It was a Thursday in early December while Hermione was picking at her breakfast of eggs, beans, and fried bread that she cleared her throat to bring Tom's attention to her. He raised an eyebrow and lowered his coffee back to the table, giving her his undivided attention.
She offered him a small nervous smile and he raised the other eyebrow.
"Yes, Deliciae?"
"About Hepzibah Smith..." she began.
"Mmm," Tom hummed. "You did say I'd be meeting the lovely Madam Smith at some point this month. I am quite eager to secure my founder's items."
"I can imagine," she said with a grin that she hid behind her hair, not fighting the small surge of tenderness she felt at his eagerness to get his hands on magical artifacts. While thievery was obviously wrong, she was also well aware she wasn't going to keep him from stealing them. She had offered the information to him after all, and even had she not, he'd still be meeting Ms. Smith this month. If she was completely honest with herself, she was rather excited to examine the untarnished heirlooms as well.
"What about Hepzibah Smith, then, did you wish to discuss?" Tom inquired, fingering the lip of his coffee cup.
"I was just wondering how you intended to get the locket and the goblet," Hermione told him, picking up her own cup and drinking deeply of the Earl Grey. "In my timeline, you murdered Hepzibah in your eagerness to make another Horcrux. Since we've agreed you won't be making any additional Horcruxes, I-"
"Did we come to some consensus on that point, Gaza?" He interrupted with a slight upwards twitch of the corners of his mouth. "I do not recall consenting to that."
She paused, momentarily shocked into silence, before her eyes narrowed.
"I believe I was rather clear about the consequences of further Horcrux production-"
"Not really," he interrupted again, savoring a drink of his coffee and waving his hand dismissively. "I recall a lot of theoretical posturing but no actual facts were cited. You, yourself, stated that you were unsure if the madness came from the Horcruxes or from becoming incorporeal."
"I would think you would be rather less interested in taking the chance on it perhaps not being the Horcruxes that caused the insanity than you seem to be," she told him incredulously.
Tom shrugged. "I have no intention of going mad. However, do not presume to assign agreements to me I have not made."
He sighed and when he continued, it was with an air of irritation. "Frankly, Horcruxes are not without their flaws."
"You mean aside from their rather horrifying moral implications, I presume?" Hermione said sarcastically.
He smirked at her, reaching up to tuck a lock of that infuriatingly perfect hair back from his face. "Yes, aside from those."
"For one thing, there is the aging of the body," he explained, fingers tapping impatiently against the table as he oozed agitation. "While the Horcrux may preserve one's consciousness, the body continues to deteriorate and would, eventually, require replacing. There is, of course, the potential of forcing the soul shard within a Horcrux to become corporeal and forcing one's consciousness into the new body made from said forced corporealness, but the process rather destroys the Horcrux. Therefore, the ability to do so is limited by the number of Horcruxes made."
"So, what then?" Hermione said, mind whirling about with the intellectual implications even as her stomach rebelled at the subject matter. "You intended to buy yourself maybe... 1000 or 1050 years of life by utilizing the Horcruxes to make replacement bodies? That's not really immortality, is it?"
Tom's jaw clenched and his eyes flashed with annoyance. "No," he stated coldly. "However, it would ensure me time to search for and secure the Deathly Hallows, assuming they exist. Or, if they do not, to secure the Philosopher's Stone."
Hermione pointedly looked away from him before he could catch the spark of recognition in her eye regarding the Hallows. She was of the opinion that Tom was quite powerful enough without her providing him with the means to secure the Elder Wand and if he noticed that she may have information on it, he'd never let her alone until he secured what he wanted. Instead, she focused on something she'd been mulling over since she agreed contractually to help him secure immortality.
"I've actually been considering this whole 'mortality' issue," she told him carefully, bringing his focus which had been employed somewhere in that rather intelligent mind of his back to her. "I've also been considering that you will likely not be allowing me to retain my own mortality. Am I incorrect in that assumption?"
Tom smiled. "Very good, Little Gaza," he answered. "Aeternum Adstringo is, after all, bound forever. I can't very well have you going over to the other side and be forced to cope with your soul calling out to me perpetually to come join you until the end of time. That, too, would lead to bond sickness and, because I intend to lack the ability to die, madness."
