Hermione trailed wearily back into Riddle's bedroom, the book held in her hand as if it weighed a hundred pounds. His eyes found her, and he frowned. "What's wrong?" She shook her head exhaustedly. "What's wrong?" he repeated.
She sat down, just looking at Riddle, and he just looked at her, confusion sliding more readily onto his face by the second. Hermione looked down at Dumbledore's book and then out the window. Everything seemed vaguely rehearsed, like someone was telling her to read a script for the thousandth time, like she had already done this before now, like she had already said the words, "Mina's gone," in a tiny voice that betrayed everything she had briefly considered concealing.
"No," said Riddle, and he genuinely seemed disbelieving, though Hermione couldn't imagine why. There wasn't even a hint of cruel sarcasm in that word, although neither was there sympathy, and Hermione stared down at her hands, wondering if those two small hands were really her hands at all... she felt detached. Detached from her own body. She couldn't do any healing in this state.
She whispered, "I can't work on you right now."
She halfheartedly conjured a cool, squashy layer of sealing gel that she placed over his torso, and then she pulled the sheets up over him, lifting each of his arms gently and putting them on top of the dark bedspread. Sitting back in her armchair, she placed her book under the chair and stared straight ahead hopelessly, every bit of vigor in her body streaming out through her wide eyes. She felt utterly crippled, like someone had knocked out her legs from beneath her and she was just lying on the ground, unable to get back up from the mud.
Then, suddenly, dead words from her lips, words without expression, words that were little more than a croak. "You'd think I'd be used to this by now."
His head turned to face her, his dark features creased with something that looked a little reminiscent of worry. "You will never get used to this."
Hermione swallowed. It wasn't mean, the way he said it, and it wasn't supposed to be mean, or kind, or anything. It was just true. "No," she said. "I won't."
"Only people like me could ever get used to it," Riddle added softly, "and I am happy to let you know that we are probably as different as two people can be."
"When have you ever lost anyone you cared about?" Hermione said. He hadn't cared about anyone he'd killed, not ever. Did he even know a hint at the feeling?
"Three weeks ago," he replied coolly.
Hermione felt like someone had just stepped on her chest, halting her breathing, and blood rushed to her face. "What – what?"
"You know exactly what I mean," Riddle said, "but right now we shouldn't be speaking about me."
"No, no, this is better," Hermione murmured. "When I'm talking about stuff I don't understand at least I'm forced to think." Her mind wrapped around the concept that he had just said he cared about her. There was a pause as she attempted to comprehend that.
"Of course," he mused aloud, his smooth voice low and innocent, "that was entirely my fault, so it's likely not applicable to your current situation."
Hermione swallowed and fixed her gaze on him. He wasn't looking at her. "No," she whispered. "It's not the same. I don't know how I can explain it." She paused and wondered if explaining it would even yield anything. Then she sighed, and said, "It's this feeling of wasted potential. Everything I could have done is over. Everything she could have done... is over. Everything our relationship ever could have become is over. And it was just as simple as that, like whoever decided to yank her out of this world didn't even care, like they just decided now would be fine and just took her away and changed everything."
Hermione's words got faster and faster and more frantic, and she couldn't stop the hysterical sob from building up behind them. "Sorry," she muttered, and shut her eyes. "But... with us – it's different. We can still change. Mina will never change in my mind ever again. She'll always be the same as when she left, always the same... she'll never have the chance to be anything different to anyone."
She swallowed. "I guess I'm just being silly, though."
"You're not being silly," said Riddle quietly. "You're being honest."
Hermione's hazel eyes found his inscrutable dark gaze for the millionth time, but she felt like it was new. Something about this boy, since the last time they talked, was different. She didn't know what it was, exactly, but it unsettled her. It changed everything she knew about his personality, which had been so little from the start. "You've changed."
"I've been changed," Riddle replied. "I've... I've become more self-aware."
Hermione closed her eyes. "More self-awareness is exactly what you don't need," she mumbled. "A little confusion would do you some good."
"Oh, rest assured, I've been confused," Riddle said quickly. "So confused, which is quite embarrassing to admit, but I suppose as you read the letter – you did... read all of it, didn't you?"
She let out a humorless laugh. "Sorry. I just – yes. Yes, I definitely read all of it."
"Well, then, you should likely know that I've been subjected to emotions that I don't understand in the slightest," he replied, raising one serious brow at her, and Hermione was struck by that simple gesture, struck by how she had actually missed seeing him do that, missed seeing his handsome face look at her simply like he thought she understood him.
