Disclaimer: forgot to do this before. I do not own anything you recognize, and probably I copied quite a lot that you don't. I am writing this story for fun: mine and yours, and I think you can tell I'm not making money.
Author's Note:
This is where I do deviate from cannon quite a bit. I have the ending written (yes!) Sorry about the long update time, but school is taking up a lot of my time. I'm doing the Bellatrix POV again, because I liked it. I also want to say that I have another idea cooking up, so another fic might be coming.
A Dream Potion
"She wouldn't say where she got it though," finished Tom as he explained his venture to the assembled group. Hermione's eyes gleamed as she pictured the relic, but Bellatrix was not nearly as interested.
"Tom," she sighed, "Why do we need to know this? Why does it matter in the slightest?"
Hermione turned and exclaimed, excitedly, "Why does it matter? Because it's bound to have very powerful magic and also because it might lead us to the kingdom of faerie itself!"
Tom gave Hermione one of his rare, real smiles. "Exactly. Bellatrix, what do you know about that land?"
Bellatrix gave her friend a disgusted look and answered in a bored voice. "It is both a parallel dimension and an island. Long ago, before civilizations like Greece and Rome intervened, humans and faerie often interacted. Since then, the realm has been locked away." She finished, looking at Tom expectantly, waiting for some sort of an answer.
Hermione rolled her eyes at Bellatrix and answered, speaking very fast, "You forgot the most important bits. Faerie magic is incredibly powerful, and it manifests itself somewhat like accidental magic caused by lack of control among younger wizards. However faeries have much more power over their own magic. It is presumed that wizards are merely the result of crossbreeding between faeries and humans. Faerie origins are also presumed for almost every bit of magic on Earth – from Excalibur in the old tales to dragons and werewolves. The ability to enter the locked away faerie realm is fantastic, impossible, wonderful!"
The gleam in her eyes was unmistakable. Hermione was excited.
Tom abruptly changed the subject. "I'll be leaving for a while, to see Rodolphus," his matter of fact tone left the two women and the silent Unspeakable with no way to protest. Bellatrix sighed and seemed rather annoyed that he would rather spend time with her rival than with her, but Hermione's face betrayed the slightest bit of happiness. Inwardly, she was jubilant, knowing this was her big chance to do something that would allow her, for a few days, to understand Tom Riddle more.
O-o-o-O-o-o-O
"Gipseng root, mooncalf dung. Stir gently counterclockwise once, then clockwise once, then increase the counterclockwise as per the Fibonacci sequence until thirteen. 1 ... switch ... 1 ... switch ... 1 ... 2 ... switch ... 1 ... 2 ... 3 ... switch ... 1 ... 2 ... 3 ... 4 ... 5 ... switch ... 1 ... 2 ... 3 ... 4 ... 5 ... 6 ... 7 ... 8 ... switch ... 1 ... 2 ... 3 ... 4 ... 5 ... 6 ... 7 ... 8 ... 9 ... 10 ... 11 ... 12 ... 13 ... switch." Hermione muttered, hunched over the finicky potion which had, each time she switched, become more and more a pearly, translucent white, the original indigo shade fading away. A bowl of honey and almond was being stirred by an animated spoon and the next ingredients, bee wings and a lump of star iron, hovered in the air near her hand.
"Now it needs five minutes to rest," she mouthed silently, knowing there was no rest for her. With her damp wand, she ordered the spoon to stop and cast Lumos on the iron, hoping she had gotten it right – this was the bit of the potion she had been least sure about – if she had gotten it wrong after all... And there wasn't much time, this was it, Tom might not leave again, or she might have to go with him, and he couldn't know. She checked her thoughts, and lowered the flames below her cauldron, before taking the glowing lump of metal and putting it into the liquid, where it sank quickly, hitting the bottom with a large CLANK. The light suffused every bit of the translucent, pearly potion. Sprinkling the bee's wings over the surface, watching as the flimsy things floated for a while before sinking and disappearing. She stirred again, this time going to 21, the next number in the Fibonacci sequence, then dipped into the honey paste a branch of holy. She dipped it into the mixture, holding it there for 34 heartbeats, and watched as the pearliness came out of the white and the potion gained a golden tinge, still glowing, now perfectly transparent.
Hermione took out the branch, levitated the iron, which had lost its light, out of the cauldron, turned off the flames, and breathed a sigh of relief. Done. She looked at the vials of very similar potion, but slightly pink instead, and glow-less. That was an earlier experimental batch, with rose petals instead of bee wings, no iron, and no honey. Soon they would be joined with new vials – seven of them, that was how many of the batch was useful. Tom, here I come. The fact that she was already thinking of him as Tom dimly registered, but she didn't think of it as important.
O-o-o-O-o-o-O
Bellatrix looked at Tom curiously, and asked, not expecting an answer. "So what was this business with Rodolphus?" He looked at her with eyes narrowed and answered curtly,
"Research."
Knowing better than to press further, she proceeded to explain what had been happening in his absence. "Hermione has also been doing research, she won't tell me what it is, she seemed obsessed. Upset, too, I don't think it's working. I took a little trip to my aunt's, just one day, of course. She told me I should think of getting married, she's been telling me that for months. I saw my little half-sister there, Narcissa, she's growing to be an adorable baby, with beautiful pale gold hair.
There are a lot of wizards from Germany fleeing, I don't know what's happening, exactly, some are allowed to stay... Probably somebody high up is feeding the Muggle government some information and some wizards agree to serve him. This Hitler apparently has some of your ideas, purity of race... Only for him it's purity of some different sort of Muggle race from others, completely ridiculous, all Muggles are trash as far as I'm concerned."
