Heyy! Well done to all those who guess the founders, spot on! But the boy… well all shall be revealed! That's to my many reviews and those who have favourited or followed my story; I can't believe I'm at chapter 10! It's a miracle. Thank you all for the support and ideas, please feel welcome to do so again if possible. So just wanted to thank you all!
This starts from when Tom left for Dumbledore, and may get a bit hectic but all straws should pull together at the end and make a clear picture for you all, if not fell free to ask any questions!
I do not own Harry Potter!
Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore sat in his Transfiguration office listening to Tom Riddle, the future Dark Lord panicking about some writing on the wall. It was… startling how much he could actually feel, a man who was supposed to take over the world and slaughter thousands of innocents.
"Professor you heard what it said! What does it mean? You should take a look Sir! Quickly follow me!" the young boy startled the aging Professor by pulling him to his feet and rushing out the door leaving him trailing behind. Tom had said Hermione had been with him but where was she now? If anyone out of the two would go to him it would be her. Where was she?
Tom turned the corridor expecting to find Hermione waiting for him but all he found was an empty deserted corridor with the blood written writing still dripping down the wall. Where was she? "Professor here it is but… Hermione has disappeared Sir."
"I expect she had to do something very important." Dumbledore said turning to look at the wall straight ahead. His eyebrows shot up. Yes he knew what the centaurs and magical creatures around the castle called her, but the knowledge they possessed that only he had only ever slightly touched on. This person knew her probably.
"Send a Patronus immediately Tom, I think Hermione might be in danger!"
"I-I can't Sir, I have never been able to do a Patronus…" Albus nodded his head and raised his wand performing the spell causing a great phoenix to emerge and fly away.
"Maybe we should follow it Sir?"
"You go ahead Tom I must inform the school, keep a look out for Miss Granger."
"Why does Dumbledore naturally call her Granger?" Tomthought cynically, wandering what he was missing out on.
The phoenix trailed ahead slowly waiting for him to catch up so he ran after it as it delved through walls and twisted quietly and swiftly around corners. It was leading him to the 2nd floor he realised, specifically in the direction of the bathroom. "No! How could she be there?"
The light trail it left was the only thing he saw as he ran into the bathroom. The beautiful ghostlike phoenix darted down the open entrance to the Chamber of Secrets. How was it possible? He ran quickly through his ancestors hide away, ignoring all the things he had usually been fascinated with until he came to the main chamber, the one that housed his Basilisk behind the wall with Slytherins carving on it. But before that lay a body, small in form, dressed in the uniform.
Their dark hair flowing out around them, creating a dark halo that circled their too pale face.
Hermione.
Next to her lay a much better looking young child, flushed and between the land of the living and the unconscious. Starting to stir, he looked up in confusion at the body that lay beside him and started shaking her, her violet piercing eyes opened warily as she turned over and grabbed the boy checking him for injuries. She looked around and spotted him, trying with great difficulty to get up, all her energy sapped.
"Tom, you have to-have to get him out of here quick-quickly." She sounded so tired, so lifeless. "Get him away from here!" she sluggishly started pushing the boy in the direction of Tom who grabbed his still unsteady form. "What about you?"
"I'll be fine, go now!" she raised her wand and blasted them all the way to the start of the chamber as she clambered to be feet slowly. Her energy was being sucked from her, taken leaving her almost unresponsive. But it was worth it, if she died now.
Harry James Potter would have a future.
"Welcome Omega…" they spoke together as one entity, all stood over the young boy with raven coloured hair.
"Who is the boy?" she said impatiently, moving closer while equipping her wand.
"Why don't you know? He should look familiar..." said Rowena Ravenclaw smirking majestically.
"NO! You can't! Leave him alone! Please!" she screamed running to his almost lifeless body. She couldn't let him die! Not him!
"We have no choice, like the diary of Tom Riddle; we need the life force of another to sustain our own."
"But you're the founders; you protect the students of Hogwarts!" Hermione cast the strongest shielding spell she knew and reinforced it with the new Time magic. Trying anything to stop the magic leaking out of the child.
"Sacrifice is for the greater good." Where had she heard that before? So many times it had been used for the wrong reasons.
"Who gives you the right to choice what is for the greater good, you have been dead for over 2 millennia!"
"Yes but we have always been here, watching, waiting for you." They said together as one circling her and the boy, raising their wands to the slight shimmer in the air.
"Please leave him alone!" she could lose him, it wasn't fair! If he was gone… she shivered dreadfully at the thought.
"We could transfer the drain to you but you would die Omega."
