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Chapter Text

Hermione found that the best way to prepare fish eyes was to steam them.

You could grill them, but the charred, smoky taste overwhelmed it. You could bake them, but they always dried out, unable to withstand the intensity of the heat. You could put them in a stew, but all that did was make you forget about it, lost with the other medley of textures and flavors. And if you tried to cover it in batter and deep fry them?

Well, they exploded.

She did admit that braising them in soy sauce and mirin was quite nice and sautéing them with sesame oil and ginger brought out its aromatics. 

But steaming them? There was something about the sanctity, the purity, the cleanliness of it all. No other flavor would cut through and you knew what it was that you were eating. It tasted just as how it should.

In fact, if Hermione could, she’d eat the eye raw , like she did with oysters and sashimi. But she was no heathen when it came with something like food, and especially towards what was a delicacy in some cultures.

Fish eyes were considered the best part, offered to the most important guest at the table. They should be cooked, they shouldn’t just be gulped or slurped down. 

There were some lines Hermione was willing to cross, but this wasn’t one of them.

No, she was respectful. Hermione didn’t just like food, she loved it. She didn’t eat to live, she lived to eat. Food tantalized every sense. Taste, smell, sight, and touch of course, that was obvious. But there was also sound . Like the crunch of a crusty French baguette or the sizzle of a Hong Kong black pepper steak as the waiter brought it out on a piping hot cast iron plate, bare hand protected only by a small towel.

So when Hermione discovered that she would be eating at the up-and-coming restaurant Horcrux, the word ecstatic or thrilled didn’t even come close to what she was feeling.

Because getting a table at Horcrux was…everything.

Horcrux was on everyone’s list – from the posh newspaper critics to the millennial Instagram food bloggers to the anonymous sleuths on Reddit to the ancient Yelp Elites to the Gen Z users on Beli. If Horcrux didn’t get three Michelin stars, everyone in the food scene would have exploded.

Horcrux was different , and that’s what made it special. Sure, some things were the same as other fine dining restaurants: no cell phones, coat check, water always filled when it reached the halfway point, dropped utensils picked up and replaced within seconds of falling.

But while most other restaurants featured a rotating, seasonal menu, Horcrux didn’t have one. One merely showed up and somehow everything you ever wanted in a perfect meal was waiting for you.

If you wanted cheeseburgers, you would be assured of eating the best cheeseburger of your life. If you wanted al pastor tacos served on tortillas with a personal engraving on it, it was yours. If you wanted the avant-garde use of molecular gastronomy and a multi-sensory experience, Horcrux gave that to you. If you wanted to be in and out in twenty minutes sharp, done. If you wanted a four-hour tasting menu, that’s what you were given.

You didn’t even have to tell them – the team behind Horcrux claimed to do extensive research on each of their guests to ensure the optimal dining experience. And the price always fluctuated, based solely on what they served you.

Unsurprisingly, it was almost impossible to book a table. Horcrux only seated seven at a time, for a more intimate experience, and their reservations opened exactly a month out on their website. No walk-in’s, no exceptions, not even for celebrities, politicians, or billionaires. 

One couldn’t even buy a reservation off a third-party website – no exchanges were allowed, and they checked IDs at the door to make sure they matched the ones provided when the reservation was made. Fake IDs didn’t work either, not even the good ones. People had tried and had suffered the consequences by having the authorities called on them and being publicly shamed on Horcrux’s social media. There was no waiting list to pull from for no-shows or cancellations. Instead, one’s credit card was charged seven times the amount of what the check would have cost.

Not that anyone cancelled. People flew into London from other countries just to eat at Horcrux.

Hence, the expectation of three Michelin stars.

What also made Horcrux fascinating was the intentional secrecy in everything they did. There was no record of what the Owner and Head Chef, Tom Marvolo, looked like, not on any corner of the internet. No culinary school claimed him as a student, no primary school boasted old class photos of him. Marvolo refused all interviews and never came out of the kitchen to greet his seven guests. He either lived in the restaurant or had a secret entrance no one in the public knew of because none had ever seen him leave it.

He emerged from nowhere, came from nothing, and remained invisible, a wraith in an era where everything could be found online. But all seemed to agree on one thing: he was a wizard when it came to food. 

There was a consensus that he was young, dark-haired, dark-eyed, upper-class, and racially ambiguous – attributes from a “whistleblower” named Severus Snape who had once worked at Horcrux and complained about the intense working conditions and domineering, abusive personality of its Head Chef.

“He employs criminals and calls all of his workers Death Eaters,” Snape reported in an interview with the tabloid The Daily Prophet. “And it's not just because he believes the work we do deals with life and death itself. It's because he expects us to make Horcrux our entire lives. I wouldn’t be surprised if he wanted us to die for it. He’s a man with a vision, but one simple, honest mistake can send him into a rage. He’s psychotic.”

The Times, The Telegraph, and The Guardian all refused to publish his statements, stating it would break journalistic integrity to do so. He was only one man and there was nothing to back his claims. All inquiries to other known workers at Horcrux and Marvolo himself were met with silence.

And even if they were true, the statements were hardly newsworthy. Everyone knew that the restaurant industry regularly employed ex-convicts and felons, one of the few places that provided them with a second chance and meaningful employment. Everyone also knew that the industry was brutal and cutthroat, that one needed thick skin to bear it – skin that Snape clearly did not possess.

And while there was a part of the internet that condemned Horcrux for not giving its workers a proper work-life balance, it was also understood they were paid well for their loyalty. Restaurants were notorious for their turnover, but these “Death Eaters” – save for Snape – seemed to worship the man who employed them.

For the most part, the interview faded from everyone’s memories. Snape’s role in the kitchens was solely focused on making sauces, dressings, and dips that Marvolo told him to make. He had no insight into the process of determining what those were, had merely followed orders.

He didn't know the answer to the question that everyone cared about: how did Horcrux know what people desired to eat?

Ginny: GOT THE REZ. 4 OF US. SEPT 19.

Harry: That’s my girl

Hermione: SHUT UP!!!!! HOW????? ALL 4 OF US????

Ginny: We always tried to do it with just 1 or 2 of us at a time. But I figured that that’s how EVERYONE was doing it. So I was like, fuck it let me try 4 and I guess it worked????

Ginny: I was like a woman possessed on that website. Pretty sure I blacked out when I got through. Don’t even remember what happened. It was like something took command of my body.

Ginny: It wasn’t me. It was the reservation gods. Time to make a sacrifice in their name.

Harry: I volunteer as tribute

Harry: I will be the pig you raise to slaughter

Harry: 🐷🔪🩸💀

Hermione: GINEVRA WEASLEY

Hermione: HAVE I TOLD YOU I LOVE YOU?????

Ron: Where are we going again?

Ron: Can we change to September 20? Man City playing against Arsenal on 19

Ron: First league game of the season so was planning on being at the pub for that

Ginny: …really Ron? Really? You absolute git.

Ron: ???

Yeah, Hermione loved Ginny alright. Telling her brother off for forgetting his girlfriend’s birthday? That deserved a hug. But getting a reservation at Horcrux?

Now that deserved a kiss.

She grinned as she opened her message thread with just Ginny and typed rapidly with her thumbs.

Hermione: I’m giving you a kiss.

Hermione: A big, fat, wet, juicy kiss. Harry will be jealous.

Hermione: 😘😘😘

Ginny: Ugh, I’m so sorry about Ron.

Ginny: Sometimes I wonder if we’re even related.

Hermione: …you look exactly alike

Ginny: Do NOT remind me

Ginny: He doesn’t deserve to look this fucking good

Ginny: I always ask myself why I introduced the two of you

Ginny: I JUST WANTED TO FINALLY GO ON FUN DOUBLE DATES

Hermione: You mean someone to talk to while all they talk about is football????

Ginny: Shut up you love me

Hermione: ❤️

Ginny: How have things been though?

Ginny: We haven’t hung out just the two of us in a while

Hermione: It’s…been rough. Nothing’s happened but it’s like…nothing’s happened? Hard to explain over text – you free tomorrow? Brunch?

Ginny: Yes! I’ll think of a place and make a reservation

Ginny: Just know that I will still love you no matter what. We were friends before you were ever his girlfriend

Ginny: WAIT, you can’t break up with him yet

Ginny: Horcrux policies

Ginny: Everyone needs to be there

Ginny: Wait until AFTER Horcrux and after he pays for you

Before Hermione could text a response, she let out an ooph as she ran straight into a pole, staggered backwards, and tripped on nothing .

Then, before she knew it, the pole reached out, grabbing her arm, steadying her.

Hermione blinked rapidly, wondering what world she had transported to where poles had arms, when she realized that she hadn’t bumped into a pole, but a man.

“Careful,” he said, amusement clear in his voice as he let go of her arm. “Wouldn’t want you falling and hurting yourself.”

“Thank you. I’m so sorry, I was just…” she trailed off as she looked, really looked at the man before her.

It was almost impossible how symmetrical his face was, how full and soft his lips looked, how classic the shape of his nose was. His eyes looked like the color of an impending storm, a dark, swirling gray and his hair was raven-black, casually tousled. His skin was smooth like glass, dewy and glowing. His shoulders were broad, but the rest of his body was lean and toned, not overly muscular. He was tall and looked to be in his mid-thirties. His clothes were stylish but not overwhelmingly so – a black Harrington jacket with a light gray shirt underneath, dark jeans, and faded white trainers.  

This man was, quite simply, the most beautiful person she had ever seen. He had to be a model. Or an actor. Or maybe even a K-Pop idol, in a certain light.

His face belonged on billboards.

“Just…?”

Hermione blushed – she couldn’t help herself. “I wasn’t paying attention,” she said apologetically. “Texting and walking, you know?”

He smiled. “A serious crime.”

“The worst,” she agreed. “Sorry about that. Have a good rest of your day.” Hermione stepped to the side of him, but blinked when he didn’t immediately give her space to walk forward.

“Actually, before you go, I’d appreciate your help.” He pulled his cell phone out of his back pocket and waved it at her. “My phone died and I’m looking for St. Joseph’s Cathedral.” He slipped the phone back into his pocket. “I know it’s here, but all the churches in this area look the same. I’m cutting it quite close, and I’d rather not be late.”

Hermione’s eyes widened. “Oh, what a coincidence. I’m headed there now!”

The man arched a brow. “You are?”

Hermione nodded and clicked the button on the side of her phone. Her screen brightened. 9:55. “Yes, let’s go.”

He turned to follow her as she fell into a light jog.

“You know, when I said I didn’t want to be late,” the man said, panting only slightly as he kept her pace. “I didn’t expect you to run .”

“I don’t like to be late either,” she panted back. “Pet peeve.”

“And what are you going to be late for?”

“I suspect the same thing as you.”

The man gave her a curious look but didn’t say anything more until they reached the doors to the cathedral.

“I’m Tom, by the way.” He reached his hand out toward her. “Tom Riddle.”

Hermione laughed. “So much for anonymous.”

Tom smiled sideways at her. “What makes you think it isn’t a fake name?”

Hermione took his hand and shook it. It was warm, but not clammy. The base of his fingers and his palm were thick and calloused, and she even noticed there were small cuts and burns scattered across the back of his hand.

“I suppose I don’t.” She smiled at him. “Name’s Granger.”

“Just Granger?” he asked in an amused tone.

Hermione released his hand to open the door. “Just Granger.”

Chapter Text

Tom’s introduction to everyone at Alcoholics Anonymous was short and brief, although Hermione noticed he hadn’t included his last name. He wasn’t a model, actor, or secret K-Pop star but a chef – that explained his hands – and had just returned to London from Albania to open a restaurant. While he was going through the process of finding a lease and getting the necessary permits, he was working part-time at a friend’s restaurant. 

He was an old timer – been in and out of treatment for the better part of his life but had been sober for the last five years. Although the stress of both the move and the daunting task of mixing business with passion was seeping into him, hence the visit here.

When the hour was up, Hermione found him outside, by himself, smoking a cigarette, instead of inside, chatting over a cup of coffee with the others. She didn’t know what possessed her to walk up to him instead of walk to the Tube to head to the library to tackle her dissertation.

Perhaps it was because he was new. Perhaps it was because he was alone.

Or perhaps it was because the way the light was hitting his face made him look like an angel.

“Got a light?”

Tom brightened when he saw her and pulled out a lighter. Instead of handing it to her, he flicked until a flame caught. Hermione leaned in, letting the tip of her cigarette burn, then pulled away, taking a deep drag.

“So…”

“I started coming here when I realized I needed to get my life together and knew I couldn't do it alone. Been clean and sober for two years. I like to come here instead of NA because…” Hermione made a face. “Well, you know.”

“Too many dealers pretending to be addicts in NA. I get it. And two years. That’s amazing.”

“Thank you. I can't give all the credit to this group though." She smiled fondly. "Couldn’t have done it without my friends.”

Where would she be without Ginny and Harry? Their friendship had helped her overcome her darkest days, even though they didn't know it. Even Ron, she admitted almost reluctantly. Despite his shortcomings, Ron had grounded her, given her a home, given her normalcy, given her sanity .

It was one of the reasons why she was both hesitant and reluctant to leave him despite finally coming to terms that that was exactly what she wanted. Even with Ginny’s reassurances that nothing would change, everything would change if she left. And that prospect was terrifying.

“Mmmm.”

Hermione lifted her head up. “You disapprove?”

Tom let out a deep exhale, smoke billowing out from his perfect lips. “I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to. Sobriety doesn’t have to be a lonely path,” she said defensively.

“And it shouldn’t be. It's why we're here. But sometimes friends hurt more than they help. They might not mean to, but they do because they just don’t understand. Anyone who isn’t an addict can never understand.”

Hermione had no response to that because he was right, in a way.

She had met Ginny two years ago. A new bookstore had opened in the neighborhood, one that only sold romance novels. It hosted a monthly book club, reading everything within the genre, from the best-selling romantasy series to alien erotica to dark, stalker romances. The two of them had shown up to the first meeting and instantly bonded over their love for the genre and excitement that they no longer felt embarrassed or ashamed about it.

Ginny had then introduced Hermione to her boyfriend Harry and her brother Ron. Ron had then invited her to join them at the board game café he owned to play Settlers of Catan because he said that four players was the best way to play.

And the rest was history.

But the three of them didn’t know much about her life before that fortuitous moment. They didn’t know that she went to AA meetings. They thought she spent her Saturday mornings in the library researching for and writing her PhD dissertation. They knew she didn’t drink or take drugs but didn’t understand why she smoked cigarettes outside. She got a lecture from one of them every other week about how she’d die of lung cancer.

As if she were woefully ignorant of the dangers of smoking.

Hermione took another pull from her cigarette, letting the small hit of nicotine gently scratch the never-ending itch in her brain.

“So…Albania? Why there out of all places?”

Tom laughed and threw his cigarette on the ground, stubbing it out with his feet. “That was only the last place I’d been in. I trained in French cuisine in Paris first, but I wanted to learn everything. I traveled all over the world to learn from the top chefs directly in the countries where they’re from.”

Impressive. “Sounds expensive,” Hermione remarked.

“It’s good to have friends in high places.”

“I thought you said friends hurt more than they help.”

“Their bank accounts have some uses.”

Hermione’s lip twitched upward as she was reminded of Ginny’s suggestion of making Ron pay for Horcrux. She stubbed her cigarette out as well. “So I take it these friends of yours are the restaurant’s investors?”

“Clever,” he noted.

“And your new restaurant will be more global in its cuisine?”

“That’s the goal.”

“I hope you’re not one of those chefs who claim they’re improving a dish from another country by making it more ‘appealing’ and palatable to us Brits.”

Thankfully, Tom looked affronted at the very idea. “I would never do something like that ,” he said in a bewildered tone. “But I do reserve the right to call my dishes better.”

Hermione bristled internally. “And why’s that?”

A slow smile crept on his face. “It’s not just the chef, Granger, it’s the ingredients. Would you rather eat a cucumber that’s been shipped from who knows where, grown in who knows what, and picked by workers who are paid next to nothing? Or from a local farm where you know the family that runs it uses the best soil and cares for it with their own hands?”

Hermione instantly relaxed. Of course she’d prefer the local farm.

“Would you rather eat pork belly from a pig that’s been given space to roam, a soft place to sleep, fed the best food, and friends in its pen to socialize with? Who’s lived a good life, happy and content? Or from a pig that’s beaten, forced to stand on its feet all day, and hears the cries of its friends as its strung up and slaughtered? A pig that hasn’t even seen sunlight?”

He had a point, she admitted to herself. Animal cruelty was wrong. She had dabbled in vegetarianism during uni after watching a documentary about the treatment of animals in slaughterhouses but had given up after three months. Too many of her favorite dishes had meat in it.

