The Beast In Me

Title: Knowledge 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: 4,966
Warnings: drug use & mind games
Spoilers: Everything really...
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the rights to these characters. I do not own Harry Potter, all of that belongs to J. K. Rowling and other production houses. I make no profit of any sort from writing this. I’m merely playing in the cosy messed up little non-canon world of Riddione. It’s nice in here; there are cute little mini Dark Lord Cupcakes too.

A/N: Forgive the run-on sentences & weirdness after I got this back from my gorgeous beta, I couldn't seem to resist tinkering with this yet again... ***facepalm***



Part 4/10:

Summary: A little knowledge is a dangerous thing indeed...


Oh there's a funny light in the stars tonight
You and I will ride all the memories
Have changed will you work it out?
Will you see that I'm going nowhere else?
I don’t know where you think and start again
But I, I know in all we've said
I finally know how it began
It's nothing that I can even explain

Till’ we begin tonight is it a righteous fight?
The sentiment's not right will you work it out?
Will you sell it all to find me?
All the weapons are finally coming out
But now you see that I only wanted to
Have it out with you

Remember our love but in the coldest light you see
You see what you want and you break it all
Find it somewhere else you say that our love
Can't be a baton in your part you say that our love…

Do you wake at night
Wishing you'd relied on someone else?
I don't know what you think you find again
But I, I know in all we've said
I finally found where I'll begin
It's something I can't even explain


~from~ Sarah Blasko, Explain (Lyrics)



~ Hermione’s P.O.V ~




For three weeks he watched her and that was nothing out of the ordinary. The fact that he was even more contained than she had ever seen him, and treated her with a reserved sort of quiet politeness. Thus, marking her out from the herd made Hermione increasingly uneasy. He made no obvious actions to be closer to her in any way and yet she felt his regard cover her like a sticky layer of magic, warning others away from her on a deep subconscious level. Her fellow classmates did not consciously register it, and yet the way they drew back slightly from her keeping that careful distance as if on some primal level they were aware she was other, was intensely unsettling.

Tom didn’t come near her, didn’t come to her room again and appeared to be studious and even more circumspect than ever before and she was not buying it for a minute.

In the end it was his quiet and careful politeness that had brought her to his door. Or rather the dungeon door of doom as Hermione had mentally labeled it; when the huge door had appeared in the old stonewall a moment ago. Her lame attempt at dark humor was she knew rather pathetic. But Hermione had learned that if one could not find some sort of humor, however bizarre, in any given situation then one might as well give up right there.

Absently she transferred her weight from on foot to the other hovering outside the old serpent encased door. Hermione contemplated the old scarred wood etched with a myriad of runes laced through even older runes that she could not even begin to recognise. She recalled the previous three weeks since Tom had trapped her inside her bedroom. Remembering what had happened Hermione shivered faintly and closed her eyes, instinctively wrapped her arms around her chest. Immediately after he had left, her first urge had been to throw up her dinner, feeling sick inside at what had happened. And Hermione still couldn’t understand why, why she had not said no.

There was no way she could avoid that small simple truth, regardless of what Tom had been about in laying siege to her in every way. And Hermione prided herself on facing truths however twisted and bizarre, or hurtful. But neither was she an idiot and honestly didn’t know if he would have taken no for an answer anyway. Hermione had let him do that to her, and the awful, sickening thing was, she’d liked it. No she thought frowning at the offending door that wasn’t the right word. Like was such an insipid word and had nothing to do with how she felt towards him. Hermione hadn’t liked being manipulated, intimidated, tormented and used.

And yet he’d managed to make her climax, despite everything. So why had she let him do that to her? She had no dark secret desire to be used or abused, why had her mind screamed no even as she had returned his kisses? Hermione knew she could tell herself she had wanted him physically regardless of the fact he was a first class prick. Hermione was very clever, she knew she could tell herself a whole bunch of crap and almost believe it.

But what really made her scared was the little voice that had urged her to read the short note she had found at the foot of her door after class. The damn note had come complete with spelled directions to his door embedded in the parchment. That little voice in the back of her mind that had her arriving outside this ancient impossibly tall door, appearing as soon as she stopped in the dark stonewall. It was that voice in the back of her mind that made her hand tremble as she touched the wood in a whisper light caress.

