A/N: A little later than promised unfortunately. I think I've kind of slipped into a routine of posting once every two weeks, and hopefully I'll be able to see that through right to the end of the story. Thanks to all those who have reviewed so far, you're absolute angels. Just a little bit of shameless plugging: I posted a George/Hermione one-shot on Saturday called Sit With You. Some of you may enjoy it, I know some of you have already read and reviewed, for which I am incredibly grateful. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this chapter, I seem to get terrible writer's block with this story and I think my writing might suffer. Whatever. Let me know what you think. =]
Tempora Abducto.
by Flaignhan.
She sat down opposite him, keeping her trembling hands under the table. He looked up at her, then returned his attention to his book. After a minute or so, he spoke.
"Well?"
"Well what?" Hermione demanded, fear dissipating as her temper began to bubble at being treated like a badly behaved schoolgirl. It was all his fault that she was here anyway. Not that he knew that, and he wouldn't find out for a good fifty years or so.
"You don't have to worry," he told her, his lips curving into a thin smile. "I'm not going to tell anybody."
"There's nothing to tell."
"Of course not," Tom said, taking a sip from his pumpkin juice, his eyes dropping back down to his book. He flicked the page, and Hermione caught a glimpse of gruesome diagrams and runic symbols that she didn't even remotely recognise.
"What are you reading?"
Tom looked up from the book. "Nothing."
"Don't you think that's a little childish?" Hermione said, raising an eyebrow.
"Don't you think you're being a little nosy?" he shut the book and stood up. "Enjoy your dinner. The other students will be arriving tomorrow so I'd make the most of the peace and quiet if I were you."
"Right," Hermione said, not meeting his eye.
"We can be friends Hermione," Tom said. "You just have to let us."
Hermione looked up, a flash of gold catching her eye. It was the ring. He was wearing a section of his soul on his little finger, and his father and grandparents were already dead. She tore her eyes away from it and forced her mouth to make words. "It's difficult to be friends when you keep thrusting ridiculous theories at me."
Tom smiled briefly, turned, and left.
Her shoulders sagged as she let out a breath. She had a feeling that he was going to use that little bit of assumed knowledge to his advantage, and she didn't like that idea one bit. Harry had told her how manipulative and controlling he had been, even as a teenager. One only had to look at what had happened with Ginny and the diary to work that one out.
With that thought, an idea hit her. An idea that would see her through the school year relatively safely, and then afterwards she could move to some country far away from Lord Voldemort, far away from the people who would come to know her in her own time in years to come, and far away from anything that reminded of how very much alone she was in all of this.
Two could play at the blackmail game, and the brilliant thing was, the Ministry knew she had travelled back in time, as did Dumbledore and Dippet, what they did not know, however, were the finer details of what Tom Marvolo Riddle had gotten up to in his time at Hogwarts thus far.
A confident smile formed on her lips as she heaped a spoonful of mashed potato onto her plate. Tom Riddle thought he had the upper hand, but he would soon realise that he most definitely did not.
"I'm Lucy, this is Joanne, and that's Ava."
Hermione tried to commit these details to memory. "I'll probably forget that all in the next five minutes," she said apologetically, "I'm terrible with names."
"That's all right," said Joanne, "when we first started, I spent an entire term calling Ava 'Eva'."
"Yeah, and Professor Binns still calls me 'Miss Meyer'. I have no idea who 'Miss Meyer' is, there aren't any Meyers in the entire school," Ava said with a scowl.
"Apart from you," Joanne joked.
Ava rolled her eyes.
Hermione sat and listened while Lucy, who was apparently the leader of the group, told her all about Hogwarts, what the teachers were like, where her classes were, how cold it got in the winter, but it was all right because it usually meant they ended up with a white Christmas and it got pretty sunny towards the end of the school year anyway, so it kind of balanced out. Hermione would ask questions occasionally, most of which she already knew the answers to, but felt it would look odd if she appeared completely disinterested.
"We'll get people to show you to your classes. All three of us are in Charms and Transfiguration with you, and I think Richard, that boy over there with the curly hair? I think he's in your Potions class, so he can show you to that one...Jo, who's doing Defence Against the Dark Arts this year?"
Joanne shrugged. "Patrick? I dunno really."
"I think I'll be all right actually," Hermione said, dreading the idea of being chaperoned to each of her classes. It was a kind offer, there was no doubt about it, but she couldn't stand being told things that she already knew. Being shown the way around Hogwarts when she had already lived there for six years and probably knew more secret passages than everyone put together (courtesy of the Marauders, of course) was certainly not her idea of fun.
"It's a big place," Lucy said, skewing her lips. "Best to be on the safe side."
