Yes, I just wrote a Tomione one-shot and there's noooothing you can do about it. Boom-shaka-laka.

Inspired by Kelly Clarkson's 'Dark Side.'

Disclamer: I do not own the following characters or the song.

Tom Riddle had never loved.

Deep inside, when he actually thought about it, he didn't know why. Or wait – he did. He had never been loved, ever, even when he was a child, so why should he? His mother died before he could even crawl, his father hated and disowned him and his orphanage shunned him. The only people who 'loved' him were those silly little girls who he charmed for his silent amusement and then crushed them so that they broke into little pieces, scattered all around Hogwarts. He put a lock on their memories, too, so that nobody – not even them – could remember what he did to them. It was a precautionary measure; he didn't want everybody to know about his methods.

He never even expected to love anybody. People were tools to him – toys that he could manipulate and play with until he got tired and threw them away. Discarded them like a broken wand. Girls were only useful when they were from influential families but he could never manage getting information out of girls – they were all too ditzy for his liking. Sure, he enjoyed it when they fawned over him, but that didn't mean they had to act like he was god and listen to everything he said, right?

He had wanted to encounter somebody who had a little fire in themselves, a rebellious streak. As much as he detested people standing up to him, a girl who had the nerve to do that would be desirable. He wanted to collect somebody like that and keep her for his own sanity. Somebody who could counter his intelligence, who fought fiercely, kissed fiercely and was not afraid to love him. Alas, he found no one.

But then she came. Nobody knew where she was from; they didn't know why she had decided to drop in to Hogwarts only for her seventh year and nobody knew why she was so confused here. First, he had been intrigued by her – he wanted to know about her past and what caused her to transfer in her last year. He tried befriending her, but surprisingly, that didn't work. Tom was impressed – he had never met a girl who could resist his friendship. So then he decided to turn up the charm and seduce her. That's when he noticed the fear in her eyes when she looked at her, the slight twitch in her hand, how her hand moved to her wand. That's when he decided that charm wouldn't work and he delved right into her mind.

He wasn't let in. The girl's Occlumency shields were immensely strong; they were strong enough to throw him right out even without and effort. After that encounter she ran from the corridor and ignored him for weeks. He couldn't understand why – he had never faced such resistance from anybody, except maybe Dumbledore. He decided that he did not want to be left in the dark, and hence apologized to her once when he saw her in the library. It was not a meaningful apology – Tom Marvolo Riddle doesn't roll like that – but it was convincing enough to get her to start trusting him a little.

They started talking from that point on. They'd sit together during classes, separate for Lunch, meet again for classes, go to the library for homework and then separate. They'd have debates about everything in the world, from Hitler to Ancient Runes to the weather. Whether Tom's eyes were blue or grey or completely new, as according to her, they always looked different. Obviously, this was always noticed in those intense arguments when Tom would be too close for comfort and both of them would get a strange feeling in them. The girl seemed to disregard that, but Tom always noticed how her eyes would flick to his lips for a second, and his would follow a second after. He also tried picking apart that tingling in her chest, but to no avail.

Finally, she seemed to fall for his charms. She blushed prettily during their intense arguments where they'd be only a centimetre apart and when his hand accidentally brushed hers while he reached out for a potion ingredient. But Tom never noticed that, no – he was too busy trying to figure out why his skin would tingle after a part touched her. Their interactions increased and so did the tingling in Tom's chest. He had many debates with himself at night about what it was. A part of his brain always popped up saying that he finally fancied her. He denied it.

He denied it up until the Christmas Ball.

When he saw her in that floating periwinkle dress that seemed to brighten her skin and give her an angelic aura, when he saw her hair in its tamed and luscious form, when he saw the fake snowflakes settle on her eyelashes, he finally understood. He fancied the mysterious transfer girl. That's when all his paranoid musings started propping up.

What if she discovered his dark side? The fact that he wanted to dominate the world, the fact that he had killed his own father and grand-parents, the fact that he had opened the Chamber of Secrets, releasing a Basilisk that killed a girl. He always felt slightly guilty about it – the girl wasn't even a Mudblood – she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. At a very wrong time. But what if she discovered his secrets? Would she abandon him like everybody else in his life, or would she continue loving him?

Oh yes, she loved him alright, but he couldn't tell. In his thoughts, she fancied him too, but he didn't know she had grown to love him – the man that would have grown up to kill countless. She forgot all about that and loved him unconditionally and was herself shocked when she realised it. But Tom was still in slight denial. Did he love her? Or was he still on the 'fancy' stage. The bigger question was whether she could love him, even with his dark side.

Soon, though, he found out about her. She kept letting things slip involuntarily when they conversed. She had seen war, she had two best friends who died in the war, she had come here to change things but something came in her way. And then finally, that she was a mudblood.

That shocked Tom to no end. Such a talented and bright witch – a lowly mudblood? He had expected to feel anger, resentment and even disgust at fancying a mudblood. But he felt nothing except one thing – acceptance. He seemed to accept that about her and that was when it hit him full force – he had finally fallen for her.

And just weeks after he realised it, she told him she had traveled in time. During one of their fights about her past, she had angrily blurted it out. She had desperately covered her mouth as if that would magically take the words back. But it didn't. Tom Riddle had stood there for a whole minute, trying to take in that the girl he loved, that the only person he had ever loved was a bloody time traveler After this the girl felt that she might as well had told him everything and hence she started from the very beginning.

Tom felt himself go paler and more stunned with every sentence she uttered. But that wasn't it. At the end came her huge confession – that even with knowing his history about what he had done and that he was a murderer she loved him with all her heart and she knew that it was wrong and that she felt that she was betraying her friends- that's when he stopped her and kissed her, effectively shutting her up and relishing the taste of her mouth. That's when he understood that love was a very powerful thing and that somebody had just accepted him for what he was, dark side and all. And that encouraged him to say his feelings out loud too. She kissed him again in return and they went on like this until a teacher caught them. Each got 10 points deducted from Slytherin and Gryffindor, but they couldn't care less.

Hermione Granger had finally changed the future and effectively had gotten her happy ending.

Tom Riddle had finally found somebody he could love who loved him too, who didn't run away, who stayed.

Who loved him with his dark side (which was eventually suppressed by her).

Everybody's got a Dark Side,

Do you love me? Can you love mine?

A/N: MOH YEAH I JUST CONTRIBUTED TO THE SHIP I FEEL GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO