A/N: Almost at the end now! Hope you enjoy this chapter. I'm not sure when the next one will be up. I haven't finished writing it yet and I've just moved into my first flat (yippee!) but won't be getting internet until the middle of October (boo!) but I'll try and get something up next week. I have a sporadic hotspot so hopefully it'll do me proud. Anyway, on the home stretch now, thanks for all your reviews from the last chapter, as I've said before, they do mean a lot and help motivate me like nothing else does. =]

Tempora Abducto.

by Flaignhan.

"I can tell," he said simply.

"Tell what?" Hermione asked, slightly distracted while she brewed the ageing potion.

"That he's out there. The air's different. It's colder."

"Yeah..." Hermione said, concentrating as she sliced up a rat's tail into thin pieces, adding it to the mixture. "You'd best get used to it, it's only going to get worse."

"Right little ray of sunshine, aren't you?"

Hermione smiled weakly - it was the best she could manage these days - and didn't reply.

"Hermione."

"Hmm?"

"Hermione," the word came out in a choke the second time, and Hermione dropped her book, rushing over to where Tom was sat, his knuckles popping under his skin as he gripped the arms of the chair. His jaw was clenched his eyes staring straight ahead, not wanting to betray any flicker of pain, any feeling at all.

She knew, of course, what it was, and immediately felt guilty for wondering if Dumbledore was okay. But of course he was, he had Snape, it was his job to deal with Dumbledore, and her job to deal with Tom.

"It must be the ring," he wheezed, eyes shut tightly now, his entire body curved forward as Hermione helplessly rubbed his back, trying to soothe the dark magic away.

He was dealing with it in a more restricted way this time, and Hermione supposed it was because this time, he knew exactly what was happening, he knew he would be all right eventually, and, no matter how painful it was at the time, it would stop.

After a short while, he let out a sigh, his body sagging against Hermione as the pain left and the tiredness took over. Once more, she levitated him upstairs, into bed, and curled up against him, holding his still trembling body as close as she could.

He spread the newspaper out on the table, smoothing the creases. "Look."

Hermione glanced over, recognising the headline.

"Fudge has finally accepted it then? I suppose that's a good sign, isn't it?"

Hermione skewed her lips. "It seems so."

"But..."

"But there's a lot of panic about, people don't know what to think and they won't talk to each other because they don't know who they can trust."

"So they all live in ignorance and fear while he gets stronger and stronger."

"Exactly."

He sighed, and began reading the full article.

"You get a mention," he said, a minute or so later. "It lists you all, but focuses on Harry, mostly. Says you'd all broken into the Ministry."

"Yes well, after the amount of damage they've done to Harry and Dumbledore's reputation this year it's not exactly sacred ground."

"I wasn't telling you off," Tom told her, "I'm actually rather proud."

She felt her cheeks tinge red and looked away.

She couldn't stop the tears. They spilled out, without permission, falling onto the newspaper, wetting the photograph of Dumbledore in the right hand corner.

"What?" Tom asked as he walked into the kitchen. He took one look at the headline and placed his hand on her shoulder. "Oh."

"How?"

"He was murdered. By Snape."

"The Potions Master?"

She nodded.

"So...Dumbledore's dead, Death Eaters break into Hogwarts, am I right in thinking things are about to get a whole lot worse?"

Hermione wiped the tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand. "Yeah."

She looked at the calendar, and then the clock on the kitchen wall. She knew perfectly well it was the right day, but that didn't stop her checking the date, which had only been circled in red to show it was in any way significant. It could have been a birthday, an anniversary, a hospital appointment, but no. It was none of those things.

"Now?"

She shook her head.

"I don't know what you're worrying about, I'll stroll in there, kill him – "

"No!"

Tom frowned. "I'm sorry?"

"You can't kill him straight away!"

"Why not?"

"Because there's something vital he has to do first, you'll know what it is when you see it, but he has to do it, otherwise this all falls to pieces..." Hermione ran her shaking fingers through her bushy hair for the thousandth time that night and stared into the bottom of her tea cup.

"What does he have to do?"

"You know I can't tell you," she said tersely, features set in her classic look of disapproval. "I can't believe you still ask questions you know I can't answer."

"So I go in," Tom said, ignoring her mini lecture, "and then, what, duel a bit?"

"Yeah, I guess so. My memory's hazy."

"Hazy? Your memory's hazy?"

