Chapter Text
Her mother says be nice.
Her father says he’s a prodigy.
Hermione says nothing. She sharpens her pencils and organizes her summer reading list in alphabetical order and presses her forehead to the window like she’s looking into a cage. She wonders if this is how Crookshanks feels when he flicks his tail at birds.
The moving van is unremarkable. The little boy it brings to the neighborhood is not.
He has dark hair like a raven. Pale skin and pink cheeks like those porcelain dolls her granny collects. He wears a neatly tailored blazer, though her mother says he’s tutored at home. He’s lovely in a way other little boys are not. She imagines he’s never blown a boogie in someone’s face, or wiped his hands on his trousers after playing in the mud. He stands too still for that, fingers laced in front of him as if he is patiently waiting for something bigger to happen.
Hermione imagines he dreams in another language, speaks like poetry, and knows the name of every constellation. His name is probably something old and aristocratic like Sebastian or Clarence, or maybe Archibald—Archie, once you get to know him.
An older man stands next to him. His mouth opens into a big laugh, it looks as if he is devouring the air. They don’t look alike at all.
The little boy carries something, but she isn’t sure what. Her fingertips turn white as she leans against the glass. Black, white, black, white…
A chessboard.
She wants, more than anything she has ever wanted in her eleven years of life, to know him.
His name is Tom. She likes it better than Archie, decides it suits him better. Simple. Timeless.
He is polite. He is beautiful. He hardly ever smiles. When he does it’s just a tiny shape, a brief uptick of the corners of his mouth. She bets he has perfect teeth. Sharp and white.
On nice days he sits outside on the small wrought iron patio set and plays chess. She passes by him on her way home from school. His fingers hold the pieces delicately. Each move is as natural as a heart beat.
Thump, thump.
Thump, thump.
Thump, thump.
One day she feels particularly bold.
Tom sits on the back step wearing a full suit. He had a tournament that morning, her father said. His shoes are so shiny she can almost see the sky reflected in them. She stands in front of him, an early summer breeze blowing through her hair. She juts out her hand and smiles.
“I’m Hermione. I live there.”
She points, though of course he already knows.
He looks up at her.
He blinks once. Slowly.
“I know.”
She sits beside him, the space is tight. She doesn’t know why. When she goes up to her room she’s sure she’ll think about it over and over. For now it’s too late.
“Do you like it here?”
“It’s fine.”
He probably doesn’t want to talk to her, but that’s never stopped Hermione. Harry and Ron hadn’t wanted to be friends at first either. But she kept showing up.
Her heart hammers in her chest, but she stays.
Tom will be her friend, too.
If it isn’t her, then who? He doesn’t have a Harry, or a Ron. All he has is her.
“My parents say you travel a lot,” her fingers tap on her knees. His eyes follow the movement for a moment before returning to her. That morning in class they looked at onion root cells under a microscope. Tom’s eyes feel like that. “Have you ever been to France?”
He nods.
“Paris, once.”
“I’ve never been to Paris. I go to the south of France with my parents in the summer. We don’t go to as many museums as I’d like, but we do go to this corner store that sells candied chestnuts and lavender ice cream.”
She doesn’t tell him about the sunburns that eventually turn into clusters of freckles, or how her dad always tries to read Le Monde even if it gives him a headache.
She doesn’t tell him about the silk scarves her mother buys at the market, and then wraps around Hermione’s curls.
But she wants to.
She wants to tell him everything. She feels the words threatening to spill out of her, battering at the back of her teeth.
“That sounds nice,” he says finally. His mouth makes that pleasant little shape.
That will have to be enough.
She rides her bike with Harry and Ron through the neighborhood. Her skin is still pink from France, peeling in spots on her shoulders and tip of her nose. Ron invites Harry back to his house for dinner. He pauses when he looks at Hermione, says he thought her parents would be waiting for her. Hermione lets her mouth stretch back until her cheeks hurt.
She leaves her bike outside the corner store. She glances at her reflection in the window, standing all alone, and tries not to cry. She wipes away the sweat from her brow, trying to calm herself down.
“Aren’t you going in?”
Tom.
“Uh, yeah.”
She follows in behind him, self-conscious in her shorts and t-shirt. She feels hot and sticky. Tom looks like he’s living in a completely different season, not a hair out of place. Complexion perfectly smooth.
