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Hermione was late. Her first day as an assistant instructor in the department, she was five minutes late to her section. She’d sent an announcement to her students over Canvas explaining — struggled to find parking this morning, sorry all — but she still couldn’t shake the shame following her into the classroom. She was in her third year, after all! She shouldn’t be making such slip-ups. It was one thing to be a bit of a screw-up as a TA; that was kind of the point of the position. You weren’t as responsible then. But as an AI… well, she needed to step up.
“Hi, all, sorry I’m late,” she exhaled as she breezed into the classroom. A few chuckles rose from the students gathered and she shrugged her shoulders.
But halfway to the podium, she stopped.
There were slides already on the projector. They weren’t her slides. She didn’t use PowerPoint, she preferred Google Slides. Her eyes focused and then quickly narrowed at the figure standing in her place.
Newly-minted PhD candidate Tom Riddle was standing there with his hand on the built-in computer’s mouse. His lips quirked upward in a slightly mocking smirk.
“Hello, Hermione,” he greeted. “I hope you’ll forgive me, but seeing as the undergraduates were unattended—”
“I had made a Canvas announcement that I was running late,” she muttered to him.
“Oh, well, forgive me for assuming you weren’t available,” Tom stated. Though he didn’t say it aloud, the meaning of ‘available’ was actually ‘capable.’ Hermione’s nostrils flared as she set her overflowing tote bag down on the podium and unloaded her MacBook.
“Yet here I am,” she smiled, just barely, and elbowed past him. “I can take it from here, Riddle.”
“Very well,” he hummed. She watched his star-student-record-number-of-fellowships-winner-MLA-presenter-boy-genius mask slip into place as he began to leave and faced the students. “Nice meeting you all! Have a good semester.” Hermione glared daggers into his back as he retreated but corrected her expression when the door closed behind him.
“Ok, let’s get started!” Hermione exclaimed. “If you’re in this room, you’re currently registered for Rhetoric 103, ‘The Rhetoric of Libraries.’ My name is Hermione and I am your instructor; please, just call me Hermione. Now, I don’t plan to keep you all the entire time today, but I do want to do an icebreaker before we get into the syllabus and I answer any questions you might have about how class will work….”
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Even a refreshing espresso and tonic at Ripley’s Roasters couldn’t shake Hermione’s sour mood. She swirled the glass mindlessly, a cursor blinking, ignored, on her qualifying exam annotated bibliography. It would’ve been one thing if Ginny or Luna had caught her lacking; Ginny would’ve just sat back and entertained her students before she arrived, and Luna would’ve shot her a worried text. But for Riddle to intercede… oh, it was beyond the pale. She’d rather Professor Dumbledore have noticed, and he was her most reputable and intimidating committee member!
“Unbelievable,” she grumbled, taking a large swig of her coffee and reclining in her chair.
Generally speaking, Hermione loved the English department at Hogwarts. She had made some great connections, her advisors were generous with their time, and her coursework her first two years had been bracing and rigorous. Overall, she got along with everyone, and everyone seemed to tolerate her. Everyone, that is, except for Tom Riddle.
Riddle was a year ahead of her in the program and worked in what was arguably her nearest, most adjacent subfield (he was a medievalist, she an early modernist). At recruitment, she’d looked forward to having him as one of her peers, thinking he would be a great colleague and student mentor.
Oh, how wrong she was.
They were in two classes together in her first semester: Shakespeare’s Contemporaries and Early Tudor Poetry. Shakespeare’s Contemporaries was Hermione’s bread and butter; her award-winning undergraduate honors thesis had been on the works of Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Kyd. Her statement of purpose had listed that course’s instructor, Minerva McGonagall, as a professor she hoped to work under. It was as if they’d planned the course for her.
