Hi all! I have bumped the rating! There is some of what I'd call "medical gruesomeness" in this chapter, and also some other things :)

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As the sunrise peeked through the windows, Tom took in the wreckage of his living room. The place was a catastrophe of old texts, unrolled scrolls, and sheaves of paper. Before him lay a map of the world that he'd been studying for the previous hour.

He rose, climbed a set of spiral steps, and emerged onto a low balcony. Birds sang along the eaves of his villa as he looked out over the palace complex.

In the rising daylight, Tom waited for the thing that had awakened in him last night to fade, banished by the fire of the sun like so many small kinds of nighttime madness. The feeling did not go. It was still there in his breast, small and vulnerable, like something newly germinated.

When he returned downstairs, the map seemed to call to him again. Tom settled before it, disturbed, splaying his fingers across the ocean.

He had stared at this map so many times, moving small figurines across it, planning his tactics, imagining the way regions and cities might fall. Now all of that seemed to exist behind a thin membrane. The jagged coastlines of the Earth Kingdom, the peaks surrounding the Air Nomads, the intricately drawn ice floes by the Water Tribes … he ran his fingers over the vellum and imagined these places. He could feel the mountain winds at the Southern Air Temple. The eddying gusts made him consider the circular bending forms of the Air Nomads, how their bodies echoed the world surrounding them.

He had been a master of airbending for fifteen years. He had known the theory, known their inspiration, been able to perform the motions effortlessly. Yet he had never cared about the feeling of airbending. It had always been a tool rather than an art.

But last night, energy had cycled through him as he'd healed Hermione's palm, and that sensation had been new. What other abilities might be dormant in him, waiting for discovery? If he abandoned this strange new road and went forward with his plans, such avenues would certainly close to him.

And what would his life become, once the invasion began? An unending stream of dealings with the High Generals, with lesser benders. He would dedicate every waking moment to a kind of conversion, and ultimately, what did any of it do for him? He was the Avatar. He already had power and status. Those who would really be enriched were the Fire Nation's court. So, was he doing all this for the benefit of mediocre people like Rosier?

Tom let his breath hiss through his teeth. The plan was starting to seem burdensome, even irrational. He didn't understand why he'd never asked these questions before. Neither had he really considered the possibility that the war would take decades, in which case, he would pour the remainder of his youth into it.

Then there was the question of his burgeoning Avatar Spirit. If he went through with the invasion, Hermione would want nothing more to do with him. Tom knew it instinctively: He would lose her as suddenly as to death. Without her, would he be trapped at the first step down the road to the Avatar State, unable to go any farther?

Tom's eyes strayed to the place they'd stood the previous night, when he'd pulled her against him and thought of nothing else, feeling something like hunger and satiation at once.

Her opinion of him would be irrevocably lost if he proceeded with his plan. She would be furious, even hurt. She would think him evil and disgusting. She would condemn him forever.

Tom felt a bizarre, uncomfortable twist in his stomach, something he didn't think he had ever felt before. Suddenly he found himself thinking of the Malfoys, and of Draco, and of all the unknowing fools around the world who had welcomed him with gifts and adoration these past ten years, believing he meant the best for all of them, and the feeling intensified. It was like alarm, or defensiveness.

He tried to shut it out. Technically nothing had happened yet. The kidnapping initiative … that was already off-schedule. The entire endeavor could be paused. It could all be paused indefinitely. And why not? Why couldn't Tom say that if it no longer served him, let the whole thing shrivel on the vine? He was free to choose his own path.

He closed his eyes and saw the darkened forest in his dreams the previous night. The Spirit World … the Avatar State … it could be within his grasp. And her at his side.

He imagined himself taking another step into the woods.

#

Hermione was dawdling outside Riddle's villa. She had caught sight of herself in the glazing of the windows. When she had arrived in this city, her reflection had shown her someone decisive, someone whose purpose could not be shaken. Now she barely recognized the woman in the glass, whose desires made everything muddy.

She finally slipped in through the courtyard entrance. She passed the huge vats of water, then the pond in the center, toward the double-doors that led into his living room. At a tap on the wood, a voice said from inside, "Come in."

She slid the door away and went still in the threshold. The place looked as though something had exploded inside. Namely, a library. Everything was covered in papers and scrolls and books. Riddle himself was standing at the only clear surface in the room: the stovetop. A small flame burned beneath a teapot, which he coaxed higher with his fingertips.

