Categories > Books > Harry Potter > The Wishing Well
Author’s Note: Thank you to all of my lovely readers and reviewers! You guys are excellent as always. I hope you enjoy this chapter!
Disclaimer: I do not own anything you recognize, druids included. I’m also making no money whatsoever off of this and no copyright infringement is intended.
The Wishing Well
Plan A
}{}{}{
Bloody witch. She didn’t have a single ounce of decorum, did she? She left her dirty teacup behind without casting, at least, a simple washing-up charm. Didn’t she realize that he had to wash dishes by hand?
He may have been her prisoner, but he was not her ruddy elf.
Tom turned his gaze on the cup in question, narrowing his eyes and focusing. Not fire. Unless the teacup was transfigured from a rat, it would never catch fire – he learned that quickly in second year Transfiguration. Avery’s rat spent two weeks under the care of Professor Kettleburn in the aftermath.
Explosion. It had to be an explosion of glass – all over the place.
With a clink, a tiny shard of glass chipped away from the cup and he ground his teeth together in annoyance, redoubling his focus. It was a tiny cup – it honestly couldn’t take that much power to break it.
His hands balled into fists at his sides.
Reducto.
Reducto.
Blasted little… Reducto!
Break, you bloody teacup!
The glass quickly shattered and he straightened his shoulders with a satisfied grin pressing across his lips. That would show her not to clean up after herself.
Granted, it was a rather weak effort; but, if he had his wand… she would’ve never left without doing her own washing-up again. She would have never left – period. Not while she was still breathing, anyway.
Looking around the kitchen, he realized that his spell had done a bit more damage than he thought. The stack of bowls sitting by the sink had crumbled into jagged pieces. A slightly concerned frown etched over his face and he opened the cupboard.
Damnit.
The plates were crumbled as well; the water glasses were reduced to miniscule shards and all of the bloody teacups were dust. The only things that remained unscathed by his spell were the pots and pans, which were metal. It seemed as if everything made of glass in his vicinity had shattered.
His eyes widening, Tom hurried to the magical icebox and relaxed, noting that the jam jars – the gherkins – and other glass pots of condiments and food were just fine. That would have been a mess to clean up.
The bright side was that there were fewer dishes to wash now. Nevertheless, there were no cups to drink out of. Well… there was that unsightly-looking vase in the bedroom area that might have been left intact. It would have to make a suitable drinking vessel until she came back and repaired all of the dishes.
Hopefully she wore the locket next time too.
If he could succeed in getting it from her, as well as her wand, he was going to make sure her death was put to good use with that locket.
Of course, that was if his plan would work. If it didn’t, his tentative Plan B was trading what she wanted for the locket. Unfortunately, that was dependent upon her acquiescence, and she didn’t seem too keen on making the deal. What could that witch possibly want from him that wasn’t a fair trade for the locket?
Money? Power? Slavery? Sex? Ancient blood ritual, perhaps?
He wouldn’t have put her above any of those options. She was a goat-sacrificing witch who consorted with ancient druids. She had said it herself. However, he drew the line at ancient blood ritual. The results of those rituals were both unsightly and unappealing – and possibly torturous.
He shouldn’t have revealed that he was a parselmouth. That was a mistake. Ancient blood rituals were lent increased power and an edge of dark magic when parselmouths were utilized. It was always for nefarious means. But didn’t she say that she knew of other parselmouths? How curious. He was the only parselmouth he knew of aside from dear old Uncle Morfin.
Perhaps his guess about Uncle Morfin was correct. She possibly knew him, could have had wards there that alerted of his break-in, and that must have been why she showed up at the Riddle Mansion at the worst possible time.
However, she could have also been well-travelled. She carried her life around in that expanded beaded bag. It was possible that she had met another parselmouth on these travels. Regardless, that didn’t explain her sudden appearance at the Riddle Mansion.
After gathering the few supplies he had collected and stored in the cabinet under the bathroom sink, Tom ambled over to the well-warded tent flap to start work on Plan A. He wasn’t going to be caught unprepared by her again and he sat down on the grubby floor to focus all of his magic into the task.
Tom’s brows furrowed when he couldn’t get any sort of desired response from his magic or the materials, save for a slight wobble from the string. It must have been the calibre of the spells he needed – things like fire and blowing things up were simple, but this was more advanced. If the tent flap wasn’t so well-warded and if the blasted leash was longer, he would have been out foraging for wand parts so his magic had some sort of rudimentary channel.
