Archive of Our Own

“Do you trust me?”

His breath was warm against her neck. His hand splayed flat across her abdomen. Hermione nodded. She couldn’t tell him what she wanted to say: I trust you more than I trust myself. So, she kept the words tucked safe behind her teeth. 

Tom took off her jeans without complication. His hands were warm and steady, fingers squeezing her thighs softly. Her knickers were grey cotton with a pale pink trim and a little bow. The nicest pair she owned, but still dreadfully plain. Tom looked at her in them for a long moment, long enough for her to squirm under his steady attention. He pressed two fingers against the gusset, where the fabric had darkened, and she bit down on her lower lip hard enough to feel it.

He replaced her teeth with his mouth. His tongue swept over reddened flesh. His hands found her thighs again, pulling her up and onto his lap. It was so easy. How was it so easy?

“Aren’t you going to take yours off, too?” She asked, voice lower than she intended. They were alone in the house, but somehow whispering felt necessary. She recognized this moment as something quiet and fragile. 

Hermione placed her hands on either side of his face to get a proper look at him. He was so pretty. Dark lashes, dark eyes, dark curls. So, so pretty. 

“Yeah,” Tom let out a breathy chuckle. “Lift for me, Hermione.”

She straightened, bracing herself on her knees, one on either side of his hips. He unbuttoned and unzipped and she watched his hands as they moved. The emergence of pale skin, the dark navy of his boxers. He kicked the jeans off and they fell beside hers beside the bed in a plop. It struck her as rather domestic. Laundry. She imagined herself sometime in the future ironing his shirts, putting away his socks. 

He pulled her back down onto his lap, back into the current moment. She felt the length of him through the two layers of cotton, hard and warm. Something flickered in her chest, something between want and fear. And maybe a little closer to vertigo. She wanted him. She wanted him so badly it terrified her. 

Tom went still beneath her. She hadn’t said anything, but he could probably read everything on her face. She knew she was horrible at hiding how she felt. 

“What is it?” He brushed a curl away from her face, tucked it behind her ear. He kept his hand there beneath her ear. She liked the pressure of it, leaned into the touch. 

Sometimes Tom looked at her like she was the only thing worth looking at. She knew that couldn’t be true, but it was nice to think he might feel that way. That anyone could feel that way about her. 

“It’s embarrassing, I don’t want to say it.”

“Hermione,” an edge of exasperation, as if he would never judge her. Could she believe that? 

Do you trust me?

“I… I always thought I would wait for marriage. To, um, you know…”

He blinked slowly. 

“Then marry me.”

Hermione laughed, startled. He was almost smiling, just a slight tug at the corner of his mouth. He nudged her forehead with his, his hands still firm and warm on her hips. 

“You can’t say that,” she told him as if correcting his homework. “You can’t just talk like that.”

“Hermione, you know you’re the only thing that makes sense to me.”

A non-answer. Or rather, an answer to a question she had always been too afraid to ask. She didn’t want to ask anymore than that. She kissed him instead. 

She moved against him, slow and searching. The friction built until her breath came in short pulls and she had to break away to press her face against his neck. Sweat had formed a layer of salt on his skin, she could taste it on her lips. Tom made a low sound against her hair. Her whole body felt like an old-fashioned stove, burning from the inside, humming, not quite herself. 

Sitting back on his knees, she pulled her t-shirt over her head. Tom’s eyes narrowed, darkening. She reached for the hem of his shirt and he didn’t stop her. 

Hermione stilled. 

Somewhere, she had always known. She wasn’t naive, and Tom didn’t do much to hide it, the way one could never really disguise a limp. But knowing and seeing were not the same. His chest was pale and firm, his mother’s locket on a silver chain down his sternum. Bruises lapped across his torso and disappeared around his back, welts from a belt or something worse. Some old and yellow-green at the edge. Others still a tender deep purple. Cigarette burns between his ribs. Deliberate in a way that made her stomach drop. 

She felt the hot sting of tears behind her eyes. 

“He did this to you,” it wasn’t a question. 

“I don’t want to think about him,” Tom told her clearly, his voice taking on a quality she hadn’t heard before. Or hadn’t let herself hear. Something deep and certain, almost authoritative. He brought her down against him again, she let out an involuntary groan and didn’t care. “I just want to think about you,” his mouth at her jaw, her neck, the curve of her shoulder. “And this.”

She kissed him until the tears dried up. 

He nipped at her throat, tongue swept across the hollow of her collarbone. When his mouth found her breast, teeth closed around her nipple, she made a noise she didn’t recognize immediately as her own. Her skin flushed red. “I’m sorry, I…”

“Don’t be sorry,” his lips continued to move against her skin. “Not with me. Never with me.”

“Tom,” she lets out another moan, louder this time. “Tom, will you.. please…”

“No,” she felt his smile against her sternum, teasing her. He looked up at her from under dark lash, unhurried in a way that was almost unbearable, then fell back against a pillow. Her pillow. He settled his hand low on her stomach and she pulled in a sharp breath. His fingers skimmed down and hooked at the lace and elastic. “Have you ever touched yourself?”

“Yes,” she swallowed, feeling her skin go hot under his steady attention. “Have you?”

