The Light and Darkness Anthology

A Fine Line

There was that look again, unmistakable, the desire and longing burning through the layer of age-old hate, the want breaking through the veils of anger, that stormy glance from the grown man's eyes that said 'My enemy, my foe... come to me, and be mine...' There was no magic she could use to resist it.

Though the Lord knew that she had tried. She had tried for ten years, watching his boyish charms settle into the irresistible maturity of adulthood. She did not follow that far behind. The simultaneous stillness that seemed to coil around their bodies tensed at their nearness, but still seemed to reach out while withdrawing farther within them.

When their eyes met, the tension was palpable.

Tom was undeniably the hero of the age, on the same pedestal as the late Albus Dumbledore and the still-living Harry Potter. With the help of the ingenuity of a certain Potions Master and the remains of an old diary splattered in ink, the sixteen-year-old memory of the Tom Riddle was restored to a physical form. Ginny went through a relapse of her severe depression, but after Headmaster Dumbledore went through the Ceremony of Magical Restrictions with Miss Weasley, the best psychologists of St. Mungo's found her a more reasonable subject, and her recovery took place over half the time expected of her.

Tom made it clear after his restoration that his intent still focused on the same path his older self took, and he expressed a desire to join himself with a coded letter to Draco that was fortunately intercepted by Ministry Enforcement Officials. It was after that incident that Tom's magic was bound further.

But the second binding was unnecessary. After Draco spoke with his father about the restoration, Lucius immediately told his master, and Lord Voldemort responded with a blatant attack upon Hogsmeade, A tall, black-haired boy was slain in the middle of the snow. The blood had been manipulated to form letters, like a perversion of a perverse boy's prank:

I am Lord Voldemort. You are only Tom Riddle.

The antagonism his double showed infuriated Tom, and he swore to aid Dumbledore in his fight against the Dark Lord. Dumbledore was not fooled into believing that Tom changed his mind about his true loyalties, but the Headmaster accepted the formidable help nonetheless.

The newspapers went wild with the story of young Voldemort clashing with his future self. Tabloids loosed the sensational exploits of Lord Voldemort's illicit sexual liaisons with himself.

As a precaution, Dumbledore wanted Tom to be watched, twenty-four hours a day, which required a different kind of binding, a more intimate and... permanent connection that was virtually unbreakable by anything short of death.

An advertisement was placed in the Daily Prophet for someone who was willing to be Tom's partner. At first, responses were not very forthcoming, although there were a few, but then Tom had the vain idea of adding his picture into the request. True to his judgment, more and more offers came in until there were more than a hundred applicants, the point at which Tom and Dumbledore drew the line.

A personal invitation was sent to each of the applicants to a Feast at Hogwarts where Tom would choose his partner.

Those who sent their replies with sighs on their lips from staring at the handsome picture they had Spell-O-Taped to their office or study walls spiffed up, dabbing on their perfume, donning expensive but understated jewelry and elegant dress robes to set off their best physical assets. Those who sent their reply in all seriousness only dressed according to the weight of the responsibility.

Tom walked through the room of volunteers, sizing up the competitors, noting the backhanded insults typical of catty girls as well as the utter indifference of the trained Aurors or Unspeakables or St. Mungo's researchers. The Feast became increasingly dynamic when he began his seemingly arbitrary interviews with the applicants. Dumbledore waited in the wings, watching the sophisticated and confident, young man ply his charisma like an art. Even Snape set aside his usual disregard for such fripperies as Feasts to watch an early master at work.

Tom's choice was a surprise to everyone but Snape and Dumbledore. He selected not the most street-wise Auror, nor the prettiest or sauciest wench, nor even Harry Potter, a remarkably ironic early applicant.

Studious, nervous, still innocent Miss Hermione Granger. At least, that was what Tom expected. What he had not counted on was Hermione's notorious stubbornness, her unparalleled talent for spells, and a force of will equal to Tom's own.

Hermione herself was weak at the knees at the binding ceremony, not from attraction, but from fear at what she perceived as a bout of recklessness and martyrdom. But the real nightmare was the night after the binding when they realized they had to share lodgings. Then, the tension was only the silence. Or the fights.