And then, for three hours every week, Tom Riddle used the course to humiliate her utterly. Every reading she offered, every ounce of historical context she brought up, he shredded with some savvy counterpoint. The number of times she’d FaceTimed her undergraduate friends Ron and Harry in tears after the course were too high for a class that had only met fourteen times. It got to the point that her parents were texting and calling her, asking if she wanted to stay in her program and if it wouldn’t make more sense just to come home and teach English in their small suburban high school. The thought of returning home was enough to muster her to tough it out, but the fact that one person had made Hermione dread a course about the very authors she studied made her sick.
That course didn’t agonize her nearly as much as Early Tudor Poetry, in any case. The latter course was Tom’s bread and butter, as he was a late Medieval English poetry scholar. Hermione had hoped that the course would reveal that Tom’s precise dissection of her in Shax’s Contemporaries was a defensive mechanism, a sign that he actually wasn’t as brilliant as he’d seemed at recruitment.
But every time he spoke in that class, Hermione was blown away. He was eloquent, direct, and highly knowledgeable on the ins and outs of 15th and early 16th-century verse. She was stunned and ashamed; she clearly wasn’t up to snuff if Tom regularly disapproved of her readings. And he’d made her feel that way about herself like clockwork every semester until he finished coursework last spring.
“Heya, Hermione,” Ginny greeted, drawing her out of her recollections. The tall, willowy Victorian scholar sat opposite her with a mug of tea. “D’you apply for the research assistant position at the Selwyn Library?”
“Yep,” Hermione nodded, taking a quick sip of her coffee again. “Sirius wanted me to, so I did. Might be nice to be out of the classroom for two years….”
“Right? Hoping they give me the TA supervisor position for that very reason,” Ginny snorted.
“Speaking of ‘supervising,’ you will never guess who attempted to teach my class this morning when I was just five minutes late.” Hermione leaned forward conspiratorially. Ginny raised a brow and nursed her tea. “I walked into my room in Collins Hall, and Riddle was standing in front of the room, reading from his slides for ‘Rhetorics of Revolt!’ I couldn’t believe it.”
“What a fucking dick,” Ginny huffed. “I don’t get why he seems to just… go after you? It’s so weird. He doesn’t do that to Luna, and she’s actually a medievalist!”
“I know!” Hermione cried.
(Admittedly, Hermione assumed Riddle paid Luna no mind because she worked on hagiography and dream visions, as well as women’s writing, three fields within medieval studies Tom didn’t seem to give a flying fuck about.)
The two shook their heads, and then Ginny perked up.
“Pub trivia at Mac’s tonight?” she asked. “Luna and Neville are already in, and we need our fourth anchor.”
“I dunno, Gin, my reading list—”
“One of the categories tonight is Shakespeare’s Tragedies.”
“Fuck it, I’m in.”
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Hermione stood in line at Mac’s Pub, the lone ‘Irish’ pub near Hogwarts’ campus. It was popular primarily with upperclassmen and graduate students and tended to be a quiet, comfortable place to grab a pint and have a burger. It was one of Hermione’s favorite places, and its famous trivia night had been a beloved tradition of Hermione and her department friends since their first year. She bobbed her head back and forth as she considered the menu, though she knew she would order a Guinness and maybe a basket of fries when she reached the front. Around the corner of the bar, the ‘trivia master’ was grading the second round of the night, which had been an excruciating refresher on Physics 101. Had they not had Neville on their team (who was interested in environmental criticism and medical humanities, and therefore had a strong background in STEM), Hermione was sure she, Ginny, and Luna wouldn’t have answered a single question.
Too focused on her drink order, Hermione barely noted that someone had stepped in line behind her.
“Hermione!” Ginny hollered from their usual booth. “HERMIONE! JUST GET A LEINE’S PITCHER!” Hermione rolled her eyes; Ginny was already a bit red in the face after a double gin and tonic. She flashed her a thumbs up and stepped up to the bar.
“Uh, a pitcher of Summer Shandy and a basket of fries, please,” she told the bartender.
“How many glasses?”
“Four.”
“Perhaps it’s your extracurricular activities that are keeping you from arriving to your class on time,” a smug baritone voice chorused in her ear. Hermione huffed and whirled sharply around, barely noting how close Riddle was standing behind her.
