Hermione doesn't trust him.
One day of detoxing and healing turns into two. Then three. After that, she feels better, but only a little. Moving around is still painful, and Hermione never gets used to feeling stiff and sore and futile. She's making little progress when she's awake and functioning; her ribs scream whenever she moves and she's exhausted all the time, but her body gets better. It grows stronger. Slowly, but steadily.
Surprisingly, Tom is a rather good cook. Even with the limitations their situation puts them in, he manages to get something decent out of it. It's part of his charm, she supposes.
"It's not poisoned," he says every day when he gives her a bowl of potatoes, carrots, or anything else that he finds in the ruins of Hogwarts' kitchen. Every day she takes it.
On the third, she says, "Thanks."
He's as surprised as she is. They don't talk apart from that.
As soon as she can walk without clenching her teeth in agony, she tries to explore her surroundings. Half of Hogwarts lies in ruins and the other half looks haunted and gloomy, even in sunlight. The deep-rooted magic in its grounds has already started to crawl out of the rubble. It stitches the land back together, leaving a scab and visible stitches where a scar was before. Vines sprout between pebbles. A family of nifflers tries to steal some flashy goblets out of the ashes. Lots of the grounds look burned and far from healing. Under one of the pillars, she sees a glimpse of a mashed human arm, but when she blinks it is gone. There's not a single soul on the grounds. Not even the ghosts are around anymore. Everything is lost, abandoned, and empty. Just like she feels.
On the fourth day, she makes it down to the Great Lake before her strength and energy fade. She lies down on the damp grass and closes her eyes to drown out the world. The pain ebbs away but her body is still weak.
She's lying there for an hour, dozing, before he finds her. They still don't talk. But she doesn't refuse his hand when he helps her up to return to their makeshift camp. He puts her down on the dirty mattress that she slept on the last few days and takes his place on the other side of the fire he made. Sometimes, she catches him staring over the flickering orange light of the flames. His grey eyes hold more darkness than any black she has ever seen before. It is alarming enough to frighten her.
She still has her wand. When she woke after the Calming Draught, it had been placed carefully alongside her head. It is not broken, not scarred and it works just as well as before. He hasn't tried to take it. In fact, he hasn't done anything but try and nurse her back to health. He checks her pulse and temperature every couple of hours. He feeds her flasks he found in the infirmary and something that reeks of sickly sweet rot that he cooked on a small fire with a pot that looked like it had seen better days. She lets him. She doesn't have much of a choice after all.
Tom is a parasitic necessity in her healing process. And she knows it.
But she doesn't trust him. She's not that stupid.
Tom smells like blood.
Hermione's pretty sure the bundle of wet clothes in his hands must be covered in it, but the darkness of the night washes the colours out. He climbs the half-blasted stairs and returns to the camp, pausing to straighten the bundled shirt on a make-shift clothesline he attached to one of the still-standing wizard statues. The shirt is drenched and drips on cracked files, leaving a puddle behind. Clear-coloured. No blood.
"Did you wash that in the Great Lake?" Hermione asks sceptically, tugging the rat-bitten excuse of a blanket she found in one of the former dorm rooms closer around her body.
Tom laughs.
"Don't worry. Hogwarts' grounds are still being cared for through magical means. The water is as clear as a mountain spring." He fishes another dark-coloured sweater (green, she guesses) out of the hole-covered army duffel he's been dragging along since Hermione woke up. He strips off the dark tee he's wearing and folds it neatly, before laying it down on the ground, folded neatly into a small package. His bare chest is white and contrasts starkly against the darkness of the night around them. His skin is covered in grooves, marks and burn scars.
"Scourgify," Hermione says while staring straight into the fire, looking anywhere but at him. The bonfire casts orange and carmine shadows around their camp, sculpting Tom's face in grotesque light. Beautifully carved eyebrows rise high enough to almost touch his hairline.
"Pardon?"
"It's a cleaning spell to-"
"I know what the spell does," he snaps, tugging a new dark sweater over his head. Hermione waits, but there's no other explanation coming from him. He puts another log into the fire, followed by a pot of leftover red beans they had from lunch.
"Then why didn't you use it?" She pulls the blanket closer around her body, trying to block out the cold. Tom's exposed skin is covered in goosebumps but the frigid air doesn't affect his movements.
The air is layered thick with a frost that sears skin before it sinks into bone. Each breath burns through her lungs and bites deep, digging its jagged teeth hard, refusing to relinquish its hold.
"The smell," Tom says, rubbing his hands over the fire until feeling bleeds back into them. "Scourgify cleans the desired object, but it doesn't get rid of the smell. And contrary to what you seem to believe, I don't like running around reeking of blood."
