The Beast In Me

Title: Loneliness Is a Dangerous Beast
By: eli
Rating: M for very mature stuff
Character(s): Hermione Granger, Tom Riddle
Pairing: Hermione-Tom/LV
Beta Babes: alibi_boo
Total Length: 2,683
Warnings: Coarse language and imagery
Spoilers: Everything really...
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. Nor do I own any of the rights to these characters. All belong to J. K. Rowling and other production houses. I make no profit off writing this. I’m merely playing in the cosy messed up little world of Tomione. It’s nice in here. There are cute little mini Dark Lord Cupcakes too.
Note: All mistakes involving grammar and such, are my fault alone. As after receiving this back from my lovely beta, I tweaked it yet again.


Part 2/7:


Summary: …What happens when the war is over and nothing really changes?

It doesn’t hurt me,
You want to feel how it feels,
You want to hear about the deal I’m making,
You and me…

You don’t want to hurt me,
But see how deep the bullet lies,
Unaware that I’m tearing you asunder,
There’s a thunder in our hearts baby,
So much hate in us for the ones we love…

Come on baby,
Come on darling,
Let me steal this moment from you now,
Come on angel,
Come on darling,
Let’s exchange the experience…

And if I only could make a deal with God,
Get him to swap our places,
Be running up that road,
Be running up that hill


~from~ Placebo, Running up that hill (lyrics) their version of the great Kate Bush classic.



~ Hermione’s P.O.V ~




Hermione was scared shitless. Sitting huddle on her perfectly made bed, after her shower in the middle of her Ravenclaw furnished room. Staring at the wall across from her with a wistful internal gaze. Hermione stared sightlessly at the far wall. Why? She asked herself yet again. Why did she ever touch that damn diary? But then Hermione was aware she had not been thinking clearly since the end of the war. She would never forget the look on Ginny’s pale drawn face. When the people at St. Mungo’s had informed them that Harry had lost his fight for life. It had eventually surfaced, through Hermione’s investigating. Via legal and not so legal methods Hermione had found Harry’s sudden heart attack had not been so accidental after all.

Voldemort, Hermione found had left them with one more trick up his sleeve. And would indeed have the last laugh. The Dark Lord had, Hermione informed Ginny that night so far in the future now, laid the seeds of a slow release termination spell. At some point during his final confrontation he must have set it on the young man-who-lived. So even though Harry won the battle he did not in the end win the war. No one had won the war Hermione bitterly thought.

She shivered in her thin nightie vaguely aware that she should get into bed, before she started to chill any further in the cold night. Hermione remembered the cold winter night when Ginny had shown up at her doorstep in Diagon Alley. Banging on the old door of her tiny flat, set over her tatty old bookshop of rare antique books. Well on her way to becoming drunk and crying into Hermione’s shoulder. Ginny had thrust into her surprised hands the diary of Tom Riddle. Confused and more than a little worried at the way Ginny was weaving on her feet. Hermione had finally gotten Ginny calm enough to explain to her what the hell had happened. It turned out that the diary had appeared next to the young widow’s pillow that morning. With Hermione’s name scrawled in bold dark red ink on a yellow aged piece of parchment, pinned on top of the tattered and torn diary.

Ginny’s eyes had been wild and rolling, reminiscent of a spooked horse. As she explained the diaries re-appearance, causing Hermione to try and hush Ginny long enough to pour chamomile tea down her throat. Before settling the pale redhead into Hermione’s tiny cramped kitchen. She had refused to look at the old diary, as it rested on the surface of her kitchen table. Hermione had listened to Ginny’s rambling snatches of guilt over the diary. Along with a very detailed explanation concerning a certain young Tom Riddle, and his appearance. It had unnerved Hermione at how very much the young woman had given away in her ramblings. Of her obsession and attraction to the young Voldemort. Until finally hiccuping and snoring lightly Ginny had fallen asleep. Slumped over her rickety ancient kitchen table, Hermione had sat in the winter cold feeling more alone than she could ever recall.

