Unkempt wildflowers and golden dandelion weeds wrestled through the abandoned Hogwarts courtyard, wet with dew leftover from a morning rain shower, and smelling of turned dirt and tree moss in the cold damp air. Hermione sat hunched over her laptop on the stone bench of the Sir Nicholas fountain. The fountain had been named respectfully after the Catholic saint, but was re-Christened Headless Nick when a senior prank gone wrong decapitated the priceless statue in 1973.

Amber yellow leaves matted and clumped together into sunset piles, gathered at the roots of hundred-year old oak trees and slowly creeping closer to Wi-Fi Willow. Helicopter seeds cartwheeled out of maple trees in packs each time a wind blew by – half a thousand of them would be tangled helplessly in Hermione's hair by now, had she not firmly yanked her hood up as soon as she stepped foot outside.

Harry spied her leaving the Great Hall halfway through the lunch period, absently pulling on fingerless knit gloves that let her type better, and appearing as though she very much did not want to be followed. He'd watched her vanish down a red brick trail (the presence of which he'd never before been aware of, despite having attended Hogwarts for two years), and disappearing between the sciences building and interfaith Hogwarts chapel. He had waited ten minutes before making an excuse to Ginny and Ron, and sneaking out of the Great Hall after her.

"If you're supposedly some extraordinary, infamous hacker, shouldn't you be listening to bizarre electronica music like Deadmau5 and Skrillex, not Johnny Cash?"

It was funny to see Hermione yell like an enraged banshee and startle so badly she nearly fell right into the fountain water. She barely caught herself in time – saving her homework and laptop – and pulled out her headphones to scowl heavily at him. "What the hell, Harry? Do you know how much it would've cost me to replace this?" she tiraded. "Computers don't just fall out of the sky, you know!"

Under the force of her Sphinx-like gaze, Harry wilted, and scratched the back of his neck awkwardly, briefly shamed but also elated to find someone else at Hogwarts who understood the importance of six hundred dollars. "Sorry, I wanted to see what you were doing out here," he said, sitting down on the damp stone next to her. He started to jog his feet back and forth over the blisteringly green grass. "How did you find this place anyway?"

Hermione looked down at his jittering feet, back at her laptop, and sighed. She seemed to have resigned herself to the fact she wouldn't be getting rid of him anytime soon, judging by the spasmodic twitch in her right eyelid. Harry repressed a smile of victory. "I got lost on my way to Economics class my first week here," she explained, tucking her large frizzy hair behind her ears and gazing around them slowly. "I thought I was taking a shortcut."

"My first day," he said, "I asked two seniors how to get to Biology and somehow ended up in Janitor Filch's office with the old lunch monitor, Mrs. Norris's, walkie-talkie. They stole it at the end of the last year and had been using it all summer to prank Filch with love messages. Trouble was, Mrs. Norris quit over the summer and moved to Florida with her husband to live on an orange farm." He grimaced. "Filch thought he was meeting Mrs. Norris for an 11:30 rendezvous when he found me locked in his office with her walkie-talkie in my hand."

Hermione's eyes widened. "Oh shit."

"Yeah." He twiddled his thumbs, remembering the rage on Filch's face when he found out the love of his life had been a high schooler with nothing better to do than torture a lonely 72-year old man over the summer. "He would have killed me with a mop, if Mrs. McGonagall didn't rush over after she heard the screaming. But I did get detention for three months – and after school community service."

"That's rough," Hermione said, frowning. "And you never told anyone about the seniors who tricked you?"

Harry pursed his lips thoughtfully. "Well. I did tell Ron – but he just laughed and called me an idiot."

Hermione's frown deepened.

"Hey, I was thinking about what you said yesterday," he said suddenly, straightening and facing her. At her blank stare, he elaborated, "You know…about my parents. And your dad."

At that, Hermione's uncomprehending expression was replaced by uncontrollable fidgeting and a faint indigo complexion. She swore under her breath. "Er – I – uh – don't know if I – er – should be someone you should be – um – talking to about this – eh – Harry," she started awkwardly, looking anywhere but at him. Harry's brows furrowed with confusion. "You know, Hogwarts has – ehm – a therapist, if you need to-"

He blinked. "What?" When Hermione continued to avoid his eyes, it dawned on Harry what she thought he was trying to do, and he smacked himself in the forehead. Oh Christ. "Look, I'm not trying to have a heart-to-heart, good God, it's just, I was thinking– How did your dad die? Because you probably already know what happened to my parents," he said quickly, and hated himself for the bitterness Hermione no doubt heard saturating his voice like acid. The bitterness he could never just manage to hide completely from a world that knew every waking second of the Potter's darkest moment.

