After Hermione finally closed her homework planner and finished her morning ablutions, she shuffled down the steps to the Great Hall, only to be greeted with a terrible shrieking noise.
"-BRING YOU STRAIGHT BACK HOME." Hermione saw a red envelope near Ron burst into flames as the boy buried his head in his arms. Neville put a consoling hand on his shoulder.
She sat down next to Harry and snorted at Ron. It served him right, flying that car to school, especially when they could have just asked a Professor or someone for help. But then why don't you tell the professors about Tom?
She shook her head.
It's different. Tom will help me with my studies, not help get the Wizarding World exposed.
She took out Voyages with Vampires and started to copy down memos into the tiny black book. When Professor McGonagall came down table handing out schedules, she covered Tom's planner with a sheet of parchment. Now why did I just do that?
"Double Herbology with the Hufflepuffs," Harry read out. "And then Transfiguration." Hermione glanced down and copied the schedule into the planner, protectively holding it to her chest so that Harry wouldn't see the cursive remarks, "Gilderoy Lockhart? What type of name is that for a defense teacher?"
She scribbled a reply.
He's actually very accomplished! He slew a whole coven of vampires in Albania and wrote a book about it. There was no writing for a good minute, as if Tom was formulating a theory.
The only person I knew who could have accomplished such a feat is definitely not this Gilderoy Lockhart character.
He is somewhat after your time. Who do you think did it instead?
Why, myself, of course.
I'm fairly sure you're not alive now. I don't know of any Tom Riddles, and I have extensively studied Wizards of the 20th Century and Hogwarts, a History. Although, I do plan on looking you up in the library just to see if you're an actual person or something trying to "corrupt my soul."
She shut the book and left with Harry and Ron for Herbology. They had quite an interesting lesson on Mandrakes, and she met a nice Hufflepuff boy named Justin Finch-Fletchley. She blushed thinking about his compliment—"and of course, you must be Hermione Granger, the best in our year."
Transfiguration was a success as well. With Tom's advice from the previous night, she was able to turn the beetles into buttons on the first try. He was right—magic was all about intent. As long as she pictured the beetles morphing to buttons and thought of her wand as the catalyst, she could master the spell easily. Before, she just thought magic was about incantations and wand movements, and she did see a connection in the sort of floating grace that Wingardium Leviosa possessed or the jabbing motion of Alohamora.
But really it was about using your magic, power, and desire to change your environment.
After lunch, she, Harry and Ron sat in the courtyard, and she propped open Voyages with Vampires in order to try to convince Tom that Gilderoy Lockhart was legitimate. Colin Creevey, a new Gryffindor tried to accost Harry. She thought it funny how Harry was so shy about his fame.
One of my friends reminds me of you. However, he does not have delusions that he could slay a whole coven of vampires like you. He's actually quite humble.
Does this friend have a name, or should I simply call him my doppelgänger?
Hermione paused. If she didn't offer his name, Tom would be suspicious, and she wanted him to keep telling her how to perform magic better. However, if she slipped up, she felt that Tom was smart enough to easily catch her.
His name is Neville Longbottom.
Longbottom? Well, good to know that the pureblood name carries on into a "humble" vessel. How good of friends are you with Neville?
We're close. He's an orphan as well, that's why I said he reminded me of you. He had to live with his muggle aunt and uncle who were apparently very mean to him.
Mu-for the first time, Tom scratched out his own writing. A jolt passed through Hermione. Was he sitting in a room somewhere, actually writing into a similar book? The error made his presence more real. –ggles like that should not be allowed to raise magical children. The orphanage was horrible to me, and I shall never forget how they treated me.
But not all muggles are…
She stopped writing. Didn't she tell Tom that she wrote with a penname because she hated her muggle father? She couldn't be too friendly towards muggles if she didn't want Tom knowing all sorts of things about her. Plus, he was a Slytherin, so he probably wouldn't be excited to teach her if he knew she was muggleborn.
Not all bad? I respectfully disagree, Hermione. Time and time again, I have only been met with disappointment. First my muggle father who abandoned my mother, then the orphanage, then there were the muggles who almost destroyed wizarding Britain during the war.