Wait!
Was he not surrounded by wood? What were the cabinets made out of? And the floor looked like… oak? Unfortunately, he’d also need a bit of something extra – something magical; a puffskein would do – to make it work a little more properly.
Maybe it would be easier to just chance it all on his unstable wandless magic.
But he was not to be deterred. She took a day and a half to return to him last time. Just in case she returned sooner than expected, he set up Plan A using Muggle means, even if it pained him to do so. His magic currently wasn’t cooperating – for whatever reason.
Crouching over his work, he tugged at his leash and lifted the tent flap, feeling the wards buzz violently in his hands. His fingers shook, struggling against the wards to hold the flap up. Mustering the loudest voice he could manage in parseltongue and trying to enhance it with his magic, he called for them.
He needed a little help and, hopefully, whoever showed up would be useful.
}{}{}{
She needed a few materials.
It was in the middle of the night and she had told Harry and Ron that the nighttime watch posts were starting to turn her nocturnal, so it was only logical that she would take them all. And, right now, she required some glass, a bit of iron, copper or bronze, and a few other bits and bobs. The materials didn’t have to be anything special or magical. When The Traveller’s Secrets was written, hundreds of years ago, they didn’t have shops where they could buy pre-charmed magical items. Witches and wizards had to create their magical devices from raw Muggle materials, which were exactly what was required.
Waving her wand at the door to a small hardware store in the nearest town, she unlocked it and entered under the duplicated invisibility cloak that she had found in her replicated beaded bag. Divitiacus’ handiwork was bloody impressive; the cloak was a perfect facsimile.
She rooted through the store, uncertain if she needed to go to an art supply shop to get everything she required. Outside of her home town of Oxford, she had no idea where she would find one. And, the last time she looked, there were Snatchers crawling all over the Oxford area, probably searching for her or her parents.
Upon finding the last item on her list – a small pane of glass – Hermione emerged from the shop triumphant, locking the door behind her. She was one step closer to ridding herself of this entire mess. Shoving her bag of goodies into her replicated beaded bag, she stalked into a nearby alleyway to disapparate.
While she was out, she figured she’d go check on the wards around Riddle’s tent. Her illusion was doing its job back with Harry and Ron and it definitely wasn’t good leave Riddle alone for too long, lest he started getting up to trouble.
That reminded her of the monitoring device that she had yet to make. It was an idea that struck her this morning while she was eating breakfast and listening to the Wizarding Wireless. An advert about new book on babysitting charms came on and everything clicked. Unfortunately, baby monitors didn’t have any sort of decent range or she would have jumped on using one immediately.
No, this monitoring device called for something more timeless and magical – she couldn’t use anything Muggle. That would be too dangerous.
A short apparation trip later, Hermione landed in front of the invisible Riddle tent, walking through the barriers of her wards with ease. Her wand was clutched tightly in her hand and she waved her wand at her spellwork to allow her to pass through.
Good, nothing seemed to be tampered with.
She could hear him moving around inside, humming a merry tune, which made her a bit suspicious and caused her to pause at the tent flap. Did he get off the leash? Was that why he was humming… happily? She knew she should have used Mordred’s method for Guinevere’s Curse...
Prepared to cast an immediate incarcerous, she moved forward, lifting the tent flap and glancing around warily.
Riddle was at the kitchen sink, washing out a pan. The humming abruptly stopped when he spotted her and he asked, “Have you finally made a decision on our deal?” Drying his hands off on a dish towel, he continued, “Or are you just here to bring me more tea?”
Everything seemed to be fine…
He stepped around the kitchen island and Hermione breathed an internal sigh of relief. The leash was still attached. However, that didn’t make him any less dangerous and she kept her wand at the ready, stepping forward into the tent.
Big mistake.
She didn’t even see it coming and she should have known – he was happy for a good reason!
One step inside Riddle’s tent, Hermione felt the sudden sensation of weightlessness as the floor opened up beneath her, dragging her down. She landed harshly, splashing into a large pool of muddy water that came up to her elbows, right where the hole in the floor ended.
Her shoes stuck to the mucky bottom of the hole in the ground – sinking her lower – and, in her shock, she barely had time to think. Riddle grabbed hold of one end of her wand and she clutched at the handle for dear life, yanking it away from him and quickly tossing it out the flap of the tent.
