Power and Control

Marina and the Diamonds

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William Blake

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I had to find Shalini. Or Jade. But I couldn't seem to move my legs. I slid down the stone wall, feeling my world shattering around me. I couldn't even remember a single word of reassurance Dumbledore had said. All I could feel was Tom's hand around my throat constricting my airways.

I took a deep breath. My hands were shaking, my heart was beating a hundred miles a minute. I couldn't just be weak and give in. I didn't want to give Tom the satisfaction. But he seemed to have the upper hand of the situation, and I really didn't know what to do about it. He was physically and emotionally abusive. I really had to find the others.... if I could just stand up...

You're Hermione, also known to most of Slytherin as Dumbledore's little lying bitch.

I shut my eyes. Tom's voice came so clearly to my mind it was as if he was standing in front of me.

"Hermione!"

I jumped, fearing the worst- but it was both Jade and Shalini running toward me. "What are you doing? We have to go to class." Shalini was calling. She fell at my feet placing both her hands on my shoulders.

"Hey. Hermione. What happened? Are you ok?" She asked in concern. I was barely aware of her and the hundreds of students around us making their way to their next class.

"I don't.... know." I said slowly. "Tom...."

I placed my hands around my neck, Jade gasped. "Oh Merlin." She gasped. "Your neck. It's so ... red. Did he fucking try to strangle you? Oh my god."

I got to my feet unsteadily, Jade put her arm around me. "It's ok." She said. "You're safe now. Come on. We have to tell our Head of House about this. Or Dumbledore."

"No." I swallowed, my throat was extremely dry. "We can't do that."

"Oh come on! Are you kidding?" She said incredulously. "Have you even seen the colour of your neck?"

"We can't tell anyone, Jade." I repeated a little louder this time. "That's what he wants."

Jade's mouth fell open.

"Look, she's right." Shalini said reasonably. "This is Tom Riddle we're talking about. He's going to keep doing this sort of shit until he's got us under his control. That's what guys like him do."

"Um- I'm sorry, what guys are there like him?" Jade exclaimed. "Honestly you two literally sound so brainwashed right now."

I stepped away from the two of them for a minute, dragging my hands through my hair. I had to pull myself together for this.

"There are a lot of guys like him, Jade." Shalini was saying. "I'm not talking about you know, the murderous villain who's probably scheming to take over the world ok I'm talking about the guys who sexually and physically exploit girls and women. I've been with a lot of Tom's type. And this is just the kind of thing they do."

"I get that." Jade said defensively. "I'm just saying that what Tom is doing isn't something we can just downplay. What he's up to isn't like what any of those guys you were talking about. He's the psychopath type. Shit, he's your type of evil guy crossed between mine, actually. But we can't just deal with it alone and not let anyone else help us."

"Well, I agree to disagree." Shalini leant against the stone wall, blinking her large dark eyes almost as if she was about to cry.

"I would love to tell someone about everything he's done. I mean, obviously, since I was raped by him for fuck sake. But you don't know all the things he said to me. He can really hurt us if we piss him off too much. And i don't know about you, but I'd rather not gamble with both of your lives. That's what's at stake here. The least you could do is not gamble with my life."

"You're right." Jade said finally. "I'm sorry. I've seen the way Tom has been acting around the both of you, and I should've realised. He's already hurt you so much. Both of you. It'll be a danger to all of us if we provoke him any further."

"I agree." A low voice said.

Walking around the corner of the corridor, tall and as menacing as ever before was Tom Riddle, anger blazing in his dark eyes.

"I thought you three would be up here. But ditching class didn't really seem a lot like you, though Hermione. I'm surprised." He commented coldly. "Is our school curriculum not up to your ridiculously high standards?"

"Leave her alone, Riddle." Jade's voice was trembling in rage. "You've done more than enough here."

"To be honest, Black, I've barely even started." Tom's black eyes were shining very brightly, as if he was plotting some horrible deed already.

"The real fun has only just begun. Since you three fools have just revealed my strengths and your weaknesses, this game should now be extremely easy for me."

