Under cover of a stand of trees, leaning against the palace wall, Hermione glanced up at the sky. In an alley of stars between two dark thunderclouds, the face of the full moon gazed down, watching in judgment.

By the spirits of the ocean and moon … she remembered chanting, the paint drying on her cheeks.

"Almost there," Ron murmured, his eye to a small hole that he had bored into the palace wall. "Almost … let's go."

He sank his fingers into the wall and pulled downward. Earthbending was not made for stealth or subtlety, but Ron had practiced how best to bend noiselessly, and the stone slid downward into the earth in one smooth, quiet motion.

Hermione nodded goodbye to Harry, then slipped through after Ron. He pulled the stone back up into place, and they sprinted through the shaded gardens, darting among the decorative hedges. Hardly had they dashed around the corner into a statuary alcove when Hermione heard the footsteps of guards crunching over the gravel they'd just left.

Hermione and Ron exhaled in unison. "There it is," Hermione whispered, pointing to the southeast corner of Riddle's villa, their point of entry. A row of bushes would serve as their cover. Hunched over, they crept behind the neatly clipped branches until they reached the window that led into Riddle's living room.

Silence was especially important here. With painstaking slowness, Ron scooped away a hole in the wall. Hermione began to duck through, hardly daring to breathe, but Ron's hand caught her elbow. He whispered, "Sure you want to go alone?"

"Yes," she whispered back. "If something goes wrong, I don't want him using you as collateral."

Ron hesitated. He didn't look happy about the idea of being such an inactive participant in this hypothetical fight, but Hermione could see that it was more than that. She knew he was worried this might be the last time he saw her alive.

She set her hand on his shoulder, but couldn't make herself say a goodbye.

Then she turned and ducked through the dark hole into Riddle's living room.

The first thing she did was peel off her shoes. In her quiet stocking feet, she circled the room with all its tasteful furnishings, making sure to move close to the walls, where the floorboards were less likely to squeak. The chant was ringing in her ears again. I vow to use my waterbending to heal, to honor the elemental precepts of life, rebirth, and replenishment …

She slipped up the low steps into the kitchen and hesitated on the stone tiles. His bedroom door was a crack open. She'd hoped he would be asleep; it was hours past midnight by now, with all the time they had killed waiting outside the palace wall. But then, she knew that the past several nights had not been restful ones for him.

Hermione stood, staring, into the sliver of darkness. I vow never to injure or kill another soul, finished the voice of her younger self. She could count the hours since she had been lain in that very room, entangled with Riddle, seduced into the darkness ahead.

He betrayed me, she found herself thinking, and she felt so angry and so stupid, that she'd let herself reach the point of betrayal. What had she expected? How had she cooked up this fantasy in the fever of the past two weeks?

She raised her hands before her, right hand above the left, fingers splayed out. She allowed herself to feel the power of the full moon, and of her anger.

With her foot she slid the door wide. The instant the barrier was gone, she was striding inside, unable to see a thing but searching for the water in his blood.

She knew the moment she stepped inside that nobody was there.

Hermione whirled around, suddenly certain that he would be behind her, ready to strike a killing blow—but the kitchen and living room remained empty.

She hurried down the hall, hands still outstretched and ready. They only faltered when she chanced a glance out into the courtyard. There, she saw it at once. The pond that they had used so often in their lessons was dry. In its place was a steep, sloping passageway that led down into the earth.

Hermione's heart plummeted. She sprinted back to the living room, back to the passage where Ron was still waiting.

"He's not here," she hissed. "He's gone somewhere. Through a passage."

"Gone?" Ron whispered. "He can't be gone! What's he doing?"

"You don't think … could someone have realized that Harry broke into Nott's office? Or—what if they found traces of you around the printing press? In which case he might have decided the coup needs to happen tonight."

They stood in silence for a moment before Ron reanimated. "All right. The plan's off. We've got to get back to Harry and get into the palace before they reach it. Riddle should be with them—you can fight him then."

"No," Hermione whispered fervently. "I'll follow him into the passageway. If we wait for him to arrive at the palace, who knows how many people he'll have with him?"

"But you don't know where it leads."

Hermione's fists curled. "I know it leads to him. That's all I need. You get Harry, and you two get into the palace. I'll handle Riddle."

She strode through the empty villa into the courtyard, then, without stopping, into the hole, which for all the light it emitted might have led to the center of the earth. But it was the night of the full moon, and Hermione's steps were sure even in the pitch darkness, because she could feel every fine particle of water in every patch of dirt beneath her feet.