Riddle sighed, and then grimaced as a pain shot through his abdomen. Not again, he thought helplessly. Hermione looked a bit worried, for a moment, but then her expression faded back into that miserable tiredness. Riddle thought for a second. "Actually, I briefly considered keeping a written list of feelings that completely mystify me, but I thought you would find that laughable, so I restrained myself."
Her mouth quivered and she broke into a smile. Riddle felt satisfaction fill his chest. He had meant to cheer her with that comment, seeing as she was taking the loss of her friend with such irrational melancholy. Another twinge of unresolved emotion struck him as he considered what she'd said about lost potential with Mina's relationship – wasn't it his fault, after all, that the two girls hadn't been speaking? Though he hadn't intended that to happen – no, he hadn't planned for them to stay away from her, and he certainly hadn't wanted to add more misery to her plate by doing so. He hadn't even considered that they might desert her for him cursing Mina. That hadn't seemed logical, unless Godric and Mina had thought that Hermione wouldn't like to know.
Riddle frowned. Actually, that was something he hadn't asked himself yet. Why hadn't Godric and Mina just told her about the Cruciatus? They had wanted her to stay away from him; surely that was a perfect reason? Unless they thought she wouldn't believe them for some reason. No, that was a mystery. Riddle's expression cleared a bit as he shook the thought from his mind, and he looked back at Hermione. She was facing out the window, eyes closed, the curve of her face illuminated by the sunset, her eyelashes casting spindly shadows across her cheeks.
"Hermione," he said quietly, and she looked back at him, a nearly-surprised look on her face. He was about to go on, but said instead, "What?"
"Oh," she said, "it's nothing, just that – well, that's the first time you've used my name, I believe." She thought for a second. "Well, when I haven't been hysterically attempting to beat you to a bloody pulp, that is."
Riddle blinked. "Ah."
"But, er, what were you going to say?"
He wiggled his fingers on his right hand a bit. "I was going to ask if you could hand me my wand," he said.
"You think you can do magic in this state?" Hermione said disbelievingly.
"Watch me," he said confidently, and a smirk tugged at his mouth. She shook her head and leaned over him, placing his wand into his right hand. A cool rush of air, of her smell, flowed over him, and he found himself inhaling lightly, almost subconsciously. Then his fingers curled over his wand. He sighed with utter relief as he felt the familiar, cool wood under his hand, that power, that lovely, delicate feeling that he could do absolutely anything in the world...
His right forearm carefully lifted itself so that it was perpendicular to the bed, the weight resting on his elbow. Riddle watched with shielded eyes as his wrist twirled dexterously, the end of his wand nimbly flicking in immediate response, and a dark blue fire streamed into the fireplace and helped the dying flame back to life.
"I think I'm fine," he told Hermione, looking at her with the self-satisfied smirk more present than ever.
"You revolt me," she muttered, awe in her face. "That is entirely unfair."
He shrugged carelessly, and right after that shrug, hissed, "Goddammit."
"Language," Hermione said, a smirk of her own growing as Riddle let his wand drop onto the bed. But the pained look on his face didn't lessen, and her smirk died to be replaced with a look of concern.
Riddle's eyes watered. He looked at her, and that look of worry on her face unsettled him. "Are you all right?" she asked, scooting closer and snatching up her wand. His face creased in pain. The agony right above his breastbone was stabbing and not going away, but what bothered him more was that look on her face, because it was so apprehensive. It was just a little pain; why was she so flustered?
"Right in the middle," he managed to work out, and Hermione pulled down the sheets and removed the gel with a flick of her wand. Her gaze stuck right in the middle of his chest, but from this angle, Riddle couldn't see it himself, which was frustrating.
She lowered her wand to his chest, and Riddle shivered a little as he actually felt the smooth wand on top of his bared innards. Then, suddenly, it was hot. Burning hot. Then it felt like someone had pressed ice to it – and then the pain was gone. All gone. "There," he sighed, and his eyes closed in relief. Hermione re-conjured the gel, a chilly presence on his naked chest, and she pulled the covers back over him. Her hands were cool and felt nice as they lifted his bare arms above the covers.
She sat on the edge of the bed, now, and his body dipped towards the indentation where she had perched herself. "You're welcome," she said, an almost-amused look coming across her face as she turned her face to look at him.
"Thank you," he replied smoothly. Then he licked his lips and glanced from side to side. "Is there water?"
She held up her wand, and he opened his mouth a little. The silence was tenable, soft, gentle, as she slowly let water trickle from the air to fall between his waiting lips. "Thank you," he said, then, without prompting, and she replied,
"No problem."
She wasn't looking at him. "You should probably go and spend time with your Gryffindor friends," he said quietly. "This can't be easy for your house."
