Hermione Granger, trespasser from the future and Mudblood, might hate him but, Tom Riddle thought with admiration, she played fair. She liked to let him know she could curse him, often by tossing nasty little hexes at his minions, but she hadn't raised a wand to him since she'd promised not to.

Abraxas Malfoy was somewhat the worse for wear, and he was becoming concerned she might actually kill Dolohov.

Well, if that happened, it happened. Some things couldn't be helped.

She also answered any question he asked her. He couldn't be sure, of course, that she wasn't lying. A quick dip into her head had shown him that while she was no master of the art of occlumency she'd picked up a few things; she knew enough to make him have to do the unheard of and trust her. It wasn't a feeling he liked and one he didn't intend to have to endure with anyone else in all of what he meant to be a very long life.

"The horcruxes were a mistake." She had opinions as well. "Bad enough to make one - "

"Three," he interrupted her.

"But seven was too many. I'm not sure, of course, whether it was the soul-splitting that made you unstable, or being incorporeal for so many years, but it you made too many. One is really enough."

"Three," he said again.

"So you have fail safes now." She regarded him seriously. "Don't make any more. The snake was - will be - a particularly dumb idea."

"I turn a mortal snake into a repository for a fragment of my soul?" Tom couldn't quite believe that.

"I did say you were unstable."

She also gloated.

They were sitting on one of Malfoy Manor's many patios. Abraxas, despite the witch's tendency to point her wand in his direction, had supplied her with a seemingly endless wardrobe, and she had softened toward him ever so slightly in response. This had not worked out well for Antonin Dolohov but her antipathy toward that particular Death Eater had given Tom the opportunity to admire her curse work. She was, he had to admit, fetching when she swept the man out of her way with little more than a flick of her wand, slamming him into cabinets and doorways. "You look lovely today," Tom said. She'd rifled through all the dresses Abraxas had procured and opted for high waisted trousers with a wide belt and a shirt that teased with the possibility it might be translucent if the light hit it properly. So far the light hadn't so hit it but he found that hope did, indeed, spring eternal.

That he was starting at a woman's curves disconcerted Tom Riddle far more than it should and he tried to solve that problem by leaning forward and running his fingers through the hair she'd allowed utter freedom. "Very lovely," he added.

"Do you have to always be touching me?" Hermione Granger demanded. "That isn't part of our bargain and has nothing to do with my trying to steer you into being somewhat less violent."

Tom ran a finger over her pouting mouth before he took his hand away and leaned back, ignoring the fact that touching her, far from ending his unwanted fascination with her appearance, had made blood rush to bits of himself that seemed insufficiently under control. "I'd stop if you didn't like it," he said.

She wiped a hand over her mouth with a shudder. "I don't," she said.

"You're lying, and it would make you less interesting if it weren't about this particular subject," Tom said. "But no matter. Tell me more about the incorporeal thing."

He watched her shift in the chair and hid his smile. She blinked too often. She looked away. She moved her weight from one side to the other. About the horcruxes she was telling the complete and utter truth; in her world he'd made too many, including a choice of vessel so poor he had to believe he did indeed lose his mind. No more horcruxes; he didn't want to risk insanity. Eternal life as a raving fool had no appeal.

About his touch, however, she was lying. She could barely keep herself from leaning into his hand. She hated him, that was true, but he fascinated her and the woman was drawn to the interesting and the complicated.

"Odi et amo," he murmured.

"What?" she asked sharply.

"A Muggle poet," he said with a shrug. "We had a relentless would-be Latin master at the orphanage and some things one does not forget, especially when the less poetic end of the language turns out to be useful for spell creation. Not important. Incorporeal, remember?"

"You try to kill a child prophesied to destroy you," she began.

"A wise enough move," he said.

"And his mother throws herself in your way."

He frowned. "People do that all the time," he said. "I don't mean to be obtuse here, Hermione, but, despite romantic stories to the contrary, sacrificial love doesn't really accomplish anything. If mothers who died for their children turned me incorporeal, I'd be such already."

She gave him a look of loathing mixed with fear. "It worked for her," she said. "Perhaps there were mitigating factors. Maybe you'd made some vow that got tangled up in the whole mess. I don't know. I can only tell you what happened. You try to kill Harry and his mother dies but he's unharmed and you end up a spirit."

"Harry," he said the name slowly, wrapping his tongue around it. This was valuable information indeed, and something she probably hadn't meant to let slip. "Thank you, my love. Harry."

"I am not your love," she spit out.

"Near enough," he said. "My only love sprung from my - "

"Nor do I flatter myself I am your only hate," she said. "You hate the birds for flying, you hate the - "

"I don't," he said. "Why envy birds when flying is simple."

"Brooms are uncomfortable," she countered.

He looked at her and began to smile. "So don't use one," he said. "I don't."

"We are not all Tom Riddle, magician extraordinaire," she said.

Tom leaned back and tilted his head up so he could look at the sky. "Why do you let them tell you how to do magic?" he asked. He'd meant to needle her but found he was genuinely curious. She was certainly powerful enough to not need the crutches of spell books and pre-made magical items. "If you don't want to fly, don't. But if you do, don't refuse because some charmed object doesn't please you." He closed his eyes and feigned sleep. "Or are you just another one of Hogwarts' formulaic witches, good at following recipes but nothing else?"

