A/N: This story is occupying my mind, so you get another update. Hurrah!
Chapter 9: Reflects all unclear
Now - 31st July 2002
"Will you help me?"
Tom's fingers tightened where they held hers against his chest, and the frown that he directed down at her was almost quizzical.
"Why else do you think I'm here?"
Hermione chewed her lip, listening to the low howl of the wind across the barren glacier as she considered the question. Tom tilted his head, and his eyes, dark as deep water, flicked down to her mouth. Against her palm, his heart raced to match her own.
"Hermione." She felt the hitch in his breath as he said her name, and with shake of her head Hermione stepped back, freeing herself of the trance of his touch.
He was Tom Riddle, she reminded herself. Tom Riddle who, for all that he claimed he regretted it, had been Voldemort; had destroyed everything she'd ever loved.
Not me, he'd said. Not me.
She glanced up at him quickly, and though the low sun made it difficult to see she could have sworn that his face twitched, his expression almost hurt.
"You'll help," she said, wiping her suddenly sweaty palms on her top. "Good - that's - that's good."
He watched her for a moment, his whole body locked in predatory stillness. "What is it that I'll be helping you with?"
"We -" Hermione paused, biting her lip as she looked at him. "Harry was the only one who could defeat him - you - whatever," she waved her hand impatiently when Tom made as though to speak. "But we have to try - we have to try - I can't have come this far for nothing, I can't, I have to keep fighting, I promised, I promised -"
I'll never stop fighting him, she heard herself say, long ago. Tom was still watching her, quiet and patient, and with the sun behind him she remembered the dream; remembered wondering at the words when she had thought it was Harry who spoke.
Revenge is something you take.
"I can't ever stop," she whispered. "Even if the only thing I can win is that Harry isn't forgotten."
"So honourable," Tom said, the curl of his lip just the right side of mocking. He tipped his head to one side and considered her thoughtfully. "History is written by the victors, you know."
The twist of his mouth bloomed into a smile as he spoke: a smile that was beautiful and terrible and that made heat rush to Hermione's cheeks even as her better judgement whispered to her that she was in a great deal of trouble.
Revenge is something you take. How could she ever have mistaken him for Harry?
"Well then," she muttered bitterly, relieved when her voice didn't shake. "At least that's one piece of work I don't have to do for everyone."
Tom opened his mouth and then closed it, pressing his palms together and lifting his fingers to his lips as he stared at her over the top of them. "I don't think that you've lost quite yet."
Hermione laughed darkly. "And I think I've brought you back from the dead half-cracked."
"Incorrect." Tom shook his head slowly from side to side. "You're still fighting, and that must be proof of something."
There was a pause while they stared at one another before Tom's smile returned, smaller and more secret. "You know what they say," he said softly, "about battles, and wars."
Before - October 8th 1998
"If you don't come now then there's no guarantee -"
"We know the consequences." Molly's voice was firm, her expression stoic as she avoided her eldest son's eye, choosing instead to look at Andromeda, who lifted her chin.
"There will always be a place for you with us, if you are able to escape." She paused and looked up at the sky, the bare branches of the apple trees casting shifting shadows across her imperious features. "Though I hope," she continued quietly, "that it will be we who return to you."
Molly nodded, and Hermione caught the gleam of tears in her eyes.
"A war is no place to raise a child," was all she said before she turned away, and Bill's scarred face creased with pain, even as his arm tightened around Fleur's shoulders.
"Good luck, all of you," Arthur said, stepping forward to shake his son's hand and press a kiss to Fleur's cheek.
"Thanks Dad."
Bill's eyes lingered on his mother for a long moment. "Mum, you wouldn't let us fight until we were old enough to choose it, and I just -"
"Don't." Molly had turned back, and now the expression on her face was fierce, furious.
She looks like Ginny, Hermione realised.
"You take yourselves as far from here as you can get, and you raise your children safe, and you forget this, you leave this behind you, and you never - you never -"
"Molls," Arthur said, catching her arm gently and pulling her against him. "They know, Molls."
"We know, Molly," Fleur agreed, her hand tightening protectively over the gentle swell beneath her robes. "Bill is not ze only one who cares for 'is family."
