Chapter 23: On The Verge (of Falling Hard)

Monday, December 20, 1944

7:11 P.M.

Hermione was seething as she slammed the Potions classroom door shut and vehemently set off for the Hospital Wing. Her entire right hand felt like someone had shoved it into a fireplace. On top of that, the little bugger was throbbing for all it was worth, except for the knuckles, in which she had, to both her relief and dismay, lost all feeling. From the unusual swell on top of her hand, she figured that her skin had bloated to an ugly black and blue, but under the crimson red covering of Malfoy's blood, which she couldn't bring herself to look at fully, she couldn't be sure.

Choking back fuming tears, Hermione gathered a fortitude she didn't realise she had and did her best to ignore the pain, pushing the throbbing as far from her mind as she could. There are bigger things going on here that you have to worry about now, Hermione! Your hand can wait!

Her book bag, slung securely over her shoulder, took a wild swing as Hermione sharply turned a corner, her thoughts jumbled. From Day One, it had been clear to everyone involved that Abraxas Malfoy and Tom Riddle weren't exactly the best of friends, as Hermione had rather stupidly expected them to be...but the reasons behind their existing enmity had never been clear. Now, facing the truth in all its ugliness, Hermione felt like a complete idiot for having never seen it before.

She had always assumed that Tom Riddle, being the Heir of Slytherin and all that was Dark and Dodgy, would have just as much, if not more authority than the Malfoys, or the Blacks, or the Lestranges... or any of the other powerful Slytherin-bred families, for that matter.

But, quite obviously, no one in this time knew that Tom was the Heir, and before she had left, Dumbledore had told the time travellers that many hadn't even realised Tom was who he was until after he had completely transformed into Lord Voldemort... and, by that point, not many people even knew he was Tom Riddle.

And that brought up the one fact that dispelled Hermione's entire theory into a pile of rubbish: Tom Riddle, or someone who Harry certainly thought was Tom Riddle, had recently formed the Death Eaters with the unbroken help and full support of Abraxas Malfoy.

Once again, Hermione's mind nimbly ran through all the facts Dumbledore had given her on the Heir of Slytherin. According to Dumbledore, Tom Riddle hadn't made the full plunge to the Dark Arts until after he had graduated, and he had only formed the Death Eaters after that... at least good half-decade after Hogwarts.

She passed a window on the way up to the fourth floor, catching a glimpse, through the darkness, of a gust of winter air and ice pellets smashing into the iced-over glass. The dreary weather only coincided with her dreary mood. Hermione loved a good mystery just like anyone else, but this one was getting a bit too extensive and a lot too personal.

She hated being left in the dark for this long, and her chat with Malfoy, as well as Dumbledore's clashing facts, had had most definitely just thrown her into a black hole. Of course, many snippets of Dumbledore's information was turning out to be faulty - he had, after all, skipped the entire curse bit and the possible Tom Riddle's close friends bit, or lack thereof...

But, if Dumbledore was correct about the timeline... then the utter derision that Hermione had seen in Malfoy's eyes, the disgust in his voice... It was real. Malfoy sincerely believed Tom Riddle wasn't worth a knut — or, at least, he had Hermione convinced that he did. Had Malfoy known that it was Tom who had formed the Death Eaters, he would have had a bit more respect than that, just because, she reasoned. I mean, you don't mess with Lord Voldemort.

Malfoy wouldn't have been able to cover it up that well, even if he was putting on some kind of an act, unless, somehow, he didn't know that his budding Dark Lord was Tom Riddle... Harry had said that the leader had used a Muffler charm...

Torn in two completely different directions and getting absolutely nowhere, Hermione's mind wandered back to the issue at hand. She had never, ever imagined that the young Lord Voldemort's half-blood heritage would make him a marked outsider in the very house his ancestor had created. Thinking back on it now, though, she found herself asking, Why not?

