When they finally returned to the flat in Belgravia, Hermione tried not to be upset when Voldemort stalked off to his study immediately upon being dropped in the foyer. She knew that they had spent more time together than they ever had outside of the Diary, and wondered if he was feeling overwhelmed. In any case, she had her own work to do, and quickly bounded up all the stairs to her room, where she would finally have a proper desk to work on.

By the time she made it to the sixth floor, she was out of breath, but knowledge pushed her on. She quickly got inside, and slid into the desk, giving Thor an affectionate, albeit absent minded, pat on the head when she past by him.

She had been working for not even five minutes when her door was opened unceremoniously, admitting a visitor into her private sanctuary. Turning, she was surprised to see that it was Voldemort. He was clearly angry, his eyes taking on a sinister red color. Hermione's eyes widened in surprise, unsure of what she'd done to deserve this kind of behavior. He held up a long piece of parchment in his hand. "Care to explain this?" he asked, derisively.

Hermione crossed her arms over her chest defensively. "I have never seen that parchment before in my life," she replied swotily, though she was genuinely curious as to what it was.

"Are you sure? You see, it was brought here by the young Mr. Nott, to be given to you. And it's addressed to you. And the wax seal was only to be opened by your magic. However, it was such a weak spell, and since our souls are connected, it was quite simple for me to open it," Voldemort explained, breathing deeply by the end of his impressive tired.

Hermione would not cower to his temper, though. If anything, she only grew more upset. "Well, if it was addressed to me, you had no right to open it!" Hermione responded hotly. She snatched it from his hands, and quickly read over the page.

Dear Hermione,

Your letter both filled me with confusion and joy. After much thought, I have decided to go with my gut. I have known you basically my whole life, Hermione, and I have never once known you to betray someone or do anything else like that. I know that you would never do something to hurt me on purpose!

I don't understand why Dumbledore and Ron keep trying to tell me that you betrayed me. Your logic makes perfect sense to me, even though I don't think I would have been strong enough to do it. By your accounts, you must have really changed Voldemort in the past. Especially if you stopped him from making horcruxes! Your plan must have worked.

I hope you are safe, wherever you are. Just know that you will always be my friend, Hermione. I don't understand why you left the Order, but I am sure you had a good reason. I hope you can share it with me someday. Please be safe.

Your friend,

Harry

Hermione breathed a sigh of relief. After not hearing from Harry for well over a month, she was sure that he didn't want anything to do with her. However, she was quickly reminded that the Dark Lord did know that she has in contact with Harry Potter...only his arch nemesis. Of course he would be upset with her.

"Now. Care to tell me why you were writing to Harry Potter? At Hogwarts of all places?" Voldemort demanded. He seemed like he was trying to be a little bit more reasonable after she'd rebuked him, but he was still on edge.

Hermione flopped down on the couch and took a deep breath before starting her explanation, knowing that it was going to take them time to work through this. "I couldn't stand the thought of Harry, my closest friend, thinking that I had betrayed him in the worst way possible," Hermione responded.

"Why should you care what that whelp thinks of you?" Voldemort asked her, truly curious. Leave it to him not to understand the bonds of friendship.

"He is my friend! His opinion matters greatly to me," Hermione responded immediately. "Didn't you ever have any friends?" Hermione snorted, before she answered her own question. "No, you only have acquaintances, wouldn't want to get too close to someone. Feeling something for someone other than yourself."

Voldemort briefly wondered how he managed to make her so cynical. Reminding himself of his own rage, though, he asked her the question on his mind. "Be that as it may, Hermione, you will explain to me what this "plan" was. You may not have betrayed Harry Potter, but you betrayed me - I knew I shouldn't have taken you into my home," he seethed, surprised to feel actual pain from the thought that she would have done this to him.

Hermione sighed, feeling a little bit helpless. "It wasn't a plan like that, Voldemort," she explained, worrying her lower lip, seeing how mad he seemed. She could certainly understand just how suspicious it sounded from how Harry had written it. "Professor Dumbledore always told us that the reason you were so...evil was because you had never experienced any love or friendship. Once it became apparent to me that I would be in what I thought was the past, I decided to consciously try to change the past."

She noticed that even the Dark Lord Voldemort seemed apprehensive about something so serious as changing the fabric of time, which was unusual, considering his usual disregard for the rules.

"I just thought, if I could be your friend, show you some love or affection, it might change your future. You didn't create horcruxes while I was there, and I stopped you from working at Borgin and Burkes. I thought that I had prevented you from becoming Lord Voldemort, by giving you my love," she whispered, her voice catching in her throat, when she realized she really hadn't unpacked all of her thoughts on this yet. "After the time we spent in Istanbul, I thought that you might even...love me, too." Hermione spoke quietly.

