#he is compelling. in his anger and his controlling behavior and his strangling love. he is compelling in all the ways he has become this.

[quietwingsinthesky]

Dean is such a paradox for me because on the one hand, I have been actively triggered by him in the show, there are moments where, intentionally or not, the writers managed to create a portrayal of manipulation and abuse and control issues that it sets off actual alarms for me. And on the other hand, I would not have him any other way. There is something — not comforting, that’s too soft a word — about knowing where Dean’s actions stem from, having seen and learned all that we do about his childhood neglect and parentification and the trauma he goes through repeatedly in the show, and that he doesn’t come out clean. He comes out a goddamn mess who ends up hurting the people around him in reaction to his own pain!

There’s a reality there that’s. Almost nice, actually. Distressing to watch, but it is a fucking mess, it’s a good mess! He’s got zero healthy coping skills and a healthy relationship with say, his brother, is terrifying because it leaves him open to abandonment!

I’m not sure I’m wording this correctly. There is a way to be a good abuse victim. Take the pain, martyr yourself on it, and then, even if you have no support or idea how to, then you have to become a Good Person who never hurts anyone the way you have been learning to your entire life. Simply toss everything that shaped you out the door and emerge a saint with a tragic backstory. And Dean is not that. And that’s so fucking good. Everything that he has gone through continues to effect the way he treats the people around him, and he can’t fight the behaviors he might recognize as harmful because he also sees them as protecting him (or protecting Sam by keeping Sam with him.)

And sometimes, idk. It feels good to see a guy who didn’t heal the “right way.” Who mostly didn’t heal at all, just keeps the wound open because it’s easier that way.

[officialsporkintheroad]

here’s a prompt :) — tom and hermione dance at the yule ball. tom comes to terms w/ his feelings for hermione but does not confess right away. the next morning, she is gone (she went back to her own timeline). he wants to find answers.

(A/N: I know it's been literally months, but I finally got around to this prompt and I had so much fun writing a little snippet for it. Hope you like it, love, and thank you so much for sending in the prompt <3 )

warnings: brief violent/murderous thoughts, toxic relationships, possessive behavior, Tom being a little bit of a creep in general

The whole ordeal is tedious.

All parties, in Tom’s opinion, possess a certain dullness that seems utterly inescapable once you reach a certain point in society, and while the Yule Ball is a school function—and therefore not quite on the same level as, say, the Malfoy’s annual Yule party or even Slughorn’s more exclusive events—it’s still burdened by the same rules of propriety and small talk that Tom loathes.

Therefore, tedious.

Made worse, still, by the fact that Hermione Granger is floating around the dancefloor in a pale blue, satin gown that flatters her lithe body and delicate curves, her riotous hair half-pinned up, pearls peeking out between the wild curls. In the silvery atmospheric lighting, she looks ethereal, an otherworldliness that suits her bizarre personality. She is not the most graceful dancer nor the most practiced, but there’s always a confidence to Hermione that seems almost daring, as if to say, “My faults are irrelevant in the face of my accomplishments.”

And she is accomplished, Tom will admit that now. Four months of watching her breeze through classes, mastering spells on the first try and giving him a run for his money with her theory work. He has seen her do things that he had previously only thought himself capable of, has watched her match him wit for wit, barb for barb.

She is the only woman—the only person—that comes even close to being his equal, and yes, he had resisted that at first, but now…

But now, he can’t stand the thought of her dancing with anyone but him.

His feet are moving before he’s even really finished the thought, slipping through the crowd of dancing couples with ease as he makes his way to her. She sees him, of course, because no matter how hard Tom has tried, it seems like Hermione always sees him—or more specifically, sees through him. Her eyes—caramel brown, thick lashes, wary and angry and curious all at once—narrow, but she doesn’t stop him when he taps on the shoulder of her current partner and asks to cut in.

The boy pales a bit, throws Hermione an apologetic smile, and bows out. It’s nice, Tom thinks, how even now, with few knowing even half of what he’s truly capable of, there’s still an understanding that when Tom Riddle asks for something, he’s not really asking.

“You’ve given poor Adrian a heart attack,” Hermione comments idly, casually, like it’s just an observation and she couldn’t care less. He isn’t fooled into a false sense of security—they have been playing this back-and-forth for months now, and he knows her anger is always ready, always burning just beneath the surface—but admittedly, he enjoys it too much to ever back down.

