Chapter Text
6 January 1997
Well, Hermione thought, peering down the drafty chute that plagued her nightmares, I suppose it doesn’t get much more alone than the Chamber of Secrets, now, does it?
Locks of her hair had slid forward to graze her cheeks when she’d bent her head to look down the chute, and now she tucked them behind her ears with fingers that trembled ever so slightly. Straightening up, she retreated from the edge of the open pipe on careful feet, fearful of tripping over her own toes and falling down the chute like Alice down the rabbit hole.
Of course, Alice had come back from Wonderland, hadn’t she, no worse for the wear. If Hermione went down this rabbit hole, there was no telling whether she’d come back up alive or in a body bag.
Not that there’d be anything left of her to put in a body bag. In all likelihood, Tom would simply feed her remains to the basilisk and call it a day.
Licking her lips with a tongue that had gone dry as sandpaper, Hermione looked sidelong at Tom and asked him a very simple question.
“Why?”
Rather than answer Hermione immediately, Tom crossed his arms and regarded her with the same reptilian calculation that had flitted across his eyes when she’d approached him in the entrance hall not fifteen minutes ago.
Had it only been fifteen minutes? It felt like forever. This year had felt like forever, even as the months contrarily seemed to pass in flashes of rushed time, as if someone had hit the fast forward button on a VCR.
Eventually, Tom said, “You asked to speak with me in private, and I complied. As I’m missing a meal on your account, I reckoned it was only fair that I got to choose the venue of our conversation. Furthermore, you asked to speak with me alone.” With a jerk of his chin, he indicated the open pipe. “It doesn’t get much more alone than the Chamber, now, does it?”
Hermione flinched reflexively. Had he plucked that thought straight out of her head? But, no, he couldn’t have done; she hadn’t been looking him in the face when she’d had it, which left her to consider a much more terrifying notion. The notion that their thought patterns were alike.
That their minds were alike.
With difficulty, she compartmentalized that horrifying thought to be dealt with later—if there was a later. For now, she put on a brave front and said, “I’m not going down there. How am I to know that this isn’t another trap?”
Tom tapped his index finger against his bicep, projecting impatience. Well, let him be impatient. It was the least he deserved.
“Bit obvious for a trap, isn’t it?” he asked. “I like to credit myself with having more finesse than that. But I suppose I should have expected as much from a Gryffindor. Your lot aren’t known for their subtlety, are they?”
Hermione’s temper flared, whiting out the worst of her fear, and she held onto it with both hands. It was a stupid thing for her to get angry over, his insulting her House like it really mattered in the grand scheme of things, but she’d take it. Anger was better than fear. Anger was productive. Anger got things done.
“Why should you care if it’s obvious so long as the result is to your liking? You push me down that pipe, seal it behind me, and call it a day. It’s neat. Simple, but effective.”
To Hermione’s mild shock, Tom nodded, conceding her point without further argument.
“You’re not wrong,” he said. “But all the same, I’m going to have to ask you to trust me and do as I say.”
“Trust you!” Hermione barked, and Tom frowned, eyes darting toward the row of toilet stalls.
Hermione bit her lip, ears straining to ascertain that Myrtle’s gurgling sobs hadn’t cut off. She’d been nestled in her U-bend when Tom and Hermione had walked into the bathroom earlier, too caught up in her own misery to notice the intrusion, but if Hermione caught her attention now, it was all over. If Myrtle saw the entrance to the Chamber, Tom would kill Hermione and everyone she loved.
Talking of.
“If I—if I refuse to go down there—” Hermione cut herself off, took a bracing breath, and then forced herself to continue. “If I don’t go down there with you, will you make me regret it?”
She didn’t elaborate. She didn’t dare within Myrtle’s hearing, and more to the point, she didn’t have to. Tom would know exactly what she meant.
Tom picked an imaginary bit of grime out from under his thumbnail, infuriatingly nonchalant.
“Perhaps I will,” he said. “Perhaps I won’t. But I think I’m right in guessing that you’d prefer not to take that chance.”
Hermione slumped, defeated. Tom was right, of course. Hermione wouldn’t take that chance. Not with her friends on the line.
But just because she had no choice in the matter didn’t mean that she couldn’t rebel in certain small ways.