Her eyes narrowed as she glared at him and his jaw clenched in barely contained fury. Her wards and spellwork on the tent flap allowed her to get in and out, but they wouldn’t let him out. For good measure, she threw her beaded bag out there as well.
Now it was just him and her.
One on one.
Then, Riddle surprised her by laughing mockingly, staring down at her with an ominous glint in his eyes.
“You do realize that you’re standing in water, right?” he said, his tone victorious.
Oh, fuck – elements!
Hermione’s eyes widened and she scrabbled out of the hole as quick as she could. Fire nipped at her, scorching the bottoms of her shoes and imbuing the tent with the smell of burnt rubber.
Water, fire, air, and earth were the easiest things for wizards to control wandlessly – and that unfortunately included wandless elemental transfiguration. In Riddle’s case – water to fire.
Bastard.
Her shoes were off in a flash and heat travelled up her trousers as she stripped the burning rags off in rapid succession, throwing them into the inferno that was previously a hole in the floor filled with water. The skin on her legs was tender and tingly, reddened from being slightly burned. She winced just looking at them.
Ow.
Her head furiously snapped up as Riddle took a menacing step toward her, his hands reaching for her shoulders to grab hold.
With an angry growl, Hermione threw herself at him, her fingers flying to his neck as she leapt on top of him and drug him down to the ground. They landed with a thud, limbs twisted around each other awkwardly. His hand dug into her hair, painfully pulling her head back while his other hand tried to loosen her grip at his neck. She could feel him swallow and choke under her palms and she kicked her legs out at him as he rolled her over onto her back. His knees dug into her hip and her thigh, bruising her with his weight, but she kept her grip tight around his neck.
“I’ll choke you to death if you don’t let me go this second,” she threatened, squeezing around his throat and digging her fingers in.
Riddle snarled, his hands moving to her wrists and wrenching them away. Her nails left shallow gouges across the surface of his skin and her wrists twisted painfully in his grip. He pinned them down beside her head, and the impact of the hard wooden floor on the back of her arms made her cry out.
“Look at me,” Riddle demanded, moving his face closer to hers.
Hermione squeezed her eyes shut, struggling and trying to buck up underneath him to get some sort of leverage to break free. It hurt to try – everything hurt. His bruising knees, the feel of his rough trousers against her burnt skin, his grip at her wrists, the splinters in the backs of her arms… But she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of opening her eyes.
“You can’t keep them shut the entire time,” she heard him say. His breath ghosted over her face.
“Yes, I can,” she spat. “I know what you want to do and I won’t allow it.”
Even though she was able to break out of his wandless Legilimency before, she wasn’t going to chance it. There was too much riding on the information she had inside her head.
“Then maybe it’s time you’ve met my new friend,” Riddle replied chillingly and she could hear the devious smirk in his voice. Her heart pounded in her chest as he unleashed a stream of parseltongue and she hoped to bloody Merlin that – whatever it was – it wasn’t poisonous.
But that was his plan, wasn’t it? She wouldn’t know if it was poisonous or not unless she opened her eyes to see it and she wasn’t going to do that.
After all, he couldn’t kill her – if he did, he would never get off the leash. That was the only hope she had as she felt the characteristic slithering form of a snake cross over her chest and curl its tail along her neck. It seemed small-ish, but – for the life of her – she couldn’t remember how big adders got in order to judge. They were in an area where it was technically possible to find adders, so she didn’t rule it out.
“This is Belka. Belka, meet –” Riddle paused. “I’m sorry, what was your name again?”
Hermione snorted, trying to twist her hip underneath him to relieve the pressure on her hipbone. “You won’t be able to fool me that easily.”
“We’ll refer to you as ‘Bird’s Nest’ then, shall we?”
Grinding her teeth in annoyance, she itched to roll her eyes. He just had to make a disparaging remark at her hair.
Riddle hissed at the snake, the language flowing from him like a stream of water. The snake’s response was light and almost tinkling in its quality. “Belka finds your name funny.”
Hermione wanted to scoff at the entire situation. How could she be so stupid as to think that this would work? She should have known that all this was going to go bloody pear shaped sooner or later. Why did she have to go and throw her wand out of the tent like an idiot?
Oh, bloody hell – if the snake could get inside the tent then it could likely get out – possibly to get her wand!
