Chapter 9
Hermione POV
She was standing with Neville in the greenhouse, and they had to take out some snargaluff pods today. Due to the mucous the plant had spat out, Neville's hands were covered in the glop. "I knew I was forgetting something, and I forgot my safety gloves when I most needed them today," Neville explained.
"That's not an issue. There are at least 3 pairs of worn gloves near the stack of manure beside the potted puffapods," Hermione replied.
Neville nodded at her and went to look for the gloves. He came back with big yellow gloves that had seen better days.
"Thanks Hermione. These will do for today. I like Herbology a lot, but I never noticed that spare gloves were there beside the puffapods. How did you know?", Neville asked her casually.
"Oh! Well...the puffapods are near the first year row, and you know, first years can be forgetful. I just guessed there would be some gloves there.", Hermione hedged.
She was lucky that Neville was not very nosy, nor attentive and very intent on getting the pods out, or she knew he would have questioned how she knew exactly 3 pairs would be there. She wouldn't have known, if it were not for her nocturnal strolls with Tom. They kept to the safe plants in the first year row and that's how she had noticed the gloves.
She was eagerly waiting for tonight. They had the rounds around 9pm, which they would finish within half an hour, and she'd meet Tom at the Room of Requirement. Ever since her night visits with Tom, she had become somewhat of an expert in glamouring her bed to look as if she were sleeping, and she drew the curtains around her bed, and went to the extra effort of placing notice-me-not and forget-me spells around the periphery of her bed. Parvati and Lavender simply didn't notice her bed on the days she spent outside the room.
They didn't often spend time in the Room of Requirement, but when they did, they'd usually fall asleep there. They just had to wish for a bed, and both of them cuddled upon it. Tom would set an alarm for 5 am, and they'd groggily get up from deep sleep, but they'd still get up. Tom always insisted on accompanying her to the Gryffindor Tower, before he himself hurried back to the Slytherin dungeons.
She had received the school owl today from Tom at breakfast. As she unfurled the small parchment, she read on it, "Meet me tonight. 7th floor."
She looked across to Tom. With a slight inclination of her head she conveyed that she had got the message.
---*---*---
She had finished up her patrol, and sent some first years back to their dormitories. They had been jinxing the floor near the cleaning supplies with a slipping spell to trip up Filch. She would have been free earlier, but she had to spend a good five minutes afterwards to nullify the spell they had done. With no further incidents, she had gone up to the 7th floor, and she was a good 20 minutes late. She glanced around the corridor, but there was no sign of Tom.
Had he gone back—she had scarcely begun that thought before she was pulled from behind and engulfed in Tom's woodsy and citrus scent.
With his arms around her, he murmured near her neck, "What took you so long?"
Turning around and hugging him, she replied, "Some first years had set up some slipping spells. Had to deal with that."
"Let me guess. Those first years were Gryffindors...hmm," Tom asked her with an amused glint in his eyes.
With narrowed eyes she asked him, "How did you guess?"
"Only Gryffindors would be stupid enough to get caught," he smirked at her.
Playfully swatting his arms away, she turned around and walked three times near the wall, thinking of needing a room to study and then sleep."
The room materialized and she pulled Tom inside. The Room of Requirement always transformed into a room accented with browns and rust, with the customary table reminiscent of their library table with two huge chairs which were three feet away from the merrily crackling fireplace, and a queen sized bed with cream coloured blankets and an overthrow quilt.
Tom had already removed his robes, opened his top shirt buttons, and rolled up his sleeves, already settling in his chair, with a few scrolls, and his book out. As she moved to sit with him, she saw that he was finishing up his Charms assignment on ensnaring charms and their counter-curses.
She also wanted to finish up some work, but today she was just distracted. Mostly because she was worried about what she was going to do once Hogwarts finished. She kept mum for the next 40 minutes as Tom read and jotted some lines in his assignment, but he looked up and caught the worried expression on her face.
"I guess it's time to wind up." He put his scrolls and book back into his bag.
Hermione pulled out a beaded bag which she had shrunk out of the pocket of her robes. There were night shirts of both her and Tom stored in there. She handed Tom his pyjamas, and tacitly moved to the bed and wriggled out of her skirt underneath the blanket, pulling up her own pyjamas under the cover. They had their backs to each other. Tom changed behind the cover of the chairs while she turned her back, and she changed her clothes underneath the blanket and quilt.
On their first night here, they had been in their uniform, and had spent an uncomfortable night in the fitted clothes. Their frequently using this space ensured that Hermione had prepared a night bag for both of them when they came here.
Changed with his clothes, Tom came up behind her and gathered her close.
"What's the problem? Why were you so worried?", he asked her in his warm baritone.
