Chapter 12: The Thin Red Line

Sunday, October 5, 1944

9:47 A.M.

"Hey, Nef, is the strawberry-rhubarb jam over by you?" "Erm... I think it's right down there, D, do you see it?"

"Oh yeah, I see it". Draco spotted the jam halfway down the Gryffindor breakfast table in front of the teenaged Professor McGonagall. Without hesitation, the first-class flirt leaned as far at he could get over his former teacher, the edge of his fingers just brushing the glass jar. He grabbed it and pulled back down to his seat, winking at McGonagall and drawling, "Morning, sunshine."

When McGonagall actually blushed slightly and smiled back at Draco, Ron snorted and hid his face behind an edition of The Daily Prophet, Ginny pretended to stick a finger down her throat and throw up, Hermione rolled her eyes and wrinkled her nose in agreement, and Draco popped the lid on his strawberry-rhubarb jam, preening.

After several squabbles, much confusion, and some lonely dinners, the separated six had agreed upon a general rule of thumb regarding their seating arrangement at meals: Breakfast at Gryffindor, lunch at Ravenclaw, and dinner at Slytherin. Lavender had sportingly offered to sacrifice eating at her table, saying, "They're Hufflepuffs, guys; we just talk about peace, love, and happiness. After a while it gets a bit boring."

"Hope dear old grandfather and grand-Lestrange don't mind me sharing all their women, but what can I say? It runs in the family", Draco remarked with an offhanded grin, holding up his orange juice-filled goblet in a partial toast in the general direction of the Slytherin table. "Thank you, grandfather!"

"Sssssh", Hermione giggled, reaching over his plate and pulling his hand down. Straightening the dark chiffon scarf that she had tied loosely around her neck, she waved her yet-empty plate at her still-wet shower head, fanning it and silently urging it to dry faster. She felt her attention unintentionally drawn to a certain haughty looking, platinum-haired older teenager at the Slytherin table, however.

Harry leaned his head down close to hers, his bright green eyes following her line of sight and landing on... "Abraxas Malfoy. Can you believe it, that bloke has already approached me twice about entering certain underhanded operations of the dark side. Kept wanted to know why we transferred, why we transferred." To this last phrase, Harry added a whiny edge that Hermione could easily associate with any Malfoy, evil or not.

"The first time", Harry continued in a low voice, "I told him that we had come to study the strange cycles of an exotic and rare mushroom plant indigenous only to the Forbidden Forest. Apparently, that didn't fly with his superiors, so on Friday he asked me again. I told him we were actually here on a highly classified government surveillance exercise that required us to search for a peculiar breed of pure-blooded animals often thought to sport white hair and known for their trademark snakelike characteristics..."

Hermione spluttered and covered her mouth, laughing. Her shoulders began to shake violently, and she buried her head in the table to cover her mirth. To her right, Draco, oblivious, began to massage her back with his left hand, munching on his strawberry-rhubarb bread and surveying the Great Hall, predator-like.

Hermione could almost hear the frown in Harry's voice as he mused, "I haven't really decided if he's figured that one out yet or not..." "Speaking of figuring it out," Draco cut in, catching Harry's last comment and, luckily, not his first, "How's the 'I Spy on Snake Eyes' going, Nef?"

Giving up with her hair-drying attempts, Hermione shrugged, picking a small red apple off the fruit basket and taking a bite out of it. "I... see him in the morning now, in the common room", she said, chewing and swallowing, "But never at breakfast."

"You know, it's really sort of strange," Draco muttered so the other Gryffindors around them wouldn't hear. He studied the back of his grandfather's equally blond head as Abraxas sat on the Slytherin bench on the other side of the Ravenclaw table. "You would think the Dark Lord, granddad, and Lestrange would be the best of friends, given their pureblood supremacy beliefs, but Lestrange and granddad don't seem to like Riddle, and vice versa. I can actually feel the loathing radiating off all of them during Slytherin exchanges." "Yeah, I noticed that, too", Harry said under his breath.

Something about Draco's statement on pureblood supremacy beliefs jolted Hermione's memory. "You know", she reflected thoughtfully, abandoning the half-eaten apple on her plate, "Riddle said something about purebloods a few days ago." She paused, going over Riddle's and her somewhat stand-offish encounter with Sir Cadogan, and she wrinkled her nose. "It was almost... degrading."

