The Bird in the Cage, a harry potter fanfic

Title: The Bird in the Cage

Summary: A backfired attempt to save the future. A helpless infant. The decisions Tom Riddle would make in the coming years had the potential to change the world, but to what end? He had plans, you see, grand plans. Once they included a mysterious bushy-haired girl, but now they involved a mewling babe who would one day be great. More importantly, she would be loyal. That was the dream, anyway. Reality proved to be another monster altogether.

A Tom Riddle Raises Hermione story.

Author's Note: This is an idea I've been playing around with for a while. There a a good number of Hermione/some other female character raise Tom, for good or ill. I have not yet seen a story (if anyone knows one please tell me) where Tom raises Hermione. This is a sort of sequel/companion to a little story I posted a few years back where Hermione goes back in time and grows up alongside Tom, but it can be read without it certainly.

Hermione's parts begin when she is about 5 and are all in present tense as she is trying to understand her situation. Tom's sections are all in past tense, and more straight forward.

Some things (dates, ages) are switched from Cannon.

*This is just for fun not profit. None of these characters or settings are mine. All belongs to and is based off of the ideas of JK Rowling, publishers, Warner Bros, etc. etc.

We begin at an end…

For years the hope of finding a way back had powered Hermione's efforts. She traveled back to this time, returned to the age of 11. Now Hogwarts graduation was the next day. Where had all of the time gone? It was a blur.

She stared over her boiling cauldron at Tom, so innocently chopping some ingredient or another. It did not matter, none of it would help her now.

Hermione had realized the truth. Well, she had realized it long ago, but denial is an addictive drug. Denying the inevitable even more so.

There was no way back to the future. Oh, it was easy enough to turn back time, but moving forward? That was something else altogether.

For a moment, Hermione wondered why she even wanted to go back in the first place. The memories of the future had left her mind. The past had taken them from her. She leveled another gaze at Riddle, still chopping away. Hermione had inadvertently interfered with the future, whether for good or ill she knew not. And this boy had something to do with it.

Oh in the early years he had known everything and had laid the groundwork…for something. She had met with people…person…and old man…

His name was not even on the tip of her tongue. It was gone from her.

She could not even remember how she came to be here, or who she was before. Even her scars had slowly faded, and her gait had improved, or so Tom had told her. She often feared she would fade as well, that one day her reflection would not be in the mirror, her legs would not carry her, that she would simply disappear from this world that had never been hers.

The sense that she had to travel to her own time, whenever that was, was what had driven her for years, even when the future faded from her mind.

"Stop." Hermione told Tom. He raised his head to meet her gaze, his hands pausing with the knife in mid air. "Let's stop this tonight."

Hermione picked up a beaker from her worktable and threw it to the ground. The sound was deafening, and glass pieces lay everywhere. Hermione picked up a handful, cutting herself purposely.

It had been so long since she has felt much of anything. Angrily, she threw the blood-covered glass into the cauldron, and watched with pleasure as it bubbled in protest.

No, the past wanted more from her than her blood. It wanted those memories hidden in the depths of her mind…hidden even from her.

She could feel a door now, buried in her subconscious. And the key that fit into the lock…the key…it is almost in her hand.

Hermione was not in the Room of Requirement any longer. She stood in front of a door, a very familiar door. It was the door to her bedroom, in her parents' house.

Hesitantly, she slipped the key into the lock…

Memories flowed like a stream at first, but quickly formed into rushing rapids. They welcomed her, embraced her in their familiarity once more. She swam through them, laughing and carefree as she has not been in so long.

But gradually, one by one they slipped past her until she wondered where she is.

And who she is.

Everything is blurry. Her limbs feel too heavy, and her muscles too weak.

A man, stands above her. He lifts her up, too easily.

Too easily? But what does she know?

Slowly, those thoughts become less coherent.

Tom peered at the baby with something akin to distaste. It whimpered beneath his gold gaze. So this was Hermione at her most vulnerable. This was the creature he had been trying to lure out all of these years? It all seemed rather anti-climatic. He had read Hermione's mind when she was quite sick, and at her weakest point. In doing so, he had discovered many of her secrets: the truth of her origins and the future that would never come to pass.

He had learned about his alter ego, so-to-speak.

In another timeline, Tom had conquered the world, but what sort of world was it? He was king of a wasteland. Hermione's intervention into his life had ensured that this would not happen. Her memories showed him that if he truly wanted to rule the world, and not simply destroy it, he would need a bit more finesse. Thankfully, Hermione's mind had left him with the clues to do so.

Still, after years of studying, learning, wondering, and spying, Tom was left with many unanswerable questions…and a baby. What was he to do with a baby? He supposed that he could simply kill it. No one would know. For a moment, wand poised above the infant, Tom considered this.

He considered the girl that had occupied his thoughts for seven years. How boring his life had been before her mysterious appearance. What would he do now? He thought of his plans, gone to dust now, and wondered if Hermione would have ever consented. Tom looked back down at the baby, buried beneath Hermione's robes. Yet another question he would never know the answer to. Tom sighed. It was not precisely frustration he felt but…regret?

On some level, Tom acknowledged that she had been an ally of his, a friend of sorts. He lowered his wand. Hermione had taught him just enough morals to honor the obligations that came with companionship. Tom decided he would have to alter his tactics.

The child would not be entirely useless anyway. He pushed aside the heaviness in his chest.

Tom Riddle had plans you see, grand plans. Once they included a mysterious bushy haired girl he had known for many years. Now they included a baby, who would one day be brilliant. She would not remember that in another life he had been her greatest foe, and so her loyalty to him could never be questioned.

He would raise her with this in mind.

She has never lived in the same place for very long. They move from flat to flat, city to city, country to country. Every place she lays her head is grungy and dirty. The furniture is ancient, and the floorboards creak. Sometimes they stay in tents and she must huddle as the wind blows icily against the flaps, her back against the cold hard ground.

She does not complain. She knows that if she does, he will look at her with his –murder, resentment, regret, curiosity- eyes and hiss (Be quiet!) as a snake does. And she will cry and bang her fists on the ground as he watches. Some part of her will scream out: Hold me, pick me up, love me.

But he will just stare at her with those steely eyes.

And in her mind is that mantra. It echoes in her ears, but she cannot place it….

Neither can live while the other survives.

Tom Riddle was a brilliant wizard in his own right. As a fully-fledged Legilimens, who could summon a Patronus at the age of 15, there was little he had ever been unable to accomplish. Yet, finding legitimate paid employment as a fresh graduate, unconnected and unspoken for without a family name, proved to be harder than he would have thought. Tom Riddle had no connections in the ministry. He had not made any allies (or was it friends?) outside of Hermione. Though he graduated from Hogwarts at the top of his class, he had been the unpleasant, off putting, unapproachably handsome student who hung around with the only slightly less frightening girl in Ravenclaw. He was not well liked or well remembered. This bothered him very little, but he realized that he not networked and was now especially at a disadvantage with a mewling baby at his side.

There was also the matter of a missing Hermione Granger. She had disappeared from this world just as suddenly as she had come in to it. Apparently, however, there was more concern for vanishing adults than nameless orphan girls. This was one issue that surely did not help his chances at the ministry in terms of a background check.

It had been difficult to smuggle the child out of Hogwarts, and even more difficult to find a room to rent whose landlord would not be suspicious of a teenage boy and infant. Thankfully, the innkeeper's wife was childless, but absolutely adored babies. The woman had convinced her husband to let them a room and she was only too happy to watch the creature while Tom went job hunting.

Borgan and Burkes had an opening but employment at that type of establishment did not fit into his plans. His record had to be clean. Eventually, the missing Granger girl would be forgotten and Tom would be free from suspicion. He had to work towards his goal in the meantime.

During the night, the creature would whimper and cry until he reluctantly and stiffly held her in his arms and fed her the concoction the innkeeper's wife had suggested. Without a mother to feed her, even the formula was a drain on his meager savings.

So, when he saw the opening at the bookstore in Diagon alley, just outside of the inn, he was hardly in a position to turn it down.

Employment for Tom was more than simply survival. There were certain ideas in Hermione's memories that he only got an inkling of, that she had tried her best to keep from him even unconsciously. They were mere echoes of their true selves, only the slightest hint of a trail. He needed a few years to make enough money to investigate further.

Sometimes she has nightmares. She is four years old, she thinks. Birthdays have never been celebrated with him. She wanders the small apartment to find him reading by wandlight. He is hunched over a book, her book, a fairytale book. His eyes are wide with exhaustion, his face sallow and hungry looking. The shabby desk groans beneath his weight as he hunches over the pages.

"Tom." She says/whispers/breaths (never father or brother or anything, never dad or papa). He blinks and looks up at her (I am not your father, he insists, gripping her arm tightly). His gaze is foggy. She remembers her nightmare (red eyes on a cold, snake face). He blinks and shakes his head.

"What? What is it?" There is annoyance in his voice, but that is overcome by tiredness

"I had a nightmare"

She hears him sigh. "There was a monster in it." She continues "He was trying to kill me. It looked like a snake, but it was a person."

He stiffens. "It was just a dream. Go back to bed."

"It felt real."

He rises and comes toward her. His tall frame looms over her (scary, scary, hide, hide, hide). He crouches down to her level, avoiding her eyes. With his slim, elegant, hands, he grips her narrow shoulders. It is not reassuring, but empty (no one is holding her, she is falling down a deep, dark hole).

"It was not."

She does not believe him (has never believed him, drowning in lies and suspicions and mysteries). Her turns her around and gives her a little nudge with his hand. She finds herself walking back to her cot in the alcove. She glances at him. He is twisting the black ring around his finger, fidgeting nervously in a way that does not match his usual, cool, demeanor. He looks afraid, she realizes.

Neither can live.

After bills for food, rent, and occasional childcare (on those days when the inn keeper's wife was too busy) Tom found that he was left with very little to contribute towards his future plans. The savings would surely pile up, especially since he had gotten the second job at the grocery store for nights and weekends. Still, it would take some time

Strangely, Tom was not entirely as broke as he seemed. His mother's locket was valuable he knew. Though he was the type to scoff at sentimentality, he found himself unable to part with the trinket. There had been some inkling of it in Hermione's mind as well, another question that would forever elude him. Her intrusion into his timeline had led him down a different path, one where this locket was surely not important. Yet still, he could not sell it.

The locket was the closest thing he had to his inheritance or any knowledge of his past. The mystery known as Hermione Granger had otherwise occupied him when he had been in school. Now, however, he needed to find out more.

After some amount of debate and a swallowing of pride, Tom found the shack his mother had once called home. He had to start somewhere, and the name of Merope Gaunt, the woman the orphanage claimed was his mother, had led him here. It did not seem very impressive, but rather rundown. Weeds practically covered the outside of the place, and the roof looked about ready to cave in.

The locket was expensive and slightly magical. Perhaps his mother had come from money? Perhaps she had some distant, wealthy relatives? Might they want to buy off his silence?

Tom knocked, but there was no answer. The door was unlocked. Inside, the smell was putrid. He starred at the rotting body of the man inside with something approaching disinterest. The only item of value rested on a decayed finger, Tom spelled it off, cleaned it, and left as fast as his feet could carry him.

Briefly, he considered his father's family. Merope had, after all, given him his father's name, a muggle name. However, the thought of entreating muggles for help left him sick to his stomach, especially the muggle who had dared to think he was too good for a witch and her spawn.

She is seven and he is teaching her magic. They are living somewhere in sub-Saharan Africa, deep in the wild, in a shack. The people bring them food and he talks to them in a language she cannot understand, but she knows he is looking for something, a clue.

"I can't have you turning the animals pink again, the villagers do not appreciate it. The diviners and I need to concentrate on things other than your incidences of accidental magic."

He sits cross-legged, across from her. The fire is between them. Along the wall are their cots and a bucket for water. The conditions are sparse as usual.

They have been here for weeks, but it is still all quite rough and unfamiliar, as it will remain. When they move, they leave everything behind (friends, people, family, but when has she ever had any of that?) and everything is new when they arrive (But she has not really ever belonged, nothing has ever been familiar).

