Disclaimer: C'mon. Reeeally? No, I don't own it. That's the Rowling, who owns it.
Author's Note: Thank you for more delightful reviews! I do apologize for the delay in a new chapter, life came slamming at me. Minor family emergency, trying desperately to set up my third and final interview to get the job I'm attempting to, and a distinct lack of cigarettes. I hope this chapter doesn't disappoint, there won't be much plot forwarding in this one. It's more of setting the scene for how our steadfast heroine and our villainous ghost interact. The action will be starting soon, though. And I apologize that this one is a bit short. I promise to update again soon to make up for it. :3
p.s. Megii – Unique and interesting curses are sort of my thing. I'm well known for it amongst my circle. I've taken liberties with a war ravaged and scarred Hermione, and I am trying to keep it to a minimum… even with her past, I don't think she'd take it as far as me. ;)
Act III
In which, Hermione Granger considers oblivion
"That is such a disgustingly Muggle habit of yours, Mudblood."
Hermione rolled her eyes heavenward, taking a long drag off the confiscated cigarette. Truth be told, she'd let this particular habit go with the war. But when she'd caught the sixth year on the astronomy tower with them, she'd snatched them up and more than likely mentally scarred the child with her verbal lashing regarding the severe health implications and utter foolishness of having such a slovenly habit. And as he'd scampered away with a detention under his belt, she'd looked at the pack of cigarettes. Just looked, at first.
And then she'd recalled the past month of dealing with this awful ghost, and she'd put one to her lips and lit it with the top of her wand.
A month of this. A month without progress. A month of painstaking research, trying and failing to find a precedent for this glaring abnormality with absolutely no results to show for it. Harry and Ron were both unaffected in such a way, Severus had found nothing in his darkest of dark tomes, and consultations with professionals had yielded nothing. And worst of all, she was acclimating to it. The slurs didn't grate her as they had in the beginning, and screaming at him until her throat was raw had produced little result.
He was droning in that ethereal voice, naturally.
"… and you consider yourself smart," he sneered condescendingly, his translucent lip curling.
"I don't consider myself smart."
His face stilled into a suspicious stare.
"I know I'm a bloody genius. My IQ is off the charts. I'm well aware of the health hazards of smoking, and the way in which the magical essence of witches and wizards can radically accelerate the growth of malignant cancers just as easily as it can help nullify them, based on the genetic make up of any individual person. You may have been powerful, but I outsmarted you as a fucking teenager. I outwitted you, and then I killed you. And I'm going to do it again. I am going to figure this out, and then I am going to exorcise you into the next plane of existence, and then I'm going to figure out how to destroy that plane of existence because hell is too good for you, especially since you and yours and your stupid war and all of the pain and misery it inflicted upon this community, and you have the gall to come back from whatever shit hole your spirit resided in to force me into this face fuck of pure and utter fuck uppery!"
Hermione was getting very good at impassioned speeches in a pinch, as it seemed she had to recite one nearly every other day.
As such, Tom Riddle's ghost was suitably unimpressed.
She flicked the still burning cigarette through his incorporeal form as she stomped noisily towards the stairs.
"Do all of you filthy Mudbloods throw your trash just anywhere?"
"Evanesco!" she shouted, waving her wand towards the cigarette butt without looking, and then pausing in her stride to stare back at him and sneer condescendingly, "Did you forget that I'm a witch?"
‡
Hermione's quill scratched in bursts of fitful energy, mapping out Arithmantic equations to predict and help formulate her recent research theory. That it regarded adjusting spellwork to function as normal towards incorporeal beings- be they ghosts or poltergeists or what have you- was no coincidence. With summer fast approaching in the coming month, now was the time to dedicate herself wholly to the cause of ridding herself of her pesky ghoul. An enchanted piece of chalk hovered at the blackboard behind her, scribbling and mapping out her equations in complex charts and graphs in conjunction with her equations.
"You need an ogonek on the a before the graeca for that to work at all," was uttered from an invisible Riddle with as much derision as was possible.
"An ogonek puts an embellishment that would further tie the spell to the world of the living, and I am attempting to make a bit of death magic. With no ogonek, the a becomes a derivative of the ex and ties into the seven, making the graeca a tether to the aether."
"With no ogonek, the a amplifies the magic with no anchor and becomes chaotically uncontrollable. Are you trying to destroy me or kill yourself?"
Hermione rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand, the ink on her knuckles smearing her forehead.
"If you don't shut up, I shall be open to both."
Riddle faded into existence, sitting in mid air as though slouched upon an invisible chair before rising and sinking to the cold stone floor. Stepping to the equation, he regarded it quizzically.
"How on earth does a Mudblood come up with such complex theorems?"
"How on earth does a half blood come up with such outlandish theories on the heritage of others?" she mocked, leaning back in her chair and swiveling to face him and her blackboard.
The translucent, silver face darkened several shades, as though he were a cumulonimbus cloud on the brink of releasing a torrent.
"You dare-" he began to hiss.
Hermione gripped her cane and stood up swiftly, lips drawn into a taut line with both pain and indignation.
"Yes, I dare," she snarled right back, "I dare. I dare question the theories of a madman, even if it only a sliver of a soul. Even if it only the sliver of a soul that has yet to form a terrorist cell of depraved cattle, cattle that are herded into attempting to destroy everything I hold dear. I came into this world with no preconceptions and found only beauty and wonder, and that was ripped away from me. I came out of everything with tremors and a fucking limp courtesy of one of your peons, after fighting for the right to have the innocence and wonder that you stole from me. I am so sodding tired of these speeches. Because they change nothing. You are only a fragment of the past, stuck in a hard won future that you have NO RIGHT TO ENJOY."
The words rebounded off the walls of her empty classroom.
Riddle, to his credit, remained silent.
Leaning heavily upon her cane, Hermione reached for the vial on her desk and swallowed it with a grimace. The shimmering black potion took the edge off of the pain, and left her feeling just a bit magically drained.
"Can't you just fade?" she asked tiredly, rubbing her eyes again, before she gazed steadily at him, and managed to say with no venom, no emotion whatsoever, "Can't you just fade away and pretend like you don't exist until it is so?"
Riddle walked without sound to her, and then through her as if she didn't exist as he had so many times before. But this time, he came out the other side just a little bit brighter. Fractionally. Marginally. She did not notice.
Tom Riddle did, and his eyes darted to the vial of addictive pain potion that Hermione only allowed herself once a week, and a small, cold smile formed on his lips.
"Not for a Mudblood."
Hermione turned on her heel and began limping towards the door.
"Professor," the ghost drawled with a sneer and a gleam to his bottomless eyes, "Aren't you going to fix your equation? You know that you cannot skirt past that ogonek."
"Suck my dick, Riddle."
Even with an upper hand, a chilling new prospect at the expense of Hermione, the spirit found himself fuming rather childishly at the fact that Hermione Granger always had the last word, as she crossed the hall into her private rooms and the wards against incorporeal entities fell into place.