“All right,” Hermione said, and Tom’s lips began to curl into a smile. “I’ll go. But you go first.”
The smile disappeared at once. “No.”
Hermione stuck out her chin and looked him in the eyes. They were beautiful, his eyes, dark as treacle and framed with long, sooty lashes. Hermione wanted to scratch them out.
“I’ll follow right after,” she said. “I swear.”
“Sorry, Hermione, but I’ve got trust issues. You know how it is.” But he tilted his head and looked at her from beneath those long lashes, considering. “I propose a compromise. We’ll jump down together.”
And he held out his hand, palm up, fingers loosely curled. Hermione regarded it the way she might a steel beartrap.
After a protracted moment of indecision, Hermione took Tom’s proffered hand, allowing him to wrap his long fingers around her clammy palm.
With a gentle tug, Tom walked them forward until they were both standing at the edge of the chute, looking down the dark length of it. Under the persistent smell of damp stone, Hermione thought that she could detect a hint of rot, of old bones, of things long dead.
Her gorge rose, but she forced it down. She forced quite a lot of things down.
“Together, then?” Tom gave Hermione’s hand a bracing squeeze, a parody of camaraderie, and when his fingers loosened once more—
When his fingers loosened, Hermione wrenched her hand out of his grasp, reeled back, pressed both of her hands to the small of his back, and shoved.
If he’d been expecting it, he probably would have been able to maintain his balance and stay put; Hermione was much smaller than him, after all, and while Tom was no Quidditch player in terms of muscle tone, his upper body strength was still superior to hers.
But he hadn’t been expecting it, and Hermione had the distinct satisfaction of watching his arms pinwheel as he struggled to regain his balance. It was far too late, though; his toes had already gone over the edge, and he had only enough time to give Hermione a brief, furious look over his shoulder before he was falling down the chute with an involuntary cry.
Hermione pressed her knuckles against her mouth, eyes wide, ears straining. After a prolonged moment, she heard a faint thump, which was followed shortly by the sound of distant cursing.
A hysterical giggle tore free of her throat. Had she—oh, God, she really had—
Swallowing back her hysteria, Hermione dropped her hand from her mouth and tangled her fingers in her skirt, torn. Should she leave him down there? Leave him there while she went and fetched a teacher? But, no. Even if she could get to an authority figure in time, she’d have no way of proving that Tom had been the one to open up the Chamber; he’d probably spin the story so it looked as if Hermione was in the wrong, and he wouldn’t have to try very hard at all. She had pushed him down that chute.
What else could she do, then? Wait for him to calm down? Perhaps she should. If she went down there right now, he’d probably snap her neck.
If she waited for him to come back up, he’d still probably snap her neck.
Hermione exhaled hard through her nose. What an idiot she’d been, signing her own death warrant out of sheer petty impulse.
Never let it be said that she wasn’t the sort to cut off her nose to spite her face.
Hermione sat down on the edge of the open chute, legs dangling freely, the cold of the bathroom floor leaching through her woolen skirt to freeze her bum. She counted slowly to ten, drew her wand, and pushed off.
The ride down seemed shorter than it had the first time, either because she knew what to expect or because she knew what was waiting for her in the form of an enraged Tom. Regardless, she landed in a heap on the tunnel’s floor in short order, scraping the backs of her knees and bruising her tailbone.
Wincing, she pushed clumsily to her feet and looked up.
Tom was waiting for her, as expected, his lit wand throwing his handsome face into sharp relief.
His face, which was tight with barely suppressed fury.
Oh.
Shit.
Hermione pointed her wand at his chest, for all the good it would do her. It made her feel a little better, if nothing else.
“I suppose,” Tom said through clenched teeth, “that you must be quite pleased with yourself.”
He sounded like an angry parent, of all things, a tone that was at odds with his filthy, disheveled appearance.
Hermione bit back the mad urge to giggle.
“Well,” she said, and she knew that she hadn’t entirely managed to eradicate the laughter in her voice when Tom’s brow twitched, “it’s only fair, isn’t it?”
“Fair,” Tom echoed flatly.
“Yes,” Hermione said. “Fair.”