He is demanding. His expectations are high, but she loves these lessons with him in the dim fire light, when he gives her his wand and has her turn a nail into a rat or vice versa. It is the only time he smiles at her, the only time he looks proud. It is the only time she is not afraid of him (When she does not cowercowercower).

He is not her father (Our father is dead, our mother too) and he claims he is her brother, (the woman in the park looks between them disbelievingly "the resemblance is uncanny," she lies through her teeth and flashes him a smile).

Brother or no, she has no idea what he really is, yet he is all she has ever known (an enigma with bright red eyes). More of an idea (an unknown) than a person, Tom has loomed over her for her entire life.

He is a tall, silent idea, which observes with those green orbs that look nothing like her brown (not brother, not sister, not family no binding). He is always there at the door or tent flap, every exit, when she wants to leave (can't go alone, he grips her hand like an ice cold vice). He is there forbidding her to play (not with muggles), he is there teaching her (Leviosa not Leviosa).

Yet, he is not really there.

In every abode, no matter the site, or time, or space, they are apart. She reads in her corner and he stays in his. The distance between them is always larger than it seems (a canyon, an ocean), and she feels quite alone all by herself.

But in moments like this, he is really here. His presence surrounds her, envelops her (chokes her, suffocates her). He speaks to her, not at her. His words are not empty puffs of air (lies, suspicions, mysteries).

All too soon, the lesson comes to an end. He goes back to the diviners, leaving her with only a dying fire for company. The sun sinks into the horizon and she is alone again.

Sleeping does not help with her loneliness. Her nightmares surface and she sees those red eyes on a handsomely sculpted face. Somehow the sting of such an image has not lessened, though she has seen it so many nights of her life.

The monster is there, a wand in his hand. Around him her home burns to the ground (but when has she ever had a home to destroy?). He laughs, a sound that is high and cold and terrifying. There are so many lifeless bodies around him, and he steps on them as he approaches her. He holds his wand above to her….and oh the pain…

And whispers….they whisper around her…the dead…

Neither can live while the other survives

Even when she opens her eyes, heart pounding, the dream is almost real. It is as if he is beside her, breathing down her neck. When she forces herself to sit up, she realizes she is not alone anymore. The fire is roaring again, and he is back, tending it. She catches his eyes for a brief moment over the flames.

A shiver runs down her spine, despite the warmth.

Tom's hours were long and demanding, but the money he made from the jobs kept them afloat. Eventually, he was even able to put some aside. The bookstore had promoted him and the grocer had given him a raise.

One late night, he stood over the crib of the creature, twisting and turning upon his finger the ring he had found on the dead man, a relative of some kind he was sure. Tom was not one to believe in omens, and the ring was surely his by right. If nothing else, it was good insurance if they should fall on hard times.

The creature was sleeping, soundly and safely beneath his gaze. It was strange how something so tiny could demand so much from him. It was stranger still that he could not bring himself to abandon it.

Tom narrowed his eyes, thinking of his mother. She had been a weak witch who could not find the strength to live, even for him. Tom hated weakness, and he would not be like his mother. The creature needed to be taken care of, and eventually she would turn into the brilliant witch he had known. She only needed the right direction and the right nudges. He would not abandon the time traveler.

Not like his mother had done to him.

With this thought, the lamplight in his apartment began to flicker. Tom felt cold suddenly, and was struck by the feeling that he and the creature were not entirely alone.

From his robes, he pulled out his wand. As soon as it was raised, however, he lowered it in shock.

Tom had been prepared for an intruder, not the ghostly, unfortunate woman, whose eyes seemed to look in two directions at once. Even so, she looked at him so sadly. She was before him, reaching out her hand to touch his cheek. Tom flinched back. She looked sadder still, disappointed. Those eyes, he knew those eyes. They were his own. It was not the color or the strange direction they pointed that was familiar, but the shape and the crinkle they made in the skin as she gazed at him.

"Mother." He breathed.

Solemnly, she nodded and spoke in a voice that was feather light, frail and croaking. Yet it hung with heaviness.

"Oh Tom." She said "You were conceived with a love potion. You cannot love."

She leaned over the crib "And a baby needs love to thrive," she looked back at him "as you should know."

And then she was gone, leaving Tom tempted to conclude that had had gone too long without sleep. However, if he had never been honest with a single soul, he had always tried to be truthful with himself.

He touched his ring and recalled a fairytale he had once heard in his third year, one that was only reinforced by Hermione's memories. He wondered at the truth of it. Her memories contained many clues that would solve a fear of his, and perhaps this was the one he should look into.

In his obsession with the Deathly Hallows, Tom failed to consider the observations of the dead.

She first sees the man sitting on a park bench. They are back in London and she is eight. It is winter, close to Christmas time. Snow blankets the grass, and decorations hang in windows. He is doing "business" in the hole of a wall store across the street and had instructed her, quite sternly, to stay in this park until he returned. "Business" always means either a frustrated groan from him or a smirk and a new city, language, new faces and people she will never get to meet.

She had spent better part of the hour on this bench with a book in front of her face. Children play in the distance, making snow angels and having snowball fights.

Making friends would be useless. It would only anger him and she would lose them soon.

The creak of the wooden bench announces the arrival of a person sitting next to her.

"Good book?" he asks. She peers sideways. It is not often that people approach her.

"Yes." She responds quietly. He is middle aged, hair graying around the edges, skin sagging slightly into his turtleneck collar. Something about him irks her. He is peering at her. She can feel it on her cheek, but when she looks back, his eyes are positioned just above her head.

"Where are your parents? A young girl like you should not be out in the cold like this."

"They'll be back soon." She answers without taking her eyes off the page she is reading. How strange for this man to bother her. Why is he so interested?

"Ah yes, of course. Your father is somewhere?" Father of course. People ask less questions when she says Tom is her father.

She puts down her book and turns to face him. He offers her a grin that makes her feel uneasy. He is so familiar…and not. She turns to peer at the shop that he is in. The bell jingles, indicating his exit.

"Yes, he's…"

But when she turns back, the man is gone. A candy is in his place. She picks it up, staring at it curiously for a moment, but puts is it in her pocket before her father's return. Only later, when she sees the frustration on Tom's face does she realize why that man irked her so. Tom had never looked so pleasant, but surely his frown had been an inverse of the man's grin. The stranger shared more of a resemblance with Tomthan she could never hope to achieve. She pops the lemon sweet into her mouth as she considers this observation.

It is not long until she sees the stranger again. Just after New Years, they are in Kings Cross station, getting ready to board the train for Scotland. It is not yet in the station, and they idle near the tracks.

Tom looks strained. His fingers that hold their bags are white. She does not ask what is wrong; he would rebuke her question anyway.

"Child." He murmurs. She looks up from her book, curious. She does not look him in the eyes (cannot, trapped, protect yourself from him), but stares instead at the space between them. He is looking down at her, paler than usual.

"Does this place…remind you of anything?"

She peers around her, feeling nothing. It is a train station like any other. She has seen many in their travels. This one has walls and a ceiling at least. King's Cross….

"Ah," she guesses "This is where Hogwarts students board, no? Platform 9 and ¾, but…" she looks at their track number "We're no where near that."

She looks back at him. His eyes are closed…is there…relief? Anger? She has never been able to guess his sporadic moods.

"Yes. Quite right." With that, he gets up "I need to take a quick walk, stay here."

She stares at his back as he leaves, feeling quite small (Alone, lost, big world, small girl). For some reason, she is unable to return to her book. The girl can only stare down at her hands clenched in her lap. The platform is sparsely populated, cold, and desolate.

"Going somewhere?"

His voice is almost melodious in the deafening silence, and almost familiar too. She looks up, rubbing at her tired eyes. The stranger stares kindly back at her.

"Oh. It's you."

He nods into his jacket collar. "Me indeed. It seems you are alone again. You seem much to young to be alone all of the time."

She returns to her book, looking at him only out of the corner of her eye "I am almost eight."

The stranger raises an eyebrow "A small eight year old then. Does your father feed you well?"

The girl narrows her eyes (fixed on her book) at the intrusive question. He had warned her against government officials and the like, muggle and magical. "Well enough. But who are you?" she asks, changing the subject.

The man grins, and there is a ghost of her guardian in there somewhere she senses "Suspicious for an eight year old too." She crosses her arms about her chest

"Well alright, let's just say I am family."

The girl narrows her eyes at him "We don't have family. My parents are only children of only children, now dead."

"And your mother?" the man asks. She notices out of the corner of her eye that he is studying her face, but what is he looking for?

"Dead."

The man inclines his head. His back is bent, she sees. He would be tall if he stood up straight, as tall as…

"I could be your grandfather, you know." He is saying. Those words draw her attention out of her book. She looks at his face, fully, for the first time.

Now she searches for something she cannot name. Earnestly, intensely, she studies his face. Whatever it is, she does not find it. She does, however, see something in his eyes. They are a familiar green, though that does not ease her anxiety. Those are the very eyes she has avoided looking into for her whole life.

"Impossible." Hermione murmurs. "They're dead."

The man nods his head at her. "Yes of course." He raises a hand to brush the hair away from his forehead. His pale, sweating, face and shaking hands do not escape Hermione's notice.

"You're ill." She observes.

The man puts his hand on the bench and it stills. He closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose in a manner that Hermione is all too familiar with.

"Indeed. I am ill, poor, alone, and hardly out of the prime of my life. I used to be very wealthy you know, before the crash. We never recovered."

The words are bitter, and differ from his previous calmness. He glances at her. "You are strange for an eight year old."

Hermione shrugs "And you are nosy. Why are you so interested in me and my father?"

The man gives her a pained smile "Because I am ill and poor and alone, and full of regrets."

"You were looking for us?" Hermione surmises.

"In a manner of speaking."

"How did you find us?" They travel so much, and their identities number in the dozens. Tom does not want to be found, but this man –ill has he was- had managed it. The man coughs.

"I do not really know myself. I thought she must have been a dream...but then I saw your father."

Hermione does not know what he is talking about, but she does not ask. He is looking at her again, studying her face.

"Tell me girl. Your father…is he a good father? Is he a good man?"

She muses over the question. She is observant and well read. Men, she has learned, can be violent and cruel. Tom? On the surface, he had never been anything but pleasant to her. Of course, pleasant is all he had been. There is something deeper there…darker.

The look on the man's face is desperate, and not unlike that look that will come over Tom sometimes, in a graveyard, in a hospital. Yet she sees nothing of herself. Hermione admits then, what she has really known all along, and decides not to crush this weak but kindly soul.

"He is…not a bad man." She answers. The man breathes, seemingly relieved.

"Good. I worried…he did not have an example to follow." He turns to her again "What is your name? I realize I never asked."

"Merope." She responds, remembering the stories Tom told of their tragically beautiful mother. Or his mother, as the case may be. That makes the man smile again, pained as it is. He studies her face once more and lifts a pale, shaking hand. He caresses her cheek in a movement so filled with affection that Hermione nearly recoils at the unfamiliarity of it all. At the same time, she desperately wants to lean in to it. When has anyone ever touched her like that? Like she was precious and loved?

Hermione does neither.

"There is something of your grandmother in you, girl. In your eyes." The man murmurs and Hermione wonders at the ability of people to delude themselves.

He is…not a bad man.

Something catches his eye, and he stands up quickly, brushing at his cheeks. He holds out his hand to her. "The train will be here soon." He says as she places her small hand into his. He drops it just as quickly. Still, there is something in her hand. Hermione stares down at the crumpled 5 pound notes. She looks up at him questioningly

"The last of my fortune. I won't need it now."

"Wait." Hermione says, catching his sleeve as he turns to leave. He raises an eyebrow at her.

"You never told me your name." she explains/demands.

"Thomas." He says, giving her that pained smile. It is almost boyish, and she can see that he was once quite handsome.

For an ill man, he travels fast. Hermione follows the outline of his form to the end of the platform, now becoming more crowded as the time for the train nears.

"Was that man talking to you?" Hermione snaps out of her reverie and turns to her guardian, stuffing the money in her coat pocket. He looms over her, but he does not look at her. He stares down toward the end of the platform.

