Interlude: Hermione (with a side of Severus)

Hermione understood why Tom had kicked her out and not Ginny, or at least she thought she did. That didn't mean it felt good, and each additional night made her more irritated. Whatever was wrong with Tom, he should just talk to them about it instead of hiding away inside his head. She sighed and shifted the thick leather strap of her bag from where it'd been digging into her shoulder.

In this, at least, Hermione thought Tom and Harry were remarkably similar. Neither liked to discuss their personal issues, but where pushing Harry might work or might make him close off even further, pushing Tom might make him close off even further or might make him irritated enough to forget his efforts to be 'good.' (This was the euphemism Hermione had decided upon for the vague fear she sometimes had about Tom's reaction to things. She didn't want to think that he might murder someone, but she couldn't entirely lie to herself about the possibility either, and so she'd compromised.)

In any event, though she was still miffed at Tom's recent behavior, Hermione made her way to Professor Snape's office for his detention Friday night. She wasn't sure if Tom even remembered giving her this task, but if he did, and she hadn't done it, he'd be disappointed in her. Hermione hated the idea of that even more than she hated the idea of disrespecting her teacher. So, squaring her shoulders, Hermione opened the door to Professor Snape's office without knocking.

"Miss Granger?" the man queried as she entered, one eyebrow raised. He had a tall stack of essays in front of him and a smaller stack beside him. The smaller one showed red slashes all over the top page, so it was probably the pile that had already been corrected.

Hermione took a deep breath and focused on her task, pushing down all the bits of her that were uncomfortable and drawing out all her courage and know-it-allness and bossiness. "It's time for your detention, Professor Snape," she said. Without waiting for him to respond, she Summoned a quill, some parchment, and a bottle of ink and sent them toward her professor. Once there, the materials hovered for a moment before settling onto his desk. With another flick of her wand, she slid the essays he'd been grading away from him.

"My detention," Professor Snape said flatly.

"Yes," Hermione said. She sat down across from him and withdrew a muggle fantasy novel from her bag. "You will write 'I will avoid situations that lead to deceiving my master' two hundred times. Your detention ends once you've finished. You may begin." With that said, she opened up her book, crossed her legs, and started reading.

Reading was, itself, part of her act. She'd considered different sorts of authorities from films and books and plays and had decided that she should aim for cool, confident, and disinterested. In reality, she felt about ready to throw up, but that was unimportant just now.

A chapter later, she glanced at her professor. His page was blank, which she'd somewhat expected. Even if Tom had told Snape to obey her, she couldn't see the man before her simply doing what she said without a fight. "Professor Snape?" she asked pleasantly. "Did you need me to repeat the sentence?"

The man stared at her. "You can't truly expect me to go through with this farce."

Hermione lifted her chin. "I can, and I do. Tom entrusted this task to me, and I will complete it." Her eyes narrowed. Heart pounding, she cocked her head to the side and said, "I think we should add fifty additional lines. 'I will obey my master's orders promptly.'"

Snape's scowl turned murderous. "You are not my master," he growled.

"No, I'm not," Hermione said. "But Tom did say I was his second-in-command, and that I should act like it."

There was a moment as he digested this, and his expression went completely blank as he did so. Hermione envied his ability to Occlude at a moment's notice. She'd been trying to practice, but she still couldn't force her emotions away like Tom and Snape could.

At last, he pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. "Miss Granger," Snape started, sounding concerned now.

Hermione didn't want to hear it. She thought she already knew what he was going to say, and he was wrong. Yes, this was a role she was taking on because she wanted to please Tom, but he'd given no instructions as to how this role should be performed. He'd left it up to her, and this was the way she'd decided she should act after thinking things through carefully. She interrupted him. "If you intend to call Tom 'Master,' then you will call me 'Mistress' when I'm acting in his stead."

Ideally, this would make him stop calling Tom his master. It bothered her, even knowing that he'd decided on it by himself.

After a moment's indecision, Snape grit his teeth together and picked up the quill. "Mistress Granger then," he said sarcastically.