Purebloods ruled the Slytherin house, plain and simple, and Tom Riddle was not a pureblood. Was that why he never ate in the Great Hall? Hermione wondered, so many puzzling pieces about him now sliding into place at dizzyingly fast speed. And why Draco, Ginny, and Harry had reported that none of them had ever seen Tom set foot in the Slytherin Common Room?

Hermione swiftly continued to fill in the gaps before she was interrupted by some confused first year or dive-bombed by Peeves or lost her train of thought. She vaguely remembered Dumbledore mentioning, from one of his inside sources, how Lord Voldemort had taken particular delight in having the pureblooded elite of his Death Eater forces — like the Malfoys — bow to his will. But of course he would have, she realised, after all the pureblood supremacy remarks Malfoy and others had no doubt made throughout the years.

Was that why Tom didn't seem to like purebloods, but he still favoured them over muggles and muggleborns, since the only muggles he had known since birth had treaded him dreadfully? And... was it why he alienated himself from her? Especially when she was trying to be friendly?

Tom obviously had the same, if not more experience in certain areas than she had... in spells and knowledge, in how to maneuvre, undiscovered, throughout Hogwarts, in intuitive observation, in emotional masking, in the utter drudgery, the darkness of life, but... had he not known what to do in response to her "bonding" attempts because he had never been exposed to something of that nature?

Had anyone his age ever even cared enough to be persistently friendly to him before she had arrived?

As Hermione mounted the last staircase, the gaping, pale oak Hospital Wing entry finally coming into sight at the end of the seventh floor corridor, an eerie, terrifying realisation struck her, chills prickling up and down her spine for the second time that night, a cold sweat breaking out behind her neck.

Had she just named most of the reasons why Tom Riddle became Lord Voldemort?

The giant wooden double doors were upon her now, beckoning her to open them. Hermione tentatively drew up alongside the Wing and hesitated, dreading to enter, if for no other reason than for fear that her expressions, her eyes, her words would somehow give away something of the revelations she had just had. About him.

Of course, she had no tangible proof that she was correct, none at all, and the Death Eater enigma threw a wrench into most of her speculations... but a strange, instinctive feeling that she could not quite name told her that she was not far from the truth. She just knew she wasn't. Sighing heavily, she turned around and leaned her back against the outside of the Hospital Wing door, trying the urge the knot of tenseness stubbornly parked right in the middle of her shoulder blades to disappear.

As she stared up at the vaulted, Byzantine stone corridor ceilings, a single idea that she had never once considered before floated through her mind - that maybe, just maybe, the way to stop Tom Riddle from becoming Voldemort was not by killing him... but by being his friend.

Was that what Dumbledore had meant when he had told her, told her years and years ago, it seemed, told her in such a different time and a different place that his grey, bearded, defeated image was fuzzy and full of gaps that her memory could not fill in, told her that, sometimes, the most difficult battles were not won by fighting?

And Hermione couldn't help but wonder... could she destroy Lord Voldemort without destroying Tom Riddle?

The giant Hospital Wing door against which Hermione was leaning abruptly swung open, and she only had enough time to utter a tiny shriek of surprise before she toppled over backward and was nearly mowed over by Madam Lamberdeau.

"Oh, so sorry, dearie!" Madam L exclaimed as she steadied Hermione with relatively quick middle-aged reflexes, balancing a cart loaded down with all sorts of shaped flasks and potions behind her. "I've got to make a House call, but go on in, go on!"

The motherly Mediwitch distractedly waved her hand toward the open door, probably used to Hermione's frequents to the Infirmary by now. "He's drifted off for a touch again, I think, but he's already asked me if you've stopped by... Twice, if I recall correctly..."

For reasons unknown to her, Hermione's heart again sped up in her chest as Madam L purposefully started off down the corridor, and she could hear the matron muttering, "Quiddich accident, stopped the bludger with his face before it could go through a window, could only make it as far as the Potions classrooms... humph! You'd think the Slytherin team would know better than to perform foolish heroics with bludgers by now..."

