Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Twenty—Sessions
Hermione closed her eyes and concentrated on breathing. She was afraid that she would start sobbing otherwise, and that was hardly the picture she wanted to present to the Dark wizards who would come to interrogate them.
She was in a room with Ron that could have come from a prestigious Muggle hotel. The walls were a soft yellow color with one, unmoving, landscape painting that showed a curling ocean wave about to break on a black stone beach. There was a twin bed with white sheets, a single table with two chairs, a bathroom that had charms to start water running and flush the loo automatically, and three meals delivered a day due to house-elf magic.
But the suppression spells woven into the walls were so thick that she couldn't touch Ron's magic at all. It made her feel as if she'd lost a third eye that she'd taken no notice of until now.
"Are you all right, Hermione?"
Ron had been sitting beside her on the bed for the past hour, but his emotions were as muted as the magic. Hermione turned and buried her face in his shoulder, shuddering. Ron stroked her hair and made meaningless little shushing sounds that Hermione knew he meant well. But nothing was going to be all right again.
Riddle was going to take over the world. He was going to subjugate Muggleborns and may eliminate them altogether. And he was going to do worse to Muggles.
Because they had failed.
They should have moved decisively in so many different directions, Hermione mourned as Ron wrapped an arm around her waist. They should have talked to Harry and made him divulge the truth when they noticed him staring gloomily into the distance all the time. And the gloom got worse when someone found their soulmate. Hermione had thought, at the time, that Harry was simply upset not to be matched yet, and had encouraged him by telling him that the phoenix was an ambiguous symbol. His soulmate could be someone deeply interested in Light magic, or who had been reborn in some way, or who was a bird Animagus—
She'd never probed deeply enough into his state. She'd left him lonely enough that he'd never truly accepted that he couldn't have his soulmate, and had gone seeking Riddle instead of backing away from him.
She hadn't opposed the idea of Harry working in the Ministry. She had been concerned about whether Harry would be safe when he was the son of two members of the Order of the Phoenix and the godson of another. She'd thought he probably wouldn't be able to pass much useful information to them with his position in the Department of Magical Games and Sports.
But she hadn't asked enough questions about why he wanted to do it when it was so dangerous. Obviously, the bond with Riddle had been yanking him in that direction all along.
She hadn't told him the truth. Of course, neither had Ron, but Hermione still blamed herself more. She was the one who had noticed Harry's edginess and silence and wondered about the Ministry plan and still hadn't questioned him. Ron had seemed content to support his best mate.
"What can we do?" she whispered, and Ron sighed and lowered his head so that his chin was resting on her hair. They had clung to each other like that when they had first come back from the raid on the Department of Mysteries, and Hermione's heart had ached.
"There's not much we can do," Ron said. "Except continue to be loyal to the Order and have an honorable death."
Hermione took a deep breath and sat back from him, wiping at her eyes. "Then do you think we won't have a chance to convince Harry?"
Ron slowly shook his head. "I can't see that Riddle is going to let us alone with him. You saw the way Harry was holding back during the duel and using non-lethal spells. He still cares about us. Riddle is probably afraid that we'll talk him around again if we're alone with him."
Hermione breathed out. "If Harry survives."
Ron rolled his eyes. "Hermione, you were the who told me to use that spell."
"Not in the back!"
"It wasn't the most honorable thing to do, but neither was bringing the Order to the fight," Ron said. "Or Harry bringing Riddle. I told you, Hermione, we have to be practical about this. That spell isn't going to kill Harry, and it would let us weaken his bond to Riddle in time if we only could have got him away."
Hermione opened her mouth to say something, but the door opened at the same time. She felt Ron stand and move in between her and the door. She had closed her eyes because she didn't want to see Riddle's smug and mocking face.
Instead, she heard his voice, and it wasn't mocking or smug. It was as soft and dark as if thunder had grown the ability to speak. "Harry is alive. If he had died, you would wish you had."