Hermione shut her eyes for a moment and allowed her fears to settle. While she may have been actively in denial about that reality, she wasn't truly ignorant enough to miss the implications of binding oneself to a sociopathic d ark lord completely committed to living forever. She was not going to find release from him in death, either, and while she still did not particularly like that fact, she was growing to accept it.
"Ideally then, especially considering what you would call my rather tedious viewpoints on ethics," Hermione said with a pained smile, "We'll need to secure the immortality offered by the Philosopher's Stone, or more specifically, the Elixir of Life. That would provide us both with the immortality you covet."
Tom stilled and looked at her with piercing, searching eyes. "And you know where to find it then, I presume, if you're bringing this to my attention now?"
She tilted her head and bit her lip. "In my time," she told him, "The Philosopher's Stone is moved to Hogwarts in 1991 by Albus Dumbledore to protect it from the clutches of Lord Voldemort's lackey, who intends to use it to provide him with a new and working body. The stone is destroyed to prevent this from becoming a reality."
His eyes sparked with irritation at the thought of his other future self being stymied and Hermione fought not to grin. "And before 1991?" he asked, voice betraying none of his aggravation.
"Vault 713, Gringotts bank," she said with a smile.
Hunger flashed across Tom's face for the briefest of moments before it smoothed back into a blank mask. "Gringotts is nigh impregnable," he stated, bringing a hand up to run across the masculine stubble prickling his jaw as he considered. "And the Goblins are near impossible to bribe or bargain with. The only way to enter with the express purpose of potentially stealing anything would be to utilize subterfuge."
Hermione cleared her throat. "I actually have a bit of experience breaking into Gringotts," she admitted as her face flushed. "I know my way around quite a few of the enchantments, but there are still some issues that I haven't resolved."
Tom smiled, much more warmly than he ever did at anyone else, and stood, holding a hand out to help her to her feet before he began leading her from the kitchen and onwards towards the stairs with his palm on the small of her back. "Well, little wife," he murmured into her hair as they walked, "Let us sort out these issues together then, shall we?"
Hermione's mouth twitched upwards into a small half-smile as she pushed back the part of her brain that screamed at her about allowing pleasure at Lord Voldemort's touch to run through her and determined to simply enjoy the sensation of his hand on her spine. His fingertips through the relatively thin fabric of her house dress were still as scorching as ever and she wondered if the attraction and the way her magic tried to reach out through her skin towards his would ever lessen with time.
She suspected it wouldn't, and she was working on being okay with that. A month or so of flaying herself alive from the inside and a conversation with the Dark Lord had convinced her of at least one thing: this was her life now and there was absolutely no going back. She did not have it in her to discard the only tools available to her here simply because her old self found them distasteful. It would be illogical to do so and if there was one thing Hermione Granger was absolutely not, it was illogical. It was also rather pointless to fight her affinity for Tom; it was a fruitless pursuit that would conclude eventually with a lot of useless effort to stem the tide and she simply didn't want to waste any more of that energy.
It's not as if he could leave her, was it? He couldn't hurt her physically, it pained him to hurt her emotionally, and he did not have the option of abandoning her. What, after all, did she now have to lose except herself?
This was not to say that her mental gymnastics were over. She doubted very much that the self-loathing and doubt were gone for good. But for now, she had found a place where while she was not overly happy about her circumstances, she was accepting them as they were. And she was determined to use her position and her standing with Tom to do some good in this world and influence the ways he was shaping fate to his will to the best of her considerable ability. He wasn't wrong when he pointed out it was impossible for her to do that effectively whilst she was busy wallowing in the many misdeeds of a different Lord Voldemort.
This cognitive dissonance, this separating of the man who was the same as the other and yet so very different, was really just a mindset. It was arguably a flimsy one at that. But it was also effective and so she was clinging to it and allowing herself to think of Tom, only Tom, and she was categorizing the monster of her past as something else entirely.
Survival. She knew these coping mechanisms weren't exactly healthy, but neither was marrying a psychopath and yet, here she was.