"Especially after R.J.," Hermione murmured, and a flash of hurt came across her face. Riddle remembered the mysterious, quiet, protective boy with a twinge of dislike – he had seemed like such a tall-dark-and-handsome archetype, and Hermione had seemed to like that.
Then again, Riddle mused, he himself was rather the tall-dark-and-handsome type, too, though it was sort of undermined by his inability to move anything more than his neck joint. Then he stopped. Why should he care what sort of person Hermione liked? That wasn't reasonable. If he was going to start being a part of an actual friendship, he had to stop being possessive, like she belonged to him, like she couldn't be friends with other boys.
Other people.
Other boys? Where had that come from?
No matter. But he was so painfully used to people practically belonging to him, just like Slughorn had used to be back when Riddle had still attended Hogwarts. A sort of domineering, belonging feeling, like they had to swear allegiance to him... though that was probably because most people he spared a thought for had already pretty much sworn allegiance at this point. But Hermione would never stoop to that level, he supposed, and she seemed determined to keep things friendly, agreeable, like she was aiming to patch up what they'd had before.
"No one wants me there," she said idly, looking away from him, down to the foot of the bed, over at the warm fire. Riddle was filled with frustration that he couldn't just roll out of bed, pace around, go sit by that fire. How irritating.
"I bet Dumbledore does," he said, attempting with little success to keep the displeasure from his tone of voice. She surprised him with a sarcastic sort of mumble.
"No; Albus couldn't care less at this point."
At those words, Riddle felt a weirdly uplifting, victorious sense inside him. But that wasn't right – he wasn't trying to unseat her friendships anymore; why should it matter to him what she and Dumbledore had going on in their lives? But, "Why?", he asked, without knowing why he was asking in the first place.
"You always seem to ask me these questions," she pondered aloud, "and the answer always seems to be you."
She turned and looked at him, but she didn't seem to be trying to make him guilty. She didn't even look mad.
"But... I've been unconscious for a week," Riddle said. "How have I made him mad?"
"I just – I haven't really spoken to him about this, because he always sort of expressed that he would like me to keep a safe distance from you."
A bit of a resentful look came across his face, and Hermione's eyes softened. "Don't worry about it," she told him.
"I'm not worried," he shot back. "It's just, Albus Dumbledore... I – I..." He swallowed. "I suppose I owe him enough not to get mad over something small, having killed him."
His voice was quiet, and strange. Pensive. Hermione stared at him. How could he feel bad for having killed Dumbledore? She had thought that had been one of his goals since he and Dumbledore had started their stupid rift in Hogwarts days. "Yes," she said softly. "You do."
Riddle looked at her, his gaze strangely hollow. Hermione wondered if she was being unfair. After all, he hadn't killed Dumbledore – not even in real life, but especially not this Tom Riddle. Was it right for him to feel guilty, or whatever he could feel of guilt, about some crime he hadn't really committed?
Was it what was inside him, even now, that had made him kill Dumbledore, or was it how circumstances had progressed over time? Nature versus nurture – Hermione had read about it in the Philosophy section during Muggle Studies, second semester, fifth year. Muggles wondered about some interesting things, and this was one of them. Was it his intrinsic nature to kill Albus Dumbledore, or was it something that the chaos of the universe had dictated?
Hermione asked, "Why do you hate Albus?"
Riddle surveyed her calmly, and Hermione was sure he saw through her ruse, was sure he had somehow found out that she knew that he and Albus had had conflicts at school... but no. "He was a Transfiguration Professor before becoming Headmaster," he said, "which I'm sure you know. My Transfiguration Professor. And he never liked me, and I never liked him. To him, I was not the perfect Tom Riddle. In fact, to Dumbledore I was always strangely invisible." Riddle frowned. "Either that, or he would give me these strange stares, like he knew more than he should. Regardless, I always felt like he knew how much better I was than every other student there, but he just never told me, or even told me I was good, besides the marks I would get in his class, like he was reluctant to give me an O on everything – and that made me hate him so much..."
His face had curled up into a very unappealing snarl, but he closed his eyes, forcing away the feeling, and he drew in a deep breath, and winced again. Hermione sat back in her armchair and just looked at him. He'd told the truth. That was progress. Truth was always good. And, after all, as a schoolgirl, wouldn't she have been infuriated if some teacher – the best teacher at Hogwarts – had never told her she was worth anything, had never praised her as every other teacher had? That would have irked her. Maybe it already had. Trelawney.
But that one phrase, letting on more than he would say. 'Like he knew more than he should.'