Could smaller snakes carry things? Was that… possible? She hoped not.
“It’s really too bad,” Riddle continued conversationally, speaking slowly. “She’s a gorgeous snake – such lovely markings. If only you had your eyes open, you could see. They’re very distinct.”
“Almost all snakes have distinctive markings,” Hermione countered haughtily. “And it’s not as if you would let her kill me – you’re still leashed.”
“Astute observation, but I never said that Belka was venomous. She could be or she couldn’t be – how about I tell her to bite you so you can find out? I could always draw it out of you before it does too much damage,” Riddle drawled, seemingly at ease even though his grip on her was shaking from the strain of holding against her struggles.
“How?” She wanted to point out that he didn’t have a wand, but that would have been a bad idea. There was perfectly good wand sitting outside of the tent and Riddle possibly had a personal fetch-snake.
Trying to hold open her eyes a scant millimeter to glance at the snake through her lashes, all she could see was a blurry outline that didn’t help much.
“It’s not as if I haven’t done it before,” he answered smoothly. “My very magic is entwined with these creatures; it’s in my blood. I can control every aspect attached to any snake, including the venom.”
Merlin, he was full of himself.
Her struggling and twisting beneath him was making her tired, compounded with the pain of it all. Relaxing her limbs for a moment to recover, she cleared her mind so she could think straight. There was no situation that a bit of logic couldn’t get her out of. She reasoned that it was unlikely that she would break free from him by struggling, that much was obvious. Riddle was stronger than her. She had to be smarter than that – she simply had to bide her time and wait for the opportune moment to escape.
‘Well that’s easy to do with your eyes closed,’ her mind dryly remarked.
Bloody Riddle and his bloody Legilimency.
She reasoned that she also had to remain calm – especially if he made the snake bite her. It would take longer for the poison to affect her if she didn’t panic.
She heard a whispered spell, murmured under Riddle’s breath, sounding a lot like a summoning charm. Her brows furrowed in confusion. No, he couldn’t summon her wand – the tent flap was warded too strongly to summon things through them. However, her pondering over what he summoned was short-lived as her wrists were forced into a new position and she felt ropes start to wind themselves around the bruised joints.
Fuck.
This was decidedly worse.
}{}{}{
Author’s Note: Thank you for reading!
Disclaimer: I do not own anything you recognize, druids included. I’m also making no money whatsoever off of this and no copyright infringement is intended.
The Wishing Well
Plan A
}{}{}{
Bloody witch. She didn’t have a single ounce of decorum, did she? She left her dirty teacup behind without casting, at least, a simple washing-up charm. Didn’t she realize that he had to wash dishes by hand?
He may have been her prisoner, but he was not her ruddy elf.
Tom turned his gaze on the cup in question, narrowing his eyes and focusing. Not fire. Unless the teacup was transfigured from a rat, it would never catch fire – he learned that quickly in second year Transfiguration. Avery’s rat spent two weeks under the care of Professor Kettleburn in the aftermath.
Explosion. It had to be an explosion of glass – all over the place.
With a clink, a tiny shard of glass chipped away from the cup and he ground his teeth together in annoyance, redoubling his focus. It was a tiny cup – it honestly couldn’t take that much power to break it.
His hands balled into fists at his sides.
Reducto.
Reducto.
Blasted little… Reducto!
Break, you bloody teacup!
The glass quickly shattered and he straightened his shoulders with a satisfied grin pressing across his lips. That would show her not to clean up after herself.
Granted, it was a rather weak effort; but, if he had his wand… she would’ve never left without doing her own washing-up again. She would have never left – period. Not while she was still breathing, anyway.
Looking around the kitchen, he realized that his spell had done a bit more damage than he thought. The stack of bowls sitting by the sink had crumbled into jagged pieces. A slightly concerned frown etched over his face and he opened the cupboard.
Damnit.
The plates were crumbled as well; the water glasses were reduced to miniscule shards and all of the bloody teacups were dust. The only things that remained unscathed by his spell were the pots and pans, which were metal. It seemed as if everything made of glass in his vicinity had shattered.
His eyes widening, Tom hurried to the magical icebox and relaxed, noting that the jam jars – the gherkins – and other glass pots of condiments and food were just fine. That would have been a mess to clean up.