Oh, Malfoy, how you lie. A smirk broke out on to Hermione's face in spite of herself, but it quickly contorted into a grimace as a jolt of electricity exploded through her nerves the moment her injured right hand attempted to close the Hospital Wing door. Now that most of her deep thinking was over, the throbbing had moved back to the front burner with a vengeance, and the powers that be had turned it on the highest level.

Bugger. Wincing, Hermione bit her lip while her mind scrolled down the few healing spells she knew of, and, grudgingly, she finally admitted that she couldn't come up with any reliable ones that could fix bones. So, still in considerable pain, Hermione halfheartedly turned to face the neat row of empty white hospital beds, hesitating again.

Oh, come on, Hermione, don't be a wimp. Leisurely, she tossed her cascade of curls over her shoulder for moral support, inhaled a deep breath for good measure, and proceeded to take extremely tiny steps toward the only occupied bed on the far left hand side of the Infirmary, i.e. the semi-permanent residence of Tom Riddle.

She was in absolutely no hurry to get there, and she didn't care if she looked like an idiot as she inched along. Nobody else was there to see her, anyway, and she didn't particularly feel like facing him in her present state. Hurt. Hot. Tired as hell.

That's right, Hermione, what little of the normally abundant optimism that was left in her mind encouraged bleakly. One foot in front of the other. And again.

Meanwhile, a little prick of guilt crept back and began to prod at Hermione's heart. Oh, don't you start, she growled to herself fiercely. This curse isn't my fault! I never asked to be a part of it, never!

But you are hemming it on, the yogic voice of reason lectured serenely in her ear. You asked him to Hogsmeade, you asked him to the Christmas Soiree, you are giving him more opportunities to fall in love with you... It is you, not he, who is sealing his fate...

I can't force him to stop fancying me! Hermione's mind screamed back, wanting nothing more than to reach into her head and chuck the little Dumbledore-like omniscient voice into the rubbish bin... once she got her hand back into working order, at least.

At long last, she reached the end of the room and dragged her usual, economically made and, she had come to believe, purposefully uncomfortable wooden chair over to Tom's bedside. And, for a moment, Hermione just sat there, staring at his still form. He looked so like Tom Riddle... yet so unlike Tom Riddle, if that made sense.

The teenage Dark Lord was lying in the only hospital bed in the Infirmary propped halfway up, his head tilted to the right so she could only see the left side of his attractive — yes, she had to reluctantly admit this— well-defined but unhealthily pale face, across which tousled dark hair now spilled, that was not buried into a pillow, one fist loosely gripping crumpled sheets.

He was sleeping—or, at least, his eyes were closed, but any traces of worry lines around his forehead... the corners of his eyes... his mouth... were momentarily gone, and his House sweater was rumpled, a far cry from his usually impeccably dressed self. She felt like she hadn't seen him in ages... ever since their deep discussion the day after Hogsmeade, she and he had hardly spoken, minus the generalities needed to keep the school, the Christmas Soiree planning, the prefects, and their Defence Against the Dark Arts project running smoothly.

Tom's Infirmary visits, though, had become something of a regularity, and Hermione had decided that Tom actually saw more of the place than Harry had, even. Hermione, on the other hand, didn't want to be in there any longer than she had to be.

"Tom", she whispered softly. When he didn't respond, his breathing still slow and steady, Hermione reached out with her uninjured hand and gently shook his warm shoulder. "Hey. Sleeping beauty. Wake up." Even in his sleep, Tom Riddle stiffened at the contact, and a beat passed. Finally, slowly, her Head counterpart tiredly cracked open one eye, squinting in the Hospital Wing's relatively dim evening torchlight until his guarded gaze landed on her own tired face.

"Good morning, sunshine", she managed to quip cheekily, forcing herself to smile while trying to push both her conversation with Abraxas Malfoy and the unremittingly burning feeling of her very aching hand from her mind—neither of which were easy tasks.