“The animal’s dead, regardless of how it was treated when it was alive,” Hermione countered just for the sake of it. “Just because it had hay to sleep in makes it morally better, but it doesn’t make your dish actually better.”

“Do you know what stress does to a body?” Tom drawled. “What fear does? All those hormones. All that adrenaline. It’s released into the bloodstream and ruins the texture and the taste of the meat. There’ll be none of that in my restaurant.”

“Can people even taste the difference?”

“I can. I’m sure you can as well.”

Hermione looked at him with skepticism.

He laughed and smiled widely at her, this time showing his teeth. They were straight, wonderfully shaped, and a gleaming white. Surely, they were veneers, although they looked so…natural.

“Let me prove it to you. What are you doing right now? Are you feeling an early lunch?”

Hermione studied Tom carefully. It was a rule of hers, to always remain professional with fellow addicts, to never take it further than support. Even though there were plenty of success stories, there were also far too many stories of couples meeting each other in recovery – and then relapsing together. That was the last thing she wanted.

She also technically had a boyfriend.

But this wasn’t a date. He hadn’t approached her after the meeting, she had approached him. She had been the one to ask him about Albania, to question the ability to taste the difference between the quality of meat.

Tom’s smile reached his eyes and his face seemed eager under her gaze.

Surely, he had work done on his face, had gone under the knife to get a jawline that chiseled and cheekbones that sculpted. Surely, he had just the right amount of filler in his lips for them to look that full and soft.

So often, cosmetic surgery looked too perfect. Exact. 100%.

But Tom looked like 98%, like there was a smidge of something that was a testament that his beauty was natural, that he was born with the face of an angel.

Hermione’s own lips moved before she could stop herself. “I’m starved.”

Tom’s smile grew wider. “Great. There’s a gyro spot nearby that we can walk to.”

Hermione brightened. “Gryffindor’s? I love that place.”

“No. Absolutely not.”

“Why not?”

They were standing in the line outside Gryffindor Gyros. She had thought this was the spot where Tom would claim tasted better, that he somehow knew where they sourced their meat. To her horror, he had said it was the spot where he would prove it was inferior .

“This is my favorite spot for gyros!” Hermione exclaimed. “It’s the best in London! They’re one of the few places that does it the right way and uses pork like they do in Greece! You will not ruin this for me!”

“I take it as a compliment that you think I can ruin it for you.”

“Every time I walk by here, I’m going to think about their pigs being beaten in cages without sunlight. Pick another place.”

“You do realize that almost every restaurant, grocery store, and butcher in London sources their meat from a place that does exactly that.”

“Don’t ruin Gryffindor’s for me,” Hermione said stubbornly.

“I’m not going to ruin it for you, Granger,” Tom said impatiently. “I haven’t even ruined it for myself. I don’t know what it is about their tzatziki. No matter how hard I try, I can’t replicate it. I always get a container of it whenever I stop by.” His brow furrowed as he frowned. “Sauces have always been tricky for me. Don’t know what it is about them.”

“You know, Tom, you really shouldn’t be doing it like this.”

“Oh?”

“It should be a blind taste test. I might be biased to hate it knowing the pig was treated inhumanely. Or I might be biased to love it because this has always been my favorite.”

“Trust me, Granger,” Tom smirked. “By the end of today, you’ll see that I don’t need a blind taste test to prove this to you.”

Hermione arched a brow. “That confident?”

Tom merely smiled and ran his fingers through his hair. He turned away to watch the men make the wraps through the window, slicing the meat from the vertical rotisserie.

Gryffindor Gyros only sold one type of gyro, no substitutions, no special requests, no vegetarian or vegan options. The pita was made in-house, fresh, hot, and slathered with tomatoes, onions, fried potatoes, and plenty of tzatziki.

When they were handed their gyros – and a container filled with tzatziki – Hermione tried to pay for her own meal but was immediately met with a scowl from Tom who insisted on treating since this had been his idea to begin with.  

Well, she couldn’t argue with that logic.

Even though with him paying, it was beginning to feel more and more like a date.

They walked outside, away from the cramped interior. Hermione bit in, and her eyes almost fluttered shut.

“So good,” she garbled, food still in her mouth. “It doesn’t even matter what happened to the pig. I don’t care and I have no idea where you’d take me that can beat this. I’ve tried almost all of the places in London.”

“It is pretty good,” Tom agreed, his mouth full as well, although he had the decency to cover his mouth with his spare hand. “But I’ve had better. And so will you.”

“Where?”

Tom chewed and swallowed the bite of gyro in his mouth. “My place. I’m going to cook for you.”

Hermione inhaled sharply, inadvertently slamming a half-chewed piece of pork into the back of her throat. 

Hermione thought she had choked before. She had coughed and spluttered on water going down the wrong pipe. She had once reached her fingers into her mouth to pull out a piece of orange that she hadn’t chewed properly that had unfortunately lodged itself in her throat when she impatiently swallowed.

But this was like nothing she had ever experienced before. She tried to cough, but she couldn’t. She tried to breathe, but she couldn’t.

Hermione immediately dropped the gyro she was holding, watched as the tomatoes, the onions, the potatoes, the meat, the pita immediately fall onto the sidewalk.

“Granger?” Tom frowned. “You alright?”

She tried to speak, but she couldn’t. She tried to cry , but she couldn’t. There was nothing coming out of her, not a tear, not even a squeak.

Hermione tried to gasp for air, but there was nothing she could do, no end in sight, nothing.

She frantically clawed at her throat and her chest. This wasn’t happening, this wasn’t happening. She was going to die from a gyro, from eating a part of a poor pig who had been inhumanely murdered in a slaughterhouse. Her time had come, and it was karma for her stating she hadn’t cared in the slightest rather than the karma of all the other fucked up things she had done in her past in the name of addiction.

“Fuck,” Tom swore as his face nearly transformed. Gone was the polite Tom, gone was the smiling Tom, taken over and replaced by a terrified Tom, by a horrified Tom. He dropped his own gyro and the container of tzatziki. The lid popped open, and the yogurt-cucumber sauce splattered on the ground. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

Her vision was starting to blur.

Arms wrapped around her torso. A fist just below her ribcage. Then –

Pressure and pain.

Pressure and pain.

Pressure and –

Hermione suddenly coughed, the meat flying out of her mouth as she hacked it out of her lungs, gasping and gulping down air, precious, precious air. She let out a soft cry as her body heaved and shuddered. Her legs gave out from under her, but the arms that were around her held her even more tightly, refusing to let her collapse.

She could taste the salt of her tears.  

She could smell the hint of smoke on his clothes.

She could see the faint scars on his hands.

She could feel the warmth of his chest.

She could hear the shakiness of his own breathing.

People don’t tell you something about almost dying. They don’t mention the dizzying rush of panic and the immediate sensation of relief, about the adrenaline that courses through your veins, the rapid beating of your heart as it pumps more blood than it should throughout your entire body.

They don’t tell you that it feels like getting high.

“Fuck Gryffindor,” Hermione finally rasped. 

“Fuck Gryffindor,” Tom repeated in a hoarse voice, his lips close to shell of her ear.

His arms were still wrapped tightly around her.

Chapter Text

Hermione figured that a man who used the Heimlich Maneuver on her couldn’t possibly be a serial killer. That and Tom had fussed over her after her near-death experience, asking if she needed to go to the hospital or go back home, if she needed to walk this off or find somewhere to sit, if she needed to be alone or needed company, only stopping his fretting after her thousandth time saying she was fine, that she was alright.

Which was why she agreed to go to his apartment for gyros. Just as friends, she told herself. To show gratitude for his heroic actions, to reassure both him and herself that everything really was alright.

They had walked to the nearby farmer’s market to pick up fresh, local produce – including cucumbers, considering Tom had spilled the tzatziki and neither had wanted to wait in the line – or step foot in Gryffindor’s – again.

Hermione had thought they would take the Tube to his place, but Tom insisted on an Uber. Even though it was more expensive, and she had to be the one to call the car since his phone was dead, the indulgence felt well-earned considering she had escaped death. That and it was a small price to pay for someone who had saved her life.

But it still didn’t hurt to be careful. She didn’t have the luxury of carrying pepper spray or a taser like American women did, not in London. It was like the government wanted women to walk around unprotected and vulnerable.

Hermione sent Tom's address to Ginny in the Uber ride to his apartment.

Her phone buzzed immediately.

Ginny: UM miss hermione granger???

Hermione: It’s nothing like that, just going to a friend’s place for lunch. Fellow PhD candidate said he made a gyro better than Gryffindors and I didn’t believe him. Pretty sure he’s perfectly normal but have never seen him outside of the UCL library. Never can be too sure.

Ginny: Mhmmmmmmm

Ginny: Just remember. Do NOT jeopardize our Horcrux reservation or I will never forgive you. That’s all I have to say about this.

Hermione: Please stop

Ginny: I expect allllllllll the details tomorrow at brunch

Hermione: THERE WILL BE NO DETAILS

Tom glanced over. “Texting someone about choking on a gyro?”

“Sorry,” she murmured. “I don’t mean to be rude. I’m just sending your address to my friend.” She tucked her phone in between her legs, looked over at him, and grinned. “That way if you’re about to kill me, someone besides Uber will have my last location.”

Instead of looking offended, he looked pleased. “Clever.”

Tom’s apartment was simply furnished, sparsely decorated, and impeccably clean. He lived in a one-bedroom apartment in one of those luxury complexes with cookie-cutter layouts. The kitchen was decent – modern appliances, plenty of storage – and there was an island in the middle for more surface space.

She smiled when she saw Tom kick off his shoes by the doorway and followed his lead, glad she had worn socks with no holes in them. People who wore their shoes in the home drove her mad. It was unhygienic . Who knew what you stepped in outside.

"Nice place," she commented, placing her tote bag carrying her laptop on one of the barstools by the island. 

"I wish there was a gas stove and I can hear my upstairs neighbor doing lord knows what in the middle of the night, but it's not bad."

“Do you want me to help or anything? I could chop the cucumbers or…”

Tom shook his head and waved her off. “No, the kitchen is my domain and I have a system. Make yourself comfortable, put music on, find something on Netflix if you want. The pita bread will take the longest.”

Hermione’s jaw dropped. “You’re making pita bread from scratch?”

He shrugged. “It isn’t difficult. My fresh pita is leagues better than whatever you get from the grocery store.”

“What about Gryffindors’?”

Tom’s lip twitched upwards. “ Especially Gryffindor’s.”

Hermione found herself gravitating towards Tom’s bookshelf next to his couch, tilting her head, peering at the titles, prepared for the worst. What would she do if The Da Vinci Code was on here? What if he went on and on about Infinite Jest or Catcher in the Rye or The 48 Laws of Power? Or even worse – if it was filled with self-help books by self-proclaimed financial gurus promising wealth and riches?

“Huh,” Hermione said out loud, surprised at what she saw.

“What is it?”

“I just find it interesting that you have Sarah J. Maas next to Niccolo Machiavelli and Deborah Harkness next to Thomas Harris.”

“Is it? I organize my books alphabetically by last name.”

Hermione rolled her eyes at his clear, teasing tone. “I mean that your taste is a little all over the place.”

“I disagree.”

She turned her head around. The island in his kitchen was filled with ingredients, chopping boards, knives and Tom was whisking something in a mixing bowl. “How so?”

“Popular books reflect societal values,” Tom said simply, his eyes fixed on whatever was in the bowl. “They’re important to read, to understand what it is that draws people to them and what that says about the world and time period.”

“Yeah? And what does Romantasy say about the state of the world right now?”     

Tom stopped whisking and his eyes burned into hers. “It tells me,” he said softly. “That women are tired of feeling like they should be grateful for receiving the bare minimum from men.”

It was so quiet that Hermione could have heard a pin drop. Her cheeks flushed hard, but she couldn’t look away from Tom, even though she knew she should.

She suddenly realized how this looked, how…intimate this entire day was. They had shopped for groceries together. She was alone with him in his apartment. He was making food for her.

Tom smiled and then broke the silence. “Now if you don’t mind,” he said lightly. “I prefer it to be quiet when I cook.”

Hermione swallowed hard. “But Netflix or music is alright?” She winced internally. Her voice had cracked .

“I can tune that out,” he murmured, as he started whisking again. “But I could never tune you out.”

Hermione quickly turned back toward the bookshelf, trying to steady her rapid heartbeat, cool the rising flush to her cheeks, and wiped her clammy palms against her skirt, suddenly very aware that she wasn’t even wearing biker shorts underneath them, only knickers.

She picked a random book – she didn’t even know what she grabbed – and plopped herself on the couch. She couldn’t help but dart her eyes at Tom working in the kitchen. He moved with such fluidity, such grace, it didn’t even seem human. He was laser focused – his brow furrowed slightly as he focused on his knifework or his kneading and she was positive he didn’t notice that she was staring at his bare forearms peeking through his rolled up sleeves since he had taken off his jacket.

She was positive he didn’t notice that she wasn’t reading a single word.

Two hours later, Hermione was eating the best gyro of her entire life. She couldn’t hold back the moan that slipped from her lips.

“Oh god,” she moaned again as she took another bite. “Tom…it’s…how…”

The pita’s texture was pillowy where it needed to be and had a subtlety to its flavor that was to die for. The tomato was fresh, sweet, and so juicy it burst in her mouth when she bit down. The tzatziki was cool, tangy, and bright all at the same time.

But the pork was unbelievable. It was seasoned to perfection, the spices somehow permeating the meat itself instead of just dusting the surface. Each slice was so tender and thin it almost melted in her mouth. It was both a cacophony of flavors and yet perfectly balanced. It made her feel giddy, rich, happy .

Hermione always loved how food made her feel, but this was on another level.

“So you like it? Even the tzatziki?”

“Do I like it?” Hermione exclaimed. “I love it! It’s unbelievable. This is the best gyro I’ve ever eaten, not just in London. Better than anything I’ve had in Greece.” She took another bite, covering her mouth as she talked. “I also don’t know what you’re talking about. I think your tzatziki is better than Gryffindor’s.”

Tom smiled widely and Hermione swore that his eyes were almost dilated at the praise.

“And you agree?” he asked eagerly. “That you can taste the difference in the meat? That you like this better?”

“Can I taste the difference ?” Hermione repeated. “It’s on another level. It’s incomparable, Tom, and I’m not just saying that because I’m being nice. You’re a really good cook. I’m not surprised you’re a chef.”

“Oh, it’s not just the chef,” he said modestly. “It’s the ingredients.”

They chatted between bites. Hermione told him she was a PhD candidate at UCL in English Literature. To her surprise, he asked her what her dissertation was about, to which she proceeded to briefly describe how she planned on analyzing how female characters in nineteenth-century novels adhered to standards of acceptable behavior in one area to evade restrictions in another, which not only reshaped possibilities for female behavior but the form of the novel.

Hermione expected him to do what everyone always did - nod politely, say that seemed interesting, and move to another topic. Instead, Tom was curious about her arguments, what novels she had in mind to support her thesis, and even suggested a source she hadn't considered. 

"The Mysteries of Udolpho could also be helpful," he offered. "This is your area of expertise so I don't want to push in, but something tells me you didn't look into it because it isn't written in the 1800s. Although I think it's close enough to the turn of the century for there to be an argument that it's applicable." 

Hermione blinked rapidly. "I...I suppose you're right," she stammered, mentally making a note to buy - and read - the book when she left this apartment. "What uni did you go to again?" 

Tom waved his hand dismissively. "I didn't go to uni. But I like to read."

That was an understatement.

“Does it feel strange?” she asked when they finally finished their gyros. She gestured towards the kitchen.

“Does what feel strange?”

“Well you spent two hours making something that we finished so quickly. And there’s so much cleaning to do. Was it really worth it?”

A look flashed across Tom’s face, something she couldn’t quite decipher. “I see it as an investment,” he said quietly. “Some things are worth the time and effort. Like you.”

Before Hermione could register what it was that he was doing, Tom’s thumb reached forward and gently caressed her lips.

When he pulled away, Hermione could see white on his thumb.

Tzatziki , she realized, in utter mortification. He hadn’t caressed her lips. He was wiping tzatziki off her lips because she hadn’t bothered to use a napkin! He was –

Tom’s tongue flitted out and lapped at his thumb.

  What the fuck…

“Well, I’ll just start cleaning up the dishes,” she said nervously as she started to shift away from Tom.

Tom’s hand shot out, gripping her waist, and steering her so her backside was pressed against the kitchen island, and he was decidedly in front of her.

“What have I said before?” he said huskily. “I have a system. You don’t need to clean a single thing. I’ll take care of it.”

Hermione swallowed hard. She hated how those words made her feel, how something so objectively unsexy was so fucking sexy. Foreplay always, always started before the bedroom.

Was that what this was? Foreplay?

If it was, then it had started the moment Tom had planned this entire food adventure, this date , rather than leaving her to put all the effort into thinking of something. 