Of course – the Chamber of Secrets. Hermione had nearly forgotten how Moaning Myrtle had been killed during Riddle's time at Hogwarts, and that was one of the main reasons why Dumbledore had never liked Riddle, because he'd gotten Hagrid expelled.
Hermione felt a sudden surge of dislike, and she picked at it. "What do you mean, like he knew more than he should?"
Riddle surveyed her darkly. "There were some... questionable events at Hogwarts while I was there," he said, "resulting in a death of one of the students. You are... familiar with the Chamber of Secrets and its history?" And suddenly, the look on his face was wary, almost sharp. "Yes, you are. Hermione, I think you know what happened already." She looked away from him, confirming his suspicion. "I don't appreciate the manipulation."
She swallowed a quick retort. His dark gaze pierced into her, and she sighed. "Fine. You caught me. Why would you do that to Hagrid? Why would you do that to Myrtle?"
"It wasn't as if I personally targeted the girl," said Riddle indignantly. "I'm the Heir of Slytherin; it was a calling. She just happened to be in the bathroom, crying, and if she'd seen me in there – if she told anyone – that couldn't happen."
He raised his eyebrows, looked up at the canopy above him, and continued. "And Hagrid – Hagrid always detested me for being everything he was not and I always detested him for detesting me, and he was so beloved by everything foul and dangerous, so he was the obvious person to blame it on if I was going to stay at Hogwarts, which... which I – I had to stay at Hogwarts." And the tone of his voice changed a little, a little lower, a little quicker, like there was still some danger of his expulsion, like he was still scared. "And I knew, I knew if I got expelled for it – I knew Dumbledore wouldn't be kind about it, but if his darling pet half-giant got expelled, of course he would be right there coddling him, if only because he was too stupid and incompetent to fend for himself -"
"Tom," said Hermione sharply. Their gazes clashed, Hermione's lips pursed, Riddle's jaw set stubbornly.
"What? He's a half-giant. That's hardly uncommon knowledge," Riddle said in an obvious tone of voice.
Suddenly, a memory flashed across Riddle's eyes, but it was not his memory.
A mighty, throaty bellow, and the floor rattled. "Hagrid!" screamed Hermione from the floor, tears streaming from her eyes. "Stop it, you terrible, evil -"
"Why don't you take a rest from your jabbering, Mudblood," hissed that woman, that crazy-looking woman, and she flourished her wand, and suddenly Hermione was gasping and letting out panicked screams under that silent Crucio, but her watering gaze was fixed on Hagrid, who was kneeling at the front of the room, three masked men standing there and holding wands, blasting away at his thick skin with the Cruciatus, and next to Hermione was a limply hanging girl with blonde hair and very wide eyes, dangling by her ankles, swaying back and forth... The curse broke.
Hermione's small hands worked furiously at the weirdly old-fashioned, too-big manacles that chafed her wrists and connected her to the wall. The woman's attention was back on Hagrid now – and Hermione's face changed suddenly, abrupt disbelief hitting her expression with immediacy, and she raised a freed, shaking hand from the manacle and closed her eyes and wrenched at the other hand with gritted teeth, and it popped loose.
And Hermione was crawling to the table, where two wands lay, and she flourished them both in one hand, and instantly two tremendous explosions burst out of the floor, but that crazy woman ignored it, turned to Hermione with a snarl on her face, started furiously dueling her, and Hermione could only whimper and shield with everything she had, shooting desperate glances at the blonde girl, even though the door was open and only three feet behind her –
And agony flooded over her expression as one of the woman's curses sliced at Hermione's shoulder, and Hermione stumbled back and disappeared through the door, with one last miserable look at the blonde.
Then, darkness in the halls, and loud breathing...
"Riddle?"
His eyes popped open. "I – what?"
"You were just sitting there," she said, giving him a strange look. "Do you need a Sleeping Draught or something?"
Riddle glanced away. "Just... just a memory," he muttered uncomfortably, his hand curling around his wand handle for reassurance.
"Of what?"
He looked back at her and blinked slowly, wondering if she wanted to hear this. "It wasn't mine," he said.
"Oh," she said in a tiny voice, her eyes lost in his. What had he seen? Which part of her memories had come to him as they spoke about Hagrid? Maybe it was one of the earlier, happier memories, chatting in Hagrid's hut. Maybe it was that night, the night of the Astronomy O.W.L., the night that Hagrid had sprinted out of the Hogwarts Grounds with spells bouncing off him like some bizarre light show – or maybe it was the last time Hermione had seen him, as he had been huddled in front of the fireplace helplessly, Dolohov, Nott, and Avery standing above him, wands in hands, that night she had finally managed to escape from Bellatrix's clutches – and after all that, just to run and hide like a coward, leaving Luna there unconscious, maybe not even alive...