If Hermione heard any bitterness though, she didn't say it. She just seemed relieved Harry wasn't attempting to unceremoniously unload a bucket of sentimental emotions on her – almost as relieved as he felt.

"When I was eight my dad was shot trying to protect a cop during an investigation. He was a detective," she explained at Harry's quizzical look, looking up in time to catch it. She paused. "He was tracking down this guy who had been stealing people's cars by running fraud rental parking lots around Manhattan… When they found his hideout, he tried to shoot one of the cops with a pistol, and my dad jumped in the way to save him. People always think it was heroic, how he died, but-" Her voice turned strangely soft, instead of hard the way Harry's always did whenever he talked about his parents. "It was really just unfair."

Unfair is a good word for it.

Harry thought of the car crash his parents were blown to pieces in before he'd even known them long enough to remember their faces, his godfather Sirius telling him the collision with a tractor trailer hadn't been an accident, the police storming into their house in Arizona and dragging Sirius away in the dead of night, his neighbor Mrs. Figg sitting with him on the front porch and reassuring him with empty promises that his godfather would return to him as the cruiser drove away. A frigid social worker had introduced eleven-year old Harry to an aunt and uncle he had never heard of before, backward hicks from Utica who would hate him for reasons he would never understand, or change…

"Why did you ask me that?" Hermione asked, studying him closely. Maybe there was some strange privacy in Harry's face, mindlessly giving his thoughts away. In any case, he smiled at her, and hoped she forgot what she wasn't meant to see.

"No reason," he said easily, clasping his hands between his knees. "I just wondered."

"You're lying."

Harry glanced at her, surprised – and a little stymied. "What?"

"You're lying," Hermione repeated. She waved her hand in his face, as if dishonesty was written all over him – and maybe it was. "You looked away when you spoke, so you lied. How come?"

"It's nothing," he replied, a hardness he usually didn't use around girls snapping into the edges of his voice like deadbolts. He told himself he didn't want her to push him, but maybe he did want her to – just to see what would happen next. Wouldn't she, of all people, get it? he thought, staring at his chapped knuckles, reddening in the dead rasp of fall and stinging him.

Then he thought, but what if she didn't?

Hermione raised her eyebrows at his silence. "You brought this up, you know," she pointed out. "Weren't your parents politicians or something?" He nodded. She heaved a sigh. "Look, if you're going to be moody and pretend you don't speak English, you can go back to that jealous harpy of yours; I'm sure she'll enjoy the cold shoulder more than me." She sniffed, "I prefer having the courtyard to myself anyways."

"Harpy." Harry smiled slowly, amused. "You mean Ginny?" Hermione nodded and he shook his head. "Ginny isn't jealous, she's just…" He struggled for the right adjective, finally settling on, "Protective."

Hermione stared at him for an immeasurable minute and Harry blinked back at her, until finally she shook her head, muttered something to the effect of boys' mental capacities, and stood up. "Come on, the bell's about to ring," she said abruptly. "My class is five minutes on foot from here." She was walking away, when Harry bounded to his feet and ran over on instinct, stopping in front of her to blurt out, "My parents were killed in a car accident, but it wasn't by accident."

Hermione cocked her head. "What do you mean? Like your parents were…murdered?"

Yes! Yes! Every vein in Harry's body told him to scream it, bellow it, but he couldn't. He had to be careful. "The car accident was planned," he said lowly, painfully aware of the vacant courtyard, of the minute hand on the clock tower nearing one o' clock, of how psychotic he sounded. "It was planned by people who didn't want my father to be re-elected as senator the year my parents died, or so I've been told." Told by Sirius, who Harry trusted with every fiber of his being. He paused, wracking his hands through his hair anxiously. "I get it, if you don't believe me. The only other person who knows is Ron and even he isn't on my side with this, which is why I usually don't..." Say anything.

He trailed into silence, waiting.

Hermione, seeming to snap out of a deep thought, cocked her head at Harry with a peculiar expression on her face. "Of course I believe you," she said, as if his parents' plotted murder was the most natural thing in the world. "My dad was a detective, remember? And if your parents were in politics and involved with the wrong people, well…what happened really isn't all that unexpected, Harry." Seeming to realize how harsh her words had come out (Harry had the feeling Hermione wasn't exactly the "sensitive type"), she hastily added, "Er, unfortunately."

