Horcrux.
It was written on her list, but should it be?
Horcrux.
She remembered what it was like wearing the locket. She remembered the strain, the constant dark thoughts that whispered in your ear all the time. Ron had definitely been the first to crumple under the pressure. Then again, Harry did almost let it drown him. What if Ron was right?
No, these ones were broken. They couldn't be affecting her. The crystalline cases were made to contain any residual magic.
She didn't feel any different. Her sleep was as subpar as it was since the days of being in the Forest of Dean.
No lost time or memory lapses.
Horcrux.
She knew what Ron would think. Harry had already told her his opinion. She needed to step away.
As if she could stop right now.
She tried to remember how much dark magic she felt the first time she held the diary. After all these years, she didn't recall much.
You're projecting your research on a snake, McGonagall would tell her. You're spending far too much time studying such morbid, terrible matters. Cherish the living you still have, Miss Granger.
Horcrux.
But she's wrong, she had to be. Tom was not an ordinary snake. There had been an explanation. Just because she couldn't see the magic or understand it, didn't mean it wasn't there.
"Hermione?"
The brunette startled out of her thoughts with a visible jolt. Onyx eyes watched her from the floor space in front of the coffee table. She was taken back by how much concern could inflected in one simple word. Tom had never said anything to her about her ambush assault several days ago. Briefly, she wondered if he was unaware of what she did to him or perhaps he just shielded those thoughts like so many others. She suspected the latter.
"Sorry," She muttered automatically.
"You've been staring at that paper for quite some time," Tom pointedly out leadingly.
Hermione swallowed and glanced down. Unlike most times where she had a spread of patient files out or a musty old tome, she held one piece of parchment this time. Her fingers twiddled with her quill anxiously while she looked at it. Among the few possibilities that weren't crossed out, the last read said Horcrux.
"Do you believe you have a soul, Tom?" She stared out the window while the words rolled over her lips lightly.
Tom hesitated before replying, "Of course."
Too smooth, too confident.
"But how are you sure?" Her expression was blank, almost indifferent, save for a raise of her eyebrow.
Tom's body coiled that time. Briefly, she wondered if he was a man, would he shift anxiously in his seat when he was uncomfortable or would it be a controlled tic.
"I can feel it. Don't you feel yours?"
Smooth deflection, even she had to admit. She sighed, tired of the half answers. The small truths that told her very little about her companion that had been living with her for several months now.
"I remember what it felt like the first time I was called Mudblood," The vile word didn't make her flinch like it used to. She commented on it idly, as if merely talking about the overcast sky outside. It would snow soon. "When I learned what I meant, I wanted to understand what it meant. I pulled every book I could find in the library. I wanted to know why I had magic and why other people didn't. What made me different from a Muggle? What made a Pureblood so pure?"
Her eyes only flickered back to Tom briefly to see if he was listening. He was. She continued on, "I couldn't find anything that made sense. I went home that summer and started studying biology and anatomy." She remembered how much her parents were considered by the way she spent the holiday indoors instead of outside.
"I spent so much time trying to understand what made us and them different. You know what I found?" She didn't wait for Tom to answer her. "Nothing. Genetically, there is no difference between a witch and a Muggle. It got me thinking then… if the difference isn't in our bodies, it must be in something else. It had to be in something else."
She leveled her eyes on Tom with an indifferent mask. "I started researching souls after I learned about horcruxes."
If she was expecting a gasp or a shout, she didn't get it. She wasn't even convinced that Tom was breathing. The snake could've been petrified for all she knew at this point.
"You know what those are," Her statement wasn't a question. "I've seen you staring at them, over and over." You're almost as obsessed as I am, she thought, but please let be me wrong.
"Yes." The response simple and fleeting in her mind, promising no more.
She closed her eyes for a moment. She didn't let herself feel relieved that she hadn't been simply paranoid.
"I wanted to understand the power of life and death," She continued in a detached manner. "I wanted to know why some souls stayed here, why some moved on. I had so many questions." Was it so wrong to seek knowledge? She rose up from her seat and approached the bookcase. "And then we started to destroy Voldemort's horcruxes." Her fingers glided over the box that covered the locket. "Have you ever seen a horcrux destroyed?" She turned to the unmoving snake.
His response was terse, "No."
"I have," She thought about the force and power behind each one she witnessed. It wasn't as simple as destroying an inanimate object. Something dark, beautifully twisted was released each time. "It made me realize there's so little we understand about not just how horcruxes are created, but splitting the soul. I kept them to study them." She picked up the box wrapped around the diary. The crystal glittered even in the low light. "Harry, Ron and I had more experience with horcruxes without actually creating one after the war than anyone in Britain." We owed it to ourselves to learn more, she had justified to herself. Of course Harry and Ron weren't interested. Harry wanted to move on and began creating the family he never had almost immediately. Ron tried to forget in a drink while between going back and forth with Lavender. He eventually settled down when she was expecting.
"I started helping at St. Mungo's after the war, helping treat the war victims and orphans. Soon I started getting letters from other hospitals. It was when I was traveling that I started to do my own research. After seeing the way the Ministry controlled the Prophet, I wondered what other information I would find outside. I found information in other countries that would make the Ministry whimper." After all, how many times was she frustrated by her access to books being restricted, even in the Hogwarts Library?