"Does Harry know you want to torture us?" Ron asked. Brash, brave, as always, and Hermione could feel his emotions a little better now, vibrating with contained fury. Maybe the wards had lessened when the door opened. "I can't think he'd approve of that."
"I'm not going to torture you. I am telling you the truth." Riddle moved further into the room and shut the door behind him. Hermione decided that she'd had enough of sitting there with her eyes closed like an idiot, and looked at him. It was harder to make him out than she'd thought, despite the sun-like illumination that had begun to glow from the walls with his entrance.
Then Riddle glanced at her, and Hermione swallowed hard and held very still. The reason it was so hard to make him out, she realized, was that his magic had seeped from his skin to surround his head like the flared hood of a cobra.
"If Harry had died," Riddle continued, pacing a step towards them, "my sanity would have gone with him. I would make you pray for death then."
"That would only happen if you were true soulmates who had completed all the bonds," Ron said, tensing next to Hermione but not moving. "I know you aren't."
Riddle laughed softly. "What, Dumbledore didn't raise you on tales of my madness and how I was only constructing a sane mask to lurk behind on my way to taking over the world?"
"It wasn't tales," Hermione said. She had got her churning stomach under control and managed to look at Riddle with as much contempt as she could muster. "It's the truth. You're doing it now. You've built up the groundwork, and in a few years or decades at most, you're going to take over the wizarding world completely, forbid Muggleborns from attending Hogwarts, and start killing off Muggles. Unless someone manages to defeat you before then."
"And I've been working towards this for, what? Fifty years now? Come, tell me."
Hermione hesitated. This was a trap, and she knew it. There were no way that Riddle was as reasonable as he sounded right now.
On the other hand, she couldn't stop defending the Order's ideals just because Riddle had her a little inconvenienced right now. She lifted her chin proudly and said, "Yes, you have. Maybe longer than that. Professor Dumbledore thinks that you might have started working towards it when you were a student and found out about the Slytherin legacy. There were people who would follow you just for that."
"Idiots," Ron muttered, not enough under his breath. Hermione leaned harder on him, but Riddle didn't seem inclined to notice. Instead, he was nodding thoughtfully, which wasn't what she'd expected.
"And how long would I need to prepare these secret genocidal plans that, at the same time, weren't so secret that Dumbledore couldn't find out about them? More to the point, why didn't he reveal my genocidal secret to the world once he knew it?"'
"No one would have believed him," Ron said bitterly. "You were too popular. The same reason you can't arrest him."
"Oh, that is likely to change now that he has participated, very publicly, in a banned ritual with a vigilante group," Riddle murmured. "But to return to the main point. I have prepared for fifty years. I suppose that if I 'prepared' for ten more, or thirty more, and then died of old age, you would still never believe that I had simply been advancing my political agenda instead of secretly plotting genocide."
"You're trying to catch people off-guard," Hermione said, despite the uneasiness that was sparkling deep inside her soul like a diamond in a velvet casing. "You want to lull them. You'd take as long as it needs to do that."
"Fascinating." Riddle tilted his head. "It occurs to me that there is no way I can exonerate myself in your eyes. Denials that I was doing such a thing would only seem like one more layer of secrecy. Continuing to do as I always have done would come to seem like secret planning in your eyes."
"Why would you even want to exonerate yourself?" Hermione asked, back on more familiar ground now. "You despise Muggleborns and 'blood traitors.'"
"I thought it would be pleasant to understand Harry's friends more and be able to convince them that Harry is not bonded to an evil lunatic." Riddle shrugged and turned towards the door. "As it's wasted effort, I'll leave."
"Wait!" Hermione blurted, and shivered in hatred when Riddle glanced over his shoulder at them. She despised sounding so desperate around him. In a just world, he would be the one sounding desperate. "I—what are you going to do with us?"
"Not torture you. Leave you here a bit longer. Your meals will be delivered as they have been." Riddle's eyes were distant, his head tilted as if he were listening to something. "Then you'll go on trial."
"You can't put us on trial."