If it was, then it had continued when Tom had asked how much the Uber had cost so he could cover the cost once his phone was charged. 

If it was, then it had risen when he had smoothly asked for her number to send over Apple Cash since he supposedly didn't have CashApp.

If it was, then it had reached its peak when he engaged with and showed interest in her dissertation rather than feigning it.

If it was, then it had ended the moment he had said she wouldn’t have to clean up after him.   

Tom’s face was leaning ever so closer, his lips only inches away from hers. She could feel her core ache in response, her nipples harden underneath her bra.

“What are you doing?” she whispered.

“Something I’ve been wanting to do since the moment you crashed into me,” he said in a low voice. “Do you know just how beautiful you are, Granger? How perfect you are?”

What was she doing? This day had been a roller coaster and days like those were never, never the right days to make choices like these. Hell, no matter how fucked things were with Ron, she was technically still in a relationship . She needed to leave, to go home, to cool off, to center herself, to meditate, to use all the tricks that therapy had taught her to realign her brain.

But those lips…

Tom’s lips were soft, even softer than they looked, and his response to her kiss was immediate. He let out a sound that was halfway between a whimper and a groan and cupped her face with one hand. He deepened the kiss, his tongue finding its way between her lips and into her mouth. His other hand let go of her waist and reached into her hair, fingers twisting, pulling her head back, and he pressed his body against hers, pushing her against the island.

She shivered and her arms wrapped around his waist, pulling him even closer to her, wanting to feel all of him pressed against her. Tom tore himself away from her lips, but only so he could trace his tongue against her neck, nibble the space where her neck met her shoulders with his teeth. His hand on her face traced downward, slipping underneath the neckline of her blouse and bra, and squeezed her breast, using his thumb, still wet from his saliva, to flick over her hardened nipple.

Hermione let out a moan – and at the sound of her own voice, her eyes flashed open.

She ripped herself away and pushed Tom’s chest simultaneously. “I…I have a boyfriend,” she gasped.

Tom’s eyes darkened and he tilted his head. “Do you?” he said softly.

Hermione nodded quickly. Ron. Think about Ron, about his auburn hair and pale blue eyes. Think about the scatter of freckles across his face, think about how comforting his laugh is. Think about how he grounds you, think about how he’s done nothing wrong , think about –

“Then why did you kiss me first?”

Hermione’s mind went blank.

Tom crashed his lips back to hers and Hermione moaned as her mouth automatically parted for him. His lips were possessive and filled with urgency and need, his teeth tugging hard at Hermione’s bottom lip before tracing his tongue over it. His hands slid up under the flowy skirt she had worn, squeezing her arse. She could feel his cock, straining against his pants, large and formidable, pressed against her lower belly.

She should have worn lace, she should have shaved, she should have –

All thoughts left her when he lifted her onto the counter of the kitchen island, settling her so she sat right at the edge. He tugged her cotton knickers down, sliding them past her calves and tossing them to the side.

Tom was in the kitchen, in his domain, but he sunk to his knees, kissing her thighs reverently, worshiping her on this altar. 

He paused to lift his head up, looking at her through his thick eyelashes, a silent question in his eyes.

He was so, so beautiful.

Hermione swallowed hard, a silent answer in hers.

A slow smile crept on Tom’s face.

Hermione tilted her head back and moaned as his lips enveloped her. She could have died, and she would have died drowning in the pleasure of Tom’s lips and his tongue.

Oh, his tongue.

It was clear that he had done this many, many times, that even though he may not have known exactly what she liked and how she liked it, he knew that sometimes it wasn’t about finding her pleasure.

It was about demanding it.

He expertly laved against her clit, again and again and again. His tongue, his lips, his mouth kissed her and kissed her and kissed her, open-mouthed, generous kisses filled with passion and pressure.

Hermione moaned at the building sensation, at the fire that bloomed from her core and spread throughout her body. She could feel Tom’s smile against her, and he slipped a finger into her cunt as his tongue continued to relentlessly lave against her.

Then another finger.

Hermione gasped as his fingers curled upwards and hit a spot inside her that made her body ache . His tongue and his lips continued to kiss her as his fingers massaged the spot over and over and over. Hermione could hear her moans deepen, could feel her body start to twitch, sense the climax building and building inside her.

And then, right when she was on the brink –

Her phone buzzed loudly, vibrating loudly and continuously against the marble countertop.

Tom paused, stilling his fingers inside her, pulling his face away.

Hermione let out a strangled whine.

“Who’s calling you?” he breathed.

Was he serious ?

“It doesn’t matter,” she panted. “Keep going .” She ran her fingers through his hair, trying to push him back to her, but he shook her off.

“I don’t want your friend to think I’m murdering you and call the police.” His fingers were still inside her.

Hermione reluctantly reached for her phone. Then froze when she saw who was calling.

Ron.

“It’s…it’s not my friend,” Hermione stammered. “It’s fine.”

Tom’s eyes narrowed slightly, and his lips curled into a slight sneer. “Answer it.”

Hermione’s eyes widened and her lips parted. “W-what?” she squeaked.

“Answer it,” he said in a low voice. “Put it on speaker.”

Hermione shook her head.

Tom curled his fingers and Hermione gasped as her entire body spasmed . “Answer it, Granger,” he said softly, sensually, dangerously. “And I’ll let you come.”

Before she could think about what she was doing, her thumb swiped at her screen, mindlessly pressing the speaker button.

“Hello?” she breathed.     

“Do you know where my jersey is, darling?”

Tom’s fingers started stroking her cunt again.

Fucking gods .

“Darling?”

“S-sorry, what?” Hermione panted as she stared into Tom’s stormy eyes.

“My jersey. I swear I put it on my chair this morning, but it’s gone.”

Tom leaned in, his teeth tugging at her clit. Hermione hissed and jolted, her right foot nearly kicking out in front of her.

“What was that?” said Ron.

“Nothing,” Hermione gasped. “I j-just…”

Tom let go and pressed a feather-light kiss against her clit, his breath, hot.

“Are you alright? You sound out of breath.”

Ofcourseshewasnotalright

“I’m…” Hermione’s mind scrambled for an answer. “I’m just going on a jog. Clear my h-head, you know?”

The tip of Tom’s tongue swirled against her, and her legs quivered.

“Fuck,” Hermione moaned.  

“What?”

“J-just remembered I l-left my laptop out in the open at the library,” Hermione managed to stammer out. “Got to turn around. Don’t want anyone,” she gasped again as Tom flicked his tongue again. “Anyone stealing it.”

“Oh no!” Ron sounded anxious. “You should go. Someone will take that for sure.”

“Mhmmm.” Hermione squirmed and bit her lip. Hard.

“It’s just, do you have any idea where my jersey could be? Did you wash it when you did our laundry yesterday? Put it somewhere?”

She couldn’t think. She couldn’t think . Tom was now laving her clit at a pace that wasn’t enough to pull her over the edge, but enough to drag her right there.

“Is it hanging in the closet?” Hermione asked out loud.

It was where the jersey always was. Ron didn’t like it when it was crumpled or folded in a dresser.

Ron laughed. “Oh blimey, it’s there! I swear that was the first place I looked. Dunno how I missed it.”

“Mhmm.” Hermione bit her lip so hard she drew blood. Tom’s tongue was now working her at a faster pace, his fingers stroking her cunt. She was close, so, so close.

“Thanks, darling. Now get back to the library. Wouldn’t want your laptop to go missing. Love you.”

Before Hermione could say anything back, before she could even say bye , Tom wrenched himself away and snatched the phone, ending the call himself.

Hermione could have screamed at the loss. That was twice now. Two times he had brought her to the edge of orgasm and pulled away.

Tom rose to his feet and stared at her, breathing hard, his lips wet and glistening with her arousal.

Hermione stared back, panting, legs still parted.

He snarled and crashed his lips into hers again, nearly smothering her with her own taste, his tongue running over the drops of blood on her bottom lip. His kiss was almost feral in its ferocity, and he yanked her off the counter, gripped the back of her legs, and effortlessly lifted her up. Her legs wrapped around his waist instinctively as he carried her to his room.

Lips and tongue and teeth and —

Tom threw her onto his bed and pinned her down with his body, kissing her fiercely, grinding his hips against her. Hermione yanked his shirt over his head and he nearly tore off her blouse, unhooking her bra with ease. He tugged at her skirt and Hermione lifted her hips to help him. When she was completely naked, he flipped her so she was on her belly, face pressed against his comforter.

Hermione heard his belt unbuckle.

Hermione heard his pants fall to the ground.

Tom pushed into her, all at once, groaning as he buried himself deep inside her, and Hermione cried out at the fullness, at how soaking wet and ready and eager she was, at just how fucking insane this was. He hadn’t even asked if she was on birth control and she hadn't even asked when the last time he had gotten tested was because surely a man with his face, body, and tongue had fucked more women - and possibly even men - than she could even think of. There was no barrier between her cunt and his cock, nothing but skin and warmth and recklessness and a tinge of danger and gods it felt fucking amazing .

She could feel her cunt throbbing again, eagerly waiting for another opportunity for release. Tom’s hands gripped her hips as he pushed her body down further into the bed. But instead of pounding into her, as she had expected of him, fucking her as roughly as he had kissed her, he did the opposite.

Tom fucked her so slowly, so agonizingly that Hermione’s hands were gripping the sheets to hold onto as her entire body tensed around him. It was torture how slow he was being, how he was drawing this out, how her body fluttered around the edge, how the ache grew and grew and grew, even more intense than the first and second time around.

“Oh,” Hermione cried out as he almost excruciatingly dragged her over. “Oh, Tom, I –”

Tom suddenly pulled out and Hermione heaved at the sudden loss, her core fluttering and clenching over emptiness and once again settling.

She whipped her head back at him. “Fuck!” she nearly shouted. “What –”

“Apologize,” Tom growled.

What the fuck ?

“For what?!” she shrieked.

Tom plunged his cock into her again and Hermione let out a wail when he kept it inside her, unmoving.

“I answered the call,” she gasped. “I put it on speaker. I did what you said. I don’t know what I did wrong, I don’t know –”

“You know what,” he hissed.

“I don’t!”

Tom grabbed her hair and she let out another cry as he pulled hard, lifting her head up and straining her neck as he leaned down to press his lips against the shell of her ear.

“You do,” he whispered. “You’re so clever. Apologize and I’ll let you come. Apologize and I’ll fill you up with my come. I’ve never come inside anyone before. I’ll let you be the first.” Tom let go of her hair and then started to fuck her. Then pulled out to let her body settle back. Then fucked her again.

And with each lost orgasm, the intensity of the ache in Hermione grew and grew and grew until it became unbearable . She had no idea how many times he did this, no idea how Tom had both the stamina and control to do this, no idea how he even knew that she was on the edge each and every time.

Hermione had no idea how much time had passed.

Hermione squirmed and cried, but he never relented. She threatened and intimidated, but he never gave in. She even begged and pleaded.

“Please, please, please, please,” she whimpered as she tried to grind her hips against the bed for the friction she desperately needed.

Tom immediately lifted her hips and put her on all fours so she wouldn’t have access to even his sheets. In crazed desperation, Hermione tried to snake her hand between her legs, but he didn’t let her. He instantly gripped both her wrists and yanked them behind her back. Her upper body fell toward the mattress and the side of her face was pressed down against the bed.

“No,” he growled. She felt leather wrap tightly around her wrists – his belt, a tiny part of her brain realized – binding it in place.

“Please,” Hermione pleaded, pulling at her restraints. They wouldn’t budge. “Please…”

“Please what?” he murmured.

Hermione moaned, her body flushing even redder than it already was at the submissiveness of her position, at how exposed she was, at what he was asking her to say.

“Please,” she begged. “Tom, please.”

“But I don’t know what you want me to do, Granger,” Tom drawled. “Tell me what you want me to do.”

Please stop? Please keep going? Hermione didn't even know. She just knew that this needed to end.

She let out an agonizing moan. “Please let me come, please, please let me come.”

Tom groaned deeply. “I love it when you beg, Granger.”

He started to thrust in her again, but this time it wasn’t slow. It was finally fast and hard and deep and rough and Hermione’s body squirmed and screamed in anticipation as he brought her to the edge of her release. She was right there, right at the cliff, right about to tumble down when –

“But that’s not quite what I want, is it?” Tom abruptly pulled out.

Hermione screamed at the loss. “Tom, please,” she cried. “Please, let me come, please, please, I want you, I need you, I need you, I need you.”

“You know what I want,” he said huskily. “I want you to come. I want to come inside you.”

He thrusted into her again and again, pounding into her as Hermione moaned and writhed.

Then he wrenched himself out of her and it was agony .

“Granger,” he said firmly. “Apologize. Now.”

“I’m sorry,” Hermione cried out as she broke. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell him I was here. I’m sorry I didn’t say I was with you. I’m sorry I lied.”

Tom plunged his cock back into her and snaked his hand down to her clit. 

Hermione screamed as her climax struck her with a vengeance. Her entire body shook, and she cried out so loudly that she was terrified that Tom’s neighbors could hear her. The intensity and buildup that had accumulated wracked through her entire body like she had been electrocuted, both pleasure and relief so overwhelming, so consuming, it almost hurt .

Tom brutally fucked her through this, mercilessly dragging her orgasm out even further, until his hips stuttered. She felt his fingernails dig into her skin, felt him pull her hips against him, felt him push himself inside her as deep as he could. He let out a deep, lustful groan as he came, his release hot and filthy as it filled her.

She was falling apart, splayed alive, shredded into a thousand different pieces by Tom.

Tom, Tom, Tom.

If that was even his name.

Hermione gasped and shuddered with Tom’s softening cock still inside her. She was breathless, voiceless, mindless, thoughtless, boneless, bloodless, utterly lost. Lost, lost, lost.

When Hermione felt something she could only describe as a drop and suddenly burst into tears, Tom untied the belt binding her wrists, pulled her hair to one side, and gently pressed a kiss onto the nape of her neck. He shifted, held her tightly in his arms, and kissed her tears away until his lips tasted like salt.

He kissed her face over and over and over until her breathing and heart steadied and he buried his head into her chest and wrapped his arms and legs around her body, clutching tightly to its soft comfort.

Chapter Text

“I want to see more of you,” Tom said quietly.

They were both naked, their bodies sticky with sweat clinging to their skin, sprawled across his bed, smoking cigarettes together. A cloud of smoke hovered around them, settling into his emerald green sheets, their clothes, her hair, something that would normally make a non-smoker wrinkle their nose in disgust, but to her, was a scent of serenity. 

“Don’t you remember?” she said in a distant voice. “I have a boyfriend .”

“How could I possibly forget?”

There was silence between them once again. Hermione waited for the image of Ron to shake her awake from this haze of a dream she was sure to have found herself in.

She had just had the best sex of her entire life, the most intense orgasm she had ever experienced. All with a man she had only just met.

But nothing. This was real and she felt nothing but peace, felt like curling up and purring like a cat, tired but content.

“Leave him,” Tom said suddenly. “I know you want to.”

“How would you know that?”

“You wouldn’t have done all this if you didn’t want to leave him. Something tells me you’re not the type.”

Tom was right. As messed up as she had been in the past, infidelity was never her thing. It had disgusted her, the utter disrespect hadn’t made sense – if you were going to cheat, why couldn’t you break up with someone first?

But it wasn’t that simple.

“You’re right,” she admitted. “I do want to leave, but it’s complicated. I live with him, and I don’t even pay rent. I’ll have nowhere to go.”

“Look for another place.”

“I’m a student,” Hermione said dryly. “I don’t exactly have that much money on a moment’s notice.”

“Don’t PhD candidates usually have a stipend?” 

“I’ve spent nearly all of it on food and books,” she admitted. “I like takeaways and going out to eat. I like supporting bookstores. I don’t get my next payment until term starts again in a month.”

“Any friends that can let you crash until then?" he pressed. "Your parents?”

Hermione barked out a laugh. Ginny, Harry, and Ron were the only friends she even had. “Not an option. My best friend is his sister. She lives with and is dating his best friend. And my parents moved to Australia. I don’t even think they remember I exist.”

“Stay with me then.”

Hermione gave him a hard look. “We just met.”

He waved his hand dismissively. “And?”

“I’ll have the same problem in a week when you get tired of fucking me and replace me with someone else." She blew a cloud of smoke from her lips. "I'll have nowhere to go.”

Tom tensed at her words and slowly turned his head to face her. “That would never happen,” he said in a low voice.

Hermione snorted and rolled her eyes at the empty promise. “I don’t know you then.”

“I’ll tell you about myself.”

“You don’t know me.”

“Then tell me about yourself.”

Hermione sighed, then flicked the ash from her cigarette onto the small tray on the side table to her left and then took another long drag. “A question for a question then.”

“Ask away.”