"Well, he is a half-blood," Harry remarked matter-of-factly, but a dark expression crossed his face. "Still, Hermione, you should have seen him when he came out of the journal in second year. He hated Muggles and Muggle-borns so much, you'd think he had been born with it in him."

Hermione shrugged, glancing over at the giant clock behind the Professors' table. "Five minutes to ten", she groaned, throwing her napkin down. "Merlin, I said I'd meet up with Riddle in the library at ten to finish the prefect patrol chart!"

"Well, you can't very well let him beat you there! Our star Head Girl being late, what would that look like?" Draco exclaimed. Placing his hands under Hermione's arms, he completely lifted her out of her seat and lowered her to the floor. Before she could respond, he had reached under the table and yanked up her book bag. Shoving it into her hands, he spun her around and lightly pushed her toward the doors. "Go, Nef, go!"

"Draco!" Hermione exclaimed, finally managing to get in a word edgewise. She took a few steps toward the exit. "Relax!" "I am relaxed, Nef, it comes naturally, and the Quidditch rooster is being posted outside the Great Hall at eleven. You have to be there for that!" Draco yelled at Hermione's retreating back. "I want you to see the expression on Evans' face when I get Seeker over him!".

"Hermione, you'd better come just to hear him start crying when he finds out he is absolutely wrong!" Harry bellowed after her as she finally escaped the Great Hall. Hermione sighed exasperatedly and shook her head, padding down the sunlit stone corridor in the direction of the library. Honestly, what was it about guys and Quidditch?

Thinking back over the course of the week, though, Hermione had to smile. While some certain Hogwarts students had been less than courteous, as would be the case in any school in any time period, the student body as a whole seemed worth spending time with – or saving from the next Dark Lord. Hermione had already befriended quite a few of her new classmates, including a certain Columbia Salvi. This had delighted Draco to no end, of course, but he had been far too busy to act on any flirting opportunity he may have had. Quidditch tryouts had taken place throughout the week, and Hermione had no doubt that he would grab one of the four open spots on the Slytherin team. Which particular position he would receive, however, was up in the air, since he and Harry had made becoming the Slytherin Seeker a personal war between them. Although Harry had repetitively proved to be the more skilled of the two, Draco had an added impetus: Columbia Salvi was the team Keeper.

Hermione, in fact, was the only time traveller who had kept a safe distance from the Quidditch craze. Ginny, Ron, and - to everyone's shock - Lavender had also tried out for their respective Quidditch teams. (Lavender: "Hey! If he's - " (shoves finger at Ron) "- on Gryffindor, then I'll join Hufflepuff just to show him I can kick his dumb arse!").

A slight smile still on her face, Hermione strolled into the Hogwarts library. Pausing, she deeply inhaled and closed her eyes, the old, musty, leathery scent of ancient books and shelves filling her senses. Like an instantaneous wave, the same disillusionment of being at home, in her time, in her favourite place in the entire school, set in. For a good minute, Hermione simply basked in the foyer, eyes closed in pure bliss, breathing in the comforting aura of familiarity around her... until the real reason of her visit reoccurred to her.

Hermione's eyes flew open, and she quickly scanned the immediate tables for Tom Riddle. Empty. The library appeared to be completely deserted. She frowned and set off down the main, shelf-lined aisle. Blinking in the bright rays of early morning light streaming through the stained-glass ceiling above, Hermione peered down each row of books and around corners into each little alcove that she passed, each containing a worktable. And each equally empty.

Irritatedly, Hermione quickened her pace, actually rechecking each alcove off the main aisle to assure herself that she hadn't somehow missed him. When her search came up empty handed, however, she found herself back to square one in the front foyer. She warily eyed the dimly lit, lesser used quarters of the library to her right and left, the murky shadows cast by the hulking bookcases contrasting sharply with the cheerful, multi-lit main aisle. As she watched, a weak light down the right wing flickered and died. Of course Riddle wouldn't have sat down at an easy to find, accessible table well-within screaming distance...

Hermione was sure that she had gone through a good two-thirds of the library that she had once called her friend before she turned, tired and irritated, into a dimly-lit niche. It was the last workstation before the infamous Restricted Section, far back in the rear of the library. It was also between one of the only two sections of the library on the Dark Arts, Defence Against or otherwise.