"Oh, but I can." Riddle's voice was low. "Isn't that what you promised in your letter to Harry? That if you lost the duel, you would go on trial for your crimes?"
"Technically he didn't win the duel! I didn't surrender!"
"You never intended to let him win," Riddle said, and his lips skinned back from his teeth in a feral gesture. "Any more than you left him a choice to fight you with that damn spell that bound his will and pulled him to your side like a Portkey."
"I—we knew we would need all the people in the Order to win. What I offered him was more honorable than what you do."
"A chance to live a life that isn't a fugitive's? Life with his soulmate?"
"You're going to corrupt him."
Riddle shrugged. "Many reports from Hogwarts mentioned your intelligence, Miss Granger. I thought about trying to recruit you, but once I found out about your soul-mark, and that you were bound to one of the Weasleys who will probably die trying to oppose me, I didn't bother."
Hermione felt herself turn bright red. "So you decided when I was in sixth year, is that it?" she asked loudly. Sixth year was when she had publicly revealed her soul-mark to stop some nasty speculation among the pure-blood students that she didn't have one because of her Muggle heritage. "Oh, yes, Minister, I believe your decision wasn't based on blood."
"Oh, that was my final decision. Before that, I had looked at other reports about your stubbornness, and thought that I would probably be wasting my time."
Riddle gave her a mocking bow and left the room with a slight click of the door. Ron immediately raced over to it and tried it, but then looked at her and shook his head. Hermione closed her eyes and struggled not to cry.
She had always done what she felt was right. She had fought so hard, and lived on the run for so long after Hogwarts, putting her life on hold because she knew she had to to fight against injustice. Well, not that she would have had much of a life in Riddle's world unless she wanted to accept a vision of herself as inferior.
She didn't know what she was supposed to do now.
Ron slid his arm around her shoulders. "We're still going to fight," he whispered to her, while their emotional bond flared and guttered out like a candle with the wards settled back over the room. "We'll watch for a chance when they move us. There's no way they can keep up their guard all the time."
Hermione nodded slowly. Riddle might be powerful and clever enough to anticipate anything they could do, but not everyone who worked for him could be the same. She leaned harder on Ron and allowed herself to hope.
"I understand that you won't do as the Healers ask and sleep on your stomach. That should be a minor effort, Harry."
Harry turned his head and scowled at Tom. The white walls of the private Healer's House around him were nearly as annoying as the peach-colored ones of St. Mungo's would have been. "Who told?"
"Healer Floyd. I understand that she's fond of the Galleons the House receives to fund treatment into a cure for lycanthropy." Tom sat on the chair next to the bed and stared at him. Harry winced as the bond rang around them accusingly.
"Tell me why you won't sleep on your stomach."
Harry breathed out slowly. "If I do that, then I won't be able to stand as easily if someone comes in." Tom's gaze still demanded answers, and Harry tossed his head and looked away uneasily. "I feel vulnerable."
Tom eased forwards and curled his hand around Harry's wrist. It was his magic, though, that draped over them like the wing of a dragon. Harry sighed and rolled closer to him, his eyes shut. A flicker of heat like a dragon's tongue touched his cheek.
"That makes sense," Tom said. "But let me assure you that at the moment, this building is surrounded by the most powerful wards I'm capable of casting, and one of the hydras is lingering to watch over you. I had to reabsorb the other to get some of my magical strength back."
Harry stirred despite himself. "That means that you're vulnerable, though."
"I assure you that I am capable of staying in my warded flat and among my Aurors when I'm not with you."
"The Aurors who have proven to be traitors already?"
"At the moment, I am choosing only those who have made some sort of personal oath of loyalty to me in the last week," Tom said lightly. "It's not a usual procedure; their oath is to the office and the Ministry, since Ministers have to be replaced. But at the moment, a temporarily binding vow is a piece of good sense that everyone has agreed upon."
Harry snorted even as he forced himself to lie back down on his stomach. "I'm surprised that you didn't do something like that already, given that you don't think you should be replaced."