“And you’re one to talk? Nursing scotch in Slughorn’s office every Tuesday afternoon like some puffed-up old Oxford don,” she fired back.
He slightly crossed her and leaned casually on the bar, grinning like a cat. Even at a slight incline, he towered over her. Hermione could feel her face going red.
“Well, I didn’t know you’ve taken such an interest in me, Granger.”
“Don’t flatter yourself, Riddle.”
“I didn’t. I think you did.”
“Ha!” Hermione cried sharply. “Like you’d find my attention a compliment.” The bartender had placed her pitcher and fresh glasses further down the bar, so Hermione started to walk away from her unwelcome company. Much to her chagrin, Riddle followed.
“I might,” he argued, shoving his hands into the pockets of his summery linen trousers.
Hermione just rolled her eyes and tossed a spare dollar in the bar’s tip jar before picking up the full pitcher and stacked glasses.
“You might find it highly beneficial!” Tom called after her as she returned to her booth.
Hermione set the glasses down and flipped him off.
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“I can’t believe the asshole beat us at trivia,” Neville muttered dejectedly, pocketing the team’s ten-dollar gift certificate. “And with those fucking MBA morons on his team, too!”
“I’m sure they’re just there so he has the numbers to play,” Ginny pointed out.
“That doesn’t make me feel any better,” Hermione sighed.
“No, feels worse,” Neville agreed.
“I… Yeah, it does, doesn’t it? Should we get another pitcher?” Ginny asked.
“Yes,” the others chorused.
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Waking the following day with a splitting headache, Hermione instantly regretted the pity party of four she’d participated in after trivia. A quick shuffle to the bathroom and two Tylenol later, she sat on her bed and opened her laptop. Hermione had an email from Sirius, one of her other committee members. It was a link to a graduate conference that UVA’s Rare Book School hosted.
Might want to take that Davenant paper, eh?
- S
Hermione replied, thanking him, and sent an abstract and her bio. Feeling content with the possibility of adding another line to her CV, Hermione headed towards the kitchen and fixed herself a cup of coffee. Her cat, Crookshanks, weaved between her legs as she measured her coffee grounds, purring contentedly.
If there was one thing she was good at that Riddle rarely waded into, it was bibliographic studies. She had never even seen him at Selwyn before, and she knew, reveled in fact, that he would never attend something like a bibliography studies conference.
“Take that, Riddle,” she smirked, pouring her coffee into a mug.
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Professor Slughorn’s back-to-school Medieval-Renaissance dinner party was, by far, Hermione’s least favorite event of the school year. But, given Slughorn’s seemingly infinite number of connections in and out of the academy, well…
Hermione put on her best shoes and made a good show every year.
This year’s party was in Slughorn’s spacious and well-manicured backyard. Whomever he’d hired to decorate had turned into nothing short of an A Midsummer Night’s Dream fantasy, with fairy lights, bountiful summer bouquets, and dreamy, mossy centerpieces at every table. She was half-surprised that the catering staff wasn’t dressed as fairies.
Accepting a glass of champagne from one server, Hermione waded into the mingling groups, searching for Luna. Typically, her friend’s shockingly blonde hair was easy to pick out from a crowd, but Hermione couldn’t make her out.
Perhaps she’s running late, Hermione surmised, knowing that wasn’t entirely unusual for Luna.
“Crudités?” another caterer offered a tray filled with little smoked salmon treats. Hermione took one and a small cocktail napkin with a nod.
Somewhere in the yard, a string quartet began to play an arrangement of Henry Mancini’s ‘Moon River.’ The peaceful, dreamy song brought a small smile to Hermione’s face. Her moment of bliss was short-lived, however, as a boisterous roar of male laughter drew her from her quiet reverie. Scanning the crowd, Hermione’s eyes quickly landed on the source.
