Albus sighed, "Hermione, I really don't feel inclined to show up."
"I don't want to go alone; it's incredibly awkward. Please, Albus? It really isn't that bad, and if someone challenges you, I'll cut in. For New Year's?" For his birthday, to distract me from thinking about him?
He ran a hand through his wiry hair. "What is the appeal in Dueling Club for you, dear?"
Hermione shrugged. "I don't know. I like the idea of a controlled environment for magical competition. And it's not like Mungo and Jared can't handle anything that comes their way."
Albus's eyes wandered up to the ceiling. "Fine, Hermione. I will accompany you, but only because you insist."
"Thank you!" sighed Hermione in relief. Dueling Club was one of the rare times she could get her mind off herself these days, and she had already shown up alone twice, and the looks she had gotten when she walked in... as if she had no friends at all.
Which, of course, wasn't true – she had Albus. And Miranda... sort of. And even Abraxas, though she hadn't really had many chances to talk to him, not without being scared that Riddle would see.
She'd spoken to Abraxas only twice since the dance, and he had seemed uneasy about speaking with her, which led Hermione to believe that something bad might have happened. The thought was not a comfortable one, and when Hermione spoke with Abraxas, she made sure that it was out of the sight of Riddle – just in case.
As for her other friends, Albus was being his usual distant self, and Miranda was still healing. She had struck up a friendship with Catalina Lightfoot. The Seeker had managed to convince Hermione to play Exploding Snap with her, a feat in itself, and Hermione had found herself enjoying the company immensely. Jared and Mungo's slight lingering unease over her supposedly casting a Dark curse on Riddle had seemed to fade all of a sudden, for some weird reason, and they were now as cheerful to her as they had ever been. Hermione wondered why, but she wasn't complaining. She really did like the Healers a lot, and they were now rescued from the clutches of petty small talk.
As for Mina and Godric... well, they were in a land all their own. Whenever she looked over at them, they looked blissfully happy. Incredibly happy. The entire school knew them as the perfect couple, made for each other, who had taken far, far too long to be together – and Hermione found that she somehow did not resent the fact that they had left her alone. They must have had their reasons for doing so, though what those reasons were, Hermione couldn't imagine.
She wouldn't exactly have been the greatest friend those days, anyway, what with her own constant mood swings and random detachment from conversations, so it was probably to their advantage that they had their own little perfect island of Mina-and-Godric-ness that could not be interrupted by Hermione's Riddle-influenced capriciousness.
Riddle seemed to have bottomed out. His appearance had not improved. He had not snapped back into his former self. Hermione had observed Araminta Meliflua running her hand through his hair with a look of concern, and he had just looked at the girl and sighed, not even politely faking interest and conversation as was the norm.
That entirely illogical feeling of guilt had not faded. If he was genuinely affected by Hermione not being in his life... but then Hermione always shook her head and reminded herself firmly that, first of all, he was a master of deception, so the authenticity of anything he ever did was to be more than questioned, and, second of all, she owed him less than nothing. Hermione wondered if he would be at Dueling Club that day, or if he would skip it for his birthday. The last day of the year. At lunch, he hadn't looked any better, regardless of birthday – positively wan, with flyaway hair and a distant look in those dark eyes.
Hermione blew at her hair absentmindedly, and found herself wondering what would happen if she gave him a chance. Perhaps just one chance... after all, it didn't seem like he needed to wring anything else out of her, as he already had wrung everything that could be wrung. The only thing he hadn't seen was her death, and Hermione couldn't see why he would care about that at all, as it had no effect on his future.
It was his birthday... perhaps the day could see a hesitant start at reconciliation? If he truly had no motive for a reconnection, it seemed unlikely that she could be hurt by associating with him. The absolute repulsion she'd felt had faded, as had the misery, and now she only felt indifference. If it was legitimately upsetting him not to be around her – and Hermione wondered at that, for it didn't seem quite logical to her that the Dark Lord could feel that sort of thing – then surely there could be no harm in a hesitant acquaintance.
She trusted herself to be able to sense any manipulation this time – she would be wary when she spoke with him, of course... She would make it clear that they were speaking on her terms, make it clear that she was not coming back to him because of anything he'd tried or done. It would be purely for the sake of research. Research on what he might possibly want.
Since Hermione's depressive post-manipulation episode had ended, she had found herself quite disinterested with most things. She was still terrified of the idea of being tossed back into that Hogwarts from her memory, so she hadn't been able to bring herself to look at her notes or at Caeziten's book for a long while now. She'd been practicing some defensive magics, exploring the castle – but the one thing that reliably managed to really interest her was Tom Riddle, and she resented him for that fact, but it was true.
His letter lived under her pillow. She had slept with it there the first couple of nights without thinking about it, and then when she had moved it, she hadn't been able to sleep, which was stupid, and there didn't even seem to be a reason, but she had ended up putting it back, and it had fixed the problem. Hermione stubbornly refused to read it anymore, refused to acknowledge that she kept his apology under her pillow with her wand, as if they were of equal importance.
Albus stretched and yawned. "Well, if we're going to go, I suppose we should go," he said. "We are already late, after all."
"You know whose fault that is," Hermione chided, and stood up. "One moment; my wand's still in my dormitory."
She walked up the stairs and rummaged under her pillow for her wand, ignoring that rustle of paper that accompanied the movement and the skip of a single heartbeat as her hand brushed the familiar parchment.
Hermione and Albus walked down to the Great Hall. "I don't know... I've been considering challenging DeLisle Andra," said Hermione. "It's been a while since I exercised my dueling, and she's really brilliant—"
Albus frowned. Hermione fell silent. They stopped about ten feet from the door to the Great Hall.