Hermione wound through the maze of texts toward him and stopped several feet away.

She had known proximity would feel strange, after the way they'd left things the previous night. She'd wondered if Riddle would ask why she'd fled, in that coldly neutral voice that betrayed displeasure. Or maybe in the light of day he would simply pretend the whole thing had never happened.

There was no such pretense. Riddle approached her. Before she could react he was sliding his fingers against the side of her neck and into her hair, then kissing her again. His lips were warm and settled firmly into place, as if to impress something upon her.

Hermione hid her surprise as he pulled back. "Hello," she said softly, feeling shaken.

"Good morning." She sensed something in his manner, an undercurrent of excitement. He trailed his fingers down her arm, then lifted her hand, the one he'd healed. He studied the lines upon her palm. "I have news."

"News?"

"Yes. I dreamed of a dark forest last night. I could hear the Spirits' voices."

It was all Hermione could do to keep her hand steady. "You … you dreamed of the Spirit World?"

"I did." He lifted her hand to his mouth. For an insane second she thought that he meant to bite her. Then his mouth pressed to the spot on her palm that had been burned, where the healed skin was pink and sensitive. "You've given me the key," Riddle said onto her skin.

Shivers raced up her arm, and for an instant she felt blind panic. What had she done? Had she really put the Avatar State within Riddle's grasp?

But—no. Understanding burned through her. Hours after Riddle had shown and felt connection with another human being for the first time, he'd had his first Spirit dream.

The truth appeared to her, so whole and complete that she couldn't believe she hadn't pieced it together before. Riddle could never master the Avatar State unless his soul became worthy of it. If his reason to seek it out was to conquer and subjugate, it would continue to elude him the way it always had.

But what did Riddle mean by the key? Was he, too, talking about understanding the nature of his Avatar Spirit? Or was his private meaning that he wanted the Avatar State for the final, deadly tool in his arsenal, and he thought it was finally within reach?

"Well?" He was searching her expression, hand tightening on hers. "You must see what this means. You must see what the future holds now."

"I don't. Tell me."

Riddle moved an inch closer. They were almost flush. He did not kiss her again, but he slid his hand back into her hair so that shivers itched over her skull. Hermione held her breath as his fingers splayed across the back of her scalp. She could feel the ghost of his mouth on hers.

"I would have thought," he went on more quietly, his thumb moving in a maddening circle at the base of her skull, "that the future would be obvious. You will stay. Move into the villa. You will have access to every library in the Fire Nation, and every resource that the Fire Lord can supply, while you design the next stage of these lessons. If you find you need other references, we will fly on Nagini to any corner of the earth. We might spend time at Ember Island; there are a number of secluded beaches there where we could continue developing your waterbending techniques. You will have all that you could possibly want."

Hermione felt dizzy. She must somehow look past the temptations, although they were enough to make her salivate. She must think only of the balance of the world, the balance he was meant to uphold, and whose fate now fell to her.

So, Riddle wanted to continue their sessions. He wanted to let her insult him and lecture him and argue with him, to gouge out handfuls of his old self and fling them down by the wayside—to siphon in more of what she saw fit. Is it enough? whispered Harry's voice at the back of her mind. His healing, this dream, his gestures toward wanting to progress down this path … was it all enough?

"You'd continue to place yourself at my mercy, then," said Hermione. In her head it had sounded light. When spoken, the words were serious, even cold.

Amusement made Riddle's eyes glint like onyx. His hand shifted at the back of her head, running over the uneven curves of her skull. "Is that what you want? To have me at your mercy?"

"Yes," she said without thinking. She saw him on his knees before her in the courtyard, breaking in dehydration. She saw him performing agonizing mental contortions in the catacombs. Yes: she wanted Riddle in the kind of pain that meant realignment, like dragging a dislocated joint back agonizingly into its socket.

But it wasn't all she wanted. She didn't know whether she loathed him or herself more for it, but underneath all her questions of duty and judgment, she wanted Riddle to desire her. To prize her. She wanted him to value her above everyone and everything else, above his wretched ideas about the world, above Rosier and Lestrange and Malfoy.

Does that please you? he'd asked her last night, having scorned the High General for her. But pleasure was not the right word. It was not nearly enough.

"And you?" she said. "What do you—"

Riddle's lips pressed to hers. The kiss was deep, forceful. His thumb trailed down the back of her neck, his other hand settling heavy on her shoulder. "I've made myself clear already," he said, the words edged with impatience.