"I see." Hermione's response meant his answer was good enough but her tone told a different story. She looks at him with a deadly blend of scepticism and 'cut-the-bullshit'.
"What?" Tom snaps, again. He shivers. From irritation or cold, Hermione doesn't know. She wonders if he also aches from being stuck in this place he never wanted to be.
"Why did you smell of blood in the first place?"
He huffs out an unamused laugh and reaches over to take the pot off the fire.
"I deactivated a trap that was more vicious than previously thought."
She considers lashing out, telling him that it's unfortunate the trap didn't get him killed, if only to rattle him. But she thinks about the way her bones and sinew knit themselves together, and how her pain has slowly ebbed away because of him, and she succumbs to the little part of goodness inside of her. She grits out,
"Are you… hurt?"
"Concerned for my well-being, Granger? How touching." He stares at her, his expression torn between bewilderment and annoyance. "Don't write my eulogy yet. The blood's not mine."
That does nothing to soothe her.
"Who did you kill?" She asks, her voice a frozen lake, not betraying any emotions. She doesn't know if she's appalled or numb. It's the first time since waking up that she's realizing exactly who's sitting in front of her.
"So twitchy with your assumptions," he murmurs while stirring the beans. When he's sure they're cold enough to eat he pushes the pot close to her feet. "Relax. It was just an Occamy."
"You sacrificed a snake?" She remembers reading about the reptiles in one of Flamel's books back in year one. She rarely forgets something she read.
"I never said it's dead," Tom says, enunciating slowly as if Hermione is stupid and he needed the extra emphasis to make her understand.
Her entire body tenses. She feels a surge of blistering hot anger flare up inside of her, sudden and punctual. She's about to snap at him when she notices his gaze shifts to the side, drawn to the wet shirt that's still dripping on the cracked concrete. Something blue glimmers between the wrinkles.
Then Tom starts to hiss.
The sound of it is abrupt and sharp and entrancing. A blue, plumed crown peels out from between the black fabric, and two bright yellow eyes look up. First at her, then at Tom. He hisses again and the snake curls back into the small space of his shirt's breast pocket.
"What will happen to it now?" She eyes the pocket of his wet shirt with something akin to suspicion, but the creature inside remains hidden.
"Occamies are tough creatures. They heal ten times faster than normal snakes. I'm pretty sure it will be completely healed when morning comes."
They share the beans over the bonfire. They taste too much of sweet pepper and basil but Hermione's not complaining. She's pushing her way around the onions and leaves them for Tom. A couple of bites later, she shakes her head when he tries to give her the rest. Her appetite is gone.
For a while, the only sound is the crackling of the bonfire and Tom scratching the pot clean. Hermione looks into distance, without thought.
Tom adds more fuel to the fire, the remnants of a wooden chair. They will have to look for wood tomorrow; their supply is dwindling.
Her body finally warms up. Slowly, but steadily.
"Why did you rescue me?" She blurts out. It's more of a fragmented thought than a real question, but Tom looks at her sternly enough. Her heart is racing in her chest, slamming into her ribs the same way it does when she's close to a breakdown.
"I could give you some witty or sarcastic reply, but the truth is that I need your help." His eyes are intense enough to count as a glare, but there's something else lingering at the edge.
Hermione laughs, humourlessly.
"You must be insane if you think I'll help you enslave the world."
"World dominance is not really what I'm after right now. At least, not the Tom that's sitting here in front of you."
"So you didn't mysteriously rejuvenate and grow a nose." Along with some pretty awesome facial features, she adds in her head.
His grin is sharp.
"Smart girl."
For a moment he seems to weigh his options, but then gives up and reaches over to rummage around in the dirty duffel bag. When he takes his hand out again, his fingers are closed around a diary. His diary.
The diary of Tom M. Riddle.
Hermione's blood freezes. Any warmth that spread through her minutes before is pushed out of her in one swift motion. Her hands grip the blanket around her shoulders furiously, knuckles turning white.
"Where did you get that?"
"Let's just say, when I called, it came. I am its owner, after all." Tom toys with the cover, running his fingers over the sleek surface. When he looks up, he sneers. "Don't look at me like that."
"Like what?" Hermione's mind is stubborn and fast and blurs in a mess of words like murderer and Horcrux and death . Her anger is an heirloom. A raging fire that simmers deep inside of her and cannot be extinguished. But the angrier she gets, the calmer Tom looks.
"Like I sacrificed a virgin and used her blood to become a human reproduction of the ink-written memories out of these pages." He hesitates but then lays the diary down on the ground close to him. Slowly he pushes it closer to her. Almost like a peace offering. "That's not even how this spell works."