And over the course of the war, they managed to act decent around each other long enough every day to work with each other along with the rest of the Order.

Then, in a twist of fate, the Dark Lord managed to defeat the Dark Lord by the calling of his magic, a spell he and Hermione developed based on the Ceremony of Magical Restrictions by binding Tom's own magic to himself, a double helix of magic, one side Tom, and on the other, Voldemort's unraveled magic, but also his life, which was so irreparably tangled in transfigurations and other alterations that it too was ripped from the snake-like shell of Lord Voldemort. The glassy red eyes and stone cold form of the former Dark Lord was a scene that shook Tom more than he cared to admit, and while the wizarding world celebrated, he cloistered himself in the flat he shared with Hermione. Hermione, feeling pity that she usually reserved for Harry, set up wards around the flat to keep reporters, admirers, and curious spectators.

They never mentioned what happened in Tom's room that night.

After his drive and purpose was fulfilled, Tom tried with all his might to resist the inexorable pull of the second binding. His rages shook the flat, and Hermione was compelled to firmly establish the Silencing wards. She took his temper with a grain of salt, saying that he chose her, and she was unable to find work--it was fortunate that the Ministry paid her for putting up with him. He would yell back that his double was a psychopathic madman, how likely was it that he was going to find a job, at least she was paid.... And so the feud within the house went on over the years. All they could do was slam the doors to their respective rooms and focus on experimentation, unsolved problems that the Department of Mysteries set them on so that they could have something to do.

But when he wasn't yelling at her...

Those eyes, watching her movements--he was silent, postured as a gravestone, but the eyes burned with an intensity that Hermione almost did not understand. Except that the more he watched her, the more the fire within his eyes began to grow inside of her. It writhed and clenched in spirals of brilliant energy. In the darkness of her bedroom, she heard the subtle creaks of his bed when he would lay down, the sounds of his pacing, even the scratching of his quill when she listened hard enough. And the fire only grew still greater until his eyes consumed her.

What happened was inevitable. The breakthrough in tracing untraceable poisons was only a catalyst. She ruffled through her papers, shocked at the simplicity of the equations, checking over her work to see whether she had miscalculated--it couldn't be this easy.

Like the fire, it grew, but it was not fire, it was a wellspring, a bubbling of excitement with the warmth of satisfaction. The geyser sprang in a boiling laughter that broke through all confines, pouring out of her mouth in floods, gushing with pride, accomplishment, relief, and bordering on hysteria. The laughter carried in waves through the tenuous wards between the two rooms, and Tom came bursting in to see the insane tableau of Hermione fallen to the floor in delight.

His marble countenance did not alter, but he walked to the desk and looked at the equations in the calculating way at which he approached everything. Hermione managed to sit up, balancing herself by the palms of her hands, giggling, but her gaze took on the pensiveness resulting from such a shift in emotions that let the nerves bare.

And then the fire hissed against the water, steaming until it clouded her vision, clouded her mind, until all she could see was him, with his burning eyes as they turned to hers, acknowledgment of her success.

She did not know when his hand took hers to help her to her feet. She did not know when Tom took the sheets of parchment and set them on her bed. She only knew when Tom pressed her against the desk and began kissing her with all the intensity that he had in his eyes. Flame that joins flame creates a forest fire, an unstoppable ravaging beast of primitive lust and intelligent desire. His mouth, his skin, his tongue on her--they were a furnace. She gasped for breath in the sweltering heat, held the heat closer with all the passion of what she hated and loved the most.

When the fire had returned to its lair--not left, no, it never left completely--Hermione lay consumed next to him, the sheets of parchment now strewn about the room like ashes. Tom's head rested against her stomach; his eyes were closed and his breathing was even. She stroked his hair. The remnants of the fire burned in Tom's cheeks, and on hers as well, a contented warmth of an afterglow.

The wards between the room were broken, burned away. The coils of their passion surrounded them both, drawing the enemies closer into an alliance across troubled waters. Hermione's eyelids fluttered, and she sank into the depths of sleep, entwined with her lover, soothed by the rocking motion of their hearts.