"Yes! Yes! I accept! I ACCEPT!" she screamed looking around frantically at their faces, shock and smirks appeared on their features, she realised that this was a trap. A trap for her, and she had been caught.
"Step out of the circle." She did so with no trepidation, no regret, she would die if it came to it for this boy.
Charlus Potter. Harry's grandfather. Kill him and there was no Harry Potter. No hope.
A chant started between the four each purposely locking eyes with the other, the different colours of their magic mixed together around her, inside her and she felt so high, like a bird, floating around freely. Then it stopped.
She could feel it leaving her, her magic seeping away to them as they grinned manically, these couldn't be the founders? Could they?
"Who-who sum-summoned you? They must have summoned you."
"Ah! The great Grindelwald himself."
Had she heard that correctly or was she already losing her mind before she lost her life? The founders were brought back by Grindelwald? What happened to Bravery? Loyalty? Intelligence? Cunning? Where had the original founders gone? The ones that made the school to protect and teach their students.
"We know what you are thinking Hermione Granger. Time had altered us each day since our deaths. You see we each caught a small piece of Time before, nothing as strong as you, no nothing at all. But we ingrained it in out very magical essence, it backfired and that is how he could summon us from the dead. With you."
"H-how?" her eyes started to droop.
"Your blood of course. You have a traitor around you. A follower of Grindelwald."
"How do you know about my past, the future?"
"We were dead, we did not exist in time anymore so we saw all that ever was and all that ever will be. It was beautiful, like staring into Time itself and drawing a map of all that ever was. We could rewrite history! Kill the Gods, destroy worlds! The power we had as immortals we shall have here on Earth when you die and give Time to us again."
She had to get Charlus out of here, save him from these… twisted monsters. She had always been told that power corrupts even the truest of hearts; she had never believed it till now. The founders themselves had been corrupted by power.
Her eyes closed as her magic seeped from her pores twisting around until it hit one of the four entities. They weren't the original founders. Only a twisted copy.
She was going to die down here.
Yes, she would see Harry again. And his future self would be safe because of her sacrifice.
What had Dumbledore said when she met him in the light after death? "So you chose to save them? To sacrifice yourself for them?" Yes, they would be safe when she died.
She hadn't expected to be found until Harry opened the Chamber in Second Year by then she would be long dead, just a rotting corpse. Maybe not even that, just a pile of bones. But Tom Riddle had to come down and spoil it! She already knew she was going to die; well at least Charlus would be safe. He had shaken her back to reality until she sent him to Riddle so she would get up, die duelling and rest peacefully for eternity in the Chamber. It was so simple.
The founders hadn't expected him which was unusual, they said to have mapped out time but he had been a missing piece. Her mind was too foggy to think it over. She had heard spells being thrown until she was grabbed and picked up. Her eyesight fuzzy, she could just picture out Riddle with his wand threatening the person holding her. Merlin this was all such a hassle. Why couldn't they just let her die?
"Hermione, you must stay awake! Don't close your eyes and fall to sleep. You will die if you do." Riddle said emotionally for once.
"Is-its ok. They're waiting for me Tom, just like I have been waiting for them." She shut her eyes again ignoring his pleas for her to stay awake.
"The rest are dead! Only I Salazar Slytherin behold the power of Time. The Omega is mine!" the voice behind her cackled. Omega? She was so tired. Where had she heard that before? Firence? No… Firenze? Yes! That was it. He had said something to her… about the end was it? "Omega?" she had asked. "I shall see you in the end." He had replied.
So she wasn't supposed to die today, but what about the boys, they were waiting. She wanted to be with them all again, would it matter if she died now? No she couldn't break the Prophesy they had made about her; she wouldn't die today even if she tried.
It seemed luck was always going to be against her, she couldn't even die when she wanted to. Riddle was still calling to her, her subconscious picking up on it while her mind worked on other things. She bet he had questions. For later of course.
How to get rid of Dark Magic? Maybe the simplest of magic would work? The purest there was. A Patronus.
"Riddle. Riddle. P-Patronus. Patron-nus." She stuttered as her throat was choked by the strong arm of the evil asshole behind her. He was trying to kill her quicker.
She waited for a while expecting the bright lights of the charm but nothing happened, forcing her to open her eyes to the defeated form of Tom Riddle, sprayed out on the ground. Slytherin chuckled darkly behind her. Using all her remaining energy she slammed her elbow into his gut so he would let go and stumbled to the ground as he reached to grab her hair. Using all the magic left in her body, she created the first ever wandless Patronus charm. As her eyes drifted closed she saw all of them there to protect her. The Stag, the Jack Russell, her Otter, the Hare, the Bore, the Cat, the Lynx, the Werewolf, she saw everyone's essence fighting to protect her and as she thought she took her last breathe…
She smiled.
