"Have you been using that book on me?" Tom asks, incredulous.

Hermione snaps the book shut before quickly hiding it behind her. "What book? I don't see any book!"

Don't see any book? She's in the library!

He Accios Charming a Witch's Heart Made Easy to him, catching it in midair. It's heavy, two inches thick and he wonders how charming witches merits this big of a book. Surely women are simply easy to woo?

He eyes it in disgust.

She had been using it on him!

"I- I can explain!"

Tom raises an eyebrow and waves it to her, flashing the cover's title to her. "Have you been seeing another witch behind my back then?"

"What? No! It's just-" She bites her lip. "I wanted you to fall for me. Which- I think, is impossible." She coughs, and he hears something suspiciously like you not having a heart and soul and all.

He frowns. "And you're rude."

He has a heart. And soul. Though he mostly uses them for Horcruxes.

Figuratively though? That's up for debate.

And because he isn't supposed to know why she needs him to fall for her, he asks her, "Why do you want me to fall for you? Are you in love with me or something?"

She snorts. "That's really funny," she says.

He has to stop getting offended every time she does this.

Hermione is really rude.

"No," she continues. "I just thought that maybe if you love someone, maybe me, then you'll stop your dream of becoming Dark Lord."

"You do realize how stupid that sounds, right?"

She pouts. "I realized that halfway through using the book."

Then she straightens herself up and stares at him in the eye, a determined look on her face. "I won't give up though. I will teach you how to love, whether you become Dark Lord or not. Loving someone can feel nice too, you know."

Good. That means getting pampered longer and more compliments.

Tom shrugs and returns the book to her. If that's what makes her happy then who is he to argue? "Suit yourself. I'm warning you, however, that I find love a weakness so it's not going to happen."

She accepts the book and points out. "Love can be a person's strength too."

Tom can't control contorting his expression into one of disgust. "If you quote Dumbledore on me, I'm going to puke."

"What if I told you that you'll be defeated in the future because of love?" she tests, carefully watching him as he absorbs her words.

He merely scoffs. "I don't believe you." The very thought is ridiculous. Losing to someone because of love? How silly.

Power can only be defeated by more power.

Hermione sighs. "I knew you were going to say that." Then she narrows her eyes suspiciously at him. "What were you doing anyway, sneaking here at night?"

Oh, crap!

He'd rather cut off his arm than let her know that he was going to read Charming a Witch's Heart Made Easy too.

He can only imagine the humiliation he'll face if she finds out.

"I was looking for…" He glances at the book in her hands, then around the bookshelf, searching for another that will excuse his actions. He spots Magick Moste Evile on the same bookshelf. "… books on Dark Arts."

Why is Magick Most Evile on the same shelf as Charming a Witch's Heart Made Easy?

Hermione gives him an exasperated look. "Tom…"

He blinks innocently. "Only for academic purposes, Hermione. No need to worry your pretty little head."

"You know what?" She puts the book back into its place on the shelf. She grabs his shoulders to turn him around. "Let's go back to our dormitories."

"And leave the Dark Arts books waiting?" he teases. "I don't think so."

She pushes his back to guide him to the exit and he can almost feelher scowling at him in disapproval.

"We are going to sleep," she says in a threatening voice. "No one is reading any Dark Arts books tonight."

That's fine. He has scoured the whole library of it and memorized the most important sections of several dark books. His brain is a library.

"What about books on charming witches?"

Hermione groans.

The next day, he asks her while he accompanies her to Herbology. He hasn't checked the book out yet so he's curious. "So, what did you learn from the book?" He chuckles. "You really think you can make me fall for you?"

Hermione's cheeks flush red. "I bet you won't be laughing once you do."

Well, he's laughing now. He really doubts he can be in love with somebody. And no matter how fond he is of this witch, what she intends to do is impossible.

"We'll see," he says, confident.

They arrive at the greenhouses and Tom waves goodbye to his fiancée, however, she tugs on his robes, urging him to stay for a bit.

"You want to know what I learned?" She grins. "Wait here." Then she runs inside the greenhouse.

Tom has a bad feeling about this, but he respects Hermione enough to listen to her so he stays.

She comes back to him with a flower in her hand.

A flower in her hand. Violet and cute.

He bursts out in laughter. Some students look over at him in shock, unused to seeing the Head Boy so carefree.

"That is your bright idea?" he gasps. "Give me flowers- no- a single flower?"

She glares at him. "I think I'd rather stab you with the flower now actually."

To his surprise, she does raise the flower to his face. He closes his eyes in reflex, afraid that he might get stabbed in the eye with whatever Hermione is doing, when he feels her slip the flower behind his ear.