“Mm.” He snapped the elastic lightly. Despite herself, she flinched. She knew it was silly, and he noticed, the corner of his mouth lifting again. He held her gaze as his hand slid under the waistband of his boxers, and she watched the movement beneath the thin fabric, her pulse thudding in her ears. “Do you ever think about me? I think about you,” he brought himself out from the elastic, hard and pale and pink. “Touching me,” hand moving above and down from the base. “Putting your mouth on me…” his thumb flicked across his head where moisture had gathered. “Hermione,” he breathed out, she wouldn’t dare look away. “I think about you all of the time.”

She moved herself back against the headboard, supporting herself with a pillow. Her hand slid into her underwear, mirroring him, the skin still warm and oversensitive where he’d touched. She watched him watching her as she began to move. She imagined his hand cupping the warmth, his fingers finding her clit, dipping into the wetness and silken heat. She bit her lip again, bucking into her hand, not taking her eyes off of him.

He didn’t look away from her once. 

She came first, folding in on herself, eyes squeezing shut. It had never felt like that before. She didn’t know it even could feel like that. 

Tom’s movements slowed as he watched her. His entire torso had flushed red. 

“Hermione,” his voice was rough and breathless. Desperate. “Please, please, let me be inside you.”

“Okay.” When would it ever be more perfect than that? 

(Tom had some condoms in his jean pocket. She noticed this with a passive thrill. Of course he would have thought about it when she invited him over on the weekend her parents were out of town. He thought about this. 

He wanted this. 

He wanted her.)

Hermione settled onto her back, hair splaying across the pillow. She thought for a moment she might regret that when she had to detangle her curls in the morning, but it didn’t matter. He kissed her again, slowly, and all over. 

Tom flooded her senses. All she could feel was his touch, all she could hear was his steady breathing, all she could taste was the salt of his sweat, all she could smell was his cologne. His silver chain dangled between them, ghosted against her breasts when he leaned in. It was cold against her flushed skin. 

It didn’t hurt the way she’d prepared herself for it to hurt. There was a brief pressure, and then a breathtaking fullness. The strange sensation of another body entering her own. She held onto his shoulders and Tom stayed very still.

“Okay?” He asked against her hair.

“Yes,” she breathed out, fingers digging into his skin. “It feels… weird.”

Tom laughed, nodding. He started to move, pressing his hips forward, slowly, and then not slowly. He leaned in, pressing his face against her neck, she could feel his breathing go uneven.

And then he stopped.

“Tom?”

“I know,” his voice was muffled. “Give me a second,” he lifted his head and looked at her. His expression was unbelievably tender. She had never seen him so unguarded. “I feel like my heart is going to dislodge itself from my chest.”

She pulled him closer, one hand in his hair, the other between his shoulder blades. She could feel his heartbeat against her chest. 

“Mine, too.”

His lips grazed against her ear. 

“Hermione, I really, really like you.”

She knew what he meant about his heart. Hers was also planning a violent escape through her ribs. 

“I really, really like you, too.”

After, they held each other for a long time without moving. Hermione’s back pressed against his chest, his arms looped over her body. His chin tucked against her hair. Skin against skin. 

She was aware of her own body in a new way. Nothing had changed, necessarily, but she had gained a new familiarity. She felt the places where he had been and still was, the warmth of him along the entire length of her back. She knew what it was to touch and be touched. 

His hand absently moved against her bare breast, palm brushing against her nipple. 

“I’ve never done anything like that before.”

“I know.”

“No, I mean, I’ve never told anyone the things I told you.”

His lips pressed against her shoulder. She never wanted to go back to a time when she didn’t know what that felt like. 

“You can tell me anything.”

“Oh, this is stunning! Is it vintage?’

“His great-grandmother’s,” Hermione smiles tightly. The wedding planner holds her hand without asking, tilting it toward the light. “His mother had it resized.”

“Gorgeous,” the planner says, releasing her hand, and clicking her pen. 

They move through the agenda in order. The groom’s cake had been ordered. Orange buttercream, for his favorite team. The florist provided another quote. The open bar which had required a brief negotiation and a lot of compromising. The DJ who doesn’t usually do weddings, but he’s a Chudley Cannons stadium staple. The siblings’ speeches—six in total, all separate for some reason, even the twins. The first dance they attended two ballroom lessons for. 

“And in terms of the head table, I left two seats here for…” The planner pauses, her expression falling. “I’m so sorry, I forgot.”

Oh. 

“It’s fine,” Hermione smiles again. 

Her parents are on a one hundred day cruise across the globe. It was non-refundable and a coincidence, they said, that it overlapped with the cheapest day to book her venue. What could she do? She is the only daughter of two only children. Her grandparents on both sides are long gone. It’s a good thing Ron comes from a large family, her parents say, over and over. 

The plan is to have dinner when her parents get back. Her father will shake Ron’s hand and her mother will kiss his cheek. Hermione will smile because they’ve already had this argument before, and it’s not worth having again. Ron is sweet. He is not ambitious, the way her mother would like, or an intellectual, the way her father would like, but he is sweet. He comes from a large, loud family. He views love as oxygen. Always there. Always abundant. Only absent on strange alien planets. He is tall and laughs with his whole body and makes her feel, consistently, that the world is a place worth living. Ron’s mother cried when she met Hermione and she never forgot that. It doesn’t matter that he never finished university, because Hermione knows as long as she is with him she will never spend a birthday, holiday, or random Sunday alone. 

And Ron has never, not once, made her afraid. 

The meeting ends with gathered notes and promises to send an email by Thursday. Hermione hides her frustration that the budget has once again gone up and gives a polite wave. She gets an iced latte to go and dials up the radio so she can scream at the red light when no one is around.  

