I'm sorry that it took me so long to post. I was very nervous, because the second chapter is always more difficult for the first, especially when people like it. I don't want to disappoint them with the second chapter then, so I fret a lot about it. Review responses are at the end of the chapter. I want to think all of you who have been so kind, it always cheered me up and encouraged me to continue with the story when I received a nice review.
Sleepless
Chapter 2: Logic
Hermione was just not herself on that Friday and everyone noticed it.
Fortunately, she had her first class only at ten a.m. and so she's granted at least a bit of sleep in that night, but even so, she had troubles to concentrate on her studies.
At lunch, her friends asked her if she'd spent the whole night partying away, she blushed and told them sternly that of course she wouldn't do that in the night before a school day.
At dinner, she dozed off several times and left already after the main course because she couldn't bear all the questions she was asked. By that time, the whole Gryffindor House was convinced that she'd either spent the night on the party or with someone special. She liked neither assumption, nor the countless inquiries that were the consequence of these assumptions.
Hermione went to bed directly after supper and in hindsight, she would be grateful for her tiredness on Friday, for that way, at least, she didn't had a thought to spare her mysterious encounter on the Astronomy Tower.
Saturday was a completely different matter.
Hermione awoke with a jolt and with the urgent desire, no, the urgent need, to check the pockets of her cloak for the Head Boy badge she had been given in her dream.
When she frantically rummaged around her trunk in search of the cloak and woke up the other Gryffindor girl with the ruckus, she was irritable and just told the whining girls to go back to sleep.
She had more important matters to worry about than their beauty sleep.
Hermione felt bitter disappointment well up in her as she searched pocket after pocket and didn't found anything that remotely resembled a Head badge. The last pocket to search was just a formality because she was a very orderly person, she had already given up hope that she would find it.
Her fingers grazed cool metal. She snatched the little thing and held it up for an inspection.
Hermione paled and at the same time she heaved a sigh of relief. She didn't had a clue what this was about, but this proved that she's still sane, didn't it?
Unless...
Hermione hurried to Lavender's bed, brushed the curtains aside and shook her housemate awake by the shoulder. "Lavender, Lavender, wake up for just a moment, please!"
Lavender made a noncommittal noise.
Hermione decided that it's good enough for the moment and she held the Head badge in front of her face. "Can you see it, too, Lavender? What do you see?"
Lavender looked very confused, but to Hermione's luck, she was willing to play along. She squinted to get a better look at the object. "Well... I see your hand for one thing, Hermione", she grumbled irritably.
Hermione's heart plummeted. So did this mean that she was insane, after all?
"And I see a Head badge." She flashed Hermione a Cheshire Cat smile. "Hey, nifty, Hermione, I didn't thought that you would have it in you! So who's the lucky Head?", she teased.
The bushy-haired Gryffindor blushed the same shade of red as the hangings of Lavender's red-and-gold bed. "I didn't... It wasn't anything like that!", the embarrassed girl stammered. She closed her hand over the Head Boy badge protectively and smiled to herself.
So it had been real, after all... And she wasn't even insane.
Hermione decided that she immediately had to go to the library and read all the books on House Slytherin she could find. Slytherin couldn't have provided Head Boys all the time, so she hoped that she would find some kind of chronicle that mentioned them. Once she knew from what time periods the Slytherin Head Boys were, she could search for "her" Slytherin in the yearbooks. Maybe she was lucky and she would encounter some of the more reasonable Slytherins, whom she could quiz about their House's past members. And when she knew his time, she would be able to narrow down the magical phenomena that had to be responsible for Friday night's strange encounter.
She mapped it all out in her logical mind while she mumbled a thanks to Lavender and hurriedly dressed. Hermione found herself excited both at the huge research task that would certainly prove to be challenging and at the mystery itself. Maybe the Slytherins were right, after all, when they claimed that Gryffindors were too nosy for their own good.
Less than a quarter of an hour later, Hermione was already on the way to the extensive library of Hogwarts.
"Hermione, what are you doing in the library on a Saturday morning? We'll miss breakfast if we don't hurry up!", Ron whined.
Hermione didn't even bothered to look up. On the table in front of her were several book-marked tomes about Slytherin House and a whole stack of yearbooks. Currently, she skimmed through the yearbook 1981/1982, she had figured that it would be most sensible to go backwards in time with her research. "Maurice Mulciber, Maurice Mulciber... why isn't there any picture of him? Was this bloke some kind of phantom?!", a very irritated Hermione grumbled under her breath.
