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Mina and Godric saw what was happening and sprinted back up the staircase before they could be seen.
They had heard sounds of loud voices, wondered what the hell was happening – but when they had gone down the stairs, they had seen Riddle kissing Hermione, and fled.
"She didn't even ask me if I was okay at dinner," Mina said.
"Well, I mean, you weren't exactly obvious. You're always sort of stoic," laughed Godric.
Mina shrugged. "She should have been able to tell something was up, at least."
Godric kissed her on the forehead. "Look – if she's happy going around with Riddle, maybe we should just leave her alone. It's not like we ever really knew that much about her relationship with the guy, and now we know for sure Riddle's a bad sort, I'm not exactly inclined to put us in danger, if we're just going to be arguing with her about him anyway."
"I guess. I just... I feel like we're letting her down, you know? He's... there's just something about the way he..." She shook her head.
"I know," Godric said. "I know."
"In the meantime," said Mina with a smirk, "we need to find somewhere we won't be interrupted by random hallway noise." Godric grinned back, and he gripped her hand as he helped her through the portrait hole.
xXxXxXxXx
Hermione went down the stairs, hundreds of stairs, interminable stairs, her eyes dry and her chest feeling queasy post-breakdown. Her mind was completely blank, because she should have known this would happen, but she didn't want to admit it to herself. So she just walked dully out of Hogwarts and trailed all over the snowed-over grounds for hours and hours until she found herself lying down by the lake in the snow, casting an exhausted Calenta to make sure she didn't freeze. Then she let herself fall unconscious in dreamless, restless sleep.
Hermione awoke at dawn.
She wrapped her arms around her knees and stared out over the frozen lake. The sky was a flat grey sheet, and the lake was a dark slate platter beneath, rippled with captured currents.
Everything she had worked so hard to keep to herself – no, not even to herself. She had shoved it back beneath herself, not letting it surface except that one time as Mina had yelled at her and sometimes during her nightmares, not letting anything faze her – only to be deceived by the smallest hint at an actual friendship. He had never really participated, she thought bitterly. He had only ever seemed to put up with her, as if she were the rotten, undesirable one in the equation. Mudblood... He had never said anything nice to her. He had never done anything nice for her. It was through pure incidence that any of his actions might have happened to make her feel like they were getting along.
Hermione pressed her closed eyes to her knees, black overtaking her vision, darkness marred only by that image of his face before he had kissed her. Like he was sorry. Like he felt bad. Like he felt anything at all. Hermione made a strangled noise that echoed in the cold air.
Everything he had done had led up to his handing her that bottle of Butterbeer, something a friend would do to comfort someone else. She should have felt unsteady about drinking something Riddle gave her. She should have heard it as the hiss of air escaped when she popped the cap. She should have seen it in his eyes; she should have smelled it in the air. She never should have tasted it. What would Mad-Eye Moody say?
Well, Moody was dead. Like everyone else. Like her.
She felt as if she was sitting on air, the ground just not there beneath her, like if she so much as breathed in she could fall and collide with that black ocean of misery again.
What did it matter? She had always known he would try to hurt her, again and again, and Tom Riddle always succeeded when he wanted to hurt someone. Infallibly. Reliably.
At least now he had what he needed, so she had a perfect excuse never to speak to him ever again. Hermione felt almost relieved. She was finally feeling like she should have felt all along – disgusted with Tom Riddle, wanting absolutely nothing to do with him, repulsed by his very existence, uncurious, dispassionate...
So why was she miserable? It didn't make any logical sense. She'd known he would try to betray her time and again. She'd known he could hurt her. She'd known he was Lord Voldemort. She had gone into the game knowing all this. She should have come out unsurprised, displeased at the very most.
What was he doing at that very second, Hermione wondered? Was he sitting on that black leather sofa, his legs sprawled out in that lazy, dominant posture he had, his wicked smile firmly in place and his dark eyes shining with victory? He was happy about this, almost certainly – After all, he had finally achieved his goal. He had worked hard enough on that potion, worked enough to win her trust, and it hadn't been just a waste of time for him, because she had finally let down her guard. Let him into her mind and showed him all of his beautiful handiwork, the terror, the darkness, the torture. He was probably cheering inwardly, with new knowledge that he was the utter master of the Wizarding World, the knowledge that now everyone feared him.
