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Tom never thought himself a family man, much less a man who would one day want a pleasant, well-behaved housewife.
Meeting Hermione only reaffirmed this. The student who sat front and center in the lecture hall of his TA class with knobby knees and perfect posture. With a practical nest on her head as she passed out fliers to her apathetic classmates for one of the on-campus environmental clubs she had managed to weasel her way into within three weeks of the semester; anything but a female student seeking her MRS degree.
He couldn’t resist it, the moment she approached him after his one allocated lecture as the class TA. She questioned his grey-area view on eugenics, the anthropological history of it his chosen topic for the class's entirety, and he proceeded to challenge her just to see her face still in the process of losing its baby fat turn bright red in frustration.
When he extended an open invitation to continue arguing with him during office hours, he was sure she would be too meek and timid of a freshman to take advantage of the opportunity. And yet there she was that same week, waiting in the hall outside his door as he approached it five minutes before his office hours started.
It became instinctive, debating her every chance he got. He knew it was goading and a bit unfair given his age, position, and inherently stronger well of knowledge, but she didn't let that deter her from meeting him with a fieriness in her eyes he probably hadn't seen in an undergraduate in a long time.
By the end of the semester he knew he could never let her go.
15 years of it, the constant defiance accompanied by her reluctant lenience any time he spread her open on a flat surface. He never tired of it, not once.
Until that wretched day six months ago, when she nearly ruined everything.
Even when he caught her rifling through the originally locked desk drawers in his office in their townhome, when he had never wanted to kill her more than in that moment, he couldn't let her go. Even through his brief lapse in control when he held her down on the floor and choked her until she went bright red and purple in the face. Even as he felt the cruel twist of pleasure in his gut looking down at her parted, empty lips, the glazed-over look in her eyes as he yanked her soul out of her body.
Like the other times he’d previously considered it, he could never follow through. Nearly half her life at that point, she'd been his. The thought of her abandoning him in this world won out all the rage he felt over her betrayal. He’d rather have her as his prisoner, or worse, risk her as his foe, than take her out of the world completely.
Which is how he ended up here. With an eerily pleasant, well-behaved housewife.
By the time he gets home in the evening, he's fighting the drag in his feet. His day had gone late after having to placate an impossible-to-please client until 8 PM. Even while remaining considerably in shape he's feeling his body's age and sensitivity. He'll be 39 soon, and he hates the feeling of slowing down. Of not being as naturally energized as he used to be, working 14 hours straight like it was nothing.
He's greeted at the door with the smell of butter and lemon and the sound of Billie Holiday on crooning on the turntable. He goes through the muscle memory of trading his oxfords for the at-home shoes with orthopedic support—No dirty street shoes in the house, Tom, and you need to be more considerate of your feet—and letting his bag drop onto the bench in the entryway.
The sound of his laptop thudding against wood is what brings Hermione out of the kitchen with a jovial pep in her step. A bird fluttering about her gilded cage.
She comes towards him with a smile gracing her lips that would be saccharine if it wasn’t so genuine. Sometimes he finds it unnerving. She never smiled at him like that even when they were so in love they practically wanted to eat each other.
“Hello, darling,” she says with a gentle kiss to his cheek.
He's not sure he'll ever get used to it, her perfectly manufactured sereneness.
"It smells lovely," he tells her.
She takes his coat without a word, hanging it up in the closet. "Chicken piccata," she says over her shoulder with a twinkle in her eyes.
Hermione had always been a wretched cook, and funnily enough, he finds himself missing it more often than not. These days he’ll swallow down pleasure-inducing pork ragu while she watches with a coy smile and he’ll almost wish the pork was dry and the pasta mushy, all so he could see the look on her face that was instead a mixture of nervous yet prideful.
The logic used to be if she was going to go through the trouble of cooking him a meal, he was going to be content with the finished product being mediocre at best. Still, she’d pick at her nails while he forced the food down his throat with a slight wince and his best attempt at politeness.
