A/N: Thanks for your comments as always :)

~oOo~

Hermione needed a plan, needed to research – so, naturally, there was only one place she thought to go. First thing on Saturday morning the library was blissfully quiet, dust swirling aimlessly in the first rays of autumn sunlight streaming in through the leaded windowpanes. She extracted a quill, ink and her longest roll of parchment and began to write hurriedly.

Alchemy. Ancestry. Animagi. Arithmancy. Art. Astronomy.

In the absence of a plan, a list always seemed like a good place to start. There were a lot of subject groups marked between the gold dividers, and some sections she had barely looked at before. Of course, that was without even considering the restricted section, but she would assess all the books out here first. Writing headings down helped her decide which branches of magic might be most important. Somehow she didn't think Quidditch was going to be as useful as Curses, Healing or Spell Creation in the fight against Tom Riddle.

It occurred to her that her first solution to "Problem: Voldemort's Horcruxes" was essentially to read every book in the library, and a wry smile fought its way onto her face. Ron and Harry would have made such fun of her.

She was so engrossed in the process of new research that she barely felt the stab of hurt that always accompanied thinking of her friends.

By the time a few other students had begun to meander in after breakfast, Hermione had copied down all ninety-six subject headings and checked out several tomes on Alchemy and Animagi – starting at the beginning seemed as sensible as anything. On a whim, she also took out The Pure-Blood Directory, because she remembered Tom had been reading it. Know thy enemy.

The weekend passed in a blur of note taking, and soon the first week of October was gone too. Finding a task had turned her empty existence into a frantic whirlwind; time had begun to accelerate again as she stopped counting the days she had been stuck in the past. She would rise early, take breakfast in the kitchens, do homework and research and spellwork practice and lessons and finally fall asleep under a book well after midnight.

October rolled on, the nights lengthening and the first frosts of winter settling over the grounds, and Hermione began to grow tired. A persistent cough began one Tuesday and never stopped, until it was accompanied by a fever that left her weak and shaking. The elves, noticing her growing thinner, were desperate to give her all her favourite things, but she had no appetite and found herself often merely pretending to eat.

By the end of the month, it was becoming difficult to drag herself to classes and hide her illness from the teachers. Still, all she could focus on was the work, telling herself firstly that it was simply a cold, and later on perhaps simply the flu, but either way it would get better eventually.

Halloween was a Monday – double potions in the morning and charms after lunch – and the levitating pumpkins and hordes of bats flying about were doing nothing to combat her dizzy tiredness. Professor Slughorn had been forced to vanish her headache draught after she added chopped valerian root instead of daisy root, and Professor Tofty had nervously suggested that she might prefer to just sit and watch after her Incendio had forced an evacuation of the classroom for several minutes until the smoke cleared.

Since she never attended breakfast or lunch, Hermione forced herself to go down to the Halloween feast, fearing that the teachers would start to notice her absences. The door of her bedroom was now appearing at various different points in the castle, as part of her plan to shake off Tom's possible surveillance, and today she found herself stepping out of it into a dead end of the dungeon corridor.

Seeing no one about, she was just about to remove her disillusionment charm when she heard voices around the next corner. It was Malfoy, presumably accompanied by the other Slytherins. She moved silently to catch up with them out of old habit, though their conversation turned out to consist of nothing more interesting than the upcoming meal. There were no alcoves in this corridor, so she settled for remaining invisible and following along.

A bit further ahead, the passage joined with another which Hermione had recently deduced led to the Hufflepuff common room. Martha Puddifoot, a mousy girl who sometimes partnered her in Defence class, rounded the corner.

Martha was a nondescript sort of child, slightly plump and rather timid. She was obviously daydreaming, because she had almost walked right into Lestrange before she looked up and jumped, startled.

"Sorry!" she squeaked, stepping backwards.

The Lestrange boy, dressed as usual in his immaculate robes and shining leather boots, regarded her with an expression of contempt.

"So you should be." He drew himself up to his full height, sneering. "If my father had his way, your kind wouldn't even be allowed to come here."

Martha looked angry and upset, and her way was now blocked by Malfoy and Burke. Hermione watched her eyes narrow.

"My mother is a witch!" Lestrange sniggered cruelly.

"Is that so? Well, I've never heard of her. She must have been a pretty lousy one, if she had to go and live with a filthy muggle. Or perhaps she was too ugly to get a wizard? Yes… Runs in the family." Malfoy and Burke were sniggering now, and Martha's mouth opened and closed as her bottom lip started to tremble. Hermione noticed Tom, at the edge of the group, clench his fists at his sides.

For a moment, Hermione forgot she was supposed to be twelve, forgot she was no longer a prefect, and forgot she was avoiding Tom. She removed the disillusionment charm and pushed through the group.