Tom’s glower faded, and he said, rather slyly, “You know, that’s rather Slytherin of you, wanting to take revenge for petty grievances.”
Hermione’s amusement died a swift death. “I’d hardly call being pushed into a death chamber a petty grievance.”
Tom shrugged, dismissive, and turned around.
“Come along, then.”
Hermione considered Stunning him while his back was turned just to make a point.
“Don’t even think of it, Hermione,” he said, still not looking at her, and Hermione jumped. Scowling, she took one grudging step before something occurred to her.
“Where are you going?” she demanded, shrill.
Tom paused, regarding her over his shoulder. “The tunnel only goes one way, Hermione,” he said.
“I am not,” she said seethed, clinging to her anger as her fear threatened to rise, “going in there.”
Tom turned on his heel to face her properly. “And why not? You’re already down here; what difference does it bloody well make?”
Was he—was he seriously asking her that question? What was wrong with him?
Well. Aside from the obvious.
“The difference,” Hermione said, jaw clenched so hard it hurt, “is that there isn’t a basilisk out here.”
Tom had the audacity to roll his eyes at her. “The basilisk won’t hurt you.”
Hermione snorted. “Right. Of course. Like it didn’t hurt Myrtle Warren. Oh, wait.”
Tom pressed his eyes shut, and Hermione got the distinct impression that he was praying for patience.
“The basilisk,” he said slowly, as a professor might to a very stupid student, “may be a mythical beast, but it is only precisely that—a beast. It kills in self-defense and when it’s hungry, and it has no particular taste for Muggle-born flesh.”
That didn’t make her feel a whit better, but she said, “Right. Unless you point it at Muggle-borns.”
“I’m not,” Tom ground out, “going to set the basilisk on you, Hermione.”
Hermione laughed, and the sound was perhaps a little unhinged. “Why should I believe you?”
Tom breathed hard through his nose, and Hermione watched him do it, a little fascinated despite herself. It was…strange. He was always so composed in public, always kept a stranglehold on his self-control, but she had the power to drive him to visible irritation. He looked seconds away from tearing his hair out.
It was…terribly satisfying to watch.
“You have my word,” Tom said, visibly struggling to control his face, “that I won’t set the basilisk on you. Not today.”
Not today. That wasn’t very promising, and it gave him room to harm her in other ways, but somehow, it was more reassuring than a promise that he’d never hurt her at all. It was more believable, for one thing.
But not quite believable enough.
“You’re lying,” Hermione said.
A muscle ticked in Tom’s jaw, but then the cool mask slipped firmly back into place, as easy as flicking on a light switch.
“I am something of a habitual liar,” he said. “But I lie out of necessity. I have no reason to lie now, and when I give my word, I keep it. For the duration of this little sojourn, you’re safe from the basilisk. And if you behave yourself, you’ll be perfectly safe from me as well.”
Hermione swallowed, and her throat was so dry that it clicked.
She’d have almost preferred to take her chances with the basilisk.
“Do I have a choice?” she asked.
Tom didn’t say anything, and he didn’t have to. He only gestured with his free hand as though to say, After you.
Hermione dug in her heels. “Oh, no. I am not turning my back to you. We either walk side by side or not at all.”
“Trying to cling to what freedom of choice you still have, Hermione?” Amusement curdled thick in Tom’s voice, and Hermione once again considered Stunning him. “I suppose I can respect that. Shall we hold hands as well?”
Hermione’s lip curled, and this time, she didn’t bother to answer him. She was quite sure that the look on her face spoke volumes.
Tom only grinned, the bastard, but then the grin parted around a hiss, and Hermione heard the sink a floor above them grind back into place, shutting them up in here.
Right. Hermione had never had a choice. Not for a while, now. Not since she’d first decided to defend Draco in Knockturn Alley.
But she fell into step with Tom, in the end, clinging so tightly to her wand that her knuckles went stiff and bloodless, hyperaware of the even cadence of Tom’s breathing, of the scent of his soap beneath the musty rot of the Chamber corridor.
And although every cell of her body wanted to cringe away from him, from the brush of his shoulder against hers as they walked, she forced herself to concentrate on him rather than on the crunch of tiny bones beneath her shoes, the stench of rot, the drip of water.