Hermione's hands rose to his face, cupping the angles of his jaw, pulling him into another bruising kiss. Their bodies moved in tandem: she stepped forward as he moved back, opening a door with his foot, guiding her into a room where the shades were still drawn. She groped backward and slid the door shut behind them. It was mid-morning, but sealed into the semi-darkness of what she knew was Riddle's bedroom, Hermione felt completely outside of time.

What are you doing, she thought to herself as they untied their robes, as their hands slid along every line and curve, as her skin lit like a map of embers at his touch. What are you doing, what are you doing … Yet her focus was elsewhere. It was consumed by the way Riddle's breath quickened. The way that even in nakedness he seemed to have no air of vulnerability. The way that his hands—always so purposeful—faltered mid-motion when her hand dipped between his legs to touch him.

As if to compensate for the instant's hesitation, his grip tightened in her hair. He bore her down to the duvet, and as they moved together, the summer heat began to get the better of Hermione. She was sweat-slick; their skin was sticking. But even now Riddle's face was not flushed. His expression remained composed. As her eyes adjusted to the dimness, the most disturbance she could see in him was a hardening of the gaze, a sheen of sweat over his forehead, too. An infinitesimal parting between his lips.

"Does it feel good," she found herself saying.

"Yes," he said in the same tight-lipped instinctual way.

Then it was too much to look at each other. Their mouths met, wet and warm, their eyes shut, their bodies moving more quickly and urgently. And as the hours slipped away, as they worked each other apart, shivered and panted in each other's grip, Hermione's thought of What are you doing transformed into I have time.

They would go away somewhere, far from the rest of the world. Working in isolation from the generals and the Fire Lord, Riddle would have no chance to advance or authorize any plans. Eventually she would work the truth of the invasion out of him. And if he would not relinquish the idea, there would be other full moons. Other opportunities.

Perhaps she would eventually make the same judgment that Albus Dumbledore had. Perhaps she would eventually strike him down on a full moon. But it would not be tomorrow night's, and until the moment of judgment came, it would be months of this. Months of what Hermione could only now recognize as rich, decadent pleasure in each other's bodies and minds. And it had been pleasurable, she acknowledged, long before this instant. There had been pleasure here since the very moment they had dueled, having shed their pretenses. It was a pleasure beyond desire or even respect. It was the pleasure of recognition.

#

"You're sure?" said Ron that evening, when she returned to Dragontongue Road. "You don't think the Fire Lord and the military will go forward with it even if he's off on some island getting trained?"

"We'll need to be sure," said Hermione. "Harry, you're still going to Nott's office tomorrow, aren't you? Hopefully you can find some correspondence in there that shows us how close we are to a tipping point."

He nodded. He looked less convinced than Ron. "I don't know, Hermione. It's a massive risk, keeping him alive. You know a lot more about him than most people, but you've still got no idea what his plans are. He might still be dead-set on the invasion."

Hermione sighed. "I know. But if he becomes a proper Avatar, he can dismantle the entire framework of what he's planned. Whereas if he dies suddenly, he'll be immortalized among his supporters as a tragic loss who died too young, and I'll bet they'll carry out his plans without him. That's especially dangerous in that first decade or so, when the new Avatar will be too young to maintain the balance of the world."

"Right," said Harry slowly. "And that's the reason you want to keep Riddle alive, is it?"

Hermione pursed her lips and didn't answer. She didn't need Harry to hold up a mirror to the marred reflection of her judgment. She knew how selfish it was to risk global war because she didn't want to kill someone who might not need killing—as if her conscience was so important in the grand scheme of things. Let alone her feelings. If it had been purely a matter of conscience, possibly she could have held that up as some kind of moral shield. But she couldn't disentangle it entirely from the way he made her feel free and powerful and really understood, for the first time in her life. She imagined returning to a world where there was no more understanding of that kind. It was a bleak future. Yet even to factor in her own future was, she knew, repellent: her happiness was an unacceptable counterweight to the fate of the modern world.

At the same time, she did believe what she'd said, that Riddle's followers would carry out his plans in the event of his death. She believed that Riddle's alteration, then, would do more good than his murder. … She did believe that to kill him should be a final resort.

"I have a long list of reasons," she said finally. "As long as we're at a stalemate, I think they're enough to tip the scale."

#

Tom dreamed again that night. He was at the head of a warship. He'd had the dream before, in many different iterations. He had dreamt of dying here, of overpowering enemies, of churning through the ocean at the pace of flight.