Tom was, predictably, holding court with Slughorn, Professor Snape, and a few other faculty, students, and guests. She recognized Draco Malfoy, the insufferable 19th-century Americanist, who seemed the most amused by whatever tale Tom was recounting. A slight scowl graced her face; Riddle being friends with Malfoy made all the sense in the world. In her ire towards Malfoy, Hermione didn’t notice a cool pair of blue eyes fix themselves on her until Riddle calmly excused himself and started making his way toward her.
“Shit,” Hermione huffed.
“Hermione,” Tom greeted, raising his tumbler of scotch to her in greeting. She gave him a quick once over and wanted to spit; why did he always have to look the part? “A pleasure, as always.”
“Riddle,” she returned. “Please, don’t let me keep you from a captive audience….”
“I was going to invite you to join us, actually,” he said. “Old Slughorn’s invited a friend of his from Sotheby’s this year, and, well, I know you work with early books and manuscripts….” Hermione tightened her grip around her glass. “Thought it might be a useful connection for you for once.”
She didn’t take the bait resting in Riddle’s ‘for once.’ Instead, Hermione plastered an easy grin on her face.
“Well, after you, then,” she insisted.
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After hors d’oeuvres, the guests sifted through the tables to find their name cards.
Slughorn, damn him, had sat Hermione right next to Riddle.
So, she did what any other reasonable person would do — she ordered another drink.
And another.
And another.
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“You’re drunk,” Riddle hissed in her ear as she teetered slightly. Hermione just giggled and took another bite from her mini lemon cheesecake.
“And?” She stared up at him, raising her brows lazily. “You’re not?”
“Some of us know how to hold our liquor,” he glowered. Hermione wobbled again on the uneven grass — heels were her worst enemy, especially when drunk — and Riddle grabbed her arm to steady her. “For Morrigan’s sake! I’m taking you home.”
Hermione wrenched her arm from his grasp and frowned. “You don’t know where I live. And besides, I don’t want to go home. I want another cheesecake—”
“No, Hermione,” Tom stated. “You are going to give me your address, I am going to call an Uber, and I will make sure you get home before you embarrass yourself and all of your colleagues by vomiting in Slughorn’s rosebushes.” Even in her drunken state, something in the tone of his voice told Hermione that he was not playing around. Frowning (and snagging a second piece of cheesecake from a tray), she accepted his proffered cell phone and typed in her address.
“Fine. You win, Riddle,” she rolled her eyes and sauntered towards the garden gate. “Like you always do!”
Tom stood and stared after her for a moment.
“I haven’t won yet,” he frowned.
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The rhythm of a busy semester soon swept Hermione up in it. Late August faded into September into October, and, thankfully, Hermione saw little of Tom Riddle. She hadn’t even thought about him nor the events at the start of the term until one afternoon in Ripley’s, where a looming figure stood before her.
“Come with me to Trelawney’s Samhain party,” Tom told her. Sybill Trelawney was the department expert in Old English and Old Celtic languages and a Wiccan herself.
“You’re going to that?” Hermione raised a brow and adjusted her blue light glasses.
“Yes.”
“Will you pick me up?” Even though Hermione did not want to spend Halloween with Tom, she had always wanted to attend Trelawney’s Samhain party. Rumor had it she made her own mead and everyone usually had a ball. Legend had it one of the Prewett kids had been conceived in Trelawney’s barn thanks to that mead.
“Eight o’clock on Tuesday?”
“See you then,” Hermione confirmed. Tom nodded awkwardly and began to walk away. “Oh, and Tom? Is there a dress code?”
“Just wear whatever feels right!” he called back to her.
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Hermione’s first surprise of the night? The fact that Tom Riddle drove a Mazda hatchback. Her lips curled up into a bemused grin when she climbed into the passenger seat, wrapping her tartan shawl a little tighter to her. She’d looked to one of her favorite period dramas for inspiration that night, picking out a very Claire Fraser outfit. It was very ‘dark academia’ of her, or whatever the undergrads would call it.
“What’s so funny?” Tom asked as he shifted up and began the somewhat long drive out to Trelawney’s farm. Hermione snorted. “What? What is it?”
“I just… didn’t picture you driving a Mazda,” Hermione admitted. “They’re reliable cars!”