The bright side was that there were fewer dishes to wash now. Nevertheless, there were no cups to drink out of. Well… there was that unsightly-looking vase in the bedroom area that might have been left intact. It would have to make a suitable drinking vessel until she came back and repaired all of the dishes.
Hopefully she wore the locket next time too.
If he could succeed in getting it from her, as well as her wand, he was going to make sure her death was put to good use with that locket.
Of course, that was if his plan would work. If it didn’t, his tentative Plan B was trading what she wanted for the locket. Unfortunately, that was dependent upon her acquiescence, and she didn’t seem too keen on making the deal. What could that witch possibly want from him that wasn’t a fair trade for the locket?
Money? Power? Slavery? Sex? Ancient blood ritual, perhaps?
He wouldn’t have put her above any of those options. She was a goat-sacrificing witch who consorted with ancient druids. She had said it herself. However, he drew the line at ancient blood ritual. The results of those rituals were both unsightly and unappealing – and possibly torturous.
He shouldn’t have revealed that he was a parselmouth. That was a mistake. Ancient blood rituals were lent increased power and an edge of dark magic when parselmouths were utilized. It was always for nefarious means. But didn’t she say that she knew of other parselmouths? How curious. He was the only parselmouth he knew of aside from dear old Uncle Morfin.
Perhaps his guess about Uncle Morfin was correct. She possibly knew him, could have had wards there that alerted of his break-in, and that must have been why she showed up at the Riddle Mansion at the worst possible time.
However, she could have also been well-travelled. She carried her life around in that expanded beaded bag. It was possible that she had met another parselmouth on these travels. Regardless, that didn’t explain her sudden appearance at the Riddle Mansion.
After gathering the few supplies he had collected and stored in the cabinet under the bathroom sink, Tom ambled over to the well-warded tent flap to start work on Plan A. He wasn’t going to be caught unprepared by her again and he sat down on the grubby floor to focus all of his magic into the task.
Tom’s brows furrowed when he couldn’t get any sort of desired response from his magic or the materials, save for a slight wobble from the string. It must have been the calibre of the spells he needed – things like fire and blowing things up were simple, but this was more advanced. If the tent flap wasn’t so well-warded and if the blasted leash was longer, he would have been out foraging for wand parts so his magic had some sort of rudimentary channel.
Wait!
Was he not surrounded by wood? What were the cabinets made out of? And the floor looked like… oak? Unfortunately, he’d also need a bit of something extra – something magical; a puffskein would do – to make it work a little more properly.
Maybe it would be easier to just chance it all on his unstable wandless magic.
But he was not to be deterred. She took a day and a half to return to him last time. Just in case she returned sooner than expected, he set up Plan A using Muggle means, even if it pained him to do so. His magic currently wasn’t cooperating – for whatever reason.
Crouching over his work, he tugged at his leash and lifted the tent flap, feeling the wards buzz violently in his hands. His fingers shook, struggling against the wards to hold the flap up. Mustering the loudest voice he could manage in parseltongue and trying to enhance it with his magic, he called for them.
He needed a little help and, hopefully, whoever showed up would be useful.
}{}{}{
She needed a few materials.
It was in the middle of the night and she had told Harry and Ron that the nighttime watch posts were starting to turn her nocturnal, so it was only logical that she would take them all. And, right now, she required some glass, a bit of iron, copper or bronze, and a few other bits and bobs. The materials didn’t have to be anything special or magical. When The Traveller’s Secrets was written, hundreds of years ago, they didn’t have shops where they could buy pre-charmed magical items. Witches and wizards had to create their magical devices from raw Muggle materials, which were exactly what was required.
Waving her wand at the door to a small hardware store in the nearest town, she unlocked it and entered under the duplicated invisibility cloak that she had found in her replicated beaded bag. Divitiacus’ handiwork was bloody impressive; the cloak was a perfect facsimile.
She rooted through the store, uncertain if she needed to go to an art supply shop to get everything she required. Outside of her home town of Oxford, she had no idea where she would find one. And, the last time she looked, there were Snatchers crawling all over the Oxford area, probably searching for her or her parents.
Upon finding the last item on her list – a small pane of glass – Hermione emerged from the shop triumphant, locking the door behind her. She was one step closer to ridding herself of this entire mess. Shoving her bag of goodies into her replicated beaded bag, she stalked into a nearby alleyway to disapparate.