“Is Tom Riddle really your name?”

Tom’s lip twitched upward. “It is. I share the same name as my father. Terribly boring, isn’t it?”

“I like it,” Hermione offered.

“My turn now.”

Hermione expected him to then ask what her name was.

He didn’t.

“How did you get that scar on your thigh?”

Her eyes flickered to his, her amber meeting his stormy gray. “You noticed it,” she said flatly.

Tom put out his cigarette on his own ashtray and slowly reached toward her inner right thigh, as if waiting for her to pull away or stop him.

She didn’t.

His touch was careful as his fingers delicately traced over the uneven skin, the faint, circular discoloration.

“I can see how some might not,” he murmured. “Whoever did the work was very, very good. Skin grafting can be terribly tricky I hear.”

Ron had never noticed it. But then again, he very rarely, if ever, went down on her. Every time she asked for it, he would refuse, until one day he snapped at her to stop pressuring him to do a sexual activity that he didn’t want to do.

She had been stunned at how easily he had made her feel not just small and vulnerable, but like a rapist . So she stopped asking because how was she supposed to respond to that?

“If you don’t want to talk about it, we don’t have to," he said in a low voice. "I was just curious.”

Hermione sighed and took another pull from her cigarette. “It’s fine. It was after uni. I took a gap year and did the thing where you solo travel all over Asia. Supposed to be safe and all, you know? Spent years working and saving up for it.”

She glanced down at Tom’s hand. His fingers were still stroking the scar, gently, tenderly. She was mesmerized by the sight. His hands, calloused, cut, and burned, were perfectly imperfect and they were touching a part of her that was also perfectly imperfect.

“I had a lot to drink at a restaurant and blacked out. Woke up in a hospital and,” she laughed mirthlessly. “Apparently someone bit me. Took a good chunk out too.”

Tom’s fingers stilled against her thigh. “A person bit you?” His voice was cold. Icy. Dangerous. “A person did this?”

Hermione nodded. “At first, the doctors thought an animal had done it. They even gave me a rabies shot to be safe. It was…bad, something they didn’t think a human could have done. That and the rape kit came back negative and there were no drugs in my system. But they found human teeth marks. So yeah, a person bit me quite gruesomely and I was so drunk I couldn’t even remember it happening.” She shuddered at the memory.

“Did they find who did it?” he demanded. "Please tell me whoever did that is behind bars."

Hermione shook her head. “No. The police didn’t find any other evidence. They…they didn’t even find the rest of me in the alley where they found me. What was...bitten off.” She swallowed hard. “It terrified me. After I recovered, I didn’t even finish my trip. Came back home.” She turned to stub the cigarette out against the ashtray and then leaned back against the pillows. “I got painkillers after that. To help with the pain after the surgery and all. And then when the pills ran out…” she trailed off then shook her head, refusing to let the memories creep up once more. “Well that’s the past. I’ve been good for two years.”

Tom let out a deep breath, as if to compose himself, and then his fingers started to trace her thigh again. “I’m sorry that happened to you,” he said softly. “I’m so sorry.” He leaned down to kiss against her scar, so soft it almost felt like gossamer.

Hermione shivered at the feel of his lips against her skin.

Tom’s kisses grew deeper. His tongue laved from one end of scarred skin to the other.

Hermione let out a strangled moan, twitching at the sensation, nearly delirious.

Tom smiled, gave her thigh one last kiss, then shifted on top of her.

This time when he entered her, he faced her. This time, he was tender. This time his hands intertwined with hers. This time, his lips kissed every part of her that they could reach, her lips, her cheeks, her neck, her collarbone. This time, he whispered in her ear praises and sweet nothings, like how good she felt, how beautiful she was, how perfect she was. And when she came, her core clenching around him, he came as well, pulsing and spilling inside her, her moans, his groans, their gasps, even their breathing in synchrony with one another.

And even that. Even that was better than anything she had ever experienced with Ron. It was like magic. It didn’t feel real.

But it was real.

When Tom pulled out and rolled off her, he reached for another cigarette. “Don’t go,” he said as he brought his lighter to the tip and lit it. He exhaled a cloud of smoke. “Stay. I’ll call in sick tonight. We can order a takeaway for dinner and I’ll make you breakfast in the morning.”

Hermione turned to look out the window. It was starting to get dark. She swung her legs off the side of the bed and started to put her clothes on. “Even if I wanted to, I can’t.”

“Why not?” he snapped.

Hermione sighed at the clear frustration, even anger, in his voice. This was probably the first time a woman had ever insisted upon leaving him after sex.

She needed to give him a reason he would understand because clearly the absurdity of him suggesting she leave her boyfriend of nearly two years to stay with a man she had known for a day wasn’t processing in his head.

“My friend got us reservations at Horcrux for my birthday, which is in a month. He’s part of the table and if I leave him, we won’t get to go. He’s not the type to have a dinner together after something like that. He’s also not a foodie. He never even heard of Horcrux until today.”

Tom suddenly choked on smoke, coughing and spluttering as he slapped his chest with the palm of his hand. “You’re joking,” he rasped. “Granger, please tell me you’re joking.”

Hermione shook her head. “I’m not. Got the confirmation this morning from my friend.”

She slipped on her skirt, remembering her knickers were on the floor of his kitchen. She’d grab them after she used the bathroom and clean his come off her.

“My friend and I have been trying to eat there pretty much since it opened. She even told me she would never forgive me if I fucked it up for her too.”

“ That’s your reason?” Tom demanded. “You’re planning on staying with him for at least an entire month because of this?”

“It’s Horcrux ,” she insisted. “They don’t make exceptions so there’s no point in trying to ask. And I know you understand. You’re a chef .”

At that, Tom started to laugh. She couldn’t tell whether it was hysterical or bitter or sarcastic or whether he thought this was all very amusing. Probably all four.

“And it’s Hermione.”

His laughter suddenly stopped, and his dark gray eyes widened. “What?”

“Hermione. Granger’s my last name.”

When Hermione got home, Ron wasn’t there. He always spent his Saturday evenings at the pub with Harry and some of their other friends from uni. She went straight to the bathroom and took a long shower, scrubbing off the scent of tzatziki, cigarettes, and sex, shaving every inch of her body hair below her chin, waiting for the guilt to hit.

It never came.

When she stepped out, wrapping herself in a towel, she grabbed her phone. There was a message waiting for her from Tom, sent about an hour ago, around the time when she had made it home. 

Tom: Did you get back in one piece? Hope I don’t need to call the police on your Uber driver.

She should ignore him. She should ghost him. Better yet, she should block his number.

She should try her best to make her relationship with Ron work, do the right thing and admit that she had cheated on him, assure him that it was a one-time thing and a moment of weakness, suggest couple’s counseling so that they could get past this.

But that was the thing.

Just because she should do something didn’t mean she wanted to do it.

Her thumbs danced across her screen.

Hermione: Hate to be the bearer of bad news. I’m locked in a basement, gagged and chained to a bed.

She couldn’t help but giggle and blush when she saw his immediate response.

Tom: Don’t give me any ideas 😏

For one month, she spent almost every day with Tom.

He refused to let her take the Tube, saying it both took too long and wasn't safe, which prompted her to roll her eyes and call him posh and overprotective. He paid her back for her Ubers to and from his place, letting her use her credit card so she could get the points for them.

She didn’t even tell Ginny about Tom, insisting nothing had happened with “the PhD guy.” Hermione knew that Ginny would never be able to keep a secret like this from Harry for so long, who most certainly wouldn’t be able to keep his mouth shut to Ron. She knew that deep in Ginny’s heart, no matter what she claimed, she would choose Ron over her. He was her brother she had known her entire life. She loved him.

Meanwhile she was a friend Ginny had known for only two years. One of many, really.

So Hermione salivated over another secret, only this time, it didn’t haunt her.

Tom cooked for her almost every single day and refused to let her clean up after him. He knew how to make everything she possibly loved and while sometimes they ordered a takeaway or stepped out of the apartment to eat at a restaurant for lunch, Hermione soon found herself slightly dissatisfied with both those options.

Tom had said he wouldn’t ruin other food her, but that was clearly a lie. His cooking was like the nectar of the gods. Nothing else could compare.

They talked about anything and everything – from sharing childhood stories to debating politics to criticizing classics, which, to Tom's amusement, she secretly abhorred with a passion because they were boring and so often atrociously racist or sexist. 

“Aren’t you getting a PhD in English Literature?” Tom chuckled. “Isn’t your dissertation about nineteenth-century British novels?”

“That’s so I can be a professor and teach adults, not children.” She sniffed. “I plan on decolonizing my syllabus.”

Their conversations grew deeply personal as well. Tom told her that he had grown up bouncing from foster home to foster home, completely disconnected from his heritage because his mother had died in childbirth. He didn't know the name of his mother or even what "type of Asian" he was since she had passed before the hospital was even able to record that information. It was something he was teased relentlessly over at every school he attended - too Asian to fit in with the white kids, too white to fit in with the Asian kids, dressed in oversized and worn hand me downs, a thick working class accent that took years to eradicate into the posh pronunciation he now boasted.

Never belonging, never fitting in, never enough.

When Tom learned that his father was alive and managed to track him down, he didn’t just face indifference but rejection. The man wanted nothing to do with him and refused to answer any questions about his mother.

“I’m so sorry, Tom,” Hermione whispered.

“It’s fine."

"It's not fine," she insisted.

Tom sighed. "You're right. But I’m over it and he died not long after I met him. An overdose. I’d say I was sorry but…” He smirked and his eyes gleamed almost mischievously. “Would it be so terrible if I said I were the opposite? He never married and I was his only child, at least on paper. He didn't have a will, and left behind a surprising amount of money that went to me. It's how I was able to pursue my passion instead of feeling like I had to go to uni. It's how I can afford this apartment even though I'm not an investment banker.”

Hermione assured him it wasn’t terrible in the slightest. It was clear his father was a horrible man, to abandon his son so callously. She also liked that Tom didn't go to uni - it was like a breath of fresh air to be around someone not steeped in academia or constantly reminiscing on "the good old days." She liked that he wasn't an investment banker. Investment bankers were awful people, in her limited experience.

Hermione told him that even though she had both her parents, it so much seemed like she hadn’t. To the outside world, they were normal people with normal jobs – dentists actually. But, for some reason, they had read some book and thought the best way to raise her was to give her total and complete independence. They wanted her to “explore her personhood” free from the constraints of adult and societal expectations. They shipped her off to boarding school so they wouldn’t have to deal with her and never cared whenever she got in trouble, saying this was all part of “growth” and “understanding her inner nature.”

They allowed her to do whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted, however she liked. And then washed their hands clean of her the moment she turned eighteen.

“I know it's nothing compared to what you went through. And I’m sure it sounds like a dream to anyone with helicopter parents,” Hermione said. “But people don’t realize what that means. I had to make every decision by myself, and I had to take care of myself. As a child. I never faced any consequences for anything that I did and didn’t know right from wrong. It fucked me up.”

“It's not nothing,” Tom murmured, twirling a tendril of her hair around his finger. “And I know exactly what you mean. It was similar for me. Not having anyone truly there, not knowing right from wrong. I grew up fast.”

Hermione leaned closer to Tom, seeking the warmth in his chest and the taste of his lips, because she knew he was telling the truth, that he understood . While her childhood had made her resentful of making decisions, Tom thrived in such a position. While she relished giving up control, he relished taking it. While she adored being taken care of, he adored taking care of her.

It was as if they were made for each other.

Some days, they would go on jogs together and treat themselves to artisanal ice cream with waffle cones and overpriced candles that smelled like eucalyptus as a reward. Some days, they would read together on the couch, his head in her lap, her spare hand absently stroking his soft, dark waves. Some days, they would look at online listings of extravagant houses, pretending they could afford it, arguing over whether the garages would fit all their cars, whether the kitchen was big enough, whether there were enough rooms for all their children.

“Two,” Hermione grinned. “One boy, one girl.” 

“Fifteen,” Tom declared. 

“Fifteen?!” Hermione exclaimed. “In this economy?!” 

They negotiated back and forth until they landed on the magic number: seven.

But most days, they would work together. She worked in his room where he had a standing desk, a Herman Miller chair, and dual monitors. She would hack away at researching for and writing her dissertation and he would lay in bed with his laptop, responding to whatever emails came his way regarding his restaurant or taking meetings brainstorming menu ideas. They continued to go to AA meetings together, although she could barely pay attention, what with Tom’s fingers endlessly tracing the back of her hand.

And they fucked. A lot. While Hermione sometimes initiated, it was almost always Tom, his desire and lust near insatiable. Every chance he got, he would pull her away and fuck her senseless. He indulged every wanton fantasy in her mind, coaxed out even the ones she was embarrassed by, the ones that lived in the deepest recesses of her mind.

She took a nap in his arms in the middle of the day and woke to the sensation of his teeth nibbling her ear, of his fingers circling her clit, of his cock sliding in and out of her cunt that was somehow soaking wet for him even though she had been unconscious. Another time, Tom tied her up until she was spread eagle on his bed and devoured her cunt, all while forbidding her to come without his permission. When she inevitably failed, he fucked her throat as punishment.

Although it certainly hadn’t felt like punishment to Hermione.

One time, Tom fucked her arse, slathering her puckered hole with lube, slowly entering her until he bottomed out. He rocked back and forth, sliding in and out, gripping her hips so hard she was sure he’d leave bruises behind, groaning in ecstasy almost the entire time. It was her first time and it had hurt. For her, anal wasn’t at all like the books had said it would be like, not at all what she imagined it to be like. She didn’t like it, felt no pleasure the entire time. She bore with it as long as she could, waiting to see if the sensation would change, but it didn’t, and she blurted out her safe word - Gryffindor.

It was clear Tom was reluctant to stop, it interrupting what was clearly an immensely pleasurable experience for him. He stilled but stayed inside her, murmuring encouragement in her ear, trying to guide her through it, massaging her clit until she whined in pain and desperately pushed at his thighs. He slowly pulled out, apologized, and then pulled her into the shower with him, kissing every inch of her body which he lathered with soap that smelled like roses.

He was obsessed with taking pictures of her naked body, of filming videos of her sucking his cock or of them fucking, and she indulged, even though she was embarrassed to watch them. Even when her period came, he didn’t mind the blood, didn’t mind the stains on the towels he placed under her, didn’t mind the crimson red that stained his cock and her thighs. In fact, he seemed to relish it, fucked her even harder, even rougher, the words whispered in her ear even filthier, using the blood to fuel a fantasy that he was taking her against her will, ravishing and violating her, that he was the cause of a devastation between her legs rather than her own body.

She played along, fought against his grip, begged him to stop, that she had learned her lesson, told him she would never tell a soul if he let her go and when he came it was almost explosive.

Tom never asked about Ron. Not his name, not how they met, not what he did for a living. He never asked if they were intimate with one another, never wondered out loud if the few times Hermione said she was spending time with Ginny and Harry meant that Ron was there as well, never showed a hint of jealousy. It was as if he was content to pretend that Hermione simply lived in her own apartment by herself, liked to eat dinner by herself, and slept in her own bed, by herself.

It was as if Ron never existed.

On her birthday, Tom gifted her a stunning black, silk dress to wear to Horcrux. Hermione gasped when she saw it, not recognizing the French label but instantly noting the quality and craftsmanship. It was a perfect fit and everything Hermione wanted in a dress. Simple, sleek, sensual. She didn't just feel beautiful in it. She felt powerful.

Even though Tom had sharpied out the price on the tag, Hermione brought it to the light and was shocked when she could see four figures. She never really did like talking about money, hadn't pushed to ask Tom exactly how much he inherited from his dead father because it felt inappropriate, but now she was...curious. 

Hermione also had no idea how he had known that she had been anxious that she had nothing to wear to the dinner. She hadn't told him that the night before she had a breakdown in front of her closet, sobbing as she threw nearly all her clothes on the floor. The one dress she had thought she would wear didn't fit anymore because she had been eating so fucking well this month with Tom and everything else she owned that did fit just wasn't right. Then she screamed at Ron when he said she was overreacting, that she looked nice in anything she wore, that they could both just show up in a jumper and jeans.

And although she knew Ron meant well, it didn't help that even the sound of his voice was now grating to her ears.

"Thank you," she said softly. "You really didn't have to."

"But I wanted to." Tom pulled her close, wrapping his arms around her, gently kissing her forehead. “Stay with me. After your dinner,” he murmured. “Stay. I have another present for you.”

She shouldn’t. She knew she shouldn’t because she knew he wasn’t asking her to stay just for one night. She knew he was asking her to leave Ron entirely, to choose him even at the risk of losing her friendships with Ginny and Harry, to start a new chapter of her life with him. She knew that to do this was to close one door forever.