Tom appeared infinitely smug as he picked up one of the vials Healer Floyd had left for Harry. "It doesn't do to appear too grasping. It lets the peasants pretend that everything is fine and nothing has changed while the whole world alters around them."
Harry sighed and sipped half of the vial, ignoring the way the potion clung to the sides of his throat in vast sticky strands like an Acromantula's web. "They're not peasants, Tom."
"I'm afraid that you'll find it harder than you think to change my perception that most people are beneath me, Harry."
That was true enough, so Harry abandoned that conversation for the one he'd been too tired to have the last time Tom was here. "What's going to happen to the Order?"
"Some of them can pay a fine for participating in a forbidden ritual and then leave," Tom said with a slight turn of his head. "Your friends will go on trial, along with the others who committed more savage crimes at Albus Dumbledore's instigation."
Harry breathed out, long and slow. "What's going to happen to Ron and Hermione?"
"A trial. I told you."
"In which they'll be found guilty, and sentenced to Azkaban. I can't countenance that, Tom, no matter what they did. You don't punish someone for murder with the loss of their—their personality."
"Cheer up. It might be the Kiss, so they'd lose their souls instead."
Harry leaned forwards a little more, ignoring the way the skin on his back stretched like the potion going down his throat. "Tom, I can't accept that."
"I want you to tell me what else you think I should do. If I spared them a trial, then I would be showing our political opponents that my lover influences me to softness, and that makes me weak. If I kept them in prison indefinitely without a trial, I would be accused of suborning justice. If I let them go, they would only continue to work against me. I spoke to them before I came here, Harry, and they are utter fanatics. Granger is so convinced that everything I do is only distraction from my ultimate purpose of launching a genocidal war that I don't think an angel descending from heaven with proclamations of my innocence would convince her. Dumbledore's done well with them, I'll give him that. They're as bound up in his thoughts and promises as a butterfly in a cocoon."
Harry was quiet, his eyes on the sheets beneath him. The emotional bond lay as flat as those sheets. Tom had apparently said all he wanted to for now and was waiting for Harry to react.
"Give—give me a chance to talk to them," Harry said finally.
"If anything you say to them can get through, I'll be truly impressed."
"And you've been consistently impressed since you knew me," Harry said, turning on one elbow and ignoring the way Tom hissed at him for pulling at the wound in the middle of is back. "I don't see why doing this will cost you anything if Ron and Hermione are going to end up in Azkaban anyway."
Tom raised his eyebrows as slowly as the surprise sang through the bond. "I'm not worried about it costing me anything," he said, and his eyes lingered on the wound.
"Oh." Harry flushed and cleared his throat. "I promise that I'll have one of your Auror guards with me at all times."
"Yes, you will," Tom said, in a way that said this wasn't even a promise Harry could make because it would have happened anyway. "I want you to make me another promise." He leaned across the bed to touch Harry's cheek with the back of his knuckles.
"What's that?" Harry's eyelashes fluttered, and he did his level best to prevent his breathing from doing the same.
"That you'll withdraw from the conversation the moment they begin to cause you pain."
Harry started and jerked his eyes open. The bond soured, and Harry sighed and lay down as carefully as he could. He wasn't used to paying that much attention to his level of discomfort, and certainly not the obsessive level Tom did. "Sorry."
"Your promise, Harry?"
Harry hesitated for a long moment. "I can't make it. I mean, it just—friendships cause some level of pain when they're under this much stress, Tom. It's just the way it is. If I make that'd promise, then I'd have to step back from Ron and Hermione before we even talked."
"Do you think they feel the same way you do?"
"That our friendship is under stress? Of course."
"That this is a level of unacceptable pain. Or will they attempt to persuade you around to their way of thinking because they are so bloody convinced that they're right?"
Harry blew out his breath. "I need you to accept that what's done is done, Tom. Hermione shouldn't have used that spell, but she did, and she shouldn't have had people lined up in a ritual to duel me, but she did." He kept unsaid the fact that Hermione had arranged the ritual when she couldn't possibly have known Tom would be able to come with him. That indicated a level of foresight targeted at defeating him that hurt too much to think about right now. "We need to deal with the consequences, not what we wish could have happened."
