"Sometimes we want what we want even if we know it's going to kill us."
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch
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Early hours of September 20th 1998
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"So," Harry said, his voice a study in nonchalant horror, "Tom Riddle."
His scar looked very stark against his skin in the candlelight as she examined him. It had been hard to guess exactly how he would react to this, hard to decide if she'd ever tell him. But Sophia had removed the decision and here she was, getting an answer to a question she had been asking herself for five decades.
She was glad he'd waited until Ron had left to ask this. He had gone home after dinner at The Ivy, too overwhelmed with the unexpected end of his relationship to stay. He'd said he needed time. She'd had too much of it to really feel for him, but somewhere there was the memory of having loved him and she understood the hurt even as she was unaffected by it.
Harry, more perceptive, had not been distracted by the new friends she'd gathered to celebrate her victory and had come back to the flat she'd been using in London while she arranged the court case. It was one of several properties she'd collected over the course of her life, but not one she used often. There was little in the way of personal effects, but she rather liked its stark modernity after so many years of living in the past.
"Before we start that story, and we will," Hermione replied, summoning a bottle of firewhisky from her desk with a flick of her fingers, "you must promise not to be too angry with Albus."
"With Dumbledore?" he asked, surprised, accepting a glass.
"The Tom Riddle to whom you were introduced in a few very brief, very select memories was hardly the full picture, you see. Did you never wonder that it was so hard for someone of Albus's calibre and resources to collect memories of a boy that in fact few people ever connected to Lord Voldemort?"
"I - well, no, not really," he replied honestly. "He said everyone was scared."
"You and I are very similar Harry in the way we see the humanity in others. Albus couldn't afford for you, his sacrificial lamb to the slaughter, the sword of justice he had to wield beyond his own death, to see Tom Riddle as anything but an inhuman enemy. Especially when you already identified with him so much. And had you seen more of him when he was young perhaps you would have seen too much of the human in him and not enough of, shall we say, the monster that you needed to see to give you the strength to defeat him."
Harry, who had matured enough to consider his words before speaking, fell silent.
"I suppose," he allowed, having had a long time to accept that Dumbledore had both loved and manipulated him, "I can see that, yeah."
"In actuality there are hundreds of other memories he could have shown you of Tom. More of his own, for example. But so many of them would have included me and even if he'd manipulated the memory to disguise who the girl was, it was so very important for you not to see that side of things. Besides, Albus never liked him, never saw that he was balanced for a while, before he took the fatal misstep of killing that stupid old woman."
The anger there had never really faded, and she fought to keep it in check.
"The truth is Harry, Albus is partially to blame for how Tom turned out. Just a little. He made most of his own mistakes, to be sure, but if he had met him with kindness instead of suspicion as a child I truly believe Tom would have been a better man than the one he became."
"So," ultra-casual now, "you knew him well?"
"Yes, Harry. Better than anyone else. I don't know what you want to call it, but he shared my bed and I loved him, I suppose. He was fascinating and brilliant and odd and - oh, Harry. I tried so hard to hate him, but I couldn't. I hate who he became, but I couldn't hate him back then."
"But you knew. You knew what he would become. He killed my parents! He killed so many people. He tried to have your kind removed from our world. He was a monster."
He was getting angry now, knuckles white as he gripped the desk; so like Tom in how he tried to restrain it and couldn't.
"I think it would be easier if I showed you," she said gesturing to the Pensieve on her desk across the room. "I'll show you any of it. All of it, if you like. I have nothing to hide. Not from you."
This was a calculated move, of course. Harry wouldn't be able to resist Tom any more than she had; they were too alike in ways that mattered too deeply to him. Nor did he question the convenience of the Pensieve being here. He trusted her; still seeing the Hermione he'd known only hours before.
"I don't think it'll help."
"Just one memory," she bargained, injecting her voice with force of will. He was strong-minded, but unaware of subtler magics.
"One."
She hid her smile and walked over to stand next to the Pensieve, raising her wand to her temple.
"Anything in particular?"
He shrugged.
Hermione concentrated, and pulled the thick silver thread out from her mind, letting it spool off the end of her wand and swirl around the shallow stone basin.
"This is the first time he kissed me. My father invited him to visit after meeting him at Hogwarts. We weren't really even friends by this point but we had a certain... repartee. I was attracted to him, but of course I didn't trust him. This is what changed all that. Are you ready?"
Harry stood and walked over, looking curious despite himself. She took his hand and they bent down, falling into the past together.
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They were outside a railway station, Harry realised. A sign on the Victorian building told him it was Brecon in Wales. As he read it, an easily recognisable, extremely handsome young man stepped out of the station's doorway. Tom Riddle seemed to have been the only passenger getting off here; there was no one else around. His face flashed with irritation as he scanned the sky and checked his watch. After a few minutes, Riddle looked up as an elegant, very old fashioned car pulled up and Harry was jolted to see his face light up. He followed his eyes to the car, and there was the other Hermione, driving the car.