"He just wanted the train time." She notices how easily the lie comes to her. She used to fear that he could read her mind. But now? Hermione avoids his piercing gaze as it turns to her.

"It should be here in a minute." Tom observes. The words barely leave his lips before the screeching of a train's entrance reverberates in the station. It does not slow "Not in service." Tom says dismissively as it rushes past.

"Why did we not apparate?" She asks.

"The wards-"

"Oh my god!" The yell cuts Tom off. Hermione looks toward the end of the platform. There is a woman there, distraught and screaming at something on the tracks…and in the distance, the sound of the train screeching to a halt.

I won't need it now.

She stands up suddenly, ignoring Tom's calls, and rushes ahead.

There is something of your grandmother in you girl

Tom's footsteps follow hers.

He is…not a bad man

She finds that her steps become leaps, her walk turning into a run

I had worried…

She only sees the lower half of him, a pile of flesh and broken bones, so like her nightmare. His head and heart have scattered somewhere else. Some part of her mind remembers that the upper part can stay alive for hours. She is half fascinated, half disgusted, and she cannot look away.

Bodies piled on the grounds, in front of ruins, blood, and guts and so pale…

She has quite a bit of trouble catching her breath suddenly and she looks down at her hands….they are much too small. But then she cannot see them at all, or anything.

She is turned pressed up against something warm and solid. Hermione fights the sudden darkness, and struggles from its grasp, though it tries to hold on to her awkwardly.

"This is not something you should see." It is Tom's voice, and that means it is his arms against which she struggles. Hermione stops, thinking of the warmth in the man's eyes, so like the ones that had looked at her blankly her whole life.

Hermione sags in his arms under the weight of the truths she has just learned and the death she had seen, and the ones she has never seen persay.

She imagines it is the dead man who holds her, the man she deluded and lied to. What does she know though? Such was the way she had been raised.

He is dead now anyway…and death…death comes for them all in the end. The words pound in her head again as she feels herself being carried away.

Neither can live…while the other survives

For the first time she has an inkling of what this may mean.

When he was still short on funds, Tom decided to first go after Flamel. It was not quite what he was looking for, but it was a quick and messy solution to his problem. Everyone knew Flamel had the stone of course, but a wizard powerful enough to halt his aging was not one to be messed with.

Tom had other ideas.

It was not wholly difficult to get beyond Flamel's wards, or to the man himself. Perhaps immortality had made him arrogant. At any rate, it was not long before he had the old man at wand point. Old was not quite right. He was a small man, sitting on the edge of a stool in his kitchen. His hair was still jet-black, his face clear of wrinkles and sagging skin. He looked no older than 30.

The look in Flamel's eyes, the only thing about him that revealed his age, was one of acceptance

"I met Newton once." The man murmured.

Tom raised his eyebrow, wand poised. "Oh?"

"Oh yes, big muggle name he was. I did not meet him until he was on his death bed though."

Wandering at the relevance of this story, Tom waited.

"Death is everyone's eventuality you know. Immortality…immortality is a pipe dream. One can only put off the inevitable for so long."

"You don't say." Tom rolled his eyes. Perhaps Flamel's mind had gone even if his face remained youthful.

"We can only live on in history books. Make a name for yourself, that is true immortality."

"I intend to do both." Tom assured the man.

He sighed "I did not have the strength to end it. My wife stopped decades ago, but I never had the will. It's the fear of what lies beyond. That is what drives us, no?"

Us?

He continued on, despite Tom's silence on the matter "Newton is immortal. But I will be forgotten. My fame rests on a lie. I spent too much effort spent on a pipe dream, on secrecy, on a refusal to share my greatest achievement. And all for nothing it seems," He looked up from the floor, eyes set on Tom's wand "It's pointless."

"Killing you?"

Flamel's lips curled into something resembling a smile "No, that certainly has a point. You cannot let me live. I may tell Dumbledore about you. I refer of course to immortality. Its pointless."

Tom sighed, wondering at his inability to utter the curse. "I am only indulging you Flamel, because these will be your last words. Choose them wisely."

Flamel raised his eyes to meet Tom's "Death lies in us all, waiting to take….or to be called upon" Now Flamel smiled at Tom, a cracked sort of smile "I've been so afraid for so long, you see. He's been watching me. I know he has. But now…now it is over." A look of contentment appeared on Flamel's face. "There is no way to hide from death, it is the same as hiding from yourself, and he is patient."

Tom swallowed, wondering at the other research he would surely have to do. "If you say so…"

And with that, Tom killed the man, silent as a mouse.

Nicholas Flamel had been a necessary sacrifice to get his hands on the philosopher's stone. The old man had lived much too long anyway. Tom knew, however, as he looked at Flamel's lifeless body that the stone was hardly a sure thing. It kept you young, but not much else. Death was still inevitable. And how could Tom ever rule the world knowing one day he would die?

No, he needed something more solid.

The Philosopher's stone was not his real aim. To become the Master of Death, that was his goal. If the Philosopher's stone was impossible, the Deathly Hallows were nothing more than children's myths, but the more research he did, the more truth he found in the myth.

Though Hermione's memories of this subject had been vague and well guarded, he was able to discover the very real Percival brothers, and their very real deaths of suicide, murder, and old age.

As it stood, he had one Hallow. There were two to go, out in the world somewhere. Tom's research in the libraries could only get him so far. He needed to go out into the real world to track them down. This was just the search he had been saving up for.

First true immortality, then the world.

It was around this time that the creature learned to walk. She had stumbled right out of the arms of the inn owner's wife to Tom's legs. Tom looked over at the wife, who seemed expectant somehow. He bent down, and wrapped his arms stiffly around the child, smiling. The wife looked pleased. The child however, looked back up at him when he let her go, seeming quite unhappy. It was almost like she knew.

Like she knew how empty his smile was.

He patted her head and the girl burst into tears. The wife ran over, to try to console her. Still she sobbed, and screamed and mouthed words she never spoke.

It was as if she had something she wanted to say, but not the vocabulary to say it. Tom continued onto his room, the sound of muffled sobs following him all the way there. He felt bothered for some reason as he tried to concentrate on his research.

Love

Tom scoffed allowed. What love had he ever had? Yet, he was the most brilliant wizard of his age. The girl too would do so, and become just as brilliant (if more loyal than) her previous self.

She could become….just like him.

Tom swallowed thickly. Would that be so bad?

When she is nine, they stop moving around the world. They settle in Scotland, in Hogwarts. He has become a Professor. They have rooms, grand rooms and elves who do their bidding. He buys her a "suitable wardrobe" that becomes the ward of a Hogwarts professor.

She is alone more now. Tom has classes to teach and leaves her with lessons to teach herself during the day. The elves bring her meals, and she can summon them for other things she needs, but she is forbidden from leaving the apartments unaccompanied (a prison, a birdcage, she can see but not touch, not live).

This is the first rule breaks, (fear, adrenaline, he does not care, not really).

She is not seen when she sneaks out. The girl explores the castle. Just as she was silent and hidden when he wanted her to be, she can make herself invisible when she wants to. The castle is filled with nooks and crannies to explore, but Hermione finds herself drawn to the open areas, where the people are.

Mostly, she watches the other children. Something inside of her feels hollow and she sees what she has missed.

There has only ever been her and Tom, and really there has only ever been her. It has not been enough. She hates (seethes against, cannot stand, his stupid, arrogant, face) him for doing tis to her, for denying her any sort of companionship, even his own.

They began to travel when the child was a few years old; old enough not to need constant supervision from the innkeeper's wife, though the woman was sad to see her go.

He searched the world, dragging the child with him all the while.

It might have been wiser to leave her behind, but whom could Tom trust? His own experiences at the orphanage had made him bitter to those that left him there, and he could not have Hermione feeling the same when she finally came of age. So she came with him, despite the slower pace and increased costs she required.

He had savings, and that got them a good start. Still, he took work where he could find it and when more funds were needed to travel farther. In poorer countries, his knowledge of potions and Hogwarts education was greatly prized by the local magical populace. He gave people cures and they came him and the child a place to sleep: a tent a hut or a shabby apartment.

Tom was following a trail of myths and legends, of half forgotten stories and outright lies. It took years and continents to piece everything together.

The child grew from toddler to adolescent. She began to speak, ask questions, and to have nightmares (of his alter ego). Where were her parents? Why did they move around so much? Why could she not play with other children?

Tom weaved her a tale of their dead parents. It was easier, after all, to make her into an orphan instead of himself a widower. It was easier to speak of dead parents than a dead lover. He told her the story he had told himself many times as a child.

Truly, Tom was afraid. He always informed the curious that the girl was his weak little sister, whose mother had passed during her birth. Her heart was not strong and so she could not play, could not even interact with other children, lest she faint. To the girl, he warned of the dangers of strangers, even other children.

"Do you want someone to take you away from me?" He asked one winter morning when she demanded to play in the snow with a group of Russian street rats. He gripped her small shoulders. There was fear in her eyes, but also…curiosity? Hope? Suspicion?

"No…"

Tom had never been able to tell lies from truth with her previous self, and he was no better with the child. Though he accepted her answer that morning and dragged her away, he did not miss her turning back to the screaming group as she stumbled behind him. Tom put little more thought into the matter. She was a child after all, her desires reflected little more than her limited understanding of the world. She simply wanted to play, but she did not understand the consequences of doing so.

Tom knew better. If she interacted with others she might…realize how different she was, and someone might see that she was not like other children, even magical ones. Her grasp of magic was too strong, her words too mature.

The memories of her other life might have been gone, but they had left impressions. The child developed too quickly, like someone reading a familiar tale. And the nightmares! Echoes of his alter ego surely remained in the folds of her mind.

That is what he said to himself when he gripped her hand tightly as she tried to run and play in some park or another. He ignored the thumping in his chest, the cold fear that crept into him when she tried to leave her gilded cage.

So Tom hid the girl, locked her away, and somehow managed to raise her without the aid of others. Even if Tom Riddle was not father material by any means, he was competent enough it seemed.

A child without love cannot thrive, his mother had told him.

Still, they can live and grow if someone is there to provide, he assured himself as the girl aged.

And one day they can be powerful enough to be worth the trouble.

An owl does not give her the letter. He delivers it to her himself at breakfast the summer after she turns eleven.

Hermione Riddle

She stares at the envelope for a long moment. Her name had never been written out this way. Certainly, she had never considered herself a Riddle, no matter what he said.

At breakfast, his tall frame bends over her. His head is just above her narrow shoulder. He is (tooclose tooclose tooclose) right next to her. Something screams at her to shove him away. When has he ever been this close to her?

Not since…she pushes the thought out of her mind.

He still holds the letter out expectantly. She slips it out of his grasp and opens it.

"You will of course be leagues ahead of the other first years." He notes when he is back in his usual spot at the other end of the table. He settles in to his own breakfast of bitter black coffee and plain eggs. "But you must not show it. Be the head of your year, not of the others."

"Why?" She asks, staring into her porridge. She cannot look up when she feels his eyes boring into her skull.

"You would not want to frighten them." He closes the matter with a sip of his tea and his interest moves from her to the book before him.

"Yes Tom." She says quietly (yes Tom, yes Tom, yes Tom, who are you? Why do you care?) "Tom?" she asks as his cutlery scrapes against his plate.

"Yes?" The girl can hear the annoyance in his voice, the (Oh please do not be anger, do not hurt me) barely concealed sarcasm. He may speak to her, make demands of her, but she has never been able to do the same with him.

"You said last week that I am to say that I am the daughter of your late friend?"

"That is correct." His eyes are still scanning the pages of the book. He makes it clear that this conversation is barely worth his time.

"But truly I am your sister?"

"Yes." The annoyance is still there, but is there also a hint of something else? His eyes remain on the book, but his face twitches ever so slightly. Has she hit a nerve?

"Why do we lie?" (why do you lie? To me? The world? Who are you truly?)

"Others would not understand?" (Others, Non-Riddles, not you and me, but there has never really been me, and you are a shadow, a changeling, a pretty, empty face). They are silent for a moment, and he announces the closing of the conversation by turning the page. Hermione, however, feels daring.