But Harry didn't care about the insensitivities. All he cared was that someone believed him. Hermione Granger believed him and if she believed this, then she might believe the rest too, and someone might finally know what really happened the night of October 31st-

"Who killed them, Harry?" They had been walking back to the Great Hall, but stopped in the middle of the hallway when she spoke. Harry faltered.

"I'm not sure," he admitted. He knew what the police said - that Sirius planned everything: the murder of his best friend, James Potter, and his wife out of deep jealousy, afterward kidnapping James' son and raising him for eleven years under a fake identity in the deserts of Arizona. The story had been raw meat for reporters, claiming headlines of newspapers and CNN broadcasting for months after the truth came to light. The truth had haunted Harry for years since then.

He was the infamous Boy Who Lived. And he hated it.

He stared over Hermione's head – she was pretty short, even for a girl, he distantly realized – and deeming it safe to speak freely, continued, "I had a godfather, Sirius, and after my parents died he took me in. He told me what really happened to my parents, about the murder, although I was too young to understand all the details. But I remember him saying something about this…this family."

"Family," Hermione echoed, frowning. "Like another politician's family?" Harry shook his head. She guessed, "Supporters? Um, networkers? A- a cult?"

"Yes, but no." He raked a hand through his black hair, then crossed his arms, then started to anxiously pick at a scab on his wrist. A cult…that was very close to what Sirius had told him about…but not it exactly…

Then it hit him.

"The Noble Blacks," he said out loud, much to the incomprehension of Hermione, and the excitement of him. "That was what Sirius called them. It was his family, but he was disowned when he left them as a teenager. He didn't agree with their…values."

Exhilarated by his discovery, Harry glanced at Hermione for reassurance, but instead he found a strange expression on her face. Disappointed, Harry thought Hermione had finally figured out just how weird he was – and not in the good way. "The Noble Blacks," she repeated slowly, testing the words.

The bell rang. Doors opened and students started to pour into the halls, making it hard to hear over the sound of conversation reflecting off the dome-like, cavernous ceilings of the school. "I'll talk to you tomorrow, Harry," Hermione said, breaking out of thought. She added, "And I'll see if I can find any more information about that family, ok?"

Harry blinked in surprise, forgetting for once that he was supposed to smile. Shocked she believed him, unthinkable that she would want to help him. The universe had flipped upside down and somersaulted. "Thanks, Gryff," he said, although the words weren't anywhere near sufficient.

Hermione scowled, the second-long moment ended. "Don't call me that."

The desolate shape of Azkaban Prison sharpened ahead, cold and stoic despite Bob Marley's cheerful singing, and half of Stan's bilingual conversation in Hermione's left ear. At least it wasn't raining today. At least she didn't have to live here.

The cement block buildings and towering electric fence grew closer.

Hermione thought again of her meeting with Grindelwald. The Chief hadn't told her anything she didn't already know about Riddle, but he had hinted she should snoop through the Azkaban filing system, hadn't he? And unless Hermione was so desperate for more information she was imagining things, what Harry told her about his dead parents earlier seemed to fit into this strange mystery, too.

Truth be told, she still didn't know what possessed Harry to confide in her. Was he always so open with strangers he'd just met? She couldn't imagine telling Dumbledore half as much about her life as Harry had told her: the planned car crash that killed his parents, his godfather Sirius mysteriously leaving a treacherous family that called themselves the Noble Blacks and plotted murders. And what ever happened to his godfather? Hadn't Harry said he lived with his uncle and aunt now? Maybe he's just crazy, a part of her whispered.She shook her head, clearing away questions she would have to ask later.

"Thanks for the ride, Stan. See you later," Hermione said, hopping out of the Knight Bus, and slamming the door shut after her. Stan waved her on with an absent bright smile, still rattling directions on his Bluetooth as he drove away in a hurricane of exhaust and gravel dust. The Azkaban gates closed between them.

Hermione started the long walk to the main building, the beady-eyed reds recording her every step toward the prison. She'd only been to Azkaban once before, but navigation hadn't been an issue for her since she started taking the subway alone at age eight.

Dementor met her inside the entrance, not so much as uttering a displeased grunt at her arrival before he started leading them through the hallways to security check. Clearly, pleasantries were overrated on Staten Island prisons.