He buys two popsicles. Cherry. He waves her away when she reaches into her pocket to pay him back. They walk home in silence, mouths stained red.
A sock missing its pair.
Two untied saddle shoes. One with a darkened glob of gum on the heel.
Pencils scattered across the desk. A paper on Bolshevik feminism with full marks.
A comb with strands of hair stuck in its teeth.
An unmade bed. Crookshanks lounging by the window.
A small mountain of clothes atop a chair against the wall.
Books. So many books.
Books stacked on the desk, sticky notes protruding at odd angles. Books spilling from under the bed, barely hidden by the ruffled skirt. Books crammed into a full shelf begging for relief, bowing under the weight of knowledge.
Hermione grips onto her hair in frustration as she looks at her room, overwhelmed at the prospect of tidying her carefully curated chaos.
She sighs.
How could her mother have invited Tom to stay with them for the week? Why did he have to stay in her room?
Her mother told her to make her room presentable, as if that were some easy task. She might have well have asked Hermione to cut herself open and let Tom dig around in her insides.
(That might have been easier.)
She begins to clean. Pencils in cups. Books in more even piles. Papers tucked away in drawers. Bedding stripped to be cleaned. Clothes thrown in. Shoes neatly tied.
Tom arrives with a small suitcase. It feels like a threat.
He is consummately polite. His hair swoops into a perfect little coif. He looks strange in her room, out of place. An alien.
She watches as he takes in his surroundings, eyes scanning each surface, committing it to memory. An air mattress neatly folded next to its empty box and an electric pump.
His eyes land on her desk. He walks toward it, picking up a book. The spine is cracked and well-loved. The annotations spill out into the edge like a Rorschach test.
“You abuse your books.”
She bristles at the implication.
“I read them.”
I love them.
Her mother sips tea and keeps an eye on the tray bake in the oven. Her father pages through the Dental Tribune. Tom practices chess upstairs.
Hermione huffs.
Why should she have to share her room with a boy? Especially a strange and quiet and beautiful boy. Why should he get to sleep in her bed while she sleeps on an air mattress on the floor?
The indignation pulses through her veins.
“What kind of father leaves his child with complete strangers for the week?”
Her mother looks up from her tea. Her father sets down his magazine.
“Who are you talking about, dear?”
“Tom,” Hermione resists the urge to roll her eyes. She’s a good girl, even as the ire burns in her throat. “Why couldn’t Mr. Slughorn take him with him if he’s going away for a funeral? It’s not like he’s in school.”
“Horace isn’t Tom’s father, Hermione. He adopted him from an orphanage,” her mother’s voice is gentle but cuts like a knife. “His mother died and his father wasn’t able to raise him.”
Hermione feels small. Tiny. Just a little speck.
That would explain the two last names.
Tears threaten to spill as the anger turns to shame.
“Think how lucky you are, darling,” her father says. She knows. God, she knows. “Can’t you be a little kind to him? Be a good host?”
She nods, wiping away at her eyes. She stomps up to her room, opening the door without knocking. It’s still her room, after all.
Tom sits on the floor, a board in front of him and a book in between his fingers. Modern Chess Openings. He moves a rook before raising his chin. He looks up at her on his own time, and not before.
“Tom, I’m so sorry,” she blurts, throwing herself to her knees before him. His expression doesn’t change. “I didn’t know about your family. I think I was rather rude to you.”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine, though. It’s really sad,” She wipes away a tear, feeling a little embarrassed to be more distressed about this than he is. “You don’t have to hold it in, you know. I’ll be your family now. You don’t have to hold everything in anymore. It’s okay to be sad, it’s okay to cry.”
Her hand grasps for his. Tom watches her as she can’t help but dissolve into sobs.
Slowly, a tear rolls down his cheek. And then another. Slow, so slow. He doesn’t blink. His expression never changes. Just a wet trail that drips from his chin.
Hermione wraps her arms around him, squeezing him tight. He smells clean, like soap. His hands eventually settle on her back. She lets out a hiccup, trying not to get snot on his jumper.
He pulls away as Hermione calms.
“Can I go back to my game now?”
Hermione kneels beside her bed, eyes shut tight. She prays for Tom to be happy, for her parents to be healthy, for her scraggly orange cat to live to 100 years old, for her to be top of her class, to get into Oxford, to be the first person to win the Nobel Peace Prize and also the prize in chemistry, for—
She feels Tom watching her before she opens her eyes.