"For so long, I had thought that Herpo the Foul and Voldemort were the only one that created horcruxes," She gave a humorless snort, staring at the blacken stains on the diary. "They weren't even close… bayou witch doctors, shamans… there was one I don't even know his real name, but they called him the Dragon. He split his soul into three Chinese Fireballs." Her lips gave a dark smirk. Imagine trying to stab one of those with a Basilisk fang! "And the Mayan priests, their rituals would make you shudder."
She took a deep breath, realizing she was getting carried away. She could feel the simmering of something in Tom's thoughts, but nothing discernible came out. It was like feeling the heat of water that you knew would scorch if you touched it.
With a controlled exhale, she clutched the diary tightly in her hands and stared at Tom. "It'll be much more pleasant for the both of us if you tell me the truth, Tom," She warned him in a voice that sounded like a gentle prayer. "Are you a horcrux?"
The snake rose, coiling back in a movement somewhere between shrinking from her and tensing for a strike. There was plenty of room between them, but yet he also knew she could draw her wand before he even made it for the door.
"Maybe," He thought reluctantly.
"Maybe?" She raised a cool eyebrow.
"He, I…" Tom stuttered before catching himself and collecting his thoughts. "I made them before I knew what they were."
Hermione narrowed her eyes. Her knuckles were white, trying to keep her hands from shaking. Such a simple statement invoked a flurry of gut twisting knots at all of their implications.
"You didn't know what you were doing when someone died?" She repeated dubiously. Murder was a pretty distinctive event. Not exactly something like missing a doctor's appointment.
"Not at the time," His tone took a defensive, but condescending sneer. "A foolish girl strayed into a path where she didn't belong… Surely your spells and curses have never missed their mark, Hermione?"
She frowned at the dripping sarcasm. An accident, he suggests. If she was to be frank with herself, even she wasn't sure if someone had died as a result of her magic. Thinking of all the fights, most of which she had to run from, with Death Eaters. She couldn't really be sure someone didn't die, regardless of who it was and whether or not they deserved it or worse. That part of his words didn't bother her nearly as much as his complete and utter lack of remorse.
"Them?" She questioned instead. "You said them. You created more than one horcrux?"
An incoherent hiss ran through her mind at that one.
"Tell me, Tom," She demanded harshly. She could feel her magic crackling in the air around her.
Tom lowered his head down. She wondered if he could feel it too.
"I was sixteen. I decided to confront my father," He thought the words with such contempt she began to imagine what his expression would look like if he was still human. "I wanted to know what gave him the right, how disgusting could…" The words of his thoughts muddled.
Hermione struggled to understand it. "What did you do?" She tried to focus him.
"I went to his house. He was eating dinner with his parents. He tried to shut the door in my face."
The unadulterated disdain for family chilled Hermione. She didn't know how to relate to that, of such an opposite upbringing. She could only use her imagination to picture the confrontation and the words that might have ensued. Tom didn't seem to be the type to lead with fists. No, he would strike you down with his words.
"Then he pulled a gun on me."
"Your father was a Muggle?" She couldn't help herself with genuine surprise.
"Yes," His thought spat viciously, before regaining its composure. "Have you ever felt the metal of a barrel pressed to your skin, Hermione?"
His voice and imagery drew goosebumps. She shook her head.
"It makes you realize how just how easily a Muggle can strike you down. They don't even have to be particularly talented or mean it."
She tried to stifle the wince. She knew full well just how much you had to mean it for a Crucatus to work.
"What did you do?" Her lips moved, even though her mind warned where this story was going.
"I panicked," Tom admitted rather frankly. "I drew my wand and threw the first spell that came to mind." The truth was in movements like that, you don't get time to think. There's no repertoire of school notes to draw upon, just muscle reflexes and instincts at a perceived threat.
"Which spell?" She was already imaging three flashes of green, the spinning before the body hits the floor.
"Expulso."
Hermione blinked, taken back at first. Expulso just made objects explode. It was a far spell from Unforgivables. She had even used it several times helping clear large debris from Hogwarts after the battle. But if there was anything the war taught her, magic was simply a tool. It was the intent and how it was used that mattered.
"And," She swallowed thickly, using his words, "did you hit your mark?"
"All three," He replied without flinching.
Looking back on it, she couldn't really recall what went through her mind at that point. There was very little that could've prepared her for the truth. The snake in front of her was a creation of a very real man, a wizard that just admitted to multiple deaths. She did recall the numb way she placed the diary back on the shelf before simply mumbling to Tom, "I think I need a drink."
He didn't do anything to stop the young witch from leaving the room, nearly fleeing. The flat door shut behind her and he didn't bother checking to see if it was locking. He knew better by now. Instead, he slithered to the window curtain and delicately pulled himself up along the sheer fabric. Once he was high enough, he could peer out the window and down at the street.
She had made it about twenty yards from the door of the shop before stopping in the middle of the street. Her wild mess of curls tossed over her shoulder as she placed her hands against her knees. She hunched over in a manner torn between wanting to retch and pray to a higher power above.
He knew that poise. It was the poise of someone having very little time to questioning their whole world.
Author's Note: I was on a role with writing today and I just had to get this chapter. Please let me know what you guys think of it!