Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"By your many sins and dishonest trade you have desecrated your sanctuaries. So I made a fire come out from you, and it consumed you, and I reduced you to ashes on the ground in the sight of all who were watching." -Ezekiel 28: 18-20.

The chain of the Horcrux closed tight around Harry Potter's oesophagus. Harry thrashed, the dark water weighing upon his torso. Distantly, he could hear the sound of splashing water—someone was kicking wildly towards him from the rocky side of the pool. However, they would be a little too late. He was going to suffocate, or drown or—

Harry and Ron were hoisted magically to the water's edge. 

Someone had cast a warming charm on them.

Harry felt his saviour lifting the golden chain over his head, at once, he felt like a great burden had been lifted off of his back. Opening his eyes, he blinked owlishly and rolled to his side—retching onto the snow, struggling to draw breath into his frozen lungs. Shakily, Harry sat up, distantly he noted his windpipe felt like someone had scraped his throat with an angry toothbrush. 

But nothing could have prepared him for confronting the sight of Ron, groaning beside him, drenched, his ginger hair plastered to his cheeks.

Ron's hands were clasped around the hilt of sword of Gryffindor, as though in some sort of prayer. He used it to stagger to his feet. Ron's lips parted, his eyes wide and fixed solely on their third companion in the clearing, their saviour.

"Are both of you insane?!" Shrieked a familiar voice. "You could have drowned, or WORSE" Yelled the third member of the trio, sounding rather like Mrs Weasley. 

There before them stood Hermione. She had come to save him, again, just as she had on the night at Godric's Hollow. Dressed in a set of witches robes, Hermione had her beaded bag slung over her shoulder, the knuckles of her hands had turned white from gripping her recently retrieved wand. In her other hand, Slytherin's locket swung like a pendulum. 

Harry, Ron and Hermione stared at each other as though they were seeing each other for the first time. 

"How did you find me?" Panted Harry. He wasn't entirely sure who the question was aimed at, perhaps the both of them. Suddenly embarrassed, Harry realized he was only in his boxers and began hastily pulling his trousers back on.

Hermione's eyes did not so much as waver from Ron. 

"Hermione," croaked Ron hopefully, smiling weakly at her. He timidly held up the sword of Gryffindor to her "We've found the sword?"

"—Don't—" Hermione hissed, cheeks reddening furiously, foot stamping in the snow. Absentmindedly, she thrust the heavy golden chain of the locket around her neck, tucking it further into her robes. It burrowed into her like a serpent that had found a new nest. Hermione advanced upon Ron, pointing her wand at his jugular. Ron held up his hands, dropping the sword and slowly backed away. She looked half ready to hex Ron into next week.

"—You dare crawl back to us after WEEKS—"

"I know," Ron said, glancing at Harry imploringly. "I'm sorry—"

"—Oh, you're SORRY!—"

Harry cast his eyes around the pool, wishing he could just melt into the climate. 

"—You come back after weeks — weeks — and you think it's all going to be all right if you just say sorry?"

"Now is not the time!" interrupted Harry, exasperated. "We've got the sword, we need to destroy the locket!"

She let a high, brittle laugh, sharp and thin, teetering on the edge malice. 

As though anticipating the imminent danger, the locket began to pulse and twist like a reptile awakened from a winter slumber around Hermione's neck. 

Hermione and Ron did not seem to notice. Instead, Hermione began to circle Ron like a shark scenting blood in the water. Ron looked beseechingly at her, looking rather dejected.

"Well, what else can I say?" Ron demanded in half a blubber, half in indignation. 

"Oh, I don't know!" Hermione screamed, completely ignoring Harry. Her lip curled disdainfully at Ron. "Rack your brains, Ronald Weasley," she gestured mockingly, voice rising higher and haughtier by the second, thoroughly intending to wound. "Come, regale us with your pitiful pleas, I'm sure we'll expire when you come up with an answer in a couple of months." Her voice dripped with venom, utterly remorseless and condescending. 

"Hermione, will you please calm down." Interjected Harry, grimacing; feeling that she was being rather merciless in her tirade.

"I wanted to come back the minute I'd Disapparated, but I walked straight into a gang of snatchers," burst Ron. "I splinched myself and nearly got caught trying to get back to the two of you—"

"Oh, did Mrs. Weasley not want you home? Was she displeased that her least favourite—least accomplished—son returned, empty handed? Is that why you're here with a sword like a kicked dog?" Hermione's eyes darkened, glinting scarlet. Ron flinched backwards as though slapped. "Did you finally comprehend that you're nothing by yourself? You're nothing unless you're next to Harry, next to us?" 

Hermione let out a deranged cackle. Her smile was a taut leer, savage and more terrifying than her look of rage. Her face contorted malevolently, she was almost unrecognizable. 

All the while, the locket glowed jubilantly, charged and eager. Harry felt his stomach turn in dread. 

"Hermione, th-that's enough. You're not yourself right now." Harry said. 

But Hermione ignored him and continued to prowl scathingly around Ron. 

Without her noticing, Harry attempted to reach for the sword in the snow with his foot and kick it towards himself. 

"Do you know what I realized after you abandoned us?" She continued, her hair swirling around her like a livid gorgon. Ron looked petrified. 

"We don't need you. What could you POSSIBLY offer us?"

"Hermione," whispered Harry urgently. "Take off the locket." Blood thundered in his brain. He inched himself towards Ron and the sword, priming himself to wrestle the locket from Hermione's throat. 

As though she finally heard him, Hermione stopped abruptly, brows furrowing.

For a second she remained swaying and reeling like a kite, to and fro in the snow, then with a tiny 'oh' as though in awe, she was levitated gracefully into the air. Like lightening to a blade of grass, Hermione's chest positively exploded. 

Ron opened his mouth in a silent scream. Howling, Harry lunged for the sword. 

Blood gushed in scarlet pain, hot and fast and unstoppable from the open cavity at Hermione's breast. At the centre of her chest the locket beat like a demented, beating heart. With a hiss the clasp snapped open like a mouth, flashing phosphorous. Beneath the windowed compartment sat an hourglass, writhing and shooting sharp sparks. 

Her hands trembled, making to rip the locket from her chest. Hermione gave a low moaning cry of anguish. 

"No, NO!" Bellowed Ron, jumping and trying to seize her by the ankles to tug her back to the ground. His hand dug into his pocket, retrieving his wand and frantically casting spell after spell to no avail. 

Hermione convulsed.

Harry whirled in the snow with the sword in his hand and slipped—

—Hermione crumpled to the snow like an offering, chest igniting in flames.

The Horcrux began to emit a macabre ticking sound, as though it were in a countdown. 

Her body combusted, smoking in a deep volcanic yellow. Her spine gave a sickening crack and her limbs bent into unnatural curved angles, spiralling around the locket in a terrible, broken display. The gaping windows expanded, looking like a gloating smile and sucked Hermione's form inwards. 

"HERMIONE!'" Ron screamed, half sobbing and pounding his fists on his skull.

Harry leapt into the air, sword flashing silver and plunging. 

There was a loud slashing noise as silver met gold. Harry felt a sudden stab of pain in his abdomen and thigh. The glass from the window of the locket had shattered onto him. Suddenly, the locket's magic threw Harry backwards. He could feel himself colliding painfully with Ron who barely seemed to register it. It's not enough, Harry thought numbly, he staggered upwards still grasping the sword. He caught sight of Ron shakily crawling towards the remains of Hermione's crumpled form.

"DON'T TOUCH HER!" Harry yelled.

Deaf to Harry's cries, Ron had already flung himself at the burning witch, his heavy hands wound into the flames. The fire ate his blackened fingers until they looked like stumps, the locket's magic spat him out.

"Hermione...Harry," Ron uttered and collapsed aflame onto the ground beside her. Fire littered the forest floor, burning away at the snow bitten trees in a rapidly spreading fire. 

The locket's flames guttered unsteadily. The Horcrux let out a painful scream, guzzling up the rest of Hermione. The sword had gouged out the window of the locket, and the lid of the locket shook. The Horcrux's flames gave a spasm, turning from confused shades of blue, then green, then red, then black again. 

The locket swallowed Hermione's feet like a serpent eating its own tail. 

In a tremendous blaze the Horcrux exploded—

—and the golden trio was no more. 

Chapter Text

"It is very hard for evil to take hold of the unconsenting soul." - Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea.

It was like being an insect suspended in a jar of alcohol.

How much time had passed? None? Some? An eternity? She had no hands to fight with, no voice to speak with, no limbs to flee on—only the imposing sensation of immutability.

She felt not a trace of meaning.

Did she exist at all? Was she allowed to cease existing? 

But as though “it” lived to prove her wrong, the distant “it” made noises.

From hisses to whimpers, laughter to desperate pleas, jubilant then seething, morose then manic—the voice was unstable, yet always hungry.

Hermione felt that it was like living next to a capricious orchestra without a conductor. 

Nevertheless, his presence came both as a source of relief and constant fear. 

That voice is not mine. It exists but he is not me, observed Hermione. I cannot be an ‘I’ in isolation, because ‘I’ is only used to differentiate oneself, she conjectured, ruminating. I am because we are; therefore, I must exist.

As soon as she surmised this, something gave way—the idea itself conjuring a cold surface beneath her. She twisted, becoming very conscious of the fact that she was curled up in a foetal position. Hermione untangled her limbs. A prickle of alien dread rose in her, source unknown. Yet, when examining herself, her body appeared unharmed. Hermione’s thoughts stirred:

Where is this? Why am I?...

Barely had the question formed in her mind, she knew her answer.

Hermione blanched and stiffened. 

It is dingy inside Lord Voldemort's soul.

This was not the afterlife—not exactly. She stood at the edge of entropy, where time itself refused to linger. 

Whatever foul scene the Horcrux had conjured to confine Lord Voldemort’s soul fragment was dark, suffocatingly small, and obviously failing. There was an odd perfume that proliferated her senses which smelt distinctively like rot. The floor she lay on was thin, cracked, haemorrhaging streams of colourless ink onto the backs of her thighs with an odd grainy sensation to it. It was like being trapped inside an enormous, infected wound.

Which is certainly not mine to suture! Thought Hermione to herself rather sternly.

She rolled forwards and stood up in the dark. Hermione held out her palms in front of herself, determined to feel her way around her surroundings.

"Stop."

Lord Voldemort spoke directly to her for the first time.

His voice was a cold whisper and had a preternatural ringing force to it. Two gleaming red eyes opened and glowered contemptuously at Hermione. 

"You will move only if I will it, Mudblood-wearer." said the Locket and it struck like a command. 

Hermione clenched her jaw and chewed on the inside of her cheek. She noted his instantaneous presumption—she was less than a speck of dust, as malleable as clay, his to command and control—and the realization was enough to ignite her. It wasn't simply terror or horror she felt right now. It was far worse, far more reckless. After all, she was basically trapped here with a portion of Lord Voldemort's soul for the rest of eternity.

Arrogant, self-deluded tyrant, she thought scathingly. 

No, it was far worse.

Hermione felt defiant in the presence of the dark lord. 

Outwardly, her expression hardened, considering him boldly for a moment before speaking. 

"Why am I not dead?" She asked simply. Riddle's eyes grew ravenous for an imperceptible second, then hardened and went impassive. 

"Miss Granger," said the Locket smoothly. "It appears I have a great use for you." His eyes examined her coolly, but his voice was so hushed that Hermione had scarcely heard him. 

Hermione blinked, incredulous. A great use for me? She repeated suspiciously in her mind.

Hermione narrowed her eyes at him, giving an irked twitch, she frowned at him, waiting. 

"I have destroyed you; I have eliminated those buffoons you refer to as friends and very soon I will eliminate what remains of you. In this space, I have absolute control. You cannot hope to fight me and succeed. Give yourself to me, and you shall find that I can be most lenient. Refuse now and you shall beg for my mercy."

There was a long, drawn-out silence. 

Hermione gasped and gulped as tears filled her eyes. She gave a tremendous shudder.

I failed them… it’s my fault that the Locket—

Hermione let out a great sob. Her nails tried to puncture the skin of her flesh.

I deserve to die… let me bleed… it is my fault that they…

She could barely finish her train of thought.

If only I had died with them.

Riddle's expression remained pensive. His blood red slits merely expressed disgust and perhaps disappointment.

Hermione sniffled and wiped away her tears on the backs of her hands.

He studied her scornfully, looking as though he wanted nothing more than to reach out and banish a pesky roach. 

"So, this is attachment?" He sneered, disbelieving. "Breeding nothing but insecurity, disbanding all logic, courting failure, and culminating in loss? Nothing but the ultimate weakness."

Hermione stiffened, hiccupping softly and raptly assessed Riddle as curiously as though he were a living potions project. Her lips settled into a thin grim line. 

Riddle’s eyes narrowed at her. He spoke again, "I offer you mercy, yield now—"

"No." said Hermione.

"No, I will not." A hollow smile tugged at her lips.

Riddle did not answer at once, but Hermione could see shock flit across Riddle’s eyes, immediately quashed by a stab of outrage.

Hermione continued, "whatever dark magic you used to cast asunder my body, I know this: my soul will remain unscathed."

Tentatively, Hermione pulled back the sleeve of her robes and held out a single arm.

The nails that she had tried so desperately to dig into the flesh hadn't left a single mark on her skin. 

"What desperate illusion is this?" 

Riddle growled, his eyes were flickering back and forth between Hermione's and he threw her a long cold look.

"You mistake my indulgence for patience, Miss Granger."

It came not as a question, but a low warning.

"As you undoubtedly know, my lord, there are few substances that can vanquish a Horcrux, like the very goblin-made sword that maimed you. In fact, moments ago, you should have ceased to exist."

Hermione paused, licking her lips.

"You sensed this. So, you murdered Harry and Ron—" she inhaled sharply "—you devoured my physical body, using it narrowly to sustain an already pitiable existence."

"You forget yourself, Miss Granger."

Riddle’s voice burned in the magical space, a controlled fury building. "Capable witch that you are, you still mistake intellect for true power. Lord Voldemort takes what is his to claim.”

"You see, I don’t believe I am mistaken. You have already taken what was within your powers to take."

Hermione hurled the words back at Riddle; her tone growing evermore accusatory.

"You said so yourself, you destroyed my physical body. But you failed to mention that you need what remains of me."

Her arms crossed and her foot tapped, impatient and uppish.

"You require my soul, willingly given." 

Riddle’s red eyes flashed from her impudence but still he did nothing, enraptured though he was.

"You possess less than a quarter of the original portion of Tom Riddle’s soul, trapped inside your enchanted trinket. From my understanding, your existence is much like an unstable nuclear element; deriving destructive energy by possessing and feeding on human emotion." 

Hermione lectured, placing her hand on her hip.

"But to escape—to truly be alive—you need a magical host. And now, ironically, you need what you once forfeited: a whole, undamaged soul. So, you sought to intimidate me, to frighten me into submitting myself to you. But it is you that is mistaken, Lord Voldemort."

Hermione’s magic flared, emboldened, illuminating the Fragment with a magnificent beacon of amber light.

For an instant, the space brightened as if remembering what light was. The inside of the Locket was cracked and splintered like a degrading snow globe.

The Horcrux recoiled from her magic, unnerved.

"I am unwilling." Said Hermione.

She could see him now.

Curled on the ground, Riddle took the form of a small albino asp. Clearly starving, its scales were raw and peeling, vertebrae jutting out grotesquely, he looked ashen and sickly-looking. The end of his bloodied tail looked had been cut cleanly off, bleeding profusely and refusing to clot.

His eyes were greedy red holes that flickered with insatiable intellect and something furtive, something shameful, but Hermione recognized it at once...

Lord Voldemort feels...vulnerable, Hermione observed. Not weak, not uncertain, but exposed in ways no one would suspect.

Hermione sensed it: each piece of him—the Locket, the Fragment—resisted the truth, he longed for the completeness of an undamaged soul.

She drew nearer to the asp cautiously, close enough to reach out and touch him; crouching as an adult may crouch before a lost child.

Infuriatingly, her magic—distressed—encircled him, almost...sympathetic.

The asp flinched and cowered from her, looking bewildered but wary. He growled threateningly.

Hermione was reminded that this was the soul of a creature, no, the soul of a man that had probably never known closeness nor compassion.

Her palm drew closer slowly, hovering scarcely a centimetre above his head as if she were seeking his permission to draw nearer.

Riddle’s magic flashed; Hermione observed the suppressed yearning and distrust there.

Hermione studied him, appraising her possibilities. 

"I don’t want your pity, Mudblood." Riddle spat, in his soft snake hiss. "I don’t need your understanding."

His voice came contemptuously but it was not high enough to fool her.

It was him that was afraid.

Hermione laughed. "Don’t misunderstand, I don’t pity you. I don’t even want to know how to begin to understand you. Perhaps, even just a little, I recognize a bit of me in you."

Hermione recalled what Professor Lupin had once called her all those years ago, in the Shrieking Shack. She turned to Riddle. "Such a waste of the brightest wizard of his age I’ve ever met." Recited Hermione, a joyless parody of the most flattering compliment she had ever received. But I'm not, Hermione thought, I'm not the cleverest witch. If I had a little more sense—

So, Hermione touched him.

Tracing the line of a wounded set of scales on his skull with her index finger. Hermione drew the back of her nails up and down the tender skin of his serpentine neck, cradling his face in her hand.

Riddle’s reaction was instantaneous—

—He melted into the palm of her hand, self-folding like a flower towards the sunlight.

He emitted a relieved hiss and the blood at the end of his tail began to clot at a blistering pace.

Hermione contemplated it with rapt fascination. 

She ripped her hand away.

With a great blow, her magic had thrown him forcefully back.

The asp thudded against a cracked wall with an enraged hiss. He regained his composure instantly.

Riddle poised to strike, barring sharp fangs and spitting. 

She withdrew and stood. Hermione licked her lips.

"You're right you know. You don’t need my pity, nor do you need my understanding." She said as if to herself.

"No, much more so, it’s my help that you require."

Tilting her head to the side, appraising, her voice came clear and high. "So, what can you offer me to get what you want?"

Riddle’s eyes widened; his black, slit-like pupils dilated till they appeared almost round, eclipsing his red irises.

“I am not above the simplest instinct of all—survival,” he spoke as though to himself.

Withdrawing, he chuckled, ecstatic, it was the most normal sound he had emitted thus far, but his smile remained in a taut and bestial leer.

“Curious witch,” he murmured. “What you seek would mean mutual cooperation.” He spoke slowly as though relishing every word, "how…fortuitous."

Hermione bristled. "I have spent the past seven years trying to aid in your defeat, you and your other incarnation have taken everything from me! If you think for a single moment that anything short of extraordinary can compel me to cooperate with you, you are woefully ignorant of the truth. I am perfectly content to wait and watch you rot here or—better yet—it would bring me no greater joy than to see you perish with me." Hermione spat waspishly.

Riddle’s expression sobered: He was gazing at Hermione as though he had never seen her plainly before.

She could tell he was considering his words very carefully before he spoke.

"Those boys. I can offer the opportunity to undeniably spare them from their fates...” said Riddle.

Stricken, Hermione's spine went rigid. She did not need a clarification on precisely who he was talking about.

"...All this I can give and more." Riddle drew closer still. 

His voice was carefully controlled, but Riddle’s desire was now apparent; his expression was greedy, he could no longer smother his longing.

His tongue darted out tickling her skin.

Two hypnotic red eyes filled her vision; she did not protest.

Her mind flung back to another pair of luminous eyes; flashing in a hand-mirror at her. As she had then, she gazed back in captivation. Her resistance melted into a kind of weary interest. The world narrowed to his eyes, his voice, the promise of purpose in the void.

Perhaps surrender wasn’t weakness at all, but the rare moment when choice and inevitability met — and she had chosen her path.

"Hermione Granger, I have seen your soul." The Locket crooned enticingly. "I have seen your most desperate desires and now...I offer them all."

The serpent encircled her, his cold skin weaving in and out of her limbs.

"Now all you have to do, is share."

Lips gently parted and eyes alight with an intemperate fascination, Hermione nodded.

Riddle lunged for her lips.

Hermione did not know where Riddle ended and where she began. 

Chapter Text

"The night in which distinctions and definitions cannot be readily made is the same night in which love is made, in which things merge, change, become enchanted, aroused, impregnated, possessed, released, renewed.” - Rebecca Solnit, Men Explain Things to Me.

Hermione surged upright.

She felt as though she'd been flayed, shoved down a narrow pipe and ejected like waste.

She blinked — once, twice — and nothing cleared.

A milky, desiccated film clouded her vision and clung to her naked skin.

Scandalized, she pulled her knees to her chest and felt blindly at her face. Her body was crusted in dense snakeskin, like the pith of an orange. Instinctively she dug in, peeled a scaly strip from brow to navel, tore the rest from her limbs and cast the shards aside.

Her skin prickled, raw as a hatchling’s.

On her hands and knees, Hermione retched loudly. Her throat felt like it might tear.

She wiped the bile from her mouth. The rocks beneath her were damp and slippery. Hermione beheld her surroundings.

It was a cave.

Hermione knelt upon a small island of rock in the centre of a cavernous lake. From a fissure in the distant rock-face, a slim sliver of moonlight broke through, casting a deathly white glow across the island. The air reeked faintly of copper, salt, and sea.

The water lay eerily still—black as marble—and the only sound was the distant roar of the ocean.

Hermione got up and walked around the small island. Her breathing came rapidly from mounting panic, her thoughts racing faster.

I'm alone, she thought.

Tears threatened to overflow.

Hermione wept.

She wanted to run to Harry and Ron, to wrap them in her arms so tightly that they would never ever come to any harm. Hermione wanted to laugh with them, traipsing down towards Hagrid's hut.

But Hermione Granger always had to think...there was no respite.

The memories welled up like blood in a cut.

It was her fault Harry and Ron had died the way they did. If she hadn’t worn the Horcrux… if she’d been more logical, if she hadn’t unleashed her anger on Ron—Hermione released another sob—if only she had listened to Harry, if she hadn’t succumbed to the Fragment, not once, but twice…

"Harry, Ron," Hermione croaked to thin air. "It’s all my fault."

Hermione moaned it again as though it were a hymn.

She sprung up and wrung her hands, circling the rocky island. 

Her mind rushed back to You-Know-Who’s promise.

'I can offer the opportunity to undeniably spare them from their fates...'

She paced back and forth furiously, you promised, she thought, despairing.

Liar.

"WHERE ARE THEY?" Hermione screamed.

Her voice echoed back at her in the cave. She truly was alone.

Hermione paced and kicked something soft; it landed with a splash at the bank of the rock. Unsettled, she approached the edge of the water.

She stared disbelievingly into her palms.

Wet and charred almost to black, but otherwise intact, lay her beaded handbag. Hermione drew in a ragged breath. In the Forest of Dean—panicked—she had noticed Harry vanish from his watch outside their tent, and in her haste to go after him, she had packed their things and snatched the bag.

"At least I have you," she whispered to it sadly.

Hermione dropped her eyes, but in glancing away from the beaded bag, she caught sight of herself reflected for the first time—refracted in the water’s dark surface.

Hermione saw herself.

Hermione was no longer simply herself. Every feature had been sharpened, aligned, measured — with an unnerving clinical geometry.

The faint irregularities of life, the tiny quirks that made her human, were gone. A gleaming scar traced a circle over her right breast, a serpent devouring itself. A nauseating awareness prickled beneath her skin — two pulses, not one. His and hers.

Her eyes glowed scarlet — no longer warm brown, but a flashing, arterial red.  

"Now all you have to do, is share." 

Appalled, Hermione dashed a stone at her burnished reflection, still imprinted on her retinas and howled.