"Leave her alone," she said, putting her arm around the other girl and starting to move in the direction of the entrance hall.

"Abraxas! It's your mudblood! Didn't you have something for… it?" Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Malfoy's smirking expression.

"Ah, yes. Just a little present, to say thank you for that night by the Astronomy tower." There were sniggers from the rest of the group, but she didn't turn around, just ushered Martha in front of her and kept walking.

"Go away, Malfoy."

She felt the jet of light hit her, right between the shoulder blades. At first, nothing seemed to be happening, and she had time to form a thought about how typical it was for a Slytherin to have cast while her back was turned. Then she thought at least it wasn't Tom this time, though logically she wasn't really sure why it mattered. Then she thought should I be more worried about this? Am I thinking clearly? I'm so tired. Then, the pain began.

~oOo~

Death used to enjoy the thirty-first of October – at least, as much as any other day. Back, before, he had once celebrated Samhain, and he remembered the firelight and the people gathering, the songs and the food and the shrieks of the small children who truly believed that the malevolent dead were gathered among them. Samhain was a night for tradition, for family and togetherness before the first true bite of winter. Shepherds and cowherds telling tales of a summer in the hills, farmers discussing the year's crop gathered in. Young lovers in the woods, forgotten by their families amid the general frivolity.

He remembered dark hair cascading over pale skin, bared to the autumn moonlight, whispered words, kisses and sighs and shivers becoming cries and whimpers and eternal declarations as the warmth of joined magic melted the forming frost. He remembered a promise, made at the dizzying height of forbidden pleasure. A promise that could never have been kept.

There had been hundreds of Samhains since that particular night. Hundreds of times Death had reached out to the other side, called her name softly, begged her to come to him for even the shortest while. But his love was obstinate, and kept her resolution made so long ago in anger. She did not come to him.

Across the years, Death had watched Samhain become Halloween, until all the traditions of his mortal life were replaced and replaced again. Until children carved pumpkins and carried various strange things made of plastic and electric lights, eating food chemically preserved from last year's harvest on the other side of the world and washing it down with liquid that came in coloured metal tins and smelled like… well, like nothing that could possibly be identified.

The world had moved on, and three hundred and sixty four nights of the year he forced himself to move on with it. But not tonight. Tonight he would gladly let the whole earth burn if only to relive that one evening, so long ago that how could it still hurt this way?

A moving portrait looked mournfully up at him from the arm of his chair, sadly nothing like the beautiful face from his memory.

Mirabella Plunkett (b. 1839) was an English witch who fell in love with a merman. When her family forbade them to marry, she transfigured herself into a haddock and was never seen again.

At any other time, Death would have found endless comedy value in Mirabella's description. On this particular evening, he merely concluded that he, too, would happily turn himself into a fish. If only that were what it took. He flicked the card angrily off the chair arm and into the fire.

~oOo~

Granger had not told anyone about the incident on the lake, and it bothered him like a persistent wasp that came straight back each time it was swatted away. What was she gaining from it? Surely she could not be saving it for blackmail, because who would believe her weeks later? They would simply ask her incredulously why she had not mentioned it at the time. She had turned up for dinner that evening, looking completely normal, and it had taken a while for him to wipe the surprise and confusion from his face.

Since then, she had clearly been avoiding him as carefully as he was avoiding her. They saw each other only in classes, where she rarely spoke and never to him. The rest of the time she made herself scarce, and the several times he had attempted to follow her had been met with a maddening lack of success.

As October wore on, he stopped worrying about the possibility of a punishment. Dumbledore had said nothing, and Tom felt an unprecedented level of smug satisfaction that the old man had not found out. He began to forget Granger and instead turned his attention to his housemates, observing their interactions. They tended to move as a pack, the Fudge boy trailing behind, and they all ignored him where possible. This had been his original intention, but he had just recently begun to see the value in winning them over; family name was important in this world – pure magical heritage. He could do nothing to change his own, could only try to hide it, and one day he would need allies.

One Saturday night, in the dormitory after curfew, he was provided with the perfect idea. The others had probably forgotten he was even there, since his bed curtains were drawn, and the conversation turned towards Granger. It was obviously a discussion they'd had plenty of times before.

"But, Abraxas, what if you got caught?" whined Fudge, and the sound of his voice made Tom fight not to grind his teeth in irritation. He heard Malfoy chuckle.

"Oh, I should think they'd thank me! Hardly anybody really likes the mudbloods – that's what father says. Lots of them have to pretend to, but they'll turn a blind eye to us. Father's a governor, of course, not to mention the largest donor to the school fund. And he's on the Wizengamot. Besides, I won't get caught. I've just got to think of the right thing."

