I own none of their ideas but can only weave them into this new interpretation. Credit should go to those I consciously draw from: Good Will Hunting, The Matrix, The Lost Symbol, anything by Virginia Woolfe, Inception, and others I can't remember right now.
It was simply too much to take in all at once. By the time she made it to her quarters, Hermione was exhausted. She could barely even muster enthusiasm for the cornucopia of books and manuscripts lining the walls. The distinct injunction between what she was given to wear and her ornate surroundings was jarring. Animal pelts covered every available surface. Hermione wanted to be offended, but it felt too right to fight the overwhelming urge to sleep.
Day and night were indistinguishable though the thick draperies. Time seemed to have no place in this world.
Awakening to the almost intangible feel of over-one-thousand count bed linens is a luxury no one should die without experiencing. Hermione reveled in it. Squirming around in quality sheets took a little of the indignity out of being caught frolicking in the bed covers. Hermione abruptly stopped mid-roll. By Voldemort himself.
"I tried to give you more time, but it seems pertinent to remind you. Your parents will be home in 72 hours and I'd like to have you returned before then."
"I fail to see how you are capable of fully informing me about Isis in 72 hours."
Voldemort was already to the door when he responded, "who ever said you would be?"
Hermione determinedly set about untangling herself from her mess of sheets. She was too furious to acknowledge Voldemort would be long gone by the time she got her fighting feet underneath her. Prepared to release all her aggression upon the first capable ears, Hermione was even more perturbed to come face-to-face with a house elf.
"My Lord tells Tinkerbell to have Misses ready as soon as misses is out of bed. Misses is out of bed. Tinkerbell is ready to have Misses ready as soon as Misses is ready to be ready." The elf tapered off towards the end of her speech. She had talked herself in circles and couldn't remember her next line. "Tinkerbell is sorry Misses. Tinkerbell as been preparing for years to take care of Misses and Tinkerbell cannot remember whats Tinkerbell has been remembering to say."
Hermione considered herself to be fluent in house-elf linguistics, so had no problem responding. "Tinkerbell should not say a thing. I can ready myself, thank you."
Tinkerbell wildly flung herself to the floor with more force than can be accredited to gravity and wailed, "Tinkerbell is so sorry to offend my misses. Tinkerbell should be better. Tinkerbell must practice more."
Dumbfounded at how her simple words had backfired so quickly, Hermione thought how to best rectify the situation, and quickly. "Wait. You are Tinkerbell. The Tinkerbell? I have been waiting for years to meet you. I could be helped by no house-elf save one, my TInkerbell." Tinkerbell was spread dejectedly across the floor, but managed to swivel her little head Hermione's direction to listen. Her pea colored head was shiny with tears, but she slowly managed to arrange all her little, green-bean shaped limbs around her and rise.
Tinkerbell stood for a moment in stunned amazement, before sharply turning to Hermione and jabbing a tiny finger in Hermione's side. "Tinkerbell is late!" Hermione's bedclothes fell away; a refreshing breeze briefly grazed her skin, but just as quickly was covered by muggle trousers, blouse, and shoes. All the while Hermoine was being thrust towards the door by an unnaturally strong house elf.
The thick oak door slammed shut in Hermione's face. A voice over her shoulder noted, "you do know after that speech you're stuck with her, and she's just a baby, so that'll be awhile."
"You!" Hermione exclaimed in stunned surprise. "You enslave baby house elves!" She trembled in rage, furious for expecting a decent explanation.
"Come, Hermione. I have a lot to show you. I will feel comfortable debating politics with you when you are better informed." His dispassionate voice was a sharp contrast to argument Hermione prepared herself for.
It took a calming breath to enunciate her argument. "I would like to think of myself as being equally informed as you at my age, perhaps with a different focus." Hermione's greatest strength was to remove herself, emotionally, from the situation to logically respond. No one could ever take that away from her. Even with the most infuriating opponent.
"Open your eyes Hermione. We are here. Together." Voldemort had paused long enough to gesture between their two bodies, both close enough to be considered friendly. "Is that not contradiction enough to what you have been spoon fed down your pipe in that hovel? Yes, Hermione, yes. You are just as well read as I was, but were I had my back turned to the institution controlling me, you seem to be blinded into submission by it."
The silence wove between them. Pulling them together, weaving a sense of understanding. Knitting an unspoken bond.
An unbidden thought prompted Hermione's next question, "You have an answer for everything. Everything has a place and a place for everything. What about the small things? Things other people forget about." Voldemort patiently waited for her to continue. "The animals."
Voldemort's eyebrows furrowed in confusion, "what about them?"
"My room is covered in furs. Covered. But every person I have seen wears the same simple mantle. Why the excess with the accommodations?"
"I suppose that's as good a start as any. Let us go to the kitchens."
