A/N: Written for QFLC's Round 3. My prompts as Chaser 3 was write about a character who makes a friend that makes them peaceful (This can include feeling peaceful or curbing their violent tendencies). Bonus points for incorporating these extra prompts:

1. (emotion) happiness

2. (object) journal

3. (quote) "What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies." - Aristotle

"Tom? We might have a problem."

Tom Riddle looked over at Hermione Granger as they walked to the library together. Classes were finally over for the day, and they frequently studied together before dinner.

"A problem…?"

"Dumbledore suspects something."

Tom gave Hermione an annoyed look.

"Dumbledore always suspects me of something or other," Tom said flatly. "He's always had it out for me."

"That doesn't mean you shouldn't be careful," Hermione shot back, and Tom rolled his eyes.

"Fine," he groused. "What exactly is he suspicious of me for this time? How fast I managed to turn my pigeon into a pig? For being annoyed when he refused to award points to Slytherin for it?"

Hermione bit her lip.

"I think he's suspicious of how you were laughing when Robards' botched transfiguration squealed and ran around the room, setting fire to Donahue's parchment," she admitted, and Tom started snickering at the memory. The Transfiguration classroom had quickly devolved into chaos, and Tom's amusement at Dumbledore's frantic attempts at restoring order had been obvious.

"He knows I don't like him," Tom dismissed. "Me being pleased at his misery is nothing new."

"But Tom…" Hermione gnawed on her lip. "Has Dumbledore ever seen you laugh before? Like, really, truly laugh, not your polite forced-chuckle?"

Tom stopped short in the hallway, wracking his mind.

"No," he said finally. "He hasn't."

Hermione gave him a pointed look, and Tom sighed.

"Fine," he said admitted. "We might have a problem."

Hermione groused. "That's what I just said."

From what Hermione had told Tom, none of this was supposed to be happening.

Hermione wasn't supposed to be in 1942, for one thing; she'd skipped through time some fifty-five years to reach him, channeling death and magic into an arcane ritual she'd found. She wasn't supposed to find Tom Riddle standing over Myrtle Warren's corpse in the second-floor girl's bathroom, flush with success of creating his first Horcrux. And she wasn't supposed to appear from midair in front of him, staggering and gasping for air before crashing into him, knocking them both to the floor.

And she definitely wasn't supposed to touch his diary and let it suck out the torn part of her soul.

Hermione hadn't expected her soul to be torn, she'd primly informed him. She hadn't realized that murder of an innocent caused soul tears, and she hadn't realized that Avada Kedavra-ing a defenseless man, no matter how evil, would count as murder of an innocent.

She hadn't expected the screaming, howling pain in her midsection that seared through her after the green light had hit, the horrid ache of something wrong boiling inside of her as she spun through time and space. She'd shuddered as she described it, and Tom had winced. She'd described it fairly aptly — Tom had just torn his soul, too.

Tom had just finished creating his Horcrux when Hermione had appeared. The ritual was still active, his soul piece settling into place within the pages of his journal, and then Hermione had come spilling out of the air, carrying another freshly-torn piece of soul with her as she crashed into him…

And the next thing he knew, there was a distinct sensation of someone settling down next to him, inside of him, and his Horcrux was now home to two souls.

His first instinct, upon learning what had happened, had been to kill her. Hermione had dodged with skill, yelling at him to calm down, there was already one dead body at his feet, and he'd just felt her make a Horcrux, so it wasn't like he could properly kill her anyway, was it?

They'd both fled from the bathroom at that point. Hermione had dragged him up to the seventh floor and into a mysterious room that appeared from nowhere to hide until Myrtle's body was found.

Tom had been enraged, to have to deal with this woman appearing from nowhere, acting like she knew everything about him. She'd hidden in the Room of Requirement, as she called it, for weeks, until Hogwarts had let out for the summer and Tom had successfully deflected blame for the incident onto that oaf, Rubeus Hagrid.

She was very swotty, and very sure of herself. It would be completely insufferable, except for the fact that she was always right.

When she had reappeared at the beginning of his sixth year, posing as a transfer student from Beauxbaton, on the run from Grindelwald, old Armando Dippet hadn't batted an eye at another war refugee student. The Sorting Hat had called out "Slytherin," and Hermione had taken the seat next to him at the welcoming feast.

And that had been that.

They had been inseparable ever since.

"The idea that Dumbledore suspects me of misdeeds simply because I laughed is absurd," Tom argued. "Everyone laughs."

"Normal people laugh, Tom," Hermione pointed out. "You're not exactly normal, are you?"

"I'll have you know I'm perfectly-"

"Normal people don't respond to the news of 'the Headmaster suspects you' with 'we could poison his lemon drops' as their first reaction," Hermione said pointedly. "Normal people aren't evil psychopaths."

"Sociopath," Tom corrected, and Hermione waved him off.

"Doesn't matter. Most people have emotions, Tom — happiness, sadness, anger, joy, regret, love, the whole gamut. But you've only had a limited range of emotions the entire time Dumbledore's known you."

