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fatesundress · 11 months

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⭑ for the love that used to be here. tom riddle x reader

summary. you and tom are the only muggle-borns in slytherin, until one day he isn’t.

tags. angst, afab reader who is referred to as a witch a few times and rooms with girls but i don't think i ever use she/her pronouns or say the word girl/woman, biggest warning is that this is SO long (idk what compelled me to write a year 1 – post-hogwarts fic but here we are twenty thousand damn words later), blood purity and bigotry, dumbledore is greatly offended by the bonding of two orphans until he can capitalise on it, frequent wwii mentions (specifically the blitz), book clerk tom, MURDERER TOM… ministry reader, kissing, smut once they’re 21/22 May all the minors in the room exit at once, more angst, sad ending kinda, me spreading a very personal and very nefarious tom riddle agenda that is canon to ME but probably only like two other people

note. i need a shower and an exorcism after writing this shit. i'm exhausted. i don't even remember half of it. but i'm also SO stoked, this is my little (very large, frankly) 100 followers celebration! i've only been on here for about a month and the love has been so crazy so thank you mwah mwah mwah ♡

word count. 21.8k (i know... i KNOW)

You learn quickly that your shade of green is not the same as theirs. The rest of them are emeralds, even at that age — they glitter with their parent’s polish. You are flotsam, sea-sick, envy green; the putrid boiling stuff that brews in your cauldron when you look away for a second too long, and, really, it’s more of a stain than a colour at all. There is a fraction of a second where you find something powerful in that. You are not an easy thing to remove. And then it’s gone, because they want to so badly.

You learn, with a bit less tact, that you doesn’t actually mean just you; that it’s you and him whether you like it or not.

He evidently does not.

“It has to be completely fine,” Tom says to you in Potions, his voice small then but just as practised.

You narrow your eyes. “‘Scuse me?”

“I said the powder has to be completely fine.”

“I heard you completely fine. I know how to read.”

He stares blankly at you before returning to his own station, and that’s that.

It isn’t unheard of for muggle-borns to be sorted into Slytherin, so you’ve been told, but one glance around your common room and you can see it’s pretty damn rare.

There’s Tom Riddle, there’s you, and there’s a seventh-year girl whose knuckles are always white like she’s spent so long with her hands balled into fists that they don’t know how to do anything else. Tom Riddle is a prat, the girl is too old and unapproachable even if she wasn’t, and you are very good at being alone.

That decides it. Flotsam still floats.

Everything is — fine. It’s fine for months; you have no one and need no one and sometimes you catch a jinx in the back of Charms that zips your mouth shut or bends a foot the wrong way (a cruel reminder of how much more these people know than you) and your broom occasionally pivots so sharply the Flying professor has to stop you from careening into a wall and breaking enough bones for a week’s worth of Skele-Gro, but it’s fine.

…It’s just that he’s insufferable.

The boy is eleven years old and he speaks like he’s stealing glances at an invisible lexicon between every word, more refined than any of the orphans you grew up with which makes you wonder which sort he’s surrounded by, and you take it upon yourself to theorise in passing if you could ever scare him badly enough his real voice would slip and he might just appear human for once.

Only it becomes clear when you’re stirring awake in the Hospital Wing after a mysterious bout of dragon pox (conveniently, all the pureblood children developed an immunity after catching it young) has rendered you bed-ridden and pockmarked, that you don’t think anything can scare Tom Riddle. He’s suffering just as well in the bed beside yours to keep the contagion to the two of you, and he’s all cold, eddied rage under sallow skin and beetling bones.

“They’re going to kill you,” he says after three days of silence, when the room is dusted in moonlight so thin it’s like squinting through cinema noise or mohair fluff to try to see him.

You blink at the vague shape of him. “What?”

“If you don’t hurt them back, eventually, they’ll just kill you.”

In hindsight, it’s an assumption so hastily bleak only a scared child could make it.

I want to hurt them, you try to say, but for what follows you cannot: I want to hurt them but I’m not good enough to do it.

You roll over and pretend to sleep, and in the morning, you hurt them anyway.

It’s Avery who’s unlucky enough to be the first to test you when you’re three assignments behind in Transfiguration, still a bit groggy from your last dose of Gorsemoor Elixir, and actually, physically green. He tugs your hair and stings your cheek with the promise of “bringing a bit of colour back to your face” and it’s sort of funny how banal it is compared to the other transgressions you’ve been dealt — that this is the thing that makes you bare your teeth, grip your wand in a hand that still can’t hold half of it, and send Avery flying across the room with a Knockback Jinx.

Tom sits with you in the Great Hall for dinner that night, and he never really stops.

You practise spells by the Black Lake between classes and he’s anything but kind about the ordeal, but you teach each other. You end your days with singe prints and sore wrists and you often take more damage than he does, but sometimes, as spring settles in with warm tones (apple and jade and moss — all the greens you’d never imagined), you leave with less bruises than he does. It hardly feels like friendship. It feels much more like purpose.

When summer comes you don’t write to him, and you don’t expect he will either. You don’t suppose you’ve actually written a letter in your life. Instead you try new wand movements under your quilt every night and wait for August’s departure on a big red train.

You sit together when the day does come. He asks you if you’ve been practising. You frown and tell him you’re not allowed to use magic outside of school.

Second year is nothing but monotonous, antiquated theoretics. Most everyone complains. You don’t see why they should — they’re already aeons ahead of you — but that means you finally have a chance to catch up in your less-than-school-sanctioned meetings with Tom while the rest remain practically stationary.

Deputy Headmaster and Transfiguration professor Albus Dumbledore is imperceptibly less soft with you than he was last year when you make the apparently poor decision to sit beside Tom on the first day, and you file the subtle shift in demeanour into some mental cabinet to review later.

You find workarounds with the librarian, Madam Palles, inclined to sympathy for the poor, orphaned muggle-borns to grant relatively unfettered daytime access to the Restricted Section so long as you keep it tidy and none of the books leave the library. That’s where things get a bit more interesting.

For a month you remain innocuous as can be. You browse through rare historical tombs and foreign biographies that would charge more galleons than you can conceptualise, and you never leave so much as a tea stain on the parchment. You smile at the Madam when you return the key each night, and walk back to the dungeons with your hands behind your back. It is, of course, totally unrelated that a month is what it takes for Tom to master the third-year curriculum’s Doubling Charm. An entirely separate affair when you meet him in the most secluded alcove of the library, slip him the key, and stifle your grin as he duplicates it perfectly.

You discover Christmas break is your favourite time of the year. Nearly all the purebloods go home. The Slytherin dormitories are effectively halved.

It’s two weeks of earnest, uninterrupted work and sleep without fear of waking up with jelly legs or whiskers.

Madam Palles, most nights, makes a slight, drowsy effort of searching the library for leftover students before she casts the lights out and closes the door. Then, it belongs to you and Tom.

You’re splayed rather ridiculously over one of the big reading chairs on Christmas Eve, Lore of Godelot in hand, enthralled by a chapter detailing his controlled use of Fiendfyre through the power of the Elder Wand.

Tom is cross-legged and sat straight, his brows furrowed in concentration.

“What’ve you got?” you ask, leaning over to answer your own question.

Tom as good as rolls his eyes, holding up the book to give you an easier look.

“Magick Moste Evile?” You scrunch your nose. “Bit much, don’t you think?”

“It’s the stuff they’ll never teach us.”

“I wonder why.”

He steals a glance at your own book and smiles in that smug way that makes you want to slap him.

“What, Tom?”

He shrugs. “You might want to know you’re reading stories about the author.”

You look down. Lore of — Godelot wrote Magick Moste Evile?

It shouldn’t really be surprising. Three chapters ago your book was recounting his months in Yugoslavia grave-robbing magical burial sites.

“Whatever,” you mumble, “It’s just a biography. Least I’m not reading the words out of his mouth.”

“Well, they’d be out of his quill.”

“Oh my God, Tom, shut up.”

All good things must come to an end. Term resumes and your hackles are back up.

Abraxas Malfoy, Antonin Dolohov, Walburga Black and the best of the worst of your house have returned, sleek-haired and insatiable and deranged, truly, in such a manner that you don’t think you can be blamed for the instinct you feel every time you pass them to lunge like a wild predator or run like wild prey. All Tom does, though (and so you follow, because he’s standing with you and who has ever done that?) is meet their gazes with equal assuredness. He never seems bothered. He never seems animal. You are still all hammering heart and heavy lungs, and you are learning not to see the world through the eyes of someone who’s only ever had their fists to fight. You have magic, you remember. You’re good at it. You could hurt them, if you really wanted.

Not much is different that summer than the last. The war is hard. The food is hard to chew. You chip a tooth. You’re too afraid to fix it with the Trace on you, but you still smile because you will, and everyone seems put off by that. What is there to smile about?

You suppose, for them, it’s a question with few answers.

For you — you’re back on a big red train musing about the functions of muggle warfare with Tom Riddle, chucking a useless card from a chocolate frog out the window and moaning about how you wasted the sickle you found under your seat.

He’s gotten very good at ignoring your theatrics and going right back to whatever it was he was talking about. And you note, unrelatedly, he almost looks like he’s learned how to open the windows at Wool’s. (You dare not suggest he’s doing something so ludicrous as sitting in the sun too, but this is a start.)

Dippet, or the Minister, or whoever it is that’s in charge of the practicality of the curriculum, has become fractionally less stupid in the last three months.

You don’t have to rely on nights in the Restricted Section or weekends at the Black Lake to actually learn something anymore. Of course, without the assistance of those illicit extracurriculars, you wouldn’t be able to match up to your peers the way you are this year, but it’s nice to duel with dummies instead of motioning your wand vaguely over a desk, and you and Tom still climb the notice boards in rapid succession.

They hate you for it. One of your roommates makes a pointed effort each night to glare at you from her bed like those jelly legs are back on the table, Orion Black (two years younger but just as nasty as his cousin) nearly trips you on your way to Divination, Abraxas Malfoy develops what you think borders on obsession with Tom, and for once it feels almost offhand to not care about any of it.

You’re beginning to think even at its best, Hogwarts is remarkably insufficient. This leads you to books mercifully unrestricted so you can read about a few of the other magical schools for comparison. Beauxbatons is renowned for providing most of the worlds alchemical developments, Uagadou’s early propensity for wandless magic makes it unfathomably more practical than Hogwarts, Durmstrang (though you scoff at their violent anti-muggle sentiment) teaches the Dark Arts as something beneficial rather than unforgivable, and — what do you learn here? Even with the hair’s-breadth of magical leniency you’ve been allowed this year, it’s no surprise so few recognizable names in wizarding history are Hogwarts alumni.

“Let me have a look at that,” you say to Tom one evening, when he’s peering once more over the pages of Magick Moste Evile. He’s a purveyor of knowledge in all forms, but he always seems to come back to Godelot in the end.

He raises a brow, handing it to you like your intrigue doubles his. “No more reservations?”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself. I’m only curious.”

“Curiosity—”

“Killed the damn cat, I know.” You glare at him through the pages. “I think that’s you, in this case though, since you’re the one in love with the bloody thing.”

He shakes his head as he reclines in the low light of the Restricted Section, muttering something that sounds like “ridiculous,” or “querulous,” or something else unimaginably fucking annoying.

You might be wrong. Retract your last quip and expunge it. If Tom’s in love with any book, it’s the behemoth dictionary he’s been spitting stupid adjectives out of since he was eleven.

But Godelot’s musings on the Dark Arts are fascinating enough that you can understand the appeal. He’s no wordsmith, and you appreciate that in a way you’re sure Tom deems regrettable, but his points are straightforward but thoughtful in such a way you can read in them how he was guided by the Elder Wand through everything he did. There’s a stream-of-consciousness to them. Something doctrinal you’re surprised to enjoy for all the obligatory English creed they washed your mouth with at the orphanage.

“Find what you’re looking for?” Tom asks, combing with little interest through the tomb you’d put down in favour of his.

“I’m not looking for anything. I’m just…” You sigh. It’s almost painful to say. “I think you were right, and — oh, shut up, don’t look at me like that — I don’t think we’re learning anything here. Not really; not as much as they do at other schools.”

“Of course,” he says blankly. “Hence this.”

This — restricted books and furtive duels — should not be necessary.

“You know that’s not gonna be enough. For the rest of them, maybe, but not us.”

He tenses how he always does at the reminder of his difference. And you get it. Sometimes in moments like these you forget the reason you’re here in the first place. It isn’t just the rebellious divertissement of two academically eager students, it’s… survival. What future do you have as a penniless orphan in wartorn London? What future do you have as a muggle-born Slytherin who’s apt with a wand when there are a thousand more your age, just as skilled and twice as pure?

It isn’t enough to be as good as them. You have to best them, and you have to do it forever.

The night stumbles into an exhaustive silence because you both know it’s true and it’s a bit too heavy right now. The answer isn’t in this room. Just you. Just him. So you sit in the dark and you stare through that muffled nighttime noise playing tricks on your eyes. The worst of the world can wait until morning.

The worst of the world has impeccable timing.

A fault of both sides of the coin; the muggle world is a travesty and the wizarding world is just a bit fucking late, really.

So there’s the newspaper. It’s October first and the date reads September tenth. School owls are a joke and you can’t afford anything better.

And it’s a dirty, ashen grey. It smudges your green if you ever had it at all. You were born to this and you will return to it always.

BOMB’S HAVOC IN CROWDED PUBLIC SHELTER

MOTHERS AND CHILDREN AMONG THE CASUALTIES

DAMAGE CONSIDERABLE, BUT SPIRITS UNBROKEN

All you can hope to do is pass the paper to Tom and wonder without words what you’ll go home to.

The answer is very little when the summer clouds your vision with dust and you stand dumbly with your suitcase in front of nothing at all. You’d tried your best until your departure to keep up with muggle news, but it had remained, routinely, a month behind with the owls. By the time June arrived you were still holding your breath through May. Tom had attempted to reason with Dippet for summer lodgings at the school but you were both denied in light of the exquisite mercy — the bombs have stopped! The Blitz has ended! Go back to the aftermath and make do with the craters.

It’s a bit ironic that Tom’s orphanage survived and yours didn’t. At least you can finally see what all the fuss is about.

In truth, it’s more strange than anything. You feel unreasonably like you’re impeding on a part of him that has never belonged to you (if any of him does); that place where you intersect but never draw attention to. You remind yourself you had no choice in the matter. The system puts you where it wants to, and these days the options are slim. But it’s — the walls are amber-black tile and plaster, lined with sanitary-smelling hospital beds and a cupboard per room. Per room, you think; you’ve got one of those now, and with only one girl to share it with.

You figure the reason for the extra space is probably not one you want to know.

Anyway, you don’t actually see Tom for two days. The caretakers bring you a tray of dinner that’s vaguely warm and a bit too salty and you sleep off the debris you think you breathed in that morning, half-sated and sun-tired.

But then you do see him, and he’s in these funny uniform shorts and a thick blazer and your greeting is an offhand joke about the scandal of his knees that he doesn’t seem to appreciate. He eyes your muggle clothes while you wait for your own set and you know you really don’t have any room to judge.

He doesn’t, or at least doesn’t say he minds your relocation.

You spend half the summer waking up in the middle of the night to acquaint yourselves with the London tube stations, and the other half in whatever crevices of the orphanage you aren’t harangued by Mrs Cole every five seconds, which are far and few between. She seems to have decided fourteen is old enough an age to worry about your intentions unchaperoned, like it’s the bloody 1800’s, and admonishes you and Tom relentlessly despite only ever finding you quietly buried in useless books.

You begin to miss Madam Palles and her invaluable pity. Everyone’s an orphan here. No one’s sorry.

“What’s his deal?” you ask one stuffy afternoon, reclining in your creaking seat to prop your legs on the desk.

Tom knocks them off (he’s so well-mannered that you sometimes push these little gestures of impropriety just to bother him) and glances at the target of your question. Some broad, blond boy who skitters down the corridor a shade paler than he arrived. You’ve yet to properly introduce yourself to anyone you don’t have to, so names are muddy when you try to apply them to faces.

He shrugs, but there’s a flash of something in his expression you’re fascinated to realise is unfamiliar. “He’s an imbecile.”

“...Riiiiight, but that isn’t a proper answer.”

You smile. Legs return to table. Timeworn Oxfords muddy the surface. Tom scowls.

“There was an altercation last year,” he says tersely, “he’s rather fixated on the matter.”

“An altercation.”

“Very good, that is what I said.”

You narrow your eyes and he sweeps your legs off the desk again, gaze catching the unmistakable ribbon of an old bullied scar on your shin.

“And I suppose you’re above such incidents,” he muses.

You cross your arms and huff. He always wins games like these.

You’re grateful when you return to Hogwarts in one piece after your final night of summer is spent underground, and the certainty of knowing where you’ll rest your head for the next ten months cannot be understated.

But the worst thing has happened, and you blame it on the flicker of a moment where you missed Madam Palles like it was some jubilant, accidental curse to ever miss anyone. A foreign thing you remind yourself never to do again.

She’s only gone and jinxed the locks to the Restricted Section so they cry like newborn Mandrakes when Tom’s replica key clicks in place.

For a second you both stand there looking stupidly at each other. Getting caught was a fear two years ago; you’d almost forgotten it was still possible.

Tom is quicker to collect himself. He grabs you by the arm and casts a Disillusionment Charm, and you don’t burst running out of the library like two blurry suncatchers reflecting the candlelight as your instinct heeds; you cling to the shelves and you slither silently to the door. (You’ll make a joke about it when you can breathe.)

Madam Palles the Traitor comes heaving into the library in her nightgown, a blinding blue light baubled at the end of her wand, and it’s really just theatrical at this point to use Lumos bloody Maxima when the basic spell would do the job just fine.

“Has she suspected us the whole time?” you say on gasp once you’ve made it to the dungeons.

“Perhaps someone else has,” Tom suggests.

“What? Malfoy?”

You think it’s a good first guess. It could have been any of the Slytherins, upon consideration, but Malfoy seemed most fixated on Tom last year and it wouldn’t surprise you to learn he’d been observant enough to follow you to the library and notice you don’t leave with the other students.

But Tom quashes the idea. “I’m doubtful. Malfoy is attentive, but Madam Palles is hardly partial to him.” (He had, in second year, set one of her books on fire while studying offensive spells.) “I suspect it was someone with more influence.”

Only no one has more influence than Abraxas Malfoy. The rest of the Slytherins follow him like lost pups. But then Tom might mean —

“A professor?”

“It may be.” He says it like he’s already decided his suspect.

He is, as always, and ever-infuriatingly, correct.

It’s that file you tucked away for later, reoccurring when you return to Transfiguration in the morning like a second epiphany: Dumbledore.

He assigns the term’s seating arrangements, which he’s never done before, and there’s something in his tone when he pairs you with Rosier that feels intentionally like not pairing you with Tom. You don’t think it’s paranoia clouding your better judgement, and by the way Tom’s gaze hardens as he takes his seat beside Malfoy, neither does he.

Dumbledore is suspicious for a number of reasons. He disappears for weeks at a time. The Prophet writes articles on his sightings in Austria and France like he’s an endling beast. He’s being sighted in Austria and France — two notable countries in Grindelwald’s ongoing war. Perhaps ancillary, you’ve decided the charmed glass repositories he uses to hold his old artefacts are the same ones encasing the least permissible books in the Restricted Section. And if that isn’t paranoia (which, you’re willing to admit, it may be) then you assume he has them so proudly on display because he wants you to know.

You consider it a warning.

Tom does not.

“Just give it up,” you hiss over a game of wizard’s chess, “I bet we’ve read every book in there twice already anyway.”

His jaw ticks as the sole indicator of his annoyance, and he takes your rook. You scowl.

“Tom, that man thinks you’re devil-spawn. You know he’s just waiting for an opportunity to catch you doing something wrong.”

“So?”

It sounds so petulant you think he’s been possessed by his eleven-year-old self. Then you think he was a lot wiser at eleven.

“So?” You make an aggressive move with your knight. “So don’t give him one!”

He stares at the board and his breath is just a trace sharper and you hate that you know him like this and no one else. You wonder if he knows you like that too, but resolve with ease that he does not. You’re hard frowns and lewd jokes and trousers torn at the knee to bare scars with stories you wish you could forget. There’s no mystery there. Tom is nothing but — gordian knots and fixed expressions and little patterns to learn like the rules of this stupid game between you. You must know Tom Riddle by every atom or not at all. And that isn’t a choice, really. You’ve never known anyone else.

“Are you stupid, Tom?”

You glance at the board. He’s got Check. A terrible, true answer.

“No,” you finish. “Then don’t act like it.”

Your king glances at you and you nod. He falls. The game is resigned.

Tom acts stupid.

Dumbledore knows.

It all happens very fast.

You strike Tom harder in the arm with Confringo than is likely necessary that night, and he returns the favour with a Knockback Jinx that thrusts you into the shallows of the Black Lake.

You gasp. The cold water feels like it’s swallowing you whole when it strikes, an envelope sealed around you and licked shut for good measure. Everything holds to you, and it’s fucking November. Your senses are so overwhelmed that you forget to murder Tom the instant you sink in. You forget to do much of anything.

You wade trembling out of the lake when sense returns and Tom huffs, peeling off his robe to treat the burn on his arm.

“You—idi—iot,” you mutter, trying to find the incantation for a warming charm but the words get stuck between your chattering teeth. “You stole a re… stricted book.”

Tom glares daggers at you between his poor healing job and you scowl, mincing through the grass and grabbing his arm. “Fucking imbec-cile…”

You’ve done enough damage that if he were anyone else you’d be proud of yourself, and somehow, simultaneously, if he were anyone else you’d be able to manage a pinch of guilt. But he’s Tom, and you know him by every atom, so you cannot be proud, and he’s Tom — he retaliated by tossing you in freezing water and now your clothes are clinging sodden and heavy to every inch of you, so you certainly can’t be guilty either.

“I borrowed it,” he says tightly. As if that means anything at all. And then he takes his robe and drapes it spiritlessly over your shoulders. “You could attempt communication before curses.”

“I could attempt communication,” you scoff, uttering a charm to partially close the gash on Tom’s arm, “Fucking h-hypocrite. I did communicate. You lied.”

“I —”

“Omitted information? Withheld the truth? Watch your mouth or I’ll steal your fucking dictionary, Riddle.”

You swear a great deal when you’re cold and mad, apparently.

“I won’t be caught.” His calm is infuriating. “It would hardly earn expulsion regardless.”

“It doesn’t matter! He knows it’s you! He was staring at you all class!”

“So nothing novel then.”

“D’you want me to blast you again?”

His lips form a flat line. No. That’s what you thought.

You sigh, clutching his robes in your fists to quell your trembling. “What’d you take, anyway? We never touch the encased stuff.”

That is, you assume, why Dumbledore was vexed enough about the whole thing to mention it in class today. A highly valuable book has gone missing, from a repository you dare conclude belongs to him, and he has to pretend all the while not to know it’s Tom who took it. You are out of the question. Theirs is some delicate vendetta you can’t begin to unfurl.

“Nothing anyone should miss,” Tom says, a complete non-answer as he stops to murmur a warming charm you could probably manage yourself by now.

“Tom.”

“It was an encyclopaedia. It’s entirely in Runes. I suspect it will take months for me to decipher.”

“God’s sake,” you groan. He really is exhausting. “I think Dumbledore’l take his chances and loot your dorm before that happens.”

Tom wipes a stray droplet of water from your cheek. His fingers are soft. “We should return. You look half-drowned.”

“I am half-drowned, dickhead.”

And you accost him in hushed tones the whole walk back. Runes, Tom, really? Threw me in the damn lake over a Runic Encyclopaedia? He accosts you just the same; You burned me first.

It does, in fact, take Tom months to decipher the Runes, and he’s quite secretive about it. He won’t let you see the book, won’t tell you what it’s about, won’t indulge your queries on how far he’s gotten or if it’s worth the way Dumbledore bores his eyes into the pair of you in the Great Hall with nothing but the glass of his spectacles to soften his censure. You consider — well — you consider taking your chances and looting his dormitory.

The day everything changes starts the same as any.

You muse over breakfast about muggle news and how the way Tom holds his wand when he casts defensive spells is too sharp when it should be circular. He argues. You soften the criticism by telling him his offensive magic is stellar but you’ll always beat him in defence if he doesn’t swallow his damn pride and listen to you for once. (So, really, you soften it very little.) He doesn’t take Divination so you don’t see him until Herbology that afternoon and he’s silent enough during the hour you share with your wormwood plant that you know he’s done it sometime between breakfast and now.

Tom has cracked the book.

It’s late spring and the night takes longer to settle than it did in the winter. Errant sunbeams still sparkle on the water when you meet him by the lake, and it’s warm enough to forgo a coat.

“Are you going to tell me what it’s about now?” you ask without preamble, arms crossed over your chest as he approaches.

He hands you the book like it’s worth something to you without his explanation, but you’re intelligent enough to gather something from the illustrations of two twined snakes embroidering the cover.

“I should have suspected it sooner,” Tom says before you can comment. “By the way Dumbledore acted when I told him… I should have known he would have wanted to keep it from me.”

“Tom, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“It’s an Encyclopaedia on Parseltongue and its known speakers.”

You flip through the pages and none of it means anything. “Parseltongue?”

“The language of serpents,” Tom supplies, and the two of you walk along the edge of the forest. “It’s almost exclusively hereditary.”

“Okay, so, what — you’re trying to learn it anyway?”

“I have no need.”

You frown. “You… you already know it.”

“I always have,” he says, and there’s something almost unrestrained in his voice. He’s proud in a new light, and it takes you a moment to understand and you’re not sure why exactly it makes your heart sink, but —

“You’re not muggle-born.”

