“What are you doing here at this hour, Tom?”

It was well after midnight, and a Slytherin had no business being in Gryffindor Tower at that hour.

“Just patrolling.”

“You’re not on the roster, tonight, Tom.”

He smiled and shrugged. “Maybe I was looking for you.”

His insouciance was infuriating. Minerva had a healthy respect for rules and little but contempt for those who believed they were made to be broken.

“Maybe I should turn you in to Slughorn for being out of bed after curfew.”

“Maybe you should. But you’re Head Girl. You can do whatever you want with me.”

It was clearly a proposition, but coming from Riddle’s mouth, it sounded more like a threat. Or maybe it was the way he stuck his arm out, blocking her path, that made it seem so.

He was very close now. At sixteen, he had not yet got his full growth, and she was a tall girl, so his eyes did not quite come up to the level of hers. He had to crane his neck slightly upward to look directly into them.

“Do you want to, Minerva?” he whispered.

“What?”

“Punish me.”

Yes, oh, yes.

She said nothing but turned on her heel and walked briskly down the corridor. Tom followed.

They did not touch one another that night. When they got to her room, she closed and warded the door.

“Undress,” she commanded him. He did so, the infuriating smile never leaving his face
.
Once he was naked, she spent several minutes looking at him in silence. She had never seen a nude man before—not in the flesh—and her interest was as much clinical as it was carnal. His body looked hard; not in the bony way hers was, but the flesh itself seemed as if it would not yield at all to the touch.