Hermione sits in her car for ten minutes after she’s cut off the engine. She has been doing this a lot lately, each time longer and longer. Not always outside her house, sometimes at the supermarket, or outside work, once for nearly twenty minutes around the corner from the Weasley's house after Sunday roast. Why does she do it? To collect her thoughts? Hands in her lap, engine ticking as it cools, not thinking about anything in particular. 

The ring catches the light from the window. She looks at it for a moment, then looks away. 

Eventually she gets out. 

She sees him before she reaches the door. At first she thinks she is imagining him. Some specter from her past. As if, finally, after years of casually fearing this, she has conjured him from nothing. 

He is so still that the illusion holds. Just a trick of the afternoon light and nothing more. Then he turns his head, and looks directly at her, and she can no longer pretend. 

The air rushes from her lungs. Her throat feels like a hand closes around it. Her vision blurs. Her grip loosens—keys and latte and shopping bags all clattering to the pavement. 

“Breathe,” Tom says, suddenly beside her. 

She can’t. 

“You can. In through your nose. Count with me.” Her knees hit the ground. He follows her. “One, two, three…”

One…

The imaginary hand at her throat stays there, adds a ton of bricks against her chest. It feels like she’s dying.

“Come on, Hermione. In through your nose. Four. Good girl, hold it. Yes, now let it go, in one, two, three, four…”

Tears fall hot down her face. Fists clenched. She takes in shaky gulps of air but it’s not enough. Her lungs burn and squeeze. She’s going to die. She’s going to die here.  

She hears him move, feels his arm loop around her back. Feels his hand gather up her hair, pulling it away from her shoulders. She hears the ice shift in the spilled cup, and then the sudden coldness of ice beneath her ear. She flinches.

He presses the cube there and holds it. Her eyes snap open.

Tom moves the ice to the back of her neck, palm flat, holding it firm against her skin. The cold spreads outward and her body has no choice to attend to it. Her vision sharpens. Her breathing slows. Tom holds the ice there until it melts, until she stops shaking, until all she can feel is the numbness of her skin. 

And the warm, heavy weight of his arms. 

“Let go of me.”

He does. 

She doesn’t dare invite him in. She stands on the pavement with her wet knees and her empty hands and watches him pick up the cup and drop it in the bin at the end of the path. She thinks about the things she told him in her bedroom ten years ago with the street lamps glowing through the open window. 

She thinks about the way he understood her in ways she feared she would never be understood. In ways she may never be understood again. And then, by Monday, he was gone. 

“I heard the news,” his eyes land on Ron’s great-grandmother’s ring. 

“How do you know where I live?”

Of course he doesn’t answer that.

“It’s strange,” and though the years have changed his face, and his voice, and the broadness of his shoulders, they have not changed his expression. “No one from school is invited?”

The afternoon is very ordinary around them. A neighbor’s cat sits on a wall across the road. She can hear the talk radio blaring from the garage next door. 

“Tom. Don’t.”

“I’m not asking for much, Hermione. I just want to see you happy.”

She looks at him for a long moment. She thinks about the last time she saw him. She thinks about what she confessed to him that night in her bed. She thinks about the bruises and scars all along his perfect, perfect torso. 

“It’s a small wedding.”

“I know,” he smiles. “I read the announcement in the paper.”

Right. 

She looks at him, takes in an unsteady breath, her throat still raw. 

She remembers what it felt like when he disappeared. 

“Why are you here? If you say anything about…”

“Hermione,” he says her name quietly, carefully. “When have I ever done anything to hurt you?”

Never. 

But that was then. 

She reaches into her bag. She kept a few extra invitations there, meant to invite some of the ladies from work. Ron said it would be nice to even out the pews a bit. 

She hesitates before holding out the envelope. He takes it from her without moving closer, without touching her hand. 

“Thank you,” and for some reason she thinks he means it. 

She goes back inside without saying anything else. Without turning back to see if he’s still standing there. 

She already knows he is. 

Ron gets home a few hours later. She hears his keys, then the sequence of fumbling sounds that she's come to associate with him. Everyone in his family does it. It might be a Weasley trait, or just part of living in a large family, either because they don’t realize how loud they’re being, or because no one would notice them otherwise. After the final touch, his shoes kicked off with a clunk, clunk, and a loud clearing of his throat, a bright orange head appears in her vision. 

Hermione’s standing in front of the stove, the steam from the boiling water providing some kind of at-home spa treatment. Ron pats her on the bum and looks at her for a moment, face twisting up in confusion. 

“Have you been crying?”

“A little,” a lot. She held a bag of peas over her face to take down the redness and swelling. Her heart flutters that he noticed. “You hungry? I’m just pulling together some chicken alfredo.”

“Ah, no, I got fish and chips from that place down the road from Fred’s. I thought you would have eaten at the wedding thing.”

“Oh,” she gives him a diffusing smile. “No worries, I’ll have the leftovers for lunch.”

He gives her a wet kiss on the cheek, grabs a beer from the fridge, and takes it to the sofa. She hears the television go on. The water continues to boil. 

When she’s plated her dinner he’s already two periods or quarters or whatever through a match. Hermione sits on the other end of the sofa with her dinner in her lap. 

“Ron?”

“Yeah, babe?”

“I want to add someone to the guest list,” she requests carefully, during an advert. A fortifying glass of red wine in hand. “I know it’s last minute, but Mafalda canceled, and it’s a friend from school I happened to run into. We weren’t very close, but I thought it might be nice.”