"And one of those consequences is your friends paying the price of their actions."
"You're being a hypocrite, Tom."
"Oh, quite possibly." Tom smiled, a bright, innocent thing that would have fooled Harry from a picture in the papers, while around him the air hummed with violence. "Tell me what about, specifically."
"You spared me from the natural consequences of my actions when I was an Order spy for years. And you did it before you knew I was your soulmate. You also pardoned my parents and did all but pardon Sirius. There's no reason that you can't spare Ron and Hermione the same thing."
Tom laughed like Sirius barking. "I did that because I made your godfather swear a vow, and your parents accepted a pardon in return for leaving the Order and moving in to a place where I could keep an eye on them. They made agreements. Would Weasley or Granger keep those agreements?"
Harry hesitated. "No," he finally whispered.
"Exactly. They wouldn't agree to swear a vow, and I can't trust them because they believe any action is justified, including lying, if it defeats me." Tom reclined in his chair and watched Harry with calm, weary eyes. "I don't want to hurt them because I hate them in particular, Harry. I want to hurt them because otherwise they will not stop. Unless they are stripped of the ability to act against me."
Harry remained still, his hands rubbing back and forth in complicated patterns. That lasted until Tom leaned over the bed and let his hand rest on the ridge of Harry's shoulder, at the edge of the injury. Harry turned and collapsed against him with a soft sigh.
"I think it might be useless," Harry agreed. "But I have to try."
"I don't want you exposed to them."
"You can't keep me from pain all my life, Tom." Harry kissed the back of his hand. "This is pain that I willingly choose to bear, because I might be able to spare myself some more in the future."
There was a silence long enough that Harry didn't know if it would make any difference, if Tom would yield. Then he made a disgusted noise and tore his hand away. "You'll have an hour with them. Once. If you can make them listen, the amount of time should be enough. If you can't, then I won't have you going back again and again."
Harry tried to ignore the sick, pounding sensation in his middle that told him Ron and Hermione's lives and freedom rode on him. In truth, their lives and freedom had been at risk the moment they chose to join the Order of the Phoenix.
And he wasn't doing this just to try and spare his friends, as much as he would mouth those words and as much as he knew Tom probably believed it.
He was doing this because he needed answers. Even if they hurt.
Hermione looked up with a madly pounding heart again as the door opened. Ron was standing behind it, the crystal lamp from the table in his hands. They had agreed their best chance was to stun any Auror who entered the non-magical way. Not that many had training in hand-to-hand combat, Professor Dumbledore had said.
But it was Harry who walked in, and a Harry who was by himself. The door shut instead of spitting in anyone who could have accompanied him. Hermione was so surprised that she just sat and stared with her mouth open.
"Hermione." Harry gave her a pained smile and glanced towards Ron. Something flashed off his skin, and Hermione blinked. It looked as if he was clad in almost-invisible, brightly-polished chain mail. "Good plan, with a physical strike, but it wouldn't work. I'm wearing a ward that would bounce it, and so would any Auror who comes in here."
"Why?" Hermione whispered. Ron sat the lamp carefully back on the table and came over to sit next to her with his arm around her waist.
"Because they'd be visiting a pair of dangerous murderers. Just like I am."
Hermione gasped because she couldn't help it. Harry sat down in the chair across from them, the one Riddle had ignored. The room was still dim, except for a glow of sunlight from the edge of the window, but Harry cupped his hand, and blue flames streaked up from his palm.
"How are you doing that?" Hermione whispered. "The duel magically exhausted you."
"I've been resting, and I can call on Tom's magic. He's strong." Harry let his blazing hand rest in his lap. "We've completed that part of the bond."
"Then the world's doomed," Hermione said, and closed her eyes to force back more tears. She was so bloody sick of crying. Ron leaned harder against her side, but the wards on the room still kept them from feeling each other through the emotional bond.
