Breaking Hermione

Reputation

Somehow, in between ruining my life and schoolwork, Tom Riddle had damn near perfected his stellar reputation amongst the staff of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. He was clever, quiet and handsome and subconsiously everyone found themselves in his favour quite often before realising. After all, who wouldn't love a high achiever from a humble background? He was cunning in a very subtle way, knowing exactly the method on how to coerce people to get his way in anything he desired.

The worst thing to realise, watching all of this taking place was knowing that I was his desire too. Or so he told me. I didn't know exactly if he was lying or not. You could never be certain with Tom, because he would say one thing and mean something else.

Trusting him was a fools move.

Before the holidays began, I was doing very well at my schoolwork despite all odds. I figured if Tom could destroy my life and still get impeccable grades, then so could I. Not that I had ever been a stranger to succeeding academically - I had always recieved excellent feedback from all of my teachers, yet it made me feel disturbed having to share my hard earned glory with Tom Riddle, the soon to be mass killer. And if Tom felt the same about me, he kept his feelings to himself.

There were several occasions during classes where we would both win prizes for the outstanding quality of our potion brewing or our assignment work and he would give me the odd stare, sharp and appraising, but soon I grew unconcerned about his reaction toward me. The more bullshit of his I was forced to endure, the more I loathed having anything to do with him.

It was like a switch in my mind had turned off. I cared about him once, and now I couldn't give less of a fuck. I had come from the future to fix the past. I didn't come here to get fixated on someone with a God complex.

The back and forth, the repeated behaviour of not knowing what Tom wanted from me - I just didn't have time for it anymore. I was sure that even his latest declaration of feelings for me was nothing short of a lie. Who was he to play these stupid games?

We were now walking back from the Hogs Head together. We were the only two Hogwarts students in our year in Slytherin that had wanted to stay for the holiday break now that term had finished. The rest had scattered, preferring the company of their family and friends as opposed to be being trapped at school forced to endure more of Tom Riddle and I didn't blame them.

As I walked, I tried to focus on the sound of my boots crunching through the winter snow, and not at the tall and formidable enemy walking alongside me on my left.

"You know what's great about these holidays?" Tom said, turning to me with a wicked smile.

"What?"

I honestly couldn't see anything good about the situation at all.

Tom turned, his demeanor relaxed and calm like someone well aware they had the upper hand of a situation.

"Well, it will be just us." Tom exhaled. "And you know what that means?"

I'm going to die.

"I could chance a guess," I put on my best thinking face. "No interferences from other students while you torment the shit out of me?"

"Close." Tom said seriously. "But no. Have another guess."

"I don't want to guess." I said coldly. "I just want to go back to School and be left alone."

"I thought I already told you, Hermione. I'm too involved with you to ever leave you alone." Tom stopped walking, staring me dead in the eye.

"The holiday break will mean we will spend a lot of time with each other. I get to find out more about you. And you get to find out more about me."