Harry waved his hand in front of her face. "Earth to 'Mione, anyone in there?", he teased lightly.
Hermione smacked his hand to the side. "I can't read this way, Harry!", she snapped absent-mindedly. "And you're not helping, either, Ron, if you want breakfast, then go and get some and don't disturb me anymore!" As soon as Harry's hand didn't obstructed her view anymore, she continued to leaf through the yearbook in search of the illustrious Mulciber.
Harry and Ron both winced as they were told off so sharply. "But what are you doing here in the first place, Hermione?", Harry asked in a very wary tone of voice, as if Hermione might jump up at any given moment and rip out his throat.
"And why are you researching on the bloody Slytherin gits?", Ron added.
Hermione froze in mid-motion.
What to tell them?
She realised just now that it hadn't occurred once to her to tell her friends about the strange encounter on the Astronomy Tower. She couldn't put a finger on the feeling, but strangely enough, it just didn't felt right to tell them.
That meeting with the Slytherin boy had been wonderful and she felt the need to protect her secret.
Hermione realised that if she told Harry and Ron, they probably would think that she had a crush on the boy. She did not, of course, that was utterly ridiculous. So she had kissed him, but it'd just been a little kiss and anyway, boys never understood these things.
Also, they would most likely try to talk her out of researching about him, just because he was a Slytherin and as such, he had to have some evil scheme. Certainly they would be worried, but Hermione believed herself to be quite old enough to know what was good for her and what wasn't. She didn't need some overprotective boys, no matter how good friends they were, to interfere in matters like this one.
They would never be able to understand what had happened on the Astronomy Tower and why it was so important for her to find evidence that she hadn't just dreamed it all, they hadn't been there and felt the way she had.
Hermione felt guilty as she smiled at the boys and told them in her best know-it-all tone of voice, "it is an extra credit project for Professor Binns, if you must know. I have to write a paper about the lives of Slytherin Head Boys and Girls at Hogwarts and what became of them later in life. You would do well to ask the Professors of your NEWT classes for some extra credit work as well, rather than to spend all your free time on the Quidditch pitch and drooling over girls. NEWTs are just a year and a half away."
Yes, she felt indeed terrible for her lie. As sixteen years old teenagers with different genders, it was natural that she didn't told the boys absolutely everything, but she didn't lied blatantly to them if she could help it.
They would be so furious if they ever found out...
Ron and Harry both raised their hands in mock surrender. "Okay, okay, we will leave you alone", Ron said good-naturedly. "We'll try to sneak you some food into the library, you must be hungry.
Hermione finally looked up and smiled broadly at her friends. They could be thick-headed idiots sometimes, as most males tended to be at some points in their lives in her opinion, but she's glad that they were her friends. "Thank you, Ron."
The boys said goodbye to her, Hermione mumbled something that sounded like, "see you later", then she was already completely immersed in the yearbook.
"Maurice Mulciber, Maurice Mulciber", she muttered again and chewed absent-mindedly on her quill.
Finally, she found the boy, but he looked nothing like the boy from the Astronomy Tower.
With a frustrated groan, Hermione added the yearbooks with Mulciber to the as yet small pile of books she'd already dealt with.
She fetched the book at the far end of the table. "Let's see who's next on the list", she muttered under her breath. "Lestrange... No, I don't think so, Lestranges are fanatics, none of them would have a child with a Muggle and let it live. Next..."
By the time that Hermione had reached the 50s, Harry and Ron had long-since returned from breakfast. They hadn't managed to sneak her some food from breakfast, because they'd had porridge, ham and eggs this morning, so they'd fetched her some chocolate from Gryffindor Tower.
"How much longer will it take?", Ron asked impatiently.
"Probably a week", Hermione replied sourly. She stuffed another piece of chocolate into her mouth. She's so excited about her research, she felt that she's very close to her target, that it's easy to ignore the hunger, but since her friends had made such an effort to have her fed, she felt obligated to eat the chocolate.
"Another failure", Hermione groaned when she found a picture of the Head Boy from 1959/60. "This would have been much easier if I'd have just been told the name", she grumbled very softly, so that Harry and Ron couldn't hear her.
She looked through her stack of books for the yearbook from 1946/47 next. When she'd finally found the old book, Hermione leafed through it as she had done with the others, in the hope that she would either find the Head Boy's name or recognise his picture, whatever happened first. "If you want to play Quidditch, I won't hold you back", she told her friends. "You can't help me here anyway." Well, actually, she corrected herself in her thoughts, they could, but if she explained the task to them, they would get even more suspicious than they were already.
