Chapter 1: Number One

Miss Granger's eyes threatened to bore sizzling holes into her computer screen. The email from Principal Dippet had requested – and with your boss, it was never just a request – that she stay after school to babysit the Hogwarts cast of delinquents in Room 114 for detention.

She hated being the new teacher.

There was no doubt that Miss Granger liked detention just as much as the kids there did. And as annoyed as she was by the students themselves, she had a special niche of irritation in her heart for one of the most insolent troublemakers; the one who rarely failed to find himself sentenced to Room 114 after school for an hour.

Still, she dared to hope he would not come today.

Her sole salvation was the sixty minute time span. Sixty minutes would not kill her. Afterward, she could drive home, vent about the undeserving upper middle class brats and their snide comments about her teaching methods to her fiancé Ron, peruse the dozen bridal magazines Ron's sister Ginny had bought her, and nurse a glass of red wine as she corrected one hundred half-assed essays for her Modernism class.

She frowned. Where was the bright side of this again?

"Miss Granger! I haven't seen your lovely…face…around here for a while." The voice of a pre-pubescent did not tempt Miss Granger to yank her skin-melting glare off the computer. She also recognized said voice, arrogant and half a pitch too high for masculinity. It belonged to Draco Malfoy. High on her list of irritations.

But he was not Number One.

"We did just return from holiday a day ago, so it should come as no surprise that our paths have yet to cross, Mr. Malfoy." She clicked her bright red pen and drew a toppling pile of tests toward her. "By the way, just when do you plan to attend my class?" she said dryly.

"Oh, one of these days." Malfoy's voice was blindingly bright. And insufferable. "Speaking of the holiday," he said quickly, "you look like you went somewhere with lots of sun." At her sharp look, his smile started to match the glowing inflection of his soprano voice.

"The tan suits you," he continued. "What would you call that shade huh? Coffee? Nutmeg?" He sauntered toward her desk like a python toward a baby mouse. If Malfoy had bothered to show up to her English class more than once a month, then he would know that Miss Granger was no baby mouse – and he was certainly not a python.

"Cinnamon?" he went on. "Beach sand, mocha, coconut-"

"Mr. Malfoy-" Shut the hell up. She sighed. "-I have a fly swatter in the drawer next to me, and I am fully prepared to use it if your rotten soliloquy does not end."

Malfoy looked perplexed. "I thought a soliloquy was like when someone talks to themselves?"

"It is, basically." She drew several xs down the length of Marissa Longbottom's paper. "You see, I assumed you were speaking to yourself, because there is no way on this good earth that you could possess the nerve to try to sweet talk me out of detention with very bad metaphors." She raised her head and speared Malfoy with a gaze sharp enough to split a pencil in half. "Why don't you take a seat, Mr. Malfoy,"she suggested, and he laughed but surrendered, slouching over to sit at a desk and text on his phone obediently.

Miss Granger rolled her eyes and resumed the tests corrections. Or xing the tests, she supposed.

The rest of the congregation to detention was moderately tame compared to Malfoy's arrival. The usual gossip and explicit commentary on bitchy lunch aids was tossed back and forth like dodgeballs as student strolled in, finding perches on the air conditioning vents and tabletops. With the secondhand moments away from three o'clock, Miss Granger nearly believed that for once in her life she had caught a stroke of luck – no, a miracle – because the most undesired of the trope was still nowhere to be seen.

Number One was not in detention today.

Huzzah!

Miss Granger set aside the tests and stood with the room key in hand, quickly crossing over to the door to lock it, and effectively diminish whatever percent chance there was that Number One would join them. The bell rang, a symphony to her ears. Diiiiiing. Diiiing.

She had nearly closed the door when a boot flashed out and stopped it. Miss Granger's stomach twisted, for she instantly recognized the vintage leather boot, and therefore the owner of it. Unlike Malfoy, Number One always attended her English class – in fact he took the AP course and could probably write his way to the cosmos and back if he so wished it, based on his impressive term paper – and Miss Granger knew his outfits well. After all, his wardrobe consisted of one color: black.

Despite the cliché, the color fitted the boy-demon well, she thought. Almost the same way a black cat suited bad luck and evil...

"One moment, teach-" his voice said.