That was one of the worst memories of all, because Hermione knew it was true. There was no chance it was a Boggart. Every second of that pain had been excruciatingly real.
"Hermione," Riddle's soft voice said, and again she was taken by the way he said it, gently, almost hesitantly.
"What?"
His eyes hardened back into their usual piercing stone as she looked at him. "I'd like to ask you how you've managed to stay... like you are, when you've been through so much."
And he didn't even know the worst of it, didn't even know of those last seventy-two hours of pure agony. Hermione's stomach felt a little sick. She didn't know how she'd managed to retain any semblance of civilization. Did that make her strange, being able to adjust back to a normal existence after having experienced all that she had? Or did it just mean she was very good at denial? "I don't know," she said softly. "I try very hard not to think about it."
Riddle looked away from her, his eyes shadowed. "I would suppose you'd have to, but one of the questions that has been most present in my mind these last three weeks – or, well, the two that I've been conscious, I suppose. The question... How can you still have faith in humanity, after what those people have done to you?"
Hermione's eyes burned. He needed to know this. This was important. If he understood this, then it could mean he was on his way to understanding the basic functions of human compassion.
"Every time I was hurt," she started slowly, "I would wonder how people could possibly do this. I know that to correctly operate the Cruciatus Curse, you have to be enjoying what you're doing – and that was just completely unfathomable to me, how the Death Eaters could -"
"The who?" Riddle interrupted. He had heard the words a lot in her memory, but had never really thought about them.
Hermione glanced at him. "Death Eaters," she said, the words leaving a bad taste in her mouth and a steely glint in her eye. "Your followers."
"Lovely name," muttered Riddle with a roll of his dark eyes. "One would think I could come up with something a bit more intelligent—"
"Anyway," Hermione said, "they were all masters at the Cruciatus. They all loved doing it, and every time I got hit with it, I would just not understand. How could they think this was right? How could they be enjoying what they were doing, hurting me, my friends, without the slightest bit of rationale?"
There was a long pause. Her tongue moved across her dry lips absent-mindedly. "But I never lost belief in humanity," she said, looking back up at Riddle, "because I always reassured myself with the fact that these people were the abnormalities. These people would be known forever as twisted, sick, torturous, insane. No matter what the cynics, what the paranoid, what you would like to believe, there is far more good present in the world than evil, and that's clearly evident, well, even by just looking at history: when there are truly bad people, they're remembered. They stick out like sore thumbs, because they're not... normal. For every one Death Eater in the world, I used to tell myself – I used to remind myself that for every Death Eater in Hogwarts, there were thousands of people in the world like me, like Dumbledore, like Harry, like Remus and Tonks, like Bill and Fred and George and – and Ron; that for every second of pain that I screamed through, there were hundreds more people feeling happiness and love…"
Her voice faded a little, and she sighed. She appeared to have worked herself up quite a bit, so she took in a slow breath. "I will never give up faith," she said with quiet strength. "It's all we have."
There was a long silence. Riddle assessed her silently, his dark features betraying nothing. Hermione let out a small sigh. "Do you understand?" she asked.
Riddle ached to lie to her, to tell her that yes, he understood every word, that he could see why she had remained so strong – but he didn't understand. Not at all. Hope was frail; hope was weak. Faith was weaker. How could she place her very sanity in their hands? "No," he murmured, and he saw immense disappointment fill her eyes, and he wished they both thought on the same plane for just a heartbeat. "I don't understand that you can place so much of yourself into something that's not even concrete. Hope can always be stamped out."
"Hope can never be stamped out," Hermione said sharply, and Riddle was a bit unsettled to see a sudden flare of anger in her eyes. "Not while Harry is alive. Not while anyone who'll stand up for what's right is alive." Then her eyes softened. "I don't understand you," she said. "If you don't believe in hope, then how are you in Slytherin? Ambition is nothing but hope's twisted half-brother."
"Ambition is goal-driven," replied Riddle shortly. "Hope is just a dream that was never dreamed."
A very mean thought filled Hermione's mind, but she held it back, keeping it unsaid. If hope is so bad, then why am I not the one here who's an emotional cripple? She bit her lip gently. "Someday you'll understand," she muttered. "Someday you'll get what I'm telling you. God – someday you'll finally see what you've been missing."
She hadn't meant to sound so condescending; it had just sort of come out that way. She looked at Riddle's expression carefully, surprised to find no dark anger there. He looked a bit sad, a bit tired. Then, he murmured, "I don't think so."
