The only sound in the still-standing tower is Tom turning the pages of the tomes in front of him. Hermione stretches, joints creaking loud. She's tired. Her entire body is exhausted to the point that it hurts. She doesn't know if it's the lack of sleep, or the aftermath of the war that lingers in her bones.

She looks to the collection of books at Tom's feet, then huffs.

"I'm glad to see some copies from the Restricted Section survived unscathed," she says, sitting down on the floor next to him. She buries her cold fingers deeper into the soft pockets of the woollen cardigan she wears, pulling her feet closer to her, making her as small as possible. Thermal energy storage. Just like she used to do when camping during the last couple of months.

"There's hardly anything that can destroy something the dark once touched," Tom murmurs, still browsing through the books. He's skimming the texts, flipping through pages with a speed Hermione has rarely seen before.

"The pros of dark magic it seems," she says, then nods at the page of notepaper by his left hand, "What's that?"

"A list of locations that might hide more diary pages."

"You wrote that down from memory?"

"I have hyperthymesia. Highly superior autobiographical memory," Tom says, flipping more pages. He looks at her when she doesn't respond.

Hermione can feel the look of confusion on her face. It probably looks comical, but Tom doesn't laugh. Tom never really laughs.

"I remember life events in unusually vivid details. I could tell you what day of the week it was when I first went so hard on the swings that the poles started to come out, what weather it was when I fell hard enough to break two bones, and so on."

"Wow. Okay." Hermione still feels confused. She blinks, several times, and wonders what life must be like for someone with such an ability. She continues to watch as he turns more pages, switching from one tome to the next. Her body is still freezing from the damp cold of the chamber that bled so easily into her body. The setting sun shining through the large astronomy tower windows, is not warm enough to heat her up.

When Tom puts the books away on a pile, she says, "So. Where's our next stop?"

"The Room of Requirement."

"That's… impossible." She almost laughs. But then she remembers the horrible stench of burning flesh and the uncontrollable heat of the Fiendfyre. She shivers instead. "The Room of Requirement was destroyed during the Battle of Hogwarts. There was an out of control Fiendfyre and-"

"Don't worry about that," he pushes himself up and packs the neatly folded note page in his pocket.

"What?"

"The Room never loses anything. I'm sure we will find the page somewhere," he says, all sharp-grins and too-pale in the dying sunlight. He shoulders the backpack he's always dragging along and leaves. The sound of his footsteps on the stairs trail away.

"If you say so," she mutters to an empty room, getting up to follow him down the stairs.


There's a headache banging at Hermione's temples, and her eyes are dry from the ashes that drift in the air. She sees no charred body or bones on the tile floor. For a second she wonders if Vincent Crabbe really died that night, or if he managed to escape.

The Room looks like it did the last time she stepped through it. Towers of books and clutter as far as the eye can see. Half-empty bottles of potions, large, magical-drawn paintings, an old masonic firing glass, busts of long-dead people, unhinged birdcages, and miles upon miles of unused furniture. A red-checkered armchair in front of her, two antique chairs farther back. An old piano with keys painted in turquoise and vintage gold. All of them unscathed. All of them in the exact same position, undisturbed by Fiendfyre. All of them covered in a thick blanket of ashes.

When she brushes at a grimy book, the ashes flutter to the floor. Curious about the room's magic, she moves to touch another trinket. But before she can, the room starts to melt under her fingertips.

She lifts her head to catch Tom staring at her blankly, before he drops the backpack to the ground with a thud. "Found it."

Much like back in the chamber, the Room of Requirement dissolves right in front of her eyes. Books, knick-knacks, and jewellery become bright, while the fine-grained dust and ash run through her hands like water. The scenery in front of her bleeds away until she can feel the soft touch of a carpet under her boots, not the hard tile surface from before.

A little warning would have been nice, she thinks and watches a fireplace and greenish vaults rising around them. Tom comes to stand at her side, closed off and lips thin.

"I've never seen anything like this," she says in wonder. People crystallize out of the dust. Slytherins, all of them living, breathing, and incredibly human. Some of them sit close to the fire, talking about their homework. Others argue about potion ingredients, and how to improve them. She can hear everything. She can even taste the salty sting of the air from the Great Lake above. "This is so….so…"

"The word you're looking for is real," Tom says to her, but his eyes are fixed on his younger version sitting in one of the common room armchairs in front of them.

The boy looks about the same age that he was in the bathroom memory. There are several suspicious stains on his robe-sleeves that look too dark to be water. He has a large, lilac-coloured book in his too-small hands that Hermione recognizes immediately.

She asks, "Is that Secrets of the Darkest Art?"

The Tom at her side actually looks surprised.

"You know it?" His voice is a mix of bewilderment and suspicion. He looks at her as if she has said something incredibly funny, or precious, or both at once. The emotion on his face makes him look younger again. More like sixteen, and not like a man double his age.

She snorts, crossing her arms in front of her.

"Yeah. I had the unfortunate misery of having to read it during our year-long Horcrux hunt. Which was, looking back, a complete waste of time." She ignores the grin he throws her and continues, "Anyways. It's a quite repulsive book."

He nods, but says, "I agree. Still, I found it to be educational."

"Figures."

They watch the memory in front of them together. Hermione tries to concentrate on everything at once; the way his younger self browses the pages with care, how he soaks every word up like a sponge, how his shoulders tense slightly when he reaches a particularly interesting point. A couple of older students try to provoke him. When he doesn't react, they start to insult him.

Astonishingly enough, Tom's younger self stays calm. The hands holding the book don't shake. Don't convulse. He doesn't react at all. Such severe self-control in a young boy is entirely remarkable. Hermione remembers, only too well, every time other students insulted her again and again. Not just her blood status. That one didn't hurt anymore after a while. But her looks. Her brains. Her character. She was judged for everything and often found wanting. The reminder of the emotional pain still stings. She remembers feeling alone. Desolate. Depressed.

Fortunately, she had Harry and Ron. But the boy immersed in the large leather armchair? He had no one. No ally. No friend. Only silence.

The memory goes on for a couple of minutes. Young Tom reads almost as fast as his older self, turning page after page. She knows the exact point when he finds out about Horcruxes, because his whole face lights up.

"I never figured out why it was so easy for you to give up your humanity," she says when the boy closes the book and leaves the magically created common room. The memory dispels with his retreating back, making way for the vast chaos of the Room of Requirement. Ashes flutter down on her boots.

"It's easy to give up on something that means little to yourself. Especially if people around you remind you again and again that you're barely human." Tom intones nonchalantly. His face betrays no emotion. "Sometimes magic promises dreams, but delivers nightmares."

She thinks about his words, staring out into the cluttered space. She thinks: but you were human. She thinks: there was no reason to give up. She thinks: nightmares are dreams too.

She says,

"Was it worth it?"

He doesn't answer.

She wonders if he doesn't answer because he's too afraid. Afraid that he will admit that it wasn't worth it. When he leaves, she follows. Their footprints leave traces in the ashes.

She doesn't press. Everyone is entitled to their own secrets.

Even someone like him.