This time, however, the warship was caught. Vines and kelp and sea plants had twined up from the deep and formed a filigree over its iron hull, teeming over its deck. Tom walked through the plants and realized that the ship was sinking, the plants tugging it downward inch by inch. Yet he felt no risk to his own person. When he rested a hand on the vines, he could feel that they reached deep into the sea.

He balanced himself on one of the vines, arms outstretched, and began to walk into the ocean.

He awoke with the feeling of seawater surging against him. The sensation was so real that Tom went out to the courtyard and drew water from the pond, trying to replicate the push and pull of the waves. If he had ever felt the water this way before, as alive as fire at his hand, he couldn't remember it. He felt sunk into its flexibility, its slipperiness.

He was so preoccupied by the sensation, in fact, that he found himself making missteps and inaccuracies. The same moves that he had performed unthinkingly for a decade and a half felt very nearly new. All his senses felt heightened, the sound of each wave so crisp, its color richer and truer. He felt as though he were still dreaming.

Tom felt distracted all morning. When Hermione arrived, she told him, "I thought we'd try healing again. See if you can replicate it under less extreme circumstances, now you know the way that it feels."

He nodded, but he had hardly heard her. Even the way her lips moved to shape the words distracted him. She had once asked him what his favorite part of waterbending was, and it had seemed so childish a question then, so ridiculous—but did it feel this way to her all the time? And if this was how waterbending was meant to feel, as though his whole self were halfway into it, then what sensuous thing might he uncover in earthbending, airbending? Tom felt like an exposed nerve.

"You seem strange," Hermione said as they settled outside. She wasn't meeting his eyes. "We don't have to … if you … I mean, yesterday …"

Her rare uncertainty tugged him back into himself. "I don't regret it."

She let out a small breath as she stirred the water in the pond. Looking at the back of her neck, the downy wisps at the base of her braid, the skin whose salty taste he knew, Tom felt almost dizzy. He felt the sudden need for privacy. He wanted her to be somewhere else while he analyzed what was happening to him physically.

Control, he told himself. He needed self-possession.

He settled stiffly beside her.

"All right, then," said Hermione, and she opened a small, shallow cut on her calf. "Go ahead."

Tom drew water from the pool. She looked skeptical, as though she expected him only to be able to heal in a moment of shock. But Tom knew how it felt now. He couldn't forget the feeling. When he placed the pads of water over her leg, he felt the energy moving through her. The flow of her qi was recognizable to him, inextricably intertwined with the way she'd moved against him yesterday, with her forcefulness and high sensitivity.

He joined himself into that feeling, then focused on the injury. The cut sealed away in an instant. He repeated the exercise on his own leg even more smoothly. For a while longer they experimented with location, with the type of wound.

Eventually Hermione stood. "All right. Let's go, then."

"Where?"

"To show the world your progress."

#

Number 12, Dragontongue Road was one of those very traditional Capital City houses that Tom had a soft spot for. Its paneling was austere, its stairs creaked, and it was hung with art that was centuries old.

"I saw no issue with your other robes," Tom called through the door to Hermione's bedroom.

"Then clearly you haven't spent any time in a healing hall. Long sleeves are unacceptable."

Her voice was so muffled that Tom was sure she had gone into the washroom to change. He decided to indulge his curiosity and slipped into her bedroom. The guest quarters were small but bright, with a large south-facing window. Her possessions were scattered everywhere. He sidled to the bedside table, where a vase of flowers had littered its petals artfully, and slid open the drawer. Inside was a stray pai sho tile and a small booklet lying open on its edge. A copy of Ba Sing Se's Quarterly.

He ran his fingertips over the booklet. They'd discussed this journal at the Volcanic, that first night. Tom remembered sitting across the table from her and thinking her mundane. Now she had turned his ordered existence to chaos.

He heard footsteps, shut the drawer, and slipped out of her bedroom. Moments later, Hermione emerged wearing a robe whose sleeves ended at the bicep, close to the skin. "Are you ready?"

"I think this will go poorly."

"Yes, it's a definite possibility. Come on."

It was half an hour's walk to the Mungo Healing Hall. Located on a tree-shaded street in Royal Caldera City, this was the most well-funded healing hall in the capital, possibly in the nation. A massive, well-lit building, its banks of large windows allowed fresh air to circulate freely through small but well-kept rooms.