Although after a certain period of time, he was comfortable enough being more genuine with his emotions when it came to her, meaning he was naturally a bit meaner, a bit crueller.
But she was mean and cruel in return, just as he preferred.
If you want a nice dinner either make it yourself or go eat alone at the Italian spot down the street. You can even call up Bellatrix if you get too lonely. I’m sure she’d love that.
Now she drags him into the kitchen that could rival a fine-dining restaurant's and makes him settle on a bar stool before pouring him a glass of white wine. Wine pairings, that's also a new one. It used to be whichever label called out to her in the moment at the store, typically a red blend she'd guzzle down like water.
He wonders if he made her a bit too complacent, her current state. Maybe he’ll ask for an adjustment to her tolerance of his attitude, make her a bit sassier. He didn’t want her to go all-out rebellious—that was the whole point of this, after all—but that didn’t mean he necessarily wanted her to be the level of agreeable she is now. There’s a reason he fell in love with her frustratingly stubborn mind.
He just may have overcorrected her a bit.
Even before the imprinting, the neuroscientists had on multiple occasions seeked out Tom for Hermione’s mind. It was, after all, the perfect specimen for helping formulate identities for Slytherin Co.'s provided services. When he handed her over to them six months ago, it was done with the strict parameters that they couldn’t copy her mind in the process for their own use.
Hermione's mind was his alone.
He knows what she would say if she were ever given full sentience again. She’d attempt to stab him straight through the heart before or after saying she’d hate him forever for what he’d done, for making her his complacent slave. And he’d understand completely. If there was anything she hated more than what she judged to be evil, it was her own lack of autonomy.
It had never been done before, her particular programming. The typical identities serviced were formulated from multiple personalities utilizing specific characteristics and skillsets. The untouched personalities of those who had become product or otherwise were safely stored without being used.
In Hermione’s case, she was the same woman from Connecticut who wanted to change the world when Tom met her at Georgetown. She was the same bookworm who never watched TV because she simply had better things to do with her time. The same clutz who hated sports and most other physical activities.
Except now, she’s an exceptional cook. And enjoys general tidiness. He doesn’t care if she cleans—he has regular cleaners for that—but her bad habit of clutter and forgotten coffee mugs had always driven him insane, so this adjustment at the very least is one he’s enjoyed.
And of course, all that made her antagonistic and rebellious has been completely removed. She no longer harbors her own sleeper-agent resentment of him, no longer acts up like a nefarious house cat knocking over glassware in an effort to make him change his ways to her satisfaction. No longer threatens to leave him when she’s feeling particularly upset about his career.
Some things aren't meant to be changed, Tom.
The sex isn’t nearly as good, though not for the lack of quality. It just wasn’t the same now that she no longer contained her rage or fire, the semi-reluctance she felt for her undeniable attraction and love for him despite his own questionable morality.
Now she’s as loyal as a dog. Would roll onto her back and show her belly if he asked. She’s independent enough, fine if he’s gone for extended periods of time. Content never leaving her little palace of a prison with its grand kitchen and a library larger than their bedroom. Perfectly shaped into the housewife he never dreamed of having.
She is herself with the necessary adjustments made to keep her happy and complacent. Tiny microscopic elements of other personalities, ultra-fine characteristics and skills imprinted on her own person as the baseline.
It is not the standard, as what clients are given are people for specific circumstances with their own unique backgrounds based on the perfectly crafted identity the neuroscientists create for them.
But Hermione has always been unique. This is no different.
It does not, however, come without its own set of risks. He was told from the beginning that keeping the base of a person while making so many adjustments carried a greater risk of malfunctioning. In the field with a typical imprint the likelihood of a malfunction was a strong 3%. With Hermione, that likelihood skyrockets to a 20%. However, most of that was based on the lack of specimens to compare to.
