I had no idea that Tom had long since given up chasing me until a Portrait of an elderly scholar reprimanded me on the ground floor.

"What are you running from, girl? Yourself?"

"What? Oh..."

Luckily for me Professor Slughorn's office was on the sixth floor, not too much of a mission to get to. I approached, knocking smartly on his closed door as I waited for him to respond.

After a moment of distinct silence, I knocked again, this time louder and hard enough for my knuckles to hurt.

Nothing.

I stepped back, weighing up my options. I could go to Headmaster Dippet. There was a chance Slughorn was already there having a good old banter with Dippet with a bottle of Oak Matured Mead in hand.... I paused, and then reaching a decision began making my way up to the Headmasters office, walking as though expecting Tom to leap out from behind a corner and yell avada kedavra!

But nothing happened. Tom didn't show up, I opened his diary in the secluded corridor outside of Headmaster Dippets office feeling as though I'd just hit the jackpot. However the feeling died almost as instantly as it came, as I opened Tom's diary all I saw was pages of...

Nothing.

"Damn it!" I yelled. Tom had gone and erased the entire contents of the diary! But how?

"Is there something wrong?" Of course it was Professor Dippet who came hobbling toward me from out of the shadows. I felt like I was going to scream. I was seconds away from a breakthrough, and was crushed at the last most critical moment by Tom Riddle. I grinned a wide, unnatural smile as he slowly came closer.

"I'm fine Professor, I was just uh, admiring that gargoyle over there." I lied through my teeth.

"It's a curious thing, I find." Headmaster Dippet said lightly. "Sometimes we say things that are irrelevant to mask the things we were originally wanting to say."

"Sorry, I'm not sure if I'm following you Headmaster..."

"Well if I could chance a guess about why you were standing outside my office, I'd say it would have had something to do with what is left of that book in your hands."

I looked down and sure enough Tom's diary had split cleanly down the binding, ripped in two by my sheer frustration.

"Youre right." I said after a pause.

"I was going to show you this diary of Tom Riddle's that he had written in regarding me."

Headmaster Dippet gave me a sharp look. "And what was it that was written inside of it?" He took the book out of my hands looking over it with academic interest.

"It was... Things about me." I said quietly. Pages of notes about me. But as soon as I came here all of the pages became blank."

Dippet drew his wand and tapped the binding, the book knitted itself back into it's former untarnished self, the pages slowly filling with that elegant inked script from Tom's own hand.

Headmaster Dippet read a few pages, a grim look on his face.

"Ah, unrequited love." He murmured with a reminiscent smile. "I remember being in the same position as poor Tom here! Quite some time ago of course..."

I frowned. Something wasn't right here.

I craned my neck for a better look at the pages Dippet was seeing and much to my horror I saw that there was nothing about me at all! Instead pages filled with neatly inked heartbroken drivel that could've easily been written by a lamenting Moaning Myrtle. I clenched my fists. So Tom had put some kind of glamour on the book, did he?

"There doesn't appear to be a problem with this book at all Miss Granger. I have to warn you however not to take possessions from other students. Thievery has never been tolerated at Hogwarts. I hope I never have to tell you again."

"But that's not what was originally written!" I was outraged. "Tom's covered up what he wrote, there were pages written about me!"

"Miss Granger." Headmaster Dippet said in a resigned voice. "We have exhausted the topic enough. I have reversed the concealment charm used, there was nothing written asides from what you see here."

Defeated, I took Tom's diary back.

"I trust you will return this back to Mr Riddle."

"Sure..."

I walked back to the Slytherin Common Room feeling like the weight of the entire damn world had fallen back on my shoulders. How did Tom manage to erase his writing? Frustrated, I stormed into the Common Room barely surprised to see a particular brooding bad boy waiting for me on a sofa, a grin on his arrogant face.

"How did it go?" He asked innocently.

"How do you think?" I threw the book at him which he caught with a careless sleight of hand.

"You erased everything you wrote. How?" I demanded.

Tom didn't look at me, instead turning over his diary in his hands in silent contemplation.

"I have my ways." He said mysteriously, standing up and tucking the book into his cloak. "If I go around sharing all of my secrets I might as well be like one of you mentally deficient imbeciles, sharing to everyone every damn thing you do."

"So are you going to explain any of this? Or is that going to damage your reputation as the School's mysterious creep?"

"What do you want to know?" Tom asked. "I've already told you why I wrote about you. I'm sorry that it wasn't the star crossed lover confession you were looking for."

"I wasn't looking for a confession of love." I said but my face was heating up, Tom watched me his lips curling into a smirk.

"Are you sure?"

He stood up and approached me until he was standing directly in front of me.

I felt all the air leave my lungs.

