Written for the International Wizarding School Championship Season Two

Round : Round Eight—The Muggle World

School : Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

Year : Year 5 - Deputy

Theme : Kings Cross Station—Discovering Magic for the first time.

Prompts : 7. (word) Superior [Main]

2. (Setting) Muggle Playground [Additional]

13. (Plot Point) Unlikely Friendship [Additional]

Please check the AN at the end for my explanation of prompts.

Word count : 2220

Warnings : Dark!Hermione. Diary!Tom. They make a girl go missing. Be warned.

A/N : Dark!Hermione AU, set before PS. Shows Hermione's journey from finding out that she is a Witch to going to Hogwarts, with Diary!Tom guiding her.

Great Deeds

Hermione finds a strange leather-bound diary amongst her shopping when she gets back home from Diagon Alley, and on it is a faint inscription that reads T. M. Riddle.

The Leather bound notebook is old and worn, undoubtedly a diary of sorts. It strikes Hermione as odd that its pages are blank even though they look well used, as if the imprint of a thousand hands have been left on them. She knows they hadn't bought it back in Diagon Alley—it wasn't on their list. It had probably ended up with her by mistake, perhaps in Flourish and Blotts—the most enchantingly wonderful bookstore she has ever visited in her life.

But it really doesn't matter now, she decides, shrugging. It isn't as if she'll be able to find the owner of the Diary from all of Diagon Alley. What are the odds that they'll ever cross paths again? So she puts the Diary on her nightstand carefully and goes back to sorting and packing all her Magical belongings in the new trunk they had bought—she's eleven now, she can do it on her own. They'll have to stay there for about another year until she can go to Hogwarts. The woes of being born right after school starts! For the next year she'll have to keep going to the normal school—Muggle school, as Professor McGonagall had called it—and then next September she'll be studying in Hogwarts.

She sighs when the pile of Muggle schoolbooks catch her eye. They are drab and unexciting in comparison to the Wizarding textbooks—the entire Muggle world is drab and unexciting in comparison to the Wizarding World.

'Maybe that's why no one accepts me at school," she thinks, huffing as she stacks neatly folded robes in the trunk. 'I don't fit because I am not like them. I am special, and they are drab and jealous.'

She imagines for a while the look on the faces of other children if they found out that she could perform magic. They'll all be thunderstruck, and then they'd be sorry for all the mean names that they've called her. They'll all want to be her friends. They'll all be afraid to hurt her. She smiles smugly at the thought even though she knows that she is not allowed to tell anyone about her abilities. Magic and its knowledge is for special people, not for normal, stupid ones like her 'classmates'.

"Hermione!"

Mum calling her from downstairs distracts her from her happy thoughts and she puts down the book she had been about to put in her trunk.

"Come downstairs and set the table, honey."

She sighs and climbs off her bed. Being special does not excuse you from chores, apparently.

It is after she has packed in everything except her wand and her mum has checked in on her that Hermione's gaze falls on the diary kept on her nightstand. She used to keep a diary until a year ago, before Penelope Worthington had found it and read it to the entire playground. Everyone had laughed at her then. She had cried for ages. But maybe she can start one again. She's a Witch now—if someone tried to make fun of her, she'd make them pay.

She thinks over it for a few seconds and then makes up her mind. She will start another diary. Her life is going to change now anyway, she should start recording it. She closes the lid of her trunk and pushes it under her bed, then gets a pencil from her desk and scrambles into bed again, wand beside her on the pillow and the Diary in her lap.

'Dear Diary,' she writes carefully in her best handwriting.

'Hello! I am your new owner, Hermione Granger. You can call me Hermione.' The words stay on the old crinkled paper for a few seconds and then disappear in a swirl of grey and blue. In their stead, new words appear on the page, black and neat. They even look sophisticated.

'Hello, Hermione,' they read, 'pleasure meeting you. I am Tom, Tom Riddle.'

Hermione stares at the page in surprise, eyes wide. The diary can talk to her. Understand her. It is truly magical!