When they arrived at the healing hall, the attendant healers were thunderstruck. But for once, their delight wasn't directed toward Riddle. It was Hermione who received their praise and excitement, and when she explained why they'd come, they gushed, "Of course! Of course! We'd be thrilled!"

Tom wasn't surprised to see a number of Water Tribe healers as they passed through the halls. Waterbending healers were in high demand around the world; they could arrive in any city and be taken on immediately by the nearest healing hall. Still, Tom's jaw set whenever he passed them. He had never enjoyed spending time around healers, knowing what they must think about his inability.

Former inability, he corrected himself with some pleasure.

The healers brought them to a long hallway where rippling white sheets obscured the doors to the treatment rooms. "As you asked, Master Hermione," said Healer Smethwyck, "emergency treatments."

"Wonderful. Thank you."

"You expect me to be able to heal major wounds right away?" said Tom once Smethwyck had gone.

"I expect you to watch."

Watch he did, and almost at once, Tom realized that he had never really seen Hermione in her element before. In their spars, he had seen the side of her that was raw talent, prodigious but unrefined. But as a healer, she was honed by years of study. She moved swiftly and silently between beds. She looked into weeping wounds, into punctures and severe burns. Tom was instinctively repulsed by the injuries—by these reminders of human bodies as weak, fallible things—but Hermione showed nothing besides a shrewd professional eye.

"You'd never been in a firebending fight before?" she'd say in a voice that betrayed no worry or judgment. Or, "Had you been using the cleaver to cut the fish before it slipped?"

"Y-yes," this second man wept, using his uninjured forearm to wipe his streaming eyes. "Can you f-fix it? Will I ever b-be able to use it again?"

At this, Tom saw Hermione soften. "Yes. You said your healer already applied the ointment to stave off infection?"

He nodded, his bald head shining in the long sunbeams.

"Good. Then place your arm here, please."

The man set his arm atop a small wooden table. Hermione undid the last of his dressing, and the skin sagged, showing the depth of the wound. It immediately began to bleed again. The man glanced into the cut and went gray.

"You'll feel some discomfort," said Hermione, unflinching. "It may help to breathe through your mouth so you don't take in the scent of the ointments."

The man immediately did what she suggested. Hermione drew water from the clean metal bowl upon the windowsill and glanced to Tom.

He approached warily, standing at her shoulder as she circled her hands over the deep cut. He saw Hermione's fingers moving slightly as though probing the currents of the energy. The water began to glow. Blood, clotted and new alike, cleared out of the cut. Over the course of five minutes, then ten, then fifteen, flesh reattached to flesh, and new skin stretched over the fading mark. The man's tears had stopped streaming down his face.

"Thank you," he gasped out, flexing his fingers. "Oh, thank you. They told me I might be here for days, and even then, that it might not be back to full usage …"

"It might not have been," said the voice of a healer from the edge of the cloth curtain. "We'd be lucky to have Master Hermione as one of our own, Mr. Bode, but she's only visiting."

Tom glanced back. Several admiring healers had clustered at the edge of the cloth curtain. Some now bustled away, looking abashed, but one piped up, "What technique did you use on the piping reattachments, Master Hermione?"

Hermione smiled and began to explain her method of side-in wound closure. Tom stood in the shadow of the privacy curtain, feeling ever more stiff and awkward. Beside these procedures, his healing a small burn and cuts that had barely drawn blood seemed pathetically elementary. Had she meant to humble him, taking him here? Was that the point of this? Did she want him to see the way the other healers adored her?

But barely had the man with the healed arm left when Hermione turned to Tom and said, "I'd like you to try to treat the next person."

The healers had not yet left. Now they began to stare. He could hear their murmurs. But—I thought—he's never been able to …

Tom ignored them, focusing on Hermione. He lowered his voice. "With what training, exactly?"

"I'll heal them most of the way. You'll finish the process. You've been able to heal me, which gives you a sense of how it should feel, passing the energy into another person's body. I want to see whether you can carry that over into someone you've never met."

Tom glanced over his shoulder at the healers and lowered his voice further, so only they could hear. "And your admirers?"

Hermione did the same, a scant murmur. "I think they'll be a good incentive for you. You do well in front of a crowd. That's also why I've brought you to emergency treatments rather than something more superficial. You've responded to urgency before."

Hermione guided him to a room near the end of the row, nearly a dozen healers scuttling after them now. A girl around sixteen was lying behind this curtain, her leg elevated on a small table and wrapped in bandages.

