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"The inner state of his soul might be compared to a demolished building, which has been demolished so that from it a new one could be built; but the new one has not been started yet, because the infinitive plan has not yet come from the architect and the workers are left in perplexity." (Dead Souls, Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol)
It was a pact made between friends; each would wear the locket in turns.
To each, it would reveal their darkest fears, their most dreadful secrets, their greatest weakness.
To each, it was made obvious from the beginning that none would be spared.
The burden had to be carried. It had to be them. There was no one else.
The price was solitude, sorrow and separation, but they were willing to pay it.
The problem was only one; they had forgotten they were wearing a soul.
"I'm going to turn in, if you don't mind...I'm too tired to do anything."
Hermione looked up sharply from the table, as if she was seeing him through a screen of fog.
"I was going to tell you – you look awful, you should get some rest," she encouraged him in her self-assured manner.
In reality, she was the one who was broken down, awfully broken down, and needed rest.
Harry was still too shocked to respond to Ron's departure. She, on the other hand, was by now used to it and shrank inwardly every time Harry left the tent and she was all alone.
"Thanks. Don't stay up too late either. We have to move tomorrow."
"I know. I won't."
Hermione turned back to The Tales of Beedle the Bard. Another sleepless night awaited her and in the morning, a futile attempt to ignore the two-ness of their journey.
Perhaps it was different tonight, because it was her first night wearing the locket. The weight of it hadn't settled in yet, since she had only started wearing it that morning, but as the hours grew darker, she was beginning to feel a descent.
It was close to midnight when she got up from the table and went outside to get some fresh air.
It was cold and white outside, a whiteness that only a winter night could colour. The sky was made of milk and snow and the ground was frosted and smooth like alabaster.
She sat down by a tree stump and, shivering slightly, took out the pendant of the locket from her shirt and stared at it by the dim moon light.
It did not shine or reflect any sort of light. It was faded and ugly. She rubbed her thumb against it, feeling the warmth dissipate in the cold night air.
A stronger shiver ran through her, one that had nothing to do with the cold. She was in the presence of Evil and Evil was watching her through this locket. She slipped the pendant back into her shirt, where it molded with the patch of red skin it had left behind. Her chest heaved a sigh, but in doing so, moved the pendant across her skin in a slow circle. Suddenly, she was aching; from sadness, despair, anger, she did not know. There was an emptiness at her core, and the pendant, instead of filling it, was digging it deeper.
Hermione sighed again and the pendant glided smoothly over the same circle of skin. It was terrible, even amusing (in some bizarre, grotesque way) to think that Voldemort's soul was trapped between her breasts. It was a bit satisfactory, too, that one so powerful could fall so low. There, in the soft vibrant musk of her being, he tossed and turned and rebelled against the enclosure. Yet the rebellion was gentle; the locket was almost caressing the skin of her breasts. It was a clumsy caress, fumbling in the dark to cup her breasts, as if two hungry, but shy hands were hidden inside the pendant.
Hermione started, frozen in fear and ache.
She breathed hard, in and out.
It was all the Horcrux's curse. The pain she felt on her skin was not real. The touch was not there.
The night air cleared her head.
She concentrated on staying very still, so that the locket would not move with her.
She had to fight it without removing it. She had to prove to herself she could do it, withstand this trial.
She swore under her breath. The locket had moved again. She had done nothing. And the locket had moved.
Hermione got up and walked back to the tent.
She needed sleep, forced sleep, sleep that had to be stolen from her ever-vigilant mind.
But then, she was afraid of what she might dream.
New wearer, your skin is too delicious to resist.
The voice pinned her to the sheets like a dead weight.
It is dirty and defiled, reeking too much of Muggle blood, but in that stink there is perfume, a putrid essence that perverts the senses.
Hermione shrieked, but a cold hand seemed to cover her lips.
I wish you would not do that. Or at least, if you must scream, let it be my name.
Hermione did not see his face. The hand seemed divorced from the body. All his limbs were ensconced in unreality. But his dark eyes, she felt them on her exposed skin. Why was she naked? She had gone to bed clothed.
It was a dream, a nightmare like any other, except she still felt the weight of the locket between her breasts.
I am here, I am alive, I am inside you, he whispered in her ear.
Hermione tried to wrench the locket from her skin.
Let me tell you a secret. Even when you take it off, I will still be here.
"No," she whispered. "I will wake up."
And then, the same hand that had covered her mouth parted her legs and two fingers dived between her folds.
Who says you are asleep?
