When Hermione learned that they not only had a new student but that the student was a time traveler, she could hardly contain her excitement. Pansy told her about it on their way to ancient runes after lunch while the boys went off to magical creatures.

'I find it hard to believe but, god, Hermione, you should've seen Theo and Draco when Tom showed them that locket.' Pansy sighed, running a hand through her hair. 'It's all too crazy to be true but, then again, I can't think of why Dumbledore would go to such lengths for a stupid prank and the boy's robes do look rather vintage and he does have a prefect badge.'

'Pansy, that's absolutely incredible.' Hermione practically sparkled with excitement. 'Has he said how he got here?' Pansy shook her head.

'No, although I'm not convinced he even knows how. He was every bit as sure as I was that he was still in his proper time all the way up until we walked into the hall for lunch.' Then, her face scrunched up like she smelled something bad as they entered the classroom.

'What is it?'

'Just remembered something from lunch. You, er, might not want to try to be friends with him or anything, he doesn't seem to like you very much.' Hermione's brow crinkled in confusion.

'What do you-'

Before Hermione could finish forming her question, their professor began the lesson, silencing all the chattering students. With a small frown and a bit of a shrug, Hermione decided to ignore what Pansy said, at least for the time being. She would do what she was going to do anyway- help out the new kid and hopefully make a new friend in the process. Ever since she befriended Malfoy, then Theo and Pansy, she felt much more comfortable dealing with Slytherins and was trying to help repair house relations. Her efforts had been met with success; the boys got on with most of the Gryffindors and Pansy was even dating Ron now, since the end of last term. Now they had this new student, this time traveler, who was also a Slytherin and Hermione felt perfectly qualified to help him settle in and feel comfortable.

. . .

The next day, the new boy got his schedule and, by the looks of it, had gotten new robes as well. Hermione was pleased to see that they would have potions together and laughed when Slughorn just about had a stroke when he saw Tom. That lesson, Slughorn had them break off into pairs and work together to brew felix felicis. She was pleased to see that she would be working with the new Slytherin.

'Hermione Granger, I don't think we've met yet.' Smiling, she stuck out her hand.

'Tom Riddle, pleasure to meet you.' She noticed, as he shook her hand, that his skin was every bit as cold and smooth as his voice.

'So, Tom, do you also find this lesson to be an elementary waste of time or were things different in 1943?' She started cutting up ingredients as she spoke to her partner.

'It is a tad better than watching paint dry, I suppose.' She smiled.

'Only marginally, though.' They lapsed into silence for a bit until Hermione broke it.

'So, how did you get here, anyway? From the past, I mean. After all, time turners were only invented in the last decade and can only send you backwards in time and that's-'

'Accident.' He cut her off but it was the frosty tone of his voice that stopped her from inquiring any further.

'I-I see.' She frowned. 'I'm sorry, it must be very difficult to have your life upended like that.'

'Thank you.' He left it at that and, somewhat uncharacteristically, she let him.

. . .

After that, their potions lesson was silent and uneventful. However, that did nothing to quell Hermione's curiosity. How did he get here? Who was he? Why did he seem to hate her so much, like Pansy had warned her about? What was his life like before he showed up? Hermione knew two things: that this broody time traveler piqued her curiosity and that she never lets anything stand in her way when she wants something and, knowing those two things, she could reach the conclusion that what she wanted was to learn as much as possible about this new student and that she would not let anything stop her from doing so.

Naturally, since it was her, she started in the library. Students tended to not be the most familiar with the library in its content and layout and far fewer knew there was an archive that students could access. The archive kept documents belonging to the school dating all the way back to when it was first constructed. In there were thousands of photographs, old literary magazines and student newspapers that had since stopped being produced, and a copy of every yearbook that had been published since they first began to be sold back in 1912. These were all open to the public, though there were other things in there, like copies of student records, that required permission from faculty or, sometimes, the headmaster, specifically.

She started by going through what was available through public access, pulling everything from 1938-1943. Then, she methodically worked her way through all the materials she had pulled. As she had suspected might be the case, she didn't really find much- well, except for one thing, although she wasn't sure why it even caught her attention. There was a school newspaper that was in publication while Tom was at Hogwarts and they had written an article about his disappearance. In it, the reporter had interviewed some of Tom's friends about it and, in Abraxas Malfoy's account, he made it clear that he was very confident that Tom was fine and would be back soon, etc. When the reporter asked 'what if Tom was actually dead', Abraxas laughed and said that 'Tom will be back, even if he dies.'

Now, Hermione didn't know why this caught her interest. She knew that, if Harry went missing, Ron would be making jokes like that, so there was nothing wrong with Tom's friends saying that about him. He could even have been referring to ghosts, although Tom didn't seem foolish enough to choose to become one if he died. A bit confused and a tad frustrated, Hermione packed up and set out for the dorm to put her things away before her nightly patrol.