Nothing in the wizarding world could have prepared Hermione for Isis' kitchens. Since the compound was isolated in the Rocky Mountains, the entire set up had to be self-sufficient. Greenhouses lined the mountainside like low-lying barracks. Hermione noticed their spiny peaks rising from the foliage immediately. The single, large window she stood before framed the entire kitchen, to each side of her, house elves filed in from the hillside. Elves crisscrossed in front of the window, baskets full of vegetables went to the left, drawn and quartered animals went to the right. None of the elves took notice of Voldemort and Hermione's position.
Voldemort reached from Hermione's arm. He took her through the archway to the carnivorous side. Far too few turns later to have covered so much ground, Hermione found herself in the sun and surrounded by animal hides. They were stretched skins tanning in the sun. "Just because the meat you see served is detached from reality, does not mean the people who prepare it are. All the skins from your room are from animals served at Isis or found incurably injured." A cold wind caused Hermione to notice for the first time Voldemort was wearing a causal suit. "We're dressed for a trip into muggle society. Are you ready?"
Hermione could only nod. The revelations kept coming, this one shaking the foundations her beliefs were based on more than any other. Appreciation for the natural world didn't coincide with her internal image of the reapers and destroyers she had imagined.
They landed on a hillside close to a busy automobile turnpike. It was dark and from this distance Hermione could only imagine the bodies of the cars behind their lights. Voldemort settled into the hillside. It struck Hermione that he must sit on the ground often. His posture was just as relaxed as he was in her garden. Hermione settled with her back to him, incapable of acknowledging the intensity in his eyes.
"From a few kilometers away the freeway flows like a river." Hermione didn't know what to expect coming here, but his melodic voice describing the scenery was not it. Hermione was able to sit in comfortable silence. Just watching the cars float down the black river cutting through the landscape. "See those cars," Voldemort pointed over Hermione's shoulder, aligning his arm with Hermione's perspective as best he could, "the ones merging. All those cars merging from the on-ramp push some cars into the next lane and cause the others to compress. Exactly like a stream merging with a river."
Hermione's mind was churning. There is a lesson in all this, but she couldn't find it.
Voldemort pointed again. "There. The accident, like a boulder in that river. The cars are instantly thrown into turbulence, but even out over time to move around the car. To us, and those muggle insurance adjusters, everything about this scene can be represented by a complex arithmancy matrix. Right down to the age of the driver. But to that kid, that young boy, that one moment changed his whole life. To all those people, every moment feels something, has an emotion. That accident could have just ruined someone's life, but to us, arithmancy indicated the exact time, place, and severity of that accident. It had nothing to do with the boy driving the car. It had everything to do with that boy driving the car. Everything and nothing, coexisting."
The hard ground seemed to grow more uncomfortable with every passing moment that Hermione deliberated Voldemort's words. She flopped back onto his shins, relaxing into the contact. Everything about the scene in front of her was beautiful. The distinct choreography of a greater being, lights flashing from the first responders, the stream of lights moving in opposing directions separated by too little space for them to be moving so quickly. Everything was beautiful until she looked closer and imagined the pain involved. That human dimension skewed everything.
Voldemort's hands clasped Hermione's shoulders to steady her as he rose. He moved around her and held out a hand. "Next."
They ended up in a hospital, hands still clasped from the hillside overlooking the traffic. Hermione's palm slipped from his grasp as she turned to take in her surroundings.
"If you could do one thing here what would it be?"
The white walls were lined with stretchers, overflow. Hermione could hear the noise from the waiting room, a dull roar. "Help everyone."
"How?"
"I don't even know where to begin. I can't even imagine how to start."
Voldemort nodded. He moved his hands back to Hermione's sides. She flinched. "Relax. Trust me." Voldemort slid his hands around to her stomach moving them under her shirt. He firmly pressed his hands between her hipbones. Hermione's skin prickled in anticipation. "Breathe evenly, I'll match you." Hermione couldn't tell if her ears were telling her she heard his voice or if her mind read his intention, but she complied. Voldemort's body sheathed her, held her. The pressure on her stomach grew, and Hermione could feel the shift in her magic as he drew from her.
The din surrounding the pair was reduced to a faint murmur. The light did not seem so bright. The smell did not seem so sterile. The warmth growing in Hermione's core was pleasant, cooled by Voldemort's magic.
His magic felt like the belly of a snake, smooth, soft and supple. To Voldemort, Hermione's magic was a like a sun-warmed rock in the winter.
Suddenly, Hermione felt pulled in every direction. Darting from one sick person to the next. Her feet were stationary, but her heat pounded like she was running to every bedside. Confusion. Disembodied pain. Relief. Joy. Sadness. All crammed into the smallest sliver of time. Before Hermione could do enough, feel enough, change enough, she felt sucked back into her own reality.
Hermione slumped against Voldemort. His fingers catching her rib cage to hold steady her.
"We did a lot more here than I though we would. Let's go back to Isis." Still in Voldemort's arms, Hermione allowed herself to be taken home.