She looked half unconscious. Still, when the girl saw Tom, her mouth drifted open. Hermione smiled. "I see you recognize the Avatar, Hannah. He'll be helping me heal you today."

"Wow," Hannah said in a faint, groggy voice. "I mean—thank you." She managed a faint smile to Tom.

He knew what he should do. He should show his usual false, demure smile in return and step up to the girl's bedside, then say some platitude about her being in excellent hands, how he was pleased to be of any assistance at all.

But he was beginning to feel that strange sensation again, between alarm and defensiveness. The act felt absurd in this context. Why had Hermione done this to him, why had she taken him here? How could she seem so unaffected by the fact that this Hannah girl looked on the brink of death? Her skin was the color of plaster.

"So," said Hermione as she began to unwrap the bandage, "you said this happened from a fall?"

"We were climbing," Hannah rasped out. "I tripped off a wall. Must have been twenty feet."

She groaned as the last of the bandage peeled away. Bile surged up Tom's throat. A shard of glistening bone protruded from her leg. The shattered tibia had come right through the skin. The whole thing was coated in dried blood.

Hermione examined the wound from several angles. Finally she said, "All right. Your healers have already applied the strongest numbing ointments they have, Hannah. I'll do some tissue cooling to add to that. If you drink this"—she folded Hannah's feeble fingers around a cup—"you should stay asleep for most of the session. You may drift awake for a few seconds at a time and feel some pain, but it won't be anything near the trouble this has given you already."

"Thank the Spirits," the girl said with a good attempt at a smile. Then she drank the contents of the cup. Within minutes she was unconscious.

Tom could barely force himself to watch as Hermione worked. At first he thought he was feeling simple disgust, but that wasn't right. As Hermione cut and shifted and reset, Tom felt phantom pangs in his own leg as though it were his body injured, his body made vulnerable.

But why was it happening? What was some clumsy teenage girl to him? He told himself that he was safe, that he was whole. He knew that he was. Yet to watch what was happening made him feel affected.

Time passed. Half an hour, perhaps. Many other healers had joined the observation group now, most of them wearing students' robes. When Hermione finally worked the bone back into place and sealed it with a small crack, there were admiring whispers from the healers and a small sound from Hannah, who stirred for the first time.

Hermione paused. Soon the girl had returned to sleep.

Ten minutes later, Hermione had knit the wound and worked her way back up to the surface of the skin. Tom watched her moving the water over the girl's shin, brow cinched in focus. He abruptly remembered that he was, in some way, supposed to be assisting with the final stages.

At last, Hermione beckoned.

Tom wet his paper-dry lips with his tongue and approached the bedside. Barely anything was left of the injury—a thin, zigzagging line.

Hermione sent her water into the discard bin, which held gallons of murky water by now. Tom took a new stream of fresh water from a separate metal stand and lowered it over the girl's shin.

Yes. He could feel the energy in the girl's body, in the same way he'd felt his own and Hermione's before. And now he knew the feeling of bringing himself into a cycle with that energy: it was not an act of intrusion but an act of opening himself.

He felt sudden reluctance, as though he'd struck a wall. Open himself to this unconscious, anonymous person? Share the flow of his qi with a stranger?

His eyes slid onto the girl's face. Some color had returned to her in sleep.

That tinge in her cheeks, for some reason, captured his attention. It was as though Hermione had beat death itself into retreat. This was the power that he, too, possessed—he could remake what time had undone.

He looked down at the girl's leg and exhaled, letting his energy meld into hers. The water began to glow. Small sounds of excitement and surprise from the healers. Tom passed his palms back and forth over the red zigzag, moving his fingers in the way he'd seen Hermione move them, as though he were knitting her together at a touch.

The line sealed away and vanished.

By the time they left the healing hall in early evening, there was an adoring group of people clustered outside, waiting for him. It all felt unreal. Tom managed to nod to the crowd, some of whom were trying to ask him questions for newspapers; he gave no answers.

As they walked back to the palace gates, he felt foolish, as though he had been caught in a lie. All day he had healed cut after cut, burn after burn. Hermione had even begun to give him suggestions to improve his form, as though this were any other bending lesson. And yet none of it made him feel satisfied, as he would have expected to feel in the glow of his success. They walked in silence a while.

Then he forced out, in a low, disdainful voice, "It wasn't selfless."

"Excuse me?"

