1928
Tom had left Hermione with her wand and a small roll of striped, green silk. The items were tauntingly just out of reach, beyond her toes and along the bed. She tried depressing the bed linen so they would roll towards her, but nothing effective happened. She tried again, harder this time. Her wand gave a faint quiver, but was stopped from rolling by the silken fabric bundle. She gave a faint noise of frustration. Her wrists itched and burned from straining against the ties behind the poster of her bed.
She closed her eyes and concentrated, lifting her head towards the ceiling. A rush of vertigo came up to meet her and she willed it away. Now wasn't the time to get distracted by mere things such as bodily physical sensation. She'd come face to face with Tom Riddle and survived.
Accio wand. She thought, and then realised that she wasn't gagged or silenced.
"Accio wand." Hermione said clearly, and the wand flew neatly into her waiting hand. She'd never had any trouble with summoning charms, or even nonverbal magic, but years of pretending she had had taken its toll on her practice. It was hard to be ordinary - she was rusty.
Tom knew she could do a basic summoning charm, he was one of the few she'd trusted with her brilliance, so he'd just placed her wand out of reach to be deliberately difficult. The thought of his smug, knowing face made Hermione's colour with anger once more.
Now, to figure out how to undo the spell on her bindings. "Finite Incantatem." She tried. Nothing, so it was clearly not a standard sticking charm. She hadn't expected it to be - nothing Tom had ever done had been standard. Still, she knew more counter charms she could try.
"Reverte." She said hopefully. Nothing again.
After several minutes of thinking and feeling the hot, stagnant air thicken around her. "Offero." She said with a flick of her wrist. Mercifully, her hands became free. She rubbed her hands over her injured wrists. Thin rings of bruises blackened the delicate blue veins.
Step One had been achieved. It was time for Step Two, before the bubble of panic threatened to surface from her throat. She needed to stay organised and on task. Else she would crumble.
On her hands and knees, she gingerly examined Tom's gift. With a lurch in her stomach, she realised it was a worn Slytherin tie - hers - her name was sewn neatly into the seam. Hermione Jean Granger. She'd left it behind in a hidden trunk of her things when she'd left 1951. It was a taunt. He could find her whenever he wanted. He knew everything, all of her secrets and hidey holes. There was nowhere that was sacred from him. She crumpled it in a ball and threw it at the wall with a scream, feeling hot and ugly.
It was too damn warm in here, and it stank of lemons and her potted hyacinth. She'd once loved the scent of lemons. She couldn't get enough of the fresh scent - of him. She'd felt like she would die every time she got close enough to inhale the scent of his subtle aftershave. Now it overpowered her in a different way, made her feel jelly-boned and useless.
She strode across the room and threw open the French doors. After a moment of gasping, she grasped the potted plant from where it lay on her desk and threw it out of the window, It thunked with a satisfying crash of soil and detritus onto the patio.
Stepping onto the balcony, she took great heaves of fresh February air and felt clearer. She had no Time Turner, that much was obvious to her. Tom had slipped it over his neck when he'd left. It made Hermione sick to think of her escape route, her blessed salvation, touching Tom Riddle's pale collarbone. She needed time to find another. She had no time. He knew where she was. He would toy with her until he got bored and then he would kill her.
Who was she kidding? Tom Riddle never got bored. He would never stop. He'd smile at her pleas for death.
She needed to leave. Needed the safety of time and years and distance between them. Years and years. This time she wouldn't be found. She'd go somewhere Tom would never expect. She'd be safe.
She shuddered. She was never safe. She hadn't been safe since that day she'd first stepped into the Gentleman's Club in London.
Back home, she'd heard whispers that there was an entire wall of them in the Department of Mysteries. In this time, she wasn't so sure. Magic had changed a lot in twenty years. Though she lived in Muggle Britain for safety, her brief forays into the Magical World of this time had showed that the families were more insular, the Sacred 28 even more secretive than before. It was much harder to find out information, especially as an insider.
There was still a Malfoy in this era - Abraxas's father, Septimus, and to a lesser extent, his reclusive grandfather, Armand. They ran the circles in these days - Tom being little more than a tiny four-year-old somewhere Hermione didn't know. She'd searched for his details, in this time and in the future, but been able to find basically nothing. She knew he was a half blood and an orphan, she would've heard of his family by now, and he'd let it slip once regardless, but she didn't know where he'd grown up. She'd wanted to find it and avoid it. She'd entertained the brief idea about murdering his tiny self, so he could never come to the future and take such total possession of her life. She'd decided against it. Any association with Tom Riddle, toddler or otherwise, was a bad idea.
Hermione was pulled out of her reverie by a lone figure walking across the grounds. Her heart leapt into her throat. It was the recognisable stature of the groundskeeper of this house. His name was Willard - he'd made Hermione a cup of watery cocoa the first time she'd thought to visit him. She was glad he wasn't dead.
She turned back in search of the others. Guilt clawed at her insides as she examined each of the cream-coloured rooms. On the gilt stairs she found Mary, the lady of the house, stunned - not dead. The Lord of the Manor - Crosby, was passed out three feet from her. He'd been sedated magically, though he had a nasty bump on the back of his head. Hermione healed the man, revived them both and promptly wiped their memories. Better they remember nothing of her at all than risk them further with information of her whereabouts, or indeed, where she was going next.
She found the housekeeper - Mrs Shelby - frozen in place in the pantry. Tom must have come through the kitchen. She did the same with Mrs Shelby as she'd done with the couple by the stairs - wipe and move on.
Hermione placed one hand on the kitchen doorknob and froze. A slow, sinister voice echoed around the room. Was it good for you too, darling? A message sent by Tom, clearly meant to intimidate her into submission. Only she could hear it, she'd been the victim of similar messages countless times since she'd met Tom Riddle. Of course, she'd felt flattered then.
"Piss off, Tom Riddle." She said with gritted teeth and stepped into the blustery February air. Now, to figure out what to do next.
