Notes: Thank you all for your continued support. I already miss Tom nearly as much as Hermione does and I know I will be writing his character again. For those of you who don't quite feel as satisfied as you thought with Tom's demise, good. That means I've done my job right and made you care, even just the tiniest bit. No death should be taken lightly, not even Tom Riddle's. And now the aftermath...

~*~ Forty Three ~*~

Time had stopped the instant their spell hit Tom. The space between was laden with the impossible weight of her emotions, every molecule of her body, every filament of her soul undiluted agony. Hermione couldn't feel her fingers, couldn't move even if she'd tried. Sensation was gone, replaced by the searing ache of loss and the cloying nausea of guilt. The sound of sobbing was echoing, filling the claustrophobic space. A part of her knew the sound came from her own throat, that she was the source of such pitiable keens, but she couldn't feel her vocal cords, couldn't control of the flow of primal emotion off of her tongue.

A vise was closing around her chest, her heartbeat clanging uselessly against its grip. Every breath was harder to find than the last, every moment so much worse than the one before. Indeed, every inhale was one more away from when he'd been alive, when those lips had been warm and inviting, not frozen in the midst of her name for all eternity.

Her fingers dug more deeply into his immovable chest, the absence of breath undeniable. There had been death, loss, but never this. This was worse than feeling his soul ripped out of her, than feeling him become nothing in the space of a heartbeat. This was so final she could barely comprehend it. Had she understood what death meant before? She'd watched her friends fall one by one, but from a distance, through the fog of war where death was omnipresent. There was no battlefield in this cursed study despite the destruction they'd wreaked upon it. There was only murder—deliberate and planned, cruel beyond the necessity of war. This was life stolen away in the most heinous of ways, unforgivable and unforgettable despite Tom being a willing victim.

Tom's robes were wet now, soaked in the sea of her penance. She could imagine drowning in this ocean, sinking to the darkest depths and letting the light fade away, letting the emptiness finally consume her. She yearned for such a release, an ending to this impossible suffering. The absolution of annihilation.

Strong hands shook her, rattling her limp frame, forcing time to start again. "Hermione, we have to go."

She wrapped her hands more firmly in the cloth below. Her voice was foreign, entirely separate, as she croaked, "I won't leave him."

The hands on her shoulders became as unyielding as her grip. "We have no choice. Grindelwald helped me destroy the rings using fiendfyre. He knows his part in our agreement is complete. He's going to come for us any second."

So Tom was truly gone. She'd known it in the depths of her shattered soul the moment the cord between them snapped, but the confirmation dug deep, twisting the shards cruelly, reminding her in a nauseating wave of the finality of their choice. Their choice. Hers, but also Draco's. They would never know who her wand had answered, which of them had mustered the conviction necessary to cast that killing blow. Hermione was sure it didn't matter. She had chosen to say the words, had chosen to rip his soul away from him, to steal what wasn't hers to take. Her lips found Tom's closed lids and brushed across them, searching for the flutter of movement beneath, a denial of all she knew to be true.

Draco was pulling at her again. "We can't stay. Every moment we spend here is closer to a lifetime of hell, of imprisonment at Grindelwald's hands. You saw what he did to Tom; we don't stand a chance."

Something broke in her then, primal and deep. "We don't deserve to! We don't deserve to survive this. I don't want to survive this."

Draco finally succeeded in yanking her away from Tom, her trembling, numb body caving against him instead of the boy on the ground. "I know. Merlin, I know."

"So let him come." She would be content to wait for Grindelwald, to suffer whatever torment he deigned to mete out. She was too much of a coward to beg for death, but a life of servitude would suffice.

"No. I will not let us ravage ourselves to destroy one monster, only to turn around and serve another. I will never bow to the will of another again." The grim certainty in his weary voice cut through the haze of guilt-ridden grief. Hermione looked at him, forcing her eyes to focus beyond the impression of light and dark. Stormy eyes came into focus, more agitated than she'd seen them, but also bright, unhindered by the emotion she found impossible to escape.

"Then death." Her words were firm, acceptance flooding through her, quelling the storm within.

Draco blinked at her, horror skittering across his severe features. "Bloody hell, Hermione. No. I could never bloody kill you, not even if you begged me."

The declaration hit too close to the dreadful scene that had played out only moments before. Hermione dry heaved into Draco's robes, several of the gashes on his battered face still leaking onto the fabric, his blood now mingling with Tom's on her quaking lips.

"But I want to die."

