A/N: So this is my first attempt at Tomione. It's a bit of a mix-up between the story of Persephone and the Harry Potter Universe and I'm not going to justify it with anything more than too much time spent in the sun.

It does things to your mind, I tell you.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything Harry Potter related. And I waited for my Hogwarts Letter until midnight on my eleventh birthday. It didn't came. Obviously. But that classifies as traumatic. And as an excuse for almost anything.

Pomegranates

She's dancing over a field, the first time he sees her. Arms stretched out widely, practically running through the knee-high grass with flowers blooming everywhere her feet touch the ground.

It's ridiculous.

It's really quite ridiculous, because she's giggling and spinning and her hair is a crazy mass of curls in some undefined mix of red-brown-gold and there are so many flowers that he's smirking at the irony of it all.

It intrigues him. The idea of breaking her. Of crushing her under the heel of his black Doc Martens like one of those delicate violets on a pavement.

And so he smiles at the thought of wilting flowers, blinks into the blinding sun and takes a drag of his cigarette while the girl is still playing greenhouse on the field.

She's wearing a sun dress.

It's all really quite ridiculous.

She doesn't scream when they kidnap her. She doesn't make a sound when they drag her underground, but she's biting her lip bloody and raises her chin in defiance and the sudden backbone she's showing stands in such sharp contrast to that mere child he saw dancing over a field that he perks up, straightening a bit from where he'd been lazing on that stone throne a moment ago and leans forward.

They're half holding her upright, half keeping her contained. Her dress is ripped and her hair is a mess, but she balls her hands into fists and straightens and she looks at him – honey coloured eyes with specks of green and silver – and she spits blood at his feet and then -

And then she starts swearing.

It's rather impressive. And described in such explicit detail that even some of his followers pale and shrink back from her – he sees Nott and Avery discretely trying to cover the parts she's threatening to cut off in such vivid language – and he didn't expect that from the purported incarnation of naivety, so he's mildly surprised.

He even orders them to knock her out gently. Head wounds are nasty and Wormtail is still scrubbing at the remains of the last bloodbath soaked into the stone floor.

Only much later, he'll applaud her for putting on a good show.

When she wakes up in some ostentatious four poster bed with green velvet curtains and a rather ridiculous amount of pillows and blankets on it, he's sitting in a chair, wearing slacks and a half buttoned white dress shirt, mindlessly flipping through the Daily Prophet.

He's barefoot and she's staring. There are two cups of tea next to a bowl of fruit and she smells chamomile and green tea and it all strikes her as rather strange.

He hums some odd tune, clicks the stud in his tongue against his front teeth and looks up.

"You're awake", he states casually, peering at her over the newspaper's edge.

She huffs indignantly, wrapping one of the blankets around her bare shoulders and glares at him. "Was that show of brutality really necessary?", she asks him, gingerly touching her maltreated lower lip and making a show of inspecting the bruises on her arms that have him thinking about blooming flowers in quite a different manner.

"It served its purpose, didn't it?", he says mildly, pouring tea into two cups and holding one out to her. She raises an eyebrow, but takes it.

"It made me taste blood", she retorts, grimacing. "My own blood. And your minions -" He quirks an eyebrow at that, but she holds his gaze without flinching. "They need to learn subtlety." She takes in the opulent décor of the room with him in the centre. "Come to think of it, so do you."

"You want me to be subtle?", he asks, placing the tea cup back onto the tray and taking a fruit out of the bowl. It's a pomegranate. "There's no need for that with a well thought out plan."

"If your definition of well thought out is kidnapping an innocent girl in broad daylight under her mother's ever watchful eye, I don't want to know what improvising might look like." She shudders and glares at him while he keeps throwing and catching that blasted fruit – he'd look like some schoolboy right now if it weren't for the piercings. There are a lot of them – lip, tongue, eyebrow – and it's bloody distracting.

"Well, it did work out, didn't it?", he drawls and then his face splits into a wide boyish grin, which despite being marred by scars, that run covered by tattoos down the side of his face, down his body and arms, has her insides jumping and doing a Scotch Jig. "Bet, they're all screaming bloody murder now, running up and down the corridors of that blasted castle like a bunch of headless chickens."