“What did you pray for?”
“Lots of things.”
They turn off the lights. It’s awkward, but she’s almost used to it now. She understands that Tom views her as neutrally as a piece of furniture. Not a girl.
“Do you believe in God?”
“No.”
“Then who do you tell your problems to?”
“No one.”
Hermione sits up on the air mattress, it sags under the change in weight. She looks at him through the dark.
“Can I tell you a secret?” Her voice lowers to a whisper.
“Yes.”
“I don’t think God listens to me, even if I pray with my whole heart every night.”
Silence.
“Then pray to me,” Tom offers. “I’ll listen.”
She lies back down. She hits the pillow with a sigh. Her cheeks feel hot.
He’s already there when the bus pulls up.
She spots him from the window, a jolt of electricity in her body that never seems to go away. He stands beneath the faded red awning, plastic bag in hand. Waiting, even if he’d never admit it.
An errand, he says.
Eye drops.
Sugar.
The New Scientist .
Sometimes she gets off the bus early before he has a chance to hold a plastic bag. On those days they go into the shop together, get a bag of fizzy dummies or rainbow drops. A copy of Chess Life .
They walk together. Sometimes in silence. It never feels heavy. Sometimes in murmurs. Sometimes he asks questions.
What did you do today?
What did you learn?
Who did you talk to?
She wonders if he wishes he could be in school, too. It must be lonely, sitting in the house with a chess board all day.
Of course he waits for her. He only has her. She doesn’t allow herself to overthink it, even if she could win an Olympic medal in overthinking.
Tom isn’t always at the bus stop.
He starts bringing her things. Keychains. Trinkets. Stationery.
From Paris, from London, from Brussels.
Pens.
“From Geneva,” he tells her as she hides her disappointment. It’s pretty. Feels heavy in her hand. She uncaps it, scribbles on a notepad from his hotel he gives her. It writes smoothly. She swipes her finger across the ink and it doesn’t smudge. She smiles.
“I heard there’s a lot of famous jewelers in Switzerland,” she teases, but all he does is nod. “Maybe next time you could get a tennis bracelet instead of a pen.”
He doesn’t laugh at her joke.
She’ll use the pen everyday.
Harry turns sixteen in the summer. The Weasleys throw a party with balloons and paper plates and streamers. A cake with frosting that turns everyone’s mouths blue.
Everyone talks at once, the volume of it pounds in her head. Hermione chatters along, tries to keep up. There’s so many redheads, so much laughter. The basement could explode with the love like a water heater past its expiration.
And yet—
There’s a hollow feeling in her chest. She sneaks away to the washroom. She runs the tap, stares at herself in the mirror.
She wishes Tom were there.
Her mother drives. Her father discusses an unexpectedly complicated root canal. The sun blares through the windshield, impossible to keep from her eyes.
She feels tired, her bones almost too heavy to hold.
She feels a bit sad today, she wants to say. I am tired all the time. Maybe I won’t get into Oxford.
But it would ruin the afternoon. She stares at the shiny silver Eiffel tower keychain attached to her bag.
The world blurs through the window.
Her gran dies in the middle of the school term. She could have cut down to three A-levels, but decided to take four anyway.
Her parents leave to make arrangements. She sleeps in her own bed. She doesn’t have to pack a suitcase.
Mr. Slughorn invites her over for dinner. The thought of eating makes her stomach feel sour.
Her mind echoes with art history and architecture. Parapets and frescos and girih tiles.
After dinner she follows Tom to his room. She revises her literature notes while he flips through Achieving the Aim . She lets her head fall onto his pillow. There’s a faint hint of tobacco smoke, but she doesn’t say anything.
Lately she feels full of secrets.
She doesn’t tell anyone about the strange thoughts that whir through her mind. The anxiety. The fear. The doubt. Things she shouldn’t feel, but can’t help.
Not her mother. Not her friends. Not even Miss McGonagall at school who says that Hermione can tell her anything.
She doesn’t say:
Sometimes I feel lonely even when I’m not alone.
Even when someone holds my hand.
Even when the room is warm and all the people in it love me.
She doesn’t say:
When I’m with Tom, I don’t feel like that.
Even in complete silence.
Even when he doesn’t even look up from his book.