2:23 P.M.
"And that one—that one right there—that's a Tongue Twisting Toffee." Hermione pointed at one of the several variously shaped wrapped candies Tom Riddle was holding up in his gloved palm. A strong gust of wind blasted through the small village, and she involuntarily shuddered. "Trust me, you don't want that one."
Riddle sceptically studied the pile of sweets in his hand. "If it were you who had to risk it, which one would you have?"
Hermione furrowed her brow, seriously considering his question. The muffled conversations and sporadic shouts from inside the Three Broomsticks only served to radically disrupt her concentration.
"Well, I actually have to admit, I do like a lot of them—yeah, scary, isn't it?— but my favourite one... would have to be..."
Scooting right next to Riddle, closer than she would have ever dared to be—or even wanted to be, for that matter— before the past few weeks, Hermione poured over his glove, some wisps of curly hair falling into her face as she lightly pawed through her options.
Wait a second. Had she just thought, 'wanted'?
"Umm... This one." She emerged triumphantly, holding up a brightly wrapped spiral. Riddle eyed the candy suspiciously, sliding the remaining sweets back into the bag he had been carrying: a small, red paper pouch with an ornate, cursive gold Honeydukes stamped onto its side. She handed the Heir of Slytherin the spiral, pink paper-wrapped toffee.
"What is it?" he asked circumspectly, eying it warily.
"It's called a Strawberry Surprise; it tastes like mixed berries." Hermione began walking alongside him down the snowy avenue, their feet crunching with each step as they passed a group of frolicking third years, the bright but cloudy morning already having darkened into afternoon.
As Hermione narrowly dodged a rogue snowball, he smirked. "Why is it a surprise?"
Hermione dignifiedly straightened her cloak, tossing a dirty look over her shoulder at Dominic Davies, the culprit of the snowball, which she now figured wasn't as rogue as she had first thought it to be. Turning back to Riddle, she mirrored his expression.
"It's a surprise, Riddle, because you never know what you might get."
Another burst of snow blew up and danced across the road in front of them. Laughing, she grabbed her hat with one hand. Riddle, though, went silent, and the only other noise came in the form of war whoops from the full-fledged snowball fight that had erupted in the street behind them. As even that began to fade into the distance, Hermione could honestly say that she was glad to leave the hectic business of the village behind.
"What does it do?" Riddle finally asked, holding up the spiral toffee once more.
Out of nowhere, her competitive streak reared its eager head.
"Hm, don't know," she mused quite innocently, though the wicked smile that had slid across her face sent quite an opposite message. She nodded slyly at the Strawberry Surprise. "Why don't you try it and find out?". Riddle's eyebrows shot up. He stared at her briefly, then deftly unwrapped the spiral, revealing two toffee cylinders, one pink and one white, wrapped together like a double helix.
Though she still strolled on, Hermione slowed down considerably and reached over. Carefully taking hold of the pink strand, she peeled the two apart so that he was only holding the thin white roll. "All right, you eat that one, and I eat this pink one. On three. One, two..."
Both she and Riddle popped their respective pieces into their mouths, and a familiar, mouth-watering, heavenly fruity flavour burst through her taste buds. Closing her eyes, savouring the taste, she waited for the sure-fire comment from Riddle... and, not surprisingly, it came soon after.
"For as good as it tastes, Nefertari, nothing exciting's happening."
Hermione glanced over her shoulder to making sure that she and he were the only two within a reasonable distance. Momentarily smiling at the flashing cloaks and flying snowballs that she could just make out in the Hogsmeade streets at least a quarter of a kilometre back, Hermione slid off one of her blue gloves and stopped walking. "Now touch my hand."
The Slytherin didn't even bother to hide the suspicion that jumped back to his eyes. "Why?" he asked guardedly, no doubt remembering the several other instances in which his skin and Hermione's had made physical contact.
Delightedly, gleefully, Hermione realized that her best response was a question that she had been dying, dying to ask for weeks, but had never had the proper opportunity. Now, though, she seized her chance.
Giving Tom Riddle her most charming smile, feeling her eyes light up, her one dimple even sliding into place — that being a miracle in itself— she inquired in the most innocent, most charismatic, most sincere-sounding voice she had ever used on anyone, "Tom... Don't you trust me?"
Riddle's wary expression froze on his face. Thinking back on it, Hermione honestly couldn't remember ever seeing anyone go as still as quickly as Riddle had just then.
For at least a minute their breathing, the quiet whoooosh of the breeze, the distant student howls, the chattering winter birds, and the occasional heavy thud as a pile of snow fell from a tree branch to the ground were the only sounds audible to both of them.
Hermione's mind wandered back to her earlier years, her naive years when she had had no knowledge of the wonders of the wizarding world, wandered to her Muggle school literature classes where she had readily memorized the four conflicts of the human person: Man vs. nature, man vs. society, man vs. man...
and man vs. self.