He can smell the perfume that she rubbed on her wrists, the scent of flowers in spring.

His eyes flutter open and is greeted by Hermione's impish smile.

So that's her plan? Placing a flower behind his ear as a man would to a woman, acting all cute?

She's adorable.

"I charmed the flower to stick to you for at least four hours," she says.

He takes that back. She's not adorable. She's annoying.

He tests the flower to see if she was telling the truth by pulling on the stem.

It won't budge.

He huffs. "This won't make me fall for you. In fact, you just lost points."

She parts her mouth in delight. "I didn't even know I had points!"

He points his wand at her. "I'm tempted to curse you right now."

"But you love me!"

No, he doesn't!

Hermione has been sneaking into the library after curfew until early in the morning, researching on time travel. She barely finds anything useful, the information is outdated, and when she does find anything that can help her, the book mysteriously disappears.

That's mostly Tom's fault.

He has been sabotaging her research because he can't have his Seer go anywhere without him. Besides, it's not like Hogwarts will have any truly informative books on time travel. Hogwarts is a school with hundreds of students milling about.

Think of the catastrophe if some random student gets ahold of knowledge of time travel because Hogwarts decided that it would be a safe place to store books with sensitive information.

Sensitive information like Horcruxes, perhaps, Tom thinks as he flips through the tome that Hermione had been reading earlier before she faceplanted on the book and started to snore.

He has been using her exhaustion as an opportunity to 'help' her, like a loving fiancé.

He still hasn't forgotten about his mission to make her talk to him about the future. Apparently, becoming her best friend does not mean getting her future knowledge.

Not even useful spells!

Hermione is stingy, Tom bitterly concludes.

It's nearly dinner and Hermione is still drooling on the table.

If only he had a camera… He would have had a lot of blackmail material from this alone.

He puts a hand on her shoulder and gently shakes her. Locks of hair fall to her open mouth. "Hermione?"

"Hngh?" She doesn't open her eyes. Neither does she close her mouth.

"It's almost dinner."

She groans and burrows her face further into her arms. Now he can't see her through her monster of a hair.

"Kidney pie is on the menu today," he urges.

She lets out a satisfied hmm.

"Yes, 'hmm', now get up before some Gryffindor eats it all." He shakes her shoulder a bit harder.

She grunts, then peeks at him through her hair with sleepy eyes.

"No. I won't wait for you if you continue to be like this in 5 minutes."

Hermione whines.

"As I said, no." He's getting hungry and he won't wait for her lazy butt if she continues to be like this.

Though he has been sabotaging her research, he does pity her a bit. They will be graduating in about a month and she has been cramming multiple books about time travel into her head every free time that she gets. Because of that, she hasn't been getting decent sleep.

"You can understand that?" a student passing by asks. "She wasn't even saying anything."

Tom is offended. "Of course I underst-"

He blinks. She didn't even say anything. The random student is right.

How did he understand her?

The student winks at him and says, "I guess true love doesn't need words, huh?"

What? How did that translate to true love?

But Tom laughs no matter how much he wants to strangle the student. He says, "I guess so."

He leaves Hermione in the library because he did warn her that he won't wait for her. When she doesn't show up for dinner, however, he saves some kidney pie for her.

"Tom, are you really sure you want to be Dark Lord?"

"Positive."

"Then…" Hermione bites her lip. "Will you…?"

There are a few beats of silence where he waits for her to continue.

"Will I what?"

"Will you please force elfish rights on Britain?"

Tom sighs.

"Fine."

She has been seeing Dumbledore lately. For what, he isn't sure.

Had she been reporting his behavior to their Transfiguration professor? Or is she discussing ways on how to get back to her time with Dumbledore? Either case isn't good.

He has to ask her, or, if she won't answer him truthfully then he will have to use Legilimency on her.

Tom hasn't been skimming her thoughts lately out of respect for her, rarely doing it anymore unless it's really important.

Such as now.

"What have you been talking to Dumbledore about?" he whispers to her during History of Magic. Professor Binns is droning on about Goblin wars again, half-asleep and half-dead.

Hermione shushes him, riveted with the lecture, riveted with the half-dead creature called Binns.

Tom doesn't know how Hermione is able to be interested in anything academic, even with a professor that might as well be dead with the way he's teaching.

He pokes her. "Tell me."

When she glares at him, he takes the chance to delve into her mind.

And sees Dumbledore in a skimpy bathing suit.

Tom chokes on air and immediately wrenches himself out of her mind.

