Hello everyone!
Loved all the feedback! Thank you so very much! Do keep it up, it is so interesting to see what you all think about the story!
I believe we're about to dive into the main storyline. There are a few characters that will need to be adjusted for our next chapter, but I'd say we're set to go (sorry for the cryptic message, you'll figure out what I mean soon enough lol)
Again, I'm posting the chapter although I'm not quite sure about the grammar! I've had some troubles with revising it, so bear with me, if you notice some huuuge annoying mistake, please do report it so that I can fix it for you all!
With that said… Here we go!
Enjoy and let me know what you think!
Chapter 5: Liar, liar, pants on fire…
Hermione had never thought about what her parents must have felt when she had first left for Hogwarts.
She had made fun of them when sometimes they had complained about her taking too long to get back at their letters. She had called them clingy and over-apprehensive, she had played down their worries. She had even felt quite annoyed by their neediness and their 'pushy intrusiveness'.
Hermione, like every first year student at Hogwarts, had been caught up in the rhythms of the school, the interesting lessons and the wonders of a completely new and mysterious world and her parents had been the least of her thoughts when she'd walked through the doors of Hogwarts.
She'd almost been a little sad when she'd had to go home for the holidays that first year, the first year she'd had friends of her own.
In the first weeks of Tom's absence, Hermione had plenty of time to regret every time she'd ever ignored her parents. She had all the time in the world to be plagued by the guilt of that past life of hers.
What had shocked Hermione the most, had been coming face to face with a reality she had never really considered before. Until then in fact, she hadn't been aware of being as clingy with Tom as he was with her.
Until before Tom's departure, Hermione had even been a little impatient to see him get on the train. She had been looking forward to being able to devote herself to her research and to be able to have some time for herself again.
Yet the moment he had disappeared into the crowd of Platform 9 ¾ , her heart had filled with something haunting, heavy and dark.
Since the train had left the station, Hermione had had to deal with revelations she hadn't expected, such as the discovery of some form of jealousy towards Tom, a feeling stinging her guts every time he wrote home telling about new friends and adventures, or her physical need to have him nearby to get a few hours of sleep, somewhat surprising considering he was once the one who insisted on sleeping in her room despite her protests.
But there were also minor and equally stinging discoveries, such as how quiet their house could be, how big their bed was, how gloomy Hogsmeade was, or how much Tom was responsible for the scent of their apartment.
The Hog's Head itself had changed its scent now that Tom was no longer hiding his candy stashes everywhere.
Hermione couldn't help feeling that something essential was missing every time she and Aberforth sat down to breakfast or dinner and Aberforth's constant sighing did not help to quell that feeling of sadness, nor did the advance of winter and the subsequent shortening of the days.
It was only when the Christmas holidays finally came, that the Hog's Head and its inhabitants came back to life.
Aberforth decorated the entire facade of the inn with colored lights and even placed a huge Christmas tree in the main entrance when Tom informed them he'd be back for his winter break.
The night Tom landed at Hogsmeade station, sporting the colors of Slytherin and the satisfied face of the one who in a few months had gained his house the highest score in the House Cup ever registered, Aberforth served free drinks to the entire village and Hermione smiled so hard, her face was sore for days.
"So? Have I grown a little bit already?" He had asked her on the night of Christmas Eve.
"Sleep, Tom." Hermione had ordered, unable to hold back a smile at Tom's stubbornness as he had rubbed his eyes to fight off sleep.
"I know I'm growing up, you witch." he had insisted then, rolling his fingers in her hair idly, "You'll see."
Hermione had laughed at his words, but when Tom had finally succumbed to Morpheus's caresses, she had continued to study his moonlit face for a long time, determined to enjoy his childish features until she could. He had been so beautiful laying in his dark pool of silky-shiny curls and Hermione had tried to take in every detail of that face.
If only he could have been wrong, if only Tom could have stayed the sweetest and most beautiful child forever... the furthest thing from Voldemort anyone could ever have imagined.
But Tom's childish face was slowly and undeniably transforming already. His cheeks were already less round, he had lost most of his freckles and his jaw had become sharper.
Hermione had seen it happen in the past with Charles, Dennis, Billy and the other children at the orphanage, the signs of the impending change were all there although she wanted to deny them in this case more than ever.
The holidays, had lasted little and nothing, not enough to quell Hermione's visceral need to keep Tom as close as possible, not that she'd said anything out loud.
Before you could say Jack Robinson, they had been standing at the village train platform again. This time, Tom had boarded the train without too many heartbreaking farewells and very excited to go back to school instead.
Hermione and Aberforth had watched the train roll off the platform with long sad faces, still unsure on how to feel about the boy's enthusiasm for school. Neither had said a word on the way home nor for the following two days.
The remaining months of that year passed slowly. Hermione's days were long and lonely, except for Dumbledore's sporadic visits, which were far from relaxing and pleasant.
Hermione still wasn't sure she particularly liked this version of the professor and each one of the man's visits only left her more conflicted about it.
This Dumbledore was impatient, stubborn, and difficult to reason with. Every time Hermione came up with a theory about the Time-Turner, Dumbledore seemed to go on a life mission to prove her how wrong she was. This attitude of his, only got worse as rumors about Gellert Grindelwald's rise to power begun spreading all over Europe.
However, pleasant or not, Dumbledore's visits brought progress for their research, and those progress began to pay off early that spring. Finally, Hermione forgot a little about Tom's absence and found something to distract herself with while waiting for the Summer holidays to bring him back home.
"Paris, mh?" Tom had asked, kicking a bush of wild daisies one late Summer evening. Hermione had told him she would have left that autumn and quite predictably, he hadn't taken it too well.
"Paris." Hermione had confirmed, restoring the flowers to their place with a touch of her wand and frowning at Tom's annoyed glance.
"Why Paris?" He had asked, rubbing his nose with the back of his hand and pouting, which was slightly odd to see since he had grown up even more since the previous winter.
In fact, Tom had returned for the summer holidays at least half a foot taller.
Hermione and Aberforth had had to learn several tailoring spells to fix Tom's uniforms for the next year, they had done quite well, apart from the fact that in the process almost all of Tom's socks had turned bright purple due to a small miscalculation. Needless to say, Tom had thrown a such a tantrum that Hermione had eventually been forced to buy new ones, but she had kept the purple ones to herself despite Tom's scornful comments.
"There is a couple of Dumbledore's friends in Paris, they will be able to give me adequate education." Hermione had replied, hating herself for the little necessary white lie.
Tom had nodded then. If it was about study and education, he would hardly have disagreed.
"Well, of course ... you will have to be well educated." He had conceded thoughtfully, then he had bitten his bottom lip looking for the right words to ask the question he'd really wanted to ask, "This ... Flamel guy ..."
"Mh?" Hermione had asked, raising an amused eyebrow at Tom's worried expression.
"He couldn't possibly be a charming young wizard... right?"
"Mh, are you afraid of a little competition?" Hermione had joked. Tom had shrugged and bit his lip.
