AN: I need to take a moment to thank all of you for coming on this journey with me. Champion has been one of the most interesting things I've ever written. You've made writing this rather dark fic a lot of fun. Here's to plot bunnies with big teeth!

Once again, this fic is rated M for overall subject matter.

Tom controlled his face tightly as Gellert circled Hermione in his study, his entire inner circle (excluding Bassett who was still drooling from Hermione's powerful memory charm) watching with varying degrees of caution.

"What did she mean?" Gellert's eyes were wild, but his tone was perfectly controlled. "The ghost who called me a fool. What. Did. She. Mean?"

Hermione shrugged, looking murderous. "I'm nearly certain she meant to undermine me in order to bring about my death. I inadvertently caused her to die." The faces that made up the court were not easy to read, per se', but they weren't impossible. With the occasional bit of eye contact Tom could see that they were impressed with her evaluation of the situation, and terrified at Gellert's reaction to being called a fool. After all, he'd just allowed two of his inner circle to be carted into the room in those bags…bags that had formally only held prey…

Gellert stopped and the 'proud father' expression returned to his face so quick it nearly game tom whiplash. "And how did you do that my heir? You must have met when you were very young."

Hermione turned her head and smiled beautifully. "I stole her wand."

Gellert grinned. "And how did that lead to her death?"

"She dueled a very powerful witch using a wand that did not mesh well for her. She lost."

"So your interference cost her life."

Hermione shrugged. "I'm certain it didn't help. She hated me when she was alive, held me for hours torturing me. When I had the chance to escape I took it, took her wand. She died days later in a duel with the mother of a friend of mine." She tugged at one of her braids and looked Gellert in the face. "Some of the spirits do not like me. Just like people they sometimes tell the truth, and sometimes they lie. If they were insane in life, dying doesn't seem to change it."

Tom put a hand on Hermione's shoulder. She put a hand on his, but she never took her eyes off Grindelwald.

"And how does she plan to come back?"

Tom stiffened, remembering the spirit's threat. She wanted him. His jaw clinched. He'd brew the potion they made for Professor LeStrange and drown that madwoman in it.

Hermione relaxed into the chair and a few of Gellert's court seemed to relax as well. Tom did not.

He knew Grindelwald was far from stable, and that he and Hermione had just given him the cloak. While that action might provoke a sense of gratitude in a normal man, it might also inform a psychopath that an ally was powerful and had outlived their usefulness. It didn't escape Tom's notice that there were no truly powerful protégées among Gellert's men. He suspected that the dictator did not tolerate rivals.

Hermione seemed to consider Grindelwald's question for a long moment. "I don't know. I haven't seen her return. I don't think she had a magical pathway to rebirth, and all of her known associates are dead." She reached up and massaged her temples lightly. She turned her brown eyes to Gellert. "I know you've probably made the same enquiries that I have to the spirits who visit when you wear the ring. Even the friendliest won't speak of the other side and exactly what's waiting. I've never seen a spirit degraded like the witch today. It was as if her spirit had rotted. Can a spirit rot?"

Gellert laughed and turned to his people. "My heir. Precocious, isn't she?"

The witches and wizards laughed on cue. Tom rather suspected that they would laugh whether Gellert was praising Hermione or roasting her alive. They were too terrified to do anything else.

Gellert poured himself a large tumbler of some amber liquid and gestured to his court. "Leave. I wish to speak to my heir."

They filed out of the room one by one, Sergei last of all. Tom stayed where he was.

Gellert snorted at Tom's silent vigil, but he said nothing. Instead he sat across from Hermione.

"Do you have anything to add to what you told me publicly?" His tone was dangerous. Hermione folded her hands in her lap.

"I was thinking about exactly what the spirit said. She said you were a fool twice, once with Albus, and once with me. I know you originally offered him power." She sighed. "Did you offer him a co-ruler position?"

Gellert stilled. "It was discussed, early on."

Hermione nodded. "And he and I are the only ones you have offered this level of power to?"