"Of course," Hermione hissed out loud. Her mind throttled alive.

"How could a man so consumed with the idea of eternally sustaining himself, have any normal conception of cooperation?!"

She mentally berated herself. All her life, Hermione had prided herself in her intellect, yet she had been outwitted by the temporary but nonetheless idiotic expectation that Lord Voldemort would have any normal solutions to a magical dilemma — to their bargain.

No, the lunatic thought himself too sly, too extraordinary, too special to use more feasible, natural methods.

Hermione had been narrow-minded.

She swooped to the floor to examine a piece of snakeskin that had sloughed off of her, inspecting it with clinical aggression.

She deposited it into her beaded bag for a further inspection later.

In one fell swoop the Fragment had ensured that his maimed soul had found a new, whole vessel while on the brink of its destruction. Albeit one which was much more conscious than what he would have originally intended. However, in doing so he had simultaneously eliminated the possibility of her destroying him.

Destroying him now would mean literal suicide.

Fool me twice, Hermione thought harshly at herself. The macabre realization was galling.

Morbidly, Hermione contemplated it: ending it all here on this rock. She had packed a few kitchen knives in her beaded bag.

But could a human-Horcrux die from a normal knife?

She shook her head.

Is that what she is now? A bearer for his Fractured soul?  was she the first?

Long since the night at Godric’s Hollow, Hermione had suspected Harry had been a human-Horcrux. It was why he could see into Lord Voldemort's mind, why he could speak to snakes, why his temperament was so volatile. In her darker moments, Hermione speculated whether Harry would need to be told what he truly is, if what she suspected of him is true.

By extension, did this mean she was also capable of the same feats as Harry was? 

Hermione flung a rock at the lake, seething at the ceiling of the cave; onyx stones blinked innocently back at her.

"Voldemort kept his locket in a stone basin in a cave." said Harry.

Eyes darting around the large black lake, Hermione could make out distant banks that glinted like black glass from what was presumably wet tar. 

There was a slim orifice that led out to the sea. The light was growing brighter still.

It's dawn, Hermione registered.

"The Dark Lord took Kreacher with him to a cave beside the sea. And beyond the cave there was a cavern, and in the cavern was a great, black lake" Sobbed Kreacher.

Harry and Dumbledore had left the cave largely untouched, trusting that Voldemort’s arrogance would make him believe his soul fragment safe. But Hermione knew with absolute certainty that the Locket had placed her in the very cave it had once terrorized, the very place it had housed its Horcrux — and now it had left her there too.

Hermione turned, eyes roving. No potion, no basin, no boat, and no Inferi.

The eerie stillness seemed to indicate this place had known some magic, but it did not show the same dark taint of the magic that Harry and Kreacher had once described. The cave was younger somehow — the darkness less saturated with evil, the air still raw.

This is beyond maddening, Hermione thought. She threw herself to the floor then rose again almost immediately.

I cannot stay here, Hermione concluded.

Hermione's mind whirled hysterically. She had no wand to Apparate with.

Even with her altered appearance, taking the Knight Bus could spell trouble for her. She was still an undesirable and a Muggleborn.

She shrugged nervously at the lake, I suppose I'll have to do this the Muggle way.

She undid her beaded bag, pulled on a change of clothes, and tied her bag to her back.

Hermione waded into the icy seawater and began to swim.

The snow was drifting down and down.

How odd, Hermione thought.

In the forest the snow had already stuck. Drifting snowflakes brushed her cloak.

Hermione shivered and took a black cloak from her beaded bag. She was absolutely drenched and freezing from her swim and climb up from the cave.

Hermione trudged up a winding cul-de-sac strewn with party poppers, drink bottles, and dud firecrackers.

Tilting her head upward, she judged the height of the sun — it was at least ten in the morning.

Not a Muggle in sight.

She passed a series of dated seaside cottages; their letterboxes stuffed with newspapers. There was a very old-fashioned blue Fiat parked on the side of the road, one which she was certain Mr. Weasley would adore.

She pulled the hood of her cloak further down.

Two Muggle children had drawn on the road with chalk and were playing hopscotch. Hermione smiled softly at the sight. Her eyes roved around the closed shops examined oddly vintage looking posters advertising sweets.

She hunted for some kind of indication of where she was — or better yet, a map.

One of the Muggle beamed at her.

"Happy New Year Miss!" One of them said.

She saw the boy's smile falter as he walked near enough to see underneath the hood of her cloak. Hermione saw the fear bloom on his little face when his eyes landed on her scarlet eyes. Before she could say a word, the little boy backed away, his hand coming to find his sister's and pulling her back into a white house.

Hermione pressed her lips together. 

New Year? she thought, perplexed. She could not recall when the last Potterwatch had been. How long have I been out cold?

Hermione paused at the window of a closed shop.

E & N. LONG Charmouth Post Office.

I'm in Dorset, Hermione noted. 

Her eyes flickered down to a poster hammered to the front door. She stopped dead.

CLOSED FROM THE 31st OF DECEMBER 1946 TO THE 2^nd OF JANUARY 1947!

HAPPY NEW YEAR'S EVE TO ALL!

SEE YOU ALL NEXT YEAR.

Unconsciously, her face had drawn so close to the door that the tip of Hermione’s nose had bumped against the wood.

Unmoved, she poked the poster with a single digit, testing for signs of it being bewitched, muttering to herself.

"I can offer the opportunity to undeniably spare them from their fates..."

She jumped back as though she had received an electric shock, tripping backwards onto the pavement.

"Awful things have happened when wizards have meddled with time…"

Hermione began to laugh hysterically.

“Awful things have already happened,” said a derisive voice.

A dog in a Muggle's garden barked in response.

Underneath her cloak, Hermione's fingers fingered for her coin purse in her beaded bag. She stepped backwards; she cast a quick look around for muggles. 

Grinning, Hermione stuck her wand hand out in front of her as though stopping a bus.

There was a deafening bang.

An obnoxiously purple triple-decker bus screeched to a halt in front of her.

I love magic, Hermione thought with glee.

Then a corpulent conductor in a much-too-small purple uniform, sporting an equally purple walrus mustache, jumped off the bus with far too much gusto.

"HAPPY NEW YEAR MA'AM!" Boomed the purple conductor.

"Welcome to the Knight Bus! At your service! I am your conductor Frode MacClivert. This beautiful beast is emergency transport for the stranded witch or—"

"—Diagon Alley, please. I need a new wand." Burst Hermione, flustered. "Oh yes, and Happy New Year," she said, remembering herself.

"Need a new wand, do you?" The conductor nodded cheerily, unperturbed. His purple walrus Mustache wiggled comically.

"That'll be five sickles. Six sickles gets you a hot chocolate, eight sickles gets a water bottle and a toiletry kit, and ten sickles will get you snacks along with this morning's Daily Prophet—or any paper of your choosing. Now, name please?"

"Mafalda Collins," she said, stepping onto the bus. Hermione reached into her handbag, extracted her change.

Thank Merlin for inflation, she thought, placing ten sickles into his waiting palm. She could hear her stomach growling.

MacClivert nodded excitedly at the driver and there was another colossal BANG!

They were off.

Hermione lowered the hood of her cloak. MacClivert's eyes instantly zeroed in on her red irises and his hospitable demeanour instantly plummeted.

"Will that be The Daily Prophet then, Miss Collins?" MacClivert asked, far less enthusiastically this time.

Hermione worried her bottom lip.

"Yes please. Oh and Mr. MacClivert?" she said very carefully. "If I give you the snack, would you mind transfiguring it into a pair of dark glasses, perhaps?"

She tried to plaster a sheepish expression on her face and gestured to her eyes.

"A wonky colour change charm,” she laughed uncomfortably, feeling like she wanted to kick herself while she lied through her teeth. “My little brother was practicing with my wand and then broke it during our New Year’s Eve celebrations. My Mum still isn't awake yet to fix my eye colour."

MacClivert brightened immediately, motioning for Hermione to follow him.

Hermione walked into the compartment, nervously assessing the bouncing beds around them. 

"Not to worry Miss. Collins, we get all sorts of funny requests 'ere. Comes with the job I 'spose."

He waggled his purple eyebrows, humming pleasantly to himself. MacClivert turned, picked up a chocolate frog card from a counter, flourished his wand and handed her a rather eccentric pair of purple, leopard print cat-eye sunglasses. He pointed at the bouncing beds.

"They're spelled not to romp about after you sit on one. If they do bother you, just lie your head on the pillow. Be careful not to switch after you choose one, they're the jealous types. Now is there anything else I can do to make your journey more comfortable, Miss?" He asked smilingly.

"A drying charm too please," said Hermione ruefully, holding up a single soggy sleeve.

"Rough night?" asked MacClivert with a chuckle.

Hermione nodded, grimacing. 

MacClivert waved his wand at her and she felt the familiar gust of warm wind.

"Well, we'll be in London by four this afternoon! I daresay you'll find that very few are as keen as Ollivander on a New Year’s Day. Rest of 'em will be shut up, or making merry, 'cept perhaps the Leaky or those folk in Knockturn. But they'd be open even on their deathbeds."  MacClivert rolled his eyes and bustled back to the front of the bus.

Hermione smiled fondly at his retreating back. She was alone.

Collapsing on a ricocheting bed, she unfurled the Daily Prophet.

1st of January 1947.

"Slimy Slytherins," Hermione uttered to the thin air.

In 1947, Tom Riddle would have just graduated from Hogwarts and begun working as an assistant at Borgin and Burkes. 

Hermione clenched her teeth. She withdrew her coins purse, jingling it.

Hermione had quietly withdrawn her life's savings before the Horcrux hunt, but it could only sustain her for so long.

"Who knew inflation would be a small mercy?" She muttered to herself, counting her savings.

Employment, she thought righteously. She gave the fragile bag a small shake, groping for a transcription of her grades. She had brought them along just in case the Death Eaters should ever decide to ransack her residence while it was vacated.

As if I'd ever let them get their blasted hands on my transcripts, Hermione thought viciously.

She wilted quickly; nobody would offer respectable pay to an O.W.L. level job applicant.

I'll need to falsify the dates, the examiner's notes and my N.E.W.T. grades. 

Her nose turned upwards in inward disapproval. 

She'd need to catch up on her N.E.W.T.s to be believable — and maybe seek additional training if the job was specialized.

Good Godric, she thought. She'd need to perform an obscene number of charms, Confund someone or worse if they found something amiss.

A trip to Flourish and Blotts would be paramount. She needed time, time to research, time to practice, and time to plan.

She rummaged around her beaded bag.

Reverently, she pulled out a bottle of perfume that Ron had once given her and Harry's Mokeskin pouch, staring at the objects mournfully. Shaking her head, she pushed them aside.

Another time.

Hermione shook open the Daily Prophet and skimmed the front page which was debating who would succeed Leonard Spencer-Moon for Minister for Magic (it would be Wilhelmina Tuft). There was a scathing opinion article on the superiority of Thiago Quintana's White River Monster wands (Hermione disagreed), and a short column on how muggle London was slowly rebuilding after (a second) tumultuous muggle world war. There was even an entire gossip column devoted to a haughty-looking witch, Belvina Burke (née Black), and her unhappy marriage.

Hermione sighed.

Her eyes snapped up to a misted window. 

"I have seen your most desperate desires...I can offer the opportunity to undeniably spare them..."

She narrowed her eyes.

"What is my most desperate desire?" She asked her impassive reflection in hushed tones, as if the Horcrux would decide now of all times to declare itself.

"I wanted the three of us together: safe, happy and unharmed. I wanted to help Harry make sure He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named would be gone." 

Hermione's voice was soft, as though she was afraid that someone might be listening. 

I didn't want to be lonely. Hermione thought longingly at her reflection, like someone in confession. 

Over the top of her purple sunglasses, her red eyes seemed to gleam knowingly back at her.

Hermione knew she was not speaking of the loneliness one experiences amidst friends, but of a yearning for an experience she felt she had been deprived of.

From the depths of her beaded bag, Hermione withdrew the Marauder’s Map.

The parchment flickered to life under her scarlet gaze. Her finger traced the inked corridors toward one forbidden location: The Chamber.

Hermione pressed her finger to the parchment like a knife, over where the Chamber of Secrets should have been labelled.

Chapter Text

“Abashed the devil stood and felt how awful goodness is and saw Virtue in her shape how lovely: and pined his loss” ― John Milton, Paradise Lost.

Hermione gave a much younger, much sprightlier Ollivander a rather sheepish look as the willow wand leapt from her hand.

“Hm. Most definitely not!” declared Ollivander, plopping the wand onto an ever-growing pile of tried wands.

“Not to worry, Miss Collins — we’ll find your match somewhere.”

He spun toward the shelves, pale hands fluttering lightly over the towers of boxes. Suddenly, he snapped his fingers and pointed upward, his eyes gleaming.

“Aha!” He announced, pointing at a wand buried on the top shelf in a rather dusty corner.

Hermione managed a small, nostalgic smile as the old wandmaker scrambled up a ladder with the wiry grace of a much younger man. He extracted a dust-coated box from the top shelf and opened it reverently.

“Ah yes,” he murmured. “Why not this one? Yew, 10¾" long, phoenix feather, formidable."

Hermione's smile had died on her mouth as though it had never existed. She stood perfectly still.

“Go on,” Ollivander urged, offering the wand. “Try her. It’s only New Year’s Day once a year.”

Ollivander waited for Hermione to take the wand.

'There's a connection between our wands'.

Hermione gripped Harry's hand harder, horrified. 'What do you mean? What kind of connection?' she asked urgently.

Her hand rose reluctantly.

Harry closed his eyes.

'Voldemort's first wand — his real wand — the yew one, 13½”, phoenix feather — the two feathers were given to him by Fawkes. Dumbledore told me himself, that our wands share feathers from the same Phoenix. He can't hurt me. 

It was not Harry’s phoenix feather wand that Ollivander now offered to her, but something infinitely more terrible—a yew wand, its nature and core the mirror image of the one that would one day serve the Dark Lord.

“A fierce protector of others,” Ollivander murmured, almost adoringly.

The words pulled Hermione out of her trance. Her head lifted, eyes meeting his pale, piercing ones. 

Then, briskly—“Well, go on, go on! We haven’t all day!”  

Hermione’s hand clasped the hilt of the yew wand.

At once, warmth surged through her palm—tender, intimate, like the memory of a lover’s touch.  

Her face drained of colour, white as newly fallen snow.  

“Well? Give it a wave!” urged Ollivander, faintly affronted.  

Hermione lifted the wand and swept it through the air.  It erupted—ecstatic—in a blaze of blinding light, as though lightning itself had been conjured from the very air, filling the shop with a shivering hum of raw, electric magic.

Hermione gasped, transfixed as the light gentled and dissipated like scattered particles of stardust. The shop seemed to sizzle with the residue of its magic.

Hermione knew what this wand meant; she knew that her own corruption was undeniable now.

Ollivander clapped loudly.

"Oh bravo! Simply glorious!" The wandmaker beamed at her from ear to ear.

"A sublime match," he cried.

Ollivander's wafer-thin hand reached out and plucked the wand from her,  preparing to pack it up and send Hermione on her merry way.

"I refuse to take that wand." She heard herself say. 

She gave the wand an expression of undiluted trepidation, like it was a gun that was about to fire. 

"Refuse?" Ollivander squeaked, flabbergasted.

His pale eyes bulged, clearly affronted by her declaration.

“I don’t want it,” Hermione repeated, her voice trembling.

The thought of wielding a wand so like Voldemort’s made her stomach twist; her fingers curled into bloodless fists at her sides.

Ollivander looked utterly scandalized. His auburn eyebrows shot so high up his forehead they might have taken flight like broomsticks.

“The wand chooses the wizard!” he sputtered. “This wand chose you! It wants only you! Do you have any idea how rare it is for a yew wand to choose a master? Can you fathom how powerful such a—”

“—I—I’m quite aware, Mr. Ollivander,” Hermione interrupted softly, her tone frayed and frightened.

He went on, almost reverently. “—The power of life and death—"

"—Fearsome. " Hermione quoted, interrupting him. "Inclined toward curses. Duelling. Protective. The darkest of all wand woods...”

A tense silence followed.

At last, Ollivander said, more measured now, “That is a trifling rumour. Those of us who study Wandlore know that those chosen by yew are not inherently drawn to darkness. The wand reflects its master, not the other way around.”

Hermione shook her head faintly, unwilling—or perhaps unable—to believe him.

“M’lady!” Ollivander began, clucking his tongue in gentle rebuke as he reached for her shoulder. “I simply cannot let you leave without her.”

He held out the yew wand like a prize, reverent and insistent.

Hermione stared at it, her mind spinning. A newer, far more reckless idea began to take shape inside her, fragile and dangerous; like a second skeleton forming beneath her skin.

Her head snapped up. She wet her lips nervously, trying to sound composed.

“Could you… show me another wand?” she asked, her voice thin with a controlled panic rising beneath the surface. “If—if I agree to buy this one?” she added quickly, catching the flicker of exasperation on his face.

To prove her sincerity, Hermione reached out and took the yew wand from his grasp. Its weight felt wrong in her hand. She thought mournfully of her old one—vine wood, ten and three-quarter inches, dragon heartstring—hers.

"But Voldemort knows now. Ollivander had to tell him everything. He’s discovered the existence of the twin cores" 

Hermione could still hear Harry’s miserable voice:

“I’m not protected anymore. He’s going to look for a more powerful wand.”

She drew herself upright, forcing calm into her voice.

“Mr. Ollivander,” she said carefully, “I’ve always been very interested in wandlore. It just occurred to me that… perhaps I might try a different wand?”

Ollivander squinted at her, suspicion knitting across his pale features. Hermione had the uneasy sense that he saw straight through her—that he knew she was up to something and disapproved entirely.

“So—you—I heard you have another wand,” Hermione began quickly, her words tripping over one another. “A holly one. Eleven inches. It shares its phoenix core with another yew wand, so—um—almost like the one that chose me.” She licked her lips, forcing a small, brittle smile. “It was just… a different length, wasn’t it?”

Ollivander nodded slowly, distracted. “I—yes—I remember every wand I’ve ever sold. I sold that yew wand to a polite orphan boy, some years ago now. He would have graduated from Hogwarts by this time…” His voice trailed off as his mind worked. “Oh yes, the other wand—its brother—the holly…”

Then he stopped. His pale eyes flicked up sharply, assessing her with renewed intensity.

“But how did you know about all this?” he asked, his voice low and curious now—dangerously curious. He studied her as if peeling back her layers: cloak, skin, thought.

Drat. Hermione cursed herself silently.

She didn’t answer. Instead, she surged forward. “Please—show me the holly wand.”

“The wand chooses the witch—”

“Mr. Ollivander,” she interrupted, her voice trembling but firm. “Show me the holly wand. I—I'm just curious, that’s all.”

Unlike Harry or Ron, she had never been any good at rashness. Her glasses slipped down to the tip of her nose as she exhaled deeply.

This is an opportunity, she told herself. I must dare like them. I must gamble.

Resolute now, Hermione cast her doubts aside. But then she made a dreadful mistake—she looked up without pushing her glasses back into place.

The red in her eyes caught the light.

Ollivander froze. The empty box slipped from his hands and hit the floor with a hollow crack. His face drained of colour, turning the pallid shade of parchment.

His hand twitched toward the counter, toward his own hornbeam wand—

Hermione bolted, snatching his wand and flung it.

Ollivander’s wand flew from her grasp, clattering somewhere behind the counter.

Her own—newly acquired—yew wand was in her hand before she’d even realized it, its tip aimed squarely at the space between the wandmaker’s eyes.

With her free hand, Hermione tore off her glasses in frustration.

How could I be so rash? So illogical? she thought furiously, her heart hammering.

“Please, sir,” she heard herself say, her voice trembling despite the threat she held. 

The young wandmaker's eerie gaze looked on her calmly

His pale eyes darted between her, the shelves of wands, and his own wand lying by the door. Hermione could almost feel his thoughts racing. A powerful wandmaker—in his own shop—surrounded by magic, facing a stranger with red eyes and a dangerous wand.

“Please, don’t.” Hermione pleaded.

"Miss Collins," Ollivander said, his eyes fixed upon hers. "I have spent a lifetime observing the bond between wand and witch. A wand carries the essence of its master. What will yours choose to do first?…what will be its first act under your hand?"

Guilt stabbed her sharply. Every instinct screamed against hurting him. 

Ollivander had always been kind, patient—but what choice did she have? For Harry, for them all—there was no other way.

Ollivander took a cautious step backward, fingers creeping toward a nearby box—

A voice hissed in her skull, smooth and cold.

Your hesitation costs lives. Protect them. Now, The acrid whisper coiled around her thoughts. Such a waste of brilliance… all for the precious Harry Potter.

“NO!” Hermione shouted and unleashed the spell. The yew wand cracked in the air.

“Stupefy!”

A jet of scarlet light struck Ollivander square in the chest. He crumpled soundlessly to the floor, limbs slack, the breath knocked clean out of him.

You’ve done well, purred Locket-Riddle’s voice, smooth as silk. Then came the warmth. It flooded her hand, her arm, her chest—a honeyed thrill of power, comforting and terrible.

For a heartbeat, the world was utterly still. She forced herself to steady her trembling hands, then moved to the shelves. 

Hermione swallowed hard, refusing to answer it. Her eyes darted to the inscriptions of the boxes on the shelves, searching—until she found it.

Harry’s wand. 

She lifted it gently, unwrapping it as reverently as if it were a relic. Her own yew thrummed in her hand, alive, responsive.  

This is necessary, she reminded herself, swallowing the gnawing shame.

She lifted the narrow box with shaking fingers and with careful hands unwrapped it gently. 

The holly gleamed softly in the candlelight.

Yes, she thought. This is the same wand I snapped in Godric’s Hollow.

She turned it over once, then slipped it into her beaded bag.

The yew wand still thrummed in her hand, humming with pleasure at her touch. Hermione’s stomach turned.

She tore her gaze from it and looked back to Ollivander, lying unconscious on the floor.

With a flick of her wand, she lifted him gently onto the spindly chair behind the counter.

“I’m so sorry,” Hermione whispered. The words cracked, barely audible. Looking at him—so young, so alive, so different from the old man she’d once known—broke something inside her.

“If I don’t do this,” she murmured, voice thick with tears, “one day he’ll find out about Harry’s wand. I have to protect them.”

Her wand trembled slightly as she raised it to Ollivander’s forehead.

"Obliviate". 

A thin but vibrant thread of memory unfurled from Ollivander’s temple, glimmering faintly in the dim light.

Hermione guided it with practiced precision, curling it around her wand as delicately as if she were twirling a strand of pasta.

The memory was tentative, still forming—its impression of her fragile and incomplete.

She pressed on.

With a steady hand, Hermione drew forth other threads—Fawkes, the creation of the holly and yew wands, the polite eleven-year-old Tom Riddle choosing his first wand.

One by one, she brought her yew wand down, slicing them cleanly away.

The memories drifted in the dusty air like sleepy fireflies—severed, shimmering, forever gone.

She hesitated only once.

Tom Riddle’s memory floated before her, pale and luminous, pulsing faintly in the gloom. Hermione stared at it for a long moment.

Know thy enemy.

Flicking her wand, she transfigured Harry’s empty wand box into a slender glass vial. With deft care, she siphoned the glowing memory into it, corked it, and slipped it into her beaded bag beside the holly wand.

Then, gently, she filled the blank space she had left in Ollivander’s mind.

A fond recollection of two Bulgarian brothers—Ivan and Dragomir—young wandlore enthusiasts visiting on a New Year’s Day. It would hold. It would explain.