"You answer the question."
Hermione had refrained from making up stories just to see what Tom's reaction would be, she hadn't been that eager to find out any way.
"I think Nicolas Flamel was young about six hundred years ago, Tom ... but charming? Who knows… I guess for some he might still be charming!"
"Six hundred ?!" Tom had asked incredulously, immediately losing all the tension in his shoulders. "How is it possible?!"
Tom and Hermione had been inseparable that summer.
Both had wanted to make the most of their time not knowing when they would have seen each other again and when September had inevitably arrived, they had headed to London and onto the now familiar platform, dragging feet and hearts as heavy as lead.
Hermione hadn't wanted to ask Tom if he'd had the same feeling too, but something had told her that this was going to be their last truly carefree summer.
Crossing their hearts they had promised a pouting Aberforth they would have done their best to return to Hogsmeade for the Christmas break, then they had said goodbye, promising to see each other for sure next summer and to write each week until then.
Despite all their promises, as the Hogwarts Express had rolled off the platform that year, Hermione had felt as if on the edge of a very high cliff. Even though there were no real signs of catastrophic events on the horizon she had just known things wouldn't have been the same the next year.
But soon the preparations for her departure and the enthusiasm for all the study that awaited her distracted her from that sad thought.
And just like that a new phase of their life begun.
The house of Nicolas and Perenelle Flamel was probably among the oldest stone houses in Paris.
It would have looked like any other respectable ancient residence to the common passerby and if anyone had peeked into one of the countless two-story windows covering the building's three floors in neat rows, they would have seen nothing but large, elegant, deserted and stylishly furnished lounges.
However, if you had the opportunity to cross the threshold of that elegant mansion, you would find yourself before a very different landscape.
The interior of the Flamels' residence was an architectural nightmare.
To begin with, the rooms were neither sharply delineated nor fully subjected to the same laws of physics as the outside world.
A room that had been the kitchen in the morning could easily have become a potions laboratory by sunset; a door could lead to the living room until noon then suddenly decide to lead straight to one of the libraries until evening, or, why not, seal itself completely for a couple of weeks.
The floor you stood on could easily have become another room's ceiling by the next day.
And the stairs… the stairs were the icing on that cake of madness, and one of Hermione's biggest sources of frustration. The stairs at Hogwarts, which only rotated occasionally depending on their mood, were a breeze compared to these diabolical stairs.
Not only did the stairs have the freedom to disappear from where they were and reappear in a completely different location, forcing you to go around in circles for hours, they could also guide you to a completely different floor from the one you were hoping to land on.
The rule seemed to be that the more in a hurry one was to get somewhere, the more the stairs took pleasure in guiding that person in an entirely different direction, except for when it came to the bathroom, thankfully.
Perenelle insisted that the house was trying to teach its inhabitants the virtues of patience and composure. She argued that it was generally much quieter when it was just her and Nicolas as their spirits weren't fierce like young Hermione's anymore.
Hermione was convinced that the house was as much a raging mess as it ever was and that Nicolas and Perenelle were just too distracted to notice when they were alone.
She argued the house had simply saturated with the mental disorganization of its inhabitants who, however brilliant and ingenious alchemists, were not quite as orderly and methodical when it came to everyday life.
Nicolas could reveal the secrets of a new natural element and write an exhaustive book about it within a week, he could explain the whys and hows of complex and ancient historical events, he could teach you the most complex Defense Against the Dark Arts spells and read whole encyclopedias in days, but he wouldn't have known the first thing about how to make tea, let alone go grocery shopping!
He was as brilliant as he was messy. He would write his notes on anything he came across, including flyers, newspaper clippings and sometimes even himself, the latter being the only notes he managed not to lose.
Perenelle on her part, could have written a treatise on botany revolutionizing the world of modern science in a couple of hours, but if you asked her where her socks drawer was she couldn't answer, nor be sure she even had one.
Her nose was perpetually buried in a book and on the rare occasions when she wasn't reading or writing, she was most likely painting. Walls, floors, windows, even already framed paintings, everything sported some sing of her creative spurs. Too bad, she wasn't particularly good at painting.
Perenelle talked to her cats constantly (despite having no idea how all those cats had gotten there to begin with) while sometimes she would forget to talk to other human beings for days on end.
Beyond their lack of managerial skill and their crazy maddening home, Nicolas and Perenelle really were two extraordinarily interesting people.
Both were very cultured and very open-minded, there was not a topic they didn't know something about, and not a day went by without them having something to research, some thesis to prove or some phenomenon to theorize.
When a topic particularly fascinated them, they could forget to eat for days and sometimes, they would even get so entranced to forget to talk to each other, ending up days later on two completely different but equally exciting research paths.
Study, research and culture seemed to be the real engine of their lives and relationship, and the more Hermione was able to witness their relationship, the more she found herself dreaming of a partner who could offer her exactly what they had, except for the house… never that kind of house!
In retrospect, it wasn't surprising that Dumbledore had thought of involving the couple in solving the Time-Turner mystery.
During Tom's first school year, Hermione and Dumbledore had worked together on the Time-Turner and they had come to the conclusion that the marks along the edge of the Time-Turner, which Hermione had initially confused for scratches, were actually what remained of ancient runes.
They had also determined that the runes themselves would have to be powered by some form of magic, whether a curse, spell or blood magic.
After discarding the spell option, which would have required far more time and energy than Rookwood had had at the time, and after discarding the curse, which would have had to strike the first to touch the artifact with his bare hands, they had come to establish that it was blood magic they were after.
So they had had runes to put back together and a blood spell to track, but just then, it had occurred to them that if the hourglass had been meant to break to draw blood for the spell, then the sands had most likely been modified to work outside their container too.
At that point, the amount of work had clearly become too much for just the two of them, hence Dumbledore's idea of involving the Flamels.
It had taken a while for all the arrangements to be made but finally, Hermione had moved to Paris shortly after Tom had returned to school for his second year.
Predictably, despite their planning, Hermione hadn't been able to go to Scotland over the winter holidays and Tom had spent most of his at school, except for Christmas Eve, which he had spent with Aberforth.
Hermione had been a little jealous to know that the two had reunited without her, but said nothing about it, comforting herself with knowing that Tom had wanted to spend at least one day in Hogsmeade in what Aberforth kept calling their room, even though they hadn't lived there for months.
When Tom's birthday had come, the first one they hadn't spent together, Hermione had sent him a huge box of assorted chocolates, an interesting book on tropical plants and their uses in Herbology and a hideous fuchsia wool scarf she had knitted herself.
Tom had sent the scarf back twice, the third time he had sent her a pair of impeccably knitted gloves, with her initials embroidered on the cuffs, which he had obviously made himself to prove his point.
Hermione had laughed out loud at the sight of the gloves but she hadn't taken them off all winter.
She was just putting them on, wondering when Tom's next letter would arrive, when the door to her room swung open.