“No, I’m not. And Dumbledore knows.”

“So, he —” You try not to sound crushed because why should you be? Why should it matter that he isn’t some exact reflection of you? He’s at your side, he’s still there, he’ll always be there — “How does he know?”

“When he came to Wool’s to inform me I'd been accepted at Hogwarts. I hadn’t known anything, certainly not that speaking to snakes is emphatically rare, so I asked him. He said it was ‘not a peculiar gift.’ Perhaps to keep my interest at a minimum.”

“Why would he lie?”

“Because it isn’t just that I’m of magical blood. I’m a descendant of Salazar Slytherin.”

You can’t be faulted for laughing. It’s not often Tom makes jokes, let alone funny ones.

“That’s good, Tom. Morgana used to have tea with my great-great-hundredth-great-grandmother, so that works out nice.”

He sighs, taking your hand and leading you further into the woods.

“Are you trying to murder me?”

“I might.”

“You’d be the first suspect.”

“No, I wouldn’t. You’ve far too many enemies.”

Not by choice, you start to scold, and then he stops, not so far into the Forbidden Forest that you’re afraid, but far enough you understand this is not something he’d chance showing you in the open.

He closes his eyes and whispers, and it’s — decidedly not English. And you know the sound of a few other languages, at least; this doesn’t sound like words at all. His consonants are pointed, his S’s stretched, the syllables repetitive but separated by a difference in cadence someone less perceptive might not notice.

It shouldn’t be surprising; it’s exactly what he told you, but it startles you how much it reminds you of a snake.

“Tom?” you murmur, unsure at the prospect of speaking some ancient, unknown language into the air of the Forbidden Forest, and, underneath that, still reeling with the knowledge that this is real at all. You’ve pinched yourself a few times to make sure.

There’s a low susurration in the grass, wet with dew that catches the moonlight, and you gasp, clinging to Tom’s arm when you see the blades part in helices for the space of an adder.

“It’s all right,” Tom says softly, almost elsewhere, his eyes zeroed in on the snake. “It won’t hurt you.”

You’re still by the balance of his arm and some petrifying awe as he extends a hand to the grass and the adder coils around it, weaving upward to his shoulder.

“Oh my God. Oh my God, Tom.”

The adder points its beady gaze at you, and Tom whispers something else in that strange language before it retreats in agreement or compliance or whatever could come close to expression on the face of a fucking snake, and maybe you’re dreaming this despite your pinching. Maybe you’ve lost your mind.

“Hope you didn’t just tell it to bite me,” you try, and it comes out half-choked.

He smiles. It’s partly for you and partly for this venomous little thing on his shoulder, and that’s a bit startling. Tom Riddle smiles for adders and you and not much else.

“Should I?”

And all you manage, for whatever reason, is, “Don’t be like them now that you’re not like me.”

It’s out before you can stop it, welling from a small, scared place that embarrasses you to return to. A hospital bed when you were eleven. The walls of a bedroom ravaged by bombs.

Tom’s smile fades. “We’re nothing like them.”

The thing is, neither of you know that’s the day that changes everything.

You celebrate your fifteenth birthday in the Deathday ballroom with Tom, a stolen dinner pastry, a green candle, and a few sad ghosts. You try to learn how to dance. Tom thinks it’s silly. You tell him that’s only because he’s upset he keeps stepping on your toes.

Summer blisters when it comes.

Some of the children take jobs as mail-sorters and steelworkers and you clasp for whatever you’re (one) allowed and (two) capable of, which isn’t much. You’re both old enough at the end of the day to explore London on your own, opting to spend as much time away from the orphanage as Mrs Cole allots, but you only have knuts and pennies and you warn Tom it would be unwise to swindle muggles and risk a letter from the Ministry. So you work where you’re needed and you eat the rationed nonsense you always do and you miss Hogwarts terribly. It’s much the same: you’re together, you’re hungry, and you’re nothing like them.

And then it’s different: Tom makes Slytherin Prefect, is suddenly tall, and you wonder in fleeting moments if his face has always suited him this well.

A stupid remark. You fervently ignore it.

Fifth year begins and you have almost the same number of electives as you do core classes, Tom has duties in his new role that take much of his spare time, and despite popular belief, you and him are not a mitotic entity, so this splits you up more often than it had in previous years. Which is fine. You still have plenty of things to talk about during meals and between duels, and you reckon you’ll share DADA until you graduate.

But in his absence, your attentions are forced elsewhere, and you should be grateful they land on something potentially promising.

It’s like Transfiguration just clicks for you this year. You’ve never been the greatest at Transformation (importantly though, you’ve also remained far from the worst), but fifth year launches you into Vanishment and something about that feels like a perfect equation. There are no complicated half-numerals and objects stuck between inanimacy and being — just unmaking the made. Nothing or not. You’re fucking excellent at it. You glean the theoretics fast and then the practise comes like breathing. Even the purebloods struggle as you Vanish Dumbledore’s Conjured garden snakes in brilliant tendrils of light. You exult unabashedly when you brush past them on the way out of class — who was it that didn’t belong in Slytherin?

You say the same to Tom and he rolls his eyes, but the amusement is there.

“Think you can talk to my snakes for me?” you tease, nudging him on the path to Hogsmeade.

“If they’re yours, I doubt they have anything worth discussing.”

And Dumbledore is… a hue nearer to the man you remember from first year. He praises your improvement and smiles when you can’t hide your giddiness as if equally impressed.

He doesn’t shelve people the way Slughorn does (you’re dismayed to find Tom has been invited to join the Slug Club and you have not) but you think if he did you’d be rapidly climbing your way to the top. Maybe get put in one of those neat little repositories he keeps all his best treasures in.

Dumbledore does, however, offer additional assignments for those who are interested, and tasks you with a few if you’re up to the challenge.

You always are.

The Tom-Dumbledore-Encyclopaedia debacle is apparently either resolved, or your part in it forgotten.

Tom humours you when you’re both singed at the fingers from duelling, yours dipped in the lake while he buries his in the cold moss, about how Abraxas takes the seat beside him at every Slug Club dinner. He tells you he pretends to be very interested in the Malfoy’s business affairs and their stock in the Bulgarian Quidditch team’s win this coming spring. He tells you he finds it amusing to let Abraxas think he can make Tom his pet. Tom says he considers searching for Salazar Slytherin’s fabled Chamber of Secrets and showing Abraxas what a real pet looks like. You smack him in the arm.

He’s had an ego forever. He just has a few too many reasons for it now.

And maybe that’s why you push harder in Transfiguration, dedicate the majority of your studies to it, spend your Saturday nights scrutinising advanced techniques while Tom makes nice with Potions experts and politics with people who don’t even know what he is but like him anyway. It’s patronising, of course — borderline fetishistic; not a real like — but it scares you. Tom Riddle would not allow himself to be anyone’s pretty mudblood show pony if he didn’t have an ulterior motive.

Everything changes but the observable truth that he is still insufferable.

You’re lucky to see him twice a week if it isn’t in class, and the way it starts is so slow you don’t even fully understand what’s happening until Christmas break when Abraxas stays a few extra days and leaves by Dippet’s Floo instead of the train.

You don’t dare ask where Tom has vanished to in that time or why the hell Abraxas Malfoy would willingly subject himself to unnecessarily extended time at school with all his lackeys gone, and it isn’t because you don’t want to. It’s because he won’t tell you himself. It’s because you’re terrified the answer will feel like a broken promise, and you’ve come to realise (it’s been there for so long; such an obvious, tiny thing that you’ve never stopped to really dissect it) that it’s quite difficult to know someone at every atom and not love them a little bit.

You’re suddenly aware of the risk of it: you love him like an inextricable piece of yourself, and, well, you’ve seen war. You know what amputation looks like. You’ve seen the remains of structures designed to stand forever, and you’re strong like them — casts and gauze in all the weak spots because you remember the pain of breaking them — but those were blows dealt without the complication of loving the bombs behind them.

Tom is the green on your robes, the dragon pox tinge you sometimes think never truly faded when you look in the mirror too long, and all the shades you never imagined. Apple, jade, moss. The beginnings of emerald. (No, he couldn’t be that.)

You wonder what the world would look like if he stole those colours back, and it’s much worse than some brutal decimation; it would leave you with too much. You would just be you without him.

So you love him into June like you always do, and you pluck his Prefect badge off on the last day of school and tell him it makes you jealous like a joke when it’s half-true.

It’s raining when you walk to the train together, miserable for what should be summer but not at all remarkable in Scotland. Tom wipes it from your cheek. Your wrists are sore from vanishing bits and bobbles all night while you still can, never truly prepared for three months without magic, and you curl into your seat as soon as you’re in it. Tom wakes you up when you arrive back in London, startling you to find that you fell asleep at all.

It rains a lot that summer. There’s nothing much to see in the city and you can’t get anywhere else (you note: the Trace cares little about broomsticks but you can’t afford one of your own and flying might be the only thing Tom is bad at) so you’re stuck to the library again with a noseful of old paper and a certain prose that magical literature cannot replicate. You theorise a lifetime of reckoning with the mundane forces one to be more creative.

Perhaps it’s the cold that makes you sick. Perhaps it’s the state of your meals. Either way, your final weeks before sixth year are hell. Biblical, blazing hell.

The nurses aren’t sure what it is — another influenza epidemic you’re the first in the orphanage to catch — but they isolate you immediately and there’s not much care they can offer.

You hear Tom arguing with one of them outside your door but can’t make out the words. Everything is dizzy, sweaty, halfway to unconsciousness but without its relief. You’d take dragon pox over this.

Some days later (though you can’t be sure because it feels like bloody centuries), he’s at your bedside, and you think even if you were lucid enough to ask what horrible thing he’d done to change the nurses’ minds, you wouldn’t.

But you know he’s not beyond breaking wizarding law, because he’s muttering healing spells with a hand to your damp forehead, and you hazily find yourself reaching for him, trying to shake your head no.

“Not allowed,” you mumble. Your throat is sore and your nose is stuffy. You sound terrible and you probably look worse.

Tom is slightly blurry but you think he’s staring at you. You know if he is it’s with the utmost incredulity.

“Not allowed,” he repeats slowly. It’s very easy to picture him clenching his jaw. “I wonder, if the Trace is so exact that it can detect all forms of magic, it can’t also detect malady. You’re burning — and I’m to consider whether saving your life might be illegal?”

He’s angry. He’s angrier than you’ve seen in a long time; and you can actually see it now. His magic courses through you and your vision clears, bit by bit, until your depth perception steadies and you realise he’s closer than you thought. His jaw is, in fact, clenched.

You move to catch his wrist and manage it this time. “Tom.”

“Don’t argue,” he says thinly.

“You’ll get sick.”

His face is far too neutral for the way his fingers stroke your damp cheek. “Hm. Then it’s a good thing you’d break the law for me too.”

Of course he’s right — you love him. Which makes it a good thing he doesn’t get sick.

Some of the younger children do. The fever comes overnight for a girl who wasn’t in the orphanage last year, and it takes her by the next.

When you get back on the train to Hogwarts, the virus is circulating Britain and you’re livid.

What Tom said is true; you consider the Trace’s precision and the details of the laws on underage magic — how one of the technicalities is that a young witch or wizard may be absolved of the consequences if the circumstances are life-threatening. You think about how it supposedly doesn’t care about broom-riding or Portkeys or Floo travel, and if the Trace is that complex, surely it understands sickness.

You only wonder if the Ministry would understand it. There haven’t been any epidemics in the wizarding world since Gorsemoor cured dragon pox in the sixteenth century, and when there isn’t healing magic there are antidotes and Pepper-Ups and herbs that muggles simply don’t have. The fatality of a fever of all things is not something you imagine could be comprehended by the sort of people who sent you and Tom back to London in the wake of the Blitz.

Of course, the Ministry hasn't written to you, you haven’t been forced in front of a representative from the Improper Use office, and you have no real reason to be upset.

You are regardless.

It shouldn’t even be a thought: you immolating into oblivion protesting rescue because one of you might get in trouble for it.

A world you’ve never much cared for is blanketed in ash and its people are dying and you can’t help them. A girl is dead. You’ll return next summer and there will certainly be more.

Life is for the magical, you find. The muggles can burn.

It’s what makes you start to panic this year, knowing you’ve only got one more after it. You have no idea what you’re going to do after school, and it doesn’t help that Tom doesn’t appear to share the sentiment. He’s got Head Boy in the bag and when he isn’t with you he’s with Abraxas, who can surely provide him connections if whatever game Tom is playing at works (and you have no doubt it will), but it’s like you said in third year: that isn’t enough for you.

You remember with a small ache that you no longer means you and him.

And then — it makes sense. You feel incredibly stupid.

“You told him, didn’t you?” you ask Tom the first opportunity you can get him alone, in the glum blue light of the Deathday ballroom on your way back from supper.

He sighs like it’s a conversation he’d hoped to put off for longer. “You’re referring to Abraxas, I presume?”

“You’re referring to — yes, you prick, I’m referring to Abraxas. Of course I’m referring to Abraxas, or are there others? Dolohov and Nott seem unusually enthralled by you, now that I think about it.”

“And for a reason I’m supposed to be aware of, this is an error on my part. Should I be apologising?”

“Why did you tell him, Tom?!”

“Why?” he deadpans.

You throw your hands up. “Oh, for fuck��s sake.”

“Shall I provide you with my itinerary as well? Would you accompany me as I tour the third-years around Hogsmeade? Or can you do me the favour of trusting me to make my own decisions with the nature of my ancestry?”

“You’re keeping something from me and there’s a reason,” you say, stepping closer to him, “and forgive me if I want to know what it is when you were willing to tell me you’re the Heir of Slytherin and you can talk to snakes. What — what could possibly be bigger than that?”

Tom returns your approach with one of his own. His eyes are steady, dark, thick with lashes and you can’t reminisce on the details of the rest of him because that would be strange for a friend to do. Stranger to do it now, when you’re angry with him and there’s two sleeping ghosts in the corner and he’s framed by deep indigoes like the ripples in the Black Lake and — you’re doing it anyway.

To be short, he’s close, he’s very beautiful, and sometimes you despise him.

“Trust me,” he says again, without the derision of the last time. “This will change things for us.”

You frown, but it’s a weak upset in contrast to the explosion you came in here willing to make. There were at least twenty questions you meant to ask and you only managed one.

You are not his keeper. You know that.

“Change them for the better, Tom,” you say on a sigh.

He blinks, and you think he’ll respond with a nod or a slightly offended ‘of course’ but he does not. He blinks and he just keeps looking at you. It’s disarming. It probably resembles the way you often look at him. There’s a rationale somewhere; you never see each other anymore, life is so incredibly busy, maybe he’s forgotten what you look like.

And he does nod, finally, but he does it with his thumb brushing the corner of your lip.

What? Sorry. What’s going on?

He pulls it away like he’s heard you. “You had something.”

You’re almost positive you did not.

Transfiguration this year brings Conjuration, which is an advanced and welcome distraction, and even more exciting when you consider no longer having to Vanish things you have no idea how to bring back. Dumbledore’s is one of three N.E.W.T classes you’re taking — Defence Against the Dark Arts and Alchemy besides. It’s easily your favourite.

You share it with eleven other Slytherins and twelve Ravenclaws. Four of them are muggle-born, and it’s hard to describe the ease you feel among them because you don’t think you’ve ever had anything resembling ease with anyone but Tom.

Your schedule is more crammed than it’s ever been, but it’s good. Two of the Ravenclaw girls invite you to Hogsmeade every other weekend, you share butterbeers when you can afford one, you study until you collapse, you take Dumbledore’s extra assignments and consider trying out for Chaser on one of your more restless evenings before waking up in the morning and resolving there is such as thing as too much of a good thing. Best not to get ahead of yourself.

Your contentment is remedied quickly.

Someone is found unresponsive in the dungeons. Dippet makes an announcement at breakfast that the boy isn’t dead, rather, petrified. No one is quite sure the cause, but the Headmaster warns a few minor precautions, suggests a buddy system, and says that after dinner studying should remain in everyone’s respective common rooms rather than the courtyards or library.

You know next to nothing about petrification, but the victim is muggle-born, and you suspect it was the result of a poorly performed statue curse by one of the many blood zealots in your house. The whole thing makes you hold onto your wand a smidge tighter, but you’re adamant not to let it drive you to paranoia like it would have a few years ago.

Tom nods at your theory when you manage to escape to the Black Lake together in November.

“That isn’t unreasonable,” he says. High praise.

You sink into the moss, sighing. “Do you think there’ll be more?”

He looks out onto the lake, the lapping waves, the crystalline beads that furrow them, midnight algae and flotsam you don’t think you belong to anymore.

You peer up at his silhouette in the dark. “Do you think whoever did it will do it again, I mean?”

“I don’t know,” he says finally, and after another pause: “but I don’t think it would be you.”

“How’s that?”

“No one would be senseless enough to try.”

And he sinks beside you with that, breath shaping the cold in steady, rhythmic clouds while yours are scattered. His robes brush yours and you take his arm with a sleepy hum, tracing patterns in the stars until your eyes feel heavy and he insists on taking you back to your dormitories.

One of the Ravenclaw girls, Marigold Wright, distracts you with a spare blue scarf and an invitation to her next Quidditch match. You watch from the stands and cheer as she catches the snitch to beat Gryffindor.

It’s a bit strange — having a distraction — having a friend. Mari is kind, smart, a good study partner who’s as keen on stepping into the advanced theoretics of Human Transfiguration a year early as you are. She’s funny in a vulgar way, introduces you to all her friends, shows you the best way to sneak into the kitchens, and you sometimes wonder if she was sorted wrong, but — her methods are creative, and she’s definitely intelligent. She’s also definitely not Tom.

You see less and less of him and more of her, Dumbledore, the Ravenclaw common room and the pages of progressive Transfiguration methodologies. He sees less of you and more of Abraxas, Dolohov and Nott and all the other purebloods, Slughorn’s soirées and Prefect meetings that cut into meals.

It happens again.

Second floor lavatory. A girl called Myrtle Warren. She isn’t petrified.

There’s a vigil the following week and her parents are there, two muggles whose sobs wrack the Great Hall even as the students clear out. Flowers descend from the charmed ceiling, little bluebells and white chrysanthemums.

You cry that night. You can’t remember the last time you cried.

This time, you don’t have to seek Tom out. He catches you on your way back from Alchemy and brings you to the Deathday ballroom with a melancholy glance in your direction that you don't hesitate to follow. You realise it’s an odd place to continue to end up in, but no one else goes there and you suppose that makes it yours.

You’ve seen Tom skinny and sickly and olive green, but today his eyes are circled with veined violets and the lack of summer sun this year has whittled him grey once more. He’s still beautiful. He’ll always be beautiful. But he’s tired and — sad — and for the six years you’ve known him you aren’t quite sure what to do with that.

You don’t spend too long pondering it. You just hug him with the dawning newness of a thing like that; a thing you’ve never done, and never really thought to do. (You ask yourself in bewilderment how you’ve never thought to do it before.)

He’s warm. He’s uncertain. He doesn’t reciprocate immediately.

And then he does, and you understand without caveats or concerns that you stopped having a choice in your destruction the moment you chose him. He’s home, and that’s going to ruin you one day.

Your arms tighten around him and his around you, the rhythm of his breath holding you to earth when you begin to float away. Nothing makes sense in this moment but the mercy that in all the death you’ve seen, you swear to God you’ll never see his. As long as you’re alive, he must be too.

And there’s something to be said about the innate self-slaughter of loving a person (of loving Tom Riddle, especially): that it’ll cleave you in two, that you’ll say feeble things in his embrace that you should be above saying, like ‘I’m scared’, that his hand will find the back of your head and he'll tell you he knows, that that should not feel like enough but it will be. You’ll clasp your hands under black robes and hold this singular embrace together by the faulty adhesive of your fingers. Maybe you’ll cry again, like your body can suddenly comprehend its capacity for it and is making up for lost time.

The first sign that something is wrong, more than the obvious grievance of the death itself, is the Ministry’s happy acceptance of Rubeus Hagrid as the culprit.

The boy is maybe fourteen years old, half-blood — half human, mind — and no one has a bad word to say about him other than he likes to keep eccentric pets. Which leads you to wonder what pet he possessed with the ability to petrify one student and kill another and what cause he’d have for it in the first place besides two terrible, miraculous accidents.

That question draws an even stranger path. Mari says over butterbeers (on her, bless her soul) that she read somewhere years ago that Gorgons can induce petrification, but that she doesn’t remember much else.

One of the boys in DADA says that his father’s an auror, and heard from him that Hagrid’s pet was some sort of arachnid. Tom deducts five points from his house after class with a scowl on his pale face, muttering about conspiracy.

The second sign that something is wrong is that only one of those things would need to be true for the entire case on Hagrid to be called into question. If Mari’s memory serves right, how the hell did Hagrid come into ownership of a Gorgon? (Could Gorgons even be owned?) If the auror’s son is worth your credence, then what species of arachnid is capable of petrification?

You take to the library.

Unsure of where to begin and hesitant to draw attention, your research lingers into Christmas break and stalls some of your extracurriculars in Transfiguration. Tom is busy enough not to notice the new step in your routine, and you’re grateful not to have him breathing down your back, telling you you’re looking in the wrong places or you shouldn’t be looking at all.

The third sign is the end.

You wish to retract it all. There are time-turners and memory charms and potions that could dizzy you enough to manipulate the truth; there is anything but this. You’d suffer the consequences for the bliss of loving him with one more day before the ruin — you’d write it down to remember through the fog: look at him, duel him without wanting to hurt him, kiss him to know that you did it at least once, have him, be had. You never will again.

He’d shown you the adder. He’d joked about the Chamber of Secrets. He’d spent months disappearing with Abraxas, earning the trust of the sons of the Sacred Twenty Eight.

And he’d killed Myrtle Warren.

So it’s statue curses and Gorgons and Tom — speaking to serpents when no one else can, buttressed by pureblood boys who want people like you dead.

Don’t become like them now that you’re not like me.

He’s something else entirely.

What do you do in a moment like this? Panting into an empty library at a revelation you wish you could unknow, fingers digging into the hickory of your desk — another memory carved among the initials and hearts; how do you stand from your chair and leave like the world outside this room is the same as it was when you entered? There’s nothing to orbit. You are cosmic debris, tea dregs in a barren cup, flotsam.

You stand; and you tell no one. Not even Tom.

His presence in your life is so infrequent that you don’t even have to come up with excuses for your distance until three weeks after your discovery when you’re paired together in DADA to practise stretching jinxes.

You almost laugh. He’s standing beside you, tall (lanky like he was when he was a boy if you look long enough) and serious, and you love him without knowing who he is anymore. You’ve skirted corners to avoid him and sat with Mari during lunch and breakfast like he’s some scorned lover to escape confrontation from and not someone who held you through a grief inflicted by his hand.

“You look tired,” he says, inspecting the daisy you’d been tasked to elongate.

You glance at him. You are tired. It’s exhaustive, bone-deep, aching like nothing you’ve ever known, and maybe that’s why you can look at him and smile sadly instead of thrashing against his chest screaming for what he did. You suppose it happens enough in your head to satisfy. When you can sleep, you sleep to the thought of it. The waking moments are just blank.

“Mhm,” you hum, transfiguring the daisy stem back to its regular length.

Tom observes it with curious eyes. “You’re getting good at that.”

“I’ve been good at it.”

His lips turn, a small frown before he puts it away. You make the observation that he’s tired too; there are still bags under his eyes and his hands tremble ever-so-slightly with his wand when he loosens his grip on it.

His own doing and still you flicker with some relentless hope that he's drowning in regret.

“Sorry,” you say. A ridiculous thing. Do you intend to slowly push him from your life with weak disinterest and diverging academic avenues? As if he were something extricable. He’d never let you.

You’ll have to confront him, and that’s a revelation that holds its weight on your chest until you think you'll suffocate under it.

You’re in the blue light of the Deathday ballroom with a face you've never worn before when it happens, deep into spring, and you know then that you were wrong all those years ago.

He sees all of you.

Takes you in in the flash of a second and maybe it’s your quivering jaw that reveals you or the flint of betrayal in your eyes waiting to be struck and lit. Yes, you were wrong — Tom Riddle knows you at every atom too.

“Are you going to let me explain?" he asks before any hello. His jaw is tight but there’s nothing else to go on to judge his disposition. He's settling into impassivity like an animal drawing its shell. You will not be allowed in if you're going to make it hurt, and you might be the only one who can.

“Explain," you copy with a hard exhale, “Just tell me it wasn’t you. That’s all there is to say."

He stares at you. There’s nothing there.

“Tell me, Tom.”

Your breath catches on an automatic please but you don’t want to offer him that.

“I cannot.”

Then make me forget, you want to scream. Let it be summer. Let us work for pennies and breadcrumbs and be no one together.

It’s late winter and it’s too cold.

“You killed her,” you say quietly.

“If I told you I did not wish for it, would you even believe me?”

“What are you… so it was an accident?”

“There was — an opportunity presented itself that may never have come again; that does not mean I don’t find the nature of it regrettable.”

“Regrettable.” You’re laughing or crying or both, and you must look unwell. Halfway out of your mind.

He’s so composed in the face of it that it only makes you more incensed.

“You told me to change things —”

“You killed someone! Can you understand that?”

“You nearly died,” he hisses, “and if I am to apologise for recognizing it only as the first of many times, I will not. If I am to apologise for doing whatever is necessary to prevent it, I will not. The hand we were dealt will not be the hand we die to — so yes, I understand it. And one day so will you.”

