During the long years at Hogwarts, Victoria Findor had already known Tom Riddle—the almost impeccable Slytherin top student, prefect, and a young man with a promising future in the eyes of all professors.
And Tom had already noticed her.
It wasn't until fifth grade that they truly became each other's competitors.
From repeated academic competitions to patrolling side by side; from testing each other to sharing secrets; from restrained attraction to the first kiss to getting used to each other's presence, they gradually became the most unlikely but most understanding couple in Hogwarts.
But behind the "perfect student" that everyone sees, Tom is opening secret chambers, studying death, making Horcruxes, building his own followers, and moving step by step towards a future that no one can look back on.
What Victoria fell in love with was never the Tom she changed.
She loved the real, smart, dangerous Tom Riddle who had truly loved her.
Until one day, she finally understood——
Loving someone doesn't mean you have to live in the same world as them.
Intention: Loving someone does not mean that you have to become a part of him. This work is not to whitewash Tom Riddle, nor is it to prove that love can save the villain. What it really wants to explore is: If a person has charm, talent, ambition, fear, love and cruelty at the same time, can the person who loves him still choose to leave? Victoria is not "the one who saves Tom." She saw that his excellence was real, his charm was real, and his feelings for her were real; but his cruelty, desire for control, persistence in eternal life, and use of others were also real. So she finally left, not because she didn't love him. But because: She is unwilling to trade her freedom and values for a life together with him. At the same time, Tom is forced to face something beyond his control for the first time: the person he loves has the freedom to leave him.