"I know", she sighs, flopping back down onto the bed. "And they'll probably want to rescue me."

"You don't want them to?", he asks carefully and then with sudden force, he breaks the pomegranate in half. It's a messy affair, seeds and juice spill all over his pale, tattooed hands and paint them a violent red.

"Well", she retorts, squinting at him from beneath hooded eyes. "I take it, you'll probably kill them if they try, right?"

He looks at her, holds out one half of the pomegranate with the red juice still dripping from his hand. "Probably."

She sighs again and takes the offered fruit, eyeing it with an inscrutable expression. Then she looks up. "I never had much of a choice, did I?"

He merely raises an eyebrow. "Did you want one?"

They're fighting it of course. Dumbledore's whole lot with Minerva as a lawyer are rallying the courts and Snape as a quiet bystander, an uninvolved third party watching them trying to get her back. They're fighting tooth and nail and the Prophet is full of it, claiming that the marriage is null and void and nagger on and on about that nasty bit about abduction – when Hermione sees it, she smiles and raises an eyebrow, making some dry comment about the advantages of subtlety that have him chuckling softly while his followers look on in confusion.

It's all really entertaining, watching them all fold and fall like a bunch of dominoes to his wishes – they're fighting to get their lost daughter back in their midst, thinking they might gain some intelligence in the process, yet not realizing that they're actually helping him and really it has never been that easy to get a spy behind enemy lines.

She's scolding him for the obvious weakness in his plans – her and her compliance – and when he tells her he'd planned on breaking her, she actually scoffs and tells him to stop being ridiculous.

"I'd like to see you try", she says, picking at some pomegranate seeds on her plate and practically licking them from her palm and he refrains from taking her up on the challenge, because really, blood stains are so difficult to get out of dress shirts.

They win of course.

He wanted them to.

"So about that immortality thing...", she trails off and he blinks at her, blowing out a cloud of smoke, that tangles in her hair and leaves traces of it in her clothes and she'll never admit it, but she keeps sniffing atthem every time he's not there. It's a very warped kind of homesickness and she blames it on the power of Stockholm syndrome. There is no other explanation.

"Yes?", he drawls, heavy-lidded dark eyes watching her lazily, but she's not fooled. He's like a snake in the sun, unmoving, but ready to strike at every moment.

"Well, why do you insist on gaining it the bloody, violent way?", she asks, straddling him and the fabric of his trousers, thin and soft, creates a delicious kind of friction against her bare thighs and if she shifts just so -

"The bloody way?", he smirks crookedly and the ring in his lower lip shines in the candle light.

"I mean, Horcruxes? Really? No other way you could have gone about it without splitting your soul into seven neatly packed pieces? I feel like I'm puzzling every time I talk to you."

"I'm not a parlour game, princess."

She levels him with an annoyed glare and he hisses when she shifts her hips just so - "Don't -" He grabs her by the waist and stills her. "Don't do that."

She smiles.

"Oh really?" His eyes widen and she smiles smugly when she leans in. The tips of her wild hair drag over shoulders and that bare patch of skin left vulnerable by the open collar of his dress shirt. The cigarette scent is even more intense up close.

He drags her head back by her hair, deliberately not touching her and then he's the one leaning in and his lips and teeth skim the skin of her neck, up and down until he lightly begins sucking at the small hollow between her collar bones.

She keens and he bloody laughs.

"The secret", he whispers, hot breath and teeth against her skin, "is that everyone of us had to find a different mean of achieving immortality, one suitable to our personality", he grins at that, "whereas your generation was simply gifted with it by the fates. Such fickle creatures...", he sighs and she grins. "Dumbledore went for power. He has his hallows or sanctuaries or whatever -"

"They're just as immersed with death as yours are", she interjects and feels him smile, while he's continuing to give her the world's most prominent hickey ever.

"And just as deadly", he drawls. "But according to my brother and his infamous warrior, they're not evil." He scoffs and rolls his eyes. "And you don't want to know what kind of concoction Snape's drinking, let alone actually drink it so there I was left with the soul splitting." He grins and it's not a nice smile. She returns it regardless.

"So you're the openly evil one of the bunch", she remarks, dragging her fingers down the swirling lines of tattoos on his hands and forearms. They're strangely enthralling and she revels in every rune and obvious crude remark recorded there. "The black sheep? The outcast?"