From Perenelle's bewildered gaze, Hermione sensed that the woman must have been looking for a completely different room, however the woman pulled herself together soon enough.
"Oh well!" She exclaimed in her pronounced French accent, "I guess I would have been looking for you shortly anyway!"
Hermione offered a smile and a questioning expression at the enthusiasm that was spreading over Perenelle's face.
"We've put the rune back together! Only one is missing now and Nicolas is already working on it! Want to join us downstairs ... or upstairs?" Perenelle added the last bit with a wary glance at the corridor behind her.
"Did you find it? What rune is it?" Hermione asked, quickly picking up her notebook and leafing through the pages until she found the one she was drawing the runes on, "It was the salamander, wasn't it? I knew it was the salamander!"
"Right! The salamander!" Perenelle confirmed, gesturing for Hermione to follow her out into the corridor, "You were right! The number six, or the salamander in this case, may be the rune that broke the time-turner's time limit!"
"Well of course it was! The mere presence of the number six on an item with a five hour limit must have caused some sort of variability, especially if paired with blood magic… oh this person was smart…!"
"Precisely! Nicolas has finally found the correct variation of the rune, it must be it, and it would confirm our theory."
"Does it have all of the five accents?" Hermione asked tucking some of her wild curls behind her ear and sticking her quill in it while turning her notebook upside down.
"All of them!"
"Which alphabet?" Hermione asked, hurrying to follow Perenelle down or up a flight of stairs, praying said stairs wouldn't suddenly decide to vanish.
"It was the ancient Norse alphabet this once, just as we first thought! We would have saved ourselves weeks of studying Hieroglyphs if we hadn't left the Norse for the Egyptian!" Sighed Perenelle, "Not that it wasn't fun..." She added.
"Here you are!" Nicolas exclaimed when the two women broke into the library where he and Perenelle had started working on the rune that morning.
Hermione noted bitterly that it wasn't the library she preferred, but was content to have taken less than five minutes to find Nicolas at least.
"Good morning!" She greeted, immediately taking a seat at the table on which Nicolas was perched among a ridiculous number of open books.
"Here it is! The culprit!" The man smiled enthusiastically, pointing to a microscopic rune at the foot of an ancient treatise on Magical Traductology and Interpretation of Norse Lost Languages.
"I knew it!" Hermione hissed as she quickly copied the rune to her notebook in a more acceptable format.
"Where are we at then?" Nicolas asked, pretending to look for some notes he clearly knew he had lost.
"We have two runes," Hermione summed up quickly, "which probably represent a date, the Lily of the Valley, which could stand for May, and Uruz, the number two." Which made sense considering that she had arrived in 1931 on May 2nd.
"Now we also have the Salamander, which would have helped in breaking the time limit... we are left with a single unknown rune."
"I still think this one was custom designed." Perenelle murmured touching the remains of the time-turner hanging from Hermione's neck.
The pendant with the words of L.M. was the only part of the puzzle Hermione hadn't shared with anyone, not even Dumbledore; it hung on Hermione's wrist on an anonymous-looking bracelet and she instinctively tucked it into her sleeve when Perenelle got slightly too close for comfort.
"Well that would pose a big problem..." Hermione sighed.
"Not that big either..." Said Perenelle cheerfully.
"You just have to guess what whoever sent you here wanted to achieve." smiled Nicolas.
"Or we could invent our own rune, oh wouldn't that be exciting, Nicolas?"
"Indeed, it would!"
Hermione stared at the elderly couple for a moment before shaking her head vigorously and returning to focus on the runes she had collected up to that point.
"No ... there must be some sort of logic. We have a when and a how… we need a why…" She whispered, staring at the runes as if the power of sight alone could somehow solve the puzzle.
"Well, now that we've found most of the runes, we should start building a prototype for the pendant." Perenelle announced, summoning parchment and quills.
"Can we do it here?" Hermione asked without taking her eyes off the runes.
"Not really, Nicolas managed to get the metal alloy right, but to melt it and shape it we would have to ask a Nott ... they are the ones who invented the initial prototype anyway."
"Nott, you say?" Hermione's head snapped up and her gaze bounced from Nicolas to Perenelle.
The only Nott Hermione knew of were Theodore, the angular and cruel boy of her time, and the one who was perhaps his father, Eurus Nott, who was currently one of Tom's classmates, and a probable future Death Eater.
"Cantankerus Nott, should be the head of the family now…?" Perenelle ventured a quick glance at her husband in search of confirmation.
"Nott ... could we avoid explaining the whole situation to him? He ... is related to someone Tom knows."
"Oh!" Perenelle exclaimed, vanishing the parchment she had already scribbled too many details on and summoning a new one, "Sure ... we can!"
"No news from Dumbledore yet?" Nicolas asked as he climbed from the table onto one of the huge bookcases and pulled down a series of dusty books.
"Nothing yet ..." Hermione confirmed, "I sent him the blood magic spell we talked about last week, but he still hasn't replied. Assuming the owl isn't just lost in this maze .. . "
"Oh nonsense, owls never get lost in here!" Perenelle laughed, but Hermione caught Nicolas's doubtful gaze and felt apprehension squeeze her guts.
"Your nephew?" She asked then, trying to cheer herself up by changing the subject.
"He never got lost here either ... except for that one time ... remember Nicolas? How long did it take us to find him?"
"More or less two days if I remember correctly." The man chuckled, swinging from one bookcase to jump to another.
"No, I mean, did he respond to your letters?"
"Oh yes! I could have sworn his letter was here somewhere ..." Perenelle took a look at her surroundings searching for the letter but soon gave up when she met Hermione's sarcastic expression. There wasn't a corner of that room that wasn't a complete mess of notes, pencils, pieces of canvases and scattered books.
Finding something in that chaos, even leaving out the fact that the house had a life of its own, was ridiculous to even consider.
"He should join us next week!" Perenelle said blushing slightly and returning to write her letter.
"He'll bring the sand with him!" Nicolas yelled from somewhere behind a shelf.
As expected from a good alchemist, Nicolas couldn't wait to move on to studying the Sands of Time.
Of course runes and blood magic had interested him and fascinated him all the same, but his favorite subject remained alchemy and the idea that he could soon get his hands on a completely new and never before seen Sand of Time, had thrilled him to no end since he had learned of its existence.
Not long after Hermione had moved in with the Flamels, a distant relative of the couple, Herbert Flamel, had found an unusual deposit of a particular Sand of Time during a trip to Romania, while looking for something else entirely ( some kind of bizarre bug to be included in Scamander's bestiary).
When the man had written to the couple, in hopes that they would host him so that they could conduct a thorough search on the peculiar Sand together, he had unknowingly kicked down an open door.
Both the Flamels, Hermione and Dumbledore had in fact, immediately agreed that it would be interesting to merge the two research fields, as such a coincidence seemed way too well-schemed by fate to be one.
Hermione though, had kept her expectations quite low, at least until now.