"I've had emotions," Tom objected. "Annoyance, disgust, ambition, satisfaction, hatred, anger, contempt-"

"Had you ever felt happiness before I arrived?" Hermione interrupted. "Had you ever genuinely laughed because something made you feel joy?"

Tom considered carefully.

"…no," he admitted. "I hadn't."

Hermione groaned, tugging on her hair.

"Dumbledore is going to know," she moaned. "He's going to figure out that your soul mixed with mine, and that's why all of the sudden you're feeling emotions you've never felt before. He'll just know it."

"He will not," Tom said, annoyed. "If anything, he should be glad that I'm becoming more 'well-adjusted' now. And I like feeling happiness. It's…"

He trailed off. It was hard to describe how "being happy" made him feel. When he'd watched Leogrand Selwyn get detention in Potions, he'd felt this floaty, airy sensation like bubbles of joy floating through him. He'd had to ask Hermione what was wrong with him, only to have her explain the concept of "happiness" to him.

The fact that he'd felt it at someone else's misery was another thing entirely. He might not be a complete emotionless sociopath anymore, but he was still evil.

Feeling so many emotions was a new experience to him. With their shared Horcrux, it was as if part of Hermione's personality had integrated itself into him. Tom was holding out hope that part of his personality would gradually integrate itself into Hermione, making her accept his more violent tendencies.

"He's also got to be suspicious of the fact that we're always together, too," Hermione said. She gave him a sideways look. "I'm guessing you never had a real friend in Hogwarts before now?"

"What is a friend, but a single soul dwelling in two bodies?" Tom quoted, and Hermione made a face.

"It's more like two souls dwelling in one body," she corrected.

"I was quoting Aristotle." Tom rolled his eyes. "You have no sense of poetry or romance."

"It's inaccurate," Hermione said, dismissive. "Both our soul fragments are in the one body of the diary. Speaking of which, that diary–"

"My journal," Tom hissed. "Would you stop calling it a diary like I'm some whiny preteen girl?"

"—is further evidence against us," Hermione finished. She gave him a look. "You carry it everywhere with you, Tom. I'm sure Dumbledore has noticed by now."

Tom shifted, uncomfortable. The truth was, he knew he didn't need to keep his Horcrux on him all the time. He knew it'd be safer hidden away under strong protections. He knew this…

…but he liked having it nearby.

There was something nice about it being close. If he put his hand on it, he could faintly feel the piece of his soul in the diary bumping up against the piece of Hermione's soul, the two resting and nuzzling into each other; two separate things, immiscible, but still flowing through each other each other freely. And it was nice. It was a peaceful feeling, one that made Tom feel things, nice things, and it was harder to feel those new wordless things with his Horcrux locked away.

"I don't care," Tom said. "If Dumbledore's already suspicious of the journal at this point, it's safer with me. He'd probably send House Elves after it if I left it in the dormitory."

Hermione sighed, and Tom restrained the urge to reach out and pat her on the shoulder.

"So Dumbledore suspects me of… something. Us, of something, really," Tom summarized. "He already has his suspicions, at this point. The question is — what are we going to do about it?"

"That's the question, isn't it?" Hermione twirled a quill in her hand. "I suppose we should brainstorm."

She wrote Ideas in script at the top of a piece of parchment.

"Put down poison first," Tom said. "I still hold that's a good idea."

"I'm not going to put down murdering the Headmaster as a viable idea, Tom-"

"Poisoning isn't really like murder," Tom objected. "It's not like I'm suggesting we go charging into Dumbledore's study throwing around Avada's." He paused. "Though, with two of us, that might not be all that out of the question. Put that one down next."

Hermione groaned, letting her head thunk heavily onto the table in front of her. Tom's eyes widened, and he looked at her.

"…Hermione?"

Hermione didn't say anything.

"Hermione?" He tapped her shoulder. "Hermione?"

"What?" Hermione snapped, rearing back in her seat, and her sudden venom caught Tom off-guard. "Can't I have just one second where I don't have to act as your personal handler to curb your violent tendencies?"

Tom felt struck, a sharp bolt of pain to his heart. It was a new feeling — he'd been getting a lot of them recently, the more time he spent with Hermione — but he didn't like this one. This one hurt.

"I just wanted to make sure you were alright," he said quietly. "I didn't know you were resting. I just saw you hit your head on the table."

Hermione's face softened, and Tom felt bolstered by her reaction.

"Let's analyze this, then," Tom offered. "What are the outcomes from Dumbledore's suspicion that we're wary of?"

"That he'll realize we have a Horcrux," Hermione said immediately. "If he learns of the Horcrux, he could have us both expelled and thrown out of school."

"Are you more afraid of him learning we keep parts of our souls in my journal, or of being expelled?" Tom asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Being expelled," Hermione said promptly, and Tom smirked. Hermione rolled her eyes but grinned back at him. A minute later had Tom and Hermione both laughing quietly, smiling. Tom felt oddly free.

"If the worry is Dumbledore suspecting us, we could give him another motive to suspect behind our actions," Tom suggested, "so he'd attribute all his evidence to the wrong conclusion."