It didn't sound like just any old duel. It was loud in there. It wasn't often that the crowd got restless and started yelling, but it sounded like that now. Who was dueling? What was it, Godric and DeLisle or something?
They approached the door. Hermione's eyes widened in horror. The raised dais in the center of the floor was empty, and it was chipped and smashed. Rock dust clouded the air. Spells shot in all directions, and people screamed curses and ran for cover. It was not a duel – this was a legitimate battle, the likes of which Hermione hadn't seen in quite a while.
Albus looked dumbstruck. Hermione said sharply, "Albus, you'd better go tell Mungo and Jared that they should expect quite a few more patients than usual." He didn't need telling twice. He scarpered.
Hermione hurried into the room – or, rather, the fray. She wondered what had started the fight, or, rather, who had started the fight. Just then, the doors to the Great Hall slammed shut with a mighty thud as a curse smacked into them. She turned and tried Alohomora, but it didn't do anything. Hermione was intensely and unpleasantly reminded of those huge chains bound across the doors, back then... not letting anyone inside to witness what surely must have been some sort of detailed torture chamber, one into which Hermione could have sworn she'd seen Bill Weasley dragged...
Hermione dropped flat to the floor as a whistling jet of white light hissed by and cracked into the stone wall behind her. She drew her wand and scrambled back to her feet. About ten feet to her left, DeLisle Andra crouched behind a huge stone barrier, her face contorted in rage. She shot spells like bullets at Melia Trueblood, who held her ground near the dais in the middle of the room.
Hermione conjured a thick, rubbery, bluish shield through which she could observe without worrying about most hexes. Over in the corner were Revelend and Herpo; where was Abraxas? Godric had made a sort of perpendicular wall out of the windowsill, and he and Mina had their backs against it, gritting their teeth and firing curse after curse at – there, yes. Abraxas and Riddle, also near the middle of the room, and Riddle was looking cool and collected as he returned every single spell that was aimed at him, not adding any of his own to the foray. Considerate of him.
Hermione's eyes were drawn to someone – it looked like Andre Taylor, though Hermione couldn't tell. He was turned away from her, sobbing, on his knees, clutching at his face, and Kenji Takahashi was standing next to him, screaming obscenities at a group of Gryffindor boys. Hermione swallowed. This was like a bad dream.
Then Eliot Vaisey raised his hand, his wand held firm in it, and there was a tremendous bang and every single torch exploded and then the room was absolutely dark.
Screams erupted from all around the room. The only lights were those of whizzing jets of spells that rocketed everywhere. Hermione fell to her knees, knowing from experience that it was safer closer to the ground, and safer the more contact you had with what you knew was there.
Every so often, a silhouette lurched uncomfortably close to her, and Hermione crawled away, her heart beating fast. Her hands were balled into fists out of instinct; it was safer for the fingers.
The spells flying by were actually dangerous. Hermione's mind reeled with the question: What happened to start this fight?
A red jet of light whizzed by, and Hermione sent a Petrificus Totalus back in the direction of the caster. The more people who were disabled, the better, before things started to get really nasty.
Hermione's head knocked into the stone dais with a clunk. In the loud, sweaty, terrified atmosphere, her cursing went unnoticed. She could hear the gasps of so many people, the yells of so many others, all at once –
A wild green jet of light smashed into someone who Hermione hadn't realized was sitting two feet from her, huddled into a tiny ball. The person screamed and keeled over, panting in utter pain. Hermione cast Lumos frantically and checked on who it was.
Catalina Lightfoot clenched at her right arm, a tear dripping from her eye. "Oh, dear Merlin," she sobbed. "I – I think -"
"Hold on," panted Hermione. "Here, let me see that – one moment, let me get your robes out of the way..."
She gently pulled back Catalina's robes, trying not to move her arm too much. It was clearly broken, bent right in the middle. Hermione pressed gently on one side of the broken bone, yielding a deafening scream from Catalina, and tapped the break with her wand. Catalina leaned back against the wall in relief as her bone clicked a little, adjusted, and then sealed itself back up. "Thank you," she whispered, and it was practically lost in the chaos.
"What the hell happened here?" Hermione asked.
"Some stupid House conflict," Catalina said. "Gryffindor and Slytherin, like you didn't see that coming, and then personal rivalries just started spitting out all over the place and now everyone's just mad at each other. Wonderful way to end the year."
Hermione rapped the stone dais with her wand, and a large hole appeared in it. "You don't do much offensive magic, right?"
"No," Catalina said. "I just come to Dueling Club to watch."
"Okay, hide in there, quick," Hermione said. "I'll make you a shield."
Catalina crawled into the hole, and Hermione traced her wand against the opening. A light green film appeared over it. Catalina gave her a thumbs up, and Hermione scrambled away, putting out her wandlight. It was attracting too much attention, and when people didn't even know who they were attacking anymore, attention was not a good thing to have.
Hermione felt a jolt of fear in her stomach. A jet of green light had just whizzed by her ear as she was on her hands and knees, and she remembered being in that dark Hogwarts and throwing herself out of the way like she would die, screaming in utter terror, screams like were echoing all around this pitch-black hall now.
A few feet away, a tangled knot of people worked together to fire blasts of spells out at random. A little further, in the opposite direction, two people were beating each other senseless with their fists, bizarrely, even as passing spells lit up their ugly expressions. Hermione placed her back to the dais. There was a dark silhouette standing to her left who was very good at spellwork, and some people to the right who weren't so fantastic, screaming simple hexes at the top of their lungs.