It wasn’t the fact that Hermione had experienced some of the best sex of her life with a very bad man that had her trembling faintly. It was the fact that the voice was whispering the truth that she wanted to do it again.

Silently Hermione pushed open the huge door unsettled when it let out a faint pale green glow as her hand rested against the wood. The door swung inwards without protest startling her into all but falling through the doorway. Within the walls were draped with dark forest green silk; on the floor precisely placed as if by some foreign mathematical equation lay rugs of varying sizes. And on every wall and available surface and piled on the floor were books so many books that her breath caught in her throat.

She felt herself pulled into their sphere as if a tiny moon drawn into a planet’s gravity. Hermione read the spines of the larger works closest, her head angled to the side unconscious hunger in her brown eyes as she mouthed the titles silently. Economics, military, history, surgery, theology, cosmogony, psychopathology, philosophy, the higher Medieval Dark Arts Sciences that Hermione had never, ever heard of and that was just the Muggle works. The Dark Magyck she could feel emanating off the other three quarters of the walls made the baby fine hairs on the back of her neck stand up and tremble.

Hermione didn’t know if she had arrived in her version of heaven, or a very personalized type of hell fashioned with her in mind. That was when she spotted him, of all things crouching by the hearth and lighting a fire the Muggle way. The incongruity of it was startling to say the least at her raised eyebrows Tom gave her his own version of one raised eyebrow. Hermione snorted mentally, their private communication tool – the raised eyebrow language, and then she quickly sobered at the intimacy implicit in the thought.

Turning away from her he continued as if arrogantly certain she would arrive at his designated time, 11:45pm. Hermione bit her lip and quietly settled into one of two enormous dark ebony Victorian style gentleman’s chairs, situated in front of the hearth intimately allowing her the chance to simply observe him. Ripping in precise motions between his long fingers torn strips of newspaper, he nudged the paper in between the stack of logs.

The fragrance of ash and dark pine stung her nose faintly; the light that appeared between his cupped hands at his soft spell highlighted the ruthless curve of his upper lip. Why she wondered was she not surprised that he could do wandless magic? Narrow blue flames soon sprang from the blackening crackle of old newsprint, all the wizarding world’s affairs Hermione mused reduced to ash at his feet.

She watched him for a timeless period and he in turn watched the flames consume the kindling and paper. There was Hermione thought, a cold beauty in his form that was subtle and almost indescribable to her. An unbidden attraction rested inside her in response to his tightly controlled being. A need inside her wanting to know all his personal experiences and how they shaped the young man that crouched before her. Hermione parted her lips and suddenly didn’t know what she wanted to say; with a snap she closed her mouth tight and frowned at the back of his head. As if sensing her silent glare he turned and looked at her over his shoulder and after a pause spoke,

“What do really you want, Hermione?”

Staring into his intense pale grey eyes Hermione realized he was not asking why she was there. Startled briefly she contemplated lying or flippantly turning the deadly serious query aside, but then she was caught in his gaze again. And the words left her mouth as if on a piece of string and he the one reeling them from her heart.

“Sometimes,”

Hermione heard herself say as if from a distance, while she eased back into the cushions at her back.

“I think that all I want is to feel loved, utterly loved. Sometimes…I feel as if the absence of such love could kill me.”

The long silence between them was suffused by hues too subtle to describe, she wondered at her own words and the vulnerability they left in her mouth, like a bad taste.

“You speak of being loved, but not loving.”

He said quiet and grave and she found herself responding with equal severity, almost harsh in her forceful words,

“That’s right. That’s exactly right.”

There was a charged pause and then he replied enigmatically,

“Cracked vessels hold no water,”

He spoke with an odd twist to his mouth and Hermione slowly closed her eyes listening to the appetite of the flames. For the first time since she had met him she felt as though he was actually seeing her properly for the first time. His regard was unsettling making her feel like she was sinking slowly into something, that would steal her reason if she was not careful. Hermione responded more to break the intimate silence than to continue this strange conversation.

“An interesting analogy,”

“Cup of tea?”