To my left, Jade let out a breath. I realised us three girls were literally gripping each other in fear. So Tom had been eavesdropping on this entire conversation. He'd just heard it all.

"Our next class happens to be just along this very corridor." Tom said quietly. "As soon as I released you three were missing I knew where you were. What I didn't realise is how stupid the three of you would've had to be to talk so loudly out in the open about me, and everything that's been going on. I was standing behind this corner listening to every word that's come out of your foolish little mouths."

He stepped closer, his eyes extremely dark. "If you think what I'm doing now is bad, you're all a lot weaker than I had originally thought." His mouth curled into a slight smirk, those dark eyes darkening dangerously. "I can really harm you all. I could technically kill you. All of you. If I really wanted to."

I put my clammy hand into the pocket of my cloak. My wand? When the hell did it get in there? I thought I had left it with all of my other bags...

"W-what do you want from us." Shalini was saying shakily. "You haven't even said-"

"That's for me to know, and for you to find out." He stepped incredibly close to Shalini, I could literally feel her shaking in fear beside me. "Merlin." He laughed. "You're scared of me. You weren't like this before." He said gently, touching her face. "And look at you now, you're trembling. Almost as much as you did in the hospital wing before I had my way with you. I always knew you were absolutely pathetic. Maybe next time you'll realise just how much that pissed me off, so I won't have to immobilise you. Hey. Don't cry. I know deep down you had to of enjoyed it."

"You really shouldn't have said that you goddamned monster." I heard myself saying.

At the very second Tom's dark eyes flashed to me, we knew instantly what to do and our wands were drawn before any of the others could really understand what was going on.

"Hermione!"

Tom flicked his wrist shooting a curse at me which I deflected with the magical agility of someone years more experienced. Someone like Harry. It was Harry I thought about as Tom and I started to duel, both of us using non verbal spells trying desperately to throw the other off guard.

Minutes passed. We both must've been almost matched for each other, because neither one of us was letting up. About half way through Shalini and Jade ran off to class, leaving only me and Tom in the corridor outside the library.

But to my surprise no one had come dashing out to see what all the commotion was about. My guesses were Tom had already placed charms around this corridor in advance as though he knew this was going to happen, and he wanted to make sure no one could come to my defence.

"Hermione." Tom said in a enviously calm talking voice as our counter curses hit each other, "You're fairly good at duelling but you're lacking in one area." Even though he was sending dozens of curses at me I was able to deflect them all.

"Really?" I called back. "And what's that?"

"Speed." Tom said, and with one particularly fast wrist manoeuvre, I saw a flash of red light- a curse square in the chest.

Pain...

I released the breath I was holding and the next thing I knew, everything was gone.

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I woke up in the hospital wing, I could tell it was night just by looking out the window directly opposite me.

I blinked wearily, my mind moving ever so slowly trying to piece together what had just happened.

"Merlin-" I breathed, slamming a hand to my face. "Oh no."

"Oh yes." I nearly jumped a foot into the air. Unknown to me, standing in the shadows in the corner of the room was Tom Riddle. He stepped forward into a patch of moonlight from a window above, his dark eyes and pale skin seemed almost eerie.

"Finally. You've been out cold for at least 5 days." He laughed softly. "Do you even remember what happened?"

I clutched my head, frowning. Everything hurt. "No." He said. "I don't remember anything." I said slowly. "What happened? Can you tell me?"

He stepped closer, coming to sit at the edge of my stretcher bed, dark eyes watching me closely.

"You had a particularly fateful burst of confidence one afternoon, and foolishly decided to surprise me with a duel." He explained, those dark eyes shining in the darkness.

"Needless to say, it didn't end up too well for you. Pity, isn't it? I've been coming to visit you almost every day. You're probably one of the only girls that's ever gotten herself locked in a solitary room in the hospital wing in the first fucking week being here." He laughed lowly, taking one of my hands in his.

