They watch the memories three more times.
She takes notes.
Writes down conversation and observations.
Tries to stitch information together to make sure they don't miss anything.

Time loses meaning as she sits on the floor, notes spread ahead of her.
The future she saw in those memories
Tom
Voldemort
The mindless killing
And Dumbledore using kids as toy soldiers.
Anything she can do to stop it, she will.

Anything to save those boys
Those kids
Her friends that she doesn't remember
But who met their horrible ends knowing all was lost.
If she could give them a different life, she would.
As long as she had Tom by her side.

Without Tom She's alone
And what would be the point then?

Tom mostly observes her work
And the memories
Bows furrowed trying not to miss any detail.

Everything about him tells her he hates to see himself like that.
Without any sense of clever moves
Blinded by his fear of losing control.

"People follow him because they fear him." He mutters as if to himself, "not because they respect him. Not because they even agree in the end."

World can't be ruled with only fear

She writes down.

"I wanted to think I'm cleverer than that. What's the point of being immortal if I'm out of my mind?"

She doubts he wants her answer, so she keeps her eyes on the work.

Tom sits behind her on the floor.
Caresses her bare arm with his long fingers

Her quill stops mid sentence.

Slowly he drops a strap of her top down her shoulder.
His lips touch her neck
And his hand cradles her jaw sliding down her throat to her chest

She closes her eyes

"I think we've seen enough by now." He hums against her skin.

His tongue slides down the side of her neck
And his hand drops inside her bra.

He nibs her skin.
She shivers, leaning into his touch.

"I'm scared we can't stop it." She whispers.

"I won't make seven horcruxes." Tom talks against her shoulder blade.

"So you say now."

"Hermione."

Tom moves fast, rounds her and puts his hand under her jaw,
Making it impossible for her to look away.
To hide from him.

She believes him
And she knows he believes it too
At the moment
And up until a few hours ago the moment was all that mattered.
But now… now there's a whole future of the wizarding world to be considered.

"That's not the future I imagined for myself. There was nothing I saw in Lord Voldemort I wish to have."

"But he was you!" She states almost Angrily.

It's true they're different now.
But Myrtle Warren is still dead
The diary is still a Horcrux
The ring is still a Horcrux
Tom Riddle Sr. Is still dead
The Slytherins are still under his control
Dumbledore is still a power-hungry bastard.

She's here
But she's not the girl in the memories
Her whole past is different
She comes from totally different environment
Her ambitions, goals, wishes and morals are entirely different now.
So how can they know for sure she's the change?

What if the future is set in stone and this reality will be just as bad?
What if it'll be worse?

"No he wasn't." Tom is still calm, still collected, still certain
And it frightens her a little.
Like this didn't touch Tom at all.
Like he's just analysing the information and redirecting his focus.

He went into the future to tell her to come to him.
To change all that from happening
But she fears seeing the future also made him see he could succeed.
Made him see the errors he shouldn't make to gain domination.

"You're not hiding from me." Tom's hand is still under her jaw, "You might as well scream that all to my face."

Tears tickle her eyes.

"Hermione" Tom says again, "I've never lied to you."

You can't lie about what you don't know.

"I don't need seven horcruxes."

It's not like she could hide her thoughts anyway.
So she might as well say everything that's going through her head at the moment.

"Not right now."

But what about in ten years?
In fifty?

Tom leans ever closer
"I told you once already. I'm not living without you."

"What does that…"

"I don't need seven lives when you only have two."

She stares at him.

"We're done killing people, aren't we?"

She blinks.

"I told you already, out of power, Infinity, immortality, world domination, I still choose you. And I know as well as you do that if it's up to you, you won't let me kill more people."

"We're barely adults! Feelings might change" She protests

Tom shakes his head, "Don't say things you don't believe in yourself. I'm yours, you're mine - today and tomorrow, next year, next decade, fifty years from now, next century… soul and body and mind. Age has nothing to do with it." His fingers grip her jaw tighter and his eyes are almost black, "You think I'd be able to let you go? That I would ever let you go?"

"You can't claim to own people." Her words are almost a silent breath in the air.

"No I can't. But I also told you I'll make a deal with anything if that's what it takes."

She swallows
Silence swims around them.
Their words swirling around

Words
Thoughts
Doubts
Fears
Hopes
Forming wires to dance on
Borderlines
Of possession and devotion
Of control and choice
Of depending and coexisting
Of twisted and true
Of obsession and love

"I could take that time turner and return..." She whispers - unsure of what she wants to prove.

"Go ahead." Tom challenges, "Try me, Hermione. I promised to find you again, to convince you again."

