Chapter Text
The orphanage—despite Riddle—has somehow become more pleasant.
Hostility is an expectation, something Hermione braces herself for any time she has to endure Bonnie—a reflex, based on her every experience with her up until now. Yet, over the past four days, things have changed.
Bonnie has abandoned her own nature.
Ever since the incident by the bathroom, she's used "please" and "thank you" more often than necessary. She's taken to asking Hermione about her day. She’s even started scrubbing the dining hall tables and the bathroom sinks, responsibilities Martha never did try to pass off to the others.
The old Bonnie snarled. The new Bonnie simpers.
“Do you want more mash, Hermione?” she asks, pushing her plate across the table. “I’ve had my fill, if you’re still hungry.”
“I’m fine, thanks.”
Agnes arches an eyebrow as Bonnie meekly pulls her plate back towards herself.
“You’ve been acting odd lately.”
“I’m not sure what you mean,” Bonnie replies at once. Apparently, she lied about having her fill too, because she sinks her spoon into the heap of potatoes and greedily rams it into her mouth. Hermione tries to hide her bemusement.
“First of all, you’ve been being much nicer to her,” Agnes points out. “You’re also signing up for chores? The Bonnie I know would never do that.”
“I’m just doing my share,” Bonnie says briskly.
“You’ve never wanted to do your share before.”
“That’s rich, coming from you! You’ve always gotten out of helping out around here!"
"Shall I just pass out, then? Work 'til I get dizzy and my legs give way?"
"Will the two of you shut up?" Meredith interrupts. "I think somethin's goin' on."
The bickering duo seethes in silence, but Meredith is right. Several children—no older than ten or eleven—point at a table, shouting for Martha. It's difficult to see past them, but a bone-chilling yowl rents the air, one Hermione recognizes from before.
Martha deserts her post by Riddle. He grins devilishly as he cuts into his serving of tinned fish.
"Out of the way!" she roars, breaking past the orphans' circle. Through the gap, Hermione sees Dennis, hammering a fist against the tabletop. "Back to your seats now, I'll have no scraps! If it goes cold, you’ll eat it cold!"
The children shuffle back to their seats, and Martha lays a comforting hand on Dennis's shoulder. The room has gone silent, save for the sound of busy silverware.
"Dennis," she says gently, "I'm right here. Will you stop hitting the table now, please?"
Dennis doesn't answer. He keeps a rhythm with each heavy bang, his puffy, red face screwed up like he wants to stop, but can't. Hermione glances at Riddle.
He wouldn't dare use an Unforgivable here—would he?
She watches him from the corner of her eye, searching for a tell. Voldemort is a master of wandless magic in her time, but to perform the Imperius Curse without a wand? It seems impossible, especially at Riddle’s age.
He keeps eating, his elbows jutting politely off the table, each bite dainty and refined, as though he's a guest in a pure-blood country-home, which, actually, may be where he’s learned such etiquette. It's nothing like the hurried chomping of the other orphans.
It also isn't like someone casting a difficult spell.
"NO!" Dennis shrieks.
It’s sudden. Martha jumps at the outburst, but Dennis ignores her, seizing the roots of his own hair with his fat, pink fingers. He rocks back and forth, muttering to himself like a patient from St. Mungos’s Janus Thickey Ward—one notably more insane than the rest.
Bonnie stiffens as they bear witness to his misery.
"Hurting yourself is no way to cope," Martha scolds. "You've only just grown back your hair from the last time, do you really want to be bald again?"
Ladley emerges from his corner in the shadows to stand behind Riddle. Unbothered, Riddle takes another small bite of snoek, not even wincing at the horrendous taste and texture. Somehow, that’s more impressive to Hermione than if he was casting the Imperius Curse.
"I mean it, Dennis! Stop it this instant!"
If Dennis hears her, he doesn't show any sign of it. He continues to pull, baring his buck teeth as he grinds down on his molars.
"'E's gonna yank it out if 'e keeps it up," Meredith says.
Martha stays firm. "Dennis, I'm asking you—"
Dennis yells. Amy rises from a nearby table. Bonnie's gaze follows her movement, and when Dennis opens his eyes for a split second, he watches her too—fixed on her, the only other person here who has experienced Tom Riddle the way that he has.
Hermione would kill to know what happened at that lake.
Dennis remains frozen as Amy faces him from across the room, silently begging him to stop with wide, doe eyes.
He's too far gone.
He lets out a sudden, terrible wail and beats his palms against his skull like a war-drum, deaf to Martha's shouts as she tries to grab him. She really doesn't stand a chance. Dennis is a large boy, and he's flailing everywhere, nearly catching her in the chin with his elbow—then, her nose. She shields her face, and he bellows like an animal, slamming a fist down onto the table again, so recklessly that he flips the lip of his plate and knocks it to the floor.
