A/N: It's baaaaaaack!

Chapter 8: A Constellation Among Our Voices

Before - 25th December 1997

"'The last enemy that shall be defeated is death,'" Harry read, and Hermione felt his shoulder tense under her hand. "But that's - that's a Death Eater thing - why would that be written on my parents' -"

"I don't -" Hermione started, and then knelt down to his level, pulling him to face her. "It doesn't mean it the way the Death Eaters - the way he does." She paused, and in the moment of silence Harry leaned forward to rest his forehead against hers. "I think it means...you know...living beyond death. After death. Something more."

Harry didn't say anything, but she saw his eyes go back to the grave; watched as tears fell silently down his cheeks, dropping onto the frozen ground. His mouth was a thin line, and she wanted to hug him, wanted so badly to have him, for once, feel something other than pain. She didn't; just found his hand with hers, and felt him return her fierce grip.

Finally Harry gave a choking gasp, and then took a breath so sharp it must have been painful, and Hermione bit her lip to stop her own tears, turning to follow his gaze.

The grave was so stark, so bleak under its layer of snow that suddenly she couldn't bear it, and before Hermione quite knew what she was doing she had waved her wand and conjured a wreath of Christmas roses. Harry rocked back on his heels and caught it, laying the blooms gently on the grave before pushing himself upright.

He didn't say a word as he reached a hand down to her, but when Hermione stood up he put his arm tight around her shoulders, turning his head to press a kiss into her hair as she fastened her arm around his waist.

Now - 31st July 2002

"I'm not Harry." Tom's voice was soft as he stepped away from her, as he pushed his overlong hair out of his eyes - and it was so accurate it was cruel, it was terrible - "but I'm the best you've got."

"No," Hermione shook her head. "That can't be - if I can bring you back then surely I can -"

"What are you going to do?" Tom turned to face her, his mouth set in a firm line of challenge. "Return me to death and try your luck at getting Potter next time?"

"I should!" Hermione could feel the old stubborn set returning to her jaw. "If I can pull you out of the Well of Souls then I'm damn sure I can -"

"And how do you plan to go about doing that?" Tom asked. "Are you really ready to kill me, Hermione Granger?"

"Why would you think I'm not?" she whispered, forgetting, in her anger, the instinct to be afraid. "You don't know what I've had to do to while you've been dead."

Tom narrowed his eyes at her, and Hermione's fingers tightened on her wand as she levelled it at him again.

"And what if this time you get neither of us?" he asked. "The Well has given once." He spread his arms wide. "Who's to say that it will answer you again?" Hermione said nothing, didn't move, and Tom's cheeks hollowed as he chewed his lip.

"Go on then," he said quietly, stepping up until her wand was pressed into the solid wall of his chest. Hermione gritted her teeth and went to twitch her wand away, but Tom was too quick, his hand rising and holding it in place.

"Do it," he hissed, his dark blue eyes boring into hers, and Hermione could feel the magic - the anger and fear and blame - rising up inside her as she returned his gaze. She could taste the bitterness of it on her tongue, feel the dark parts of her ready to shape the words Avada Kedavra.

The last enemy that shall be defeated is death, she remembered.

She looked into Tom's eyes: dark, fathomless blue in place of the green that she had longed for, and she couldn't make herself do it.

"I need to check on Hogwarts," she said abruptly, turning away from him.

"Hogwarts?" Tom barked after a moment. "Why would you need to -"

"Because that's where we were hiding out." Hermione flicked her wand impatiently, "Accio map!"

"Hiding out?" Tom asked. "What do you mean hiding out?"

But the scrap of parchment had come hurtling out of the cave and into her hand, and Hermione ignored Tom, wasting no time spreading the map on the black rocks.

"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good," she murmured, hearing Tom scoff behind her.

The reddish outline of the castle materialised quickly, the jagged lines of ruin clear even on the plan.

Hermione held her breath, waiting for a flicker of movement, the tiny footprints with a label in Sirius's best copperplate, but there was nothing. The whole school stood abandoned.

"Fuck," she whispered. "Fucking f-"

"Why would you be hiding at Hogwarts?" Tom repeated, interrupting her stream of invective, and Hermione whirled on him.

"Because it was the one place we thought they wouldn't look. Everywhere else that we went, they found us. We couldn't hide at the Burrow, we weren't safe in Godric's Hollow - you and your fucking goons would show up anywhere that they thought -"

"Shut up and give me that."

Tom snatched the parchment from her fingers, frowning down at the map. Hermione saw his eyes scan the castle rapidly, before he looked up at her, a crease between his dark brows.

"What the fuck is this?"

"I - what?" Hermione blinked, caught off-guard by the question.

"Who did this to the castle?" Tom glowered, the righteous indignation in his expression so jarringly familiar that Hermione almost felt nauseous.

"You did," she whispered eventually, watching as what little colour Tom's face had held drained away from it.

"Not me," he croaked, staring down at the image of the ruined castle. "I wouldn't - Hogwarts was - I would never."

He bunched his fist around the map, and Hermione started forward with a little cry, only for Tom to grab her by the arm, holding the parchment out of her reach. "How long have I been dead?

"Four years," she said. "But I don't see why it would -"

"Are you kidding?" Tom gaped down at her in disbelief. "I left a legilimency echo in your mind as Potter died, I thought you would - Jesus Christ, you stubborn little -"

"Don't speak to me like that!"

Hermione had her wand in his face again in a moment. Despite his grip on her arm, her hand shook with anger and strain and she realised suddenly that she was starving, that she hadn't eaten since she entered the Well, which could have been any length of time.

Any length of time - her eyes flicked back to the Map, still scrunched in Tom's fist. Who knew how much time had passed, how much time she had already wasted arguing with - with - whatever Tom was.