The robes looked right and the kind of haircuts did as well, Hermione was optimistic that it wouldn't take more than two more Head Boys to find her mystery boy from the Astronomy Tower.
She smiled triumphantly as her mind belatedly processed the letters on one of the last pages. "Gotcha, Riddle", she whispered. Hermione leafed back two pages, to look right into the eyes of the boy she'd searched for.
It was a black-and-white picture, though the quality was far better than the quality of a Muggle picture from the 40s.
The boy winked at her, his lips shaped into one of those amused smirks and for an uncanny moment, Hermione had the distinct feeling that the boy from the photograph recognised her just as much as she recognised him.
"Tom Marvolo Riddle, so that's your name", she muttered.
She had the distinct feeling that this name should have rung a bell, that she'd heard it sometime before, but at the moment, she just couldn't remember where she'd heard or read it.
Harry and Ron leaned forward to find out what interested their friend so much.
Ron's face scrunched up into an expression of intense concentration as he tried to make out the minute script upside down. "Rib... Rin... Riddle? Hey, Harry, wasn't that the name of the You-Know-Who from Ginny's diary?"
Hermione's stomach plummeted.
This was bad, extremely bad...
Harry nodded. "Yeah, that's him, Voldemort. He looks a bit older here than he did when I fought him, but that's definitely him."
Hermione stood up so hastily that she toppled over a chair. "I think I'm going to be sick", she gurgled out and pressed a hand firmly against her mouth. Her gaze was transfixed to the picture in horror.
Tom Marvolo Riddle.
Lord Voldemort.
She'd kissed Lord Voldemort...
Hermione felt the bile rise up in her throat and she dashed out of the library at top speed as if Voldemort himself chased her to reach a sink in time.
The boys wore twin expressions of worry and confusion on their faces as they stared at the place where their friend had sat just a moment ago.
"Do you reckon we should check on her?", Ron asked, worried.
Harry shook his head. "If we go into the girls bathroom, we'll get hexed", he pointed out sensibly.
Hermione finished to rinse out her mouth and turned off the tap.
She stared at her reflection in the mirror and forced herself to smile weakly, just to make sure that this was really her.
If she wouldn't indeed deal with ghosts on a daily basis, she would have claimed that she looked as if she'd just seen one.
In a way, she thought, she had. Tom Riddle couldn't be more than a ghost from the past, it was impossible that the actual him had appeared in the year 1996 when he apparently hadn't even been aware of it.
"There exists no natural time travel phenomenon, there exists no natural time travel phenomenon, there..."
"You look horrible, dear", the mirror said.
Hermione jumped, she gave a little, terrified scream. Accusingly, she glared at the talking mirror. "Well, you would, too, if you were in my shoes", she said stubbornly.
"What is it, dearie? Heartbreak? I have dealt with more heartbreak in the time that I have hung here than you would think possible", the mirror said.
"Just leave me in peace", Hermione pleaded. She felt suddenly so very tired.
And once she was out of here, she would have to deal with the questions of her friends, she realised with a feeling of dread.
As pale and distressed as she looked, they would never believe her that it's nothing.
Hermione pinched her cheeks in a futile attempt to force some colour back onto her face, her mother had always claimed that it helped when she was a little girl.
For a moment she entertained the thought to avoid Harry and Ron for the rest of the school year or at least the rest of the day. But she felt miserable enough already because she lied to them and kept an important secret from them, she felt no desire no make it even worse.
With a resigned groan, she brushed her hair back and dried her hands, then she left the bathroom.
Hermione was relieved that Harry and Ron didn't waited for her in front of the bathroom. For a moment, she was again tempted to search herself some retreat where they couldn't find her. But she had left a mess in the library that Madame Pince would never forgive her for and she still had these pesky pangs of conscience.
Sometimes, Hermione thought, she would be very grateful for a less active conscience. It would make life considerably easier.
She felt as if she walked to her own execution as she walked back into the library and approached her desk. "Hi." She greeted her friends with a weak smile.
As she had feared, the boys immediately swooped down on her like some overly protective mother vultures. They fired off questions at light speed.
Hermione raised her hands to ward them off. "Pals, I can't answer your questions if you speak both at the same time, I don't understand you." She smiled sheepishly as she returned to her chair. She's grateful that one of them apparently had righted her chair again before Madame Pince could find it. "I'm fine, I was just overcome with nausea, but I'm feeling well again now. I guess my stomach just didn't liked the chocolate on an empty stomach." She gave a minute shrug, as if she couldn't care less.