But his logic was that given his role, he was the perfect person to monitor her. To be her handler.
He had never been a handler, having always been on the business side of things since being recruited for Slytherin Co. after completing grad school. He didn't typically work face-to-face with the dolls, didn't have any experience managing them. Every doll has a specially trained, independent handler. It was never his concern.
It was part of why the neuroscientists were initially reluctant to adjust her as he asked. Bringing her unconscious body into the lab with hand-shaped bruises on her neck and the demand that they put her in the imprinting chair was enough of a cause for concern. Thankfully, he'd been given the lead position of the underground Slytherin Co. D.C. location years ago, and at the end of the day they couldn't defy him.
This could be the future, was his argument to help ease their nerves. If Hermione’s imprinting succeeded, they could formulate baseline personalities into the perfect specimens. Remove addiction or cruelty. Ensure people did not experience mental illness that prevented them from living fulfilling lives. They could fix the murderous and end physical abuse. They could change the world.
They were only six months in, but her consistent treatments and check-ins with the doctor only showed good news thus far. The end goal was to make it possible for her to go extended periods of time without treatments. While they may never be able to master the ability to make people permanently adjusted using their technology, they could at least make it last.
Before this, the longest he’s risked her going is three weeks. Despite his vision for the future, he has been hesitant to let it go longer. But without the experimentation, he has no way of knowing what side effects she’ll begin to experience. And she is supposed to be the experiment.
Currently she sits at four weeks, and he has permanently braced himself for the moment she starts to malfunction. The scientists and doctors said it could show up similar to how it does in other dolls. Confusion, fatigue, the inability to fulfill a task. These instances do not happen often in the field and are easily corrected. So long as it doesn't go beyond what they expect, it should be perfectly manageable.
She tells him about her day while she finishes preparing dinner. The book she finished reading, the research articles she's been sifting through, the visit from the massage therapist, her concern about the active wars happening overseas and her ideas about which organizations they could donate to to help the affected countries.
It's equally thoughtful and mindless. All her interests in learning and being aware of her place in the world remain, but now she has no yearning to pursue any of it for herself. Now she reads articles about dying children and feels just the right amount of sympathy, takes just the right amount of action, and then makes a list of groceries for her planned out fancy meals of the week.
It is night and day, the woman gliding around the kitchen with a healthy glow in her face versus the woman who loved him yet tried to destroy his livelihood.
He's spent a questionable amount of time wondering if she knew that morning six months ago, hours before she would attempt to ruin his life, when he awoke her in their bed with his hand caressing her throat, tilting her head towards him to seal his lips over hers, bad breath and all. If she knew what she was later going to do while he released her hair from her silk head wrap so he could wind his fingers through her curls. If she moaned his name into her pillow with the conniving little plan already on her mind.
Sometimes it feels like a breakup, in its own way. The way he didn't know it would be the last time they were truly together. The way he didn't know everything would come crashing down in a mere span of a day. The way she didn't know that it was her final hours of belonging to herself. Maybe that was where she went wrong, believing she was her own person, that she hadn't been fully his since the moment she waited for him outside his office when she was 19.
Before, the closest thing they'd ever had to a break up was the three month stint after they both graduated from their respective programs and she went on to grad school and he transitioned into his new job. She hated him for it, his choice to work for a company rumored to conduct questionable experiments on animals and potentially even humans. It was three months of radio silence from her while he attempted patience through farmer’s market bouquets and generous donations of his new salary to her favorite nonprofits, finally coming to a head when her best friend and his sister nearly died in a car accident and he stepped in to help pay the hospital bills for the already nearly destitute family. Then she’s showing up at his door in tears with the confession she’d never stopped missing him, and she’d fallen so sweetly back into his arms. Everyone was happy in the end.
Just like now, with her new personality keeping everyone content and safe. She no longer has to spend so much time worrying about the moral dilemmas of loving him. He no longer has to worry about her putting herself in danger or leaving him.