But how could he be happy to see the misery of others? Hermione just couldn't comprehend the appeal. How could he feel like his mission was to murder everyone else, to spread pain and heartbreak to people for absolutely no wrong they had ever committed against him?
She bit her cheek until blood flooded her mouth, and then the pain kept her from crying. She opened her mouth. A red drop from her tongue sizzled down into the snow, like a tear, a bloody tear from her treacherous, faithless lips, lips that never should have touched that bottle, lips that never should have touched his.
That kiss... she couldn't remember a thing about it now, could only remember that she had waited for it to stop... When he had drawn back, that look in his eyes, that fiery, raw, impassioned look – she had never seen such mindless lust in any eyes. She had never thought herself capable of instilling it in anyone. And now... now, she never wanted to see it again. Especially not on that face. Especially in those twin velvet eyes, eyes she could never trust. What had he thought, that he could lure her in with one kiss?
Hermione felt sick. She hiccupped miserably.
He had looked so... human, right before and right after the kiss, and in-between, his mouth so eager – Hermione's mouth itched uncomfortably, and she felt like cutting off her lips just to get rid of that feeling. She felt like placing a hot poker to her mouth to burn away the wrongness, to burn away the deception, the first kiss she had had since Ron – since someone so good at heart it was hard to believe, and now this. How far she had fallen, from that haven of Ron into this hellish torment of something that was never the true Tom Riddle.
Nothing, now. No surprise. Alone. Empty.
Hermione lay back in the snow, removing the Calenta charm, and willed herself to freeze into an absolute catatonia, where it wouldn't hurt anymore, or even where she could understand why it felt like her heart was breaking.
xXxXxXxXx
"Hermione, it really is very late – Hermione?"
Mina ripped back the bedsheets in shock, as if Hermione could be perfectly flat under them, as if the bed weren't empty. She swallowed fear. Surely she hadn't... moved on? Maybe she had stayed the night with Riddle, as repulsive as that thought was. She could wait, wait and see if she saw Hermione that day...
Hermione wasn't at breakfast, or at lunch. Mina, Albus and Godric finally set out to find her in the afternoon, scared sick. It didn't seem realistic. Hermione had scarcely been there for two months. She couldn't have moved on. It just wasn't rational.
"Hermione?" yelled Mina, standing by the lake, looking around.
"I'm here, Mina," said a reproachful voice scarcely ten feet away. Mina jumped. There had been some more snow during the day – Hermione was lying in three feet of snow, flat against the ground and completely invisible except from right next to her.
"Oh. Merlin, you scared us," Mina said. "We thought you'd moved on... Are you alright?"
"Fine. I was practicing flying for a while, but I thought I'd try some meditation now."
Mina nodded. "Okay. Well... okay, I'll leave you in peace, then. You coming to dinner?"
"Probably."
Mina waved, relief flooding her, and went back up to the castle to tell Godric and Albus.
Hermione turned her face to the right a little, staring at the wall of white crystals surrounding her. Mina hadn't suspected a thing. Hermione should have felt happy about that, but she felt betrayed. Perhaps she had thought that anyone who was an inherently better person than Tom Riddle should be more sensitive to hidden emotion. She was disappointed.
xXxXxXxXx
Riddle was still under the sheets when the sun set. He hadn't removed himself from his bed all day. There wasn't anything of appeal outside the room, after all. He suddenly felt exhausted of the distance people gave him in terror, that barrier between him and the rest of the world. He almost longed for Araminta, because she at least thought he was a regular eighteen-year-old with whom she could hold a normal conversation. But it was irrational to long for that ignorance; Araminta didn't know a thing about who he really was. Everyone who knew had that distance – even Abraxas, one of the friendliest people here – even Abraxas kept carefully away from familiarity, from friendliness, and Riddle felt like if he left his bed and encountered that just then, it would just irritate him to no end.