They arrived at Tom's study where he pulled back the wards he always kept active on the room and allowed her to enter before him. The wards fell back in place behind him and he cleared a large space off his desk with a few flicks of his wand, sending the piles of parchments and books sailing back to their respective spaces, before he pulled out a new parchment and settled it onto the space.
"So little Gaza," he began, moving behind the desk and facing her with his body leaned forward and his palms pressed against the wood. "You implied you've been considering this option for a while. Enlighten me; how would you steal the Philosopher's Stone?"
"Well," she said with a smirk, "That's the first thing right there. I wouldn't."
Tom blinked at her. "Explain."
"Everyone who has any basic magical knowledge either knows or can easily find out that Nicholas Flamel is the owner and maker of the Philosopher's Stone, correct?" she pointed out.
He agreed with a short nod, waving his hand impatiently for her to continue. "This makes him a target," she stated simply. "If someone wants to have the stone, they focus all their efforts on him. I say let him keep his stone."
"You want to make your own," Tom posited with a considering tip of his head. "How? And why would we need to sneak into Gringotts then?"
"The story of Nicholas Flamel states that he was born in 1330 in Pontoise, France. He grew up there and attended Beauxbatons, where he met his wife, Perenelle," Hermione explained, tapping her wand to the parchment in front of her to charm it to begin taking notes. "We know Flamel worked as a bookseller for all of his natural life. Muggle records show he died in 1418 and left his home, possessions, and known investments to his nephew, Perrier. Wizarding records, however, show he faked his death and moved, with his wife, to India."
Tom's nostrils flared with impatience. "The point, Deliciae. This is a matter of public record and I am not fond of pontificating for pontificating's sake."
"Albus Dumbledore was a close personal friend of Nicholas Flamel in my time," she continued, ignoring his interruption as she quickly pinned her riotous curls out of the way with a sticking charm and leaned over the parchment. "He kept a number of memories about a great many things under unbelievably difficult warding charms involving QUITE a few people. He saved memories with information he thought would be useful. Dumbledore would become Headmaster in 1965."
"That hypocritical, arrogant irritant becomes Headmaster?!" Tom seethed, temporarily losing all decorum as his fists clenched and his magic sparked wildly.
"Shush," Hermione said dismissively. Tom took what was likely a threatening step around the desk and opened his mouth, but she spoke quickly, cutting him off. "He won't become anything, Tom. You're beginning your influence campaign at Hogwarts much earlier than during my timeline, remember? None of that is going to happen. Now, you need to focus."
He clenched his teeth together and shut his eyes tightly, but eventually returned to his previous post. "Would that crucios worked on you," he murmured, but the threat was undermined by the fond upturn of his lips. "Fine, little wife. But mind your tongue."
She fought not to roll her eyes at his condescending tone and ignored the baiting. "Dumbledore died in my sixth year and the Battle of Hogwarts occurred in what would have been my seventh. After the battle, the one I showed you? The school was left abandoned and I returned to the site to scavenge and, eventually, plot to go back in time. It took me nine months to break the man's warding on his memories, but I managed it. And there were three memories that included Nicholas Flamel."
"Flamel confided to Dumbledore that while he was working as a bookkeeper, he had been approached by a man," she continued eagerly, flush with the implications of intellectual intrigue and a puzzle. "This figure he later identified as 'Abraham the Jew' and Flamel said the man had angelic ties which coincided quite neatly with a prophetic dream he had experienced. Now, whether you believe in that sort of nonsense or not, we can assume the manuscript he was gifted was real enough. This manuscript was written in a combination of Hebrew and Greek, neither of which Flamel understood, and it took most of his natural life to get it translated. Today, thankfully, we won't have to deal with such tedium, what with modern translation spells being available."
"And what, pray tell, was this manuscript said to contain?" Tom prompted, a knowing glint flashing in his eye.