"If I had to write in detail the raw fucking imagery that comes to my head when I think of you, I'd be writing a pornographic novel." He said in a harsh tone. "Consider yourself luckily you didn't see what's in my mind."

He smirked, putting a single pale finger to the side of his head, ignoring the way I was losing composure fast.

So Tom often thought of me in explicit ways?

"You look shocked." Tom observed. "Don't tell me you didn't anticipate this. Every guy in the world considers the opposite sex in depraved ways."

"Or the same sex." I interjected.

Tom ignored me.

"That's not right." I said as if from a distance. "To think of me as..."

"What, as a human?" Tom said in an amused tone. "We all have needs, Hermione. Even you do, although you'll never admit it to yourself. In fact," He continued shamelessly, "I bet you've never even been fucked before."

My face felt like it was on fire. "What does that have to do with anything?" I thought back to days and nights I had spent with Ron. Both of us were uncultured to this sort of thing, the most we had ever done was passionately kiss. My first time was actually Tom's barbaric friends who sexually assaulted me in the Room Of

Requirement all that time ago. Tears filled my eyes as I remembered it and Tom's eyes widened in understanding.

"Now this is precious." He said in a voice of thinly veiled excitement. "You really have never given yourself over to your own carnal desires?"

"Carnal desires? As in what, exactly?" I felt like I was melting into a mess before him.

"Havent you ever in your sheltered, frigid little life ever considered anything other than goddamned rainbows and fairies?" He demanded.

"Excuse me?" My voice sounded high pitched even in my own ears. This was judgement day and Satan himself was condemning me for all the sins I hadn't dreamt of committing.

I took a step back, my own breathing ragged. "I have to go." I said, not bothering to say and entertain Tom any longer. I walked away quickly as if the more steps I took the further I could distance me from myself and the overwhelming truth of my own innocence.

"You dont need to be scared."

I jumped. Tom was standing beside me, that amused smile gone from his face.

"I'm not going to hurt you." He said very quietly. His voice was low, rough, but as usual it was something I couldn't decipher.

"You make me feel like I'm the big bad wolf." He said, standing so close I had to look up at him just to see his face, he was ridiculously tall.

"In what sense?" I said quietly. "It isn't your job to corrupt me, Tom."

"Oh, but it is." Tom said seriously. "Pure souls are wickedly troublesome to taint. And how do you expect yourself to liberate your own soul? You have already proven time and time again that it isn't in your interest."

"I can't believe I'm talking about souls with the one person in this School who has yet to show evidence of one." I snapped. I was done humoring him. I wasn't a concept of innocence, I was a damn person.

Tom stared at me for a moment, as if appraising his options.

"You're upset," He said quietly, "Because I've told you the truth. You cannot hope to be like me if you're going to shy away from your own darkness. You are the only person standing in your way to greatness. It's not anything to panic about if you would only let me help you..."

"Who said I wanted to be anything like you?" I looked up at him, seeing my pale face and wide eyes reflected in his own. "And what makes you think I want your help? I dont want-"

"I didn't ask you if you wanted me to help you." Tom cut across me. "I told you to let me help you. There's a difference."

"And how are you planning on doing that?" But as the words came out I realised I already knew what the hell he meant, and had known for quite some time.

"Have a guess." Tom said lightly. His black eyes were burning with unspoken desire, quite a contrast to his relaxed body language.

"You want... to assault me?" I whispered.

"Assault you?" Tom looked confused for a fraction of a second before his features split into a cold smile. "Are you serious?" He laughed. "I could do that at any damn time I want, and there wouldn't be a damn thing you could to stop me." His tone suddenly became rougher. "Why don't you have another guess, Hermione? Humour me."

So Tom didn't want to assault me. Then what the hell did he want?

I thought back to everything he'd done so far. "You want to get others to assault-"

"No." Tom cut across me harshly. "Get the word "assault" out of your head. And while you're at it destroy the notion that other men are going to have you. This has nothing to do with anyone except you and me."

My heart was pounding.

I didn't speak. I couldn't speak.

"You have no idea." Tom realised out loud. "How about I enlighten you."

He stepped behind me and I made to move out of his way but he put his hands on my waist.

"Don't move." He said dangerously. I couldn't see him from where he stood behind me. I could feel my knees knocking together in fear. What was he doing?

"I'm only standing behind you and you're trembling head to toe." But Tom's tone wasn't disdainful. If anything it was curious.

"I want you to submit to me. Physically, mentally, emotionally. Now do you realise how this has nothing to do with assault? Both parties will be giving their full consent. And," Tom stepped around me until he was standing in front of me staring into my eyes.

"And mark my words. You will enjoy every second of what I have planned."