.
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Hermione was packing her trunk for the third time, meticulously checking every last item to ensure it supported her story. The weeks had slipped by quickly and it was the thirty-first of August.
Tomorrow, Cerdic would take her to Kings Cross to catch the Hogwarts Express. She wondered whether the train would be the same.
The two older wizards had taken almost childish delight in preparing her. They'd taken great pains to make sure her identity was complete. There could be no possibility of suspicion: if anyone were to find out when she had really come from she would be in terrible danger.
She had even been to the castle in Wales for a weekend so she would be able to imagine growing up there.
Even her possessions had to play their part in weaving the lie. Her leather trunk had belonged to Cerdic's cousin Hellawes. It was a relatively standard magical trunk, with three compartments, depending on how far you turned the key. Hermione had added a fourth, secret and heavily warded, in which she stored the various valuables Cerdic had packed up. Some old jewellery Hermione suspected was goblin made, which she would probably never have occasion to wear, a painting of the castle and a lovely landscape of the surrounding area.
Minor details of life had had to be gathered together to paint their own picture: an old silver-capped inkwell, enchanted never to spill or run dry, a writing set, a miniature of Cerdic. A collection of new and old books, potions equipment, a telescope. Perfume, robes. Old things and new things jumbled together to tell the world she was Hermione Dearborn.
The incessant folding and refolding and examining of the objects that represented her new life couldn't keep Hermione's fears at bay forever.
A boy with black hair and a pale face, a face she had never seen in person. A face Harry and Ginny had described with odd reverence. A face that had haunted her dreams every time she'd worn Slytherin's locket. Handsome, charming Tom Riddle - orphaned but brilliant. The cleverest boy in Britain, and the most evil.
Hermione wondered how powerful he already was. The churning nausea that had building in her stomach for weeks overcame her. She ran to the adjoined bathroom and violently emptied her stomach.
.
She was unusually quiet at dinner that evening, and prodded at her food listlessly. Sensitive to her preoccupied state, Cerdic and Professor Dumbledore spoke to each other, and left to her thoughts. She was remembering Horcrux Tom who'd somehow been able to speak to her in her dreams, tempting her, telling her to go to him, that he'd make an exception for her because she was so beautiful, so brilliant. That Harry and Ron would never see past her bookishness and see the bravery within. That Harry would always always value Ron's friendship over hers, even though she was the only one who'd never left him, who'd always always believed in him and stuck by him. She'd never had the courage to ask the boys if he whispered to them too.
It would tell her that life with Ron would be an unending monotony, twisting her own vision of their future into suburban hell. In her dreams he would stroke her hair and tell her that she was too brilliant for such a life - and wouldn't she like to do something really amazing?
Didn't she want everyone to recognise what she was really capable of? To see that it was she who had consistently outwitted him?
Without you, he'd hissed over and over again, they are nothing. Without you I wouldn't even bother chasing them. Come to me, bring yourself to me and I will reward you, I will show you and show the world what you're capable of... Come to me Hermione. Join me. Show the world what you can really do.
It had been a masterful attempt at seduction. No one had ever known about the dreams she'd had night after night in the tent, dreams that were not of her own making – and some that were. Dreams of torture, of isolation, and other dreams too, that made her blush to awaken and remember.
Worst of all had been the dreams where he had cried, lost as a small child, and begged her to release him. When he had promised to do anything if she just let him to feel the sun on his skin. When he had asked her why had Dumbledore loved Harry, why had he looked after Harry, but had hated Tom and left him to the dogs?
This last had disturbed her more than anything else he'd done. Because it was true, and because she felt the Horcrux's genuine sense of rejection.
He - it - had played on her compassionate nature like a virtuoso manipulating a violin.
Hermione vowed that she would do anything, anything to avoid his notice at school. Barring the link with Dumbledore, the background they had created shouldn't excite notice. The Dearborns weren't on the list of the twenty-eight purest familes. It was an old name but they had infrequently married Muggleborns and, more often, Half-Bloods.
She would be just another witch. Not Muggleborn, not Sacred Twenty-Eight. Not the first half-blood in an ancient family like Harry or Riddle. As as long as she wasn't sorted into Slytherin, and resisted the temptation to be too clever or too capable, any interest garnered by her unusually late entry to the school would quickly fade.
Hermione picked up her new wand, trying not to look too closely at it. It was of the same ilk as Bellatrix's, although not the same wand. This was elegant and straight, surprisingly flexible, but walnut and dragon heartstring all the same. A dangerous wand if used for the wrong ends.
A wand, the unsettlingly young Mr Ollivander had murmured quietly to her, that, once conquered, could be persuaded to do almost anything. She hadn't replied. She did not want this new companion. Yet the age and origins of wands could be traced: her beloved vinewood one lay hidden in in the small Gringotts vault marked with her new name.
Later, as Hermione lay in her bed for that last night, she murmured over and over again: I will not lose my temper. I do not need to be the best.
She had already aced her NEWTs (and it was so incredibly irritating that she knew, because she'd checked in the Ministry records, that Tom Riddle had just – just – beaten her). But no matter. She would control the stupid, reckless desire to beat him this time around... It would be cheating any way - a hollow victory. And she would try her best to go the whole year without even speaking to him.
I will not lose my temper. I do not need to be the best.
She dreamt of duelling the Horcrux Tom, of leaving him beaten on the floor.
If Hermione had a motto, it would be 'always be prepared' x