As Hermione handed over her belongings for security to pick through and toed off her Converses, she studied the guards surrounding her more closely than she had the last time she was here. The faces that greeted her were haggard and suspicious, creased with years of work and unspeakable horror stories. Or maybe I'm subconsciously referencing crime thriller movies again. Hermione dropped her head when Dementor met her wandering eyes with his pale amphibian gaze, lacing up her returned shoes before following him through the gate.

They took a route different from before since Hermione wasn't being treated to a grand tour today, and it was now abundantly clear teenage girls should steer clear of the cell units at all costs. Hermione would've liked to say she also noticed the ominous reds watching them at every turn less, but she could only take her eyes off of them as much as the cameras could take their own scarlet eyes off of her.

"See you Thursday," Dementor said grouchily, speaking for the first time in fifteen minutes when they reached Dumbledore's office. He briskly strode away, swinging his nightstick around his wrist authoritatively. Hermione knocked on the door.

As she waited, she absently kicked the dusty air-conditioning vent next to Dumbledore's office door lightly with the scuffed toe of her Converse – her shoes were filthy, ancient things she needed to wash again, but would much rather replace with a new pair. Preferably in the shade of powder blue. A voice from behind Hermione suddenly made her jerk up from her absent-minded kicking.

"Hello Miss Granger."

Hermione made to spin around, but her shoelace snagged on the A/C vent and she had to yank her foot free first. "Oh, er, hi…Dr. Dumbledore," she said, turning around vaguely embarrassed.

"Sorry to startle you," Dumbledore replied cheerfully, waving her forward. Together, they walked in the direction of the recreation rooms. The doctor was once again wearing a pajama-esque pair of bathrobes and the sort of enchantingly outdated, pointed glasses that could easily rear back into style with the right shirt.

"You're a bit early actually," the doctor observed, and Hermione wondered how he knew the time when he never wore a watch. "But that's all good and well, you can help me set up. I'm very eager to start today's session. You see, I was speaking to a colleague of mine-" He stopped, humming while a guard swiped their passes and unlocked the door to let them in. A rack of fold-up chairs shoved against one wall of the sterile session room demanded their attention first, and one by one they started to unload and arrange the chairs in a wide-spaced circle.

As they set up, Dumbledore talked, and Hermione was surprised to find it wasn't irritating to listen to the older man go on and on, but weirdly relaxing – like listening to soothing meditation music she imagined people performed yoga to. Sounds of the Rainforest or Waves Washing on the Seashore. All of Dumbledore's background chatter simply rushed past her like white noise.

"And my colleague informed me of a new type of experimental therapy," he continued enthusiastically, struggling with a fold-up chair before Hermione bent over and kicked it. The incorrigible chair sprung open, much to Dumbledore's bemused pleasure. "Neat trick there, Miss Granger," he commended, beaming. "Well, as I was saying, the therapy is called positive psychology, and he gave it a go at a correctional facility in Cambridge with outstanding results. It's something I would love to try out here. We'll start small of course, but then big things always start small, don't they?"

Hermione agreed and he mused, "This group in particular may be a struggle, although my other groups have been successful today. Still, I think we have a fair chance at success."

"Why is this group different?" she questioned, sitting down while Dumbledore paced back and forth across the room. The inmates would start to arrive soon, session started in less than ten minutes.

Dumbledore paused and looked at her, in such a way that she was struck by the conspicuous fact – it seemed so plain now, how did she not realize it before? – that Dumbledore was overwhelmingly intelligent. Except overwhelmingly intelligent didn't do him justice. Staring into the doctor's eyes, Hermione felt as if she was actually staring down a long, long hallway filled with doors that could take you anywhere if you just had the key to open them.

"Because this group is unique," Dumbledore said at last, in a curious voice. It wasn't only his tone when he spoke, but the way he said the sentence that made the moment notable.

It made Hermione wonder if Dumbledore was actually speaking less of the group, and more of one particular member of it.

The inmates started to appear at that moment. Crabbe and Goyle were the first to arrive, they sat side-by-side, immovable human mountains with intricate tattoos of Chinese symbols and naked pin-up girls wrapped around their bulging, hairy forearms like delicately rendered ink ribbons. The steroid giants were followed by a hassled-looking Cuss, pacing Twitch (Hermione tried again to place Twitch's last name, Crouch, and failed), Riddle (he ignored them all), and Dolohov, who sat across from Hermione after licking his lips lasciviously at her. She promptly pulled the zipper of her hoodie up to her chin.