She had walked for what must have been half an hour when, at last, a glimmer of light appeared ahead. She resisted the urge to move more quickly, taking care to step on patches of earth soft enough to make no noise.

The light grew until she could discern a cave with sandstone walls. Emblazoned on its wall in red paint was the insignia of the skull with its tongue of flame, but as she grew closer, she saw no sign of movement—only dark holes in the walls, mouths of other tunnels.

She hesitated a long time in the darkness before finally darting out, hands raised, into the light of the cave.

No one was there.

Hermione eyed the several other passageways. Riddle may have gathered with his co-conspirators in some other cave, but this would be the ideal way to smuggle them all into the palace complex unseen. They must still be here, or surely they would have closed the pathway under the pond …

The question struck her too late. Why didn't Riddle close the entryway behind him?

This was Tom Riddle, who knew better than nearly anyone alive how to cover a trail. It was not Harry or Ron's behavior that had tipped Riddle off. It was something she had done—and this had been a trap for her.

Hermione threw herself back toward cover of the dark passageway, but too late. The ground before her shattered. Riddle rose out in a gale of air, hands thrust forward, and before she could take hold of the blood within him, thin bands of stone were encasing her wrists, dragging her backward and pinning her against the wall. She struck the rock so hard that stars showered before her eyes, and when her vision cleared, he was right there, his nose an inch from hers, his features twisted almost beyond recognition.

It was painful to see him again. She hadn't anticipated how painful it would be, standing in the light of the truth with this person whom she'd inexplicably grown to trust—even to care for, in his lonely distance from the world, in the intensity of his regard for her, in his brilliance and incomprehension. Now his dark eyes were filled with such venom that Hermione felt as though she were being pierced by cold fangs, and her own anger warred with an absurd sense of loss.

"So," he said. "From the start, this is what you were. You, the healer, so sanctimonious, so saintly—this is what you really are."

"Yes. I had my task, like you had yours." Hermione cast a contemptuous look around the cave. She needed to get Riddle talking. She needed time—because she had lined her sleeves with two long, thin pockets of water.

#

"Hermione Granger," Tom said. He'd meant for cool menace. Instead the words rang around him fast and agitated, echoing until he felt imprisoned by the very sound of her name. "Dumbledore sent you?"

"Yes. I'm here on his orders. And I never should have doubted him. You make me sick." Her eyes were filled with loathing.

Tom felt as though someone were running a knife's tip over the contours of his innards. He felt invaded. He should have seen this level of hatred, sensed it, before now.

"Then you never wanted me to heal," he snarled. "You, with all your talk of connection—you never cared about helping me, you were only trying to destabilize me. Everything you've done since you arrived has been sabotage."

A laugh came from her as a sort of shout. "I didn't sabotage you, you're the one who sabotaged yourself! You've been doing it your whole life, refusing to see what the rest of the world has to offer you!"

"Offer me? The world has nothing to offer me except this! People like you, and—" Tom bit off the sentence, the world seeming to turn crimson in his rage. He hated that she would know he was speaking about the orphanage. He hated that he had ever shown her any part of his life; he wanted to reclaim every piece of himself into sacred privacy. His vision narrowed to the shape of her face, and he was livid in a way he had never been in a lifetime of anger, because he had never confided in anyone the way he had in her, never wanted someone the way he had wanted her, never thought anyone understood him the way she did. He had never even thought understanding might matter. Of course, now he saw that it did. It was the most dangerous kind of weakness to seek understanding. It was a mistake he must never make again.

"You betrayed me," he said. "So you are just like them after all."

Her gaze hardened. "Don't you dare. Don't you dare equate me with someone who would hurt a child, because I want to prevent you from causing the deaths of millions. Take responsibility, Tom. You spent your life planning for the downfall of my people, the world's people. You should have known we'd fight you for our survival."

And even now, Tom understood her. He knew the lengths she would go to survive, the merciless feeling that would have powered her these months. That comprehension made him feel twice as much turmoil. He didn't want any more knowledge of her. He wanted out.

He was opening his mouth to reply when Hermione's fists flew open.

Tom reacted instantly as the cuffs of rock exploded into shards. He swept his arm forward, transforming the whizzing fragments into sand and shielding his face, and in that instant he understood what she must have done—water at her wrists or in her sleeves, a last resort. That instant was all she needed to shatter the cuffs on her ankles and spring free.