"Healing. You've built up this idea of connection, of focusing on other people, but it's all selfish. Those other healers couldn't wait to fawn over you—and if not the healers, then the people themselves. The second you've healed them, you're like a god to them." He was speaking too quickly, his voice sharpening now. "And the other healers, too. They're doing it because it makes them feel good to receive praise. It's no different from the way I've always been."

Hermione sighed. "For the most brilliant person I've ever met, you can be a complete blockhead, you know."

Tom wasn't sure whether to feel offended or smug. He went with offended. "I'm waiting for a counterargument."

"Fine. Although it's obvious, you know." She shook back her hair. "You're right that it feels good to be praised for helping somebody. That's the entire point of connection: it has two sides. It's neither completely selfish nor completely selfless. Like everything else, it's shared between people." She looked up at him with faint exasperation. "Like when I brought you lunch at the volcano. Yes, I did it for you, but I also did it for myself. While I was making it, I wondered if you'd enjoy it, and whether we'd have a conversation about how I made it, or what you liked to eat. These are things that involve me, too."

They were nearing the palace gates now. Hermione sighed. "There's no such thing as total altruism, Riddle. You can't make any action outside yourself. You can't escape the ripple effects something might cause inside you. That doesn't diminish the effect of a good act on another person."

As they halted at the gates, Riddle let his gaze move over her stubborn, sanctimonious face. Her hard eyes. Her hands, wrinkled from the day's submersion in water.

He could not have heard this sort of speech from any other person without wanting to sneer. But Hermione was not a trifling person; she was not a sentimentalist. He had offered her a life of impossible, unending luxury the previous morning, a life that fulfilled all her dreams, and her response had been, You'd continue to place yourself at my mercy? He had felt almost hungry with his desire for her in that moment. It was something he might have said.

So to hear these ideas from her, about goodness and selfishness intertwined—it felt almost like having the concepts arise in his own mind.

In that way, he supposed he did, finally, understand what it meant to share something with another person, and to let himself prize it.

"Will I tell the Fire Lord," he said, "that you mean to stay for the indefinite future?"

After a long moment, she said, eyes bright, "Tell him I will."

#

Hermione stood on the balcony and watched the full moon rise. She felt as though she were turning the page of a book, looking into the first lines of a new chapter of her life. What would Albus Dumbledore say when he heard no news from abroad of the Avatar's sudden death? Would he make new attempts, send another assassin? Could she find some way to contact the Order and explain?

But the day's events had only reinforced her decision about Riddle. In the healing hall, he had looked like any other young healer confronted for the first time with catastrophic injury, unnerved and repulsed and fascinated. And he had healed them. With person after person, he had done good—and he had been so unsettled by his own capacity to do good, apparently, that he had rejected it, tried to reshape it into the familiar form of self-interest.

She heard motion from inside Number Twelve. Shaking herself from her thoughts, she re-entered the house, only to find Harry and Ron standing rigid in her bedroom.

"What is it?" she said at once.

"You know all those letters I was sending to printing presses?" said Ron. "Trying to see if anyone recognized the insignia? Well, someone did one better. They looked at the type of paper. It's a type of papyrus that only this one really traditional printer used to use. So I went there. It was an abandoned building, but I found the printer in the back, covered up. And there was a locked door right nearby. I tunneled under and found boxes of these."

He drew several sheets of paper from his pocket and handed them to Hermione.

RETAKE THE FIRE NATION! read one leaflet's headline. Another said, FIRE PRINCE DRACO REJECTS FIRE NATION'S TEACHINGS FOR IBA STUDIES!

As Hermione read, she lowered herself slowly into a seat. Some of the literature was years old; other sheets had been printed earlier this year. But in the top corner of each one was the same insignia of the skull and the flame. Put together, they painted a clear picture.

It was a campaign against Prince Draco. It showed him as weak but power-hungry, ineffectual but smug, complacent with all the ills of the Fire Nation and yet desperate to seize power from his father. It showed him as someone who had so absorbed the ideals of the IBA that he could no longer act in the Fire Nation's interests. Weren't his closest friends, after all, Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle of the Earth Kingdom, Blaise Zabini of the Southern Water Tribe?

And in every single leaflet, delicate contrasts were drawn between Draco and other public figures. The High Generals were used as foils, sometimes, but most often it was Riddle. Riddle was painted as strong and worthy, the nation's true leader, the Fire Lord's adopted son, as good as a second prince in all but title.