Hermione had never heard such defeat in his voice. Surely if he just tried to understand, if he wanted to understand, then he could? Surely it was only human nature to comprehend these things? Why did he sound like he'd fought a war and lost? Then, suddenly, he asked a question, and every tinge of emotion was gone from his voice.
"How much do you know about my horcruxes, Hermione?"
His gaze was steady. She stared at him, wondering whether she should feign shock at the plural, wondering whether he had managed to find that she knew about all seven – or, well, all eight. He wouldn't have recognized most of them at this point – just the ring and the diary – but the chance seemed too slim.
"Quite a bit," she replied.
"Why don't you tell me what you know?"
"Because you don't want to hear it," she replied.
Riddle could feel his heart beating a little faster in his chest. What could she know that was worse than what he already knew – that two of them had been ruined? Surely the most she could know was the number of them, which was quite a lot in itself – "Why?" he asked slowly.
"Because I know far more than you do," she answered. He cursed the way her face was completely unreadable right now, except for maybe a faint note of unease behind those strong hazel eyes.
Hermione found herself wanting to tell him. Surely, if she ever would, this was the best time, right? He couldn't hurt her while he was lying in bed with a gaping wound, and it would give him lots of time to mull it over, which was more than could happen after he was healed – though did she even want to tell him at all? It would hurt immensely to find out that his life's work was utterly ruined. Not like it would matter to tell him one more thing, after everything he already knew... But he insisted. "Please?" he asked, looking like it was causing him physical pain to say the word.
"Fine," she said, "but don't do anything rash when I tell you."
His heart raced even faster. It was almost cruel, the build-up she was giving this –
"They're all destroyed except for one."
The way she had said it was so calm, so blasé, that he could practically imagine she'd been talking about the weather, not about everything he had ever planned, not the destruction of his ability to become a Master of Death, not his plan to never have to feel that panic that one felt right before they died, the panic that he was slowly filling his stomach now. "Oh – oh," he said, his voice utterly strangled. He hadn't ever felt such fear, absolute terror, as if any second he would be killed back on earth and sent careening into the depths of death. All but one? All but one? All but one?
Hermione looked like she'd known this would happen, this rushing, awful, inexplicably terrible feeling, not just in his stomach, but razing his entire body, a nauseating swirl. "Are you sure?" he demanded.
"Absolutely sure." No hesitation. No doubt. In fact, there was even a hard edge to her eyes that Riddle didn't understand.
"How can you be sure they're destroyed?"
She opened her mouth, and then a flicker of fear spread across her face, and Riddle found he already knew the answer. He shook his head limply, and looked away from her. This was all he had ever wanted – not to die. And it had been so, so achievable... and she had ruined it. He found his voice saying, "How could you?" in a disgustingly weak whimper of a voice, a corrupted attempt at his usual virile interrogatory tone.
"How could I?" she asked, and her voice was suddenly shaking as he had never heard it shake – with utter hardly-controllable rage. He looked back at her, but made no clarification. He couldn't seem to find words at all. "How could I?" Hermione repeated, her mouth quivering in barely-suppressed anger. "How could I see fit to attempt to stop, in the singleway I could, the man who was trying to murderall my friends and family? Oh, excuse me for attempting to save my own wretched life! Excuse me for doing something that would actually help people! Excuse me for trying to rip the Wizarding World back out of your clutches, back to a state where I might be able to get a job and have rightsand freedoms and be out of your disgusting discrimination!"
She was visibly shaking now, her every limb rigid, her mouth lifted in disgust. "Just for the sake of your vanity trip, your irrational fear of death—"
"Stop," he whispered, closing his eyes tight.
"I owe you nothing," she hissed. "Don't you dare forget that I did what I had to."
He seemed to shrink under her words. His eyes were scrunched up, and he seemed to be shivering. Hermione's anger didn't fade or recede at the sight. How could I – how dare he. He knew everything she'd been through to attempt to rid the world of him, and so he knew perfectly damn well why she'd try to do so. White-hot anger pricked at her nerves, almost making her want to spring out of her seat to slap him, but restricting her every movement was that cold grip she had on her mind at all times. Heart on fire, mind on ice, she remembered with a bit of a jolt. Her old mantra whenever she felt herself getting out of control.
"All right." She tried to breathe out her frustration. "Okay."
Unmasked fear still glowed on his face. Hermione felt a sick sort of satisfaction that he was finally being subjected to the fear that had ruled her that last month. He deserved to know what it was like, at the very least, to have that taste filling his mouth, that dread swelling in his very blood.