At about three in the afternoon, Abraxas had come to his room briefly, just to check that he hadn't moved on. "Oh, good," Abraxas had said. "You're still here."
"Yes," Riddle had muttered in disappointment. "Yes, I'm here."
Abraxas had bowed his head a little and walked away swiftly, not asking about the blasted door, and Riddle had wanted him to, so badly, had wanted to speak about this with someone who wouldn't tell anyone else, someone who could give him information as to the workings of the mind of an 18-year-old girl.
Riddle closed his eyes. He had gone his entire life without leaning on someone else; this tiniest of tiny dilemmas was little reason to start. In fact, this was victory. This was good. He should have been pleased, not feeling... numb.
That feeling he'd had during the kiss... that had been entirely unplanned. He should have known to stick to the plan; he should not have gotten attached to her damn smile and her constant laughter and the way she would roll her eyes and blow her hair from her eyes and the way she would attempt to correct him and they'd have to dig through the library to see who was right, and the stubborn looks in her eyes and the way she would drop his first name just so and the way she stuck by him no matter how utterly blank or downright mean he was being – she always stayed until she wanted to leave, and would not leave a second before, no matter what he tried, and he had started adjusting for that. He had started adjusting for everything about her.
Then, when he had pulled away from kissing her, there had been such a writhing feeling in his chest as he had never felt in his life, like someone was strangling him from the inside out, like someone had lit a furnace in his stomach, his hands practically shaking – but that blank, dead look on her face. She hadn't even considered for a second kissing him back. It hadn't even been an option for her.
Rage burned in Riddle, and he flipped over, burying his face childishly into his pillow. He was being so infantile. So he had kissed some girl, and she hadn't wanted to kiss him back. How utterly horrifying; surely the world would end, right? Next he would be fretting about maybe it being his kissing that had driven her away, and just the thought made a tiny smirk appear on Riddle's face for the first time all day. No other girl had ever complained...
And there he was, reassuring himself! Like it was even an issue! Like it mattered! Like the feelings of some girl were consequential!
Riddle let out a hot breath of frustration into the pillow. Hermione would have hated that thought. She would have told him that everyone's feelings mattered, that everyone deserved to be happy, blah, blah... She so faithfully believed that, even... even after... after all those memories.
Images rushed painful and vivid into Riddle's mind, completely unasked. He gritted his teeth against the screaming that seemed to echo in his ears, squeezed his eyes closed against images of Hermione, wild-eyed, sprinting around corners with a sob in her breath. And again, that feeling in his chest, a defensive feeling, a feeling of... of righteous anger.
He let out a tiny growl. He did not feel emotion on behalf of other people. It was stupid. Stupid. He had enough to deal with on his own without having to feel for other people, people who were probably a lot better at feelings and things than he was.
Why, then, was that feeling not draining away?
She had ruined everything.
Riddle quietly dwelt on the fact that he was the master of the entire magical community, carrying on the noble separatist work of Salazar Slytherin, keeping Muggle-borns in their rightful place... getting all that legislation through. His first choice had always been teaching, because Merlin knew teaching was just a glorified way to show off magical knowledge and maybe give information to a select worthy few in the process. But being an immortal ruler of the Wizarding World... that seemed good, too.
Riddle put a pale hand to his face, tracing the outlines of his facial features with mild distress. How had the physical transformation happened? Had he been in some sort of accident that required very poorly-done facial reconstruction? Seventy-year-old men didn't look... like that. A bald, smooth face, red-eyed... he didn't look like he could have an age. He looked like he had been there since the beginning of time, or not at all. There wasn't an age associated with that sort of face. And there certainly wasn't an age to that look of malice.
Riddle swallowed. His hands had looked like torture instruments, dangerously thin and long, holding that wand with the same reverence, the same casual beauty as always.
He didn't know what to think about his future self. If he had met that person, he would have been fearful. A snake-man, hardly even human-looking...
If his horcrux plan had succeeded, he wouldn't really be human, then, would he? He would be superhuman. He would be so much more than mortal.
