Tom didn't speak to her for several days after New Year's.
He spent most of his time wrapped up in the nest of blankets. She couldn't see his face, but the few times she got close she got a hiss as a response. He actually made her second guess whether or not she had taken communication potion that month.
About a week later, when she found a shed skin in the living room one morning, she gave him a few hours before deciding enough was enough.
"Tom," Her voice said, crouching next to the blankets, trying to guess where his head was at.
Another irritable hiss.
"I didn't catch that," She retorted dryly.
"Go away," He finally came, rather harshly in her ears.
Stubborn.
Fine, two could be stubborn. "No," She sat down on her rear and folded her legs.
"I mean it, Hermione," His threat wasn't harsh enough to instill any fear in her, or she was just used to them by now.
"And you think I don't?" She shot back hotly. "You can be mad at me all you want, but I'm not going to let you develop retained spectacles under my watch."
His words were slurred into a hiss and she only caught, "Insufferable."
"Now, show me your face," She demanded, holding a warm moist cloth. "Or I'll stupefy you and drag you out from there by your tail."
There was a rustling in the fabric before a reluctant snout poked out of them.
"Come here," She coaxed gently, holding her palm open for him.
She felt him sigh in her mind before the snake moved forward. Gently, she caught him under the chin and tilted his head up so she could inspect his eyes closer. Lightly, she dabbed the cloth at the newly exposed skin.
"How long…" His voice hesitated. "How long would I have if I stayed in this form?"
Hermione frowned thoughtfully, biting her lip as she inspected his face, "Ten, maybe fifteen years."
"And if… I went through with it?"
She tilted his head in the other direction, inspecting the other side for any dead skin tags. His voice sounded, dare she say, vulnerable. It made her uncomfortable.
"Well, I wouldn't go through all that trouble for you to kick it shortly after as an old man," She tried to brush off the feeling with humor. "But if you're really that eager to go through puberty again, I'm sure I could arrange something…"
"Hermione."
Part of her wanted to reassure him that it would be okay. That she would take care of him, but she couldn't and she didn't.
The following day, Hermione installed one of those Muggle telecommunication contraptions on one of the living room end tables. Like that blasted bookcase, the paranoid witch warded it so only she could touch it. Tom figured this out when he tried to nudge it while she was in the shower.
A firm electric shock to the nose later, he was bumping into furniture for hours and couldn't smell a damn thing.
Tom didn't normally question where she went or what she was up to. But the day she came into the flat covered with soot, dust, and something else that caused him to recoil, he had to.
"Where were you?" That stench was old, recently stirred up, he was sure of it.
Hermione stopped her march to the bathroom. She looked down at soiled robes. "Shrieking Shack," She sighed, attempting to brush off more dust from her front. "I cleared out the basement. I thought it would be a good area for the ritual. No one goes up there, students still think it's haunted."
Tom hummed slightly in thought, understanding why it seemed faintly familiar.
"You smell like wet dog."
"I think I worked out the runes," She announced while waiting for the coffee to brew in the kitchen.
"Do you want me to look it over?" Tom offered sleepily.
She shook her head, "No. I'm pretty confident about it."
"My, my," Tom didn't pass up the chance to goad her when she came back to the flat twice that day wearing a white long jacket. "Two Unforgivables in one day, little witch?"
Hermione gave him a withering glare while plucking the visitor badge off her coat. "I didn't hurt anyone," She replied defensively, shrugging the jacket off her shoulder. "There's nothing wrong with just gathering information."
She dropped the badge into a small bowl on the kitchen counter. The number had recently been accumulating of various fake names, but similar institutions.
"I only asked for a phone call for a specific set of circumstances," She rationalized, seeing some of the names peering back at her.
Middlesex Hospital. Whittington Hospital. Royal Northern Hospital. St. Lukes Hospital.
"I have to go to the Forbidden Forest to gather one of the ingredients," She had told him before gathering a heavy winter jacket. He didn't stop her, even when he was eying the storm clouds rolling in.
When she came back in the early hours of the morning, even Tom knew better than to goad her. The thunder cracked, causing the glass of the windows to shudder against the frames. When the lighting lit up the room as Hermione stumbled into the flat, Tom was alarmed by her pale, wide-eyed expression.
"Hermione?" He asked.
She jumped, her eyes darting around before settling on him. Barely seeing him.
He was looking at her hands though. Even in the darkness, the silver-bluish liquid glowed. Even before his tongue darted out reflexively in the air, he knew what it was. "Is that…" He knew, but he had to ask. "Unicorn blood?"
"I didn't kill it," She muttered quickly. "I didn't kill it, I swear I didn't."
Her hands shook violently as she held them in front of her. "I just… I just needed its tears."
She sat at the bottom of the shower that night, hugging her knees to her chest until the water ran cold and her body shuddered violently.
The snow on the ground had begun to thaw into the early signs of spring when the day came that the telephone rang. It came with a shrilling ring, cutting through the peaceful silence of the flat.
Hermione looked up from her book and Tom turned his head from his perch on the back of the couch. On the third ring, she picked it up and held it to her ear without a greeting.
Tom could faintly hear the voice on the other line. The conversation was short. Hermione simply acknowledged it, "Understood. I'll be there shortly."
The phone dropped back on the receiver with a clank.
There was a deep sigh from Hermione, bracing herself, before she announced, "It's time."