Her eyes had once again snagged on the old diary with its jagged hole in the center. With what she strongly suspected was dried blood still flaking off it. Unable to help herself she had reached out with a trembling hand and poked the book once. When nothing happened she tentatively settled her fingertips on top of the diary. In the silence Hermione had stared with somber eyes, at the source of so much pain and anguish. Lifting her gaze from the diary she had seen her calendar on the opposite wall. And the day’s date had blinked out at her. December 31st, Hermione had felt a vague tugging at the edges of her memory but then it was gone.

Still retaining a cold trembling hand on top of the scarred tome. Hermione had closed her eyes and lowered her head to rest on one arm. Almost collapsing her upper body onto the scarred wooden tabletop. The last thing she clearly remembered was the almost unbearable feeling of yearning loneliness. Before a sickening vertigo unlike she had ever experienced had roared out of nowhere, and slammed her across the head. The sensation of be forcefully Apparated against her will, mercilessly dragging her sideways into nothingness.

When she had opened her eyes to find herself in 1943, Hermione had wanted to scream abuse at whatever cruel bitch of fate watched over her sorry ass. Upon finding Dumbledore as ever supposedly unaware and completely un-forthcoming. Hermione had realized she was on her own yet again. When she was subsequently sorted into Ravenclaw, Hermione had not known whether to laugh or vomit. As she lifted her head in the middle of her sorting ceremony, upon feeling her skin itch bizarrely. Only to find dark enigmatic eyes pinning her to the rickety stool she was perched on in Dippet’s office. In her head as the months moved on Hermione would go on to give Dippet the label ‘Dippet the drip’. Due to his unfortunate complete and utter idiocy.

Tom Riddle, the reason she was sitting in the middle of her bed. In the middle of the night in her bloody nightie no less. That damn diary, it all came back to that scarred book. Hermione knew it had been a bad idea to go snooping through Tom’s room. Especially after their last confrontation in the shadowed hall. A darker part of Hermione knew she had tried it just to see if she could get away with it. Hermione was scared like she never had been during the war. And she had been plenty terrified then. She was intensely afraid of the way he made her feel. The way he could elicit reactions out of her that no one ever had before. Unwanted desire riddled emotions churned through her, with absolutely no outlet. Tom Riddle fascinated and repelled her in equal measure. Hermione didn’t want to feel this way. With every week that passed she could feel her mind squirreling away at the enigma that was this cruel convoluted puzzle of a young wizard.

He made her question everything. Making her want to hurl textbooks at the back of his perfectly parted evil head of hair, every damn time he got the question right in class calculatedly just seconds before her. Hermione wanted to howl her frustration to the ceiling. It wasn’t fair pretending she wasn’t far more advanced than the majority of her teachers. And he knew damn him. Hermione could see he was as intensely aware of her, just as she was of him. Knew that he was far more intelligent than he let show, just like her.

It was in the way Hermione continually felt his gaze trail over her with frustrated awareness. The way he stalked her without seeming to notice her at all. She had to get out of here and now. A sob strangled unborn in her throat, Hermione missed her cramped rickety old shop. She was so lonely and completely adrift, hell she even missed Ginny’s sessions of let’s go and cry all over Harry’s best friend at Ginny's loss. And yet what did she have to go back to? A tiny old bookshop that made little to no money? The cold graves of friends long passed?

Stumbling off the perfectly made bed Hermione halted uncertainly. She stared at her closet not knowing what else to do next. She was literally stumbling around in the dark, from one day to the next. At some point when she wasn’t looking, Hermione had somehow lost her drive to fight the good fight. Maybe it had occured during the loss of her parents. Not as it turned out as a casualty of war, but rather a casualty of her powerful magical capabilities. Hermione had wiped their memories with an Obliviate spell, that turned out to be more powerful than she had anticipated. It had not been until after the final stand that Hermione had discovered her loving parents had no awareness of ever having had a daughter.

