Trigger Warning: Do not read this chapter if you're triggered by war and death.
The sun has started to peek out from behind the large cedars of the Forbidden Forest, a burning halo that crowns the pine-coloured peaks above them. Hermione gets lost in the colours for a moment, shielding her eyes with one hand against the blinding shine.
"Where are we heading?" She asks, following Tom down a narrow passage of slippery mud. He looks over his shoulder at a particularly steep place to see if she needs a hand, but Hermione ignores him and descends the path without help.
"We should be close. There's a clearing not far from here," Tom says. They make their way deeper into the forest side by side, twigs snapping under their boots.
"I'm amazed that you know so much about Hogwarts and its grounds."
"Hogwarts is the closest I ever had to a home. When I still went to school, I explored its grounds for hours. Often long after curfew."
"So Lord Voldemort has been a rebel."
"Just Tom is perfectly fine. Never liked the anagram Voldemort used. I mean it's clever, but ridiculous."
"You're full of surprises," she mutters while watching stripes of shadow and light dance across his profile. Tom stops moving abruptly, causing Hermione to almost run into him. She loses her balance, but catches herself instead of falling.
The clearing stretches in front of them, far and bright, but without sound. No owls hooting. No crickets chirping. No small animals running around, and no wind rustling through the leaves. The stillness weighs heavily.
"Do you want to wait here?" Tom asks, low enough she almost misses it. He's not looking at her, but even if he was, Hermione didn't notice. She's staring at the vast area in front of them. In the middle of the clearing, between olive and yellow coloured leaves, is a large cleared spot. Human-sized. Harry's deathbed.
She can feel her knees buckle under her weight. Emotions wrestle themselves up into her throat, choking her. She's close to a panic attack. Her heart jackhammers painfully behind her ribs, vigorous enough to hurt. Her chin trembling faintly, she takes a step back. Damn Hermione get a grip, she thinks, forcing herself to take long, deep breaths. Inhale. Exhale. Just as she taught herself.
She stays there for a while, waiting for her heartbeat to even out, for the blood to return to her face, for her emotions to calm.
"No. It's fine," she forces out between gritted teeth. She follows Tom from a distance, stopping far from where Harry died. Tom goes over to the spot, crouches down, and starts to rummage through the wet foliage. He brushes leaves and branches away, pushing his hands deep into the soil. When he finds the page he's looking for, Hermione closes her eyes.
For seconds, nothing happens. Then the familiar pulse of the magic crawls over her skin. All her senses tingle in anticipation. She can feel hard stone under her feet. The air reeks; stale, greasy and dirty. The temperature rises a couple of notches, making it harder to breathe.
When she opens her eyes, the Forbidden Forest is gone. Where moments ago cedars and firs towered over them like skyscrapers, brick stone houses fit neatly into rows, and cobblestone pavement snakes its way to the horizon. Fog patches clog their view.
Even standing a couple of feet apart, Hermione can barely see Tom's shape in the dark. No street lights illuminate the area, no candles throw their warm glimmer through the windows. The night around them swallows them whole.
"Where are we?" Hermione asks, voice barely above a whisper.
"London," Tom says, emotions hidden.
Her eyes have almost adjusted to the dark, when the moon pushes past the clouds and throws its wading shine down on them. A large metal gate fences the surrounding area. Large letters stamp a name into the gate, but the fog makes it hard to read. Still, Hermione can make out what it says. Wool's Orphanage.
She looks over to Tom. His lips are set downward, his eyebrows pinched, in a look that is not fear, not disgust, but definitely not a positive emotion. More like a mix of confusion, anger, discontentment. Slowly, he makes his way to the entrance and opens the old, creaking, wooden door. Hermione follows him into the orphanage.
The corridors are deserted and sombre. Some of the doors are ajar or half-opened, but Hermione has no chance to take a peek because she hurries to follow Tom's large strides. The only sound in the building is the hiss of harsh voices coming from the end of the hall. Tom enters the room with slight trepidation. Inside, a large group of children is huddled close to one another, shivering, sharing rat-bitten blankets. It doesn't take them long to find Tom's younger self. Even though all of them are dirty and malnourished, Tom's younger self stands out.
