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She doesn’t drink from the glass of champagne he hands her, and he almost wants to laugh. What does she think he’ll do? Try to poison her in a potion master’s classroom? Though, now that he’s thought of it, the idea is mildly thrilling.
"Miss Granger, this is Tom Riddle, my brightest student in years." Slughorn’s hand claps down on Tom’s shoulder like a sack of bricks, but he bears it as best as he can.
Tom offers Granger a smile that typically leaves girls giggling. She may be older than him—though not by much if he’s not mistaken—but that’s never been a problem for him. He’s charmed old Merrythought into thinking he’s the second coming of Merlin after all, and, well, Tom’s not blind. There’s a reason Abraxas’s mother doesn’t mind having half-blood filth stay in her manor over Yule, and it has nothing to do with Tom’s prodigious talent.
"I’m very interested in your line of work. Perhaps you could tell me more about it?" he says.
Granger raises a brow, unimpressed.
"Oh, the minister!" And with that, Slughorn is off, disappearing through the crowd and leaving the two of them alone. Or as alone as they can be in a room full of people.
"Perhaps you’d like to be introduced to the minister, too," she says smoothly.
It would be tempting, except Tom is rather certain that the minister isn’t half as talented or interesting as Hermione Granger. He tells her so, if a bit less rudely.
"And," he adds, wetting his lips in anticipation, "I believe we have run into each other before."
She seems to consider him for a moment, humming thoughtfully. "I don’t think so," she says after a moment, a small smile pulling at her mouth. It is infuriating.
"My mistake," he says, though it pains him. But he’s not sure what he expected. For Granger to admit to stalking him? An explanation, maybe?
Instead, she slides into an admittedly fascinating story about how she recovered the Book of the Dead. He cannot help but be intrigued by the breadth of her knowledge, the ease with which she talks about curses and hexes and seemingly impossible feats of magic, how she doesn’t shy away from the darkness in her.
When he asks about the jagged burn mark on her left forearm, she huffs a dry laugh.
"Inferi," she tells him, "are a right bitch and a half. Let’s just say your first go at fiendfyre shouldn’t be done under pressure."
He is enchanted, and he wants her knowledge. He wants whatever she can teach him. He wants—
Ultimately, it is Elysia Rosier who pulls him away from Granger with a whine about how Tom promised to dance with her—he didn’t, he thinks, unless he did in order to get her to shut up about it earlier this week...he can’t be sure. Elysia Rosier is not someone who occupies a great deal of Tom’s thoughts.
But when he turns around to reluctantly excuse himself from Hermione, and to perhaps secure an invitation to owl her some time with more questions, the woman is already gone.
Slughorn is predictable, malleable in Tom’s hands. Tom can get anything he wants from the man if he plays his cards right. Hell, he convinced the man to tell him everything he knows about horcruxes. By comparison, this should be nothing. So Tom does what he would never normally do. He gushes.
Specifically, he gushes about Hermione Granger. And Slughorn is absolutely thrilled. Tom suspects that Slughorn mostly loves the rush of power knowing that he’s the one who is cultivating these connections. The professor is outrageously eager to talk about Hermione Granger, how she’s one of the few people who could probably give Tom a run for his money. And perhaps Slughorn is relieved that Tom’s inquiries are no longer about the darkest arts, but now about a respectable woman.
It’s almost disgustingly easy to get the woman’s address from him.
The only downside, of course, is that Slughorn is now convinced that Tom has a crush. And he brings it up. All. The. Time.
Tom brews a perfect draught of the living death. This should not be surprising to anyone—Tom has never once brewed a less than perfect potion. But Slughorn is determined to see everything Tom does through a new lens.
"Oh, ho, my boy," Slughorn says, peering into the cauldron. "Keep up the good work, and it won’t just be me who’s impressed."
Slughorn has the audacity to throw in a wink. The professor is not subtle enough to avoid catching Malfoy’s or Avery’s attention, and so later in the Slytherin common room, it becomes a topic of discussion.
"What was that with Slughorn?" Avery asks, nose wrinkled into a grimace. "He seemed especially nosy today."