But for the first time in a very, very long time she was happy . He saw her and she saw him. And it was like when she was with him, the itch in her brain was dormant, the urges not entirely vanished, but quieted, subdued. It was a miracle. He was a miracle and she wanted him.

She wanted to share both her days and nights with him. And even though they had only known each other for a month, she wanted a life with him. She wanted late nights dancing in the middle of a living room without music playing and mornings sleeping in complaining about her hogging the blankets or his morning breath and not caring about either. She wanted a family with him, one where they would make sure they'd never repeat the sins of their own parents. She wanted to grow old with him, to hear his grumbles about the ache in his joints or to panic over the wrinkles on her forehead and strands of silver in her hair.

She even wanted to die with him.

“Alright,” Hermione whispered. “I’ll stay.”

When Tom kissed her, it felt like a triumph. When Tom kissed her, it felt like magic. When Tom kissed her, it felt like love. When Tom kissed her, it felt like home.

Chapter Text

“I bet Horcrux hires private investigators,” said Harry in the Uber ride to Horcrux. “Scopes out our social media, sees where we like to go, what we like to eat.”

“That’s too obvious ,” Ginny countered. “And besides, plenty of people don’t have social media!”

“Maybe they interview friends and family?” Harry suggested. “Make them sign NDAs?”

“If that were the case, they would have interviewed the three of us for your meal, Harry,” Hermione said in an exasperated tone.

“Well did they?”

She snorted in response.

“What? So it’s just magic?”

Ginny giggled. “Maybe.”

“What do you think your meal will be?”

Harry shook his head. “Don’t ask me that question, Hermione. I don’t even know what I want to eat for breakfast and now I’m headed to eat a meal that is exactly what I wanted but didn’t know that I wanted. I know what your meal will be though.”

“What?” Hermione scowled. “How?”

“So do I,” Ginny smiled. “It’s easy. Predictable. A tasting menu because you like being fancy. And every last course will be something exotic, from appetizer to dessert.”

Hermione rolled her eyes. She hated the word exotic, hated how it implied that her tastes were different, unusual, foreign, and abnormal. God forbid fish and chips or bangers and mash didn’t satisfy her.

“Well I know what your drink of choice will be, Gin.”

They both stared at each other for a half second.

“A negroni,” Hermione grinned.

“I was gonna say the same thing,” Ginny grinned back.

“Spagliato.”

“Oooh.”

“With prosecco in it.”

“Ooh, stunning.”

“BOLLOCKS!” Ron roared.

Hermione jumped in her seat and turned her head towards Ron. He had his AirPods in and was watching the football game on his phone. How he managed to do that without getting dizzy in the car, she didn’t know.

“Ron,” Ginny snapped. “Can you be a normal person and socialize? It’s Hermione’s birthday , for crying out loud.”

“Sorry,” Ron mumbled. “We missed a bloody free kick. And I figured we’re not at the restaurant yet, just in the Uber. You know I won’t do this there.” He looked up toward Hermione. “You don’t mind, right, darling?”

Of course she minded. Of course she wanted him to put down his phone and join in the conversation. Of course she wanted him to act at least like Harry, who loved football just as much as Ron but was content with glancing at his phone for score updates and then quickly putting his phone back in the pocket of his trousers.

She wanted him to compliment her hair which had taken nearly two hours to style. She wanted his jaw to drop when she had emerged from their room in a black, silk, figure-hugging, midi dress.

She wanted him to notice that the bruises on her neck that she covered with makeup weren’t from burns from her curling iron. She wanted him to confront her, to ask why she spent so long in the shower every day, to demand an answer as to why she didn’t cuddle with him before they fell asleep anymore, why she refused every initiation of sex for the past month.

She wanted him to recognize that her lack of pestering and nagging meant that she had stopped trying. She wanted him to realize that she was going to leave him. She wanted him to fight for her, even knowing he would lose.

“Of course I don’t mind,” Hermione said lightly.

Ron smiled gratefully at her. “Thanks ‘Mione.” His eyes flickered back to his screen.

“Welcome to Horcrux. I take it you’re Hermione Jean Granger, Harry James Potter, Ginevra Molly Weasley, and Ronald Bilius Weasley?”

The hostess was tall, and still had the confidence to wear heels that had to be four inches high. Her raven-black hair was long, thick, and shining and on her right hand, she wore a massive emerald surrounded by a halo of diamonds. On her left hand, a platinum band decorated with diamonds sat on her ring finger. The rings were something Hermione couldn’t imagine the hostess of a restaurant, no matter how acclaimed, to be wearing. 

But what stood out were her eyes. They were dark, heavily-lidded, and seemed to carry a spark, a promise that there was more to her than first impressions.

“My name is Bellatrix Lestrange.” The woman smiled as she checked all of their IDs. “It’s nice to finally meet you four. We here at Horcrux look forward to serving you the best meal of your life.”

“Bold claim to make, isn’t that?” Harry chuckled.

“One we don’t make lightly." Bellatrix turned to grab a small, woven basket. "Now as a reminder, Horcrux has a policy of no phones at the dining table. Rest assured, they will be kept safe under lock and key for the duration of your time here."

All four of them dropped their phones into the basket, although Ron appeared the most reluctant. Bellatrix thanked them and walked away from the hostess stand, presumably to put their phones in a room.

"What if there's an emergency?" he grumbled under his breath.

Ginny rolled her eyes. "Is the emergency the game going into penalty kicks?"

Ron opened his mouth to respond, but quickly silenced himself at the sound of clacking heels.

"Thank you for your patience," Bellatrix said smoothly when she returned. "Please follow me to your rooms.”

This was another thing that made Horcrux different. People ate in rooms, not a shared space. The restaurant claimed they did this so that the dining experience wouldn’t be interrupted by staring at other people’s dishes, envious over food they didn’t even know if they would like and that they would never be able to eat. At least with friends, you could ask to try their dishes. You couldn’t do that with strangers.

When they reached the room, Bellatrix opened the door and stepped inside. The interior of the room was dark, lit only by candlelight, and rose petals lined the floor.

Hermione supposed it was romantic, but personally, she thought all those candles were a fire hazard.

“Here we have Mr. Potter and Ms. Weasley.” Bellatrix gestured towards the table in the middle of the room. “Your starting drinks have already been prepared for you.”

Hermione glanced at the table and – there it was.

A negroni spagliato with prosecco in it for Ginny.

An old fashioned for Harry.

Two flutes of champagne for both.

But –

“I’m so sorry,” Ginny started. “Are we…are we not sitting altogether? I made the reservation as a group of four.”

Bellatrix only smiled at her and started to move toward the door to leave the room.

“Er…right.” Harry moved to sit in his seat and Ginny followed after a brief moment of hesitation.

“It’s alright, Ginny,” Ron assured as he followed Bellatrix. “I’m sure they put the couples together. You two have fun.”

Hermione’s heart raced as she followed as well. It was not alright. The thought of eating a meal with Ron by herself made her want to die.

Her heart stopped as Bellatrix opened the door.

The room was as near of a replica to Ron’s pub with the dark brown bar stools, the picture frames that lined the walls, the Manchester City flags that hung from the rafters. There was even an enormous screen projecting the game. On the countertop of one of the tables was a pint of Guinness waiting for him.

“Blimey.” Ron’s jaw was dropped. “This is…how did…” He turned to Hermione with a wide smile on his face. “Isn’t this perfect? Wow. I can’t believe it.”

Was this a joke ? Had Horcrux hacked into her mind and brought to life her worst nightmare? In a pub, by herself, with Ron, a football game on in the background, without even a phone or a book to distract herself with?

“We hope this is to your liking,” Bellatrix said politely, although Hermione swore she could hear a tinge of condescension in her voice. Or perhaps that was just her imagination, a projection of her own feelings. “Ms. Granger, if you would follow me.”

Oh, thank heavens . She let out a deep sigh of relief – she couldn’t help it – and immediately turned to follow Bellatrix.

“Wait! Mione!”

Hermione stilled and turned around. “Yes?”

She didn’t know what she wanted Ron to do or say. Did she want him to insist on her staying with him or for refusing the room so they could eat together? Absolutely not. Did she want him to want to be with her on her birthday, to abhor the idea of being separated from one another? Of course.

“Happy Birthday,” he said softly. “Love you.” He leaned in and gently kissed her on the lips.

Hermione shoved away the instinct to pull away and let this happen, gave him one last kiss, something sweet to remember. The kiss ended quickly, and Ron closed the door behind him. Hermione turned to Bellatrix, who was staring at her with a careful, blank expression.

“My room?” Hermione asked after a few too many seconds of awkward silence.

Bellatrix blinked rapidly and a smile fixed on her again, only it almost looked forced. “Yes, this way, Ms. Granger.”

Together, they walked past five other sets of doors, until they reached the one at the end of the hallway.

“This is yours,” Bellatrix said quietly as she opened the door.

The room was pitch black, Hermione couldn’t see a single thing, not even a vague outline. If she didn’t know any better, it was as if the room was empty. The darkness was eerie, almost unnatural.

“There’s a light switch inside on the left side of the wall,” Bellatrix explained as she gestured her hand toward the room.

Hermione stepped inside and realized only a moment too late that Bellatrix hadn’t followed her into the room as she had done with Harry, Ginny, and Ron.

The door shut behind her, the click of a lock obvious in the quiet. Hermione frowned, felt for the doorknob, and tried to turn it, meeting resistance.

What the fuck?

The light, Hermione told herself. The light. She felt around the left side of the wall, as Bellatrix had said, feeling for a light switch. Finding one, she flipped upwards, turned her head – and froze at the sight.

No…

No, no, no, no.

This was impossible , absolutely impossible .

This was her room.

No, not the room she shared with Ron. This was her room, the little studio apartment she lived in before she had even met Harry, Ginny, or Ron. No one alive besides herself had ever seen the inside of it but there it was. There was the full-size bed shoved against one corner, the kitchenette in the other. There was the dark blue couch, the rickety coffee table with scratches on the wood, the faded rug.

Hermione’s breath hitched and panic flooded her senses at the sight, overwhelming everything, taking reign of her instincts. This room bore so many memories, memories that no soul in the world should know about, memories she would rather keep locked away and shoved into the deepest of vaults where no light would touch it.

Memories that now were resurfacing.

She immediately turned around to burst out of the room, to run, to do something, but no matter how many times she rattled the doorknob, it wouldn’t budge. She screamed and slammed her shoulder against the door over and over again, tried to kick it down, but it did nothing. The walls were closing in, the ceiling was crumbling down, yet she was still trapped.

No. No, no, no, no.

Her eyes darted around the room, looking to see if there would be something to help her, to free her, and then she froze again.

There was something on the small, circular dining table at the foot of the bed that she had missed.

A glass filled with Tuna Tears - chamchi nunmulju.

Her gaze slowly went back to the plate of food. It was a whole steamed fish.

Hermione stared hard at the fish that gaped upwards, mouth slightly parted, whiskers – no, barbels , not whiskers, barbels – wilted and soaking in the pool of soy sauce that the fish lay in. It was topped with scallions and there was still steam rising from white flesh under the dark gray imprint of the scales.

The last time she had this very drink and meal had been three years ago, at a restaurant in Seoul, just before she had woken up in a hospital with a chunk bitten out of her leg.

She heard the door click open, but she didn’t move. She knew who it was, recognized the sound of those footsteps, and finally, finally put two and two together.

Hermione looked up and couldn’t help but inhale sharply as Tom Marvolo Riddle’s pitch-black gaze was fixed onto her. They were no longer a stormy gray. No, it felt like she was drowning in liquid obsidian, lost in a bottomless pool of shadow and night.

Her heart thumped even harder in her chest, so loud she was terrified he could hear it.

Tom leaned over the table with a pair of chopsticks between his long, pale fingers. He expertly plucked the steamed eyeball out of the fish’s head, leaving behind nothing but an empty socket. Tom’s lip curled upward as he shifted and popped the whole thing in his mouth. “Delicious,” he murmured as he chewed slowly, the soft squelch of the gelatinous layer giving way to a small crunch . “The eyes are the best part, aren’t they?”

Then he winked.

Hermione fainted.

Chapter Text

Seoul

If beauty was a weapon, then the girl who had just crashed into him was an atomic bomb.

She was also a drunken mess. Her amber eyes were glazed over, her mascara smeared against her eyelids, her curly hair unruly in Seoul’s summer humidity, her golden-caramel skin sunburnt from not wearing enough sunscreen. She was wobbling backwards, and Tom reached out to grab her arm. He wondered if she was going to throw up on his shirt.

“Careful,” he murmured. “Wouldn’t want you falling and hurting yourself.”

The girl giggled. “A fellow Brit. Sorry just need to use the loo.” She burped and giggled again. 

Tom let go and stepped out of the way, letting her stumble to the bathroom. He started to make his way to exit the restaurant, having just finished his meal, but then paused.

He glanced around. Where were her friends? Was she here by herself? No one seemed to be concerned about this little thing.

He walked to the counter. “How many drinks has that girl had?” he asked in Korean.

The dark-haired bartender glanced at the tab. “She’s had nine Tuna Tears,” he replied in English.

Tom didn’t think his Korean was that bad, but he switched back to English. “Are you going to cut her off?”

The man snorted. “She’s fine. It’s just soju.”

Clearly the girl was not fine.

Tom waited by the bar until the girl returned.

“Oh,” she hiccupped. “You’re still here.” As he suspected, she slid into the stool next to him. She was alone.

“What’s your name?”

“Penelope Clearwater,” she said without hesitation.

A fake name, clearly, and one she must use with strangers. At least there was some bit of sense in her.

“I think it’s time for you to close out,” he said in a low voice. “Is there anyone you can call to help you to your hotel?” He glanced at her dress, clearly cheaply made and rumpled in a way that told him she might have stuffed it in a backpack. “Or hostel?”

The girl giggled again, placed her hand on his knee, and leaned forward, flaunting her slight cleavage. “Why?” she breathed. “Are you offering?”

Tom stared at her.

“Either way,” she continued. “I’m not done. My food hasn’t even come yet.” She waved at the bartender, pointing at her shot glass, and he nodded. “And you’re not my type. You want to know why?” she giggled again.

“Not particularly,” he admitted.

Another shot of Tuna Tears appeared in front of her. Before Tom could move to intercept, the girl’s hand left his knee, snatched at the glass, and downed it. She grinned sideways and turned towards him. She pursed her lips.

“First, you need to lose weight.”

Tom blinked twice. “Excuse me?”

“You’ve got a good height, and your shoulders are nice. But,” her nose started to wrinkle. “You could go to the gym more. And not in the bodybuilder way. The I’m fit like the lead in a romance movie type of way.”

Tom was speechless.

The girl suddenly grabbed his jaw. “Second, you need to fix your teeth.”

Tom’s lips parted slightly. He didn’t even think about asking her to move her hand.

“I know us Brits don’t care about all that. But I care about that. I grew up with dentists as parents.”

Tom ran his tongue over his teeth, suddenly self-conscious over the gap in a way he never had been before.

The girl let go of his jaw to pinch the bridge of his nose.

At that, Tom frowned and pulled back.

“Third, your septum is slightly deviated. I’m sure you could get insurance to cover the nose job.”

Tom supposed he did have trouble breathing through his nose from time to time.

The girl pressed both her palms against his cheeks, squeezing them together, as if he were a child.

He was speechless.

“Fourth, your face. It’s pretty enough but it’s pudgy.”

Well that was rude.

“I like that chiseled jawline.” She traced her thumb against his jaw. “And those sculpted cheekbones.” Her thumb moved up to the apple of his cheeks. “You know, like the K-Pop idols?”

He knew exactly what she was talking about. TOMORROW X TOGETHER was his top artist on Spotify Wrapped. 

“Fifth, you need to take care of your skin. Have you heard of the ten-step routine? I know men think all of that is for women, but please. How is self-care just for women?”

Rich, coming from her. She was clearly not taking care of herself. And her face was sunburnt .

“Sixth, your lips. They’re too thin. Doesn’t inspire me to kiss them,” she said dismissively. “But they can’t be too big either, you know? You don’t want to end up on the show Botched.”

Her lips certainly inspired a lot more than kissing.

“And last but not least?”

A plate of food was placed in front of her. Tom glanced at it, and his brows arched up.

She had ordered a whole steamed fish for herself.

His gaze flickered back. Her eyes pierced into his.

“Your eyes,” she said then leaned back, taking her hands off his face. “They’re boring .”

The girl picked up her chopsticks and plucked the eyeball out of the fish’s head. “And everyone knows the eyes are the best part.”

She popped the eye in her mouth, chewed, and swallowed.

Then she winked.

Tom left the restaurant after the girl had given exactly seven reasons why he was so undesirable to her.

He left utterly besotted.

Then he waited in an alleyway across from the restaurant for her.  

He stood for forty-two minutes before the girl stumbled out. By the look of it, she must have had even more to drink.

