Jörmungandr

Two Sugars, Half as Much Milk

Hermione did not know what she expected Tom Riddle's room to be. Maybe deeply lush and embroidered like the rest of the Slytherin dorms. Or minimal and spartan. Utilitarian. Maybe a dungeon like the Chamber. A library with too many books, perhaps, or a white room with just a fucking bed in the middle.

But no, it wasn't any of those things.

It was a Conservatory.

Large, humid and hot, smelling like flowers, with plants everyfuckingwhere and charming little fake suns floating near the ceiling, the wrong size for stars. Red, yellow, and white. Either stolen from the Greenhouse or made by hand. Ivy and large, flat-bladed leaf plants and a ridiculous amount of different color orchids. A willow tree.

In his room.

In its own stupid, neat planter in the corner as if this was completely normal to just have a tree.

The windows exposed the bottom of the Black Lake, not actual sunlight, and turned to mirrors from the light in the room. A tea table sat next to the windows with her chess set out as if he'd been playing with it. A simple bed was placed into a corner. There were books. A single modest bookshelf—

Filled with muggle books.

Not a single spellbook.

An almanac, an encyclopedia set, something that looked suspiciously like a diary that she knew. A book on British law. A chemistry text. Not so distrustful of muggle science after all. Maybe just the humanities. They were just as pristine as Missy's Miracles. Like they had come fresh from the factory floor.

Which was impossible.

The muggle world was currently embroiled in war. Even if he hadn't touched them since they were bought, they would still have wear from shipping. When she had gone to the bookstore, most of their stock had just been pulled up from the basement. Where it had been. To protect from bombings. The books she had bought—brand new, printed in the last year—had curled corners. Even they weren't pristine. How?

And there were plants, of course. There were more succulents on the shelves than books, like he was some sort of fucking Herbologist. What the fuck.

"You look confused," he said as he set his bottle of blood upon an ingredient shelf above a cauldron table on the other side of the room. There was another door next to it. Probably his own bathroom, luck git.

He stretched long enough that a sliver of white skin peeked out, and Hermione had several, hare-rapid thoughts in succession. The first one: she wanted to lick him, taste him, bite him hard enough to leave a mark. The final one: why didn't he just float it to the top?

If his eyes weren't still maroon, if there weren't still smudges of blood on his clothes, on his arms, on his cheek. If there still wasn't the jitter of bloody black magic on him. She hadn't felt it right after his ritual, but it crept out slowly now, making its presence known. Dark under his eyes. Radiating off his skin like steam on asphalt.

If he wasn't Tom Riddle, she would think him cute.

He fit in well, here in his den, all black and white and green. In a different timeline, she would be helpless.

"I am. Why do you get your own room?"

There were soft leather couches and chairs, a simple rug spread over stone, a small writing desk in the corner, extra dressers. Hermione stuffed her hand in her robe and flicked her fingers, subtly casting a summons for the ring.