A slight, genuine smile did break out on her lips, however, when Tom visibly relaxed and actually let out a tiny groan, closing his eyes again and shoving his dark head farther into the pillow like an obstinate six year old. "Wha tie's'it?" he mumbled, his voice still thick with sleep. Hermione translated his question into an answer. "Half past seven at night". Tom's eyes snapped open. "No".

"Yes, actually". Hermione attempted another grin, but failed miserably, as the pounding in her hand had spread to her brain like a potent drug, fogging most of her happy senses, her motor skills, and her hearing: the only sound echoing in her head was a rhythmic, thudding boom.

She was almost beginning to regret she had even punched Abraxas Malfoy in the first place. Almost.

She felt no better when Tom took a quick, assessing survey of what he could see of her from the waist up, lingering on her no doubt ashen face, pale even for her tanned skin. She shifted uneasily under his gaze —something she normally refused to do— but she was still caught completely off guard at the speed of his perceptiveness when he muttered a second later, "What's wrong, Nefertari?"

Hermione's eyebrows shot up, both staggered and impressed, and she automatically, defensively protested, "Nothing's wrong!" The too-smart-for-his-own-good prat merely raised his eyebrows in a similar fashion.

"Well..." she rephrased, absently twisting her loose curls into a ponytail with one hand a tucking the wavy mess under the collar of her robes. No use lying about it, I suppose. "I was thinking about how you just missed the last and best Silviarius project meeting that we've ever had..."

As if she had pushed a button, Tom's eyes clouded over. "Oh?" he asked, his voice emerging unexpectedly apathetic — unexpected because he had loosened up around her a lot, or, at least, a lot for Tom Riddle, and never constantly masked his feelings anymore, unless the occasional time came up when he really didn't want her to know what he was thinking. Like now, apparently. He turned his head to get a better view of her. "What was so wonderful about it?"

Hermione casually lounged back in her chair, pretending to actually consider his question while making sure she kept one stretched-out robe sleeve well over her bloodied fist. "Well... I suppose the fact that I survived meeting up with Malfoy every other day for a month and a half and no longer have to do so was a significant moment for me... but I think I enjoyed punching him in the face a tad bit more".

Hermione didn't know what kind of reaction she expected from Tom, but instead of hi-fiving her like Harry or Ron would most definitely not have hesitated to do, and probably even kiss her, too, Tom's stormy eyes only blanched at her, irritatingly unreadable. More like a complete lack of reaction.

"You punched Abraxas Malfoy?" he asked, a tinge of disbelief in the question. When the smirk on Hermione's face only grew wider and she nodded, he continued, his confusion evident, "Why?"

"Oh, don't know, really..." Hermione gazed up at the white ceiling and shrugged indistinctly, immediately wishing she hadn't as another intense shock that nearly brought tears to her eyes shot through her right hand. Setting her jaw stubbornly and forcing the pain from her mind, she began to whistle innocently. "I mean, who would ever want to physically attack such a smart, sweet boy..." She stopped whistling, tilted her head back down, and looked back at Tom, not surprised to see a Draco-like smirk on his face.

"You do realise he's going to hate you forever now", he said matter-of-factly, still studying her as if trying to figure out exactly what had caused the usually understanding and collected if not somewhat frenetic Head Girl to suddenly resort to assault and sarcasm.

Hermione decided that she might as well be brutally honest, and she rolled her eyes. "Excuse me while I cry", she said sardonically.

Her unapologetic disclosure about hitting Malfoy had clearly awakened Tom fully, and his grey eyes turned devious. "Nefertari, Nefertari", he tisked in a tone that Hermione would have classified as teasing had it not been Tom Riddle who was using it, "And here you told me that you have the incredible and somewhat rare ability, in my case, to enjoy yourself most anywhere, at most any time, with most any person, in most any situation."

It took Hermione's pounding head more a moment to recall their discussion during the carriage ride to Hogsmeade three weeks earlier. When she did, she started at Tom's incredible, seemingly effortless capacity for recollection. "I'm not even going to ask how you remembered that whole thing verbatim".