"You won't be able to get out of here, unless they let you. You see, Hermione, I cursed you at the end of that petty "duel" of yours. An illegal curse to erase all memories of the future from your head. You won't be that angry at me now, because you won't remember what you've lost. It's an ongoing process. Not even Madam Pomfrey or Dumbledore know what's happening with you. I've been monitoring you myself. You were talking in your sleep about me the other night, actually." He smiled slightly.

"It was amusing. But it's all okay now, don't worry about any of it. I'll take care of you. Now, get some sleep."

"What are you talking about. What happened to me?" I croaked. "What did you do to me?"

"Hey, hey." Tom said, making his voice light and soothing. "Don't get upset. I only did what was best for us."

Very slowly, panic started to kick in. I tried to move my arms and legs to jump out of bed and run away from him but I couldn't. It was like I was frozen.

"As soon as you arrived, on the first fucking day you came to Hogwarts you've been causing trouble amongst my Death Eaters." He said, caught between amusement and irritably. "It's been most entertaining to watch from a distance. You seemed to have convinced yourself almost completely that you could resist me."

"What about Jade and Shalini. What did you do to them?" I could only whisper, it was too hard to speak. "Did you hurt them?"

"The Black sisters?" Tom smirked. "Why would I hurt them? On the contrary, I rewarded them both. They did their job well."

I blinked, not quite understanding. "Their.... job." I repeated. "What job?"

Tom smiled revealing his perfect white teeth. "Well, the job I had given them, of course. Befriend you, and help break you down to get you to be under my control. It happens to most new recruits of Slytherin House. Obviously not the first years and those other little babies. I choose the students from my own hand, and as a group we break them in to my control."

"Hold on." I said, feeling extremely ill, "So you're saying - J-Jade and Shalini lied to me?"

"Yes. On my orders." Tom touched my hand almost sympathetically. "I told them what lies to tell you. I helped them orchestrate all the problems that you three all went though. Don't be upset. It's not like they had much of a choice. I can be very persuasive when I want to be."

He smirked down at me, dark eyes shining in amusement, and I suddenly remembered a young Ginny crying to me after everyone was rescued from the Chamber of Secrets, saying how she was so humiliated after she'd fallen for Tom Riddle's lies. Her embarrassment at how she fell for him because he was extremely persuasive telling her to paint the Hogwarts walls in blood....

Blood....

"Ouch-" I gripped my head, a sharp pain had randomly sparked through my brain and was now pounding inside my skull like a headache.

"Trying to remember something from the future?" Tom asked, holding up something gold. A Time Turner. My Time Turner. "You won't be able to."

"Huh?" I gasped. Something was terribly wrong and I couldn't remember what it was. "Give it back." I gasped.

"There will be no more going back to the future now." He said, his voice low, enchanting. "As soon as I saw that Time Turner around your neck on your first day, I knew something wasn't right. And when you found me in the Common Room "studying" late that evening when you thought you'd lost it, I was busy researching up on what type of curses I could use to alter the course of whatever mission you were on. At that point, I tried most counter curses against that first Time Turner of yours. When you came downstairs and demanded I hand it over to you, I did. It's already been cursed, I had told myself. It was all I could do for the moment, so I obliged and returned it. When you got this shining new Time Turner, Merlin knows where from, I just knew I had to tamper with that one too. So when you were unconscious, I did."

Breathing heavily, I listened, tears streaming down my face. Distorted images of Jade and Shalini flashed through my mind, of Shalini injured after Tom allegedly assaulted her. Jade's wide, scared eyes. Was it all really a lie?

"Traitors." I gasped.

"I suppose we are." Tom said carelessly. "I hadn't really given it much thought, if I have to be honest. Anyway. I'm going to downstairs to the Hall for dinner, I suggest you get back to sleep." He said quietly, standing up.

"We'll talk about this in depth tomorrow. I don't have time right now to go over it all with you. I'll pass on to Madam Pomfrey that you woke up and got a bit too overwhelmed as I leave, shall I? She'll give you further sedation to calm you down. I don't want you doing anything reckless, like attempting to escape from this locked room."

"No- wait! Tom!" I tried to shout. But he had already gone, closing the door behind him and leaving me in the dark once more.