"I've been with you since I was a baby?" The words hang in the air for a moment, heavy despite their seeming innocence.

He sets his cutlery down, shuts his book, and crosses his arms. He looks up at her (through her, around her, at the space above her head, between her eyes). She ignores the desire to look back at her food.

"Indeed." His mouth forms around the words coolly, but there is worry in the drumming of his fingers upon his arm. His tone is dismissive (But when has it not been so? Surely he has never been endearing, only mocking. Never warm, only slightly less then ice cold).

"Was there no other family to care for me? Why did our parents leave me with you, though you were so young?"

His fingers clench around his arms (around you, wrist, throat, mouth).

He is…not a bad man

"They were only children of only children and quite poor. I took you in because the only other option was the orphanage."

She nods at this new information, though she had assumed this much. "What was I like as a baby?"

"Loud."

His fingers have stopped their drumming. He looks at his book, clearly eager to end this conversation. He picks up a fork, ready to continue his breakfast. His eyes roam back to her face, as if he is daring her to ask another. She feels strange quite suddenly, older. A newfound confidence straightens her back, and tightens her knuckles.

Neither can live while the other survives

"Are you my brother, truly?" Now her voice is the steely cold she has heard her entire life. She catches his wandering eyes as he freezes.

She sees nothing of herself in the old man

"Tom?" she prompts. If he is a snake, she is a cat (You can't frighten me).

Neither can live…

"What would make you ask such a thing?" He sounds outraged, but she can see fear in his white-knuckle grip on his silverware.

If he stood he would be as tall as…

"We do not look alike, or act alike. We share no mannerisms or hobbies or favorite foods. And you do not act like a brother." (or a father or friend or anyone). He is silent.

"Who are you to me Tom?" She asks (demands). He puts his elbows on the table and rubs his eyes with the palms of his hands in a rare moment of weakness.

When I saw your father I knew…

"I'd hoped that you would never ask." He murmurs "But I should have known better.

Tom stands and puts his napkin on the table. He summons a house elf to clean up. Clearly, the man has lost his appetite."You're young Hermione. We will have this conversation when you are older."

With those words, she feels her confidence evaporate. Her body deflates like a balloon. The fear creeps in…what has she done? He is standing over her, looking above her head again.

"Yes Tom." She murmurs and stares at her hands.

…while the other survives.

It took him the better part of a decade to track down the wand. He had even dabbled in other theories of immortality in the steppes of Asia and the jungles in Central Africa, but ultimately he decided that those would cost him too much. Murder was one thing. Tom did not feel remorse for Flamel, and his death had not even been completely necessary.

The splitting of a soul was quite another matter all together. Later, when he was a public figure, he could not afford to have stories that he was some Dark Lord or something. He had seen the kind of future that came with being a Dark Lord, and it was not one that he desired.

So he followed the stories and clues instead. Eventually, his clues led him back to the UK. Soon after the incident at the train station, death on his mind, he found himself at the edge of the ocean, waves lapping at his shoes.

The old man in possession of it was feeble and frail. He lived in a cottage by the seaside. The man was sleeping when Tom entered, but sat up when he got close. He looked up at Tom with milky white eyes and did not squint at the sudden flash of light from his wand.

"Mr. Grindewald." Tom drawled. The man did not look afraid, though a stranger was in his bedroom, in his isolated little cottage by the sea.

"Are you here for it then?" His voice cracked not with age, but with misuse. Tom quirked an eyebrow, though the man could not see.

"You've guessed?"

The man chuckled "I've been waiting, ever since she came."

Tom looked at Grindewald, a smile on his dried lips. There could only be one she. But when would Hermione have made the journey? She began to lose her memories in her teens…and what did this Grindewald have to do with it all? It had been one of those hidden memories perhaps.

"What happened when she came?" Tom asked.

The man's brow furrowed. "I am not that old, you know. I look ancient, but I am not a day over 70."

Tom doubted that as he looked the man over. For a wizard, he looked about 120. But he decided to play along "Oh? Then how did you get to be this way?"

"She did it."

Tom wondered, vaguely, why he was sitting here listening to the man's tale. Why did he not just kill him, take the wand, and get it over with? It was surely in this room somewhere

"If she beat you in a duel, the wand would be hers." And now his, for all the times he had curbed Hermione's accidental magic.

"It was no duel, boy. I was ready to wage war you know, against the damn muggles and muggleborns. I had followers, supporters. We could have won."

"Then why didn't you?" Tom drawled. His curiosity would be the death of him, surely. First Flamel, now this.

"The little girl came to me in the middle of the night, like you. She let me see her memories, the ones she wanted me to see: a world where I won."

Or someone like you, Tom thought. Those were the same memories he had seen of the future. Consciously or unconsciously, it seemed, Hermione was willing to show would-be dictators a dystopian version of their hopes for the future.

"But no one won." The man continued "The world was in pieces, ashes." Though his milky white eyes could not see, they seemed to fall right on Tom "I could not forget the misery, the screams. It has aged me."

Tom sincerely doubted that logic. Hermione's magical core had always been unstable with the whole time travel issue. It was far more likely that this man had hit upon something he shouldn't have in her mind, and it had infected him. Tom himself had had to be careful about the minefields in her mind. Gellert Grindewald had not had as much caution, clearly.

"And the wand?" Tom prompted.

"She said you would come for it."

Tom shook his head. Of course she knew about his obsession with immortality. She had known everything, hadn't she? "Why did she not take it for herself?"

The man finally sat up in the bed. He threw off his covers, revealing flannel pajamas. He sat on his bed, fits clenched in his sheets.

"She did not want it. She could have had it. The demon child would have beat me, I know."

"Why? Why didn't she want it?" It was a stupid question. The Hermione he knew could have taken over the world with her skill, but all she ever wanted was to go back. The wand would have done nothing for her. Even after all of these years though, Tom was fascinated by her power and her sheer lack of ambition. The most powerful wand in creation had almost in her grasp...in his. Tom's fingers itched.

"She said it would be too close to her enemy…to you."

Tom smirked at those words. "And yet here I am. Where is it?"

The old man flicked his wrist and the wand appeared in his hand. What he had said about…a war must have been true, at least in part. He had been prepared anyway. Only practiced duelers used the holsters. Hermione had had one, Tom remembered. Years ago, there had been a series of attacks against "blood traitors," muggles and muggleborns, and several skirmishes with the ministry, but they had stopped around second year….

"I won't fight you." The old man murmured. He was not facing Tom, but the wall instead.

"What?"

"She told me not to fight you when you came. She told me you would win, that resistance would be useless."

Tom raised his eyebrows "She was quite right of course." Hermione had really wrecked this man, or at least her memories had. He had no more fight left in him. Tom raised his wand at the man, prepared to end his lonely existence. The rustling of his robes caught the man's attention.

"She wished me to relay a message to you before I die."

"Oh?"

"Death…comes for us all in the end. Running only makes him more angry."

Tom sighed and gripped his wand tighter as he remembered Flamel's warning. This man had clearly been important in Hermione's own timeline. Had she shown Grindewald her memories to stop his own war against muggles (which obviously was not successful if Tom's alter ego sought the same thing) or had she inadvertently destroyed this man only to leave a message of warning for him? Tom shook his head. It was no use, thinking of these things he would never know.

Tom raised his wand, the death spell on his lips.

He glanced at a grandfather clock in the corner of the room. The child would be waking up soon. She would be afraid if he was not there. He thought of her face, the fear lines around her mouth and eyes…the look he gave her sometimes…like she remembered, like she had an inkling…

"Expelliarmus!" He said shortly, pointing his wand at the man. The wand flew out of his grasp, as he his back slammed into the mattress. Tom picked it up gingerly. Warmth coursed through his fingers. He smiled ever so slightly.

Tom made his way to the window.

"Wait." The old man croaked.

"What now?" Tom groaned, regretting his sudden decision to spare this man's miserable, lonely life.

"What was she? I thought she was a demon…or an angel…please. I have to know." Tom mulled over the man's request.

"She was…the most brilliant witch of her age…of any age. I think of her as an enigma myself, trying to understand her will destroy you. Trust me." He climbed out of the window then, apparating with a loud crack on the cold sand.

"But I am already destroyed." The old man whispered when he was gone, eyes facing the ceiling. "She destroyed me."

That summer before her first year, she finds something sitting on her nightstand when she awakes one morning. It is a wand, one she has never seen before. And yet, it fits comfortably in her hand when she picks it up.

A feeling of warmth spreads throughout her body as she preforms spells with it. A little giggle escapes from her mouth before she can stop it. This is nothing like her awkward, stiff, handling of Tom's wand.

She preforms more spells, amazed by the ease she can command magic with now. Yet, despite this happiness, a kind of nostalgia envelops her, though she does not know what she misses. Tears prick at the corners of her eyes.

That's not a real spell

An Otter flows from her wand tip

Leviosa, not Leviosa

She is not unaware of the eyes that watch her through the creak of the door, and she will not let him see her weakness. Hermione laughs despite the hollowness inside of her.

Neither can live…

While the other survives

The cloak Tom easily tracked down. He had gone to school with about four Potters at one point. He did not need Hermione's memories of Harry to get that one. It was considerably harder to get through the Potter wards at the mansion. But if Hermione was the brightest witch of her age, he was at least the first of the wizards and her close second.

When he felt the cloth, he knew. He knew he had done it. He had conquered death. A dark, unforeseen weight lifted from his shoulders.

And yet he felt heavier, somehow.

Tom laughed. In Hermione's world, he had failed. But thanks to her, he would succeed and with Hermione by his side, or a version of her anyway.

A child needs love to thrive….

She would be at his side, regardless

With one of his life's goal achieved, and his savings quite spent, Tom was forced to look at the future once more. He was unmarried, saddled with a child, and had never had a job in the magical world. Oh sure, his NEWTs and OWLs had been exceptional, but that had been years ago.

Tom was nearly thirty, and he needed to become respectable.

Around this time, conveniently, a position at Hogwarts opened up. Someone needed to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts. It was helpful that the wand and the cloak had ended up being in the UK in the end (despite his globe trotting), as it made it easier to get to Hogwarts for his interview. While the child stayed in their room in a nearby inn in Hogsmeade, Tom sat with his former Transfiguration professor.

"Welcome back, Mr. Riddle. Still…traveling the world I hear?" Dumbledore's eyes dimmed a little as he looked Tom over. He and the professor had never been particularly friendly. Tom would never say that the professor disliked him, but he often seemed distracted in Tom's presence, as if trying to remember something that he had forgotten. Hermione, however, Dumbledore had always liked, and while he did not seem overly fond of him, Tom got the sense that Dumbledore approved of him by association.

Tom nodded "Yes, but I came back as soon as I heard about the opening."

"You think you are suited to it?"

"Yes, according to my NEWTs. I have had to deal with a fair share of the Dark Arts in my travels as well." Dumbledore nodded, and glanced at the letter Tom had written to the school when he had heard of the opening.

"Of course, you are my first choice. You had the job as soon as I received your letter Mr. Riddle. You had the highest Defense Against the Dark Arts scores of your year, along with every other subject. And your account of the vampires in Athens was really quite intriguing. I expect you will do a fine job."

Tom grinned "Really? Oh I am very grateful to hear that Headmaster Dumbledore. I will be sure to prove myself equal to your expectations." Searching for immortality often forced Tom to confront dark creatures terrorizing the local muggle populace. Though never his ultimate goal, monster-hunting provided a moral and convenient cover story.

The headmaster nodded, still looking at Tom's letter. Tom noticed that he was not, however, actually reading it. "Of course. Ah, but there is one thing I seem to have forgotten. You were not the first of your class, were you? The young Miss Granger was."

His gaze traveled back to Tom, who tactically avoided meeting his eyes. He was not unfamiliar with the headmaster's strategy as he had witnessed his use of it while disciplining cheaters and plagiarizers. The headmaster's mouth turned into a frown. Was there confusion in his face…hesitation? Tom worried briefly that Hermione had not kept the future to herself.