"The first step to wisdom is silence, the second is listening", he threw out carelessly, that same smirk on his face, although his eyes, strangely, seemed absolutely serious.

For that brief moment, he sounded so unexpectedly much like Dumbledore that Hermione grinned, and she decided to stick with her assumption that Tom and Malfoy didn't like each other simply because she'd be happier if that was indeed the case. "Well, don't get me wrong, I'd have a great time with Malfoy if I sent a silencing spell at the git the second he showed up. He's so much more likeable when he doesn't open his mouth, don't you think?"

Tom actually smiled, his eyes laughing at her, a rare but welcome occurrence that never failed to catch Hermione off guard, as the transformation to his features had him looking like an entirely different person altogether and was nothing short of unbelievable — the genuine light in his eyes, the touch of rosy colour on his pale cheeks, the dazzling, charismatic but hesitant flash of white. In other words, his smile was nothing like Abraxas Malfoy's smile earlier that evening.

Hermione couldn't help but stare at Tom, all wounded sensation from her injured hand flying from her body as quickly as Harry could dive for the Snitch. Almost simultaneously, as if he had felt her steady gaze on him, the smile froze on Tom's face, and his eyes narrowed at her questioningly. Luckily, her motor senses chose that moment to take control of the situation, and a ruthless jab of electricity was sent through her right arm. Snap out of it, Hermione! Woozily, Hermione shook the cobwebs from her head and blinked. Oh my, I did not just look like some ditzy, star-struck adolescent!

Without wasting another second, she hastily added, "And, although I did a lot more damage than I expected to, and the little monster got exactly what he deserved... I think I broke my hand".

To complete Hermione's mortification, her last words emerged as a whimper, and she winced, all the while concentrating on not flushing the colour of Ginny's hair. Maybe he wouldn't notice. Maybe he'd think that it was from the pain.

"That would explain why you're acting like a bloody lunatic", Tom muttered, more for his own benefit than hers, immediately heaving himself to a sitting position, his mussed bed hair haphazardly strewn to one side of his face, a few uncombed strands twirling into his grey eyes, his forest green Slytherin knit twisted, slightly askew, around his torso.

To Hermione's immense relief, her latter prediction proved to be correct, because he noted wryly, "I know the very prospect of talking to me seems to thrill you more than most, Nefertari, but shouldn't you have had Madam Lamberdeau take a look at it before you rushed over here?"

In spite of the unrelenting throbbing in her hand and the sarcasm in Tom's last comment, a smirk jumped to Hermione's face, and this time, it made it completely. "Thanks for that brilliant observation, Mr. Smart Aleck, I'll be sure to keep it in mind for any future visits, and, no, I couldn't have because she's not here. She had to take a run to help out a certain Slytherin who recently 'took a bludger to the face for the good of the building.'"

"'Good of the building', I'm sure that took him a while to think up". Tom mirrored her smirk and impatiently straightened his sweater while motioning for her to hold out her covered-up hand. "Well, Nefertari, let's see it, then", he muttered gruffly. "Can't have you dying on my watch."

Hermione's heart began to thud heavily, much like her hand and her head had already been doing for the past half hour. He wanted to see it? Like she was about to believe that he had any substantial healing skills. Suddenly, a rather disconcerting image of Lord Voldemort in a standard Mediwizard uniform flashed through her mind, and, even though the situation was far from funny, it took Hermione all she had not to burst out laughing. Honestly, she had never really believed that pain was like a drug... until now.

Hermione vacillated for only another second, though, before the brutal throbbing in both her hand and temples overwhelmed her, and she reluctantly surrendered her injured hand, resisting the urge to growl, "Mess it up more, and you'll die on my watch".

Tom took her hand, and Hermione sucked in a hiss of air as an electric shock ran up her arm that Hermione credited only to bruised nerves. Tom continued to proceed cautiously, though, balancing her fingers in his palm with more gently than she had ever expected from him.