In which case... why did he look so much more like a monster than a god?
Physical appearances were trivial, though. He had... everything.
Yet he dwelt on the dark Hogwarts, that fearsome Hogwarts, with reprehension. This had been the first place in his life he had ever had anything, and that indebted him to the school. This was the place he had garnered his first followers, the place where he had started to come into his own, especially since the Muggle world had been...
Well, filthy Muggles aside, Riddle felt conflicted about having ruined Hogwarts as a place of education. Surely there had been students there who'd had potential? Even future students who could grow up to be useful? No; the overrunning of Hogwarts was unfortunate, not to be cheered. Especially since such... acts were taking place in those classrooms, classrooms that had seemed nearly sacred to Riddle, for they had been the jump-start of everything that truly mattered in the world. He wondered... had the future Lord Voldemort forgotten that sacredness? There was a sense of nobility in the things that had provided assistance in one's past, and the future Voldemort—the present Voldemort—had defiled and scorched that nobility. Riddle didn't like that. A Slytherin always had unspoken respect for things that were truly great, and Hogwarts was one of those things, without question.
And again, unrequested, Riddle's mind flicked back to Hermione Granger. This had been happening all afternoon, and it was not a satisfactory result. He couldn't seem to move past the fact that he had ordered his followers to torture and kill a bunch of teenagers. Where had his manipulation skills gone, that he couldn't even convince them to join his cause? What was his cause? He hadn't managed to find any trace of a bigger purpose in Granger's memories. What did his past self feel like he could accomplish once he had taken over the Ministry? Would he just start Hogwarts back up again like nothing had happened, only everything would be segregated? He felt like something like that had been buried in the depths of her memory. That was a good thought – but how could anyone return to teach there after he had spilt blood on every floor, put screams in every corridor? He could get his followers to teach, create his own doctrine of necessary teaching topics...
That was trifling, though, a trouble he wouldn't have to deal with as the ruler of all. Would his life betray itself to delegating every task to less able followers, while he was as alone with his thoughts as he had ever been? What a miserable existence.
That Potter boy had seemed foolish. All that anguish he had unleashed on his friends... Riddle would have internalized it and used it to his advantage to find out everything he wanted to know. Potter had seemed a bit annoying, actually, very teenaged and immature on many counts, as had the Ron boy.
Riddle found his jaw clenching involuntarily at the thought of that boy. He and Hermione were obviously... together, but there had been so much evidence of his utter incompetence, and his complete disrespect for all that was important to Hermione. He had just... fled, leaving Potter and Granger alone in those dangerous woods. What was so bad about a buffoon like that evacuating the premises? He had probably only ever been a hindrance to them, anyway, with emotional episodes nearly rivaling those of the Potter boy and no great intellect to speak of. What could Granger be attracted to about that?
Riddle was reminded of his thoughts on Dumbledore. Dumbledore, whose white tomb had glowed in the light. Dumbledore, who had had the most glorious, beloved funeral Riddle could ever imagine, and Hermione had sobbed. That was why she clung to him in this world, why she wanted to be close to him, Riddle realized – she had already known him, known that he had died, and had felt incredible affection for the ancient Dumbledore. Riddle shifted uncomfortably, playing with a small fray on his bedsheets. Albus Dumbledore... dead. It was hard to picture, hard to fathom. What had he done that had made Lord Voldemort despise him so much? A childish rivalry in schoolboy days was hardly the stuff of high-stakes murder.
Riddle's stomach growled angrily. He hadn't eaten anything all day – he was too busy with his thoughts.
He pulled up his shirt and scrutinized his slightly-concave stomach. Purged of everything. And across the muscles of his abdomen and chest, five thin white lines, criss-crossing, a webwork of self-inflicted deception.
He tucked his shirt back in, stood slowly, and flicked his wand lazily. The door soared back into its frame with a loud crunch and repaired itself. Riddle trailed down to the Great Hall, unwilling to walk in and see those four full tables with exactly two people he could tolerate. The cheerful clatter was oddly distant to him as he stood just outside the doors. He glanced out through the Entrance Hall. The sun had just slipped over the horizon, and someone was walking in through the main doors.