"Yes. Hermione was the top of our year." He tried to look pained, as if he missed her, as if he too was not sure where she had gone, and found it was not so hard. The professor was still trying to catch his eye. "I…prefer to keep my thoughts private." Tom explained. The suspicion was replaced by chagrin on Dumbledore's face.

"Yes of course I…I apologize. Old habits die hard. I do not know what came over me." That seemed true enough, and he did not appear to remember his mention of Hermione at all.

Tom thought back to Hermione's interactions with the professor, her gift for memory charms, and to the old man by the sea…and felt quite certain he knew exactly what had happened. He stayed silent of course, and Dumbledore moved on. "I hear you have a child you bring along with you as well?"

Dumbledore, who knew of his origins in the orphanage, would not accept that she was his younger sister. "A girl, yes. She is my ward, a foundling. Her parents were acquaintances of mine."

The headmaster nodded solemnly "Of course, we will expand your rooms to accommodate her." The barest hint of a knowing smile played about the headmaster's lips. Tom did not need to read his mind to understand what the professor was thinking: He and Hermione had had a child together, that this had been her reason for disappearing before graduation, and that he was saving her reputation while she hid in shame.

On some level, the thought was ridiculous. He and Hermione had not had that kind of relationship. Despite any rumors, they had never done anything other than awkwardly stand next to one another. And yet…the thought was not entirely ludicrous somehow, in a way that Tom did not understand.

He had buried many of his memories of the older Hermione when the younger had come into his care and during his search for immortality. He realized he had not mused upon her in quite some time, though she had been at the forefront of his thoughts for the entirety of his Hogwarts education.

"How old is she?"

The question snapped Tom out of his musings, for which he was thankful. "….nine." He wondered then about quiet birthdays gone uncelebrated, and a solemn, little, lonely face.

Cannot thrive…

Tom shook his head while Dumbledore shuffled some papers around on his desk. He noticed the obituary section of the Daily Prophet at the top of the pile.

Dumbledore noticed Tom's gaze. He held up the newspaper. "An old…friend."

Riddle tried to look solemn and sympathetic "Sorry to hear that."

Dumbledore popped a lemon drop in his mouth and linked his fingers in front of him "It happens to us all…in the end. I regret that we drifted apart decades ago due to…disagreements. But its not all sad. He left me his cottage…by the sea." Tom froze, and this did not go unnoticed by Dumbledore. "I was surprised. He promised me something else you see. Something precious" The suspicion was in Dumbledore's tone again. His blue eyes drifted towards the wand in Tom's hand, and he rested his head in his hands, appearing pained. A moment later, and it had passed. He looked at Tom expectantly, not appearing to remember the moment before.

"Well, I must be going Professor. It is nearly dark and I have my ward to think of…" Tom looked back up at Dumbledore. At the mention of Hermione, his face had clouded over again.

"Ah yes. Well, I will see you back here soon Professor Riddle."

"Indeed."

And with that, Tom left the office.

She alone of all of the first years does not look with wonder at the Great Hall. Neither does she gasp in surprise as the Hat opens its mouth to sing. In the last two years, she has sat on the side and watched this spectacle.

When the name "Riddle, Hermione," is called, a hush falls over the great hall.

"Professor Riddle has a daughter?" she hears.

"No its his sister I bet."

"She's too homely…"

Hermione ignores the whispers (and his eyes trailing her, watching her movement, anticipation, disappointment). She sits on the stool and faces the Great Hall. In the back, he levels a gaze at her. The hat, however. cuts off her view of the tables, the headmaster…Tom.

Ah, we have met before. Twice if one takes in to account that which will never pass

What?

I have sorted you before child. Not once, but twice. And I must say if twice is quite unheard of.

Thrice is quite impossible, even if it is just a shadow of a memory. Yet here we are.

What-

You know, deep down. I can see that. Or maybe not. They are remnants of scars that have been ripped away and grown all over again.

They?

Your memories. But I have gone off on a tangent, haven't I? Well, you are two houses down now. Why not try something new? The ambition is there. You will need that and the anger to warm your blood in the dungeons

"SLYTHERIN" boomed the hat. It was lifted from her head and she could see once more. She dared a look at the head table before hopping off. Tom looked alarmed and….pleased?

She makes her way to the applauding green robed students. Left, right, left, right.

Third time?

Slytherin, not the Ravenclaw he had expected. While Tom was not exactly displeased by the sorting, it certainly meant he had influenced the girl in some way. He could not decide if this was good or bad. The child was not exactly as he had thought she would be…

Cloistering her had been a mistake. He had stifled her. The child was too clever to be stifled. She would always ask why, would always search for the truth of things, and sniff out a lie. He did not earn her loyalty, only her suspicion.

A child without love cannot thrive

Indeed, Tom mused, fingering his ring as he did when anxiety struck him. Anxiety. The child and death had been his only sources of anxiety all of his life. Now one problem was solved, and the other…

She was slipping away from his grasp. She had been for quite some time, though he had only just noticed. Oh years ago, she had worshipped him, he knew. It had been easy then. Her admiration had outweighed her fear. Now?

Tom watched Hermione's fluffy brown hair bob up and down as went to join her fellow Slytherins. She, huddled near the end, elbows pressed inward. Still, she talked with the students, her back very deliberately turned toward him.

All of her life, he had kept the wall between them. Not all of it had been on purpose. Mostly, it had simply been his way. He cared for the child only in the capacity that she was useful to him, and he lacked the ability to show anything else.

Yet she had survived, despite his miserable attempts at raising her. She was brilliant, adaptable, and fearless in a way he had never dared to be.

A child without love cannot thrive.

Abruptly, he scraped back his chair and stood up. A flurry of robes and dissatisfaction, Tom strode from the Great Hall. He did not turn, but he could feel the gaze of the headmaster upon his back, as well as the once familiar brown pools that had watched him so closely for so many years.

He walked to his apartments, glaring daggers at anyone who dared to meet his eyes. He headed for his own room, but he passed Hermione's on the way. It was spare, plain, grey, no knickknacks, no toys, no pictures or posters.

In his own room, he went to his bed. "Where is it?" He murmured, pulling the trunk from beneath his bed. It was not his as the initials H.J.G. exposed. For years, he had left it in the Room of Requirement, all evidence of Hermione's previous life aside from herself.

He threw open the lid, and rummaged through the items that were also not his own: plain, grey, cloaks, long out of fashion, a wand holster (the wand itself was in the child's possession), textbooks…

Nothing was indicative of its owner except…

"Ah," His fingers closed around the familiar square.

She was standing in the frame, and so was he, his arm slung stiffly over her shoulders. She looked vastly uncomfortable, and so did he. They had not touched before, or since, in that incarnation any way.

Her round face was plain, surrounded by bushy curls. She looked horrendously short beside his tall frame. Behind them stood the structure in which they had spent their childhoods: Wool's Orphanage. It was a hot summer day, and the building was nearly impossible to get a hint of fresh air in. The London air was hardly better, but it was not quite as stuffy.

A tourist in muggle London, a visiting photographer who had clearly wondered into the wrong part of town, had thought they were a couple. A bit tipsy, he had set up his camera and taken their photo. He had even sent it back to them when it was developed, the Orphanage's address clearly printed in the photo.

"Happy Christmas!" He had said as he was leaving. It was not Christmas, but early August. All the same, Hermione had waved at him with that false smile and said goodbye in that polite voice that Tom was all too familiar with. She rarely dropped it, except with him.

He thumbed her still face, wishing for some movement so he could better remember the way her hair fell about her face, her gait, her real face, not just the one for show.

A child without love cannot thrive

But she had. She was so many things he had never taught her to be, had so many gifts he had not given her.

What did that mean?

The weather outside is beginning to turn cold and Halloween is just a few weeks away. While the other girls in her dorm gossip, Hermione stares up at the canopy of her bed. She does not miss her room in Tom's apartment any more than she has missed the little flats and tents they had lived in.

Having been forbidden from interacting with the outside world for her entire life, the freedom to do so is intoxicating. Hermione does not need to study and Tom has not requested her presence (has not even spoken to her since the summer). She finishes her homework in the library and spends the rest of her free time wandering. It is not as exciting as her stolen explorations of the castles in past years, but this is an addiction all its own. Hermione explores hallways already known to her, finding new crevices and tunnels and hidden passageways. She tucks them away in to the corners of her mind for future use.

She is alone in these travels. Other first years are wary of her. She does not know how to interact with other children, and they can see it. Her movements are strange and stiff, her vocabulary wide, her voice mature, and her grasp of magic frightening.

Nothing ever seems new to her really. It is all like words that have been sitting on the tip of her tongue until she could say them.

Sometimes the children ask for her assistance, but she eats alone and spends much of her time in silence, even as others chat around her.

Loneliness is familiar enough to her. She is content to wander the halls, no more unaware of the eyes that follow her than she has been all of her life.

Tom is her Defense Against the Dark Arts professor. He ignores her as he always has, and he watches her, as he always has.

Dumbledore had largely ignored Tom, just as he had when Tom was a student. He suspected nothing of course, knew nothing of Tom's true nature or motives, but he was never more than cordial to him.

Occasionally, his gaze would become foggy as he looked Tom over, as if there was something he was trying to remember. Thankfully, it always escaped him.

Hermione did not so easily escape the headmaster's notice. Her knowledge was too extensive, her resemblance to her other self too similar, though Tom had tried his best to tame her curls and fix her teeth with magic. At any rate, he could not do anything about her appearance now, as she would not speak with him.

Other professors, ones who had taught the first Hermione, looked at her knowingly and at him too. Slughorn would give him a sly wink when he talked about how much his "ward" resembled her namesake, and that her parents had undoubtedly been very big fans of classic Greek literature. Tom shrugged these comments off saying "it's not so uncommon of a name."

The younger professors found her aloofness, coolness, and abilities perturbing.

Old or young, student or professor, everyone searched her face, he observed, for something of him. They all suspected a family connection. It would explain away his own lack of wife, lack of apparent interest in courting and dating, if he was a grieving over the loss of her mother. It hardly bothered him what they thought. They would never guess at the truth. It was too unbelievable, even by the standards of the magical world.

Still, Tom could not manage the act of a grieving widower as he did not have a wife to grieve for.

Occasionally, however, he did find himself staring at that picture, at their spot on the Slytherin table, their old seats in his classroom.

Lately, Hogwarts seemed filled with ghosts he could not see.

When the older Hermione was not occupying his thoughts the younger was.

Tom thought the girl was quite unaware of the dangers of the old castle. There were reasons the children were generally encouraged to wander in groups, why their class and food times were so scheduled, why there was a curfew. Discipline may have been one concern, but the very real creatures that went bump in the night (and the day) were the primary threat.

Peeves alone could send a child plummeting to their death through some prank or another.

So with magic and his own eyes, Tom watched her wander by herself, and used a spell or two to help her avoid danger.

He had decided to give the child space now, or at least he would let her think she had some. He would not treat her differently in class or call on her for lessons. He hoped, once she felt she could move about freely, that she would let down her guard.

He could not lose her, and that was the problem. He had invested so much time her growth and knew the rewards were soon to come.

But there was more. He did not want to lose her, and that was the truth.

A child without love…

When Tom was not stalking his ward, teaching, or grading papers, he was working towards his goals.

The mystery of Hermione Granger had been largely forgotten. For all that she had changed in the past, she had not made much of an impression in this world that had never been hers. At any rate, he was free from suspicion.

As a Hogwarts Professor, he had some amount of prestige. Powerful people sent their children here, and Tom taught each and every one of them. After three years, he had developed the reputation of a gifted, likeable, generous professor. He had invitations to weddings, dinners, and even muggle baptisms.

His name was moving steadily up the ladder of the ministry. More than once he had overheard witches and wizards "That Professor Riddle, he deserves an appointment…"

Of course, his plans were much grander than that, but it was a start.

At Christmas, she finds that she is in the minority of children staying at the castle. Most go home for the holidays. But then, where else can Hermione go but here? This building has felt more her home than any other hovel they had lived in, and certainly they had stayed here the longest.