Hermione stared down at the papers. In all the time she had been in the Fire Nation, she had never heard one positive word spoken about Fire Prince Draco. He was ignored, or scathingly referenced. Riddle held the spotlight. The campaign had been an obvious success. And as for its purpose … in conjunction with the kidnappings …

"I got into Nott's letters," said Harry quietly. "I found that insignia. Nott's in on this. A dozen other generals are, too—but not the Malfoys, of course."

"Then the plan is …" said Hermione.

Harry nodded. "A coup. They're going to murder Fire Lord Malfoy and Lady Narcissa. Riddle and the generals are going to pin it on Draco, plus that missing group of people they've kidnapped. They're going to make it seem like Draco planned the murders with other kinds of benders in the city."

"But, of course," Hermione whispered, "Draco and all his supposed collaborators will die in this supposed coup attempt. And who'll be left to take his place but the Fire Lord's adoptive son?"

"Yeah," said Ron. "That'll be their reason for the war, see? The idea that Draco was influenced by these people from the Water Tribe and the Air Temples and the Earth Kingdom. They'll act like the Fire Nation's a victim, that if the line of succession's been attacked, of course they've got to fight back."

"When will this happen?" said Hermione, rising from the chair.

"It was supposed to have happened already," said Harry. "They'd planned it for the night of the summer festival, to add to the confusion. But the letters get patchy more recently. The generals are writing more to each other, saying Riddle hasn't been responding. Apparently he called off the plan for the festival date, and now he's … I don't know."

A dead-sounding laugh fell out of Hermione's mouth. Then this was what had been going on behind the scenes throughout her visit. She had managed to distract Riddle at a crucial moment—but the whole thing was more immediately imminent than she could have imagined.

And Riddle did not have to be present in the capital to orchestrate his coup. In fact, it might even be better for him to be out of the country, where he could deny any involvement. The generals could kill the Malfoys and whip the nation into a frenzy, and everything would be ready for him upon his return, where he would graciously accept the mantle of Fire Lord—as always, the picture of humility.

Hermione crushed the leaflets in her hands. Something seemed to be ripping apart inside her. After all this, the risks were far too high to let him live. And that was for the best. In the darkened corners of her mind, when considering Riddle's murderous past, she had pinned the killing of his three remaining family members on the years of childhood abuse that had festered inside him. She had wondered, if she had been beaten and isolated the first ten years of her life, then left to die, mightn't she have wanted revenge on anyone and everyone responsible?

But now something had snapped back into place. She could see clearly again, the way she had when she'd arrived in this city. Any day now, on a whim, Riddle might decide to snap his fingers and give the order to kill his entire adoptive family, plus a dozen innocent citizens, precipitating the war. She had performed so many mental contortions to spare the life of this person, but holding in her hand what he had used to infect the Fire Nation for years, she could no longer, for the life of her, remember why.

"Let's go to the palace," she said through her teeth. "I'm ready."

#

Tom left his audience with Fire Lord Malfoy in the same strange mood that he'd been battling all day. It was done, then. At least for now, he was letting the lives he'd led in secret dissipate. He would write letters to the generals telling them to consider their project on an indefinite hold.

No more nighttime meetings with Rosier and the rest, making sure that the Malfoys received no word. No more bending over backward to make sure that Draco was kept out of everything. But when he thought about his Spirit dream, and about the rush of sensation the day's healing had brought, the bright and delicate thing in his chest seemed to have gained strength. It seemed almost mad in retrospect, two and a half weeks' reconsideration leading to so much upheaval in his plans, in his future, in the very fibers of his body.

He was almost out of the palace when his steps caught.

Near the entrance, there was a red-draped drawing room where Lady Narcissa often entertained her friends, and the sight of a pai sho table had caught his eye through the threshold.

He lingered at the door, something itching at his memory.

One of the women at the pai sho table slid a tile into place, and Tom located the image: the single pai sho tile inside Hermione's bedside table.

He had scanned over its design at the time. Now he remembered the emblem of the blazing bird upon its face. It was a White Phoenix tile. Such a tile was rare. It had been phased out of regular play over a hundred years ago, and few still took stock in the White Phoenix gambit.

Tom had only ever seen the tile twice before. Once upon the pai sho table of Albus Dumbledore, who had dismissed him from the IBA with a wariness that Tom hadn't liked at all. And the second time—it had struck him because of its strangeness—he had seen a tile just like that one tumbling out of the robe pocket of Regulus Black, a traitorous recruit who, two years ago, had tried to kill him.

.

.

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will they/won't they but it's murder