What the hell?

"Like what you see? It's called bikini by the way." Hermione grins at him. "You've been using Legilimency on me without my permission, Tom. That isn't nice."

He rubs his face with his hands, horrified at what he had just seen.

Is there a way to Obliviate oneself? That image will be in his nightmares for years to come.

"That's not true," he chokes out, still not over what he just saw.

Dumbledore.

Bikini.

Oh, Merlin.

"Dumbledore showed me how Legilimency feels, even the softest brush of the mind." Then she tells him that she asked Dumbledore to teach her Occlumency, to shield her mind from Tom, if he ever attempts to dig into her mind. "I didn't know if you were using Legilimency on me so I had to train with Professor Dumbledore." She narrows her eyes at him. "Turns out that this isn't the only time you attempted to read my mind."

Tom molds his face into one of the most innocent expressions he has to make. "This is the first time I've used Legilimency on you. Why would you think that?"

She quirks a brow. "Because you're you?"

"I take offense to that," Tom says. "And you're not making it easy to fall for you."

She teases, "But you're already in love with me!"

He scoffs.

Inside, however, he agrees that what he has been doing to her is rude. Now that she knows that he has been using Legilimency on her though, it's fair play that he also trains her with her Occlumency.

He does it on the most unexpected times.

He's dueling her in Defense Against the Dark Arts when he asks, "Hermione, who's your ideal man?"

She rolls her eyes and casts a Protego to his Stupefy. "That's a silly que-"

He delves into her head.

And sees puppies.

Corgis, Golden Retrievers, Siberian Huskies, and the like, playing with each other, doing things that cute puppies would do to each other.

He fights back a smile. "I thought you were a cat person?"

She shrugs, then launches an Expelliarmus at him. "Maybe sending you loyal dogs will make you less evil?"

Eh. Tom doubts it.

He dodges her spell and casts it back to her.

He has noticed that whenever she's dueling him, she loves to cast that particular spell on him. To others, she uses a wide range of spells, but to him, it's Expelliarmus almost exclusively.

He asks, "Why do you love casting Expelliarmus at me?"

Her mouth twitches upward. "Would you like to read my mind?"

Why not? He does as she says.

But he sees Dumbledore in a bikini again.

"Hermione!" he scolds.

She bursts out in laughter, clutching her stomach. She barely dodges the Incendio that he sends her hair.

Let him burn her hair! It would do her a great service!

"Did you like it, Tom?" she asks between giggles.

Like it? Does she want to know how much he likes it?

He casts a more powerful Incendio to her hair. Sadly, her shield charm is impenetrable.

Fine. She wants to battle against him with Occlumency? Then he will give it to her.

He attempts to read her mind again and again, though he is careful not to use too much force since she is a beginner at Occlumency after all.

He has noticed a pattern.

Whenever he asks about simple things like Who do you like more, me or Harry? She would imagine cute things like kittens and puppies.

And then she'd brutally answer Harry.

When he asks sensitive questions such as Did I succeed as Dark Lord? He receives the Dumbledore nightmare fuel.

She's getting good, to be honest. He's proud that she's able to block simple Legilimency in such a short time.

Sometimes, he gets carried away, however. Tom has too much fun on reading her mind, expecting the unexpected (he still hates the Dumbledore image though), and accidentally forces her mind to take on too much.

He gets glimpses of her future.

Of S.P.E.W.

He teases her relentlessly for that and he earns hours of lectures on elfish welfare and the abuse they receive and their rights. He fell asleep last time and she woke him up, angry, and gave him books on the topic.

When you become Dark Lord, you will protect the house elves. Or else I will hunt you down.

She gets headaches when he puts too much power behind his Legilimency so he tries to be careful.

Then he realizes that he isn't using this opportunity to find out more about the future!

Hermione has been oddly accepting of him into her mind, letting him cast Legilimency on her, trusting him not to push too much to see the future. This is his chance!

Now that he finally remembered himself, he reminds himself to poke around her head more, never mind that her head gets hurt.

So he taps her on the shoulder to get her attention. She has been puzzling over a problem in her Arithmancy homework for a while now.

But then he sees her concentrated expression. She's chewing on her quill, a wrinkle between her brows is forming.

Maybe he shouldn't disturb her.

"What?" she says, a sweet smile on her lips. "Would you like to see puppies again?"

Tom returns her smile, unexpected warmth fills his chest.

Fine. He won't force her mind. She'll just tell him once they're closer.

"Sure," he says, and reaches into her thoughts.

He sees Dumbledore in a bikini.

End Note: They have an odd courtship.