What do you think, would not one tiny crime be wiped out by thousands of good deeds?

― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

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Tom's wand was out. He'd released Hermione the second the laugh broke through the silence, and they stood shoulder to shoulder, ready to fight.

"Come out, come out wherever you are," he taunted. He looked alive, hungry.

Homenum Revelio, Hermione cast silently, scared sick to her stomach. How stupid she had been not to check the room before revealing her secret. Not her biggest secret, of course. Not The Secret, but one that could damage people she'd come to love nonetheless.

A skeleton in the closet that could lead to the discovery of that other, far more important one.

Tom sent a spell, dark purple and menacing, to the door, sealing it shut and ready to attack anyone who dared to open it.

Hermione's second spell found its target, the outline of a human glimmering in the back-left corner of the room. It fired back, a girl's voice crying out a blasting curse. Tom countered it, Hermione instinctively following it with a binding spell.

"Finite," she said. "Hello, Claire. This is a bit of a quandary, isn't it?"

The girl didn't reply. Hermione walked over, and looked down at the girl, bound in silvery cords.

"Accio wand," Hermione added for good measure, catching the wand. She inspected it curiously, half-tempted to snap it in half.

"Why were you spying?" she asked.

Tom slid onto a desk next to her, twirling his wand, violence in his eyes.

"I wanted to find out what you were really up to," the girl said at last.

"I don't believe you, but I don't really care," Hermione said, tiredly. Claire's hatred was so irrational and misplaced. It was almost relief it had come to a head at last.

"You ruined everything for me when you came."

There was nothing Hermione could say to that. She turned away in frustration. The situation was insane.

"Shall I do it?" Tom offered.

"We're not going to kill her, Tom!" Hermione whirled on him, hands flying to her hips. "There are so many other options!"

"None so permanent," he argued.

"I'll just obliviate her."

Damage was so easy to undo in the magical world; they played at gods with few consequences. It was no wonder it was a more brutal place.

"Killing her," Hermione added, "would create the need for more lies – and a second death would be very suspicious. It's unsophisticated and a weak move, at best. Not to mention it's never the answer."

Tom smiled, a glorious smile that lit up his dark eyes.

"Hypocrite," he said. She ignored him.

Hermione levitated the girl, who was crying now as she struggled against her bonds. She was no Gryffindor. But perhaps, Hermione thought, neither was she anymore, either.

"I'm going to change your memories of the last half an hour. It won't even hurt. Stop being ridiculous."

The room was cold and dusty and Hermione couldn't wait to get out of there. Still, doing it properly would take some time. And the thought of messing around in the girl's head – using the same spells she'd used on her parents – made her feel sick. It was almost enough to make her agree with Tom's solution.

But that way lay madness, and as hopeless as it seemed logically she wanted him to be better. To see there were other ways.

"This will take a while. Can you spell the door to distract people away?"

Wordlessly, he walked over to the it. Watching Tom cast was something special, under any circumstances. He was a lyrical spell-master, never one to shy away from flair and yet he tempered it with a ruthless sort of efficiency. There was a cold poetry to it.

Hermione took a deep breath, seating herself opposite the bound girl.

"Firstly, you will make an Unbreakable Vow never to reveal what you heard here even if you recover your memory."

"I'll do no such thing," Claire spat. "You're disgusting and the world should know you're just a fraud. A Mudblood."

Hermione sighed.

"You'll do it, or I will have to make you do it."

"I won't," the blonde girl said, more quietly. "I won't. Just let me go and I won't tell anyone. I'm sorry I stayed. Please."

Tom returned to his desk throne, lounging slightly on the scratched wood. A heart with an X through it was carved next to where his right hand propped him up. His presence was apparently threat enough because Claire started to cry again.

She begged for a while and Hermione sat, thinking. Panicking would mean a mistake. She couldn't afford to make another one. She focussed on her breathing for a few moments, mind rapidly sorting through the options and dismissing them.

"You can't force me to make the vow, anyway. They don't work under duress. And I can't make it if I'm obliviated. So just let me go and we'll forget this ever happened."