“Yeah, totally,” Ron says, eyes still on the screen as he drinks his beer. “What’s her name?”

She pauses. “Tom.”

“Oh, a bloke?” He nods. “The more the merrier.”

“Great, thank you.”

The match comes back on. Hermione can’t even tell what sport this is. They’re calling it football but they keep tackling each other, everyone seems Australian, and no one’s wearing pads. 

She finishes her dinner, the chicken is a little rubbery and overcooked. But the wine makes it easier to swallow. She puts her plate in the sink, grabs Ron another beer, and refills her glass.

“Hey, actually, I was thinking,” Ron calls out over the television. “While we’re on the wedding,” he turns to her with the expression she’s come to associate with a sales pitch. “You know my pick-up league team? We were thinking, and stop me if this is insane… choreographed dance.”

She looks at him. All he's missing is jazz hands to really sell it.

“Oh? I thought we—”

“I know, I know, but the lads put something together and it’s actually pretty sick. They’ve been practicing pretty hard, might really liven up the reception.”

She thinks about the orange cake. The DJ. The great-grandmother’s ring. 

“Yeah,” she takes a sip of wine and joins him back on the sofa. “That sounds great.”

Ron kisses her, gives her hip a squeeze. She knows he doesn’t think of this as reciprocity. That’s just not who he is. He is genuinely, straightforwardly excited, and she knows this. She has always known this, and it’s fine. It’s fine. She turns back to the television and finishes her wine. 

The pub is loud and hot and there are seventeen Weasleys and Weasley-adjacents spread across three tables. There is a great deal of orange and freckles and periodic outbreaks of singing at the top of their lungs. Harry, who has been inseparable from Ron since the first year dorms, but is also elementally an only child, toggles between the drunken ballads and taking a breather with Hermione at the window seat.

Ron has been drinking since lunch. He has entered the pseudo-fugue state where he is sustained primarily by lager and wanders from table to table and laughs at everything, everything, everything. He puts his arms around her shoulders, smacks her back a little too hard, and she leans into him without thinking about the sweat stains developing in his crisp blue dress shirt. 

She almost doesn’t see him.

She’ll fixate on that later, probably. She could have gone the whole night, might have made it to the end, if she hadn’t been scanning the bar for a waitress and let her eyes land on him instead. He is wearing a black shirt loosely buttoned, a silver chain beneath the collar that catches her breath. His sleeves are pushed up over his elbows, exposing the taut muscles of his forearm. Hermione looks away, tells herself it’s nothing, maybe it’s not even Tom. 

She’s just imagining things again. 

And yet.

Hermione looks back. He doesn’t notice her immediately. He’s talking to someone else at the bar, someone she doesn’t recognize, both of them half-turned away. She could almost believe that this is a coincidence, that he didn’t come to this pub because she’s having her combined stag-night-hen-do. Almost. 

She watches him for long enough that Ron notices. 

“Oh, hey!” Ron sits up, pushing back the bar tool he was precariously balanced on with a loud scrape. “Isn’t that Marcus?”

“What? No.”

“No, no. It’s Marcus. Marcus!” Ron’s already on his feet, arm waving wildly, weaving through the crowd composed mostly of siblings and cousins. She watches in horror as he crosses the room, clapping a hand on Tom’s shoulder. Tom’s eyes meet hers, and she can’t pretend that he hasn’t known precisely where she was the whole night. There’s a slight tick to his lips as he follows Ron back. 

Ron gestures wildly and Tom listens with the immeasurable patience of an apex predator. 

“Coulda swore you looked just like him, mate, sorry about that,” Ron is saying, flagging down the bartender to get Tom another drink. “This one’s on me, this is my stag night! We got a table, few tables actually, and hey, there’s my girl!”

“Ron,” Hermione grits out in warning.

“Hermione!” He turns to her with an innocent lopsided grin. At some point in the night he will slump over as if someone yanked out his batteries, but she knows they have a few more drinks to go before he reaches that. “Turns out this isn’t Marcus. Meet my new mate… uh, sorry, mate, what was your name?”

“Tom, what are you doing here?”

He smiles despite the death glare she has in full effect. 

“Just out for drinks with my coworkers. This is your hen do? No, stag night?”

“It’s combined,” she grits her teeth. Ron is looking somewhere else, he might be closer to batteries-out than she thought. “Ron, this is my friend Tom. I talked to you about him the other night, he’s coming to the wedding.”

Tom places his hands in his pockets. She pretends she doesn’t see the way the veins on his arms pulse with the movement.

“Tom, was it?” Harry appears, hand pushed between them. Tom shakes it with a smile. Hermione is grateful for Harry’s ability to materialise precisely where he is needed, and also, looking at his expression, slightly less grateful. “I’m Harry, Ron and Hermione’s friend since university. How do you know Hermione?”

“We went to school together,” Hermione answers for him, not trusting what he might say if left to his own devices. 

“Brilliant!” Ron beams, throwing an arm around her shoulder. “She never talks about school, this one. Absolute mystery woman.”

Tom looks at her with a knowing smile. 

“She always was.”

Ron’s sister Ginny appears with a glass of water pushed into his hand. It’s a nice gesture but they all know it’s useless. 

“How did you know we were here?” Harry asks sharply, like a dog with a bone he won’t give up. Hermione shoots him an uneasy look. 

“Complete coincidence,” Tom answers without missing a beat, sipping the beer Ron had bought for him. “That’s my boss and his son over there. They know Rosie, it was their idea to bring in the popcorn machine, bought it from our store.” 

