Nightmare
By: Provocative Envy
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CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The room felt different in the aftermath of Tom's death.
The atmosphere was dreary, vacant, and there was a steady thrum of white noise flitting around the empty spaces in my skull, oppressive and deafening, stagnant static—it did not feel real, what I had done, not yet, and I would not let it, not yet, not now, because I was not finished.
"Lumos," Edmond said hoarsely, eventually; and his voice wobbled, but I could not tell if his shock was genuine, could not tell if he had known that this was coming, known what I had planned and what Tom had anticipated and how he was going to fit into all of it.
"Got him on the first try," Grindelwald remarked, sounding pleased. "It's usually much harder for beginners to muster up that kind of conviction. Well done, sweetest."
The smooth ivory handle of my wand dug into my palm.
Make sure your back is never to the door.
I spun around.
"He was going to be a horrible person," I said, squinting into the shadows.
The lights switched back on with a shrill, electric crackle.
"Then justice has indeed been served, Miss Granger," Grindelwald replied, looking at Tom's body—he was so still, though, still and rigid and motionless in a way that he never was when he was alive, and it made me ache, made me sick, made me want to bring him back to life just so I could catalogue all of his twitches and his tics, microscopic mannerisms that would tell me so much more than his words ever could—
"What now?" I asked.
Next to me, Edmond inhaled sharply.
"You were a good choice," Grindelwald murmured, apropos of nothing. He circled me slowly, like a vulture, as I stared at the dented brass doorknob on the opposite wall. My back was to the window. My back was to Tom. "So many people—imbeciles, all of them—seemed to think that traveling forward in time was a trick, an easy way to assemble a future of my own design. What theydidn't understand, precious, is that the future is...myriad—it's changeable, rather like the weather, dependent on a variety of factors that are nearly impossible to predict. Do you want to know why I picked you to come here, my darling?"
"Why you picked me," I repeated warily. "We discussed this already. You said—"
He interrupted me with a rich, buttery peal of laughter.
"I hardly remember what I said to you the last time we met," he drawled, tone condescending and crisp. "I'm almost certain, however, that I lied."
Tom's voice—and I felt a pang, violent and quick, at just the thought of his name—came back to me, a memory, fleeting and tenuous—
He's using you for something else. He just doesn't want you to know what it is.
"That's…not exactly surprising," I said.
Edmond's arm jerked.
"Quite a bit can happen in fifty years, sweetest," Grindelwald said, sighing wistfully. "In fact, so much can happen, so much can be altered, that every time I went forward, it was different. Sometimes just small details—a clock set three minutes early, a street named after a prince instead of a princess—irrelevant things. But occasionally…the differences would be drastic, my darling, on a scale of such alarming magnitude that it rendered the landscape of the timeline almost completely unrecognizable. Those particular versions of the future were…interesting, to me. Do you know why? Do you know what I was looking for, when I first realized who Tom Riddle would become?"
I narrowed my eyes.
"No, I don't."
"The same three scenarios often played themselves out during a uniquely specific stretch of time," Grindelwald went on, rubbing his knuckles against the point of his chin. "The first of the three scenarios involved just you and Mr. Riddle—or is it Voldemort? It's awfully troublesome to keep track of his names—while the second involved you, Mr. Riddle, and a very small child—but it was the last chain of events that I found particularly attractive."
"Oh?"
"Mm," he said, licking his lips. "You see, princess, I deduced that these same three scenarios kept popping up because of the enormous likelihood of one of them truly coming to pass. They were all contenders, so to speak, and only one of them could win. But the only reason I even noticed you, sweetest, was because you were quite noticeably absent from the only future that I found acceptable. The one that depicted Mr. Riddle alone. I checked, my darling, and you had never even been born."
Adrenaline flooded my veins.
I jumped to an obvious conclusion—I was going to die—but stopped, thought quickly, realized that I was focusing on the wrong part of what he had said—the one that depicted Mr. Riddle alone—
"Tom is dead, though," I reminded him, mind racing. "And if I had never been born…that's a paradox, that doesn't make any sense. I'm right here."
Edmond began to tap his foot against the floor, lightly, nervously, without any sort of discernable rhythm.
"A paradox," Grindelwald mused. "That's such a fascinating word, isn't it, kitten? It's Greek, of course—cradle of western civilization, and all that—but do you know what it means?"