She sighed before answering him. "I'm so worried about what I'm going to do after Hogwarts. You know I had joined that Potions project hoping to get any recommendation, any apprenticeship, just about anything, but that avenue did not even take off. I'm at my wit's end about what I'm going to do."
"Do you really want to pursue Potions. I thought you liked Arithmancy."
"You know I like Arithmancy, but at this stage it's not about liking. I just want to grab any opportunity I could get," she answered him on another frustrated sigh.
"Hermione, turn around please."
A few frustrated tears had escaped her, so she surreptitiously wiped them before turning to face Tom. But perceptive as he usually was, he gently rubbed at the corners of her eyes, and pressed a kiss to her forehead.
"Have you asked Professor Vector of any Arithmancy apprenticeship positions, or research avenues in the subject?"
"I have. There is a two year course at Ilvermorny, and I can get her letter of recommendation, but it is expensive."
Chucking her under her chin, Tom looked intensely into her eyes. "Get your letter of recommendation and apply to Ilvermorny," he told her in his authoritative tone, the tone he used to allocate duties during his meeting with the prefects.
"Tom, there's no scholarship, and it's expensive—"
"Don't think about the expenses right now. Focus on getting accepted. We'll figure out the expenses later."
"You're graduating in another 5 months. What are you planning to do?"
"You know I went to Malfoy's Christmas gala, and their New Year Dinner last year. I've met a potioneer who can take on an apprentice. I'll begin working for him after graduation."
"That's great Tom," Hermione hugged him, genuinely happy for him. Her earlier doldrums forgotten, she pulled on his cheeks. "Why didn't you tell me this before?"
Pulling her hands away from his cheeks, he smiled down at her. "I didn't get any response from the man, till last week."
"You've still been sitting on this news for the past week," she countered him.
"We couldn't meet last week, and this topic never came up in our conversation before now."
Hermione stopped questioning him. She had found that Tom may have planned several steps ahead, but he only revealed things when he was truly ready—trying to pull anything out of him before he was ready to share something on his own was a futile effort, one which she had done before but had only been rewarded by his annoyed glares and silence directed at her. Tom was a curious mix of expressive and secretive. This was one more reason why they had not gone public with their relationship.
Whenever she had asked him about it, he had always said, "It's not the right time."
She didn't know when, and if ever there would be a right time, but she trusted Tom. Though she saw countless girls trying to flirt with him, he was always polite, but never gave those girls any wrong impression of being swayed by them. If she had seen even a hint of such behaviour from Tom, she would've broken things off with him, but he had never given her any reason to feel insecure about his attachment to any other girl. If anything, it was she who sometimes felt that Tom had invested his feelings too deeply into her—not that he ever directly said anything, but he was very possessive. Any boy showing the mildest interest in her usually ended up in a detention with Filch within a week for their showing any interest in her. She was not a simpleton to not know who had framed those boys, but she didn't argue with Tom about it—he needed to let out his steam. She always got the feeling that springing traps on others, or even being able to indirectly control other people gave Tom a lot of pleasure. That was the reason he didn't reveal anything beforehand, craftily springing shocks or surprises on other people, and she hadn't made her peace with this habit, but she accepted it, it was one of his inherent traits.
As she was about to drift off into dreamland, he said, "You'll come to the Slug Club party with me."
"Wait! What about keeping our relationship secret," she asked him. This was one of those surprise decisions he kept springing on her.
"It's the right time. The party is 2 weeks before the NEWTs. The session would end by then. The period of harassment you'll face would be less."
"What do you mean by 'period of harassment'?," Hermione asked him.
"I mean, any nastiness Dorothy Black or her minions might want to unleash on you, would be limited to two weeks before the exams—but by then everybody would be engrossed in passing the NEWTs or their exams, and the chances of you encountering her pureblood clique would be minimal."
At the mention of Dorothy Black, Hermione understood what he had been trying to say. Dorothy was the pureblood Head Girl along with Tom, and she had tried countless times to go out with him, being tactfully rebuffed by him everytime. Had Dorothy been on her own, she wouldn't be a problem, but Dorothy was the epitome of a pureblood witch with blonde hair, blue eyes, classic features, and a slender build. Just like Tom had his own admirers, Dorothy too had her admirers, especially among girls who wanted to be like her. It was not a stretch to imagine Dorothy making things difficult for her if her relationship with Tom was outed too soon.
Despite the potential danger from the likes of Dorothy Black, Hermione couldn't contain her happiness and she peppered Tom's face with light kisses.
Once she moved back from pressing a kiss to his nose, Tom said, "Happy about going out with me."
With beaming eyes she answered, "Yes, absolutely."