"You are my princess, my heir, not my co-ruler. What I offered Albus…was more queen to my king. And no, it's not a position I have offered to others. Most of my people are easier to persuade. They want gold, or safety, or decadence. They don't really want to rule, they just want to do whatever they like. I provide a few of them with that opportunity in exchange for their support."

Hermione nodded. "But Albus and I…we don't want the trappings of power, we want the real thing."

"He did once." The words seemed bitter in Gellert's mouth.

Hermione started playing with Tom's fingers. "He still does. Did you know that he'd been nudging the ministry?"

Gellert sat, obviously enchanted. "And how do you know that, pet?"

Hermione gave him an angelic smile. "Well Grindelwobbly, I noticed some correspondence and 'accidentally' spilled my tea on Albus' chartreuse slippers."

Gellert wrinkled his nose. "The man simply shouldn't be allowed free reign in satirical matters." He frowned thoughtfully. "Remind me to draw and quarter his tailor when I take over England."

Hermione didn't flinch, though Tom was quite certain that Gellert was serious. "He loves those awful slippers. But while he was saving them, I made copies of the letters."

Tom kept his mouth from hanging open with difficulty. The girl was amazing.

Gellert grinned madly, caught her face in his hands, and kissed Hermione on the forehead. "Brilliant girl!"

Grindelwald took the letters while Tom fought down the urge to hex him.

Hermione walked over and poured herself a small glass of the sherry on the sideboard. "Yes, I'll keep a lookout for anything more, but you'll see that he is involved with organizing our magical defenses. He figured out your tendency to use Gringotts to transfer funds and items." She took a sip of her drink and sat again, crossing her ankles neatly. "Albus is trying to get the Ministry to crack down on that somehow…I wish him luck. The goblins will not allow wizards to dictate what happens in their banks."

Gellert grinned. "And the little pests are terrified that if they don't work with me, I'll take their main banks in Switzerland. It would be a bloody hard fight, they hollowed out an entire mountain…but planning it is a pet project of mine."

He waved his wand and dozens of detailed schematics of the goblin headquarters appeared and unrolled with a flourish, only to roll themselves up and disappear.

Tom blinked but the drawings were gone before he could get a good look at them.

Gellert began to peruse the letters, seemingly in an excellent mood until he read a single line on one of the letters. "Albus calls me a madman bent on world domination."

Hermione craned her neck and pointed to the letter with one finger. "It says 'brilliant madman'."

The other man squinted and grinned again. "Ah! You are right. Damn his handwriting, it's only gotten worse." He read Albus' words with a manic grin. "Better yet, he warns that I'm a real danger even in the so-sacred borders of the British Isles…They do seem to have the idea that nothing can cross the water to get them, don't they?"

Hermione nodded. "They do. I have a number of ideas on reforming the current system. Most of them involve removing most of the Ministry."

Gellert grinned like a hungry shark. "I have an army that would like to do just that."

Hermione tipped her glass and placed it delicately on the table. "We need to head back, Albus was supposed to be out tonight, but I don't want him to miss us. The last thing I want is for him to suspect anything as of yet."

Gellert's eyes narrowed. "As you say. But you were quite impertinent tonight pet. I think you need a little reminder of what, exactly, I can do." With that he lifted his wand and a silent spell hit Hermione. Her back arched in pain. Tom tried to move, but he was glued to the spot where he stood. He could see tears pooling at the corners of her eyes and sweat breaking on her forehead. Finally, a tiny whimper erupted from her lips and Gellert released the spell.

Tom still couldn't move as the wizard ran his fingers over her jaw, across the tear tracks on her cheeks. Her breath came in pants.

"So strong." His voice was a caress. Grindelwald cupped Hermione's cheek. "Don't fight me next time pet, and it won't be as hard. I have no wish to do you real harm."

She gave a gasping laugh. "I didn't fight you Grindelwobbly." Her chin lowered and there was something dangerous in her eyes. "I even bound Tom so he wouldn't fight you while you tortured me." Tom felt his eyes widen and his jaw clinch, but she snaked her fingers around his wrist in warning. He allowed her touch to calm him.