Many people in their right mind would not have believed a word of the story of a girl coming from as far into the future as 1998, plus, she had doubted Flamel's nephew would have shown up since his uncle had requested he'd swear to an Unbreakable Vow in case he decided to start working with them.
Apparently Hermione had underestimated Herbert Flamel's thirst for knowledge.
"Good!" She commented gleefully, before diving back into her notes.
It was almost too good to be true to think that pretty much everything was going well for once.
Sometimes Hermione worried that all these positive developments were just a red herring, a twist of fate, designed to have her let her guard down before striking with something horrible.
Anytime such thoughts would crowd her mind, she would be reminded of the odd feeling she had felt standing on Platform 9 ¾ that previous summer, when she had hugged Tom last.
Usually she simply awaited for these moments to pass, telling herself she had grown so used to life being miserable that she just had to get used to 'normal' again. She needed to stop with the negative attitude and start believing that maybe, all of her past efforts were simply, finally paying off.
"Owl, dear." Hermione shook herself from her thoughts.
"What?"
"Owl ..." Perenelle repeated with a gentle smile pointing to a large owl on the back of Hermione's chair.
"OH! Finally!" Hermione nearly knocked the bird off the chair snatching the letter from its paw, "Sorry ... here ..." she tried to make up for her behavior by offering the stern, and rather offended owl, a treat. The animal just gave her a scornful look and flew away without looking back.
"Oh well ... sorry!" Hermione yelled while tearing away the envelope without much grace.
"Your boy?" Nicolas asked laughing at Hermione's sweet expression as she recognized Tom's familiar handwriting.
"Yeah…" she confirmed.
"Has he solved our riddle yet?" Asked Perenelle trying to peek at the content of the letter.
Hermione smiled widely. He had. Of course he had. Her brilliant boy!
Herbert Flamel arrived at the Flamel residence on a rainy Monday in March.
Not that anyone had noticed.
The house had cheerfully welcomed the Flamels' descendant, without bothering to notify anyone of his arrival.
Herbert's presence was noticed only when the latter broke into one of the attics to find the Flamels and Hermione lying in the dust, surrounded by books and notes, studying by the light of their wands.
He told them that he had spent a good part of the day looking for the inhabitants of the house before finally finding them, while they explained to him that they had not been locked up in the attic for two days of their own choosing, rather, the house had thought it a just punishment to lock all the doors after a particularly malicious comment made by Hermione about the need to exorcise the stairs.
For some reason, perhaps because of the couple's venerable age, Hermione had expected Herbert Flamel to be a middle-aged man; in her mind, she had painted the image of a grizzled man with a round, jovial face and extravagant clothes. Something similar to a rejuvenated version of Nicolas himself.
The Herbert Flamel gawking at them from the trap door leading to the attic had been nowhere near what Hermione had expected.
For starters, the man was barely in his 30s, fully dressed in a three-piece suit that was tight enough to make his muscular shoulders and chest stand out. He had very clear green eyes, shielded by a pair of wide glasses and curly blond hair, disheveled to perfection. He had square large front teeth and a slightly crooked nose, which nevertheless made sense in that context.
Not the kind of middle-aged nerd Hermione had anticipated, at all.
Simply put: Herbert Flamel was handsome and liking him was ridiculously easy, especially if you were a Hermione Granger.
He was the perfect middle ground between a socially misfit nerd and an adventurous sexy explorer. Basically it seemed he had been tailor-made according to Hermione's tastes and thrown in the mix to spice things up a little, maybe get her mind off her dark thoughts a little.
And it worked.
The flirting between Hermione and Herbert was something immediate and inevitable.
They had kindred minds, compatible humor and they were also the youngest ones in the residence, which somehow forced their situation a little.
Hermione and Herbert's relationship always remained innocent and platonic, nothing that could have evolved into anything more than a slightly playful friendship, both because Hermione's experience in matter of men was confined to a kiss stolen from Ron in the middle of a battle more than ten years ago (which certainly hadn't given her enough ground and confidence to know how to deal with a grown man now) and because of Hermione's peculiar ageing situation, that Herbert just couldn't bring himself to overlook.
In fact, although Hermione had lived around nine years in the past and should have been around 25 or 26 by now, numerous tests with the Age Line had confirmed what she had been suspecting for a while already. Her body had stopped ageing at age 17, so, at least technically, she hadn't aged a day since the day she had arrived.
Herbert wasn't going to be the love of Hermione's life, nor anything even remotely close to that, but thanks to his presence, Hermione found that she could still enjoy the perks of some healthy male attention.
It was fun to study with Herbert, to listen to his tales and his adventures, to walk around Paris holding hands, to exchange pungent digs, to fake jealousy rants and to blush every now and then.
In short, it was nice for Hermione to be able to experience the more superficial and simpler aspect of life too.
Not just a matron, teacher, savior, not just the warrior and the mind of the trio, not only the responsible one... Hermione found out she could be just a girl every now and then too.
Although there was nothing really significant to say about her relationship with the man, Hermione still somehow failed to mention Herbert's existence to Tom.
When Herbert had arrived she hadn't immediately been able to invent a justification for the man's presence. After all, Tom didn't know about the Time-Turner study, so she definitely couldn't tell him about the Romanian Sands of Time.
A few weeks later, she had told herself that maybe she could've just told Tom about a Flamel relative coming to visit… yet every time she had been about to put Herbert's name on the parchment she had felt stung by some kind of silly feeling of guilt.
Such guilt wasn't entirely related to the fact that she knew how jealous Tom could be or how childishly he was still convinced that Hermione was somehow going to be the woman of his life. Those were concerns she would have easily dealt with.
Rather, Hermione was torn between two major worries.
On the one hand, she thought it wasn't fair to distract Tom from his studies and make him feel uncomfortable about a story that meant absolutely nothing (Merlin, she had never even kissed Herbert, nor she planned to).
On the other hand, there was 'something' biting deep inside her guts, a terror that made her irrationally think of the summer of the cave whenever she thought of putting Herbert's name in a letter.
That 'something' within the depths of her mind, a 'something' Hermione hated as it implied she still didn't trust Tom not to become Voldemort, suggested it would have been better to talk to Tom in person, at home, when he wouldn't have had a whole school full of minors to vent his frustrations on, just like he had done with Dennis and Amy in the past.
Perhaps, it was because of this second concern that in the end, Hermione opted to keep silent on the matter, especially since summer was near again, and she would soon be back in Scotland anyway.
If Hermione could have predicted that someone else would have benefited from Tom's frustration, she would have done otherwise.
Tom glanced at the large clock on the wall, sadly confirming that it was not nearly dinner time yet.
The librarian, sitting right under the clock, gave him a fleeting smile before returning to scribble something on the parchment in front of her and Tom sighed.
He rubbed his eyes and stared back at his essay on the International Warlock Convention of 1289, wondering if there was a more boring subject than History of Magic. Probably not.