“I’m not saying they aren’t.”
“… I’ll turn this car around.”
“No, you won’t.”
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By the time Tom had parked his car alongside the other vehicles in the field around Trelawney’s place, they could smell the bonfire burning. Shouts and faint strums of instruments carried over the crisp night air. Hermione’s spirits rose despite herself. Though she’d been raised a good Methodist girl, she’d always loved folk customs. If only her strict, bible-thumping great-grandmother could see her now, the old bat would surely have put in a prayer request for her.
Trelawney herself was handing out overflowing mugs of mead and beamed at Tom when she saw him. She handed him one with a greeting that seemed to be in one of the revived Celtic languages; Tom returned it with a nod.
“We’re so happy you’re joining us, Hermione,” Trelawney said as she handed her a mug of her own. “Enjoy this night of return and new beginnings, my dear.”
Hermione thanked her and followed Tom towards the lively Celtic band.
“How’s the mead?” he shouted to her over the flute and bodhran. Hermione raised her brows and took a sip. It was cinnamon-y and sweet and citrusy — truly a delightful drink.
“It’s good!” she shouted back. Tom took a swig of his own and nodded.
“D’you wanna dance?”
A few young couples around their age had started to spin and shuffle their feet to the music. Hermione’s eyes widened. She had two left feet, and she certainly didn’t know how to dance to Celtic music.
“I’m no good!”
“You’ll be fine; just follow me,” Tom took her mead from her hands and set both mugs down on a small table.
“Tom, I can’t. I’ll be terri—”
A new, fast reel started, and the sensation Hermione soon felt could only be described as flying. She wasn’t sure her feet touched the ground as Tom led her along the field with the other couples. A laugh — a genuine, delighted laugh — left her throat as they spun, and she clung to him for dear life. And was that a genuine smile on Tom Riddle’s face? Hermione couldn’t believe her eyes. They broke apart to link arms with the other couples and dance in one large circle, and Hermione couldn’t keep her eyes off him. This was the real Tom, not the stuffy, know-it-all she dealt with regularly in the English department. He locked eyes with her, and something warm bloomed in her stomach, a blush rising despite the chill in the October air.
When the reel ended, Tom and Hermione clapped for the band alongside the other couples before retrieving their mugs of mead. She took a hearty chug from her mug and caught Tom grinning at her.
“What?” she exhaled, laughing slightly.
“Nothing,” Tom shook his head. “You want another dance, or do you want to sit by the fire?” The wind whipped up at his suggestion, and Hermione shivered (and took another gulp of mead).
“Let’s go sit,” she said.
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Second mugs of mead were acquired, and a ghost story competition entered (Tom won, of course, and Hermione wasn’t sure she’d sleep that night).
“Let’s take a walk, yeah?” Tom whispered in her ear.
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“Why are you being so nice to me?” Hermione asked, her liquid courage bolstering her as they rounded the barn away from the fire, away from the music. “You’ve never been this nice to me in three years of my being at Hogwarts.” Tom was very close to her. She could smell the honied mead on his breath, his cologne, the ashy warmth of the bonfire on his clothes.
“As I said back in August,” he breathed. Hermione shivered and pressed her back against the barn. “I’ve decided this could be highly beneficial… for the both of us.”
“So… this is just business, then?” She was practically overwhelmed by him, the mead, the chill in the air, and the smell of the bonfire. “Nothing personal?” Hermione bit her lip when he brushed her nose with his.
“Who said it can’t be both?” Tom purred before capturing her lips with his.
He grabbed at her skirt, hiking it up and spinning her around to face the barn. A moment of tension against her skin and a ripping sound told her he’d just ripped her panties off rather than bother with her dropping them. Hermione pressed back against him, and Tom hissed. She panted softly as he fumbled with his zipper one-handed, his right preoccupied with fingering her aching pussy from behind.
“Ah,” a breath of relief left him, and Hermione whimpered softly when she felt the throbbing heat of his cock brush through her folds.