She conjured a mirror and re-arranged her braids as Gellert watched, seemingly transfixed by her cavalier attitude. When she was done with the braids she banished the mirror with another non-verbal and gave the dictator an unnerving smile. "I know that was nothing more than a love-tap, torture wise. Believe me when I say though, you don't want to push me. I'm not like the rest of your sheep."

Tom felt the binding release and Hermione stood without aid, seemingly untouched by what Grindelwald had done. "I'll send you the next report through an owl. See you at Easter." And with that she motioned Tom through the door and they walked languidly to the port-key. A wisp of magic later and they were back in the rented room in Hogsmead.

Tom didn't get the opportunity to question Hermione when they returned to Hogwarts. Albus debriefed them (though Hermione left out more than she told Dumbledore, including her pilferage of his personal correspondence).

Tom didn't contradict her. Albus walked them to their dorms and reminded them that they had to be awake in a few hours…they were going to do some serious socializing the next day and Helena wanted them both there early.

He tried to sleep, but the images from the night before were burned into his eyelids. He tossed and turned for over an hour, fighting down the urge to vomit as his mind sorted through the overwhelming carnage and presented him with details he'd missed while he first viewed them. He suspected he'd been in shock. Never had he imagined anything like it.

Most of the 'traitors' had been men…young, old, and everything in between. The few women that had been dumped into the group were too young (in Tom's opinion) to be guilty of much of anything. The men were chosen because they opposed Grindelwald. The women had been chosen to add 'spice' to the revel, like the bastard was baking a fucking cake. Oh, Tom didn't doubt there were women who opposed the tyrant. He just suspected from their beauty that the women he'd provided his inner circle for sport were just young pretty women who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The smells and sounds had been the worst as he stood there: he could watch Hermione and pretend he didn't see the bright jets of deadly and debilitating spells being cast on the helpless in the main room…but nothing could block the sounds. Most of Gellert's men had silenced their victims, or at least gagged them: there was still the sound of thrashing, and whimpers around gags; it didn't change the cruel laughter and the muttered obscenities from the torturers. And the sounds of rape…cries of pleasure mixing with the sound of blood squishing. Tom fought down a shudder that threatened to wrack his body. He couldn't be this weak. He'd seen pain, and lots of it, in his life. But this wasn't the same. This was a group of humans who looked like reasonable people one moment and turned into a pack of rabid animals the next.

Tom buried his head under his pillow and counted to five thousand, focusing on each number as it appeared in his mind, making the numbers glow like spell work…

But that mental image brought him back to the torture and the lone screaming voice of Jean Marie Bassett. Hermione hadn't silenced the man. Probably because she didn't want anyone to doubt that she was torturing him.

Even though Tom loathed him for Hermione's original capture by Grindelwald, he hated the fact that Hermione had been forced to turn a man they'd met into a pile of quivering flesh. The beautiful man's mind seemed to have fled.

And Hermione…Hermione had known she was going to be tortured and she sat there and took it…like it was nothing, like it was expected. She had tortured Bassett in her turn, again, as if this was just the business at hand…like she was disemboweling toads for a potion.

He pounded his pillow and stifled sound that tried to come out of his mouth. His head was pounding. His mouth was dry, and he couldn't force himself to let go of his wand.

Unwilling to continue to lie in bed and think about the future or worse, the exposed flesh and the pitiful cries, Tom made his way down to the common room. His favorite leather couch welcomed him and he opened a book.

It was easy enough to pretend that the scene he'd witnessed was a nightmare. At least until a shivering Hermione rushed into the common room wrapped in a blanket.

Her face paled when she saw Tom, and then she paled further.

"I'm sorry."

He looked at her red-rimmed eyes. "I am sorry too."

She walked into his waiting arms, still shaking.

"I didn't know it would be that bad, I swear, or I would have never have taken you." She half-sobbed the words, and another wave of rage hit him as the meaning sunk in.