"I still don't understand the link between the Convention and the Medieval Assembly of European Wizards..." Nott murmured, banging his forehead on the solid oak table and groaning softly.
"The what, what?" asked Lestrange, peering at Nott's scrolls with a confused expression.
"I have a feeling we'll never be done with this fucking essay…" moped Mulciber, "Can't we just copy from you, Riddle?"
Tom rolled his eyes and snorted.
"If I'd let you copy you wouldn't learn anything and I'd find myself surrounded by idiots ..." He glanced at Lestrange, scribbling doodles on his essay, "Not that I have too high expectations ..." he added.
Nott smiled and stretched in his chair.
"I'm going to look for more material... there's no way this is all there is on the subject" said the dark haired boy gesturing to the four books scattered on the table.
"Leave it," Tom said as he stood up and stretched his limbs, "I could use a walk, I'll go."
Tom liked libraries.
Hermione had told him so much about Hogwarts' library that somehow, walking around those shelves, he had the feeling that she was always around the corner.
The description she had given him of every aisle was so accurate that it seemed she had spent most of her school years locked in there, which was probably quite accurate, considering she could still quote entire paragraphs from Tom's school books without even opening them.
Tom was so lost in his thoughts about Hermione and how much he missed home that he winced slightly when, turning yet another corner, he found himself in front of the imposing figure of Dumbledore.
He immediately stiffened and schooled his expression into a totally blank one.
There was something about the Transfiguration professor he had never liked. Whatever Hermione said, Tom always had the feeling that this man was not to be trusted.
Dumbledore had always given him a vibe that, though remotely, reminded Tom of Mr. Wool and he often found himself wishing Hermione would come and crush this man to obedience too.
"Professor," Tom greeted, bowing his head only slightly so he wouldn't have to lose eye contact with the professor.
"Mr. Riddle, on the hunt for a good book?" Dumbledore asked as he stopped scrolling through the volumes in the opposite aisle.
"In a way, Professor." Tom sighed, "I'm looking for something to help me and my classmates complete a History of Magic essay."
"Oh, let me guess, boy ... The 1289 Convention?"
"Precisely, sir."
"Binns has no imagination ... the same essay every year. When should you turn it in?" Dumbledore took a few steps in Tom's direction and leaned against a table. Tom subconsciously took a few steps to the side instead, leaning his back against a shelf and putting distance between himself and the professor.
"By Friday, sir."
Dumbledore nodded imperceptibly without taking his eyes off Tom.
For a moment Tom had the feeling that the man was measuring the space between them and the thought made his skin crawl.
"I'm sure Miss Granger would have a lot to teach you about the subject." Dumbledore suggested when he finally managed to snap out of his mysterious thoughts.
Tom felt the muscles on his back tighten at the mention of Hermione but he held onto his indifferent mask as best as he could.
"Unfortunately, Professor, Mrs. Granger is still in Paris and sending an owl would take way too long. I'm sure you are right though, she always knows best." He agreed.
Dumbledore nodded absentmindedly again.
Ah what Tom wouldn't have given to know just what the hell the man always seemed to be calculating. It was really annoying and unnerving the way the professor would quietly let him glimpse at the spinning gears of his brain denying him the knowledge of what they were processing.
"It's a shame you couldn't visit her," Said Dumbledore finally breaking the odd silence.
Tom raised an eyebrow involuntarily giving up his blank expression.
Dumbledore seemed to enjoy the sight of the surfacing annoyance and jealousy, because his lips curled in something more similar to a devilish grin than a smile.
"I bet you would have loved to meet Nicolas, Perenelle and Herbert... the Flamels are a very interesting family. I'm sure Mrs. Granger will come home even wiser than before."
If Tom had been less young and naive, he might have desisted from falling into Dumbledore's obvious trap, but he, unfortunately, wasn't. Repressing the need to gag he clenched his jaw.
"I'm sorry, sir, did you say Herbert Flamel?" He asked in the most neutral voice he could manage, as he tried to restrain the sudden rush of his heartbeat, already pumping liquid rage through his veins.
"Oh yes! Herbert, a very bright young man... worthy heir to a very important family, if you ask me." Dumbledore left the table and took a couple of steps forward, stopping to collect a small book from one of the shelves.
"Oh, but don't let me interrupt your search, Riddle, your classmates will be waiting for you."
"Classmates?" Tom asked blinking stupidly. He had suddenly lost the power to form a coherent thought as his mind kept spinning around the words 'Herbert' 'young' 'bright' and 'important family' blindly.
Dumbledore smiled a smile that did not reach his eyes, and Tom realized the man had stepped even closer only when he felt his own shoulders press against the bookcase behind his back.
He forced himself to focus on the older wizard and noticed the professor was now holding out a volume for him to take.
"I'm sure this book will help you with your essay, maybe you will even find some notes from past students in it... it's one of the most popular when it comes to Binns essays!" Said Dumbledore waving the book when Tom made to move to grab it.
"T ... Thank you, sir." Tom said snapping back to reality and snatching the volume quickly from the professor hands, if only to get the man to back out from his personal space.
Dumbledore did not take the step back that Tom had hoped for, instead, as soon as the boy closed his hands on the dusty cover of the book, the wizard came even closer, all the while reaching into the large sleeve of his robe and producing another volume.
Tom had to strain himself to keep his focus.
She wouldn't have hidden something from him, right? Hermione… she wasn't a liar. Was Dumbledore bluffing? Why? And why the fuck was he still so close?
Tom wished he had fangs, long poisonous fangs. He wished he could be threatening and scary, enough to get that old man to just step away and leave some room for him to breathe. His thoughts started blending all together and every time he blinked he could see Mr. Wool unfastening his belt with a grin.
He knew it was a stupid thought, but part of him promised if Dumbledore as much as tried touching him right now, he would have just jumped him and torn his throat open with his bare hands.
Blinding and angry thoughts snarled in his mind, feelings he had forgotten about years ago. Damn, he had never been good with anger management nor with other men…
"Have you ever read this, Riddle?" The professor asked in a carelessly innocent tone that managed to wear down Tom's nerves even more if possible.
"Hogwarts, a history? No, sir. I don't think I've read it." Tom spat through clenched teeth. Dumbledore's clear eyes lingered in his for way longer than necessary.
"I think you might find it interesting, Riddle."
"For the ... for the essay, professor?"
"Oh ... well yes maybe even for that. It's a fascinating book, it might surprise you. Among Miss Granger's favorites I believe."
Just hearing Hermione's name again, caused Tom to lose his hard-earned mental balance again and anger began to run over him like a raging river.
He had to physically shake his head, clouded by the hiss of words like 'liar', 'traitor', 'cheater', to be able to go back to staring at the professor.
"Professor, I don't think I've ever heard Mrs. Granger talk about this book." Tom said accepting the weight of the second volume as Dumbledore placed it on the previous one.
"In that case," said Dumbledore finally moving to a more comfortable distance, "I hope I haven't revealed a secret of hers!" With those last words, Dumbledore walked away between the shelves without even turning to say goodbye.
