My head was pounding by the time I pulled back the covers of my bed and got in. It was a fucked up day. Hermione stirred faintly as I lay down beside her. Being close to her helped calm me down, somehow.

Thinking about everything else was making me feel sick. I was feeling things that weren't... normal. The least I could say was that I felt I was finally going insane. It reminded me of a time at the orphanage, one night when one of the kids was crying to a matron about missing their parents, I was about 7 years old. I was walking down the hall when I heard the commotion begin, and as I heard the boy cry I felt something deep inside myself twist suddenly.

I wasn't stupid enough to think it was my heart. I didn't know much of my parents, except that my father's name was Tom. I hated how it was also my name. And my mother was named Merope, who was apparently infatuated with my father. She was nothing short of a psycho stalker who finally got the poor bastard with a love potion. I never liked to think of them. I was better without them, after all. The only thing they had given me was physical attractiveness, a very useful tool I used to push my own agenda each chance I got.

I pushed the stray hair from my eyes, sitting back on my elbow so to look down at Hermione sleeping. She was a dream. Up close it constantly threw me off guard. It wasn't that she was extremely physically attractive like me, something about her plain features captivated me somehow. She was average at best. I could name at least 10 girls at this school who were lookers, but Hermione had her own appeal. And it was magnetic. I almost didn't want to blink just looking at her. I could spend all my days doing this. And I didn't know the damn reason why.

I knew I had pushed her past breaking point, and I hated myself for it. It killed me. I had now started to feel some strange urge to protect her, a dormant feeling that kept rearing it's head on every occasion I would see the guys in Slytherin House picking on her. It was always when they didn't think I was around, too. Fools.

I could feel Hermione's distress through the Curse, now. She wasn't in her right mind, it wasn't like she knew what was ever happening. She had regressed perfectly and could be controlled very easily. I was learning how to feel things when I was around her, and it was.... scaring me.

I turned so I was lying on my back. I was beginning to fall asleep when I felt a sharp pain in my chest. I lurched out of bed, snatching up my wand from my bedside table.

"Fuck."

I hissed. What the hell was happening? I was on my knees on the cold hard ground trying to control my breathing. I had both hands on the ground bracing myself against who knows what.

Suddenly a bright light was shining directly in my eyes, by closer looks it was a wand pointed at my face.

"Reverse the fucking curse." I looked up to see Jade Black in my own damn bedroom standing above me looking absolutely murderous.

"How did you get in?" I said more out of surprise than anything else, doubling over once the pain flared up again. Whatever this bitch was doing to me was getting irritating. I was done humouring her.

"Levicorpus," With careless sleight of hand I aimed my wand at her and the jinx hit at once causing her to fly back and crash into the wall with an ear splitting scream that cut out upon impact.

"Tom, what's going on?"

Hermione slid out of bed, holding a pillow in front of her defensively.

"Get back into bed." I told her.

I got to my feet, walking over to the motionless figure of Jade Black. My head was pounding worse than ever. I was extremely furious that she'd dare attack me while I was trying to sleep in the privacy of my own room.

I pointed the wand directly at her limp form.

"Petrificus Totalus."

She stiffened like a board, still entirely unconscious by the effects of her own stupidity. I left her on the ground and got back to bed.

"Is that girl going to be ok?" Hermione asked me. She was sitting beside me, her eyes very wide and fearful. "You hurt her." She started crying. "You hurt that girl."

"She deserved it," I said coldly. "She attacked me in my own damn bedroom."

"I don't understand." Hermione was becoming more upset. "Is hurting people wrong or right?"

I smiled in the dark. "It's right to hurt someone if you feel that they are wrong." I said convincingly.

"But..." Hermione wiped her face on her pyjama sleeve, "What would make someone wrong?"

"Disobedience towards me." I told her. "I hurt Jade because she disobeyed me. It's that simple."

Hermione sat up, sliding out of bed and padding over to where Jade lay. Pulling her wand out of her sleeve she pointed it at Jade's helpless form as I watched silently in the dark.

"Avada Kedavra." She said.