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Hermione felt tired; her eyes were heavy with a sleep that would never come. Sleep had become scarce these past few months. Night had become a cloak for her nocturnal rendezvous with Tom. Otherwise her intrusive roommates deigned her every act their personal concern. She smiled faintly, imagining how they would react to seeing her with her Dark Lord. Most likely have a collective apoplexy. That would at least still their ever-chattering mouths. Her smile faded and a slight frown appeared between her eyes.

She could feel him beckoning her, telling her to come to him. It was a dark pull that she was never able to endure for long. She did not know if she even wanted to resist it. Time spent with him was far more appealing than time spent watching the shadows dance across the ceiling of the room, listening to the unfeminine snores of her roommates.

It had been a long day. She had spent the evening hunched over a table in the Gryffindor common room, writing a three-foot composition for Potions. Harry and Ron had pointedly ignored her and opted to play chess for most of the evening. She had been miserable. The words had not flowed as easily as they usually did and her time was largely spent nibbling the end of her quill and sending covert glances to the two boys. They had not even looked once her way. Harry’s eyes had been intense behind his glasses, as he had surveyed the chessboard; he had looked slightly uncomfortable. Ron had been smirking slightly and his eyes had been filled with a grim satisfaction. It was even worse than her first few months at Hogwarts when Harry and Ron – and the majority of her classmates – had looked at her with a vague sort of contempt. Now they truly despised her. Their impatience with her had spread to her housemates and what had been tolerance had turned to amused disdain.

Her time in the library had increased and she avoided her room as much as possible. It was easier to do without her few belongings than to endure the pointed stares and the sly giggles. It was surprising, really, how much Harry and Ron’s teasing and easy chatter made the day go by faster. Without them she had only her schoolwork – and Tom – to keep her company.

She slight frown increased and she felt faintly uneasy. There were times when she truly felt that Tom was always with her, a shadow that never left her. His cold voice had forever marked itself in her mind and seemed to whisper still, never completely leaving her. It was not a thing she cared to dwell on; it led all too easily to thoughts of madness and of paranoia. If she had gained anything from her conclave meetings with Tom it was paranoia – of herself and of her classmates. Every glance now contained hidden meaning; every whisper was about her. She felt that they knew about her nightly doings, Tom had left a dark imprint on her psyche and she feared it discernible.

It was time to go; the only sounds in the dormitory were of deep, steady breathing and light snoring. The curtain was drawn over the dusty window, which left only inky blackness in the room. Hermione silently took out the diary, feeling the smoothness of the cover against her fingertips; she opened it. Already the page she had turned to had transformed into a window to Tom’s shadow world. She could see the dark shifting there, could see Tom waiting. She pressed her hand to the page and – for lack of a better word – stepped into it. She fell through time and space, leaving behind the diary.

Her feet hit the stone floor and she stood still for a moment, willing away the slight nausea this always brought her. The room slowly came into focus. Tom stood by the window, a tall black shape, looking out at the night – for there was night here. He did not acknowledge her presence. His profile was highlighted by the dim light faintly coming in through the window. It was a handsome one and stirred conflicting feelings of pride and of fear. This dark-haired boy was hers or so she liked to deceive herself. It was, she knew, more apt to say that she belonged to him. She chewed on her lower lip for a moment – a habit she had picked up these past few months – and said, “Tom. I’m here.”

For a moment there was silence, then he turned to her and said in a deceptively soft voice, “You’re late.” Hermione flinched at the tone of his voice; she nodded almost imperceptibly and resisted the urge to fidget under his dark scrutiny. At times like these she was very aware of her mere twelve years, far younger than he. That is, if you took into consideration all his years spent in the diary, waiting patiently.

He moved closer to her and she shivered slightly, though not with cold. He was every inch the dangerous, calculating Slytherin of yore. Very unlike the snobby, sniveling brats that passed as Slytherins today. It was blackly exciting to watch him move slowly and carefully towards her with a feline grace.

He moved closer to her and her mouth parted automatically, anticipating what would come. His hands were heavy on her shoulders; she turned her face away. A question had been drifting through her mind the past few weeks, teasing her at the most unlikely moments. She did not know if she had the courage to ask. In the face of the power that exuded from him and underneath the watch of those hungry eyes her courage dried up.