Making an obnoxious amount of commotion, Riddle grabbed his chair and dragged it back several feet from the circle, spinning it around until his back faced the rest of them. It seemed the only event on his agenda was counting how many dots were on the ceiling, judging by the dangerously angular tilt of his chair.

Unique was definitely the word, Hermione thought with a heavy sigh.

"Hello everyone," said Dumbledore, crossing his ankles, and shining an effervescent smile upon everyone. "I hope you don't mind this too terribly, but I've decided to change up our routine a smidgen today. I wanted to start off by asking you all to consider a question: what is the worst and best thing that's happened to you today?" He paused to let his instructions sink in, while the group – excluding Riddle of course – stared back at him dubiously.

"Think about your answer," he continued, "and prepare to tell it to the person sitting across from you in detail. For instance, Mr. Carrow will be my partner." He smiled at Cuss, who swore aggressively in return, and Twitch stopped compulsively cracking his knuckles long enough to snigger loudly. Hermione glanced over at the seat across from her to find Dolohov grinning at her. She cautiously smiled back, and his unsavory grin turned malicious.

Fantastic. She was stuck with the psychopathic serial killer.

"As soon as you're ready, you may start," Dumbledore concluded.

The next twenty minutes were filled with background chatter. Dolohov yammered incessantly about all the injustices done to him in the cafeteria at lunch today, his plans of attacking several inmates via dismemberment and gutting, and never reached the optimistic point of the conversation – although he always somehow managed to discreetly inch his chair closer to hers. By the time Dolohov got to the fist fight in the dayroom, she was halfway out of her seat in an attempt to maintain distance between them, and Dolohov's malicious grin was all but breathing down her neck. Staring at his wide, lascivious mouth, Hermione saw a glimmer of gold in the back row of his teeth, which reminded her disturbingly of Mundungus. Oh gross.

"And you, Hermione?" he drawled, prowling closer, and rolling the r in her name around his mouth as if licking a savory candy. Hermione stiffened. If she gave him another inch of wriggle room, she was going to be sitting on the floor. "Why don't you tell me about your day?"

"I, uh, went to school," she started, but never got to finish – thank God – because Dumbledore called her over for assistance at that moment. Making hasty excuses, Hermione scrambled out of Dolohov's groping range and shot over to the doctor.

"What is it?" she asked, hoping he needed her to switch partners – or evacuate the premises completely.

"I'm afraid-" said Dumbledore, so lowly Cuss couldn't hear him, and Hermione had to bend closer to. "-Mr. Riddle has upset his partner, Mr. Crouch Jr."

Had he? Lifting her head, Hermione scanned the inmates and realized Twitch had gone missing at some point during her conversation with Dolohov, while a suspiciously smug Riddle examined his immaculate nails. A guard must have removed Twitch from the room without her noticing.

"The activity isn't over, however, and I would really like for him to participate," Dumbledore went on regretfully. Hermione's eyes widened. Oh no no no, she thought. Nice try, Dumbles, but there's nothing on planet earth that will make me voluntarily talk to that glorified frat boy. "Could you speak with him until the end of the session? Just try to steer the conversation in a safe direction, avoid his triggers."

"'His triggers'," she repeated dumbly. "But shouldn't you be-?"

"Precisely," Dumbledore beamed, either forgetting about the second half of her sentence, or choosing not to remember it. Hermione suspected the latter. "And you'll learn the rest as you go along."

"Or die trying," she muttered.

"That's the spirit, love." The doctor patted her shoulder encouragingly.

Trudging past a confused Dolohov and toward the empty chair next to Riddle, Hermione realized this unseemly turn of events could be just what she had needed. Didn't she want to know more about Riddle, the elusive criminal who for unknown reasons had to be contained above all others? Even if he is an asshole, she thought, remembering his condescending smile – she refused to use the adjective gorgeous again – and insistence to call her Hayley last Friday.

"Are you my new partner?" Riddle asked, watching Hermione sit down with a curl to his lip that seemed to suggest he thought she was a talking toilet bowl.

"Yes." Unfortunately. Hermione met Riddle's eyes shrewdly, refusing to be sucked into whatever madness the crazy man had imposed on poor Twitch before her. Riddle's eyes were choppy blue, although she could have sworn they were the color grey the last time she saw him – in fact, she was sure they'd been grey. She had an infallible memory. Her brows furrowed in puzzlement.