Hermione suddenly felt terrified for Godric and Mina, which was a bit illogical, but she'd never really seen Mina use offensive magic, and if Godric was trying to do enough spellwork for the both of them, it could put him in serious danger too. A jet of yellow light whizzed by the people to her right just as a bright white disk collided with one of them. The boy's high voice screamed, and the yellow light illuminated black blood bursting out of his torso in a great splatter, as if it was ripping its way out to freedom.
Hermione retched as the smell of blood hit her, and she started scrambling to her left, trying to get away from the streams of dark liquid that were trickling slowly over the stones. The injured boy's friend, a girl, knelt down next to him and screamed, a vague cry of a name that sounded something like... Scott? Skip?
Then, even as panic took over every fiber of Hermione's body, someone saw fit to send a huge spell up to the ceiling, creating a miniature sun that cast insanely bright light all over the room, and Hermione relaxed. Then several things that were suddenly extremely visible happened very quickly.
The boy to Hermione's immediate left cast a spell over towards the door, and she turned to him, swallowing her pride at long last, her eyes scanning his face.
In the momentary lull immediately after his spell, Hermione said, very quietly, "You would celebrate your birthday with this."
A midnight-black, ricocheting curse issued from the end of Araminta Meliflua's wand.
A dangerous-looking, spinning wheel of red light spat itself from the wand of some Ravenclaw boy.
The two spells collided at an angle.
His face turned to her as quickly as if she had just tried to shoot Avada Kedavra at him, and his wand hand dropped down by his side as a sequence of indecipherable emotions flickered across his face.
Then, before she could even open her mouth to yell a warning, the two mated spells smashed into his body, sending him flying like a doll through the dusty air to lie, motionless, on the ground.
And still the battle roared on. No one seemed to have noticed what had happened. No one seemed to have noticed that Tom Riddle's broken body was lying stock-still on the dusty floor. No one except Hermione. How was this possible? Where was Abraxas?
Hermione frantically looked around for his blond head, and found it over in the corner. He was kneeling over a collapsed Revelend, looking like he was having a breakdown, his wand shaking in his hand, an expression of agony on his face.
She couldn't seem to breathe in. All she could do was scramble gracelessly over to Riddle's body, flicking her wand, moving him back to the side of the dais where there was relative shelter.
His eyes were wide and staring, his face unmoving. Bizarrely, slowly, a trickle of bright red blood made its way from between his lips. Hermione realized that the front of his robes, where he had been hit by the spell – they were shredded, and soaking dark.
She put a hand tentatively on his robes, and when she drew her hand away it was red with his blood. Hermione sucked in a breath through her mouth. That colossal flash of light had made a massive impact. Hermione looked around again, like someone was suddenly going to appear, like someone was suddenly going to notice, but no one did. Tom Riddle was unconscious, dead-looking, not breathing, on his birthday, and no one cared.
Hermione stared at his face, his brown eyes clearer in this comatose state than they had ever been in real life... She closed them with two trembling fingers, completely unnerved.
He needed to get to the infirmary. Mungo and Jared had to fix this, now, before that growing pool of blood got any bigger.
This hadn't been how it was supposed to have gone. She had distracted him for that one second... he would've kept his wand up, would have been able to block this, surely, if she hadn't said anything to him... Of all the rotten luck in the world –
Hermione staggered to her feet and flicked her wand. Riddle's body rose gently in front of her, and she sprinted to the huge doors of the Great Hall, his limp body speeding after her like some sick marionette.
Okay, Hermione. Deep breath.
She had never tried to blast something as huge as the Great Hall doors before, but there was a first time for everything. She laid Riddle on the ground, took a step back, ducked a curse, and raised her wand, gathering power in it even as her hand trembled.
"CONFRINGO!" she yelled, and a colossal wave of power rolled out of the end of her wand, knocking her back a step. The doors flew open with an incredible bang. Even that didn't stop the battle.
Hermione flicked her wand again. Riddle's body floated in front of her, and she ran as fast as she could to the Infirmary, so fast she thought her heart would burst. This spell wasn't exactly reliable, and placed a light constriction on its occupant, so it was risky using it in the first place, but it was the only way, since he was so tall –
There was a huge trail of blood leading right through the school to where Hermione stood now, in the door of the Infirmary, wild-eyed and crazed. "Mungo!" she managed. "Jared!"
They ran over to her, gazing at the pooling blood beneath Riddle's levitating body with shock.
"Jesus Christ, Hermione, what is it with you and getting involved in the worst injuries we've ever – is that – is that..." Jared trailed off.
"Is that Tom Riddle?" asked Mungo quietly.
"Yes!" Hermione said. "Hurry, he needs a bed; he needs a -"
"I can't heal him," Mungo whispered.
Hermione's eyes fixed on him. "What do you mean, you can't -"
"We can't help Tom Riddle," murmured Jared, his eyes fixed on Riddle's face with a strangely cold look on his own face.
"What are you talking about?" Hermione asked in a low voice. "You have to. Look at him!"
Mungo sat on the bed and took a deep breath, as if he were about to unveil a great secret. "Hermione, we – we saw him using – using the Cruciatus Curse."
"Who cares?" Hermione said loudly, and twin expressions of shock filled Pippin and Mungo's faces. They hadn't been expecting that reaction from the Cruciatus information, that was for sure. "You have to heal him! It's your job!"
"No, it's not," Pippin said quietly, burying a hand in his light brown hair. "I'm sorry, Hermione, but someone that dangerous – it would be better for them not to wake up. It's practically our duty not to heal him."