Maybe that was something she could change. Hermione focused on Harry. "Don't you think it's inhumane to separate a prisoner from their soulmate?"
"I'm surprised at you, Hermione. I thought you had no problem with that, given Albus Dumbledore's tactics against Tom and me."
Hermione forced herself, forced herself, to ignore the poisonous sensation in her throat, as if she was about to swallow a potion that would give someone control over her. "It's different when the bond has never been consummated."
"Maybe that's true. But you aren't separated from Ron. You simply can't use his magic and he can't use yours, and your ability to sense each other's emotions and thoughts is muted. That's all."
"That's all?" Ron burst out. "That's more inhumane than anything we did to you, Harry!"
"Including nearly killing me with a curse to the back?"
Ron flinched and rubbed the nape of his neck. Hermione shifted closer to him protectively. She knew how guilty he was about that, and that he had thought of almost nothing else except taking Harry out of the battle. She glared at Harry, who was watching them with a painfully neutral expression.
"We know almost nothing about who you really are, do we?" Hermione asked. "You were lying to us all through Hogwarts."
"Then I feel like we're on even ground," Harry said quietly. "I don't know much about you, either. My best friends would never have done what they've done in the name of the greater good or bound my will with that spell."
"It was justified because you were lying to us."
"What would you say if I told you that this confinement for you is justified because of what you did?"
"It's not the same thing at all." Hermione leaned forwards. This was what she had been hoping for, a personal chance to talk to Harry. "We only did what we did in the name of the greater good. But what Riddle's going to have you do is going to kill people, Harry."
"You killed them, too."
Hermione sighed. "We were doing this because Riddle is going to cause the genocide of Muggles and Muggleborns, Harry. Riddle will do what he does in the name of his own power."
Harry was quiet for a few seconds. Then he said, "Did you realize that Tom is the only democratically-elected member of the Wizengamot? The others are Ministry appointees, some of them from past Ministers, or pure-bloods who recommend each other. What did you think would happen when Tom died and someone like Arcturus Black took over the Wizengamot?"
Hermione waved a hand. She had thought Harry would probably say something like this. "The democracy in the wizarding world is corrupt anyway, Harry. It's the only way someone like Riddle managed to be elected. It wouldn't be the best outcome possible, but Arcturus Black being in charge of the Wizengamot would be better than Riddle being in charge of it."
"And do you think Black hates Muggles and Muggleborns less than you're convinced Tom does?" Harry shook his head slowly. "He proposed and voted for the laws that Tom supported—and which Tom is now going to be changing his support for. No one is going to convince Black otherwise."
"Yes, but with Riddle gone, the political and magical power necessary to make the future miserable for us is removed," Hermione said impatiently. Really, she didn't know why Harry wasn't getting this. He might have hidden his magical power from them at Hogwarts, but she knew he was plenty intelligent enough to understand what she was saying. "The Wizengamot is full of pure-blood infighting. They won't manage to mount a coordinated attempt to do anything."
"How do you know that for certain? Especially if one or more of them decided to treat Tom as a martyr and managed to rally everyone behind that?"
Hermione rolled her eyes. "Harry. They don't really like or support him. They wouldn't treat him like a martyr. They despise him for being a half-blood. They only go along with him because he's doing what they want."
Harry stared at her. "Hermione. Listen to yourself. Tom is powerful and dangerous and a political genius. But everyone hates him and barely stands behind him, and he wouldn't be missed if he died. Do you think anyone who elected him might miss him? That he doesn't have any allies who would do their level best to destroy the people who destroyed him?"
"People were manipulated into electing him," Ron pointed out. "They wouldn't miss him."
Harry sat back in his chair and watched Ron in silence. Hermione decided that that might mean they were on the verge of convincing him. She kept her voice as gentle as she could while she leaned forwards again. "Harry. Don't you see? The masses of people are easily manipulated and gullible. But when we free them, they'll be grateful—"
"Why?"
"Because we'll have freed them."