As the dead end came into view, snake carvings thrown into relief by the light of Tom’s wand, Hermione’s already unsteady breathing hitched violently. He’d lied to her. He had to have lied to her. He was going to wake up the basilisk and lock her up in there with it. He was going to—
Tom’s fingers touched her wrist, warm and dry and nothing at all like their cold, damp surroundings, and Hermione started.
“Calm down,” Tom said. “You’ll have an anxiety attack if you’re not careful.”
“I already had one over the Christmas holidays,” Hermione said, words skipping unsteadily as she struggled to control her breathing. “Because of you.”
Hermione saw Tom’s head turn in her periphery, but as she was determinedly not looking at his face, she couldn’t read his expression.
“Is that right.” It was a question, but he didn’t phrase it like one. “Then I’m sorry about that.”
Now Hermione looked at him properly, unable to believe what she’d just heard. “You’re sorry?” she echoed. Of all the things he’d done to her directly or indirectly, this was what he apologized for?
Tom had the nerve to frown at her. “Your mind is of great value to me, Hermione. I wouldn’t want to see it damaged.”
Hermione huffed and looked away. At least she was back to being too angry to feel properly afraid.
Not that she hadn’t plenty to fear, especially right now, because Tom was opening his mouth and speaking Parseltongue again, and while it still sounded like nonsense to Hermione’s ears, she was beginning to recognize the cadence of it. Open, was what he had to be saying. Open up.
And the wall did. It split down the middle like a cracked egg and pulled apart until there was nothing there but a yawning black hole.
A yawning black hole, and the distant sound of something breathing in the dark.
Hermione took a step back without meaning to. Tom’s fingers circled her wrist, holding her still, and she was too petrified to throw him off.
Petrified. Bad choice of words, that.
“Come along,” said Tom. “It won’t wake unless I tell it to.”
“That’s not especially reassuring,” Hermione snapped, but she allowed herself to be pulled into the Chamber, perhaps fifteen feet or so past the entrance. There, she dug in her heels and wriggled out of Tom’s grip.
He didn’t try to pull her farther in, at least. No, he only stopped and faced her, one hand loose at his side, the other holding his wand at waist height. Hermione mirrored him and tried very hard not to look at the great, shapeless mass coiled in the distance.
“So,” Tom said. “Talk.”
Hermione half wanted to keep her mouth shut just to thwart him, but the sooner she got out of here, the better. So she talked.
“Tom,” she said, and he inclined his head, indicating that she had his attention. “There’s this Muggle story—a fairy tale, really, about a man—a wizard—called Koschei. I wonder if you’ve ever heard of it?”
Tom’s face was perfectly blank. “It rings a bell or two.”
Oh, God. Heart thumping against her ribcage, Hermione forced herself to go on, forced herself to speak with the voice she used when she was lecturing her friends, nice and steady.
“Right,” she said, licking her lips. “Then you’ll know that Koschei was called Deathless. He couldn’t die, you see, because he’d hidden his soul—his mortality—inside an inanimate object.”
“Fascinating,” Tom said. “But do get to the point, darling.”
Hermione set her jaw. “The point,” she stressed, “is that it’s true, what the Muggles say about legend being grounded in facts. Because while Koschei himself may be a fictional character, what he did to keep himself undying isn’t fictional at all. What Koschei purportedly created to make himself immortal isn’t unlike a horcrux.”
That one word—that ugly, vile word—hung in the air between them like a spell, like a physical thing, and Hermione expected Tom to cringe back. To at least flinch a little.
He didn’t.
No, he only said thoughtfully, “You know, I discovered horcruxes quite by accident. I was paging through a book I’d found in the Restricted Section—Secrets of the Darkest Art, I believe it was called—and while the author named it, he refused to elaborate on how to go about creating one. Too rich for his blood, I suppose. And then the book disappeared off the shelves the very next day—Dumbledore’s work, no doubt. You know, he’s always had an awful habit of thwarting me.”
Hermione struggled to breathe evenly. “Right,” she said. “So, you went digging for the particulars. Slughorn?”
