at her.
She doesn’t know how to react at first, so she cuts him with a glare instead, arms crossed. He stops laughing for just a moment.
“You think you’re so experienced in these frivolous matters, and you think you know so much about how all this dating business works.” He was lying down on the seat now, twirling his wand through his fingers. “But you don’t, and yet you still feel the need to justify that you’re an expert on the topic, and that—that’s bloody hilarious.”
“You’re wrong! As a matter of fact, I do have experience—”
He laughs again, but she ignores him and continues on.
“—because I have been with Victor Krum, he was my boyfriend, if you don’t know.”
Riddle stops laughing, and sits up straight. Gone was the callous attitude, a serious expression had taken over his face.
“Keyword here, Granger—Was. He was your—boyfriend,” he snarls, voice full of venom as his hand grips the plush armrest. “And quite a lousy one at that, I must say. You two barely lasted together. And anyway, a Quidditch-playing oaf hardly qualifies as someone date-worthy, but of course, you’d go after someone for all their fame and glory.”
In a haze of red, Hermione sees nothing except for his self-satisfied, haughty face smirking at her.
She rounds on him, striding across the room, wand in hand and pointed at his face.
“Shut up, Riddle! Just shut the bloody hell up you mean, vile, horrible piece of!—”
Without warning, the candles flicker out, and the room is submerged in darkness.
Hermione didn’t have time to react as she loses her footing and, slippers flying off, stumbles onto the floor in a graceless heap among the rose petals. There’s a burning pain up her ankle, and she bites her tongue to stop her cry of pain. No way is she going to let Riddle see her like this, injured and helpless.
She hears his footsteps around her.
“No, don’t come near me.” Ignoring her feeble attempt to stop him, she feels him crouch down beside her.
“Granger, I’m not going to murder you,” he says in a tone a bit too gentle for her liking. She doesn’t like how he was talking like this, and she doesn’t like how he was a bit too close to her.
There’s some shuffling of movement, and as her eyes adjust to the darkness, she can make out his shape in front of her.
“Let me have a look at your ankle,” he commands, wand lighting up with a Lumos. He hovers it over the affected area, noting the swelling.
It was too quiet, all she can hear is her own breathing in the dark. And why does she feel so damn warm? Again, too much.
Hermione abruptly pulls her leg away, ignoring the hiss of pain. “I can fix it myself, I don’t need your help!”
“I never said I was going to fix it!”
“Then just go away!”
With an exasperated sigh, he stands up. “Can you at least get up?”
He knows better than for her to ask for any assistance. She straightens her leg, and pushes herself up off the floor. With a sharp inhale, she slowly moves into an upright position. Riddle gives a quick look over, but doesn’t try to hold her or anything, for which she is grateful.
“Good. The injury isn’t too bad, nothing broken, only a sprain. Walk over to the seat.”
“Whatever.”
She limps over to the seat and lowers herself onto it, being careful to keep her leg straight.
With a wave of his wand, Riddle points at the the space they were occupying on the seat, enclosing it in a soft light emanating from an orb hanging above them between the mistletoe.
Well, it was certainly creative of him. She knew how to perform the spell, too, Hermione thinks with pride. “Didn’t know you were also an expert on illuminations, Riddle.”
“I try new things now and then, sometimes they work, and at other times they don’t. And then when that happens, it’s just considered dangerous.”
It sounded the suspicious, the way he phrased the “dangerous” part. And the fact that he had admitted to ‘trying’ things out. How shifty of him. “Hang on…it was you! You caused that explosion in the potions room!” He leans back into the seat and gives her a lazy smile. She ignores the flip in her stomach. “But how did it happen?”
“I was experimenting.”
“Experimenting what?”
“On how to create a Philosopher’s Stone.”
Hermione face-palms, and brushes the stray curls away from her forehead. Does she even want to know the reasoning behind his so-called “experiment”? She thinks not. Definitely not right now, at least.
“I’ll explain it some other time. Now let me see your ankle again, and I’ll actually try to heal it.” Before she can retaliate, Riddle moves off the seat and crouches in front of her. But she’s wary, and moreover, sure that she can fix her ankle herself. Even if she first had to learn the spells to do so.
“You really don’t have to, Riddle. I can fix it myself later.”
Retrieving his wand, he looks up. “But I want to, because I’ve learnt the spells and know how to do this right now.”
“Okay, but don’t—” Don’t what? She can trust him to play healer for a short while, if anything went wrong she would make sure he faced the consequences. “Just, don’t mess anything up. Or try anything silly.”
“Don’t worry, I will,” he replies sarcastically. Hermione gives an eye-roll and ignores his comment, letting him inspect.
He grasps the base of her foot in one hand, and drifts his wand over with the other, before murmuring a couple of spells, some of which she picks up, including Episkey. It was strange, watching him look so entranced. She notes the furrow in his brows, the sharp concentration in his eyes.