“Fuck me, Tom,” she whispered. “Please.”
Hermione had never been one for a dirty quickie, but the way she could feel herself throb when the head of his cock pressed ever so slightly into her cunt… well, she told herself she needed this. They both groaned as she stretched to take him, Hermione arching her back to allow Tom to plunge deeper into her.
It’s quick, but not in an embarrassing way (for Tom). She’s pressing back against him so eagerly and he pulls her back by her hair, rutting into her like a desperate man. Hermione moans and cries and gasps — and he notices she comes, comes hard around him when he wraps one hand around her throat and gently squeezes. He gives two or three more full strokes before he feels that churning heat and fills her slick cunt with his cum. Her eyelashes flutter and her rosy lips remain parted as he pulls out of her and presses a searing kiss to her neck.
“See?” Tom whispers in her ear before biting down hard on her neck. Hermione hisses and keens. “Highly, mutually beneficial.” ******************************************************************************************
Perhaps it would’ve been more beneficial if they didn’t spend most of their free time on campus finding creative ways to fuck each other’s brains out.
But, Hermione quickly learned that ‘post-nut clarity’ was beneficial for writing.
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A year raced by. Tom scheduled his defense. He got a job offer — a postdoctoral position at Yale with a generous salary and the potential to turn into a tenure-track associate professorship. Hermione had passed her quals and was making strong headway on her own dissertation.
“Come with me,” he murmured into her hair one night as she sat up rereading The Spanish Tragedy. “They’d give you a job.”
“Not without my PhD,” she remarked, turning a page.
“They’d make you a lecturer if you were my wife.”
Hermione set down her book.
“Are you suggesting I be a spousal hire?” she hissed. “Tom—”
“Tell me you have a better idea,” he sat up and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her back down onto the bed. “We’d both have jobs and, besides, you’re practically done with the diss as a fourth year. Defend this summer. And come with me.” Tom slowly slid one hand down into her panties. “Be my brilliant, sexy early modernist wife and help me pick out a place in New Haven. I want a place with big windows so I can fuck you as the sun—”
“Well, Mr. Ivy League,” Hermione teased, blushing at his little early-morning fantasy. “You’re forgetting one thing.”
“And what’s that?”
“You haven’t even proposed.”
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Just a week after, a brief wedding announcement ran in Hermione’s hometown newspaper:
Drs. Elizabeth and Daniel Granger, DDS, announce the marriage of their daughter Hermione, Hogsmeade, ME, to Dr. Tom Riddle, Jr., PhD, also of Hogsmeade. The couple celebrated their nuptials with a small reception hosted by the maids of honor Ginny Weasley and Luna Lovegood. They will shortly reside in New Haven, CT, where Yale University will employ the bride and groom.
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“I still can’t believe your parents thought I’d knocked you up,” Tom grunted as he lugged another box to the top of the landing. Hermione slid it into the bedroom they’d agreed would become their study. “Do they really think they’d raised a girl who doesn’t use birth control?”
Hermione shrugged. “Small town mentality,” she explained away.
“They’re dentists,” Tom drawled. “Educated people!” He wiped his brow and climbed the narrow stairs of their new townhome and wrapped his arms around her waist. “And as much as I’d like to knock you up and raise our own little super-genius, well… I want you all to myself for a bit.” Hermione hummed as he pressed a kiss to her exposed shoulder, and another to her neck.
“And what if I wanted you to get on it, hm?” she whispered. Tom paused his teasing little peppering of kisses and spun her around to face him.
“Really?” Hermione nodded. “Did… Did you…? Did you throw out your pills?” She nodded again. Tom searched her expression to see if she was teasing, to see if there were any possibility of this being some sort of joke — she knew how much he wanted a family, having grown up without one of his own, how much he wanted a proper legacy that wasn’t just a monograph or two.
“I, Hermione Granger, want you, Tom Riddle, to put a baby in me,” she grinned.
“Say no more!” he cheered, scooping her up into his arms and running to their new bedroom.
Mutually beneficial, indeed.