Having left Professor Slughorn's office in a cheery mood, Charlotte smiled to herself as she returned to Tom in the library. The books around him had shifted places and more rolls of parchment were unfurled in front of him, which he didn't look up from until she sat down beside him and started speaking.

"I realized something that I'm interested in. Maybe enough to make a career out of it."

"Go on." He was tapping his fingers rhythmically one after the other against the table, which might have indicated impatience, but Charlotte told herself it was probably nothing more than an unconscious habit.

"Do you remember that conversation we had when I was working on that essay for Muggle Studies? I told you about how I wanted to see wizards be more accepting of advancement?" she asked.

His smile faded and he looked at her with questioning eyes and a face showing disagreement. Charlotte was disappointed he wasn't enthusiastic, but she didn't let his judgmental reaction alter her enthusiasm. "I remember it," he said.

"I want to find some way to put that interest to use.

"I think you'd have trouble presenting that idea to the wizarding world and getting any great positive response." Then, with concern in his voice, he added, "And it might even make you a target for Grindelwald."

"No. No, it wouldn't," she objected, without giving it any proper thought. She didn't want to think about that.

Tom shrugged. "I just want you to consider whether you're passionate enough about it to put yourself in danger."

She sighed and let herself fall against the back of her seat, folding her arms. "Well that lasted all of five minutes." She couldn't answer his question.

"I'm sorry," he answered. "I just don't know that it's… realistic."

"Thanks for being honest," she said, her gratitude genuine and not sarcastic.

He gradually cracked a smiled. "Of course."

"But Professor Slughorn didn't say anything to discourage me." She tried again to cast a positive light on her idea.

"What did he say?"

"He said that I still have plenty of time to make up my mind because right now I just need to be sure of which classes I'll continue taking."

"Then maybe he thinks he won't have to talk you out of it if you give it time."

"You certainly seem to be making strides towards that end." It annoyed her that he was being so negative, even if he called it realism. Shouldn't he be supportive?

Tom didn't say anything for a while. "I don't want you to make a foolish choice." There was a coldness in the way he said this that felt like more than an absence of warmth; something else lay beneath it.

"What's on your mind? Is something bothering you?" Charlotte asked him, looking for the reason behind this iciness.

"I simply meant what I said. If it's a bad idea, I don't want you to carry on with it."

"If? Really? It sounds as though you've already made your mind up about it."

He didn't answer.

"Telephones," she said. "What's our equivalent? Sending a patronus, maybe? Hardly an equivalent." She was determined to get some agreement out of him.

"You can send a patronus from anywhere." It wasn't going to be easy.

"Telephones are two-way communication."

"Two-way mirrors."

"Those aren't that common. And, you know, using telephones would help us blend in."

"Why do you think we should want to hide?" Charlotte looked at him confusedly. "I only mean, wouldn't it be so much better if we didn't have to hide anymore?"

"No, the muggles would be after us."

"I said if we didn't have to hide anymore. If there was nothing they could do."

"Do you think we'll live harmoniously with muggles someday?" she asked skeptically. A look came over Tom's face like he could have been sick.

"I most certainly did not say that."

"No, that's true. What you said sounded more like…"

"Like what?" he prompted.

"A little bit, well, a little bit Grindelwaldian," she whispered. That was not an ideology that anyone, aside from Grindelwald's own supporters, was keen to be the least bit associated with, hence her hesitation. And it utterly frightened her. She knew what people who took on that view could become—unrecognizable to anyone who knew them.

She was relieved, then, when Tom responded relatively calmly, disputing this. "That's not what it was either. According to Grindelwald, his ideals are in favor of a greater good, which includes muggles—their own greater good. I don't believe that."

"That what Grindelwald is doing is for the good of the muggles, too? I'm not sure I believe that either."

He shook his head. "No. I don't believe that we should be concerned with what's good for the muggles. The muggles can worry about what's good for them." After a pause, he started again suddenly, "Anyway, I thought you'd left that idea behind, wanting to blend in with the muggles, I mean."