“Hm. That really is a coincidence.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Who’s the hottie?” Ginny whispers rather loudly in Hermione’s ear. 

“Tom,” he offers a hand, smiling when Ginny blushes. Hermione moves her heel onto Tom’s foot beneath the bar. He doesn’t react. She keeps the pressure there. Ron has wandered off again.  

“How do you two know each other, actually?” Harry asks again.

“School,” Tom’s eyes narrow.

“Yeah, Hermione said that. I meant specifically.”

“We had a few classes together,” Hermione removes her heel from Tom’s foot and picks up her water. “It was a long time, feels like another life,” she smiles at him, lets it crinkle at her eyes like she really means it. “Honestly, I barely remember it!”

Tom says nothing. Somehow that’s worse. 

Ginny grabs Ron by the collar of his white undershirt, the blue shirt she ironed before they went out disappearing at some point without Hermione noticing. Ron ends up all but in Hermione’s lap, she holds onto his hand to steady him. She doesn’t miss the way Tom’s eyes flicker to their joined fingers. 

“Ron, how’s Ernie feeling?” Ginny asks, getting an exaggerated shrug in answer. She smacks him across the head and he looks up at her. 

“Dunno, heard he had to get two casts.”

Ginny frowns, turning to Tom.

“Ernie was supposed to be a groomsman, but he had an accident while hiking and ended up breaking both of his legs.” 

Hermione doesn’t want to think about it. She and Ron had been going back and forth for weeks on whether or not it made sense for Hermione to have one less bridesmaid, for Ron to pick someone else, or for the wedding party to be simply uneven. 

Ron raises his head, gives Tom a solid once over. 

“Say, Tom and Ernie are about the same size, don’t you think?” Ron bounces to his feet with renewed energy. Hermione frowns, not liking where this is going. “Mate, mad question, feel free to say no, I’d completely understand…”

“No,” Hermione nearly shouts. 

“Any chance you’d like to step in and be a groomsman?”

Tom looks at Ron, then at Hermione. Slowly, a smile forms. 

“I wouldn’t want to intrude.”

“No, it’s brilliant,” Ron beams. “It’s fate, isn’t it? Hermione, isn’t it fate?”

“Fate,” Ginny grins, eyes on Tom with all of the subtlety of a bull in a china shop.

“It’s really not…”

“You’re already on the list,” Ron reaches out to poke at Tom’s shoulder. “Hermione put you over by Aunt Muriel, but we’ll switch you around to the head table to sit next to…”

“Me!” Ginny interrupts.

“Yeah, next to Gin, and…”

“He can’t sit next to Ginny. Dean is next to Ginny.”

“Well, we’ll move Dean. Relax, ‘Mione.”

Harry looks at her as Ron and Ginny continue to prattle on. She looks at her drink. 

At some point Ron throws up in a potted plant. The shift is immediate, Ginny already moving, two of Ron’s brothers lifting him up into the air arm by arm like Christ on the crucifix. Harry’s attention finally moves away from her. 

Tom goes back to his alleged friends, but she feels his eyes on her until the moment she eventually follows the procession with Ron's unconscious body out the door. 

Hermione sits at the small wrought iron table and chairs in the garden, a mug of tea going cold in her hands. She doesn’t turn when the back door opens and Harry comes out, still wearing his clothes from the night before, having fallen asleep on their sofa after carrying Ron back. 

He doesn’t say anything at first. He sits beside her, forearms on his knees, and looks past her at the hedges. 

He knows something. She has always been able to tell with Harry. 

“How long have you known Tom?” he asks, eventually, and she knew this is where he was headed. 

“I don’t know. Since school. We’ve lost touch, though, it’s been, maybe, ten years?”

“Right,” Harry nods, he takes the spoon she’d used to stir her tea. He turns it over in his fingers, considering his reflection in the surface. “I couldn’t sleep last night and borrowed your computer to get some work done. Hope you don’t mind.”

“Of course not,” she sucks in a deep breath.

“You know how I go down a rabbit hole sometimes. Well, I found this article from your hometown,” he looks up at her and time stills. “I found it awhile ago, back when we first met and you were trying to find something for that history class we were taking. You said your town didn’t have any local history, and, well, that’s just not possible.”

“Get to the point, Harry.”

The tea is cold. She drinks it anyway, feels it slide down her throat. 

“There was a pretty gruesome murder. Some star student killed his parents in their home right after New Year’s Eve. They couldn’t use his name, of course, but the way they describe him…” Harry looks at her with all the force of his deep green eyes. “That’s Tom, isn’t it?” She doesn’t say anything, which is its own answer. “Hermione, what’s going on? Why is he here?”

“Isn’t there something better you could be doing with your investigative journalism skills?” she scoffs, and even she can hear that it doesn’t land right. Harry is silent. God, she hates when he gets like this. She hates that he can never let anything go. “It was self-defense. He was acquitted. Funny that you left that part out, Harry.”

“Just because he got off doesn’t mean—”

“His parents were abusive, Harry,” Her voice remains even. She tries not to think about the welts along Tom’s torso. The cigarette burns. She tries not to think about how she can smell the stench of tobacco even now. “His father was cruel, horrible to him. His mother treated him like a human ashtray. But Tom was my only friend, okay? I was eighteen and had one friend and then one day he didn’t come to school and I had no idea why. And then suddenly everyone knew.”