As the wizard disappeared from his sight, Tom heard an angry rattle finally erupt from his throat and dropped the two volumes at once.
Too overcome with anger, and shaken by the tension of the unwanted proximity of that man, Tom slumped on a shelf gasping for air, taking mouthfuls of oxygen and trying to stifle the anger that was about to burn him alive.
His magic creaked and crunched shamelessly around him. The books on the shelves closest to him sizzled as if someone was frying their pages in melted butter.
Who the fuck is Herbert? Cheater! Liar! Fucking… bitch… what the? Dumbledore… he had schemed for this… he should've paid… that bitch… what else had she hidden?!
Tom's mind started running wild, there were angry voices hissing within it and in a matter of seconds he couldn't figure out who he was even angry at anymore, he was just seething, unable to hold back the consuming feeling.
"Are you all right, Riddle?" Tom's head snapped in the direction of the voice.
Nott was watching him worriedly from the back of the aisle.
It took another second but then Tom managed to pull himself together.
"All right," He said stiffly, "I just tripped and dropped my books."
"Sure ..." Nott murmured approaching cautiously and ogling the frying books on the shelves with a frightened gaze, "Can I get them for you?"
"There's no need." Tom snarled arresting Nott's progress at once, "I'm not a fucking weakling."
"Of course, sorry mate."
Tom reached down to collect the books and his eyes fell on the volume of Hogwarts, a History, which in the fall had apparently opened up to a random chapter.
"Chapter XIII - The Chamber of Secrets" Tom involuntarily read aloud, tilting his head in curiosity, "What ... kind of a book is this?"
"Did you say something, Riddle?" Nott was now standing beside him.
"No ... no nothing, let's go back I found something."
In the month before her departure for Scotland, Hermione hadn't given much thought to Tom's silence.
She knew he was busy with his last exams and she herself had been completely absorbed in the results of her own research.
Nott had agreed to produce three prototypes for a Time-Turner, the Romanian Sand had turned out to be a substance worthy of interest and although Hermione and Herbert had not deciphered the last rune, they had tracked down an ancient treatise that could have helped them in that sense. Herbert had left for Alexandria precisely to retrieve the ancient manuscript, and everything seemed to be going well.
Progress also came from Dumbledore's front, albeit ridiculously censored in his latest letters, a problem Hermione promised to address by confronting the man in person over the summer.
When July finally arrived, Hermione set sail for Scotland filled with excitement and anticipation.
She hadn't seen Tom and Aberforth for a whole year and by the time she arrived in Hogsmeade, her heart was so erratic that she feared having a heart attack before even making it to the Hog's Head.
She ran down the alley leading to the house at record speed, turning several heads in her direction and laughing as she heard the Honeydukes' girls cheering for her from the shop window.
Hermione threw the inn's door open with such enthusiasm that it nearly came off its hinges.
"Hermione!"
"Abe!" Hermione leapt into the wizard's arms and let him twirl her around happily, under the astonished gaze of those who knew how grumpy Aberforth normally was.
"Oh! You've lost weight too! You and that boy ... didn't they have food in France?"
"Don't be silly, Abe! I haven't changed a bit!"
"Haven't changed my arse!" Aberforth thundered, deaf to Hermione's amused protests, "Thank goodness you're here now, I'll fix you up in no time!"
"Tell me you made apple pie!"
"I made apple pieS, as in several of them!"
Hermione smiled broadly then her eyes scanned the room again and Aberforth finally let her go.
"Where is he?" Hermione asked with her heart pounding with excitement.
"Oh ... he's ... Hermione I should warn you ..."
"Come on, Abe! Please, I'm dying! I have to see him!"
"Yes, he's upstairs, but ..."
But Hermione didn't let Aberforth get to the end of the sentence, she let out a little shriek and rushed towards the stairs, climbing them two steps at a time.
"Tom? I'm home!" She threw open the door to their former room but the room was deserted. Everything was exactly as they had left it a year ago, but there was no sign of Tom.
"Tom?" Hermione's voice trailed off and she lost some of the excitement in favor of genuine concern.
The bathroom door was open and that room was also empty.
Hermione spun around and then returned to peer out into the hallway of the inn just as the door to one of the other rooms, the ones that Aberforth generally rented to travelers, opened.
The boy who stood in front of her was almost as tall as her and his face was so similar to the face he would have had as an adult that Hermione's jaw dropped.
"Mulciber."
The boy froze staring at her with a curious expression, but before Hermione could say more her attention slid onto the boy standing behind Mulciber and her jaw could easily have come off completely at that point.
If it weren't for those eyes, gray as snow and stained with the deepest puddles of blue ocean, she would have had a hard time recognizing him.
"Tom?" Hermione heard herself ask stupidly as her eyes took in the transformation.
Tom had grown tall, much taller than when he had left a year ago, taller than her by a few inches for sure.
He wore a plain white T-shirt with sleeves rolled up to the shoulders and high-waisted jeans. The shirt showed some of his ancient scars, but if once he had been meticulous in hiding them, they didn't seem to bother him now.
"Do you know her?" Asked a third guy who was peeking at Hermione from behind Tom.
Tom's lips, well centered in a sharp, regular jaw, curled into a smirk but he didn't respond. Instead, he kept his cold gaze onto Hermione's visibly surprised one.
Hermione, shook herself from her numbness, pushed Mulciber out of her way and into the hallway and pulled Tom down into a bone-breaking hug.
His smell was familiar and warm, Tom smelled of Marseille soap, mint and dark chocolate, only his smell was more intense now, perhaps due to hormones. She took it in in big gulps, as if to make up for the long time she hadn't been able to.
What was truly astonishing was how tall and wide he had gotten. Where was the 5 year-old she had met only yesterday? Hermione felt tears prick her eyes and sniffled against his neck.
"Tom!" She whispered again, "Oh! I missed you so much!"
It was only then that she realized that Tom was stiff in her arms.
He wasn't returning the hug, he was just standing there, cold and distant, while she was squeezing him under the vaguely confused gaze of his friends.
Hermione released him as if she had suddenly caught fire and stepped back, still unable to cope with the fact that to look Tom in the face, she had to look up.
"Leave." It was the first word Tom said. His voice had morphed too. How odd.
Hermione gasped at how quickly his friends vanished down the hall as soon as he turned to glance at them, indicating it was them he was talking to.
An alarm bell went off in Hermione's mind at the sight of Tom's schoolmates acting exactly like the minions they would be in the future but she forced herself to ignore it.
"Look at you! All grown up! How tall are you?!" She asked venturing a smile.
Tom kept silently watching her, looking for something in her eyes.
"Tom? What's going on? Why don't you talk to me?" Hermione reached out to brush aside a lock of hair falling on Tom's temple in a wild curl but he pulled his face away from her touch and, at that gesture, Hermione felt a knot tightening in her throat.
She searched his eyes for a clue as to the reason for that strange behavior but Tom was impossible to crack, as if hermetically sealed from the world.