Hermione had forgotten that Tom was a student during World War II. She could understand that he would be upset with the muggle world afterwards, and given his less than illustrious experience with muggle guardians, it made sense why he was bitter.
I know. I feel the same way.
She closed the book again and sighed. She didn't feel the same way, but Tom was half right that Muggles had done many bad things. However, wizards were not saints either. Voldemort and Grindelwald were prime examples. They both subscribed to the blood purification message of discriminating against muggles and muggleborns.
People like herself.
Nevertheless, if she wanted Tom to keep teaching her magic, she'd have to accept his argument. It wasn't as if it was like Malfoy's horrible sneers or Marcus Flint's habit of targeting muggleborns on the Quidditch pitch…
Defense Against the Dark Arts was horrible in that Tom was completely right about Lockhart. After scoring a perfect mark on his pop quiz, Hermione had proceeded to witness a grown wizard release one hundred Cornish pixies into a classroom with no idea how to contain them. A small ball of anticipation unraveled itself into disappointment in her stomach. She had thought that Lockhart was a master of the Dark Arts, someone who knew so much about defeating different creatures. Instead, he was a buffoon.
Harry and Ron were pleased to see she had come around. "Yes, well, I didn't have a crush on him like you two said," Hermione huffed. The trio went back up to the common room and Hermione retired to her bed to begin her Transfiguration essay, consulting Tom whenever she needed help explaining a bit of theory.
After she rewrote her essay in her best handwriting, she lay on her stomach, absent-mindedly writing her name on spare parchment. Hermione Jean. Hermione Jean. Hermione Jean Granger. Hermione Granger.
When she woke up the next morning, she realized she had fallen asleep on Tom's book, which hummed and buzzed with a warm energy.
I have to stop writing to you, she scribbled, I should be going to classes instead of talking with you about them!
I'm not to blame for your poor time management, Hermione. She noticed how he wrote her name, slanted with an embellished "H" and made a note to try to write it like that on her next assignment.
I haven't even started to teach you one percent of what I know. You have just seen a glimpse of what knowledge I have. If you're truly a Ravenclaw, you know that I can show you how to ensnare magic and render death, bewitch the senses and seduce the mind.
A chill danced down Hermione's spine. She could hear a deep, lingering voice saying those words, reverberating. She did want to know everything she could. Oh how she desperately wanted to know everything she could!
The next few days passed without event. Harry had his first Quidditch practice, and so she and Ron trekked to the Quidditch pitch to watch Wood practice his finely-tuned sadism. Well, Ron watched the finely-tuned sadism. Hermione was now going through Travelling with Trolls, furiously marking up the pages with comments and questions. It had now become a personal project of hers to expose Lockhart for lying about his escapades. She wrote little notes in her planner while Ron shot annoyed glances at her.
"Hermione, do you go anywhere without that book? I bet it's your love letter to Lockhart, isn't it?" he said, giving the planner a dirty look.
"I told you Ron. I'm going to prove that there's no way Lockhart could have written these books. But that's going to take lots of research—he certainly knows a lot, and if they were someone else's stories, he would have been exposed by-" she paused and a gleam of satisfaction was born in her eyes. What if he had sworn them all to secrecy? There could be magical vows, and that was even more illegal than just stealing a story! She turned to Ron.
Ron wasn't paying attention anymore. In fact, he was now down on the pitch in what appeared to be a duel with Draco Malfoy.
"Eat slugs, Malfoy!" Ron yelled, and was knocked backwards by the force of his own wand.
Tom, do you happen to know the countercurse to a curse that makes you spew slugs?
Who did that to you?
Not to me, one of my friends. The countercurse?
Remember, Hermione, intent. Try to remove the curse through sheer will rather than through exposing words. Neville in trouble again?
Great load of help you are. And no, this is one of my other friends. She paused. Oliver Wood.
Neville Longbottom and Oliver Wood? Sounds positively Dickensian.