"We should go," Blaise said, eyeing the darkening sky. "Last chance for anyone who wants to come with us."
He glanced around the small gathering, though he remained turned slightly towards Ginny. Hermione watched as the other girl looked away, her hands balled tight by her sides, and sighed before stepping forward to say a goodbye to Teddy.
"Be good, little man," she whispered, stroking a finger across his soft cheek where his head rested on Andromeda's shoulder.
"This life will be harder for you than for the others," Andromeda said quietly, and Hermione glanced up at her, frowning.
"What do you mean?"
"Losing a part of yourself changes you." Andromeda's hand was gentle on Hermione's shoulder. "Take it from someone whose life seems to have been shaped by loss."
She looked down at the sleeping baby. "You have to find a way to move forward."
"I'm going to fight him," Hermione said. "I'll never stop fighting him, until he's paid for what he did to us, to all of us, to Har-"
His name caught in her throat and Hermione blinked at the sudden appearance of tears in her eyes.
"Every day that you survive this you are fighting him," Andromeda said, after a moment's silence. "You are the proof that he has not won, that he will not win."
Hermione looked up with a watery smile, to meet Andromeda's gaze; the same ghost-grey as Sirius's. "We'll miss you," she said, her voice breaking slightly over the words, and Andromeda took her hand, her slim fingers gripping tightly.
"However you choose to mourn, it is not weakness to do so," she whispered, and Hermione frowned as a light weight settled in her palm.
"Do not let this fall into the wrong hands," Andromeda's words were barely audible as she closed Hermione's fingers over the small object. "It will be no use to you unless you can cross the border wards, but if ever you do -"
"Thank you."
"Now!" Blaise called, and Andromeda stepped hurriedly away, swiping at her face with her free hand.
Hermione looked hurriedly between them, trying to commit faces to memory - Bill and Fleur, Dean and Seamus, Andromeda, Teddy and Blaise.
"Goodbye!" Luna called suddenly, her voice sounding strangely childlike in the autumn evening, and then in a flash of blue light they were gone.
Ginny made a choked noise and turned on her heel to stomp out of the orchard. Molly followed after her, wringing her hands in the apron that she still wore, in spite of everything.
One by one the others trickled away, Ron leaving with a gentle squeeze of her shoulder, until finally Hermione stood alone in the gathering dusk, her hand still closed tightly. Finally, when she heard the call of an owl and the chatter of the gnomes in hedgerow, she opened her fingers.
At first she thought the small circular object was a watch, but when she pressed the button at the top the weathered brass face flicked open to reveal a compass. The mother-of-pearl face shone gently in the moonlight, and Hermione could just make out the way the dial spun lazily, not settling.
She closed it, frowning, and turned it over in her hands. Faint letters were engraved on the back, and she held it up to the moonlight before sighing and rummaging for her wand.
"Lumos."
"'I carry your heart,'" she murmured aloud, drawing her thumb gently across the entwined initials beneath the quote.
ET & AB.
Turning it over she flicked it open once again, watching the dial revolve gently.
Now
After Tom's cryptic pronouncement they had lapsed into an uneasy silence, maintaining a careful distance from one another as Hermione sorted through the contents of her beaded bag once more. It was becoming an almost compulsive response to upheaval, but even if she had been able to stop herself she wouldn't have. Anything to avoid looking at Tom; to avoid meeting the demand of his gaze, of his smile.
He had sat quietly, apparently content to wait for her to sort herself out. When Hermione had wordlessly tossed him the set of Harry's spare clothes that she had been carrying around with her for years - a strangely twisted memorial - Tom had taken them without comment, disappearing back into the cave to change.
She had only peeked over her shoulder once, long enough to be struck by the lines of Tom's back, lean muscle shifting beneath his pale skin as he stripped out of the strange grey robes that he had been wearing. The shape of him made Hermione's hands tremble, made her skin prickle with want; and it shouldn't have made sense, it shouldn't have felt right, except that it suddenly threw every moment, every odd look that Harry had thrown her, when he hadn't seemed to be quite there, into sharp relief.
We're bound, you and I.
Hermione gnawed her lip as she sifted through her meagre possessions, worrying at questions that she wasn't sure she wanted the answer to until a dull, thudding pain started to emerge at her temples.