“Is a fool and a coward, yes, but he’s also terribly susceptible to flattery, and he is rather well read. I think I frightened him a bit, though, when I asked him to tell me about horcruxes.” Tom grinned, a wolfish flash of teeth. “And when you came to him with a similar line of questioning, he must have felt as if he’d seen a ghost. I suppose he thought that the two of us were conspiring against him.”
Probably, but Hermione wouldn’t allow him to distract her.
“So you have made one already,” she said, the words falling like stones out of her mouth. “Haven’t you? You’ve created a horcrux.”
“You already knew I was a murderer, Hermione,” Tom said, revoltingly gentle. “Why is this the thing that finally makes you cringe away from me in disgust?”
It was as good as a straight yes. He’d done it. He’d made at least one horcrux.
Hermione’s blood roared in her ears. She couldn’t hear anything past it, but she could feel herself moving, could see Tom’s face as it grew closer, as she switched her wand out of her dominant hand and coiled back her arm—
She punched him. There was a brief flare of hot pain—hers—and then Tom staggered back, clutching his nose.
The blood rushing in Hermione’s ears sang with triumph. She wanted to do it again. She wanted to hit him again. She wanted to smash his pretty face in—
“Bitch,” Tom was snarling, voice thick with the blood pooling on his tongue, and Hermione stared at him, feeling unmoored from herself. Her knuckles were throbbing hotly; she’d almost certainly split them. They’d swell soon, making it difficult for her to hold a quill.
At least Ginny had taught her how to throw a proper punch. Otherwise, she might have broken her thumb along with Tom’s nose.
“You—bloody—idiot,” she ground out. “What have you done to yourself?” It was a stupid question; she already knew. But she couldn’t help but to ask, to force him to tell her why. Why he thought it was worth it.
It was hard to tell with his hand in the way, but she thought that Tom grinned at her. His eyes were still livid, yes, but his lips were smiling, coated in blood as they were. He straightened up and muttered, “Episkey,” and his nose snapped back into place with a wet crack.
“You’re beautiful when you’re furious, did you know?”
Hermione saw red, and then she was storming forward again to grab Tom by the ear and yank him down to her eye level, the better to scream in his face.
“Then I must be positively gorgeous right now, because I am absolutely livid.”
Tom’s fingers clawed at the back of her hand, tangling with hers and hurling her hand away from him.
“I’ll thank you not to scold me like a child,” Tom said, and something in his voice told Hermione that she was on very, very thin ice.
“Of course not,” she said, fighting back the shudder that wanted to spread through her body. “A child would have the sense not to do what you’ve done—stupid arrogant inbred purebloods, playing God—”
“I’m not a pureblood.”
Hermione cut herself off. “Wh—pardon?”
“I’m not a pureblood. I’m a half blood, like that friend of yours. An orphan too, but you already knew that. So you see, Hermione, my blood’s as filthy as yours.”
Oh. That was…mildly surprising.
“One of…one of your parents was a Muggle-born?” Hermione guessed, split knuckles straining as she clutched at her wand.
“Worse,” said Tom. “My father was a Muggle.”
Hermione exhaled hard. “Oh,” she said.
“Yes,” Tom agreed. “Oh. I suppose it must come as a bit of a shock—I’m quite good at acting like a pureblood, aren’t I? Of course, if my Housemates knew of my true ancestry, I’d be ostracized. Half bloods aren’t entirely uncommon in Slytherin, for all that most of us like to pretend otherwise, but none of them have Muggle parents. Distant Muggle-born ancestors, perhaps, but that’s all.”
“If that’s the case,” Hermione said, trying to work through it, to make sense of it all, “then how did you end up in Slytherin?”
Had he flinched a little when she’d said that with such patent disbelief? Good, then. Good. She wanted to hurt him. Longed to cause him pain that couldn’t be magicked away by a healing spell.
“Aside from my qualifying personality traits?” Tom sneered, no trace of that fleeting flinch in his face. “Half blood I may be, but I’m still the Heir of Slytherin.”
Right. That.
“How disappointed he would be,” Hermione drawled, channeling Draco Malfoy, “to know that his one living heir is only a filthy half blood.”
Tom’s jaw tightened when she called him filthy, veins standing out in his forehead. Odd. He’d been perfectly composed when he called his own blood dirty, but it would appear that he didn’t take it very well when someone repeated it back to him.