She knew that her last rhetorical question had thrown another clash into the Heir of Slytherin's mentality. By going along with her original request, Tom Riddle would be giving out an extremely personal statement. Yes, he'd touch her hand, or no, he wouldn't?
Did he trust her or not?
Slowly, ever so slowly, with his grey, piercing gaze never losing sight of her face, Riddle stuck his Honeydukes bag into his cloak pocket and began to tug off the fingers of his right glove, removing them one by one. He took such a long time, Hermione wondered if he was repeatedly re-convincing himself, with each finger, to do what he was about to.
Finally, the dark glove was off. And with a final intense gaze into her expectant eyes, Riddle extended his hand.
Hermione watched, not moving an inch, her breath surprisingly coming in quicker, more vigorous bursts, as he reached out to her. His fingers hovered for a split second, indecisive... until they gave in and brushed against her soft fingertips.
At the exact moment Riddle made contact with her, she firmly closed her hand around his, waiting for the Strawberry Surprise to kick in. It didn't disappoint.
Almost immediately, his eyes squeezed shut, and a small, hardly noticeable jerk passed through him. Just as quickly, his eyelids fluttered open again, and he seemed a bit disorientated, his hand gripping hers more tightly.
"What..." His unsteady gaze finally landed on her, and he seemed almost surprised to see her standing next to him. "Was that yours?"
Hermione nodded, a smile breaking out on her face despite the overcast, dismal skies. Flicking a few snowflakes off her nose, she asked curiously, "What'd you see?"
Riddle distantly glanced off toward the forest, his eyes not seeming to stare at any one spot in particular, and caught his breath. "I saw... you, but you were younger, much younger, and a woman who looked like she could be... your mother?". Hermione nodded, suddenly grateful that her mum had always been one to tan easily and retain the colouring all year long. She had a vague idea of which happy childhood memory of hers the Strawberry Surprise toffee had given to Riddle, but she signalled for him to continue.
"Your mother, and, judging by the lack of space, your entire family was there, I assume... It looked to be Christmas..." Riddle furrowed his dark brow. "You were decorating, singing, eating... doing whatever else it is that people like yourself do at parties..."
'People like yourself...' Purebloods, you mean. Hermione couldn't help but give a little dignified snort at his last comment. If only he knew the truth.
Gleefully, Hermione spied a small, snow-covered gazebo in the near distance, its white colouring almost rendering it camouflaged with its surroundings. In the future the place was broken-down, dirty, cobwebbed, and used as a far border for the fence surrounding the Shrieking Shack. Now, though, the Shrieking Shack was not yet constructed, and it looked sparkling clean, brand new, empty, and most importantly-
"Dry," she said dreamily, then covered her mouth in dismay when she realized that she had actually voiced the thought aloud.
Bemusedly, Riddle followed her gaze, his eyes landing on the gazebo. "I actually agree with you entirely on this one, Nefertari." That was all the encouragement she needed. She tugged on his hand—still holding hers—and began to pull him off the beaten path toward the bench... before she remembered exactly who she was touching and swiftly released his hand, taking up the narrative.
"I don't think I'll ever forget that Christmas. Just imagine this. You were right, I have a huge extended family, It's madness in a good way. My Dad and the other big men of the family decide to 'venture out into the wilderness' and cut the Christmas tree 'the old-fashioned way.' So they go right out into the woods next to the house with these gigantic axes. They come back hours later, dragging this massive thing—which they can barely even fit through the chateau doors, might I add."
She smiled, hopping a log and landing in half-metre pile of snow on the other side. Stupid... snow...
Determinedly, she pulled herself free and trudged doggedly onward toward the gazebo. Whoever puts a gazebo this far away from the road, anyway?
"Anyway, as I've said, the whole family's over," she decided to continue, "and we have the admittedly... unwise custom of putting up all the holiday decorations on Christmas Eve— And you can just wipe that smirk off your face; I didn't make the stupid tradition up!— so the entire place is basically in general chaos for twenty hours. So, dad's finally gotten the tree up, but as it was, he had forgotten to ask the family of squirrels already living in the tree to move out first."
From behind her, she heard him doubtfully ask, "Are you serious?"
Again glancing back over her shoulder at him, she was surprised to see that he appeared to be listening attentively to her every word, his mouth actually open just a bit, as if in surprise, and she laughed. "Oh, just wait, it gets better." They finally make it to the place.
Merlin, we've made it! Immediately, she felt the shelter's wind-blockage ability take effect. Thank God!
Relieved, she spun in a circle, arms held out, until she dizzily plopped down on one of the snow-free benches. Riddle followed close behind, a small smirk on his face, the top of his dark head now dusted with a light covering of snow. Hermione could only assume he was as happy to temporarily get out of the elements as she was.
