Invictus [Tom Riddle / Tomione]

Disillusionment

Hermione shivered without meaning to. Gaspard stood behind her, his chest at her back as he showed her the proper methods of wielding a blade. McClaggen stood in front of her, advancing toward her in various attack positions, and she held her goblin-forged blades in both hands, with Gaspard's fingers wrapped around her wrists. He manipulated her wrists like a puppet's, jabbing the knife toward McClaggen, bringing it up and slicing at his throat.

Hermione swallowed, keeping her attention on the knife moves. Then, Gaspard stood back and watched as she and McClaggen sparred. She mimicked his movements perfectly.

"Whew!" said McClaggen. "If I had moved an inch to the left she'd have had me with that thing."

Gaspard smiled, a rare occurrence, and he nodded his approval. "It's obvious you've fought with a blade before."

Hermione caught her breath for a moment. "Yes. Some." She darent say more about the war with Jack McClaggen present.

"Let me show you something else." He came near again and Hermione's blood beat through her veins swiftly. She didn't quite understand the reaction of her body. She wasn't exactly crushing on Gaspard, but with all of the things her friends had put into her head recently, she had a sudden acute awareness of his overwhelming masculinity.

She'd heard nothing all weekend from Cedrella and Eulessia about his good looks, his brilliant marks in school ("he's a Ravenclaw, of course they were!") and ("but he had more outstanding NEWTs than any other seventh years!") as well as his accomplishments in the DMLE and his brusque behavior.

"He's quite hard to read," Hermione had said. "I can't imagine anyone being able to get under that stony exterior."

"You know the more prickly they are, the better they are in bed, right?" said Eulessia, giving her a twinkling side eye.

Hermione didn't have much experience in that department, but she would still have to agree.

"I can't really think of him that way," she muttered. "All he does is order people around all day."

Eulessia's eyes rolled back in her head. "Could you be more thickheaded? Imagine him ordering you around like that... in the bedroom."

Hermione swallowed, and suddenly she had a vision of those ghostly blue eyes staring down at her while she knelt below him.

"Stop it, Lessi! Now you're putting nasty things in my head!"

"Perfect! So now you can think about him that way," Eulessia giggled.

Hermione found it difficult to breathe when she did her training days with Gaspard, mainly because they'd put so many things in her blooming head about him and he was just far too close for comfort some days... especially during combat training.

Still, when night fell and she was alone, her thoughts wandered to Riddle, and her body ached with a fulfillment that never came.

"I love you," she whispered each night, before she drifted off in pure exhaustion.

Gaspard had Hermione in a headlock.

The witch twisted and bucked in his hold, but couldn't break it.

"Remember the maneuver, Dumbledore. You can do this."

Jack McClaggen sat nearby observing, eating a treacle tart.

Hermione issued a struggling sound, causing Gaspard to hold his breath.

Fuck, he thought. Don't do that, trainee.