While Tom was talking, Hermione had trouble forcing her brain to let go of the photograph. Her brain was a finicky operator. As soon as she got excited over the comprehension of the wizarding education system, the stranglehold on Tom's face relaxed and Hermione was able to remember the entire picture - a Hogwarts trophy, school uniform, a Slytherin crest, and a badge that could have been for prefect or Head Boy, but the photograph was too poor quality to tell.
Understanding always seems to be instantaneous for Hermione as soon as she has all the pieces to a puzzle. She rarely has to walk her mind though the steps of connecting all the bits of disjointed information. She knew where she had seen the picture before, seven years ago, before she even boarded the Hogwarts Express. She wanted to run, needed to distance herself from the rich timbre of his voice so her brain could function, but the prospect of learning new information was impossible to ignore. The books there must have been waiting for her to read, were too tempting. Hermione couldn't immediately flee upon her recognition of his face.
The process to stir her body into action began well before her limbs showed any recognition of the impulses sent to them. In moments of intense emotion, brain function accelerates and outside stimuli seem slower. Hermione's brain was running on all tracks and her body couldn't catch up. Her mind was already inside the carriage house, frantically searching for that old book. It wasn't even a question of whether she would take the satchel or not, her body acted according her most basic reflexes.
'I have to be sure, I have to know for certain the boy is my gardens is Tom Marvolo Riddle.'
Finally, Seat of Power: Headmasters of Hogwarts was in her hands - a biography of the Office of the Headmasters of Hogwarts. No one of any importance bothered to read this book. Hundreds of other, frankly, more entertaining and well-written accounts had been published. How this one even made it to the printing press is a mystery. She remembered plucking it from the shelves of Obscurus Books during her first trip to Diagon Alley before her first year. The cashier chuckled as she set the book on the counter, 'Quite the overzealous first year, ehh?' This one here, he tapped the thick hide of the book, 'is very poorly written, too disjointed for most folks to get through the first 15 pages.' Hermione was not about to be demeaned by a dolt of a shopkeeper too unintelligent as to risk losing a sale. She paid spitefully and refused to admit how boorish the tome really was until it came time to pack for her first year. She had read it once already and there were so many books in the place she was going. That was enough of an excuse as any when it came to leaving the offending book in Kensington. Fortunately for her, it wasn't in the basement of Order headquarters when her things had been confiscated like a common Azkaban contraband cleaning.
Her fingers had already found Armando Dippet's chapter. Everything within these few pages had been sensationalized in Rita Skeeter's 'exclusive look into the life of Headmaster Dippet'. The plagiarism would go unnoticed. Hardly anyone would be able to draw a connection between the dry statement of facts in Seat of Power and Skeeter's dime novel Armando Dippet: Master or Moron? Predictably the most press-worthy page of the entire book, Skeeter missed. There in the middle of Dippet's chapter was a photograph of Dippet handing an engraved trophy to an unnamed boy. The caption only credited Dippet for the giving of the award for Special Services to the School. The recipient of the trophy remained unnamed, but it didn't take Rowena Ravenclaw to deduce the boy's name.
Hermione deeply pressed her fingertips into her scalp. Nothing came from Hermione's search except for the distinct satisfaction of knowing she was correct, again. That, and the creeping certainty her betrayal was far from over.
'I could have killed him, just now. Just moments ago I had the chance to end this, all of this. I could put Harry out of his misery. Free the wizarding world. I knew, for absolute certain, I was sitting next to Lord Voldemort - a terrorist, murderer, and worse. Everything would be over if I had drawn my wand and uttered Avada Kedavra. It didn't even occur to me though. He was just so calm, so suspiciously calm. As if I didn't even necessitate the energy for him to remain on guard. So inordinately calm. I have nowhere to go and I am contemplating the murder of the only wizard offering me asylum. Snape is by all means out. He thought it more pressing to tattle on me to Voldemort than respond to my letter.'
For hours, Hermione sat at her desk deliberating her next step. The lights from the carriage house were sure to ignite the ire of the meddlesome old lady living across the alley. She was always such a light sleeper; even the slightest disturbance woke her. During lower school, the rumor mill would invariably spread Hermione's latest infraction. Before Hermione even heard of Hogwarts, she would always come out to the carriage house and perch on her father's sedan to practice her ability to move things and do things without the judgmental eye of her nanny. No matter how hard she tried not to, she always made some sort of noise and the old hag would tell anyone with ears of her latest rave, or of the Granger girl doing marijuana in the dead of night, or any other degree of scandal.
'Is he even offering me asylum? Will I be a test, an experiment? Or an equal? I don't even know what he wants from me.' Hermione played out every possible scenario in her mind, but it was a circuitous process. Every train of thought always managed to warp into her ultimate betrayal of Harry.