Cold shock filled Hermione's stomach. Two of the greatest Healers who had ever lived – and they were refusing to heal someone? "No," she said. "It's... it's your duty... to heal everyone, no matter what..." Her voice was faint. She privately reeled in disbelief, blood soaking into her shoes. She looked down at Riddle. He was as white as a sheet, and the trickle of blood from his mouth had turned into a trail down one of his cheeks, like a brand, like an unsightly scar. His closed eyes had no flicker of action behind them, his eyelashes stretching out like grass over a tombstone, every muscle completely devoid of movement.
They were just going to stand there, just going to stand there and let Riddle exist in a coma for the rest of his days? She'd had so much faith in them... She'd thought they were better than her, that nothing could get in the way of their helping someone. How could this be possible? How could this be real? How could the existence of this Tom Riddle, this strangely-conflicted, maybe-salvageable Tom Riddle, be over, just like that?
No. Rage seared through Hermione's veins. Damned if she was going to sit back and let this boy bleed everything he had onto the floor in front of her, especially after she'd been the reason he'd been hit!
Hermione remembered how she had once thought – what if there'd been someone back on Earth who had been there for Tom Riddle like she had? What a farce that had been. The first time he'd done something truly bad, even though she'd practically expected it, she'd fled from him, ditched him, like everyone else must have always done. An angry feeling boiled in the pit of Hermione's stomach. "You have to help him!" she exploded.
Mungo blinked tiredly at her and stood. "No, Hermione," he said gently. "We can't. I... I can't."
With a bit of surprise, Hermione watched as Jared took Mungo's hand reassuringly. "It would be best if you took him away, now, Hermione," Pippin told her, not unkindly.
She just stared as they turned and walked back into the back room, past Miranda. Hermione's eyes fixed on Miranda. What if they had refused to heal Miranda just because she'd used one Unforgivable Curse? For all Mungo and Jared knew, that was all Riddle had ever done.
"Well," Hermione yelled after the two Healers, "if you won't help him, then – then I will!"
She realized with panic just how much blood there was on the floor. It was starting to curl around one of the metal bed legs on the stone floor.
Bed. That was what he needed.
Hermione hurried down to the seventh story, Riddle still floating corpse-like in front of her, still leaking thick blood in a steady dribble from his robes.
"Ernest Hemingway," Hermione said, and the door swung open. She tapped his doorknob – December 31st – and turned left into his room.
She stopped, appalled. The Head Boy quarters looked like a different room entirely. The bed-curtains were half-open, and behind them, the bed was messy and unmade. Papers were strewn all over his desk and the floor surrounding it, and the fire's logs were scattered around the hearth as if someone had dropped them. Two sofa cushions lay on the ground, and clothes were all over the top of Riddle's dark wardrobe and the immediate floor area. Hermione stepped on a quill as she entered the room. Its ink feebly dripped from the tip and mixed with Riddle's blood.
Hermione shut the door and navigated Riddle to his bed, pulling the hangings wide and yanking the bedsheets down to the foot of the four-poster. She laid him on the white sheet, pulling a pillow under his head, and she conjured an armchair and sat down in it.
She swallowed in dread. Time to see the damage.
Her hands slowly opened his sodden robes, or what was still intact of them. His shirt, too, had been made light work of, and once-white rags were plastered randomly to his bloody torso. Hermione gagged desperately, and then again. She couldn't help it. His chest didn't even look like a chest – it looked like a raw piece of meat, ripped and torn right down the middle as if a wild animal had found him while he was sleeping. The entire top layer of skin, for the most part, just wasn't even there.
Hermione didn't know what to do. Her Healing knowledge was passable at best; she didn't even know where to start with this.
She could see a lung, could see his stomach, liver, and intestines, but they all had lacerations, and there was so much blood everywhere that Hermione could hardly make out what was what.
She left him lying there, sprinted to the library, and grabbed everything she could see on anatomy and Healing. There were a bunch of pictures of what the opened human torso was supposed to look like, the heart pumping steadily, the lungs inflating and deflating regularly.
Hermione returned, sat, and stared defiantly at Riddle's mutilated body. Okay. Mungo had started with the nervous system on Miranda, but there wasn't enough skin to do that. Next, the lungs, and the diaphragm, that long, hard muscle right in the middle...
Hermione retched again as she leaned over the mangled boy in front of her. This wasn't going to be easy.
xXxXxXxXx
Riddle opened his eyes. The last thing he remembered was two mated jinxes – one had looked like a sloppy piece of Dark Magic; the other some very powerful and old curse –smashing into him, with just a second of what he could only describe as blinding pain. But he hadn't been looking at the casters – he'd been looking at her. He'd been reeling in shock at her words, her quiet, sarcastic words, the fact that she had been there and words had been spoken from her mouth to his ears. And his concentration had been broken. Like an idiot, he'd lowered his wand, and then – then the pain...
But now... now he was back in his own bed, like it had been a dream or something, staring up at the dark green canopy overhead, his head on a soft white pillow, but there were no sheets over him for some reason...
His mouth opened slightly, and he sucked in a breath, and then he let out a loud 'ah' of shock. It hurt to breathe in.
"You're going to want not to breathe that deeply," said a tired voice from next to him. Riddle turned his head a little to the left. Next to his bed, in a plushy armchair, sat Hermione Granger. His mouth opened a bit wider in surprise.