“You’re such a hypocrite, Tom,” Hermione marveled. “Befriending purebloods that hate people like you, twisting their ideologies for your own gain, killing Muggle-borns—”
“Hypocritical?” Tom smiled patiently, his earlier anger draining from his face. “No. As you said, I’ve twisted their ideologies for my own gain, but that doesn’t mean that I ascribe to them. I’m using them, Hermione.”
Hermione’s wand hand wavered, her arm growing tired, but she held firm. Her eyes wheeled about the Chamber, from the great carving of Slytherin’s ancient face to the sleeping basilisk’s poison-green scales.
“Why?” she said, and Tom cocked his head, a mute request for clarification. “Why are you doing this to yourself? Why make horcruxes?”
Tom was silent, and for a long moment, Hermione thought he wouldn’t answer her.
But he did.
“My father was a Muggle,” he said, as dispassionately as if he were reciting text from a book. “He lived up north in a village called Little Hangleton with his wealthy elderly parents. My mother lived there as well, but she wasn’t a Muggle. She was a pureblood, but not a pureblood like the Malfoys. Her family was of a distinguished line untouched by Muggle blood, but her ancestors had gambled and squandered away all of their riches, and she and her father and brother lived like tramps in an old shack.”
His hands spasmed when he said tramps, and Hermione swore that sparks spat out his wand, but then he took a breath. Calmed himself.
“He was terribly handsome, my father, if terribly useless, and my mother would watch him from the window of her family’s shack as he rode down the street in some beautiful car or another. She was miserable, you see—my uncle and grandfather would abuse her with regularity—and I suppose she took comfort in watching handsome Tom Riddle, in imagining that someone like him could love someone like her.”
Something must have shown on Hermione’s face, because Tom broke off talking long enough to give her a bitter smile.
“Oh, yes. I inherited his name as well as his face. I suppose I should be grateful for the latter—it makes things easier on me, you know—but I could do without the former.” He shook his head, then, as if to remind himself to stay on track. “At any rate, my mother’s unrequited obsession with my father eventually grew to be too much for her to bear. She ran away from home, and she took my father with her.”
“They—they ran away together?” It would have been foolish of them if they had, but the little girl in Hermione thought it terribly romantic, and she pitied Tom’s mother, besides. Growing up in a house like that—it had to’ve been hell on earth.
“Technically, yes,” Tom allowed. “But what you need to understand is that my mother wasn’t much to look at—must have been all that inbreeding.” Despite herself, Hermione winced, and Tom watched her do it with satisfaction bright in his eyes. “Perhaps he would have come with her willingly if she’d been beautiful, even though she was poor, but she wasn’t, and he didn’t. I can’t be certain, but I suspect that she must have enchanted him somehow—an Imperius Curse, perhaps, or liberal abuse of a very strong love potion.”
Hermione’s heart turned to stone in her chest. Disgust curdled her stomach. The pity she’d felt for Tom’s mother died as fast as it had been born.
“You’re talking about rape,” she said.
“She probably didn’t think of it that way,” Tom said, the slight curling of his upper lip the only indication that he was displeased with the circumstances of his conception. “Deluded as she was. But, yes. She raped him, but she must have grown tired of living a lie, because she lifted the enchantment once she was pregnant with me, thinking that my father would stay with her if only for his unborn child’s sake.”
“And he didn’t,” Hermione said. It wasn’t a question.
Tom inclined his head. “My mother, lovesick little fool that she was, lived only long enough to deliver me, and then allowed herself to die.”
Hermione blinked. “To—to die? Of complications related to childbirth? It—it had to have been the late seventies. Something like that—” Something like that could have happened, but the likelihood would’ve been terribly low.
Tom shrugged, the careless motion belying the strained look on his face. “She didn’t want to live without him, and so she left me to grow up in an orphanage, and then in the foster care system when the orphanage closed. She was born from a long line of pureblooded wizards—Slytherin’s own heirs—and yet she allowed herself to die from something as mundane as childbirth. If she’d gone to St. Mungo’s, she almost certainly would have lived.”
Hermione felt revelation itching at the back of her brain like a bug bite, and said carefully, “Is that why you don’t want to die? You don’t want to be like your mother?”