With another flick, the discarded wands soared back to their boxes, sliding neatly into their shelves.

Not a trace.

Hermione stooped to pick up Ollivander’s fallen wand, setting it carefully on the counter within reach of his limp hand. Fourteen galleons clinked softly as she placed them into the till.

Then she drew up her hood. The purple lenses of her glasses hid the exhaustion, the shame, and the terrible resolve that churned beneath her calm.

She looked at him one last time.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered to the sleeping wandmaker.

Hermione stepped into the cold night, the sweetness of power still burning at the back of her throat.

I have two wands.

She told herself it was only to protect them. It had to be.

Now… it’s time to plot.

Chapter Text

"Cry havoc said he who fought chaos with chaos, and let slip the dogs of war." - Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare. 

Months later, Hermione stood alone at a shuttered windowpane — a wraith, tranquil in her isolation.

What had once been a pleasant bedroom now looked like a strategist’s cell. The walls were a storm of parchment — old Prophet clippings, torn pages from spell books, pedigrees of Pureblood lines — all threaded together with red, glimmering charm-lines like the magical equivalent of a detective's pin board.

It wasn’t madness. It was order. Her kind of order.

The floor was crowded with abandoned plates and half-read volumes pilfered from the Imperial Wizarding Library. A single lamp cast amber light over her desk, where letters lay neatly stacked beside the Daily Prophet. The page was turned to a charming section called the Witch Weekly’s Society Supplement.

The page blared a particularly scurrilous headline:

HERBERT BURKE: A LECHEROUS ADULTERER OR FAITHFUL HUSBAND? (August 1929)

Rumors continued to fly about the libertine son of a notorious swindler, Caractacus Burke, owner of Borgin and Burkes. In the last couple of weeks, Herbert Burke, the current Deputy Head of the Department of International Magical Cooperation was spotted in New York, entering the Ritz-Carlton Hotel with a litany of witches; none of whom were his wife.

His lawful wife, Mrs Belvina Burke (née Black) remained at their residence in South Kensington, with their two sons and one daughter. “

"In most marriages, I imagine there are only two people. But it would appear that Herbert Burke is determined to include fifty more,” said an anonymous source, close to the Burke family. Chiefly among his scarlet mistresses was a Muggleborn expatriate, who refused to give her name or comment.

“Herby is most certainly not a blood traitor! He is very committed to his Pureblood children. Now you can sod off from my property, or I will set my house elf on you! Bunch of bleeding vultures—" Denied his harassed-looking wife.

According to our sources in the Magical Congress of the United States of American (MACUSA) the Americans find Mr Herbert Burke’s conduct offensive.

The article had a moving picture of the backs of a young Herbert Burke, arm in arm with three witches, one of whom he was canoodling passionately with.

Hermione checked her watch. Time.

She swept up her purple cloak and fastened it. A flick of Harry’s wand turned a thick book into a small leather purse. She slipped the holly wand up her sleeve and lowered the hood of her cloak to shadow her face.

When she raised her yew wand to her eyes, the irises flared red, then cooled into a dark mahogany hue. Hermione let out a huff of indignation.

She frowned. It would have to do.

In her reflection, she saw something neither wholly herself nor wholly his — something new, refashioned from the ruins. She was more than a battered diary, more than quivering Quirrel; and more than even Voldemort's pet snake. A new, hybrid creature, torn from the pages of some bizarre mythology and sewn back into the Earth.

Lord Voldemort’s influence was an ever-evolving complication. He had an effect on her mind. She could scarcely sleep for fear that he could take over, like Hyde to a Dr. Jekyll.

She could feel him trill through her like a shot of brandy. He whispered sometimes, warm as poison. But she whispered back. His words would light up in her head, taking deep residence, arcing quickly from thought to thought like Icarus trying to touch the sun.

Frustratingly, whenever Hermione reached out with fledgling Occlumency — to encircle him, to pen him in — he slipped through like smoke. Her mind waged civil war: order against invasion. Madness as a defense against terror, she recalled bitterly. Madness as a defense against grief.

But he always returned. He could not resist.

Hermione tightened her grip on the yew wand. Light flared beneath her hood as she flourished it — Prophet clippings rose from the bed, unfolding into a neat constellation, like tarot cards mid-shuffle. Another twitch of her wrist, and a single letter soared into her hand. The slanted script was aggressive, almost carved into the parchment. It read:

Dear Hermione,  

Fine. Three days. I shall call upon you at The White Wyvern. The bar. Two o'clock.  Sharp. The wizard in a cloak of Juniper. You will wear purple.  

We shall test the strength of your spurious accusations.  

I will approach you.  

Herbert Burke.

A flash of silver light burst through the room — sharp, clean, final. When it faded, every trace of chaos was gone.

The walls shimmered beneath ghastly sunflower wallpaper; clothes folded themselves into the wardrobe; plates vanished; darker curios — a cursed barrette, a bone-handled quill — were transfigured into harmless trinkets.

The black, leather-bound books she’d “borrowed” from the Imperial Library were now no larger than thimbles, nestled at the bottom of a red velvet jewellery box. Hermione clicked the lid shut.

Midnight reading, she thought wryly.

Crossing to the bed, she reviewed the spread of Prophet articles one last time — each headline, each name, each date — like a general surveying a battlefield.

Yes. Burke will do.

She goes over every contingency plan. She is ready.

With a soft pop, Hermione reappeared in the antechamber adjoining the White Wyvern.

The air was thick with smoke and the sour tang of stale Firewhisky.

The bar was built from slabs of fused dragon bone, the floor shimmered with a restless aurora, and the bar itself carved from a Wyvern’s skull grinned across the back wall. Some twenty feet high, its fangs filed down into waiting chairs.

Hermione’s eyes swept the room with the efficiency of someone used to cataloguing danger. If she succeeded today, Riddle’s fortress would be within reach. If she failed… well, she’d be an invader without a garrison.

Her pulse thrummed traitorously in her throat. Foolish to be nervous — she had prepared for every variable, rehearsed every line. And yet, a small, treacherous part of her mind whispered he was watching, that he could feel the tremor in her thoughts.

Hermione forced her breathing into even measure. Fear was a luxury she couldn’t afford; logic was armour enough.

A hunchbacked wizard in a juniper-colored cloak sat alone at the bar, nursing a goblet of Goblin cognac. His back was to her, but she noted the tension in his shoulders, the way his fingers clenched around the glass.

Target acquired.

She crossed the floor with quick, deliberate steps, cloak trailing like a shadow. The wizard pulled his hood closer. Pretending not to notice, Hermione rapped her knuckles lightly against the bar.

“Afternoon, Sanguini,” she said, warm but measured. “Would you arrange a tray of Cauldron Cakes and a pot of tea to be sent to my room? Put it on my tab.”

The vampire inclined his head and glided away.

Now less than a foot from her, she could feel the wizard’s gaze on her — assessing, brazen, suspicious, uncomfortably intent.

“Are you Miss Hermione?” came a strained voice beside her.

She turned slightly. The hunchbacked wizard had crept closer — hairless, green-tinged skin slick under dim light, eyes bulging and wary, lips puckered like a sardine.

“I am,” Hermione said coolly. “Why don’t we go upstairs to my room? We’ll have more privacy there.”

She didn’t wait for an answer.

Turning on her heel, she strode for the staircase, every line of her body suggesting someone used to bossing people around.

Behind her she heard the faint, awkward shuffle of boots and a muttered curse.

He was following.

Hermione ascended the ancient, creaking steps two at a time, passing doors of every imaginable size — one barely wide enough for a Kneazle, another carved into the ceiling. She stopped at a small blue door that barely reached her chest.

Bending slightly, she pressed her palm against it.

The wood glowed faintly green before swinging open with a soft, obedient sigh.

She stood back, gesturing. “After you.”

The wizard ducked through, stooping under the low frame. He was breathing heavily by the time he crossed the threshold. Hermione followed him inside and shut the door behind her — a quiet click that sounded, to her ears, like the closing of a trap.

"Would you like me to hang your cloak up—" Hermione began.

By the time she had swivelled back to face the wizard, he had straightened to an intimidating height.

On the floor was an enormous silver-gilt tureen, it seemed that he had charmed it to his back in the guise of a hunchback. The ghastly soup dish took the shape of a silver, swaddled baby being held up by a platter, made of two metal hands.

Lowering his hood, the wizard tapped his vine wand on the top of his head. His fishy appearance dissolved.

A broad-shouldered man appeared. In his forties, the wizard had a bull-like affect to him, red-faced, with stern aristocratic features; fiercely bearded and curly brown hair flecked with silver. The man had glaring, bloodshot blue eyes. He was a wizard who may have been handsome once, but the years had pilfered this as it often does to many. 

"Herbert Burke," he greeted her stiffly.

Sharp blue eyes swept the room, cold and appraising, before curling into a faintly contemptuous smile.

Without warning, Herbert flung his juniper cloak straight at her — a rough, careless gesture — and Hermione caught it with a strangled little squeak she barely managed to disguise as decorum.

He didn’t speak. Instead, he began a systematic inspection of her quarters, moving with the brusque efficiency of someone who expected to find treachery. He stooped to peer beneath the bed, jabbed her armchairs with his wand like a customs officer searching for contraband, yanked open the wardrobe, and — most insultingly — marched into her bathroom to stamp his dragon-hide boots in the bathtub, as if to flush out any concealed spies.

Hermione, meanwhile, seized her chance. Running her fingers through the damask folds of his cloak, she collected several long strands of Herbert Burke’s hair, tucking them swiftly into the sleeve of her robe.

It would seem that Herbert Burke had the mannerisms of a sailor and the paranoia of a back-dealing politician.

Let's just hope he doesn't own any cats, thought Hermione drily. 

At last, after ransacking every inch of her carefully arranged sanctuary, Herbert gave a curt nod — the kind of gesture that carried no satisfaction, only temporary reprieve. He planted himself before her, extending an imperious hand.

"Right girl," He snapped rudely. "Your wand. Give it here."

Hermione blinked at him, still clutching his cloak.

The nerve.

He lifted his chin, eyes narrowing. “What? You think I’m greener than a Welsh dragon? You could be some witch trying to confund me for a pretty galleon.”

How right you would be, Hermione thought grimly. But that suspicion doesn’t help me. She couldn’t afford his contempt — not yet. She needed him pliable, not provoked. Affection would be too much to hope for, but a hint of obligation might do.

She pressed her lips together, schooling her face into something cautious and small. Then, with a deliberately hesitant motion, she drew Harry’s holly wand from her sleeve and offered it to him, handle first.

He took it without thanks, veering off to deposit both her wand and his own atop the dusty wardrobe.

Hermione watched him go, her pulse steady despite the prickling in her palms.

Fine. Let him think I’m harmless. That’s how you survive men like this.

She unfastened her cloak and hung it neatly beside his on the back of the door, buying herself a heartbeat to breathe. By the time she turned back, a tea tray had materialised on the table, steaming politely.

“Would you like me to peel back the floorboards so you can check under those too?” she asked, her tone laced with brittle civility as he continued prowling. “Or could you please sit, sir?”

Glaring daggers, the wizard stopped before an empty armchair and dropped into it with a huff.

He set a silver tureen on the floor between them — the clang was loud enough to make Hermione’s heart jolt, though she forced herself to merely flinch and fuss with her teacup.

She took a sip, pretending to find the ceiling fascinating.

Herbert sniffed loudly and downed half his tea in one go, wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve like an ill-mannered troll. Then, without warning, Herbert smashed his cup down on the table with a violent crack.

“Not a word of our correspondence to so much as a soul?” he snarled.

And now we tango, Hermione thought dryly.

The first lunge. His elbows were braced on his knees, shoulders bunched forward — a bull ready to charge. She could almost feel the heat of his suspicion.

Hermione placed her teacup down deliberately, porcelain meeting porcelain with a polite little chime.

“No!” she exclaimed, letting just enough tremor sharpen her voice. “Mr Burke, I have not breathed a word. I have conducted myself with the highest discretion!”

Hermione tried to master the pounding in her chest, willing her pulse to quiet beneath her collar.

Herbert nodded imperceptibly. He still looked coiled, ready to spring, but the tendons in his neck loosened by a hair.

"I do not detect an American accent," he said flatly, eyes narrowing on her face.

"Oh!" Hermione exclaimed, as though wounded by his suspicion. “...You may not recall, but my mother was—a expatriate B-British Muggleborn,” she stammered softly.

Her mind raced, constructing the lie in real time, smoothing its rough edges as she spoke.

Anchor it in sentiment. Make him uncomfortable, came a cool voice.

Looking down, she felt an unexpected sting rise behind her eyes — not entirely contrived. “She—she taught me to speak in her way, you see. Very eloquent—I mean—eloquently!” Hermione spluttered. “But I’m so glad you don’t think I have an accent. She tried endlessly to—”

“—Enough.”

Herbert’s interruption cut like a knife. His gaze raked over her boldly without a flicker of recognition. 

“Well,” he sneered, “I don’t remember her.”

He bared his teeth in what might have passed for a smile, and Hermione thought absently that they looked like piano keys — sharp, yellowed, and meant for grinding.

She forced a bright, shaky laugh, feigned eagerness flooding back to her face.

“—Did you remember all the witches you had dalliances with?” she blurted, then slapped a hand to her mouth, eyes widening in horror, as though she couldn't believe her own audacity. “Oh, I—I'm so sorry! It’s just—I read about you in the papers—my mother kept some—”

Her performance spiraled perfectly into hysteria.

Herbert’s face went an alarming shade of puce.

“—You do go on and on, witch,” he growled. “I know when someone is trying to sell me some centaurshit.”

He spat on her floor — a wet, deliberate sound.

“My father, Caractacus Burke, is a very well-connected wizard. Such useful contacts. I’m sure I could find some beggared fool to conveniently help…”

You mean get rid of me, Hermione thought. How charming. What a gentleman.

She had hardly expected Herbert Burke to rejoice at the supposed circumstances of her birth. Of course he didn’t believe her — why should he?

He was a Burke, bred to understand worth only if stacked like money. 

The documents she’d sent him were never meant to convince him entirely — only to stall his suspicion long enough for her to get them to this space, to control the pace of the conversation. Her tale looked as tall as it was false. At best, the evidence had been circumstantial; at worst, transparent. Hermione knew was not Herbert Burke was not a betting man...

No, he was the son of Caractacus Burke — the most avaricious wizards ever to grace the halls of Hogwarts. Hermione highly doubted that Caractacus Burke became one of the richest wizards alive with a firm handshake and dumb luck. Neither father nor son had built their fortunes on honesty or happenstance.

And she knew precisely what that meant: Herbert Burke would want proof — tangible, irrefutable proof — before he risked anything at all.

Fortunately, it seemed that they had both come prepared for exactly that. 

Herbert Burke bent to the floor and lifted the lid off the tureen.

At the sight of it, Hermione’s face flickers, a quick flash of unease she buries beneath a mask of polite curiosity.

Burke’s own expression, however, was far less composed; his eyes darted, and his hands trembled as he set the lid aside.

His face was eloquent with trepidation. 

A thin sheen coated the inside of the silver bowl, glistening like oil on water. 

Herbert poured half his tea into the bowl.

The liquid simmered, turning into a yellow potion.

Hermione tried to withhold gagging from the smell of bile which emanated from it.

She forced herself to breathe through her nose, to think. It wasn’t bile, not quite — more like a catalytic base, alchemically reactive. She’d read of such enchantments before, crude descendants of blood-ward magic — Lily Potter’s protection turned inside out. She had anticipated some form of blood-sensitive magic, though the alchemical overlay made it almost…crude.

Herbert coughed.

"This silver tureen once belonged the vampire Ivan IV Vasilyevich of Russia, more commonly known as Ivan the Terrible. Unlike most of his kind—" Herbert intoned with his lip curling into an expression of distaste. "—He could not recognize the scent of his own offspring. Ivan commissioned a skilled wizard to enchant this soup bowl. In this tureen, the Tsar would place his new-born bloodsuckers in it. If it should happen the child was not his, well..."

He gave her a foreboding look. 

Hermione blanched under the weight of his gaze.

The snappish wizard held out his hand to Hermione. "It has been rectified—spelled to recognize my offspring," Herbert said in a low voice.

"A strand of your hair will suffice."

Hermione’s mind was a clockwork of caution and calculation. One wrong hair, one miscast charm, and this would all unravel.

Finally, she nodded her assent, keeping her face deliberately neutral.

Her left hand rose to her scalp, fingers brushing her curls as she feigned plucking a single strand of hair, surreptitiously extracting a sliver of Herbert’s from her sleeve instead. Her pulse thudded in her throat, but her expression remained composed. In bated breath she let the hair fall into the silver tureen. 

Herbert quickly shut the lid as though it were an oven.

The tureen came alive.

The silver baby opened its mouth and wailed like a banshee. The baby’s arms flailed wildly, the sides of the lid began to smoke. Two silver eyes flickered open. Chips of ice of the palest blue glowed—

Hermione held her breath, eyes locked on the miniature chaos, willing it — to behave.

The lid flew off and the strand of hair was intact.

Herbert Burke roared, tearing a giant clump of hair from his beard and hurling the silver tureen against the wall. His face, once abnormally ruddy, drained of color; his hands trembled.

The wizard looked around Hermione’s room as if plotting a desperate escape.

A long, tense silence stretched between them, taut as a rope.

Herbert now resembled a deflated old tire, his giant head buried in his hands, emitting low, almost animalistic whines.

Hermione’s chest tightened as she watched him with an expression of concern. She gripped her robes, heart stuttering with a mixture of relief and guilt.

“Mr B-Burke?” Tried Hermione timidly.

Herbert raised his head. He was still trembling. He swallowed and looked anywhere but at her. Hermione noticed that his hands had come away glistening and wet. He had somehow gotten to his feet again.

She swallowed hard, turning her gaze away, she felt as though she was intruding on a profoundly private, painful moment.

The oaf did threaten to vanish you, a velvet voice intoned. The existence of an illegitimate daughter may be false, but it doesn’t excuse his continuing infidelity, another colder voice cut in from the back of her mind.

Herbert staggered to the shuttered window, squinting down at Knockturn Alley. He didn’t look at her.

What is the face of a coward? hissed the embittered Locket. The back of his red neck.

Hermione swallowed again, steadying herself. She forced down the voice of You-Know-Who, pressing it deep behind her thoughts. She would need every shred of control if this encounter was to succeed.

“I—” Hermione began.

“—Silence.” He said in a low, hoarse voice. 

Hermione inclines her head, heart skipping a beat.

“Years ago, my wife’s brother nearly blasted off my entire family—my children—off the Black family tapestry,” Herbert said sullenly. “But It was not because I was in bed with witches who were not my wife...”

He sniffed generously and drew out a handkerchief of flobberworm silk.

“No, it was because The Daily Prophet wrote that my entanglements didn’t discriminate. Purebloods, Halfbloods, Muggleborns, even Muggle girls...lust is not prejudiced.”

Hermione's eyes softened ever so slightly.

He turned his tired gaze onto her, lips twisting as though he’d just swallowed a draught of rat poison.

“Your mother, she is a Mudblood?”

Hermione’s eyes darkened, flashing red.

“Was.”

“Ah.” His tone sharpened suddenly, and his face hardened. Herbert seemed to regain some of his brisk, crabby manner.

Hermione let a beat stretch, letting the silence pressure him. She weighed every twitch of his expression, every shift in posture. Would he pry further? Would he see past the mask?

“…is she why I was never owled?” Herbert finally croaked.

“Yes,” Hermione said evenly, measured, each word deliberate. “...I don’t have anyone left.” Her voice carried the sting of pain and resentment, though she kept her face composed. From the shutters, Herbert’s full torso twisted toward her.

Hermione thought of her own parents, gone. 

She cleared her throat. “Sir, as far as the Black family will know, Herbert Burke never had an illegitimate daughter in America.”

The road to victory is paved with hypocrisy, she reminded herself.

Her voice was careful, controlled, edged with insinuation. “I won’t say a word, sir.”

Herbert ran two idle fingers along the windowpane, holding them to his eyes as though to measure her intent. He seemed to understand.

Slowly, he stalked back across the room.

“…And I will reward you liberally for your silence, Hermione,” he said quietly, finally granting her the recognition of being called by name.

Herbert Burke now stood before her, towering over her seated form.

“What would you want in exchange?”

Hermione inclined her head deferentially, the smallest curve of a smile touching her lips. “A wise man once said that a rich wizard is always sold to the institution which made him rich,” she said carefully. “I ask, what made you rich, Mr. Burke?”

Herbert froze, staring as if doused in ice-cold water.

“My father,” he said, disbelief ringing in his voice. “You want Borgin and Burkes?”

Hermione smiled sweetly, faintly, knowingly.

From the lion’s den to the nest of serpents.

Chapter Text

At dawn, Hermione awoke as if the sunshine were an alarm. The windows had been flung open; cold light flooded the room. Hermione sat bolt upright, shrieking as she snatched her wand from beneath her pillow.

“Miss is to get out of bed, at once!” squawked a high voice.

Balancing precariously on her torso was a house elf — no taller than a ruler, eyes like green Christmas baubles, draped in a tea towel.

"Oh, Bon Bon—how many times—have I told you—warn me!" Hermione spluttered. 

The elf pirouetted off her torso, sent the covers flying, and with a flick of her fingers, flipped Hermione clean out of bed. Bon Bon dropped nimbly into a sly bow. 

Since her “meeting” with Herbert Burke, his house elf had been popping in and out of her room like a random bomb.

Each visit brought new pandemonium: hurricanes of cleaning (that nearly upheaved her magical charts), aggressive furniture swapping (noise complaints followed), even kidnapping her to Gringotts to open a secret vault which Herbert had filled with an ample allowance.

Herbert had effectively commissioned Hermione her own miniature governess.

Despite herself, Hermione found she had grown exceedingly fond of Bon Bon. 

“Master Herbert orders Miss to meet Master Caractacus Burke,” Bon Bon chirped, summoning a set of black robes that shimmered like the night sky. Bon Bon snapped her fingers, and the bed began to make itself.

At that, Hermione scrambled to her feet from the floor. 

"Bon Bon is proud to make sure that Miss doesn't dress like a common hag." 

Hermione felt her face redden and she stammered indignantly at the unperturbed elf. She could not escape the notion that the house elf was thoroughly enjoying herself. 

Minutes later, Hermione looked enchantingly polished in a dress of black watered silk — Bon Bon, at least, had respected her request for hidden wand pockets. Although Hermione would only admit it to the enchanted mirror, she always felt rather fetching after Bon Bon had dressed her.

The house-elf seized the back of her knee.

“We is ready,” Bon Bon announced, and with a sound like a pistol crack, they disappeared.

The world poured back and forth between Hermione's eyes.

They reappeared in the vast, unlit interior of Borgin and Burkes. It looked much as it had when she’d entered at sixteen — the trio in hot pursuit of Draco Malfoy.

A different time.

Spiked iron grilles were lowered over the dusty shop window, fastened shut. Hanging from the vaulted ceiling were rusted instruments, the sort that promised pain. Dark curios sat locked behind glass: a bouquet of dried fairies, a stolen royal scepter, bloodstained international teleportation stamps, Runespoor eggs, a taxidermy kappa.

Which were all illegal, Hermione registered sanctimoniously. But worse were the evil-looking masks glaring down from the walls — waxen, demonic, and too familiar. They looked suspiciously like the same kind worn at the Quidditch World Cup, when Lucius Malfoy blasted through tents and tortured the Roberts family.

Bon Bon gave Hermione’s skirt a sharp tug and signaled her to follow.