Hermione gave a girlish giggle and put the planner away. Ron and Harry had gone over to the side of the pitch and she ran to catch up with them.
"Ronald Weasley! Why on earth did you pick a fight with those boys?" she huffed, "Hold still." She tried to practice what Tom said and willed the curse to stop working. Ron belched up another slug and Harry moved into her, breaking her concentration.
She tried again, and unconsciously moved her hand so it rested on top of Tom's book. She felt a jolt of power fly up her arm into her wand arm and through towards Ron. He staggered a bit, but no slugs came up.
"Wow, Hermione! How did you do that?" Harry asked, his eyes wide. He stared at her wand and then back at Ron.
"Yeah, Hermione, how on earth did you do that? You didn't say a thing!" Ron said, giving her a funny look.
She took her hand off of Tom's book and shook her bushy hair impetuously. "If you would pay attention more to your studies, maybe you could learn a thing or two!" she sniffed.
That was a blatant lie. Non-verbal casting wasn't done until sixth year. And she didn't want to think that she only did it because she was taking lessons from a sixth-year Slytherin in a book. With Ron's prime display of inter-house unity a few minutes before, she couldn't imagine his reaction upon finding out about Tom.
That night, she talked with Tom about Hogwarts, A History. She said that she found the history of the castle fascinating and the architectural parts as well. Apparently, Tom had done a lot of exploring when he was a student, and he told her of several passages and rooms that Hermione hadn't known existed.
I haven't even told you about the best one though. There is a room in Hogwarts filled with thousands of lost treasures. Piled to the ceiling. Jewelry, wands, and books, books to the sky.
Hermione tried to imagine such a room and found she couldn't. Everything in Hogwarts seemed so orderly and old-fashioned. Could there really be a sort of Hogwarts attic?
It was one of my secrets when I was at Hogwarts. I believe that only I know where it is.
Where is it, Tom? It's not very nice to talk about something like that and not tell me where it is.
There was a long pause and Tom began to draw a map. The ink stretched out into corridors and rooms, and she could see a tapestry unfold. The one on the seventh floor! She had seen that before.
This is where it is, but it takes a special person to see the room. The door only appears to those who are worthy.
I find that highly unbelievable.
You don't think me worthy? After all I've helped you with during the past day? I believe that your friend Oliver would still be exuding slugs if it were not for my incredible dominion over magic.
You're a Slytherin. Of course you're unworthy.
The ink gave a red sheen. Was it the light? Hermione pressed her fingers to it although it didn't come off.
You speak more like a Gryffindor than a Ravenclaw. Why should you think Slytherin unworthy?
Hermione realized her mistake. She wasn't acting like a rational, smart Ravenclaw. She was letting prejudice get in the way. The Slytherin house of fifty years ago could have been much different. She hadn't had a chance to look up Tom in the library yet because of the busyness of the week, but she couldn't just judge him on the small sample of his present housemates she'd seen thus far.
I don't. I just think Ravenclaw is the best. Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure, Hermione wrote, quoting the words Hogwarts, A History said to be on Rowena Ravenclaw's diadem.
Page 352 of Hogwarts, a History.
I know.
I would have to say, that means to an end is man's greatest friend. Although, that may just be the 'unworthy' Slytherin in me. Go to sleep, Hermione, so you don't blame me in the morning.
Goodnight, Tom.
Hermione closed the book and felt guilty. She should try to look at the houses more evenly—Tom was right about that. The actual qualities of Slytherin were things that she had and Harry had too. She turned over and put the book under her pillow. And really, how could someone that knew Hogwarts, a History as well as she did be bad?
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Well, well… Hermione begins to view Tom as a person rather than a dark magic artifact. However, much of the events are progressing the same.
This will be a long, drawn-out fic if you haven't been able to discern as such. There's nothing I dislike more than stories where the characters immediately change all of their values upon meeting one another. I've especially notice it happen in the HG/TR realm with time-turner fics in which Hermione forgets her whole previous life just because Tom Riddle is a good looking guy. There's a lot more going on under there. /rant
As always, reviews are welcome, nay, encouraged!