Or perhaps her loss of a clear and resolute path had sowed its seeds earlier than that. Maybe it had been the never-ending bureaucratic bullshit, after the fall of Voldemort? She just didn't know anymore. Hermione had repearedly fought the urge to clasp Harry to her, when he looked at her like a lost little boy. His confused despair deepening month after month, over the endless repetition of power struggles. That had begun to leave the wizarding world no better off than during the war. After the war life had not gotten better, nothing really changed in the end after the dust settled. And that fact more than any other had eaten away at her clear cut resolve. To the point that Hermione knew she had changed forever from the young girl she had once been.

But then Hermione suspected she was only lying to herself yet again. The change that no one but her noticed occuring, had started during her acquired knowledge of The Dark Lord. Over the years during the war Hermione had unintentionally ended up knowing more about Voldemort than she ever wanted to. To the point that she was more intimate with his machinations than she had ever cared to be. And with every illegally learned spell Hermione had cast to protect those she loved, nearly all of the more dangerous spells had roots in a darker magic. She could feel herself sinking further down day by day, as if in mercurial ethical quicksand. And yet the irony was that it was her knowledge of the Dark Arts that would see her live through the war.

Hermione knew she looked barely nineteen and yet she felt so much older than her years. Indeed, aside from one horribly embarrassing one nightstand, two months after the end of the war. Her love life to date resembled the Sahara Desert. She felt unable to connect with those her age of either sex. Ron left her sexually cold despite her genuine fondness for him and his surprising quite bravery. And Harry was her brother in all but name. Neither in her future time nor in 1943 had Hermione met any one, who stirred her senses both physically and intellectually. Except for one young Slytherin lord. What made it all so horribly intimately scary was that the only person who made her feel alive any more was Tom.

Hermione stared at her floor in a daze; she realized absently that the wetness on her cheeks was drying tears. Somehow for her it all came back to Tom Riddle. She knew he suspected her surname. Really she was a little shocked at Dumbledore’s idiocy over choosing her surname. Smith? Hermione knew he was well-aware that Tom grew up in the Muggle world. And would surely suspect the too obvious choice of fake name. Like the faintest hint of winter snow Hermione had felt Tom circling her mentally. She had woken earlier that week as the effects of horrific dark magic had lapped at the edges her awareness.

With a sinking heart and acid churning in her gut, Hermione had realised that the Chamber of Secrets was open. She had wondered that the whole magical world had not felt the unnerving faint shift in the balance of magic. But then she had discovered intimately that people did not seem to see anything except what they wanted. It was a lesson Hermione had become painfully aware of during the war. With a lurch Hermione came back to herself, wondering when she had become so scattered and off balance.

Tom Riddle, it all came back to him. There was some strange and twisted pull between them. Hermione had come to realise this with a sinking sensation. And her gut whispered that he was not unaware of the weird magical pull, the attraction whenever they were near the other. Hermione didn’t know what was going on and had never felt so off kilter and shaky. Not even in the thick of war had she ever felt so unsure of her opponent. But then her mind whispered, that was one of the reasons why she was utterly fascinated by him.

The cool draft as the door swung softly open and the powerful warding charms pinged recognition, made her head swing to face her doorway disbelievingly. No one should have been able to get passed her advanced wards. Hell her teachers were so far behind her that it was laughable. Not even Snape, Harry or Dumbledore could have broken through those wards, Hermione thought slightly dazed. And yet there he stood smirking ever so faintly at her expression of shock.

“Going somewhere?”

Tom drawled from the open doorway.



End This Part


A/N: before you say it lovely people, yes I am fully aware that Hermione is OOC. I am writing a more mature Hermione who has come through a war. So in essence I am writing her as both slightly older and more cynical. Not to the point of being ridiculous though (I hope), but she is rather darker in nature in this fic.