It shatters into a hundred pieces. Fish and potatoes land in an ugly pile on the linoleum. Amy gasps and covers her mouth.
"That was an awful lot of food to waste," mutters Agnes. "Martha'd be raging if that was any of us."
Hermione frowns and glances at Riddle again. Ladley pulls up his sagging underpants just behind him, then taps Riddle on the shoulder. Riddle looks up at him with something between apathy and subtle irritation.
Martha pays them no mind. She’s still attempting to calm Dennis down many paces away, wrapping her arms around him as he wriggles in her grip. She’s barely able to encircle his middle.
"Okay, dear," she coos. "It's time to calm down now, yes? Ouch! Be still, boy! I can't help you if you knock me on my backside!"
Hermione’s attention zips back to Riddle. Ladley is wrenching him out of his seat by his upper arm now, so hard that he could easily pull it out of its socket. Tom remains expressionless as Ladley drags him out of the dining hall.
Half his meal is left uneaten.
Half of Dennis’s is on the floor.
Tom isn’t at dinner, nor at lunch the next day.
“Seems like they learnt their lesson about letting him eat with us,” Bonnie says, nodding in Ladley and Martha's direction. Martha hovers over Dennis’s shoulder, and Ladley stands in his usual corner, his nose wrinkled as though he may have had the dissatisfaction of smelling himself. “He was still locked up when I came through. Serves him right."
“But he didn’t do anything,” Hermione points out. “He was only eating.”
Bonnie reddens and looks down at her plate, embarrassed—yet for once, Meredith seems to agree with her.
“Don’t matter if ‘e did anythin’ or not. Dennis can’t be in the same room as ‘im—not for long, anyway. Loses ‘is ‘ead, ‘e does.”
Agnes nods along with her, and Hermione can understand why. Reprehensible actions should have consequences, and there is little doubt Riddle did something terrible to Dennis and Amy, all those years ago. However, otherizing children only isolates them, and she has a good idea of what Tom Riddle does when he’s left to his devices.
Under lock and key, he thinks. He plots. He calculates precisely what he must do to rise to power as Lord Voldemort.
He’s dangerous alone.
“Well, I for one don’t think he’s going to act any better if he’s punished every time someone gets upset,” Hermione says. She stands and grabs her bowl. “In fact, I have a feeling it makes him worse.”
“Where are you going?” Agnes asks.
“I’m going to go visit him. Maybe if someone treats him with a shred of decency, he'll stop making enemies of us.”
All three girls look up at her in horror.
“Hermione, you can’t,” Bonnie cautions.
“Doesn’t look like anyone’s going to stop me,” retorts Hermione. Martha is still well distracted by Dennis, patting him on the back as he shovels in his second helping of stew; Ladley is making his way to Paul and John Maiser, his eyes locked on them with such hatred that nothing short of an air raid could prevent him from spouting his rebuke. Two perfect diversions—neither to be wasted.
Hermione seizes the opportunity.
“Hermione!” Agnes and Bonnie hiss.
Meredith shakes her head and mutters something as well, but Hermione is halfway across the dining hall, unable to hear her through the low lunchtime chatter.
Her prediction was right: Nobody stops her as she slips into the quiet hallway. She looks to her right and to her left—for Cole or loose children, or anyone else, for that matter—but she’s wholly alone, and so she continues, anxiously anticipating the inevitable darkness she’ll feel in the presence of Riddle, and for the hours that follow, when that ache in the pit of her gut still festers.
The walk is too short. She hasn’t had enough time to work out exactly what she plans to say or how she's going to say it. Now, she's parked in front of his door, her words like ash in her mouth.
Inside, he lays across his bed, his gaze fixed on the ceiling.
With all things considered, he’s impressively groomed, his curls swept impeccably, even with his hands intertwined behind his head. His shirt is fully buttoned, and he wears leather shoes that hang off the end of his mattress, shined so well that they glint under the flickering lights. If Hermione didn’t know better, she may have thought he’d even had his trousers pressed.
The locks remain, clasped tightly across the door and the jamb.
Softly, she knocks.
Riddle’s head whips in her direction. There’s something feral about the way he does it, like a cornered animal that’s heard a limb break beneath heavy boots. But upon seeing Hermione, he must realize he’s the hunter here, for a predatory smile stretches across his lips and he swings his long legs over the edge of the bed. There, he stays. It’s almost as though he's waiting for her to do something interesting, to give him an excuse so he can stalk towards her and lunge in for the kill, to take out the floor from beneath her very feet.
She has no doubt he could.
Still, she holds fast onto the bowl and schools her expression. The locks wouldn’t be an obstacle, if she could use her wand, but she can’t, so they are.
You knew they were there, she tells herself. Why did you come all the way over here?
