Notes:Thanks again for being the best readers ever. I appreciate all of you so much. And on we go to Truth or Consequences (yes, that is a real place in New Mexico, USA). Although this is perhaps more truth and consequences...

~*~ Five: Quoth the Serpent, "Nevermore" ~*~

She shivered as a blast of cold swept over them, rustling the fallen leaves coating the forest floor. Tom frowned and straightened, as if just remembering where he was. She didn't bother to follow his gaze up to the moon. It wasn't time yet, but it was close now. A chill that had nothing to do with the sudden cold crept down her spine and suddenly she felt horribly exposed.

Her dress was in tatters—nothing but scraps of once enchanted fabric. She searched frantically for something else to cover her bare flesh, to buffet her against the harsh reality of what she had allowed.

"Take this." Tom was holding his midnight dress shirt out to her. "I can make do easily enough without it."

She tentatively took the silken fabric from him, quickly slipping her arms into the oversized holes and buttoning the front closed with trembling fingers. The shirt only emphasized how much larger he was. It fell to her mid-thigh, almost a modest length for a tunic dress and the cuffs hung loosely far below her fingers. She rolled them carefully until the fabric only just swallowed her wrists. The collar exposed far too much of her ravished skin beneath, but it was better than nothing. She found her knickers beside the ruins of her dress and slipped them on, thankful they had survived the carnage.

When she turned back to him, Tom had already donned his trousers and was in the process of securing his belt. His chest was still bare—still littered with the evidence of their indiscretions. He leaned down to pull his socks on and she whimpered at the sight of his back. Long bloody trails were rent across his skin, some still oozing liquid scarlet under the diamond moonlight.

She had done that to him. And she had liked it.

She stumbled away, tripping over a fallen log and sprawling into a bed of cold moss and crisp autumn leaves. She barely registered the pain blooming in her palms and across her battered knees as a hissing penetrated her hazy senses. Hermione froze, some part of her recognizing the danger amidst the chaos of her emotions.

Then she saw it. A snake with a diamond head as large as her palm and a forked tongue tasting the air less than a meter from her. It hissed again and she flinched, breath catching in her trembling throat.

"Don't move."

Tom's voice was disturbingly calm, as if a giant serpent weren't wending its way closer to her with every passing breath. Hermione had never read about a beast like this, with luminous amber eyes and scales as black as a moonless night. But she was sure it was deadly. Whatever creatures lurked within the depths of this forest were not to be trifled with.

But what could she do? The snake was slithering steadily closer and her wand was lost in the wreckage of her ruined dress.

Tom's hand was hot, burning even, as it settled on her shoulder. "Trust me."

She would never trust him, but what choice did she have now? Hermione stayed as still as possible as he moved past her and toward the snake. Its head rose, tongue flicking in his direction. There was a moment where the serpent and Tom merely studied each other, an odd calm enveloping them both. Then it swung its mighty head back toward Hermione and surged forward.

Ghastly hissing filled the air. But it didn't come from the snake. The creature froze midway through its strike and turned its diamond head sharply toward Tom. It let out a menacing series of hisses. He remained stationary and unflinching. Then the unearthly hisses came again, Tom's lips moving in foreign patterns. The black scaled beast stared long and hard, its amber eyes seeming to pulse. An instant later it retreated and disappeared into the haunted depths of the spindly trees.

And then she knew.

A wave of nausea tangled with the surge of adrenaline that hit her veins. She lunged back toward her dress, digging frantically for her wand. It took forever for her to feel the reassuring press of the wood against her frantic fingers. But then she was swinging back to where he had stood and uttering every spell she could remember in the turbulent chaos of understanding.

"Stupefy! Reducto! Diffindo! Perfectus Totalus!"

Every incantation met its mark, but Tom didn't so much as waver. His full, kiss-bruised lips twisted in a smile that held too much regret. "I wondered when you would figure it out. You are, after all, the cleverest witch of your age, Hermione Granger."

Fear and panic drove the next desperate words from her lips. "Avada Kedavra!"

Tom's luminous eyes widened as the green light blasted through him, but he was entirely unscathed by its deadly effect. "I can't say whether I'm proud you tried or insulted that you would kill me after what we've shared."

Hermione stared down at her wand. The magic wasn't working. She blasted a nearby stump with a reducto and it blew to smithereens. Correction, the magic wasn't working on him. On Tom Marvolo Riddle. Lord Voldemort himself.

The nausea won. Hermione heaved whatever remained of her supper into the nearby flora. She had… she had… she couldn't bring herself to think it, to allow the truth of her actions to fully manifest in her mind.

Tom was by her side then, his strong hands holding back her loosened hair as she continued to retch. She was shaking so hard, upright only by the grace of his gentle grip on her shoulders. She wanted to tear away. Needed to race into the depths of the forest and lose her way until the truth was so far behind her, she could breath. But he was the only thing keeping her vertical and that made it so much worse.

