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Hermione got home to the smell of simmering onions and garlic. Tom had decided to learn to cook a month ago. She had to confess – he was amazing at it. She'd spent years existing off scrambled-eggs-on-toast or salads or takeaways, never really bothering to cook for herself but now… a feast every night.

She could almost understand Ron's constant griping that she didn't cook like his mother, now she knew what it meant to come home to such glorious fare.

"I hope you never get a job," she muttered, dropping her work robes onto a chair.

He wrinkled his nose in annoyance and handed her a glass of wine without replying.

His face (now aged to match her own, thank the druids) was as unbearably handsome as usual but he looked stressed.

"It's still deeply insulting that I have to retake my exams," he said eventually. "I mean don't they know who I am?"

Hermione had been (not to put too fine a point on it) utterly delighted when Tom had been told that he couldn't use his previous qualifications without also facing all the charges associated with being Lord Voldemort. She'd been even more pleased when he'd seen the syllabus and realised that there had been just enough changes in the past fifty-odd years that he couldn't just sit them straight away. He had to actually study.

It was brilliant.

"Maybe you'll get a better mark in Arithmancy this time?"

She'd looked up his records, of course. She'd beaten Tom Riddle in three subjects: Arithmancy, Charms, and Transfiguration. She'd fixed a copy of her results over his desk with a permanent sticking charm after that.

He'd had a small tantrum, destroying only one building, but he'd settled down and started working afterwards. And when he was bored of reading books written for people many decades younger than him, he cooked.

And baked. She had photographs, which he'd made her take a Wand Oath not to send to Harry.

"What are you cooking?" she asked, smiling coyly.

Being dead for so long, and monstrous for so long before that, and incorporeal for so long before that did amazing things to one's earthly appreciations. He'd become, entertainingly enough, a foodie.

It was hilarious.

"Moules marinière. Have some more wine and shut up."

"You are so charming, darling."

"Your mother rang," he said after a few minutes.

He hated when her mother called, partly because (as far as she could tell) it annoyed him that her parents were clever, sophisticated and kind, and altogether removed from the Muggle figures he'd grown up with, and so it was hard to dislike them. She suspected the other part was because, when he'd experienced her entire life in that weird fucking chamber, he'd also experienced familial love for the first time. Tom probably loved her mother through Hermione's memories of her and that must be very confusing after seventy years of not knowing what it felt like.

"Did you have a nice chat?" she asked innocently.

"Yes, they're coming back from Australia. For Christmas. I –" he looked panicked and bent down to the oven so she couldn't hear him properly but it sounded like he said he'd invited them to stay. For the holidays.

She stopped herself from laughing aloud with great difficulty. Her hapless, idiotic, brilliant, evil husband had invited her parents, probably by accident, and certainly because her mother had manipulated him into it.

"I just – she was saying she didn't know where they'd stay but they wanted to see you on Christmas and it had been so long since you'd all spent it together in England and – anyway. Eat."

He thrust a plate in front of her and sat sulking, eyeing up her reaction to the food.

She tasted it. It was amazing.

"This is delicious, Tom. I hope you're looking forward to making your very first Christmas dinner."

He threw his glass against the wall and walked out.

It was adorable.

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.

.

They'd been married for three months, Hermione realised, as she finished her mussels in peace. That was quite amazing actually – three months of living with a man supposed to be the Most Evil Wizard to walk the earth or whatever and it was going quite well really.

Well, sometimes they lost their tempers and duelled each other, and this was the second house they'd lived in because they'd accidentally burned the first one down, but all things considering it was rather a success.

He liked her. She could feel it through their weird and deeply creepy bond. She'd have known anyway, probably, because he hadn't been researching how to get out of it, and nor had she if only because this was the only way she was actually totally safe from him and if he did anything too drastic she'd could, well, deal with it. By killing herself, sure, but if he knew how reluctant she was to do that he would also know that she would if she had to. If she died, he died.

That was both leash and risk, and it made him extremely over-protective. Like the time she'd been held up late at the office and he'd come to find her in a total panic.

That had been sort of sweet, really, until she'd found out how many people he'd hexed to get into the Ministry and to her office. Technically he wasn't meant to go into government buildings unescorted, as he was still in a probationary period where no one trusted him enough to let him near anything important but where they also couldn't actually do much about knowing who he was/had been/it was all a bit confusing.

He'd hexed seventeen people just to check she was alright.

It was weirdly… endearing, even if she had laughed at him for a full five minutes before she could explain that he probably didn't have to worry about her.

Hermione Riddle was quite a capable witch.

.

.

She hadn't slept with him yet. She'd been tempted, of course, because he was was so beautiful and sometimes when they were arguing about something it just hit her how much cleverer he was than anyone else she'd ever met.

How he just measured up.

It was so annoying – of all the men – literally anyone who had ever died ever ever ever and he was her soul match or whatever it was supposed to mean that she'd dragged him out of death to be with her.

Something had picked him over every. other. person. ever.

It could have been Merlin himself, and she'd have been less baffled. Although baffled wasn't exactly the right word any more because the more time she spent with him, the more it actually made sense.

And that was in itself baffling and –

- she quelled her rampaging thoughts.

Sighing with irritation because she felt guilty about teasing him - he was still a bit oversensitive when it came to teasing, having never actually had friends - she waved her wand and sent everything in the kitchen dancing into a quick frenzy of self-cleaning.