"Well to be honest, there wasn't much to do in the last two weeks except look around, so I think I've got a pretty good idea of the place. And I don't want to be a nuisance to anybody."
"Nonsense!" Lucy said with a wide smile. "You're a Gryffindor! We look after our own and we're happy to do it. It's a good job you weren't sorted into Slytherin, they'd probably let you rot."
"They can't all be that bad, can they?" Hermione knew with absolute certainty that they were.
"It's best to just steer clear of them. Especially Tom. Don't get on his bad side. He practically controls the entire school. He's got Dippet wrapped around his little finger."
"Really?" Hermione asked, mildly surprised that Lucy hadn't been taken in by Tom's charming façade and handsome features.
"Yeah," Lucy replied. "He's the cleverest boy in the school, always in the library, and by all accounts, he should be loathed. He's a total swot. Not that that's a bad thing, it's just generally accepted that smart isn't cool, but he's like their king or something."
Hermione looked over, and saw a rather greasy looking boy vying for Tom's attention. When Tom granted him a sentence or two, he looked towards the other boys around them, his face oozing smugness. There was another boy, sitting slightly further down the table, looking quite detached from the group. He took no trouble to hide the venomous look etched across his features, his top lip curled and his brow creased in disapproval. Tom didn't seem to care, and none of the other boys paid much attention to him either.
"Who's that?" Hermione asked, nodding towards him.
Lucy frowned while she tried to work out who Hermione was looking at. "Oh, Arcturus? The on the end?"
Hermione nodded.
"Arcturus Black. He's not really on friendly terms with Tom. Mostly because he's a Black, so he thinks he should be ruling the Slytherin roost. He keeps putting it about that Tom's muggleborn, but nobody believes him. Or at least, when it comes to Tom, nobody cares."
Hermione's lips twisted as she tried to remember the family tree at Grimmauld Place. Where did Arcturus come into it? Was she looking at Sirius' father? Bellatrix's father?
"All a bit pathetic really, isn't it?" Lucy said with a roll of her eyes.
"I think it's good that they're looking up to Tom," Ava interrupted, glancing over to the Slytherin table. "He's a good influence on them. He's Head Boy, Lucy."
Lucy pursed her lips, tucked her blonde hair behind her ear and said nothing more.
When she had first arrived, the silence in the dormitory had been odd – she was used to sharing with Parvati and Lavender – but after the first few nights she'd become accustomed to it. Now, however, it was a slightly different story. She was sharing with Lucy, Ava and Joanne, and though they weren't particularly loud, there was so much noise coming from each of them that Hermione didn't manage to get to sleep until long after midnight.
She yawned widely at breakfast the following morning. Professor Dumbledore was moving along the Gryffindor table, handing out timetables and welcoming first years with a warm smile and words of comfort.
"I trust you're getting on well enough, Miss Mercer?" he said when he reached Hermione.
"Yes, thank you Professor," she replied, twisting round on the bench so she could see him.
"Very good, here's your time table," he handed over a sheet of parchment, "and I'm sure one of your fellow Gryffindors will aid you in reaching the dungeons for your potions class this morning." He looked pointedly towards the curly haired boy that Lucy had pointed out the previous evening, who nodded, then smiled at Hermione.
"Excellent," said Dumbledore. "Well, I trust you'll have an enjoyable first day. Any problems, my office is on the third floor, Ava will be able to show you."
Ava looked down at her plate, her cheeks tinged pink and didn't look up again until she was sure Dumbledore had moved on.
Hermione frowned and looked at Lucy.
"We'll tell you later," Joanne said with a grin. "Delicate matter, isn't it?" she looked towards Ava who scowled.
"Miss Mercer, am I right?"
"Yes Professor," Hermione said as she took a seat at an empty table.
"Very good, very good. Tom! Why don't you sit next to her, make sure she finds everything she needs this lesson, give her a hand if she needs it, there's a good lad."
Hermione's stomach sank and she felt the muscles in her forearms tense up. Her feeling of dread, however, didn't stop her from feeling a little offended. What did Slughorn mean, 'give her a hand?'. Was he so sure that she was a disastrous potion maker already? She pushed the thought from her mind, replacing it with determination to prove her intelligence.
"Of course, Professor. It would be my pleasure."
Hermione kept her eyes focused on the blackboard as Tom sat down, and thankfully Slughorn didn't waste any time in getting started.
"Now ladies, gentlemen, I trust you all had an enjoyable summer break and I hope that everything you learnt last year hasn't whizzed out of your heads. Now, this year will be a tough one, though I'm sure most of you will manage to leave the school with a decent set of grades. I've brewed a selection of poisons, one for each of you. Your job is to find out what it is and brew a suitable antidote, are we clear?"