Hermione hadn't trusted the DA members in her fifth year; she was hardly going to acquiesce to someone so openly hostile. But Claire's words had given her an idea.

"No," she agreed, "I can't force you to make the vow. But I can make you take a blood oath."

"That's illegal!"

Hermione shrugged. "It's your choice." She just wanted to disentangle herself from this woman's life as soon as possible.

More begging and crying. She met Tom's eyes. He was watching, apparently fascinated.

"Don't you even care that she's a Mudblood?" Claire asked him, as though she'd given up on Hermione.

Tom didn't even look down at the other girl as his mouth quirked up in the corner. He ignored the question completely, as though no one had spoken.

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He was beautiful like an aeroplane hurtling to the ground with its tail on fire, leaving a burning trail across a twilit sky. Beautiful in the way a glacier's cliff was at its most beautiful just as it was poised to crash into the sea.

"Imperio," Hermione said.

Claire took the knife Hermione conjured and sliced open her palm.

"I vow, by my life blood, that I won't reveal Hermione Dearborn's true birth, by any means," she repeated. "That I will never try to cause someone else to learn of it. I won't talk about anything I learned in this room. If I should even try, this wound will open and never close and I will bleed to death. My blood will choke the words in my throat."

She smiled as she said it.

The Imperius curse was unlike anything Hermione had experienced. She'd never been particularly interested in having power like that over another person. She could feel Claire fighting, but it was weak. For a wilful woman, whose opinion had too easily been cast aside or mocked, it was heady indeed to have such easy compliance.

She felt the loss of the imperiused connection as she let it drop away, and dove straight into the girl's mind to alter her memories. No cheap obliviate, this. She would rebuild the last half hour into another memory - a dark and complex magic. Sorting through the memories was tiring, but more difficult – and exhausting – was navigating the blank spaces.

Hermione followed them, curious, until she found a mistake, a strand left in a deserted corridor. She pulled at it, exerting her considerable magical will onto the little scrap of thread, so small she'd almost missed it. It resisted, but she persevered until it loosened.

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Memories tumbled around her, and they were of Tom. Tom, asking questions about Hermione. Tom, reading Claire's mind. Tom, obliviating her. Tom, twisting her into a tool of spite. Tom.

Hermione pulled harder, until they were unbound and floating around the empty space in the girl's mind, and she rewove them into harmless conversations, into information freely given.

Her own anger was distracting, and she locked it away. She would release no more anger into the girl's damaged mind.

Finally, she found the tiny, scared space of the past half hour. She thought of conversations with Ginny, locked away in the tower, of healing and sharing. Of making peace with Lavender.

When she was done, she withdrew, exhausted and sweating, from the girl's mind. The clock told her another hour had passed. Claire had passed out, head slumped forward. Her mind would heal around the new memories in sleep, and when she woke she would remember staying behind to make peace with Hermione, of agreeing that Marcus had treated Claire terribly, and that she deserved better. She would remember staying behind in the classroom and falling asleep.

She would wake up free.

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"What's wrong with her now?" Tom asked. He hadn't moved from the desk.

Hermione didn't look at him. "I think," she said, "that you should leave. I am very angry, and very tired. Go."

He did not leave, but stepped closer.

She looked up then, and whatever he saw in her face made him drop the arm reaching for her shoulder

"I'm not going until you tell me why you want me to go," he said firmly.

"You consistently spied on me, and twisted this girl into someone who made my life very difficult for months. Someone who hated me."

Realisation dawned and she wanted to slap it away. To hurt him.

"It seems we have much to discuss," he said, and left.

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I would never leave you all on a massive cliffhanger for too long. Hermione may not have killed Claire - and I hope those of you baying for blood are properly chastened at the reminder that Tom was messing around in the mind for ages - but friendly reminder that that's her first Unforgiveable, ever. What does that mean?

Thank you all so much for your reviews last chapter - they were plentiful indeed, and look how quickly I updated. Fuel to my writerly fire.

Good luck tomorrow, US pals.

tbc.