Another charm and the sparkling dishes tidied themselves away.

Tom was so messy when he cooked, she reflected, wondering if it was a boy-thing (she'd have to ask Ginny) or if it was just one of his many irritating idiosyncrasies.

She took his plate, repairo-ed glass, and the bottle of wine and went to find him.

He was sitting reading at the table in the window of their smaller sitting room, which they used as a library. Hermione put the plate down, poured him a glass of wine, lit a fire and then picked up her own book.

The tension gradually dissipated, he'd probably just been hungry, and eventually he broke the silence.

"I've got a job."

Oh. Oh. That was new. She was immediately concerned – what sort of employer would take him on?

"That's exciting. Where are you going to work?"

"There's this group… they're setting up a university. A magical university. I've been asked to join one of their research departments. Magical Theory."

She was jealous, actually. Although her work – fixing everything wrong with the way this society was run – was important and she couldn't stop yet, it would have been nice to be asked.

She supposed he was probably more than qualified for this at least.

"Not… teaching?" she asked, tentatively. However bright, he probably ought not be allowed near impressionable minds just yet.

He glared at her. "No. Just research. Writing."

Well, then. That was perfect really.

"We should celebrate," Hermione offered.

"That would be – good. I'm going to bed now." He apparated, leaving his plate and wine glass on the table. She heard him moving around upstairs for a while. He was so... odd. It was strangely endearing.

She wondered if he was lonely. He barely left the house, and although it was a spacious one in Holland Park, with six bedrooms and a Potions lab on the top floor she thought that might get boring after three months.

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.

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Six months later.

She missed his cooking. He was so good at it. He was good at everything.

He was even better at kissing than cooking. She knew that because the night before Tom Riddle, her husband, had shoved her against the wall at the top of the stairs after they'd walked up to bed, still arguing about the magical creature rights, and snogged her till she was breathless, mindless, arching against him.

It had been idiotic, she reflected, prodding a chopstick into the takeaway box in front of her. It was Pad Thai from the Thai restaurant she didn't like. They used frozen prawns. She wished he'd never got a job. She had grown used to Michelin-level cooking and now he was always busy.

"Are we going to this?" he asked, disturbing her, waving an invitation.

She blushed, and hated herself.

"No. I hate them," she snapped.

They ought to go, really, rational-Hermione said, but the very thought of twirling insipidly around the ballroom in Malfoy Manor made her want to scream and burn down the house.

And why should she have to associate with his people?

"Your… friend Harry flooed my office earlier. He said I ought to make you go, but if you don't feel up to it…"

Fucking prat.

A challenge.

"Fine, we can go. I don't care."

.

.

They went. Hermione thought it was worth it, just to see his gobsmacked face when she walked down the stairs in her aubergine silk robes.

She scowled at him, but he'd just laughed and pushed up against the wall again and kissed away all her lipstick.

He really was evil. He really was good at setting her body on fire.

She took his hand.

"Are we doing this?"

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.

"You ought to run for Minister," he said one day, thirteen years later, stroking down the naked length of her spine.

"Why the fuck would I want to do that?" she snapped. She'd been trying to go back to sleep. She was tired. They had three children under the age of eight.

She wondered where it had all taken such a detour.

"You'd be perfect," he muttered, distracting her as he kissed her thighs, her cunt, sent her spiralling into an ecstasy only he could offer (God knew, she'd tried).

"You are such a power hungry slut, darling," she hissed as her orgasm crashed down.

"Mmm," he agreed, pressing into her, until she forgot her name.

"I'll think about it," she said, as they lay tangled together afterwards.

She'd decided to be Minister when she was fourteen, but he was so much more enthusiastic about tasks when he thought they were his idea, and she really would need him to behave.

Not that that had been a problem so far. If anything public loved him. They always did love a reformed villain, though. He volunteered with orphans, founded an initiative called Mentors for Muggleborns, campaigned for all manner of worthy causes, even developed a treatment for longterm Cruciatus Curse damage.

Even Harry liked him. Harry.

But Hermione knew better, even as she dissolved under him, wrists pinned back against the headboard, knew what he wanted.

She knew him, every facet, too well to simply like. He was just this: a part of her. Half her soul, walking the earth beside her. But he was the perfect consort. And that was what she needed – even if he thought it was his idea (how adorable, he still thought he was in control. It was so sweet).

"What's for lunch?" she added. "The monsters will be home from that thing soon."

.

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Five years later

Minister Riddle met her oldest friends, her husband and her youngest child, naughty little Merinda who was bidding to be just as swotty and manipulative as either parent, for lunch in a trendy new bistro in Islington. Then they wandered down to King's Cross Station to collect their offspring. Ariana and Leo Riddle, one in a blue and one in a green, were a set of bookends with their dark curly hair and matching smirks. She hadn't quite kept them humble, but she had kept them loved.

So had he.

Later, at The Burrow, Hermione embraced Potters small and tall and all manner of boistrous Weasleys and exclaimed how everyone had grown. She watched her husband make Molly, grey-haired now, giggle into her mead before hoisting an over-excited Merry onto his lap before she hurt herself.

It really couldn't have worked out better.

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Thank you for the wonderful reaction this story has had. It's been a lot of fun.