Tom sighs, lowers the book he has been trying to focus on, and levels Avery with a bored expression. "Slughorn fancies himself a matchmaker," Tom says a dully as possible so as to discourage further discussion on this topic. It doesn’t work.
"Really?" Malfoy’s interest is piqued. He raises an assessing brow. "I’d have guessed ol’ Sluggy wouldn’t think anyone here was good enough for you."
That’s probably true. Tom, certainly, knows that no one at Hogwarts has the capacity to hold his attention for long. It wouldn’t surprise him if Slughorn recognized that, too. But Tom isn’t about to reveal how hard he’s been trying to get Hermione Granger’s contact information, so he merely shrugs.
"Merlin knows what goes on in that man’s head," he says as he returns his focus to his book.
The first letter he sends to her is purposefully bland, filled with schoolboy nonsense that Tom has difficulty writing—if only because it bores him so much that he’s tempted to abandon the endeavor altogether. He throws in a few inane questions about curse-breaking that he already knows the answer to, and finally, finally, asks whether she will be returning to Hogwarts.
It has been not-quite two months since he saw her at Slughorn’s party. He shouldn’t know that off the top of his head. He shouldn’t be asking when he’ll see her again. She is a stranger. She is a distraction. She is...
Well, annoyingly, all he can think about 80% of the time.
This letter is his solution. If she responds to all of his dull, pointless chatter with dull, pointless chatter of her own, then he’ll know not to waste time on her. And if the dark curse he’s buried in the parchment kills her, then she’s not as talented as he thinks, and he’ll know, again, not to waste his time.
She writes him back. Short and to the point. And cheeky.
"No plans currently, but I’m sure I’ll see you around. Nice curse, by the way, but still detectable. Needs improvement."
He is elated. He is doomed.
He wasn’t going to write her again. Granger—Hermione—is a distraction. He should be making plans.
He sends another letter, this one with a blood-boiling curse. "Curious to see if you’re as good as your reputation claims. T.M.R"
A week later, he gets her response.
He is used to unfounded arrogance from his fellow Slytherins. Malfoy overestimates his political influence. Lestrange thinks himself twice as clever as he really is. Avery is overconfident about his prowess with women.
But Tom does not think Hermione Granger is arrogant—or rather, he does not think she is blinded by her own confidence. He suspects that she knows exactly what she is capable of, and that must be quite a bit.
Still, he wants to push her. He wants to see for himself what she can do. That’s why he sends his next note, uncaring of how provocative it is.
She gives him Slytherin’s locket for his birthday. Slytherin’s fucking Locket. As if it’s just another fair piece of jewelry. As if it doesn’t mean everything to him.
Once his excitement dims to a more manageable level, he has questions.
How did she know his birthday? How did she know about the locket—or did she know? Was it just a lucky guess? Did she know about his heritage, or did she just think he would want it because of his house affiliation?
And most importantly, how did she know about the horcruxes?
Did she know he’d already made two, or did she merely suspect that he was thinking about it?
Slughorn must have tipped her off somehow, Tom reasons. It’s the only thing that makes sense.
And he knows it’s foolish to act so rashly, but Tom has never responded well to threats, even hypothetical ones.
"If you tell anyone I’ve made a horcrux, I’ll have to kill you, and I think both of us would hate the loss of such valuable magical talent just because you decided to be an idiot. P.S. Thanks for the gift, Hermione," he writes.
It’s an escalation that he’s not sure she will take favorably. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if he has to follow through on the threat. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if she stops writing to him.
She keeps writing, though her letters are sporadic, and she doesn’t see him soon like she’d said she would. While he’s been trudging away at his school work, she’s been in Egypt, Italy, Romania, and Antarctica. She always apologizes for not writing sooner, but she stays away.
Tom tries to focus on finishing his last year. He throws himself into crafting plans for his Knights with renewed vigor, and he can see the relief on their faces when he says they should all push forward with their plans of settling into the ministry. He knows he’s been distracted lately, and he knows that his Knights have wondered if Tom was straying from their chosen path—though none of them had been stupid enough to say so out loud.