She doesn't write anything for a few minutes, still surprised, so Tom writes to her instead.

'How did you find me, Hermione?'

Hermione grins as she watches the flourishing handwriting appear. The diary can truly hold conversations with her.

'I went shopping with my parents for all the things I need for my first year at Hogwarts," she writes, the smile not leaving her face. 'When I came back home, I had you with my things!'

'Oh,' Tom writes back, and Hermione feels his tone is inquisitive, although there is no way in which she can hear him. 'You weren't given me by someone? Perhaps someone of the name Malfoy?'

'No, perhaps they dropped you accidentally.'

'Hmm. Nevermind then. So, when does Hogwarts start?'

'Oh, it's a terribly long time away! I was born days after the term starting so I'll have to wait for a whole year and even go to this awful Muggle school Mum and Dad have chosen for me until then.'

'Muggle school …" she feels a slight prickle of surprise run from the diary up her arm. The page is blank after that for a few moments, until she feels a sarcastic sort of amusement come from the Diary. 'Are you a Mudblood, Hermione?

Hermione frowns, putting her pencil against the paper again but then drawing it away. A blonde man with a boy her age had said the same thing to her while they were in Diagon Alley, and not in a good way. She didn't know what it meant, but the word had stung. Professor McGonagall had said to ignore them.

'What does that mean?' she asks finally, gripping her pencil tightly.

The reply comes at a languid pace, the words still holding an amused aura. 'Are your parents Magical or are they Muggles?'

'Muggles.'

'Then you're a Mudblood.'

Hermione purses her lips and frowns. Tom doesn't seem overly concerned by the fact that she is a Mudblood, as he calls her, only greatly amused.

'Does it make any difference?' she asks finally.

'Not really.' She feels Tom laugh. 'Not if you know what to do and the right strings to pull. The Wizarding and Muggle, both worlds can be yours if you tread carefully enough.'

It is within hours that Hermione decides that Tom is a friend, a good friend, who can help her with the new Wizarding World. And a friend who can help her deal with the kids who treat her badly.

It is also within hours of acquiring her wand that she casts her first spell and her second and third, a few simple ones that Tom teaches her, even though he says a first-year student doesn't learn it until after four months of class. She waves her wand the way he tells her to in the direction of her bedroom door, and it flies open on her first try. She can feel a tingly sort of feeling in her head when she does it, and Tom writes in his flourishing handwriting, 'Well done.' She feels his glee and laughter radiating from the Diary. 'You're a natural. Powerful. You'll be the greatest Witch to walk earth if you let me guide you.' Hermione grins.

It is within hours that Tom decides that Hermione is a worthy Witch, a worthy accomplice. She won't die the way Lucius Malfoy's son Draco was about to, before Lucius had caught on to what was happening. She has a greater fate. The Mudblood is a worthier Witch to groom than a Pureblood Malfoy brat. Now to wait until she reaches Hogwarts.

They talk everyday since the first one, even when she starts going to the regular Muggle school and learning regular Muggle things. Tom teaches her Magic spells she is supposed to learn in school—she isn't supposed to use Magic outside of school, really, but the Ministry won't start tracking her until after she starts going to Hogwarts.

'Tell me about your life outside of school,' Tom says one day when they are talking, and Hermione feels what can only be curiosity come from the simple sentence, though it is mixed with something she cannot determine.

'Well …' she starts, then stops, not really sure what to say. She doesn't really have a very interesting life. She doesn't really have friends either. Some people in school are nice to her, although most aren't, but they cannot be called friends in her opinion. She cannot help but feel everyone hates her. Hates her for being better than them, hates her for being smarter, faster, special, superior. She avoids going out for that reason, though, and that might be called cowardice, but she sees no reason engaging with unfriendly children who are not like her. Things will be different at Hogwarts. Everyone will be like her over there. And that is what she tells Tom.

She feels a flash of something like anger from the diary before Tom says, 'Mistreat you, you say?' A pause. 'Put your hand flat on the page, Hermione.'