Well, darn it. Even though Ginny and Luna both said it'd go this way, she'd really been hoping otherwise. That didn't stop a small (miniscule really) thrill from shooting through her at the title. "Better," she sniffed, and resumed reading.

It was kind of fun, role playing like this, Hermione thought as she turned a page. Hugely uncomfortable, and she was going to be sick with delayed nerves as soon as it was over, but fun, in a 'standing on the edge of the Astronomy tower and looking down' sort of dizzying way. It was all the more interesting (and all the more terrifying) because she'd had a small, masochistic sort of crush on the man back before third year, back before he'd shown himself to be far too petty and small-minded to put aside a decades' long grudge for the sake of the truth.

Half a book later, Snape Vanished the quill and ink. "Your lines, Mistress Granger," he said with a mock bow. "Now get out."

Hermione sighed and took the parchment, glancing at it briefly before storing it in her bag to show Tom later as proof. "You understand why you needed to do this, don't you, Professor?" she asked softly. "Tom trusts you, but when you hide things from him, it erodes that trust. He couldn't let that go unpunished."

"It was necessary," the man said.

"Then you should find a way to avoid situations that make it necessary in the future," Hermione retorted. She slid out of her chair and crossed the room toward the door. Just before leaving, she heard a sigh from behind her and paused, looking back.

Professor Snape sat with his head in his hands, long hair hanging in front of his face, and Hermione thought she'd never seen a man look so defeated. She took a step back toward him. "Is there anything I can do to help?" she asked softly.

"You've finished your task, Miss Granger. You can end your act." The voice was muffled.

Hermione took a deep breath and walked back to him. "You're important to Tom, and that makes you important to all of us." Even if we don't especially like you, she thought, but she held her tongue, because that sort of thing wouldn't be useful right now. She sat down and scooched her chair closer to the desk. "If there's anything you need to talk about, I'm willing to listen."

Snape's head lifted. "I don't need comfort from a school girl," he snapped. He looked tired.

Hermione frowned. "Have you been sleeping properly?"

His eye twitched. "I've been spending each day teaching teenagers how to kill each other faster, walking a fine line between oaths, avoiding any possibility of leaving the castle because the Dark Lord has discovered by now that I've betrayed him, and now on top of that I have to determine just how much of the difference between an eleven-year-old Hermione Granger and the one before me stems from nothing more than growing up and how much is a result of my master's manipulations." Snape stared at her accusingly. "No, I've not been sleeping properly."

Hermione's brow furrowed as she thought that through. "You don't have to do that last one," she started, but he cut her off.

"I don't doubt you think you're behaving as you yourself have decided to behave," he said. "However, I also have no doubt that 'Tom,'" the way he sneered the name injected an impressive amount of frustration, "knew what you would do and how before you did, because he left a trail of breadcrumbs guiding you there."

That gave her pause. It was true that many of her decisions in the past year and some had been a compromise between her own beliefs and what she thought would make Tom happy with her. Even so, nothing about her felt off. She still felt all the same things as before – she just went about things a bit differently. "I don't think that's true," Hermione said at last. "Tom is brilliant, and I'm sure he could manage that sort of thing to some extent, but there are so many decisions made based on emotions he doesn't understand that he can't possibly know for sure what I'll do."

"Like your feelings for Potter?" Snape drawled, eyebrow raised. "Because I guarantee he knows how to take advantage of those."

Hermioine's eyes narrowed. "No," she said coolly. "I was thinking more about the things I decide because of my feelings for Tom."

Snape looked shaken. "Your - you don't know what you're talking about," Snape said.

Hermione couldn't believe Snape hadn't already known. She'd thought everyone had noticed by now. "I'm in love with him," she said plainly, then held up her hand before Snape could say anything. "This isn't some teenage romantic fantasy. I'm not expecting much in return," she explained. "I know that Tom will probably never say he loves me, and that if he does, it will be because he's trying to manipulate me. I know that he will never be someone who buys me flowers because he saw them and thought of me, and I know that when we… when we eventually have…" She blushed but forced herself to keep going. "When we have sex, he'll be there merely to perform a necessary task, so it will probably happen quickly and only as often as is necessary to have whatever number of children he's decided he needs." She bit her lip, feeling the somewhat miserable feeling of it all that she normally ignored. "It would be a thoroughly unhealthy relationship, if he even consents to call it that."