Hermione's heart sank into her chest and she had to cough to recover her voice.
"Did your friends rent the room?" Hermione asked looking around and noticing several school trunks along the entrance wall and two cages with two large sleeping eagle owls, "Will they spend a few days with us?"
"Us?" Tom asked, tilting his head to the side. A cascade of soft black curls followed the movement as he did, and Hermione was bewitched by the multitude of details about him that she hadn't even known she'd been missing until now.
From the way he talked, moving his lower lip more than the top one, baring at times a row of perfect lower teeth in the process, to the funny way his curls moved with him when it was summer and he left them natural.
Why was he so cold and distant when she just wanted to hug him and be told every detail of the last month of school? When all she wanted was looking at the full range of his expressions and smiles?
"With us ... did I say something wrong?" She asked trying to get a few steps closer, but Tom took a couple back until his back touched the wall, then he looked down at his feet, biting his lower lip from the inside.
"Nott's mum rented the room for us for the summer." He informed her after a while, glancing at her from under his long dark lashes.
"Oh…" That was all she could say, taken aback by the icy distance Tom was putting between them.
Sure Hermione remembered how heartbreaking and difficult it could be to deal with teenagers, but maybe she was out of practice, or maybe she just hadn't expected Tom to follow into the usual pattern given their close relationship, anyhow, this time she found herself unable to react properly, overwhelmed by a sudden sense of sadness and bitterness.
"Well, see you around, then." He said suddenly pushing himself off the wall and moving towards the door. Hermione moved faster and grabbed his wrist stopping him.
She felt Tom stiffen under her touch but she did not let go.
"Tom… what's wrong?"
"Let go."
"Tom, just tell me. What is it?"
"Let go of me, now."
"Please, I don't…"
But Tom snapped before she got to the end of the sentence.
With a fluid gesture, he twisted his wrist between her fingers and grabbed hers, then used his new physical strength to push her back and against the wall he had been leaning on moments earlier.
Hermione gasped in confusion, the air was knocked out of her lungs when her back hit the wall and she blinked rapidly, unable to really understand what was happening.
Tom's face was fleetingly illuminated by the same expression he had had when he had found out he could physically overwhelm Dennis and Hermione shivered.
"I said, don't touch me, you liar."
"Liar ... what? Tom? What?" Hermione's stomach became an ice block. Tom's anger flared behind his eyes.
"Aren't you a liar, then?"
"I ... what are you talking about? What?"
"You didn't lie to me? Tell me, Hermione, am I wrong? If I'm wrong, I'll apologize." Something wild curled his lips into a smile that wasn't genuine at all. Hermione's heart churned in her ribcage, something crushed her lower abdomen and she gasped for air, air she couldn't guide into her lungs crushed as she was, between an unknown side of Tom and the wall.
"I ... Tom? Why are you doing this? Can we talk?"
"Answer me." His voice had grown low and dangerous, the words hissed between his clenched teeth, "Who is Herbert, Hermione?"
Black dots began to dance in Hermione's field of vision and she placed some of her weight in Tom's hands, which still held her pressed against the wall. His expression did not waver slightly.
"Nobody, Tom, it's not ... that's exactly why I didn't tell you ..." she finally managed to spit, placing her hands against his chest to push him away. He let her and took a step back.
"You disgust me, you liar." He snarled.
"What the hell is wrong with you!? What's with the anger? We haven't seen each other for ages! I would have talked to you about it if you'd given me a chance!"
"I don't care, I'm not going to spend my time with a liar, I have better things to do."
"Tom!" Hermione almost screamed this time, stopping him from moving towards the door.
Perhaps the wisest thing would have been to let him go, there was no way he could stay angry forever, yet Hermione could not be lucid or wise at that moment. She was angry, she was offended, she was mortified, and disappointed in herself, she was scared to death that she had pushed him too far from her, she was confused about how he knew about Herbert in the first place, she was afraid she didn't know this Tom well enough.
He turned to stare at her again, his jaw clenched so tight he could have chipped his teeth applying just a little more pressure.
"Don't ... don't do that. Don't get away from me. I didn't mean to hide anything from you, there was nothing to hide. Ask me anything, I'll answer any question. We can talk."
"I do not care."
"Please ... I ... Tom ..." Hermione's struggle with her own tears was lost and they streamed down her cheeks regardless of her attempt to stop the flow.
"Did you fuck him?"
"WHAT?!"
"Oh, you heard me." Tom retraced his steps until he towered over her again, his anger was almost palpable, a warm aura enveloping him.
"What ?! NO! NO! Not that I owed you any explanation even if I did!"
A those words he came so close and so fast that Hermione flinched backwards holding her hands up, fearing he would strike her. He didn't.
"Tom! You're stepping over the line! Yes, I lied to you and I apologize, I didn't want you to be anxious knowing there was another man in the house I was in, but even if I was interested in that man , which I'm not, Tom, you're not my boyfriend! When will you understand? It is not your place to decide what I do with my life! "
"So what am I?"
"I ... what?"
"WHAT AM I TO YOU?!" He roared.
"You ... are ... Tom ... we are a family ... you are ..."
"You are mine." he hissed, "Is that clear?"
"You can't decide on your own! You're just a boy, Tom!"
"Shut up." He hissed.
"You're just a child, Tom, I'm sorry but you are and you just don't see certain things but soon…"
"A child? Do you have eyes on that pretty liar face of yours?" Tom scoffed, looking down at himself as if to prove a point.
"So you've gotten tall, now what? If you want me to see you as anything more than just a child, then stop acting like one!"
"I'll give you the child." He laughed devilishly, his sharp grey eyes stabbing through hers.
Hermione's eyes widened when one of his hands landed around her neck, she parted her lips to protest but the next thing she knew, was his face was closer than it had ever been.
Before she could say a single world, full warm needy lips landed on hers, sealing her mouth shut.
"Mhf… No!" she fought him, trying to push him away but Tom only pressed harder against her. The more she fought back, the more his unwelcomed kiss turned demanding and harsh.
He bit her lips forcing her to open up and his warm tongue assaulted her mouth.
Hemione pushed against his chest with renewed vigor but her struggle was useless against his newfound strength.
His spit tasted sweet, like chocolate, and it was minty like him, Hermione hated herself for noticing such a thing. She gagged, disgusted at the whole situation, disgusted by him and by herself.
Tom broke the kiss when he felt like it, leaving Hermione gasping for air and blushing wildly in anger. Her hand lifted automatically and she aimed for his face, but he caught her wrist and twisted it painfully.
"You lie to me again…" he warned, tightening his grip, "You lie to me again, Hermione, and you'll see."
Tom left the room without saying anything else, without them having really cleared up anything. Hermione slid against the wall and onto the ground and cried every tear she could produce until she was too tired to even think, too broken.
She went back to their former room and dropped onto the bed, unable to move, unable to process what had just happened. A poisonous little voice in her head whispered that she should have paid more attention to the presentiment she had had the previous summer.