Tom offered abruptly as he moved to the twin seat across from her causing Hermione’s eyes to pop open at the bland innocence in his query and tone. She suspiciously eyed the lovely tea suddenly set out at her elbow. She was sure it had appeared when her eyes had been closed. Slowly watching as he mirrored her actions Hermione picked up her delicate teacup and eyed the herbal tea in it with trepidation and a faint grimace.

“Poison?”

She asked ironically looking at him with a level direct gaze,

“Now really Hermione would I be drinking it if that were my aim?”

He replied blandly to her blatantly cynical glance and then with obvious intent drank some of the hot liquid before raising an expectant eyebrow at her.

“Cracked vessels hold no water,”

Hermione murmured to herself as she threw his words back to him in a dry resigned voice. She then drank her tea and found it tasted quite lovely with just the faintest aftertaste of lemongrass. He waited until she had swallowed before replying to her verbal parry in a strangely low subdued tone. The haunted edge to his words made something ripple along the edge of her awareness as her eyes snapped to his face while he spoke.

“That’s right. That is exactly right.”

“Meaning?”

Hermione asked quietly and was surprised when he really looked at her and it was as if something ancient peeked back at her for the briefest of seconds. But, then his gaze slid sideways and she felt him retreat into wherever it was he went when avoiding intrusion from others.

“Nothing,”

He said dismissively his hands moving to rest on the cobra headed armrests of his chair. His blatant dismissal made anger trip over her words as she snapped at him before thinking.

“Don’t lie to me; I know your voice,”

Hermione said tightly her words making his gaze swing from the fire and she stilled as his gaze reflected the flames, a faint red shimmer moved through them and she stilled.

“You presume too much,”

“Not presume, that’s too risky with you,”

Hermione continued almost under her breath feeling pinned by his intense regard, almost speaking to herself. The bizarreness of the situation settling around her, she was having a real conversation in a manner of speaking with Tom bloody Riddle.

“Risk has never been my area,”

Hermione spoke under her breath and then flinched as she felt his attention spike at her un-thought out response.

“Risk has never been your area? Why?”

His eyes narrowed as he saw her twitch of a response as his question hit her, making him go on before she had a chance to respond.

“You have been badly hurt,”

His statement was final and absolute making her cringe inside, Hermione felt as though she was an insect being studied clinically under his regard.

“That wasn’t the question,”

She threw back at him hoping to sidestep the whole damn issue of her. He smiled at her sarcastic retort as if privately amused at something and his reply was a satisfied low hiss.

“It was the correct answer.”

Hermione suddenly wanted to hurt him viciously, felt the venom drip from her mouth as she lashed out at him verbally her eyes harsh and burning.

“Before the world betrayed you,”

She said slowly and methodically,

“You must have experienced some feeling; such cold arrogance is not as far as I know genetic. Of course I could be wrong.”

His heightened smile was sharp as a stiletto and made her stomach muscles quiver, Hermione wondered if she had finally gone too far.

“You can be venomous.”

He spoke quietly as if making an amusing observation to himself half under his breath. Hermione closed her eyes the handle of the delicate Muggle teacup in her hand suddenly felt impossibly fragile. She felt a strange nausea rise up and listened to the silence, the crackle of the flames feeling his eyes on her face. A question rose inside her like a bubble and unbidden fell from her mouth before she could catch it,

“What do you fear?”

And surprising her into utter stillness he replied calmly,

“Only you, Hermione,”

His words were low, mocking and caused a chill to settle deep in her bones as he continued even softer than before.

“Only you.”

Hermione opened her eyes in annoyance at his blatant lie, lowering her tea cup realizing faintly that she had somehow drunk all of her tea without meaning to. She met his eyes, a tremble starting in her hand as she registered that his taunting half smile did not in any way reach his hard intense gaze. His eyes followed the progress of her teacup as she settled it on the small table separating their two armchairs. It wasn’t until the bottom of the teacup met the surface of the table with a soft clink sound that Hermione felt the first fogging tingle along her senses. It was official she was the world's fool, the thought made her eyes close briefly in a despairing self-directed anguish.

Through a haze of swirling blurriness that was her drooping eyelids, he was barely a phantom of shadows composed of pale lines and angles. She was helpless to do anything but listen as her body become soft and languid despite her inner anger spiking. Hermione heard his words as if through thick oily water,

“Don’t look at me like that Hermione, it won’t kill you. If I wanted you dead sweetheart you would be already. I simply need your co-operation, now hold out your hand.”