"Why am I not in the Infirmary?" Riddle said, and was not happy to find that his voice was hardly more than a croak. "My voice -"
"Yes, your voice would be unaccustomed to use by this point," mused Hermione aloud. "As for why you're not in the Infirmary, well... well, apparently you were stupid enough to let Mungo and Jared see you use the Cruciatus Curse on someone, so they refused to heal you."
Riddle blinked sleepily. This didn't seem real, especially with her sitting there. Was this really happening? "Are people still fighting in the Great Hall?" he worked out, and he tried to move his hand to his throat to massage it, but there was a massive pain in his chest as he made the attempt, so he just let his arm flop limply to the side.
"That would be quite a feat," Hermione said with a raised eyebrow. "A week-long battle? Not overly likely."
Riddle could only stare. "A week? I've been unconscious for a week?"
"Yes. Thus, you know, the voice-not-working thing," Hermione said, surveying him idly. "Though that could just be the state of your lungs. I tried very hard, but I'm not really a Healer, so I don't know if -"
Riddle's sharp intake of breath, and subsequent inelegant whimper of pain, interrupted her. He had looked down and seen his torso, or what had used to be his torso. The skin was just... not there. It was like someone had made it invisible so he could see through to all his innards. Riddle was filled with disgust. How utterly revolting...
Wait. Had she said –
"Did you... did you just say that you 'tried very hard'? Have you been... have you been healing me?" he asked in a low voice, and surely the disbelief was plain on his face, for he couldn't seem to remember how to shield his emotions.
"Yes," she sighed, "although, as you can see, I've still got some work to do. Your skin's being very stubborn and not returning, and I've tried quite a few -"
"You healed me," Riddle repeated in utter bewilderment.
She raised her eyebrows. "I believe I've just said that, phrased numerous ways," she said acidly. Riddle turned back to the ceiling, numb confusion invading his every pore. Hadn't she already made her sentiments perfectly clear? After she had already received the letter and continued to ignore him? That was why he had let everything collapse, because he just hadn't felt the motivation anymore. To fix his hair, or even clean his room, although it was weirdly spotless now, somehow.
"And, er, did you clean my room?" he asked.
Hermione sighed. "Well, yes," she said, "because it was utterly revolting to spend so much time in something that was so pigsty-reminiscent—"
"So much time?"
Hermione's mouth snapped shut and she glared at him. "Are you ever going to let me finish a sentence in peace?" she said.
"Probably not."
"Anyway – you have no idea how hard it is to fix holes in lungs and ripped diaphragms and torn intestines and other such lovely things. So yes, I've been spending the larger part of my day sitting next to your bed," she said with a hint of exasperation. "At least it's given me something to do... Jared and Mungo are too busy with other people to spend time with me, Abraxas has been helping Revelend get back to his usual self, and Catalina's still under that Sleeping Jinx, so this is about the most interesting prospect I have. Though I must admit you are quite a bit more entertaining when you're conscious."
"I... would hope so," Riddle said dryly, and felt the side of his mouth curling into that usual smirk. He suddenly felt a lot more like himself than he had in a while, despite the fact that half of his chest was absent. "So, tell me, why am I not in intense pain right now?"
"I saw fit to give you a Numbing Solution, though if you try to move, it won't be able to stop that from hurting."
"And... why would you want to reduce my pain?"
She slumped back in her chair, that familiar expression of complete disbelief on her face. "What... why would I not want to?"
Riddle didn't say anything. He just blinked. Something cleared on her face.
"Oh. Right," she muttered.
There was a very long, very awkward silence in which Riddle surveyed the contents of his chest and Hermione stared at her knees.
"I got your letter," Hermione said, and her voice had changed. It was soft, now, nearly gentle.
Riddle felt like he was heating up a bit, a warm tingle in his every synapse that was still intact. A tinge of red colored his cheeks. "Oh."
"It was very... like you," were her next words, and Riddle turned his face again so he was looking at her.
"When one writes a letter, it tends to be like them," he said, because right then half-sarcasm and half-teasing was easier than saying anything real.
Hermione didn't look impressed. She scowled a little. "Perhaps I should leave and you can fix your own torso?" she suggested darkly, but there was a hint at humor buried in her voice. Riddle nearly sighed in relief – he didn't want to talk about the letter. Not really. But then she kept talking, and his heart sank. "I thought a lot about it," she said. "Um, about you."
Riddle felt like the bed under him had dropped away. If she had thought about it – about him – then why had she never spoken a single word to him? Why had she never made an indication that she cared at all? "I had hoped you would," he said carefully.
Hermione fidgeted and sat forward in the chair again. She looked at him and suddenly blushed. What was she thinking about? Then, she said, "I'm sorry I never talked to you about it."
"No – I never should have expected you to speak to me," Riddle muttered. It had been a grave tactical error not to factor in her stubbornness when he was considering what she might choose to do. Because of that blunder, he had somehow managed to invest himself emotionally in the situation.
"Well, yes, that's true," Hermione agreed, "but that doesn't make what I did any less immature. I apologize for having completely disregarded your feelings. Especially when you have so few of them to spare."
And then a small grin spread across her face, and Riddle let out a slow breath through his nose. That grin was like summer on a winter's day, like the sun finally coming out after a year of cloud.
"Nice to see you smiling again," he commented dryly.
"Of course it is," Hermione said. "It's never a good sign when your healer looks worried."
"I'm hungry," muttered Riddle, staring up at his canopy. "What do I do? This really is most inconvenient."
"If you'd rather be dead, sorry, but that's not going to be possible."
"That actually was not intended to be a slight on your Healing skills, Granger."
She sighed, and as he glanced back at her, she said, "What have I told you about the Granger thing? My name is Hermione."