"The alchemic formula for the Philosopher's stone, among other things," Hermione said triumphantly. "Dumbledore, of course, attempted to ferret out where the stone and/or the manuscript were kept, but Flamel was very tight lipped about their whereabouts. All he would say is that they were both safe and were being held, together, by trusted, unbiased parties. Together, Tom. That means the manuscript-"
"-Is also in Vault 713," He interrupted, smirking as he glanced down at the charmed parchment that was noting the details of their conversation. "So you intend to have us steal the- Wait, no. Oh, you clever, clever witch..."
He paused and smiled at her wickedly. She fought valiantly now to sway under the heat in his eyes. "Not steal the manuscript. Copy it. Flamel continues to be the target for theft, we get the alchemical formula to create our own Philosopher's Stone, and no one else is ever the wiser."
"Including Flamel," she confirmed. "The key is to get access to the vault without anyone knowing we've been in there. When I broke into Gringotts it was to retrieve something and although we were successful and alive at the end, it was really a fluke we didn't die."
"Show me," Tom demanded, stepping around the table and moving to place a hand on her waist. He grounded her with that touch while his other hand clutched her chin between his fingers, bringing her gaze up to meet his. "I need to see the security protocols and what we're up against. Let me into that beautiful brain, Gaza."
"I-"
Hermione hesitated, looking away. Would Tom be angry she was securing one of his horcruxes in order to destroy it? She didn't particularly care if it angered him, she was proud of her choices and the decision to try to destroy Lord Voldemort had been one she'd never regret, but his rages tended to be uncomfortable for them both.
Tom's eyes narrowed. "You're nervous," he stated. It wasn't a question. "Why?"
She sighed and pulled the memory to the forefront of her mind, bringing her eyes up to meet his. "You'll see soon enough," she answered, placing her hands on his shoulders to keep her balance. "Get on with it."
He raised an eyebrow and his mouth twitched at her sass, but he simply stroked a single finger along her bottom lip before breathing out a 'legilimens' and ghosting his way into her head.
Hermione watched the Gringotts break-in again, reliving it with him as she tried to focus more on the security features of the bank and less on the residual terror the experience brought up within her. She had hated being Bellatrix Lestrange. The body had felt dirty like somehow a piece of the deranged witch's soul followed her form and it was uncomfortably bumping up against Hermione's own. Breaking out on the back of the dragon was horrible even in memory form and as soon as the beast cleared the bank floor, she pushed the memory back into the fog and waited for Tom to slip away into the real world.
He withdrew gently and stood there with his fingers still cradling her chin, looking somewhere just past her left shoulder as he considered. She allowed him the time to think, enjoying and yet still uncomfortable with the way her body sang at his touch, soaking up the contact the need entreaty made her crave. He obviously wasn't angry. If anything, the purpose of their break in had been something he brushed by entirely as incidental.
If he wasn't going to bring it up, she certainly wasn't.
"The bag," he murmured, releasing her as he walked back around the desk and began pacing back and forth.
"What?" she asked, confused about what he was referencing.
Tom paused, eyes still focused on the middle distance before he seemed to come to some sort of conclusion. He smiled coldly at her and adjusted his cufflinks, running a hand through his hair to straighten it.
"I need to send owls to Orion and Antonin," he began, summoning an unmarked piece of parchment and a quill. "And then we, little wife, are going to Lestrange Manor."
30 minutes later saw Hermione and Tom walking up the paved walkway to the Lestrange homestead. It was raining more than steadily, though the Dark Lord's modified Impervious charm was keeping them completely dry. She didn't know if she was annoyed or impressed that he had managed to construct a way to cast the charm without tying it to a physical object, instead forming a barrier almost like a Protego shield by simply utilizing his own will. She begrudgingly settled on impressed. Of course Tom Riddle would be able to force water and air to bend to his demands as easily as he did men's souls. Of course he'd have that power.
Unlike when anyone came to visit Nidum Serpentis where they had to be specifically and diligently allowed entrance, he had tucked her under his arm and simply approached the home as if the wards were not an impediment. She had felt the magic register them, shudder, and fall away as if it were nothing more than gauzy spider web. She wondered if the Death Eaters were even allowed to ward against him. She suspected not.
The door swung open before they reached it and Angua Lestrange greeted them with worried, jerky movements and an immediate dip into a formal curtsy from which she did not rise. Tom rolled his eyes.