"I told you before, I'm not quite alive. Not quite dead either, but definitely not alive. Magic in this realm can't touch me, but nor can I use magic on you or anything else here. I'm as close to a ghost as you can get and still have lungs that breath and blood that flows." His voice was soft, as if talking to a wounded animal.

The soft vibration of his chest against her quaking shoulders should have made her retch again, but instead she sagged against him. He pulled her away from the bushes and eased them both down on his rumpled jacket once more. Hermione shook violently in the circle of his arms.

"Can you be killed?" She wished her voice was stronger, sharper and filled with hatred. But she couldn't hate him. Despite who he was. Despite what he was planning to do to her. She couldn't hate the boy who had showed her the stars within her soul.

But she could still stop him.

He glanced over his shoulder at his ravaged back. "I can certainly bleed. But no, I don't imagine you could kill me. I am, after all, already dead or something very like it."

Hermione shifted against him, wishing she had the strength to pull away from the warm comfort of his chest. What sort of Hell would she go to for this weakness? She bit her lip hard enough to bleed. "But what are you? Vol—the older version of you is still alive…"

"If you can call what he's doing living. I certainly do not." Tom took a long breath that heated the nape of her neck. "In my arrogance I thought my sanity would remain more or less in tact when I created my Horcruxes. You are aware of those, aren't you?" She nodded silently and he continued, "but I was dreadfully wrong. The first few times were nothing, but as I continued to search for an escape from the veil, from what must come after, I splintered myself beyond recognition. Perhaps beyond repair."

She studied his hands clasped over her stomach, just resisting the urge to cover them with her own. "Then why are you so…"

"Sane?" He pressed a light kiss against her nape, the curls of her disheveled updo shifting as he moved. "I'm not. But every time a Horcrux is destroyed, a portion of my soul is freed and returned to me. My body comes from the incantation I performed when I created the diary that your friend Potter destroyed, but another fragment of my soul has since been returned to me. Because these parts of me were stored in some of the first objects, they comprise the majority of me. Thus, I am more than half myself now whereas that pathetic resurrected fool is only a tiny portion. He's more dark magic than man."

Hermione blinked. "You don't hate Harry? You don't want him to die? And you aren't working for… him?"

"I am absolutely not working for that disgusting creature without a proper body or brain. I would kill him if I thought it possible in such a short time frame. Perhaps after…" She could feel him shake his head. "But I digress. No, I don't want your friend Harry Potter to die. I don't particularly want him to live either, but that's because I have no opinion on the matter. I simply want to escape Hell, Hermione. The rest is immaterial."

She looked up at the full orb of the moon nearly at its apex. "And you'll do whatever necessary to ensure your escape."

His embrace tightened, pulling her closer into him. "Your soul is light and good, Hermione Granger. You will not be damned to Hell like me."

She was no longer so sure of that. What had occurred between them in the depths of this forest was dark and untamed, rimed with the sort of sin that paved the path to Hell. She shuddered and took an unsteady breath.

Nothing had changed. Everything had changed. But nothing in her plan had changed. She only had to distract him, keep him off kilter long enough to miss his chance at salvation. It might be cruel to keep from him, but she knew now he deserved his dark fate.

"If you were always going to kill me, why…" she couldn't finish the question. Couldn't put a voice to the trespasses that had occurred between them. To the dark intimacy that had consumed her.

"Just because I am willing to do everything I can to… survive, doesn't mean I didn't find you to be the most alluring soul at that ball. It doesn't mean I didn't choose you for another purpose entirely." His voice was deeper now, suffused with the echo of his desire, tantalizing as he brushed his mouth across the shell of her ear.

Hermione swallowed thickly. "So you want to fuck me more than you want to kill me?"

If he was surprised by her crude language, she couldn't tell. "No. I wanted to make you shatter until I was your entire universe. I knew you could be a flame to illuminate my darkness, Hermione, and I wanted to see you burn brighter than any star. I wanted to give you something precious before I stole it all away."

"Why not find someone else to kill then? Why not dance with me, sleep with me and then spare me?"

"Because you are the flame to illuminate my darkness," he repeated. "This ritual doesn't work with just any soul. Only the brightest, most kind hearted soul will break my bonds. Only a soul that does not harbor hatred for me. It requires more than a mere death; it requires an exchange."

Hermione twisted in the circle of his arms, finally finding the strength to stare into the depths of his sapphire eyes. "I will not sacrifice myself for you. I will not make that choice for the ghost of a monster no matter what has passed between us."

"I know." His smile was bittersweet and cut like a knife. "I never expected you would give up. The ritual does not require you to give your life. Only for me to take it."

The moon was suddenly too high and the forest too quiet. Hermione tore from the confines of his embrace and ran.