Tom sharply turned her head up with an ungentle hand. “What is it?” it was a command.

Her brown eyes turned up to meet his. “What do you take from me?” This was said in a hesitant voice, very unlike her usual decisive one.

He cocked his head slightly to one side and asked, “What do you think?”

She looked down at her hands and saw that they were shaking. She did not know why. There was a colorless feeling of anger that dissipated even as she tried to comprehend it in its complexity. How uncharacteristic. Inside her mind she heard Tom laughing. That cold, high-pitched laughter that went on and on. Hermione wondered if he would ever stop or would he always be there in her head, laughing, whispering, threatening.

She needed him. As much as he fed off of her she fed off of him. The difference was that it was draining her of life even as it assured his continuing survival. It mattered little in the end; she needed him and not even those bleak foreshadows of death would dissuade her from her course. Even if her friends did not notice she had not missed the changes that had been wrought from those stolen moments of give and take, of feeding. Her weight had dropped steadily over the past few months, vaguely disconcerting. Her menses had stopped, giving way to only a few droplets of blood and then to nothing. She had only had it for half a year and its disappearance filled her with a covert mixture of gladness and dread. There were those moments of light-headedness that had had her clinging to a doorway or a chair with white hands; her head spinning madly with scattered fragments of thought. She had known what Tom had been doing to her these past months. On some level she had known. Yet she had willingly offered herself to him time and again.

She took in a breath and noticed – not for the first time – that he had no scent. Her voice did not shake,”You’ve been feeding off of me. Every time we meet you take a part of me.” She had been feeling so tired, always tired. Nights spent listening to his voice echoing through her dreams. “You’re using me.”

He only nodded, his eyes unreadable. “I have. I deny nothing.”

She went blank for a moment; she had no response to that. Her usually quick mind moved sluggishly, trying to put everything together. Her instinctive desire to compartmentalize every experience, every thought, could not be fulfilled. Her feelings were fragmented and useless in the face of his blunt honesty. She had expected him to deny it. That would have made anger and accusations and feelings of betrayal her response. Hermione made her way to the window he had stood at earlier. She could see the cold stars shining their ineffectual light. She looked down at her hands and wondered what Tom had made her do with them these past few months. The red paint, the chicken feathers, those scraggly words written across the wall of the corridor. It had been her. Not a Slytherin as would be expected but by one of the most trusted of Gryffindors.

THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS HAS BEEN OPENED. ENEMIES OF THE HEIR, BEWARE. She tried to remember writing that chilling declaration but could not. Her memory of the event had been cleanly erased as if it had never been. For a moment she felt the prickle of tears behind her eyes. Then it was gone, her eyes dry and contemplative. Tom did not care for her. She was merely a silly little girl to him. He had easily taken advantage of her with no qualms, no prickles of conscience. Normally such a realization would have driven her to tears but not now. Tom was not a boy to cry over, not a boy who would love her and cherish her. She had known that, despite her childish dreams and her guileless love some part of her had known the truth.

Hermione felt his presence behind her, dark and powerful. She turned back to him. It was too late to turn back now, to go back to what she had been. Her eyes shone and her cheeks were suffused with color. She lifted her face up to his and looked into his cool eyes. No words needed to be said. He had known what her response would be.

His mouth was on hers and it began as it had countless times before.

----


Later that night in her bed she lay, thinking of him and smiled secretly to herself. Crookshanks was a warm presence beside her. She wondered what another girl would have done in her situation. Would she have given herself freely to this dark boy who ruthlessly used her? Hermione frowned at the thought of another girl with him though he must have had girlfriends before he had imparted his presence to the diary.

She knew that Harry and Ron would have been horrified, their Gryffindor ideals affronted in the face of what could be called betrayal. She did not feel betrayed. Perhaps she would have many months ago but now the idea of betrayal did not seem to apply here. That was only the bare surface of what had been occurring over these past few months. He had opened her up to the world as it really was. He had become a confidante and a mentor of sorts. He had shown her the confidence that had lay dampened within her. He had stirred the darkness that had been dormant within her. She needed him and she would stay at his side until the day he found no use for her. It was not as it should have been but that was now to be her destiny. It could not be otherwise. The strength of his influence over her had seen to that.

With that she closed her eyes and gave herself over to the night.