"My Lord," Angua murmured, missing his annoyance as her gaze was now downcast and fixed to the floor. "Welcome once again to our home. Lord Lestrange is at work right now, but if you will allow me a moment, I can owl him and get him here ri-"
"I'm not here to see Rad, Lady Lestrange," he answered with a cold appraisal of her form. "And do get off the floor; this is not one of those kinds of meetings. I assure you, no one has been naughty."
Angua immediately exhaled deeply and rose to her feet, glancing up at Hermione and Tom with relief evident in her face even as calculation flitted ever so subtly across her features.
"May I offer you tea then, my Lord and Lady?" She asked, eyes no longer averted as she led them into the sitting room. She gestured for the pair of them to seat themselves on the loveseat as she herself settled on the chaise across from them.
"No," Tom answered coldly. "We're here on business."
"No, but thank you for the offer," Hermione said at the same time, ignoring her husband's usual show of superiority as she smiled at the woman who could, one day, perhaps be a friend.
Angua blinked, seemingly unsure where to settle her attention before she decided on smiling very, very quickly and very, very hesitantly at Hermione and quickly moving her focus back to Tom. He smirked and Hermione made a face but said nothing.
"What sort of business may I be of service with?" Angua asked, settling herself into a polite, meek expression. Hermione was forced to concede it was a very good mask. Angua, she had noted in her all too brief interactions with the woman, was significantly smarter than she behaved.
While Druella and Walburga wore sneers like diamonds, Angua and Jocelyn draped themselves in innocent, false contentedness and non-threatening gestures. Calliope was much more assertive with her intelligence and ambitions, a woman not made for the artifice of hiding her talents, and while Jocelyn played the part of the empty-headed society wife, Angua shrouded herself in a picture of weak-willed shyness.
Her eyes, though, sharp and clever, gave her away if one was willing to look. Hermione doubted very seriously most were willing to look; she was, after all, only a woman.
Tom, however, never missed a thing and perhaps that was part of why they were here.
"To begin," he told her, leaning back on the loveseat and running a hand absentmindedly through the curls that ran down Hermione's back in her half-up, half-down style, "You can tell Hermione the story of how you met the Pukwudgie you call James."
Angua's eyes widened ever so slightly and she paused, but she seemed to decide against asking questions and nodded. "Alright," she said slowly, turning her attention to Hermione. "I suppose the first question is if you know what a Pukwudgie is."
Hermione bit back her offended remark ('Of course I know what a Pukwudgie is, I'm not daft,') and answered with calm, flat affect.
"They are magical creatures, historically native to the United States," she stated. "In appearance, they are rather small, typically grey-skinned, and have large ears. They are related to the European Goblins we, here, are familiar with."
"That'd be a yes then," Angua said with a small smile. "I once saved a Pukwudgie from a small herd of Acromantulas. My brother, who was eleven at the time, and I were playing hide and seek at a Quidditch World Cup Match. The campsite was beside a forest and I became lost in the thicker trees. I was recently graduated from Hogwarts and perhaps overly cocky and reckless, so I determined to use spells and cleverness to recover my way rather than Apparating out as would have been wise."
"Of course," she continued with a small, self-deprecating upturn of her lips, "I had no idea dangerous creatures were in the forest so close to the World Cup. I doubt the Department of Magical Games and Sports did either. Regardless, that was where I quite literally stumbled upon James. He had been traveling in the wilds of England and had been caught in the web of anti-magic wards. You see, the forest was charmed against non-wizarding magic in case any wizards wandered into it. He was backed up against the tree I came out into the clearing beside, surrounded on three sides by Acromantulas. I didn't consider it, I just grabbed the little creature by the arm and apparated us to safety."
"And since then," Tom cut in, leaning forward slightly in his seat as he fixed his cold gaze on Angua. "James has owed you a debt, as is the Pukwudgie way. 'Help no humans second, but first, pay what's owed.' Pukwudgie despise being indebted to human beings and are always eager to clear their register. You will allow him to do so, Angua. This is a debt I require you to now collect."