'But how can I betray someone whose cause has already betrayed me? Harry and the Order claim to be fighting for equality, but on whose terms? I have just been all but excommunicated from the wizarding world, my world, and preemptively banned from fighting with them. I am their cause,' Hermione thought exasperatedly. 'Molly was always saying while we were in school that I am the exemplar of muggleborn intelligence and I disprove their entire pureblood edict. My words, not hers, of course. I can do everything mudbloods aren't supposed to be able to do. I am everything Voldemort is fighting against. So, why is he offering to teach me?'
Just as Hermione would do in her notes, she went back-and-forth with options until she could make an informed decision. She decided she made her decision the moment she walked out the door of Number 12 Grimmauld Place. For three weeks she had been fooling herself into thinking she still had a decision to make. Ever since she picked up her quill to continue studying controlled casting, she has been lying to herself.
She prepared for bed with white noise roaring in her ears. She was emotionally exhausted from the trauma of the day. It took a considerable amount out of her resolve to admit she was no longer fighting for the 'light side', for good, and for the principles ingrained in her since her induction into the magical world. She sleepily crawled into bed and lay unmoving until morning.
The morning dawned with the hope of a new day. The leaves had been washed clean with dew, and the day stretched ahead with infinite possibilities. In the kitchen a note was lying on the counter:
Darling, your father and I have made an impromptu trip to Geneva. We are scheduled for return next week. Please remind Mridati not to clean the carriage house. Our Love
Without her parent's scheduling, the possibilities were endless. First, she was going to eat some breakfast directly out of the icebox. Hermione loved to break rules. Nothing big, but anything she could do with complete confidence she wouldn't get caught, she'd do in an instant. For example, her favorite rule to break was no eating out of the Tupperware. With no parents around to enforce the rule, she could get off scotch free, and get the satisfaction of knowing the next time her mother pulled the fruit tray from the icebox her mother would have no idea. It was the principle of the matter.
Breakfast left her giddy at the potential contained in her new books, and she zealously began her studies. There were only five books in the messenger bag, the thickest of the two she had already read from the Black's library. The remaining three, The Conservation of Magic, Alma, and Infinito Totallum, were all books on the origins of magic. Each vehemently declared the theories of the others to be incorrect and extolled their own theory with more than a hint of propaganda.
The Conservation of Magic, by Sandiver Mohr was the most scientific, but even the author seemed to admit the trouble in quantifying all the magic in the Universe. Hermione had heard of this text before. Tonks often vilinizaed her family's strict adherence to the pureblood code. Once, she said, "If they ever would get Conservation of Magic unstuck from up their behinds, they might actually be able to see how dumb they are." Hermione deduced this text must have been used in teaching prejudice to young purebloods.
Once the author quit dwelling on muggles stealing magic from deserving purebloods, Hermoine had trouble finding fault in his work. His experiments were well documented and strictly quantitative. He set a baseline for magical output and quantified magic from there. Most of his experiments involved alternately casting protection and destruction charms on an inanimate object. In the subsequent 319 pages of experimentation, Mohr's theory held. Hermione was reluctant to admit the accountability and thoroughness of Mohr's work. He did, after all, believe in taking back the magic that was allegedly stolen from purebloods.
Hermione found the most interesting portion of his work to be his conclusions on the affectivity of protection charms in general. Mohr found when an offensive spell is cast less powerfully than a protective spell, the protective spell absorbs the power of the attack to further enhance the protection. The bad news was Mohr's discovery that when an offensive spell penetrated a protective spell, the power from the protective spell turned of the very thing it was supposed to be protecting and amplified the effect of the offensive spell. In other words, if you were dueling a master, you best bet was to just stand there. Ideally, your protective spell should diffuse the power of the attack. If the offensive spell had ten Mohrs of negative energy and a defensive spell was cast with only seven Mohrs of power, instead of the resulting attack being diminished to three Mohrs of power, the attack was amplified to 17 Mohrs.
Most problematically was the author's inability to gage the power of magic absolutely. In the same way muggle scientists have trouble quantifying temperature, Mohr was unable to reduce his testing environment to a magic vacuum. Muggle scientists theoretically quantify absolute zero as the pure crystalline state were there is zero uncertainty of the state of the substance, but Mohr was unable to do that.
Alma was the most controversial of the three. Alma, meaning giving, stated the ability and capacity to practice magic was given from one magical being to another. The author claimed every magical being could trace their magical lineage back to Merlin himself or a claviger. He claims a claviger is a person who is able to tap into the magical grid and withdraw power directly from the source. His whole argument is entirely theoretical, so Hermione has a hard time finding holes in his argument. Her main point of contention is where her conclusions of his argument and his, don't meet.
'If I chose to assume this author, this Nicolas Sadi Carnot, has merit, I would assume all mudbloods are clavigers. It would explain their ability to perform magic when all others in their families could not. But Carnot, a prueblood, claims there can only be a handful of clavigers alive at a time. Far fewer than mudbloods.'