"Like what?" Hermione moaned. "What is going to make him think you had a sudden, fundamental shift in demeanor and personality that's somehow tangled up in my mysterious appearance, and have him not think-"

"Love," Tom said quickly, and Hermione's eyes darted up to his, astonished. "If Dumbledore thinks that we're in love with each other, he'll attribute me laughing and being happy to it. It'd also explain why we're inseparable."

Hermione gave him a slow, evaluating look. "…and the diary?"

"Clearly I'd want to make sure no one could read my innermost embarrassing thoughts," Tom said, his throat dry. "I imagine I'd want to protect such incriminating evidence of me having any tender affections with my life."

Hermione laughed, and her eyes danced with amusement. Tom felt a small smile on his own lips echo in response.

"That might actually work," Hermione admitted. "Dumbledore… Dumbledore has many opinions on 'love conquering all'."

"See?" Tom said, touching her elbow gently. "There's no need to panic. We've got it all under control."

"I wasn't panicking. I was worrying." Hermione gave him a haughty look. "There's a difference."

Tom rolled his eyes but inclined his head, acknowledging her point.

"And I'm still worried, Tom," she carried on. "I mean, do you have even the slightest idea how to behave as if you're in love with someone?"

Tom hesitated.

"…I hadn't thought of that," he said.

Hermione gave him an evaluating look.

"No," she sighed. "I thought not."

Her face fell again, and Tom felt something squeeze in his throat at the sight, a physical discomfort at the display of her emotion.

"Help me, then, Hermione," he urged. "If I don't know what it's like, I won't be able to fake it with any degree of sincerity. What's being in love like?"

Hermione looked thoughtful, her expression growing wistful.

"It's… it's like the world shifts on its axis," she said. "It's a feeling of great emotion, similar to happiness or joy, but much more powerful, and suddenly, you find your world revolves entirely around this person. You want to be around them all the time, and you enjoy life most with them at your side."

Hermione sighed softly, looking off into space. Tom gave Hermione a funny look.

"Hermione," he said slowly, and she looked back to him. "How's that any different than how we are now?"

Hermione's eyes widened in alarm.

"Wait, what?"

"Surely you know by this point that our worlds orbit each other," Tom said reasonably. "I know you can't stand the imbeciles at this school any easier than I do, and we enjoy each other's company more than anyone else's. We spend our lives at each other's side from dawn to dusk."

"I think you're missing the depth of the emotion involved," Hermione objected. "When you're in love, everything your beloved does or says takes on great significance to you. You care what they think and what they say, and the slightest word of disparagement or encouragement can send you into deep depression or soaring joy at the drop of a hat."

Tom considered this. "Like when you called me a megalomaniac with delusions of grandeur and I sulked for a week?" he offered. "Or when I told you your dueling was exceptional, and you glowed and floated around in happiness the rest of the day?"

Hermione's face flushed.

"That's… different," she said hotly. "With love, there's generally an element of physical desire. Wanting to be close to each other, to hold hands, to kiss, that sort of thing."

"I've never kissed anyone," Tom remarked. "How would I know if I want to kiss you or not if I've never tried it before?"

Hermione was gaping at him now, her mouth making unattractive little fish noises, and Tom felt his lips curl upwards in amusement.

"I'm going to kiss you now, Hermione," he warned her, and her eyes fluttered closed as he swooped in to capture her lips with his.

The kiss itself was fine, Tom supposed — her lips were soft, moving against his, and the physical movements kissing were nice and non-offensive, he supposed. But the rest of it — the way his chest warmed as she kissed him back, the surge of pride as she relaxed into him, her hand coming up to rest on his cheek, and the sudden feeling of molten fire rushing through his veins…

Hermione broke away, short of breath, and Tom smugly noticed her eyes were a bit glassy.

"…fine," she conceded. "We… we'll be able to pull off that we're… that we're at least dating, I think."

Hermione seemed to skirt around the idea of them being in love with each other. That would bear further exploration later.

"We'll present ourselves as dating, then," Tom said, nodding seriously. He stood, offering her his hand. "And we'll begin with me escorting you to dinner."

Hermione gave him a look but took his hand regardless, standing smoothly.

"You escort me to dinner every day," she complained.

Tom smirked. "Exactly."

This time, Tom kept her hand, holding it on his arm as they left the library, escorting her more formally. Hermione looked surprised, but she squeezed his bicep under his hand, and Tom felt a flood of warmth at the gesture.

"I don't think I'll mind being your paramour," he told her. "Do I need to do certain things? Give you kisses?" He warmed to the topic. "Do I present you with romantic gifts?"

"On occasion," Hermione said cautiously. "Like what?"

"Antonin's head, for one," he said promptly. "I know you don't like him, Hermione."

Hermione laughed freely and openly at that, and Tom watched her. Her laughter was charming, and she patted his arm ruefully when she was done.

"I suppose as your girlfriend, I'm supposed to give you a different outlet for your more volatile urges, aren't I?" she mused. "Or do dating teens not do that in this day and age?"

Their entrance to the Great Hall saw Tom laughing and Hermione blushing but smiling, and even with Dumbledore's open suspicion written across his face, Tom couldn't bring himself to care.