"You should see Madame Pomfrey", the boys said at the same time.
"Okay, just let me bring these books back to their shelves and then I'll see her about a stomach-calming potion. Madame Pince will have my head if I leave the desk in the state it's in now."
"And you're sure you're feeling fine now?", Harry asked. Both looked reluctant to leave Hermione. "I don't think you should study so much. We have Quidditch training soon, I think you should rest while we're gone and later we can play some games or just talk, we haven't done that in a while." Harry picked up a stack of yearbooks to return them and Ron followed suit.
Hermione heaved a sigh of relief. She wasn't fooled that she would escape the Spanish Inquisition, but at least her friends were willing to postpone it. "I still have a lot research to do, but I guess I'll find some free time sometime today", she gave in reluctantly. Hermione moved to close Tom Riddle's yearbook, but she froze.
Again, her gaze met the photograph-Tom Riddle's.
A shiver ran down her spine.
The scariest thing in Hermione's mind wasn't even that the boy she had spent an enjoyable night of conversation with was to grow up to become Lord Voldemort. Even more scary than that in itself was that she wouldn't hesitate to return tonight if she would get another chance to meet him.
Resolutely, Hermione snapped the book shut and returned it to the shelf with the rest of the yearbooks. She memorised where the 30s and 40s yearbooks were stored, so she could find them faster when she returned later to check them out.
Soon, the rest of the books were returned as well and Hermione had her notes stuffed messily into her bookbag.
To her annoyance, Harry and Ron insisted to accompany her to Madame Pomfrey. Few times before had Hermione been as grateful for Quidditch training as she was on that Saturday.
Once she returned to the library, the first thing that Hermione did was to check out the seven yearbooks with photographs of Tom Riddle in them. She didn't wanted to take any chances with her friends again.
Then, she dedicated herself to the huge task to figure out what had exactly happened to make a meeting possible that defied all natural laws and how it had happened. She consulted both Muggle science books and magical books, but the first problem was encountered quickly.
Hermione just wasn't able to concentrate on the books.
Whenever she tried to tackle temporal difficulties, her mind conjured up memories from that fateful encounter in the Astronomy Tower.
She truly had had more fun than she'd in a long time. It was fun to talk to Tom Riddle, he didn't gave her funny looks when she tried to discuss schoolwork with him like her fellow Gryffindors did. While they had skirted around all touchy topics, she still believed that she'd got a better understanding of the way he was and thought at that age than most people from her generation and the past one as well did.
It was so incredibly difficult to grasp it that the nice boy she'd met Thursday night was a man who would grow up to be responsible for the murder of countless innocents.
And wasn't he a murderer already, hadn't he opened the Chamber of Secrets and killed Moaning Myrtle already during his Hogwarts years?
Hermione wanted answers, she wanted them right away and it drove her mad that the more she thought about him, the more questions popped up that only he was able to answer.
And that encounter, it certainly must have been an one-of-a-kind opportunity.
These thoughts brought up other thoughts. Had he played with her all the time? But if he had caused that time travel or whatever it was on purpose, would he have wasted the night on her then? He could have searched Harry or Dumbledore, someone who would have been of more use to him, whatever reason he might have had for a visit in this time. Even as she dissected every memory she had of the night, she couldn't remember that she'd said anything that would have made that conversation a worthwhile one for the young Dark Lord.
And while she's at it... Why did she even care?
It would be sensible to tell Professor Dumbledore so he could have the Order investigate possible time travels and forget about it.
Maybe her housemates had been right, after all, when they teased her about a crush. It wasn't like her to be so unreasonable.
A snapping noise caused Hermione to look at her hands, placed on the table.
She had broken a quill and ink had spilt over a new scroll of parchment.
Hermione threw the broken quill into a dustbin and got a new one out of her book bag.
Before she could dip the new quill into the inkwell to make doodles on the now useless parchment, Hermione's hand froze.
What if something... had been released? Wasn't Halloween the ancient Celtic Samhain feast, when the veil that separated the world of the dead and the world of the living was believed to be the easiest to penetrate? What if it was the same with time...?
She slapped a hand against her forehead. "Of course, why didn't I think of this before?!", she exclaimed loudly.
Hermione dropped the quill in the inkwell and hurried to the mythology section.
Sunday night, Hermione had returned to the Astronomy Tower as she'd done already the night before.
While she leafed through one the yearbooks and searched for more pictures of Tom Riddle, apparently, he's rather camera-shy, she reflected on her quest.