"But are you planning to make some grand pronouncement to tell them how Tom fooled them all?"
Hermione blinked. "Of course not. We can't—I mean, the Order doesn't announce its existence that way. We don't need to. People who know the truth will realize that we worked in the shadows for the good of all humanity."
"Tell me something. Do you believe Tom has them all under a literal spell that's going to be removed by his death?"
"No. There's no kind of enchantment that's so wide-ranging." Hermione was sure. When she had first realized how thoroughly Tom Riddle controlled the wizarding world, she had researched to see if there was. But she had come to the conclusion that there wasn't, and it was simply the wizarding public's depressing stupidity that let Riddle retain control.
"Then why do you think they're suddenly going to wake up and realize the truth when they elected him in the first place and you're not going to tell them anything?"
Hermione hesitated. There was a trap here, but she couldn't see where it was coming from.
"Anyone ought to be able to see how terrible Riddle is," Ron said, his face flushing. "Unless they're brainwashed into thinking Riddle is capable of love."
Harry folded his hands in his lap. "I'm only asking you to think about it from a logical perspective. How is anyone going to realize the truth if Tom is widely-respected and no one knows the truth? How can he control everyone so well as to force them to elect him, and yet be so incompetent as to cause them unparalleled relief when he's gone? How is the Order's perspective going to become everyone's perspective if you don't spread it?"
Hermione clenched her hands slowly. The words sort of made sense, but she had to resist them, because Harry was speaking them and she knew he had been tainted by Riddle. "With him gone, everything will be better, Harry. You can't deny that."
"Of course I can. You know what will happen to cripple my mind and soul if he's gone."
Hermione sighed. "You're just seeing it too much as an individual. It's tragic that you were marked as his, but if we have to sacrifice a soulmate bond—"
"What would happen if I asked you to sacrifice your bond with Ron?"
"There's no need to ask for that," Ron said, tightening his hand on her arm. "We aren't evil."
"Oh?" Harry whispered. "But from Tom's perspective, you are. And the papers are starting to spread all sorts of things, based on very few interviews with him in which he offered only bare facts. They're saying that you're so entrenched in Dumbledore's nonsense that there's no saving you, and you should be killed to spare the world from what you would do if you escaped. Trying to murder the Minister's soulmate and potentially drive him mad has done you no favors in the wider wizarding world's eyes."
Hermione felt a huge jolt under her breastbone. She had never once considered that the public would turn on them. "That's not true!"
"Why is it true in my case? And Tom's?"
"He's evil!"
Harry sighed in what sounded like exhaustion. "The problem, Hermione, is that you don't have a rational argument about that. You're not even prepared to make those arguments. You just think that everyone should see it from your point-of-view without an explanation." He stood up. "It's perfectly logical to make the argument that Tom is evil. You could have done it by pointing to his voting record. But you're so convinced that everyone should just believe what you do and your own actions are justified that you didn't do that. And now half the wizarding public is convinced that you're a terrorist and wants you dead, and the others are calling for your imprisonment in Azkaban." He took out a paper from his pocket and handed it to her.
Hermione unfolded it and stared at it. The front had a photograph of her and Ron the day they had graduated from Hogwarts, draped in bright red and gold robes and smiling. But the headline said, MUGGLEBORN TERRORIST CAPTURED AT LAST!
Hermione skimmed the article. Phrases jumped out at her like pure-bloods out of an ambush.
…brightest witches to graduate…influenced heavily by Albus Dumbledore…soulmated to a pure-blood she persuaded to rebel…raided the Department of Mysteries…
"They're twisting it," she whispered, and stared at Harry, wondering how he could stand there in front of her with dry eyes when he had to know what this could lead to. "This isn't the way it happened!"
Harry shrugged. "You weren't making the arguments to convince them otherwise, Hermione. You were hiding in the shadows and striking from them. Killing people that most people are convinced were innocent."
"The Unspeakables weren't—"
"But you didn't publish the reason you went after them," Harry said, his voice sharp and pitiless. His eyes were terrible. "You just committed the crime and then ran away. No public trial, no pamphlets that gave the Order's side distributed."