Carnot just automatically jumped to the conclusion there were only a set number of clavigers and didn't give a reason for it. He was so sure of his conclusions he didn't properly justify them. It was infuriating to say the least. Hermione was finished taking words at face value.
Albus Dumbledore, often quoted third book, Infinito Totallum by Tito. Never having been aware, Dumbledore wasn't quoting himself; Hermione was a little shocked to see the words published verbatim. This ideology seemed to be the most easily explainable. There is magic in everything around us, magical beings are able to harness that power and manipulate the magic from the environment. Magical persons are simply more aware of the magic within them and able to consciously control it. Muggles, live in the same world wizards do, but they are unaware of the magic around them.
'This is all well and good, but if I dismiss Carnot's work for having no proof, this one has to go too. The theory is wonderful, but Dumbledore always explained it as something we only had to teach to willing muggles and they would become wizards too.'
Hermione wasn't certain what conclusions she was supposed to draw from these books. The two from the Black library were pitiful discussions on how pureblood wizards are supposed to be able to strengthen their magic.
'I need to talk to Tom.'
The mansion next door was imposing on a good day, downright ominous on any other. The fog held London in a clammy grip since midmorning, but Hermione was too busy reading to notice the suppressive hand until she was contemplating going though it. Just as she was about to step into the night Riddle rounded the corner of the main house like he hadn't just broken and entered.
Hermione was able to observe his approach and felt better composed than their prior meeting. "Good evening, Hermione."
"Tom." Riddle could take the lead in this scenario. Hermione preferred to keep her cards close to her chest until she could determine the lay of the land.
Riddle settled himself on the porch were Hermione had stopped. He even seemed unsure of where to start for a moment. "What do you want to know?"
"Everything," she breathed.
"Start simply."
Hermione took a breath to still her thoughts, "why can I do magic?"
"I said simply, not at the beginning." Hermione made to defend her question but Riddle continued, "I thought you might ask why we're here. We come from a different school of thought than most. Together we could learn from each other."
Despite being flattered by Riddle's acknowledgement that she had something to offer, Hermione didn't let Riddle's evasive tactics fool her. If being a prefect had taught her anything, it was how to spot it. "What, specifically, do you do Tom?"
"Ah, the heart of the matter. Did I give myself away with the reading material? I'm in international politics."
"Right, I'm well aware of your politics. Which makes me wonder why you haven't killed me yet."
Riddle was staring directly into Hermione's eyes, "I couldn't if I tried, Hermione. And those politics you read about in the paper are part hobby, part deception. The politics I'm invested in are more of a covert nature."
Hermione's face hardened into inscrutable intensity. It was a lot to process. "And if I agree to your terms."
"We become research partners in some areas, you my apprentice in others." Riddle reached out and gripped Hermione's wrist, flipping her palm upwards, and seemingly realizing the awkwardness of the gesture, dropped her wrist back onto her lap.
"What assurances do I have you won't kill me?"
Riddle had been forcibly controlling his facial emotions for all his interactions with Hermione. Until now. "You're not listening to me," he snapped. Now he was standing, Riddle had always been a tall man and compounded with Hermione's small stature, the effect was imposing. He began to manically chuckle as he walked toward the steps. Hermione knew instantly the whole set up had been too good to be true. He was too kind, too handsome for him to be sincere. "Come. Bring your wand." Riddle set his wand on the porch and walked ten meters away from Hermione's position on the steps. "You want to avenge the death of Harry Potter's parents? The insanity of the Longbottoms? Everything that has gone wrong in my 'reign of terror'? Now's your chance Hermione Granger. Seize the moment. I'm unarmed."
This was the moment. This was what the entire ministry had hoped for, what she had been contemplating this morning. But Hermione was frozen in indecision; he was her only chance to remain in the wizarding world. "I can't do it. You're everything I have right now." Riddle moved a step towards her with his hand outstretched. Before Hermione could protest against the voice in her mind, her wand arm rose, and her vocal chords roared, "Avada Kedavra!" Hermione waited for the jet of green light to flare from her wand's tip, but nothing happened. Her wand hand began to tingle, then burn, like over stimulated nerve endings. She gasped and looked to see Riddle clutching his wrist. "What. Are. You. Doing." Hermione gasped between breaths.
Riddle had made it to the front porch and reached for her hand. Instantly, as their fingers touched, the pain subsided. "Our connection. I had to make sure it worked."
"And if it didn't you would have died!"
"The Killing Curse has to be truly meant to kill someone. Most castings are misfires that cause more damage than they're worth. It was very low risk."
Hermione lay panting on the cool marble of her porch. The pain was long gone, but concentrating on her breathing seemed like the safest option at this point. "Tom." Hermione turned her head to peer at Riddle sitting on the stairs by her feet. "When can we start?"
The air blew from Riddle's lungs and a smirk tugged on the hardened planes of his face. "Right now. We have a week before your parents return."