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.