Riddle blinked in silent comprehension. That was her forgiveness. In that statement, she validated everything he'd written to her and indicated that somehow, some way, she had managed to move past the incident of... he didn't know how long it had been, anymore. His perception of time was completely skewed. "Yes," he said. "I... yeah."
Hermione looked away again, seeming a bit uncomfortable. "In any case, I've been liquidating your food and force-feeding you, which you don't even have to start to tell me is entirely repulsive. Now that you can... well, chew, things should be much better. I've already gone to the Great Hall to get your lunch, actually."
She waved her hand at a silver plate that was lying on his bedside table, filled with food. Next to it was another that was already empty, a fork and knife lying on it.
"Do you just eat in my room?" Riddle asked a bit warily. "Don't your Gryffindor friends get a bit... well, jealous or something?"
"I..." She didn't seem to be able to finish. A miserable look wandered across Hermione's face, and Riddle abruptly remembered the events leading up to Mina and Godric's desertion. That Cruciatus had also been the one that Mungo and Pippin must have seen, Riddle mused. No; the events of that night had not been well-planned or executed in any way, shape, or form.
"How's your friend in the Infirmary doing?" asked Riddle quietly, removing the pressure from Hermione to answer his previous question. She seemed to brighten a bit.
"Miranda's actually doing quite well," Hermione said. "They're still reworking her blood vessels, of course, but overall it's going smoothly. She should be awake within the next week, which is a bit earlier than they had originally thought."
"If you don't mind me asking," said Riddle, "how have you managed to fix me so much faster than they're fixing her?"
Hermione smiled. "I have so much less work to do. You just got... sliced up a bit. Well, more than a bit, but... but Miranda – imagine all your veins and arteries bursting. That's a lot to handle. Quite a bit to rebuild, a lot more than just the cuts of some weird hybrid curse."
She turned around and picked up a tray, laying it on her knees. "Time for your medication session," she said. Riddle eyed the tray uncomfortably. Eight potion bottles sat on it, each one a different color, shape and size. "And before you ask, Riddle, yes, you have to drink every one of these every day."
He sighed in mock exasperation. "What a shame," he deadpanned. "I suppose I'll just have to drink the things that are healing my incredibly large wounds."
She shot him a glare. "Well, don't say I didn't warn you about them tasting foul," she snorted. She took out a cup, pouring a bit of the first potion into it. "Drink up."
Hermione observed him drinking potion after potion without complaint. She really had been spending a hell of a lot of time sitting in this room working on Riddle's wellbeing, which seemed traitorous to everything and everyone she could think of except maybe Riddle himself. He did seem appreciative, though, which was more than Hermione had dared to hope for. More than anything, he seemed surprised that she was there at all.
Then again, wouldn't she have been surprised if someone she'd thought detested her ended up healing her?
Actually, Riddle was probably dumbfounded by the very notion of her doing something nice for him and asking nothing in return. Saving his life and asking nothing in return. It probably hadn't even registered with him yet, the extremity of what she had done. She had brought him back from the dead, or whatever the peculiar coma version of death was here.
Working on Riddle's battered body was a strangely appealing alternative to everything else she could think of. Her notes on thread theory were sitting under her chair even as she sat there, but she didn't want to touch them. Her fear about returning had receded somewhat in the aftermath of the battle, because submerging herself in Healing had been a very therapeutic way not to think about other mutilations than the one in front of her. Admittedly, though, her research had flatlined. She had found what she needed; she was sure about that. She just didn't know what to do with it. Too scared to experiment, but too determined to just drop it – Hermione found herself in a terrible limbo to be in.
She had spoken with Abraxas a lot over the last week, a lot about Riddle. In fact, they had positively picked apart his character, only to come to the general conclusion that neither of them ever knew what the hell was going on inside his head. Hermione had associated more with Abraxas, Revelend, and Herpo more than any other students in the entire school, because they were the only ones who dropped by to check on Riddle's condition. This was despite the fact that Revelend was still getting over the pain of the very Dark curse that had turned his legs backwards. Abraxas seemed like he was dragging the other two along a lot of the time, but Hermione thought that Riddle would secretly appreciate it when he found out.
The Infirmary had been full for a couple days after the battle; Mungo and Jared had said they'd never had so many people before. Godric put up announcements that Dueling Club had been put on hold until further notice. The vehemence of the battle had gotten to a lot of people; Hermione had seen a lot of random emotional episodes over the last couple days, even while she was just walking around the castle. Perhaps it had brought back peoples' memories about death.
Hermione looked back at Riddle, who was quietly surveying his own open chest. "So... may I eat now?" he asked, his eyes looking up at her with a sort of cautionary plea.
"Are you really asking me for permission?"
"No," he said, and an amused look found his expression. "I'm asking you to feed me, as I can't lift my arms."
Hermione's mouth opened in an 'o' of understanding. Of course – his ripped pectoral muscles were only just now starting to repair. In fact, the musculature was being a bit of an issue, because whatever the hybrid curse had done, it allowed her to heal his organs without much of a problem, but when it came to mending muscles back together and re-growing skin, the clutches of the curse completely prevented that from keeping. Hermione had knitted together half of his abdominal muscles, then finished the other half only to find that the first half had completely split apart again. The major veins and arteries that had been ripped apart had even managed to heal; it was just the stupid muscles. Hermione wondered if maybe that spinning red wheel had been some sort of curse to remove muscular control or something, which was why it wasn't working...