She, the girl who had never been touched like this by anyone but herself, shuddered and cried out in anger. She felt betrayed by her own hands, which had been unable to do what he was doing now. She, who was young and, as they say, virginal, now felt old and experienced and almost as ancient as he. She, who blushed and fumbled when affection was shown her, now took it all as a given, inevitable fact. She arched wildly and sighed, not even caring that she was naked. His fingers drew the same circles the pendant had traced across her skin.
She bit her lip hard when the circles grew wider and sharper, tasting her own blood on the tip of her tongue. The circles were everywhere; she was a circle herself, spinning on the axis of her own pleasure. Each one seeped into her skin and tipped against her pressure point, making her fingers claw at the sheets. When it was too much to bear, she moaned once, but the fingers stopped.
Hermione was about to protest, but she felt another hand on her neck.
You won't moan until you say my name.
His fingers slashed and flicked mercilessly now and prodded in with such dexterity that he almost wasn't touching her at all. Hermione choked on a sob which never reached out, because his other hand was still pressing down on her neck.
Hot tears fell down her cheeks, because her pleasure was growing too torturous, too horrible and she had to let it sink inside her, culminate and finish in silence, a life unlived. She couldn't take it; she bundled up the sheets and pushed them aside, cried soundlessly, on and on as the fingers swam inside her warmth without relenting. She wanted to tear out her skin, make herself disappear.
Say my name and I will let you come apart.
Hermione shook her head, biting her tongue so hard that she felt it break inside her mouth into pieces of dead flesh. She had to spit it out. She had to. But if she did, she knew she would be calling out his name.
You ought to know by now, you will do as I say. You want to say my name. Your tainted blood begs for it, can't you hear it? Oh, Mudblood, your mind is the witness of so much knowledge, yet your body is an uncharted map. They all value your words, but I will cherish your screams.
Hermione kept shaking her head, a torrent of tears wetting her hair as she thrashed under his touch.
I know, it is always a struggle. You've tried so hard to make them love you. You learned their language and for a while, you spoke it so well. What happened? Why did they not love Hermione Granger? Why is it that, all her efforts have come undone?
Hermione trembled. Her hands suddenly reached out to touch the one around her neck, but her fingers only touched air.
Well, he chuckled, no one can love a Mudblood.
His fingers left her core, finally. She sighed with relief, feeling now only a damp coldness where his hand used to be.
But his other hand was still holding her neck.
"You're wrong," she whispered through her teeth.
She could not see a face, but she could see a smile.
Do you think anyone will love you after this?
And then both his hands were wrapped around her thighs, holding onto her as if he were about to float away. She could feel him, a dark mass of pain and pleasure, standing between her legs, preparing his feast, and then his breath was on her mound, tickling the wet hairs, and his tongue slithered down her folds like a snake that was spitting out its poison before slowly eviscerating his victim. He only licked at first, drawing circles, more circles that turned her world into a sphere.
Hermione was free to cry out now, but it was as if a weight was constricting her throat.
She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.
She shut her eyes and imagined what it would be like to run her hands through his hair, to push him deeper inside of her.
But she was not imagining it. Her hands had somehow traveled down to where he was and she could feel the soft locks intertwining between her fingers. She did not marvel for long. She pulled and tugged at them, until he began to bite and chew, eating, devouring, eviscerating. No longer slithering quietly, but pouncing menacingly.
She pushed him further and further, until his tongue was devoured too, by her. And he smiled against her heat, making sure his mouth was another perfect circle against her skin.
No one, Hermione. No one will love you after this. But you will choose this anyway. And you will scream my name.
His fingers joined his tongue in a dizzying dance that left her more broken, more empty, more shattered than any pain she had felt, any sorrow she had witnessed, any pleasure she had been given.
It was more than any absence, more than any disappointment. Ron had asked her to come with him, but he had left before she had had the chance to tell him she had already come with him all this way. He had left her, knowing she would wear the necklace, knowing perhaps that -
"T-Tom..." she moaned, defeated. "Tom. Tom. Tom."
Knowing you would be mine, he finished the thought for her.
"I - Yes... Please, Tom...Please, Tom!"
It felt right to spell it out and brush away all other names. It felt right to give this to him and imagine he had no other name.
She screamed once more as she came undone around his tongue. Each circle broke into a wave and each wave broke against another circle, and that circle crashed into another wave and it was endless. Endlessly crashing, endlessly breaking. She could feel the snake inside her, being squeezed by her walls until all his poison was soaked into her marrow.
She accepted the poison, just as she accepted the vital truth. No one will love me after this.
It almost made her feel proud. She was sated and loveless and fallen.
He lapped at the juices trickling down her legs, drinking from the essence he loathed and adored, and she imagined, drinking her very soul.
But then, she did not know where her soul ended and his began.
When Harry left the tent next day, she no longer felt alone.