So far, the results had disappointed her.
Hermione had spent the weekend figuratively speaking buried under heaps of books in the library.
She had checked everything. She had looked for old legends about spontaneous time travels, she had read everything she could find about Halloween and it's Celtic predecessor Samhain as well as all the important books about magical mishaps, time spells, astronomy and astrology, she had even got a pass for the Restricted Section to check up on Dark spells for time manipulation.
She had learned a lot over the weekend and found some interesting and promising information, but nothing was conclusive enough to make for a decent theorem.
Whenever she thought she had found her explanation, she had discovered some puzzle piece that just didn't fit into the picture.
It was extremely frustrating, all the more so, because Hermione feared that she might pass up another chance to meet with Tom Riddle because she wasn't able to figure out how to in time.
She knew, she just knew that she missed out on an important detail.
She also knew that once she realised what it was, she would be frustrated with herself because it would certainly turn out to be something ridiculously obvious.
A gust of wind ruffled Hermione's bushy hair, she shivered.
The Gryffindor girl made a mental note to get herself on the next Hogsmeade weekend another scarf, she'd realised too late that the one she'd given Tom Riddle was her only one. Damn him.
Her heartbeat quickened. Hermione had that eerie feeling that someone watched her, that she wasn't alone anymore in the Astronomy Tower. There was something or someone that caused a shiver to run down her spine.
Her brown eyes darted nervously through the room. "Harry? Ron? It isn't funny, take off the Invisibility Cloak already." Hermione's hand slid as subtly as she could manage to her wand.
Tbc...
looks sheepish Okay, I admit it, I didn't get to the part why Tom was OOC yet. I promise I'll explain it in the next chapter. To torture you a big more with the cliffhanger, the next chapter will most likely be shorter than chap. 2, it's going to be all Tom Riddle. I hope chap 3 will make the wait worth it :-)
Review responses:
Dragoness Kaei: Thank you! I hope you'll continue to like it. And here's the update, just a day after your review :-D
NecroLord: Thanks a lot, it pleases me particularly much that you think it's realistic.
Wanamaker: blushes Thanks, I'm so glad you liked it.
TheDragonDancer: Thank you very much! I'm happy that you like it.
w1ckedangel: Originally, it's planned as one. And here's the update
Meave: Thanks, you flatter me!
Luckylily: I promise you that Ron and Harry will find out. They'll be suspicious by the end of chapter two, though Hermione hasn't picked it up yet, and I don't think it'll take much longer for them to figure at least part of it out. rubs hands in glee That's going to be fun to write...
JellyBeans: Oh, thank you, I'm glad you consider this one of the good TR/HG! Yeah, there are really too few stories out there for us poor shippers.
Lady Evanescence: Oh, an Evanescence fan, that's great! is totally shocked out of her mind Wow! I never had someone compliment my writing style before, thank you so very much! You've made me extremely happy.
Vera-Sabe: Thank you so very much for your lovely long review! I love to receive long reviews, though I'm myself to my own shame lazy, so it makes me feel all pleased that you took the time to write such a long review. When I got the review alert, you made me feel all gooey and wobbly inside, I was so extremely happy. squeaks I'll try my best, just don't come with pitchforks after me! ;-)
PallasAthena1: I'm glad you like the way that I portrayed Tom. I wasn't sure how people would receive the way I portrayed him and I hope you'll like him in chapter 3 as well, which will be all from Tom's perspective.
Zaralya: I don't know how long it'll exactly become, but I do have a penchant for rambling and am completely unable to keep something short (as proved by the attempted one-shot laughs), so I think that it will at least be of medium-length in the end... I hope, if my Tom and Hermione muses continue to be so nice to me and demand their play time. Und übrigens knuddel schön, noch jemand aus Deutschland hier zu treffen! lach Dann fühle ich mich gleich nicht so allein ;-) I think it's great that you translate Everything I Know, it's one of my favourite stories.
Princess of Mordor: Thank you very much, Princess!
Qoheleth: xxl-sized glomp Whee, you were my very first first reviewer, thanks a lot!
Well, I hope you'll all like my second chapter, too. Again, thank you all so very much for all your reviews, you made me insanely happy and inflated my ego so much I barely fit through doors anymore! glomps all reviewers I don't think I've ever got so much feedback for just a single chapter and I'm really extremely happy that you have enjoyed chapter one. It's been my first HP story for a long time and you made me feel a lot more secure writing these characters again (and writing Tom for the first time).