She did not show up for dinner, nor did she answer when Aberforth knocked on her door. She heard Tom and his friends retire to their room late at night, and shivered at the idea that he could enter the room. He didn't.
Hermione tossed and turned in bed all night, blaming herself for everything.
If only she hadn't lied, if only she had pulled out her wand, if only she had returned for the Christmas holidays, if only she had resigned herself to the idea of staying in the past, if only she had contented herself with sacrificing herself for good , if only she had focused on the Voldemort issue.
And now Tom was lost and she had no idea how to get him back on track. She had no idea where these events would lead, if she hadn't created Voldemort she'd still created something… wrong… was it her fault? It had to be ...
It was only at the first light of dawn, when the darkness of the night cleared, that a new realization entered the chaos of her mind. A thought that slowly began to take over everything else.
Who was the only other person Tom could've learned about Herbert Flamel from? And why would Dumbledore have felt the need to talk to Tom about Herbert? How could he have known Tom didn't know about Herbert… was Dumbledore reading their mail?
Those thoughts took Hermione's mind away from the matter of Tom's kiss and her own guilt for a moment, and she jumped to her feet before the clock even struck six.
She took a piece of parchment, locked the door, and went to sit at the desk.
She drew a long line on the parchment and marked Tom's date of birth at one end of it.
She added the year she arrived shortly thereafter, 1931, the year the cave accident happened right after, then the year they left London and the year Tom started school. She scribbled down the current year, 1940, and the following year with the inscription 'third year'.
Hermione stared at the rest of the line she had drawn, she closed her eyes, took a deep breath and plunged into her own memories looking for the detail that might solve the puzzle. She might have been horrible at raising children, but when it came to reasoning, she had always been good enough, hadn't she?
Harry smiled at her from the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall of her mind, Ron beside him looked at her with eyes full of love.
A tear, the last that Hermione still possessed, ran down her cheek and she let out a shaky breath.
"I don't think I will see you again." She murmured.
"We love you."
"Do not give up."
Hermione looked at the parchment with a sniff and scribbled down a few more dates, mostly significant events from her timeline.
What was it Dumbledore might have wanted? Why was he trying to get Tom to hate her? She had to find out, and in order to do so, she had to look at things from up close… closer.
"Oh, hell, I'm not letting you slip right now, Tom ... this is going down the way I want it to, and you better brace yourself." She hissed as she pulled two clean pieces of parchments from a drawer.
The first letter went to the Flamels, informing them that she would continue to participate in the search from afar, as a small problem that required her attention had arisen in Scotland.
The second letter contained far fewer words. It was aimed at Dumbledore and in it, Hermione suggested that Dumbledore ask Dippet for an assistant for the Transfiguration Chair, either that or the Prophet would have had a hell of a story to tell.
Aberforth barely allowed himself to look at Hermione when she stormed out of the Inn to go to the public owlery. He flinched when upon her return, Hermione addressed him with a new fire blazing behind her eyes.
"Where the hell is that boy?" She asked downing a shot of Firewhiskey Aberforth had meant to serve to another customer.
"Hermione ... please don't fight, you know, it's just a difficult age and ..."
"Abe. We won't fight. Where is he?"
"The boys… they are in the back..." he conceded then defeated.
Hermione drew her wand under the frightened eyes of those sitting at the bar drinking, she nodded, took a deep breath and marched towards the back door.
"Wait!" She heard Aberforth yell worriedly.
The door flew open and the three boys sitting in the tall grass whirled in its direction with allarmed expressions.
The first two jinxes hit the targets before they could even realize Hermione was armed.
Tom's eyes widened at the sight of Nott dancing away towards the path leading to the main road and his jaw dropped as Mulciber's head was encased in a pumpkin and the boy got knocked off his feet seconds later.
He turned back to Hermione who was advancing inexorably towards him, her wand held high in front of her.
Her hair swirled and creaked with magic and her eyes were wild and filled with a new resolution.
In the blink of an eye Tom was five years old again and before him, he saw the warrior girl again, ready to deliver her divine punishment to whomever deserved it.
Too bad he had failed to realize that this time he would be the recipient of the aforementioned divine punishment.
Tom gaped at her helplessly, unable to even think of standing up.
He couldn't tell if the sly smile spreading on her face scared him or aroused him, maybe both. He gulped down loudly.
"Colloshoo" she mumbled and he felt his shoes stick to the grass underneath them.
"Wait up!" He yelled then, when it finally occurred to him that he should have ran away and that it was too late now.
"Oh, should I wait now?" She laughed wickedly.
"Let's talk, let's talk, Hermione..."
"Oh no, Tom ... I'm sorry but the time for you to talk is over." A moment later Hermione was on top of him, she straddled him grabbing his collar with one hand and pointing her wand under his throat with the other.
Tom had never been so scared and hard at the same time in his short life.
"Now you will listen to me." She hissed and brought her lips to his ear, so that the people who were rushing into the backyard to see what was going on couldn't hear, "We have a deal Tom Riddle and you will stick to that deal and drop your attitude or I'll curse you to hell and back until you regret the happy times with Mr. Wool. Did I make myself clear, Tom?"
Tom nodded in spite of himself, growling slightly as Hermione's lips brushed his earlobe.
"Well, Tom, now apologize for your behavior and know that next time you force something on me I'll hex your balls off for good."
Tom couldn't hold back a small moan. He gave her a wicked smile when she leaned back to scowl at him. She shook him by the collar of his shirt and he sobered up slightly.
"Sorry," he breathed out, "For my behavior, it was inappropriate, my love."
"Professor."
"What?"
"You can call me professor." Hermione hissed as she plunged her wand deeper into his jugular.
"You're joking!" Tom scoffed.
"Oh, but I'm not laughing, am I?"
"No, professor." He spat.
She seemed pleased by those words.
"Well I hope we've bridged our differences." Hermione started to get up but Tom grabbed a lock of her hair pulling her back close to his face.
"I'll stick to my part of our deal, but you are mine and nobody else's and I will not react well to another lie, professor, my love." Tom smiled licking his lower lip, savoring the taste of her breath against his lips.
The kiss he had stolen from her the day before might have been a mistake but if he could go back he would do it all over again.
Hermione stared at him intently for a long moment, seemingly evaluating his words.
"Do you want me for yourself?" She asked after the long pause.
Tom was so taken aback by the question that words failed him.
He just nodded, feeling something hot envelop his lower belly and spread under his belt and down his legs, burning where Hermione still sat astride him.
Her lips parted in a smile that promised the pains of hell and the glories of heaven and Tom almost came undone at the sight alone.
"Well, you'll have to win me over then, and just so you know, I never liked whiny fourteen year old brats, love of mine."
And with that she was hauled off of him by a panicked Aberforth while the small crowd rushed to the rescue of the other two jinxed boys.
"Game on, professor." Tom whispered out of breath.
So... yeah... that happened.