He could hear her stand up and move toward him but, trusting her promise, he kept his eyes closed and his muscles relaxed until he felt water streaming down over his head. He sputtered and gasped and opened his eyes to see the witch floating - almost flying - in front of him, pouring the pitcher fro their table onto him. He began to laugh and, reaching forward, yanked her onto his lap. Unstable in air she'd just begun to even think about manipulating, she fell forward and he found his mouth at her skin as her weight pressed into his legs. He put his hands around her back to keep her from falling backward onto the stone pavers; if she cracked her head open now he'd lose all the other knowledge of the future she had hidden away. "You are a rotten woman," he said, breathing in her scent. "How will I get dry now?"

"Magic?" she suggested with an arch smirk.

He licked his lips before he pressed them to her neck. "Magic," he agreed. Her skin was cool under his touch and the hands she had on his shoulders to steady herself curled into claws that dug into him as he ran his tongue along her skin. He waited for her to pull herself away from him but she didn't for a long, long moment. He could almost hear the blood racing in her veins, could hear her breath get shorter and faster and he tasted her skin. She was salt and fury and power and something else.

A puzzle.

He stood up and helped her to her own feet. "You have been most helpful today, Miss Granger," he said. "You are quite right that I should stop with three horcruxes and, apparently, avoid babies named Harry."

She shuddered. "I think I'll go lie down," she said. "Helping the devil makes me a little queasy."

He caught her wrist in his grip. "As you lie down, think about how you didn't object to my touch," he suggested.

"Think about how you willingly touched a Mudblood," she countered before she strode off.

He watched her walk away and murmured, "Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior." Mr. Callahan would have been pleased by how well he remembered the poem. Catullus 85, as he recalled. Funny how things could stick in the brain only to bubble up when they became relevant.

. . . . . . . . . .

The way Antonin Dolohov scurried back into a room when he saw her stalking down the hall almost made Hermione smile. She'd once heard him hiss to one of the other Death Eaters, "What did I ever do to her?" and the urge to say, "You cursed me in the Department of Mysteries when I was fifteen and left a scar that will never heal," had made her mouth twitch open but she remained unsure exactly what she was doing with the way she was poisoning the timeline and informing Dolohov of anything seemed unwise.

Things were already different.

Tom Riddle already didn't plan to make more horcruxes.

She might have spared Harry a lifetime of being hunted by a madman. That was worth something, wasn't it? That made cooperating with Lord Voldemort okay, didn't it?

She rubbed at her forehead and pushed open the door to her room - to Tom's room? to, Merlin forbid, their room? - and then kicked it shut behind her. She hated how much she liked the man's simple taste; the room was soothing and pleasant and close to perfect. All the boys she'd known had decorated by affixing posters of Quidditch teams and banners from school sports events to their walls. Harry had made, at best, a token effort at cleaning out the debris left behind in Grimmauld Place and had then settled in to a cheerful bachelorhood of take away pizza, paper plates, and belching contests with Ron.

She loved them but sometimes they made her want to scream with just how idiotic they were. How childish. She chalked it up to post-war recovery; none of them had gotten to be children when they were in school and now that the world was safe they were taking the opportunity to be as immature as possible. Ginny had been unsympathetic to her complaints. "You've got a stick up your arse," she'd said. "Take it out before you marry Ron or you'll both be miserable."

Hermione flung herself down on the bed, pushing her shoes off with her toes, and wondered what she was doing. She'd told herself that if she could steer Tom Riddle away from his insanity she'd be able to make the world better. Failing that, she'd go back to trying to kill him. She just wished he didn't have to be so charming.

So pretty.

Why did he have to be so pretty? Why did he have to hold her chair at dinner with a courtesy she'd never experienced and smile at her with that mocking tilt to his lips when she seemed surprised? Why did he have to pour pearls into her hands and goad her to push her magic further instead of calling her a swot and groaning about how she wasn't any fun and didn't she want to hear more about Quidditch?

It wasn't fair for a monster to be clever and charming and it wasn't fair for a monster to listen to her and it wasn't fair for a monster to make her skin bloody well burn when he lay his fingers against it. "You love Ron," she muttered to herself. "Brave, noble, virtuous, heroic Ron." She reached a hand up and wiped her mouth again, as if she could undo the memory of his touch on her lips. "I hate and I love indeed," she said. "As if I could be impressed with a little Latin poetry."

She rolled onto her side and hid her face into the pillow. She was stuck in the past with a brilliant and dangerous man but she was dangerous and brilliant herself and she'd feed him just enough information to change his path. She'd steer him toward something less deranged, less violent. She'd play on his contempt for his underlings and his fear of losing his mind and make him, well, not good. Nothing and no one would ever make Tom Riddle good.

He was nothing like Ron. Nothing like Ron, who she loved and missed.

Nothing like Ron, who would never quote Latin poetry at her.

She wiped her hand across her mouth again.

She was doing the right thing. A world with Tom Riddle as a functional person could only be better. He could be a politician. Merlin knew that after the war she was quite aware how many politicians were little more than functional sociopaths anyway. He'd fit right in.

It would be fine.

. . . . . . . . . . . .

Catullus 85

Odi et amo. quare id faciam, fortasse requiris?
nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.

I hate and I love. Perhaps you ask why I do this?
I do not know, but I feel it happen and I am torn apart.