It took a great deal of magic for the part of a soul that had been trapped in a horcrux to take physical form, she knew, and while it was true that the Well practically hummed with power, how was it that six parts could -
"Is it your intention to stay here forever?"
Hermione jumped, her hand instinctively closing over the compass that she had just pulled from her bag. She wasn't sure why she had kept it hidden from the others all this time, but it was hard to suppress four years' force of habit.
Tom quirked a brow upwards but said nothing, and Hermione wavered a moment, taking in the strangeness of him dressed in Harry's old clothes; the striking physical similarity between them.
Except that Harry would have fidgeted under her scrutiny, whereas Tom only gave her a small smile. And she knew that it had never been Harry who had made her feel like this.
Hermione sighed, unwilling to worsen her headache by pondering the strangeness any further. When she opened her palm to show him the compass Tom's only reaction was to let his eyebrow climb higher up his forehead. "May I ask what you've got there?"
"Obviously it's a compass," she said impatiently, ignoring his glare and moving her thumb to flick at the catch. She felt a quiver of anticipation as the lid lifted, unsure what to expect; what to even hope for.
After so many nights watching its slow revolutions it was almost a shock to see that the dial was still; the red arrow pointing unerringly in a direction that Hermione judged to be approximately south-east. She glanced up, smiling with excitement, to see that Tom was watching her. When she caught him staring his cheeks pinked slightly, and he looked back at the compass, his eyes narrowing as he studied it.
"Unless I'm very much mistaken, that isn't pointing due north."
"No," Hermione said. "No, I think it's pointing to - to -"
Her excitement at the thought of seeing Andromeda, of seeing all the others and maybe - hopefully - finding some answers as to what had happened at Hogwarts - drained away as she realised the impossibility of turning up with Tom Riddle at her side.
She looked away, towards the horizon where the sunlight had diminished to a sickly glow - probably as close to full night as they were going to get this far north. Overhead the sky was the colour of a black pearl: bruised purple striated by glistening bands of green. Ordinarily Hermione would have been mesmerised by the flicker of luminous colour against the undark night, but her attention was caught up in the sour taste on her tongue, the sleep-deprived jitter of her nerves, and the quiet, watchful presence of the man before her.
"It's pointing towards friends," she said eventually.
"Ah," Tom sighed. "And friends of yours will not be -"
"You said you'd help?" Hermione blurted, rounding on him before he could finish whatever he was going to say, and Tom scowled at her.
"I did, and I intend to. You'll have to trust me at some point."
Hermione gave a little snort, muttering as she looked back down at the compass in her hand. "I don't know whether you've noticed that you're Tom R-"
"Tom Riddle, yes, not Vol-"
"Don't say his name!" Hermione cried, leaping forward to clap her spare hand over his mouth, the compass clattering to the floor.
Tom's breath was hot on her hand, his eyes wide and surprised above her fingers.
"The taboo," Hermione said quietly, watching as the crease between Tom's dark brows smoothed with understanding. "They never lifted it."
He made a 'hmming' noise against her palm and Hermione felt heat flare up the back of her neck and down through her stomach. She jerked her hand away as though burned and made to step back, but found herself held in place, Tom's fingers splayed possessively against her spine.
"Let me go," Hermione whispered, unsure whether or not she meant it. Tom's hand didn't move.
"I am not him," he murmured. "I came to your call, I will stand at your side."
He leaned forward as he spoke, and Hermione's chin tipped upwards until she could feel his words dancing against her mouth.
"Who among your friends will know Tom Riddle from the Dark Lord?" Tom's voice was a purr, his words and his touch a hypnotic cocktail that had Hermione shaking her head in an effort to clear her thoughts.
"Ginny," she said, shakily. "Andromeda - I think, Esmeranda Zabini -"
"Then you explain," Tom shrugged as he tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, his thumb stroking at the lobe. "You tell them the truth."
They stood frozen for a long moment, caught in a not-quite embrace. Hermione could feel the way that Tom's ribs expanded against hers as he drew a breath. She watched the dance of green and purple light reflected in his eyes, and swallowed.
"OK," she said. "Alright. We'll leave in the morning."
A/N: Eep. For sunset oasis - your reviews have been an endless source of delight this week.