“Don't," you spit, and your anger must look pathetic under your welling tears. “Don't you dare tell me that this was for me.”

“Do you want me to lie?”

“What could her death possibly bring me, Tom?”

“Her death is the first step to —”

“God, stop dancing around the fucking question!” Both hands have wound their way to your head, clutching at your skull like the brain matter might spill through one of the cracks he’s wearing down. “Just… tell me.”

“You recall Godelot's work," he says stiffly. The question of it takes you by surprise, peels the moment back like the rim of a fruit and you're left uncertain.

All you can do is nod, arms falling to cross over your chest.

“There was one form of magic he refused quite concisely to impart. I searched the Restricted Section for days, and under Dumbledore's watch that was not an easy thing to do."

You stole from him, you're urged to remind him, but it's something you'd say with a nudge of annoyance and a roll of your eyes. Such admonishment is small and far away.

“I found it at last in one of the repositories," he goes on, “Secrets of the Darkest Art."

“...What?"

“It's called a Horcrux,” he says. “Murder, by nature, splits the soul. The Horcrux simply makes use of the act; puts the soul fragment into something imperishable so that it is protected, rather than abandoned. In turn, your life cannot be taken. By malady, by magic, by sword — the vessel is destroyed but the soul lives on.”

You blink, feeling dizzy. “Myrtle was the sacrifice.”

“Myrtle was there,” Tom remedies.

“How lucky for you.”

“The circumstances could be ameliorated if one were to be made for you. I would have preferred it be someone who deserves it.”

“For — you’d do it again? Again, Tom?”

His brows crease, and even his upset seems contrived. There’s this barricade he’s placed that you, in all your infallible knowing of him, cannot puncture. It’s agony to begin to question what he could possibly be keeping from you in a confession like this.

“You killed someone, Tom. You — I would never ask you to do that. I would never live at the cost of someone else."

“No, you would not,” he agrees, though he shakes his head like it’s incredulous of you. “Do you think, even if I knew it were certain, a summons from the Ministry would have stopped me from saving you this summer? Do you suppose the threat of punishment would cause me to waver at that moment? I know it would not hinder you. So, you have your lines and I have mine — you never needed to ask.”

And now it hurts. The emptiness clears and you can't stand yourself for crying, but you do. It comes out in ragged, breathless sobs, clasped behind your palm as you turn away from him.

You've loved him since you were eleven. It's always been you two — it was always supposed to be you two. What is there to say to him? He's blurring in your periphery like in the midst of your sickness, and there's nothing he can do to heal you this time. Your vision will clear and Myrtle Warren will still be dead. He'll still be a stranger in the face of the boy you love.

“Why," you whine, a wet, hollow stain in your voice you've never cried enough to hear before. “Myrtle was — wasn't — uh —" You swallow, hysterics severing your words. You can't really think right now. Your body wobbles and your head feels puffy and hot. This might be shock.

Tom scowls like it irritates him to watch you push yourself, like this is just the unfortunate effect of you depleting your energy in a duel, not eating correctly, treating yourself carelessly.

Of course you can't stand or talk or think. You're you, contemplating a life without him.

“Sit," he says in frustration. You smack his hand away when he reaches for you, but the world has turned a shade darker and you're slipping into it.

He tugs a chair towards you with a silent charge and a reprimand, and your body doesn’t possess the wherewithal not to collapse into it the second it’s under you.

After a moment you can speak again, shaking hands steadied by your knees. “Did you… did you think I wouldn't find out? You know, the only thing that can petrify someone besides a serpent is a Gorgon. And — where would Rubeus Hagrid have found one of those?"

“I thought I would have time.”

“To come up with a good lie? Something I’d sympathise with?”

He bites his cheek. “Evidently the particulars matter little to you.”

Fuck him. “Fuck you.”

“Very cogent.”

“No, fuck you, Tom. We could have — we only had a year left and then we could — we could've done anything we wanted." You're crying again. You don't have the energy to be embarrassed. “And you chose this."

He’s indignant as he steps closer. “With what money? For what life? We are better than all of them and it’s never mattered. It never will; you know that. You told me that. You’re angry now, but you must know the truth of it. I would not forsake you. I would not lose you.”

You blink up at him, mouth stuck with some cottony feeling and cheeks stiff from crying.

“You have lost me, Tom."

He stills as if suspended. Some maceration must follow but it doesn’t.

You stand on weak legs to look him in the eyes. You wonder if he can see the love in yours. You wonder if he knows you will walk away despite it. (Of course he does. You’ve never lied to him.)

You think about how his fingers seem to always find their way to your cheek and you put yours to his. The bone there is sharp, but the skin is soft. Boyish.

There isn't a word for a goodbye like this. It shouldn't exist and so it doesn't. You just leave.

You fail your N.E.W.T courses. Quite spectacularly.

Mari sits beside you on the train with a soothing hand on your shoulder, and doesn’t ask what’s rendered you into a comatose husk since March. There’s no crying. You chew numbly on soft caramels from the trolley and stare out the window onto the hills.

That summer is spent in your bedroom unless you’re forced elsewhere. A new girl with skin so white it’s nearly translucent sleeps in the bed beside yours, taking meals on trays like you did in your first days here, tracing the cracks in the tiles, humming to herself in the dark. She makes you feel less pathetic for doing much the same.

You’d been right in your assumption that there would be more dead upon your return, and wrong that there would be more empty rooms. There are always more orphans being made.

And then you receive a letter. It isn’t delivered by owl (only for secrecy, you assume, because there are no muggles who’d be writing to you) but it’s stamped with a vaguely familiar crest. Not Hogwarts’ waxen seal, but something undoubtedly magical. A cockroach and a cup, you think, squinting. Transfiguration.

You tear the envelope open and pull the letter out.

It’s from Dumbledore. Some of it melds together, but the key words stand out.

Spoken to Dippet… Exceptional promise… N.E.W.Ts… May be reconsidered… Upon dispensation… Be well.

Be well.

You are not. You are something half-drowned and half-burned, never enough of one to quell the effects of the other. Sunlight is sparse through your side of the orphanage. On the radio, they warn a pattern of one bomb every second hour. The only other warning is the sound when they fly overhead, and if you can’t run fast enough —

You write your answer in a crowded tube station with a spotty ballpoint pen. Tom is there, looking between you, the dust, and your shaking hands as if to say: tell me I was wrong.

Some of your letter melds together but the key words stand out.

Thank you, Sir. Whatever you need.

It’s a shock that you live to seventh year. It’s a shock that you do it without him — though he watches, and in his gaze you feel regressed. You’re alive, yes, but there’s something there… his dead weight, death-grip; his haunting. They always speak of the dead as something heavy. Something that holds onto you even after it’s gone.

You find that to be true.

Dippet’s condition that you remain in Dumbledore’s N.E.W.T class is that you achieve more than the standard requirement. Essentially, your final exam will be much harder than everyone else's: Human Transfiguration, mastery of petty Transformation (through the means of Wizard’s Chess pieces), Conjuration and Vanishment of various delicate objects — all done nonverbally.

Even Dumbledore seems sceptical, but it translates to more rigorous practise rather than resignation, assignments he doesn’t even task to Mari, though she’s just as good, and you can’t begin to understand why he cares so much.

“I’ll entrust you with these while I’m away,” he says before Christmas break, sliding a sheet of parchment your way with a flick of his wand.

You frown, unfolding it. His instructions are always short now — you’ve learned to decode his meaning well enough without much exposition.

Teacup to gerbil — to cat, and inverse.

Inanimatus Conjurus spell (cockroach and cup, as instructed) to be Vanished when perfected.

Study Antar’s Doctrine. Miss Wright will act as your partner.

Due February.

It’s far too much to be done in that time. “Sir?”

Dumbledore lugs a messenger bag over his shoulder that appears small, but he carries it in such a way you suspect it’s magically extended. He smiles wistfully, pushing his spectacles up the bridge of his nose. “You know, I often regret how much this war asks of me. A consequence of my own doing.”

Right — Grindelwald. Sometimes you forget between awaiting the next muggle paper. War is everywhere.

You nod. “I hope… Good luck, Sir.”

Another half-smile as he twists open a jar of Floo Powder, and then he shakes his head with something you almost decipher as amusement. A brittle sort. Tired. “Good luck to you.”

And then he’s gone, in a swath of green flames that do nothing to inspire any desire for Floo travel in you.

Antar’s Doctrine is simultaneously prosaic and grandiose. They read like excerpts of a journal and you yawn into them over your morning tea, stirring amongst the first-years, who are the only people at the Slytherin table you can stand to sit with. Your blood status is apparently nullified by your age, and the worst they do is look at you funny. You aren’t sure what Abraxas’s — Tom’s (the new hierarchy never fails to stagger you) — lackeys would do if you sat with the other seventh-years instead. A part of you longs to know. They certainly don’t bother you in class the way they used to, you aren’t tripped in the corridors, but you wonder how far Tom’s influence can stretch. He is the Heir of Slytherin, and he’s earned them. But you are nothing.

You’d like it if he would let them hurt you. You think the incentive would be enough to hurt him back. And God — God, you want to. You want to hurt him almost as much as you want him.

You practise through the doctrine with Mari, as Dumbledore directed. When you’re able to sever Antar’s egotism from his abilities, you can see why Dumbledore would recommend his book to you. It feels like slipping through a crack in glass without shattering the whole thing. You weave in and back out, and Mari grins when she returns from the shape of a teapot to her body without you needing to utter a word to do it.

In the back of your mind, you’re aware what you’re doing is nearly unprecedented. It’s spring, you’re months away from eighteen, muggle-born, and mastering nonverbal Human Transfiguration like it’s a Softening Charm. Mari tells you you’re the smartest person she’s ever met. It makes your cheeks go hot to hear such open praise, worse when you snap out of the thought that you believe her.

Grindelwald falls. The school celebrates in whispers until the evidence is in front of them — Dumbledore, returned without a scar, a new wand in his hand — and then they’re cheers. The feast that night is a great one, and he toasts to you from the end of the staff table, a discreet tilt of his cup before he takes a sip and returns to converse with Professor Merrythought.

You take from your own, and your eyes land on Tom, spine of his goblet tight in his hand. He’s looking at you like you’ve affronted him somehow. You could laugh — by choosing Dumbledore. Of course. As if it was a choice at all.

But if it bothers him… if it feels anything at all like the betrayal you felt, then — good.

You drink, and don’t look away.

By the time your N.E.W.T.s arrive you have a renewed confidence that you’ll succeed, even with the obstacle of performing each exam wordlessly.

There are only twelve students who came out of your sixth year class, so to divide resources for the tests is no grand task. You’re given a Wizard’s Chess set, a desk with assorted vases and goblets, an intricate epergne (you had to whisper to Mari to learn its name), and a Ministry worker borrowed like some laboratory mouse. You suppose it makes sense, though — you’re all capable enough of Human Transfiguration not to mutilate anyone, and performing on a classmate could obfuscate the results. It’s far easier to Transfigure someone you know than someone you don’t.

You start with the chess set, Dumbledore and the Ministry worker observing you as you turn pawns to knights and rooks to kings, the minutiae of the pieces drawing sweat to your brow. They change, and change, and change, and you don’t mutter an incantation once. The Ministry worker puts the set away and directs you to the glass. You Switch the vases with the goblets, Vanish them, and Conjure them again. The Ministry worker takes notes. Dumbledore nods affirmatively at you and you can exhale. The epergne is the hardest; so kitschy and elaborate you don’t know where to start when you’re tasked to Transform it into an animal.

An animal — like that isn’t the vaguest instruction you’ve ever received.

You look at it on the desk, mirrors and glass and gold on protracted arms, and you go for the first thing you think of because the Ministry worker is staring at you like you’re inept and you see it in his eyes — this is the muggle-born one, this one can’t do it.

You’re better than them. You can do it forever.

The epergne spins at the dip of your wand, and emerges more than an animal. A big glass tank appears in its place, round and gold-rimmed, water lapping at the sides. Inside it is a jellyfish. Emerald green, bobbing, tentacles and oral arms coiling against the glass like the limbs of the epergne had spanned its centre.

The Ministry worker swallows. Dumbledore smiles.

“And — and back?” the worker says, like that will be the thing that stops you.

You point again, mouth tight with irritation, and reverse the Transformation. A droplet of water smacks your face and you’re lucky to be so hot you can disguise it as sweat. You suspect even an error that small would cost you a mark.

You wipe it away. A strange thing happens; you imagine Tom brushing the water from your cheek at the Black Lake. You imagine his fingers in the rain.

The Ministry worker steps closer with a shameless frown. He tells you to turn his hair red. You do. He regards himself in the mirror and scribbles something down. He tells you to turn it back. You do. To grow him a beard, to change his clothes, to make him taller, shorter, this and that — all read from a list he does not appear enthused to recite. You do it all.

He shakes Dumbledore’s hand when it’s done, duplicates his notes for him to keep, and follows the other Ministry workers through the fireplace when everyone’s exams are finished.

You find out you’ve passed with an Outstanding on your birthday.

Mari drags you to the Three Broomsticks to celebrate, butterbeers on her. (They always are.)

“Can’t believe we’re about to graduate,” she says into her cup, froth on her upper lip.

You sigh into your own, partially giddy and mostly nervous.

Mari squeezes your face between her thumb and finger so your frown is puckered. “Chin up, genius. You’ll be excellent.”

You push her hand away but can’t help a small smile. “Outstanding,” you correct.

“Outstanding!” She bursts out laughing. “Bloody ego on you now…”

“Well, I am the smartest person you know.”

“I take that back.”

She pushes out of her chair with a slightly inebriated wobble. “Going to the loo. Don’t touch my chips.”

Your hands raise in surrender, and you steal only one when she’s gone.

You aren’t the only ones here to celebrate. (Your birthday and your mutual achievement, yes, but the Three Broomsticks is filled wall-to-wall with seventh years drinking their final nights at school away.) There’s music charmed to reach every corner, even yours at the little alcove hidden from plain sight. It’s nice to watch from here — the stumbling, the kisses meant for mouths that land drunkenly on cheeks and noses, the barkeeps that roll their eyes as soon as they turn away from all the newly adult customers, not yet learned or careless in their drinking manners.

It is not nice to be occluded from plain sight in such a way that you don’t notice Tom Riddle until he’s inches away from your table. It is not nice that no one else notices either.

On instinct you don’t make any impressive exit. He slides into the booth next to you and your brain short circuits for a moment at the warm familiarity of his presence beside you. Then it occurs that it’s been more than a year since this was remotely commonplace — that you cannot forget the reason why.

There’s not much time to decide whether you want to be vicious or indifferent or to debate on past precedent which would bother him more. You haven’t attacked him despite being concealed enough to do it unnoticed, and you haven’t shoved furiously out of the other side of the booth.

Indifferent it is.

“Can I help you?”

“You’re causing quite the stir,” he says, taking one of Mari’s chips.

You’re allowed. It’s infuriating when he does it.

“Am I?”

“It’s enough to fail a N.E.W.T level class and be expressly petitioned back, but to have a special criteria set for your exams and manage an O on top of it all…” He inclines his head as if to appreciate your face so close after so long. You should not let him. “You are incomprehensible. It terrifies them.”

“They’re afraid of the wrong mudblood, then, aren’t they?”

Indifference effaced. You’re angry.

He seems to have come prepared, and shrugs your scorn off like a scarf you would have forced him to wear winters ago. “Of course, they have no reason to suspect Dumbledore might have ulterior motives.”

Ulterior — you certainly hope he isn’t suggesting this is based on anything but your merit, but then — you couldn’t begin to understand why Dumbledore cared so much, could you? You’d made brief inspections of his disdain for Tom in second year, his waning shades of kindness and the matter of his stolen encyclopaedia, but you hadn’t… you hadn’t thought at all about how his dedication to your progress only begun after you’d stopped sharing a class with Tom, how it had developed as you began to drift from one another in fifth year and accelerated in sixth after the first petrification and Myrtle’s death. How Tom had worn you down with a weighted glare at Dumbledore’s little toast.

It wasn’t because you had chosen Dumbledore, you realise. It was because Dumbledore had chosen you.

“Why don’t you worry about your pets, Riddle?” you snarl, “I’m sure there are bigger problems with your lot than my exam results.”

Something in his face shifts at the name. You swell with distorted pride.

He mends the reaction by looking you over in more detail, his features schooled into something he must know you can’t deduce. You try not to squirm under the intensity of it.

He reaches almost mindlessly for your collar (there is nothing mindless about it, you’re sure) and smooths the fabric gently with his fingers. “I always liked you in this colour.”

You blink. His thumb just barely brushes against the skin of your neck before retreating, and your mouth falls open.

“Don’t do that,” you say. Truly a sad attempt. Your repulsion is more with yourself than him, and that’s not at all right.

Where is Mari?

“Your friend was at the bar, last I saw her.”

You stare at him with wild eyes. How the hell — ?

“You were always easy to read,” he supplies, and leans in so you can follow his line of sight to the tiniest sliver of the bar visible between two columns, where Mari looks deeply engaged in conversation with Leo Ndiaye, one of the Gryffindor Chasers.

You take a sharp, exasperated breath at her antics. She might be more in love with the competition than the boy himself. They’d never last without Quidditch to bind them, but you can’t fault her for wanting a bit of fun.

“Well then —”

Right. Tom hasn’t actually moved away. You turn and his face is just there.

His eyes dart forthwith to your mouth, and — no. No, he won’t be doing that and neither will you.

“...I’m off to bed.” Stop talking to him like he’s your friend, you think miserably. Stop looking at him like he’s your —

“That would be wise.”

He’s still looking at your lips.

No one else is looking at you at all.

It could exist in just this moment, you deliberate; separate from everything else.

Except nothing about Tom exists in its own moment. He’s all over you all the time, skin and bone and soul. You hope you still have a place in the broken fragments of his.

“So I’ll be going now,” you say again.

“I haven’t protested.”

But he’s leaning in, and he has to know that’s impedance enough.

“But you will.”

His lips touch yours. “Yes, I will.”

You grab him by his shirt and you’re kissing him. You’re kissing each other like either of you know what the hell it means to kiss anyone, but you’ve learned the rest together, haven’t you? Your noses bump and you don’t care. You just need to kiss him, and — God, you make some noise against his mouth and the hand cupping your face spreads to capture more of you, greedy and wayward — he needs to kiss you too. It’s a horrible thing to know. It leads you to pose too many questions.

The need must have begun as want, and when did the want begin? How long has he looked at you and wondered what you’d feel like to kiss, touch, mark? (He’ll never have the latter. You swear that.)

You’re pulling away in intervals. “You don’t have me, you know.”

“I know,” he responds, lips on the corner of yours.

“You still lost me.”

“I know.”

“I hate you.”

He pauses for a moment. “I know.”

You kiss him again. Long and soft, memorising his cupid’s bow and the tip of his tongue, and when one of his hands moves to your waist you part from him like you’ve been burned.

“I —” You resist the urge to touch a finger to your lips, standing abruptly from the table and adjusting your shirt. Your body feels like an evolutionarily faulty vessel, too easy to please, though you can’t imagine it responding to anyone else this way. Or perhaps your mind is the problem. Not wired well enough to resist an evidently bad thing. “Goodnight, Tom.”

You thought there wasn’t a word for your goodbye, but that’s it. So simple it sinks you. Goodnight, Tom. I’ll dream of a morning where I wake up beside you, but you won’t be there.

He grabs your hand before you can go, licking his lips and it haunts you to think he’s savouring you. It stings a place deep in your chest you’d spent all year trying to heal.

“My door is always open,” he says.

He lets you go.

You graduate with Mari’s hand in yours, and you aren’t afraid.

Dumbledore requests that you stay for the summer to help him prepare for the first year’s curriculum in the fall. It’s a ridiculous opportunity for someone your age — free lodgings and a stellar impression on your resume, and — you can only accept it with an ire you haven’t felt since the spread of influenza in muggle Britain.

If he’s offering you lodgings now, he could have done it all along.

It sends you down a horrible train of thought while you move your things from the Slytherin dormitories to a little chamber a few doors down from the staff room; Tom will be removed from Wool’s this year. Will he stay at Malfoy Manor? But Tom is still publicly muggle-born — Abraxas’s parents would never allow it. Will he find a job, a flat? Will he swindle muggles once he turns eighteen and the Trace is no longer an obstruction?

You think of him often. You think of his offer.

My door is always open.

Plenty of doors are open to you now. Why should you want to go back to his?

Still, the Second World War ends in November and you feel like you can breathe at a depth you never could before. The school doesn’t celebrate like it did with Grindelwald. No one but you seems to care at all.

It’s a tempting door.

The year passes in a blur of graded papers and lessons Dumbledore sometimes involves you in and sometimes does not. Most of the first-years care little for you, but there are two Slytherin muggle-borns who look at you like a new sun to orbit. Everything is worth it for that.

You see Mari when you can, and find she’s training with the Italian Quidditch team, who apparently are smart enough to care more about skill than blood. She says she misses the complexities of Transfiguration, but any career in it was always going to be yours. Smartest person she knows, she reiterates. Biggest ego too.

The next summer Dumbledore informs you of a posting at the Ministry. Something small with a smaller wage. He emphasises the weight of his personal recommendation, but that you won’t be respected unless you claw tooth and nail for it. You don’t take long to consider a chance to make an actual income with an actual career doing something muggle-borns simply don’t do before you’re nodding assuredly and asking him what you need.

Better clothes are first, and all you can afford until further notice. You take to Gladrags with intent to purchase for the first time in your five years of wandering in the shop with eyes bigger than your wallet, and the owner looks at you with distrust when you slide her your sickles.

The Ministry job is truly, infinitesimally, insignificant.

It’s far down in the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes. You’re a glorified secretary, and you recall the few times you’d worked as a mail-sorter during the war. It’s some sick irony that you’ve landed yourself in a pile of paper once more.

But the money, though offensively scant to someone with better options (and it’s infuriating the options you deserve), is more than you’ve ever had, and within the next year you’re able to leave the castle and take a cheap room at an inn in Hogsmeade. You’re close enough to Dumbledore to aid him when he needs you, but far enough to feel like your school days are departed, and you need not worry about memories lurching unexpectedly at every corridor.

A sick part of you still reaches for your mouth sometimes to remember what it felt like to be kissed. That part of you wishes for Tom. You could kiss him into oblivion. You could find a way to make it hurt him back.

My door is always open.

Then you’ll slam it bloody closed.

Mari invites you to her first professional game and you cheer for her in the stands, a green, white, and red scarf around your neck in place of her old blue.

She wins and you get drinks in a muggle pub. You kiss a man at the bar. You go home with him. His hair is dark, but not dark enough. His lips are soft, but the shape is wrong. He makes you feel good, but you wonder if in another life, the dream is true; you roll over in the morning to Tom beside you, and he makes you feel better.

When you can find time between the monotonous demands of your job, you’re in the Transfiguration classroom, staying behind to help the Slytherin muggle-borns with their Switching spells.

It’s one stupid accident the next fall that changes things.

A muggle bank has been robbed, and whatever idiotic, panicked witch or wizard was behind it apparently found themselves incapable of getting the deed done with a simple Imperius Curse (you can’t imagine, based on the scene, that they’re above Unforgivables), and somehow ended up leaving the building half-charred and teeming with at least six bank tellers Transformed into birds, two chirping into the floor tiles with broken wings.

“Renauld’s on it, though,” your coworker says when the news finds your department.

“Renauld?”

He’s a year older than you, a pureblood with parents in high places, and endlessly fucking hopeless.

“Well, yeah —”

You push out from your desk, files fluttering behind you. “Renauld will expose the whole damn wizarding world if he touches that building.”

“But McCormack sent him.”

“Where is it?”

“I… McCormack said that —”

“Where is it, Flack?”

“Um. Um, near King William, I think. Moorgate or, um —”

That’s good enough. You toss the Floo Powder into the fireplace and go.

The place is a mess. You don’t even have to look for it. There’s some ward around the street, bouncing muggles away like an invisible end to a map they don’t even register is there. At least that’s handled right.

But you slip through it and curse under your breath at the muggles trapped inside the wards. They’re like fish prodding at the dome of their bowl, and some run up to you demanding explanations when they see you unaffected by it. You brush them off — Obliviation is not your strong-suit — though you do shout at a pair of DMAC wizards uselessly standing guard outside the bank.

“What the hell are you doing?” you ask on approach. “Renauld’s supposed to handle the inside, yeah? You deal with fixing them.”

You point toward the frantic muggles, and the officials just regard you with vague confusion at your presence. “Renauld said —”

“Oh my God! Fix. The muggles.”

You afford nothing else before pushing past them to enter the bank.

It’s quite impressive, actually; Renauld, the result of generations of foolproof breeding, is waving his wand around like he’s just stepped out of Olivanders for the first time.

“Heal their wings,” you say without greeting.

Renauld jumps. “What? What are you doing here?”

“Heal their damn wings. They’re easier than human limbs and healing magic’s the only thing you aren’t completely shit at.”

“Who authorised you?” he hisses.

“I did.”

In hindsight, it should have gone horrifically wrong. Your wand could have been taken and your life might have been over in all ways that matter, flung back into the muggle world where you’ve always been told you belong.

But Renauld vouches for you. You Transform the walls, you fix the burns, you mend the bank to something presentable. A muggle robbery — dangerous, financially tragic, but believable. And your suggestion to heal the injured bank tellers in their animal forms might be the thing that saved them. When Renauld mends their wings and regenerates their blood, you Untransfigure them, and the other DMAC officials alter their memories with haste.

You were completely out of line and utterly right.

It isn’t something people like you are allotted.