And Riddle felt it. Oh, yes, he felt it.
It seemed like an age to Hermione that she watched him, but it felt like only a couple of moments to Riddle, though they were very strange moments... moments where his heart wasn't beating, where he was breathing shallowly through his mouth, the inside of which was dried up like dust, and he was strangely aware of his every orifice, his every appendage, everything that made him so absolutely mortal.
"Tom," Hermione said softly, and that word shattered his concentration. He looked back at her. Her anger seemed to have drained somewhat. "Everyone dies," she said softly, and those words made Riddle want to sob, because – because –
"I am not everyone," he told her in a broken voice.
Hermione sighed. He was completely delusional. She slowly reached out and placed her hand on his in a comforting gesture, and said gently, "Yes, you are."
He had to learn it at some point. She just hadn't imagined he might cry when someone broke it to him.
Bizarrely, a drop worked itself out of the side of his eye, and a snarl made its way onto his face, and he shook his head as if to make the tear go away, but it just trailed down the side of his face, touching the place where his ear met his jaw before it quivered and fell onto the pillow. His face was still perfectly controlled, but his eyes were bright with insuppressible tears, and he seemed filled with rage at the fact.
Another tear. Before he could stop it.
Hermione's heart twisted a bit. Seeing this felt wrong, invasive, and he clearly would have smashed away his tears if he could have.
Hermione slowly reached out her thumb and wiped away his tear, gently, knowing the pain of crying against her own will, and his face was soft and warm under her finger, and his hand, she realized, was gripping onto hers like she was the last hold he had to earth. "Why did you do it to yourself?" she whispered, moving her chair so it was right up against the bed.
"I'm scared," he said, and it was so quiet she nearly couldn't hear it at all. "So scared. All the time."
And his eyes squeezed shut, and he bit his lip, and the tears started to come in earnest. Hermione raised her eyes to heaven and prayed for assistance as he opened his mouth and a legitimate sob worked its way out, a sob that should have had no tenure in the body of Tom Riddle, a sob that reminded her of that night when he had told her to leave, to get the hell out – with that face she remembered so well, that face that he was clearly restraining right now. Only now – now – his warm hand was clutching hers, the muscles of his pale arms clearly defined. His grip tightened even more, and she could have sworn she saw pain show in his face, but she couldn't tell whether that was from his chest or from his insuppressible emotions.
"Why would you want to deny yourself death?" she asked quietly. "Everyone else has it. I would think you'd like to have something that everyone else in the world—"
He let out another nasal snarl, and she fell silent hopelessly. "Tom—"
At the word, his head jerked forward off the pillow, and then he opened his mouth and let out a cry of pain. Hermione moved his sheets, groping around for her wand with her one free hand, and she slowly inspected Riddle's wound. Right there, in the abdomen – two weak ropes of muscle had popped apart again. She sighed, squeezed Riddle's hand reassuringly, and with a shimmer of moonlike glow, the strands pieced themselves back together, not wanting to hold. But with a forced blue light, they did.
She replaced the gel and drew the covers back up. His face was turned away from her, and his shaking seemed to have stopped, though his hand held hers with as much force as ever.
"What you've done to your soul isn't something for anyone to be proud of."
"What does it matter, now?" he growled.
Hermione swallowed. She'd read in the passage on thread theory that those who had truly mutilated their souls beyond all human recognition could never truly move on to death, for they had already essentially stopped living by the time their physical selves passed on. "It matters," she said, "because you might be stuck here forever."
Riddle stiffened. He still did not look at her.
"You can fix yourself, though," she told him quietly.
"How?"
She paused. This wouldn't go down well. "Remorse."
He let out a loud snort of disbelief, surprising Hermione. "I don't believe either of us really considers that to be possible," he mumbled. "I'd hazard a guess that I wouldn't be able to tell what it was, even if it did happen." He looked back at her, his dark eyes unreadable, trails of half-dried tears leading down from them like bizarre crystalline ornaments. Hermione reached out and slowly smoothed away the wetness from his face again. He looked bitter as she did it, looked humiliated.
"How do you know that, about remorse?" he suddenly demanded, as if he were hoping there were some other way, as if he were disbelieving that simple human emotion could be the key to anything important and magical.
"R.J. told me," she answered, "and he dedicated his life to studying horcruxes." Which, she thought, couldn't be far from the truth. He had, after all, given so much of his life to the horcrux he had created.
"Oh," Riddle said. "I... I see."
He stared at his dark green bedcurtains, stared at them like some secret was hidden in their folds. "How am I supposed to know when it happens?"
Hermione bit her lip. "You'll know. If it's remorse... you'll know."