“Hermione, I…”

“I never got to say goodbye. I saw him at the trial, but I haven’t really seen him since. I don’t know why he’s here. I don’t know what he wants.”

Harry looks at her and she is aware, distantly, that she can smell cigarette smoke. It’s faint, possibly nothing more than a memory, carried on the breeze from somewhere over the fence. 

“Is he threatening you?” Harry leans in, grabbing her hand. “I need you to tell me if—”

“No,” She hesitates for half a second, and she knows that he notices. “No, it’s not like that. Tom is my friend. I want him to be part of this day, even if I don’t want him to be part of my future. That’s all.”

“Okay, but Ron—”

“Please,” she meets his eyes, squeezing his hand back. “Please don’t tell Ron the truth. I know it’s not fair to keep things from him, but people deserve a second chance. Don’t they?”

He exhales through his nose, his shoulders shifting with the movement. He looks away, then back. He nods slowly. 

“Yeah, sure. Okay. You’re right, ‘Mione. People deserve second chances.”

He squeezes her shoulder once. He lingers, as if there’s more to be said, but then decides against it. He waves to her before going back inside. She turns, can’t see much with the curtains drawn. Faintly she hears the muffled voices in the kitchen. She sits with her empty mug. 

The garden gate creaks. She allows her eyes to flutter shut. 

When they open, Tom is beside her, chair pulled close, a cigarette dangling between his lips. He places a hand on her knee and she hates the way her entire body reacts to his touch. It shouldn’t be like this. It shouldn’t still be like this. 

“People deserve second chances,” he muses, blowing a cloud of smoke in her face. Hermione covers her mouth to stifle a cough.

“Do you mind? I don't know you can even stand those things...”

His lips curl upward, the cigarette dropping into her mug. 

“That Harry’s really perceptive, isn’t he?” Tom keeps his hand on her knee, thumb brushing along the fabric of her dress. She can feel the warmth of his skin on hers, even with the cotton between them. Hermione licks her lips and reminds herself she isn’t eighteen anymore. “Is he a cop or something? Is he going to arrest me for being a very bad boy?”

“No, he works for the paper,” she props her chin on her palm, looking at him pointedly. “They’re both inside, you know? Is that your plan, for Ron to catch us and call off the wedding?”

“Is that what you want, Hermione?”

“No,” her cheeks flush. “God, you’re ridiculous.”

Tom laughs, it’s a low and quiet chuckle for all of his credit. She feels it deep in her chest.

“You think I deserve a second chance,” he comes even closer still, fingers teasing at the hem of her dress. “I think that you miss me, and that you want me close. And this…” he gestures vaguely to the garden and the back of the house where Ron may have woken from his nap already and Harry may still be inside. “All of this might be a little more complicated than you’ve been telling yourself.”

“That couldn’t be farther from the truth.”

“No?” His breath tickles at her face. He lifts her chin with his hand, looking at her properly. When he closes the space between them, his lips on hers, she doesn’t know why (okay, she does!), she kisses him back. He gathers the fabric of her dress in his hands. For a moment there’s no thinking at all. There’s only Tom. 

She pulls back. 

“Ron is inside,” she reminds herself more than Tom. She knows that Tom knows. 

“Yeah?” he laughs again, mouth moving to her jaw, her neck, lips finding her pulse. She puts a hand flat against his chest, but she doesn’t exactly push. Tom bites down on her earlobe hard enough that she cries out. It’s a short and sharp sound. Her eyes water, the pain of it radiates straight to her core. 

Tom lifts his head and looks at her with a satisfied expression. She stares at him in resignation. 

He trails one finger down the line of her throat, her sternum, settling against the skin just above her heart, beneath the neckline of her spring dress. She feels her heartbeat meet his palm, giving her away. 

“You can’t hide from me, Hermione,” he murmurs, not looking away from where his skin meets her. “Don’t forget, I’m the only one who really knows you.”

She says nothing. 

Tom goes back the way he came, the garden gate creaks, and then she is left alone with her thoughts. 

After a while she flicks the tea-soaked cigarette over the hedge. Then regrets it and goes around to properly dispose of it in the trash. She goes back inside and thinks to herself with a startling clarity: this is probably going to be a disaster. 

But she has already made most of the decisions that matter. Whatever is going to happen has already been set into motion. She is too far into it now. Perhaps she had gone too far when she invited Tom over that weekend and bared her heart to him. 

She takes her mug inside to rinse it. 

“Good nap?” She calls toward the living room. 

“Brilliant,” Ron groans. “‘Mione, would you order some pizza?”

“Yeah, in a little bit.”

She puts the mug on the rack and stands at the kitchen window for a moment, looking out at the garden. Then she goes to join him. 

I’m not going to stay long, she tells herself. 

She lingers at the antique shop’s glass door. She is going to say what she came here to say, and then she is going to leave. The sign above the door is hand-lettered and freshly painted. She wonders absently if it was Tom who wrote it. Through the window she can see the shapes of things on shelves, the dark gleam of wood and glass, and decades, maybe centuries of clutter gathered. 

She thinks about Ron’s face when she said she was going out. Anywhere nice? He’d asked. 

He kissed her temple, laced up his trainers, and said he might be out late with his pick-up league mates. Hermione nodded to herself, knowing that meant he might not come home at all. 

The bell above the door chimes as she enters, startling her. She stands still for a moment, just inside the threshold, steeling her nerves. She won’t be here long. 