“Perhaps you should have acquired a date that doesn’t startle so easily,” he muses, enjoying the subtle twitch of her jaw.

“Perhaps you should learn to wait until the next song to ask for a dance. I hear patience is a virtue.”

It burns, a little, that she’s right. He could have waited for the song to end, waited to approach her during the lull in music. It would have caused less of a scene, certainly. Would have seemed more gentlemanly, less…desperate.

But then, it hadn’t really been a conscious choice in the first place.

“And you could have refused,” he tosses back, because he’s petty and it’s true anyway.

The pause that follows is one that Tom doesn’t expect. What he expects is for her to push back, snarl some insult about Tom being childish and greedy, or snark that she could never dare to refuse the great Tom Riddle—all said with the heaviest, driest sarcasm he’s ever heard in his life. Instead, she sighs.

“I’m tired of fighting useless battles,” she says, and there’s something so bitter and sad and…and tired in her voice that it makes him stare. Because she’s definitely not just talking about the dance he stole from her.

Because maybe… Maybe, despite all the anger and derision and sheer viciousness that has tainted their every interaction since she arrived the beginning of September, maybe she, too, feels that he has worn her down in the way that she has done with him.

It is not love—Tom is absolutely certain of that—but it is something startlingly closer to it than Tom ever imagined he’d feel: a sort of raw possessiveness over her that pisses him off nearly as much as it gratifies him, an understanding that she is likely the only person alive that could ever satisfy him on an intellectual level, and the only person he has ever wanted like this, even if he’s half tempted some days to strangle her and throw her carcass down in the Chamber so no one finds the body.

It is strangely compelling that he can see hints of that same violent and conflicting desire in her.

When the song ends, she disappears into the crowd and Tom lets her go. After all, he doesn’t need to chase after something that is already halfway his.

*****************************************

Hermione is not at breakfast. She is not part of the group of students that Tom escorts to the train platform, and she is not at lunch when he returns. He asks the Ravenclaw 5th year prefect if he’s seen her, checks in at the Hospital Wing, and finally ends up at the library—where, truthfully, he really expects her to be.

The library is empty.

Almost.

“She’s not here,” a voice says, and Tom stiffens at the sound, an automatic response he can’t control no matter how he tries.

Dumbledore, always poking his nose in where it’s not wanted.

“Sir?”

“Miss Granger left this morning.”

Tom frowns, because he knows she didn’t get on the train, and the deputy headmaster must realize this because he sighs.

“She returned home, Tom.”

“Home,” he repeats flatly, because Dumbledore is lying. He’s sure of it.

Because Hermione doesn’t have a home to go back to. She told him as much—parents dead, all her distant family either deceased or estranged, and even if she could get in touch with them, none of them wanted to take in a war orphan. She was alone and lost when she came to Hogwarts. She can’t have gone home, because Hogwarts is home. For her, and for him.

“Miss Granger was only here on a temporary basis, Tom. You know that,” Dumbledore is saying. “Arrangements have been made with her mother’s cousins in America…”

That’s around the time Tom stops listening. It’s all bullshit, every word. It’s funny. As much as Dumbledore has always managed to know when Tom’s up to something, it goes both ways. It always has.

“I see,” Tom says eventually. “I…am sorry I wasn’t there to wish her off. We had been getting on better these past few weeks. You don’t happen to have an address for her, do you? I’d like to write her, if I can.”

“Ah, unfortunately not, my boy. Her relatives are travelling people, I believe.”

They both know they’re both lying. Neither of them blinks.

“I see,” he says again. “Well, thank you for informing me, professor. I’ll be off to dinner now, though.”

Dumbledore watches him with undisguised suspicion for a good minute before smiling. “Of course, Tom. It’s shepherd’s pie tonight. You certainly wouldn’t want to miss it.”

Tom holds his calm, impersonally polite smile through dinner, relieved that at least most of his peers in Slytherin have gone home for the holidays so he’s not subjected to their inane chatter. He keeps it in place through evening rounds, through his nightly routine. It’s only later, having sneaked down to the Chamber a little after midnight, that he lets the façade crack, firing off spells at the wall with a vicious, raging anger while he shouts his frustration.

Impulsive and erratic as it is, it does make him feel better. Steadier. Clearer.

He’s Tom Riddle, he reminds himself: prodigiously talented, sharp and clever and determined, the brightest mind of the century. And then he smiles.

There’s nowhere Dumbledore can hide her that Tom can’t find.

send me prompts if you want <3