He looks a couple of years younger than the Tom she's used to by now, but not much. Maybe he's fourteen, or thirteen, she guesses. He's not yet as angular and sharp as he will become, but he's missing the baby fat that would make him look round and healthy. He's sitting apart from the others, gaze fixed into the dark corner to the left of him.
There must be a lot of memories here, Hermione thinks, a bit lost in thought, and feels the adolescent Tom in front of her flinch. Looking at him, she sees his face pale more than a few shades; his eyes are huge, and meet hers in horror. He's murmuring something under his breath that sounds like not here, but Hermione's not sure that she got that right.
One of the nuns pushes through them both - dissolving into golden dust that does nothing to lighten the atmosphere before she reforms - and hurries to the other end of the room where a couple of men are lying. The whole room is barely lit, and it is hard to make out what it is hiding in the shadows.
Little Tom's eyes don't waver. He doesn't look away from the dark spot next to him. Instead, his eyes are painfully wide, enough to irritate the iris. His hands are clenched around his knees, almost as if he's desperately trying to keep himself under control. She can see the outline of his wand under his left arm. Probably because he pushed it into the inside of his sweater.
Older Tom leaves the room without looking back. He stumbles on his way out, his balance off. Hermione follows him with the eyes but remains rooted in place. Her eyes snap back to his younger self again, to concentrate on the memory that plays in front of her.
"Help me," a hoarse voice croaks from the darkness, next to Tom's younger version. The boy breathes faster. Hermione can feel his terror slipping out of every pore. Without the older version to stop her, she gets closer to the boy, to take a look at the shadows he is fixated on. For a while, she can see nothing. No shape, no contour. Just the dark, heavy and foreboding. Then, the light of the moon falls in through a nearby window. She recoils immediately.
Corpses are piled in the corner. At least eight or nine of them. It's hard to count. Too many body parts hanging stiffly from a lump, too much blood coating pale flesh and bone. Soldiers; Foreigners and Brits. Civilians. Children. A deathbed for war.
One of them is still alive, but not much longer, if the gaping hole in her stomach is any indication. A nun, it seems. She reaches her red-covered hand out to touch Tom, who's sitting closest. His body is tense, trembling from stress.
"Kill me," the nun begs. She's crying, her tears leaving ashen tracks on her face. The stench of foul flesh and faeces is excruciating. Young-Tom does not move. Does not blink. Does not breathe.
Hermione feels her body convulsing. Bile rises in her throat, and she has a hard time swallowing it. When she turns away, she can still hear the rattling breath of the nun.
It feels like an eternity, but in reality, the memory plays only for a couple of minutes before eventually, the nun dies. Finally, Tom's younger self blinks. Hermione does too. Then, the memory starts to dissolve back into golden dust in front of her eyes.
The cool air of the forest is balm for her thin nerves. By now, the sun is high in the sky, blanketing the clearing in a brilliant, luminous glow. Tom is standing between two large cedars with his back to her. He turns around when he hears her approaching footsteps.
"You alright?" Hermione fights the urge to bite her lip when he looks over to her. His eyes are haunted, grey and bleak, like the Thames in winter. He seems conflicted on how to answer her.
"I forgot," Tom shrugs carelessly. The diary is still open in his hands. He browses the pages almost like he's searching for something, but puts it away when he doesn't find what he's looking for. "I don't remember much. Glimpses. Fragments. There were no seasons. There was war, and not war. Children on the streets played hide and seek with knives in their pockets. One time I had to carry one of the younger ones out of the rubble. By the time we reached the protective bunker he was stone cold and dead on my back."
His voice is calm, placid. Conversational. The Gryffindor inside her shivers in terror.
"War is no place for children," Hermione says. She's not sure he heard her. He stares at her, his mask falling into a much more neutral and intimidating expression.
"War is no place for anyone," Tom says after a while, turning away.
Her words desert her. Instead, her hand lifts up as she contemplates reaching out, if only to give some kind of physical support. But before she can make contact, Tom leaves, paying her no mind. A stillness forms in the now-empty clearing as a hush settles around her. An absence. Full and encompassing. Utterly prominent and misleading in its definition. How fitting, she thinks and drops her hand.