"But you didn't change me, darling," he said with a sneer. "Because the silly boy you knew was little more than an illusion, more interested in manipulating you than loving you."

She pulled back, as if she were burned, shocked by his words. "Tom, don't lie-"

"Stop calling me that name!" he snarled, his eyes glowing in that unusual red, making her hair stand on end.

"It's your name, and it's what I'll call you!" Hermione insisted. "Tom might have been an illusion, as you say, but it was still you I was interacting with, and whether you meant it or not, I am soul-bound to you now. I know that I changed you, Tom. You didn't make the horcruxes."

He laughed at her, shaking his head. "Oh, you pretty, little fool. I'd already killed my father and my grandparents before you ever even showed up. I made my first horcrux in my fifth year," he explained with glee, seeing how much it hurt her. "You changed nothing."

Hermione narrowed her eyes at him, shining with tears. "You still loved me - you, you told me you loved me," she countered, her nostrils flaring.

Voldemort was quiet for a long time, thinking about her words. "Love is a useless emotion. I know you are young and see the world with rose colored glasses, but love makes a wizard or witch weak," he said forcefully, but also not denying her accusation.

"That's not true, Tom, and you know it!" Hermione said, beginning to get angry with him, a single tear slipping down her cheek. She wiped it away furiously, not wanting him to see her hurt.

"Love killed Lily Potter," he stated simply.

"No, YOU killed Lily Potter!" Hermione roared, standing up and whirling around to look at him. "Love is what kept Harry Potter alive! His mother's love protected him from the killing curse, even a killing curse produced by the greatest dark wizard who ever lived," Hermione replied, even angrier now.

She saw him preening under her calling him the greatest dark wizard and resisted the urge to roll her eyes at how simple he really was.

"Don't you ever wonder what the prophecy meant by "the power he knows not"? The power that you, Lord Voldemort, know not is love!" Hermione was practically shouting now. "Unless you begin to understand love, Tom, you have no hope of beating the Order."

Hermione was unable to hide her crying now. Voldemort hated to admit it, but he did have some pleasure in watching the young woman cry, mostly just because her eyes transformed into a beautiful, sparkling brown. She was beautiful.

"I know you cared for me when I was in the diary," Hermione whispered, insistent. "I saw it. You were worried about me when the Basilisk attacked. You were jealous that I might choose Albert or Teddy and so you took me for yourself. You did care for me, Tom! Why can't you just admit it?"

Her eyes were piercing his own soul, searching for something, anything within his eyes that would show that he had feelings for her. "I am afraid you are mistaken," Voldemort replied to her. When he could stand being in her presence no longer, he stood and left. She was making him feel things that he wasn't comfortable with.

As soon as he left, Hermione resolved to take a bubble bath, wanting to wash the day away from her. Her heart ached from his stinging rebuke, and even though Snape had promised that there would be other men in her life, she couldn't imagine loving someone else like she loved Tom. Despite her best efforts. Sinking into the copious bubbles, she let her tears flow freely. She never knew that heartbreak would hurt this badly. The worst of it was that she couldn't even stop loving him, not even when she knew who he was! Under all of his layers. If only he would admit what she knew in her heart to be true...

Once she got out of the bath and into her pajamas, she found Thor waiting for her in her bed. She climbed in under the covers, and the wolf instantly snuggled up in a ball closer to her, placing his overly large muzzle to rest on her leg. It was comical for her to see such a large animal try to get into such a small ball.

"Oh Thor, you love me right?" Hermione asked the big dog. He made a noise that sounded a little bit like a purr. "Once this baby is born, you and I can get away from here. We can find a little cottage out in the country, by a stream and a woods. And you can go out hunting all day, if you want." Thor looked at her directly in the eyes, seemingly very pleased with this arrangement.

Hermione noticed that her sinuses seemed to be very stuffed up. Annoyed with the possibility of having a cold, she decided that it was best for her to go to bed. The ancient runes could wait. Even though she was curious, she couldn't stand the thought of helping Voldemort right now.

The next morning, Theo and Draco were sitting in the dining room happily chatting over breakfast. Snape was there, as were Bellatrix and Voldemort. Voldemort looked like he hadn't gotten a wink of sleep the night prior. Without knowing that he would hit a nerve, Theo finally asked the one question that had been on his mind all morning. "Hey, where is the lovely Miss Granger this morning?" He wanted to talk to her again, and maybe get another snog in, if he could manage it.

Voldemort seemed to be trying to bore a hole right through the younger man's body, bristling at the question. "Severus, go check on her," he barked out, hoping that no one would realize that he was concerned as well.