Your probation period is dreadful. You hide in your room at the inn most days, Vanishing little stained panes on your window to feel the warm breeze of air before you Conjure them again. You help grade papers, though Dumbledore is displeased with you and the night is a silent one. He assures you curtly that he’s doing his best with the Ministry to amend this.

And… he does.

With Renauld’s help and the corroboration of the other DMAC officials, you’re back at work by the start of the school year.

It’s a slow process — almost eight months of meaningless paperwork — before the next incident occurs and you’re hectically ushered to the scene like a belated understudy. And then it happens again. And again. And again.

There’s really no choice but to promote you.

Your heroics are torn from a Gryffindor cloth, so says Flack. You urge him never to say such a thing again.

By your twenty-first birthday, you think about Tom almost exclusively in your sleep. You’re much too busy to think about him anywhere else.

The summer is warm and Hogsmeade is lively. You’ve vacated your room at the inn for a little house on the outskirts of the village, decorating it how you like — discovering what you like. You’d never had a chance to find out before.

Mari visits when she can once you have your fireplace connected to the Floo Network (you yourself prefer Apparating) but her name is slowly working its way from the Italian papers to the British ones, and she has so much to tell you there isn’t possibly enough time in her days to tell it. There’s also the matter of Leo Ndiaye, who has, recently, gotten on one knee and proposed to her. If there had been a bet on them ending up together, you would have been out enough galleons to put you in debt.

After especially gruesome days at work, you and a few colleagues make a habit of getting sherries at the Siren’s Tail, complaining that sometimes the nature of your work is akin to an auror’s but without the notoriety and pay.

“Oh, please,” says Emilia Alves, twirling her straw, “have you seen the shit the aurors are up to lately? I’d rather be a blimmin’ Unspeakable.”

“You’d have to be able to keep your mouth shut for that, Alves.”

Emilia punches Renauld in the arm.

“What are the aurors up to?” Flack asks.

“I dunno much. There was a murder all the way in Albania, s’posedly. Reeked of dark magic.”

“Nothing new,” you join, and then frown. “Why’s our Ministry dealing with it though?”

“I dunno. I got word from Hillicker that the Albanians didn’t know what to make of the mess. They’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Hillicker’s not a source,” Renauld scoffs.

“Yeah? Why don’t you ask your daddy for something better?”

“Alves, I’ll have you know —”

You lean in over the counter. “What do you mean they’ve never seen anything like it?”

She grins. “Why? Storming a bank robbery wasn’t exciting enough for you?”

You roll your eyes, taking a drink.

That ought to be the end of it. One extraordinarily lucky incident to push you up the career ladder was rare enough — there is absolutely no way digging around a case that has nothing to do with you or your department could ever end well.

But something about it itches.

You make nice with Hillicker. She’s a year younger than you and far too kind for her own good, and she gushes freely about her husband’s work as an auror (they must be a perfect match for him to gush freely about it with her). It’s a bit manipulative. You have no excellent excuse for it, but… ambition, and all that, you suppose. Flack’s Gryffindor theory is studded with holes.

You are green, through and through.

Emilia’s updates are meaningless when you garner so much information that you’ve already heard everything she has to say over drinks, and at this point her and Hillicker might be a step behind you. Emilia still only knows about Albania; peppery little details of half a story. Hillicker discusses an assortment of murders with no real string between them, and Dumbledore regards you with cool heeding when you bring up the matter with him.

You see him little nowadays but you’ve never been close in any true sense, traces of resentment budding over the years like rainwater collects on glass until the stream finally slips.

You visit Hogwarts mostly for your Slytherins, fourteen or fifteen now, unafraid of the distinction of their blood.

And then there’s one night after you turn twenty-two where drinks take place at yours for a change, Mari and Leo included and happily wed. You have no sherries but your ale is just as well, and it’s only you and Renauld who are sober by the time everyone else is vanishing into the fireplace and going home.

That makes it much worse when you sleep together.

There’s no excuse of having had a glass too many — so sorry, I’ll be on my way then, and him stumbling over his trousers to get out of your hair. Of course, he does that anyway, scratching the nape of his neck when he reaches your doorway in the morning.

“Thanks for the — well, you have a nice home — I do think I should —”

“Yes.”

“Right.”

“Oh!” He turns around at the last second. “Er — I know you’ve become a tad obsessed with… Hillicker mentioned another, anyway. Hepzibah something. Killed by her own elf, the aurors suspect.”

“Oh,” you echo, sheets pulled up to your shoulders. “Thanks, Renauld.”

“I thought you might like to know. Don’t be daft about it.”

You’re incredibly daft about it.

There’s something reminiscent about Albania in this case that wasn’t there with the others. The tide of dark magic ebbing across the scene, the cherry-picked information released in the Prophet, the claim of an old, dumb House Elf who poisoned her mistress like the Albanian peasant killed in some insoluble accident.

The itch exacerbates.

You see him in your dreams again. He peers over Runes in a stolen encyclopaedia, he whispers to an adder on his shoulder, he kisses the corner of your mouth and it isn’t enough. He kills you, again and again. You kill him too.

You wake up and he isn’t there.

It’s a new low when you’re invited to the Hillicker’s anniversary dinner and you end up digging through the drawers of their study halfway through the night.

The Albania file offers nearly nothing. There was the charred residue of dark magic imprinted on a hollow tree in the fields of the peasant’s hamlet, but nothing detailing more than a blank imprint of the Killing Curse in his eyes. Still, you tuck the knowledge away for the file of one Hebzibah Smith, whose tea did indeed have traces of poison, but whose den was also ripe with a layer of darkness that didn’t line up with the Ministry’s tale of senile elf.

And then there’s the forgotten matter of her being a purveyor of ancestral artefacts. The file doesn’t recount whether any are missing, since the woman was wise enough not to proclaim all her possessions to the world, but it’s something. A scratch.

You travel to Albania that Christmas. The neighbours in the peasant’s hamlet have skewed memories, so they provide little help, but the man’s house was left almost untouched.

You tear the place apart and Transfigure it back together when you’re done.

All you find, in the end, is a scrap of an old envelope in a suitcase.

R.R

It could be that it’s old. The cursive seems ancient enough. But you swear the letters have the distinct shape of quill ink — too artful for any pen — and maybe that wouldn’t matter if it weren’t for half a wax seal stuck to the torn edge of the envelope. Stained but silver, the barest hint of two ribbons, a crest, and the letter H.

You return to Hogwarts posthaste.

It’s snowing in the courtyards and you waddle with a duotang under one arm to pretend you’re here for something scholarly, an array of excuses prepared in case you run into Dumbledore, but you don’t.

The Grey Lady is as beautiful as she’s rumoured to be.

You ask her about her mother, and she’s silent, an expression on her face like you’ve struck her.

“Is it found?” she whispers. The snow floats through her.

Your heart hammers as you consider how to approach this. She thinks you know more than you do, which means there’s something to know.

“Yes,” you say. And you dare further with the context you know, “In Albania.”

“Oh,” she hums. “Oh…”

And if she means to say more she doesn’t seem able, washing away through the balusters, then the walls. You think of your house ghost and what he did to her, and you feel sorry for a second.

Madam Palles expels you from the library the moment you find what you’re looking for, and you rush past a throng of staring students to the staff room fireplace. It’s too far a walk to the border of the castle wards to Apparate. You bite back the preemptive sickness, get swallowed by the flames, and go home.

There are blanks to fill in but you do it easily. Rowena Ravenclaw’s diadem. Hepzibah Smith and her assortment of unregistered artefacts. The stain of dark magic. Something so rare not even the aurors recognized it.

But you do, because he told you.

You wonder on your search to find him what object he used when he killed Myrtle Warren. Nothing special, you think — maybe even the closest thing he could find. These murders involved more preparation. He got to mark them however he wanted.

It’s almost disappointing to find him here. In a little flat over Knockturn Alley with a view of charmed coalsmoke and the brick wall of another shop.

It’s as tidy as his room at Wool’s, the only dirt the irremediable age of the building itself. The whole place looks almost slanted, large enough only for the bare necessities; a kitchen, a toilet, a bedroom that looks more like a closet, and a study/dining room/den you can’t imagine he hosts many gatherings in. You rescind the mere thought. Whatever gatherings Tom Riddle is having these days, you’re sure you can’t begin to imagine at all.

You wait, legs crossed on an old loveseat, fiddling with your wand.

The door clicks open when the snow has turned to hail and there’s no light but the few scattered candles you’d lit on the mantelpiece.

It strikes you only when he’s standing before you that it’s his birthday.

You’re in Tom Riddle’s flat, on his birthday, adorned by the orange glow of half-melted candles, and you know everything.

He eyes you carefully, a hint of surprise at the sight of you after four years that even he needs a second to recover from. And then he's even, inscrutable Riddle again, and you dare to think, come back.

“I placed wards," he says, hanging his bag on a rack by the wall.

“I thought your door was always open.”

You see his posture change from just his silhouette.

“Wards never work in Knockturn,” you offer additionally, “not really. There's too much conflicting magic; one border cuts into another; leaves a little sliver behind if you’re smart enough to find it. You should know that."

He turns to you. You take in a moment to acknowledge how he's changed. It's hard to see in the curtained moonlight, and it seems unreasonable to imagine he’s grown, but you think he has. An inch taller, perhaps. Two. Maybe the dress shoes. His arms are bigger under his button-down, but not enough to consider him muscular. His black hair isn't as perfect as you remember, and you suspect a long day of work undoes his curls. You always liked him better that way in school, after a night duel at the Black Lake, his robes askew and his hair a mess. Evidence that you were the only one to dishevel him. Now you were — what? Did he even think of you anymore? Yes. You'd always think of each other.

“Duly noted. What are you here for?” He tries your surname like a foreign language.

You cross your arms, and you're acutely aware that he's observing your changes too. You're not the matchstick witch he once knew. Your emotions are cultured now, taut to mirror his. You wear dull, formal grey, and that glowing green tinge that should be gleaming on you is under a thick carapace. That’s for Mari, Flack, Emilia — even Renauld. Not for Tom.

You wonder if he knows it was Dumbledore who put in the word that got you this uniform. You wonder if he resents you for it.

“There’s been talk at the Ministry," you say finally, “A string of murders. Whispers of something — some dark magic they don’t understand. And you know they're careful about things like that after Grindelwald."

“A string of murders... Hm. That might imply you understand a connective thread. Is there some sort of accusation being made?”

“Oh, I'm sure you'd be flattered by accusations. There’s not enough there, as it stands. Just whispers." You sink more comfortably in the seat and the springs make a concerning sound. “But I know you."

His hard, sharp gaze falters for a moment. You watch the flames dance behind him, the firelight playing against the lines of his shoulders, and feel your heart skip a beat. “Who else is speculating?"

“No one." Your fingers brush over the book spines on the coffee table. “I guess their attention hasn't been drawn to a book clerk yet, even if you have taken residency... here." You say it with no shortage of disapproval.

Knockturn was never where Tom belonged. You'd once imagined a flat together in muggle London, taking the telephone booth to the Ministry together, changing the world together. It's a wish that's a lifetime away now.

“Is this a warning? I assure you, I don’t need the condescension.”

“I'm not warning you," you scoff, “I — I'm seeing you. God knows I'll probably never get the chance to do that again once you get yourself locked up in Azkaban, which you will."

You sound exasperated. You sound half-pleading. “What are you doing, Tom? Is this — this is really what you want?"

“Yes."

You shake your head. “I don't believe that." And then some of that fiery spit returns to you, and you feel like a child again, stuck in the London tube stations holding his hand at every plane that flew overhead, scowling that you needed his reassurance. Scowling that you were afraid.

“Well, your conjecture is ever-appreciated. Shall I lend you mine? Shall I congratulate you on your revolutionary position at the Ministry? Or is it Dumbledore I should afford my thanks?”

“I earned this,” you hiss.

“You deserve it,” he amends. “But do not lie to yourself and pretend that’s why you have it.”

“Fuck you.”

He smiles. “There you are.”

“I don’t need your congratulations, Riddle. Dumbledore doesn’t need your damn thanks. But,” you say, biting back the snarl that wants out, “you could thank me. After all, I could turn to the Ministry any minute with the truth of your heritage. I could tell them about Myrtle, the Horcrux — Horcruxes.”

The humour dissolves from his face and you despise the immense glee it brings you.

“Oh, did you think I didn’t know? Didn’t understand the connective thread? You are sentimental under all that… fucking posturing, you know. I’m sure it’s all very romantic to you — making Horcruxes out of Hogwarts artefacts. Shame it’s such an insult to your intelligence.”

“Very good,” he says after a long, terse silence. You’re sure he’s thinking just the opposite.

You hum, meddling with your nails. “So what’s your plan?”

“I’d need a Vow for that.”

You laugh. “I’m not that desperate.”

“You’re also not an auror, are you?” He tilts his head appraisingly. “And yet you’ve found your way here.”

“How many do you plan to make? How many people do you plan to kill?”

“A Vow.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Tea, then? Biscuits?”

“Oh, I shouldn’t. I read in the paper the other day about a poor old woman who had her tea poisoned.”

“Hm. Terrible shame.”

Your fist clenches around your wand. “Is it paying off well, Riddle? It must be a good life if you’re willing to split your soul to hell and back to have more of it.”

He smiles at the barb in your words. “You never were good with subtlety.”

“I wasn’t trying to be subtle. This place is horrific.”

“I was referring to your inability to see more than what’s directly in front of you.”

“Oh, really? And what more should I see than a boy who’s very good at getting weak men to bow and do very little else? I’d try to see the bigger picture, but I reckon it wouldn’t fit in here.”

Tom regards you colourlessly. You are slate, Ministry-grey, impermeable like palace portcullis.

“I suppose I should have killed you.” He says it with the nonchalance of a forgotten chore. He says it like you’re a stain.

He doesn’t say it like he feels any terrible urgency to remove you; and you think, this time, you’d feel more powerful if he did. You think it’s far more debilitating to sit here and be looked at like he regrets wanting you alive more than he wants you dead.

“Yes,” you concur, “I suppose you should have.”

You place your wand down on the table and scoot your chair away for good measure. “It’s never too late to rectify your mistakes.”

Tom, for a moment, looks surprised. That makes you feel powerful. You’d take more of that.

“You have wandless magic,” he tries. A weak recovery.

“Scout’s honour, Riddle.”

He doesn’t move for a moment, then fixes his wand in his hand and rises, doused in the same inscrutable calm that always used to drive you mad. Now something in you gleams with the knowledge that he only ever looks like this when he’s trying not to look like anything at all.

He steps closer and it gleams brighter. It trembles inside you and you know, distantly, that this is insane. You’re weighing your life on a childhood trust that was shattered years ago, and you don’t think you’ve ever been that good at faith, but he’s approaching you and that gleam you feel is reflected in his eyes and you just… know. Your spilled blood once crawled with his. There’s no undoing that. Half of you is made of the other.

“I should have killed you,” he repeats.

It’s a murmur. Stilted. Angry, even. Angry that you made him this and there’s no fucking rectifying it — what a joke that is. What an immensely you thing to suggest.

“Yes,” you agree.

It’s a breath. Low. Proud, even. Proud that you’re his only mistake and he’s going to make it again.

Tom kisses you. It’s a murder of its own kind. You kiss him back, and — you were always going to kill each other like this, weren’t you? It’s you and him whether you like it or not.

There should be no love in it. You know that. Love is far behind the both of you, stifled in a gasp at the back of your throat on your eighteenth birthday and the soft, selfish hands of a seventeen year old boy. This is mutual destruction. Spite and teeth and skin that’s cold under your fingers.

He was your first in everything but this.

You push back at him and feel the hunger, the need in him, like a flame as he kisses you deeper and harder, and you find yourself losing yourself to it all over again, like you're back in the dark alcove of a pub where you told him goodbye, pushing to extend the juncture. And then he lets out a hitched, gravelly sound; not a moan but enough to make you shudder.

You pull him onto the sofa and crawl onto his lap.

“How long?” he asks thickly.

You don’t have to ask what he means. You bite against his neck, nails under his shirt as you struggle to pop the buttons open. There must be a violence in all your want for him because if there isn't it's just loss. It's just another thing you'll give him without taking anything back.

“Sixth year," you pant, “in the Deathday ballroom when we fought for the first time. You — ah — you put your thumb on my mouth. Since then."

You hear a sharp intake of breath, and his hand moves up your back to pull you impossibly closer. His voice is ragged. “Should I tell you how long I’ve wanted you?"

You shudder a breath. “Since —" And it's a bit hard to talk with the way he's rolling your hips — “Since when?"

His lips twitch into a mirthless smile, hands spanning your thighs as you start to rock against him. “When you burned me, and I sent you into the lake."

You swallow, agonised by the slow pace his grip forces you to keep when all you want to do is go faster.

“Your uniform was terribly wet,” he says, mouth tracing your jaw. “Did I ever apologise for that?"

“N-no.”

He tuts, the hushed sound warm and deadly on your neck. “Bad manners. I must have been distracted."

Oh. Oh, you think. It seems pointless to flush in the position you're in now, but the knowledge that he wanted you then and you hadn't even known is... all the more devastating.

But you shiver at the question of how he’d wanted you, in what amount of detail, in what precise way. You almost want to ask. See it for yourself.

You don't think you'd manage the words. He’s hard underneath you and your head wants to lull toward his shoulder but a big hand holds you from one side of your jaw down the length of your neck, his tongue laving up the other. Instead you’re balanced only by his hands and his mouth, rolling against him because it’s all you can do like this.

He’s marking you, you realise with a gasp, and your fingers bury in his hair to remove his mouth from its descending assault on your collar. Not that. You’d sworn against that.

Your fingers return to his buttons and he copies you by finding yours, pulling at the fabric tucked into your trousers until it’s discarded entirely. You press your hands to the planes of his chest and watch him, your mouth agape as his eyes linger on your chest.

His heart is pounding and he must know you’re about to comment on it because his lips are on yours again and he adjusts his position and your fingers dig into his shoulders at the delicious new feeling of him pressing into your thigh.

You move for his belt. He moves for your zipper. It’s some sort of race, whatever you’re doing, and you’re at an unfair advantage when you’re still fumbling with his buckle when his hand is already carving a slow path to the band of your underwear. You're scalding under the journey of it, little stars pricking you under every new inch he explores.

He dips in and your eyes wrench shut, grasping frantically for his wrist.

“Shh,” he says softly, caressing your cheek with his spare hand, thumb finding your mouth how it did all those years ago and you want to curse him. The fucker knows exactly what he’s doing.

You shake your head, chest rising with heavy breaths as you return to his belt and scrabble to unbuckle it.

“So tense,” he murmurs. The hand at your cheek draws over your lower lip before it falls to your back to hold you closer. “Rest now.”

And his fingers trace you where you want him most, brushing past your clit as he pulls his face back to watch you.

You sink into the feeling, still swaying on his lap, a half-efforted attempt at finding friction in the hardness between his legs that feels fruitless because it won't be enough until he's inside. Your hand just grips onto the fabric of his unzipped trousers and stays there. It’s a pause. An obstacle on your path to him that you need just a moment to recover from before you’ll make him feel just like this. Better. Worse. It’s hard to tell which is which.

He’s stroking at you now, pleased by the way you lurch against him with every touch.

You have to recover, you have to make it even, you have to… you…

A finger presses inside and you moan.

“You came back to me,” he whispers, close enough to be kissing you but there’s just the stutter of his breath. It's a fucking religious thing to say, the way he does it.

“Doesn’t make me yours,” you breathe.

He shakes his head. “I know. You’ll still take it though, won’t you?”

Oh, fuck.

He makes a sound of approval. “Good.”

Good. Fine. Your hands slip from his zipper to the meat of his thighs, pushing yourself forward so the shape of him is firmer against you, and Tom slips another finger in.

You’ll take it, won’t you? Yes.

Maybe you don’t need to tear him at the seams (though you want to) to make it even. Maybe this is punishment enough. That he can have you like this and it still won’t make you his, that he’ll give you everything and you’ll lap at it with half the greed he possesses.

You ride his hand, clutching his shoulders, rocking your hips. You take all of it, and it builds something delirious inside you, that it’s him doing this, his perfect fingers, the shape of his lips, the soft dark of his hair when you find your hands in it again. The feeling makes you stutter, and he has to move you by the waist himself to keep the momentum when you can't do it yourself.

He’s painfully stiff, pushing up against you with a degree of self-control that feels like it can only end disastrously for the both of you, and you start smattering kisses down his cheek. You tilt his head back and lick a stripe down his neck. Rest now, you'd say if you could.

But he adds a third finger and your head falls, a cry planted in his collar when you come, and you don't think you say anything.

Tom holds your legs steady, guiding you through it like this is just another one of his studies. You are what he knows better than anything else, and still he wants to learn more.

“Look at you,” he mutters, dipping you back to press his lips down your chest, unclasping your bra while you’re still breaking, the sensation swelling again when he takes a nipple into his mouth.

“Tom,” you try to say. Your mouth is the sticky sort of dry that words refuse to come out of.

“Will you give me more?”

Give, not take. You fuss into a stolen kiss, grappling again with his trousers, pulling them down until you can palm him through his boxers.

He hisses, gripping your wrist like he hadn’t just done the same to you, and then he’s pulling you up and off the couch, trousers discarded with what must be magic because you blink and they’re gone. Greedy boy. (You have no room to judge.) Your back is to the wall an instant before his fingers are on you again, pushing your underwear down your thighs until it falls at your feet like they despised to ever part from you.

You arch to feel him press against your stomach, pushing off the wall so that you can meld to him but he just closes in on you to do it himself.

He goads the heat from you when his fingers push in again, still wet, coiling how you like, where you like —

“Want you,” you protest shakily, hand on his abdomen.

That must kill him a little, because he curses under his breath (a thing he never does) and the immediate absence of his touch is cruel when he goes to free himself from his boxers. You reach for him without thinking as he does, and he pins your hand beside you when your fingers so much as graze the length of him.

You sound frail, but you have to ask. “Is this how you wanted me?”

A cruder version of you would go on. Is this how you pictured it? Taking me against a wall? Have you waited for it all this time?

And you don’t belong to him but you’re so incomprehensibly, contradictorily his. You’ll want him forever. He could do anything, and you’d be his. You could haunt him into his lonely eternity, and he’d be yours. Then, you suppose — haunting him makes him yours by principle.

Maybe you already do.

Tom practically growls into your mouth, pressing against you and — God, it’s skin on skin. He's right there. You could push forward and —

He slides in. You cry out at the feel of him inside you, the angle of it like this.

“I wanted you,” he says lowly, your legs wrapped around him, “everywhere.”

You’re gripping him so tight you think he’ll bleed under your nails and somehow you still feel on the brink of collapse when he thrusts deeper.

“I thought mostly of your mouth,” he rasps. “It felt depraved to imagine it wrapped around me, but then I thought of you splayed out before me instead. That maybe you’d like it if it was my mouth on you.”

You whimper.

“Would you like that?” he asks, hands spanning your hips to snap them into his, like you are a piece removed from him he seeks to reattach.

If you wanted to answer you couldn’t. You’re clinging to him and the rising surge inside you, carved between your legs like something sweltering and unfixable. It rushes in and he pulls out of you. He pushes in and you cry for the release of it, the moment the wave lurches over the edge, but he won’t let you have it.

“But,” he says, and your eyes want to roll back at how heavy his restraint is, callous in the tone of his voice, some leash at his neck he must tug himself lest you take it from him — “If I knew how well you’d take me like this, I would have thought of it much more.”

Taking him, again — you don’t feel at all like that’s what’s happening. You feel possessed. You are buoyant in his arms: his and his and his.

“You can — uh — you can — ”

"Hm?" He brushes down the slope of your brow, your cheek, back to the edge of your mouth, wiping a trail of saliva from your chin. “Poor thing.”

And he slams into you again, drawing a mewl from you that slices your unfinished thought.

You clench around him, flames wild and fluttering at every contact of his skin on yours, and there are too many to count. Too many points where they intersect, just some blend of bodies connected at every curve.

“You’re going to give me more,” he says, like it’s an epiphany when you already told him you would.

You remember then. What you meant to say. “You can take me too.”

You feel him twitch inside you, his pace stilling for a moment, and the thumb on your lip slips into your mouth. Your lips close around him and he curses again.

He fucks you with a finger in your mouth and his teeth clamped over your shoulder, soothing the sting with his tongue. His pace is too slow when he drags his free hand between your legs, but you understand its purpose well enough that the mere recognition almost destroys you.

He’s patient in bringing you to the edge because there's time here. A slow agony that severs you from the rest of the world until it splits you down the middle. And he may not ever have it again.

You have to promise yourself he’ll never have it again.

But the movement of his fingers against the same spot he’s hitting inside you is too much at once, and you won’t last. You drool around his thumb. You let him mark you. You can see on his neck you’ve marked him too. And you hope impossibly there’s a scar. You hope the little death you coax from him claims him as yours for eternity, keeps him even when you're gone. You tighten, lurch for the edge, and make him mortal once more.

Tom holds you there, your cries reverberating as he sinks another finger in your mouth, and then he’s gasping at your neck, peeling back to look you in the eyes when he spills into you. Your eyes screw together and he releases the sounds you make by holding you by the jaw instead.

“Look at me,” he says, and for the strained need in it you do.

You come down to earth and you kiss him, wetness dripping down your thighs as he pins you to this moment. You love him. You’ll always love him.

He’s still inside you when he’s secure enough to bring you to his bed, only removing himself from you when you’re safely in his sheets, legs surrendering their grip on his waist as you pull apart. You pant into the cold linen of his pillow. Everything smells like him. There’s something empty now; the reason you came today; the reason you left four years ago.