Tom watched as the girl’s phone slipped out of her hand and clattered onto the sidewalk – but she didn’t even notice. She kept walking, stumbling really, down the street.

How idiotic was this girl? She was going to walk to wherever her hostel was this late at night, completely by herself?

So many travel blogs claimed South Korea was one of the safest places for women to travel alone, which was true. The crime rate was low.

But Seoul was still a city and a city was filled with disturbing men.

There were real predators out there. Creeps.

Tom followed the girl, picking up her phone.

He pushed the button on the side of her phone and the screen brightened. He slid his thumb up – as he suspected, no passcode needed. This girl really was a walking disaster.

Tom glanced up, finding her still walking at a slow pace, and flickered his gaze back to the screen.

He clicked on WhatsApp.

Hermione Granger.

Huh. If she had given that name to him at the restaurant, he would have thought it was fake.

Tom immediately found the name and address of the hostel she was staying at – they had messaged her confirming her arrival time and reservation. She had only just arrived to Seoul that very morning.

He scrolled down, curious to see what else he’d find in her messages. She had been traveling for a good amount of time, mainly in Southeast Asia. She had done Vietnam first, then Thailand, then Cambodia, then Indonesia. Then she had flown north to Seoul to start the short East Asia leg of her trip since it was considerably more expensive in this part of the continent. Tokyo was next, then Hong Kong.

And she was a mess . Her messages were filled with people that were clearly from the same hostels as she was, reaching out to her, worried about how much she had to drink, of where she was, of if she was safe.

Tom glanced up again. Hermione was still stumbling. Where she thought she was going, he could only guess.

His attention went back to her phone. His thumb clicked on Uber and he started to put in the hostel into the destination, but paused.

Was this really the right thing to do? If he did this, it would be the same cycle. She’d wake in the bed of her hostel with no memory of the previous night. She’d brush it off, never learn her lesson, always be vulnerable to the worst dregs of society.

This girl needed help. Serious, serious help.

She needed to have a wake-up call, something where she was forced to reevaluate her decisions.

He slipped her phone into his pocket and pondered his options.

Clearly being mugged wouldn’t work. It was clear she had lost her belongings before. There was even a message where she reacted with a laughing emoji when she woke up in her bed with bruises, a black eye, and her wallet missing.

Even being raped wouldn’t work. There were countless messages of concerned people asking her if the man she had left that bar with hadn’t killed her, if she was even alive, if she wanted to report them to the police because she was obviously not coherent or alright. She had brushed all of it off, saying it was fine.

It was clear she needed to be hurt badly. Badly enough to scare her off, badly enough for her to understand there were some sick, sick people out there.

Tom knew what he had to do. 

When Hermione reached a small alleyway, he quickened his steps, grabbed her arm, and pulled her in.

She let out a faint sound of protest, but otherwise didn’t resist.

Tom pinned her against the wall, breathing hard as he stared at her. She was a small little thing and beautiful . Her skin seemed to glow in the moonlight and her amber eyes were dazed as she stared into his. He couldn't help but graze his thumb across her lips, relishing the way they parted for him.

He slowly sunk to his knees and lifted the hem of her dress, pressing his face against her inner thighs.

Hermione let out a whine.

Fuck, he wanted to taste her. Wanted to pull her knickers to the side and lap at her folds, laving at her clit with his fingers inside her cunt until she came around them.

But he couldn’t. He had principles. He wasn’t going to rape her. 

He almost, almost felt sorry for this, but this was for her own good.

Tom pressed his lips against her inner right thigh, kissing it gently first.

Then he bit down and tore through her golden skin, ripping into her supple flesh, reveling in the taste of her blood and the sound of her screams.

Barty said nothing when he picked Tom up in his car, despite both his face and shirt drenched in blood. Instead, he silently handed him facial wipes and clean clothes to change into. Tom didn’t need to tell Barty to dispose of the clothing discreetly and clean the interior of the car after he dropped him off at his hotel. He knew that he would just do it.

This was why Tom brought him along at every business trip instead of hiring local drivers – clearly, an excellent decision from his past self. He wouldn’t have known what he would have done if Barty wasn’t in Seoul with him. 

Tom pulled down his trousers to change into the fresh ones and took Hermione’s phone out while he was at it.

What to look at first? He knew he only had so much time before he had to destroy or get rid of it. He knew he could get this information through other means, but there was something deeply intimate about personally looking through someone’s phone, exploring all there was to see.

Email, he supposed.

He scrolled through, finding her resume, and taking in the information. She attended a co-ed boarding school in Scotland called Hogwarts and graduated with honors from ICL. She was considering applying to PhD programs for English Literature. Clearly had her eye on UCL based on how frequently she emailed their admissions officer – she probably had no desire to leave the city. Had a job lined up after her travels working as an assistant at a literary agency.

Tom tsked. She was clearly an academically intelligent woman. He hoped this assistant position was merely a temporary position as she focused on her applications. She had so much potential, and she was clearly interested in becoming a professor.

Huh. She had a lease lined up for a studio apartment on Little Hangleton Lane.

Before he could stop himself, he grabbed his own phone and began messaging his secretary. None of Hermione’s WhatsApp messages were from anyone in London, suggesting she had little to no actual friends. For all he knew, her parents would just leave her there to fend for herself after such an injury and attack. They had shipped her off to a boarding school for nearly all of her childhood. They allowed her to go on a trip completely by herself for an entire year on the other side of the world. They hadn’t even checked in with her.

If no one would watch after her, someone had to.

Tom: Hi Bella, I need to set up a discreet surveillance system at 455 Little Hangleton Lane, Apt 6 in London. Interior and exterior, video and audio. Rookwood should be the point of contact for this.

Bellatrix: You got it!

Tom tapped his fingers against the leather seat of the car. What next?

Instagram.

He briefly scrolled through her feed and then her profile which featured pictures of her smiling in front of various monuments and attractions from her travels.

He exited it quickly. He should have known better. Social media so rarely showed who someone truly was, only the version they wanted to present to the world.

Spotify.

Huh. Her taste was all over the place.

Phoebe Bridgers. Lana Del Rey. Kehlani. Frank Ocean. Kendrick Lamar. BTS.

And was that...Phantom of the Opera?

Goodreads.

Mainly classics she had read in her courses and popular literary fiction, all four- and five-star reviews.

Hmmmm.

Kindle.

Tom let out a laugh. He couldn’t help himself.

Her library was filthy . Period romances. Sport romances. Dark romances. Monster smut. Alien smut. Demon smut.

And was that…fanfiction? He’d have to search up what dead dove: do not eat meant later.

Photos.

He scrolled through. Almost all of them of food she had eaten and if not that, mostly near-duplicates of the ones she had posted of herself on Instagram.

Then he froze.

Fuck.

She didn’t even put her nudes in a hidden album.

He shouldn’t…

He couldn’t help himself.

Tom’s eyes feasted on the slope of her breasts, of the curve of her hips, of how her arse was fucking perfection. He kept swiping. Her skin was tanned in these photos – not burnt – and her curls weren't frizzy from humidity but styled. She looked good .

A flicker of jealousy – completely unreasonable, he knew – flashed through him. Who was she sending these to? She had no dating apps on her phone and her WhatsApp didn’t show any indication of a romantic partner. She had ignored messages of men who had followed up on her after a hookup.

He pored through, and after spending far too long going through her ridiculous messages, he realized something.

They were for herself . She was ogling herself, knowing she looked good.

He reluctantly exited out.

Safari.

Good lord, Hermione needed to clear her cache. She had 179 tabs open. Didn’t she know that that drained her battery?

He scrolled through. Restaurant searches, restaurant menus, restaurant reviews, restaurant recommendations, and –

Tom smirked.

What a hungry little thing.

Tom stared outside the window of his hotel suite, smoking a cigarette, staring at the skyline of Seoul. A part of him wished he hadn’t handed Hermione’s phone to Barty. He had told him to download everything on the phone and then get rid of it, but he wanted it in his hands. He wanted to look through it all again, to hold the very device that had been in Hermione’s own hands.

But it would have been foolish to keep it. He was smarter than that.

Tom had come to Seoul to quietly attract investors for his company, Slytherin Industries LLC. A breakthrough had emerged in his R&D team – a tool he called Horcrux that used a combination of data mining and artificial intelligence to determine what someone truly desired. It was something that went beyond anything that existed. It was nothing like the predictive marketing indicators that relied on survey popups before YouTube videos or the tracking bots that told Amazon when you had looked at something on a different app. This didn’t try to make you believe you wanted something. It wasn’t a trick.

This was something different – in fact it was deeply intrusive. It listened to every conversation, watched every moment, read every document, monitored every purchase, saw every decision you ever made. It made an ever-evolving profile of what made you you then fed it into its algorithm to discover what you desired most in each individual aspect of your life.

It violated every country’s consumer protection acts and privacy laws.

There was also potential besides just marketing, advertising, or an app that told a boyfriend exactly what their girlfriend wanted for their birthday.

What was a man without his deepest desires? His ambitions, his motivations, his hopes, his dreams? Wasn’t that what made him human ?

And if Horcrux could take all that information about someone, all that data that existed about them, and not just produce a profile but predict what someone desired…couldn’t that assist in the pursuit of immortality? Couldn’t that even make them God? There were already whispers here and there of the transference of consciousness to another vessel, of even creating consciousness.

Horcrux could help make it a reality.

There was interest, but also heavy skepticism. Horcrux was still in its beta stages, still needed work and capital to improve and expand – hence the need for investors. They wanted reassurances. More proof than what Slytherin had already painstakingly gathered and funneled billions of dollars into. Real, solid proof that Horcrux could cut through the lies, slash through what existed only as a fantasy, and reveal the truest desires against a wide array of people, even for those without a large online presence, for those who were immensely private.

And Tom had an idea of how he could do just that…all thanks to Hermione. Because what could be more personal, more intimate, more subjective than what people liked to eat?

Even fucking was an aching hunger, a ravenous feast.

And just like that, it was like his priorities had both shifted and aligned, his vision made clear.

Tom put out his cigarette on a crystal ashtray and then picked up his phone.

Tom: Bella, I need several more things from you.

Tom: First, I need you to schedule a two-hour meeting between me and Lucius Malfoy for tomorrow, at 9:00 am in Seoul’s time zone. Put the title as Leadership Transition [highly sensitive]

Bellatrix: Will do. What else?

Tom: I need you to clear my schedule.

Bellatrix: Alright. What dates?

Tom: My entire calendar.

Bella didn’t respond for five minutes – the longest she had ever gone in between messages. No matter the hour, no matter the request, Bella always was there at his fingertips, not just an exceptional secretary, but an unquestioning, devoted, and loyal Slytherin. She had been with the company from the very beginning as one of its first employees, and she could have quit last year. Sure, she had married Rodolphus, VP of the entire R&D department, and had even taken his last name, but she was also far more wealthy than Lestrange now.

What had seemed like a highly competitive stock compensation for a secretary at “just another tech startup” had exploded nearly overnight when Slytherin released the world’s first artificial intelligence chatbot, Parseltongue, for free and to the public. Its valuation as a privately owned company had skyrocketed to the hundreds of billions and all eyes were on them to IPO, although Tom was reluctant to do so for...obvious reasons. 

Bella was worth millions now, but she still stayed. For Tom. For his vision.

Tom’s phone buzzed when she finally responded.

Bellatrix: That will take some time, but I’ll get started on the ones we can just cancel.

Bellatrix: I’m assuming this is related to the meeting with Lucius. You’re not leaving us, are you?

Tom: Never. Just taking a slightly different role and need to “disappear” for a bit. Horcrux related.

Bellatrix: Phew! You had me worried there for a second.

Tom: I also need you to find the best culinary instructors in the following countries: France, USA, Italy, Greece, Peru, Mexico, Morocco, India, Japan, South Korea, China, Hong Kong, Vietnam, and Thailand.

Hermione’s favorite cuisines, Tom fondly thought to himself.

Tom: Research potential investors for Horcrux in these places as well. Some are obvious - been meaning to make another trip to San Francisco/Silicon Valley. But there might be some surprises in the other spots. We’ve run into a few issues here in South Korea, but I have a good feeling about things moving forward. Be prepared to book flights, hotels, cars for Barty, etc.

Tom: Dates TBD, depending on other factors. Just start with names for now.

Bellatrix: How exciting! Am I coming along on this as well? Or is it just Barty?

Tom: Do you want to come?

Bellatrix: Are you asking me if I want an all-expenses paid trip around the world staying in five star hotels, flying first class, and eating the best meals? Of course I want to come. It’ll also be much more convenient working on the same time zone you are in. I wish I was in Seoul right now.

Tom: Rodolphus won’t be coming along though. He has to be in London.

Bellatrix: Eh, he’ll be fine without me. I can always fly back for visits if he’s feeling pouty and work from London, if that’s alright with you.

Tom: Fine by me. Add yourself to this then. You’re much more pleasant company than Barty :) But don’t tell him I said that.

Bellatrix: My lips are sealed!

Tom: One last request for now. I know this sounds strange but trust me on this.

Bellatrix: I’m ready.

Tom: I need you to find the best dentist and plastic surgeon in Seoul.

Chapter Text

London

Hermione had traveled all through Southeast Asia, eating street food from stalls with flies settling on the skewers, and not once had she gotten food poisoning. She even did what everyone told her not to do – eat fresh vegetables, drink tap water, have ice in her drinks – and still nothing. Her stomach was iron. It never failed her.

Yet it was like a truck had hit her. Her entire body hurt, and she was throwing up like she never had before, not even from drinking until she blacked out. Her body was cold yet hot, feverish, and she swore that she had lost weight what with the number of times she had run to sit on the toilet of her new studio apartment.

Hermione laid naked on the bathroom floor, pressing her cheek against the cool, white tile.

A small part of her wondered what she had eaten to cause this severe of a reaction, but a larger part of her understood what this was.

Hermione had done everything, everything right after Seoul. She hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol since the moment she woke in the hospital. She had known the risk of opiates for the treatment of pain, followed the doctor’s orders to a tee, taken the pills exactly as prescribed, no more, no less. She took them until all of them were gone. She took them thinking that she would be fine, because a doctor had ordered them, because she wasn’t one of those people who played with fire when it came to something like this.  

She wasn’t stupid, but she felt pretty fucking stupid now.

Hermione moaned and lurched upwards, emptying what little was left in her stomach into the toilet, gagging and heaving as bits of toast drenched in acid fell into the bowl.

She flushed and laid back down.

She touched her inner right thigh, her fingers carefully lingering on the scar. The doctors had assured her it would fade, that with the latest advancements in skin grafting, it would even blend into her skin.

It still hurt.

Hermione didn’t know why it still did, but it was why she had continued to take the pills in the plastic, orange bottle. Maybe it was psychological. Maybe it wasn’t even real. Maybe it was her mind playing tricks on her, maybe it was just her fucking brain pretending that it hurt because it craved the sensation of floating to the sky, of a complete and utter bliss for several hours of the day where she could forget every horrific thought that had ever passed her mind, the visions of blood and gore and flesh and screams. A place where life wasn’t just peaceful, it was beautiful.

When the chills started to come, when the nausea began to spill over, when her stomach began to feel like it was being stabbed by a thousand knives, she had turned to her good friend, her only friend, Google, and discovered, to her horror, something that she hadn’t even known when she popped the first white tablet into her mouth: that for some people, opioid dependence can happen after just five days.

Her doctor had given her two weeks’ worth of pills.

People know addiction is complicated. They know it because they read about it, because they’re constantly told that it isn’t an easy path, that it’s a disease, not a choice.

But they still think it’s straightforward. A detox program, rehab, therapy, support from friends and family. If you do your best, if you take control of your own fate, if you look at yourself in the mirror, if you just simply try , then you don’t slide back. You hold on.

But it isn’t that simple.

It isn’t simple when you can’t afford detox, can’t afford rehab, can’t afford therapy, and you have no real friends and no true family. It isn’t even simple when you have all of that.

Hermione wasn’t stupid.

She knew she had a fucked up relationship with alcohol, one that she was determined to end after being bitten and her flesh gnawed off to the point that doctors had thought it was a feral animal with rabies.

She knew she wasn’t addicted to opioids all because she had taken painkillers for two weeks straight after she returned from Seoul, she was just going through withdrawal. She had no more pills, and she didn’t even know how to get more. She knew she could try to go to a doctor and attempt to claim chronic pain, but according to the internet, that didn’t work anymore. She knew she could go to a corner, and try to ask someone for something – Vicodin, Oxycontin, Percocets – but according to the internet, that didn’t happen anymore.

No, the internet said heroin was the more realistic option, cheap and easily accessible, and then once you were hooked onto heroin, there was fentanyl.

And the word fentanyl was far more terrifying than the itch in her brain.