A hand wrangled the door open and a young man slipped inside. He straightened, giving the young and impressionable females in the class a moment to ogle him, and a flash of surprise crossed his face when he saw her standing behind the door. Miss Granger tried not to glare. He hadn't done anything horrible yet, after all. But the wickedness of Tom Riddle was in the cards of destiny.

"Oh hello, Miss Granger." A wink dashed the grey eye below his wayward lock of hair, even darker than his outfit, and she pursed her lips, unimpressed. Riddle looked her up and down. "How was the cruise to Barbados. Your tan suits you."

"It was just fine, thank you," she said stiffly. "Please take a seat, Mr. Riddle."

He turned around. "Hope you missed me, fuckheads," he said to the class.

Miss Granger pinched the bridge of her nose as the girls giggle-sighed, and the boys welcomed Number One back with cheers of assent. She had been so close. So close!

"Riddle, go fuck yourself," said Malfoy, but he was laughing too.

"Why would I? That's what I've got your mother for," Riddle replied. Everyone laughed – they always laughed – and Miss Granger sat back down at her desk, pulling over the tests. If Riddle was king bad boy of Hogwarts School, then Malfoy was the prince in-the-running, and when Riddle graduated later this year and Malfoy moved up to senior class, Dippet would really have his hands full. They were all doomed.

How had she ever been a teenager? Miss Granger wondered. Then she remembered that she had hated high school, and the universe began to resemble something sensible again.

"Crabbe, what are you here for now?" she heard Riddle demand. "Did you eat somebody?" Room 114 roared with hysterics, but Riddle retained his poise.

Miss Granger massaged her forehead with two hands. Her period four class clearly had logged onto Sparknotes, not read Hamlet.

"No," Crabbe said, blushing furiously. His knuckles were cracked and swollen. While Crabbe had plenty of brawn, he did not possess enough flair for a wittier comeback, but that was no matter; Malfoy eagerly came to the boy's rescue.

"He set one of the queer kids straight, but Mr. Lupin didn't like that – I imagine he's homo too." Malfoy smiled widely enough to show the entire class all of his perfect white teeth. A mixture of laughter and awkward chuckles spread throughout the classroom, but Miss Granger noticed from the corner of her eye that Riddle had said nothing in response. Not that his indifference meant much – he rarely responded to actions that did not directly revolve around him.

"That's enough." Miss Granger clicked her pen closed and moved to her feet. Thirteen gazes swiveled over to watch her cock her hands on her hips and shift her disapproving lips at Draco, who simply smiled back at her sunnily. Cheeky bastard, she thought. "Listen, I know most of you come to detention regularly, so I won't bore you with rules and regulations. Be silent. Don't use your cellphone. If I see you on an electronic device or hear so much as a phone vibrate, I'm keeping your iPhone for the rest of the week. If you have to talk-" Her eyes mysteriously found Malfoy. His grin grew cheekier, the urge to slap him with the flyswatter grew strong as well. "-then keep the swearing to a minimum. I would like my ears to remain unsoiled."

Riddle snorted from his desk, hardly a foot away from where she towered over him in all three inches of her high heels. High heels made Miss Granger feel taller and therefore more powerful, which was very important on two counts. 1) She worked at a high school. 2) She was the young new English teacher. If she didn't don the heels, then Janitor Finch would try to give her a referral for walking through the halls without a pass.

Miss Granger raised an eyebrow at Riddle and looked pointedly at his mud-caked boots, kicked onto the desk. He did not move them. "What was that, Mr. Riddle?" she said.

"Nothing at all."

"Fantastic." Her sarcasm scathed the first two rows like a bucket of boiling hot water. The less seasoned students flinched back, Mrs. Granger stalked over to the windows to open the blinds. Mr. Snape's classroom was always overbearingly stuffy. As she twisted the blinds, she said, "Now if you'd like you may get a book from the shelf to read or count the wads of ancient gum plastered to the underside of your desks for the remainder of the time allotment-"

"I only detected," said Riddle, as if the past paragraph did not exist, and two minutes had not passed, "the profound scent of bullshit."

Silence.

Miss Granger paused mid-twist. After a moment, she finished opening the blinds, and afternoon light flooded into the class and illuminated eleven zit-plagued faces. Riddle did not have a blemish in sight, for he was a devil in angelic wrapping. She looked down five foot three inches - and the extra three inches of her heels - at Riddle, who did not innocently smile back at her as Malfoy would have, but simply clicked together the toes of his boots – crumbs of dried dirt shook loose onto the desk – and waited.