"You wouldn't have taken me?" His word dripped acid as he held her away from his body and looked into her eyes. "Hermione. He tortured you. Forced you to torture someone else. We had to watch a dozen people being tortured and raped to death…if you had known all that would happen…"

She shook her head. "I might not have had the courage to go…"

"But you claim you wouldn't have taken me?"

"I would have never exposed you to that." Her eyes were bright and her words were fierce.

"But you would expose yourself."

"I might, in order to fight it. I knew I'd eventually push him to the point of torturing me. I didn't think it would escalate this quickly, but I knew he would if I kept going back. And I suspected that he didn't limit his use of rape to the battlefield. That's why there are a number of anti-rape jinxes on both of us."

"You didn't even flinch when you had to torture Bassett."

She snuggled into his arms, and smiled up at him. "One tiny bit of good in all of this. I didn't have to hurt him. Even though I don't like him, and I think he's a pathetic lapdog for a madman…I didn't torture him. I could have, and if I have to, I will. But I won't if there is another way. I came up with one. I'll teach you that spell. It causes the person you cast it on to behave as if they are being tortured horribly, but in reality, they are just screaming themselves horse and may need to change their pants. Then they drool for a few hours and their mind blanks the entire experience like a bad memory charm." She gave him a little half-grin. "And I still don't feel bad about Lestrange."

He kissed the top of her head. "Vicious thing. I didn't feel particularly bad about her either, if the truth is known."

"Grindelwald is going to implode sooner rather than later. Did you see how relived his court was to have an heir?"

Tom nodded. "I'd say close to forty percent want him gone."

Hermione smiled. "We need to make that number around eighty. If he loses the support of his court and then he can't call on the witches and wizards that he thinks are oathbound to follow him…"

"Then we can maneuver him into a situation where he's overextended and vulnerable."

She nodded and rested her head on his chest. "He's inhuman. I can't imagine tossing people to a crowd like that, like tossing scraps to a dog. It's hard to believe that any of those people could have been saved at one time."

"What do you mean?"

"They didn't have to turn out like this. They could have chosen another path. And this one is going to use them, degrade their very essence into something horrible and dark, and then the path they chose will destroy them."

Tom rubbed little circles on her back. "It is disgusting. He's surrounded himself with the lowest kind of filth, and now he panders to them because their actions elicit fear."

Hermione gave him an odd look, and then clambered into his lap. She tugged his head down and proceeded to snog him silly.

Traumatized he might be, but he was a teenager who had a warm willing witch on his lap, and he didn't find it hard to put the evening aside as he traced patterns into her sensitive neck with his tongue.

They didn't stop the mutual assault until they were panting and sweating lightly. Hermione rubbed her damp forehead along his cheek. "Thank you. I can't imagine facing this night without you."

He kissed her swollen lips as he considered a cold shower. He didn't fancy meeting Helena Malfoy in a few hours with evidence of his activities straining against his robes. Hermione followed his gaze, and the look in her eyes was hungry.

Which did nothing at all to help with his not-so-little problem.

Abraxas removed a small bejeweled hand from his left buttock as he made his way through his ballroom. The matron that the hand belonged to looked somewhat put-out by his indifference, but the witch was his grandmother's age and had breath like a dragon.

Insincere queries as to his wife's health had been a staple since he'd sequestered Helga. No few of those came with propositions, and since he'd discovered that his wife was willing to kill him, he'd taken up a few of those offers discreetly. Perhaps not discreetly enough, since half the pureblood elite seemed to want to believe that he was screwing every matron he danced with, which was hardly the case. He'd indulged in a half dozen dalliances in the past weeks, and none of them were particularly gossip-worthy…well, he supposed that the two buxom waitresses at the Leaky Cauldron he'd taken with Charlus Potter might have qualified as a bit racy. To be honest, it was more of matter of too much firewhiskey and two very forward witches, but his reputation for being a young rakehell was the talk of the evening.

He walked over to Tom and Hermione, intending to ask her to dance, and changed his mind. With the gossip he was currently encouraging; he probably shouldn't be seen dancing with anyone who had a reputation that needed to be maintained.