She stops. She's tempted. She's so tempted to ask him how the spell works but the darkness of it alone makes her swallow her tongue. All knowledge comes with a price, a price Hermione's not ready to pay right now. She'll not let him get to her.
Tom clears his throat.
"My human conscience is not in this book anymore. In fact, it never was. But to try and start explaining the process of Horcruxes and mind-altering magic would be-"
"Enlighten me."
"You won't let it go, will you?"
"I was well-informed from various different sources that I am one stubborn human being, yes." She's not smiling. Her ribs start to ache. From fury or cold, she doesn't know. She wants to be somewhere else. Somewhere she isn't in pain. "And while you're at it, how about you start from the beginning?"
"My name is Tom Riddle. I am the man that will be known as Lord Voldemort. But that much you already know." He considers her carefully, the slightest etch of a smirk on his lips.
She looks at him and for the first time, she realizes how young he looks. In the obscure shine of the bonfire, he is a boy. Not a man.
The realization of it makes her voice falter.
"How… How old are you Tom?"
Tom's silent, and for a moment, Hermione knows instantly that she hit … something.
He doesn't answer.
The silence lingers, heavy with bottled-up restraint.
"Does it matter?" He finally says, quietly, into the silence. But Hermione's glare is enough for him to answer, "Sixteen."
Sixteen. Younger than her.
"Did you travel here from the past?" She's confused and Tom can't help but laugh.
"I am not a time traveller."
"You're a Horcrux then? Like the reflection in the locket?"
"No, I'm not a Horcrux either. Merlin would you just- okay. Listen." He's frustrated and snatches the diary at his feet. Restless, he runs his fingers over the pages, flipping them open and closed. "When Horcruxes are destroyed their piece of soul goes back to the host."
"If that's the case why are you here and not at your headquarters celebrating your victory, Voldemort?" She's growing more and more confused by the minute. Her ribs are pounding and her head follows too, but she's trying desperately to keep him talking. It's the most they've talked in five days and she fears if he stops she'll never get any information out of him again.
"Because I'm not Voldemort." Tom falls again for a moment, as if considering his next answer. "At least not yet. And right now I don't have any ambitions to become this version of my future self, a distorted Horcrux of flesh and bone."
There's no condescension in his voice; he's calmy relaying facts. Hermione can work with that but she almost wishes that Tom would condescend to her. It would make hating him easier.
"Are there any other Tom's or Horcruxes out there?" She asks instead.
"Only Voldemort and I remain."
"Only two to kill then."
She's not smiling. Tom however is.
"I'll count on it."
Another pause. Then, she carries on.
"You said you need my help but I doubt you'd need me to kill you. There's also a whole queue of people out for your head who are far more creative in death scenarios. Harry, for example."
There's a bitterness in her voice that she hates. Good people like her should not be bitter. Good people like her should not be wicked. But then again, she doesn't feel very good right now. Hasn't for quite some time.
"I've survived worse." He smiles but it doesn't reach his eyes, and for a split second Hermione believes him. She can almost see the dirt under his nails and the blood on the corner of his mouth, his teeth bared and fists clenched, and it makes him look even younger.
"But you're right. I need your help," Tom continues, oblivious to Hermione's thoughts. He pauses to get her full attention. He picks his next words carefully and tries to put enough sympathy into them to make them sound half-genuine. "Still, I feel the need to inform you that your friend Potter didn't survive the war."
Hermione's breath staggers. Her heart stops, then beats on from muscle memory. If she breathes, it is because her body knows what to do without her guidance.
She can see Harry. Harry's smile. Harry's hair. She can see his face in the scattered shadows that surround her. The memory is vivid enough that she can picture him walking straight out of her mind and onto the cracked concrete in front of her.
Then she remembers his body. Limbs hanging loosely in Hagrid's arms. Skin pale and ashen and lifeless.
Grief wrestles its way through her chest like a disease, squeezing all emotion out of her until she's a numb ball of meat. The pain is sharp enough she's sure her bones have punctured her lungs. Desperation spreads through her and fills all the cracks the war left behind.
Tom's eyes are unbelievably grey and cold.
"I'm sorry, Hermione," he says.
I killed him, she hears.
The hand around her wand turns bleached and crow-picked from clenching the wood too tight. Tom looks at her, then down at her hand. Like an animal caught in headlights. His body stiffens and his posture screams flight.
He looks impossibly young.
It wasn't him, she reminds herself. At least not yet.
Calmly, she releases the grip around her wand. Tom on the other side breathes easier.
At the same time, tears are forcing their way out of her eyes. Sadness consumes her and leaves another emotional scar. She's glad she knows how to wear them by now.