She did, begrudgingly, trailing the elf behind the counter of bones. They stopped before a strangely familiar painting of a fierce-looking Tudor witch. Hermione frowned; they weren’t headed to the backroom.

Bon Bon threw herself into a ludicrously low bow that flattened her beak-like nostrils to the carpet.

The portrait raised a haughty red eyebrow.

"Is this her?" Asked the portrait in a soft, musical voice.

“Yes, Mistress Elizabeth!” Bon Bon nodded with near-worshipful fervor. Hermione’s eyes narrowed; she was goggling at none other than Elizabeth Burke — a deplorable former headmistress of Hogwarts.

“This house-elf has the honor of bringing Miss Hermione to see noble Master Burke, in his study!” Bon Bon declared.

“Password?” said Elizabeth Burke coolly.

“’Tis better to be seen and not heard!” piped Bon Bon.

“You would do well to remember that,” the portrait intoned darkly, eyes trained on Hermione.

With a disdainful sniff, Elizabeth Burke swung forward to reveal a descending, moving spiral staircase, onto which Hermione and Bon Bon stepped.

“Level One, the Grecque Nautique Study,” chirped Bon Bon.

Hermione stifled a gasp. There are more levels? she thought, disbelieving. The sheer scale of such an undetectable extension charm—

They descended in smooth, silent spirals until they came to an imposing iron door. Its brass knocker was the snarling head of a decapitated Chimaera, teeth bared and wet-looking, as though freshly used.

Something deep within her shifted, like the tide pulling against the shore. A thought, unbidden, surfaced — and she drowned it before it could take shape.

Bon Bon shoved Hermione back, then bounded up to knock thrice with the creature’s jaws.

“Finally! Is that you and the girl, Bon Bon?” came a rich, genial voice from the other side. “Herpo’s effing staff, we—I—have been waiting here since dawn.”

Hermione froze. We? she thought sharply.

Bon Bon lowered her head. “This elf offers Master Burke her many apologies for her worthless tardiness—”

But Hermione stepped forward, pushing the iron door open brazenly.

“It was my fault, not Bon Bon’s, Mr. Burke,” she said evenly. “I’m sorry for the delay. I hope I didn’t keep you waiting long.” She hesitated, then added, in a tone that was almost defiant, “My name is Hermione.”

For a heartbeat, silence. Then a low, gruff laugh.

“Well then, Hermione. Welcome. Enter, enter.”

The iron door swung wide, revealing a chamber of colossal proportions. From somewhere deep inside, syrupy, sweet music floated out — unnervingly serene.

Hermione took one step inside—and the locket’s magic roared to life.

It wasn’t a pull, but a remembering — the air thickened with yearning, as though the space between them had once been filled and now strained to be whole again.

Her pulse struck against it, traitorous. Something within her surged upward, like a drowned thing remembering the air.

She gritted her teeth, forcing her mind to tighten. Occlude. Close.

He was here.

Close.

And worse yet — some buried part of her was hungry for him to be.

Her resolve rallied like muscle against gravity. She raised her Occlumency walls, stone by trembling stone, suffocating the thing inside her that purred in recognition.

The pull receded — but lingered, a promise waiting to be kept.

Tom Riddle was close.

Hermione shook off the ripple of unease and moved forward, grounding herself in motion.

A lone chair waited by the door, angled toward the room, as if it had been listening.

The chamber curved upward into a glass dome, where cool blue light filtered through the bewitched vivarium above, bathing the room in a sapphire glow. Shadows of sea-creatures drifted overhead — a Hippocampus, a drowsing Ramora — a species of merfolk seized her attention. Pale, half-formed things, their mouths shaped soundless laments, their hair coiling like smoke.

Hermione masked her intense revulsion, lips parting in an imitation of wonder.

At the center of the round floor was a bookcase. In front of it, a long-painted table where Herbert's silver tureen glimmered on the top like a crown jewel.

Caractacus Burke rose from his chair, a winning smile slanting across his broad, ruddy face.

"Hermione," he said gaily, gesturing grandly to the seat before him. "Please."

Wearing crooked, gilt-silver scissor glasses and an eccentric eau-de-nil suit, the old warlock spread his arms in theatrical welcome. Like Herbert, he was broad and heavy-jawed — but softer, more porcine, as though years of indulgence had worn away the sharpness his son had honed into cruelty.

Caractacus clapped his hands commandingly and the merfolk instantly stopped singing, and the silence rang with obedience.

She moved over to the table and Caractacus brushed his whiskered old lips over her hand.

It seemed that where his son was crabby and inhospitable, Caractacus was boisterous but courteous.

“A pleasure, Mr Burke,” Hermione said evenly, lowering herself into the blue-velvet chair. The fabric clung to her dress; she leaned forward to free it, feigning composure as her pulse skipped. Hermione smiled as best as she could. Caractacus's gaze lingered on her with what could only be described as clinical interest for only a moment, then darted away.

“Bon Bon, you can pop off now,” Caractacus said, craning over the desk. “I daresay Belvina and the children will be awake and hungry. You wouldn’t want them missing you, would you?”

Hermione’s smile held, though it tightened at the edges. The barb had found its mark.

Bon Bon bowed and vanished with a pop.

Caractacus settled himself back down into his chair.

His wormy lips stretched into a sharp smile. “How silly of me, to dismiss the house-elf so soon! I must be getting old.” He shook his head, mock-shame in every motion. “This early in the morning, we could profit from some breakfast.” Caractacus clucked at Herbert’s tureen, still bearing strands of hair. “We can’t have soup now, can we?”

He said it without saying it at all.

Shame, the tureen confirmed our relation.

Hermione’s eyes narrowed; an attack seemed imminent.

Caractacus twitched his wand, and a tray of food appeared: gold-rimmed china cups, a golden plate heaped with glistening strawberries and overripe raspberries. A mouth watering sight— if Hermione didn’t feel rankled. Even magically grown, this fruit should not be so perfect for the season.

She considered what Harry or Mad-Eye Moody would say about eating anything offered by a potentially hostile adversary.

Caractacus’ eyes flicked to the fruit with mild distaste.

“Now then,” he said blithely, “I thought we ought to have a little tête-à-tête about you. I hear you’re staying in the White Wyvern. You arrived in Britain… when?”

He had left his wand on the table — the magical equivalent of leaving a gun out. Neither witch nor warlock touched the tea.

“December 31st, 1946,” Hermione said stiffly, careful to use the American form.

“At the brink of the New Year? From the New World,” Caractacus murmured wistfully. “How poetic.” He whistled softly, chuckling. “I see Herbert has already lavished some of his… budding fatherly affection on you.” He gestured lazily to her luxurious new attire. “Quite svelte, aren’t you? Did you play Quidditch in Ilvermorny? I daresay Herbert has been feeding you well.” His tone oozed apparent concern.

Hermione understood the deeper meaning perfectly. Quick to pinch at your father’s pockets, aren’t you?

To him, she was no better than a starved stray.

Crossing her legs, she said curtly, “We play Quodpot in America; it was actually inspired by Quidditch.”

“Oh?” Caractacus raised his bushy brows in mock surprise. “You Americans!” He threw back his white head and chortled. “Always so eager to duplicate the better, original things. No wonder Herbert adored the free world — always an appetite for delicious-looking, unremarkable food. He never developed my more refined palate.” He smiled, twiddling his thumbs. “Drink the tea, my dear, before it grows cold.”

With the back of his wrinkled hand he stroked the painted table admiringly — another indirect insult, perfectly packaged.

Herbert may be blind to how ordinary you are. But I see you: another witch with no extraordinary attributes.

Hermione felt the heat of her temper rise. She wanted, very badly, to reach across and throttle him by his tie. Every sentence was a small, gilded jab; she had heard enough.

“I’m afraid I don’t have an appetite for tea or fruit right now,” she snapped. “Let me remind you the condition for my silence was that I remain at Borgin and Bur—”

Caractacus raised a fat finger, amused. “—with Herbert, not with me.” He said it pleasantly, as if explaining the weather. “Discussions are not commitments, my dear. I see no value in employing another, infinitely inferior shop‑assistant.” He folded his hands. “Nor do I see merit in you strutting about, flaunting Herbert’s money when he already has three perfectly good children by marriage. When I catch more of the same fish, I throw it back in the sea.”

Hermione’s gaze fixed on his crooked glasses; she kept her face deliberately blank. In the instant before her anger fully caught fire, thought moved faster than emotion: she had misjudged him. She had expected the son’s blunt, predictable cruelty — not this cultivated appetite for ownership.

Caractacus Burke was greedy, yes, but above all he was a collector — of rare objects, of rarer people. In his mind she was merely a lesser model of something he already possessed: useful, expendable, and not unique enough to be kept.

He was a Horace Slughorn writ grotesque.

The knowledge stung. Hermione felt a hot flare of fury — the urge to boil him in a cauldron and be done. But hot wrath would be her ruin here. Cold, controlled cunning won this room.

Fine, Hermione thought viciously. If Caractacus wanted her to prove her worth, then Hermione would.

She smoothed her expression, folded her hands, and prepared to sell herself the way the world expected her to — for now.

Hermione leaned across the table, adjusting the old wizard’s crooked glasses.

Caractacus flinched back.

“What in Herpo’s name—”

“You’re crooked,” Hermione said sweetly, tilting her head like a naive kitten.

“Did you not notice? You did say you were feeling old. Perhaps your vision has suffered further with age.” She snorted, as if stating a painful truth. “Might I suggest a new prescription?”

Caractacus’s wormy lips thinned; his face reddened. Hermione lifted a teacup to her lips, obviously not drinking.

“Mr. Burke, you strike me as a man who enjoys books. Ever hear the phrase: ‘To improve is to change, to perfect is to change often’?”

“No, I—”

“I thought not,” she interrupted, letting the words hang.

“And yet, in your shop earlier, I could have sworn I saw a whole host of illegal objects…taxidermy Kappa, Runespoor eggs. Endangered, yes? And International teleportation stamps? Forgive me, sir, but doesn’t selling such things violate International Laws of Apparition and Travel?”

She set the cup down with a soft clink, feigning doubt in her own assessment, daring him to speak.

“So silly of me!” she added, channeling Dolores Umbridge perfectly. “Did Herbert mention I studied History of Magic? One of my favorite subjects. Not that it surprises anyone I was sorted into Horned Serpent — favors the mind, you know.”

She asked airily, fishing for a response, ears pricked for any sound that did not come from Caractacus or the marine life overhead. “Isolt Sayre founded the school — a descendant of Slytherin himself,” she rattled on, the remark not aimed at the warlock so much as cast into the room.

At the name, a faint creak of wood answered from somewhere behind them.

Strange coincidences, Hermione noted, sharpening the point. She filed her appraisals away for further inspection at a later time.  

She waved the comment away with a flippant hand. “Anyway — my point being that I’m an avid student of history. Did you know the scepter of Dagobert was stolen in 1795 during the French Revolution? I wonder what the French would say if they found their precious sceptre was illicitly—”

“—You’ve made your point!” Caractacus thundered, springing up as if the chair had burned him, tufts of white hair trembling in his ears.

He turned his glare to a spot behind Hermione.

Interesting.

“Have I made my point?” Hermione asked, faintly pompous. “Forgive me, but isn’t it foolish to display a regalia of rare, illegal artifacts so nakedly? Any Ministry clerk could stumble in. You might as well lay your underbelly open to the entire Department of Magical Law Enforcement.”

She did not intend to report him — Borgin and Burkes would trade dark curios for decades — but the accusation left a fissure.

Hermione leaned forward, scenting weakness. “Mr Burke, you made your fortune by maximising profit, but you’ve failed at minimising risk. I spent less than five minutes in your shop and counted breaches of nearly every International Wizarding Statute.”

“So,” Caractacus finished, settling back with a calculating gleam, “you offer me risk assessment and magical management?” His blue eyes bored into hers.

“I’m open-minded,” he added, already picturing possibilities.

“By all accounts,” Hermione continued, voice cool, “your shop assistant is excellent at persuading owners to part with curios. You provide valuation and confidentiality; then you sell at inflated prices. Might I propose a more profitable modus operandi?”

Caractacus’s smile split, a greedy expression trilled across his face. 

"Go on."

“I could help you acquire more, with minimal risk,” Hermione said loftily. She drew her wand and traced shimmering shapes in the air: a locket, a sword, a diadem, and a cup — deliberately leaving out the Slytherin ‘S’.

“Around twenty years ago, you made the best bargain of your career. One winter, a pregnant witch stumbled into your shop with a certain… priceless locket,” she paused for effect.

“The witch had inherited it by virtue of being from one of the finest Wizarding families—”

“—How did you—”

She ignored him, dispersing the glimmering images with a flick.

“Of course, I cannot retrieve what has already been sold,” she said slowly, as if explaining to a dull-witted child, omitting that the cup would need to be stolen from Hepzibah Smith.

“But I can locate other items of equal value.” She punctuated the point with a graceful wave. “Does it matter how I know, or only that I can deliver? Consider me… an anthropomorphic niffler,” she added, slyly. Her words cut with the clarity of sunlight through the murk, scattering the silt of his complacency.

Caractacus’s face split into a grin that could only be described as Cheshire-cat. In the subaqueous glow, he resembled a baby-blue pig with teeth.

“Perhaps there is some value in our blood relation, after all,” he said, rising. “I like this vision. Consider me persuaded.”

He strode to the bookcase behind him, fingers skimming the spines before plucking out two volumes.

“Bon Bon, come.”

With a riotous pop, the small house elf appeared. Hermione raised a curious eyebrow — so, house elves can Apparate here?

You-know who truly overlooked you, Bon Bon. 

“You may escort Hermione back to her residence,” Caractacus said firmly. Then, turning back to her, he handed over the books.

“Study these before you start. Tom Riddle—my shop assistant—will be there to show you around,” Caractacus said slowly, shooting a fleeting glance behind Hermione’s head.

“You will begin your training in three days’ time, from midnight until at least two o’clock.”

Hermione opened her mouth to protest.

But Caractacus didn’t pause. “When I judge you capable of operating alone, you will be fully employed—during normal working hours. You will also remain silent on your comings and goings here.” His tone left no room for argument.

“My salary?”

“Negotiable,” he replied curtly. Discussion closed.“And I trust you know how to return even without the company of a house elf?”

Hermione scoffed, nodded, and rose.

“It’s been a pleasure, Mr. Burke,” she said, the words dripping with the exact opposite. She offered a deliberately stilted curtsy just as Bon Bon touched her leg.

With a crack like a pistol shot, Hermione and the elf vanished.

Hands clasped behind his back, Caractacus studied the blue chair Hermione had vacated.

He paused, glanced up at the chair by the entrance of the room.

“You can remove the disillusionment charm now,” said Caractacus simply. 

A faint rapping broke the silence, as if someone had cracked an egg on an empty head. 

The air seemed to shiver. 

“Well, Tom? Do you agree with my decision? What do you make of her?”

A tall wizard stepped through the reflection of the vivarium’s light, like something surfacing from the deep.

Light traced his features, lending him the aura of a languid deity: fascinating, yet untouchable.

He remained still for a long moment, dark eyes speculative.

Finally, Riddle inclined his head. “Yes. A valuable future colleague, sir.”

Caractacus’s gaze lingered on him, sharp as a blade, before he settled back and vanished the tea and fruit. Flicking his wand over the blue-velvet chair Hermione had vacated, he studied the traces she left behind.

“She did not actually touch the tea, nor the fruit. My static charm collected no hairs.” His voice was steady, harsh. “Perhaps next time I should command Herbert’s elf to ensure her hair remains loose.”

A frown puckered his forehead. “Exceedingly cautious and shrewd for a witch. Quick as a viper. Yes… best to keep her in the shop.” He murmured to himself. “Tom… were you able to skim that mind?”

Riddle’s expression remained unreadable. He bowed his head, subservient but measured. 

“…I confess, sir. I caught only a whisper,” he said, voice low, conspiratorial. “It seems the lady is an Occlumens.”

Caractacus blinked, thunderstruck. Perhaps for the first time, his brilliant shop boy had failed in an extraction.

“Not a single thought?!” he barked, alarm flaring, placing a fat hand under his chin in contemplation.

A long silence followed, broken only by the grumble of Caractacus’s stomach.

“Sir?” Riddle’s voice was light, deliberate. “Might I suggest, Mr. Burke, that if you endeavored to form…a bond with the lady, deception could yield pertinent information?”

Caractacus’s face flushed faint pink. “Social engineering, Tom?” he tittered, a note of wry amusement. “I thought that better suited your talents.” He withdrew slightly, sighing under his breath.

“I’d rather not. She is a prissy witch.” Caractacus stared into the silver tureen, contemplative. “She will remain in the shop until she can deliver on her promises and I can verify her identity.” He snorted. “My son may be a lecher and a moron—but he is uncannily accurate in assessing witches. She is a pretty witch, yes, but lacks any savoir-faire. It will prove…troubling, to have her behind the counter. She will be in for a shock in three days.”

Riddle walked the domed room leisurely, flicking his wand. A plate of Turkish delight appeared on the table.

“That, sir, can be taught,” he said quietly.

“You remembered!” Caractacus grinned, eyes lighting up as he stuffed a handful into his mouth. “You will teach her how to behave, then, Tom?”

“If you wish it, sir.”

Caractacus nodded, muttering under his breath. “The Americans were most unhelpful in providing information. Then again, when Herbert porked half their wives, I doubt they were eager to oblige his father.”

Riddle said nothing, pacing with measured deliberation. The shadows danced across his features, as though the sea itself leaned closer.

“Sir?” he whispered finally. “Forgive me, there were certain things I did not quite understand—”

Caractacus laughed, a ring of sugar around his mouth. “Stumping even you, then? What is it, Tom?”

"I heard mention of a… locket, a sword—"

The warlock coughed violently.

"—And that is all you need to know!" barked Caractacus, wheezing heavily, his face red, fingers sticky with sweets.

For a brief moment, Tom Riddle looked genuinely taken aback—likely the first time his employer had ever directed ire at him. But the surprise passed quickly, replaced by a flicker of eerie coldness before he bowed, contrite.

"Forgive my probing, sir. That was… too bold of me," Riddle said smoothly, sinking back into his subservient guise.

Caractacus waved a sugared hand dismissively. "Never mind that. In fact…" He leaned forward, eyes glinting behind spectacles, moist and piggy. "Endear yourself to her, Tom. Make her divulge every secret. Use whatever means you deem necessary. Give me verbal reports of my supposed granddaughter's comings and goings—fortnightly, at minimum. But ensure my lecherous son remains unaware. He seems… already attached to the swot, merely by association." He waved a sticky hand, adding, "I’ll even improve your salary for it."

Riddle’s eyes seemed to gleam in the blue light in something like triumph. 

"As you wish, Mr. Burke," he said smoothly, something flickered in his gaze, too brief to name.

Silence fell, broken only by Caractacus shoveling more Turkish delight into his mouth.

"Oh, and Tom?" Caractacus called, swiveling in his chair. "Make sure you charm her."

Riddle's returning smile unfurled slowly, deliberately, like a serpent uncoiling in the warmth of recognition.

"I intend to." 

Chapter Text

It was nearing midnight.

The dark-stoned shops of Knockturn Alley were ablaze with torches of shamrock flame, bathing the street in fickle green light. In the cover of darkness, the higglety-pigglety buildings took on an eerie quality, rising higher and higher like headless, fallen angels hankering from above.

Knockturn Alley breathed.

Hermione paused, orienting herself amid the din, then set off with quick, purposeful strides, her skirts whispering over the uneven stones. The twisting alley had been transformed, overflowing with a throng of cloaked shop-goers and other questionable entities that filled the air with unruly shouts and drunken slurs.

Electric-blue pixies hovered like floating gumdrops, snickering as they pilfered from unsuspecting wizards. Decrepit market stalls had been erected; one shabby-looking florist sold boutonnières of poisonous cobra lilies to a passing wizard. His stall displayed venomous Tentaculas and devil’s-snare pods. A half-burned poster flapped against a lamppost, its edges curled and blackened. Beneath the scorch marks, someone had scrawled The circle reforms in jagged green ink. The letters shimmered faintly.

Hermione narrowed her eyes; a flicker of unease passed through her. She committed the words to memory before forcing herself to look away. Whatever it meant, she would think on it later. For now, she pressed on.

It will be tonight.

Muttering darkly, Hermione narrowly avoided colliding with a crowd of squabbling goblins outside The Starry Prophesier, who bore gleaming celestial orbs and harassed a disgruntled-looking centaur. The goblins suddenly turned their domed heads to follow her movements as she passed — it was as if they had never seen a witch before.

Hermione quickened her pace, her eyes fixed on the golden-embossed sign in the distance: Borgin and Burkes.

She shivered in her suit.

Even the thought of meeting Tom Riddle seemed to draw the cold closer.

She pinched her wrist sharply. Enough.

Whatever she might feel in his presence, she had a task. She would not falter — not when the stakes were this high. The Horcrux had sent her to 1947 for a reason, though she didn’t pretend to understand why. Where the war had failed, she would succeed. Before Voldemort became the Dark Lord, before the name itself was feared, she would shed the serpent of his immortal shells, one by one, like peeling rot from a core.

Dumbledore’s records said Riddle stayed at Borgin and Burkes until 1960. He’d believed Riddle fled after Hepzibah Smith’s murder. Hermione doubted it. Riddle never ran from anything; he only left once he’d taken what he wanted.

The Founders’ relics. His vessels.

If she played her part well — earned his trust — she could turn him from them. Let him underestimate her. Let him confide in her. When the time came, she’d use that trust to undo him, expose him to the Wizengamot, strip him of his myth before it began.

But she needed more than opportunity; she needed information. Dumbledore’s notes were fragments — half-erased names and families who later claimed not to remember their sons’ friendship with Riddle. Avery. Mulciber. Lestrange. Rosier. Nott. Shadows of a circle forming decades before they’d call themselves Death Eaters.

Already, Knockturn whispered of a group named the Knights of Walpurgis — young men trading coin for loyalty, intimidating collectors, and blood for belonging.

Early tests of loyalty. Early rehearsals for something worse.

If even half the rumours were true, Riddle was already building his empire brick by brick. And tonight, she was walking straight into the architect’s workshop.

She knew better than to think she could best him in a duel — not yet. The gap between them — magical, mental, even moral…  

A chasm.  

Sometimes, when she thought of him, the entity inside her stirred — a shiver of the other. The locket had left its ghost behind, and it wandered her like a house, testing locked doors, whispering through the cracks. She had learned not to listen too closely, only to follow where it led. Disturbing, yes, but instructive. Perhaps, through it, she could even anticipate him. For now, that would have to be enough.

Hermione quickened her pace past the battered sign of Dystyl Phaelanges, its skeletal model juggling skulls in the window. Ahead, the crowd thickened near The Spiny Serpent; Firewhisky sloshed as wizards jostled and jeered. She ignored them and pressed on—until a suspicious-looking figure lurched from the shadows, glass tray in hand.

“Essence of the moon?” the peddler crooned, his voice as slick as the vials glinting under the torchlight. He leered after her from the shadow of a doorway.

Hermione brushed past him without a glance, her cloak billowing over the cobblestones.

A crash and a harsh cry split the air behind her.

“My potions! You clumsy fool!”

She turned just in time to see the peddler brandishing his wand at a bewildered wizard, shards of glass glittering at their feet. He was demanding payment, waving his wand like a knife.

Miscreants, fraudsters, hustlers, and crooks—the whole lot of them, she thought dismissively. Hermione frowned, her nose upturned, priggish, but she moved on. There were more dangerous men ahead tonight.

At last, she stopped outside a nasty window display of shrunken heads, the shop opposite Borgin and Burkes.