They stood at the end of the patient's bed while Hermione looked over the notes from the imperio'd nurse. She could feel Tom shifting anxiously from the satchel slung across her body. His head peered out from the opening, staring curiously at the unresponsive patient.
"Male, twenty-five years old. Clean medical history prior, family history looks good too," She read aloud, flipping through the papers. "Victim in a hit and run with a drunk driver. Only immediate family member is a single mother." Her eyes darted to the bedside, noting the lack of balloons and flowers. "No friends, unlikely to be missed. Much at least."
"These contraptions…" Tom asked curiously, looking at the various boxes. Some of them beeped and hummed. Tubes ran from them to the patient's nostrils and throat. One wheezed and huffed periodically. "Are keeping him alive?"
"For now, at least," Hermione muttered. "Although, the longer he's on them, I'm not sure how much there is left to keep alive."
Tom didn't say anything while she finished reading the notes. With a sigh, she pocketed them in the satchel, carefully around the serpent.
"Thoughts?" Tom coaxed.
Hermione bit her lip in thought. "I'm thinking a few Duplicating charms for the equipment," After all they needed to keep him allow just barely long enough. "Portkey for the rest. Confunded boggart with a Notice Me Not charm should do the trick for the Muggles."
"Yes, it should," He agreed.
A second thought came after, "I won't look like at him, will I?"
She could hear the curling disgust in his tone while Tom eyed the brutally battered face, covered mostly in dark bruises and swelling. She could barely make out a tuft of blonde hair. She rolled her eyes at the sudden moment of vanity, "No. You'll just look as you should've at his age."
"Now, unless you have a better idea how to keep someone at the cusp of death and harness the energy of their passing without creating another horcrux, let's not waste any more time," She declared.
The ritual itself ended up being rather anticlimactic given the months of planning. In the basement of the Shrieking Shack, she had placed a large soaking tub. She spent a few days etching her rune creations into the sides. They placed the accident victim carefully in the tub, using some of the Muggle equipment to monitor his heart rate. Tom was placed on the other end of the tub. She spent two days brewing the potion, which she then filled half the tub with the two of them in there. Tom hissed from the coolness of the liquid, which glittered a gold sheen from the unicorn tears.
Hermione sat on a stool by the tub and they counted the breaths after they took the Muggle off the last of the machines. Forty-five long minutes passed before the moment came and Hermione recited the incantation to begin the ritual.
It ended with a thick rise of steam that caused Hermione to cough and sputter. She leant back and waved it away from her face.
"Tom?!" She began to panic when her vision cleared enough to see the serpent slumped limply over the edge of the tub. Its eyes were closed and its mouth hung open loosely.
She reached forward to touch it, but hesitated at the last moment when her eyes caught the other end of the tub. Instead of seeing the blotching, tarnished skin of the Muggle, she froze at what she saw.
The first thing she noticed was the short, wiry blonde hair was gone. A head full of thick, raven locks covered the slumped over figure. The bruises and swelling were gone, revealing a pale, aristocratic features and a straight nose. Shallow, ragged breaths came from chapped lips.
Seeing a face before her bringing the reality of her actions, Hermione bore a moment of humility to wonder, "Oh, what I have done?"
Four days she spent with the unconscious man on her living room couch. She transfigured the furniture's bottom couches to extend out into a makeshift bed.
Four days she paced anxiously waiting for him to awake.
Four days of checking his vitals.
Four days of sitting by his side, studying the features of his face until she saw them even when she closed her eyes.
Four days of watching his chest rise and fall evenly, checking his wrist for a heartbeat that was steady and strong.
Four days of urging him to wake up, to make sure she wasn't alone.
On the fifth day, the charmed bracelet on his wrist alerted Hermione that he was beginning to wake.
It started with a twitch of his fingers and under his eyelids. Consciousness pricked at him shyly at first, but then it hit him with the force of the Hogwarts Express. Everything about his body ached. His muscles twinge and his joints gave a sharp stab. He felt it in his chest, pounding in his head, all the way down his ankles.
He couldn't help the groan that passed his lips.
"Tom?" The feminine familiar voice broke through all of it.
Grey, almost charcoal eyes opened, searching out the source. Blurrily, he made out the figure sitting to his left. A bushy mess of brown curls, chocolate eyes and lightly freckled skin.
"Hermione," He sighed out, the corners of his lips beginning to pick up into something that could have been a grin or maybe even a smile.
His hand lifted, despite his body's protest. He had to touch her.
"Not so fast," Her voice struck sharply.
He blinked several times, having to refocus on the rush of movement in front of him, when realized he was staring down the length of a vine wood wand. His eyes moved from the tip of her wand up to meet hers.
There was no warmth or relief in them.
"I think it's time you and I came to an understanding, Tom," She spoke slowly, pausing only a moment to correct herself, "Or should I be calling you Lord Voldemort?"
Author's Note: Thanks for all the support last chapter! I hope you guys are as excited about this chapter as I was to write it. As much as snake Tom was fun to write, it's now for the next part of the story. FF is still acting up on the reviews, but I'm doing my best to respond to them. Please shoot me a PM if you have any questions. Any feedback is appreciated, please leave a review or follow. For disclaimer purposes, JKR owns the wonderful world of Harry Potter, I just have the privilege of playing in it.