"Hi, Tom."
He looked up. There was Hermione, clutching a scroll to her chest. He held out his hand and she passed it to him.
"Almost all correct," Tom said, scanning Dumbledore's single slanting comment on her Transfig essay. "Have you figured out the mistake in this section though?"
"I'm going to do that now," she said, taking back the scroll and putting her bag down a couple of tables down.
Hermione, it turned out, was a pleasant surprise. For all that her first week at Hogwarts had been a disaster, she had listened to what Tom said. Even better, she had actually kept her promise rather than flagged a few weeks in. When he told her she had better shape up or else, he had expected the standard small child response: tears, shaking, some wailing. It took Tom off guard a bit when she instead stood up straighter, looked him in the eye, and said she was made of sterner stuff than most. Something about it reminded him of himself, when Dumbledore brought his Hogwarts invitation to Wool's.
Not that Dumbledore had been approving of his ambition and strength of character, of course. Tom was a better man than he was, though, so he was happy to encourage such qualities. And on this occasion, it seemed as though he might have struck something that glimmered in the dirt.
Her approach to studying needed refinement, though. Tom had left the library one night and found her stuck in a familiar, absolutely useless textbook.
"It's curfew. And that book is utter rubbish," he said, pointing at it and sneering. "Honestly, forget Herbology. And Defence."
"I thought you said I needed to get top grades –"
"Anyone can ace Herbology without trying. It's a stupid class," he interrupted. "And Defence is just as bad. Just say the Dark Arts are bad and you're set."
"What you should be focused on," Tom continued, an idea suddenly coming to him, in a brilliant flash of inspiration, like all his ideas, "is getting the best grades in Potions and Transfig."
Hermione looked confused as she shoved her books into her bag. "Why those two subjects?" she asked.
"Because they're about actual magic," he answered witheringly, walking ahead – she ran after him. "And - because it's important to get Slughorn and Dumbledore on side," he decided to share as they left the library.
"Why?" she asked. 'Why' was her favourite word, he quickly learned; it was an annoying chirp in his ear that had made the library much less of a quiet escape than it used to be. At least Hermione seemed to be a quick learner; she didn't need to ask the same question twice, which was good, because Tom could barely tolerate answering all her incessant queries the first time.
"Because Slughorn is Head of Slytherin house, obviously," Tom said, rolling his eyes. "And Dumbledore is…the most pro-Muggleborn professor at this school."
Yes, that was the way to misdirect her. An eleven year old girl could hardly understand the subtle war of minds going on between him and the Transfig professor, who had seen a little too much when Tomhad been an eleven year old idiot and discovered the first stage of his destiny. It would be far better if she did not know the true reason he was suggesting she suck up to that smug old man.
"Ok," Hermione had confirmed, mercifully ending her questioning. And since then, Tom supposed it wasn't entirely unexpected she would approach him with her grades and snippets of feedback from Slughorn and Dumbledore. He guessed it was her way of showing him that she had done as he said, so she didn't need to be on the receiving end of whatever hex was front of mind whenever they ran into each other.
Hermione seemed to get hexes or harsh words enough from her dorm mates, from what he could gather.
"D'you know what old Sluggy had to do the other day?" Abraxas asked, as though he was giving Tom a choice in listening to his insipid gossip. Tom had learned long ago that he never was, and Abraxas just liked to ask rhetorical questions and feeling like he had others on the edge of his every word.
"Well, Tom?" he asked, nudging Tom and making his quill swerve on his Ancient Runes translation.
Was it reattach your arm after I tore it from your torso to bash you with it? Tom thought, but he said, "I couldn't possibly guess."
"He had to go to the first year dorms to break up a fight," Abraxas said, the relish of unheard gossip on his lips. This was about the extent of their conversation and friendship with each other. Whatever physiological thrill that Abraxas got from telling someone an idle rumour they didn't know, even if that person was completely uninterested; and for Tom, a droning voice, sort of like a wireless that occasionally blipped with useful information but could otherwise be safely considered background noise.
"Oh no, squabbling eleven year olds," Tom remarked. "I certainly hope he didn't get hurt."
"Well, Thaddeus Rosier's younger sister almost did," Abraxas said. "That Mudblood broke a post off their bed and had the pointy bit of it against her throat."
"Really," Tom said vaguely. Abraxas exaggerated, so there was no way to know if this was accurate. If it was true, though – rudimentary, but adaptive, Tom couldn't help thinking. It wasn't like a first year could be expected to start slicing up their dorm mates with their wand after a few months of magical education. Not like a fourth year, Tom thought smugly, thinking of how Hastings had collapsed in the showers, red dripping down the drain like -
"Untamed beast," Abraxas said, shaking his head and interrupting Tom's recollection. "But Slughorn just gave them all a talking to…told them to stop fighting."