And despite everything, Tom felt an instant's satisfaction that she was, after all, exceptional, that she would not be defeated so simply. In the first few seconds there was no comprehensible movement. Speech was replaced with the sound of water against stone, water hissing into fire, water upon itself, as the elements whirled around each other, and he grappled for Hermione, keeping her from forming a center, while her hands strayed, again and again, toward her core. Her last words, You should have known we'd fight you for our survival, seemed to echo around the cave. Tom wondered how long he would hear that sentence once he killed her—for he would not be the one to fall.

Except he was realizing blow by blow, move by move, that he was no longer the duelist he had been when she'd arrived. The distracting fury warred with that new sensation in his body, the visceral awareness of each element. He felt himself mis-stepping. He was making the kind of error that would have made him sneer two weeks ago, because his total conviction had been destabilized; the elements were no longer tools to him but living things. She had destabilized him.

It doesn't matter, Tom thought, punching a blast of fire toward her. She deflected, and again her hands strayed toward her center, but he forced her to cover with a kick that created a howling gust of wind. It didn't matter, because he had called for reinforcements long before she had arrived, and he could hear them arriving now, the distant echo of footfalls.

But it wasn't triumph that he felt, not malicious glee that soon she would die. Tom imagined Hermione's body on the floor of the cave, dead. His heart thudded more and more quickly as though he were powering toward a finish line, but he didn't know what awaited him on the other side. I'll hold her captive instead, Tom thought, and the idea came as a bizarre relief; he should have wanted revenge above all else, but he seized the idea of captivity, held to it, told himself it would be a far better punishment for her to live in disgrace …

Again he broke her forming center, and she let out a yell of frustration, lunging forward at him. Tom grabbed her by the forearm just as she seized his other wrist, and they held each other there for a moment, each twisting, their eyes boring into each other. Suddenly words were bursting out of her. "I found out about the coup. I know the sabotage you've been planning with the High Generals, after the Malfoys took you in." Her voice was shaking. "After they raised you! You'd sacrifice your own city's citizens on the altar and your own country's stability!"

"And that surprised you?" Now Tom did feel malicious satisfaction. He was never going to tell her that he had been on the brink of reversing those plans. She must never know how deeply she had penetrated. "You came here knowing what I've been working toward, and you care that I'll kill the Malfoys?"

"Then you're still going to go through with it." She was blinking hard, and he thought it must be sweat in her eyes, but the brightness remained. "Which means you've learned nothing. You still know nothing!" Her hand struggled in his grip; at the same time, her other hand tightened on his wrist so that he could not break away. "I thought I knew you," she spat. "And I wouldn't have expected you to know everything about other nations, or even about respect. But I would have expected you, at the very least, to know something about power."

Something clenched in Tom's stomach. They wrenched out of each other's grip at the same time. They backed away from each other, still staring into each other's faces as if trying to translate something written there, as Lestrange, Nott, Mulciber, Avery, and half a dozen generals of lower rank broke out into the cave and encircled Hermione. Tom did not spare any of them a glance. Her insult was beating through him in time, but wasn't this proof that she was wrong? He had won. She was surrounded.

"You were right," he said through his teeth. "See? I know what power looks like. I command them. I call and they come."

She looked at him with cold pity, as though an army stood at her back. Then she lifted her hands before her, her right above her left, and splayed her fingers.

And he understood, finally, why they had sent her.

#

She brought eleven rigid bodies, as one, to their knees.

The cave was still and silent, but from the bulging of the generals' eyes, Hermione could feel the air fill with horror. She stepped from one general to the next, keeping her right hand enmeshed in the feeling of blood and flesh. Her left, she placed upon their foreheads, closing passageways. One by one, they slumped to the floor of the cave, unconscious.

Finally she had knocked Lestrange out, and she aimed her hands toward Tom. She felt the throb and ache of his heart, every little twitch in the small muscles of his hands and feet. As she crossed the cave between the bodies of his followers, she felt the sweat upon his brow. The wetness of his tongue, held rigid against his teeth in the slick and intimate pocket of his mouth.

Finally she stopped before Tom, looking down at him upon his knees. His face spasmed every few seconds, trying to express something. She saw desire in his gaze, and here, on the threshold of the killing stroke, her eyes began to burn again.

"You don't have real power," she said, low and quiet. "You don't even want real power. You only want enough to order people around, to hurt them, to make them fear you. It's such a pathetic little thing. I thought you wanted the rest of it, too—like I do. Knowledge and understanding. Self-mastery. That's power."