"Good Merlin, Nefertari, you must have got him good", he said in a low, appraising voice as he lightly turned her hand over in his, no doubt observing the dried blood on it that Hermione had been too preoccupied to clean up.

"It felt good at the time", she muttered defensively, subconsciously thankful he hadn't pursued the issue of why she had punched Malfoy in the first place.

"Oh, I don't doubt that". Tom smiled slightly again — not the same full smile that had graced his dark features before, but Hermione would take anything she could get — and he reached back under his pillow, emerging with his wand. Hermione stiffened up the moment she saw it, sending a skeptical look in his direction. He caught the look and grinned. "It's my turn to ask now, Nefertari. Don't you trust me?"

Hermione's doubtful expression promptly hardened into a glare, and she grumpily wrinkled her nose at him as he chuckled under his breath and trained the wand on her mangled hand. The painful throbbing in her entire body sped up frenetically, her chest tightening excruciatingly as if a pump had just squeezed all the air from it, and, in spite of herself, she recoiled, her hand trying to tug itself away from him as if it had a life of its own.

She was up against a Head Boy as stubborn as she was, though, and Tom obstinately held on to her wrist. "Nefertari, hold still, will you, do you want me to miss?" he asked nonchalantly, though the underlying threat to his words was clearly evident.

It was a dirty trick, and Hermione froze faster than she would have had she been petrified, her stomach solidifying into a bundle of nerves. She apprehensively watched as he took in a calm breath and slowly released it, obviously doing whatever it was he was going to do nonverbally... and a soft emerald light simultaneously flowed from his wand.

At first sight of the green flash and memories of the Killing Curse flashing through her mind, Hermione nearly had an aneurysm, but this emerald glow was not the Avada Kedavra's instantaneous kiss of death, thank Merlin. Rather, it was as bright as a real fire, and, Hermione was soon to discover, equally as hot.

She gasped —in both relief that she hadn't died and in pain at the additional burst of scorching heat— and instinctively jerked away again, the abused hand feeling like it had just been dunked in a pot of scalding water. Tom quickly glanced over at her, and Hermione was shocked to find a surprisingly large depth of concern in his grey eyes.

In a heartbeat, though, he blinked, his momentary lapse in his emotional mask vanishing, and he diligently returned his gaze to her wounded hand. Reaching his long arm across the void between his bed and her chair and retrieving her thoroughly unenthusiastic hand, he murmured mildly, "Come back, Nefertari, this'll hurt far less than it did in the long run, and it's a lot faster than anything Lamberdeau'll give you."

He retrained his wand on her bloodied fingers and continued the spell as if he had never stopped in the first place. This time, though, Hermione knew what to expect, and she bit her lip, steeling herself for the torrid sensation, as the green mist again spread from the tip of his wand, enveloping her entire hand.

Like a veil was swept from before her eyes, Hermione immediately felt her senses clear. The green glow disappeared into thin air, and her eyes shot open in shock as the bruised swelling, splattered Malfoy blood, and throbbing, stinging pain all vanished with it. Tom's cold hand lingered on hers for a good half minute after the emerald haze faded into oblivion, before he shook his head slightly and loosened his grip, dropping his wand into his lap. "That's it, Nefertari; you've made it out alive. Congratulations."

Hermione pulled back her mended hand and proceeded to critically inspect the smooth, unbroken skin. With a quick glance at Tom's expectant face, she pushed on random knuckles with her left hand, feeling for some kind of tinge that would indicate a lack of healing and, therefore, spell error. None came. "What was that?" Tom shrugged. "Something I made up".

"You made that up?" Hermione echoed incredulously. She promptly stopped her examination of her extraordinarily repaired fingers and, rather, arched her right eyebrow in impressed astonishment. "That was... that was good!"

The praise seemed to neither bolster nor deflate Riddle's ego. Instead, he blatantly appraised her for a moment as though he was trying to decide whether to tell her something or not, and Hermione figured she'd been approved when he began in a low voice, "I broke my arm a few years ago, when I was in the orphanage. Whatever the Muggles did for it, it hurt like hell for weeks. Didn't even heal properly until Madam L fixed it when I came back to Hogwarts."