"Sorry I'm late," the other Hermione said as she got out. "I got a bit lost, actually. I'm not used to going by road."
Riddle was staring at her with an expression Harry had never expected to see on his face. He looked oddly vulnerable, almost longing, before he hid it. Harry listened as they bantered about the car, Hermione relaxed as she wound him up, Riddle snarking back at her. They both looked slightly nervous.
The real Hermione gestured to Harry to follow her and they climbed into the back seat.
"This is really weird," he told her as Tom Riddle told the other one, "You're good at this."
"I know," the real Hermione replied. "I've never quite got used to watching myself."
That wasn't what Harry had meant, although he supposed that would be odd.
"I didn't know you were scared of heights," he said, surprised, as she told Tom Riddle about flying hippogriffs.
"Well I wasn't going to tell you and Ron that, you already thought I was wet enough about Quidditch as it was."
Watching the boy he'd only ever seen as menacing ask Hermione if she was a witch or not, hearing the gentle, teasing edge in his tone, the charm of it, Harry began to see why Dumbledore would have hidden this from him.
"He played seeker?" he snapped, jolted again.
The real Hermione rolled her eyes.
"Of course he was. The most powerful position on the team... obsessively chasing after one goal... the glory of it."
Harry snorted. There, at last, was a glimmer of his best friend, and indeed there she was, lecturing Tom Riddle at the same time.
Then the mood changed suddenly.
"Tom," the other Hermione said, "the compass you gave me – it just warmed up."
"Fuck, let me see it," the other boy replied, as he tugged at something around her neck, and ordered her to stop the car.
"Compass?" Harry asked, baffled, but the real Hermione just put a finger to her lips and gestured to him to get out of the car.
"To warn me of danger - it was a Christmas present."
"'Repartee'," Harry mocked, but he was too caught up in the memory now to put any real vitriol behind it.
She was right. This was not the Tom Riddle he had expected to see. He watched as the other boy vanished, a faint ripple the only clue there was a person there.
Another man's voice came from somewhere in the clearing and Harry grabbed his wand out of instinct, before relaxing. It was just a memory.
"Missed you on the way out, din I? Thought you was flying, see, so I was waiting on my broom… then I saw the Muggle car and I thought to myself, I'll catch you on the way back little goose. And you was sposed to have a friend with you, thought I'd have two of you to deal with."
"What do you want?" the other Hermione asked the disembodied voice. The real Hermione was leaning back against the car, her eyebrows drawn together. She looked sad.
"Me? Just my paycheck, pretty goose. Nothing personal, see?"
"So you're just a mercenary. Who do you work for?"
"You'll meet him soon enough."
The man's voice was closer now and Harry realised he, like Riddle, was disillusioned.
"Try hominum revelio," the memory of Hermione whispered to him, but it wasn't him and Harry realised he was standing where Riddle was in the memory. He sprang sideways, but heard the whisper back, almost next to his own ear.
"Keep him talking. When I count three, drop to the floor."
"I don't think I'd like that," Hermione said to the man. "How did you know I'd be going to collect a friend today?"
"Been reading your post. Camped out in the hill for a fucking month, I've been, since you left that damn impregnable school. But Gaelfric always gets his mark in the end and I've got you now little goose."
"Why do you keep calling me goose?"
"Golden goose, see? You're worth a fortune little girl. Your Daddy'll be paying like Croesus for his riches."
"What riches?" Harry asked the real Hermione as Tom Riddle said, "Three," and began shooting stunning spells. There was a thud, and the other boy, pale faced and focussed, swung around and kissed the memory of the girl Harry loved like a sister. But she was far from the woman he'd known, he thought, as she froze and then melted against Harry's sworn enemy.
"I told you to wait in the car," Tom Riddle told her when finally they stopped kissing.
"I am not the sort of girl that sits in the car, as you know perfectly well, you arse!" the other Hermione snapped at him before swivelling and revealing the unconscious man with a spell.
It was Riddle who woke him up, cold and in charge and, to be honest, doing exactly what Harry would do under the circumstances. Although he thought, with wisdom granted from his Auror training, he'd have taken the man somewhere else before he woke him up. Of course, he wouldn't have been able to dive straight into the man's mind either. But Harry's instincts were right, and seeing Tom Riddle's face as he realised he'd made a mistake was oddly... endearing.
"Drop yer wand, boy," the second man ordered Tom, who smirked. He and Hermione appeared to be having a silent conversaion and then Tom feinted, lowering his wand for a second before cutting the man's wrist off with a third-year spell.
