Dark Love

Nobody would have expected her to have joined him.

It started when Hermione idly ran her fingers through Harry's hair, down his shoulders, and onto the desk he was sitting at. They'd been steady now for a year, and they made a good pair, just like Ron and Lavender. Then her hand stopped on a small leather bound book. It called to her...she couldn't resist. She waited for Harry to leave the room, and smuggled the diary into her robe.

That night, lying on her bed, she fingered the cover. Black,, torn at one corner, the leather cracked at some places, smooth and worn at others. She flipped the pages rapidly. Blank. Curiously, she opened the front cover and gazed inside. The yellowed paper slowly formed the words in faded black ink.

Tom Marvolo Riddle.

Hermione gasped and shut the book quickly. She left it on her bedside table, meaning to return it as soon as possible.

Somehow that never happened.

The next night she dreamed. Usually they were of Harry, some made her blush when she thought of them the next morning .But this time she was in a dark room in a castle, looking out the window, waiting for him.

He came then, and as he bent over her she gazed into his dark, dark eyes. She kissed him then, long and sweet and slow. Then she woke up.

Hermione realized with a shock that the dream kiss had been better than any she had shared with Ron, Harry or even her old flame, Viktor. And with him! She shuddered. But the next night she dreamed of him again.

A week later, Harry and Ron held a hurried conference before Charms about Hermione's pale haggard look. She no longer greeted them with a smile or a hug, but floated past them, unseeing. She hadn't put up her hand even once in class, which was so not standard 'Mione. Instead, she sketched in class, intricate drawings of dark castles and lairs, with her love reposing within. She had now flung away any horror or repulsion. She loved him madly!

On her birthday the boys had bought her a cake and loads of presents, but she was nowhere to be found. While half of Gryffindor house searched for her, she was sitting in the Forbidden Forest. The diary was in her hands and she stared with rapture at the faded, beautiful handwriting that appeared.

Come away with me. I love you.

He loves me, she thought, and pressed the book to her heart. Then her hand went to her pocket. She knew what she had to do.

The next day, after the whole school had been commissioned to find her, a search party consisting of Hagrid and the boys finally found her.

She lay there with a smile on her face. As a distraught Harry went closer to pick her up and carry her back to the school she had loved, he saw it.

With a knife, she had gouged out the letters T O M on her delicate neck. The bleeding had killed her.

As Harry and Ron wept and Hagrid led them away with their precious burden, they failed to notice the open diary that lay beside her.

A new line of writing emerged on the blood-streaked page.

She is mine now, my Hermione.