His fingers tighten in her hair almost to the point of being painful. "What are you playing at?", he growls, not prepared to find her smiling widely at him with her neck bent in such an awkward ankle and her throat so utterly exposed - he sees her pulse point beating rapidly.

"Nothing", she says casually, her nails piercing his skin and drawing blood. "Just remarking on your Daddy issues."

He knows she's annoyed that this place keeps wilting the flowers, that bloom with her every footstep. He's seen her expression, somewhere between crestfallen and curious, but he has yet to see her cry.

She doesn't.

No, instead she locks herself in their private rooms for three days and when she finally emerges, she has covered all those ten feet high walls with bright, colourful murals of flowers and meadows, a myriad of shades, that give him a right headache with all their vibrancy and exuberance – and does she know it's not exactly dignified to have the Underworld look like a bloody flower shop?

It's a bit of a dig at his masculinity and he opens his mouth to say something, but then he sees her smile, satisfied and gleefully and also a tiny bit smugly and he closes his mouth and rubs at some bright red splotches of paint on her chin and forehead. "If you insist, darling", he grumbles lowly and indulges her.

"So this is about power, I take it?", she asks him one day while they're taking a walk around his kingdom, passing ghosts and shadows, who bow and curtsey in respect and she's holding onto his arm and if she weren't touching him, he'd never have guessed her hand is trembling.

"Partly", he sighs, plucking a pomegranate from one of the nearby trees. They're artificial of course, because nothing is growing in the underworld, but the illusion is a nice one. "It's partially resentment for being stuck down here, partially leftover childhood trauma and partially about my siblings actively trying to kill me." He sighs. "They're always overdoing it."

"So it's self-defence", she summarizes and he pecks her nose fondly.

"Partially, yes", he says. "But mostly it's about boredom. Nothing exciting ever happens down here."

They kiss for the first time the night before Solstice. It's her last night underground before she can go back for those fleeting summer months, back to her family and a smugly smiling Dumbledore, who doesn't know that he's been played yet and Tom delights in the absurdity of it all.

It's not like they haven't touched before – she's pretty casual about physical signs of... well, whatever the hell it is, while he usually recoils and kills everyone, whose fingertips get too close. Must be an after effect of literally getting eaten by one's own father, not that his siblings ever had a problem with it, but they're also a bunch of incestuous, hypersexual nut-cases so perhaps they're overcompensating the other way.

But he lets her touch him, partly because he doesn't want to dispose of her, partly because he actually likes her touch and so she's stroking his hair and absent-mindedly playing with the tiny silver ring, he'd pierced his right nipple with and she absolutely doesn't fucking see the point of sitting on chairs unless they're stone thrones and they're judging the dead upon their lives' deeds, instead she regularly curls up on his lap with her bare feet tucked under his knee, claiming that she's cold and if he could please get her some tea now.

So they're casual about the touching thing and he's even dragged his fucking tongue down the column of her neck and spine when instead of wearing one of her usual flowery sun dresses, she puts on an essentially backless sparkling black dress for the annual Yule Ball, he'd held in his halls for his followers, some nymphs and a few lower gods.

It had been about claiming and she'd called it barbaric, but he'd delighted in that little shower of goosebumps erupting on her skin and her soft moan when he bit her shoulder, grazing teeth and all that.

So when it's their last night together, the last of all those nights, in which they did naught but cuddle, because apparently she thinks he's some kind of radiator in human form and she's sitting there looking miserably at the flower covered walls - he swears to get rid of them as soon as she's gone - it's not that big a step to stalk over, lift her chin and press his lips against hers.

It should have been a brief, beta-test sort of kiss, but he's not prepared for her practically jumping him and she's really fucking tiny, but she's also really fucking fast and -

She tastes like pomegranates.

She comes back to him the next night.

He's been awake for hours – not that he needed to sleep, but yet unable to do so without her curling up next to him like a chaotic mess of a cat and he stares at the walls, which are still, still covered in those absolutely horrible murals, because he hasn't yet told Wormtail to get rid of them, he can't, he just can't do that and that's not, that's absolutely not acceptable.