So Hermione puked until she had nothing more to puke, sweated until there was no more sweat, shit into her toilet until her intestines felt like they had been pulled out of her body.

And then it ended and that should have been that.

But it wasn’t that simple.

It wasn’t simple because when Hermione started work her first day, her boss took her out for lunch, winked, and said she could order a drink and that he would do the same and didn’t every single blog post about making a good first impression at work say that you mirrored what your boss ordered?

It wasn’t simple because at the end of the week, there was a work happy hour, and her colleagues had bought her a drink and said congratulations for making it through!

It wasn’t simple because every time she walked home, she passed by liquor stores filled with cheap alcohol and pubs filled with roaring laughter and cocktail bars filled with drinks that were sour, fruity, and so aesthetically pleasing they demanded pictures to be taken of and shared on social media.

It wasn't simple because every restaurant she went to would put their drink menu on top of their regular menu, because every waitress asked can I get any drinks started for you? and she knew this didn't mean a glass of water.

It wasn’t simple because one morning, she woke up with stomach cramps she couldn’t explain, that no matter how much Tylenol she took, it wouldn’t go away. She took the medicine that a doctor had prescribed for her in case she got sick in Asia and even that hadn’t worked. It was so bad to the point that she thought she had stomach cancer because that was what the internet said, to the point that when she took an Uber to the ER her driver had slammed on the gas pedal because she was moaning and crying and he had thought she would die. And when she was there, she realized to her horror that the nurse had given her morphine because she was in agonizing pain and pain needed to be treated and she had been so fucking high, reveling in not just the relief but the silence.

It wasn’t simple because when they discharged her, finding nothing fatal in the scans of her abdomen and the tests of her blood, saying it was likely just an upset stomach, that what she needed to do was drink clear broths for a week, the nurse had winked and offered her another hit of morphine for the road.

And even then, Hermione was good. She ordered a lemonade at her lunch with her boss. She gave the drink at happy hour to another colleague, saying she was allergic to agave and that’s why she couldn’t drink the margarita, then spent the night sipping on a Diet Coke with a lime wedge, claiming it was a coke and rum. She walked past the stores, the pubs, the bars until she reached her studio apartment and sobbed because she wanted a fucking drink so she didn’t have to fucking feel. She turned down the hit of morphine that had dangled in front of her like candy during Halloween, even knowing she desperately, desperately wanted it. She did all this because she was good .

She worked on and then submitted her applications for her PhD even though she had no idea how she would be able to afford it. She went to the free yoga class in the nearby park and was finally able to do the astavakrasana pose. She made an effort to cook instead of constantly order takeaways. She was good .

But being good while awake meant being bad in her dreams. Every time she closed her eyes, she didn’t dream of the person who bit her. No, it was her that sunk her teeth into the flesh of someone’s upper right thigh and ripped it apart.

His name was Cormac, his curls were a dark blond, his eyes were a mesmerizing hazel. He was an investment banker and acted like it, casually dropping that he only flew business class on international flights and ordering a glass of red wine first, then a martini, and then a scotch on the rocks.

Hermione sipped on her Diet Coke as she twirled the pasta around her fork.

Cormac was talking about something he thought was important and impressive, like hunting and shooting with his uncle and a member of Parliament in the Scottish Highlands, all because she mentioned she had gone to boarding school in Scotland.  

“Do you want to get out of here?” Hermione interrupted. “My place is close by.”

Cormac blinked, a stunned expression on his face, although Hermione couldn’t tell at whether it was because he was shocked at being interrupted in the middle of his story or at how forward and direct she was.

She had met him on Hinge, looking for someone to fuck for one night to distract her from her own thoughts, but not wanting to sort through the men on Tinder. Cormac’s profile featured the best, most photogenic pictures of himself yet his prompts were devoid of any personality or interest. His first prompt was “The best way to ask me out is…” And his response was “To ask me lol.” He was tall, fit, and labeled his political affiliation as “Other” which meant his views were conservative but didn’t want to admit it and lose his chances of fucking women who weren’t.

He didn’t seem the type to message her afterwards which meant that he was perfect.

“Right,” said Cormac, as he recovered quickly. “Yeah. I’m down.”

He paid for their meal, and they started the walk to her apartment.

Hermione took out a pack of cigarettes and placed one between her lips, lighting it effortlessly and taking a long drag.

Cormac looked at her sideways. “Those things will kill you,” he commented.

Hermione exhaled, turning her head to blow the smoke toward the street. “Really? I had no idea.”

The moment they entered her studio, Hermione slipped off her shoes and instantly went to the kitchenette to grab a glass of water, knowing people didn’t like the taste of ash and smoke.

She gasped as Cormac shoved her, her stomach digging into the edges of the counter, his hands instantly lifting up her skirt, revealing her red lace knickers, which he tore off her, the flimsy fabric snapping.

“You’re a slippery little minx, aren’t you?” he said in a low voice. “Couldn’t even go to the bed.”

Hermione could hear the rustle of his pants lowering.

Hermione could hear the rip of foil.  

“A fucking slut,” Cormac muttered as he rolled the condom over his cock, lined up with her entrance, then slammed into her.

Hermione let out a strangled cry as he plunged inside her. She hadn’t been wet, hadn’t been ready for him at all. It didn’t even matter that there was lube on the outside of the condom. It felt like her cunt was burning but not in pleasure, felt like she was being split wide open, stretched like a stiff rubber band and then snapped back into place.

She gritted her teeth as he fucked her, hissing as she tried to force herself to relax, to let her body’s natural response slicken her cunt, but it was hard because Cormac was grunting in her ear like an animal and –

Was he wearing shoes in her home?!

“Wait, stop –” she tried to rasp, but Cormac grabbed her throat and squeezed hard, continuing to fuck her, harder and rougher.

She’d been choked by men as they fucked her before and she liked it, loved it even, the loss of control, the thought of wow I could die right now adding something to the entire sexual experience, but the problem was that she couldn’t speak, couldn’t tell him to take off his fucking shoes.

“You fucking love this, don’t you, Hermione?” Cormac taunted. “You dirty little slut. You love being choked and fucked. I can tell.”

She was getting wetter, that was true, it didn’t hurt anymore, but that was a default reaction from her body to ease the sensation of being fucked for how many minutes without a single second of foreplay.  

Hermione desperately clawed at his hand, trying to ply it off her neck and when he let go, she gulped down air, gasping, shuddering.

“No, stop,” she gasped. “I mean it, I –”

Cormac grabbed her jaw and wrenched it to the side, giving her a brutal kiss, cutting off her protests.

And then Hermione moaned . Not because of the feel of his lips, but because of the taste of his mouth because it tasted like scotch. Her tongue lapped every inch of his, trying desperately to find the source, to see if miraculously there was any droplets left for her that he had saved.

Cormac wrenched his mouth away and –

He spat in her face.

“You taste disgusting,” he sneered, continuing to pound his cock into her.

Out of all the kinks she secretly harbored, spitting was not one of them. She gasped, stunned, and then before she could say anything, before she could register how disgusting it felt to feel his saliva and phlegm slide down her cheek, Cormac grabbed a fistful of her curls and then violently pushed down .

Hermione struggled against his grip, but he kept one hand pressed on the side of her face against the granite countertop and the other gripped on her hip, holding it down and in place for him as he continued to fuck her.

“Cormac, stop.” Her hands moved to the front of his thighs, trying to push him off. “Stop it, I want you to stop. I don’t –”

“How often do you do this?” he drawled. “Why do you think I’m wearing a condom? Think I want to take the chance and fuck you raw? Dirty fucking whore.”

He was slamming into her now, his thrusts pushing her against the counter, jabbing the edge into her stomach over and over again and Hermione started to whimper. It hurt. It hurt like the time she went to the hospital, hurt like the time the nurse had given her morphine, and oh gods if she had morphine right now, then this might actually feel good, but she didn’t and Cormac wasn’t stopping, he wasn’t stopping and he was wearing his fucking shoes in her fucking home and he was raping her in her fucking home.

If she was good then she would slump against the countertop of her kitchen, close her eyes, and try her best to think about something else until he finally came.

If she was good then she would try her best to forget about this because going to the police wasn’t an option. She had messaged him first on Hinge, she had suggested the restaurant that was close to her place, she had asked him to come over, she hadn’t protested when she heard him unzip his pants and put on the condom, she had let him fuck her against the kitchen countertop, she had moaned when he kissed her, and for some reason, police officers and jury members didn’t understand that just because she had done all of that didn’t mean that she wanted this .

If she was good then she would process all of this in therapy because she was stone cold sober which meant that she wouldn’t forget. No she would remember all of this but if she had been blacked out drunk, she wouldn’t have remembered a single second of it.

Hermione was tired of being good. Look where that had gotten her.

Her hand moved away from Cormac’s thigh and clutched the kitchen knife that was closest to her. Even though it wasn’t as sharp as Japanese steel, she had purchased it just outside of Bali after watching a woman use it to expertly and meticulously butcher a pig to feed herself and her husband.

Without hesitation, Hermione swung the knife behind her, plunging it deep into Cormac’s side, and ripped it out.

Cormac let out a cry and pulled out of her, hands immediately reaching to the wound.

“You stabbed me,” he said, bewildered.

Hermione slowly turned around, panting hard at the sight of blood oozing from him, staining his white button-down shirt. His cock was still out, condom still wrapped around it. His pants were pooled around his ankles. The look of shock on his face was similar to the one he had in the restaurant when she had interrupted him.

“You fucking cunt, you stabbed me!” Cormac roared.

But Hermione could barely hear him because in this moment…

In this moment, she felt glorious. Powerful. Immortal .

Hermione stared at the knife in wonder, at the crimson red that stained the steel, and she slowly lifted it to her lips.

Her tongue flitted out, licking the side of the blade, and she moaned at the taste of copper.

It was fucking perfection .

“What the fuck,” Cormac whispered, his hands pressed against his side, trying to staunch the blood. He started to back up, shuffling awkwardly, his cock no longer long and hard but small and soft, the condom fallen to the floor. “What the actual fuck.”    

Hermione could taste his fear and it was glorious .

She screamed as she launched herself at him, tackling him to the ground, bringing the knife down, burying it deep into his chest.

Again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

Hermione lost count, lost in her frenzy, lost in her elation, lost in her bloodlust, lost in her ecstasy, lost in her pleasure . She laughed, gleeful, high beyond compare, beyond the pills she swallowed, beyond the morphine that had sunk into her veins. She stabbed Cormac again and again and again, salivating over the squelch of flesh, the taste of copper, the smell of iron, the sight of crimson red and torn flesh, the feel of the wooden grip of the knife in her hands, slipping and sliding because it was coated in blood.

When Hermione finally stopped, she looked down at the mutilated, mangled body beneath her. What hope for a self-defense argument was long gone in the eyes of the law, and she knew, she knew she couldn’t get away with this. 

Her gaze lingered on Cormac’s face. She had left it alone, because she admitted, it was quite pretty. He had a strong jaw and high cheekbones. He looked like the lead in a romance movie.

He had the most beautiful hazel eyes.

Hermione had stopped but she most certainly hadn’t finished because if she was going to prison for the rest of her life for murdering a man, she couldn’t not try it. This was her one chance to do something that had haunted her every single moment since the moment she had awoken in a hospital room in Seoul, and she would take it.

Hermione dropped the knife, clattering it against the tiled floor of the kitchen.

She reached for Cormac’s eye.

Her fingers dug in, pulling back the lids, slipping past the socket.

She laughed as she twisted.

She laughed as she pulled.

She laughed as she ripped out his beautiful hazel-colored eye, its base trailing a bloody root.

She felt glorious .

She felt alive .

She felt ravenous.

She felt so fucking high .

Hermione licked her lips.

Everyone knows the eyes are the best part.

Chapter Text

Tom knew Hermione preferred to eat eyes that were steamed.

He had watched as she tried different ways to prepare them, but she always settled on this.

She was smart. Clever. She wouldn’t waste both eyes on trying a new cooking technique. She would take one to experiment on and save the other one just in case it didn’t meet her expectations.

Hermione also never ate them raw. Perhaps she was scared to, although he had seen that she had been tempted the first time she had killed.

She had stabbed Cormac McLaggen one hundred and four times in the chest. Tom had watched the video in real-time on his laptop in a hotel room, enraptured, infatuated, turned on . He had touched himself at the marvelous sight, moaning at the sound of her maniacal laughter, imagined what it would be like to fuck her just as she was, covered in another man’s blood, and came hard, his release splattering against silk sheets.

When he initially realized that the man she had brought over to her home was raping her, that she meant it when she said stop, that she was in pain , he had immediately picked up his phone to call Rookwood to deal with this , that even if he couldn’t make it to Hermione in time, this…this predator clearly needed to be eliminated.

But before he could even press dial, Hermione had fought back.

She was perfection. She was the goddess of war and beauty incarnate.  

He watched her gouge her dead rapist’s eye, his blood splattered all over her face, laughing as she did so. Watched as she slowly put her lips against it, her tongue flick against the hazel iris, her teeth scratch against the cornea.

But she stopped. Sighed. Gouged out the other eye.

Then she walked back to her kitchenette and took out her bamboo steamers.

And that was the moment Tom knew that he had to have her.

That was the moment Tom knew that they were made for each other.

That was the moment Tom knew they were soulmates.

Tom hummed, tapping his feet to the beat of a new song by Lorde that Hermione had been playing nonstop the entire week. He filled a wok with water, cranked the gas stove to high to bring it to a boil.

His mind lingered on old memories.

Covering up a messy, gruesome murder and disposing a half-eaten body so your soulmate won’t go to prison wasn’t easy, especially when you were halfway across the world.

No, it took a village.

The village being Bella and Rodolphus’s innate ability to gather the best, most discreet workers in the R&D Team at Slytherin – and the promise of bonuses.

Hermione had hacked what was left of McLaggen into pieces, put him - and his phone - in black trash bags, and thrown him into the dumpster of her own apartment complex, like an idiot . 

At least she had done a decent job at cleaning the blood off her floorboards. Tom knew how much she cared about clean floors.

Fenrir had grumbled when he fished the garbage bags out before anyone could notice the smell and before the garbage collectors arrived.

Rosier had sighed when he removed evidence of McLaggen and Hermione matching on Hinge and messaging each other.

Mulciber had cracked his knuckles when he wiped all CCTV and private footage of them together.

It took Hermione two weeks to understand that no one was coming for her.

And it took her four months to kill again.

Those four months, Tom had seen that Hermione had a glow to her complexion, a bounce to her step. She didn’t sob in her bed when she woke up anymore, didn’t stare longingly at the liquor stores, pubs, and bars. No, she danced by herself in her studio apartment, singing along to silly pop songs. She excelled at work, receiving compliments for her performance.

She looked so beautiful.

But Tom knew it wouldn’t be permanent. He could see the changes, slowly at first then all at once.

She was back to how she used to be, nervous, anxious, twitching, stressed, unhappy.

And then she brought home a man named Gregory Goyle.

Hermione had grilled his left eye, using a miniature indoor grill she had purchased to also make panini sandwiches.

Two months later, she brought home a man named Vincent Crabbe.

Hermione had baked his right eye at 180 degrees Celcius.

One month later, she brought home a man named Blaise Zabini.

Hermione had put his left eye in a seafood stew.

Two weeks later, she brought home a man named Theodore Nott.

Hermione had tried to deep fry his right eye and she yelped as it exploded.

One week later, she brought home a man named Marcus Flint.

Hermione had braised his left eye in soy sauce and mirin and smiled.

Three days later, she brought home a man named Graham Montague.

Hermione had sauteed his right eye in sesame oil and ginger and nodded.

She always was partial to Asian flavors. Sweet little thing.

But Tom could tell by the time she brought Crabbe over that this was being a problem . She was messy, reckless, careless, even more so than with McLaggen. Addicted. She wasn’t happy anymore, she was lost in it, consumed by it. She was binging. She didn’t know how to moderate herself.

That and the people in the R&D Department were being pulled away from actual work with Horcrux to deal with cleaning up the mess that came with the murder of seven men. Since they were salaried, they didn't qualify for overtime. Instead, they had emailed Rodolphus and cc’d both Lucius and Tom, demanding seven-figure bonuses, to all of their annoyance.

He had to fix this.

Ah. The water was boiling.

Tom placed the steamer into the wok, making sure the bottom of it didn’t touch the water and merely rested on the rim. He covered the top of the steamer and lowered the heat slightly, bringing the water to a rolling boil. He set a timer.

A floorboard creaked behind him.

Tom turned around, smiling widely.

“Hermione,” he sighed longingly. “You’re awake.”

He loved that name. So much dimension and complexity, just like her. She was beautiful in the black, silk dress he had bought for her, her curls slightly mussed, her skin golden.