It was almost shocking to see her walking by him, as if he had thought she would just vanish from the world after he had devoted the entire day to her cursed memories and the remembered feel of kissing her –
He watched her. She walked into the Entrance Hall, stopped, shook the snow from her clothes, and dried her hair, using that familiar spell to comb out the knots in that frizzy mass, and then she started walking towards the Great Hall.
If she saw him, she made no indication. She passed within a few feet of him, not even appearing like she was straining not to look at him. His gaze was glued to her, though, as she walked over to the Gryffindor table and calmly sat down next to Mina and Albus, across from Godric. She was facing the Slytherin table, as usual, which turned out to be terrible, because as Riddle slowly took his own usual space, facing the Gryffindor table, he could not rip his eyes from her face.
It was as if she had put him under some sick spell. As was customary, no one spoke directly to him, so his attention remained focused on her the entirety of dinner.
She looked... she looked very tired. She was talking, participating in the conversation, but there was a wan look to her eyes that Riddle recognized even from twenty feet away. It was that look she'd had after her friend, that King boy, moved on, but it was quite well-concealed. The other three at the table didn't seem to bring it up.
But then she laughed, her lips drawing back in that impish grin of hers before she burst into a merry peal of laughter that seemed to cut right through the atmosphere. Riddle clenched his teeth and his hands absentmindedly placed his fork and knife on the plate in front of him. Then – suddenly – anger. Unfounded rage.
His eyes speared into the Mina girl and Godric Gryffindor's back. This was all their fault. Even after he was gone, they remained. Even after all his efforts to get rid of them, they had won, and the thought made Riddle want to throw up.
He waited quietly. Hermione left the table about ten minutes before Dumbledore, and about five minutes after that, Mina and Godric stood up. Riddle did too, quietly, following them out of the Great Hall.
They went to the Grand Staircase, but they didn't get off where they should have to go to the Gryffindor common room. They continued higher, and Riddle didn't know where they were going, but there weren't any people, luckily. He followed at a safe distance. They didn't even notice him.
The mindless anger was still overtaking him, making him feel detached, cold, unaware of anything at all except those two Gryffindor backs walking in front of him, and then suddenly they stopped and turned around.
"Why are you following us?" Godric asked uneasily, and as he looked at the boy opposite them he was stunned by Riddle's eyes. They were narrowed practically into slits, his serious brow curved into an unbelievably angry expression. And Godric could have sworn he saw an alarming flash of red in his eyes. What in hell's name?
"This is all your fault," Riddle hissed.
Mina glanced at Godric in mild alarm. "What are you -"
"This is all your fault," Riddle repeated, in a lower voice this time. He drew in a breath slowly, and suddenly his wand was in his hand. Mina gripped Godric's hand in fear, and Riddle's eyes flew to their joined hands, and that seemed to be the tipping point, for some bizarre reason –
"Crucio," he said quietly, and it was so unexpected, so surreal, that he was saying that in that corridor, just twenty feet from the Infirmary, just fifty feet from the entrance to the Grand Staircase, right out in the open –
And the spell knocked Mina to her knees, and she turned her face upwards and screamed, so loud, so unbelievably loud...
Godric's yell of rage was followed by a spell that forced Riddle to create a shining orange diamond of protection, and just like that the curse was broken and Mina keeled over, her face pale, her eyelids fluttering weakly, hair in her face and all over.
"You're demented!" Godric yelled at Riddle, his green eyes hard and furious. "You're sick!"
Something inside Riddle seemed to change at that word, and he took a bit of a step back, blinking, and every bit of expression fled from his face in an instant, leaving him blank once more, and he turned and ran.
Godric cradled Mina in his arms, stroking back her black hair. "Oh, Merlin, Mina... talk to me -"
Her breathing was light, her eyes crazed. "I'm... I'm okay, Godric, I just -"
She gasped for breath. Godric took out his wand and placed it to her temple, and a silvery glow laid itself onto her body. Her breath calmed, and she opened her eyes fully, looking slightly recovered. "I don't even know... what..." she whispered, staring up into Godric's eyes with a hopeless plea.