The shelves are even more crowded than she could tell through the door. There is no one else in the shop. Eventually, Tom comes in through the back, stopping when he sees her. There’s a thrill that runs through her body when she recognizes genuine shock in his face. It goes away as his expression settles into self-satisfaction and lazy little smirk. 

“Want some tea?”

“I can’t stay long,” she glances around the shop, raises a brow. “Is your boss in? And his son? The ones from the pub.”

Tom looks at her for just a moment, amusement flickering in his eyes. 

“Mr. Borgin doesn’t come in on weekends,” his hand reaches across to run across her arm. “And his son went back to his place in Derby.”

“What a coincidence.”

“Isn’t it?” he continues to trace nonsense shapes along her skin. “I’m renting the flat above the shop. Come up and have tea.”

“I can’t stay long.”

“So you’ve said.”

He flips the sign outside, locks up, and leads her around the back up a narrow set of stairs. The flat above the shop is small, but tidy. There’s dark wood and wallpaper. Nothing sentimental, nothing that is Tom’s. She sits on the loveseat as he fixes them tea in the small kitchenette. She takes her mug with a small, involuntarily polite smile. 

“I don’t want you to come to the wedding,” she says all at once, afraid she wouldn’t say it at all if she didn’t blurt it out now. Tom’s expression doesn’t change. He slowly sips his tea. “Harry knows about… you. He’s suspicious and he’s the type of person who doesn’t really let things go. I don’t think he’ll make a scene, but…” she wraps both her hands around the mug, desperate for its warmth to soothe her. “I’m worried about you.”

“Worried about me, or worried about what everyone will think?”

“It can’t be both?”

Tom laughs, sets his tea down on the table. 

“I was thinking about that weekend. What was that girl’s name? The one who ended up disfigured after your science experiment gone wrong?” A pause, his dark eyes focused on hers. Hermione holds in a breath so that she doesn’t scream. Marietta, she thinks. Her name was Marietta. Not even a plastic surgeon could heal her chemical burns. “You know I never told anyone about that, Hermione. I never told anyone about the other things you told me that night, either. Not the police, not my solicitor when he asked where I was for those two days. Not anyone.”

“Tom.” Her chest tightens.

“You told me,” he continues, not moving any closer, but she can feel him surrounding her. Suffocating her, “that my parents were evil for what they did to me. You told me I shouldn't put up with it anymore. You didn’t tell me to go get help, did you? And you certainly never told your own parents what had happened…”

“I didn’t think…”

“There’s a word for that, isn’t there? Oh, what is it? Something after-the-fact, but really, this is before the fact, hm… I’m terrible with legal terminology.”  

She remembers everything she said that weekend. She has spent ten years trying to cope with what it meant. 

“I get it,” she grits her teeth, slamming her mug onto the table. “What do you want from me?”

Tom finally moves. When he does it’s like a cat. Slowly. Stalking. He sits beside her on the too small loveseat, his thigh pressed against hers. 

“I protected you,” his chest brushes against her shoulder. “I have always protected you, Hermione. And now you don’t want me to be part of your special day?”

“I love Ron.”

He blinks at her. 

“I’m sure you do,” his fingers skim down her arm. Gooseflesh erupts in the wake of his touch. “It must be nice marrying into such a large family, you probably never have a chance to hear yourself think. I bet his mother’s pleased as punch to have another daughter.”

Hermione stands. 

“I should go.”

She makes it three steps. 

Tom’s hand closes around her arm, just above the elbow. It’s a firm, absolute grip. She stills. 

“I know you, Hermione,” Tom breathes out. “Better than anyone in this world knows you. Better than he does.”

She doesn’t pull away. Why doesn’t she pull away? It wouldn’t work, she knows that. She knew it the moment she stood outside of that door. 

“Tom,” his name leaves her mouth like an inevitability. All of this was inevitable, she thinks. That soothes the guilt more than she’d like to admit. 

“Stay and have some more tea.”

She stays, but she doesn’t have more tea. 

Hermione curls her body into his. Tom is standing now, holding himself as an offering. She presses her lips against his, light and quick. He smiles against her mouth. 

“There, that was so easy, wasn’t it?”

“Oh, shut up,” she mumbles, following him into his bedroom. “I shouldn’t be here.”

“That wasn’t much of a kiss was it?” He pushes her onto the edge of the bed, steps back to look at her. “I know you can do better than that.” 

She pulls him in with a fistful of his shirt. She had forgotten it could be like this. Tom cups her jaw with one hand, tilting her head back. Their lips meet, then pull away. A careful and desperate set of collisions. His tongue sweeps across her lower lips, begs for entrance, tangles with her own. Hermione lets out a tiny sound, Tom pulls back, her lip briefly between his teeth on the way. His hair is a bit of a mess. She likes to think that only she’s ever seen him like this, undone. His eyes are dark, pupils blown, and he says nothing. 

It’s as if no time has passed at all. 

Ten years. Ten years since she’s kissed him, touched him…

“I can’t do this.”

“No?” Tom kisses the space beneath her jaw. She lets out a sigh.

"This is... wrong."

“You’re right, this is wrong," he steps back, watching her. “I shouldn’t touch you.”

“No,” Hermione breathes out, the words coming out without thinking. 

“But you can touch yourself. Remember?”

Her skin feels hot. She starts to make excuses, but stops herself. As long as he doesn’t touch her, it’s fine, right?