"You'll know why when you get there," she said tiredly, trailing her finger around the rim of her cup, searching for some sort of distraction.

"Right. Of course. Then I finish him off once he's done his vital bit, and then come back here and go to bed. Yes?"

"Hopefully, yes."

"What d'you mean hopefully?"

"Well, let's hope you manage to beat him."

"What?"

"What d'you mean what?"

"You're hoping? You don't know?" Tom's eyes were wide with panic and he took a step towards her, anxious for her answer.

"Well...no. Not really," Hermione kept her gaze pointing downwards. She didn't want to look at him, not when she'd just broken that carefully concealed bit of news to him.

"So he might kill me?"

"I suppose he might."

"Well who won?"

"I don't know!" Hermione yelled, standing abruptly, her chair flying backwards and taking a chunk out of the wall as it collided with it. "I don't know because I wasn't there until the end! All right? You might win. You might not. I can't tell you."

"You left?"

"He sent me back to you!"

Tom's shoulders sagged and he let out a breath of understanding, mouth still ajar as he watched her, over-bright brown eyes glaring up at him, fists clenched into shaking balls and her jaw set stubbornly, with only the slightest hint of a wobble as she tried to contain herself. He collapsed into a chair, elbows resting on the table, head in his hands.

"I could die."

"Yes."

"And you're all right with that?" he looked up at her, and it was quite obvious that she was very much not all right with it, but he needed to hear her say it.

"The world needs you."

"And you don't?"

"I'm part of the world."

"Yes but if I die, the world won't have needed me because I would have failed, and you would still have lost me."

"Dying isn't necessarily failing."

"Oh really?"

"It might be that you loosen the lid of the jar, so to speak, but don't manage to make the final turn, but someone else can come along and –"

"Claim all the credit," he said.

"Oh for Merlin's sake! Do you really care about credit?"

He didn't reply.

"Just because I didn't see the outcome it doesn't mean you lost," Hermione said quietly after a short silence. Her hands were now dug deep in the pockets of her jeans, and she kept flicking her eyes between the tiled floor and Tom's hunched figure. "You were always better than him."

"I know that, but it's not necessarily about being better. It's about luck. You say Potter escaped him when he was fourteen and surrounded by Death Eaters?"

"Yeah," Hermione answered, stomach shrinking uncomfortably. Tom was skilled. Far more skilled than Voldemort, but he was right, it was about luck, talent was only a very small part of it.

"Was Potter a better wizard than Lord Voldemort at the age of fourteen?"

"No."

"So Potter's lucky."

"Depends how you look at it," Hermione said with a shrug. "I'd say he was hellishly unlucky."

Tom frowned, mouth opening and closing as he tried to form words but failed. Eventually he settled on "What?"

"Well, how many boys had both their parents murdered, got sent to live with ghastly relatives and from the age of eleven had yearly run ins with a mass murderer who was hell bent on finishing him off?"

"I see your point. But he always manages to slither out of said run ins." Tom looked up at the clock. "Now?"

Hermione turned her attention in the same direction as his. "Yeah. Now."

Tom stood up, wand clasped in a steady hand. "I might not come back."

"I know." She bit her lip and closed her eyes. After a stressful evening of marking off the exact points when her friends' lives were being snuffed out, left right and centre, a solitary tear slid down her cheek. She wasn't prepared to lose someone else. Not today. Not now. Not after they'd waited so long for peace.

He grabbed her roughly by the back of the neck and pulled her close to him, pressing a kiss to her forehead and resting his chin on the top of her head. She wrapped her arms around him, fingers digging into the fabric of his shirt, squeezing her eyes shut to keep herself from breaking down completely. She had spent over fifty years of her life with Tom Riddle and it wasn't enough. It didn't even come close, and now, she had to face losing him.

For a second, the most selfish part of her suggested that she told him not to go, but she stifled it. She had to let him go, if she didn't, there would be no point in him living anyway. There would be no point in either of them living. Lord Voldemort's world was no place anyone bar himself would like to live, and so she pulled away, letting him go and keeping her head bowed so he couldn't see her blotchy, tear stained cheeks.

He didn't say anything, and, when she looked up, Hermione could see fear in his eyes for the very first time.

"I love you."

His face melted into a smirk, all traces of apprehension vanishing in that moment, as he turned to her and said "Frankly Hermione, that doesn't surprise me."

He turned on the spot, and was gone.