This was his calling, she muses. “What made you interested in healing?"
He doesn’t answer straightaway, and waves his wand over her ankle until it is veiled in a blue glow.
“I want to be renowned someday for my abilities to mend, and to create—” he answers pensively, not looking up. “To renew, replicate. To bring something, or someone back, from the brink of death.” He places his wand down, and holds her foot in both his hands. She ignores the warmth of them. “And to face death itself. Not to surpass it, but rather challenge it. I’ve seen the way the healers tended to my mother over the years when she was ill, and helped her restore her magic. I want to take those skills and further apply them, to prevent such instances from happening in the first place.”
“That’s both quite noble and ambitious of you,” Hermione replies. She chooses not to delve on the information regarding his mother, and what it meant that her magic was ‘restored’. She had never heard that about her before, and wonders vaguely if anyone else knew, too. It seemed unlikely when she thought about it.
Riddle doesn’t answer and, wand in hand again, continues to work on her injury.
“Hermione, why do you despise me so much?”
Again with her name, and the way he said it, and the way it rolled so pleasantly off his tongue, it made her want to push him away.
“You’re asking me as though it’s such a mystery. You know very well why, Riddle. I don’t need to reenact the memory from that ill-fated day.”
He looks up, eyes looking deceptively pleading. He knows how to play the part well. “Come on now, how can you keep a grudge for something so insignificant? I was younger back then, I didn’t know, truly.”
“For you it might be insignificant, but for me it wasn’t. Calling me a—what was it again? A “bossy, insufferable, and obnoxious know-it-all”, and then proceeding to say it was the reason why I hardly had any friends—in front of practically everyone on stage during the competition…It was like something from my worst nightmares.” The competition on defensive spells theory had taken place in front of both their year groups, and she had won over him in that round, so he chose to respond in the most stinging way. “I was so humiliated, and made fun of for weeks.”
“I’m sorry,” he says in a low voice, hands moving away from her ankle, leaving it cold. She hadn’t noticed when the pain had subsided. “I didn’t know my words affected you to such an extent.” He pauses, picking off a few petals from his shirt. “But again, I’m sorry, and I mean it, as I did back then, too.”
“It’s…fine now, I guess,” she replies with apprehension, and mulls over his admission. Perhaps he’s right, it was such a long time ago, it made no sense to hold onto an old grudge. But her pride won’t let him in so easily.
They don’t exchange anymore words, and the eery silence of the room takes over.
Hermione considers getting up to unlock them out of the room, and if the door still failed to open, she would just have to break it down.
But then, she feels him grasp her ankle again, so gentle. And the pads of his thumbs rub circles over it. Small, harmless circles, the pressure barely there. However, Riddle doesn’t acknowledge them, and speaks again, unaffected by his actions.
In that moment however, she forgets how to breathe.
“Whatever I said then, it was all reactionary—”
Slowly, too slowly, his fingers graze up her leg, palms flat against her skin, and her breath catches another sharp hitch. Fight this—fight him, and run away, because she hates him, doesn’t she?—
“Like you, I’ve always been competitive when it came to my studies—”
The hem of her trouser is pushed up her calve, and his fingers slide up and trace over the dimples in her knee. Her own hands dig into the the seat below her, nails piercing the velvet cushion. She can barely hear him now. She’s going to faint, she’s sure of it, because he’s a fake and he can charm anyone to get what he wants and she hates him, she hates him—
“It was only natural for us both to be defensive—”
Up, up, up his hands went, pushing the cotton fabric past her knee. Heart thundering in her chest, she leans against the back of the seat, failing to keep straight. No one had made her feel like this before. Really, he’s just charming her, he just wants some information from her, no way, is any of this genuine, it just couldn’t be.
“When you’ve been the top student for a while, it’s not easy making space for another student who’s just as brilliant—”
His hands lay firmly on her thighs, and he looks up at her. Shaking, she leans on her arms, and sits forward again, to really see him this time. His cheeks are flushed, and his lips—they are parted. But it’s his eyes, they are dark and flashing and alive. And they hold the oncoming warning of a storm. A storm she was ready to drown in and just let go—
She feels the rich silk of his voice wrap smoothly around her mind before she understands the meaning of his next words.
“Tell me, Hermione,” his voice is feverish, and his throat bobs as his fingers dig into her legs. “What was it like when that oaf Krum kissed you?”
“I—What?”
“Tell me.”
“It was…okay, I suppose.” She swallows thickly, shaking her head and holding onto the last bit of composure in her vicinity. “I mean, I was new to it back then, and don’t remember much, anyway.”
Hermione thinks it’s unfair that Riddle was able to corner her and ask about such personal details, and make her feel conflicted. She decides to throw his interrogating ways back at him. To fight him. “But I’m sure you know all about it, because you must be so experienced, Riddle, in such “frivolous matters”, as you inferred earlier.”