Snape stared at her as though he'd never seen anything like her. Possibly he hadn't - she doubted Slytherins spent much time considering things like this, and they certainly wouldn't go ahead anyway after recognizing so many downsides to the situation.

Hermione smiled slightly with a helpless shrug. "But I also know that what Tom doesn't know how to express, I'll be able to feel through the bond. And I know that he'll never try to quash my ambitions or tell me to give up on changing the world. Instead, he'll be by my side, helping me. I know that when we disagree, we'll both be stubborn idiots who can't manage a proper apology, but we'll manage to compromise anyway because we care about each other. And," she finished with a certain amount of satisfaction, "I have it on good authority that when asked about his type, he described me, so it clearly isn't completely hopeless."

"And who might this mysterious authority be?" Snape asked, not bothering to hide his disbelief.

"Ron," Hermione said. "Apparently Neville asked Tom about his type, and he described me."

With a frown, Snape shook that off and leaned forward. "And you're truly fine with sharing him? Because while Miss Greengrass doesn't seem to harbor any sort of romantic feelings toward him, Miss Lovegood and Miss Weasley most certainly do. Muggleborn students typically have more difficulty with such arrangements."

Hermione nodded. "Yes." That part was actually something she'd had surprisingly little trouble accepting. As she'd grown up with the idealized vision of a man and a woman falling in love, getting married after being engaged for a few years, and having two or three children, she assumed the bond was responsible for this.

Snape put his head in his hands and groaned, fingers tensing as though he'd like to pull his hair out and was restraining himself only with great effort. At long last, he took a deep breath. "What I am about to tell you, you will tell no one, not even Tom. Do you understand, Miss Granger?"

Eyes wide, she nodded.

Snape straightened and looked her in the eye. "When I was a young man, I was friends with a muggleborn witch much like yourself. She was in Gryffindor, and I was, as you know, in Slytherin, so our friendship was opposed on all sides. Even so, we remained friends up through our fifth year.

"However, my fifth year is the year that I met the Dark Lord. When I first met him, he was only just beginning his descent into madness, and so the man I spoke with was handsome, charismatic, and above all else, possessed of a type of magic that drew you in and made you want to submit to him. When he gave an order, it felt natural and right to obey, even if it was something you'd never have done otherwise. Pleasing him was the greatest pleasure of all, and the more you submitted to him, the better you felt your life became, even as everything began crumbling down around you.

"I called my friend a mudblood at the end of our fifth year in a fit of anger. I regretted it immediately - it was just a word you picked up in Slytherin in those days, much like any other curse - but she wouldn't forgive me. The Dark Lord spoke to me then, and he sympathized with me. I'd made a simple mistake, so how dare she ignore me now? He instructed me to forget about her and think about how best to serve him instead."

Snape closed his eyes, looking pained. "And I did. It seemed perfectly natural, and I felt as though leaving her behind was simply what anyone would have done. It wasn't until my Occlumency improved to the point that I could resist the Dark Lord's magic to some degree that a fog I hadn't even realized was there lifted. I found myself among men and women whose sanity decreased along with their lord's until they were happy to murder and torture anyone at his command. The difference between what I'd been experiencing and reality was so drastic that I let down my defenses, let the fog cover my world again, and continued to be his servant until outside circumstances forced me to accept reality."

With a twist of his lips, Snape looked back at Hermione and said, "My master now, your Tom Riddle, has this same quality. It may even be stronger in him than it was in the Dark Lord. He is an infinitely better master than the Dark Lord, or even Dumbledore, of course, but that does not make him a good man. He will find your deepest, darkest desires, those things you would never have even admitted to yourself consciously, and he will use them to twist your character. Not because it is necessary, but because that is simply who he is. Dragging down others comes to him as naturally as breathing."