"Sounds about right," Tom said. Anything else, like detention, would interfere with cigars and brandy time.
Hermione, meanwhile, had not mentioned this at all, which made Tom consider who was the most immature child to annoy him when he was trying to concentrate.
It was a cold Saturday in February when Tom realised what was bothering him: it was too quiet. He hadn't had a Saturday morning in the library alone the entire school year.
Someone, who was supposed to be rifling through the nearby Prophet records, was not there.
He pushed his chair out and stood up. Tom had a hunch. It was the exact same feeling you could pick up at the orphanage on occasion: a silent atmosphere of small children doing something very silently they were not supposed to. And sure enough, after wandering towards the other end of the library, he found a guilty sight indeed: one Hermione Granger, surrounded by about thirty books. It was something like finding a wild animal eating food intended for human consumption: she was reading them haphazardly and as fast as she could, half of the books open and cast aside, haphazard notes being taken in a distinctly Muggle-looking diary.
"What is this?" he asked, as loudly as he dared given it was the library. Hermione actually jumped as though she might leap out of her skin; books toppled over as she hurried to stand up.
"Oh – Tom –"
"You're only allowed to issue ten books at a time," he said, staring at the veritable mountain of literature she had piled up. "Were you planning on reading all of these in one day?"
"I've – flicked to the parts I want to read," Hermione said. Even her tone sounded guilty, though she stared him straight in the eye while she said it. Tom picked up one of the books that had fallen to the floor and read the title.
"Linguistic Analyses of Non-Latin Charm Creation," he said aloud. "What are you doing?"
"Well, what it looks like," she said. "I want to – amend a charm I know."
"You've not even been here six months," Tom informed her. "You barely know how to light the tip of your wand. You've skipped several steps of magical education, Hermione, which I have to tell you, will be quite critical to success. Need I remind you of what you're supposed to be doing?"
She pouted, finally looking away under his Criticising Look, which was normally reserved for ill-behaved orphans and, when he was being particularly inane, Abraxas. "Tom – I've looked every Saturday for six months, now," she pleaded. "I checked out the Potions master, but –"
"If you're about to say I haven't found anything," Tom said icily, "when that is more than what I have found in four years of searching for my magical family, I must advise you to reconsider."
"But not every Saturday!" Hermione said, throwing a hand out in frustration. "You don't look every week. I know you work on other things. That's what I'm doing, too."
"What I'm doing is more important than finding my ancestral link," he reminded her, thinking of Salazar Slytherin's hidden chamber, and the path to immortality and godhood. "Nothing you are doing is more important than that. Aside from Potions and Transfig."
"What about my other classes?"
"Those too." Tom sighed, watching her balled up fists, the tension in her shoulders up around her ears. "I would have thought you'd have wanted the fighting to stop. Unless you enjoy threatening to stab your fellow Slytherins with pointy sticks."
"You heard about that?" she asked. So Abraxas hadn't been making things up.
"Everyone did," he said. "You can't do things like that in front of a crowd if you want them to stay quiet." If she had wanted to hack at Thaddeus' sister's neck alone in the bathroom, though, Tom knew that might have been easier to get away with.
Hermione looked at him, all anger and stubborn defiance for an eleven year old kid. "Maybe I don't care if people know," she said, voice wavering which indicated she definitely did care. "Rosemary looked at me and said someone should clean the dorm of all the filth. Now she and everyone else can know what will happen if they try it."
"Yes, but - wait, Thaddeus Rosier's younger sister is called Rosemary?" Tom asked incredulously. "Rosemary Rosier?"
Hermione's mouth twitched. "Oh, I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought that was funny. I felt like such a – I felt so mean when I heard it."
Amazing how it even made the name Tom Riddle look esteemed by comparison. There was no accounting for pureblood taste. "Be that as it may," Tom valiantly pushed on, "you threatened her with all the finesse of a mountain troll. This is Slytherin, Hermione, you need to be more subtle than that."
He didn't know what he'd been expecting, but it wasn't for her tiny shoulders to slump in defeat. "That's – that's what they all say," she said, and to his horror he saw her bottom lip was wobbling. Children crying was only tolerable if he had intended to cause it; unanticipated, it was like nails on a chalkboard, the sound was positively nauseating. "That I – that I don't get what –"
"You are a Slytherin," Tom reminded her shortly. They had already had this conversation once, he could not bear to repeat it with a child that asked so many painfully obvious questions. "Remember what the Sorting Hat said?" And then he realized he had no idea what the Sorting Hat had said, aside from the house name. Even if he hadn't Muffled his ears, the Hat merely whispered in first years' brains rather than opined out loud for everyone to hear the thought process. "What did the Sorting Hat say to you, anyway?" he asked. "Because it told me I was destined to be in Slytherin," he added smugly.