Chicken piccata is served on stoneware plates with pasta and broccolini, plated with easy perfection by hands that used to eat Annie's Mac & Cheese hot out of the pot. Hermione says something about dessert while ushering him to the dining table too big for just the two of them, chilled white wine bottle in her hand. A bouqet of flowers he had delivered just yesterday, two tall tapered beeswax candles flickering on either side of the vase. The closest thing they'd ever experienced to this in the beforetimes was their six-year anniversary when he began the evening cooking dinner and ended it sliding a black stone ring onto her ring finger. The same ring she still wears today.
"This is beautiful, angel," he tells her, leaning over to kiss her on the cheek before they sit.
He never used to call her angel. If anything, the woman before was a demon summoned from the depths of hell to terrorize him for eternity. So utterly non-angelic he would have laughed at the concept of using such a pet name.
But the woman she is now is all angel, and she deserves to be called and treated as such.
When they slide into dinner, it's his turn to share his day. One small perk of the new and improved Hermione is that her seclusion paired with her discretion and lack of interest in doing anything with new information beyond conversation with him means he can tell her more about his job. Less secrets, a lightened burden from his shoulders, and the comfort of talking to someone who wasn't a coworker about the varying levels of absurdity he has to deal with on a daily basis.
It helps that she also doesn't question his morality every five sentences, now, too.
It's a redundant dance. He was told repetitive structure may be best while Hermione is still a case study. Maybe one day he'll be able to jet them off for a trip to Greece, or even visit her family for the holidays. But for now, they go through the same motions almost every day that he's home.
But she's happy. Truly, genuinely happy. And that's what matters.
She was always an intentional listener, but now it's like she's a natural. Subtle yet reactive facial expressions, quiet but thoughtful noises at the right moments, small interjections with questions for clarity. Many would learn a thing or two from her mastery of it.
It doesn't happen often, but ocassionally, it's easy to forget it wasn't always like this.
He notices she hasn't eaten as much as usual today. She portioned herself the same amount of food she usually does, yet only consumed a third of it, instead politely picking away at it in a way that reminds him of how she used to be when she was served food she didn't like but was too afraid to say anything.
He attempts to joke. "Saving room for dessert?" It feels almost comical, the way they talk to each other now. Like a happy-go-lucky couple made for a television show neither of them would ever watch.
She smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. Very unlike her.
“Are you alright, angel?”
She does a little wiggle of her head. “Just a bit of a headache, today.”
He makes a sympathetic noise, silently making a note to mention it to the doctor after dinner. “All day?”
“Just the last few hours. I took a Tylenol but it hasn’t helped much.”
He raises a hand to her forehead, pushing loose curls back as if he'll be able to find the culprit causing her headache beneath his fingertips. “Have you been drinking enough water?” He knows she has. She’s conditioned to take care of herself well. Exercises, eats well, stays hydrated. A stark contrast to the woman who would forget to eat all day and live on coffee and toast, who would balk at the idea of rigorous activity.
Why subject myself to that kind of torture when I could be doing much more valuable things with my time, Tom?
She nods, but takes another sip of water all the same.
“If it is still bothering you when we go to bed you’ll tell me, yes?”
Her hand comes up to grasp his resting against her face. She gives it a soft squeeze. “Of course.”
She stands to clear the dishes. He didn’t ask for her to enjoy washing dishes and oftentimes insists on helping, but it is a neat perk on the days when work has been more trying.
She takes both plates from the table, turning away.
She barely manages to take a single step before the plates fall from her hands and shatter to the ground.
He nearly jumps at the sight and sound. Her hands seem to spasm as her body wobbles, one hand feebly grasping at the table as she slumps forward.
“Oh—” she says blearily, “I’m so sorry—”
He’s at her side in an instant, hands cupping her face. “Are you alright?”