While she was out, she figured she’d go check on the wards around Riddle’s tent. Her illusion was doing its job back with Harry and Ron and it definitely wasn’t good leave Riddle alone for too long, lest he started getting up to trouble.
That reminded her of the monitoring device that she had yet to make. It was an idea that struck her this morning while she was eating breakfast and listening to the Wizarding Wireless. An advert about new book on babysitting charms came on and everything clicked. Unfortunately, baby monitors didn’t have any sort of decent range or she would have jumped on using one immediately.
No, this monitoring device called for something more timeless and magical – she couldn’t use anything Muggle. That would be too dangerous.
A short apparation trip later, Hermione landed in front of the invisible Riddle tent, walking through the barriers of her wards with ease. Her wand was clutched tightly in her hand and she waved her wand at her spellwork to allow her to pass through.
Good, nothing seemed to be tampered with.
She could hear him moving around inside, humming a merry tune, which made her a bit suspicious and caused her to pause at the tent flap. Did he get off the leash? Was that why he was humming… happily? She knew she should have used Mordred’s method for Guinevere’s Curse...
Prepared to cast an immediate incarcerous, she moved forward, lifting the tent flap and glancing around warily.
Riddle was at the kitchen sink, washing out a pan. The humming abruptly stopped when he spotted her and he asked, “Have you finally made a decision on our deal?” Drying his hands off on a dish towel, he continued, “Or are you just here to bring me more tea?”
Everything seemed to be fine…
He stepped around the kitchen island and Hermione breathed an internal sigh of relief. The leash was still attached. However, that didn’t make him any less dangerous and she kept her wand at the ready, stepping forward into the tent.
Big mistake.
She didn’t even see it coming and she should have known – he was happy for a good reason!
One step inside Riddle’s tent, Hermione felt the sudden sensation of weightlessness as the floor opened up beneath her, dragging her down. She landed harshly, splashing into a large pool of muddy water that came up to her elbows, right where the hole in the floor ended.
Her shoes stuck to the mucky bottom of the hole in the ground – sinking her lower – and, in her shock, she barely had time to think. Riddle grabbed hold of one end of her wand and she clutched at the handle for dear life, yanking it away from him and quickly tossing it out the flap of the tent.
Her eyes narrowed as she glared at him and his jaw clenched in barely contained fury. Her wards and spellwork on the tent flap allowed her to get in and out, but they wouldn’t let him out. For good measure, she threw her beaded bag out there as well.
Now it was just him and her.
One on one.
Then, Riddle surprised her by laughing mockingly, staring down at her with an ominous glint in his eyes.
“You do realize that you’re standing in water, right?” he said, his tone victorious.
Oh, fuck – elements!
Hermione’s eyes widened and she scrabbled out of the hole as quick as she could. Fire nipped at her, scorching the bottoms of her shoes and imbuing the tent with the smell of burnt rubber.
Water, fire, air, and earth were the easiest things for wizards to control wandlessly – and that unfortunately included wandless elemental transfiguration. In Riddle’s case – water to fire.
Bastard.
Her shoes were off in a flash and heat travelled up her trousers as she stripped the burning rags off in rapid succession, throwing them into the inferno that was previously a hole in the floor filled with water. The skin on her legs was tender and tingly, reddened from being slightly burned. She winced just looking at them.
Ow.
Her head furiously snapped up as Riddle took a menacing step toward her, his hands reaching for her shoulders to grab hold.
With an angry growl, Hermione threw herself at him, her fingers flying to his neck as she leapt on top of him and drug him down to the ground. They landed with a thud, limbs twisted around each other awkwardly. His hand dug into her hair, painfully pulling her head back while his other hand tried to loosen her grip at his neck. She could feel him swallow and choke under her palms and she kicked her legs out at him as he rolled her over onto her back. His knees dug into her hip and her thigh, bruising her with his weight, but she kept her grip tight around his neck.
“I’ll choke you to death if you don’t let me go this second,” she threatened, squeezing around his throat and digging her fingers in.
Riddle snarled, his hands moving to her wrists and wrenching them away. Her nails left shallow gouges across the surface of his skin and her wrists twisted painfully in his grip. He pinned them down beside her head, and the impact of the hard wooden floor on the back of her arms made her cry out.
“Look at me,” Riddle demanded, moving his face closer to hers.