"I thought I had…" She had thought the fear that drove her to this was gone, the fear of losing her magical world. Tom didn't look very sympathetic. But she didn't want to be pitied, anyway; that would have made her feel weak and childish, like the fear itself, persisting from her younger years.

She didn't want to be some muggle-lover. That wasn't her. She couldn't be.

"People might think you're a muggle-lover if you carry on like this."

"No! I'm not. And people had better not assume that I am—because they'd be wrong." She spoke with redundancy partly to convince herself. The beginnings of a smile on Tom's face were visible to her as he leaned over to kiss her cheek, and she felt his grinning mouth against her skin before the puckering of his lips.

In her haste to contest what he said, it wasn't until after she made her dispute that she questioned whether she had spoken aloud before. Tom had responded like he knew what she was thinking, but she was fairly certain the thought had stayed in her mind.

"I know that you're not," he said softly as he pulled away. She smiled back at him, feeling eased by this. But her smile faltered.

He looked at her a moment before asking, "Still something's wrong?" Then he stopped her as she opened her mouth. "No, wait. We talked about Grindelwald. That's what's on your mind, isn't it?"

"Yes, but not simply Grindelwald," she said slowly. "The fact that you seem to be so in tune with him..."

He turned in his seat to face her fully. "I will never join Grindelwald. You don't have to fear that." He could say that now, but someday they might become empty words. Charlotte wasn't ready to believe him on that alone.

Without raising her voice too much for the library, she replied, "The things you just said? About muggles and wizards? They're dangerous words to me. You cannot speak like that—please don't."

"It may sound as if I agree with Grindelwald, but I promise you, I don't; he and I are not... in tune, as you say. I have no interest in joining his ranks." There was a certain degree of disdain in his voice, which partly lessened Charlotte's doubt, but not enough for her to let it go. She didn't say anything more because she couldn't put into words what she feared, not without sounding ridiculous, she thought. Tom was struggling with something as well. She could tell from looking at him that he was on the verge of saying something.

"Do you really think I would betray you like that, Charlotte?"

"It's not that I think you would, but that Grindelwald could be capable of persuading you—"

"No." Tom spoke forcefully. "I would never hurt you like that. Do you think I don't love you at all?" His voice tapered off into a whisper. An intense meeting of their eyes went on for sometime before Tom said, "Grindelwald would never be able to convince me that I love you any less, not a bit."

Charlotte glanced down, a bit embarrassed that she hadn't thought of this. Of course, if he loved her...

She reached for his hand with a smile.

The Chamber of Secrets was cavernous room in which the hissing and slithering of the basilisk echoed remarkably. Tom stood leaning against the wall, not bothered by the coldness of the stone; he was too busy thinking about the history and the greatness of the place he was in. And it was a secret only he knew—at least, out of anyone else at Hogwarts. The staff only guessed that the Chamber might exist, and often hoped to convince others that it didn't. It scared them. That such a thing as a single room, the very idea of it, could frighten people… Tom loved it. It was, of course, the idea of everything else that went with the room that scared them too: the monster, the mission of purging the school of muggle-borns. But just to whisper "The Chamber of Secrets" could draw out a certain uneasiness, a tenseness, in everyone who heard.

He'd finally arrived at this place in his mind, but it had not been so when he first entered the Chamber. These thoughts had needed to suffocate that other, the despicable words that had passed from his lips earlier that day—and not despicable in the way that he liked; no, not an outsider's idea of despicable. Do you think I don't love you at all? ...She should, but she was too foolish to guess at it.

He'd been so caught up in denying that he could become a supporter of Grindelwald, he had inadvertently gone to great lengths to reassure Charlotte she had nothing to fear from him. Unable to provide her with the truth—that he wanted to rise above Grindelwald as a feared dark wizard—he attempted a different line of persuasion. There had been a struggle within himself to determine whether he should. Not that he minded lying to Charlotte at all, but lying to her in a way that forced him to proclaim his ardent love for her? Part of him, at least, was very resistant to that. The part of him that won out, however, was of the opinion that he needed to remove Charlotte's doubts. It seemed utterly necessary, even though it was without reason.

