prompt: broken clock

1996

"Hermione, I know you don't want it to be like this but – Last time you snuck in to look for the thing, Harry almost set the Room on fire, Ron alerted the entire castle of your presence and you three barely managed not to send the tunnel toppling down on your heads. Face it. We want the Horcrux, we need someone who understands that place."

Hermione slumped her shoulders, defeated. Draco Malfoy it was.

5.04 a.m. 1996

If in that precise moment someone held the tip of a wand to his head with no more than a question and an Avada ready on the lips, Draco would die. His life would pause right there with no rewind button, be honest to Merlin done and over, end as if someone had cut the film of the camera in half, and he would die – dead, Malfoy, dead – because he wouldn't be able to tell what was worse - being simply stuck in the Room of Hidden Things by himself or being stuck in the Room of Hidden Things with Hermione Granger of all people.

He was still stuck, one would say, so what was the big difference? It was. It was a Granger level of a difference, a barely 100 pounds soaking wet difference, a pale, worn out, all ribs and skin difference, and she seemed to occupy the entire room like a chatterbox of a shadow.

She huffed.

She puffed.

She nagged.

Circe, did she ever nag.

5.03 a.m. - 1996

" – just that – I mean, it's fine that you need a charm to tie your laces, Malfoy, that's your upbringing, lazy and comfort-oriented, I'm not judging. And it's not fine that you need a house-elf to spread your marmalade on toast, but that is, again, your upbringing and, though I might judge you a little for that one – what I don't understand is – you almost lived in here last year! Look! I can still see your dried drool on that couch! And that's the stupid cabinet you stupidly repaired just over stupid there! I thought you knew this Room!"

And Circe did Draco ever want to strangle her.

He had just opened his mouth to finally spit some of the vitriol that kept gathering under his tongue when –

5.02 a.m. - 1996

"What's that?"

Granger's glance followed the beefy finger of an equally beefy hand all the way to a dusty object thrown on a pile of sherry bottles – looking for all it was worth like a tipsy crown on a more than just tipsy head – and clucked her tongue, full of impatience.

"It's a mantle clock," she said dismissively. "You have to know that. There's one in every room in this school. Classrooms. Studies. Bloody bathroom." Granger shrugged. "Everywhere, really." Goyle, decidedly unimpressed, gave her a withering look, so self-righteous Draco barely chocked back a laugh. He knew what was coming. Hell, his years of minion lording were probably responsible for what was coming. "You're lying because you think I'm stupid," Greg accused. "It's not a mantle clock. It doesn't have a mantle."

Granger blinked. And blinked. And blinked. Then "And what you said are not words. You obviously have no brain to produce them."

5.01 a.m. - 1996

There were few worse things than being stuck in the Room of Hidden Things with Hermione Granger of all people but there were a million better options he could think of. One of them was being stuck in the Room of Hidden Things with Hermione Granger and Gregory Goyle, mostly because, if he had to go down hunting for the maniacal Dark Lord's equally maniacal Horcrux, he'd rather do it watching Granger sputtering in shock.

5.00 a.m. - 1996

There were five bits of sound echoing through the Room, a window shattering over and over again slowly in their ears.

"I swear," Draco whispered. "It rang six five minutes ago." Then a door opened.

5.00 a.m. - 1945

Tom Riddle leant with his back against the trolls' tapestry on the fifth floor, the Common Room's mantel clock mostly deconstructed in his lap, his wand taping cautiously against the mercury-like liquid flooding its insides. It had taken him months to narrow it down but he was pretty sure this was the one Slytherin had written about. He was also pretty sure the charm he'd put on the Time Turner fluid would accelerate things nicely. Undoing the Universe was good and all but he had no intention of waiting for it to happen in real time.

5.01 a.m. - 1945

"Why do we have to do it here?" the other boy moaned, puffing into his tinged with blue hands. "It's cold as fuck, My Lord."

Tom sighed. Archibald Goyle had no magical aptitudes to show, no basic understanding of social niceties, no rational sense of fear or functional survivor's instinct, and, Tom was almost certain on this last one, not two brain cells to valuably rub together in the empty cavern of his head. It was truly demoralising his Arithmancy calculations seemed confusedly ambiguous on the certainty of his presence.

5.02 a.m. – 1945

An abstract point in the space-time continuum was what he needed and a better fitting place than this one he couldn't quite imagine. Lifting off the floor and dusting his robes, Tom willed the door of the Room into existence

5.03 a.m. – 1945

Goyle returned with the clock in his hand, an expression both sullen and conflicted etched on his beefy face.

"You need to rethink your strategy," he said. "There's no mantle to put a mantle clock on in there."

This minion business was what needed serious rethinking, Tom decided.

5.04 a.m. – 1945

He pushed open the door again to find himself face to face with a carbon copy of Abraxas and smiled.

1944

Tom Riddle poured over his Arithmancy maps with brows furrowed and an unpleasant frown carved into his skin. He didn't like it, the way his lines went blurry and fuzzy, the way his results fluctuated all over the place. He needed the future to tell him more, he decided. That's when he remembered about Slytherin's broken clock.

I had originally put this into a different collection but I think it sits better here, even if it's not theoretically a romantic relationship. Thank you all for your comments, they were lovely.