He leans to put his cheek next to hers.
She half expects to hear threats
Not even sure why
He never threatened her before.

"Please, don't make me watch you leave." Comes out with a choked sigh, "don't make me tear down the world to find you."

Maybe it is a threat
It certainly can be interpreted as such.
But there's also a plea
A wish
Something raw and genuine and straightforward.
Three things he doesn't let out easily.

"You're the only thing in the world that matters."

She wants to tell him it's sick.
That they can't keep living this dependent on each other.
But the truth is - up until today he was the only thing in the world that mattered to her.
She would have done anything to keep him.
To save him.
To find him again.

But in the memories there were so many others who used to matter too.
So many lives that other version of her was ready to give up everything for.
It feels wrong to forget them all
To just toss aside the fact that things could be entirely different
The fact that she wasn't supposed to belong in this time in the first place.

She wants them to matter
She wants to care
She wants to be that selfless girl she saw she could be - or become...
But Truthfully all those thoughts don't mean shit.
They're just pretty covers for her real intentions.
For what she really wants.

She watches Tom absentmindedly turn the ring in his finger.
There is no power in the world that would keep them apart.
Nothing she could see in those memories that would make her leave him.
She knows - like he does - that this is the change that has the ability to alter the future.

"They told me I might not know how to love." Tom is still holding her gaze as he speaks.

"Who did?"

"Dumbledore… He said it might be because I was conceived under the influence of a love potion. I looked into books but found nothing to back that up."

A flare of anger sparks up inside of her. How dare they speculate something like that to him? How dare they make him question what he feels?

Almost like Dumbledore wanted Tom to second guess himself
To block out emotions.

"He told me." She nods slowly, "not about the love potion though. But I figured it out last summer. I told him basically to suck it. I asked how would I know love any better? How could he tell you might not know love and expect me to be somehow different?"

"I know what I feel for you." Tom's index finger caresses her cheek, "I ache for you. It's almost like I'm in physical pain when you're far away. I want to touch you and kiss you and be inside of you so badly I sometimes feel like screaming. I've tried to subdue the feeling, but I can't. And I'm not sure if it makes me more angry or ecstatic. I want to lay the world at your feet. Whatever you asked of me I'm not sure I'd be able to tell you no. I'm ready to kill anyone who even tries to hurt any part of you and I could burn the world down just to keep you happy and safe and for myself. Maybe I don't know love, maybe there's another name for it, but that's how I feel"

It's all there reflected back at her
No walls or lies
She believes every word

And just like that her doubt melts
Collapses in on itself

It's her and Tom
And there was nothing they couldn't achieve together.

She puts both of her palms on the sides of his face, "I don't care what it is." The words come out effortless, "I feel the same for you. And I think… I know we can prevent the future in those memories from happening."

He nods.

"We. You and me. We are going to rule the world!" She puts their foreheads together, "But not with fear and death. We're better than that, smarter than that!"

Tom nods and grins knowingly "I know we are."


Take-over

She uses the knowledge about the possible version of the future on their advantage only once.

The day of their graduation she goes to Headmaster Dippet and tells him about Dumbledore and the deathly hallows and Grindelwald.
Knowing the old man has no obligation to believe her She still warns him not to let Dumbledore in power. And something about her words must hit the mark.

Tom gets the job as the Defence of the Dark arts teacher a month later.

She gets an apprenticeship in Magical Law Enforcement.

And that's how it begins.

Together they're a force of nature. With a little help of Abraxas and his family library they slowly put their plan in action.

She climbs the ladders in the Ministry
And he changes the way children are educated.

Defence becomes a study of Dark Arts.

"Fear has always the ability to control." Tom always says, "Stigma only enforces power."

So he teaches his students to know Dark magic, how it works and what's the price of using it. He teaches defence too, but only when kids know what they're defending themselves from.

She helps to reform laws about Dark creatures. Aids to develop Wofsbane and fights to let werewolves back into society.

Together they take the power away from Dark forces - him in education and her in politics.
When there's no light and dark divided there are no sides. Only different layers of magic.

In the version of reality they saw in the pensive Tom rode the pureblood agenda.
And they can't forget it this time around either.

They talk about the importance of teaching wizarding customs and history to the muggleborn children.
They want to make sure what happened to them never happens to another kid ever.
No one deserves to grow up feeling like they don't belong, only to be thrown into another world where they're outsiders again because no one bothers to introduce that world to them.

Her and Tom had each other, but how many muggleborn kids grow up alone and scared of their accidental magic?

They raise funds to put up a magical pre-school system for muggleborn children. And hire young Minerva McGonagall to lead the project.