"The dreams didn't start until Halloween last year," she said quietly, slackening her hold on her wand and feeling Tom's grip relax. "Luna said it would have been because -"

"- the veil was thin." Tom nodded absently, "Full moon on Halloween, I should have realised." He looked down at her, and then released her abruptly as though he had only just noticed he still had hold of her arm. "But there was nothing before that?"

"Just -" Hermione frowned, trying to remember. "Just flashes," she said eventually. "I thought they were just memories, just dreams. It wasn't until that night that I started leaving myself messages."

"Messages?" he asked.

"Bits of bible verses mostly. I thought it was - it was so muggle I thought it must be Harry - that there must have been something that Dumbledore showed him. It's how I knew to come here," she said, then frowned. "Well, not exactly. It's how I knew to get answers from - from -"

"From him?" Tom's expression was one of incredulity. "But I remember - so you should - what on earth possessed you to do -"

"You, apparently." Hermione crossed her arms defensively. "I didn't know what I was seeing, so we thought it best to get as much information as possible. It was a calculated -"

"Are you mad?" Tom cried. "Who let you - how desperate were you?"

"Desperate enough to come here and jump into a magic lake in hopes that I might be able to bring back my best friend!" Hermione yelled. "Instead of which I get you, you piece of -"

"Enough," Tom said, raising a hand in defeat as he turned away to squint towards the horizon and the blunt line of the distant mountain, gilded with sun. Hermione inhaled deeply, taking a moment to study him.

He was younger than any version of Tom Riddle had any right to be, appearing about her own age. When Harry had described the Riddle he had seen in the Chamber of Secrets, or in the memories that Dumbledore collected, he had always said that he was neat, almost eerily composed. But his hair was overlong, his shapeless robes tatty, and with his face turned away from her she could almost have believed -

You came, she heard him say; felt again that strange surge of elation, and a shiver of something else.

"How did you get inside my head?" she asked softly. "Why me? Why not Ron, or Ginny, or -"

His eyes caught the low sunlight as he looked back at her over his shoulder, and Hermione fell silent, feeling the press of his regard against her skin, the quickening of her blood that she told herself was fear, making her pulse a raging storm.

"You were the only one who followed," Tom said, barely a whisper, and Hermione swallowed hard, remembering the terrible look of defeat on Harry's face as he crumpled beneath the blade.

"And besides," Tom went on, his eyes never wavering from her face, "You're the only one who could understand, Hermione."

Her name on his lips had the cadence of a spell, calling her forward just as she had called him, and Tom turned towards her as Hermione reached out to rest her hand on his chest, catching the insistent beat of his heart in her palm.

"How did you survive inside Harry?" she breathed, and under her fingers she felt his heart begin to race; flagrantly alive; and Tom grimaced before taking a step back, leaving her hand raised in the empty air.

"Do you remember how he defeated Quirinus Quirrell?" he asked, and Hermione blinked, thrown by the return question, before the answer came to her.

Love.

Tom nodded slowly, as though she had said the word aloud. "You know what happened when Harry touched him."

There no question in his voice, and his gaze had become intent, almost imploring. Hermione recalled Harry's expression of naked horror as he recounted how Quirrell's skin had blistered and turned to ash beneath his fingers.

Dumbledore says it was because my mum died to protect me. Because she loved me so much it placed a spell in my skin.

And how would a slice of Tom Riddle have taken root inside Harry, so full of love that it made him a weapon, unless -

"I am the best part of myself," Tom said softly. "The only part that could survive inside a vessel like Harry Potter, when almost everything else had been carved away, one murder at a time."

He paused, his mouth twisting as he reached for her hand, hesitating a hairsbreadth away. When Hermione didn't pull back, he closed his fingers around hers and placed it back on his chest; back over that obstinate heartbeat, his eyes never leaving her own.

"The unending strangeness of magic," he whispered.

"Dumbledore said," Hermione started, and then swallowed hard, her mouth dry. "He said that you could not love - that you were incapable of it -"

"Dumbledore?" Tom's eyebrows quirked upwards in surprise. "Oh, Dumbledore thought he knew all about love, it's true. But he didn't know everything. He didn't know what it is to learn love from a distance, trapped in a body over which you have no control."

Hermione blinked at the implication of his words, and then gave into herself, lifting her other hand towards his face. Tom closed his eyes as she grazed her fingers along the angle of his jaw; feeling the shape of it that was strange and yet familiar under her touch; feeling him lean into her, and for a moment - a moment -

"You see?" he whispered. "We're bound, you and I."

"I don't -"

"Hermione." His eyes opened, endless blue, and the weight of his gaze made her words catch, tightness in her throat like a noose. Like -

The Hanged Man.

The High Priestess.

The Lovers.

Death.

Hermione swallowed again, feeling the weight of understanding settle over her memory of the cards.

"You said you felt remorse?" she asked, and this time the spasm that crossed Tom's face was one of pain.

"I suffered for what I have done," he said, his voice very low as he stared at the floor. "I - it was -"

As he paused Hermione saw the card again, the hanged man suspended by his heel, his face contorted with agony as his dark hair caught the sunlight.

"It was not something I would wish to repeat," Tom said finally.

There was a long silence, broken only by the call of a bird high overhead. Hermione closed her eyes and took a breath of the sharpening air. In her mind's eye, the priestess reached up and plucked the pomegranate, smiling all the while.

She opened her eyes, stroked her thumb through the soft hollow beneath his cheekbone.

"Will you help me?" she asked.

A/N: Readers old, readers new, thank you for your patience. I can't make promises as to regularity, but hope not to keep you waiting quite so long in the future.