"He's insane," muttered Godric, rage boiling in him, and caressed Mina's face, soothing her. "We have to tell -"
"No," Mina said, her eyes shooting wide open. "He'll find us. He'll kill us."
"Hey, we can't die, remember?" joked Godric feebly with a bit of a grin, helping Mina shakily to her feet. She rolled her eyes.
"Hardly reassuring," she replied, and Godric was immensely relieved to see her start to regain some of her composure. "He won't do that again," she said determinedly. "We'll … we'll just keep an eye on him and make sure he never follows us. Shouldn't be that hard."
Godric shook his head. "Mina," he said, "that was the Cruciatus Curse. He's a Dark Wizard. I don't trust someone like that anywhere."
Mina swallowed. "I don't even know what I did. I didn't do anything."
Godric thought for a second. What possible motive... "It's Hermione," he realized slowly. "He's... he's jealous. He's jealous that we're friends with her, because we're Gryffindors."
Mina's eyes widened. "That must be it. God, what a – I mean – what do we do?"
"Well, if she's going around snogging him, she obviously doesn't know what he really is," Godric murmured, "and she's not going to believe it if we just, you know, spring it on her that her boyfriend is someone who would use an Unforgivable... I don't know what we can do."
Mina tied back her hair, thinking hard, and then she bit her lip. She remembered Hermione saying, "He's manipulative. And evil."
"Maybe she already knows," Mina suggested.
"If she knew he used that type of Dark magic, there's no way she would associate with him."
"Well, then, there's only one thing we can do, and that's stay away from Hermione."
Godric's face drew in dismay. "But... I mean...that's so cowardly."
"No, it's self-preservation," Mina insisted. She picked up her wand with shaking hands and put it back in her pocket. "Unless you'd like to feel that curse yourself, and I guarantee you don't."
Godric's green eyes rested fiercely on hers. He wasn't scared of facing Riddle's Cruciatus, but Mina? "I will never let him do that to you. Never again."
Mina was distracted. "How do we tell her?"
"We can't," Godric sighed. "Not without her getting mad. I mean, if she randomly told you, 'Hey, Mina, I can't be seen with you in public because that Godric kid is an evil bastard', how would you react? Not well."
Mina let out a humorless chuckle. "You're right," she said softly, and kissed him. "Okay. If this is the way it has to be..."
"I hope he doesn't hurt her," Godric said.
"Hermione's strong," Mina scoffed. "She wouldn't let anyone push her around. You saw that duel."
Godric nodded in agreement. "Let's get out of here," he said, and they hurried back to the Gryffindor common room.
Meanwhile, a very disturbed Jared Pippin and Mungo Bonham snuck back behind the Infirmary door. The Infirmary was silent, the only occupant the unconscious Miranda Goshawk. "I can't believe Riddle..." breathed Mungo. He looked like he had just been punched in the stomach.
"Yeah, me neither, mate. But those two... they're not going to tell anyone."
"Who is there to tell?" Mungo sighed, a weary look in his eyes. "No one's in charge of this place."
"Listen. It's their business, I guess, so we should just stay out of it."
Mungo laughed. "Jared," he said, "when have you ever kept your nose in your own business?"
"You do have a point there," Pippin mused, shaking back his light brown hair with a bashful grin.
Mungo's expression slid back into worry. "How can people do those things?" he wondered aloud. "What makes them think that's okay?"
Jared shook his head. He placed his hands on Mungo's shoulders. "Evil will always, always be a mystery," he said, "and don't you worry your pretty little head over it, because we'll just heal who comes our way and send them on with love. Right?"
"Right," said Mungo. "Thanks, mate. You always cheer me up."
"That's my job," Jared said with a warm smile of his own, and he kissed Mungo lightly and clapped him on the shoulder. "Now let's go search for that potion for our comatose friend over there." He nodded over to Miranda, leading Mungo over to the potions cabinet by one gentle hand.
xXxXxXxXx
"Listen, Albus, mate, you can't let Hermione know why we're not talking to her," Godric said hurriedly. "I... just... who wants to know that about their boyfriend?"