In less than a blink, she’s pushed back flat against the love seat, and the light from the makeshift torch glares into her eyes until he was above her, pinning her down by the shoulders and blocking off the illumination. Apart from the damned mistletoe, his silhouette is all she sees.
“Don’t try to mock me, or say anything you’ll regret later.”
“Make me, Tom.”
He closes the distance between them, and his mouth covers hers—or jams onto it, rather.
He kisses her with an urgency, a desperation, as though he had longed for this, as though he had dreamt of this, but no, he couldn’t’ve, surely not. But her mind has at last switched off and she can no longer comprehend her thoughts, because all she can feel are his slightly chapped lips and the taste of peppermint and the remnants of tea.
His kiss however, is not gentle. His teeth scrape her bottom lip, and he bites down, hard—“Ouch!”. He breathes a muffled “sorry” against her lips, and with a light smack to the side of his head, she pulls back for just a moment, before she brings her hand up to cup his cheek, guiding his mouth.
Her other hand holds onto his shoulder as he threads his fingers through her hair, and she lets out a sigh. It felt so good, so right, and she wonders if he can feel the rapid beating of her heart against his chest, if he can hear it.
They break apart for a moment, foreheads touching, warm breaths fanning across each other. She tries to speak up, to say something, anything. But no words leave her mouth, and all she can smell are the bloody roses.
Tom—Tom, her Tom, leans into the crook of her shoulder, and places soft kisses on the side of her neck, down to her clavicle. She feels his tongue roll across the heated skin, and then his mouth trails back up her neck. A moan escapes her mouth and she hears him growl low in his throat.
“Hermione,” Tom rasps against her jaw. “What are you doing to me?”
She sits up on her elbows, moving her legs away to push him back, and then she straddles him. “I want to know the same, Tom.”
He pulls her closer, and she leans down to kiss his neck, his throat, and that spot where his shirt is open, where he feels hot and damp against her own burning mouth, and then she moves up, capturing his mouth in hers. She runs her hands through his hair at the back, and brings her fingers forward to sift through the silky locks at his forehead. She pulls, and she knows that he’s fallen apart in her arms as his hands touch her everywhere, down her arms, up her waist, over her thighs, her hips, her tailbone—
It felt perfect and utterly divine, and she knows she’s insane right now and will have a million questions tomorrow, but right now, nothing mattered, nothing else mattered except for the touch of his hands and the taste of his lips. She grinds onto his lap, and, oh, is that his?—
BANG!
Hermione and Tom break apart with a jerk, steadying themselves on the seat to watch the unexpected spectre of fireworks unfold in front of them.
The crackers explode into loud colours of purple, green and red, and take the shape of roses, cupids, and crudely drawn love hearts.
A firework whizzes past their shoulders to the other side of the room, leaving a shower of sparks and then returning its way to the front.
“This is completely cheesy, but also somewhat impressive, I have to admit,” says Riddle—Tom? His voice not entirely collected yet. Now that her senses are back, she’s hesitant in addressing him. Everything will be different now between them, so very different.
An empty firework cracker lands at their feet, and Hermione picks it up, noting the initials of none other than the Weasley twins.
The fake notes, the decorations, the enchantments on the door and the room, it all made sense. And she’s hardly surprised. After all, did she expect Ginny to keep quiet about her quarrel with Tom? Such a clever prank.
There’s a click at the front, and then the door creeks open. Of course, the timing of it all, the cheeky Weasley siblings do deserve credit.
“We ought to leave before the room locks us in again,” Hermione says as she stands up, fixing her robe and smoothing her hair back, and then retrieves her slippers from the floor. She must look a hot mess right now.
Tom follows suit, pulling his nightshirt down and adjusting the waistband of his pants. Hermione looks away, then feels silly for doing so because they had just participated in the most questionable of activities.
They make their way across the room, before stopping in the door frame, and turn to each other.
“Who shall I thank for this date night?” Tom asks, amusement lighting his eyes.
“Redheads. That’s all I’m saying for now,” Hermione replies, shifting on her spot. “But you’re still not a saint in my eyes, remember that.”
Tom doesn’t reply, and instead leans in to hold her hands, placing a kiss on her forehead. How dramatic of him, how terribly like him. She wishes he will do this to her forever.
“Don’t think this will dissuade me from beating your O.W.L. scores,” Hermione chides, pointing her finger into his chest.
Tom grins down at her. “I’d never expect you to. Believe me when I say that I look forward to the day you pass my marks.”
Close to each other, and without any unnecessary distance, they head back to their dorm rooms. Hermione cannot think to whether scold Ginny or thank her. Perhaps she will not recall the events of this night to her at all. She will keep these moments a secret, close to her heart and away from prying eyes. They will be aware of the outcomes of their plan soon anyway, she reflects with a smile.