Her head drooped back against the headrest of the chair in a wobbly un-heroic fashion, even as she tried to roll her eyes in disbelief at his calm concise words. Hermione fought the coppery taste of pure terror as he rose in one long sinuous uncurl of contained limbs from the chair to crouch before her knees.

Remembering her last encounter with him as she quivered on her chest of drawers against the wall, Hermione’s gaze lunged wildly for the door that seemed to have conveniently made itself scarce. With a smooth move Tom confiscated her wand with a strangely courteous manner, his hands with their prominent knuckles and scholarly long fingers grazed the side of her hip as he moved making her skin tremble at the contact.

But then as she felt the icy touch of the blade that appeared in his pale hand caressing the skin of her throat Hermione froze. She met his eyes with the taste of columbine and ash thick on her tongue, and Tom asked the same question again but this time it was as if he already knew the answer. And there was a new alarmingly possessive glint in his gaze, a look that she had never before seen settling on his face.

“Who are you, little Miss Granger? To make me think like this…”

What made fear finally tighten in her chest was the fleeting look of vulnerability in his eyes that accompanied the clearly rhetorical question. Unmistakable and disquieting in its evidence of him being more than just a soulless psychopath, bent on nothing but domination and destruction. His face was now even paler than usual the skin drawn over his high cheekbones. His next question was phrased in such an alluring low reasonable voice that she felt little chills of premonition skitter along her ribs.

“Hold out your hand, Hermione.”

The rough darkening tone of his voice laced with violence, when he said her name made her insides quiver. Memories of when he had come to her and taken her crashed into her mind, making her nipples tighten and her lower belly clench in need. Even as he moved to delicately trace with deft grace the edge of that small ceremonial blade down over her collarbone. And as she felt the tip of the blade cut through the material of her robes, Hermione met his clear burning gaze frantically. Refusing to look away first somehow she held his frightening gaze. Even through the spelled drugs swimming in her system, she noticed his eyes darkening to a blood red causing the hairs on her arms to stand on end in primitive response.

Certainly the spelled drugs must be messing with her head because Hermione was certain for the briefest of moments she had seen his eye’s flicker with a quiet admiration.

But then that poker face flowed like water across his features, like a second skin. Hermione stared at him warily as he picked up her limp left hand and cradled it in his right hand before he looked at her coolly. And then he was saying something about unbreakable blood bonds and fate. Her eyes almost crossed in frustrated desire laced fear; Hermione felt her body loosing the fight with whatever had been in her tea. And then he spoke in a conversational tone and fear smashed through her tentative desire.

“So Hermione, was my diary an interesting experience for you?”

Her eyes widened as she found herself unable to control her bodies betraying response, making his expression turn from mildly enquiring to fierce cold triumph. That was when Hermione started to truly panic at the look in his eyes, as though she had given him the answer to a particularly pressing equation. Fear threatened to suffocate her dry throat as the blade flashed in her peripheral vision. She let out a strangled shriek of pain as with a practiced economic move he sliced the blade across her palm, so deeply she wondered the nerves in her hand were not severed.

She floundered like a captured fish in his grasp, while her brain yelled at her body to get the hell up and curse him to kingdom come. Or at the very least vomit all over his perfectly pressed dark school robes. Hermione’s blurry gaze watched the blood well up from the diagonal cut that was suddenly marring the paleness of Tom’s right hand. And then as if through a foggy haze of magic shimmering in the air around them, Hermione stared as he wrapped his right hand around her left. Somehow he managed to imbue the action with gentleness strangely foreign to his usual demeanor. He held her hand clearly waiting for something to happen and she blinked at him, and nothing happened.

Hermione sat there feeling bile rise in her throat along with the hysterical urge to laugh in his face at his faintly offended expression. The faint frown deepened in his eyes while he looked at her, like she was a particularly vexing puzzle. She felt hysteria rattle at the edges of her mind. Tom’s frown slowly turned fierce cold and dangerous. She desperately attempted to not fall over sideways, her vision started going spotty and Hermione realized she couldn’t feel her feet anymore.