She tasted bitterness, and her voice rose. "You're still a scared child, wanting revenge on people who hurt you twenty years ago and taking it out on the whole world. And if you'd just grown up, I wouldn't be standing here. I wouldn't have to do this." She closed her eyes and felt his heart pumping.

I still don't want to, she thought. She remembered Tom in the healing hall, stiffly accepting the patients' gratitude. She remembered feeling his heartbeat in the heat of the midmorning, one hand splayed against his chest. She saw him lifting her palm to his mouth, promising her futures she had never dared to envision for herself. It struck her now that she had lost everything. The generals had seen her here in combat; after killing Tom, she could never return to the North Pole. She might escape, but she would have to live in hiding forever, always afraid of capture.

"We could really have done something," she murmured without really meaning to.

Her future seemed to float like a wisp of smoke upon the air. Then it was gone, and only her duty remained.

"If you have any last words, say them." She adjusted the angle of an index finger, loosening her control over his face and throat enough to allow him to speak.

#

Looking up at Hermione, Tom felt strangely empty. The only thing left was that strange pulsing lightness in his chest. With each general who had collapsed, he'd felt as though part of himself was falling away, too. With Nott fell his shock, with Mulciber his fear, with Avery his envy, and with Lestrange, at last, his anger.

Tom considered, vaguely, what he would do if she accidentally released one muscle too many, allowing him to wrest his way free. He imagined attacking her like a feral animal. He imagined touching her again, holding her face so closely to his that he, too, could feel everything inside her. He imagined retreating into isolation with her, as they'd meant to, and standing by a moonlit river while she taught him this method: biological manipulation on a scale that had somehow never occurred to him, because he had never accepted the presence of her element in all things.

She was waiting for his last words. Only one came to mind.

"Don't."

Her eyes brightened again. He hadn't imagined it before. Tears had come to her eyes, evidence that the past two weeks had become something other than sabotage. Her lips were pressed tightly together, but he could almost hear her saying, You didn't leave me a choice.

"Don't," he said again, but hardly had the word left his lips when there was a flicker of movement in the corner of his eye. A gravelly yell rang around the cave, and a figure burst from the tunnel behind Hermione.

A blinding flash of light. Lightning erupted at Rosier's fingertips. The High General thrust his arm forward, and the strike blasted into Hermione's back.

She let out a scream that echoed and echoed. The force of the strike blew her off her feet. Her body struck the wall like a doll's and fell in a heap to the ground.

The cave seemed to warp around Tom. His mind filled with a dull roar, his mouth open but drawing no breath, and he staggered to his feet. The delicate quavering thing in his chest built, multiplying upon itself as he lurched toward her. He could not seem to move quickly enough, as though mired in a nightmare. Was she dead? Her hair was strewn across her motionless face—one eye was half-open—

Tom's vision whited out. A sound tore out from him that was not one voice but many, and everything seemed to collide inside him, to fuse and explode like a distant star. He felt an excruciating oneness with all the parts of himself he'd repressed, and with the rest of the world, because if she was dead—he knew it only now—he would be changed, and so he was tied forever into her, into something greater than himself. His eyes warmed with a cosmic glow. His self dissolved wholly into the Avatar State. He saw a rush of colors and scenes and strange landscapes and ancient cities. He was being folded into the past lives that he had never glimpsed before. He was one with the young monk with her cane and the elderly waterbender with his braided hair and the willowy earthbender with stone-beaten knuckles.

He had no control. His body collapsed back to its knees, and the impact hammered an impulse into the rock so powerful that the side of the cave ruptured. Ten solid feet of stone blasted outward, scattering onto a white-sand beach. His body rose to its feet with her limp form in its arms, then stepped out from the wreckage and onto the beach, every movement informed by millennia of lives within him, each step his own and someone else's, the movements of every person who had ever cared for another.

Sensation was slow in coming to him, and so he had already reached the ocean when he felt wetness on his forehead, plastering his hair to his skull. The storm had split open, and it was raining. Tom's head tilted upward. The thunderclouds had blocked out the light, but the radiant strength of the full moon was nonetheless palpable. As Tom stood in the shallows, eyes emitting a brilliant light, the rain began to glow, too. It spread outward from them until they were encased in a dazzling sphere half a mile wide, thousands of droplets of healing rain tumbling around them, cascading upon her body. Words came from his tongue, shaped by a thousand voices. "Live. You will live. You have to live."

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one left! it will probably be shortish (around this length or a little shorter) and so will probably come your way in the next few days!

as always, reviews warm my cold dead heart :)

-sw