Snape raised one eyebrow at his lord, knowing that he would want to speak with him later. Snape grumbled a little bit, before apparating up to Hermione's room.

The table was mostly silent until Snape's return minutes later. He was certainly up there longer than expected, Voldemort mused. When Snape apparated back into his seat, Voldemort could tell something was not right, especially when he had assumed she just hadn't wanted to see him. "Hermione has the flu," he explained.

Despite himself, Voldemort felt a bit guilty knowing that he'd yelled at her when she was ill, and he wondered if she would have been able to fight it off if he'd just left well enough alone. Although he hadn't planned on becoming a father, he found that he was quite invested in the child's health. "And will she be okay?" he found himself asking, unwilling to meet anyone else's eyes at the table.

"I gave her some pepper up potion, but we will want to keep a close eye on her because of the baby," Snape said quietly, forgetting his audience.

At this information, Theo's eyebrows shot straight up into his hairline. Baby? Certainly Hermione wasn't pregnant, was she? Standing up, leaving his breakfast half finished, he decided he would eat lunch with her, and proceeded to make arrangements with the house elf. He wasn't sure what she would want, but the house elf informed him that chicken noodle soup and grilled cheese sandwiches were Mistress Hermione's favorites.

Hermione was sitting up in bed later that afternoon, feverishly working over the parchment for Voldemort. Even though she was utterly pissed off at him, that didn't mean that she wasn't curious about what he was up to. The pepper-up potion that Snape had given her early got rid of her actual fever, but she still had the sniffles, a headache, and a painful cough. Luckily, she was nearly done with the long parchment. The syntax wasn't actually that tricky once you got the hang of it. Hermione even mused that once the war settled down, she would maybe write an academic paper on it.

Sitting up, she was pleased when the house elf brought up her lunch on a tray. Hermione sat up, setting the tray in her lap. Steaming hot chicken noodle soup and a grilled cheese sandwich, Hermione was pleased to see. "Ahh! Thank you! It's my favorite," she complimented. The house elf looked bashful and pleased before popping back to the kitchen. Usually Thor would be drooling, watching her eat, even though he didn't even like "human food." However today, he was happily munching on a large, juicy bone.

Thor's ears immediately snapped up and he began growling when Theo entered the room unannounced. "Wow, Hermione is that a wolf?" Theo asked, incredulously. He drank in the sight of the beautiful girl in the bed. She was clearly not expecting visitors because she was in some rather slinky pajamas. Her face was flushed and her hair looked luscious, even though she was sick. Her bed was filled with books and parchments, and a self inking quill.

Hermione was embarrassed by her state of undress, and pulled the sheets up higher.. "Yes, that's just Thor, my familiar. Thor, behave yourself. What are you doing here Theo?" she questioned surprised, as she hadn't even realized that he'd be there that weekend.

"Well, I missed your company at breakfast, so I arranged to have lunch with you," Theo responded, shyly, sitting down in a chair that he maneuvered next to the bed.

"I was wondering why the house elves gave me a double lunch," Hermione confessed with a laugh. "I thought it was maybe just because they think I should be eating for two," she added quietly, her eyes darting down to her lap. Theo's eyes nearly popped out of his head hearing this. Hermione definitely saw his shock written all over his face.

"So, it's true then. What Snape said is true? You are having a baby? I don't understand...how? Whose baby is it? It's not Draco's is it?" he asked, almost sounding a little bit horrified at the prospect of her and Draco reproducing. Theo wouldn't have stopped asking questions if Hermione hadn't held up her hand so that she could respond.

"Yes, it's true that I am having a baby. It happens the way that anyone becomes pregnant, Theo, but I am sure you don't need me to explain the birds and the bees to you," she said smartly, though perhaps she should wonder, seeing as they had no sort of health class at Hogwarts. Hermione watched his cheeks become pink with embarrassment. "And why is it that everyone thinks that Malfoy and I would ever get together?" Apparently this rumor was a lot bigger than she knew.

"Surely you've heard what people think, Hermione?" Theo asked, honestly surprised. "A lot of the Ravenclaws, and even some of the Slytherins think that it's all posturing, and that you only argue in public to hide your feelings for one another."

"I hadn't," Hermione chuckled. "No, the baby is not Draco's, though he has been hinting that I should name the baby after him. The child belongs to a man I knew as Tom Riddle." Hermione responded, quietly, before taking a deep breath, wondering if she was doing the right thing by sharing this detail with her new friend. "But you might know him as Lord Voldemort."

Seeing the look of complete shock on Theo's face necessitated that Hermione tell him the whole story.