Albus nodded slowly, a hollow look invading his eyes at that last word.
"I would warn you to stay away from her, too," Mina said, "but Riddle doesn't seem to hate you as much for some reason -"
"I can handle Dark magic," said Dumbledore simply. Mina and Godric exchanged a startled glance.
"...okay, then!" Godric laughed a bit nervously, nodding to Albus. Then he sobered up. "And... please don't tell her," he requested quietly.
Albus said, "I won't." But as the couple walked away, he placed a hand to his forehead and sighed. Hermione Granger either was very confident, or very lacking in common sense, or perhaps both. He couldn't fathom that she was in a romantic relationship with Riddle, and if Riddle was going around using Crucio so lightly, he was even more entrenched in the Dark Arts than Albus had thought.
xXxXxXxXx
Hermione felt a little strange these days. It was three days before the Christmas Dance, and most girls were excited, but she just felt... subdued. She had turned in a request slip to Catalina Lightfoot, the Gryffindor Seeker, for a dress, but without any great sort of enthusiasm, even with Catalina's happy expression as she took Hermione's measurements. "You've got a lovely figure," commented Catalina, and she flashed Hermione that pearl-white grin as she hummed and danced gracefully around Hermione's body, measuring arms, legs, hips, waist, neck...
"Thanks," Hermione said with a tired smile. Catalina really was a very sweet girl, just as Mina had said.
Thinking about Mina hurt. Without any sort of warning, two days after the Riddle incident, she and Godric had abandoned Hermione completely. They sat at the end of the Gryffindor table with most of the Quidditch team, leaving Hermione with Albus.
Albus was another issue. He always seemed preoccupied. Harry had always been frustrated with Dumbledore for never telling him anything, keeping him completely out of the loop, and now Hermione felt the same. Every so often he would shoot a glance up at her, but their fragments of conversation were awkward and she felt like there was an ocean between them. Hermione wondered aloud to him a lot, but he always gave a slow shrug and a reassuring shoulder-pat and very little more.
More and more, she was realizing that this Dumbledore was not the Dumbledore of Earth. He hadn't ever been on a Chocolate Frog card; he hadn't ever met Harry Potter; he hadn't ever dueled Grindelwald; he'd never been the Transfiguration Professor of Tom R – but that was neither here nor there. The point was that he was a different person. He'd undergone different events. He was even a different age – the Dumbledore of earth had been well over a hundred, but this Albus was probably only around sixty in true years, and that fact unsettled Hermione a bit. She felt like no one should go around calling themselves Albus Dumbledore if they weren't the Dumbledore from earth...
She never saw him outside of meals, either. She supposed he was always visiting Miranda, or something, but that left Hermione alone, alone as she researched and theorized. She hadn't tried anything to do with her thread theory discovery, because with the resurfacing of all her memories... she found she was scared of returning, all of a sudden. It had taken so long to build resistance to her memories, that hard bravery that made her want to return there – but that was all broken now. And now her mind was unfocused, and she didn't trust that mind, because any moment she relaxed, it flew like a magnet to Tom Riddle.
He always looked at her during meals. It wasn't just the occasional glance, either. It was a ready, constant stare, and every time she looked up and met his eyes, she felt like crying again, and mentally kicked herself. What was he doing? Hadn't he gotten what he wanted? Why was there that weird, unfamiliar look on his face, all the time? Couldn't he just leave her alone now, now that he had stripped everything from her, her memories, her dignity...
What did he want? Did he want to violate her physically, or something? Surely that was all that was left on his Ultimate Evil To-Do List: rape virgin Gryffindor. Hermione didn't discard the possibility, as she kept remembering that look on his face after he had stopped kissing her... that look of want – of hunger. And she shuddered every time she thought about it.