She’s shaking her head in confusion, eyes fluttering. Her skin feels as if it's heated by several degrees in the last few seconds. Her curls quiver as her body seems to shiver, short uneven breaths fighting against her ribs.
He angles her chin upward, and then he sees it.
It’s like her brain short circuits. She glances up at him, and it’s her.
Not Hermione the refined doll, but herself. True, raw Hermione.
She sways, squinting as she looks at him. “Tom?”
He’s torn between excitement and fear. Whatever it means that her brain has managed to reconnect with the organic part of her personality still hardwired into her mind is nothing good, but it’s also her. The version of her that remembers all of him, and not just the glorified parts that make him seem like a saint in her eyes.
He's come to accept the sad truth in these last six months—he prefers it when a part of her hates him.
He grazes his fingers along her cheek, realizing they’re shaking as they glide across her warm smooth skin. “Hermione?”
She shakes her head again. “I don’t—what’s happening?”
He never prepared for this possibility. He figured if she malfunctioned it would still be perfect little Hermione, maybe a bit confused and out of it. But this isn’t her.
This is the woman he had locked away inside her own mind six months ago. And now she’s breaking free.
He watches as her memory comes back to her. Watches as the fire in her eyes begins to return like kindling flame.
She shoves against him. In his shock he lets her, taking a voluntary step back.
She looks around the apartment in a fury, scanning the penthouse, the skyline view outside the windows, the broken dishes at her feet.
“Where are we? What did you do to me?”
He'd moved them into this apartment to be closer to his work after her imprinting. Before that they lived in a beautiful but crammed townhouse in Georgetown, filled to the brim with their infinite collection of books. It was the kind of place that kept her happy at the time, but would not be nearly enough to placate the little bird kept locked away.
She looks down at her dress, a red and pink floral thing.
“What the fuck am I wearing?” she bleats, and despite himself he has to bite down a laugh.
She wasn’t the type to wear sundresses if it wasn’t summer. One of the rare times he allows her out of the apartment now is for shopping. While she’s still not its biggest fan, she’ll efficiently peruse the store for endless selections of dresses, typically in varying shades of red. On occasion she’ll even try them on for him in the dressing room, give him a little twirl until he can see the lace of her underwear.
It’d be so incredibly unlike her and still he couldn’t help himself, grasping her hand and tugging her forward until she’d fall into his lap with a devious smile. It was one of the rare times he enjoyed sex with her more than before. She had never been an exhibitionist, had always been too bashful to unleash herself in precarious situations with the risk of getting caught.
The furthest he managed to get with her was in his TA office when they were both still in school, when he succeeded in coaxing her onto his desk and letting him pull her practical cotton underwear down from beneath her skirt. Despite the closed and locked door, she still shook her head in worry, whimpering someone would hear them. Tell me to stop then, he'd whispered against her lips. She never did, even as tears sprang to her eyes from the unfamiliar sensation of his fingers inside of her, crying out as she gushed all over his hand. He'd kissed away the salt on her cheeks with a pleased smirk.
When he takes her in the dressing room there's never a risk beyond the retail associate, what with the entire store closed down for her to shop to her heart’s content. But it’s fun to pretend.
He wonders what she’d think of him, if she knew he enjoyed playing dress up with her like a proper little doll. Likely nothing worse than what she already did.
You make the antichrist look like a fucking saint, Tom.
His heart thrums with a mixture of excitement and nerves. "What's the last thing you remember?" he asks her.
Her eyes narrow as she stares at him, like he's the thing that will trigger all the answers to her questions.
"Your office," she murmurs. "I saw—I saw…" Her eyes glaze over as she looks past his shoulder at nothing, willing the memory to return.
She squeezes them shut. "I saw what you were doing, what you were a part of. I was so angry."
So was he, at the time. When she threatened to go to the press, to leak everything they'd kept so successfully covered up for years.