You love him and it isn’t enough. Not even to look at him, the sleepy hint of the boy you knew in his eyes, and know that he loves you too.

“Goodnight, Tom,” you say, finding home in the warmth of his chest.

You’ll dream of a morning where you wake up beside him, but you won’t be there.

#tom riddle #tom riddle x reader #tom riddle x you #tom riddle x y/n #tom riddle fluff #tom riddle smut #tom riddle angst #(the trifecta)#tom marvolo riddle #voldemort #voldemort x reader #tom riddle imagine #tom riddle oneshot #harry potter fanfiction #wizarding world #ftltutbh

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pasukiyo · 19 days

Text

WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING

remus lupin x f!reader word count; 2,224 summary; even just the smallest things remus lupin did was enough to have your belly full with butterflies. you trace it all back at three thirty a.m. to find that something that night turned in your heart...

“I don’t understand how you can call yourself a bookworm yet, you haven’t read a single Jane Austen book.”

Remus casted his gaze to the ground beneath their feet and smiled sheepishly, tucking his hands in the front pockets of his jeans. “Does that discount my self-proclaimed ‘bookworm’ title?” He asked and she huffed, rubbing her palm up and down the expanse of her opposite arm when London’s autumn breeze snuck like a phantom beneath her coat.

“Perhaps,” she replied as Remus closed the small distance between them. “You should at least…” she trailed off when his arm slithered its way around hers and warmth pooled in her cheeks when he guided her hand in his coat pocket. She blinked a glance his way to find he already stared, waiting expectantly for the rest of her answer.

How could he be so casual while touching her like so?

“…read Pride and Prejudice,” she managed to breathe through a shiver, his hand wrapped so tenderly around hers turning her brain to mush, a cocoon erupting somewhere deep in her belly, the warm, fluttery feeling of butterflies in her stomach making her feel light, airy. Remus said nothing, only simply gazed at her with a sentiment so warm and earth-shattering, she wondered if she’d melt and ooze like magma right there on the pavement in the midst of fall.

“Yeah?” He spoke and she turned away, willing herself to breathe. She hummed, nodding. “It’s a classic,” she replied, cursing her voice for sounding so meek. A lump had appeared in her throat and she forced it back down to her belly.

“Is it your favorite?” Remus asked, a gentle tug of his hand on hers to guide her around the corner. Her lips parted in a gasp at the subtlest of dominance, her heartbeat thundering so loud in her chest, she could hear it in her eardrums. For a moment, she caught a glimpse of Remus’s face, wondering if he could hear it too. She swallowed again, “well, no. If I had to choose a favorite by Jane Austen, I’d have to go with Emma.”

“Then why Pride and Prejudice?” He questioned and Merlin, it was such a simple inquiry, but even the mere notion that he was interested in what she was interested in made her feel like she’d catch on fire any moment now. Her palms suddenly felt clammy and she flushed, desperately hoping he could not feel the sweat that was surely beading them.

“Because I think it is the best introduction to her writing and style,” she answered as they neared her flat, dread already beginning to lace her bones like a poison. How foolish she’d become for Remus Lupin, how desperate she’d become to always have him in her sight.

The longer she spent with Remus Lupin, the more she was beginning to realize that she craved spending time with him, craved their conversations, even their debates over books, whether coffee or tea was better. She loved when they’d stare at the stars at night, listening as he told her each and every single constellation’s story, when he laughed at her jokes and brushed her hair over her ear and told her she was brighter than any star in the entire sky.

“Is that right?” Remus’s voice sliced through the syrupy mush of her brain and she blinked, clearing her throat and nodding. “Yes,” she hummed. “And if you read it, I’ll let you borrow my heavily annotated copy of Emma.”

Remus’s lips parted in a devastating smile that she had to tear her gaze away from before she quite literally turned to putty in the palm of his hand. She nodded, brushing an astray strand of hair behind her ear with the hand not in the pocket of Remus’s coat as they approached her flat building. Disappointment struck like an earthquake in her bones and she deflated as she forced herself to pull her hand away from his, lacing her fingers in front of her hips as she turned to face him.

“I must get to reading then,” he said and the corners of her lips twitched. “Glad to hear it,” she said in hardly a murmur. For a moment, a silence fell upon them, neither seemingly wanting to find a reason for the evening to end.

Eventually, she willed her eyes to find his, no matter how much his gaze made her want to draw herself into him, deep enough that she’d never be able to be pried away.

“I… had a really good time with you today, Remus,” she said, eyelashes fluttering against her cheeks. His smile only grew at that, a blush creeping onto his face, a light pink to contrast the fading red of his scars. “And I as well,” he replied before his eyes widened, as if remembering something he’d almost forgotten. “I almost forgot.”

She blinked, watching as he rummaged through the pocket on the inside of his coat, revealing a small, light pink bouquet to match the blush on his cheeks. The flowers were a bit wilted, more than likely from being stuffed inside his pocket for too long. The dusty pink on his cheeks deepened into a rosy color, his smile sheepish as he held it out towards her.

“It’s a bit… well,” he tittered as she reached for the stems, the brief brush of their fingers igniting a spark, a ray of electricity surging through her veins. Her face was so hot now, she was certain she’d be reduced to an oozing stream of lava any second now. “Been in my pocket all day.”

A laugh tumbled from her lips as she brushed the pad of her forefinger across one of the soft, pink petals, holding the bouquet close to her chest.

“They’re beautiful, Remus,” she whispered. “Thank you.”

Remus stuffed his hands back in the pockets of his jeans again, kicking rocks around on the pavement. “Beautiful flowers for a beautiful girl,” he said after a moment, as if he’d been mustering the courage to speak in the first place. “Seems only fair.”

Her lips parted, unable to breathe for a moment, her heart beating so fast now, it was a miracle it hadn’t leaped out of her chest by now. She wasn’t even sure what to even say, what to do— Remus Lupin thought she was beautiful.

What was she even supposed to do with herself now?

“Remus, I…” she trailed off, unsure what to say. Remus’s gaze lifted from the ground, surging into hers and her heart skipped a few beats, her stomach doing a couple of somersaults. She knew she’d never before felt the way she did now, never felt so tender, so warm, so foolish, enough that she felt like she could break into a dance right now without a single care in the world.

She realized she felt this way every time she was with Remus Lupin, like she could dance, sing, scream into the night without a mere thought. She felt like nothing else mattered, as if every idiotic thing she did no longer mattered when she was with him. She didn’t recognize herself when she was with Remus and she realized that it was because of him that she was becoming someone entirely brand new.

Somewhere deep down in her heart, she knew this change was meant to be.

“…I want to see you again,” she spoke breathlessly, chasing air back into her lungs with a rather large inhale. The warmth of the smile Remus gave her was enough to challenge the sun itself, even on its brightest day in the midst of summer. Truly earth-shattering a thing, Remus Lupin was.

“Of course,” he said, stepping in closer, leaning down until his lips could press against the apple of her cheek. She blinked, pressing her lips together to stifle her gasp as he ruffled the hair atop of her head, pulling away. “I want to see you again too. And that’s a promise.”

She was frozen, turned to a statue by Remus’s lips like staring into Medusa’s eyes had done to people in the myths. She hardly remembered saying their goodbyes, watching as he disappeared further down the lamp lit street, hardly remembering her feet whisking her way up into her flat.

She hardly remembered unlocking the door, closing it behind her and locking it again. Hardly remembered putting the light pink bouquet in a vase, hardly even remembered getting herself ready for bed.

But she did remember lying awake that night. She remembered tossing and turning, staring into the darkness of her ceiling, turning to face the buildings on the other side of the street from her window, the moon peeking its head over the rooftops. She remembered watching it as if it were an old friend as it disappeared over the top of her window, remembering every ticking of the clock on the other side of the room.

Never once did her thoughts stray from Remus Lupin. She still remembered the first day they met, the first time she saw him in the park, sitting on the bench where the primroses grew, holding a copy of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. She remembered him looking up and catching her eye, remembering how neither one of them seemed to be able to look away.

She was so bewildered, hardly believing she’d been able to catch his eye in the way that she did. She couldn’t believe that he wanted to talk to her, that he said that he wanted to see her again. She remembered the beating of her heart then, every single time he looked at her, talked to her, smiled at her.

She remembered their first date, when he took her stargazing, which she still was convinced was only so he could tell her about the constellations. He seemed so passionate then and she was so entranced, enthralled with the way he spoke. She still remembered the way her heart beat and fluttered around her chest when she felt his fingertips brush against her ear when he swiped away her hair, the way her eyes flickered to his lips when he tenderly told her she was brighter than any star.

She sighed— how she regretted not listening to that voice inside of her head that told her to kiss him.

She could still feel the shape of Remus’s lips on her cheek from when he kissed her there earlier. His kiss haunted her, lingering like a phantom on her skin.

Remus Lupin haunted her, bewitched her as if he’d cast her under some sort of spell, until her every thought was of him.

She glanced over at the clock, just barely making out the time.

Three thirty.

Something began to shift from within and she sat up with a gasp at the realization that indeed, she was irrevocably, hopelessly, undoubtedly in love with Remus Lupin.

She practically leaped from her bed, uncertain what she was doing, unable to control herself. It seemed like foolish things were all she could do since she met Remus, such as picking up the phone, dialing in his phone, anxiously twirling the cord around her forefinger.

For Merlin’s sake, it was three thirty in the morning, why was she calling him?

The phone rang for a few moments and she sighed— why did she expect him to pick up? He was asleep, she shouldn’t be bothering him like this—

“Hello?”

Remus’s groggy voice whispered through the receiver and her breathing hitched at the base of her throat. He picked up?

Her lips parted with the intent to speak but nothing came out— what was she even going to say?

“Hello?” Remus said again, yawning.

She squeezed her eyelids shut, willing herself to just speak.

“Well… I’ll be hanging up now…”

“I’m in love with you.”

Silence.

For a moment, she wondered if he really had hung up, a flush warming her cheeks. She was about to put the phone down, to trudge back to her bed and wallow in the depths of her own despair, until he softly whispered her name, so faint, she almost didn’t quite catch it.

“Remus,” she whispered back, her vision glossing over with the bitter sting of tears. She crossed an arm over her chest, the heel of the hand not wrapped around the phone digging into her brow. “I’m sorry for waking you, I just… I just…”

“You’re in love with me,” he said, repeating it as if to confirm it was real, as if he weren’t still sleeping and this wasn’t all just some cruel dream he’d be waking from. She sniffed, nodding, “I’m in love with you. And I wish you were here right now.”

Another silence.

Her heart did a waltz around her chest even despite the anxiety bubbling like acid in her throat. Would he reject her? Did she read him wrong? Maybe she was really a fool after all, for thinking that he would love her back, that he would feel the same way she did. Perhaps this would be the last time she’d ever hear from him, perhaps she’d never see Remus Lupin ever again and will forever be haunted by what could’ve—

“I’m in love with you too.”

She blinked, speechless.

"I can be at your flat in ten minutes if I run.”

a/n; a little rushed but i've always thought this song was just so remus coded :( i'm seeing laufey for the second time next week and i'm really hoping she performs this one! she didn't perform it for the u.s. bewitched tour and i'm still so salty 😭 hopefully there's other lauvers reading this and if not, i encourage you all to listen to the song that inspired this fic!

🎀 if you enjoyed this one, i would appreciate a reblog or even just a reply to let me know! thank you so much for reading! 🫶

TAGLIST

@pinktreee

@jxxey3

@iamthejam

@strangerfromketterdam

@burns-in-the-sun

@cancelledkaley

#remus lupin x reader #remus lupin x fem!reader #remus lupin x you #remus lupin imagine #remus lupin #harry potter imagine #wizarding world #harry potter #harry potter fandom #remus x you #remus x reader #remus x y/n #remus lupin x y/n #marauders #marauders era #Spotify

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kaciebello · 10 days

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Random texts with bf!Mattheo Riddle

Masterlist Social media masterlist ☀ Mattheo Riddle x reader Summary: just random texts from Mattheo Warnings: none Authors note: Haiya! I always wanted to try this type of thing so here is my attempt. I will definitely do one like this for all the boys, but if you have any prompt you wanna see all of them react to, don't hesitate and ask! Hope you like this a little bit! ‪♡

Tag list: @imobsessedwitholiviarodrigo , @klimovatereza-blog , @lafrone ,@enfppuff , @rafegfs , @frogtape , @lovelyygirl8 , @catiwinky, @anyam444 , @leeleecats , @ghostgardn , @reverse-soe , @ultramarinetovelvet , @iwishigotswallowed , @jazz-berry , @justatadbonkers , @partnerincrime0 , @schaebickel , @bunnyhopsstuff , @deluluassapocalypse , @adreamingpendulum

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amongemeraldclouds · 1 month

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Ruin The Friendship

A letter gets mailed to its intended recipient. A letter confessing your feelings. A letter you never meant to send.

Lorenzo Berkshire x Reader

Warning: fluff, no use of y/n

Author’s note: My final entry for the Hogmarch challenge, prompt five. This was such a fun challenge, thanks for hosting @thatdammchickennugget ♡

✿ Masterlist | 1k words

“What letter? I didn’t have any mail to send, Daisy,” I ask our house elf as she updates me about the chores she’s done for the day.

“The letter beneath your bed. Daisy found it and to thank you kind miss for saving Daisy from your father’s fury yesterday, Daisy went the extra mile to send it,” she announces proudly.

“You mean,” I whisper, a sinking feeling growing in my chest, “the letter containing my deep and honest thoughts and feelings, about the boy I love, that I swore to myself I would never - and I mean never - send?” I exhale, feeling the edges of a panic attack creep in.

Daisy frowns. “Sorry miss, Daisy did not know. Daisy thought she was helping,” she apologizes, cowering in the corner.

“Stand up, Daisy. I’m not going to hit you,” I reassure her. “But I could hit myself so I don’t have to attend class tomorrow and face the mortifying events that are sure to follow.”

I jump up from my bed and nod, waving my wand. I could do that.

“Miss, please!” Daisy pleads. “Don’t hurt yourself. It’s Daisy’s fault,” she hisses. “Stupid! Stupid! Stupid Daisy!” She chides, punctuating each word by banging her head against my drawers.

“Stop, Daisy,” I reach out, touching her shoulder. "Fine” I sigh, “no one is hurting themselves.”

I am just going to have to go to school tomorrow and die from shame.

The letter

My sweet Enzo, It’s ironic you admire me for my bravery for taking down our childhood bullies and for being one of the top students in our DADA class. Yet here I am in a moment of weakness, thinking of you. Actually, even when I feel strong, defeated, or happy, I still think of you. In an ideal world, I’d be brave enough to tell you face to face. But we live in an imperfect world where hearts can break and relationships end, far more often than anyone would like. So if it saves our friendship, I can and must lock my heart away. I wish I can tell you when or how it happened, but I myself don’t understand. All I know is that I’m hopelessly in love with you. There, I said it.

The aftermath

I peer into Enzo’s dorm, head snaking past the door.

Please, please, please, let it be vacant. Let it be vacant, I chant in my head.

I sigh when silence greets me and move the rest of my body inside, sagging against the door in relief.

What are the odds that Enzo has already read a letter that just arrived this morning? He’s probably at quidditch practice, which means I still have a shot at saving myself from utter mortification. And more importantly, to save our friendship.

I scan his room and hurry towards the table littered with books, dried ink splotches stain the oak wood. If the letter were anywhere, it would be somewhere he—

I yelp when a door opens and turn towards Enzo stepping out from the bathroom with damp hair clinging to his scalp, water dripping down his sculpted chest, running along his toned abs. All hail quidditch.

He clears his throat and I bite my treacherous tongue - the one that unconsciously moved across my lips. Salazar, if I don’t get my act together, I won’t even need some stupid letter to reveal my feelings.

My cheeks burn as I return my gaze to his amused expression. “What the hell are you doing here and why are you naked?” I accuse. That’s right, I’m just blushing because I’m angry.

He adjusts the towel across his hips and I turn away, shoving the image of his toned figure from my mind, trying not to imagine whatever else is beneath his towel. “First of all, not naked,” he states.

“And more importantly, you’re asking me what I am doing, taking a shower, here in my dorm?” he points to the floor for emphasis. I wince and kick myself internally.

“I thought you’d be at quidditch practice,” I try. “I just - I just lost something and thought it might be with you.”

“What is it? I can help you look,” he offers, moving towards me and I step back.

“Enz please, put some clothes on first!” I plead, reminding myself to breathe.

I stop midstep when I feel something cool and solid behind me and I realize I’ve backed into a wall. Why the hell is Enzo prowling towards me like I’m his prey?

I close my eyes when he stops just in front of me, heat radiating from his body. I will myself to disappear, to fuse with the wall, to—

“By any chance,” he starts, “the thing you’re looking for. Is it white and made of paper—”

No, no, no, no, I chant this time, my eyes opening to stare at him in horror.

He continues, “the one with your handwriting scrawled inside?”

All the words leave my mind.

He smirks, “it would be a shame if you lost it and wanted it back because I rather liked it.”

“Y-you do?” I whisper.

His smirk gives way to a warm smile. “Darling, you’re more courageous than I am and I still admire you for your bravery. You managed to write it. Here’s my response: I love you too.”

“Well technically, I never meant to send it. It was Daisy,” I try to explain.

“So I have Daisy to thank. I’ll bring her flowers next time,” he says, making a mental note before continuing. “I’ve wanted to tell you for a long time too, but I was also worried it could ruin our friendship if you didn't feel the same.”

“Now that we’ve established we feel the same…” I begin but trail off when he rests his arm on the wall above me and leans in. My breath hitches.

“I won’t need my clothes until much later,” he ends my sentence.

It’s not what I was going to say but the second I open my lips to protest, his mouth crashes into mine and nothing else matters.

#hogmarch challenge #lorenzo berkshire x reader #lorenzo berkshire x you #lorenzo berkshire #enzo x reader #enzo berkshire imagine #enzo berkshire x reader #enzo berkshire #harry potter fanfiction #hp fanfic #hp fandom #slytherin boys #wizarding world #amongemeraldcloudswrites

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bey0nd-1he-stars · 3 months

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I know Snape was the only death eater that was able to produce a patrons and I’d just like to beg your pardon.

Snape conjured a patrons based on an obsession. What he had for Lily might have been love once but let be real, we’ve surpassed that phase. Now it feels like it’s just an obsession over her.

Other than Lily, his life was fucking miserable. His father was a prat and his mother was weird. He got bullied at school and he doesn’t really seem to enjoy his teaching life very much.

It’s also portrayed that his patronus is conjured from love and not happiness.

So excuse me if I feel like any other death eater has happier memories than Severus Snape.

Lucius Malfoy, he’s respected at the ministry and has a wife, a son that he at least cares about, a nice ass mansion. He’s wealthy and grew up in a famous, rich family, why can’t he conjure a patronus?

Bellatrix Lestrange, like the only death eater who really enjoys what she’s doing with Voldemort. She straight up laughs when killing Sirius. Why can’t she conjure a patronus?

Regulus Black, whose love for his god damn house elf got himself killed. Why can’t he conjure a patronus?

Narcissa Malfoy, who loves her son more than anything, so much that she straight up lied to Voldemort who can read minds just because there’s a chance her son is still alive. Why can’t she conjure a patronus?

Why can’t any of the death eaters conjure a patronus especially since Harry, at 13 years old, could do it based on a made up memory.

It’s a shit excuse to get people to like Snape more.

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mallowsweetmiri · 4 months

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• One of the Boys •

Reader x Fred Weasley

Based off of Katy Perry’s song “One of the Boys”

Word count: 3.5k

Summary: You’ve always been one of the boys. That was until you came back from summer break looking a bit, different, as Fred puts it.

Warnings: cursing, mildly steamy scenario

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

One of the boys

“Today was bloody brilliant!” Fred cheered and clapped you on the back as he raised his cup to Gryffindor. Practically the whole school was shoved in your common room to celebrate the quidditch cup.

“To Gryffindor!” Oliver bellowed drunkly as everyone drank and cheered.

“Seriously, Y/N, you played fucking amazing today,” Angelina bellowed, downing the rest of her drink.

“I can second that. Since when did you get so bloody good, little one?” George smiled as he put his arm around you. The twins had always been your good friends, the three of you joining the Gryffindor quidditch team in your third years. They’d often referred to you as little one, due to the fact that they towered over you. They constantly teased and pranked you, but you would also join in on their antics. More often than not, you guys were playing quidditch during the warm seasons and pranking Filch in the winter. You were really just one of the boys and you couldn’t be more happy to be a part of their mischief.

“I’ve always been good, Georgie. But I will admit, this was probably my best game yet,” you beamed as you joined the rest in downing your drink.

“You’re only that good thanks to our rigorous coaching throughout the years,” Fred smiled wryly, filling his own cup up again. You rolled your eyes.

“Yea right, Weasley. The two of you combined still wouldn’t be as good as me,” you challenged. The three of you went back and forth all night, drinking and laughing and celebrating Gryffindors victory. The high spirits continued throughout the week and before you knew it you were saying goodbye to all your friends at platform 9 and 3/4.

“Oh! So good to see you sweetie,” Molly smiled warmly as she dragged you into a tight hug, “Have a good summer, we’ll see you in the fall! Say goodbye boys.” Fred and George both approached you and each gave you a quick hug before heading out with the Weasley family.

“See you next year little one!” George called out.

“Don’t skimp out on the quidditch practice, Y/N! You could use it,” Fred shouted, giving you a cheeky smile and a wave. You rolled your eyes and sent a smile back before meeting with your own family and heading home for the summer.

3 months later

You checked yourself out in the mirror one last time and smoothed the top of your hair flat.

“Come on, Y/N! You’re going to miss the train,” your dad called from downstairs.

“Coming!”

Over the summer you had grown a considerable amount. Your dad had been teasing you about how much time you spent in the bathroom getting ready, but you didn’t care. For once in your life you actually felt pretty. Your body had begun to fill out in all the right places and your hair had grown out well past your shoulders now. You had started to shave your legs and wear perfume. You had even bought new clothes as you had outgrown your old wardrobe. All of this had instilled you with a newfound confidence that had you beaming. As you walked onto platform 9 and 3/4, you wore a fitted long sleeve shirt and some new low waisted jeans. You had blown out your hair into soft falling curls and you had even applied some lip gloss. You were excited to start your sixth year with all your friends and your new look.

“Bye guys! I’ll see you for Christmas,” you hugged your family before loading your trunks on the train. As you put your final trunk into the train, someone called your name from behind.

“Y/N?”

You turned around to see Fred and George standing behind you, still towering over your frame.

“Fred! George! How was your summer?” You bounded towards them and hugged George. When you pulled back to hug Fred he just stood there with his mouth slightly agape. George nudged him and he seemed to snap out of whatever trance he was in and leaned in to hug you.

“You look… different,” was all he could manage to say. You chuckled and put your hands on your hips.

“Yes, I’m not so little anymore. You guys can stop calling me little one now,” you teased.

“Nah, you’re still tiny,” George brushed you off as you all started to head onto the train to find a compartment. After walking down the length of the train, you had finally found the compartment where Lee and Angelina were.

“Y/N! How was your summer! Oh my gosh, you look absolutely stunning,” Angelina beamed as she hugged you and pulled you down to sit next to her.

“Thanks Angie, I can say the same about you! And my summer was amazing,” you guys chatted back and forth, catching up on all the latest gossip and all the fun things you did over the summer. Fred and George beamed about the Quidditch World Cup and soon the five of you were full of sweets and ready to take a quick nap before you had to change into your school robes.

“Every year I tell myself not to eat so many chocolate frogs, and every year I eat more than I did the year before,” Lee groaned, leaning back and rubbing his stomach. You laughed and slid down in your own seat, leaning your head against the window and looking out across the green landscape. You were so happy to be back with your friends. The summertime was amazing, but there was nothing like Hogwarts. As you smiled to yourself, you looked up from the window to see Fred staring at you with a serious expression. You raised an eyebrow at him but he just shook his head and looked out the window. That was weird. You shook it off and leaned your head against the window again and nodded off.

Before long, the train had pulled into the station and crowds of students were piling out into to the night to go to welcoming feast. As you filed out of the train and towards the carriages, Fred and George lagged behind a bit and whispered to each other.

“Do you think they’re acting a bit strange?” You leaned in towards Angelina, sending another glance back towards the twins.

“Aren’t they always?” Angelina shrugged as she stepped into the carriage. She had a point.

After a few minutes, you found yourself at the Gryffindor table listening to Dumbledore announce the Tri-Wizard Tournament, everybody increasingly getting excited as his speech went on. The excitement reached its peak as piles of fresh food appeared in front of you and everybody dug into the feast.

“Oh how I missed this food,” you groaned, piling food into your mouth. George hummed in agreement as he piled more potatoes into his mouth. You could feel Fred staring at you again but you decided against meeting his gaze this time. Were they going to prank you or something? He was acting so weird.

Shortly after dinner, everybody headed up to their dorms. Despite wanting to hang out together in the common room, the long day of travel and the large feast caught up with the Gryffindors as the students filed up the winding stairs to their rooms. You had just gotten to your room when you realized you left your book in the common room. You turned around and quietly padded down the stairs to retrieve it. You slowed your steps as you saw the twins huddled together on a couch with their backs turned from you.

“Well yes, I’m not disagreeing. Any bloke can see she looks good, so what? I mean, what are you trying to say?” You managed to hear George say as you approached the coffee table.

“Ooh, who looks good? Does someone have a crush?”

The twins jumped as you grabbed your book next to them.

“Bloody hell, Y/N!” Fred exclaimed with wide eyes. George laughed.