It was incredibly frustrating, and thus she had made a few potions that she thought might help give the curse a move on. There was no countercurse, of course, because the hybrid wasn't a real curses, but there were curses with vaguely similar symptoms that Hermione had found antidotes for. Her potionary efforts didn't seem to be hurting, either – along with the blood replenishment potion, which Hermione had found was helping stimulate Riddle's internal organ activity, she was giving him two antidotes, two immune boosters, and three different types of pain-numbers, and the fact that he had woken up at all was brilliant progress, let alone that a few strands of muscle were tentatively holding together now.
But no, it was definitely not safe for him to even attempt to pick something up at this stage. Hermione sighed. This was sure to be awkward.
She scooted her chair a little closer to the bedside and lifted the plate, putting it on the bed.
Hermione sliced up a potato with her knife, speared some on a fork, and lowered it cautiously to Riddle's mouth.
His eyes found hers, then, and neither of them looked away. "Wow," she said, as she glanced downwards uneasily, "I forgot exactly how little I missed our staring contests."
"I missed them," said Riddle in a small voice. "May I have some chicken?"
"Dear Merlin," Hermione said, "what on earth has being unconscious done to you? A polite request and something that could be misconstrued as nice, all in the same breath?"
A dark glare spread across Riddle's face then. "Much better," Hermione said, and placed some chicken to his waiting lips.
"I just don't feel as if I have the presence to order anyone around when I'm lying here with a big hole in my chest," Riddle mumbled, sounding like a child whose toys had been taken away.
"I'm sure if you tried you could still manage to scare someone or other," Hermione reassured.
"Yes, but it wouldn't be you, so it wouldn't be fun," said Riddle, and Hermione scowled at him. He still had the lingering touch of disbelief on his face, like at any second she would just stand up and leave. Hermione certainly felt more than a bit uncomfortable making her usual sarcastic comments, even though he didn't seem entirely opposed to them.
Albus knew nothing of Hermione healing Riddle, because Hermione knew he would completely disapprove. As a consequence, Hermione found herself without a single person to talk to in the entirety of Gryffindor, which was disturbing. Should she just go ahead and move all her things to the Slytherin quarters or something? What a ludicrous idea. She had just as much a Gryffindor spirit as ever... it just seemed that circumstance had dictated that no one in her own house should want to associate with her, except perhaps Catalina, who had somehow managed to get hit by two Sleeping Jinxes at the same time. As of two days ago, she still hadn't woken up.
Hermione had considered talking to Godric and Mina, but the opportunity never seemed to present itself, and they never took the initiative. Also, Hermione assumed they wouldn't like the idea of her locking herself away with Riddle for nine hours of the day, even though that wasn't general knowledge. No one knew in Gryffindor, and only Abraxas, Herpo, and Revelend in Slytherin, although Riddle's disappearance from meals hadn't gone unnoticed. Abraxas had let it be known that he had been hit by a particularly bad Sleeping Jinx and was sleeping it off in his room, and nothing more.
Once Hermione had gotten used to the blood, the Healing had gone more smoothly. Every so often, there would be a flopping, limp end of a vein that would weakly hiss blood, and Hermione would have to restrain her gag reflex, but she had become almost accustomed to the terrible sight of Riddle's chest.
Hermione took out her wand, flipped open a book, and consulted a diagram. The tip of her wand wove a thin golden thread around a dark gray, dead-looking artery. Hermione bit her lip and spared a glance back at the book before directing her concentration fully to the golden thread. Slowly, bit by bit, the thread slid into the artery, breaking through the clotted blood, pulling out the accumulated scar tissue, and wrapping with a gentle golden glow around the outside. When the thread vanished, the artery was a healthy shade of dark red, and blood pulsed openly out of it. Hermione flipped a page and rotated her wand gently, and then with a flick, a sizzling white bolt jerked out of the end of her wand, and before her eyes, the tissue started to regenerate itself, copying what was already there. Hermione guided it back to its corresponding injury, her brow furrowed in rapt focus, and when it finally connected to another limp, dangling end, the pale new tissue quickly darkened with the transfer of blood. Hermione's expression cleared.
"You'd think there would be some more efficient way to do that," commented Riddle, and Hermione jumped. She had become fully used to the absolute silence of his room, the soporific crackle of the fire.
"Yes; I wish there were," said Hermione.
"And you've just been doing that all day for the last week?"
Hermione nodded, flipping a page and reading a section on the heart, although it was sort of irrelevant, because by all rights Riddle's heart should have stopped due to all of these cut veins and arteries and... well, cut everything.
Riddle stared down at his ripped midsection. Why was she spending so much time on it? It would have been one thing if she had tentatively agreed to stop ignoring him after what he'd done, but she had dived into the care of his body, pushing other things aside for his well-being. After what he'd done, it was nearly surreal. Even if he hadn't done anything bad, why should she donate so much time to the life of someone else when she had a perfectly intact life of her own?
Well, a relatively intact life of her own. There was something in her carefully controlled expression that told him she was not unaware of the disadvantages of spending all day in here, that she had more problems than she was letting show, as usual.
She frowned and reread something. "One moment," she said, and stood. "I'm going to get a book from my room."
He found that he couldn't even nod without pain shooting down to his abdomen. So he just gritted his teeth and said, "Okay," sending his most evil glare down at his own torso. This was the most inconvenient of all inconveniences that had ever managed to be inconvenient. Merlin, he couldn't even roll over. The most sort of movement he managed to be able to do was to rotate his legs a little out and in, wiggle his feet, and lightly move his fingers. He found, as he attempted to make a fist, that even that contracted his pectoral muscles and brought forth a hot burn of pain.