Riddle sighed. "Look, if you could pretend not to stare at me like a lovesick buffoon, it would be much less awkward for me to sit here for the remainder of the half-hour talking to you."

Hermione blinked, and still he stared expectantly at her.

She blinked one more time.

He smiled.

Enacting tunnel vision.

"I wasn't staring at you, I was waiting for you to speak," she said forcefully, but her flaming cheeks – burning out of rage, not embarrassment – probably didn't seem all that convincing to him. Riddle rolled his eyes, confirming this suspicion, and her fists clenched in the pockets of her hoodie.

"Whatever," he breathed. For the first time, he sat up and forfeited that lazy couch potato slouch of his, to reveal a shockingly long figure. Hermione's eyes caught a sliver of a tattoo under the neckline of his orange jumpsuit, reading lu san in loopy black script, when he leaned forward. What language is that? she thought.

Realizing what she was doing, Hermione ripped her eyes off the offensive collarbone. Stupid foreign tattoo. Stupid Riddle. Stupid distracting color-changing eyes!

"Here," Riddle said, bringing her back to reality with a deceivingly friendly smile she didn't believe for a millisecond. "How about you talk about your day and whatnot, and I sit back and just pretend to listen." He waved a fine-boned hand at her, as if signaling she was permitted to speak, and leaned back into his seat expectantly.

Huh.

Hermione thought for a moment and folded her hands. "Well, I would have to say the lowest part of my day was this disgustingly rude guy I met," she began. Riddle, already too bored to function, stared into the middle distance. She went on, "He was so arrogant and full of himself, it was astoundingly repulsive. I mean, it explained the astronomical size of his big fat head, but why he was so conceited I didn't understand – not like he had anything to gloat about, as far as I could tell." She tapped her chin, contemplating, while Riddle's eyes suddenly refocused and narrowed at her infinitesimally. "As for the highlight of my day, I can't say quite yet. It will probably be getting away from the Big Fat Head." She shrugged. "But who can say for sure?"

"Cute," Riddle said, but the flutter in the corner of his jaw suggested he thought her little story otherwise. Hermione did an inner fist pump, but her victory quickly ended when he said at length, "I could almost say the same thing, except my problems exceed that of meaningless strangers I meet, who have the hair texture of a Troll Doll."

He didn't.

He didn't.

Hermione waited for Riddle to take it back, but he didn't do that either.

Loading ammunition.

"A Troll Doll? Are you serious?" What was he, two years old?

"I am." Riddle scrutinized her. "Do you know the meaning of 'wash, rinse, and repeat', by any chance?"

Fire.

"You're in prison," Hermione said painstakingly, "and you've got the nerve to criticize my hairstyle."

"That I do," he replied, unabashed. He looked at her hair pointedly, which was admittedly larger than the average, and shook his head mournfully. "Although I wouldn't put your hair and style in the same sentence."

"Thanks for clarifying."

"You're welcome."

"What are you in here for anyway?" she snapped, hoping she didn't sound as curious as she really was – or as annoyed. At that, Riddle's arrogant smirk abruptly vanished, his eyes turning cold as iceboxes. In the void of conversation – which was quickly accelerating into uncomfortable – Hermione saw firsthand what Grindewald had meant when he called Riddle dangerous. Right then, the inmate barely looked human.

Minutes passed. An eerie chill danced down her back under Riddle's unrepetant staring. The bored, self-serving pretty boy, she now understood, was nothing but an act – except for the self-serving part – because the thing that looked at her now, like he should have fangs instead of teeth, and red eyes the color of blood - he was the loose canon criminal locked inside Azkaban Prison. Hermione's expression didn't change on the outside, but her heart jackhammered when Riddle licked the inside of his top row of teeth slowly in thought.

"I'm here for the same reason you are," he said finally, and she frowned at him in confusion. Riddle leaned forward, making her automatically lean back, and slowly he whispered, "To dine on despair and mingle with Death's cheap hookers."

"Acting psychotic isn't going to intimidate me," she snorted, although she was secretly relieved to feel the momentary chokehold of fear vanish when Riddle laughed. There's nothing to fear from an idiot, she told herself, relaxing. But her brain had a mental snapshot of the dead cold glaring out of Riddle's eyes thirty seconds ago. "Not all murderers are stir crazy," she muttered.

Riddle stopped laughing. "What?"

Hermione's face twisted in puzzlement and Riddle seemed to realize something before she did. Then she understood why he wasn't smiling anymore, and she felt sick. Of course, she should've expected this…the whole room was probably full of them, but still to have it said out loud like that-

He had killed someone. Maybe more than someone. More than that, even.