"We had to do it that way, though," Ron whispered, taking over because Hermione's throat had clogged and she could say nothing at all. "If we handed out pamphlets and so on, then they would have suspected Professor Dumbledore's involvement. His public image would have been compromised."
Harry snorted. "So you gave up your freedom and your normal lives and even your attempts to persuade people to join your cause to protect his apparent innocence? That's just rich."
"We—we had to do it that way," Hermione said, but her voice was wavering and she hated it. Her eyes remained on the headline. She knew Riddle controlled the papers, of course everyone knew that, but at least one person—who wasn't Rita Skeeter—had written this story. She knew it wasn't Riddle. She knew his writing style. "It was imperative that Professor Dumbledore remain uncompromised."
"Why? How did he assist the Order's cause? He didn't even really speak up against Tom's interference in Hogwarts, but he told me more than once that he hated it."
Hermione shook her head. She had been so sure that other people understood the rightness of their cause. And why should they have to speak up to defend themselves? The people on the right side didn't.
"Dumbledore's sacrificed all of you so that he could keep playing at being Headmaster of Hogwarts," Harry said. "He hasn't come forwards now, either, even though Tom said that he's to be arrested if found and not cursed on sight. He spent years recruiting people who came through Hogwarts for the Order. That was more important to him than actually explaining what the hell you stood for."
Hermione dropped the paper on the stool next to her. "Harry, you know that we have a point! You said that you could easily think of Riddle as evil just from his voting record. Why do you—"
"Because even if I wanted to defend you, you've made it really fucking hard, you nutters!" Harry shouted, and Hermione fell silent in shock. She never, ever remembered him yelling at them like this in Hogwarts. "You bound me with a spell to force me to duel, and then you had dozens of people waiting to feed you magic in a forbidden ritual! Ron cursed me in the back! Tom wants to destroy you. He would have been happy to just see you arrested and tried for your original crime, but this? He wants you dead."
"Casualties of war," Hermione whispered. "It was justified."
"You haven't even convinced the average person that there is a war," Harry snapped. "They don't know what you're fighting for! They're caught up in the romance of the Minister who's gone partner-less for so long finding his soulmate at last, and they like that I'm powerful and dueled Lestrange to a standstill in the middle of Diagon Alley, too. They hate you. Yank your self-serving heads out of your arses and stop thinking everything you do is perfectly obvious and everyone will rally to you because you're the good ones. Use that logic you're so fond of, Hermione. If Tom controls the wizarding world, perfectly, and has pulled the wool over everyone's eyes regarding this supposed war, why would anyone support you?"
"Professor Dumbledore said—said that everyone would understand once Riddle was dead." But the words tasted of ashes as Hermione repeated them.
"Yeah, well, he's a nutter, too," Harry snapped, and turned to face the door. "Listen to me. I'll save as much of your lives and freedom as I can. But after that, if there's anything of you left, then you're going to have to work to free Muggleborns. Not commit romantic crimes and spout that rot about sacrifice and the greater good and casualties of war. And if you ever tell me again that someone else is evil and that means you're justified in whatever you do to them, then I'll let Tom do whatever he wants with you."
The door slammed. Hermione sank slowly onto the bed, and felt Ron trembling as he tucked his arm around her.
"He's the nutter," Ron whispered. "Going over to Riddle like that."
Hermione shook her head slowly, eyes locked on the paper. She felt like she'd been hit with a Stunner that had awakened her instead of dumping her asleep. "No, Ron, he's right."
"What? About Riddle being—"
"No. About the way that we're coming across to the public." Hermione folded the paper up again and lowered her face into her hands. "I mean—it's not right. But Riddle does control the wizarding world. It's full of sheep that will follow anyone. We were stupid to think that the righteousness of our actions would proclaim the righteousness of our cause without trying harder to express those views in public."
"So what are we going to do?"
The word stung her throat, but Hermione forced it out. "Compromise."