Hermione loudly dropped her book bag on the floor beside the small, square table and stiffly lowered herself into a chair facing the wall and opposite Riddle, squinting in the gloomy shadows just to make sure it was him and not some other creepy, Dark Arts obsessed character.

The sound of books connecting with wood caused the dark-haired Slytherin to pause his reading and glance up calmly. "I hope being unfashionably late isn't going to become a permanent habit of yours, Nefertari", he commented, a slight derogatory twist to his words. Apparently, he didn't have any trouble seeing in the dark.

"Well, maybe if you had left a map and directions at the door, I would have found you sooner," Hermione retorted tartly, reaching for her bag. A thought randomly struck her, though, and her hand froze halfway inside it. "Do you always come here?" she asked keenly. He surveyed her, his expression unreadable, and nodded wordlessly after several seconds. Hermione frowned. "Then when do you eat?" Riddle shrugged unaffectedly. "I find the time", he said indifferently, briskly snapping the weathered, worn and coverless book he had been reading shut with a SNAP! and quickly dropping it into his bag.

Well, that explains why you're never in the Great Hall. With that particular little mystery being solved, but still wondering exactly when - or where - he ate, Hermione yanked her rosy book bag up on the seat beside her and irritatedly ruffled through it. At last, she emerged with the half drawn-up Prefect Patrol Charts.

Unnervingly, a sense of being watched fell over her, and, as she guardedly put the charts to the table, she glanced over at Riddle. She could almost sense the amusement behind his apathetic grey stare as he watched her unload. "What?" she snapped, her annoyed gaze challenging him to respond.

Riddle raised one dark eyebrow noncommittally and reached across the table, picking up the top patrol chart and skimming through it. "You're unnaturally moody today, Nefertari. No 'Good morning, how are you?' "

Hermione rolled her eyes, tired of whatever game he was trying to play, and snatched the parchment he had taken seconds before back with her right hand, handing him the one that had been below it with her left. "That one's yours, thank you very much, and don't you lecture me on the virtues of politeness, Mr. I-Don't-Do-Formalities."

Riddle's right eyebrow raised slightly as he continued to scan the length of his chart. "Well, be at ease, Nefertari, because I have no intention of doing so", he derisively rejoined without missing a beat. "At this rate, someone as ill-bred as myself would never even hope to catch up to your obviously superior standards of etiquette."

Hermione's mouth fell open, shut, and opened again. "You know, for as clever and witty as you undeniably are, Riddle, I have no appreciation of being mocked," she ground out scathingly. Glaring at him, she shuffled through her book bag again and finally emerged with a small silver watch. She set it on the table and sighed. "All right, now that that's out, let's not waste any more time with pointless arguing. I have to go in exactly forty-five minutes."

She watched uneasily as Riddle blatantly scanned her non-uniform attire: a knee-length, dark, flowing skirt and forties style, lightweight mauve blouse that had once belonged to Professor McGonagall. It had taken the six time travellers nearly their entire preparation time in the modern world to cajole enough vintage clothing out of their older teachers to suffice when they needed to wear non-uniform, until they got the chance to purchase their own.

"Oh, that's right, I forgot", he said in a mild voice laced with dark undertones of acidity, shaking his head slightly as he lay a schedule and a list of prefect names side by side. He craned his neck and leaned forward, mulling over the list. "You've got an interview with Witches' Vogue at eleven, right? I mean, you, being the rich and famous heiress that you are, can't let your influence in the higher social circles slide just because you moved to England, can you?"

An agitated growl inadvertently escaped Hermione's lips, and she jammed the tip of her quill into her paper, grinding it down in a small circle. Her eyes quickly took in the fact that, despite it being the weekend, and a warm, Indian Summer one at that, Riddle still wore his immaculate uniform and school robes.

"I simply wear what is comfortable, my dear Riddle, which is certainly more than I can say for you", she gritted out in an irately controlled voice. "And, if you must know, two of my best friends are finding out their positions on the Quidditch team — your House's Quidditch team, to be exact — at eleven o'clock, and Draco asked me to be there to give them moral support."

Riddle shook his head again, this time almost in condescending manner, and lightly pencilled in a name on his chart. In an indifferent, almost amused voice, he tisked, "So sure your precious du Lac's going to make the team, aren't you, Nefertari?" He looked up and smirked at her. "Would it break your heart if he didn't?"