At least he could find a reason for his vehement opposition to some relation between himself and Grindelwald being drawn. By now the school had realized that someone was acting as the Heir of Slytherin and had opened the Chamber again and people still tried to link Grindelwald to it somehow; just that morning he had overheard some Ravenclaws coming up with theories about Grindelwald having recruited the Heir, implying they were working in tandem. It could almost be amusing, if it didn't make him so angry. He had so wanted to tell them they were wrong. He would have told them the Heir was very much independent, and they would one day have more to fear from him than from Grindelwald. Yes, Tom—Lord Voldemort—had made it his ambition to become the most feared dark wizard of all time, and to remain so forever.

Forever. Eternity. Infinitely. These words had so much power to them. His favorite, however, was immortal. Everyone else was mortal, but he would not be. Death would mean nothing to him. Death would be unable to take him.

The information he had sought for so long had been well-hidden. Tom gathered that it scared most wizards; he imagined it was because they knew if someone were to make themselves immortal, then their strength and power would overshadow that of every other wizard. The process of creating a horcrux frightened most as well. But to Tom it was logical to endure that pain in order to make the greatest triumph—over death. And after all, why should they succumb to mortality when the means to overcome it was within their power?

The basilisk approached him, speaking. "Ssspider… A great spider residessss in the castle. I feel it, smell itss fear… But it will not leave…"

"Why should I care about some spider?" Tom asked the snake.

"They never sstay in our presence. Why does thisss one? I want it to leave!" The serpent reared up. It would have been terrifying to someone not capable of controlling it. Tom stood his ground; it had to obey his commands. Despite this, however, it sometimes liked to boast of its age, how many generations of Heirs it had seen, how it had known Salazar Slytherin himself. These were all things worthy of glory, but Tom still disliked the way the basilisk flaunted them.

He thought about why there might be a spider in the castle that did not give in to its deep instinctual need to flee from the basilisk. Even a very large spider, as the basilisk described this one to be, would feel threatened. It might be trapped. Maybe someone was keeping it—although it seemed absurd to think that anyone would want to keep a spider like that for a pet. Then a name came to mind. Rubeus Hagrid, a third-year Gryffindor. He was certainly the type to do such a thing. Tom decided he would look into it, if only to prove himself right, and not for the snake's benefit.

Author's Note: Often when I write conversations, I'm just in a hurry to get all of my thoughts down, and it becomes strictly dialogue with very little or no description in between. I try to go back and fill it in a bit, but it doesn't always work out like that. For instance, in this chapter, most of the first half is written like this. I wonder if this is okay. Too much commentary can make it harder to follow the conversation, but I feel like lacking any at all is also a drawback. What do you think about this and how it came across in this chapter? (Or any previous chapters, if you remember any specifically, or want to look back; I know I've done this with past dialogues too).

As you see in this chapter, Charlotte has conflicted feelings about muggles and muggle things. While writing this, I remembered the scene with Henry Sprott in DADA (chapter 6). I didn't write any reaction for Charlotte there, but I realize now she should have had one, so I added it. It's just a little bit, around 50 words. I'm in the processes of working out Charlotte's views on these things, which I probably should have done earlier, but I didn't realize it could be so much a part of her character until recently. When she has her reaction to the thought of being called a "muggle-lover", and I don't explain much why she hates this, I've left it out intentionally, because she doesn't know exactly why; she doesn't think about why, only that she is used to having an aversion to that idea.

I realized the basilisk totally has the potential to be its own character. It isn't just some beast who follows the Heir's commands; it has its own history, and I tried to show a little bit of what I think it would be like. Expect more of that later!~

Second thing about the basilisk: I'm uncertain about pronouns for it/him/her. See, in the book, the basilisk is female. In the movie, it has a masculine voice. I think that the voice in the movie is more memorable, so it's more likely that people will think of it as male,—myself included—but I prefer to go by the books. So I ignored both and just went with "it". I will most likely return to this later and change it.