No matter how much time she devoted to thinking about him, about the kiss, about what he wanted from her now, about why sometimes in the hallways he would say, "Hermione," as if he actually expected her to turn and look at him... no matter how much time she spent thinking about him, she would not crumble and speak to him. There was no reason her mind should be polluted with any information from him, no matter what that information revealed, no matter if it was the reason he kept his eyes fixed on her like she were a bright light, no matter if it was an explanation of his motives for every piece of evil he had ever done, no matter if it was some twisted childhood memory that could somehow justify his absolute badness.
Because Tom Riddle was evil, and he was bad for her, and that was all there was to it, and she might think about terrible things she wanted to make happen to him and she might still somehow be completely fixated on him and she might be completely alone but she would not break. Or even bend. As she had said – No. Not anymore. No more playing his sick mind games. No more being the yarn to his itching claws. She was tired of living, which was sickly ironic, tired of being, and just the idea of speaking with him ever again exhausted her.
It was strange, though – there was no more curiosity. Not an inkling.
Just a dark magnetism that she had to resist with every fiber of her being.
xXxXxXxXx
Riddle had cursed his irrational Cruciatus nearly the minute he got back to his room. Why was he so mad at them?
It was because of her. That thought that had run through his mind – that they had won – no. He had won. He knew everything, now. Knew the past, knew his future. They still knew nothing! Why had he gotten so angry that they got to keep the girl when he now had everything that mattered about her, everything that was useful?
Then again, if he wanted to keep her, that was just his right, wasn't it? Tom Riddle always got what he wanted... and it was useless to deny that he wanted her. After all... he couldn't speak with anyone about what he'd seen. They'd think he was a complete lunatic. She was the only other person who knew everything he'd done...
She was always alone, now. Now that Gryffindor and his girl had utterly deserted her, in the aftermath of the curse. How selfish, Riddle mused. The two Gryffindors had abandoned her at the first whiff of danger. Some bravery.
He kept trying fruitlessly to make her acknowledge his presence. At meals, she would, every so often, look up at him, but there was no resulting expression. She would just look blankly away like he was any other idiot in the room. When he said, "Hermione," to her, in passing, it was as if she didn't even hear him, which made him almost insane with anger. He considered so many a time just pulling her aside, pulling her into an empty room where she could not ignore him, but he always seemed to revile the idea just as quickly. He had done too much to her to attempt to force her into being in his presence once more – that wouldn't yield any sort of satisfactory result. No; force didn't work with the girl. How tiresome.
He had pulled himself out of the quagmires of denial. He acknowledged it to himself: he wanted this Mudblood girl back, for whatever reason, no matter her heritage, no matter her being a Gryffindor, no matter to anything. He wanted her back fiercely, with such egocentric greed that he could almost believe he was regretful about having tricked her.
And, he realized, something had changed just a bit, inside of him. He discovered that he didn't want to hurt her again. Tom Riddle had always told himself that people who associated with him were just going to have to get used to getting hurt, and he had never really cared when he hurt them... but with this girl, he just didn't want to put her in danger of that anymore. He didn't want to see that look on her face, as irritating as that fact was, the fact that he remembered her every facial expression like they were of consequence – but he didn't want her to look... sad. Partially because the memory of her face when she was sad made him inexplicably angry. He wasn't sure whether the anger was directed at her, but just remembering that battered look got under his skin and irritated him immensely.
He had completely and utterly broken his rule of remembering people's faces, as hers was the clearest image he seemed to be able to recall right then, but then again – she deserved to make him break his rules. She had managed to make some sort of imprint. She had, somewhere along the line, managed to make him realize that she was a person, a person like him, not just some tool to be manipulated – and that was more than anyone had ever been before. Not an obstacle or stepping stone. Not just another clone who was so easily swayed by his façade and so easily rocked to the core by his use of Unforgivable Curses. Riddle mused that, for one who was so obsessed with optimism, she was rather cynical, in a strange way...
Riddle was surprised to realize that he wanted her to be herself again. What had he done to her personality? That fiery Gryffindor spirit – where had it gone? These days she looked tired. These days she looked dead.
And Riddle was not entirely surprised to find that that did matter. Quite a lot. To him.