It is a command, not a request, but Hermione complies only because she is curious. She feels a small bout of something cold travel through her arm and inside her, and she realizes she can hear faint echoes of Tom's thoughts inside her head.

"Tom," she says out loud, "are you inside my head?"

He laughs, and she hears it in her head. 'Yes. Don't worry, I'll go right back.' The next moment she feels the cold feeling descend back into the diary.

'Who is this Penelope Worthington you seem to despise so much?'

'A girl from school who is not exactly what you'll call a friend.'

'She humiliated you and trod all over you. What did you do about it?'

'Nothing! What was I supposed to do? I am eleven!'

'Seek revenge, of course. How will you get anywhere if people do not fear your wrath, if they don't always think of the consequences for their actions? You'll need to let her know that you cannot be walked all over, little Lion.' She can feel the sarcasm that rolls off his tongue as he ends his sentence. Hermione knows by now that Tom isn't a fan of Gryffindor, and that she absolutely wants to go to Gryffindor.

'Go to that miserable little playground at once. And take me with you. We have a lesson to teach.'

Hermione isn't too sure what they are going to do once she has reached the playground, but hatred rises inside her like bile when she sees Penelope. Silly, stupid, normal. She herself is so much better. How can she let such a trivial girl make her feel the way she does?

It is noon, right after lunch. The kids will be trickling in the playground one by one now. Worthington is alone, waiting for her friends. The opportunity is perfect.

'This is her. What are we going to do?' she asks. Tom grins, the taste of his grin settling down on her tongue unpleasantly.

'Leave that to me. Walk up to her.'

Hermione walks towards the blonde haired Muggle with all the pride and courage she has, and stands before her with a purpose. Worthington's lips curl upwards cruelly when she sees her, but her smile freezes almost immediately. She glows a greenish colour, and her eyes glaze over. Without expressions or any reason, she begins to wander towards the edge of the playground, where the wilderness starts. Hermione doesn't move, only watches without expression as she keeps walking into the undergrowth. Before long, she is gone from sight.

'Where have you sent her?' she asks out of curiosity.

'Somewhere it will take her long enough to come back from …' he leaves the 'if at all' unsaid, but Hermione feels it anyway.

She turns on her heel and they head home, Hermione with an uncannily sweet smile on her face.

She has the little bit of Tom in her head when she sits on the stool to be sorted on the First of September in the Great Hall, although Tom makes his presence very small to avoid the Hat getting suspicious. There is no doubt in her mind that she wants to be a Gryffindor, no matter how much Tom tries to steer her towards Slytherin, because why wouldn't she want to belong to the house that is seen as the best of them all? It is a step closer to success. A barrier overcome. She is plenty brave, and she has plenty of nerve. She does, after all, have another soul in her head and she is, after all, already planning to overthrow the Wizarding World's norms. It needs courage. To decide upon such a thing is not a deed of small proportions.

The Sorting Hat considers three houses for her—Slytherin, Ravenclaw, or Gryffindor.

'Gryffindor,' she thinks clearly enough that the Hat is impressed and surprised.

"Quite sure, aren't you?" It murmurs as it shows her the path the other two could take her on.

"Gryffindor," she says again, and the Sorting Hat smiles.

"Choosing to be brave … needs quite the nerve. I'll be expecting great deeds from you, lassie." Hermione grins.

"Gryffindor!" announces the Sorting Hat.

'Indeed, great deeds,' Tom calls from inside her head as she heads towards the Gryffindor table.

A/N : I hope everyone enjoyed this little fic. I thought I could be a prequel of sorts for my dark!harmony story In Your Search For Power (Don't stumble Too Far). This is how it all begun.

Prompt usage : My main prompt is 'Superior', which has been used by showing how being magical makes Hermione feels superior throughout the story. She looks down on those who are normal and non magical.

Prompt Unlikely friendship is that between Tom and Hermione. Hermione is a muggleborn, and Tom would certainly have killed her had it not been for her exceptional magic, skill and resilience.

Prompt Muggle playground has been used as the setting for an important scene.