Her reflection wavered in the glass — hair coiled and pinned by a crystal ornament, a fiery amber crown against the dark.

She drew a long, steadying breath and let her Occlumency barriers fall, like a fist slowly unclenching.

The locket’s magic stirred, slick and hungry, creeping through her chest. She tested it, nudging it with painstaking control: Can you sense his presence nearby?

It responded. Tendrils of magic spread along her ribs, like a denied lover. It longs for its master, she realized, dizzy with the pressure of it.

And yet, despite every warning in her mind, a part of her couldn’t help but be drawn to the presence it sensed.

Hermione forced it still, like dousing a candle with water, and tore herself away from the connection. Her forehead rested against the cool glass of Noggin and Bonce’s window.

Down the alley, the hooded peddler lingered again, tray glinting faintly under the torchlight.

He watched her too intently from beside a cage of monstrous black spiders. Hermione scowled at him and turned away.

She had far more pressing concerns than a dodgy peddler. 

Hermione heard the shop bell peal, clanging sharp and loud from behind her.
Instinctively, she spun on her heel.

A young woman with a strong jaw stepped out.

Petite, with thick, shining dark hair held in pristine victory rolls, she carried an indefinable air of being well cared for. She wore white, splendid puffskein-fur robes and dangled a metal chain attached to an enameled — and rather familiar-looking — enchanted music box.

A trio of drunken wizards whistled at her as they passed the antique shop.

"Did they just whistle at me? Did you?" she barked loudly, looking ready to pounce.

Horrified, they gaped back at her ferocity.

"How dare you stare — close your eyes!" the witch bristled. "Disgraceful, stains of dishonor, the three of them," she muttered aloud as the trio scurried away. "Preying on a married witch," she sniffed, muttering about “stains of dishonor,” before turning back toward the shop.

“Still innovative, aren’t you?” she called archly inside. “If Orion is snoring like a dragon, that’s his fault! I only like the fun part, not the growing fat and round part.”

The witch laughed — a bright, vulgar sound. “Oh, Riddle, you were Headboy — you’re not a house-elf! The Blacks could easily position you in the Ministry with a rank worthy of your caliber within a week!”

From within the shop came a movement.

The tall silhouette of the Slytherin heir filled the doorway, precise and still.

The figure inclined in a slow, graceful bow. Warm air spilled into the street, brushing her cold face.

“I thank you for your concern, Madam Black,” came a voice — smooth, deep, dangerously civil. “But I remain Mr. Burke’s assistant. He has, this evening, entrusted me with a rather… pressing engagement.”

The witch pouted, disappointed, but his words closed the matter like a lock clicking shut.

And then — Hermione felt it — the weight of his gaze, its hunger, slithering past Walburga, past the shop, and curling around her like smoke. Her chest constricted; a shiver ran down her spine. Every nerve stretched taut, every instinct screaming.

“Riddle—” The name escaped Hermione's lips like a curse she could not swallow, a tremor running through her bones.

The world seemed to tilt.

Glass rattled; a sharp crash split the air. Hermione’s breath hitched as she stumbled back against the stone of the alley.

The peddler barreled into her from behind, sending her sprawling onto the cobblestones.

Vials shattered, spilling luminous liquid that pooled in the cracks, swirling amber and pearl beneath the midnight sky. The smell of tansy and something acrid suffused the air, jolting her from her stupor. Liquid soaked through the hem of her skirts, but she barely noticed.

The hooded wizard’s warty face loomed, skin hanging in folds beneath glaring yellow eyes. His thin black lips twisted into a sharp, sinister grin, moss-stained teeth flashing.

“Watch where you’re going, you blundering witch!” he crowed, triumphant.

A dozen heads turned.

The peddler sank to his knees, wringing his hands in mock despair. “All my precious wares! How will I feed my poor children? This isn’t something a mere Reparo can fix!”

Hermione’s pulse leapt. A setup, she realized, heat rushing up her spine. She had witnessed him try this on others just minutes before. Here he was, attempting it again, thinking she was meek and gullible. Her fingers tightened on her wand.

It was a transparent pressure tactic.

“You did that on purpose,” she said, low and shaking. Rage surged through her like lightning, hair lifting in the charge.

He was looking at her with a kind of horrible delight. “You best pay for this—”

The world bled red.

The peddler staggered back, shrieking, thrown by a sudden invisible force. Across his forehead, the warts writhed, searing together into one blazing word: CROOK.

He yelped, fumbling to hide the mark, eyes wide with indignation and fear. Hermione froze for a heartbeat, mortified. Did I do that?

A warmth pulsed inside her, the locket vibrating faintly — tentative, approving.

She inhaled sharply, heart hammering.

The man’s eyes darted past her, suddenly stricken.

“Oh, M–Mr. Riddle,” he stammered. “I hadn’t, I didn’t, I didn’t se—” The peddler blubbered, mouth opening and closing soundlessly.

Hermione turned.

A shadow had appeared at her back, looming and perfectly still, cast by no clear source of light. An unearthly stillness radiated from him. Calm, chilling, commanding. Then a voice — smooth, unhurried — sliced through the murmuring crowd.

“That is enough.”

The street fell silent.

The voice came close to her ear, low and quiet, yet it carried clearly above the murmurs.

Hermione froze. Riddle had approached without a sound, quiet as a shadow.

A wand — yew, polished to a dark sheen — lowered over her shoulder.

“Peddling is not permitted outside Borgin and Burkes,” he said, perfectly calm. His voice carried easily, low and composed, the kind that seemed to make others fall silent before they even realized it.

The peddler’s face fell at once. His indignation collapsed, eyes darting down, and Hermione could practically smell the fear rippling from him. He knows him. 

Even in such a state, Hermione’s mind lurched. No one she had ever met seemed to grasp the depth of Riddle’s presence, yet here was this petty shopkeeper, cringing as if before a living storm.

Riddle's hand rested on her back, gently steadying her. The weight of it felt measured, designed to gauge a reaction, not offering aid. Hermione's breaths came quick, shallow. 

The dark lord knelt behind her, so close she could feel the buttons of his robes brush fleetingly against her hair. A faint, heady scent of cedar, ink, and parchment drifted from him. Her heart leapt into her throat.

Long, elegant fingers held a yew wand with relaxed grace. With a casual flick, he restored the shattered glass and potion to their pristine state, resplendent and gleaming. Only her tansy ornament was gone.

“Oh, I just—th-thank you. But she still—” The peddler stammered, glancing from Hermione to Riddle and back at the murmuring crowd.

One look from Riddle silenced him entirely. He bolted through the gap, leaving a wake of startled whispers.

“Well, that was a scary bit of wandless magic, from a witch no less,” someone muttered, clutching a flask.

The crowd, sensing the show was over, dispersed, whispering among themselves.

Her heart leapt into her throat.

It wasn’t fear of what he might do — it was fear of knowing, with unbearable certainty, what he would become.

Riddle’s wand vanished, but his other hand remained more firmly to her back, guiding her upright. Hermione’s head brushed the front of his robes; warmth flooded her face. He moved closer than decorum would allow. Hermione’s head brushed the broad, warm expanse of his chest. With any other wizard, she might have felt a flutter, perhaps even swooned. Instead, a shiver of dread ran down her spine.

Riddle felt… familiar. Like a voice from an inaccessible past, echoing in some corner of her memory she couldn’t quite name. 

“He is gone now,” he said softly, misplacing the source of her tremor.

The pulse of the Horcrux still throbbed under her ribs, dizzying in its pleasure. Hermione wrenched herself away, as though tearing off a bandage.

“Are you feeling well, Miss?”

He offered the gallant hand of a gentleman — precise, polite, yet carrying an unspoken command.

Hermione shot to her feet. “Quite well, thank you,” she said, too sharply. Terse. Almost hostile. Her lips pressed together, face flushing.

She cleared her throat pointedly, smoothing her skirts, masking the tremor beneath.

He studied her in silence; she felt his gaze trace her from throat to temple, an invisible line of appraisal.

The muscles in her throat ticked in response to his scrutiny.

A silence stretched between them, taut with tension. An intangible friction.

“You can call me Hermione,” she said at last, steady now. “And… thank you.” She repeated the words more firmly this time, drawing herself to full height, regaining control.

Then, slowly, as though daring herself to face a duel she had long awaited, she met his eyes directly, unwavering. Not in submission, but in challenge.

Tom Riddle was irresistibly handsome.

The Slytherin heir stood like a carved idol, impeccably dressed. High cheekbones carved the aspect of a perfect mask; every line of his face precise, unyielding. Dark waves of hair framed his features, accentuating their flawless symmetry.

Hermione met his gaze and felt herself sucked out of herself, pulled to the edge of a vertiginous oblivion.

They're like black holes, she thought, before she could stop herself.

His lips curved in a faint, knowing smile. The air between them seemed to crackle.

Hermione schooled her expression into polite indifference. She did not smile back.

“Hermione,” he said softly, as if tasting the name. “At last, our long-awaited meeting.”

Riddle dipped into a low, effortless bow, every motion controlled, deliberate, unnervingly graceful.

Her brow arched.
“Our long-awaited meeting?” she echoed. Despite the levelness of her voice, her blood still sang. “And you are?”

Riddle stepped closer.

“A fellow assistant to Mr. Burke,” he replied smoothly, smiling pleasantly. “He has instructed me to guide you, my lady.”

“Riddle,” he added, extending a hand. “Tom Riddle.”

She inclined her head, noting his subtle preference for the surname. Her hand stayed at her side.

Then, without warning, Riddle took her gloved hand. In a fleeting motion, he brushed his lips across her knuckles.

Hermione’s skin tingled, as though struck by a spell.

She snatched her hand back, retreating a step. A ripple of energy lingered where his lips had touched beneath the glove.

“Thank you,” she said tersely.

He made no comment, only regarded her in silence. His expression became suddenly blank—unreadable, impossible to penetrate.

Eyes: unyielding.

Control your emotions. Discipline your mind.

Hermione forced her breathing to steady. She turned slightly, pretending to inspect her skirts—and caught sight of Walburga Black watching them from the doorway, curious as a cat.

Good. A witness. A distraction.

Hermione licked her lips and smiled lightly in Walburga’s direction before addressing Riddle, still not looking at him.

“Ah yes, I remember now,” she said, tone light, almost taunting. “Tom—” she lingered on the name he loathed, “—Mr. Riddle, then. I’d hate to presume familiarity. You’re to show me around today, aren’t you?”

His gaze sharpened, but he said nothing.

“I’ve heard so much about you,” she continued, circling him with deliberate ease. “I feel as though I know you already. The question is—” her eyes met his, voice dropping to a murmur, “—will you live up to your daunting reputation?”

He stilled. A faint tension crossed his shoulders. Their gazes locked—dark on dark, fire upon fire. Curiosity flickered in his eyes—and beneath it, something keener.

What do you know?

Hermione drew her wand, slow and deliberate, catching his attention from the corner of her eye. His gaze followed the movement. The resemblance to his own yew wand was unmistakable.

His chivalrous façade seemed to dissolve, replaced by something colder. Unearthly.

Recognition flickered—brief, dangerous.

She twirled her wand with studied ease before tucking it beneath her sleeve. Her robes, newly mended, gleamed spotless once more—no trace of dust, no trace of weakness.

“Goodness gracious me,” Walburga’s voice cut through the alley like a charm gone awry. Hermione nearly flinched, memory conjuring the shrill echo of a portrait.

The heiress drifted between them, gaze flickering from Hermione to Riddle—half-fascinated, half-stunned. And just like that, the moment between them was gone.

Hermione offered a polite smile. Riddle finally broke his gaze to address her.

“This is Mr. Burke’s new assistant, Madam Black,” he said smoothly. His voice was courteous, his expression a perfect mask—but his eyes never left Hermione. Measuring. Digging.

“Hermione,” Walburga repeated, thrusting out a gloved hand. Hermione curtsied and took it. “Charmed, Madam Black. Mr. Riddle will be training me this evening.”

Walburga blinked, incredulous. “That old ghoul is employing a witch? He barely lets me cross the threshold. Only because Riddle is discreet.” She released Hermione’s hand with a little too much force. “Great-Auntie Belvina never mentioned any of this,” she muttered, before her gaze softened—inevitably—toward Riddle.

Hermione held her breath as the heiress looked her up and down.

“That was quite some magical aptitude I saw just now,” Walburga said, lips curling faintly. “You must be a Pureblood.”

Hermione bit the inside of her cheek. Riddle’s eyes flicked toward the motion—unreadable, intent.

Walburga’s attention swung back to him. “Quite valiant of you to rush in like that,” she teased. “Was it for your… pressing engagement?”

Hermione blinked, missing the implication for a heartbeat, and stole another glance at Riddle as the heiress hovered close. His expression was speculative, calm—seemingly unbothered by her proximity.

For the briefest instant, his smile faltered—a tightening at the mouth, there and gone so quickly she might have imagined it. But she doubted she had.

Get away, you fool, Hermione thought, half-tempted to yank Walburga out of reach despite her distaste for the woman’s bloodline piety.

“Yes. Mr. Burke has deemed her an invaluable future employee,” Riddle said at last, his tone quiet, composed—yet edged with something almost amused. His eyes gleamed with an inner light. “Marvelous, isn’t she?”

The words hung in the air—too polished, too precise. A compliment sharpened to a point.

He smiled then, teeth flashing white against the dark.

Hermione froze. He saw it. The peddler. The outburst. The wandless magic. Her pulse skipped; her throat tightened.

Walburga, oblivious, gesticulated grandly. “But this is a sign, Riddle! Orion and young Abraxas always said you were destined for the Ministry. After you train this little lady”—she grinned—“she can replace you!”

Hermione felt the blood drain from her face but managed an expression of polite astonishment.

For an instant, iciness flickered through Riddle’s eyes—there and gone like a blade catching the light. Then he smiled beatifically, took Walburga’s hand from his arm, and clasped it delicately in his own.

“Is your husband engaged elsewhere tonight?” he asked softly.

The air shifted. Walburga’s eyes widened; her breath hitched. She trembled, caught between confusion and fear.

Hermione’s mouth twitched despite herself. Effortless. The way he could unmake a person with a single sentence.

“He—they’re quite well,” Walburga stammered. “Orion’s out with the old boys tonight. He’d hoped you might join them, but—well, you’re nearly always busy these days, aren’t you?”

Hermione’s eyes narrowed. So he’s invited. And declines.

Walburga shook back her puffskein-lined sleeves and glanced down at a fine wristwatch set with ten onyx dials. Hermione bowed her head slightly, sensing the end of the woman’s company—and the withdrawal of her protection.

Then Walburga shrieked, stumbling backward. Whatever the dials had shown, it couldn’t have been good. “Yes—well, quite late for me now. Wouldn’t want Orion thinking I’m up to that sort of no good.” She curtsied hastily. “Thank you, Riddle—do pop by Grimmauld for a proper meal, won’t you?” she added crossly, tapping her foot in a motion absurdly reminiscent of Mrs. Weasley. With a vague nod toward Hermione, she swept off, drawing her furred hood up as she vanished into the alley.

Silence settled, unnatural, as if the street itself were holding its breath.

Riddle stood by the entrance, one shoulder against the pillar, watching her.

Hermione met his gaze, throat tight, and nodded.

With a flick of his wand, the door to Borgin and Burkes groaned open. A sickly yellow light spilled out, glinting on dust and iron. The faint scent of mildew and something acrid—old magic, old blood—drifted into the street.

He turned back to her, expression unreadable, and held the door.
“Shall we begin?” he asked softly.

The words rippled through the air—calm, commanding, like a spell taking hold.

Hermione hesitated at the threshold. The noise of the alley dimmed behind her, the world receding. Inside, the light flickered weakly against the dark, revealing shelves that seemed to bend and shift under their own shadows.

For a heartbeat, she thought she heard a whisper—faint, serpentine—curling from the depths of the shop.

Her pulse quickened. She reminded herself to breathe.

The question might have been courteous, but it felt like an initiation.

She stepped forward, the edge of her boot crossing the worn stone. The air inside clung to her like a damp shroud. Her footsteps echoed once—sharp, solitary—and the click of the door sounded final.
A seal pressed in wax.

Light fell away. Only darkness—and Riddle—remained.

Chapter Text

“The word “eclipse” comes from ancient Greek ekleipsis, “a forsaking, quitting, abandonment.” The sun quits us, we are forsaken by light.” - Anne Carson, “Totality, The Colour of Eclipse”, in Decreation.

An elaborate assortment of dark artifacts hovered above Hermione's head—a broken, unholy halo.

"Specialis Revelio," she hissed. 

Nothing. 

She tilted her head, brow furrowed—an expression of honest confusion rare for Hermione Granger. She stood, regarding them with scholarly scorn.  The altar cloth before her gleamed with white silk and gilt embroidery. With a sniff, she prodded it with her wand; the Veelas woven into the fabric sprang to life, dancing the Sborenka with indecent enthusiasm.

Hermione frowned, drumming her fingers along her wand as she studied the objects again.

Her diagnostic spells had revealed nothing. Countless charms, every counter-curse, failed to yield so much as a whisper of meaning. For all her reading, she could not divine what these wretched things were—and that was infuriating.

Unhelpful, arrogant toerag, she thought bitterly, aware of the wizard by the fire.

At last she turned, as though remembering herself, and peered over her shoulder.

Riddle stood at ease beside the black marble column, half cloaked in the fickle glow of the fire. He watched her with an air of idle amusement, though nothing in his gaze was truly idle. Shadows seemed to gather around him by preference, sharpening the striking austerity of his figure—impeccably tailored, unfairly composed.

In that uncertain light he might have been carved from the same cold marble that framed him—beautiful, yes, but with the faint suggestion that the statue might step down from its pedestal at any moment.

The corner of his mouth lifted, slow and deliberate—a gesture that suggested both curiosity and condescension.

Hermione scowled, bristling inwardly.

Then Riddle chuckled—quiet, precise, as though he found amusement in her very existence. The sound was low and warm, a startling contrast to the austerity of him.

A little taken aback, Hermione blinked at him, half-defiant, half-bewildered. Then, determined to ignore him, she turned sharply back to the floating altar cloth, muttering irritably as she jabbed at it with her wand.

One of the embroidered Veelas turned mid-dance to make a rude gesture at her, looking far too pleased with herself.
“You’re lucky I don’t set you afire,” Hermione hissed.

Another, blonder Veela stopped skipping, turned, and shook her fist. Hermione exhaled a long, defeated sigh.

I’m certain I committed everything to memory—and yet now—now—

“Feeling a little lost?” came a voice.

Tom Riddle’s voice was deep, imbued with a mesmerizing smoothness, like a fine liquor. It bore none of the high, hissing and cold quality she had come to associate with the locket.

Hermione spun around instantaneously. 

Riddle didn’t look up. He was half-seated on Mr Burke’s desk, leaning back slightly, paging through a book open in one hand—as though he’d been there all along.

She hadn’t heard him move; he had shifted places with the quiet inevitability of a shadow.

Then he glanced up, smiling so superciliously it made her blood positively boil. 

“A little,” Hermione snapped, trying—and failing—to quash the irritation in her voice. She tapped her foot and looked away from the future Dark Lord.

“Since you’re not going to assist me, as Mr Burke instructed, surely you have something better to do?” she growled testily, deciding she really must be an impudent Gryffindor at heart after all.

Besides, Riddle wouldn’t dare hurt the ostensible granddaughter of his employer. Not unless he wanted to lose his job… prematurely.

He only chuckled—quietly, as though amused by a private thought. Soft enough to disarm, strong enough to drown.

Closing the book with a soft thud, he stood in one fluid motion. His wand appeared in his hand almost by sleight of mind; a faint, unspoken command sent the artifacts gliding back into their cabinets. Another breath, another subtle flick—barely a movement—and a silver bottle brimming with mint-green liquor, two empty glasses shimmering on the counter beside him. 

He stepped closer, the firelight catching on his cuff links. 

Two lush armchairs materialized behind her, facing one another across a small, round table.

“That’s quite enough for now,” he said, slipping his wand away.

“You’ve shown me precisely where your strengths end—and where mine might be of service.” He gestured to the nearest chair, a sliver of calculating interest touching his expression.
“Indulge me. Sit.”

Hermione looked positively scandalised. The absurdity of it struck her all at once:
Tom Marvolo Riddle—Lord Voldemort—inviting her to sit. Laughing. Pouring drinks.

She sat anyway, stiff-backed and suspicious, and gave a disapproving sniff as she drew a shrunken book from her pocket—one of Burke’s required readings. It was an old, nearly childish reflex: to bury herself in a book when she disliked the direction of a conversation, letting the weight of her preparation speak in her stead.

With a muttered charm, it expanded to its proper size. She caught it neatly and opened it with studied indifference, feigning interest in a text she could have recited from memory.

This time, she felt him before she saw him. A whisper of movement, the faintest scrape of leather on stone, and he had shifted—first from standing by the column, the table, then behind her, and finally settling beside her in the chair—all without a single sound, as though he had flowed like shadow and reformed at will.

Every step, every subtle shift of weight, was deliberate—a quiet declaration:

I want you to hear me.

His very being resonated with the shard inside her, stirring it awake

Hermione’s heart thumped, mortifyingly loud in her own ears. The quiet clink of glass told her he had set down the silver bottle and two waiting glasses. 

She looked up despite herself. His movements were measured, assured, his expression unreadable—and there was something in that composure that warned her, quietly, that this was no ordinary conversation.

His voice, when it came, was careful—almost gentle—but every word balanced on something sharper.

“You’re thinking,” he said, loosening his cuffs, “that this stooge has arranged all of it so you look like an unqualified fool. Hm?”

He said it softly, almost consoling—like a man soothing a wounded creature, though the careful control beneath it suggested he could strike just as easily.

Hermione’s mind lurched back to life. She shot upright in her chair, eyes blazing.

Riddle, of course, remained entirely unruffled. He reclined beside her, glass in hand, the very picture of leisure, like a languid deity. The sight of him—composed, elegant—was infuriatingly reminiscent of the wizarding model Parvati had once gawked over in Witch Weekly.

“Then you’d be absolutely right,” Riddle continued smoothly, lifting his glass to his lips.

Riddle's eyes snapped back up to hers, looking not unlike a curator inspecting a rare painting, adamant to determine its authenticity.

“That is because you are unprepared.”

Hermione nearly shook with emotion.

Even in the rosy firelight, her face had gone scarlet. She sank back into her seat, spine rigid, glaring at him as though sheer indignation might set him alight. 

Riddle, unperturbed, extended the second glass toward her. The mint-coloured liquor shimmered invitingly.

Hermione eyed it with severe mistrust, as though it were an offending criminal. 

Riddle exhaled, a sound too controlled to be called a sigh.

“I can’t assess your competence,” he said evenly, “without first understanding the limits of your knowledge—and of your character.”

Hermione’s expression did not soften.

Constant vigilance, Moody’s voice barked in her mind.

“It isn’t poisoned,” Riddle murmured, a knowing smile curving his mouth—a smile too warm, too practiced to trust. “Promise.”

Hermione stiffened, caught off guard by how simply and reasonably he justified himself.

Behind them, the clock chimed one. Hermione fought the urge to groan, counting down the minutes until she could escape his scrutiny.

“It’s called Praescientia,” Riddle said, nodding toward the liquor. “A mermaid-made whiskey. Opens the mind.”

He leaned back, one brow lifting in deliberate mockery. His dark eyes glinted—good-natured, almost—if one didn’t look too closely.

Hermione blinked hard at the slight, her spine straightening. She glowered but lifted the glass all the same, taking a careful sip.