Once Hermione thought it, she couldn't un-think it. All she could do was wonder how, why, when, where, who, how many… How old was Riddle anyway? Twenty-four? And he'd already upped somebody? Possibly more than one somebody? These were the sort of people her father had gotten himself killed trying to protect Hermione from – and here she was, having come to a slithering den of monsters, voluntarily.

"That's why you're here," she whispered, but Riddle of course said nothing. Inexplicably, his remoteness made her all the angrier. She bent forward, hissing, "What is wrong with you? Why would you-? No, never mind, I don't want to know anything about your horrible, demented mind-"

"Save it, Gremlin," he interrupted, batting away her accusations like a pesky mosquito. She glared at him. "What you have to say is nothing I haven't heard before, and I'm not convicted of anything yet. I'm just waiting here until my trial, and when I'm proven innocent of all crimes, I'll be out of here faster than you can say acquitted."

That's why Grindelwald is so anxious to keep him here, Hermione thought, with the satisfaction of finally being able to piece parts of the puzzle together, and at the same time, indignity at Riddle's nonchalance. Did he really think he could just breeze in and out of prison, no questions asked?

A more terrible question asked itself. Could he do that?

"Tom Riddle Black," she said, and she didn't mean to do it out loud. Annoyance flickered across Riddle's face. He corrected, "Voldemort," but she wasn't listening. More of the mystery was threading itself together, there was an outline of the truth surfacing in her mind.

Black. The Noble Blacks, the family Harry told her about. Was it a coincidence that Riddle shared the same last name? Bartemus Crouch Jr. Didn't she read an article about Senator Crouch in National Issues last month? Didn't he have a son, who was convicted for stealing from government funds and involvement in a "nefarious criminal activity" scandal? That was Twitch. It had to be him.

Did their stories connect somehow?

Or was she just acting as paranoid and crazy as Harry?

None of this should have mattered to Hermione, but already it had begun to. Maybe she was finally showing signs of the very inquisitiveness that had made her father a detective. The inquisitiveness that put him in a cold ditch in the ground.

Riddle's scowl was reptilian, more an empty gesture than anything even faintly human. He's adopted, she remembered, does that mean his foster family is the one that killed Harry's parents? Questions, questions…

"Are you finished staring at me?" he snapped. "Or do you need a few more seconds so you have something to go home with?"

"Shut up," she said absently, brow creased in thought. He blinked in surprise. She said, "Do you by chance know anything about the Noble Blacks?"

Silence. Not just Riddle's silence, but the entire room. Hermione looked around and was unnerved to find every soul there staring at them, Dumbledore included. When she met his livewire gaze, Dumbledore stood and announced the end of session.

With surprising willingness, the inmates broke away from their groups to file out of the door for head count. Riddle gave Hermione an inscrutable stare before walking off, without looking back. His refusal to respond said more than words though.

Hermione was onto something. Something big.

She had stumbled onto something she shouldn't have, something secret - possibly huge in importance - and she wasn't even sure how she had done it. Now she had the pieces of a something, but she didn't know how to make them fit together, or even what image they would make if they did. Maybe she shouldn't try to figure this mystery out. Maybe she would anyway, just to see if she could do it. Maybe she should stop thinking so much.

Her ribs hurt from her heart beating so hard against them.

"Miss Granger," Dumbledore said when everyone had gone, making her look up. He was the picture of disapproval, his wispy white eyebrows drawn and mouth elongated by creases on the corners. The expression surprised her. Was she in trouble again? "How did you come across that name?" he demanded.

"Name? Um. What name?" she said, stepping back nervously.

Dumbledore fixed her with a clever look, but Hermione kept her lips sealed shut. She wasn't saying a word about the Noble Blacks… at least, not until she learned more. The doctor sighed heavily after a moment of expectant silence. "I believe we had an issue with you and Mr. Riddle before. If it would be more beneficial for you to change groups-"

"No!" Maybe she answered him too hastily, considering the rise and fall Dumbledore's expressive eyebrows embarked on. He reminded her of Gandalf the Grey when he did that, with slightly less bushy facial hair. "I mean, there's no issue, Dr. Dumbledore. We had a misunderstanding, he's…difficult to get along with."