The words hung between them, ghastly in their truth. Draco's hands dug into her skin, sure to leave marks if her body lasted long enough for it to matter. His jaw twitched as he said evenly, "No. You don't want to die. You want the suffering to be gone. There's a difference."

Hermione couldn't help the glance over her shoulder at Tom. "I want it to never have happened. I want to never know what this feels like."

The door banged and they both jumped, Draco's hold on her more frantic than before. "I put the most intricate locking spell I knew on it when I came back in, but it's Grindelwald. It isn't going to hold for much longer. I need you to trust me."

She could hardly trust herself, but the fight had been drained from her, eradicated by the act she could never erase. So she didn't resist when Draco pulled her tightly to him, when a familiar chain settled around their shoulders and the world began to spin just as the door exploded from its hinges.

The explosion turned to dust, Grindelwald's intimidating silhouette to shadow, and the hum of the battle fortress to complete stillness.

Draco removed the time turner from about their bodies, chain tinkling softly in the absolute silence. Hermione stumbled back a step, then another, back connecting with the same wall Tom had held her against. Dust billowed at the contact, coating her in a fine sheen and emphasizing that while this might be the same wall, it was definitely no longer 1944.

"What have you done?" Her voice was chock full of accusation, of muddled disbelief.

"The best option of a series of bad choices." He was unrepentant, eyes a host of defiant storms.

"When are we?"

"Where we started, perhaps a bit later. It's never wise to cross paths with yourself, so I errored on the side of caution." He crossed the room, pushing the door open, clearly repaired sometime in the half century that had passed since its destruction. The air in the hall was no less stale, no sign of life, let alone occupation. Nurmengard was a ghost now, forgotten to the depths of time.

Hermione followed, not quite able to comprehend the leap they'd just made. She took a last glance at the floor of the former study, but it was nothing but dirt and forgotten time, no sign of the crime left, no bones or decayed flesh. It felt wrong, like the agony inside was a product of her imagination and not a gruesome facet of reality she would never escape. She had no idea how she kept her feet moving, how she walked silently after Draco until the cerulean sky ate the dust and the darkness away.

They were only halfway down the main stair of Nurmengard when the nausea hit. It knocked her over, sending her tumbling down a step or two, scraping her knees. She heaved, bile rising, but only air escaped her gaping mouth, throat already raw from the depths of her miserable grief. Distantly, she heard Draco topple too, then wretch violently.

Her head felt wrong again, off in ways that couldn't be explained by the viscous mess of her emotions. Draco growled, platinum hair falling across feverish eyes as he crawled toward her, every movement etched in pain. Hermione hauled herself upright, barely able to maintain the position. His shoulder connected harshly with hers as he mirrored her position. His breath came in uneven pants, his pulse a wild flutter at his straining throat.

"I… think… we… we've… really… buggered… this… up," she managed between straining breaths.

He coughed and blood fell on the stone. "We're merging with the other time stream, the one without Riddle. It seemed the most likely outcome if we came back here."

How he could string so many words together was beyond her. "What… does that… mean?"

"We're about to be erased."

That made her head snap to him despite the wave of nausea, despite the sharp spasm of pain. "What?"

His forehead dropped against hers, his skin clammy. "We talked about it."

"I said… no."

"You just said you wanted to forget all of this." His eyes were bright, fighting to focus on her.

Hermione choked as she forced a riot of bile back down her throat. "I wanted… to forget… what we did… to Tom, not you."

"You could never have lived like that. Even if you had me." The sorrow in his expression cut deep, the truth of his words deeper. "It's for the best."

"It was… my choice." It should have been. What they had done in that room had been her choice, no matter the consequences. At least she had known she'd written her own fate. But now Draco had robbed her of that, just as Tom had when he'd taken her mind. The intention was clearly different, but the sting still lashed into her. "You had… no right."

"No," he admitted. "But I would do it again. I would give you this freedom every time. There is more to life than suffering, Hermione, and you deserve to experience every moment of it."

Another wave swept over her, the disorientation overpowering now. Her vision blurred and faded for a moment. Her stomach reeled from the constant upset. She clung to Draco, hand finding his shoulders, breath mingling with his uneven pants. "I only want… you."

"I wish I could have been strong enough to give that to you," he murmured, words drunken and uneven. His lips seared across hers, a poor imitation of a proper kiss. "I love you, Hermione Granger."

She chased his lips, searching futilely for the sense of comfort, of coming home she always found against them. But there was nothing but chaos now, darkness eating away her memories, her senses until only the abyss loomed before her. She stared down at it and then let go, toppling endlessly through vast emptiness, drowning in an infinite night.