It tasted of something indescribably bright—berries and sea-salt, a strange, clean sweetness that flooded her senses. To her dismay, she felt the tension in her chest ebb, her thoughts sharpen.

She hesitated, then muttered, “Thank you. I like it.”

Riddle’s smile deepened, gracious and unhurried. “I thought you might.”

He leaned back, elbow resting over the chair’s arm, a study in controlled elegance.

“Now,” he said quietly. Hermione’s eyes flicked to his fingers—long, pale, and restless as they tapped against the wood.

“You are indisputably clever,” Riddle drawled, “and if Mr. Burke is to be believed—gifted.”

He paused, the ghost of a smile at his mouth. “Given your recent escapade, one might even venture to say… powerful.”

Hermione’s face warmed despite herself.

“Thank you. You have an uncanny knack for careful flattery, Riddle.”

Riddle regarded her for a beat, eyes glinting with private amusement.

"Tom,” he corrected lightly.

“If we’re to be working closely, we may as well be… amiable.”

“If you say so—Tom,” Hermione said slowly, the name tasting strange in her mouth. “Mr. Burke is far too kind.”

Riddle laughed—deep, genuine, from somewhere in his chest. To her dismay, it was an absurdly infectious sound.

“Come now,” he said, eyes bright with mischief. “We both know neither of us believes that. Kindness is hardly a word anyone would conjure for Mr. Burke.” He grinned then, boyish and devastatingly sure of himself. “Perhaps your first lesson… is flattery. Or discretion. Choose wisely."

Hermione couldn’t help it—she laughed.

Her gaze followed his hand as he raised his glass, and then froze. On his finger gleamed the Gaunt ring.

Her breath caught.

Such a pity, she thought distantly, watching him through the shimmer of firelight. Such a handsome man.

“On the contrary,” she said at last, her voice calm, almost pleasant. “I happen to have impeccable foresight in that department.”

Her tone was so soft, so measured, that Riddle might have pretended not to hear it over the crackle of the fire. She took a slow sip, eyes glinting above the rim of her glass.

“Perhaps,” she added, lips curving faintly, “a better suggestion would be a first lesson in disingenuous flattery.”

Riddle smirked, a slow curl of the lips, “An invaluable asset, in any field.” He furrowed his brow, feigning deep thought. “But one especially useful… here.”

Then his face broke into a grin, revealing a set of devilishly perfect, gleaming white teeth. Hermione blinked, internally reeling at how disarmingly pleasant, refreshingly… human he seemed.

Voldemort is different.

The Riddle I met… he’s always been able to charm the people he needed, Harry whispered darkly in her mind.

“Yes, that much is obvious,” she murmured, eyes narrowing, jaw ticking. “Faux charm has never come as easily to me as it has to some,” she admitted quietly to her drink, swallowing thickly at her own boldness.

Coldness seeped into Riddle’s gaze; his smile sharpened like a blade. And then, just as quickly, it vanished, replaced by his practiced mask of polite interest.

Hermione’s eyes flicked away, desperately seeking anything but him.

Riddle poured himself another drink. His voice dropped to a whisper, conspiratorial: “These things can be taught.” He took her glass, refilling it with , and handed it back. “As with a great deal of other things.”

Hermione drank deeply, feeling a surge of calm that vanished almost as soon as it came, leaving her senses sharper, more alert.

Riddle leaned forward, clasping his hands, eyes dark, intent. “Now, be honest,” he said, voice suddenly high, cold, cutting. “You disapprove.”

A pause — then, quieter: “I wonder why.”

Hermione’s heart pounded. She frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Crook,” he said quietly, an observation, a subtle accusation.

“My magic simply reacted defensively. The greedy man accosted me—tried to swindle me! Nothing more than a bit of accidental—”

Hermione opened and shut her mouth, caught mid-explanation, her face the very picture of bewilderment.

“—A difficult jinx, nevertheless,” Riddle interjected softly. “The effect is a nasty onset of puss-filled warts, shaped to the caster’s perception of the subject. First cast by a Greek warlock to mar the forehead—”

“—Of Ephialtes of Trachis, the traitor,” Hermione finished, excitement threading her voice. She blushed, realizing she had almost punched the air with her fist.

“Ten points to Hermione,” Riddle said, amusement flickering across his face. Yet his gaze was no longer playful; it held her, probing, seeking.

“A powerful spell,” he continued smoothly, “even some of the most advanced wizards find it difficult.” His eyes drifted to her yew wand on the armchair, a silent warning.

Hermione squirmed, sensing imminent danger.

“A ruthless display of accidental magic,” Riddle drawled, in a tone which coaxed and cornered in a single utterance. “I find accidental magic often more revealing than even the most carefully chosen of garments.”

His black eyes bored into hers, striking deep, assessing, unsettling. Hermione felt exposed, as if every thought had been caught in a net of shadow and precision.

“However… Crook?” he murmured, inching closer.

“Crooked. From our brief acquaintance, your conduct, your evident disdain for these alleyways, suggests you see it as little more than a rat’s nest—a den of deviants, criminals, the morally bankrupt… one might even be bold enough to suggest—”

Riddle’s face moved so near that Hermione could see the dark pupils dilate, swallowing all light.

“—Monsters.”

Hermione felt herself collapse inward, a single particle caught at the center of a black hole, pulled helplessly into his orbit.

She gaped, utterly outmatched, caught in the irresistible gravity of his presence.

“Honestly, I hardly think that’s an unfair j-judgment to make,” Hermione stuttered, feeling set upon. “You can’t deny that Knockturn Alley is hardly the sort of place for the good sort of wizarding folk.”

Riddle set his drink down, expression glacial. 

Hermione shrank, biting back another retort, alarm bells ringing in her mind.

His returning stare was more petrifying than any Basilisk’s gaze. His lip curled.

“Just why, might I ask, is a morally righteous witch such as yourself here?” His voice was smooth, cold, and measured. “You, who view the magical folk of this street with little more than cursory disdain? Partitioning them into arbitrary categories of good and… presumably bad?”

He prowled closer, eyes glinting like black glass. “And you, in the brief time you’ve been here, have shown little respect for the craft, the sheer magical effort devoted to these objects you might ostensibly sell?”

“Don’t lie. Tell me the truth.”

The finality of his command hit Hermione like a falling star. 

“I—” She spluttered, voice strained. “I’m… sorry.” Genuine remorse cut through her indignation.

Her mind raced.

It struck her then that she’d misjudged him entirely. She’d come expecting arrogance—the same proud indifference his future self wore like an armor, a boy already convinced of his own legend. Instead, he was controlled, perceptive to a fault—every glance a calculation, every smile deliberate. He’d been studying her from the moment she arrived, weighing each word she spoke, each breath she took.

Her throat went dry.

“Tell me, Hermione,” he said, voice quelling and unnervingly calm. “Why should I expend my precious time instructing someone so… closed-minded?”

“I—” She began, trembling, but rage and fear waged a battle inside her. Words failed her; fury left her momentarily mute.

“You’ll forgive me for saying so, my dear, but I perceive very little aura around you. Very little receptivity to the resonances of the future.” Said Trelawney sadly. “So… very closed-minded.”

Hermione drew herself up to her full height, tossing back her long mane of hair. Her pulse raced, fury and fear warring inside her.

"Because I have nowhere else to go!" she shouted, nostrils flaring. "I came to learn—and to claim what was promised me!" Her words tumbled fast, full of fire. "If you won’t give me what I need, I will find another way, Riddle. I have always been resourceful."

Breathing heavily as though bracing for duel, Hermione turned from him and paced, bare knuckles rubbing her palms as she fought to stay in control. Her eyes flashed to the fireplace, distant, stormy.

"My entire life, I have been overlooked—taken for granted! I’ve fought so hard. So many tried to kill me, to murder those I loved!" she spat bitterly. Turning, her gaze snapped to him, white-hot fury coursing through her.

Something raw and unbridled had erupted inside her, a wound torn open. It didn’t matter that this was Tom Riddle. Hermione Granger needed, demanded—

She let out a mirthless, almost inhuman laugh.

"I have been abandoned, betrayed, forgotten, tormented, mutilated!" she seethed, voice quivering with the effort to remain steady. "I’ve been ripped asunder, nearly destroyed!"

Her fists clenched.

"I’ve lost everything." Her tone suddenly hollow.

Her eyes flared scarlet.

"I will do everything in my power to obtain what I want—even if I must lower myself to muck, mingle with the worst of wizardkind, wade through blood and bone—" she hissed, venom dripping from every word. Then, abruptly, she stopped.

Hermione met Riddle’s startled gaze, unflinching, burning into his icy abyss.

"I will be stronger. I will get what I was promised."

She glanced at the second glass of mint liquor, suddenly aware of her own candor, and gasped, horror and clarity warring across her face. "Merlin," she breathed, fevered.

"I sound mad."

The Slytherin heir froze, his face expressionless, but his eyes were flickering back and forth between each of Hermione’s, as though trying to ascertain if she was telling the truth.

Hermione’s hands shook as she covered her face, and she sank back into her chair, trembling. Tears threatening to pour forth.

Riddle tensed slightly at the display but remained silent, calculating. The quiet stretched, broken only by Hermione’s uneven breaths.

"You are… different. Not mad," he said at last, voice calm but carrying weight.

Startled, Hermione lifted her tear-stained face, eyes wide. His gaze was dark, yet there was a glimmer of satisfaction, subtle but undeniable.

“Accidental magic,” he said, tracing the rim of his glass, “is confession. Your magic speaks before you do. Loudly. Too loudly. Yours… screamed.”

Stunned, Hermione only listened.

"Wrath, pride, greed, jealousy," he continued, barely above a whisper, voice greedy and mesmerizing, "all the emotions ‘civil’ society deems… low, unworthy, or sinful… They are fools. Magic is varied, ever-changing, immortal."

His features shifted, the fine aristocratic lines taking on a predatory curve, bestial yet controlled. Hermione shuddered, realizing he had moved so close their knees brushed.

Too close.

She drew a deep, uneven breath. It did little to steady her.

"There is no light and dark," he whispered, leaning forward. "Only magic. Pure. Unflinching. Fighting it… fighting yourself… futile. The conventional… they ignore potential."

Riddle’s eyes burned into hers. It was more foreboding than any look of rage.

Hermione’s emboldened expression faltered; pain, awe, and fear churned behind her eyes. For the briefest instant, Riddle’s mask slipped—his expression sharpening, almost hungry—before smoothing back into polite sympathy.

Then he smirked, a slow, silken curl of the mouth, and the tension in the air cracked like an egg.

“We wouldn’t want anyone conventional around here, would we?” he murmured—voice velvet-dark, laced with dry amusement. His gaze drifted to a cabinet as though bored, but the glint behind his eyes was anything but. “The incantation is Patefacio.”

“Pardon?” Hermione blinked, still breathless, tears trembling at the edges of her lashes.

Riddle drew his wand with unhurried elegance. “Patefacio,” he repeated softly, the word rolling off his tongue with a dangerous sort of warmth. “And cutem exuendo.”

His wand swept through the air in a series of fluid, deliberate arcs—movements so controlled they bordered on hypnotic.

“The first,” he said, slipping the wand away, “reveals the true nature of an object.”
A beat.

“The second removes its skin.”

Hermione stiffened. Skin?

Riddle’s smile deepened at her reaction. “Unknown to Mr. Burke, I’ve warded each artifact myself. Should a careless witch or wizard touch them…” He lifted a shoulder. “They will not die.”

Doesn't mean they won’t be harmed, Hermione thought darkly.

“Patefacio strips the façade,” he continued, tone smooth as dark glass. “Cutem exuendo… removes the shell that keeps the object docile. Incantations of my own making.”

“Patefacio,” Hermione repeated, breathing the word like a secret. The new knowledge warmed her, settling like a flush beneath the skin.

Riddle’s eyes lingered on her, pleased. “Good,” he murmured. “You learn quickly.”

Hermione felt her face warm despite herself.

“Some magic is too old… too clever… to bother announcing itself.”  

For all its elegance, he spoke like a flame crackling low: beautiful in its restraint, devastating in its promise. He lifted a hand and retrieved shards of crystal from his pocket.

Hermione stared, recognition blooming. The shards were from her tansy hair ornament, broken in her scuffle with the peddler. When did Riddle retrieve this? she wondered.

A long pause stretched between them, taut and charged.

“Do not flee from your magic,” Riddle said softly, eyes reflecting the firelight.

“Embrace it. You’re not mad, Hermione. You can do everything right and still feel wrong inside.”

Hermione stared at him, searching for some hint of deception in his expression. There was none.

“Your hands,” he said, almost lazily.

She hesitated but obeyed, sitting close enough that their knees brushed. Riddle took her wrists gently, his cool fingers gliding along her lifelines. The contact sent a rush through her—warmth, cold, exhilaration, something like calm threaded with danger.

They stayed like that, silent, gazes locked. The air around them thrummed with a dangerous magic.

Then the Gaunt ring against her finger pulsed—hard, cold, insistent.

Hermione, Harry’s voice hissed. Take off the locket.

Panic surged. She tried to pull free, but Riddle’s grip held her fast. Not cruel—measured. Intentional.

A soft glow bloomed between their hands, like mother-of-pearl catching fire. The light wasn’t just magic; it felt like something inside her stirred awake in answer—reaching back, unbidden.

Her magic recoiled and reached at once, a sick, impossible pull—like something inside her recognized him.

When he let go, the euphoria vanished, leaving her with a sickening chill. And for a heartbeat, she thought he felt it too.

In her palms lay a delicate crystal barrette—gladiolus and snowdrops twisted together, sparkling with dew-like beads. A gift. For her hair.

Hermione’s breath hitched. “I—what—?”

“A welcome gift,” Riddle murmured, gaze briefly averted. “To mark our new partnership.”

Her mouth opened, closed. Color drained from her face.

“If one were so gallant as to replace your hair ornament,” he said lightly, “one might expect thanks.”

“I—I… thank you. Tom.” She said tremulously. 

His answering chuckle was low, molten. “You’re welcome, Hermione. Now—it grows late.”

She glanced at the clock, startled by how much time had passed.

Riddle flicked his wand. Her jacket and gloves flew neatly into his hands. “May I?”

“No, thank you,” she said quickly, shrugging into the jacket herself, pretending to fuss over her robes to steady her breathing.

“I will escort you to the White Wyvern,” he said, tone brooking no argument.

“That’s not necessary. I’ll summon Bon Bon. Herbert and Mr. Burke will understand.” She forced a smile.

He watched her pull on her gloves, eyes keen and unreadable.

When they reached the door, he opened it with effortless courtesy. She slipped past him—and froze as his hand brushed hers. He caught it lightly and pressed a brief kiss to her knuckles.

“A pleasure,” he said, straightening. “Our next meeting. The White Wyvern. Two days. Same time.”

Hermione swallowed, suddenly very aware of how tall he was.

“I trust tonight has been… illuminating.”

She managed a tight smile. “Fiasco might be closer.”

His soft laugh followed her into the alley—warm and sinful in its delight.

“You mistake safety for goodness,” he said, voice sliding after her like a whisper against the dark. “They are not the same thing, Hermione. Remember that.”

The door shut before she could answer.

Dearest Herbert,

I urgently require an instructor in Occlumency. I'm sure you can infer why...
If possible, if it is within your power, I will require a pensieve.

Best wishes,
Hermione.

Chapter Text

“I hunger for the bread of God, the flesh of Jesus Christ; I long to drink of His blood, the gift of unending love.” — Ignatius of Antioch

The door swung forwards.

Beyond the doors lay the splendid Great Hall.
Hogwarts.

Music drifted through the air—beautiful, impossible, and in a language she could not divine. The hall teemed with movement, yet no students filled it.

The air felt misaligned, wrong in a way she recognized but could not name—like a memory wearing the wrong skin.

Faceless wizards in tall, pointed hats and sumptuous robes of damask-red twirled with their partners, dressed in gowns of surpassing loveliness. Shafts of moonlight struck the knights’ emerald armour, illuminating a smouldering pyre around which their helm-shadows writhed like executioners.

Appalled, her attention snagged on the staff table.
One chair sat conspicuously empty, as though waiting for her and her alone.

She hurried towards it.

Harry sat beside the vacant place. Relief flared—a fleeting, foolish hope—before the chair dissolved into soot as she tried to sit.

Harry’s name escaped her.
He did not hear.

His face was blistered and burnt, fire still smouldering beneath the skin. His grey lips shaped a prayer she could not hear as he arranged pomegranate seeds with ritual precision.

Ron sat at his side. Ash fell from the charred stumps of Ron’s sleeves. His ruined arms hovered, trembling, forever unable to reach the food set before him.

Their voices were hollow shapes of sound, garbled and distant. No language she knew.

Hermione reached toward Ron’s shoulder; her hand passed through him like a pebble dropped into water.

She glanced down.
Her plate: empty.

Hermione turned, desperate, toward the figure at her left.

Professor McGonagall rose in her regal robes, eyes unseeing, tears falling from her face like sapphires that made no sound when they struck the tablecloth.

Hermione’s heartbeat thundered. None of this made sense.

At the centre of the table, Dumbledore lifted his goblet in a solemn toast. The others raised theirs in perfect unison. Hermione tried to seize her own—
but it skittered away, struck the table, and burst into flame.

Dumbledore’s eyes met hers at last.
“Some hunger,” he whispered, “is not meant to be satisfied.”

The faceless began a new, broken lament.

A wizard with cold, black eyes at the far end of the table fixed her unblinkingly.

“Professor Snape,” she whispered, as though pleading.

“Go,” his voice was sharp as a dagger.

Professor McGonagall turned fully toward her at last.

“You do not belong,” she said—quiet, irrevocable, like a verdict already passed.

“You never needed to,” crooned the locket, sweet as venom.

Pretender.
Mudblood.
Outsider.

Traitor.

The floor gave way.
Hermione fell—
Dissolving, scattering—salt in water.

Then she became again.
Shadows danced, boneless and cold. Shelves rose around her like tombstones.
The Restricted Section.

She tiptoed forward, fingers brushing the spines of a book that thrummed with faint illicit magic. She lifted an Arithmancy tome—it shot from her grasp.

Another leapt away, tumbling into the shadows.
“You’re not good enough,” a voice hissed, like leaves scratching stone.

A low hum rose from the shelves. The shelves leaned away from her, slow and deliberate, spines twisting like offended shoulders.

One by one, the tomes pivoted inward, hiding their pages from her. Turning their backs. Rejecting her.

Whispering that she did not belong.

Frightened, she followed the slanting moonlight to a desk in the corner.

A shabby diary lay there, rough yet compelling. Her hands shook as she reached for it.

Please, please, please. 

When she opened it, it was no longer parchment.

It was skin. Smooth. Pale. Barely warm. Ink rose like bruises forming before her eyes.

Hermione froze. A pulse throbbed beneath her fingertips.

“Oh,” she whispered.
“No—”

The skin tightened, drawing her in. Bloodless veins surfaced beneath it like ink rising. The page shivered—alive—and something beneath it breathed:

Turn the page.

Her heart slammed painfully.
“That’s not— That isn’t—”

But her fingers were no longer hers.
They moved, obedient.

She turned the skin-page.

Darkness swallowed her whole.

Hermione staggered into a narrow corridor stretched too far, too thin. Cold. Clinical. Institutional. The air stank faintly of disinfectant and something colder still—resignation. Loneliness baked into the walls.

There were no windows.

Bare bulbs hummed overhead, their weak light smearing across the walls like diluted milk. The floorboards groaned in a language of neglect.

Too small, she thought.
Too low to the ground.

No—
Not her feet.

His.

Her breath caught as the corridor narrowed the deeper she walked, closing in the way old memories do when they try to swallow their owner whole.

Then—
A voice.
Thin, reedy, afraid to take up space.

“Tom, Tom, Tom, Tom, Tom…”

Hermione turned toward the sound.

He called out.
Not loudly.
As if he expected no answer.

“Me. I’m Tom.”

A pause.

Then—

“Tom who?”

Somewhere far ahead, a door slammed.
Her—his—small hands clenched.

“Tom Riddle,” he said, trying to make the name solid. Real. Worth something.

Something cold crawled up Hermione’s spine.

A dread that did not belong to her.

A child’s voice—his—high, careful, braced for the blow.

“Not you. Another Tom.”

“Wait,” he tried again, desperation fraying the edges of the sound.
“Don’t go—don’t leave me here—please—”

Silence answered.
Silence, and the long breath of an empty corridor.

He called again.
Softer.
Smaller.

Then louder—cracking, pleading—
as though calling into a void that had already decided it would never love him back.

Hermione's throat tightened. 

He's only a boy. He's afraid. He's so afraid. 

This wasn’t anger.
This wasn’t ambition.

This was terror.

The terror of being forgotten.
Unwanted.
Insignificant.

Abandoned.

A lifetime of forced composure cracking at the edges.

Hermione tried to pull away—but she was him, and he was freezing, shrinking, swallowed by the corridor that didn’t care whether he existed.

It was pain trying to become power.

Hermione gasped.

And the corridor responded.

A shadow at the far end sharpened.
Not a child now.

A boy.
Seventeen.
Tall.
Immaculate.
Mask-perfect.

He turned—

—and saw her.

For a heartbeat he didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. The shock in his eyes was raw, unguarded—gone in an instant, swallowed by something more ominous.

His eyes locked onto hers with frozen, furious clarity.

“That’s impossible,” Hermione whispered.

Not because she was dreaming—
but because he was not supposed to see her inside his fear.

He stepped toward her.

The world warped with each footfall.

One moment he was far away—
The next, close enough to see the tension at the corners of his mouth.

His voice was flat, controlled, but trembling underneath.

“You.”

“Why are you here?”

Hermione tried to speak. Nothing came out.

She wasn’t supposed to see this.
No one was.

His expression tightened—not into anger, but something far more dangerous: a fear of being seen.

He snapped:

“Get out.”

A sharper breath.

“You don’t get to see this.”

The corridor shattered.

Hermione woke with a violent gasp, as if her body had breached the surface of deep water.
Cold air tore down her throat. Her hands scrambled for purchase on the blankets, for something—anything—that was real.

It was the ghastly ceiling of her rented room in The White Wyvern. 

Her heartbeat hammered, frantic and arrhythmic. Sweat slicked her neck, her hair, even the inside of her elbows—as if she had run for miles.

For a moment she couldn’t breathe properly.
The echo of the his voice still clung to her like hands around a throat. 

Tom, Tom, Tom…
Don’t leave me here—please—

Hermione pressed the heel of her hand hard against her sternum, trying to steady herself. Her fingers shook uncontrollably.

No.
“No, that— That— that wasn’t just a nightmare—”

The corridor.
His voice.
The way he had recognized her.

Hermione’s stomach churned. 

She dragged the blankets closer, curling inward, shaking off a sensation that felt disturbingly like grief. Or pity.

Don't be ridiculous, she told herself sharply. He’s a murderer. A monster.

But the memory of the corridor still clung to her.

He was also a child.
Terrified.
Alone.
Unanswered.

In a few hours she would have to face him again.
Not the boy in the corridor—

Him.

The real one.

The man.

Brilliant. Merciless.
The one who had looked at her with total, icy awareness inside the vision.

A wave of nausea rolled through her.

She pushed herself upright, brushing damp curls from her face. Her limbs felt too light, too hollow, as though some part of her had not made it back fully.

She had to get ready.

Her breath wavered.
She steadied herself, mentally willing her Occlumency barriers to rise up again. 

The horcrux had done something.
Linked something.
Broken something.

And this time, she would not let him see that she was still shaking.

She checked the time on the cracked wall clock.
An hour and twenty minutes before she was meant to meet the Slytherin heir. 