In horror, Hermione felt her right hand violently rise up under the table as if it had a life of its own, and her left hand wrestled it back to her lap before she completely lost it and gave Riddle the same punch she had bestowed on Draco so many years before. Why did Riddle have to be so difficult?

Hermione's mission had always been to stop Tom Riddle from becoming Lord Voldemort at whatever the cost, at whatever the sacrifice, doing whatever it took. Now, even though it was only the first week into her 1944 school year, Hermione was seriously beginning to consider Ron's words from Day One: 'There'll always be a fast way out. Right, Hermione?' If killing Tom Riddle turned out to be the only way... Well, then, despite that little soft voice whispering in her ear that it would be seriously wrong, Hermione would have to consider that option, too.

Lord Voldemort, she thought sardonically, you are treading on the thin red line between war and peace, and you don't even realise it. "Then at least I can say he tried", Hermione finally replied, her tone arcticly frigid. She jerked the prefect list toward her from the centre of the table and, on her open schedule, forcefully scratched in Pepperdine, Piper, with the 8:30-10:00 P.M. slot on Thursdays next to Jenson, Wilhelma. "Which is a great deal more than I can, at the moment, say for you." Riddle didn't respond.

Hermione had actually began to enjoy the silence of their little hook, save for the occasional scratching of quills and the ruffling of sheets as either she or Riddle would pull the prefect list toward their side of the table. For a good half hour, she tolerated the dreary settings and impossibly faint lighting as best as she could. Finally, as the excruciatingly slow minutes ticked by and the lights simply seemed to dim further, just to spite her, Hermione reached the end of her rope. She was seriously considering using her wand as a penlight when a memory from the past Monday wafted through her mind.

She set her quill down, gathering her nerves and a quick breath before she trained a steely gaze on Riddle. The latter was still fully engrossed in his work. In fact, he looked surprisingly normal, absently tapping one hand on the table as he scripted in the names of various prefects in various positions. Hermione wondered if he'd forgotten she was there. After a moment, she shook her head and asked with determination, "What events?"

Riddle's eyes remained actively fixed on the patrol chart. Her sudden inquiry didn't seem to faze him in the least, nor did he even stop writing, for that matter, although his tapping hand did freeze abruptly and then slowly lower to the table. "What?" he eventually asked, sounding distracted.

Hermione lowered her voice and added a whiny edge that was very similar to the tone Harry had used earlier in describing Abraxas Malfoy. " 'Oh, and do try to keep a close eye on things; I don't want the events of a year and a half repeating themselves,' " she said in a rather good imitation of the Headmaster, a cutting edge to her voice as she quoted Dippet's words. She crossed her arms expectantly.

Riddle stuck his quill back in its well, tipped his chair back from the table on two of its legs, and stretched slightly, for all appearances unconcerned. He was an amazing actor, Hermione recognised. Fabulously talented. "You do come up with the most random things, Nefertari, you do realise that," he commented carelessly. Hermione narrowed her eyes, sending Riddle a sure sign that she was not planning on letting this subject drop anytime soon. "Not that random". She had no way of reading Tom Riddle's expression as he stared unemotionally at her. She was just as surprised, though, when he leaned forward in his seat again and reached across the table for the prefect list. "It seems to me that, instead of working to finish this assignment so as to spend as little time with each other as possible, might I add, you're the one who's getting significantly off-topic—"

Oh, you are not going to get out of this one, Tom Lord Voldemort Riddle— "Pardon me if I'm wrong, but anything that has to do with the state of this school seems to be significantly enough on-topic for me," Hermione snapped, heatedly grabbing his wrist before he could pick up the parchment...

...and releasing it just as quickly, yanking back her hand as if she had just been burned, her 'kind of almond-shaped' eyes flying wide open in surprise and shock.

This time around, Hermione was certain she saw alarm momentarily pass over Tom Riddle's features. He jerked his hand backward toward him just as quickly as she had, his breaths audibly quickening, but not noticeably, had Hermione not known to listen for it. She knew he had to be frantically remembering the last time she had come in contact with him, and for good reason.

Inwardly, Hermione was cheering at her golden opportunity. That's right. Squirm, you little worm! She decided to surprise Riddle. After all, Riddle, was now staring at her expectantly, and Hermione was not one to disappoint. Making her eyes go slightly off-focus, Hermione stared at the faded torch above Riddle's head as if she were gazing at some distant image. She began softly, slowly, carefully, "There was a... a chamber... a chamber of... of... of silence?" Her eyes shifted to Riddle questioningly.