I crossed my arms over my abdomen, shifting my stance so that I could see the outline of Tom's body out of the corner of my eye.
"Technically, it means—a contrary opinion," I answered quietly. "A contradiction, essentially."
"Yes!" Grindelwald exclaimed, clapping his hands together. "A contradiction. You, my darling, are a contradiction. In fact—in this precise moment, your very existence is contradicting what I know to be irrefutably true about the future."
I tucked my thumb into the loose waistband of the trousers I was wearing.
"I don't understand," I said—even though I did, I did understand, and I glanced at Edmond, noticed the corded muscles of his neck slither like serpents beneath his skin as he gulped—
"Tell me, precious," Grindelwald crooned, "why ever are you wearing men's clothing right now?"
His back was to Tom.
He was not looking at Tom.
Tom, though—
"This house is in the middle of bloody nowhere," I replied, plucking at the fabric of the trousers, dislodging Tom's wand from the holster on my thigh. I felt it slide to the floor and land upright against my ankle. "I wasn't about to go traipsing through the wilderness in stockings and a dress. Edmond lent me clothing."
Edmond jerked at the sound of his name.
Grindelwald's lips curved upwards.
"I admit that I was curious about how this all might play itself out," he said, holding up Tom's diary. "Especially when you volunteered to kill Mr. Riddle and I was still very much in possession of his horcrux—which, a journal, really, how exceedingly clever of him—but then it occurred to me…if he had made one horcrux, presumably after the murder of that poor muggle-born two years ago—what would have stopped him from making another? What would have stopped him from giving it to you, the only person he trusts, for safekeeping?"
I met his eyes—blue and big and calculating and hidden under a glistening layer of scorn and frost—
"That's ridiculous!" I scoffed. "Do you know how much trouble he went through to make even one?"
His smile widened.
"I thought about just bringing you back and killing you," he said, ignoring my outburst. "Because even if I didn't understand why you were my key to the future—you were, precious, you are, and if I was a less intelligent man, I might've just slit your throat while you slept. However."
I made a show of fumbling for my wand and letting it drop onto the parquet floor with a clatter.
Edmond was frozen, dark eyes stuck on Tom, waiting, waiting—
"I wondered, kitten, about that second future—the one with the child. I wondered what it said about young Mr. Riddle that that future was even a possibility considering the nature of his…alternate identity. And so I made a rash and rather peculiar decision. Can you guess what it was?"
I bent down slowly, allowing Tom's wand to slip under the too-long hem of my trousers.
"No? Oh, fine, I'll just tell you, then—"
I gently picked up both wands.
"—see, dearest, your Mr. Riddle becomes a rather formidable disciple of mine in that last version of the future. He even ends up adopting my name—to instill fear, I imagine—and carrying on all of the tenets I've worked so tirelessly to uphold. It's as if I had a son of my very own—"
I straightened my spine.
"—you're not there, of course—how could you be, you're a mudblood—"
Grindelwald still had his back to Tom.
He could not see Tom.
He could not see—
"—realized that I could use you, princess, you would be the perfect tool to ferret out who I could trust and who I needed to kill—"
Peripherally, I observed Tom as he blinked, sat up, rotated his wrists and his ankles and stretche out his neck.
"—means, of course, that you've served your surprisingly valuable purpose admirably, my darling, done me such a favor—but, unfortunately, it's time for you to disappear and for Mr. Riddle to…reanimate himself—"
And then, even as my heart sped up and my stomach tightened because he was alive, it had worked, he was safe—I threw Tom's wand across the room, watched it hurtle through the air in a graceless arc, watched him leap to his feet and catch it one-handed and—
"Avada Kedavra!" Tom roared.
My vision was engulfed by an abrupt eruption of bright green light.
Grindelwald's body hit the floor with a dull thud.
Edmond took an aborted step forward, towards me, but—
"Hermione," Tom choked out. "I—fuck—Hermione."
