"Tell me girl" a growl echoes against the stone walls. The room chills as he speaks, this man, who looks more serpent than wizard.

"Your name" he hisses slamming his bare foot on the back of her head. She spits out a tooth her vision spots. Her black hair is matted with blood, only some of it is her own.

Her fingers touch the leather strap encircling her wrist. She utters a sigh, a moment of distraction, he would come. They all would come, and if they didn't, well, she had done her best fought the good fight.

She makes eye contact with her captor, almost insolently. Blood oozes from a gash that stretches from her hairline to her collarbone, an old wound fresh again. She clenches her teeth, she refused to give him the satisfaction of hearing her scream.

"My name is Max Potter" she grins her chin defiantly jutted out. "although there are rumours that Black may be added to that in the future." Her words are confident, almost obnoxiously so, especially from someone under torture, but her pain is evident in the way her voice shakes and muscles twitch.

"LIAR" He screams, a distinct hissing sound to his voice. "Crucio, crucio CRUCIO" he curses and red light travels from his wand to strike her. She had read once that for this curse to work you had to mean it, and Tom Riddle really did mean it. But as her mom once said, if the word was trying to strike you down that meant you were from powerful shit; well, she may have rephrased a little.

The pain of the curse enters first through her fingertips like lightning and her body convulses, her spine arching toward the sky. The world spins, her vision becomes blurry, a lurching feeling in her stomach and then blackness. A void of all sight.

She can hear someone screaming. A nightmare of a sound. Hoarse, like bone against concrete. Her head pulses with pain. Her neurons fire like needles in her skull.

"Now are you ready to talk", he drawls the old British town of his upbringing leaking into his voice. He grasps her face roughly in is boney hands, staring into her eyes. She spits blood at him, blood and bone, and pushes herself off the ground with trembling limbs.

"If you want to talk feelings, at least buy me dinner first but you should know Riddle, I'm taken" she grins a ghost of a smile plastered against her face, her teeth covered with blood.

She is Maxima, the greatest, the most powerful. She is the explosion. Beautiful and devastating. Another spell. She is blinded, her mind pounding and throbbing. Her ears ring. She wonders if this is where she dies, after all this time, this is her end. But her hands twitch, every bone courses with the familiar feeling, the power. An old kind of power that she hasn't felt in a while.

The ground shakes, it trembles at her will. She is no longer captive but orchestrator. Her vision returns. He is on the ground, her standing on shaking limbs but standing. Her hair sparks with purple electricity, like an elastic band that snaps, waves of magic course throughout the room.

She fastened her hands at his throat, his lies meters away they crackle with purple pulsations. Electricity crackles in the dead air. Magic is palpable in the open room.

"My name is Maxima Halley Potter. But I have lived many lives, had many names, I once was Hermione Granger. But time and I are old friends." Magical energy zaps across the room, there is lightning, thunder. The room shakes and Riddle scrambles to find his wand.

"Know my name, know it is me that kills you, who has been killing every part of you for years. I am Maxima Potter, meet your death, Thomas Riddle"

She slices her hand through the air. It is not a spell she has learned, yet she knows at her magical core that this will kill him. He is lifted towards the ceiling and then flung to the ground. His bones shatter. His head lolls to a side. His lips are pressed into a final manic smile.

She collapses on the ground, someone is screaming, sobbing. He is dead they chant, it may even be her laughing, crying, screaming. He is dead, but she has sacrificed so much for this. Her soul may be just as fragmented as his. She hears the movement of people. A camera shutter. The ringing in her ears continues. Her heart pounds.

"MAX"

A familiar voice. He has come. She knew he would. He smells like spearmint, cigarette smoke and gunpowder. He is here and he figured it out. Hands grip her clothing, touch her face, her arms almost too hard. Safe. She is safe. For the first time in years, she feels free.