Pureblood families, the Malfoys and Lestranges in lead, are pleased with the development.
Gene pool gets new blood, but wizarding customs are respected and history well taught forward.

Sometimes people would ask if she wished to have kids of their own.
She never really pictured herself as a mother.
And Tom as a father even less

But faith works in mysterious ways
She's twenty six and the head of the MLE when twins Alya and Orion are born.

It's the midwinter day of a surprisingly cold and snowy winter. They're small and beautiful and perfect from the first moment they enter the world.

She watches Tom stand in the middle of the sterile white hospital room and hold his baby girl in his arms.
His dark eyes so focused on the small miracle all the world could cease to exist and he wouldn't notice.

Silently she thinks they were all wrong. There's nothing purer, nothing more soul shaking, nothing deeper than that look in Tom's eyes.
Tom would do anything to keep his children safe. To protect them from the childhood he had to live through. To love them the best he knows.

And so will she.
If she wasn't sure they knew love before that day - She has no doubt about it now.

People could call it whatever they like.
People could speculate what they wanted of her and Tom.
She knows for sure it's love.
Deep and pure and unconditional.

Tom becomes Headmaster of Hogwarts the year twins turn five. The board is unanimous, Dumbledore doesn't even get a chance.

She gets elected the Minister of Magic five years later.

So begins the era of Riddles.
The one where they rule the world.
Peacefully
And together.

Like they swore they would.

"What about the muggle world?" She asks Tom one evening in bed when the kids have left for Hogwarts.

Tom shrugs, "I could settle for the magical."

She nods, "Me too"

He kisses her forehead and pulls her close under the covers.

.

.

In the fall of 1991
She watches as excited kids board the train and puts her jaw on Tom's shoulder.

There's a boy with messy black hair and round glasses kissing his mother's cheek.

There's a family full of redheaded kids chatting happily.

There's a kind looking boy with a toad hugging his little sister goodbye.

There's Lucius Malfoy patting his son on the shoulder giving them a polite nod.

There's life and love
And no war looming over them

One change and everything could be different.
Tom said she could save them all.
Everyone she loved would have another chance.

Harry's parents are alive

Ron doesn't have to die in the battlefield
Ginny doesn't spend her teenage years hunted by the voice of Voldemort in her head every night.

Neville's days are not spent in the cold halls of a hospital.

They get to grow up in a world of peace.

In a world of order and justice.
In a world of light and dark but also shades of gray.

In a world she and Tom worked so hard to build.
A world they swore to rule one day.

Everyone gets the chance to chase their infinity
To lay the foundations again

She gave them up to give them this.
But she would do it again
In any reality
Any lifetime
Any alternative

Infinity isn't living forever
Isn't holding all the power and all the knowledge

Infinity isn't complete control over your faith
Or world domination

Infinity is the first cry of a newborn
Small fingers curling around yours
Infinity is the swell in your chest when you watch your children play on a sunny field
Infinity is the colors of sunrise reflected from your lovers eyes
And falling asleep knowing tomorrow is going to be another beautiful day

Infinity is your children passing on the things you taught them
And becoming their own person.
Infinity is watching your student master a new spell
Infinity is when people repeat your ideas forward.

It's the smell of new dawn in the grass
It's watching the Hogwarts train leave the station for the first time carrying your child.
It's kids coming home and buzzing with excitement.
It's the winter frost on the trees on the morning of the birth of your first grandchild.
It's seeing yourself in the grin of a small girl
And the bouncing curls of your grandson.

Infinity isn't for you
Isn't you

It's so much more than you
So much more than your human desires

Infinity is writing down your story on the leaves of history
Giving it to the hands of others and watching them write their own stories on the foundations you laid.

Tom takes her hand in his.
And together they walk out of the station.


Epilogue

She has lived 200 and 10 years when she finally lays down on her bed and closes her eyes.
She has seen everything and done enough. Tom has been gone for a week now and life without Tom… a week is enough.

That's how she leaves the world

And wakes up to the sound of waves crashing the shore.

The beach house is decorated with delicate colors and her bare feet make no sound as she walks through the rooms.

White curtains wave with the mellow breeze from the open windows.

Her hands are free of wrinkles
The skin on her feet is soft and smooth.
Her body is vibrant, vital and able.
She's young again.

On the porch she stops.

Tom is standing on the beach at the edge of the water.
His feet are bare and his hair ruffled with wind.
He has rolled the sleeves of his cotton shirt and opened the top buttons.

Almost like sensing her presence he turns to her.
And she runs to him.
Her white summer dress flowing at her feet.

He extends his arm and she links her fingers with his.

"I told you" He says, a smile in his voice, "in any reality."

FIN