"Meanwhile, those squirrels are wreaking havoc on the chateau— My dad wanted to kill them." Smiling to herself as she remembered, she yawned and leaned her head back against one of the gazebo supports. "Of course, I'm only eight, I think they're the cutest things I've ever seen. I've already picked out the one I want to keep, so, naturally, I get so upset with him when he just whips out his gu—wand."
Not noticing her almost-slip, Riddle smirked again, leaning against the support beam completely opposite her.
"Naturally," he echoed, drawing his wand, tapping his hand, and muttering a simple warming charm.
"Darn right, and I naturally didn't speak to him for a week after that. I was a mean little kid." Wondering if he was planning on sitting down any time soon, Hermione paused, looking up at the tall Slytherin... and she trailed off, her words imperceptibly fading into oblivion, her mouth partially agape.
Tom Riddle was smiling, smiling an actual smile— she could tell because a few lines around the corners of his eyes had crinkled up, something that she had never seen occur during his barrage of insincere smirks and vacant grins. As abruptly as it had come, however, the smile faded, and Riddle sighed. Brushing a layer of snow off the shoulders of his cloak, he crossed the gazebo's diameter in less than two steps and sank down onto the bench beside her, staring at his hands. Hermione held back, praying that this entire afternoon had not been in vain, that she had given enough of herself to at least temporarily receive some of him in return. Come on, Riddle... say something...
"I wish I had memories like that."
Tom said in a neutral tone. Hermione hugged one knee up to her chest and leaned her head on it, merely gazing at him silently, feeling sympathy in her expression in spite of herself.
"Sometimes," Riddle continued in a dead voice, "Sometimes... I hate my life. I hate who I am, and I hate what people did to me...and I hate what I could have done back..."
He looked away, off at the snow-covered vista, his jaw visibly clenched. Hermione felt her stomach sink, certain he was going to start preaching the Dark Arts any time now. She began to stare blankly at her snow-covered boot as he went on, "I hate that no one cared, I hate how my own family hated me, I hate them, I hate them..."
The Heir of Slytherin was shaking by this point, his eyes flickering red. A spring of fear rushed to Hermione's brain. She tore her gaze back to his face interestedly as he said, even more quietly, "I hate them, hate them, hate them, hate them..."
He stopped speaking suddenly, as if realizing he had said too much. "It's rather difficult to explain," he muttered. He shook his head resignedly, inadvertently sending a small shower of stray snowflakes flying in all directions. His eyes went back to there original color.
Hermione's stunned eyes, still wide open from Riddle's extremely personal revelations, quickly blinked and cleared, and she studied his angry, frustrated, wholly cheerless profile. Her mind, however, was racing, zooming at record speeds, his last line still reverberating in her mind like a broken record: 'I hate what people did to me...and I hate what I could have done back... '
"Riddle," she began slowly, wanting nothing more than to punch herself just to shut off her own over-analytical brain, "you can't control everything that happens. It's not possib—"
"Look at you!" he burst out unexpectedly, spinning back around to stare at her accusingly. Hermione quickly, subconsciously slid a few inches away from him down the bench. "Look at your bloody life! Your perfect rich family, your happy little pure blood friends..."
A bitter scowl spread across his face as he turned away again and bit out scathingly, "You know a lot, Nefertari, I won't deny that, but you can't even begin to understand anything about how much of a hell this horrid thing we call life can be—"
"My parents are dead," Hermione said quietly, calmly. Waiting.
"-you can't even—What?" he asked suddenly, nearly tripping over his own momentum as he came to an abrupt stop, still slightly breathless from his outburst. He sharply swivelled his head back to stare at her.
"My parents died when last year," she repeated patiently, her mouth going dry. "I came home too late." Her mind wandered off to the end of the war against Voldemort. She has erased her parents memories. When the war was over she has gone to find them, they were dead. She was too late.
Riddle's eyebrows shot up. She had clearly caught him completely off-guard: he wasn't even bothering to hide the intense astonishment, scrawled all over his face. He opened his mouth, seemed to think better of it, closed it, then opened it again. "They... they did?" he asked dubiously.
Hermione gave him a small, empty smile. She had known that their conversations would most likely come down to this; she had realized that her passed family would eventually end up being a source of leverage, a source of connection between Tom Riddle and herself and their similar situations. Well, sort of similar.
Now, though, now that the time to discuss it had actually come ...
Hermione wanted her parents more than she had ever wanted them during the past.
"Yes," she eventually answered Riddle quietly, "they did."
"But..." Tom shook his head, and he looked like he was still having an extremely difficult time swallowing what she had just told him. "But that was not long ago..."