"Are you going to… to kill her?" Fudge's voice quavered nervously.

"Of course I'm not! I'm not stupid, am I? No one could get away with that."

"Father says the time is coming. Minister Fawley is completely unprepared for war." It was a deeper voice, belonging to Lestrange.

"Yes, Einar, we all know how much your father loves Grindelwald." There was a scuffle as Lestrange considered how to respond to the insult, but Malfoy cut him off again. "Calm down, I'm joking. But my father says Grindelwald's going about it all wrong. Too many countries, not enough followers. He'll never be able to win over the Wizengamot, even though the Minister's an idiot."

There was a pause – probably because they can't remember any more of their fathers' opinions, thought Tom snidely. The voice to break the silence was Burke's.

"In the shop, we've got plenty of things that could scare Granger. Or curse her." Tom had often heard Conrad talk about his family's shop. He had not seen it when he had visited Diagon Alley, and was now very curious.

"You'll never get away with that," said Lestrange, "Remember what happened last time one of your father's things was found here. Dumbledore nearly had him sent to Azkaban."

The ensuing uneasy murmurs informed Tom of two things: firstly, that his dislike of Dumbledore was shared by the others, and secondly, that the place called Azkaban had the ability to totally kill a conversation. He made a mental note to find out about it.

"You could slip her a potion," piped up Fudge, after a while.

"What potion, idiot? How am I going to brew a potion without someone noticing? Where am I going to get the ingredients, how am I going to give it to her? Don't be stupid." Peeking around the bed curtains, Tom saw Fudge quail under Abraxas' withering stare.

"Curse her yourself," suggested Dolohov, who rarely spoke and hence was Tom's favourite of the bunch.

"Yes, quite." Malfoy's voice was clipped. "What curse?"

The ideas ranged from the banal to the utterly ridiculous, and Tom stopped listening. He began to see a way into the group, and their regard, with a side benefit of punishing Granger. It was too good to miss. He waited for Fudge to make another particularly stupid suggestion, then pushed the curtains aside and interrupted.

"I know the right curse."

Fudge looked angry, Burke and Lestrange dubious, Dolohov expectant, Malfoy surprised. He relished the few seconds of silence, of power, while all heads were turned to him. He let a conspiratorial smile form about his lips.

Tom raised his arm, palm facing up, and basked in their rapt attention as a ball of light formed in his open hand. A casual flick of the wrist sent it hurtling towards Fudge, and the round boy let out a squeak of surprise but had no time to move out of the way before he was hit in the chest.

Silence, while everyone wondered if something was going to happen.

"Is that the best you can do, Ridd–" Lestrange's sneering insult was left to hang in the air as Fudge emitted a piercing scream.

Tom glanced dispassionately at the irritating boy, who had fallen off the bed and was now writhing on the floor. After a while, since he was getting bored and sensed his point had been made, he ended the spell. Fudge gasped, spluttered and retched, plastering a nearby rug with the contents of his stomach.

When Tom emerged from the bathroom ten minutes later, Fudge's bed curtains were drawn but did nothing to muffle the sniffling sounds coming from within. He sneered; even Amy Benson had coped better than that. Still, it was useful to have a test subject, because it would be clearly detrimental to his longer term goals to have to curse Malfoy or Lestrange… too often, anyway.

They were all desperate to learn the spell, of course. Just like that, they were hooked, drunk on the promise of knowledge and power and not once thinking of his muggle connections. How very simple it was, to bend them to his will.

Teaching them the spell, on the other hand, was utterly not-simple. Imbeciles, the lot of them, raised on wand magic and incantations. Somewhere at the back of his mind he could see Granger's small form, sat beneath a tree, and hear her pensive voice: we learn to understand our own magic in a way they never do. She was right, of course. But there was nothing to be gained siding with the… mudbloods. He tried the word inside his head, rolled it around. The way to win was to fit in with these powerful families, let them think he agreed with them, have them accept him into the fold. Granger was nothing.

Hours later, only Dolohov had managed the beginnings of the ball of light, much to Malfoy's anger. They tried again the next night, and the next, and the next. As every day passed with him possessing a skill they could not master, so their respect and their dependence on him grew. He could not have planned it better.

In the end, Abraxas had come to him, choking on his pride, and begged him to be the one to cast the spell. Said he would be in his debt, he wouldn't forget it, Granger deserved to be punished. Checkmate.

Abraxas even told him that Granger must think that he was the caster – that he didn't want word to get round that he couldn't manage a spell. You mean, you'll have to take the blame if we get caught. Tom tamped down on his manic grin and forced out a serious expression. Having powerful friends was going to be even easier than he thought.

~oOo~