"You let me believe you weren't a part of it." Her voice is thick, strained. "That you had nothing to do with what experiments they were doing…And the whole time you were lying to me."
Then her hands come up and grasp her throat, fingers twitching against the phantom feeling of his own squeezing until her eyes threatened to pop out of her head like a mouse getting choked to death by his childhood pet snake. When she opens her eyes now he sees her own incredulousness, the betrayal.
"You hurt me," she whispers.
He takes a slow, cautious step towards her, hand raised. "I know. I'm sorry."
That gets her, surprise flickering across her face. He wasn't one to apologize often. Granted, neither was she, but she didn't revel in his antagonization the way he reveled in hers. There were a million and one times he had logically argued his way out of an apology, when he spent too long of a time justifying his reasoning rather than just biting the bullet and saying sorry.
If it were six months ago, maybe he would have done just that, told her he had never been more angry in his entire life, had never planned to kill her, had felt so betrayed he saw red.
If it were six months ago. Now, he fights the urge to get on his knees and apologize for every bad thing he's ever done to her. It wouldn't be enough—she would want penance for all the ways he's hurt other people—but it would be far more than he'd ever dared to previously give.
It used to be enough, his willingness to adjust for her. She couldn't change him or fix him, but if there were any slivers of humanity within him, she was the one who coaxed it out. Maybe it was that she was the only one to see his monstrosity and believed in him anyways, that she loved him despite his darkness, even if she hated it.
But no more. She'd likely never forgive him for this, and she'd be right not to.
He's reminded of the sedative in his pocket, the thing he carries around as habit ever since he became her handler on the off chance she becomes uncontrollable. He angles his body in a way that hides his hand creeping into his pocket, fingering the capped needle that has resided against his thigh for the past six months.
She looks down at the shards on the floor, her feet clad in cushy slip-ons and toes painted a pleasant scarlett red, same as her fingers—she gets at-home pampering sessions weekly—before whirling around to study the apartment again.
He pulls the syringe from his pocket as she's turned away.
"What happened?" she asks, her voice wobbly. "What day is it?"
She focuses on him again. "Why can't I remember anything?"
He's always been good at improvising, at coming up with convincing excuses and lies in the moment to maintain his convenience. Yet now he hesitates. Unsure of how to move forward for once.
And she sees it, the disruption happening in his own mind. Her stare sears directly into his skin.
"What did you do to me?" she whispers.
He'd do ungodly things to be able to keep her this way. To hell with the perfect doll and her healthy habits and wine pairings.
His movements towards her happen at a snail pace in an effort to not startle her, the wary little doe. He's nearly within reaching distance now. Just a little farther.
Neither of them look away from each other, unblinking, etching the other into their respective brains.
"I'm sorry," he says again.
Her eyebrows furrow in confusion. "You already said that. What—what did you do, Tom?"
He takes her in, the quivering of her curls and the hummingbird rise and fall of her chest, the mixture of curiosity and fear in her eyes.
He raises his free hand to run his fingers along her cheek. Her eyes flutter, but she doesn't stop him. Doesn't pull away. It nearly shook his resolve then.
There are a million and one things he could say. Yearns to say.
Instead he bites his tongue, and with his eyes still connected with hers, hand still cupping her jaw, he raises the needle to her neck.
The look of shock on her face as he pushes the sedative in slides itself into his memory next to the image of her asphyxiated under his grip.
"No—" she gasps out. Her body sags against his. He drops the needle, wrapping both arms around her as he lowers them to the floor.
"I'm sorry," he says once more, meaning it the most he's ever had.
The whimper she lets out cuts deep into him. He used to take some pleasure in her pain, received satisfaction from inflicitng such a thing. Now it feels futile, unrewarding.
He presses his lips against her forehead. “It’s alright, angel,” he murmurs against her skin. “It’s better this way.”
“It’s better this way,” he repeats even after she’s fully unconscious in his arms, the sudden quiet of the apartment roaring in his ears.