She turned the taps on in her bathtub. Hot water rushed out at a blistering pace and steam coloured the mirrors in her bathroom. 

You saw something you weren’t meant to.

He felt you there. He knows. He knows.

Hermione forced her hands to stop shaking long enough to pull her towel and clothes from the chair. She dressed mechanically, knotting her hair back with fingers that had not completely regained their steadiness. She chanced a look at her face in the mirror, her cheeks looked hollowed and her eyes like bruises.

By the time she left her room, the hour had stretched into a long, unbearable ache of anticipation.

Knockturn Alley thrummed—vendors shouting, arguments slurred, metal dragged across stone.

Hermione’s eyes narrowed when she took in the dull glow of the streetlamps.

Cloaked magical folk rushed past The White Wyvern at a brisk pace, on their way home or somewhere far more pleasant for the evening. Everyone was in a rush to get out of the cold air except for...one. 

And there he was.
Waiting exactly where he said he would be, standing with the same immaculate composure, hands behind his back, expression schooled into polite blankness.

The young dark lord was wearing plain black robes. 

He offered no smirk. No greeting. No assessment. He just looked.

It was longer than was proper.

Hermione swallowed, keeping her face neutral.
Her pulse thundered in her ears.

"Good evening Tom." She said as evenly as possible. 

Riddle’s voice, when he finally spoke, was soft enough to be a whisper.
Too soft.

"You came,” he said quietly. “Good.”

She hated that her heartbeat stuttered.  Loathed that his voice sounded different — not tired, not shaken, but guarded.

“Of course." She said insistently. 

His eyes searched her expression, dissecting the slight tremor in her tone. 

He stepped even closer — not touching her, but narrowing the space until she could feel the same cold gravity she’d felt in the dream.

"Shall we?" Hermione offered tensely, looking anywhere but at him. She nodded in the direction of Borgin and Burkes. 

Riddle shook his head and stepped away from her. 

"No." 

A sinking feeling rose in Hermione. 

"Tonight we go elsewhere." 

"Oh?" She peered up at him. "Where?" 

"Follow me." 

Riddle set off without waiting for a response.

He swept around the steps into a narrow lane behind the pub. Hermione scurried after him. Riddle seemed to glide across the cobblestones, dark robes billowing behind him like smoke. They rounded another street corner coming to an empty, brightly lit avenue.

Riddle stopped and he offered his arm in a way that indicated that she should take it. Hermione noted his composure was perfect—too perfect. As if he was afraid she might notice the seams.

Hermione shivered and stepped smartly forwards, hooking her arm in his elbow. 

As their elbows linked, a cold thrill ran up her spine—he had felt it too.

The crack of Apparition swallowed them both.

Chapter Text

They reappeared into cool, mist-slick darkness.
The air smelled of exotic spices and something richer—an intoxicating sweetness that felt out of place in Knockturn Alley.

Riddle looked at Hermione for a long, assessing beat before neatly disentangling his arm from hers.

They stood behind a ramshackle three-storey building of crooked pink pinewood. Its windows glowed with lamplight, the leaded panes carved into flowers, fever-dream fancies, and young girls in linen shifts pressing themselves against faceless lovers. Music—low, wanton, strangely elegant—spilled out and tangled with raucous laughter.

There was no door.

But where a door ought to have been, an ornate oil lamp swung from a heavy chain, its globe of leaded red glass pulsing faintly like a heartbeat.

Riddle sauntered toward a patch of mauve carnations sprouting improbably from the cobblestones. He tapped his foot against the dirt, as though listening for something beneath it.

Hermione’s gaze snagged upward.

A sign hung crookedly from the top floor, upside down, its scrawl an affront to Latin:

A sorceror ex Lustris.

Her mind halted.

Lustris—brothel.

Hermione swore. Loudly.

Riddle paused mid-step, turning his head just enough to look at her. One eyebrow arched in a thin, unimpressed frown.

“Riddle—” Hermione snapped, fury sparking. “Please tell me you haven’t brought us to a wizarding brothel?”

She looked seconds away from launching herself at him like a projectile and beating some sense into him with her bare hands—
but the flare of indignation cracked, giving way to a colder, steadier alarm before she forced herself to breathe, to recalibrate.

Riddle only shot her a warning glance before crouching. With a flick of his wand at the grubby earth, a concealed hatch blew open with a sharp bang, revealing a narrow stairwell descending into darkness.

“Strictly business,” he said coolly, nodding toward the trapdoor. His tone held the softest edge of amusement—dangerously close to a smirk, but never quite forming one.

He met her glare without flinching.

“After you.”

Hermione glowered, looking as though she might argue—then squeezed herself into the hidden door.

Riddle descended gracefully behind her and flicked his wand in a casual sweep; dust and grit vanished from their robes.

They trailed down the narrow tunnel, the walls pressing in as the passage twisted upon itself. The air was warm, rippling with the scent of new parchment and exotic spices—an alluring, dizzying fragrance that clung to the tongue. Hermione felt a queer relief when they finally re-emerged into the brothel’s common room—her disgust easing into uneasy fascination as she tried to categorize the place before reacting to it.

By the hearth, a frightful patron sat with a buxom Veela, the two of them embroiled in a vulgar game of Forfeits. The wizard’s grotesquely huge torso strained against his undershirt; a second head, no larger than a clenched fist, jutted from his neck and muttered gleefully. From the look of things, he had lost his robe, belt, and right boot thus far, while the Veela had been forced to unbutton her cream shift to her waist.

To their left, a pretty witch perched by a large window. Behind her, a neat choir of well-dressed banshees plucked harps and sang in dulcet, shimmering tones—so sweet they made Hermione’s teeth ache.

Mystified, Hermione cast Riddle an expectant look. His face remained utterly stony. He offered no explanation.

A thin hand swept back a scarlet curtain.

A striking witch stepped forth wearing a feathered cream gown; her silver hair glinted like uncultured pearls, and her blue eyes lit at once with fondness.

“Riddle,” the witch simpered, halting in front of him, face flushed with adoration. Her hand outstretched, waiting. Riddle bent and brushed his lips over her knuckles.

“Miss Wasser,” said Riddle, voice smooth as silk. “You look radiant, as always.” His smile came dazzling—dangerously so.

“And welcome, new colleagues,” she added dreamily, dipping into a graceful curtsy toward Hermione. Her pale eyes lingered on Hermione’s features with polite curiosity.

“If it please you both, follow me. Mistress is awaiting your presence.”

Wasser turned with theatrical flourish and swept into the corridor.

Riddle followed, unhurried; Hermione, after a bracing breath, strode at his side—forcing her spine straight, knowing her first instinct—distaste—must give way quickly to strategic composure.

They followed her through a corridor of innumerable pink doors, each humming faintly with charms Hermione did not wish to identify. The carpet was soft as moss underfoot. The walls pulsed faintly, as though imbued with magic that breathed.

At the end stood a towering bronze door, carved in baroque patterns of roses and serpents. Wasser rapped seven times. Precisely seven.

“Enter,” croaked a voice from within.

A small fire burned inside, shadows leaping like living creatures across the room. A short, sour crone sat at a heavy wooden table, drab-shifted and hunched over parchment, an oil lamp hovering obediently at her elbow. A tiny house-elf in a feathery tunic perched cross-legged upon the desk, grinning with impish interest.

Lacy curtains draped the surfaces in drooping swathes; sinister-looking plants sat in vases on doilies by the hearth. A wall of portraits displayed pretty witches in feathered gowns identical to Wasser’s—fans raised to painted faces.

The crone set aside her quill.

She regarded them with colorless eyes; her face was so deeply wrinkled it seemed nature had carved a toad’s map into her skin.

“Leave us,” she said crisply. Wasser curtsied herself out at a brusque gesture.

Riddle stepped forward and bowed low over the desk.

“Madam Umbridge,” he said once they were alone.

Hermione stared.

Umbridge.
Madam Oroma Umbridge.
Unmarried mother of Orford Umbridge… and grandmother to Dolores Jane Umbridge. Hermione had seen the woman’s entry in Wizarding Families her fifth year.

A familiar churning sensation twisted in Hermione’s stomach—
shock giving way to the cold, bracing clarity she always found when danger sharpened reality.

“Be seated,” Umbridge’s voice cut through the air. Whereas Dolores Umbridge spoke in a fluttery, high-pitched voice, Oroma spoke in hushed, sharp tones—like a rose with hidden thorns.

Hermione observed that the crone did not offer Riddle her hand as per decorum. Her pale, unblinking eyes fixed instead on Hermione.

“You too—sit. Hermione, I trust?”

“Yes,” Hermione said, forcing calm into her voice. She dipped into a stiff curtsy and lowered herself into the chair beside Riddle. “A pleasure to meet—”

“Oh, do shut up,” said Umbridge impatiently. “My centaurs can curtsy better than you… now where’s Twit gone to with the tea tray?”

Hermione frowned and glanced sideways at Riddle. His face was an impassive mask—and she took that cue, smoothing her own features despite the sting of humiliation.
For a moment her pride flared, then—disciplined—she funneled it into quiet observation instead.

A house-elf reappeared at Umbridge’s elbow with pink-iced cupcakes and rose tea, tiptoeing to reach the desk.

“Might I disclose how well you look today, Madam Umbridge,” said Riddle amiably.

Umbridge stared at him for a good moment, then let out a whoop of harsh laughter.

“How well I look today? Is that your usual line?” she guffawed. “Forget death by a malignant curse—it’s death by bad conversation.” She cackled with satisfaction.

Riddle chuckled mechanically.

Hermione’s lip twitched upward at the crone’s sheer impertinence—
the warmth of amusement briefly loosening her tension before she re-centered.

“I haven’t had the opportunity to express my sorrow for your son’s wife,” Riddle continued, voice polite, almost conversational. “It must have been… devastating.”

Umbridge swallowed thickly. Setting her quill down, her wrinkled hands on the arms of her chair trembled almost imperceptibly.

“…spare me,” the crone intoned. A sliver of drool dribbled from the side of her mouth; she wiped it with the back of her hand. “Now, get on with it. What is the excuse for your visit this time?”

Hermione winced as though Umbridge had thrown something at her and cast a frightened glance at Riddle, waiting for some impending explosion—
her panic rising, then cooling as she forced herself into analytical distance again.

He leaned back slightly.
Contemplative.
Dissecting.

“Mr. Burke wishes to make an improved offer for the Opal Necklace—150 Galleons. He believes it fair…”

Hermione flinched in recognition.

The crone blinked once. Hermione felt the tiny shift—a crack in her composure.

Riddle inclined his head, his voice light and calm. Hermione felt a kind of coolness emanating from him.

“…He wishes to assist in relieving you of your suffering,” he murmured delicately.

Umbridge twitched sharply, stunned and affronted.

“How noble,” she hissed, “of Burke to consider our suffering.”

“I am but a humble messenger of Mr. Burke, Madam,” said Riddle quietly.

“You see, the true measure of fairness is not coin, but careful stewardship…” he pressed on, soft and even. His gaze drifted deliberately over Umbridge—her quill, the scattered papers, the firelight dancing across the scars on her gnarled fingers.

“Surely one such as yourself would not allow the necklace to remain such a peril to innocents, Madam Umbridge?”

Madam Umbridge paled, face whiter than chalk. Motionless.

Hermione felt a jolt—
admiration and dread flickering together before she quelled both, building a neutral façade.

“Burke expresses that our establishment, Borgin and Burkes, wishes to gift you this offer… of protection at a fair price in consideration of such a difficult and unfortunate event.”

The air felt thicker than cold custard. Hermione could scarcely breathe from the tension. She pressed her hands to her lap, forcing herself to focus—not on fear, but on the moving gears of manipulation Riddle turned so expertly.

“Fair price?” Umbridge choked, voice a strangled whimper. “Protection?!”

“Yes. Protection,” he said lightly. “We understand better than most the dangers that lie in idle hands. That is why we intervene—not for gain, but to ensure nothing worse comes of it.”

His gaze lingered on the crone. Hermione watched her gulp down what could have been tears.

Hermione erupted.

“I will buy it from him for more,” Hermione found herself saying, surprising even herself. Her voice was steady, but her chest thrummed. “And I will see it destroyed.”

She shot a nervous glance at Riddle, then plunged on. She could practically feel his eyes drilling into the side of her skull. She shifted uncomfortably—
principle, fury, and the awareness of being watched colliding until she forced them into disciplined purpose.

The crone’s eyes shifted to her, giving her a long, hard look.

“You? Burke’s subordinate? Some trick?”

“Listen,” Hermione said heatedly, “if it remains here, more will suffer. If it leaves these walls, it will be destroyed, and no one else harmed. Surely that is the path of least cruelty.”

The crone’s gaze wavered.

“I’m sorry that happened to you and your family.”

“We weren’t the sole victims,” Umbridge snarled. “Half a dozen Muggles died.”

“No, there were more than that,” Hermione corrected, unblinking—anger sharpening into crisp certainty.

The crone nodded almost imperceptibly. She opened her mouth to retort, but Hermione forestalled her.

“As a matter of fact, it’s claimed the lives of nineteen Muggles,” Hermione repeated sternly.

Umbridge’s jaw tightened. She waved her hands dismissively, venom barely contained.

“Why would you care? Your lot, always spewing pure-blood nonsense—”

“I couldn’t give a damn about magical lineage,” Hermione shot back, anger flaring. “My blood runs as red as anyone else’s. Lust or love, as you surely know, Madam Umbridge, does not discriminate.”

The crone recoiled, startled.

Hermione felt Riddle’s gaze. Cold and precise. Unrelenting.

Her thoughts raced: pity for Umbridge, fury at the world's prejudices, awareness of Riddle’s scrutiny—
before she deliberately smoothed the turmoil into practiced logic.

This is exactly what he tests.
Strength. Control. Judgment.

“I understand your hesitation better than most,” Hermione said, leaning forward with icy calm. “That necklace perverts the very sacraments of magic itself. But—we have a job to do.”

Umbridge’s eyes flicked between them, suspicion warring with instinct.

The undercurrent of strategy, the subtle shaping of choices, was clear.

This is not coercion. This is negotiation, persuasion, and calculation intertwined. And I must navigate it or fail.

Umbridge’s gaze faltered.

“Bring us the opal necklace,” she finally said, voice tight.

Hermione’s heart skipped.

The house-elf placed the box on the table with a flourish. Umbridge’s wand dissolved the lid, revealing the opal necklace—twisting light and dark into its deadly fire.

“I’ve tried everything,” Umbridge admitted, “except—”

“Fiendfyre,” Hermione supplied, nodding.

“Yes,” Umbridge said, composure fraying. “I would never dare. Not here, not while Wasser needs me to guide the others… and my son, my only son…”

Hermione remained silent, listening.
Her anger cooled into something quieter—understanding, even sympathy—before she disguised it beneath a calm, professional tone.

“Let me destroy it,” Hermione finally said, steady.

Riddle’s lips curled faintly in the ghost of approval. His presence was both reassurance and warning.

“Give me the necklace,” Hermione continued. “Burke offered 150 Galleons. I will buy it from him for more—and I promise, it will be destroyed.”

Umbridge studied her, then Riddle. Suspicion evident.

“I am not breaking rules—only bending them, Madam Umbridge,” Hermione said, somehow feeling hollow.

“You swear it, then?” the crone asked, desperation and exhaustion mingling.

“Upon my honor as a witch,” Hermione affirmed.

Umbridge slumped, defeated but wary. Hermione felt Riddle’s satisfaction—subtle, like a shift in air pressure.

“You are an honest and honourable witch… Hermione,” croaked Umbridge. With a trembling flourish, the box floated to Hermione’s hands.

“Now, get it out of my sight.”

Hermione rose and curtsied, legs stiff. She followed Riddle toward the door, chest tight with the moral weight of the object.

Minutes later, they emerged back into cold, mist-slick darkness.

The brothel’s lantern cast a feverish crimson pulse across the alley.

Riddle was silent. He flicked his wand at the earth, sealing the trapdoor.

Hermione stared at the crooked building, thoughts tangled—the residue of righteous fury, strategic clarity, guilt—
until she forced herself to breathe, to sift them into something controllable.

I compromised. I played his game. I won—but at what cost?

She turned.

Riddle stood directly behind her, close enough that she could feel the warmth of his breath.

He hadn’t moved—or she hadn’t seen him move. Mist curled around them like a half-cast spell.

He watched her with a strange expression on his face that Hermione could not decipher.

A serpent examining a flame.

“Why did you gamble like that?” he asked finally. The innocent tone held poison beneath it.

Hermione’s pulse surged—fear rising, then flattening into poised calculation.

This is evaluation.
Another test.

Hermione met his gaze.

“Every ambitious move is a gamble, Tom,” she said lightly, handing him the box. “Don’t you know?”

Releasing the box felt like crossing a threshold. He didn’t merely take it; he received it—confirmation of something he’d suspected.

He stepped closer. Hermione’s breath hitched, then steadied.

“You’re far too cunning for your own good,” he murmured lazily. 

Hermione flushed—mortification tangling with a dangerous thrill before she forced both down.

“Not to my face,” she replied coolly.

Riddle laughed—rougher, real.

“Join me,” he said. “Next week.”

“For business?” she asked.

“Not for business,” he said. Riddle lowered his chin as though bashful. “For pleasure. Join me and my associates for dinner, Hermione.”

Her jaw ticked visibly ticked. 

“I’ll give it some thought.”

Riddle went very still.
A stillness like impact—silent, sharp.

He recovered almost instantly.

“Of course,” he said, too smoothly.

Hermione stepped past him into the swirling mist.

“You’ll have your answer when I decide one.”

Hermione stood at her window, watching Riddle’s retreating form disappear down the alley—her heart still thrumming with leftover adrenaline, a strange mixture of victory and unease.

She unbuttoned her robes and flung herself onto the mattress. Something thin and sharp jutted into her back.

She flipped over, hands searching the sheets, and found an envelope. She ripped open the letter.

Dear Hermione,

I am delighted to write to you; Herbert has told me so much about you! I was his peer once at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

I am now Professor Horace Slughorn, Master of Potions. Herbert has informed me that you are interested in private Occlumency lessons. I have, in the past, offered this to my absolute favourite students at Hogwarts.

He has told me of how gifted you are. I understand you are somewhat acquainted with the subtle art of Occlumency. However, as he mentioned, practical lessons will be invaluable!

He has told me you are available on the weekend. Might I suggest we meet in Hogsmeade, at the Three Broomsticks at noon?

We can take our lunch, and from there proceed to a private classroom at Hogwarts.

Headmaster Dippet has offered his approval and discretion.

All the best,
Horace Slughorn

Hermione beamed at the letter—the excitement cutting cleanly through the fog of the evening, bright enough to momentarily hush every lingering echo of Riddle’s scrutiny.

She was going back to Hogwarts.

Chapter Text

"The Dark Lord, for instance, almost always knows when somebody is lying to him. Only those skilled at Occlumency are able to shut down those feelings and memories that contradict the lie, and so can utter falsehoods in his presence without detection." - Severus Snape, Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix.

The classroom swam in front of her eyes and vanished; image after image of very choice fragments of her childhood flickered past, racing through her mind like a picture book rifled at high-speed.

Hermione instinctively summoned that familiar swell of self-protection — the gathering and bracing of her own mind as if she could fold herself small and safe behind it. She had built these inner chambers carefully, brick by brick, but now something older and colder uncoiled behind her walls, sliding into place with an authority that wasn’t hers.

The intruder pushed.

For a heartbeat the world whitened at its edges — and something not-quite-herself surged forward, eager, cold.

A flash — a boy’s cold delight, sharp as fractured glass, rang through her skull.

Mine, the voice whispered — not spoken, not heard, but remembered through her.

Then it dissolved, leaving the aftertaste of smoke and triumph curling in her chest.

A quiet command — no further — resonated through her, so natural she didn’t question it. For a moment she wasn’t sure whose instinct it was. Her pulse? Her will? Or that other presence curled deep in her, guarding not her memories so much as its own. The air inside her mind tautened. 

She yelped, slamming her mind shut—hard—expelling its intruder as though hurling a brick through a window. The charm slid off her mind-barrier as though it were a droplet of water colliding with glass.

Hermione found herself on all fours, palms stinging against the flagstones, forced yet again to arduously re-shuffle the decks of her memories. The added pressure of avoiding certain… more revealing recollections had sent her sprawling in a graceless heap. Her mind was still reverberating from the intrusion, but Slughorn bustled on as if nothing had happened. Hermione forced herself to keep pace, burying the tremors under a scholar's composure. 

She simply could not allow Slughorn access to her time at Hogwarts.

He’d know immediately that something was awry. And if there was one thing she could not abide, it was his— or worse, Dumbledore’s—interference.

If word got to Dumbledore… if the wizard discovered what Riddle would become… what Hermione had already become…

She would be put out like a pig for slaughter.

And yet the opportunity to learn Occlumency from Professor Slughorn—Slughorn, who had stymied even Dumbledore’s Legilimency—was far too tempting. More tempting still was the quiet promise that their acquaintance might permit her access to the Hogwarts grounds, the vast library… and certain other endeavors that pricked at the back of her mind like silver needles. Advantages she could not afford to let pass, untouched.

The Highroad is a pretty path, she thought darkly, but I’ll have a hard time marching an army of one up it.

“Oho!” Slughorn exclaimed, elated, bouncing out of his chair. “Splendid improvement, m’dear—splendid work indeed!” His tone was half amazed, half proud.

“You’ll be a skilled Occlumens in no time, mark my words.” He wagged a stubby finger at her, looking not unlike a schoolboy who had just stumbled upon the final Chocolate Frog card to complete his collection.

Hermione sucked in great lungfuls of cold air and blinked back streaming eyes.
“Th-thank you… s-sir,” she spluttered, forcing her voice into politeness as she wearily pushed herself upright. Her skull pounded with the horrible sensation that her brain had been melted down and re-poured into the wrong shape.

Slughorn—slightly younger, though no less round—still sported the gingery walrus moustache that rose and fell whenever he spoke. His belly was not quite so monumental yet, but it still preceded him like the bow of a ship carving the sea.

“Still,” Slughorn said, carrying his empty goblet back to his desk, “a master Legilimens could still detect your attempts to mislead them.”

“Oh?” Hermione said, voice leaping an octave, thin and sharp with panic.

He noticed, she thought, throat tightening.

If he noticed, then Riddle certainly could.

The realization chilled her to the marrow.

“Oh yes,” Slughorn continued emphatically, resettling into his comfortable winged armchair. “But not to worry, m’dear. There are ways to rework a memory—so your adversary may witness only what you choose to provide.” He hummed happily, oblivious to Hermione’s rigid posture. 

“Done well, the alteration will be seamless. You may change what was said, the smell of the room, even what you are wearing if you will it. The true memory will remain accessible only to you. But it requires considerable willpower and skill.”

“Memory modification,” Hermione repeated astutely, remembering Harry’s recount of the man’s own tampered recollection—of Riddle, no less.

“And what happens if it’s performed incorrectly, sir?” she asked, feigning scholarly concern. “It appears odd, doesn’t it? Unnatural. Some accounts mention a thick, white fog filling the memory.” She fibbed at top speed, sliding elegantly into the chair before his desk.

Slughorn cleared his throat, shifting uneasily. “Yes… well… that only happens when the memory is infused with shame. Or guilt.” His moustache twitched. “Which is why it is paramount that you master yourself—and your emotions.”

His voice had darkened with sudden gravity. He rose and rummaged through his desk drawers. 

“Well! It can’t hurt to give you an overview before our next session.”

He withdrew a dusty tome and handed it to her.

“Thank you, sir,” Hermione said brightly. She rummaged through her heavy bag, tucking the tome beside Hogwarts: A History and withdrawing a prettily ribboned box.