The thought that she never should have accepted that damn diary off Ginny fluttered like a moth through her consciousness. Her wandering thoughts suddenly went scattering as she absently noticed something distinctly odd out of the corner of her eye. A thick jet black mist or fog like substance was rising lazily out of the stone floor underneath them. Slowly gathering speed as it seemed to reach for the two of them with tendril like fingers of smoke.

Tom retaining his hard grip on her stinging throbbing palm suddenly pushed her thighs open wider. As she stared at him he settled his hips against the edges of her kneecaps, so that he was now between her legs with an alarming finality. His free hand came to rest with a disturbingly familiar unconscious intimacy on her thigh. And the fingers of his right hand insinuated and entwined firmly with hers, it felt like he was almost entwining himself around her she thought foggily. The confused signals of sexual need, fear and drugged confusion being sent directly to her overworked brain made her head spin alarmingly.

The weird fog like complete darkness was spiraling around them now, and she looked at Tom in silent panic, only to meet his gaze. Barely visible she again witnessed that haunting vulnerability like a stain at the back of his eyes. The sight of that hint of emotion froze her already struggling brain cells into immobility.

And then the world imploded behind her eyelids, suddenly the only thing holding her down was that cool narrow masculine hand wrapped so tightly around hers. Their blood was mingling and burning, sending the strangest prickling sensations snake through her veins. Words floated past her conscious as if burnt into the very air between their bodies, as Hermione became lost to the here and now. One by one her senses gave up all recognition of what was up or down, left or right. And through it all Hermione felt the acid sharp dash of his surprise, as reality seemed to tilt on its axis.

…the balance must be kept…unbreakable…were there not you, I would be not too…Not one without the other…Surpassing death and soul…

Without warning a wave of uncontrollable absolute raw power smashed through her as though she was made of tissue paper. Making the few tendrils of intent Hermione had felt coming towards her from Tom’s mind in the past, seem like rain drops compared to the deepest ocean depths. She was lost inside the maelstrom of darkness when Hermione felt his shocked awareness brush her own fleetingly. Then, he was gone and she was held in the eye of the storm floating in nothingness. All she knew was absolute silence and Hermione felt her sense of self begin to dissolve at the edges like sugar in liquid.

Then abruptly she was falling, drowning under another person’s magic, something howled through her with such haunting loneliness and pain. Hermione was bombarded by sensations as they entered her, such icy darkness and endless stretches of loneliness.

Periods of lucidity and longer periods perilously close to madness and rage. Such hatred and such an all-consuming thirst for power and knowledge. But above all else a soul drenching power, such sweet darkness a voice whispered softly somewhere in Hermione’s mind. From a long distance she felt her whole body shudder, Hermione felt her mind tremble perilously close to snapping under the onslaught. Had her hands been free she strongly suspected her own hands would have clawed at her face, in a vain effort to ease the cold frigid burning sensations. Emotions not her own were settling inside Hermione, settling so deep down inside her that they found that place she never went. She felt him settle into that dark well Hermione refused to acknowledge.

As if from far away carried on an electrical wind Hermione heard the curl of whispered words. They snaked through her mind like an icy flutter of snow settling into her mind.

I have lied, I have tortured, and I have seen the future... I have killed...

And filtered like sand down into her soul words silently embedded themselves into the web like strands that made up her world,

And it all led me to you.

And then everything stopped as though a tap had turned off with abrupt finality. Like a gut churning nightmare Hermione’s awareness burst upon her in a rush. She slumped forwards helplessly barely hanging on to consciousness with mental fingernails. Hermione half expected the stone floor to smash her in the face as gravity took over. But instead she fell and was caught, held against a thin wiry muscled chest covered by prickly wool fabric. As the scent of wood pine smoke and something else reminiscent of moonless nights and sex tickled her nose. Hermione’s last coherent fleeting thought was that the thin arms cradling her were a hell of a lot stronger than his wiry frame indicated.

As a welcoming sweet darkness rushed up to engulf her, she felt that voice whispering inside her once more. The low almost hissing voice was telling her it was all right that he would take care of her.

Hermione realized as she fell head first into a black nothingness that the voice sounded an awful lot like Tom’s.



End this Part