Hermione squeezed her eyes shut, struggling and trying to buck up underneath him to get some sort of leverage to break free. It hurt to try – everything hurt. His bruising knees, the feel of his rough trousers against her burnt skin, his grip at her wrists, the splinters in the backs of her arms… But she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of opening her eyes.
“You can’t keep them shut the entire time,” she heard him say. His breath ghosted over her face.
“Yes, I can,” she spat. “I know what you want to do and I won’t allow it.”
Even though she was able to break out of his wandless Legilimency before, she wasn’t going to chance it. There was too much riding on the information she had inside her head.
“Then maybe it’s time you’ve met my new friend,” Riddle replied chillingly and she could hear the devious smirk in his voice. Her heart pounded in her chest as he unleashed a stream of parseltongue and she hoped to bloody Merlin that – whatever it was – it wasn’t poisonous.
But that was his plan, wasn’t it? She wouldn’t know if it was poisonous or not unless she opened her eyes to see it and she wasn’t going to do that.
After all, he couldn’t kill her – if he did, he would never get off the leash. That was the only hope she had as she felt the characteristic slithering form of a snake cross over her chest and curl its tail along her neck. It seemed small-ish, but – for the life of her – she couldn’t remember how big adders got in order to judge. They were in an area where it was technically possible to find adders, so she didn’t rule it out.
“This is Belka. Belka, meet –” Riddle paused. “I’m sorry, what was your name again?”
Hermione snorted, trying to twist her hip underneath him to relieve the pressure on her hipbone. “You won’t be able to fool me that easily.”
“We’ll refer to you as ‘Bird’s Nest’ then, shall we?”
Grinding her teeth in annoyance, she itched to roll her eyes. He just had to make a disparaging remark at her hair.
Riddle hissed at the snake, the language flowing from him like a stream of water. The snake’s response was light and almost tinkling in its quality. “Belka finds your name funny.”
Hermione wanted to scoff at the entire situation. How could she be so stupid as to think that this would work? She should have known that all this was going to go bloody pear shaped sooner or later. Why did she have to go and throw her wand out of the tent like an idiot?
Oh, bloody hell – if the snake could get inside the tent then it could likely get out – possibly to get her wand!
Could smaller snakes carry things? Was that… possible? She hoped not.
“It’s really too bad,” Riddle continued conversationally, speaking slowly. “She’s a gorgeous snake – such lovely markings. If only you had your eyes open, you could see. They’re very distinct.”
“Almost all snakes have distinctive markings,” Hermione countered haughtily. “And it’s not as if you would let her kill me – you’re still leashed.”
“Astute observation, but I never said that Belka was venomous. She could be or she couldn’t be – how about I tell her to bite you so you can find out? I could always draw it out of you before it does too much damage,” Riddle drawled, seemingly at ease even though his grip on her was shaking from the strain of holding against her struggles.
“How?” She wanted to point out that he didn’t have a wand, but that would have been a bad idea. There was perfectly good wand sitting outside of the tent and Riddle possibly had a personal fetch-snake.
Trying to hold open her eyes a scant millimeter to glance at the snake through her lashes, all she could see was a blurry outline that didn’t help much.
“It’s not as if I haven’t done it before,” he answered smoothly. “My very magic is entwined with these creatures; it’s in my blood. I can control every aspect attached to any snake, including the venom.”
Merlin, he was full of himself.
Her struggling and twisting beneath him was making her tired, compounded with the pain of it all. Relaxing her limbs for a moment to recover, she cleared her mind so she could think straight. There was no situation that a bit of logic couldn’t get her out of. She reasoned that it was unlikely that she would break free from him by struggling, that much was obvious. Riddle was stronger than her. She had to be smarter than that – she simply had to bide her time and wait for the opportune moment to escape.
‘Well that’s easy to do with your eyes closed,’ her mind dryly remarked.
Bloody Riddle and his bloody Legilimency.
She reasoned that she also had to remain calm – especially if he made the snake bite her. It would take longer for the poison to affect her if she didn’t panic.
She heard a whispered spell, murmured under Riddle’s breath, sounding a lot like a summoning charm. Her brows furrowed in confusion. No, he couldn’t summon her wand – the tent flap was warded too strongly to summon things through them. However, her pondering over what he summoned was short-lived as her wrists were forced into a new position and she felt ropes start to wind themselves around the bruised joints.
Fuck.
This was decidedly worse.
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Author’s Note: Thank you for reading!
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