She remembered back to her first year when she was crying in the Library, sad that she didn't have any friends, she remembered when she had been saved by Harry and Ron from the troll, when they had gotten through the Devil's Snare, when she was petrified, when she and Harry had saved Sirius and Buckbeak, when she trained Harry for the Triwizard tournament, Dumbledore's Army, Slughorn in Potions when Harry had for the first time beaten her at something, when they had gone camping in the forest looking for evidence of other Horcruxes. She remembered how they all had died after her 2nd capture, the one after Bellatrix had tortured her. How they had dropped off slowly one by one, taking a part of her with them when each one died.
She remembered all the rapes, the tortures, her screams, her calls for Harry and Ron the night when Greyback had found her, she had memorized every moment with them. Hermione smiled in her sleep, she wasn't ever going to forget them like she thought she would.
She compared every simple sexual act she had ever been in or participated in, the good and the bad. She thought that if she slept with others, the pleasure would overcome the pain she had experienced. It did to an extent but she always woke up the night after remembering each detail of every rape she had ever experienced. After hundreds of men she gave up altogether, she had slept with more men in a year than most did in a lifetime.
She didn't blame him but Harry had started her off, it was the night Ginny had died.
"Harry, she loved you." She said calmly cuddling his frail body to her, stopping the tremors that surfaced every now and again.
"But she's gone. She left me all alone!" he screamed into her chest tears streaming out of his red puffy eyes and staining her shirt.
"She was taken from you Harry, she didn't have a choice. Ginny loved you with all her heart!" she rubbed his back soothingly, her own eyes watering, she wouldn't cry, Harry needed her to be the strong one for once.
"How do I know who will go next? Who will leave me alone next?" he whispered moving to look into her eyes, wanting to see her reaction for the plan he had just thought off.
"You don't, but you must live in the moment, have no regrets." She had said the perfect answer. He quickly closed his eyes and kissed her deeply. "Harry…"
"Please."
"But what-"
"Please Hermione."
She knew he was only after the physical contact, so he would know she was there. He would regret it in the morning, she would probably too. He was asking so much of her, not knowing that she was pregnant, that she didn't want such male contact yet but for once this was what he needed. To know she was there.
She deepened the kiss and grabbed his hand dragging him to the bed and laying down so he could climb on top. It wasn't fair of him to use her like this; she had done so much for him. They quickly unclothed.
After he had finished she lay in bed thinking back on it, Ron was out so that was fine, Harry was asleep next to her and for once she felt peaceful, he had been nice to her, gentle unlike any other experience she had endured before. Sex was good.
After that night she took advantage of any male contact she could get and she and Harry never discussed it again, though he did question her if he was the father of what would later be called Rose. She told him she was about 3 months along when they had shagged so he calmed down quickly. Male contact was pleasurable, nothing like what had happened at the Manor, only Draco had ever been gentle with her there.
She liked it for once. Hermione wasn't sure if she wanted to hit Harry for what he had forced her to do or thank him because it gave her a new light on it all. But after Rose was born, she didn't sleep around as often as she did before, only when she had the chance, not like before when she went searching for it. Rose gave her a new meaning to life.
Until she was taken away and Hermione was raped again.
And again and again…
Tom watched her sleep in the hospital bed, making sure she didn't fall out of bed with all her rolling and twisting. She was so interesting to watch. He had attempted Legilimency multiple times with only one success, he wished he hadn't though. She had been remembering all her… sexual experiences through out her life. He needed to talk to her though, she was around her age now when she was first… active. If that was the right word for it. She had had sex so many times, been raped triple that, only a select few, about 60, carved their initials on her thigh, meaning there had to be hundreds of them in total.
Normally he would of thought such a person a whore, a slut, any foul name he could think of but he had experience them along side her. Felt what she felt, heard what they called her. It was bloody horrific. He hated the fact that she had turned to sex as an escape, it had all been that raven-haired boy that started it, using their friendship to get some action after his love had died. "Poor Hermione, being used like that."
He understood why she had done it but every time he had closed his eyes and tried to block out the screams… or moans. It was quite weird for him as he was a virgin, know that the person he wanted had been used, used others and experienced things that he had not.
In the real world away from her mind he had so much to ask her about; when he had regained consciousness he had found her almost dead being guarded by about 20 different Patronuses. He had been absolutely speechless.
He had to carry her all the way to the hospital wing worrying that she had already died. She was so pale, so cold, and so beautiful. He thought at that moment when he entered the hospital wing that he loved her. He had never loved anyone before, it felt so foreign yet so right. She was perfect for him in every way, beautiful, compassionate, caring, and intelligent, just so… Hermione.