Riddle's eyes squeezed tight shut. This was abysmal. He hadn't thought that he could be hit by anything, ever – especially not during Dueling Club. How utterly juvenile. How humiliating. If he ever found out who had sent those spells at him, there would be hell to pay, or something very similar.
xXxXxXxXx
The book had said something about Runic Spells. If they were, indeed, as powerful as Hermione theorized, then their capacity to heal would be incredible. She didn't know if she wanted to risk previously untested Runic casting abilities on Riddle, though, not after she'd invested so much time knitting him back together in the first place. But perhaps if there were something for beginners in Albus' book, which was lying under her bed... then she might try.
"Venomous Tentacula," she said, and the Fat Lady's portrait swung forward. Hermione clambered through, and then stopped. It was deadly silent inside, despite the fact that there were quite a lot of people inside. Hermione froze in place as she saw where everyone was looking.
Godric had his head buried under two sofa cushions. He was kneeling on the red carpet, and he was shaking furiously. And then, as Hermione watched, Godric drew a terrible, heaving breath. His knees gave way, and he sat down hard on the ground, wrapping his arms around his knees, burying his head in those arms. Hermione's mind spun with questions. What was wrong with him? What had happened?
Hermione ran to the stairs and sprinted up to the dormitory. Mina would know what to do. Hermione's hand shoved wide the dormitory door, but Mina wasn't inside. Hermione frowned, knelt, and grabbed her Runic spellbook from under her bed, but then she heard a hiccup and a long, shaking breath. Hermione straightened up and looked over at Mina's bed. There was someone standing behind her bedcurtains – Catalina Lightfoot. She was awake.
"Catalina?" Hermione said hesitantly, and she was filled with shock as she saw Catalina's face. Two fat tears were rolling down from her dark eyes. "Catalina, what's wrong?" Hermione asked, hurrying to her.
"It was h-ho-horrible," Catalina wailed.
"What was horrible?" Hermione asked, her voice deadly quiet, her heart banging hard against her ribcage as if begging for release.
Catalina's eyes shone with apology as she gazed at Hermione. "You weren't there," she whispered. "You weren't there when it happened."
"When what happened?"
"Godric and Mina were standing there, and – and – and his hands were on her shoulders, and she'd just made some stupid joke—"
Catalina let out a tremendous blubber, holding her hands up to shield Hermione's eyes from her wild face. "And," Catalina bawled, "she just sort of started getting hazy around the edges, sort of – of fuzzy, like – like – like she was just going to melt -" Catalina wiped her eyes and gave a mighty sniff. "I – I, I – and then – and then she just started getting pulled in at the sides, and little bits of her just started fading away, and Godric was yelling so loud..."
Hermione swayed. This couldn't be happening. This couldn't be happening.
"And then she got sort of see-through, and there was this, like a band of white light, and it was all curled up inside Mina in this big ball, but this one part of it was just stretching down through the floor, and then it was like she got sucked downwards by it and it just pulled that ball right down into the ground and then she wasn't there anymore... oh, Hermione," sobbed Catalina, and burst into fresh tears.
Hermione had forgotten how to breathe. Hermione had forgotten how to speak. Hermione had forgotten how to move, besides that swaying back-and-forth motion that was growing more and more unsteady as her feet melted into puddles. She could only stare at Catalina, who flipped herself over onto Mina's bed and screamed into the mattress.
It must have been ten minutes before any thought managed to make its way back into Hermione's mind, and then she turned slowly and stared at the door for a second before tottering back down to the Gryffindor common room.
The silence was still fully intact, though about half the people seemed to have streamed away. The people who were still there still seemed frozen in utter horror. Godric was burying Albus in a hug, sobbing helplessly into the thinner boy's shoulder, his usually-cheerful face screwed up into a red, contorted, miserable mask. His mouth was open in a silent scream.
Hermione stumbled through the portrait hole and leaned against the wall, the cool air of the hallway shocking her out of her stupor a bit. She slid down the wall until she was sitting, her legs straight out, her arms limp, her eyes staring at the stone wall across from her. Her book was still clenched in a nerveless hand.
Mina was gone. Just like that. Without a thought, without a goodbye, without anything. Hermione had heard this had only happened a few times before, moving on during the day... but the way she had gone was not the bad part, it was that she was gone, and Hermione had never had the chance to make up with her, to ask what it was that had made Mina so detached from her in the first place, and that chance was gone forever and ever.
Hermione let out a disbelieving sob, and tears rushed to her eyes. She let them drop, let them splash onto the stone with a quiet patter, let herself mourn without even a hint of resistance. She would have been there. She would have been able to tell Mina she was sorry... if she hadn't been with Tom Riddle.
Hermione's innards twisted up into a knot. No matter what I choose, it's never right. Even the right thing to do, the tentative forgiveness of someone who had hurt her, the healing of someone who couldn't get help from the Healers themselves... even that, apparently, was not enough for God to grant this one tiny thing to her, that she might be able to tell her once-best-friend-here goodbye. Was that so much to ask? Was it too much to ask that she might have realized she needed that book fifteen minutes earlier? Then she would have seen it happening, would have dropped everything and run to Mina's vanishing body and told her that she loved her and would miss her... so much...
A low moan worked itself from Hermione's throat, a pathetic, miserable noise.
Slowly, the tears stopped, unbidden. There wasn't anything left to cry. There wasn't anything left to cry about, things that hadn't happened, things she hadn't said, things that would always live inside her as wispy what-ifs, now, and nothing more.
So, who wants to get their chest ripped open for their next birthday? I KNOW I DO! :D
All my love,
Speechwriter.