Instead, he pulled the pair off to a visible alcove and set one of his mother's favorite privacy spells…if anyone tried to listen in, they would hear nothing but a discussion on the merits of different types of teas.

Both Tom and Hermione looked a bit worse for wear. He knew they'd spent the previous evening with Grindelwald, but he didn't like the tightness around their eyes when they looked at the glittering throng of revelers.

He took a couple of glasses of bubbling elderflower water from a passing elf and handed them to the two.

"Even under privacy spells, I won't ask about last night, however, for all of this to work you at least need to look like you are having a decent time."

Hermione gave him a dazzling smile. "Can you imagine the rumors that would start if we looked like we really were having fun?"

Tom smirked.

Abraxas laughed. "I leave Hogwarts and the two of you become perverts."

Tom put a hand over his heart. "I'm wounded."

Abraxas put an arm around the younger man. "You know who looks wounded…and confunded."

Hermione pulled a face. "Bassett. People are noticing. He looks like he spent the past few days under a bridge."

Tom twirled his glass. "Or being tortured."

Abraxas felt a small satisfaction. "Poor chap. I suppose he felt he couldn't skip the party. Really, social obligations are so tedious sometimes." He leaned indolently on the edge of the alcove. "Still, he should leave early. I'll mention it to him."

Hermione nodded sagely. "Perhaps your mother could mention it to one of her friends. I think the matrons might hold more sway over him."

Abraxas chuckled. "If the matrons find out he's here alone, he won't be leaving that way. Ravenous they are."

Tom raised a brow. "We'd heard. One of them informed me quite seriously that I should speak to you about rutting with dragons. Apparently, if you are going to indulge, you need special equipment to protect your…equipment."

Abraxas groaned. "They've really gotten out of hand. I was going for devil-may-care, not Marquise de Sade."

Hermione snorted. "I thought you were going for man-whore. Did you really take Lady Goyle while she sat on her drunken husband's lap?"

Abraxas wrinkled his nose. "Certainly not. That bit a fantasy can most likely be laid directly at Lady Goyle's feet. She's still angry about her husband's latest conquest."

Tom chuckled. "So do you really think Grindelwald will underestimate you if you bed half the women in Great Brittan?"

Abraxas shrugged. "It's a wonderful cover story for me being in all sorts of places I shouldn't be, with people who might raise a brow. But if I'm there following my baser urges, everyone just titters and talks about sowing 'wild oats'. Though one would think that they'd be better off encouraging that sort of nonsense before a man got married."

Hermione put a soft hand on his coat. "Helga has not softened her ideas about you?"

Abraxas shrugged carelessly. "No. There was never any hope that she would really." He ran his fingers over his hair, smoothing the silky strands. "A fool's hope I suppose. It wasn't as if either of ever wanted the other. I simply needed an heir and she needed to get away from her crimes. I offered to send her to Greece. Or France. Or any number of places. And I offered to allow her lovers as long as she vowed on her magic to protect the family name." He grinned ruefully. "She tossed a copper tea kettle at my head that time, and it was full of boiling water."

"What will you do?"

"Divorce her once the child is born. She'll keep her dowry. But she won't see the child unless she makes some very binding vows." He turned from the crowd and let his false expression slip. "It's a horrible thing to do, to force this kind of intimacy. My son will not be forced to endure what I have, what my mother did."

Hermione took his hand and squeezed for an instant. "I think that's the right thing to do."

Abraxas sighed. "I'm glad there is one path forward that is clearly right. The rest of our endeavors are cloudy at best." He gave them both a charming smile. "I'd better get back to mingling. If I stay much longer half the room will be convinced that I'm sleeping with at least one of you." He let a hint of wickedness slip onto his face and then dropped the act for a moment. "Once this business with Grindelwald is over, I will end all of this too. No more playing a part for the crowd."

Tom frowned at him. "If this is too much…"

Abraxas shook his head. "No. For now, I will do my part. But once my son is born, I want to show him something different." Abraxas put a hand on Tom's shoulder. "We're going to build a brand new world. I want there to be room in it for more honesty than this one has allowed."