The one after that, though, was more what he'd been expecting. Avada Kedavra. A spell he, Harry, would never cast. He felt vindicated.
"Are there any more of you?" a very shaken looking memory-Hermione asked the man on the ground.
"Might be.."
She sent a silent, purple curse in response, one Harry recognised from the war.
"It's alright, Hermione, it was just the two of them. They were going to grab you and go. The other one was further back in case you got past this cretin. I suppose he heard something and came looking."
Harry watched Tom watch Hermione as she summoned their portkey. He looked fascinated, although the fearful, hungry expression he'd had before he kissed her still lingered. Harry recognised Hermione's pragmatism from years of experience, as she tidied up the scene, but Tom looked like he'd never seen anything like it - like her - before. His lower lip caught in his teeth, his eyes fierce. It was a face unguarded, unaware of Harry's future scrutiny and even he could find no motive there, no reason to doubt its authenticity. As she tied the dead man to his still-living colleague, Riddle's face changed suddenly, mouth dropping as though he'd come to some realisation.
"Obscuro," memory-Hermione said, "Obliviate."
She tucked what Harry supposed was the portkey into the man's pocket and then looked up at Tom, defiant and satisfied and slightly embarrassed, just as she'd looked when she'd told Harry and Ron about putting Rita Skeeter in a jar
"Tell your master not to bother me again," she said after a moment to man, who was still screaming.
Then the memory became scarier, and not because of Riddle.
"Silencio. I said, tell your despicable master not to come after me again. We know who he is and there will be... consequences. Repeat that back."
"Not to come after you again. Know who he is. Consequences."
She cast one more spell before the portkey took the men away, leaving the four of them alone in the memory of the woods.
"That was quite brilliant," Riddle said.
"If only he'd known you weren't a Pureblood," Harry said scathingly.
"I told him," Hermione said, "not long after this. He didn't care."
"YOU TOLD HIM?" he wasn't listening to the memory now, just staring at her. "What were you thinking? He could have killed you!"
"Look at him, Harry."
Harry looked, and saw something he couldn't quite believe. Tom looked uncomfortable and unsure, but he was holding the other Hermione in his arms, hand stroking her back as she cried.
The words were hard to make out, so the other Hermione told him. "She's saying she killed him. I killed him. The other man."
"You didn't," Harry and Tom said at the same time.
"No, I did. I spelled his blood to clot. I- I used a healing spell and made a little clot by his heart... He'll be dead in three days."
Their reaction to that was different, though. Harry looked at his best friend in horror as the tall, black-haired memory of his nemesis kissed Hermione again.
"Why?"
"I didn't want to be hunted again," she said simply. "Come on, that's the end of this for now. Like I said there's plenty more. Although I don't think I'll come back into my head again. It's hard to remember him like this."
The floated back up to their bodies, and Harry was grateful for the whisky she'd poured. She returned the memory to her mind and they sat in silence for a long time.
"I want to see more," he said, breaking the silence at last. "I want to understand."
"Don't you want to see your parents first?"
His parents. Harry's stomach lurched. No one had ever offered him that, and now he wondered why. Only Hagrid had ever tried to truly share them with him, collecting photographs for him.
"Yeah," he said hoarsely. "I want to... but I think I need to understand all this first. I need to see who you've become. All of it."
I need to know I can still trust you.
"I can't speed up the memories by much. It will take days. And it's... it's very draining to part with a memory for a while and then have it returned you see. Mentally and emotionally draining. But I'm strong enough to show you a few more tonight, if you want. The ones of your parents are yours to keep. Here."
She gave him a box. He opened it, fingers shaking a little, to find several crystal vials, little gold ribbons holding labels on them in her neat writing with the date of each one on. It was a great effort to close it. But he had to know who she was before he indulged his own desires.
And so he watched them, alone this time, for hours. He watched as they tentatively grew together at Hogwarts, watched Hermione break another boy's heart, watched her sadness fade as time passed, watched Tom make her face dance in amusement. He saw the girl he'd known grow more assured, more beautiful. He watched them dance, he watched Tom Riddle collapse at her feet, surrounded by fire.
She was white-faced as she returned the last one to her mind. Dawn had broken outside the window as he'd sat watching the past play out, and he was exhausted too, but fascinated.
"You're right," he said as he collapsed into the chair next to her, eyes closing of their own accord. "I couldn't have seen him like that, before. What happened?"
"You'll see," she murmured, curled on the sofa, eyes drawn and older somehow than her youthful face could truly allow. "He was an idiot."
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Chapter 40 should be up soon.
I can't believe how far we've come and how far we have to go. Love you all, thank you so much for your beautiful and kind words, they honestly mean so very much and are so humbling
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