How childlike he looked. How innocent he looked, just then, just as he was learning that his entire existence was unraveling, just as he was learning that nothing was going as planned and he wasn't even happy with what he'd already done with his life. A muscle flexed in his strong jaw, and his eyelids lowered a little. "And, yet again," he murmured, "I've managed to make this all about me."
"That's just a part of being around you," said Hermione with a small smile.
"What's that, under your chair, by the way?" asked Riddle, glancing down to Hermione's notes. "I've been trying to get a decent look all day, but it hasn't been working out too well."
"Just some notes."
"On what?"
"Just... things."
"Highly specific as usual," he muttered, rolling his eyes. "I thought we were going to start being honest with each other?"
Hermione shot him a skeptical glance. "When did we agree to that?"
"I was under the impression that that was something that came with attempting to repair trust," Riddle said, his low voice smiling a bit now.
Like you know what you're talking about when it comes to trust, thought Hermione involuntarily, and then she felt bad. "If you must know," she sighed, "these are my notes on this place. Theories about Life and Death."
Riddle raised his eyebrows. "Was that what you've been searching so furiously for since you arrived?"
"Well... well, yes," she admitted. "But I've... I don't know. I've reached a... a sort of a wall."
"Haven't found exactly what you need?"
Hermione shook her head. "No, I have. I've found it. I just – I don't know what to... do with it."
Riddle eyed her curiously. "You were planning on 'doing' something with it?"
This was getting uncomfortably personal. Hermione wondered whether she should just tell him it was private, attempt to get him off her back. But was it really worth keeping it secret from Riddle? The main reason she wouldn't tell him was that he might be able to get back to earth... but he was only here because of all his horcruxes, not because of any character objects, so there wasn't anything he could do to strengthen the bonds between himself and earth. In fact, his soul was so helplessly partitioned that there wasn't much he could do about anything until he felt remorse, and then Hermione would be able to tell, surely.
Why did she want to tell him, though? This was her treasure. This was what she had worked so hard on for so long. Didn't she deserve to keep it secret? Didn't she owe that to herself, to everyone she hadn't told?
Then why did she feel the desire to tell him?
Intellectual discoveries were always fun to share, Hermione mused. That was probably it. She'd always loved to share a good spell or two with Harry, or Ron, or a teacher before class, one she'd found in an obscure book, one no one else could know. It was that same type of draw she felt now.
"Well," she sighed, relenting, "I found this book buried in the Restricted Section by this Drew Che – Chez – well, it's a really odd last name, but that's beside the point. I'd read this tiny little snippet of this new magical theory a couple years back, I think it was, and they called it 'thread theory' – that is, essentially, a theory that people's souls, like threads, could unravel, and could get caught between Life and Death if they got stretched out, and lead people into this sort of – well, this place."
Riddle raised an eyebrow in interest. "So you were searching for more about it?"
"Yes, and Chez-what's-his-name's book had quite a bit written about it," Hermione exclaimed, her eyes glowing with sudden animation. "I took some really detailed notes. He's spot-on about most everything about this place, and then he theorizes that there are a few ways to get out of here – to Death, or to Life, though your soul has to be relatively intact to go anywhere at all."
She thought she saw a flicker of sharp dismay in Riddle's eyes, but she plowed on. "But, the thing is, since he was just speculating, it's all vague. Nothing specific, really, at all, and I'm... well, a little worried about trying something on myself, because honestly, messing around with souls and things sounds terribly like Dark Magic to me..."
"Well, perhaps between ourselves, we can come up with something for you?" Riddle suggested. Hermione raised her eyebrows in surprise. "Since it's not going to be possible for me," he added quickly, surely scared of seeming anywhere near considerate. Then he shot her a furtive glance and looked back at the bedcurtains. "Also... I do owe you your life."
Hermione felt shocked for a second, because that sounded awfully like he knew how she'd died – but no, he just felt responsible for overrunning Hogwarts with Dark Wizards, and assumed she'd been caught in the crossfire. She'd kept her one vital secret locked up well.
"Well... yes," she said. "Maybe we can."
She gave him a small smile. And only in that silence did Hermione realize that he was still holding onto her hand, that she hadn't taken it from his grip yet. And he squeezed her hand, as if reassuring her, and it was like an incredible shock was barreling up through her arm, spreading an itch of heat through her whole body. She felt her cheeks slowly turn pink as they just looked at each other, and she was sure her hand was sweaty and unpleasant to hold, or something, and she was wondering why he wasn't letting go, and she was wondering why she herself wasn't letting go, either, or really wanting to let go at all.