At that moment the clock struck four, its chime cracking across the room like a whip. Slughorn gave a great jump, and the potions vials on the shelves trembled in alarm.

“Good gracious—is it that time already?” he blustered. “You’d better be off, m’dear, or we’ll both be in trouble.” He heaved himself from the armchair, apparently prepared to escort her from the grounds himself.

Hermione’s thoughts sharpened. Slughorn, as promised, had not informed any of the other Professors of her presence—save Headmaster Dippet. All the same, the abrupt dismissal left her slightly wrong-footed. She rose quickly, letting her gaze sweep the room.

Slughorn had left a window open; a stack of parchments had scattered across the floor. Pale sunlight slanted through the thick yellow glass, and dust motes drifted lazily in the beams like tiny golden insects. Outside, snow blanketed the great expanse of the grounds. On the smooth, solid surface of the lake, she glimpsed a group of laughing boys returning from Hogsmeade. Their shrieks of mirth cut through her like a broken promise—bitter, sweet, and unbearably distant.

Hermione tore her eyes away and would not dwell on the ache of it.

“I—yes—thank you, Professor,” she said, but paused. Her stillness made Slughorn glance back; she was standing there, waiting, compelled by some impulse she did not yet have words for.

“Look sharp, Hermione,” he said gently. “You don’t want to be caught here when the students come flocking back.”

Hermione swallowed. "Sir, I wanted to give you something — before I leave — you know, as a thank you for your help."
She held out the silver box, smiling shyly. Slughorn accepted it, lifting the lid to reveal a glistening heap of crystallized pineapple she’d bought that very morning at Honeydukes.

"Oho! Well, thank you, my dear." Surprise burst in every syllable. "Crystallized pineapple is my favorite — just how did you—"

Hermione felt the warmth of his delight like a weight on her conscience. For a moment, she almost wished she were just a promising student bringing a kindly professor a harmless treat—not a trespasser threading lies through every conversation, not a girl carrying a secret that could unravel the future. Then, Slughorn's flabbergasted expression melted into a mischievous grin, his voice dropping into a conspiratorial whisper.

"You’ve been talking to Tom, haven’t you?" 

Hermione blanched.

"Yes. Tom— Mr. Riddle is erm… a senior colleague of mine. I’m new to Borgin and Burkes, and the subtleties of the artifacts are rather dangerous unless guided. He’s been instructed to show me around."

Slughorn beamed, expectant as a boy promised a story.

"He’s… uh… very competent," Hermione added, hoping the understatement didn’t curdle in her mouth. Although privately, she thought she would rather be left alone with a hoard of centaurs than tell Riddle she had come to Hogwarts for Occlumency lessons from Slughorn. 

"Ah, Tom — always the gentleman! Did you know he was one of my all-time favorite students?" Slughorn nearly bounced, smiling gloatingly as he pointed to the many framed photographs on a nearby dresser.

In the very center sat a great silver frame glittering like a treasure chest.

Hermione recognized Riddle at once.
Relaxed. Handsome. Languid in second-hand robes that looked regal simply because he wore them. His right hand draped over the arm of the chair, the Gaunt ring winking at the camera.

Hermione swallowed the thick bile that rose in her throat. 

He had already murdered his father.

Slughorn’s arm lay across the boy’s shoulders, grinning as though he’d just caught the Snitch.

Hermione tore her eyes from the Slytherin heir to study the others in the frame — and it spoke to the young Dark Lord's magnetism that she hadn't registered them first. Half a dozen Slytherin boys surrounded Slughorn, sitting on lower seats, raising goblets, cheering. One blond boy hoisted the Quidditch Cup overhead, roaring triumphantly.
Riddle only stared — but it was clear he was their leader.

"All ex-students — all mine," Slughorn declared proudly. "There’s Remulus Lestrange — Curse breaker at Gringotts — always boasting the goblins would bail me out if I ever ruffled their feathers," Slughorn released a chortle. "Antigonus Avery — now an Auror — and of course — Abraxas Malfoy, there waving the Quidditch Cup. Ambitious boy, that one." Slughorn slapped his thigh, chuckling smugly to himself.

Hermione started, but held her tongue.

A rat in every corner of society.

Hermione grimaced, coughing lightly to hide her revulsion. Her stomach squirmed just looking at the ancestor of her childhood nemesis. She wished she’d eaten less lunch.

"And now," Slughorn said, shifting massively in his chair like a compere preparing to unveil his crowning glory,
"Tom Marvolo Riddle." Slughorn’s voice tailed off; he gave her an almost wistful smile.

He regarded the teenaged Riddle in the frame as though he were a particularly large and delectable piece of crystallized pineapple.

"Prefect, Head Boy, winner of the Special Award for Services to the School. Brilliant mind. He could have given Albus a run for his money," Slughorn’s smile sank like a leaking ship.
"I always told him he’d go far — rise high in the Ministry… Of course — you know what happened next?"

He shook his head again, as if clearing an irritating fog from memory.

"Borgin and Burkes," Hermione whispered — the word sounding closer to condemnation than answer.

"Yes. None of us could quite comprehend why Tom went there. Well — there’s still time left, of course…" Slughorn stared hopefully at Riddle’s face, his thick fingers absently clawing the stem of his goblet.

A thin ribbon of pity wound through Hermione’s apprehension.
For how could he have known?
How could any of them have known the depths of Riddle’s future evil — or the tyranny wrought by his little schoolboy gang?

"Of course, sir," Hermione murmured, feeling suddenly stupid and out of place.

Slughorn gave a little jolt, as though waking from a dream.

"Well, you’d better be off now. I’ll escort you, of course, m’dear — you’ll get lost otherwise. The grounds can be daunting even for a seventh year." He smiled kindly, ambling toward the door.

Hermione, who knew Hogwarts as intimately as her own pulse, simply inclined her head. Slughorn’s escort was a perfect alibi; she would not squander it. The warmth of Slughorn's office vanished the moment the door shut behind her, replaced by the sharp winter air and the reality of what she had come here to do. 

They stepped through the Main Entrance Gates.

"Well, give my regards to Tom, won’t you? Only if you’d like to tell him about your lessons, of course. Perhaps you might convince him to visit his favorite professor?" Slughorn asked cheerfully, winking. There was an unmistakable glint in his eyes — the eager hope of a man who longed for news of a prized pupil.

Hermione stiffened.
"I’ll do my best, Professor. But unfortunately, Herbert and I agreed that… Occlumency would be kept between us." She smiled sweetly.

"I’m grateful for your time — but I really must be getting to Hogsmeade," she added, glancing around as though unfamiliar with the landscape. She tugged on her gloves. "I have prior arrangements with Herbert this evening, and I’ve heard you can only Apparate at some distance from the castle, right?"

She emphasized Herbert and Hogsmeade with practiced clarity.

"Why yes," he said, jovial once more. "I could call you a carriage—"

"—No, it’s quite alright," Hermione said, smiling ruefully. "I think I can can work out by following the students."

She waved, turned, and walked briskly toward Hogsmeade, ensuring her path was plainly visible.

Students streamed back from Hogsmeade in clusters, trudging up the path with laughter and chattering excitement. Hermione walked with purpose among them, making a point to be seen — noted, accounted for — before peeling away down the narrow alley behind The Three Broomsticks.

A quick glance left, then right. No one watching.

She drew the Invisibility Cloak from her beaded bag and swept it over herself, the world muffling the moment the fabric settled. Students passed within arm’s reach, oblivious, their conversations dissolving into the muted hush of evening around her.

When the street cleared, Hermione raced towards Honeydukes.

A student exited, and in that brief sliver of opportunity, she stepped neatly inside on the witch’s heels. Warm air hit her — sugar and cocoa layered over the faint tang of old stone. For a heartbeat she nearly collided with the shop’s owner (or who she presumed was the owner in this era), a harassed-looking witch locked in a heated negotiation with a third-year over the price of fizzing whizbees.

Hermione hugged the wall, sliding behind the counter toward the wooden staircase. Every board felt like it might groan under her weight, but none did. She slipped down into the cellar.

Wooden crates towered around her, stacked like bricks in a cramped fortress. She dropped to her knees, sweeping her wand in a tight arc across the floor. A soft shimmer — then the trapdoor lifted itself obediently from the perfectly matched boards. Harry had been right: it blended so seamlessly into the floor it was nearly invisible.

Hermione dived headfirst into the passage and pulled the trapdoor shut above her with a muted click. The adrenaline hit a beat too late; she landed hard on her back in a tight earthen crawlspace, the impact knocking the breath from her lungs.

Darkness swallowed everything. Lightless, breathless, close. 

No turning back now.

She lit her wand with a whispered charm, the golden glow pressing back the dark just enough for her to see the narrow, winding path ahead.

Hermione gripped the wand between her teeth and began to crawl, elbows digging into the packed earth as she hauled herself upward, inch by inch, along the twisting rise toward the castle. Her blood thundered in her ears, dirt collecting under her nails, the grit of it embedding itself into her skin. The tunnel grew narrower, colder—until at last her forehead met stone.

A dead end. The wall.

She huddled there for a moment, chest heaving, and summoned the Marauder’s Map with trembling hands.

“I solemnly swear that I am up to no good.” She whispered.

The parchment unfurled against her knees as she scanned it frantically. Tiny ink names drifted past, weaving through corridors above her. She waited, breath tight and shallow, watching the small footsteps running across the parchment until the space behind the one-eyed witch finally cleared. 

Vacant.

She folded the map away and shoved it back into her beaded bag. Wand in hand, she braced her palm against the cold wall.

“Dissendium!” Hermione gasped, tapping the stone.

With a low, grinding ripple, the statue’s hump yawned open. She squeezed herself through, boots scraping the edge as she tumbled onto the flagstones.

The third floor corridor was empty. 

Hermione stood still for a beat, pressing herself flat against the wall as the hump sealed behind her with a muffled grind of stone on stone. Her lungs burned. Dirt clung to her robes and streaked her wrists, and her hair had come loose from its braid, frizzing wildly with sweat.

She slipped the Invisibility Cloak back over her shoulders and ventured forward.

The lower corridor was dim and narrow, lit only by a torch sputtering weakly against the damp. She crept toward the next landing, her steps feather-light, praying she wouldn’t run into a prefect—or worse, a professor—this early into the castle.

A faint echo drifted from above: laughter, footsteps, the clatter of something dropped. Students returning from supper. Hermione swallowed. She waited for the sounds to fade, then hurried up the uneven staircase that zigzagged sharply at each landing like a drunken decision.

On the second landing she nearly collided, face-first, with a floating, grinning menace.

Peeves.

Hermione jerked backward, heart hammered painfully against her ribs. Peeves was smearing something thick and revolting onto the wall—a brownish sludge that steamed faintly, its stench assaulting her through the cloak.

“Ohhh, come out, ickle wanderer,” Peeves crooned in a singsong rasp, dabbing a smiley face in dung. “Peevsie knows you’re there… someone’s sneaking where they shouldn’t…”

Hermione froze, barely daring to breathe. Her wand trembled in her hand.

Before Peeves could pivot her direction, a clatter of footsteps thundered down the corridor.

“PEEVES!”

A tall wizard with knobbly knees and an oversized coat came barreling around the corner, brandishing a bucket of water like a weapon. “AWAY WITH YOU, YOU FOUL, MISERABLE—”

Peeves shrieked with delighted outrage and rocketed upward, cackling as jets of water sprayed through him uselessly. The wizard—whom Hermione recognized with vague relief as Rancorous Carpe, predecessor to Filch—gave chase, bellowing obscenities as the pair hurtled off.

The corridor fell silent. Filthy. Blessedly empty.

Hermione exhaled shakily, her knees nearly buckling with adrenaline. She swept past the dung-painted walls, trying not to gag, and cursed herself again for leaving the Marauder’s Map in her bag—she’d thought it would slow her down, but now…

No time. She pressed forward.

Up ahead, around a corner, the corridor bent into a sparsely lit, deserted passage. At the far end sat the door to the second-floor girls’ bathroom—Myrtle’s bathroom. Out of Order even in the 1940s. Absolutely reeking.

Hermione’s stomach tightened. Ron’s voice echoed unbidden in her mind:

“Can’t go in there. That’s a girls’ toilet.”

And her own voice, long ago—or was it long ahead?—replied softly in her memory:

“Oh, Ron, there won’t be anyone in there. That’s Moaning Myrtle’s place.”

Hermione gripped the cloak tighter, forcing the memory away.

She approached the door with deliberate slowness, ignoring the giant OUT OF ORDER sign nailed crookedly across it. Wand in one hand, courage in the other, she nudged the door with the faintest kick.

It creaked inward — dark, familiar, and dreadful.

She stepped inside.

The bathroom was still the gloomiest Hermione had ever seen. Beneath a large, cracked mirror, rows of chipped sinks lined the wall, dull and damp. Moaning Myrtle hovered above a toilet tank, sobbing, then froze as her gaze fixed on the doorway.

“Who’s there? If it’s you, Peeves, I’m not coming out!” her voice wavered, thick with tears. “My life was nothing but misery at this place, and now you’re coming along and ruining my death!”

No, Hermione thought. I’m avenging it.

Her palms tingled as if slapped by cold air as she folded herself small behind the sinks, wand at the ready. “This is the girls’ lavatory—”

Myrtle’s face swelled with indignation, her ghostly form glowing faintly in the dim light.

“—Boys aren’t allowed in here!”

Hermione flourished her wand.

A hiss tore itself out of the air before Hermione even realized she’d raised it. Magic leapt from her like a striking nerve.

A cobra — black-eyed, milky, glistening, and far too real — unfurled on the tiles, hood flaring, venom spitting in thin arcs.

Myrtle shrieked, her entire spectral form twisting in alarm. “SNAKE! SNAKE IN THE GIRLS’ LAVATORY!” she howled, diving headfirst into the toilet in a tragic, undignified flail that sent water splashing across the floor.

Hermione stared at the snake, breath trapped in her throat. She hadn’t spoken. She hadn’t even meant—

She slashed her wand through the air. The cobra dissolved into smoke, leaving the bathroom still and shivering around her.

“Honestly,” she muttered, though her voice shook. “Some things never change.”

She let the Invisibility Cloak slip from her shoulders and folded it neatly into her bag.

The sinks looked ordinary — nondescript and damp, exactly as they had in her own time. But Hermione examined every inch with a shrewd eye until she saw it: scratched into the side of a copper tap, a minuscule snake.

Hermione grinned triumphantly. What had Harry said he thought of when he spoke to snakes?

She stared, white-faced, at the tiny engraving, willing it to be alive.

“Open,” she commanded.

A guttural hiss — her own, yet not — wrapped around the word.

The tap glowed faintly, a thread of white light spiraling across its surface, and began to turn, obedient to her whispered will.

Chapter Text

The sink began to move, steaming, sinking right out of sight and leaving a large pipe exposed, wide enough for the average man to slide into.

The hole was a black mouth, ready to swallow her whole.
Hermione Granger had opened the Chamber of Secrets.

She crouched, lowering herself cautiously into the pipe, and rushed down into the gaping slide.

Here was no sun, no stars, only the ground below coming up to smash her—

She wanted to cry out.
Alas, she shot out at the end, landing with a distinct crunch on a damp stone floor at the far end of a dark stone tunnel.

The darkness swelled.

"Lumos," said Hermione in a faint whisper, shivering.

Her numbing fingers fumbled with the fastenings of her robes.
So cold, she thought. Her breath came out like hot streams of dragon fire.

The air smelt putrid, of rotting flesh and cold. She thrust her wand higher, and the shadows leapt and danced on the walls behind her in ghostly apparitions. She followed the shape of the tunnel.

Her feet crunched on a thousand bones of small creatures, and the tunnel looked like a wasteland of frost-fallen leaves and skulls, empty-eyed and with an unpleasant, fish-like aspect to them.

Alone, she felt desperately afraid.
If I must be alone, I would make solitude my armor, Hermione thought.

At last, she saw an entrance on which two serpents were carved, intertwined like lovers; their eyes danced in the wand-light like emerald flames. She knew what she had to do now.

"Open," she said in a low, thin hiss. Their jaws opened, and the serpents slid smoothly out of sight, revealing a long chamber.

She stood at the end, and the darkness deepened into a malevolent, sickly green glow.

There were slack-jawed serpents carved into towering, greasy black pillars rising to support a ceiling that mortal sight could not divine. The ground was frozen and muddied for slick footing, but she made no noise when she entered.

Wand held aloft, the Gryffindor moved forward from the shadows; the hollow eye sockets of the oily stone snakes seemed to follow her.
Her heart stopped in her chest.
For a moment, her voice abandoned her. Fear filled her gut like a meal she could not digest.

For a great oily stone statue loomed.

Hermione craned her neck to examine the ancient face of Salazar Slytherin: dressed in stone robes, his face was gaunt and hard as bones, with a sloped forehead, huge square teeth, a long thin beard. He had a broad, flat nose suggesting slits, which gave him the aspect of his house sigil.

She stooped low with her bag, putting her wand between her teeth, the cold wood in her mouth giving her comfort.

From the bag she removed a shrunken box. Its silver surface winked at her in the dim light of the chamber.

The girl drew her wand, tapped it once, twice.

The box expanded.
It was a closed metal cage.

She undid the cage door, and a brightly colored rooster emerged, with a large red comb on top of its head, its beak opening and closing in a soundless cluck.

She knew the rooster would be the Basilisk's undoing—its crow, the creature’s one true vulnerability. She swished her wand; it remained stuck to the floor, beak opening and shutting in silent, horrified crows.

"I'm sorry," she said.

She flicked her wand, dispelling her silencing jinx.

"SONORUS!" Hermione yelled the amplifying charm, her wand pointed directly at the rooster's vocal cords.
Its terrified cries filled the chamber like a horn had been blown—

The stone statue stood still, patient, silent.
There was no scream, no movement, only a high, thin sound at the edge of hearing.

She panted, her breath steaming into frantic wheezes.

This thing could kill me without even trying.

She checked a second spell on the rooster, and a third, then fell back a step, panicked. Its crows grew louder, and louder still, closer to screams—

The chamber trembled. The ancient torso of Salazar Slytherin cracked across his feet and face, as though cut by some unseen force. His face was a ruin; a yellow ichor seeped through the cracks like dribble.

The sound split and doubled, a single voice becoming two — a cry of a beast to a master who would never answer.

The floor vibrated beneath her feet — a low warning rumble. The scream drove Hermione backwards; dust rained down from the ceiling. 

A vivid, poisonous green tail lashed out of the foot of the statue, colliding with a gigantic crash against the right of the chamber wall.

A flurry of rocks exploded; dust suffused the air like a haze of mist.

She dove left, skidding across the wet stone. A whip of its tail barely missed her shoulder, smashing a jagged shard of stone into the wall where she had stood. The scent of venom hit her nose, hot and corrosive, and she stumbled on the slick floor, scraping her palm.

The Basilisk lashed its torso, smashed into the arms of the statue, and shattered its own stone nest into smithereens.

She threw herself behind the nearest pillar, arms over her head as shards of Slytherin’s face skittered across the floor like shrapnel. 

The face of Salazar Slytherin shattered into a hailstorm of thousands of rocks and pebbles that made the floor tremble and shake. Dust stung her eyes; her ears rang.

She pressed flat against the stone, heart pounding so violently it hurt. Her knees buckled. She shrieked, covering her eyes.

The Basilisk whipped its tail; its thick, reptilian body keeled onto the chamber floor, writhing and hissing and sliding on its massive back. If it rolled the wrong way, it would crush her without even noticing.

Eyes lowered to the floor, she forced herself to move—one step, then another—keeping the pillar between them.

Through the chaos, Hermione’s mind raced. The Basilisk could not see her, she realized, but every hiss and scrape of scales gave away its strikes. If she timed the next spell just as it lunged, she could stay just out of reach and aim for its flanks rather than its head.

She heard the breath go out of the rooster in a long, drawn-out cry, and it fell silent, dead.

"No, no, no!" Hermione whispered, her voice cracking.

She threw her robes over her shoulder to free her arms for battle and took her wand in both of her hands. The Gryffindor lifted her wand high over her head, defiant.

The Basilisk said something in its language:
"Help me," it said.
It did not want to die.

She halted; for a heartbeat she dared to pity it. A creature built for obedience, breaking itself apart in confusion.

"Silence!" she spat, heart lurching in her chest. Hermione found her fury, coming up snarling, lifting her wand like a longsword with both hands and swinging it around in a slash with all her weight behind it.

Fire erupted, blistering and red-hot. The Basilisk cried out in pain; blood welled in rings of red fire across its blackening body, steaming in the cold air.

Blood welled in rivers of flame across the stone floor

The smell of charred meat overwhelmed even Hermione's perfume, and the Basilisk's wail was a deafening cry.

Its scales had burst so fiercely into flame that for an instant the king of serpents wore a burning crown.

The girl threw her hand across her face to shield her eyes from the furnace wind. She stood, face expressionless, her robes billowing around her like smoke, facing a haze of smoke and flame.

The Basilisk twisted, screaming and flailing, and then—

It moved no more.

Was this what the Chamber demanded of her… or what she had always been capable of becoming?

Hermione slid to the floor, emitting a rasping sound, thick tears pouring down her dusty face.

"Harry... Ron... I did it — I killed it."

She raised her head, shaking, and with gaze lowered approached the corpse of the king of reptiles.

The air smelt of death and burnt flesh. Hermione knelt, avoiding a wide trail of deadly venom oozing onto the stones from its gaping jaws.

The Basilisk's scales had peeled and crisped, sloughing off the beast into ashy dust. They floated adrift on boiling, bloody, black pools.

"Incendio," she said.
There was a noise like a bubbling cauldron, and when she cast a wary look up, where its yellow eyes would be were two smoking, empty sockets filled with pus.

She rose and stood over the great head, levitating eight dripping fangs with her wand and dropping them unceremoniously onto the wet floor. 

Solemn, she sliced her wand, encasing them in the same gilded metal that had caged the rooster.
They looked like small, pointed metal coffins.

She paused at the threshold—breath ragged, hands shaking, heat still clinging to her skin. For one heartbeat, she almost looked back at what she had done.

Almost.

Hermione swept out of the chamber, leaving its exit wide open. The stone mouth did not close; the chamber remained exposed to anyone daring enough to descend. 

Hours later, Professor Merrythought and Slughorn stood, speechless by the flooded sink in the second-floor girls’ lavatory. The tiles were slick with water and something darker.

The air stank—rot, blood, and something scorched.

Professor Dumbledore did not enter.

He stopped at the threshold, blue eyes moving slowly over the bloodied writing on the wall. The strokes were neat. Deliberate. Written by someone who had meant every word.

He read them once.

Then again.

The Basilisk has a murderous stare, and all who are fixed with the beam of its eye shall suffer instant death.
Spiders flee before the Basilisk, for it is their mortal enemy, and the Basilisk flees only from the crowing of the rooster, which is fatal to it.

The Chamber of Secrets has been found. The Heir, beware.

Dumbledore closed his eyes wearily, as though the act physically pained him, then forced them open again. His face was unreadable. 

Even from the lavatory, Dumbledore could see the dark slide yawning, its stone mouth still open where it should have closed.

He turned to the floating apparition beside him.

“Ms. Warren,” he said quietly—too quietly. “What precisely did you hear?”

Myrtle twisted her hands. “I—I heard the voice of a young woman,” she whispered. “Hissing.”

Dumbledore looked once more at the writing—no surprise, no anger, only a terrible clarity settling behind his eyes.

“I see.”

Somewhere below the castle, the chamber walls still smoldered, its entrance left gaping and undisguised.