She's quiet and when she slips under the covers he thinks she's one of his ghosts– a lost soul – until he feels her breath, hot and heavy, dragging over his bare skin.

He doesn't stop her when she's pulling the waistband of his silk pyjama pants down his hips, his breathing is shallow and he can't remember anyone doing that and he doesn't care about being vulnerable, because she -

She's taking him in her mouth and his hips shoot off the bed, hands tightening in her hair and he's... he's not complaining, no, oh no, he's not complaining about those stupid murals on the wall ever again.

There are a bunch of fresh pomegranates in the fruit bowl the next morning.

It's strange being back. There's an odd sort of distance between her and the others and she sees them eyeing her, sees Ron and Harry eyeing her like she's damaged goods or something and it makes her angry, has her screaming about the bloody double standard in her head, because she knows Ron's screwing every nymph he can get a hold of and that Harry has been awfully interested in Pansy lately, which is also a stupid, stupid name for a dryad. But never mind, it's like she's suddenly grown two heads for loosing her virginity, which she technically never did, but announcing that would raise too many questions about her and Riddle's... arrangement.

And so she plays the part of the abducted maiden, blushes appropriately under Dumbledore's steady gaze and evades the other's pitying glances, while claiming that no, of course she has no idea what Riddle is up to, it's not like he'd tell her anything.

She listens though.

And she listens well.

"And what did he say then?", Tom asks lowly, a sensual drawl against her thigh and her breath hitches and gets caught in her throat when he pushes her knees apart, keeping her spread open for him, bare and glistening, and she feels the abject vulnerability of that position pulsing through her veins and it's exhilarating in a kind of dirty way and she stares at the murals on the walls, which he hasn't gotten rid of yet, because the picture of him between her legs is nearly enough to have her come undone and -

She can't. Because this is about power, about defying and surrendering and she's not, she's not ready to surrender just yet.

"That we'll have to stay... stay strong... strong together", she breathes out, her hands fisting the green silk sheets beneath her, while he drags his tongue up, blowing soft kisses on her clit and she can, she can feel the silver stud in his tongue there and -

"Indeed...", he murmurs, fingers digging into her thighs.

"He says you were dangerous, Tom." She lets out a breathless laugh at that and he takes it as an invitation to dive in deeper. "Tells me you were dangerous..."

"Dumbledore's a fool", he whispered, dragging his tongue straight down and she gasps.

"That... ah... that he is", she lets out. "He's also a damn... damn hypo- …. hypocrite! Oh, Tom, fucking dammit!", she cries out in frustration at his sudden retreat and he chuckles and the sound vibrates through her body and she -

"Goes on and on about Harry being our saviour", she gasps. "Instructs us on hunting horcruxes while he's sitting in his damn tower and -" She grits her teeth. "Fuck. Tom, is that some kind of fairness rule? Some other -", another gasp and another smile against her thigh, "stupid kind of balance thing?"

"You mean reciprocating?", he asks, looking up. "I've wanted to thank you for that... thing the other night for ages."

"That was three days ago", she reminds him. "But I can't fault you for -"

"Not bothering with the trivial concepts of time and space?" He grins and she lets out a laugh, that turns breathless once again when his tongue is again doing wicked, wicked things to her and the erupting scream is dancing in her throat.

"No! …. I mean, leaving all the precious parts of your soul scattered across the earth where every blundering idiot could stumble across them while you have a perfectly safe, perfectly inaccessible place here with that three-headed monster guarding the entrance and -"

"Don't insult Fluffy", he scolds her with a mock-glare. "And what makes you think every blundering, stumbling idiot could -"

"They've found the locket", she interjects, shutting her eyes tightly when he blew soft kisses on her clit again. "They've destroyed the diary and the ring and - "

He looked up. "You really didn't think I'd just leave them there for Dumbledore to find?" He scoffs and rolls his eyes. "You were the one teaching me about subtlety", he says, his hands moving up and down her thighs. "And I taught you about distractions -"

"You're pretty good at them", she laughs and arches her back slightly.
"I'd say so", he agrees, propping himself up on one arm and hovering above her for a split second so that the light is caught in the silver surfaces of the many piercings covering his face and body and her breath catches in her throat for a moment, because there are exactly seven pieces – eyebrow, nose, mouth, lips, ears and nipple – seven soul pieces and she laughs delightedly when the third or fourth or fifth piece draws a circle around her clit and the sound gets caught in her throat and then she's flying and soaring and -

She really fucking tastes like pomegranates.