There was a murmur of agreement and Slughorn began handing out vials of poison, some of them clear, some of them brightly coloured and one, which he gave to Tom, jet black. Hermione took her vial and immediately got to work, hoping that her need to concentrate would block Tom from her mind.
After half an hour of carefully adding indicator potions, analysing smoke patterns and cross referencing them with her battered copy of Advanced Potion Making, she was quite sure she had the answer, and she was also quite sure she was going to make an impact with her antidote. Whether she had Harry to thank for the idea, or whether it should have been Professor Snape, in their first ever lesson, or that wretched annotated text book of his, she had no idea. As it was, however, she was going to pull this trick before any of them.
She brewed the antidote regardless, to pass the time and to cover herself when Slughorn told her that her other option was not always available. Finishing ten minutes before the end of the lesson, she emptied a small amount of antidote into an empty vial, vanished her cauldron and the rest of the potion and patiently, waiting for the others to finish.
"Right! Who's got an antidote?" Slughorn said, clapping his hands together. He pressed his lips together as he looked around the room and vanished a few cauldrons which seemed to contain something much more detrimental to the health than the poisons they were supposed to be fighting.
"Tom, what have you got?" Slughorn's round face looked hopeful as Tom held up his poison.
"This is Asinter. It's a paralytic potion and shuts down all of the major organs in less than an hour. This," he held up a vial of purple liquid, "is the antidote. It can also be used to combat several other poisons."
"Very good, very good," Slughorn said as he held the antidote up to the light, turning it around in his fingers. He set it back down on the table and looked towards Hermione. "And Miss Mercer?"
"I had the Deletritis Potion."
Slughorn nodded, looking pleased. "And your antidote?"
Hermione reached into the pocket of her robes and pulled out a small round stone. She placed it on the table.
"Oho," Slughorn said, his smile growing wider. "Oho..."
"Did you have some trouble with your antidote, Hermione?" Tom asked, smiling ever so slightly.
"No, but if something's going to kill me in twenty minutes, I'd rather get it sorted straight away with a Bezoar as opposed to waiting for some of this," she pulled her vial of antidote out of her pocket and placed it on the table next to the Bezoar.
Tom's smile disappeared as Slughorn's grew impossibly wider. He chuckled loudly.
"Well Miss Mercer, I think the only thing that remains is for me to give twenty points to Gryffindor. I don't know who taught you at your last school, but should you see them again, make sure you give them my regards."
Hermione smiled and wondered how he would deal with it when she walked into this classroom in fifty years time, and whether Dumbledore would tell him about the curse. Had he already known in sixth year what had happened to her? She frowned as she left the classroom, trying to work through everything inside her head.
"That was quite an amusing little stunt you pulled there."
She turned and saw that Tom was walking along side her, his large hands holding out a tatty book.
"Your potions book," he said. "You forgot it."
"Right," Hermione said, blinking a couple of times. "Thank you." She took the book and stopped in the corridor as she fiddled with the clasp on her bag, finally managing to deposit the book inside.
Tom waited patiently for her. "There's no reason we can't be friends. I know your new Gryffindor buddies have probably told all sorts of tales on us Slytherins but-"
"Say for a second your theory was correct," Hermione interrupted. "Hypothetically."
Tom smirked. "Yes..."
"Well if it was correct, then wouldn't you need to be a little more concerned than you seem to be at the moment at the things I might know?"
Tom's confident smile froze and slowly dropped. "What could you possibly know about me?"
"Secrets get uncovered over time, Tom. If you want to stay in this school, the only place that you could ever call home -"
Tom's face twitched.
"- then I suggest that you play by my rules."
"So I'm right then?" he asked, quickly getting over his displeasure.
Hermione sighed. "You know you are."
Tom's smirk returned.
"I warn you though," Hermione continued, her voice hard, "do not underestimate me. I know more about you than anybody in this entire school. I know about the orphanage you grew up in, I know what you did to your father and your grandparents, and I know exactly what you got up to in your fifth year."
Tom laughed and she could hear the nerves despite his forced display of confidence. "Nice try, Hermione, but you're not fooling me."
Hermione merely smiled. "My rules, Tom. My rules." She turned away from him and began walking down the corridor, careful not to move too quickly. She didn't want it to look like she was running away.
"What are your rules?" he called after her.
Hermione turned around, now walking backwards. "Stay away from me. That's all." She turned back again, and left Tom standing in the corridor, grey eyes narrowed, lips pressed together in a thin line of anger.