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Everyone was shocked. Scandalized. Sprinting through the streets, sounding alarms and reaching for their pitchforks.
He’s a killer, they chanted. A criminal, a tyrant – the darkest wizard to step foot in the British Isles.
But if he was so dark, evil, and wild, why did he make her feel so alive? Whenever his emerald green eyes settled on her, softening the way they never did for anyone else, Hermione felt that she too could rule the world.
After all, what good was saving the world and proving herself worthy of a society that presented her with their own idea of who she should be when those people, witches and wizards with their pureblood notions unable to stomach violence, would still look down on her in the end? Each wanted her curls pulled back in braids, eyes soft like the silk gloves on her hands, dress impeccably white and giving away no hint of the dirty blood running through her veins. They wanted her to be quiet, docile.
Not Tom. Tom loved her fire and ambition, and the way she’d pressed the tip of her wand against his throat the evening she found him. And now, as he raised the back of her hand to his lips, enigmatic eyes boring into hers with the promise of letting her dance on the graves of each man who’d attempted to put her in her place, Hermione was thankful for it.
“My wild girl,” Tom purred, his lips tilting up in a smile.
“My wild boy,” Hermione returned, letting him pull her flush against his chest in the summertime sun.
In the future, he’d found her parents. In the past, they learned to love him just like she did, clad in a three-piece suit looking as handsome as ever. The present, as far as Hermione was concerned, was all that mattered now. Falling deeper in love in a countryside town, a thousand miles away from the war and the battles that Harry insisted only he could win.
Let him win, she thought to herself as the piano played their song and Tom’s hand made its way to her hip, tender but harsh. Always harsh, and red, and every other color that lit up the grey cage they built to keep her fire contained.
“How does it feel, Mrs. Riddle?” Tom asked, leaning down to let his words brush against her ear. Shivers ran down her spine in reply, quickly giving way to the kind of roaring heat that only he could ignite.
“Like a victory, Mr. Riddle,” she smiled, anticipating the low dip before his hands moved to cradle her body just right. “What about you?”
Tom paused, the music crested, and in that moment Hermione saw the rest of her life playing out like the piano notes dancing across her skin. Their house hidden behind wards, her parents growing old. Two little children, both with black hair and one with her curls, racing through the dandelions popping up amongst the wildflowers.
“Like destiny,” he whispered as he pulled her back up to him, her hands finding his chest and the heart beating frantically beneath it.
The Minister called it a betrayal. Harry claimed she was out of her mind. Ron said that was what happened when a Mudblood girl sat too high on her horse.
In the end, Hermione didn’t care. She’d run her already muddied name into the ground over and over again, and laugh along with the righteous zealots cheering for her downfall, to keep Tom in her arms. Over and over again until there was nothing left but the taste of him and the sound of their love running from people and places who would never understand.