Tinkerbell was waiting eagerly for their arrival. When Voldemort led Hermione slowly into her room Tinkerbell rushed to help, changing Hermione into bed clothes, plaiting her unruly hair, and setting tea by the bed all during Hermione's steady trek to the bed. Voldemort dismissed Tinkerbell when Hermione was safely under the covers. Moments later he collapsed to his knees by her bedside.
"That was unbelievable." Voldemort pressed his forehead into the bed. He was grinning. "There is not a spell for what we just did Hermione. We saved people. We didn't save anyone's life, but maybe we saved their quality of life. Merlin, Hermione. Every other wizard on the planet is limited by the confines of their mind. Every healer can only heal people with spells they know how to cast. How do you do that?"
Hermione felt immediately rejuvenated once in bed. The weight of her limbs had been reduced to a deep tingle. "I've never done that before. It was you."
"It was us." Voldemort picked himself up from the floor and perched at Hermione's side. She shifted so Voldemort would have more room, but only gave him enough room so she could still feel his presence though the covers. "It's impossible to protect people Hermione. Everyday people narrowly escape death a hundred times, we can't model it, we've tried, people just do, some hand of fate pulls them away at the last minute. What we were just able to do is a huge improvement."
"I can't reconcile the contradictions. Everything you have shown me today contradicts everything I have been told, even makes what I have been told completely irrelevant. I don't believe those death eaters you claim are impostors could have perverted your message to such an extent."
Still grinning, Voldemort replied, "that's just it Hermione. We aren't protecting their lives Hermione. It's impossible. Death Eaters, eating death, is precisely what we cannot do. Everything in the world is at our disposal, but we cannot cheat death. We cannot even defer death. We can only free people to live their lives the best they can. Until tonight, really Hermione."
In accepting that she was fooled before, logically, she had to admit she could be fooled again. "Let's say for a moment I believe you. How do the impostors claim your crusade is the massacre of muggleborns, how did that concept even have a place in your vendetta?"
Voldemort, patiently as ever, responded to her every reservation. "I am a muggleborn Hermione. I may be a halfblood, but I am a muggleborn. I was raised in the muggle world. I hated every waking moment I spent in that prison. Dumbledore made it that way for me. Every summer I was thrust back into non-magical society, my powers bound. I was in prison. I am pure now because I have vowed to be considerate of my magical footprint in the muggle world."
Every fiber of Hermione's being wanted to believe him. She wanted to find solace in this new place, but she had to be sure. "That sounds a bit glossed over if you ask me."
"To an extent yes, I have killed people and I will kill again, and I will feel good doing it. If a burglar came into your home intending to kill your husband, children, and destroy all chances for your future would you not feel compelled to kill them?"
Hermione had heard this argument a thousand times before in every context from gun rights to Dark Arts education, "I would, but that's irrelevant."
"No, No, Hermione it isn't. That's exactly what people like Mr. Weasley are doing."
"Wait, no! He is a kind man, foolish at times, but kind and never does a thing with bad intentions."
"Hermione, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Every time he ventures into the muggle world in what could generously be described as a costume, he is erasing the line between muggle and magical. Misistry officials have to travel in his wake and obliviate muggles to prevent them remembering his antics."
"Who is to say there should even be a line between muggle and wizard? I think it is a great service Mr. Weasley does: to try to understand muggle technology."
"Hermione, I understand muggle technology, most powerful wizards understand muggle technology, and a fair few of the right sort of wizards are furthering the muggle technology muggles depend on so much."
"What exactly are you trying to tell me, Tom?" Hermione sat up from the bed so she could look Voldemort in the eyes.
"I'm trying to tell you that things aren't as they seem. That every time a wizard or witch traipses back and forth across the line separating our world from theirs, thousands of galleons and a handful of lives are spent trying to repair the damage that has been done. " Voldemort took a deep breath and moved his hand to Hermione's leg. "When even intelligent muggles sit to watch television in idle bliss, do you think they can even comprehend the complexity of its operation? Ions being shot from a tube in perfect order to illuminate the screen in front of them. They aren't ready to understand. They can't understand, with every new technology we develop we bring a fair few closer to us, but at the same time the convenience that technology causes pushes countless more away."
Hermione subconsciously moved her hand closer to Voldemort's. Now the two lay temptingly close. "I can fill in all the blanks to corroborate the hope that I already have. The hope that you really are a good person and are fighting the good fight, but you needs to be more specific."
"Hermione, Isis has untold amount of power and is protected by immeasurable force. I use my power without shame. I have tortured people and relished it. I have killed hundreds and will kill hundreds more. I crave it."
Voldemort paused dramatically as if to let his words sink in. The effect did not endear him any more to Hermione. Her mind recoiled, trying to shut out everything she felt.
He leaned forward to attract her gaze again. "But I believe in a power bigger than myself, bigger than all of us. And between me and that infinite power is Isis, they ground me, they require justification for my actions. If you cannot believe me when I'm telling you the basic foundation of my life, you are never going to believe your place in it."
"As long as you know there is something out there more powerful than you, judging you. I trust you."