Still, does that mean it is home? Home implies something about people, connection, family. Hermione has none of that. She only has Tom.

Tom is her only connection, if he cares to be called that. Certainly, he is her only obligation, the only person she has ever required to answer to, though he has not spoken to her outside of class since the summer.

Hermione feels invisible. She has perfected the art of being invisible to curious eyes. Never though, has she tried to be visible, but felt unseen all the same. People are not mean to her precisely, but they seem to look through her. Even Tom. He had not called upon her, has not even said her name (Miss Riddle). It is as if she does not exist. Other professors praise her sometimes, but mostly they just seem afraid of her (will not look her in the eye), or remember someone else (a third time), but no one will say whom.

The castle is empty on Christmas morning. Hermione awakes tired, can practically feel the bags beneath her sleep deprived eyes. She stares up at her canopy, considering the dream she had just had.

The man with the red eyes, slits for a nose, a bald head. He stares at her, he tries to kill her, she runs, he follows. But it is not a nightmare, not entirely.

She can also see outlines, of the friendly, the familiar, the loved. A black haired figure and a red haired figure welcome her into their arms. Wondering at the faces she cannot see, or name, the voices she cannot hear. That is what keeps her up at night sometimes.

It is not a new dream, but one that has plagued her in her early childhood. When she learned to control her emotions and magic, it had slowly abated. In recent months, with her separation from Tom, it had strangely come back. She considers how odd it is that she feels separated from him at all, given how apart they have been her entire life.

Hermione pulls back the curtain, pleased to have the room to herself after that nightmare.

Her dorm mates are all off celebrating with their families. The few Slytherins in the common room do not even wish her well. Her parentage is, after all, a mystery. And while the handsome professor Riddle may govern respect in spite of this, his mousey ward does not.

She begins the day with breakfast and Hogwarts: A History for the 10th time. This way she does not have to look at the head table (and see his eyes, his acknowledgement of her attention).

Christmas, much like birthdays, had never been celebrated with Tom. If Hermione feels deprived, she does not show it. She merely closes her book tighter in one hand, and forces a meal down her throat with the other.

With a resounding "snap" she shuts her book and exits the Great Hall, itching to wander the empty castle.

It is during this particular trip (which takes her to the Dungeons, a place cold enough to numb her from the pain of thought, she hopes) that Hermione stumbles across a kindred spirit.

He is a tall, lanky, young boy, about 14. His face, long, pale, drawn, is surrounded by bright blonde hair, with blue eyes at the center (the hair is wrong, the eyes are right). He strikes her as familiar, and makes her (cold frozen) heart ache with a sense of loss wholly strange to someone who has never been attached to anything or anyone.

He does not look through her, or act wary of her. He does not look at the spot between her eyes or above her head. His robes are Slytherin green. His gaze meets hers (blue eyes, orange hair, and a wicked smile), and she feels the corners of her eyes prick.

Her heart beats rapidly and she does not know why.

"Hello." His voice is smaller, weaker, more hindered than she expected.

"Hello." She parrots him, her voice reflects her mousy appearance.

"Caleb Black." He introduces himself, holding out a skinny, pale hand. His fingers are long, warm, welcoming. "You're Hermione Riddle." It is not a question, merely a statement awaiting confirmation.

"Yes." She does not need to ask why he is here, or why she has never seen him before (invisibility, once acquired, is difficult to shake). He does not fit in, like a warped puzzle piece, like her.

"I was just going to the library," He says, hesitant, afraid of rejection

(I am not your father)

"Would you like to join me?" There is hope there too, no balking at her age or intelligence.

"Yes." The answer comes easily and is struck by how alone she has felt before now. He smiles, it is almost goofy, and points in the direction he had come from. Side by side, they make their way through the halls.

Tom had seen the older boy slinking around with Hermione for a few weeks now.

Caleb Black was a fourth year, the black sheep of the Black family: a son of the union between a wizard father and a mugggle mother. Both parents were dead. Most presumed assassins working for the Black family to eliminate the wife and child, and maintain blood purity, murdered them.

The husband had been collateral damage, but once he was dead there was no one to inherit but the child. It was an unexpected situation for the familyHe was the last remaining male relative, and the Goblins knew it. A suspicious death may be met with a freezing of the Black funds entirely. So, until a legal solution could be found, he lived neutral but hardly affectionate relatives, always under the threat of death or abandonment if a solution could be found before he came of age.

His fellow Slytherins did not so much harass him, as ignore his presence entirely. It was the safest approach to take with a half blood that was only a possible heir.

Tom watched her secrete off to the library with the boy. Another guardian might have interceded out of some misguided fear of the girl losing her virtue. Tom considered interfering for an entirely different reason. It was the same one that had caused him to cloister her for so long: he was truly a selfish creature, and was jealous of her loyalties. Still, he held himself back. She would come to him in time.

They do not talk for almost a year. It is a lonely summer for her, though she and Caleb do communicate with ink and paper.

My family went to France for the summer, They left me with the house elf

I cannot speak with him, I cannot look at him, I am afraid he will find out

They said they would write, they lied

So many lies, what is truth?

I fear they will leave me here forever

The nightmares won't stop.

I wonder if they ever loved me

The red eyes on his porcelain face…

Some messages they write. Some messages must be read between the lines.

Mornings she sleeps later to avoid Tom at the breakfast table. He waits, sometimes for an hour or more, but leaves eventually. Only then will she slip on her robe and tiptoe downstairs.

One can always rely on Tom's stubborn desire to not be the first one to give in.

She cannot look at those eyes on his face…is afraid they will turn redredred

Unfortunately, he likes to spend his days in the library, so that lovely place becomes off limits to her.

The staff at Hogwarts is a skeletal one. Most professors are on vacation, and the ones that stay hole up in their apartments doing research for new publications. So she, after the week spent doing her summer work, spends her days wondering the winding halls and mapping them out. She has hopes to create a map, visible only to her, that records Hogwarts's numerous hideaways, nooks, and crannies.

She must find the places where one can hide, if one needs to

One day, she goes up to the seventh floor, as she had done several times before. This though, feels different. She thinks she missed something and walks backwards. Again she, misses it, and walks forward.

I need to remember something

Then it appears, a door that had not been there before. This is not unusual at Hogwarts, she has found. Many enchanted rooms only appear when they are supposed to. This door, however, feels strangely familiar.

Prison cells can become familiar too

She pushes it open….

It is a room full of potions, ingredients, and cauldrons to cook them in. Shelves line the wall, filled with ingredients and books. At the center of the room, a potion bubbles. She walks over to it, barely notices the crunching sound beneath her shoes as she steps on bits of glass. Next to the cauldron is a piece of parchment, crumped and stained with blood. She picks it up, flattening it out with her hands.

A piece of me…

She doubles over in pain. Her head feels as if it has exploded into pieces, like the glass that lines the floor. She feels nauseous.

Nothing left. I have nothing left.

She sees the shelves out of the corner of her eye, and wonders what secrets are written in the pages of those books. The thought sends another wave of pain over her. She stumbles towards the door, pushing it open with her fists.

Out in the hallway, her pain has receded. She pants, trying to catch her breath and still her quickly beating heart. She leans against the wall, and glances at the enchanted door, or rather the place it had been. It is gone now.

"I think I remember." She whispers to herself, lips trembling with a fear she does not understand. "I remember something."

Darkness, Swirling, Dizzying, Madness. But when?

The blood.

She gazes down at her right hand. No scar. But there should be. A cut like that would remain even after a decade.

She does not mention the incident to him, nor does she write about it to Caleb. It is something she feels she has to figure out on her own, and one that he would not like to find out about.

Secrets and secrets and lies and lies and what is the truth anyway? When has she ever heard the truth from that forked tongue?

I am your brother. We are kin.

She has no kin. She knows that now.

September 1st takes too long to arrive. She can hardly wait to escape his apartments and the suffocation they bring. She does not remember a time when she did not feel discomfort in his presence…though surely such a time there must have been.

Waiting for him to return, clutching his coat to her face, inhaling his scent…

His breath on the back of her neck. Cold. It sends chills down her spine

Once school starts she does not give Tom a thought, too caught up in new classes and material. She had wanted to take more classes still but….

Dumbledore holds a time turner before her. A headache comes on, nearly blinding her. The hour glass stays just out of her grasp

DADA classes are slow. She does not raise her hand; he does not call on her

Her first teacher. His praise meant the world and the sun and the stars, now her skin crawls to think of it

This cannot go on forever. She needs answers.

Who are you? Who am I?

There are too many questions, and not enough answers. There is too much fear, but no reason to be afraid. She finds herself in his apartments while he teaches the sixth years. His room is locked, as always, but the House elves idolize her and it does not take a lot of convincing to get one to open it for her. She is his ward after all.

The room is sparsely furnished. The bed is at the center, with a wardrobe in the corner and a desk on the other wall, and a chair. They never had an opportunity to collect junk in their travels. She does not know what she expects to find, but she knows it must be here. She walks to the wardrobe, opening the dark oaken door. His robes hang, but there are no shelves. Nothing is inside except for the robes. She shuts it gently and slumps on the bed. What had she hoped to find?

But then…what is that next to her foot? She looks under the bed, noticing that the corner of something is sticking out. She grasps it firmly and pulls. It is a trunk that looks like it is decades old. Where had Tom acquired it? Where had it been all of these years?

She scans it, ignoring the sense of familiarity that itches at the back of her mind. What is inscribed on its lid? H.J.G?

She flips it open, noting the lack of lock with surprise. The clothes inside are out of fashion, but…quite feminine still. She sorts through the items, searching for clues. Then her fingers touch something papery. In her hand is a…photo. A muggle photo. What would he be doing with this?

Two figures stand stock still in front of a dreary brick building. She can make out the words inscribed on the stone….Wools Orphanage…

Orphanage?

Then she looks at the figures and her eyes still. One is clearly Tom. Has hardly changed. But the other…the figure he has his arm about…she freezes. The frizzy hair, the almond shaped eyes…so empty.

A face so much like her own…but older, gruffer, stares back at her.

A warning knock brings her back. The elf is telling her the time. Tom is punctual, and he will be here soon. Hermione stuffs the photo where it came from. So easy to find…why had he not hid it better?

She leaves his apartments, determined to get back to the dungeons before Caleb notes her strange absence. She keeps her eyes straight ahead, hardly noticing she is heading toward someone until she crashes into them at the base of the grand staircase. The shock of falling on her backside snaps her out of her reverie. She looks up at Him smirking. She ignores his offered hand, and gets back to her feet. Angrily, she brushes past Him, fingers clenching as she hears his laughter.

There was a time it had been music to her ears, rarely heard in the shadowy places they stayed.

As she approaches the common room, she realizes something. He had wanted her to find it. He wanted her to see that woman.

This is his game, and she is merely making her way across the board.

It is nearly Halloween when she awakes feeling wrong. The redredred stickiness on her fingertips makes her scream. Her world goes black.

Bodies on the ground, redness on their skin, their hands, puring out of their ears, their noses, their eyes….

"It never occurred to me to tell you." He murmurs at her, sitting beside her bed in the hospital wing. She does not look at him, eyes pointing to the corner of the room. Her guardian goes on.

"You are bright. I had thought you would come across it in a medical text somewhere." He sighs, "Where did you think babies came from?"

Where does anyone come from? Me? You?

She twists her neck in his direction, speaking to him for the first time in a year "I do not know Tom. I seem to have come out of nowhere, out of the blue. Maybe I figured everyone else did too."

He narrows his eyes at her "You've seen pregnant women before. Surely, you had some inkling."

Babies in carriages and proud parents, of swollen bellies and contented smiles. He peers down at her, she does not see contentment

"You raised me with magic Tom. Maybe the babies just appeared in their bellies. What do I know? You never gave me medical texts to read, and Hogwarts contains nothing concerning reproduction. I never gave it much thought. Until now." She winces in pain. "It made sense. We do not even look alike Tom. I am no more your sister than I am your daughter. What am I to make of that? Surely, I just appeared out of nowhere, never born, never created."