As the last word ended, the air hung heavily in the room. Hermione swallowed. "I thought you were supposed to be loyal to him," she stammered, suddenly reviewing all her actions and trying to think what darkness Tom might have found in her to draw out. (She pointedly ignored Umbridge's death. Tom hadn't made her do that, for all that she knew he was pleased about it.)

"I am," Snape said and leaned back in his chair with a sigh. "It is far better for him if you realize this now and end your schoolgirl crush than if you pursue him and, Merlin-forbid, gain his affection, only to realize this truth then and leave."

"Oh." Hermione looked down. Could Snape be right? She thought about Ginny, who had fallen into the role of Tom's pet with hardly a word of protest. Thinking of Ginny made her frown. Ginny had also cursed Tom, and he'd been furious, but he hadn't retaliated, not really. And Tom hadn't been happy about letting Ginny continue to attend Umbridge's detentions, but he'd allowed it anyway. She bit her lip, thinking through the past year. "Aren't…" She looked back up. "Aren't all relationships like that? At least a little?"

Snape's gaze sharpened. "How so, Miss Granger?"

She spoke haltingly, still thinking it through as she spoke. "When Harry and I were in first year, I thought that being expelled might well be a fate worse than death. By the end of that year though, that had changed. By then, letting Harry die was far worse than either of those things." Her voice grew surer as she continued. "And when Tom first woke up in Harry's body, he'd never have given a second thought to Mister Weasley's death, but last Christmas, he was devastated by his inability to prevent it. He didn't care about Mister Weasley, I'm sure, but he knew it had hurt Ginny, and that hurt him. I think every relationship changes you, for good or for bad."

Snape continued to stare at her, before finally he inclined his head. "You may be correct." The corner of his lips twitched upward, and his gaze softened. "Very well, Mistress," he said, tone only slightly sarcastic now, "I withdraw my protest."

It was only then that Hermione realized just how late it'd gotten. She grimaced. "I'm sorry, I've kept you up." Not letting him protest, she stole the stack of essays. "I'll take over grading these. They're the third years', right? You go to bed."

Snape looked ready to protest, but then he simply snorted and stood. "Good night, Mistress," he said quietly.

Hermione looked up from the paper before her and smiled. "Good night, Severus."

A/N: So I was going through a folder my parents brought up from my old room, and it's full of notes between different people in middle school/high school. Some of them include me, and like… wow. I'm impressed by what a complete psycho bitch I was. Like… Zero ability to empathize with others whatsoever. And then other notes between friends but not including me tend to mention me in a "yeah, she's an idiot but what can you do" sort of way. So like… I guess I'm glad they didn't think of me as evil, because I sure would have, but I also am not sure I'm happy they thought I was dumb instead.

And I'd totally forgotten that one of my boyfriends once told me he "wanted to rip out my eyes and keep them in a glass jar forever." … This is a guy I broke up with because he was 'too nice.' … Yeah. So that's a thing. (Don't ask what I meant by him being too nice. I honestly didn't even remember that was the reason until reading through those, so I haven't the slightest what past-me was thinking.)

Hippothestrowl (how do you pronounce that btw?): I think that kind of hypocrisy is a major factor in most serial killers and serial rapists. (Although, in Tom's defense, he personally has never performed that particular violation… but he'd be offended by any other violation too, so there goes that defense XD) If I remember correctly from my forensics days, there's often just this disconnect from other people and themselves, so they just can't see it as being the same thing at all.

Of course, he's got Harry's brain now, so he might be capable of comprehending that, depending on how much of that is biological and how much is a matter of upbringing, but he's also got 70ish years of thinking of himself as more important than anyone else, so I'm not sure Harry's brain chemistry is up to overcoming that.

And yeah. Tom might be becoming slightly less evil from interacting and bonding with the others, but they're 100% coming out the worse for it. But, you know, teenagers. They're terrible at making decisions based on logic and great at leap first, think later.

Phaedra: Ah… Next chapter. Or the one after. Depending on how long Dumbledore takes. But that's definitely been considered.

Also, don't let me forget that I need to include McLaggen's scene. And look up his name to make sure I've gotten it correct.