"I agree, actually," Hermione said absently, staring at a pair of students—who suspiciously resembled Jacobson Andrews and Phyllis Hardiman—as they danced down the road a bit of a distance away, holding hands, and, ultimately, ducking into a small, abandoned shack set a few metres from the deserted avenue.
"Riddle, please, please hear me out, because this is really important." She scooted over and turned herself on the bench so she was facing the Heir of Slytherin's stiff figure directly, not even concerned that her face was no more than twelve inches from his.
"I can't say," Hermione began carefully, deliberately picking over her words, "that I know what if feels like to have my own father disown me,"
she noticed the knuckles on Riddle's one ungloved hand grip the bench and turn white
"nor can I say that my mother has cursed me,"
all the colouring drained from his face "but I loved my parents very, very much, Riddle, very much, and I..."
Her pitch raised a notch, and, to her horror, her eyes begin to burn, hot and powerfully, with unshed tears. Violently, she shoved the sensation away and continued, strangled, "I saw them both lying, dead. And they were so cold...so so cold-"
Her voice catching, she choked up. Swearing at herself for suddenly becoming a wimp, she doggedly shook her head, feeling the tears recess back in. She was going to get through this; she always had.
Sucking in a breath, the brunette continued in a stronger but relatively lifeless voice, "And I have to live with the knowledge that if I hadn't lingered on the way home, if I wouldn't have asked my ride to stop for a cup of coffee, if we wouldn't have talked to the waitress for so long, if I would have suggested another, faster route home... I might have gotten back in time to do something."
The words were twisted to make them fit with Hermione Nefertari and not Hermione Granger but they will still true to some painful extend. She had gone to Australia to find her parents with Harry and Ron. When they had gotten to the house in which her parents had now lived in they were dead. Her mums eyes open wide and her dad with a slash in his chest. Hermione has never forgiven herself for it. It was all her fault...all her fault.
"And, just so you know," she added acerbically, "that is hell to deal with, too."
It may have been her imagination, but Hermione thought she actually saw Riddle's stormy eyes soften as he stared at her. Finally, he ripped his gaze back to his hands. "I suppose we've both lost everything in our own different ways, then... haven't we?" She said. Hermione blinked rapidly and quickly glanced up at the gazebo's roof, feeling one single runaway tear escape from her eye and trickle along the side of her face.
"Yeah." He responded.
Both Head Boy and Girl fell silent, but soon Hermione felt Riddle's eyes again land on her, and he muttered, "Nefertari, what happened?" A distinct, eerie chill tingled down her spine at the cruel irony of the entire situation.
"They were both murdered by..." she thoughtfully ran her tongue over her cold lips, "the epitome of evil." She did not let her eyes wander to Riddles face.
Riddle sat quietly, mulling, before he asked, "Grindewald?"
"It doesn't matter who," Hermione said firmly, wanting to move the conversation back to a definite safe zone. "What matters is—the point of this entire speech, from which I've gone so horribly off-topic, is... Riddle," she began again, having composed herself enough to finish what she had started, her eyes lighting up encouragingly, "You can make memories like the ones I have, you know. No matter what's happened in your life, you can."
Briefly, he closed his eyes, and, in his lap, his hands balled into fists.
Ducking his head, shaking it half-heartedly as if to disagree, the Slytherin muttered, "Quite the idealistic picture you've painted, Nefertari, but you've come a bit too late for me, I'm afraid."
Hermione lowered her head slightly to his hunched level. Tilting it to the left so she could see into his eyes, she searched his gaze warmly, genuinely, deciding that she wasn't going to let him get off that easily.
"Tom," she said delicately, almost breathlessly, knowing he would look at her like he always did whenever she called him by his first name, "It's never too late."
For an instant, for a single, solitary instant, Hermione thought that she could see a tiny, longing flicker of hope deep within Tom Riddle's apathetic grey eyes. Maybe, just maybe—
Suddenly, he emitted a small, startled yelp, bit his lip, and doubled over, clutching his stomach with one hand and the back of the bench with the other; in a matter of seconds, his face had turned completely ashen, and he began to cough violently, hardly able to catch his own breath.
Oh, God.
For some bizarre reason Hermione felt the bottom of her own already-queasy stomach fall out from under her at seeing someone—yes, even if that someone included Tom Riddle—hurting so badly.
Even though she knew exactly what was going on, she grabbed his shoulder frantically and heaved him upright, asking automatically, urgently, "Tom! What's wrong?"
Instead, as a second jolt ripped through his body, she actually saw the pain in Tom Riddle's agonized grey eyes...and it wasn't Hermione who passed out next, but Riddle.
Hello everyone!
I am just...ugh...I'm just so sorry for not updating like the trash I am lol. I was really busy with school and work (I GOT A JOB BISH). I will try to upload once a week or so from now on. I hope you enjoyed this chapter!
-Cassi