Dumbledore pursed his lips. Surprisingly, it was with understanding that he said, "It's true, Mr. Riddle is – to put it delicately – one of a kind." He smiled encouragingly at her, although it was clear he was still concerned. "I'm glad you want to stay, truthfully. Your stubbornness is what people here need more of, a consistency in character. Plus, I've never seen Mr. Riddle laugh at a session before-" He sighed. "-so kudos to you."

Hermione struggled to formulate the correct response. Did Dumbledore compliment or insult her, or did he insult her and cover it up with a compliment? She frowned.

"Thanks," she said, since there wasn't much else to say, and she felt guilty for tricking him besides. "Um, I guess I'll get going to the filing room…" She was far more eager to go there now, the search into Riddle's background had become more than finding out if he'd really murdered his uncle. It was about the Noble Blacks now, too.

"If you want to start early," said Dumbledore. "Are you sure you don't want to get something from the cafeteria first? Meals are included on your visitor's pass, you know."

"That's alright, I brought," she said absently. Brought meaning a brown paper bag of a probably rotten banana and PB&J sandwich. But food was the last thing on her mind. As soon as they finished stacking the chairs and parted ways, Hermione was brought to the filing room by a guard, located in building three and past the dismal yard with the lonely basketball court. When she was left alone at last, she let out a sigh of relief – and remembered the reds with a jolt.

Where was the red in here?

Hermione craned her neck, scanning all four corners of the filing room and coming to a rest on the third. There the camera was, sticking out of the wall like a black skeleton arm, its scarlet eye blinking down at her tranquilly. She glanced away from the red, in case anyone on the other side of the camera decided to take an interest in her. If she acted normally, she could get away with this. Plus, it was her job to look through the prisoner's files. She was supposed to organize them and type them into the Azkaban virtual database. It was another part of the prison's new renovation plan.

All she had to do was spend the entirety of her sixty minutes here trying to hunt down Riddle's file.

But there were hundreds of files to go through, all of which were piled in unordered stacks of boxes lining the walls. Hermione hadn't even gotten to the computer part of her task yet. Worse, she'd only managed to put a dent in one cardboard box of files on Friday.

No time like the present, she thought to herself, and tore through the first box her hands fell on.

Hermione Granger was a spy.

But she wasn't old enough to work for the FBI, and she couldn't possibly be a member of the Three Brothers.

So who was she? Why did she know so much about him?

She knew about Morfin, Voldemort thought, lying on the cot in his cell and staring into the dark. A cold sweat had come over him in the middle of a bad dream, turning his skin into a tacky-like wax. Lights out was three hours ago. She knew about the family.

Maybe she was a reporter.

Voldemort thought, if he smoked, then this would be the perfect time for a cigarette. But he did not – he made it a point not to, in fact, in order to separate himself from the mindless addicts and junkies that poured money into his pockets every time the family business enabled them to kill themselves. He hated cigarettes viciously.

Granger didn't seem like the type of girl who smoked.

He rubbed his jaw, barely growing a mist of dark stubble, and wished for the vintage shaving kit sitting on his bathroom counter back at home. His hair grew back faster when he used the cheap razors they had here. He also wished for his contacts, he was blind as a damn bat without them.

Damn Wormtail for sacking him here, the useless rat. His fist clenched around an invisible neck in the air.

In his head, Voldemort ran over the progress report Malfoy had given him that morning. Wormtail was practicing his prescribed testimony every day, in front of an audience of button men and a trusted capo, Lestrange. Senator Fudge had happily obliged to their requests to have him stash the 300 keys of heroin in Thailand on his private plane when he heard the price Voldemort was offering. The senator had successfully flown in the supplies, hidden in boxes of cargo customs thought was food and medicine supply for earthquake victims, and the Noble Blacks' shipment would soon be picked up by Malfoy personally. Malfoy was going to store all the heroin at a remote warehouse with the help of several handymen, then transfer it to another discreet location once the scrap men left, until only Voldemort and Malfoy would know of the stash's true location. Afterward, the loot would be carved up and dealt out accordingly.

Everything was running considerably well for the Noble Blacks, but Voldemort's everything was getting smaller every day – especially since he was cooped up in this hellhole. The fervor of loyalty in the Noble Blacks' ranks was at an all-time low of the century – physical threats weren't enough anymore, his men wanted results, too. He could hardly blame them for it.

Twelve more days until trial.

Seventy-eight more, until his crowning.

AN: As always, thanks for reading! Your faithful tomione worship is solemnly appreciated.

Kisses!ImmortalObsession