Over the years, she’s grown too used to doing magic, perhaps. After all, she still finds herself reaching for her wand at minor inconveniences when she’s cleaning, or things that bother her, like the wonky eye Agnes still hasn’t fixed. She even considers it now: Maybe she’s been wrong to hide her talents. Maybe if Riddle sees her perform a spell, he’ll let her grow closer. Maybe it’s precisely how she learns more about him.
It’s a silly justification.
In the end, it’s too dangerous. The Ministry still lingers in the back of her mind, and if Riddle knows what she is, there’s a good chance he’ll perceive her as an unnecessary risk, rather than an ally—someone he needs to dispose of to ensure he succeeds.
Instead, she offers an awkward wave through the window.
He stands and approaches the door. He looks down at her with lidded eyes.
“Shouldn’t you be at lunch?”
It’s a question he knows the answer to, and it’s not really the question he’s asking.
“I erm—I was thinking of you, being stuck in here,” she tells him. The words are thick and bitter as they slither off her tongue, and the worst thing of all is that they’re true; she thinks of little else, other than Tom Riddle. He is her entire purpose, her reason for existing in this place and in this time. How couldn’t she think of him?
“Is that so?” he asks.
“Yes, I thought you might be hungry.” Hermione holds up the bowl and sighs. “But I’m feeling awfully stupid now, because I’m realizing there’s no way for me to actually give this to you.”
He examines the bowl through the glass. “Pity. I was so craving Mary’s infamous slop.”
Hermione laughs. “You know, she really ought to rename it that.”
His darkness clouds her insides, and it’s starting to feel like her darkness too. What does it make her, if she jokes with the devil?
The boy before her is the reason people like her die. He murders her best friend. Bonnie was right. If Martha is starving him, it’s what he deserves.
He’s not Lord Voldemort—not yet, she reminds herself. He’s a boy, and he’s being treated worse than an animal. Animals bite back. Give him a reason to think twice about it.
Sometimes, there is no obvious right thing to do. War taught her this the hard way.
She clears her throat. “Anyway, I erm—I hadn’t seen Martha bring you any meals, so I assumed . . .” She trails off, completely aware that she must sound bizarre, obsessive even.
“That she hadn’t been feeding me?” he finishes for her, amused. “Fascinating that you noticed. Most people in this place can barely tie their own shoes, let alone pick up on what’s happening to those around them.”
“I grew up on the street,” Hermione says quickly, avoiding looking at him, because she still gets the sense that he can see right through her, read her like the books she knows he consumes, the same as she does. “I had to learn to keep a keen eye.”
“A street girl that speaks the king’s English?”
“I speak no differently than you.”
“Because Cole taught me.” He gives her a scrutinizing look. “I daresay you and her are the only ones that would even think to bring me a meal . . . The others would spend their days counting my ribs ‘til I withered away."
“I doubt they’d be that cruel.”
She knows they would be. She understands why too.
“They would, but what is cruelty other than being human?” says Riddle. He pauses, then taps the glass. “I think I’d like that slop now. I am famished, after all.”
Confused, Hermione furrows her brow. “I’m sorry, like I said, I can’t—”
“You can’t, or you won’t?”
“I can’t,” she insists. “I’d be happy to, of course—that’s why I came here—but short of nicking the keys or breaking the window, there's no way for me to open the door . . . I can tell Cole what's going on, but that's really all I can do."
The darkness swells inside of her and all around her, descending on her like an unkindness of ravens. Tom Riddle leads their hierarchy.
“Let me summarize the situation, so I can try to make sense of it . . . You’re the type of girl that notices Martha hasn’t left a room, and that I’m not in that room—yet you forget about over a half-dozen locks you see every day?” he asks slyly. “Come now, Hermione, am I to believe that?”
“I didn’t forget them, I just didn’t think about them.”
“Which is just as unbelievable,” he replies airily.
“What’s unbelievable about me trying to be polite?" Hermione asks at once. "I was only worried about the fact there was someone potentially being starved, excuse me for my poor planning but I hadn’t exactly thought through every minute detail!”
"Most would consider those locks a rather important detail, but maybe for you they aren't . . . I have a feeling a simple lock wouldn’t usually stop you." He speaks in purrs, murderous and intoxicating all at the same time. A lesser witch might fall for it. "In fact, I’m almost certain you've gotten past them before—more than once, I'd wager."
Something lurches in Hermione's stomach. He knows her secret. She can feel it. He's dug his way under her skin and into her brain. It isn't Legilimency—she doesn't think so, at least—but something else entirely. Unmatched intuition, maybe.
All she can do is hold her stance. She sets the bowl of soup by the door.
"Martha hates wasting food," she says resolutely. "She'll probably give it to you on her way through."
Riddle doesn't respond, and Hermione doesn’t wait for him to. Her chest is tight as she hurries back to the dining hall and finds her seat with the other girls, who pummel her with questions she refuses to answer.
She never should have left in the first place. She wasn’t prepared, not for him, anyway, and having talked to him twice now, she’s not sure she ever will be.