“What the fuck, Tom,” she whispered, trembling. “What the fuck. Where am I? What…what…”

“Shhhh,” he said gently, stepping toward her and wrapping his arms around her tightly. He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “It’s alright. There’s nothing to be scared of.”

She was still shaking. Nervous little thing.

“You fainted, that’s all,” he soothed. “I didn’t quite realize it would be so overwhelming for you at the restaurant. That was my fault. I brought you home.”

“Home?” she squeaked. “But…this isn’t…this isn’t…”

Ah. That.

That tiny little apartment with the tiny little kitchen and the tiny little room and the tiny little bookshelf and the tiny little couch.

Tom pulled slightly away to smile down at her. “You said you’d stay with me and I said I had a present for you. This was the house you liked the most out of all the ones I showed you. I bought it just for you. For us. Do you like it?”

He hoped she did. He’d give her a proper tour in the morning when the sun was out. The pictures on the website hadn’t done it justice and the interior designer, Daphne Greengrass, had done an excellent job in such a short amount of time furnishing and decorating it. 

The large windows brought in so much natural light to the Manor and the gardens were filled with roses. There were more than enough rooms for all seven of their future children. There was even a library, filled with books he knew she’d love. 

He wanted to fuck her against the shelves. He knew she’d want that too.

Maybe he’d even show her the basement…

Desire pooled. There were no safe words if Hermione was gagged. There would be no hands pushing him away if she was chained to the bed.

“Who are you?” she rasped. “How…how did you know what…what my old apartment looked like? I…I don’t understand, Tom. I don’t understand.” Her breathing started to quicken. “Was…was that you in Seoul? Tom, did you...did you bite me?”

Her amber eyes were wide. She was so, so scared.

What could he say to reassure her that she would never have to be scared for the rest of her life?

“Of course it was me,” Tom breathed.

Hermione let out a shriek and halfheartedly fought against his arms, pushing against his chest, but he held firm. He would never let her go. He would hold onto her forever.

“You needed help,” he tutted. “You were a mess, you were so lost. I told you I was sorry, remember?”

Hermione froze, then stopped fighting as her body shuddered. “Are you…are you going to eat me?” she said in a small voice.

Tom’s breath hitched and his eyes nearly bulged out of its socket.

How could she think such a thing?

 “Eat you?” he repeated incredulously. “Eat you? Hermione, I love you.”

It was now Hermione’s turn for her breath to hitch.

“Who do you think made sure you were never caught by the police for all of those missing men?”

Hermione’s eyes started to water just as her upper lip started to tremble. She was such an emotional little thing.

“Who do you think funded the scholarship and stipend that let you quit your job and pursue your PhD?”

He didn’t even have to bribe the admissions office to admit her. She was so, so clever. He knew that the acceptance offer with a generous package of a stipend three times what was normally given to other candidates would boost her confidence and livelihood, occupy her time, and give her a direction and fulfillment that her job at the agency couldn’t give her. She had stopped her kills around the same time she started term.

“Who do you think opened up that bookstore in your neighborhood and told them to start a book club?”

This was the biggest one. He knew Hermione needed friends, clung on to the idea of them as her saviors since she had gone through her life never being able to make them. She needed a place where some of her secret desires were normalized, where people were open-minded and accepting. Slytherin’s receptionist, Pansy Parkinson, had gladly taken on that role of running the store, leading the book club, and choosing books Hermione would love. 

“You rarely talked about finances with your ex.” Tom tsked.

Healthy couples always talked about money and the two of them had both either lied or avoided it. Hermione had lied about the amount the university paid her so she wouldn't have to pay rent, spending the money on food and books instead. Meanwhile, he had avoided disclosing the financial strains of his business and reliance on anonymous donations.

“Running a board game café is a precarious business," he continued. "He was always in the red. Who do you think helped make sure he was afloat so you could have a roof over your head? So you could use your stipend on food you wanted to eat and books you wanted to read? So you would have someone else to help you stay sober since I couldn’t be there?”

That had been the hardest part of this all. He was selfless for doing that, for funding the failing business of a man who fucked his soulmate , who kissed her lips, who told her he loved her.

As if that man knew what love was. The man had the audacity to make Hermione do all the chores in the home because in his eyes, he financially supported the relationship - when it was Tom's money to begin with! He barely cared about her ambitions and her thoughts about the world, only cared about strategy games and football. 

He didn’t even pleasure her the way she deserved to be pleasured. Tom had watched throughout the years on the surveillance video he had set up when he realized Hermione was moving in with him when her lease was up. That man refused to go down on her and was squeamish about choking her because he “respected her too much." Whenever he came first - which was eighty-nine percent of the time - he didn't make an effort to make sure she finished as well.

And Hermione had put up with it for nearly two years! Silly little thing.

Tom would make sure Hermione would never wash a dish again and never feel the need to do his laundry. He would make sure they challenged each other intellectually. He would make sure she climaxed every single time they had sex, devour her cunt every time she wanted him to, and hold her in his arms before they fell asleep together every single night. 

His soulmate had desires and needs and he would satiate every single one of them.

“I take care of you,” he said softly. “I love you. All of you. I know you love me, too.”

“Alright,” Hermione finally said, her voice still shaky. “Alright even…even if I believe you, and I’m not saying I do…” she swallowed hard. “Why all the lies? Why do it all like this? What does Horcrux have to do with anything?” She swallowed again. "Who are you?"

Tom sighed deeply. Introductions were always difficult. He always struggled with them. 

The room in the restaurant was supposed to be romantic. It was supposed to tell her that he saw her for who she truly was and loved her.

Instead, Hermione had fainted.

She had thought he was going to eat her.

“My name really is Tom Riddle,” he said truthfully. “Marvolo is my middle name. I’m the owner of Slytherin. Horcrux is one of our projects that I’m leading myself. I suppose my eyes aren’t gray, as you’ve probably noticed by now. Those were contacts. When I first met you, you said my eyes were boring and I didn’t want you to think I was boring. The only lie was the whole story I gave at AA. Everything else was the truth.”

“No.” Hermione shook her head fiercely. “No. Lucius Malfoy is the CEO of Slytherin. He took over his father, Abraxas Malfoy, a few years ago. Everyone knows that.”

Tom snorted. “The Malfoys were CEOs because I made them my CEOs. It’s my company. I started it with the money I inherited. I own controlling majority of the shares. I was the one who invented Parseltongue.”

Hermione started hyperventilating again. Once, she had complained about the harms of AI, how it would ruin the world, how Parseltongue ruined academic integrity and artist creativity, how they stole from authors to model their language. He had laughed and kept his mouth shut, knowing it wasn't the right time to talk about it.

He would soon change her mind about it all. She would see his vision. 

“And why I did it all like this? I wanted you to get to know me . To love me. I’m sorry for the lies in the beginning and that tiny apartment, but I didn’t want you liking me for my wealth or dismissing me for my work.” He ran his fingers through her curls, wrapping a tendril around his finger. “And it’s like an investment, Hermione. Timing is everything.”

He couldn’t drop everything for Hermione the moment he met her in Seoul. No, Horcrux and Slytherin were the priority. Which was why Hermione had needed to get clean from her murderous, cannibalistic addiction until he was ready for her, until she was by his side and they could be far, far more careful together, meticulous about their kills, level-headed about their consumption.

She’d been pulling away too much manpower and resources from both himself and the R&D department. It was exhausting to constantly monitor when and who her next victim was. It needed to end.

Hermione had helped Horcrux too, in a way. Immensely. When Hermione had pointed out all the flaws in his face, it made Tom realize something.

That beauty was a weapon.

He had been approaching investors with his vision, he had tackled everything so technically, so logically, thinking the work would speak for itself. He never thought that how he looked like even mattered. After Parseltongue, all he thought about was Horcrux.

But the moment he started meeting investors with his new body, face, and teeth, the money came pouring in. People saw a face like his and instantly warmed to it, trusted it, believed in it.

It was remarkable really.

And Hermione had given that to him. No one, no one had ever been that honest with him about his physical appearance.  

If it weren’t for her, he was sure that Horcrux would have never made it out of its beta stages. She had even planted the idea of a restaurant to prove to investors of Horcrux’s power what with her countless open tabs on Safari.

The roaring success of it only fueled investor confidence. And it didn’t hurt that he genuinely liked cooking and running the kitchen.

More money and more funds flowed in for more projects and more visions. Parseltongue and Horcrux were only the beginning. There was so much more he had in store, something he called Project Voldemort. 

There was Quidditch - self-driving vehicles that utilized artificial intelligence to navigate and make driving decisions. With one stroke, he would eliminate the inefficiencies and dangers of human error when it came to driving cars, buses, trains, and even planes. Millions died every year from vehicle accidents. He was even researching how he could make cars fly.

There was St. Mungo's - countless patients were misdiagnosed and mistreated in hospitals. While that horrid nurse had injected Hermione with morphine and irresponsibly and unethically offered a second hit, he was certain artificial intelligence would have known to never have done that. There would be no need for silly things like overworked doctors who told women their pain was just in their minds or overworked nurses who couldn't keep track of why someone was discharged. He was even researching how robots could perform surgeries instead of doctors with shaky hands.

There was Gringotts - investment firms and financial institutions were corrupt and greedy. They crippled the economy and made predictions that simply weren't true. With artificial intelligence specifically catered towards financial markets, this could be completely replaced. Things like depressions and recessions would be a thing of the past.

There was Wizengamot - the court system in this country - and in many countries - was a mess, relying on incompetent humans to act as judge or jury on topics they knew little to nothing about. Lawyers were overpaid or overworked or both and more often than not twisted logic to bolster their claims. Artificial intelligence could provide true justice and bypass all of that.

And then there was Ministry. The world was wracked with strife and instability, run by stupid, narcissistic megalomaniacs, governed by either their emotions or by popular demands that weren't always right. This was on both sides of the political spectrum. Artificial intelligence could chart the way to lead humankind to a better future.

Tom had a vision of the world ruled by the proprietary technologies that Slytherin would produce.

A world ruled by him.

Forever.

Project Voldemort was a fitting name - a flight from death, a legacy to remember, immortality. All for his to claim.

Sure, the prospect of artificial intelligence brought fears of displacement, of discrimination, of bias, of misuse. Sure there were things like "ethical dilemmas" and "privacy issues" and "environmental concerns." Sure, millions of people - no billions - would be affected by this, even lose their jobs. And yes, Tom heard all the rhetoric that artificial intelligence could bring the downfall and extinction of human society as everyone knew it.

But technology that changed the world for the better was always met with fierce resistance because people were terrified of change. 

Sometimes the world needed to burn before it could be made anew. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes.

“I…I…I don’t understand, Tom,” Hermione stammered. “Timing? I don’t understand.”

Tom sighed again. “I had to wait, my love,” he said simply. “I could've taken you for myself, but I didn't want that. I wanted you to want me and for that, I had to wait until your desire changed from wanting to change him to wanting to leave him. And when that happened, I was able to give you everything you wanted. What you truly wanted.” He lovingly caressed Hermione’s lips with his thumb. “Some things are worth the time and effort. Like you.”

“What I…what I truly want?” whispered Hermione.

“You’ve been so much happier with me, haven’t you?” Tom purred. “You’ve never felt better. That itch, that urge, that addiction kept at bay? I’d love to take all the credit but,” he flashed her a knowing smile. “Even though I am a very good cook, the best I’d have to say, it’s really the ingredients.”

Hermione gasped and her eyes widened. “You didn’t,” she whispered. “Tom, you didn’t.”

He couldn’t believe she hadn’t realized it the moment she had bitten into the gyro he had made for her and moaned. Every man that Hermione had ever consumed had been doused in fear, drenched in it. But she said she tasted the difference.

She had called it incomparable.

Then she spent the entire month saying that he had ruined food for her, that no matter what it was, takeaways and restaurants could do no justice to his cooking.

She had been so happy . And not in the way she had been when she had first killed. That had been a binge, a bloodlust fueled by adrenaline and thrill. Sloppy. Messy.

No, she had been happy in a healthy way. A constant way. A sustainable way.

Just as how he knew she would be. It worked for him, and he knew it would work for her.

His timer went off and Hermione jumped at the sudden ring.

Tom smiled widely and gently steered her toward the stove, his heart warming at how she let him guide her, at how her feet didn’t drag.

“I have another present for you,” he murmured, his lips against the shell of her ear.

He reached over her to lift the top of the steamer, the calloused tips of his fingers dulling the sting of the heat.

Hermione let out a strangled cry and her legs gave out from under her, but Tom caught her, wrapped his arms tightly around her torso.

He would always catch her.

He would never let her go.

Hermione’s amber eyes were wide, filled with tears, shock, and possibly even horror, but Tom could see it, clear as day.

Hunger.  

In the middle of the steamer were three pairs of eyes – two blue, one green.

She didn’t need her friends and she certainly didn’t need the man she had once called her boyfriend anymore. They had always been temporary placeholders. They would always be people who would never understand.

Hermione didn’t even want them in her life anymore. She had decided that the moment she said she’d stay with him.

He was here now. He would take care of her.

“Happy Birthday, Hermione,” Tom said softly, pressing his lips to hers, relishing in the sound of her whimper, tasting the salt of her tears, savoring the way her mouth automatically parted for him.  

When Tom kissed her, it felt like a triumph. When Tom kissed her, it felt like magic. When Tom kissed her, it felt like love. When Tom kissed her, it felt like home.

Chapter Text

Writing The Eyes Are The Best Part wasn’t just a labor of love but of pain and frustration as well. I wrote it - my very first fanfic actually - in April when I was unemployed, depressed, and in a deteriorating relationship with someone I was dependent on financially, for the roof over my head, and for most of my friendships.

This fic was first and foremost inspired from that. Of half of me wanting to leave a relationship all while the other half of me was terrified of what life would look like without it. Of wishing for someone who knew what I wanted without needing me to say a word, who understood what I was going through, who stood with me through my darkest moments.

I wanted to create a character that exhibited deeply “undesirable” traits in a partner and then create another character that saw them, supported them, protected them, took care of them, and loved them despite or even because of those very traits.

Enter...Tom fucking Riddle. As psychotic, horrific, and dystopian he and his "vision" are, Tom truly is the dream man.

Then I took topics I was fascinated with or passionate about: Michelin-starred restaurants/foodie culture, Asian representation in media, the opioid crisis, the popularity of Romantasy books, weaponized incompetence, racism/sexism in classic literature, K-Pop, cosmetic surgery, artificial intelligence, consumer protection/privacy, the blind faith and religious fervor of working-in-tech culture, how sexual assault victims are treated, self-driving cars, the dismissal of women's pain, the fucking economy in shambles, the brokenness of the justice system, and the absolute dumpster fire of the authoritarian fascist that is the fucking President of the United States. 

And somehow put it all in a Tomione fic that’s less than 30k words. Unhinged, I know.

I also took inspiration from events and other forms of media: ao3's data getting scrapped, Meta's theft of 7.5 million books to train its AI systems, the movie The Menu, the tv series Hannibal, the book You by Caroline Kepnes, and the book The Eyes Are The Best Part by Monika Kim (I can’t take credit for the title name of my fic!).

I’ve poured so much of me into this all while doing my best to make this as true and faithful to what I love so much about "Tomione". Almost everything was written with purpose or had a personal story behind it, especially Chapter 7. If that makes Hermione a self-insert then I guess it is what it is - but I hope that I've written her in a way that still remains true to her character while also giving her some additional dimension.

No false modesty here: I think The Eyes Are The Best Part is amazing. I love and am so fucking proud of this fic. I want to share and shove it in front of anyone who wants to read it. I want to scream it from the rooftops. But a part of me thinks that I'll never be able to write something like this again…

Because fast forward to June: the fest has dropped and I’m doing better. Mentally, financially, and emotionally better. Gainfully employed (!!!) but that also means I’m not able to write and edit for hours and hours every single day like I did with this fic. No longer in a relationship and just taking it day by day, week by week. Life is a work in progress but hey…most of my favorite fics are WIPs (lol this was a bad joke i’m sorry but i couldn’t help myself!!!). 

Don't get me wrong, I freaking love my other fics and I'm so excited to continue writing more. But The Eyes Are The Best Part is so very special to me and the conditions that birthed this story aren't quite there anymore. I sincerely hope for my own sanity that they never return. :') Unemployment + depression + a history of substance abuse + money problems + relationship problems = not a fun combination whatsoever.

As a brand new fanfic writer, the love for this fic during the two weeks of anonymity during the fest has meant everything (even if some people on discord guessed the author was me). I’m glad I created something that gave so many of you joy and in turn, your joy gave me joy. In a world as chaotic and frightening as ours, I find that to be quite beautiful.

So to this small, dark, passionate, misunderstood, and dare I say controversial corner of the HP fandom and the internet: thank you. Thank you for reading, for commenting, for kudos-ing, for bookmarking, for sharing, for loving, for just being.

Thank you for being…here. <3