“See, you say you’re no longer little, but you’re so tiny your footsteps don’t even make a sound,” George teased, leaning back into the couch and tossing his arm over it. You rolled your eyes.

“You guys just stomp around like ogres, I walk like a normal human. Anyways, I’m heading to bed. Try not to drool over Angelina, Georgie. It’s only the first day back,” you teased as you turned to head up towards the girls dormitory. You heard George let out a loud laugh before hearing a loud slap and more commotion. You just smiled to yourself, oh how you missed those two. You entered your room and placed your book on your bedside table before going to your wardrobe to change.

“I think George likes you,” you nodded to Angelina as she shot up in her bed.

“Really?” She said with a slight smile. You just chuckled. You were so happy to be back.

The weeks flew by and soon the other wizarding schools had arrived. The only thing that sucked about this whole tournament was that there was no quidditch. It was a surprisingly warm November day when you bounded into the common room looking for a certain pair of red heads. You spotted them huddled up in the corner of the room, probably working on one of their pranking products as you had learned of recently.

“You two,” you pointed at the twins as they whipped their heads up, “wanna play quidditch? Two on two, George and Angelina, Me and Fred.” A cheeky grin immediately grew on George’s face as he turned to look at Fred. A more sheepish smile appeared on Fred’s face as he stood up.

“Alright, Y/N, let’s kick some ass.”

The game had turned out to be exactly what the four of you needed in midst of all the school work that was being assigned. You and Fred flew seamlessly together, scoring over and over again on George and Angelina. They were putting up a good front, but your flying skills were outmatched. You had even attracted a small crowd of students by the time the game ended.

“Good game,” you said, landing onto the field and sticking out your hand for Angelina.

“Yes, valiant effort you two,” Fred smirked, shaking Angelina’s hand after you.

“Merlin, Y/N, I forgot how good you are,” Angelina mumbled as she took her defeat in stride.

“Yeah, shes bloody brilliant,” Fred mumbled with a reserved smile. You looked up at him, beaming at the compliment but he quickly looked away and cleared his throat.

“Gotta admit it, little one. You sure can fly,” George clapped you on the back before following Angelina off the field.

“We make a good team, Freddie,” you smiled, patting his arm before beginning to walk off the field as well. You couldn’t help but feel a little sad. Why was Fred acting so weird around you? Did he not like you anymore? He had been so distant this year, choosing to spend his time with George and whenever you came over to join them, he seemed to shut down and become reserved. And Fred had certainly never been reserved before. You shook your head and walked back to your dorm to shower. You decided you’d ask George about it that night.

After dinner, you sat in the common room working on some homework with Angelina. You tried to focus on your assignment, but your eyes kept drifting over to the pair huddled in the corner. How in the world were you going to ask George about Fred when they were always together? As if your prayers had been answered, Fred stood up and walked out of the common room. Your eyes followed him until he disappeared through the portrait hole. You took no time waiting and began to walk over to George.

“Ah, Y/N, what’s up?” George closed whatever he was working on and put his arm over the back of the couch. You took a seat next to him and turned to face him, nervously playing with your sleeves.

“Um, I actually had a question for you,” you stammered, looking up towards the portrait hole to make sure Fred wasn’t coming back.

“Spit it out, Y/N. What’s up? You’re making me worried,” George laughed, scooting closer to you. You cleared your throat.

“Does Fred have a problem with me? I dunno, it just seems like he doesn’t like me around anymore. He’s been acting so weird and I don’t want to bother him if he doesn’t want me hanging out with you guys anymore,” you trailed off, looking down at your legs. George put his arm around your shoulders.

“Y/N, I can promise you that is not the case,” he sighed, “we both love hanging out with you.”

“Really?” You let out a breath and chuckled.

“Yes, really. Merlin, he is such an idiot,” he grumbled to himself, shaking his head.

“What do you mean?” You raised an eyebrow at him when Fred walked back into the common room. You looked up and your eyes met his. As he got closer to you and George, his brows furrowed. George took his arm off your shoulders and you shifted your body away from his.

“What are you guys talking about?” Fred questioned, stopping in his tracks and crossing his arms over his chest, looking mildly annoyed. Why were his forearms so ripped? You shook your head and cleared your throat.

“I was just bugging him about the herbology assignment, which he hasn’t even started,” you glared at George. It was true that he hadn’t even started the lengthy assignment that was due by the end of the week. George chuckled.

“Did you set it up Freddie?” George questioned, probably about a prank, looking up at his twin. Fred still looked visibly annoyed.

“Yes. I did, but I should’ve made you do it.” Fred said dryly, his jaw clenching slightly. George rolled his eyes. You looked between the twins with a confused expression. You rarely saw them annoyed at each other.

“Alright, well I’m headed upstairs. Goodnight you guys,” you ducked out of the awkward atmosphere and towards Angelina to grab your books.

“Goodnight, Y/N,” George said as Fred sat down in your seat and began to whisper something to George. What was that all about?

A few days went by and Fred was still acting distant. You wondered if George had even said anything to Fred about it. If anything, Fred was avoiding you even more. George tried to give you passing smiles and waves, but anytime he passed you in the halls, Fred would completely ignore you. Even at dinner, he would rarely engage in conversation with you and you were starting to feel really hurt. After this particular night where he purposefully avoided your gaze the entire dinner, you were actually angry at him. He’d been acting so weird all year and then as soon as you talked to George about it, he started completely ignoring you. That night, you left your dorm and stomped up to the twins room. You knocked on the door and stood there with your arms crossed waiting until George opened it. He looked taken aback by your angry presence.

“I need to talk to Fred, alone.” You stated. George gulped and turned to Lee.

“Let’s go to the common room,” he grabbed Lee and pushed past you. Fred was now looking at you from his bed. You couldn’t read the expression on his face. It looked half scared and half the nonchalant expression he’d been giving you the past few days.

“What the fuck is your problem with me?” You stomped over the his bed where he sat. He raised an eyebrow at you and crossed his arms.

“I don’t have a problem with you, Y/N. What are you talking about?” He shrugged as he looked up at you nonchalantly, but you could see his jaw tensing.

“Are you serious right now, Fred? You know exactly what I’m been talking about. You’ve been avoiding me all week, ever since I talked to George about you. I don’t know if he even mentioned it to you, but I thought you didn’t like me anymore! He told me that wasn’t true, but now I’m not too sure anymore! You’ve been acting like a prat all week!” You were fuming at this point. You couldn’t believe he had the audacity to pretend like he hadn’t been ignoring you for days.

“That’s not fuckimg true! I told you I don’t have a problem with you, Y/N,” he jumped up off the bed and stalked towards you, “why can’t you just take my word for it?” His height became apparent as he loomed over you. You only stood up straighter and kept your arms crossed.

“Well then what’s your problem? Why don’t you like hanging out with me anymore? Why are you avoiding me?” You questioned, your anger slowly seeping away and being replaced with the hurt you’d been feeling. Fred sighed, his posture relaxing as he saw your eyes fill with sadness. He groaned and ran his fingers through his hair.

“I do like hanging out with you, Y/N. Merlin, I’ve been missing spending time with you, I just…” he trailed off, his eyes falling to the floor.

“You just what, Fred? Since when are you so shy?” You asked genuinely. That only made Fred groan and run his hands roughly through his hair again.

“Since I started liking you! Since you showed up on the platform looking like that and now I can’t even look at you without thinking you’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen,” the words tumbled out of his mouth and left you standing there with your mouth open. Did he just say he likes you? Did he just call you beautiful? “I miss playing quidditch with you and coming up with pranks together but fuck, Y/N. I don’t want to be your friend anymore. I want to be with you.” You stood still for what felt like a long time. Were you dreaming right now? Your brain scrambled to make sense of what was happening. I mean, Fred was standing in front of you, confessing his feelings to you in a very real way. But you’d been friends for so long. What if this ruined everything? But he was standing right in front of you with his messy hair and his freckled face and his furrowed brows and he just looked so good and he was finally talking to you again and

“Oh, fuck it,” you breathed out, closing the space between the two of you. You were kissing him. And it felt so good. He groaned into your lips as his hands found their way to the small of your back, pulling you flush against his body as his lips worked against your own. Your hands tangled in his red locks as you pulled at his neck to deepen the kiss. His hands slid up your body until he held your cheeks. He kissed you softly one more time before pulling back. You face was blushed red as you stared up at him with wide eyes. He finally let out a breathy laugh and his lips curved up into a crooked smile.

“You’re so cute, fuck,” he laughed, still holding your face in his large hands, “I’m sorry I’ve been acting like a prat. I just didn’t want to ruin our friendship. But after kissing you, fuck, I should’ve ruined it a long time ago.”

“I just wish you would’ve told me earlier. Had I known you liked me, I could’ve had you kissing me all year,” you smirked as you walked him to the edge of his bed. He sat on the edge and pulled you down with him.

“Let’s make up for lost time then,” Fred whispered as he pulled you to his lips. You groaned as you straddled his lap and deepened the kiss. This man knew how to use his tongue.

“Fuck, Freddie,” you moaned into his mouth as his hands found their way to your ass. He chuckled as his grabbed your hips.

“I’ve been wanting to do that ever since I saw you bent over your luggage on the platform,” he breathed out with a smirk as he slapped your ass. You gasped and hit his chest.

“Freddie!” You scolded, but it didn’t last long as he pulled you back to his mouth, making you moan as his thumbs rubbed over your hip bones.

“Bloody hell,” you heard someone say from the door. You gasped and pulled away from Fred only to see George standing in the doorway with his jaw wide open. Fred’s smirked stayed plastered on his face and his grip held you tight on his lap.

“Sorry Georgie, think you can give us a few more minutes? We’re still talking.”

#fred weasley fanfiction #fred weasley x reader #harry potter #harry potter imagines #wizarding world #harry potter fanfiction #reader x fred weasley #y/n x Fred weasley #george weasley #Fred weasley #harry potter oneshot #Harry Potter master list #hpboys #Fred weasley one shot #fred weasley oneshot

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rainydayathogwarts · 9 months

Note

hi please could i request something with ron where he has a seggs dream about you and wakes up h3rd with you cuddling him. thank you <3

So it seems I wasn't lying and I really am in my ron era. But who am I to complaint honestly.

Warnings: sexually explicit, smut, fluff in the end kind of, embarrassed ron. creations of the dirty teen boy mind, semi public sex.

0.9k words

Smut under the cut!

Ron laid flat on his back as your naked, sweaty body bounced up and down on his hard cock. You shone with sweat and your head was thrown back, letting your long hair perfectly run down your back in flawless ripples. Your tits bounced up with every move you made, and Ron reached up to squeeze them with both his hands. Both of you moaned in pleasure when Ron's cock hit your g-spot, causing your pussy to squeeze tightly around his thick length.

You brought both your hands down onto your boyfriend's abdomen, where you felt his muscles flex under his skin, and he let out a whimper, bringing both his hands up to grip your hips tight enough to leave marks.

You sped up your pace and Ron dug his head deep into the pillow behind him, and you felt his nails dig into your skin. His hips jerked up into yours frantically and just as he was about to let his load out into you - his eyes fluttered open.

Ron's arms were wrapped tightly around your waist, and your body was pressed against his in a spooning position. Ron immediately groaned in disappointment and discomfort when he realised that it was all a dream and that he was still hard as a rock. He unwraps his arms from your waist and tries wiggling away from you to create space between you, but you instantly flip around onto your stomach, throwing a leg over Ron's hip, while cuddling deeper into his chest.

He suppresses a moan, because despite the illusion of privacy you got from the curtains pulled around Ron's four poster bed, his four other dorm mates were probably still in their respectful beds, sleeping. Ron froze. He had no idea what to do from there. His mind races while he tries to make up his mind; should he go to the bathroom and get himself off or take care of himself right next to you. He didn't think twice, reaching into his sweatpants to free his hard-on.

Once he's shimmied his sweatpants and briefs down his thighs, he starts to relieve himself. He groans and bring his knuckles between his teeth as he tries to control his slow movements, intently staring at the way your legs are slightly spread for him. Your legs and panties are exposed, the t-shirt you borrowed from Ron riding all the way up past your hips, allowing Ron a perfect view of your panty-clad cunt. His movements start to speed up, but he goes still as soon as soon as he hears a quiet "Ron?"

Your eyes are fluttering open, and your head is tilted at just the right angle that you get a perfect view of his hand tightly wrapped around his leaking cock. You blink a couple of times, allowing yourself to adjust to the rather sudden change of sleeping, to seeing your boyfriend jerking off. You look up with raised eyebrows at your boyfriend's face, which has suddenly gone all red, and can't help but giggle slightly.

You reach down to replace his hand and mutter to him "Here, let me take care of you", and he does. The hand previously on his cock reaches up under his your shirt to grip your waist and his second arm wraps around your shoulder, pulling you impossibly closer to him as if it would suppress him moans. Ron bites his lip and throws his head back, grunting quietly and you put a hand on his abdomen as if it would help, but it only causes Ron to desperately whine.

"Ron." You say again, but only this time it's in a warning tone, and Ron tries stifling the noises he makes by biting your shoulder. You gasp quietly and increase the pace on Ron's dick. A harsh tug on your hair makes you look up at him only for Ron to slam his lips onto yours. You feel the muscles in his lower stomach contracting which never fail to tell you he's close and bring that hand down to focus on his red tip. This has his hips frantically humping up into your hand as he releases onto the sheets and pretty much everywhere else.

Once he's ridden out his orgasm and is safe from releasing any other inappropriate sounds, he breaks the kiss. He's red in the face and his chest heaves up and down as he tries to catch his breath, but a shy smile still finds itself on his face, and he tries to hide his embarrassment by burying his face into your chest. You giggle, both your hands starting to play with his ginger hair, the unspoken question floating in the air.

"I had a dream." He finally admits and you look down at him, pressing a soft kiss on his forehead. His arms wrap around your torso once more and he rolls onto his stomach, and you move so he's now resting between your legs, his head laying on your stomach as you play with his hair. "Well you might just have to have those more often"

"No you won't!" A voice interrupts, which you recognise as Harry's, essentially ruining the moment. Ron's face flushes again and he groans, even as you laugh in shock.

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cuntrygirlcallista · 5 months

Text

☆ I had to let you know that I got a crush on you..

draco malfoy has a crush on you…

Draco is extremely arrogant so initially he would try and impress you.

Bragging about his home and the lavish, expensive possessions his parents can afford him. It’s not charming at all, it’s actually quite annoying.

He’d have Crabbe and Goyle help him play it up more. They would sing his praises incessantly anytime they saw you. One time you even let them convince you to go see him at Quidditch practice.

It was a nightmare.

While attempting a very daring feat on his broomstick that involved a midair roll, he fell. Luckily Madam Hooch was supervising and was able to save the poor wizard. Seeing you giggling at his misfortune definitely hurt his pride.

Eventually Blaise snitched, even though by then you’d already pieced it all together.

You decided one day at the end of one of his long bragging sessions to finally tell him you knew.

“and Draco” you say haltingly, before walking off making him turn to face you. “The bragging isn’t going to win me over, I prefer gentleman”

After that something finally clicked for the moron. From then on he was as charming as could be. Taking you out on dates, calling you “princess” and surprisingly treating you like one.

You were actually starting to like him

@cuntrygirlcallista

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ghoulie-67-baby · 6 months

Text

Rule breaker- Wizarding world.

Summary: You tried to be a good girl, but a certain Sirius Black makes you break rules.

Warnings: Domxsub dynamics, pet names, SMUT (were not pissing around), Edging (without permission I guess), manipulation, subspace, crying, cum play, using sub as ‘cum dump’, lying, punishment, cum eating, overstimulation, multiple orgasms, slight blackout,

Pairing: Wolfstar x fem!reader.

Word count: 6,290.

The walk to class was never an easy one. Hogwarts was filled with magic and mischievous ghosts and moving staircases but today this wasn't my issue with getting to classes on time. I had 7 minutes to get to my lesson and I knew if I didn't want to get into trouble with Remus and Sirius then I needed to haul ass, despite my tired legs.

Sighing heavily, I began to climb another staircase, noticing it had not long moved and so wouldn't for a while, and trudging down the corridor with a yawn as my body fought to rouse from its sleep. Despite me having a lie-in, I was still drowsy but I put that down to not getting up until 20 minutes before my class, barely leaving myself enough time to get ready. If Sirius and Remus didn't have an early class then I would have gotten woken but I liked to push my luck when they weren't there. It meant nobody was there to see me break the rules but that was my little secret.

I was almost to the end of the corridor where my first lesson was when a smirking Sirius walked out of an empty room, as if he was waiting for me, with a smug look on his face, blocking my path.

"Well, well, well what have we here?" The grin never left his face as he leaned against the wall on his shoulder and crossed his arms. I smiled sweetly up at him, hoping he didn't point out my sleepy eyes and ruffled looks.

"Morning Pads, how was your first lesson?" Hopefully diverting the attention to him would take his attention from my lie-in.

"It wasn't so bad, I think the most important question is how was your late start Poppet?" I froze and bit my lip, I knew there wasn't any point in denying it unless I wanted to get into any further trouble.

"I didn't mean to get up late, Moony usually has time to wake me but he couldn't this morning." I watched as he nodded his head in faux agreement almost as if he was mocking me before smiling sweetly and moving to kiss my head.

"Well, I have something that could wake you up," His lips ghosted over my temple as he rubbed his hands up and down my arms. I knew by now I was late to my class and the thought of Remus' disappointment made my stomach turn slightly. At the same time, I didn't want to disappoint Sirius, after all, they were both my Doms and so I had to abide by both sets of rules. It was almost as if he could read my mind because he smiled down at me and grabbed my hand, pulling me gently behind him and into the empty room.

"Don't worry Y/N, it's not rule-breaking because you're following my rules." I relaxed a bit more and let my arms wrap around him as he kissed my neck before meeting his lips in a rough kiss. It didn't take long for him to have me perched on the edge of the table, he stood between my parted legs and my hands tangled in his hair as I panted harshly. His hands expertly lifted me from my perch before slipping my underwear off, letting them drop to the floor before grinning down at me. Well at least he got one thing right: I really was wide awake now.

My head hung back, eyes closed and mouth open in a silent moan as he pushed into me with a groan as he bottomed out, stretching me out nicely. For a moment he was still and I looked up at him, admiring his mess of hair as his eyes sparkled with a mischievous smirk. Before long, his stillness turned to short thrusts as he tried to restrain himself before becoming rough and harsh which he knew I loved. The classroom was filled with groans as he chased after his high, using me like I was there for his pleasure only which made whimpers escape me alongside muffled moans as he covered my mouth with his hand to quieten me. My hips bucked in time with his as I gripped his shoulders for support, pulling at his shirt as I got closer to the edge. With a moan, Sirius pushed into me as far as he could before I felt hot thick ropes of his cum coat my insides, almost pushing me over the edge.

Just before I could get my release, he removed himself from me, leaving me a panting and shaking mess that could barely stand up as he moved away to straighten out his uniform. Tears collected in my eyes as I watched him in shock and annoyance. The sparkle never left his eyes as he grinned back at me, straightening his tie.

"Next time don't break the rules and you can cum, you bad girl. Remus is going to be so disappointed in his good little girl when I tell him what you've done. See ya later Poppet." With a wave and a mocking smile, he disappeared out the door and to his next lesson. I tried to shout after him but he ignored me as he ran to his next class.

Now two rules had been broken. I had been late for my class and let Sirius use me without Remus being there or giving permission. Usually, that had to be discussed between the three of us or agreed upon by Remus but this time I knew I would definitely be in trouble, especially if Sirius was to tell Remus it was my idea.

The decision to skip classes was a quick one and so I pulled my underwear back up, ignoring Sirius' cum that slowly seeped out of me, and sped back to our dorm without a word to anyone. Once I reached the common room, I ran upstairs to Remus and Sirius' room and threw myself on the Lycanthrope's bed with a huff. Usually, girls weren't allowed in the boy's dorm, and vice versa, but of course the marauders had found a way around it.

The rest of my morning was spent with me sulking in Remus' bed, trying to read my books but distracted by the need to cum and also by the thought of punishment from my Dom. I had swaddled myself in one of Remus' jumpers, leaving my skirt on and curling under the covers. The day dragged by and if anyone had noticed I hadn't turned up to any class then they mustn't have said anything because no visitors came up, which I was grateful for. As dinner passed, my stomach growled at me but I ignored it as a sick twisted feeling grew. I felt so incredibly guilty and though it was Sirius who had the idea, I shouldn't have agreed because Remus wasn't there too. I knew better than this and now I wasn't a good girl anymore. At least I didn't break a third rule by touching myself without permission even though I was desperate to.

The afternoon was filled with me slipping in and out of subspace, crying to myself and napping because I was exhausted from crying. I was so caught up in my emotions that I forgot Remus finished before Sirius who had an extra class after him. My eyes were still blurred by the tears that tracked down my cheeks when the bedroom door opened and I held in a breath, glad that my face was hidden away from whoever it was by Remus' pillow and my body covered in his blankets. I stiffened as a hand rested against my covered ankle but I soon relaxed when the familiar scent of pine wood and chocolate clouded my senses. Though the intruder had been identified as my Dom, I still kept my face hidden, not wanting to face him right now as guilt wracked me.

"Hey bunny, how come you weren't in lessons?" His voice was so soft and sweet just as it always was when he knew I was having a bad day but today I didn't deserve for him to be nice. "Is everything okay?" I couldn't answer him so I nodded silently. "Bun, Look at me." His voice was slightly harder, knowing he needed to be firm so I'd listen. Reluctantly, I turned onto my other side so he could see my face and raised my eyes to meet his, knowing they were red and puffy. His face flashed with concern and he raised a hand to caress my cheek but I stopped him, shaking my head.

"What happened Bunny?" Remus was far from stupid and wouldn't stop until he got to the bottom of this mess. "Did someone hurt you?"

"No," My voice came out as a whisper. "I'm just a bad girl Remmy, I'm sorry." I got a look of confusion as I curled my legs towards my chest.

"No, you could never be a bad girl f'me Y/N, you're my good girl. What makes you think you're a bad girl?" I bit back a whimper and sighed knowing I had to tell him. Obviously, Sirius hadn't told him so now was my chance to tell him what truly happened.

"I broke two rules. Nearly broke three Remmy." His back straightened slightly as I spoke but he didn't speak, instead he allowed me the chance to explain my wrongdoings. "I got out of bed really late 'n' nearly missed my lesson but when I was making my way to my class Sirius stopped me in the corridor, I would've been on time if he hadn't. I told him I was going to be late because I knew it would be better to tell the truth but I wasn't fully awake yet so he said he could wake me up and pulled me into one of the empty rooms." I sniffled as he nodded for me to continue. "Siri said it would be okay because I was following his rules and being good to him so I wouldn't get in trouble with you but when he was finished he didn't let me cum and left me in the room on my own after telling me I was a bad girl and you were gunna be disappointed with me. I ran straight back up here and haven't been to any lessons. I didn't want him to lie to you about it." By the time I was finished, he looked angry and I sat on the bed with fresh tears on my cheeks, sniffling like a baby.

"Oh Bunny, you poor thing." He crooned, running his hand over my hair and wiping away one of my tears. "So Sirius lied to you about it being okay and then didn't let you finish. Is that why you're so upset? Because you want to cum?"

"Kind of, yes but because I was bad as well, I didn't mean to be bad, he said I was being good f'him." I shifted uncomfortably against the blanket which didn't go unnoticed.

"You're not bad, Sirius is the one that's bad Bunny and I'll be dealing with him later." His eyes travelled down to my curled-up legs. "Did he clean you up after at least?" I shook my head no as he gently pulled down the covers. I let my legs part as he moved my underwear to one side and sighed in frustration at our boyfriend. "Why haven't you cleaned his cum away Bun?"

"I didn't wanna break another rule so I left it," I admitted, blushing as he watched Sirius' cum leak from me. Remus shook his head and moved back to his sitting position before smiling at me softly.

"You're not a bad girl, you know you should get up earlier but if Sirius hadn't stopped you and done this then you would have been on time for the lesson which I would've let slide. As for what happened, That's his fault and he will be punished accordingly so don't worry, you didn't break the rules. I'm very proud that you didn't want to break another rule but you can still clean yourself up Love, we wouldn't class that as rule-breaking."

"Thank you for not being angry Remmy." I smiled, feeling a little better about the day now that he knew what had happened. With a sigh I sat up and shuffled into Remus' lap to cuddle him, knowing now he wasn't angry at me at all. His warm arms wrapped around me gently and I nuzzled into his chest, getting as close as physically possible, feeling a little better now I knew he wasn't angry with me.

"Let's get you cleaned up Love and then I can help you out." I nodded and climbed out of his lap and walked into the bathroom, whining when I felt something warm drip through my underwear and down my thigh. The lycanthrope chuckled as I watched it slip down my leg and began to strip off my clothes, leaving them in a pile on the bathroom floor as he got me some fresh underwear and one of his cardigans. He knew I hated wearing my clothes because his and Siri's were always more comfortable.

I waited in the bathroom for him to come back, shifting from one foot to the other as my hands stayed clasped in front of me, not wanting to be tempted into rule-breaking. As he walked back in, he smiled at me and kissed my head before stripping my underwear off and leaning me over the bathroom counter gently. I gasped as the cold surface met my chest and closed my eyes, holding in a whimper as he brushed his fingers over my hip gently, seeing the new bruises that had formed from Sirius' hands. I didn't mind the bruises, I actually loved having them, made me feel like I belonged. Seconds later, I jolted out of my thoughts as he started to clean me up, tutting to himself, being as gentle as always with me. A small moan slipped through my lips as he finished cleaning me, forgetting how sensitive and needy I was at the moment.