When in an attempt of sheer stupidity, side-kick-hero Ronald Weasley tries to free her and possibly kill her most evil husband, Tom doesn't hesitate for long and kills the brat with a flick of his hand. He's fairly unperturbed by the whole process, but Hermione of course is inconsolable.

She refuses to come to him for over a month.

He ponders killing Potter, too. To get rid of the annoying woud-be-saviour and have one less risk to worry about sounds downright appealing, but Hermione's continued melancholy about her friend's untimely demise has been unsettling and he doesn't know how many more silent nights he can spend staring at those stupid flower murals on the walls, which he hasn't yet gotten rid of, and so he delays the decision until he notices Potter staring at that Parkinson girl more than is strictly appropriate and what only mildly piqued his interest before, suddenly becomes rather entertaining when he watches young Malfoy join those two and well -

Nothing interesting ever happens down here. So he lets them.

When she comes back to him, she spends about half an hour simply sitting on the edge of their bed, feet tucked under her thighs, nervously biting her lower lip and it annoys him, but he keeps silent and so they're just staring at each other, calculating and assessing, because none of them wants to be the first to surrender.

"We could have children, you know?", she suddenly says and it catches him off guard and his eyes widen a fraction before he controls his features once more.

"Whatever gave you that idea?", he coughs and her eyes narrow.
"I don't know", she retorts flippantly. "Perhaps the whole marriage thing. Other people do have children, you know?"

"Other people also have sex", he drawls and her chin juts forward defiantly and he's silently daring her to stick out her tongue so that he might bite it.

"We have sex", she insists, not quite able to suppress the blush rising in her cheeks.

"Not of the reproductive kind."

She huffs. "Well, we might if you didn't insist on killing my friends."

"Is this some kind of bargain?", he asks provocatively. "Selling yourself for your friends' lives? Consecutively, that would make you a -"

"Don't call me that!", she hisses, her eyes blazing and he thinks she might have picked up some things from underground, because her hair looks like it's literally on fire. "My own family practically sold me for gaining even a small advantage in this war you've going on and you're no better with your mindfuck of a plan using me as a -"

She's so caught up in her rant that she doesn't notice him eyeing her like a predator, calculating, one, two, three and then he jumps, pushes her on her back, with her wrists pinned above her head, effectively rendering her motionless.

"Care to repeat that, princess?", he asks with a dangerous glint in his eyes and she's smiling, she's fucking smiling.

"I just thought it might alleviate the boredom", she grins and it's calculating and gleeful and she juts her lower lip forward in mock resemblance of a pout and -

"What?", he barks and her smile widens.

"Children", she says and pushes him off her. "Do try to keep up, darling."

When she brings him the Elder Wand, she's barefoot and bloodied and she's limping down the path his followers have cleared for her, but she's holding her head high, wand in hand and there's whispering and rumouring and they're in awe, because she's their Queen and she's coming back with a token of their victory.

He's looking up at her when she nears the stone throne and she doesn't bow or kneel or curtsey, she just holds out the wand for him to take, casually as if she's passing the salt at the dinner table, yet oh so important and he pulls her down for a kiss before she graciously sinks down on her own throne.

He gives her the dripping half of a pomegranate.

She takes it.

Later, much later, he'll ask why she came back to him all those summer nights when she could have been free of him, because it's a concept he can't quite grasp, sacrifices as a concept are purely abstract to him.

She'll scoff at that. "Don't be silly", she'll say. "There were flowers blooming everywhere I went. Rather ridiculous, don't you agree? So impractical..."

And she'll turn around, the green silk slipping from her waist and revealing smooth lines of pale skin, her eyes huge in the dark, a seductive kind of innocence only marred by the bite marks on her shoulders and before she kisses him, she'll say.

"We all have to grow up sometime, don't we?"

A/N: So I hope you liked it:) I'm playing around with some Dramione at the moment. There's a punk band. And a revolution. And antiquated pureblood rituals that can trap you if you're not careful.

I love reviews, btw., much love, Teddy