But he knew that she would not love him back. Yet. He would stay as her friend until she was ready and that probably wouldn't be for a long time, but he could wait, would wait for her.
After 4 days out she woke up still exhausted, but shouting a quick "Charlus!" Tom bolted from his seat next to her bed and grabbed onto her hand.
"Hermione, I can't believe you're awake."
"Charlus! Is he alright?"
"Yes, he is already out of the hospital wing and back in lessons."
She stumped back into her scratchy bed smiling and closed her eyes. "Hermione?"
She sighed and opened an eye to stare at him, angry that he wouldn't let her return to her adventures with the boys. "Yes Riddle?"
"What happened down there, wait how did you even get down there?"
"Magic."
"Hermione!"
"I can not tell you under threat of breaking a magical oath." A lie but it would do to stall him for a while.
"Lie, magical oaths have not been used in over 300 years and no one knows how to complete them." or not it seemed.
"I can't tell you Tom, it will ruin things that have already been set in motion."
"Well tell me who they were and who sent them!" what a tricky question.
"The founders, they were sent by… Grindelwald, he is still after me." Not the complete truth but she was supposed to have survived Grindelwald so adding that he was after her was probably ok. Why had he sent the founders back to drain her? Did he know it was her that was Time? Or just a student?
"The founders?"
"Yes look Tom, I'm really tired, wait do you have my bag?" she shot up out of bed scanning the room for her possessions.
"You mean this." He held up her rucksack, open and still intact. "You have very odd things in here, a horrid cloak and a useless piece of parchment, some pictures, potions and other odd things. Tell me about them please?" he sat next to the bed on his chair and placed the bag next to here on the bed.
"Those things are private and mine, how did you get past my wards?"
"You have been out for 4 days now Hermione, it took me 3 just to work out what you had placed on it; I had to regrow a finger… twice!" he waved his perfectly intact hand in front of her smiling broadly. "Your magical skills are superb by the way."
"Thank you." She said with a curt nod.
"So… what are they?"
"Secret."
"Please Hermione?" he sounded just like Harry did that night, she flinched away and he look at her understandingly. He knew.
"You shouldn't have had to do that for him."
"You shouldn't have been in my memories, what else have you seen?"
"Nothing else I promise, only the things that caused you the most distress. He shouldn't have done that to you."
"I know but I had the choice in the end."
"It wasn't right."
"I knew that at the time as well."
Silence filled the air as he stared at her, making her feel like he could see her very soul. It was hard to ignore his piercing green eyes that followed her every action.
"So… How's Voldemort?" she winced, that wasn't the best small talk she had thought up of.
"Well I suppose." He smirked after catching her small action.
"I'm tired. Go away?" he chuckled at her pitiful whimper attempt to make him leave, what she didn't know was that he had been sleeping here, in that very chair, to make sure she was alright.
"Ok but I sleep in the bed next to you. You know I was in a battle not that many days ago." He said pompously rolling his eyes and toeing his shoes off as he sat on the bed next to her that was only cornered off by a curtain.
"Night Mr Riddle." He chuckled darkly.
"Goodnight Miss Delacour."
He listened to her change in breathing over the next hour as she drifted off to sleep. As he closed his eyes and started to fall himself he was disturbed by the sound of hooves entering the wing. "Strange." he thought. Muttering could be heard coming from the creatures until a distinctive "Omega! Wake up!" could be heard over the top of all the background noise.
Hermione moaned in protest and turned over until her blanket was stolen from her causing an instant reflex of grabbing her wand and the throat of the attacker. "O-Omega!"
She instantly let go of the foal and replied a quick "Sorry Firenze."
Tom was surprised, startled, shocked! Hermione was the Omega on the wall and the one the founders and Grindelwald himself wanted, plus she was in contact with the Centaurs, a race that hadn't interacted with humans in over 3 millennia. She was extraordinary!
"I heard what happened from the elders, they had seen it with their powers, I don't actually understand them, and wanted to check you were alright, I knew you wouldn't die but you could have been hurt. Oh and they said to pass on a message to you."
"Thank you young foal, I am alright. What is the message?"
"The elders were talking long and hard about this, it went on for hours before they made up their minds. When the moon is at its fullest and the rivers run high, you must kill the Dark Lord."
"What? But he's just a boy; he doesn't understand what will happen in the future!" "Huh? What is she on about?"
"Not Tom Marvolo Riddle. You, Hermione Jean Granger must defeat Grindelwald."
…
"WHAT!"
Hope you enjoyed the chapter! Feel free to review.