"Sorry Bun, "He pressed a kiss to my shoulder before sliding my feet into the underwear and pulling them up as I stood up from the counter. The wool of the cardigan glided across my skin as I melted into the fabric, encased in the Wolf's scent, and snuggled into his chest as I was buried in his arms. "That better now love?" I nodded against his chest and hummed happily before kissing his cheek gently.

"Thank you, Remmy." He gave me another squeeze before walking back into the room with me and patting his lap as he sat on the bed, against the headboard. I grinned and climbed onto the bed, settling myself so I was straddling him with my legs on either side of his hips. His hands looked huge against my thighs and I traced the scars on them with a small smile.

"Feeling better now little one?" His eyes were warm and kind as always. I nodded as his thumb rubbed against my skin, feeling a little more settled but still itching for some sort of contact. "Still feeling needy huh? Have you eaten yet Bunny?" I dropped my eyes from his and glanced at his hands shyly whilst shaking my head slowly. "Well, you need to eat a little something before anything happens because I don't want you getting ill." I nodded softly and clambered off his lap as he nipped down to the common room to make a sandwich. After he had brought it up and settled on the bed with me, I nibbled at it in little bits, glad to have the encouragement of my dom, not wanting to eat after the day I'd had but doing it because I knew he was right. Once I had finished half, I looked at Moony and he nodded in understanding, taking the plate and placing it on the bedside table, he knew I couldn't eat it all at the moment.

Minutes passed, and I let my food settle and had a drink of water before I started to feel fidgety and needy again. I pressed my face into the Lycanthrope's neck as I whined at him, hoping it would catch his attention. He chuckled but pulled my face to him, letting our lips connect into a gentle kiss. Instantly, I melted with a small sigh as my chest fell so it was pressing against his comfortably, soothed by the feeling of his thumb rubbing my skin gently. I whimpered quietly as I felt his bulge start to grow beneath me and tried as hard as I could to keep my hips still. Large hands slid from my thighs to my waist and started to move my hips slowly, silently allowing me to grind against him as my head started to cloud.

Warmth spread through my body as the anxiety and frustration I had from earlier melted away in lust for my Dom. The feeling of his rough hands against my hips mixed with the bulge beneath me had my back arching as I sped up the pace a little.

"Ah ah Bunny, you've had a very overwhelming and emotional day," He cut himself off with a low groan, grip tightening on my hips. "You need to take this slow or you'll drop and we know how bad you get when that happens don't we?" I knew the question was rhetorical so I slowed myself down back to the original speed before wrapping my arms around his neck loosely. His warmth soothed me until a chuckle began to rumble in his chest which caught my attention. "Bun, I can feel how wet you are right now and I've barely touched you. I can smell you too, you smell delicious." His voice lowered considerably when he said it and I hid my face in his throat as the blood flushed my already warm cheeks. "Awww my shy girl, don't have to be shy f'me Bun, let me see your pretty little face." I lifted my head to find him smiling at me lovingly and pulling open the buttons of the cardigan, exposing my bare chest to him. Warm lips met my collarbone as he kept my hips moving slowly but kissed any skin he could get to. I let my head fall back and my mouth open in a sigh of relief as his mouth made its way down to my nipples, which had hardened when the cool air of the dorm met them. I wrapped my fingers into his hair and pulled his head from my chest gently.

"Remmy, I really really need you," I pressed my forehead against his, pressing my core against him harder. "Please, want you to do whatever you want with me. Make me do anything to you, use my mouth or my body, anything." I truly was desperate for anything he was willing to give me, I was on the verge of tears.

"Bun, I'm not gonna use you, Sirius did that and you ended up in this state so I'm gonna help you and give you what you need and want. This is about you baby." His hands manoeuvred me as he spoke, placing me against the pillows carefully as my breath caught in my throat. "Now, what's my name little one?"

"Daddy, you're my Daddy." I didn't have the energy or patience to be bratty about it so I gave him the right answer the first time.

"Good girl, now let Daddy take these off," He tugged at the waistband of my underwear and I lifted my hips so he could slip them off. "Let me see my pretty girl." I let my legs spread and watched as he grinned and licked his lips as if he was hungry. "Atta girl." A gentle thumb rubbed patterns on my skin as he knelt on the bed, level with my throbbing heat. "Bunny's all wet f'me huh? D'you think I should help out?" I nodded furiously and bit my lip to hold in a whine at the teasing.

He chuckled darkly and slid his hands under my parted legs to hold them apart with strong hands before peppering kisses over the skin of my thighs, working closer and closer as he went. When the kisses reached where I wanted him most, he continued but avoided touching my clit. I whimpered as his grip tightened and he finally pressed his mouth to me, letting his tongue rub around my bundle of nerves. If it wasn't for his hands holding me down then I knew my hips would be pushing against his mouth as hard as I could. It didn't take long for him to get the idea of what I needed as his tongue finally met my clit, tracing circles into it. My legs tensed as a gasp escaped me, my eyes squeezing shut as a flash of long-awaited pleasure ran through me. I lifted my head and looked down at him, eyes meeting my Dom's as they sparkled.

"Daddy, please, need more." I felt breathless as he gave me just what I asked for, moving one of his hands to rub circles into my clit as his tongue thrust inside me with a groan. It didn't take long for the feeling to begin bubbling in my abdomen as he sped up, knowing by the way my body reacted that I wouldn't be able to last much longer. My breath got heavier as I moaned and gasped through the feeling, reaching my peak as he nipped at my clit. The world seemed to drown out as a much-needed feeling washed over me and I came, moaning and thrashing as he held me down and carried me through it.

"Shh shh, it's okay Bunny," He crooned, slowing his motions down before coming to a stop and pressing kisses to my trembling thighs. "That's daddy's good girl." The pet name made me feel warm and fuzzy as I drifted down from my peak, opening my eyes to find his amber eyes staring back at me. He licked his lips before running his hand over his mouth with a grin. "You really are delicious Bun."

I smiled and pulled him down towards me for a kiss, hands bunching into his jumper as his lips met mine. I pulled at it, letting him sit up to pull off the jumper and shirt so I could touch his bare chest, grinning at how warm he was. My fingers traced over his scars nonchalantly as they always did and he smiled down at me. I loved the feeling of the scars, they were a big turn-on for me, and him letting me touch them meant he trusted me, especially in such an intimate moment.

"Let's get you stretched out and I'll give you everything you want little one," I nodded softly and bit my lip as two of his fingers worked inside me, giving me enough to sigh in pleasure and relief but not satisfy me completely. "Good girl Bunny." The praise made the flush on my chest travel to my cheeks and a hazy smile made its way to my face.

"I wouldn't be doing that if I were you Moony," My moans were cut off by Sirius as he spoke up from the doorway. My eyes widened as I heard his voice and Remmy's thumb rubbed my hip to comfort me as he turned to meet Sirius' gaze. I could hear the smirk in his voice as he caught us.

"And why's that Pads?" His tone stayed neutral so he didn't tip the other male off that he knew what had happened. "She's my good girl and good girls deserve to feel good." The darker-haired male scoffed at the words, chuckling darkly as Remus rubbed his free hand on my thigh gently.

"Well, your good girl happens to be a rule breaker and apparently a liar Remus or didn't she tell you what she did?" Remus smiled down at me, hidden from Siri's gaze.

"Oh you mean about how she got up late and didn't go to a single lesson." Sirius nodded but gestured for him to continue to say there was more than just that. "And perhaps you mean about how she was taken into a side room with someone who just used her as a cumdump," My core clenched around his fingers at the words, "leaving her hurting and needy so she spent the day up here suffering and upset and so far in subspace that she thought cleaning herself up would be rule-breaking." Sirius' smug grin dropped as soon as he realised Remus knew and I couldn't help the slight smile on my face. "Or maybe you mean the part where you tricked her into thinking it wasn't rule-breaking because she was doing as you said, could possibly even be the part where you said you'd lie to me and say it was her idea." I knew Remus was unhappy and disappointed with his other sub by this point but his fingers didn't stop moving inside me, letting me feel him inside me as I let out soft whimpers and moans that broke through the tension. I almost cried out as the lycanthrope pulled his fingers out of me so he could stand, stalking toward Padfoot, but I swallowed it down because I was his good girl and didn't want to interrupt.

"Moony, I didn't mean for her to get hurt or upset." He began, "I saw her on the way to class and I couldn't help myself she was just so beautiful." My body flushed more at the unexpected compliment. "I just wanted to get a release is all." Remus shook his head in annoyance as he cornered the smaller boy with a dark grin.

"I don't care, you still did it even when you knew it wasn't allowed. And didn't you think that maybe Y/N wanted a release too rather than being used and left pent up with your cum still inside her for the day?" My body shivered at his words, my pussy clenched around the air. "Because that's how I found her. Crying on my pillow with your cum dribbling out of her. She missed out Pads, big time and now because of what you did you're gunna miss out too." As he spoke, Remmy pulled Sirius by the wrist over to one of the chairs and used wordless magic to bind him to it but not before removing his clothes with a spell.

"Moons, I didn't mean to, please don't make me sit here and -"

"I'm sorry, I didn't recall saying you had a choice or that you could speak did I?" His eyes glared into Siri's as he straightened himself out and began to strip off himself entirely. My mouth watered as he got entirely naked and I sat up slightly so I could watch the way his muscles shifted under his freckled skin. "I'm going to make her feel so good and you're going to watch and think about what you did and how you can make it up to her. And if she's not entirely satisfied then you'll have to do whatever she wants. Is that understood?" His voice was harsh and clipped as he walked back over to the bed, nodding in satisfaction when the tied-up boy agreed.

"Can I please have you now Daddy?" I begged, pulling his shoulders down as he came to kneel on the bed between my legs.

"Of course, you can Bunny." I smiled as he pulled me into a kiss, his tongue mingling with my own so the taste of my cum transferred into my mouth, leaving me moaning. My breath hitched in anticipation as Remus positioned himself at my entrance, using my cum as lubrication to push into my tight, throbbing heat. My grip on his shoulders tightened as he pushed into me as far as he could. A loud groan filled the room as the tip of his cock came to a stop against my cervix, unable to go any further; I never could fully fit him. Sirius' desperate moans faded into the background as my body jolted with short, sharp thrusts. I let my eyes meet his tear-filled grey ones as my own watered with pleasure and relief giving him an idea of what he could've had if only he'd played fair.

"Please Rem, it hurts," Siri whined as he tried to wiggle in his bands, hissing as the red, leaking tip of his cock rubbed against his stomach at the movement, eyes fluttering away from my face.

"That's a real shame Pads," The wolf growled sarcastically, gritting his teeth as I clenched around him, pulling him close to me. "Now you know how my Bunny felt." My walls fluttered as his thrusts sped up and I climbed towards my peak much quicker than I'd have liked. It didn't take long for him to find a specific spot along my velvet walls which made me see stars as a loud and almost pornographic moan ripped from my throat, making me gush around my Dom as I toppled over my peak and through my high. The way I tightened around him, had him moaning loudly and stuttering hips came to a stop as he buried as far into me as he could, thick ribbons of his cum coating my insides generously as he buried his face in my neck, biting down to leave his mark. He stifled his moans as they vibrated against my neck.

I raked my fingers through his hair as my vision came back into focus and listened to the sounds of his panting and last few moans. His head lifted slowly, letting his eyes fall on mine, before dipping to kiss me sweetly.

"Any better Bunny?"

"Much better, thank you, Daddy." I giggled as he pressed a kiss to the tip of my nose before pulling out slowly, hushing me as I whined at the feeling and overstimulation.

"D'you think we should let him help?" I hummed in thought for a moment before nodding up at him. "Okay Pads, you follow my every word or you go back on the chair." His curly hair bounced as he nodded vigorously. "You're going to kneel in between her legs and eat every last bit of my cum out of her, swallow it all, and then maybe I'll let you get some stimulation on you're selfish, needy cock." With a snap of his fingers, the binds fell away from the marauder's body and disappeared, allowing the boy to scramble over to the bed and straight to where Remmy said.

I worked through the sensitivity as his tongue began to lap at my pussy, ignoring how it quivered at the feeling. Large hands snaked around my thighs as he held my legs open for him so he could feast to his heart's content. I whined, feeling cum begin to slide out of me and down towards the bed sheets. Before it could get any further, Sirius' tongue licked a stripe from my ass upwards to catch it and swallow it down just as he'd been told to. Keening at the feeling, he buried his face into my pussy, suckling and slurping at me as my fingers curled into his hair and the bedsheets, loving how his fingers dug into my thighs. Small tears began to drip down my cheeks as the strength of my pleasure shook my thighs around his head. The sounds of his moans as he ate me out made my stomach clench in pleasure and anticipation and I found myself fighting to hold back the third orgasm of the day.

"Daddy," I gasped. "M'close again." A smile donned my Dom's face as he reached down to brush the hair from my face. My voice was barely a whisper as sobs of pleasure began to rack my body.

"Go ahead baby, cum on Padfoot's tongue."And with that, I let my body release what I'd been holding back, gasping my way through it. Though it was an amazing feeling, this was different from the others, more soothing because of the sensitivity and stimulation, leaving me feeling warm and fuzzy, like I was drifting. "That's it, good girl." His voice kept me grounded as I shuddered through the feeling, not being able to stop my trembling legs as he lapped at me, slower now. The subspace I had been suffering in earlier melted into a gentle and calm one that I had needed.

"Can't do anymore Daddy," I whimpered, fingers tightening in Sirius' curls as I tried to pull him away from my throbbing heat. "No more mouth, Daddy, tell 'im please." Remus chuckled and nodded at my request.

"Alright Pads, enough now." On cue, the mouth against me retracted and he came into view above me, a small grin but apologetic eyes as he hovered over me. He leaned down to kiss me softly and I reciprocated, enjoying his soft lips on my own. "Okay Bunny, One last time and then you can rest okay? I know we have you worked up but this will be last because he's been good and listened to me." I didn't have the strength to argue with him as my other Dom positioned my legs around his waist before pressing into me slowly. My back arched at the feeling, eyes rolling back and mouth open in a silent moan whilst the tears were wiped from my cheeks. His head fell into the crook of my neck as he thrust against me, having lost all of his composure from his punishment and eating what was left over from it. My eyes squeezed shut, my fingers scrambled against his back as he sped up, not being able to hold back as long as he'd like, my nails making crescent dents in his soft skin.

"Come on Poppet," He growled into my ear, with me whining in response. "One more, just one." His thrusts began to lose their rhythm as I clenched around him, eyes flowing with tears. "Cum for me Poppet." The way he moaned in my ear sent me over my final peak and I couldn't tell if the moan was loud or silent with how strong the feeling surged through me. I heaved for air as it was knocked out of my lungs, gripping onto whatever I could to try and stop the feeling of falling. It took what felt like a good while for me to come back to my senses.

"That's it Bunny, You're okay." The first feeling I could isolate was the way my legs trembled, aching from their spread position though there was nobody in between them anymore. My own broken breaths sounded in my ears as my heart thumped against my ribs. Gentle hands held my hair back from my face as my eyes fluttered behind their lids.

"Come on Poppet, come back to us." Sirius seemed to beg as he whispered to me, a large hand wiping the tears from my face as I came back down. I whined at the feeling of more cum slipping out of me and groaned as my eyes batted open and painfully lifted my aching legs to curl them to my side to stop the pain of being spread too long. "There she is." His grin looked relieved as he glanced down at me. The bed shifted beside me as Remus got up and returned from the bathroom with a warm, damp washcloth. My legs snapped shut around his hand as he started to clean up the mess that was left behind, hissing at the over-sensitive feeling that shocked my body.

"Now Bunny," The lycanthrope warned. "You have to let me clean you up. Can't leave you in this mess." Too exhausted to fight, I let him part my legs one more time and swipe, dab and clean away Sirius' cum and my own. All the while, I cried out in discomfort and slight pain but tried to focus on Sirius' gentle hand rubbing my stomach. It didn't take long for Remmy to finish his task but by the time he was stopping I weakly kicked his hands away, whimpering and welling up with more tears.

"No more, ouch Remmy, stop," I begged through tears, their faces blurring as Remus came to sit at the top of the bed with us. "Can't do it, hurts Rem, all done," I mumbled tiredly, making no sense but soothed by the covers that were pulled up over my body and the two boys that cuddled me and caressed my body sweetly whilst I floated.

"All done Bunny don't worry." A shivering exhale deflated my body, letting me relax bonelessly against the bed.

"Poppet," Sirius whispered, a hand running through my hair as my eyes met his own. "I'm sorry for what I did sweet girl, I won't ever hurt you like that again I swear. I'm sorry." I smiled softly at him and nodded, pulling him down for a gentle kiss to let him know he was forgiven.

"I think it's time you got some rest now though Bunny, Your body is exhausted and your head is too fuzzy so you need to sleep it off." Before Moony had finished talking, I was already drifting off. I finally fell asleep to the two protecting me and holding me to them like I was a prized possession.

#wizarding world #the marauders #wizarding world x reader #wizarding world imagines #remus lupin #remus lupin x reader #remus lupin smut #sirius black #sirius black x reader #sirius black smut #remus x sirius #lupin x black #wolfstar #wolfstar x reader #wolfstar x reader smut

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catartac · 8 months

Text

screams to relax/read to

(Version with actual screams available here)

#Someone said they wanted an actual video or sometiing #I imagined they also pictured the lofi girl like me #Pretty much copied it #Dont claim not to have done it #Its just an image we wanted to see #Little suvi #Babe #worlds beyond number #the wizard the witch and the wild one #worlds beyond number fanart #The wizard the witch and the wild one fanart #Spoilers #wbn spoilers #wbn #twtwatwo #wwwo spoilers

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sweetpandorabox · 1 year

Text

Fred Weasley as a boyfriend 💥🦁

⋆ ˚｡ ⋆୨sweetpandorabox୧⋆ ˚｡ ⋆

⋘ 𝑙𝑜𝑎𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑑𝑎𝑡𝑎…⋙

Warnings ⚠️: Slight mentioned of sexual themes and some spicy stuff.

Dating this troublemaker yet funnier and sexy twin could include:

👨🏻‍🦰🪦🧹

He's very affectionate in a playful kind of way, for example, he can pick you up like a ragdoll and would playfully threaten to throw you in the black lake, tackle hugs, rest his chin right on top of your head because he's built like a tree, smacks your ass, pinch your cheeks and harmless prank here and there to make you laugh.

He's lowkey the jealous type but plays it off well and hides it away from you because if you caught him jealous he knows you'll never drop it.

Still flirts and tease you like you guys aren't already dating. Sending a wink and smile your way and whispering dirty yet clever pickup lines all the time to see you blush.

Him being lowkey a bad influence on you by taking you along and breaking the school rules to pull pranks, but somehow the best memories that the two of you have together are of breaking rules and being silly teenagers together.

Pulling faces, sending notes, hitting you with paper balls at you during classes to get your attention if he isn't sitting next to you, because if there's anything that Fred loves most it's your attention.

You guys have a deal, he teaches you how to juggle, cartwheel and cast cool spells in return for you helping him with his school work.

He loves PDA and is not ashamed of it and would pull it anywhere he could, in some occasions he's gotten told to keep his hand off you just for an hour until class ends by numerous different professors.

The both of you have a special place where you're able to just hold each other and snog whenever you feel like it, so to mark the place Fred carved both of your initials inside of a big heart on a nearby tree by that spot so everyone knows who this place belongs to.

Stealing all of his knitted sweaters and hoodies because they're much larger on you, but then he asks Molly to make one for you this Christmas with your initial on it and you got super excited that you wear it every day for a month.

Likes when you call him Freddie, Baby, Good-looking, Spitfire, or Casanova (you call him that before the both of you started dating and still use it at times).

He calls you cute nicknames like Baby, Lover-Girl, Sexy, or Sunshine.

His love language is probably quality time because spending time with you and making memories with you is what he cherishes most.

He stares at you all the time and can't keep his eyes off you, one time he full-on ditched his school work and was looking at you focusing on your own thing while he plays with your ponytail the entire time.

Molly adores you because of how much the both of you bonded through food, she teaches you how to make Fred's favorite meal and she encourages you to stay over at the burrow as much as possible because to be honest, she likes how Fred is when you're around and Molly may or may not like you more than Fred.

Asks for messages after a rough Quidditch practice or games that usually elevate to something more... a.k.a sex.

He asks for your opinion on the joke shop products he and George have come up with but doesn't dare make you try them because he doesn't want to see you hurt or be embarrassed.

Dance party inside his shared dorm room with snacks when everyone is away and blaring out his phonograph with the weird sister's newest record player album.

Him sneaking into your shared dorm room quietly and frequently because he wants to sleep with you and not in his own bed, so it's not unusual for your roommates to see a shirtless Fred cuddling you in the morning.

Joking and confusing new people who don’t understand your relationship; Are you dating? Enemies? Friends? (but in the end, he can't keep his hands off you anyways so they're bound to know)

Him leaving all of his classes early just so he can meet you outside and escort you to your next class so he can have those extra moments with you.

Taglist:

@igncrantbliss @milivanili99 @thatdummy-girl

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fatesundress · 1 year

Text

⭑ observations ii. tom riddle x reader

part i here.

summary. two weeks after your last encounter with tom shatters all of your previous observations, tensions are high, and eventually, something's gotta give. (it's tom. he’s giving head)

tags. smut (so. so much. minors BE GONE TO WHENCE YOU CAME!), fem anatomy + reader is referred to as a woman by someone, fingering, cunnilingus, piv, again implied tall!tom or short!reader (take it however you prefer), jealous tom does not understand friendship but then again neither does reader apparently, a little wine is had, the room of requirement is used shamelessly as a plot device, did i mention smut, i’ve lost my mind etc etc.

note. this is a part two, so go ahead and read the first part and come back if you'd like :) obligatory preface: it's safe to assume any smut i write within hogwarts is a university au — these people are all 18+ tyvm. also woahh was not expecting the love on my last post so thank you! i'm still trying to figure this whole acc out so support, questions, (requests? never done those before) anything is appreciated ♡

word count. 6.3k

The next two weeks are agony. You don’t, in fact, stop meeting with Godefrey to study, because you do, in fact, still need a good mark in Ancient Runes and for all his faults he can reach the tallest shelves and he’s a faster writer than you. Also, Tom Riddle is fantastic with his hands but this does not make him God.

You find pureblood politics a bit archaic. You find muggle courting a bit stifling. This leaves very little space for what took place between you and Tom in the middle of a corridor two weeks ago (you can’t stop wincing at how insane that sounds) and very little patience for his utterly original and not-at-all entitled request that you halt your studies with Godefrey. Godefrey doesn’t stick his hands up your skirts while the two of you are studying, doesn’t silence your gasps with a shush and a finger to your mouth, doesn’t — wouldn’t (you’re so imaginative when you want to be) — tell you to keep reading as his thumb draws circles between your legs, tell you to repeat the words that get caught in your throat, tell you how much he likes it when your eyes go dumb and glassy and all you can say is his name. So, really, Tom should have nothing to worry about.

“I swear,” Selwyn says, picking at a plate you don’t think she’s actually eaten anything off with how distracted she is, “he’s looked over here at least three times.”

You don’t dare glance at who you know she’s talking about. “You’re obsessed.”

Pot. Kettle. Whatever.

“Are you sure you didn’t do something to upset him in Potions? Didn’t botch something that might mar his perfect record?”

You flick her forehead and she scowls. “I’m not an idiot, Selwyn. I handle myself just as well in Potions as he does — he wouldn’t —” Wouldn’t have complimented your rapport if that weren’t true, wouldn’t have said you communicate efficiently, make a good pair, probably wouldn’t have — fingered you in the hallway? — yes, that too. Slipped your mind. So easy to forget.

You take a long exhale, and smile impassively at her. “I didn’t botch anything, trust me.”

She finally takes a bite of food. “Maybe I did something…”

And then she’s lost in thought again, eating now, at least, and you shake your head softly as you watch what are likely a million different theories flitting through her head.

“Morning,” Tom says to you when you enter Potions after breakfast, a delicate smile tugging at his lips.

You have, of course, trained for this.

It’s your fifth — sixth? — time sharing a table with him since that night and it is somehow easier by nature and harder by anticipation (of what, you have no idea) every time. The first was terrible. Unsalvageable and without a silver lining. It had taken almost an hour that morning to charm the violent hues of red and purple spanning the column of your throat, and ultimately, the marks were so persistent you’d forgone the glamours and decided to just wear a turtleneck. You’d been fortunate it was completely inconspicuous to wear such a thing in December, but that was about all there’d been to be grateful for. You hadn’t been able to look at Tom all class and his hand had brushed yours once to take a phial from you and you’d flinched so sharply it would have shattered on the floor if he hadn’t caught it. And he’d smiled, like he’s smiling now, a soft, “Careful,” that honestly, for a short moment, made you want him dead.

Now you could speak just fine, look him in the eyes in practised intervals, and almost, impressively, make articulate conversation with him again. Make stupid comments about Slughorn and Lestrange and bear the weight of his grin knowing it was there for you.

His, he’d called you. A very funny thing.

“Morning,” you answer on a smiling sigh, sleepy but jovial all the same.

You deserve applause for this.

“Tired?”

“Mhm — Essays for Ancient Runes are due Friday and it’s been keeping us up all night.”

His eyes flash with something you’ve yet to ascertain. Your research has been put temporarily on hold, scattered and splintered by the revelation that your first observation was, admittedly, a little bit off, and you have no means of figuring out a look like that when you can’t even begin to figure out anything else.

“Has it?” he asks, a tinge less friendly.