The silence tells her what she needs to know, what thirteen years of living in confusion and fear had never explained. Then he breaks it.

"You did not just appear."

"What?"

"You did not just appear." He repeats. "You were…left in my care."

There is truth in lies perhaps. Avada kedava green eyes lock onto hers. She is trapped.

"So I am the daughter of your friend."

"Something like that." He sounds frustrated "We cannot go on like this Hermione. You cannot keep on ignoring me."

"You have to stop keeping me in the dark."

He closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his notes. She is unnerved. He looks almost human. But then…when did she begin to doubt his humanity? "You are still a child." She snorts, a vulgar noise that makes his porcelain face twitch. Forgotten words from her childhood come to mind…

You will be a lady, a lady to rule the world.

"Tell that to the nurse then. She informed me I am now a women not five minutes ago."

His eyes dart around the Hospital wing, and she wonders if he will finally kill her for her newfound voice.

"Oh very well. I should have known better I suppose." He takes a breath and lets it out slowly. Her fingers tap impatiently on the bedframe, echoing about the silent room. "What do you know of time travel?"

The time turner, dangling in front of her face just out of reach…it is not Dumbledore that holds it

"That wizards are not supposed to mess with it." The words feel hollow and well practiced "Terrible things happen to wizards who meddle with time."

He smirks, and she is chilled. "What a long list that is, things wizards are not supposed to meddle with. Come on, what else?"

She shakes her head "Nothing really. The library does not have much information."

I do not want to know. Oh merlin, I do not want to know.

"Look again, and come back to me." He stands and he is tall, still looming over her as he did in her childhood. She yearns to bury her face in her blankets.

Do not give him the power

She waits until he is out of the room to give in.

It happens like this: she finds the room again and the courage to open the books she had been unable to touch before. The pain had receded. She pieces together the clues: the picture, the paper, the fear of red eyes. But there are no memories and for that she is glad. They have left her, her first life, with the world that will never be. She can recall the Hermione that attended school with Tom though, her fear of him, her story as she grew up.

"I am from the future." She realizes over Christmas, staring across the dinner table at Tom. He shrugs, fingering a fairy tale book from her childhood.

"In a manner of speaking. You are from a future, one that no longer exists."

"We are enemies."

"We would have been, I think."

"And now?" Her guardian? Her family? The terms fit as well a misshapen puzzle piece. They distort the image. Does he look pained, or is it just a mask he puts on for her benefit?

"Allies." But are they? She looks up at his pale, perfectly sculpted face.

"I didn't trust you."

"No."And she does not now. Nothing has changed.

Despite his disclosure, she was not any warmer to him in her second and third years. For the most part, she avoided him. Only in her fourth year did she become cordial with him again, if only because the Black boy had graduated. She did not want to return to a lonely existence, it seemed.

Their relationship was different now. He had to acknowledge the change in her, the rigidity in her back, the steeliness in her eyes. She was not the child Hermione he had known, nor the adult, but even so, they were equals now. This Hermione had accepted her past, the future that had never existed, even if she could not remember it.

She was strong, and she knew it.

Still, she respected him, and even trusted him a bit. Well, more than her previous self had. They came together as intellectuals to discuss experiments and papers. These roles they fit in to better than they ever had as ward and guardian, brother and sister, or parent and child.

The last decade and a half had not been entirely in vein after all.

Her fourth year is also the year Hogwarts hosts a ball for its own students, as well those in several schools from the continent. Somehow, Tom had gotten dragged into being a chaperone, if only to improve Dumbledore's opinion of him. He stood at the grand staircase, away from the tumble of teenage bodies in the great hall before him. The rather annoying new charms professor hung on his arm, which Tom seemed unable to rip from her grasp. She wore an ugly pink dress and fluttered her fluttered her heavily colored eyelids at him.

"I absolutely love this song Tom, don't you? Wouldn't you like to-" Tom was about to request –for the fifth time- that she addresses him as Professor Riddle, as the other professors called him, when something –no someone- caught his eye.

Her dress was purple, a deep, royal shade of it that highlighted the brown in her hair and eyes. It flowed on the staircase behind her, and stopped well beneath her collarbone, sleeveless. Around her head was a crown. It kept the curls piled atop her head in place, in an elegant way he had never realized was possible.

She met his gaze as it traveled to her face.

Tom swallowed. The child had grown, it seemed. When had she done that? She looked more like her former self. He noted her gait with each step she took. It did not carry the limp, nor did her shoulders hang heavily. She was different to be sure, but still…

He moved over to the girl, ignoring the chattering new teacher he could not recall the name of.

"I did not think you would want to be bothered with such nonsense." He murmured, taking her elbow. "Without a date or an escort, no less."

The girl blinked up at him "Are you not my escort, Tom?"

Tom swallowed again "Could your boyfriend not make it?" he inquired as they walked through to the Great Hall. Students danced slowly to the music. Tables lined the wall with food. The professors chatted around the edges.

"He has some head of family business." She responded.

"They haven't killed him off then?"

Hermione smirked in a way Tom found to be uncomfortably like his own. "The Goblins have assured Caleb that if anyone in his family tries to off him, their accounts will be frozen. No, they've given up on loopholes. They are trying to marry him off to "purify the line." "

Tom raised an eyebrow "You don't seem worried."

Hermione shrugged, highlighting her collarbone "Caleb hates nothing more than prissy pureblood princesses." They stood on the outside of the crowd of dancing students. Tom noticed the looks Hermione was getting from the male students, although Hermione seemed perfectly unaware of it.

"You clean up nicely, child. But you still have not answered my question. Why are you here?"

Hermione looked back up at him "I think she- I think I went to a dance, and I think I liked it."

Tom nodded "I see, and you thought maybe you could get the memory back?"

Hermione inclined her head "I see so many shadows in my dreams. I wanted to shed some light on them. Nothing else has worked."

Tom was somehow bothered by the frown that appeared on her face. It reminded him of when she was a child, when he forbid her from playing with others. "Perhaps…a dance will bring it back?" he suggested, taking her hand to lead her into the crowd. She was confused when he put her hands on his shoulders, and his own on her waist.

"Tom…" Hermione said slowly.

"I lead, you follow. Simple." And it was. They spun and twisted to the slow music. She even began to smile. Tom held her close to him. He wondered at the years he had never held her, and why he was able to now. He felt her breathing against him, her chin on his shoulder, her breath near his ear.

The song came to an end. They parted. Hermione looked at him…confused. Her chest heaved from exhaustion Tom cleared his throat. "Anything?"

Hermione blinked a couple of times. A moment, once buried beneath time, dragged itself up to the surface of Tom's consciousness.

She is sitting next to him, trussed up in a borrowed dress. She stares at the dancing couples

"Something you've forgotten?" He inquires.

She frowns, and he feels himself frown along with her "Yes. No. Maybe. I remember…Russian." She shakes her head, fingers clenching the table cloth.

"Maybe…maybe a dance would bring something back?"

She looks up at him. There is confusion in her eyes and apprehension and….disgust. Tom coughs

"Malfoy is giving you the eye." Tom gestures to the blonde in the back of the room, looking at her hungrily.

She laughs "I think I knew his grandson. I think…he also had a creep vibe."

Tom returned to himself and shrugged "Well, I tried. I have to get back to my post now. We have to stop the naughty students from leaving together and all of that."

Quickly, he walked away from her, leaving Hermione staring at his receding back.

In her fifth year, the Black boy began to officially court her in the manner purebloods must, much to his family's distaste. Tom was not particularly worried for her well-being as she could very well take care of herself. Still, the relationship bothered him for a reason other than jealousy.

Tom did not know why it made him annoyed, and that annoyed him further. He wondered if she had informed the boy of the truth of her existence. The thought made his fingers clench. He had worked for her secrets, but the Black boy was just handed them.

He watched them in the Great Hall, in his class, and he was reminded of another pair of students, nearly 20 years ago. The boy was an outcast of Slytherin House, and the girl who took pity on him…who tried to improve his lot in life…

Black reminded him of himself

But this Hermione did not keep the boy at arms length. It was not jealousy, then, but a sense that this was wrong. This was not the Hermione he had known. She was softer, kinder.

A child without love cannot thrive

Where had she learned kindness? Tom wondered at the effects of losing the darkest memories, of being left with only an imprint of her previous life. What was left then…was this the real Hermione Granger? For all that he had taught her, she still resented him and refused his manipulations.

The infant had never liked him, the child had feared him, the adolescent refused to be controlled, and the teenager hardly acknowledged him. Molding Hermione into the perfect assistant had not turned out as he had intended. He supposed she had been a side project against his search for immortality. By the time he thought to focus on her, when she was old enough to hold his attention, she was already out of his grasp.

Tom sighed, wondering if this was truly a bad thing, if Hermione would really have turned out as he liked anyway. Tom had seen kindness as a weakness, no better than love. Hermione was powerful, all the same, intelligent, ambitious…

A child without love cannot thrive

Tom pinched the bridge of his nose as he looked down on the couple from his seat in the great hall. He hard his arm about her narrow shoulders. Hermione rigidly withstood the contact. Tom could not waste energy on this.

He had a campaign to work on.

Tom stares at the ring upon her finger. She has graduated, is packing up for Wales, where she will continue her education. The last item to check off the list is informing her –now- former guardian.

That is how she finds herself in his study in the middle of the summer. She could not tell him earlier, he could use such a warning to prevent her from leaving at all. He wears glasses upon his sculpted face, but she knows they are just for show, an acknowledgement of age that has not occurred and time that has not passed. Not for him anyway.

"Are you pregnant? I am much to young to be a grandfather."

She stares at the face that has not aged since she was a child. She wonders about a chocolate frog card about Nicholas Flamel that sat upon her bureau in one scrubby apartment, and about the death of the man. "Worry not Tom, you would be no one's grandfather."

"Then why? Love?" he sneers. She flinches.

Love?

Nights she spent staring at his back while he was hunched over some book or another… tucking herself in…awkward hugs in public to put on a show…wanting to be held by him, yet fearing the suffocation of his torso curling around her body

Tom's parenting had been haphazard and psychopathic. Hermione wonders if she can even love. How do people describe it? Warmth? Safety? Caring about someone else more than yourself? Thinking of that person all of the time? Missing them? She had not promised Caleb any of that, and he had never asked.

"I am fond of him, and he of me." She answers instead "We have to be married to live together in Wales."

Riddle snorts "I've never known you to be held to the whims of societal convention."

Hermione raises her eyebrow "School rules Tom. Bigger apartment, full kitchen."

"So you are getting married for a full kitchen?"

Hermione sighs "We would have married eventually." Caleb is her best friend…her link to humanity, everything Tom never was, was unable to be. She wants to say "I need him in my life," but does not think Tom will appreciate the show of weakness.

"You have never considered marriage?" she asks instead. Tom cocks his head to the side and stares at her for a moment, fingers playing with his pen.

"Once." He steadies his gaze at her, any humor gone from his face. "Not for love, I assure you, but the closest I have ever come to it."

She finds his eyes unnerving, but squashes the instinct to squirm. She thinks of a dance in her fourth year, an arm slung about shoulders awkwardly and two polite smiles. She thinks of the way his eyes follow her sometimes, his gaze almost nostalgic. She thinks of how he searches her face, but never finds what he is looking for. She thinks, but she does not ask. He is an enigma, as he has always been. No explanation he gives her will change that.

"How is your campaign going?" she inquires instead.

"I am on track to be the youngest Minister of Magic in history. First England, then the world." Anyone else may have meant the words in jest. He is smiling after all, as if in practice.

She does not think he is joking as she looks upon a face not any older than her own. His smile is like porcelain, decorated beautifully but truly fragile. It will break when one looks away, revealing the humorless smirk beneath.

The youngest indeed.

Four years later she finds herself standing in front of him in the Office of the Minister of Magic of the Union of Magical States. UMS had united with Riddle at its helm. He was elected by other world leaders to guide them, but Hermione knows Riddle is more than title. His grip on the magical world is a strong, and its all legal. People wanted security and Tom brought that. He brought peace, the way only a dictator could.