One of Riddle's eyebrows rose slightly as if in appraisal, no doubt realising that Hermione could have easily found out the premise of the events from the end of his fifth year and be putting on a false show. "Of secrets," he finally said in a low, even voice.

Hermione furrowed her brow thoughtfully and nodded to herself. "Yes, that's right... the Chamber of Secrets. And there was something... something in the Chamber of Secrets," she continued unhurriedly and deliberately, as if trying on each word for size. "It was... it was driven by hate — Kill, kill the Mudbloods", she abruptly rasped in a voice far deeper than her own.

As soon as the words passed her lips, she jerked in mock surprise, blinking and shaking her head. In her mind, she fought to hold in the laughter that was very dangerously threatening to burst from her lips as Tom Riddle's gaze narrowed from that of haughty assurance to extremely heightened suspicion to — could it be?— disbelief.

"A girl - There was a girl, with glasses... She died," Hermione stated bluntly, once again glancing at Riddle for affirmation.

Riddle nodded silently, this time not offering any more information, but Hermione was by no means through with him yet. "She was... in a... in a bathroom... and - and there were eyes, giant, glowing... A giant snake. Sweet Merlin, it was huge, and -" She almost smiled, knowing that her next statement was information she could have, hypothetically, only gotten from the Heir of Slytherin himself. "- and there were pipes, a... a gigantic hole in the middle of a bunch of sinks. Hm, that's odd... Wait! It opened up -"

Riddle slammed his bag down on the table, jolting Hermione from her 'psychic trance.' As she leapt in surprise, he pointed over at Hermione's little silver watch, upside-down to him. "The time, Nefertari. Two minutes to eleven", he noted quite tonelessly, despite his lightening-quick interruption. "If you stay any longer, du Lac might grow impatient and leave you for another woman. I saw him checking out Salvi during Defence Against the Dark Arts on Friday—"

That was it, Hermione had had enough of Riddle and his cute little indifferent comments! Angrily, she clenched her jaw and jumped to her feet. Banging her hands flat on the table, she leaned her head down furiously so she could be eye to eye with the seated young Lord Voldemort. Hermione liked to think that she seldom lost her temper, but Merlin help those around her when she did...

"Listen up, you utter piece of slime," she snarled, growing even more put-out when she saw a faint ghost of a smirk begin to slip onto his face. "What I do with Draco du Lac is my own business, but I am in no way the gold-bought Head Girl position, dumb blond want-to-be that you seem to think I am."

"No?" Riddle asked, sounding quite interested, both of his eyebrows rising unperturbedly as he leaned back in his chair, as if to say, 'That's news to me.'

"No", Hermione agreed vehemently. She angrily jammed her book bag shut and slung the dusty rose strap over her shoulder. On second thought, she paused, glaring back down at him. "And if you're not careful, you may just find out that you're the one who is being fooled."

As Riddle's eyes visibly darkened at her last comment, Hermione supremely pushed herself off the edge of the table and strolled toward the beginning of the row of books, heading for the secondary aisle. She turned back toward Riddle at the last moment, trying to keep another smirk off her face.

"That was right, wasn't it?" she asked knowingly. "The Chamber of Secrets, the girl dying in the bathroom, was 'the event' that Dippet was referring to. Wasn't it, Riddle?"

Although Tom Riddle's face held no visible emotion, Hermione could see he was sitting far more rigidly and less relaxed than he had been when she had first entered the library. He blatantly surveyed Hermione for a minute, a move to which she was becoming accustomed, and eventually said in a low voice, "Ten points to Ravenclaw for that... unerring display, Miss Nefertari."

At his strange way of acknowledging her being right, Hermione's own eyebrows shot up, but she knew that Riddle had to act, if only for the sake of her not telling other people what she had 'seen,' as though what she had just said was common knowledge. Which it definitely wasn't.

"Right, well, I'll be seeing you", Hermione said nonchalantly, swirling around and sauntering off toward the main corridor and the sunshine with an alarmingly Draco-like swagger. At last, she could give in to her urge to smile and bask in her brilliance, but a glance at her watch spurred her to a jog, and she absently wondered if she was fated to be late to every single appointment she would have that year.

She had an advantage over Tom Riddle. I should win an award for that.