Tom keeps his eyes on her as her hand slides down her dress. She pulls up the hem, exposing the skin of her thigh, widening her legs, but not too much. She won’t give him the satisfaction of a full show. With her other hand, Hermione brushes against her nipples, sending a jolt through her body. She rubs her legs together, a little anticipatory friction, smiling slightly when Tom’s eyes follow the movement of her knees. His tongue darts out, wetting his lower lip. She wants to bite it off. 

“You’re disgusting,” the words leave her lips as her hand dips into her satin knickers. She isn’t sure who the words are meant for. 

“Let me watch, Hermione,” he insists, kneeling before her. She obliges him finally by widening her legs. She moves her fingers against her clit, abdomen clenching at the sudden sensation. She cards her fingers through her slit, feeling the softness of her knickers against her hand, creating a wonderful tension. 

“You won’t possibly cum like that,” Tom tsks. 

“Yes, I will.”

“Let me help you,” he insists. “I can’t let you go on like that. It wouldn’t be right.”

Hermione moves her hand, feels the absence of touch like an ache, and shimmies out of her knickers. Tom helps her slide them down her legs and over her ankles.

“They’ll get in the way,” she breathes out.

“Of course,” Tom nods, and she doesn’t miss him pocketing them in his trousers (after taking a deep sniff). He moves in closer, hands at her knees, properly parting her legs. He looks up at her from his dark lashes. She time travels. “I’ll only have a taste.”   

He gives her cunt a broad, torturously slow lick. She squirms with the sensation, needing more friction, more… more. He spears his tongue, circles it around her clit, circles it everywhere but her clit. She grips hard onto his curls, keeping him close. He closes his lips around the swollen little bundle of nerves, sucking, applying such terrible pressure. Hermione cries out, feeling herself get close, close, closer. 

Tom pulls back and she cries out at again at the loss.

“I’ve been so hungry,” he tells her, “For ten years. I’ve been starving.”

Hermione comes harder than she has in a long, long time. Tom pushes her dress back over her stomach, adjusting himself so that he’s leaning over. 

“Tom, I…”

“I’ll just use my fingers,” he kisses her softly. He slips one, and then two, fingers inside of her. Her cunt still clenching and sensitive from her orgasm. He curls them inside of her, his thumb brushing against her swollen clit. Hermione comes again, another moan pulled from her throat, back arching. Tom pushes her back against the bed and she watches him through half-lidded and delirious eyes. 

His fingers make nimble work of his belt and trousers. He pulls down his trousers and boxers in one movement, stepping out of them with an urgent ease. He brings her hand to feel his erection and she stills. He is hot and silken like she remembered. He’s hard, so hard for her. 

“It’s only fair,” he says, guiding her hand with his to grip him at the base.

“Fair?” Her eyes widen, feels the hot length of him in her hand. So smooth. So, so, so hard. “No, Tom, we can’t. We can’t…”

Tom moves forward, finding a place for himself between her thighs. He moves his cock near her hot center, she murmurs out half-hearted protests, but he doesn’t pay her any attention. He slides his length against her lip, she trembles with the friction of him against her. He slides so easily against her wet, wet cunt. He bucks into her, not entering her, just grinding up and down against her folds. She watches his brow furrow in concentration. His lips part, breathing ragged. 

Hermione reaches to hold onto his neck, grinding her hips up against him for more friction. Her fingernails bite into his skin. He grips himself again, kissing her sloppily. 

“I’ll just put in the tip,” and he brings his reddened head against her swollen lips. She watches with halted breath, he stretches her entrance, then pulls back, in and then out. It’s not enough. It’s not enough. It’s not… she lets out a strangled moan, something in the shape of more. 

“Won’t you take me half-way, Hermione? Just half-way?”

She studies his expression, struck with a sudden clarity of how ridiculous this all is. He’s teasing her, mocking her. Hermione places her hands on his chest and pushes back. 

“No, Tom. Stop.”

Thankfully, he does. Tom sits back, watching her as she rolls to her side. If they’re going to do this, then Hermione owes it to herself to do it all the way. 

“Get on your back,” she tells him, watching with a thrill as he does exactly what he’s told. She follows after him, keeping on her dress but pulling it up around her hips. She roughly grabs onto his cock, Tom hisses with the lack of gentleness. She meets his eyes, angling him at her entrance, then impaling herself on him. 

Tom lets out a low and long groan. Hermione feels her entire body erupt with electricity. She can feel it pulsing along her spine and radiating through her limbs. God, she missed him. She missed this. 

She rolls her hips, grinding properly against him, feeling the deep pressure of the angle. She puts her hands around his neck, closing them until her fingertips meet at his nape. She squeezes, feels another roll of pleasure as Tom gasps out beneath her. She imagines not letting go. She imagines him struggling beneath her. Would he let her? 

“What was it like?” She asks in a moan, not loosening her grip. “What was it like to kill someone?”

Tom grabs onto her arse, pounding harder into her. Hermione screams out, finally releasing her hands to press against the headboard. Flesh slaps against flesh.

Tom sinks his teeth into her breast and she cries out. He lets out a long groan, giving her an answer to a question she nearly forgot she asked. 

"It... was... divine."

She spends the night, despite telling herself she would leave before the morning. Tom holds onto her and she believes him when he says he will never let her go. 

In the morning, Hermione gets ready in Tom’s small bathroom. She takes off her makeup from the night before, washing her face. Tom comes up behind her, presses a kiss behind her ear, looping an arm around her waist. She meets his dark eyes in the reflection of the mirror. 

“Don’t come to the wedding.”

Tom smiles against her skin.

“Yes, darling. Whatever you say.”