I stared at Grindelwald, taking in his still-flushed cheeks and blank, glassy eyes and the laugh lines around his mouth—
And then I glanced at Tom, all the way across the room, and he was whole and he was alive and he was tall and strong and he was alive, he was fucking alive and breathing and I had missed him, I had needed him, I had been frightened for him, frightened of him, still, in the moment before I had tossed him his wand—
"Hermione," he said again, voice cracking, and that was it, that was all it took—
I rushed towards him, tripping over my thoughts and my relief and my initial hesitation, falling into his chest and inhaling desperately, memorizing the intoxicating scent of sandalwood and salt and sweat, because it was still not over, I was still not done, not entirely—
"I missed you so much," he murmured into my hair, broad hands and slender fingers splayed across the small of my back, "fucking thought about you every day, every second, couldn't believe it when I saw you in the doorway—"
I tilted my head, savored the warmth of his arms and the breadth of his shoulders—
"You didn't think I would come for you?" I asked, steadying myself by placing my hands on his waist.
"You weren't supposed to," he whispered, letting his forehead fall against mine, taking deep breaths as his gaze roved frantically over my face; but I was doing the same thing, making sure that he was there, making sure that all the pieces of him that I loved best were still intact, symmetrical and perfect. "Lestrange wasn't supposed to bring you, but—fuck, you were brilliant, you are brilliant—"
I furrowed my brow as he kissed my nose, my chin, my throat, lips lingering like a promise over my pulse point.
"What do you mean—I wasn't supposed to be here? I thought—wasn't this your plan? Not what I did, specifically, but—weren't Edmond and I supposed to be here?"
He pulled back—barely a millimeter, unwilling to put any unnecessary space between us.
"No," he replied, frowning, "the plan was for Lestrange to take the Polyjuice that I left for him and pretend to be you so that he could get in to see me."
I stiffened.
Don't trust him, Nott had said. You fucking can't. He isn't on your side.
"That isn't what he—"
"Look, can the two of you please not shag while I'm still in the bloody room?" Edmond whined from several yards away. "I get that it's been awhile, but maybe we should take the opportunity to escape before Grindelwald's incompetent fuckwit guards realize we've killed him, yeah?"
Tom pressed a hot, open-mouthed kiss against my lips, flicked his tongue out and along the ridge of my teeth—he tasted faintly of chicory, spicy and tangy and sweet, all at once—before he stepped back and strode over to Grindelwald's body.
"I really don't think you're in any sort of position to be making a mockery of their intellectual prowess, Lestrange," Tom said, crouching down to rummage roughly through Grindelwald's pockets.
I flinched at the sight.
"I'm sorry, Riddle, but who rescued who, again?" Edmond demanded.
Tom snorted, holding up the Elder Wand and his diary and a long, familiar gold chain, hourglass glinting as it spun in a dizzying, repetitive circle.
"Hermione rescued me," he retorted, pocketing the time turner. "All you did was stand there and look shifty. Although—I suppose you did manage not to piss yourself, that was pretty bloody impressive—"
Edmond scowled while Tom smirked and triumphantly twirled the Elder Wand around, inspecting it from every angle, and I bit my bottom lip, pictured Melania Macmillan's corpse and Tom's face, easy and handsome and manipulative as he lied—to me, to Slughorn, to everyone, he could lie to anyone—
I would bleed for her.
—except there were secrets, so many secrets, and he would always have them, would always keep them, it did not matter who I was or what I meant to him or what he would do for me because I did not belong there—
Who knows what sort of world you'll be going back to?
—and it was selfish, yes, foolish and selfish and stupid to want to stay, to want to keep him, because he was not mine and I was not his and he would still be Voldemort, I could not change that, I could not fix that—
By all means, Miss Granger. Get your revenge. That's what this is about, isn't it?
—but I gripped my wand, searching fruitlessly, urgently, for the ferocious wave of anger that had tainted every last fiber and cell and platelet in my blood, months ago, weeks ago, needed to feel it and taste it and use it, now, now, because I was not done—
I would bleed for her.
I would bleed for her.
I would bleed for her.
"Expelliarmus!" I cried, watching, with baited breath, as the Wand flew out of Tom's hand and directly into mine—
I caught it.
I flexed my fingers.
My magic fucking sang—
"I'm sorry," I whispered, tears pooling in my eyes as I pointed the Wand at his chest, taking in his open mouth and cherry-red tongue and slack, startled, stunned expression. "I'm sorry, Tom, I am, but if you don't give me the time turner, I'm going to have to hurt you."
His jaw snapped shut—
And I did not notice that my back was to the door.
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Author's Note: DON'T GIVE UP ON ME, GUYS, THE END IS NIGH AND IT IS SIGNIFICANTLY LESS ANGST-RIDDEN THAN THIS CHAPTER MIGHT INDICATE.
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