Slughorn sits him down one afternoon and asks Tom what his plans are for after graduation.
"I’ve always thought you were made for the ministry, Tom," the professor says. "But I couldn’t help but notice your recent interest in magical archaeology."
This is said with a wink that Tom tries to ignore.
Professor Slughorn pauses for a moment. "There are many types of ambitions, Tom. Political power is only one of them."
Tom nods, promises he’ll think about it. He does not tell Professor Slughorn that he already knows his course, that’s it’s just a matter of time now.
But he also can’t stop thinking about what it would be like to travel as Hermione does, to learn organically, to push the boundaries of magic and discover lost arts. What it would be like to learn from her.
In early April, he gets a letter from her that says she won’t be able to write for a while. Where she’s going—some isolated island temple in Thailand—she won’t be able to take her owl.
For a single, horrifying moment, Tom wonders if this is it. If this is where she cuts him off. Has she grown tired of his threats? Of his arrogant superiority? Has he been too presumptuous? Pushed her too far? He doesn’t want to give this up, this strange battle of wits between them. This bizarre companionship he’d never thought he would want.
And then, she writes that she will be back in England in June, and would he like to meet up? She claims she is curious about his post-graduation plans. A sense of right-ness settles in his bones. Of course she’s coming back to England. Where she belongs. And this is his opportunity to sway her to his side, he thinks. She appears reluctantly attached to him, something he can use to his advantage.
He does not think about how that attachment might go both ways.
He sees her in the Three Broomsticks before she sees him. It occurs to him that he has only spoken to her in person once. He likes to think they have grown close, but it is strange to see her again. To think that she is here, now, and he could touch her if he wanted.
They talk for hours—he has endless questions about Thailand, endless questions about magic that Hermione laughs as she struggles to answer them fast enough.
"You’re insatiable, Tom," she tells him with a fond shake of her head. He has never liked his name, but perhaps if she only ever says it like that, he could allow her to continue using it.
When she tells him that working at Borgin and Burke’s is beneath him, he’s not surprised. He thinks the same thing himself, but he gives the excuse he has given everyone else: he has to start somewhere.
Unlike everyone else, though, she does not believe his bullshit answer.
"But what do you want to do?" she asks, frustration and something else churning in her eyes.
He grins. He has been waiting for her to ask. He has been waiting for the right moment to try to bring her in, to weave for her an image of a better wizarding world. The one that he intends on building.
"Something great," he starts, but that’s as far as he gets when he notices how fast the light drains from her eyes. As if she’s weighed down by some immense grief that he could not begin to understand.
If he had hoped that she would push for more information, he is sorely disappointed.
And when she stands to leave only a few minutes later, the mood of their encounter irrevocably ruined for the day, she only says, "Good luck at Borgin and Burke’s Tom."
He wants her to stay, to hear him out. He wants her on his side, by his side, something like that. He wants her to not leave. He wants—
Well, he doesn’t know what he wants. Not when it comes to Hermione Granger.
Sixth months pass without a single word from her. He is furious, no matter how often he tells himself to forget her. Furious because his owls return empty-handed, his letters received but never answered. Furious because she was bloody right, working at Borgin and Burke’s will drive him to insanity or homicide, and he’s not sure which will come first. Furious because he is not sure what he did wrong to drive her away, and furious because he cannot do anything about it.
Furious that he wants to, that he would even consider second-guessing his own actions for the sake of one witch.
A portkey for his birthday. He almost wants to break it. Because how dare she. How fucking dare she ignore him for six months only to practically demand he leave his job behind to travel with her.
The note she attached to it rings in his head. "Meet me in Cairo. Or not. Your choice. We could do something great. P.S. Happy Birthday Tom. P.P.S. It activates at 3 PM. Don’t be late."
He wants to be spiteful and not go. That’s why he packs and unpacks and packs again with a level of indecisiveness that is disgustingly reminiscent of Lestrange. That’s why he nearly burns the walls of his small flat down, only stopping himself because he has a reputation to maintain, dammit.