"Excuse me?" she asked in a deadly quiet voice.

"Your bullshit stifles me. You know, the stench of it. Positively overwhelming." Riddle waved through the air elegantly, as if warding off a foul scent. Miss Granger's eyes narrowed into fiery slits. "You said to keep the swearing to a minimum," he calmly explained at her glower, "but I happen to know you curse like a sailor."

"Where-" the fuck "-do you get that misconception?"

"Oh, it's not a misconception. It's true." He swung down his feet and leaned forward, staring up into her eyes with gleaming silver coins of mischief, and he stage whispered, "I can sense it."

"Can you also sense that you are about to get another week of detention?"

This time, Riddle did smile, with long soot-colored eyelashes and a whopping supply of sass as he slid back into his former position. Riddle was a first-class smart ass. As in very smart and an ass.

Yet, she mused, he was the type of boy she would have fallen in starry-eyed crush with back when she was a schoolgirl. Then she would have hated him for being too much of a jock to ever be within her reach. But schoolgirl was ten years ago, and she had since grown out of her infatuation with angel-faced assholes.

"No. But I can sense that your bra is purple," Riddle said, his eyes flicking down to her chest, "since it's showing through your shirt."

Her mouth dropped open, she hurried to shut it. "In the hall, now!" she snarled. "None of you move!" But Miss Granger could barely hear herself speak over the thunderous, shocked laughter, and as she led Riddle into the corridor she couldn't help but glance down at her button-down, which was not shear at all but dark blue and cotton. He had been bullshitting her the whole time.

Fucking Number One.

She wanted to throttle him.

"A week of detention," mocked Riddle, as he spun around to face her. The door slammed shut behind them. "That'll definitely be a change."

"Well, if detention does not suffice, Mr. Riddle," Miss Granger hissed through clenched teeth, "then I suppose you wouldn't be opposed to some community service. You will assist me after school every day until I see fit. Despite all your acting, you aren't a complete and utter loss to society, although your classmates might not believe it." She glanced at the door to Room 114, which had fallen silent again in an obvious attempt to overhear their exchange outside. "You will help me grade tests and essays. It's very tedious work," she added. It was childish of her, but she wanted to spark a reaction from him - a scowl, shamed silence, something.

Riddle smiled. "I love tedious things."

"You'll come to my classroom straight after dismissal for an hour. And during lunch periods, if I require it," she said brutally. Break, dammit! BREAK!

"Excellent." He bared his teeth at her like the big bad wolf. Even in high heels, Miss Granger realized, this boy-demon stood over her by a good seven inches. No wonder he didn't take her seriously. "Besides, it's my pleasure to help a soul in need," Riddle continued, leaning against a locker and reaching into his jacket pocket for a pack of Marlboros. She gaped at his audacity. Was he stupid? Did he want a worse punishment? "And," he murmured under his breath, giving her a very blatant once-over, "a soul in such tight stockings."

Miss Granger's eyebrows flew to the top of her head.

Oh...

…no.

The universe transformed into a row of falling dominoes suddenly. She had the horrible, overwhelming urge to laugh – very loudly – when she realized what Number One was attempting to instigate here. Of course he wanted her to punish him. He wanted to be alone with her and…and he wanted to...

Hysterics flooded her throat. She swallowed them.

"I'll take those." She plucked the Marlboros out of her hand, scowling at them momentarily before she met Riddle's dancing grey eyes again. "Keep your thoughts to yourself, Mr. Riddle. In case you have forgotten, I have a fiancé-"

"I haven't forgotten."

They stared at each other for a minute. Or at least, Miss Granger stared, and Riddle smirked.

"You can go back inside and sit with the class," she said finally.

Riddle shrugged and strolled back in. Miss Granger followed, but not before she chucked the cigarette pack into a trash, and thought of the bottle of red wine at home with a deep longing. She would not be drinking a glass tonight, but downing the entire bottle.

AN: I'm not dead! (Or am I? Hard to tell in my existential crisis. College is hard. And so is being broke. And overdramatic.) I digress.

Leave a review if you want, or don't! I've missed all of you. :)

~ImmortalObsession