Tom scoffed. “No one wants to die, Hermione. Not really. Not in the end.”
Perhaps, perhaps not. But whether that was true or false was beside the point.
“It’s foul, Tom. It’s wrong.” Her eyes darted across his body, searching. “Where have you hidden it, then? Your horcrux?”
Tom’s lips curled. “And who’s to say that I’ve made only one?”
Hermione’s breath caught in her chest, and then started to come faster.
“You—you’re mad. One’s bad enough, but—where are they?” Her eyes landed on the gleam of gold at his throat, and she thought of the locket, of the way Tom had held it out for her inspection, of how he wouldn’t let her touch it. “Is it that locket? I—” Her fingers curled, but what would she do? Snatch it? Even if she could get a hold of it, he’d kill her before he let her escape with it. And even if she did escape, where would she go?
“Did you use Myrtle’s death for your horcruxes? Who else?” Something occurred to her, then, something that had been staring her in the face for months. “Did you use Evan Rosier to—”
“Evan,” Tom said, “thought of Muggle-borns as little more than animals, and you’ve no cause to mourn for someone like him, Hermione.”
Think, she had to think. “Tom,” she hedged. “I’m sorry for your parents, really I am, but—”
Tom laughed his cold laugh, and the hairs on Hermione’s body all stood on end.
“You’re sorry about my parents? At least my mother was a witch. Your parents would have burned you at the stake if you’d had the bad luck to be born five hundred years ago.”
Hermione felt as if she’d been doused in ice water. “No, they wouldn’t have done—my parents love me—”
“Love,” Tom said, foot scraping filthy stone as he took a step forward, “is circumstantial at best. Your parents would have loved you right up until they found out what you could do, and then they would have handed you over to the Church to be tried for witchcraft. You would have been found guilty, of course, and they’d have burned you alive before you could ever get your Hogwarts letter.”
“My magic would have protected me—”
“Might have. You and I both know that untrained magic is highly unpredictable. Even if it had saved you in time, you’d have had to run away before they could catch you again. You would have been an orphan of sorts.” Tom’s teeth gleamed like pearls in his grimy face. “Like me.”
Hermione had gone cold in ways that the freezing Chamber couldn’t account for, but she shook her head and kept shaking it. “No—no. This doesn’t matter; it’s hypothetical. I wasn’t born five hundred years ago, and my parents—”
“May be the tolerant sort, but do you truly think that all Muggles are as generous as your parents? They’re dangerous. They start wars and commit genocide and build nuclear weapons of mass destruction. You’re safer down here with me and the basilisk than you are up there with them.”
Hermione shook her head again, but she couldn’t convince her tongue to work. She couldn’t—
“And those friends of yours,” Tom went on, taking another step, and Hermione found herself retreating until her back hit the Chamber’s cold, slimy wall. “Potter and Weasley. Why do you love them so? They slow you down. Hold you back. You waste so much of your time and energy wiping their noses for them when you could be devoting yourself to greater things—”
Tears sprang up in the corners of Hermione’s eyes, hot and angry. “You shut your mouth. They’re my best friends. I love them—”
“Why?” He was close, too close, blotting out the world. “What about them is worthy of your love?”
Hermione’s tongue was thick and clumsy, but she knew the answer to this. Knew it in her bones, in the blood that Draco Malfoy called filthy. “Love isn’t about being worthy. It’s not a prize to be handed out. And let me ask you something.” Hermione forced iron into her spine, tried to look brave even though she was cornered like a rat. “Why am I worth keeping around? And don’t say public relations.”
Tom’s eyelashes swept down, the fire in his eyes banking to glittering coals. His lips were dark with drying blood.
“It’s true that you’re good for my reputation, Hermione, but I’ll admit that there’s more to it than that.” He cupped her chin in his hand, thumbed her lower lip. “It’s your mind, Hermione. I’ve seen it, and I want it. I want you.”
Hermione shuddered all over. Yes, she’d already felt that he wanted her, but hearing him say it—hearing him admit to it—it made her want to run away. Worse still, it made her want to clutch him closer.