"You have got to be kidding me."

"I do not kid, child"

"The magical world is one thing, Tom. There are only a few million of them. But muggles? Tom, there are billions. How will you control them all?"

Tom shrugs "They want security too."

"And magic will make them secure?"

"It will scare them into acceptance, certainly. I will end the cold war, Hermione. I will be a hero."

She knows then that saviors are never as one expects them to be and no hero is entirely good.

"This is about you, Tom. You want to rule the world."

He does not try to deny it "I saw in your memoires what happens when I try to destroy the muggles, enslave and subjugate them. It did not end well. So I will control the muggles, but they will be equal to magical beings, in law."

"Why did you bring me here Tom?" Hermione does not comment. She leans back in her chair, staring at Tom over his desk. She must crane her neck to the right, given the direction of the chairShe peers around. He had changed the design of the Minister's office, and had taken tips from the Americans. The desk was the largest item in the room, the floor ever so slightly slanted to raise him. He is meant to be at the center, the place of power.

It might work on magical world leaders, but Hermione was not intimidated.

"To congratulate you on your recent degree of course."

"And?"

"I need you to be my second in command, my vice."

"Why in the world would I do that?"

"It is what I raised you for. I knew when we were in school together, I knew I needed you by my side for me to achieve power."

Hermione clenched her fists and faced her eyes to the wall. "I am not her."

Tom sits up straight, stands and walks around the desk, giving up the place of power. He leans against the desk. "No of course not. She would never agree to it. But Hermione, I need you. I need your intelligence, your leadership. This is not something I will easily achieve without you."

"If I say no?"

His fingers clench on the edge of the desk. She knows he does not like to be told no. "You will only have yourself to blame when poor Caleb meets his end."

She glares at him "I hate you."

He smirks "Some things never change."

That is a moment she thinks back on as she looks into Caleb's dead eyes, ten years later. The terrorists are masked, cowards that cannot show their faces. They stand in her parlor room, a dozen of them. Caleb's body cools on the floor, alongside her, his eyes open. They are poised above her, the real target. Caleb had only been collateral damage, like his father. She does not suppose they much minded the opportunity to kill a half blood though.

She cannot move her face, her hands, her legs. She cannot scream or cry. In a way, this is good as she cannot show her weakness. She can only stare into those blue eyes that once chased her loneliness away.

She took down ten before they got him, and another ten before she fell. It wasn't enough and it does not seem to matter now.

They were going to kill her, and Tom was powerless to stop them. She was going to die because of him, because of his ambitions.

"I am so close." Tom whispered to himself, to the empty room "I can control them all." Wizards, muggles, everyone. Exposing the wizarding world had terrified the muggles, but their weapons had been confiscated, and they were allowed to benefit from magic. At the head of their union sat Tom Riddle, technically elected President of the Union of Muggle and Wizarding Republics.

Then came this splinter group, wanting to subjugate the muggles, enslave them, murder them.

It was quite ridiculous. 7 billion muggles up against a few million wizards? Tom did not see how that could work. In fact, he saw how it failed miserably in Hermione's memories. He had won to be sure, but the constant upheavals were draining on the state treasury, and cost countless, unnecessary lives. It was only a matter of time before the state of that kind crumpled. No, muggles needed consensus to control them, so Tom had given that to them. The use of the imperious did not hurt.

The position of president was for life, and Tom would not die.

But Hermione would. Tom watched the magical video feed being launched everywhere in the world, from an untraceable location. The husband was already dead at their feet, now their wands were pointed at Hermione.

"President Riddle" The terrorists sneered "We have your ward, your weakness, the mudblood pet of the halfblood disgrace. We are going to kill her, so you know that we are serious about taking you down."

Riddle's fists clenched, they were not even going to negotiate.

There was only one way. Gripping the cloak and feeling the ring upon his finger, Riddle pointed the elder wand at his temple.

"Avada Kedavra."

The blackness of his vision took a few minutes to clear. It was then he realized that he was at Kings Cross station, and very naked. That bothered him little, however. He ignored the clothes placed for him to put on. Tom scanned the space, so empty compared to the crowdedness of the first and last day of term. Here had taken place the happiest and most grating times of his life. Here were the comings and the goings. Here he had stood beside Hermione all of those years ago, until he did not, until he carried her secretly inside of his coat, a mewling infant.

Why was he here? Why now? He had to negotiate.

"I don't have time to waste!" he screamed. The emptiness was unmoved. Surely, time passed differently here, but it could not pause entirely. The outside world still existed, and the child…and Hermione was still in danger. "I know you are here. I know the stories. I have revealed myself to you, and now I should be given a choice. Come out!"

Tom tried to sound certain, as if the stories were not simply fairy tales, not simply words he had read to the child years ago. Still it was a few more moments before anything appeared in the whiteness. What did appear though was a figure that nearly had him on his knees. Her mousy brown hair, pale skin, muddy brown eyes…so sickly and starved. He had only met her once, and she had looked just the same. Then again, so had he. Ghosts did not change, and neither did a creature like him.

"Mother." Riddle gasped, "You're death?"

The frail woman shook her head "Of course not, Tom. No one is death per say, but there is an essence of it within us all. Within everything, as I believe you have been told." His mother approached him, her thin nightgown dragging on the white ground. Tom did not have the energy to feel shame at his mother's knowledge of the first of many murders that paid for his power. He was not the creature in Hermione's memories. The world was at peace, and he ruled it all. Collateral damage had been inevitable.

"Then can you help me?" He asked instead, not commenting on the phrase.

"How, Tom?" But she already knew "With the girl, the baby?" Did the ghost seem eager? Surely this was but a faint echo of his mother, no different than the ghosts of Hogwarts who sulked in their tragedies and pastimes, but lacked who they once were. That is what the ring brought. Echos.

"She's not a baby any more."

"No. She is not." His mother agreed. She seemed quite satisfied with herself. The slightest hint of a smile played around her lips. Tom's mind flashed to the image of his own reflection, the corners of his mouth tilting ever so slightly upward…

He shook his head. He would not be drawn in by this distraction. Death was a shifty character, and he would prefer Tom for free, rather than the price he would charge. Death was stalling.

"You have to save her. Make it so that she cannot die." Tom pleaded, hating the desperate tone in his voice. He had lost even the false assurance from earlier. How much time had passed in the real world?

"Only one."

"What?"

"Only one can live while the other must die. Prophecies are tricky things, they tend to hold on even when the time line changes. So only one person can hide from death, not two. If she lives, you must die."

This Tom knew. Orpheus may have thought he could save Eurydice, but Hades knew from the beginning he would never be able to climb out of the underworld without turning around. Tom was no Orpheus. He was no protagonist. At his worst, he was the villain, and his best he was a businessman. For every give, there was a take. Nothing came without a price. The price of life was death in return. But he was so close…he almost had it all under his thumb. The world, muggle and magic, calling him their leader…

His mother's mud brown eyes met his own, seeing into his soul. He felt more naked.

"Did she thrive, Tom?"

Tom swallowed at the words that had haunted him for decades. She had feared him, suspected him, for most of her life. Even as a child, she had both loved and hated him, yearned for his praise, and recoiled from his touch. Tom kept her at arms length. He had no other idea how to handle her, how to…

"I do not know…she is successful, married, intelligent, brilliant…"

"Is she happy?"

Why were they wasting time on this? What did any of it matter? That was Hermione's past. Her present was much more concerning. Her past…Tom had not paid much attention. He had been distracted with his search for immortality. Hermione had not yet been Hermione. She was a child, hardly worth a good portion of his interest

Hermione trembling before him, cold and afraid, the remnants of a nightmare around her eyes, Hermione begging to play with the other children in the park, to go to school, her disappointed face

Hermione clutching a bruised knee, sobbing and he just watches, arms at his side

Suspicion in her eyes, shadows of memories clenched in her fists

"I don't…."

Hermione glowing under his praise, Her smile when he brings her a new book, Hermione elated with a trip to the muggle museum, the library, Hermione gripping his hand trying to drag him to some new exhibit, Hermione smiling at her graduation, Hermione sitting with Caleb and snorting milk, Hermione grinning down at her textbook and scribbling furiously, Hermione kissing Caleb…

The older Hermione cutting up ingredients, Her hair covering a page as she reads some book, the glow on her face as she is awarded house points, the contentedness in her eyes when she stands in the library…

A child without love cannot thrive.

"Dear God…." Tom whispered. You love her. You love someone…"But I thought I wasn't capable…" The potion, the love potion should have made him incapable. He had cared for the older Hermione, surely, but he had thought only insofar has she had something to teach him. The younger fit into his plans for the future…but…

"You love her." His mother maintained "And your love will be your undoing, as it was mine."

Tom peered at the ghost of his mother. There was something more of her in their than the echo perhaps. Ghosts did not usually reflect on their mistakes and regrets.

"You did not love me enough to even stay alive." His mother nodded.

"I had wasted it all on someone else. But now, I think, he must have loved me back a little, truly." She brushed back the hair on Tom's head. "Your father."

At those words, the memory of a suicide at a train station rushed to Tom's head. A man who spoke to the child…who shook her hand…whose face he saw for only an instant…

Or maybe, decades of living beside and raising a bushy haired savior from the future who murdered his alternative self, had connected Tom to a soul he never realized he had…or needed. Hermione had come to him by accident, had unknowingly put him in a position to care for her younger self, and had surely achieved a great deal through doing little intentionally. Tom wondered, briefly, that if Death was a real enough entity, if there were not a few others floating around as well.

He did not feel like a player, but a piece on a very large board. Was he the pawn, or the king. Was she the queen? The pawn's purpose was distraction, to die so that the king could cross a dangerous path. And the queen? The queen ranked higher than the pawn, surely….

"I do not want to live in a world without her…even if I have to give up everything…"

She awakes with a headache and squints at the light. Immediately, a face appears above her, the wrinkled face of former Headmaster Dumbledore, now Minister of Magical Children Services. She does not believe it when she hears it, cannot believe it. Caleb

"But how? Tom was nowhere near me. How did they get him too?" Dumbledore is silent. He holds a mirror to her face and gently pushes her bangs back with his hand. An echo of a ghost of a memory stirs within her mind and she wonders if rips in the timeline do not mend themselves after all, in some way.

"How…" She whispers, but she knows. When an Avada Kedava is preformed on someone who another has died to protect, a sacrifice of love it leaves a scar and kills the caster. Caleb would not have known he was going to die. He was caught off guard, but Tom who searched for decades for immortality…

Tom could never die by accident. Death would never have taken him by accident. The implication of this knowledge is something she does not have the energy to consider. "The terrorists?" she changes the subject, unwilling to dwell on her former guardian. Dumbledore does not question this.

"Dead. Mostly. The others are being rounded up now."

"So, I am the President then."

"For life." Dumbledore nods. He places a package on her nightstand. "These were found on his body." She swallows. It is certain then.

Dumbledore's look tells her that he knows exactly what is inside, and does not exactly disapprove. If anything, there is a hunger in them that is not unfamiliar. She had seen it in Tom's eyes as well.

"For life, huh?"

"Indeed."

The baby is more than a surprise, and the calculations do not make sense, but she supposes that Tom's rise to power had been distracting. Certainly she and Caleb had not been trying…she had never pictured herself as a mother. How could she? What parent had she ever had to look up to?

And certainly poor Caleb was not eager to play a game of chance with his half inbred, pureblood genes. Still, she cannot say that she is entirely unhappy with the infant. If she had ever been lonely before, losing the only two people in her life had left her quite by herself and with too much to dwell on.

Those familiar, Avada Kedavra green eyes though, those unnerve her a bit. This is at least until she admits that nothing is ever impossible, not in her world.

Her world: where girls can grow up and grow young, where nightmares turn into heroes, where evil can produce good, where immortality sits on her nightstand, where the killing curse kills its castors, where memories disappear and reappear, where an orphan can come to rule the world, and a foundling follows him. No nothing is impossible for Hermione Black nee Riddle, The Woman Who Lived. And certainly, nothing is impossible for her son, Thomas Riddle Black.

…and end at a beginning