He lands in Cairo, only stumbling a little bit on the sand. It’s hot. So much hotter than it was in England when he left, but that doesn’t matter. Hermione stands ten feet away, dressed entirely in vaguely-sheer white linen, with a smile so broad that he has never before seen on her. It makes her look younger. More her age, whatever that may be. It makes her look weightless.
It’s enough to wipe away the last of his hesitation, the last of his regrets. It’s almost enough to make him forgive her for ignoring him on the spot.
"I’m glad you’re here, Tom," she says, pulling him into an unexpected hug. She has never touched him before, he doesn’t think. Certainly not like this.
Actually, he doesn’t think anyone has ever dared to touch him like this. For all that she is small, her arms are surprisingly solid as they wrap around his shoulders. He leans into it without thought, wraps his arms around her too. The urge to touch her has been lingering in the back of his mind since the moment he walked into the Three Broomsticks six months ago. The reality of it is exponentially better than he imagined.
He suspects he would not like it half so much from anyone else.
Travelling with Hermione is more exhilarating than Tom could have ever hoped for. Unlike his wealthier pureblood followers, Tom has never been outside of the British Isles before, and there is magic in the world that he had never thought possible. Magic that he now gets to see up close.
Cairo is a bustling city, hot and sandy, but beautiful in its own way. They only stay for a week because, "Everyone’s interested in mummies now." Or at least that’s what Hermione grumbles. She never says so herself, but Tom is quick to figure out that it is Hermione’s own semi-recent discovery of the Book of the Dead that has drawn interest to Egypt.
He is glad they don’t stay long, nonetheless. Over-eager curse-breakers and half-wit thrill-seekers have plagued most of the known dig-sites, and Tom does not have the patience to put up with less-than-extraordinary wizards. Especially when they are all so eager to get the advice of prodigious Hermione Granger. She has fans, admirers. Tom hates them, and he tries not to examine that too closely.
The only blessing is that Hermione seems to hate the crowds as much as he does, maybe even more so. It’s not that she’s uncomfortable with the fame—no, that she seems to handle remarkably well. But he has noticed that she does not like to be touched, to be crowded, to be surrounded. She does not like to be outnumbered.
When they leave Cairo, she tells him, "The first thing you should know about magical archeology, Tom, is that the places which draw the smallest crowds often offer the most interesting rewards."
It is an excuse, professional reasoning to support her instinctive urge to flee, but he is grateful to go. And they go everywhere.
Some places, she takes him just because he has never been though she does not say as much. Paris, for example, has no extraordinary magical treasure hidden beneath the streets. Hermione tells him they are just passing through—"It’s an international hub. Very convenient for getting transatlantic portkeys."—but she insists on dragging him around the city, practically sightseeing. He allows her this ruse, allows himself to be dragged to the Louvre (even though it’s a muggle museum), allows himself to be dragged to the top of the Eiffel Tower, and to a pastry shop, and so on and so on.
And then the next day, they are halfway across the world, sipping iced-water in Argentina, researching ancient magical societies. He doesn’t know what possesses him to bring up his horcruxes—by all logic, he should probably avoid talking about them to anyone, especially one of the few people in the world who has already hinted she knows how to destroy them.
He had planned to make seven. But there is something tragic in the way she looks at him when he admits that he had planned to turn the locket into one. There is always something about Hermione that leads him to think she knows more than he does. She always seems to know more than he does.
(He is not sure why this particular fact does not irritate him as much as he’d expect. But then, he is constantly realizing that he is not sure about a great many things when it comes to Hermione.)
"Your position on horcruxes, combined with your expertise on all things ancient and obscure, has forced me to reconsider."
He doesn’t even know that he means it—really means it—until the words are out. It tastes like defeat, but he will stomach it. She smiles at him, takes his hand across the table and squeezes it gently.
After that, they say no more about horcruxes.
They are in Germany at the behest of the German Minister himself, supposedly to help break the ninth-century wards around a recently discovered castle. Tom still remembers Hermione’s words from Slughorn’s party, how she hates to be sent on assignments. But the promise of ancient wards is enough to tempt her and Tom away from the leads they were following in Cape Horn.
Except Tom is starting to doubt the legitimacy of this job.

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