Hermione gasped, suitably impressed. "Oh goodness, really? Wow!" she exclaimed as he nodded. "Destined? That's amazing, Tom…no, it – it didn't say that to me…"
"Well, of course it didn't," he replied, rolling his eyes. "Not everyone can be destined to be in Slytherin. But it must have said something."
Her eyebrows knotted together, like it was hard to remember.
"It told me a - it was like a riddle. Oh!" Hermione smiled at him, and he felt his mouth thin into the most disparaging glare he could muster at her absolutely terrible joke.
"And?" he asked deliberately, and the laugh faded from her face.
"Well, I didn't understand it," she admitted. Of course she didn't. Most children were idiots, even the ones that could scrape a good grade like Hermione apparently could. "It was arguing with itself – to go into Slytherin, or go into any other house?"
"A hatstall," Tom said knowledgeably, folding his arms and nodding. "Interesting."
"But it said – let me see if I can remember this right –" Hermione screwed her eyes up, trying to recall. "It said - the magic tilts, and – it is time for a blade to be sharpened, and to be cast into the heart and the fire."
Tom stared. Hermione opened her eyes again.
"What did you say?" he whispered.
"Um – er, 'the magic tilts –'"
"Tell the truth!" he hissed at her, striding over to look closely into her face for signs of a lie. "Is that really what the Hat said to you?"
Hermione just frowned. "Yes," she said blankly. "I figured – it's an old magical object, it probably always speaks in complicated puzzles…"
Tom was fairly sure it didn't, but at the same time realised he had only ever heard Slytherins boasting about what the Hat said as a proxy for blood purity. He'd need to check with students in other houses to be sure, but…
This sounded much more like what he had been told by the Hat; that the wisdom of the founders of Hogwarts had seen something here of importance, of value. A blade…he stared at Hermione, thinking of a jagged stick against a stupidly named girl's throat, a first year of no magical background who was quickly becoming the top student in every class Tom off-handedly mentioned was worthwhile.
It was so clear. This blade was a tool meant for him, to wield as the person destined to be in Slytherin.
But for what purpose? Tom couldn't help it; he grabbed Hermione by the shoulders and stared, possibilities stretching out before him. Would she battle his foes for him? Into the heart and fire…would she be struck into the hearts of his enemies? Or their throats, rather, if Thaddeus' kid sister was any indicator? Would she help open up the fires of hell across Britain when he ruled it as a god, a Dark Lord?
Maybe she would be struck into the heart of Dumbledore, when Tom finally opened the Chamber of Secrets and murdered that horribly annoying man with Slytherin's Beast that lay within. Or maybe she would be the Mudblood sacrifice required to open it; his research was tending that way, that blood would need to be spilled first and not after…
"You could do anything," he said.
"What?" Hermione asked.
Oh. He'd forgotten another person was here. "Um – I mean – listen, don't worry about what the Hat said," Tom lied. "In fact, don't mention it to anyone else, alright?" This weapon was obviously only intended for him, he didn't need anyone else knowing about it. Especially when it was still pre-pubescent and fighting with sticks rather than magic.
"We choose our own destiny," he said, decisive and grand and lying. "The Hat put you in Slytherin, but you decide what that means, Hermione."
She looked suitably impressed, mouth agape with the false prophecy he poured into her ears. "Who cares what some poorly named girl says?" he asked, casting around for anything he knew about this kid to get her on side – a sense of being on the outside, anger at the snooty girls in her dorm. "You'll show her, won't you? That you're a better witch than her?"
"I will!" Hermione said firmly. "I promise, Tom!"
"Good," he said. And when he saw some girl with a tell-tale hook nose in the halls outside the Charms classroom, whispering to her fellow shrew and staring at the back of Hermione's head, he loudly exclaimed about the lack of parental love her appearance must have engendered to be saddled with such an atrocious name. Like an eleven year old was going to mess up Tom's plans. Hermione's destiny was a lot greater than getting kicked around by some vaguely uppity first year.
Author's note: Thank you to everyone who left lovely comments and kudos on this new story. I'm very happy others are excited to read it! I'm still nervous about sharing it, but I'll swallow my nerves and keep updating :)
Tom doesn't know Hermione's age, which is why he gets it wrong. First years = loosely associated with being eleven at Hogwarts. This may or may not be a recurring theme in this story lolol.
Oh boy a vague prophecy! So many different ways to interpret it; which way(s) will be accurate?