“Well,” you say, grinding the lacewing flies, “that’s commonplace, isn’t it? You take all sorts of advanced classes, I’m sure you understand the work it takes.”

“...Hm.”

That’s it. That’s all you get from him.

And if Selwyn’s concern over you botching your work in Potions wasn’t already, obviously dispelled, the glee on Slughorn’s face as he assesses your and Tom’s cauldron should do it.

“Brilliant! Just brilliant!” He claps a hand over Tom’s back, regarding you both with pride so thick it clouds his eyes, like he's drifted into a revery of the future (you and Tom, you expect, are his most prized graduates, making history under his name, proving his immense wisdom) before he appears to return to Earth. “Ten points between the two of you, hm? Very, very good — though, of course, no surprises there!”

He chuckles to himself as he evaluates the other students, and you catch a horrified wheeze of Godefrey’s name (bless his heart) as one of the cauldrons in the back begins to sputter and froth.

You look to Tom with some droll little comment at making it to the end of term with top marks, but his gaze is burning into Godefrey’s table in such a way you wouldn’t be surprised if it was what was causing his cauldron to boil.

Well. Perhaps not, then.

You and Godefrey hand in your essay that Friday with more relief than apprehension — you both decide it’s quite good — and you laugh loudly and breathlessly as he picks you up and thanks you a thousand times, spinning you until you’re dizzy. You refrain from making any promises to attend his Quidditch games, but he vows to let you have the snitch he catches.

And Slughorn, you come to find, was not exaggerating his elation at your skill. After trotting after you on your walk back from Ancient Runes to invite you to the last Slug Club dinner of the year, your spirits are high with the blissful satisfaction of a job well done and a night to celebrate it with.

You can breathe, finally, when it’s the last week of school before Christmas break and Selwyn’s zipping the back of a last-minute dress you purchased in Hogsmeade.

“Gorgeous,” Selwyn says with a grin. “Wish this school would have a bloody ball so I could really dress you up.”

“Buy a doll, Selwyn; you can dress them however you like.”

“You are such a —”

You burst into laugher, swatting her wand away as she pokes your side with it.

“Just — go then, before I hex you.”

“All right, all right!” you concede, arms raised in surrender. “Don’t ruin all your hard work now.”

“Oh,” she calls on your way out the door. You turn and there’s a mischievous look in her eyes as she tucks her wand back in her pocket. “And do tell me before I leave tomorrow if Riddle stares at you all night.”

You groan as if it’s a truly abominable thing to imagine. Riddle, staring with those dark eyes of his? You, the centre of his attention? Ghastly. You daresay you’d never recover from the horror of it.

“Don’t leave before I tell you how remarkably uneventful a night it was,” you say with a sidelong glare, and leave before she can edge in the final word.

You have no idea what a Slug Club supper typically consists of, but you imagine for Christmas he’s gone a little further with his festivities. His office is glittering in hues of green and red and fleecy, snow-dappled gold. The lights overheard (some similar charm to the one in the Great Hall but a tad less complex, you think) drip and then vanish into the air like squeezed berries, and the berries — served with pastries and ice cream — taste like they must be enchanted with something.

Selwyn was right that the standard dress isn’t quite formal enough for a ball, but it’s… formal. The boys are in clean-cut dress robes and the girls are in fine gowns of different lengths. By the overwhelming number of them you recall being archetypes of Slytherin pureblood fanaticism, it makes sense how expensive they all look. You yourself brush up nicely, if not a bit more frugally, but you haven’t been to an event like this at the school yet, and that’s exciting on its own.

It’s another degree of training (is there going to be a marathon? Are you at war?), a step up from your preparations before Potions every other day, to be ready when Tom Riddle enters the room a respectable five minutes late with a gleam about him more captivating than any of the lights.

“Ah, Tom!” Slughorn exclaims, and ushers him into a seat you remark before Tom is even in it is discomfitingly near to yours. “We’re all here at last… Supper, then? Hope you aren’t too full already, I’ve got the House Elves running laps!”

You’re spared Tom’s closeness by a Ravenclaw couple sat in the chairs between you, their hands clasped under the table while they sip wine from their goblets, and you only realise the length of your observation when Tom glances at you from the spot over, and you startle yourself into reaching for your own goblet and pretending to enjoy Slughorn’s bitter wine.

You eat. You listen to cluttered, unending tales of Slughorn’s time at school and how he earned his post. You drink, and then you regret not drinking before eating because there’s only a very light, very nice buzz that warms you when you finish your cup, and the Ravenclaw couple is — oh, wait, it isn’t just them — they’re standing up to dance as a gramophone sparks to life and a low, dulcet instrumental begins to play. There are now two notably empty seats separating you from Tom.

What had you said this night would be? Blissful satisfaction?

You couldn’t blame Selwyn for suggesting you’d blundered Potions — you didn’t feel exceptionally smart right now.

“I didn’t know you would be here tonight,” Tom says, pulling the chair beside you.

Where is the bottle of wine? No. Nevermind. You behave regrettably enough sober.

You manage a simple, “And yet.”

“...And yet.” His lips quirk before he takes a drink from his goblet.

You lament for a second that you’ve only actually kissed those lips once. They spent a great deal longer on your neck.

“Will you be here over break?” he asks, and it isn’t an unreasonable thing to ask, you suppose.

“I think so. Why?”

“I’d like to know whether to expect you or not.”

Expect you… No, yes — revert to observation two: unusual is not an apt enough word for him.

It takes you a moment to conjure a response befitting polite dinner conversation. That is, after all, still what this is.

“I suppose you can. I’ll be busy, of course.”

Well, you didn’t say you conjured something good. It’s a big fat lie. Placating, vague, empty. And you suspect Tom knows that.

“Pity.”

Yes, he knows. He’s all quiet amusement again.

You stare off, satisfied to be left alone —

"And what is it that'll be taking so much of your time?"

“Well, I'm —” And now you have to build the lie — “I’ve told Godefrey I’ll attend to his Quidditch practise. Since the pitch isn’t in use.”

God, it’s so stupid it’s almost impressive — you don’t even know if Godefrey will be here over break, and you could have chosen any number of excuses that would pique Tom’s interest less than it’s apparently consistently piqued by the mention of your study partner.

There’s that strange, indecipherable look again. Riddle is a perfect surname for him, you decide then, and you almost laugh at yourself for it, but that would probably not go over well should he ask what’s so funny.

“Have you, now? That’s very kind of you.”

“It’s hardly charity.”

“Hm, it’s kind of you to think so.”

You huff, tipping your goblet back to swallow the last meagre dregs of your wine.

“You look lovely.”

It’s just a little bit — just a tiny, straggling little bit of elderflower that captures your throat — and you cough into your goblet. “Thank — thank you.”

And, well, he looks lovely too. Obviously. Sickeningly so. You know little about his personal life but you’re positive he’s at least a half-blood, if not muggle-born, and it makes you wonder the influence of his renownedly plain black suit in a crowd of neat, long robes.

He manages with little effort to look better than all of them at their best.

His eyes drift over you appreciatively, quick enough not to be rude but — enough. (Enough that you daresay you might never recover from the horror of it.) You adjust under his gaze even when it’s situated on your face, far too heavy a thing for you to carry. “Does Godefrey call you lovely?”

What?

You blink at him, your mouth is probably open and you probably look stupid but he’s so… irritating. Yes, of course Godefrey calls you lovely. Godefrey tells you you’re the smartest woman he’s ever met (after his mother), and he drowns you with sherbet lemons at no cost, and he writes at the speed of light to match the quickness with which you recite your textbook, and none of it means anything. Tom is just —

“Unbelievable…”

He quirks a brow. “What was that?”

“I said you’re unbelievable, Riddle. Is it impossible for you to comprehend that I might have friends? That Godefrey is my friend?”

“Well, memory serves me right that you seemed a bit confused on the conventions of friendship last you mentioned it. Do forgive my uncertainty.”

He — that was —

“Well, that’s because we are not friends.”

“No.” He leans in. “We are not.”

You push your chair from the table with all the grace you can manage for such an abrupt thing: a tight, impersonal smile on your face as you walk away and approach Slughorn, only realising when you get there that your empty goblet is clutched in your hand like you’re trying to strangle it.

Whatever he sees on your face, he isn’t drunk enough not to frown at. “Ah, our newest gem — hardly seen you all night! Not leaving already, are we?”

You glance at the clock. It isn’t as though you’re being impolite by abandoning his party in the middle of the event. It’s quite late, the servers are stuck to the walls with little to do, and most of the room has divided into waltzing pairs.

“I’m taking my friend to the train station tomorrow, sir. Unfortunately I need to be up quite early.”

Yes, yes, it’s all so tragic. You’re depressed to go.

“Such a shame,” Slughorn frets, wobbling a tad and balancing himself on the wall. “You’ll be all right getting back? Not at all dizzy, are you?” His laugh is cleaved by a loud hiccough, and then he laughs even more. “My, well, I myself will need to be carried!”

“...I’ll be fine, sir. Thank you.”

“Oh, no trouble at all — there’s — hm… ah, Tom!”

No, no — is it bad you almost reach over and slap your palm over your professor’s mouth? Is it at all impressive that you don’t? You should look on the bright side in moments like these. You should admire your restraint.

But of course, Slughorn’s eyes don’t fall upon Tom for nothing. He's halfway across the room already, and Slughorn must have spotted him approaching to achieve this brilliant solution. “Tom can escort you back, no?”

Tom (unforgivably) is beside you now, a very mean, very pretty smile on his face.

“Not too much to ask, I should think? You know the castle best. Head Boy — sometimes I still can’t believe it!”

You look up at Tom and your jaw is clenched where you’ve since put down your goblet. There is too much tension in you to know what to do with, and he looks positively thrilled.

“It’s hardly charity, sir.” He holds out his arm.

You wonder what spell would catch him most off-guard if you were to blast him in the face right now.

Slughorn claps his hands together. “Ha! Yes, well… perfect, then! Off now, the two of you, off now. Do have a good — ” He hiccoughs again — “rest!”

You don’t even bother the diplomacy of smiling at Slughorn as your arm loops through Tom’s and you’re exiting the party.

Neither of you say a word on the journey, and that’s very well.

If you could just get back to bed without speaking to him you may still consider it a good night. You may be able to push his strangeness and his entitlement and the annoying way his hair falls to another day, when he pesters you about Godefrey’s nonexistent Quidditch practise, which — come to think of it — you do think he told you he'd be headed home for the holidays. You really fumbled that one.

And then Tom’s thumb is brushing the bare skin of your arm and your walk stutters a bit. But he doesn’t mention it, and so neither do you.

And then he’s drawing down your elbow to your forearm so softly it almost feels like he isn’t touching you at all. He doesn’t mention it. Neither do you.

And then your arm, without really meaning for it to, is slipping from his and his hand is holding yours instead, feather-light as his fingers clasp yours and your breath is not the same as it was when you left.

He doesn’t mention it. He just keeps going.

His fingers work back up your arm and you shiver as they drag across your shoulder, gaze searing your neck as the soft digits find their way to your jaw, and you get the sense he’s remembering just how much he liked the taste of it, and you’re… you’re allowing it all again. You’re leaning in, you’re seeking him out, you want him flush against you and even that might not be satisfactory.

You are, in the end, a half-decent observer and a terrible liar.

You’re grabbing his hand with a small amount of direction and a great deal of meaning. You suppose it's because, historically, you’ve proven to have trouble with words in moments like these, and you don’t really know where you’re taking him but god, you know where you want him. Somewhere soft, this time, thick enough that you can fist your hands around it and melt. Somewhere he can hover over you, maybe hold you down a little, just until — maybe, miraculously — you might make him break a little too. Clamber over his lap. Make him yours.

“Tom,” you mouth, some question in the way your eyebrows knit.

The moment you say his name — the instant — he’s pulling you in, crushing his mouth against yours. And, ah, right, that’s what his lips feel like. You’d almost forgotten.

This kiss is not chaste, hardly tender. It resists in that it asks you to push, to plead, to take this for yourself to prove how badly you want it, and he smiles into it when you do. And then, sated by your efforts, he lets you have him. You’re gripping the collar of his suit in your hands as his wander appreciatively over the back of your dress, pulling you into him as the kiss deepens. He’s savouring you like you’re something religious that’s been offered to him, and there’s the taste of wine on his tongue and you’re still here, aware enough that the symbolism isn’t lost on you.

“I've been thinking," he says between kisses, “about the way you felt when I touched you. I've been thinking about how long it might take before you need it again."

You gasp at the sensation, and god, god, you've been wondering too, haven't you?

You’re pulling him impossibly closer and something hard is pressing into your hip and you clutch tighter onto his shirt as you moan into his mouth. You need it off, you think, and — has your dress been clinging to you like this all night? You need that off too. You need skin on skin. You careen him backwards without aim, your mind a muddled mess of all the many things your body is screaming it needs, like this is fucking imperative; to give it up would be catastrophic.

You suppose, based on what you’ve read, that that’s how the Room of Requirement works, but it’s still funny to think it would apply to this.

It hurts to remove yourself from him to watch in dumb awe as the door forms in the stone (to see the dark, languid shape of his eyes bearing down on you, the wet, stained pink of his lips), and Tom seems to recover from the revelation much faster than you.

His mouth is on yours once more, a hungry kiss; his free hand at your waist, guiding you through the door and shutting it carelessly behind him.

He’s like fire against you, radiating as he presses down on you, his hand tangled in your hair and his hips flush against yours. You shiver as his mouth starts to move down (a cheap trick — he hasn’t forgotten how much you liked it the last time) from your jaw to your throat, as his lips trail down your chest and you're shivering into the warmth of him.

You’ve heard it said before, in some romantic sense, that it’s sometimes hard to tell where you end and someone else begins.

This is not like that.

You've never been more aware of anything than the point where you and him meet.

You’re tugging at him blindly again, trusting in the nature of the Room like this isn't the first time you've been in it, and then you're stumbling down onto a bed you're quite sure wasn't there a moment ago (people say magic is a neutral force but evidently this is not the fucking case), fingers carding through Tom's hair as his body pins you into the mattress.

His mouth is molten hot as you squirm and pant beneath him, your breath coming faster than it ever has. Everything feels sharper and deeper and more intense under his touch, every sensation heightened until it's almost impossible to tell pleasure from pain, his tongue from his teeth.

How did it take you this long to do this again? To need him like this?

And his — you should really have the mind to see the mistake in all of this but perhaps that's for later — his fingers are pulling your sleeves down, propping your back to arch as he reaches under you to unzip your dress, apparently too impatient to sit you up and take it off properly so he just bunches it around your waist instead. There’s a moment where he stops to look at you, your chest exposed to him in the dim sconce-light, and then his mouth returns to circle your breast and you're biting down on a pillow to hold back the whimpering gasp that seeks to escape you. He hums around your flesh, and then he’s at your sternum, kissing a stripe to your belly button before pushing past the dress he's left ringed around your abdomen.

You shimmy under the weight of him to prop your head up — to see past the mass of silk that obscures his face from you as moves lower and lower, hands spanning your hips to keep you still.

His face hovers above your thighs, and he doesn’t move.

“Did you enjoy my fingers?" he asks.

At that you freeze, thighs pressing together to bury the hand that's rising between them.

Tom smiles. “Hm, you did."

And then he spreads your legs apart, one hand pushing your underwear aside and regarding you with delicate, shameless appetite — something that might even be adoration: like this is all he ever wanted you to want.

“Do you think you'd enjoy my mouth, too?"

Words are gone. There's nothing left in you.

His head moves happily between your knees, holding them apart, pressing kisses to the base of your thighs. Your hands flail from the sheets, desperate to grip something else and you hold back a sound that feels like irritation and need at the same time. You need him closer, higher than this. He knows. You can feel his smile biting into your skin.

And then you manage a nod though you're not even sure he's looking at your face anymore (and what a picture to imagine he is) and you worry momentarily it won’t be enough for him — that he’ll ask you to be nice and say it out loud for him — but he hums with something merciful, and — his chin dips. You catch the smallest glimpse of his tongue before it’s on you, wet and slow and unrelenting and you say his name, but it’s a mewl; you choke on it. It sounds like a cry.

Pitiful, needy, undone. Just how he wants you.

You think all efforts to remain even remotely composed are thrown to the wind as soon as his tongue is lapping at you, fast and then slow, everything you want and not even remotely close. He sinks all his weight down as if he can predict the moment you'll writhe before you do — and you do. And with his grip he tells you to endure it. You only need him to say it with his hands and his mouth but he breathes back, licking his lips and he actually says it. “Be good.”

That makes your breath hitch and your cheeks swell impossibly hotter, and reality is a small glint in your peripheral where everything else is burning red. “Y-you’re—”

His mouth returns to you, tongue catching your clit in a drawn-out, agonising motion, and you gasp and lurch forward to inch through the sensation, craving more, more, more. Reason is lost on you, a throbbing familiarity forcing you to grind your teeth down on the pillow to stop yourself from telling him to — you don’t even know. Finish you. Abandon all reluctance. Just let you come as hard as you know he wants you to.

But he pauses, observant as he starts to work his fingers against you. Watching how your slick coats them like it’s the most enthralling sight he’s ever witnessed. Slowly, ever so slowly, he starts to push one inside of you, hearing your breath catch above him and the moan that comes tumbling out of your throat, pillow be damned.

You do your best to breathe through it, and you know he knows how to make you unfold like this, so the meticulous lightness of his ministrations tells you he’s trying to keep it from you now. You’re almost embarrassed about the fact that you’re dripping onto his hand regardless; his lips puffy, his gaze unnervingly, dizzyingly carving you in two.

“Just,” you rasp, clutching desperately at his wrist. “Tom, please.”

Your begging must be music to his ears. (It’s a rare, unplanned fifth observation: that you think he’ll never get tired of hearing you say his name like that.)

He adds a finger. It’s encircling you, first, and no amount of restraint can stop the harsh gasp that leaves you, but then it’s his tongue and two fingers and he’s pushing into you how you wanted, and he makes a pleased sound against you, gripping you tighter with his free hand, still not allowing you movement and fuck, are you trying. What you're feeling now — the need, the want, everything — is more than rational thought. Your mind goes blank, and all that matters is this, him, right here and now; nothing else exists, not even for a second. You moan, a low, throaty noise that's a little too loud, a little too intense; you can't recall if anything has ever come from you quite like it and Tom devours you at the sound.

More, you agree; it's almost an obsession in you now; more, more, please, anything and everything.

It’s the precision of his touch — not some bored, hurried transgression — that brings your hands helplessly to his hair.

“Tom,” you whine, holding him tight, and the purr of his mouth finding you again is something destructive.

As soon as you feel another swell of something deep down, your mouth is dropping open.

His tongue is sliding through you, fingers curling, and then your clit is in his mouth, and he’s watching you between your thighs as your eyes clench shut, and you’re coming.

Your voice breaks somewhere in the catastrophe of it. Your body spasms, electric down to every atom, and he pins you down through it. He doesn’t grant you the reprieve of escaping the frenzied, glorious torture of it. His mouth still lingers. His tongue moves thankful and unrelenting.

He takes all of you, and you think this is destruction — creation — both. How terrifyingly similar they suddenly feel.

His lips are swollen and slick when he finally detaches them from you and you want to kiss him, but he’s leaning back to admire his work. You swallow, unable to blame him for it because you look down at yourself and — this is something else. You’re dripping down his chin. You're shaking. Your legs are still clenching around his torso. They’re holding him so tight you can’t imagine it doesn’t hurt.

But he just rolls off of you. Adjusts his trousers and your abdomen flutters and you think, don’t.

You don’t even realise you’re reaching for him until your hand is around his wrist and you’re still fucking sighing through the come-down, panting into the hot air.

He presses a kiss to your forehead, fingers damp on your chin as he holds you. You make a note that that’s the second time he’s done that. That you thought it was strangely intimate the first time and nothing’s changed other than how much more you like it.

And it doesn’t really feel like you can help it but crawl with gooey, trembling legs onto his lap. Doesn’t feel like you can help it when you lean in and capture his lips with yours, moan unabashedly into his mouth at the stiffness that presses against your core when you do, steal his tongue and the taste of you on it.

When he pulls away he’s looking at you like he doesn’t think you can actually do this. Like you’d just crumble the moment you tried.

A low, determined protest rises in your throat and you’re kissing him again. You’re unbuttoning his dress shirt, you’re trembling to reach for his trousers.

When you can finally shrug his shirt off, press yourself against him, feel that skin on skin you wanted so badly, you find it somehow even more suffocating than its absence. You’re left wanting a more you aren’t able to even conceptualise, but you’re grinding involuntarily against him and his teeth are scraping your neck and he's hissing at the sensation, and — yes, there’s more.

Your breath is staggered when your hips stutter into a roll and you — fuck. You’re tugging desperately to remove his belt and he smiles against your throat as he takes your hands and guides them to him. You can feel his bulge against your thigh and you’re spreading your legs to usher him where you want, clawing at his chest without even meaning to.

Tom’s taking off his belt, and he’s pulling down his trousers just enough to bare himself to you, and maybe he’s right that you can’t manage it yourself but he stops his assistance like the intrigue of finding out is too good to resist. There's something both intimate and imperious, in a way, about the way he's looking at you now; it's a kind of focus and intensity and withheld hunger just for you; and you're more than happy to give yourself over to it, to let his hands and his eyes and his mouth claim you for his own. To claim him for yours, at last.

You do. You struggle for it. He’s very patient.

But then it’s there — more — as you finally sink down on him and bite his shoulder and he shudders a low, pained exhale, his hands clutching your waist.

There’s a silent, suspended moment where neither of you move. The room feels entirely still.

Your lips quiver over his pulse, and your stomach flips at the intensity of it, the undeniable rate of his desire beneath you. You smile against him now, like he always does to you, conscious enough to mumble into his neck, “Mine.”

Tom stutters inside you, fingers gripping you impossible tighter as you dare to think he even gasps. You dare to think he likes it.

And then one of his hands grabs your jaw and his kiss is searing. He thrusts upward and you cry into his mouth, searching to match his pace in a way that you appreciate, for once, he seems unlearned in.

It’s all a bit messy, a bit new, palms in fists, in skin, in hair, digging for every part they haven’t already taken from. The sound in the back of Tom’s throat is divine, the feeling of him inside you as he slips his hand back between your legs — like he needs everything, like he knows you do too — it’s ineffable. It coils somewhere deep, touches something you didn’t know existed. Your hips are rotating, thighs still soft and slack from coming apart on his tongue, but you’re determined. It feels like finding even ground. It feels like something you deserve: to make him feel how you did.

Your head rolls back, eyes pinching shut in bliss, but Tom is there at your jaw again, forcing your blurry gaze back to him.

His hips are inching even further, the intensity of his pace as he adjusts to you making you dizzy. You think, realistically, there’s sound coming out of you, but you aren’t entirely sure when it’s so close to him, when your mouth is between his fingers and your ears are ringing and he’s looking at you like you’re made for him.

“Mine.” And it isn’t a dismissal of your own claim but a confirmation that one will not be without the other. His voice is raw and breathy and something about the way he says it makes you contract inadvertently around him, hands swatting his chest like they don’t know what else to do. There’s just too much.

You recognize you’re trying to say something. Some plea, a moan, his name (is there anything else left?), but you’re just babbling into his mouth and he holds you there. He doesn’t kiss you. It’s your failing words against his lips. He swallows whatever syllables try to shape them.

It’s there again when you need it most; the heavy, swirling feeling inside you as he snaps his hips, his fingers returning to your waist with punishing firmness. His breathing accelerates, low in his throat, and you push harder against him. Your vision is gone again, head held in his hands to keep from rolling back so that, you suspect, he can watch defeat split you down the middle again — not over your shoulder, not with his head between your legs — with his eyes on yours, with every broken moan you let out so close to his face he can feel the breath of each one.

You’re grappling desperately at skin that doesn’t feel like enough, even though he’s rocking inside you, and you see the insanity of it, you see that it isn’t logical. Too much and not enough at once — you’re smart enough to know that doesn’t work, but it just is.

“Please,” you manage in a voice you don’t recognize. “Please, Tom, pleasepleaseplease —”

Had you said before it was foolish to call him forgiving? You take it back. He’s very eager to oblige you.

He finds some place inside of you and you don’t know quite what it is that he changes but it's new, uncharted, and you break there. You dissolve. You’re liquid in his hands as you sob, stuttering around him, trembling like you didn’t know was possible, and you swear — you swear you’re going to take him there with you. It isn’t that you could stop yourself if you tried but your body is gripping around him, fingers carving halved spheres into his skin, and you’re pushing down on him through the ecstasy — you’re forcing your eyes open so he can see you break, watch them flutter back all soft and pretty.

And you're sated by your ruin when it ruins him too.

The sound he makes is ragged. Undone. He can only bury it halfway with a kiss you think is actually more of a bite, twitching inside you as he fucks you through it.

You’re both lost in each other for a moment that feels detached from time, feeling his hips stutter to a halt, feeling your body soften. And he’s pulling out of you like it hurts, mouth falling open as he does. You wince at the loss, the sweet soreness between your legs, and you’re held only by the weight of him. You think — and you actually sway like the mere idea is too strong — that if it weren’t for his hands, you’d fall flat off the bed.

But he sort of lifts you off him, lays you down and watches you for a long time as if to decide something important before he's laying down beside you. You watch him too. His fingers brush your hair out of your face, and when there’s not a single curl left clinging to the sweat on your skin, he continues anyway. You let him trace your lips, your jaw, your nose, and somehow, a bit terrifyingly, your final observation: nothing about it feels unusual at all.

You did say he was yours.

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