Hermione stepped out of the kitchen, looking tired, and nodded to Tom. "What have you been researching?" he demanded.
"Come here, have a glass of pumpkin juice, and we'll talk about it," Hermione responded wearily. She had 2 glasses on the table, and one of them, which she hid from Tom, had some sort of liquid in it. She filled both of them with pumpkin juice and handed Tom the one with the liquid. Bellatrix scowled. She didn't know if she could trust Hermione that far, but the girl didn't seem to want to poison him. The woman who would become Voldermort's most fanatical follower resolved to force it out of her friend tonight.
O-o-o-O-o-o-O
Bellatrix watched, amused, as Hermione drank a vial full of golden liquid, a liquid which resembled very closely the one which had been within the glass of pumpkin juice.
"What are you doing, Hermione?" she demanded, her voice cold. "What did you do to Voldemort?"
The French witch sighed and put down the empty vial. She seemed to be looking for a way around the truth. "What I've been working on is dreams. Partially a potion to induce terrible nightmares, but mostly I've been working with the project I've worked on before. How to enter another's dream. This potion is the same that I gave to Tom, but his had a thought of mine in it. A thought of me. That means that our Nox, the part of our minds that dream, will be open, and they will naturally drift towards each other and merge. The fact that the thought of me was in his potion means that that thought will enter his dream and I will follow, meaning it will be his Nox which dominates." Bellatrix noted with interest that she refused to grant him the title she herself had used.
"And why would you want to enter his dreams?"
"To understand him. To understand our leader. To help him if he needs it, because he would refuse my help awake. Maybe one day we will all dream together every night, alternating with a random dominant Nox, to become closer together and to help communicate in a way. But first I want to understand him."
She knows, thought Bellatrix. She knows we do more than research, that we have a mission. She knows that one day we will need her potion.
"If that is truly what you are doing, then next time you do this, let me enter the dream as well."
Hermione nodded, and the English witch thought her French friend was not only acquiescing because of the implied threat, or to prove her point, but because she wanted to do so. No, what am I thinking. Hermione's a researcher, she's fascinated with Tom, but scared of him. That's it.
O-o-o-O-o-o-O
Hermione ran, filled with purpose, through a forest ravaged by fire. She ran past skeletal black trees which crumbled into ash if she touched them, her feet rousing up more ash with each step.
The forest thinned, and here and there she glimpsed ravens feeding or flying, or perhaps some patch of crimson. She resolutely ignored these morbid happenings and kept running, not knowing where, knowing only that it was important. Then there was no more forest, just a gray, corpse-strewn plain where ravens gorged. Somewhere deep inside of Hermione, a lucid voice spoke up. What a nightmare. Poor, poor Tom. But the rest of her kept going, filled with purpose.
She came to a solitary charred tree, below which lay yet another corpse. Only it wasn't a corpse, not yet. One eye looked at her pleadingly. The other was hidden by a raven which seemed to be pecking it.
Without consciously deciding to do so, she raised her arms, and the ravens flew there, where they perched on them, her shoulders, and her heads, their claws digging slightly into her flesh. When they left the 'almost corpse,' she recognized Tom Riddle, but missing one eye, and the other looking thoroughly terrified.
The purpose left her, leaving only a lingering knowledge of her power to judge him, replaced by her still lucid mind and a grandeur, a confidence, that had never belonged to her.
"You killed your father," she said, looking down at him.
"Yes, I did. He killed my mother, and almost killed me."
"You killed him. Because he abandoned you, or because he was a Muggle who dared to be your father?" she asked, before adding, "Do not lie, the ravens will know" as a last spurt of the purpose that had brought her here.
"Both," he answered after a while.
"You let your uncle take the blame," she said, armed with, not the knowledge of the dream, but her own knowledge, the memories of Harry's words.
"It was that or die, go in Azkaban."
"He did go there, where he will die."
"He was a crazy murderer." Tom tried to defend himself, but whether it was the dream or something else, his lack of confidence betrayed by his face and his voice.
"So are you," she said simply, believing every word.
"He was a disgrace to Salazar's line."
"He was pure blood. You are a half-blood," she retorted, stumbling slightly over the words, but forcing herself to say them. She had to understand him and could not protect herself from his pureblood mania. "Who is the disgrace? Salazar hated those with Muggle blood."
"I am the Heir of Slitherin! My mother's sin is forgiven!" He was almost hysterical now, staring not at her eyes but at the birds' sharp beaks. For a second, she felt sorry for him.
"Have you killed before?"
"A girl, Myrtle. A Muggle-born. I used her death for my first Horcrux. I was sixteen." His words were filled with an odd mixture of shame and pride.
Hermione lowered her arms slowly, pronouncing his sentence as the crows descended. "Tom Riddle is dead, and death people are food for the ravens."
O-o-o-O-o-o-O
She lay in bed, wide awake, staring at the ceiling. The potion had not worked as anticipated, she had become part of his dream and lost part of herself. Maybe it was better that way. She wondered over Tom's nightmare, wondering whether he did think of himself as dead, or whether it was simply his own fear of death. Whether he had any morals, or he was just trying to play to her own. Whether he was truly incapable of understanding a Muggle-born witch.
O-o-o-O-o-o-O
Author's Note:
Sorry about the long update period. I unfortunately was kept off my computer by homework and two sisters, and I don't know which is the more unbearable.