Because she wanted him, too. Despite everything he’d done, everything he’d told her, she still wanted him so badly that she could have choked on her own longing. She could feel the heat emanating from his body in waves, was shaken by the violently intense memory of his hot tongue on her open cunt. She wanted him. She wanted him. She was going to go mad from wanting him, but—
Hermione banded her arms across her stomach as if to hold something in. She took a breath. Looked Tom in the face.
“We’re missing our classes,” she said. “I won’t become a truant on your account.”
Tom reared back, hand falling away from Hermione’s face. She suspected that she’d actually managed to surprise him.
“Unless,” Hermione said, “you lied, and you really don’t plan on letting me out of here alive.”
“No,” Tom said, thoughtful. “No, I suppose I didn’t lie.”
He turned his back to her.
And hissed.
Hermione saw it. She saw the great snake uncoiling in the seconds before she remembered to screw her eyes shut. She crouched down on the dirty floor and covered her head with her arms like a child hiding from a monster. He’d promised, but he’d lied. Of course he’d lied. Of course—
Gentle fingers combed through her hair, catching on knots and snarls.
“Hush, Hermione. It’s only going to take us up through the pipe and drop us off in the bathroom.”
“No,” Hermione heard someone saying. “No, no, no—”
Tom’s sigh stirred her hair. “You’re going to make this difficult for me, then, aren’t you?”
Difficult for him? Difficult for him?
Hermione dropped her arms and scowled into Tom’s face. “You absolute bas—”
“Keep your eyes shut, if you please,” Tom instructed, grazing his fingertips across her eyelids to coax them closed. “The basilisk won’t deliberately hurt you, but there’s nothing I can do for you if you look into its eyes by mistake.”
Hermione slammed her eyes shut, but she could still hear perfectly well. She could hear the scrape of a massive body as it uncoiled on the stone floor and swept closer, closer—
Tom had gripped her by the elbows, but when she refused to climb to her feet—her legs were so stiff with fear that she suspected she wouldn’t be able to stand even if she wanted to—he sighed again and slung her up into his arms. There was a steady swaying as Tom walked, and then the dry touch of scales against her inner thighs as he sat her astride the basilisk’s spine.
Hermione’s breath caught and didn’t release. Black spots danced across her shut eyelids as the oxygen depleted from her lungs—
Tom’s arms circled her middle, and he pressed his palms against the curve of her stomach.
“Breathe, Hermione.”
As though she’d been awaiting his permission, Hermione breathed, and then they were moving. The basilisk was moving.
If she tried very hard not to think about what was happening to her—if she ignored the scrape of scales on her skin, the way the giant body beneath hers exhaled and inhaled—she could pretend that she was aboard a rollercoaster cart, especially when Tom ordered the sink to open and the ground tipped upwards.
It had gone on forever, and yet it was over in a matter of seconds, and Tom was helping her to her feet. He hissed first at the basilisk, and then at the sink, which ground shut.
It was over.
“You can open your eyes, you know.”
Hermione knew, rationally, that the basilisk had gone, but she still squinted through her lashes to confirm that there wasn’t a massive bloodthirsty snake in the room before opening her eyes properly.
Tom was leaning against the sink that masked the Chamber’s entrance, perfectly clean, hair neat and tidy, lips unstained by blood. He must have siphoned off the mess while she wasn’t looking. She should probably do the same for herself, but she had to say something first.
“You,” said Hermione, “are never touching me again.”
Tom looked only mildly interested in her declaration, which only pissed her off more.
Hermione balled up her fist. “We—we can carry on pretending to date, but when we’re alone—no more doing what we did this morning, do you understand?”
“Really now, Hermione,” Tom drawled. “If we can’t even say it, we shouldn’t probably be doing it, now, should we?”
A blush scorched Hermione’s face. “We won’t be. Doing it, that is. Ever again, do you hear me? I’m done.”
“All right.”
Hermione pulled up short. “All right?” she parroted.
Tom shrugged and crossed his arms.
“Yes, all right. I may want you, Hermione, but I certainly don’t need you.”
Hermione felt as if she’d just swallowed something bitter, but she nodded. She didn’t need him, either.
“Good,” she said. “Good. I’m glad we’ve sorted that out.”
And, still covered in grime, Hermione did what she’d always done whenever she’d had enough of Tom Riddle.
She turned her back on him and walked away.