He absently picked up his wand and began to ravel and unravel the crisp white bed sheets around it. "After that, I decided that I should at least have some kind of a back up in case another time came when I was stuck without a bone-healing potion."

But... but... making up spells of that level could take... months! Her mind spluttered. Years, even! Hermione had never met anyone who took the time to sit down and invent healing charms for their own amusement. She had always wanted to try it, herself —inventing spells in general— but she had never seemed to be able to find the time, what with the war, all her classes, the war, running around with Harry and Ron, and then the war...

"Merlin, I wish I knew that one". Hermione shifted in the stiff-backed Hospital Wing chair, her back already sore, grinning dryly as she remembered how many times Harry, Ron, Ginny, and Draco had to lounge about the Hospital Wing waiting for a Quiddich injury to heal up — and none too willingly, either. "I have a few friends who break bones like it was the latest fad."

Tom modestly shrugged again, as if he didn't quite seem to grasp how big of a deal his ability was, and glanced away, staring blankly at his hands. "I can show it to you sometime, if you want. You shouldn't have any problems with it". "Really?" Hermione asked, faintly surprised that Tom Riddle would offer to lend someone a hand. "You'd do that? — I mean..." She hesitated, flexing the fingers on her healed hand like she was playing the piano.

Hermione smiled. "Thanks. For the offer and for my hand, I mean."

There was a pregnant pause in which Tom seemed knocked a bit off balance, and then he said awkwardly, too quickly, "You're welcome". He posed it as neither a statement nor a question, but... as more of an unintelligible phrase he had randomly strung together, as if he was rather surprised that two words such as those had exited his mouth in such a context.

Another silence, not quite as uncomfortable as the first, filled the otherwise empty Hospital Wing, broken only by the occasional blast of arctic wind that rattled the windowpanes, and both Head Boy and Girl sat, so close to each other, yet so far away, each lost in their own thoughts... until Hermione remembered the reason she had come in the first place. "Listen, Tom, we need to talk about tomorrow."

Tom glanced back at her inquisitively, and for a considerably lengthy time —at least, for the intelligent Slytherin— he seemed to draw a complete blank... until Hermione raised her eyebrows pointedly, jumped to her feet, gracefully lifted her arms like she was holding on to an invisible partner, and elegantly glided in a mock-waltz in the little space between Tom's hospital bed and the next.

"Good Merlin, that's right", Tom suddenly said, sounding as startled as she imagined he could ever be as he swiftly jolted in recollection, holding a hand up to his mouth and coughing. "The Soiree. Tomorrow."

Hermione smiled slightly, immediately dropping her arms and plopping back into the irritatingly hard hospital chair. The overwhelmed expression that blasted across Tom's face was one that she was all too familiar with. "Yeah, don't worry, that's how everybody else feels, too."

Hermione could almost see the wheels of Tom's mind turning behind his grey eyes as he thoughtfully furrowed his brow, impatiently sweeping a few rogue locks of dark, uncombed hair from his face, and she couldn't help but mutely respect how calm he was remaining, what with the knowledge that that blasted Soiree was in less than twenty four hours and all... Merlin, I have so much to do... until he started shooting bullets.

"Nefertari, can you double-check the catering order with the house-elves? I was supposed to cover that yesterday, but I..." Tom abruptly halted his onslaught, and a single, uneasy beat passed... until he seemed to decide that she could probably fill in the rest of the sentence for herself, and he briskly continued, "And that blasted Mediwitch still refuses to let me out of here early; did you find someone to fill in my place for decorating tomorrow? Have you talked to Dippet about the music yet?"

"I already did during lunch today, Draco, Ron, and Lavender — see, you're so good I needed three people to replace you"— Tom's lips twitched upward slightly at that — "and ten minutes before curfew last night", Hermione answered efficiently, finding it easier to answer all of his rapid-fire questions at once. "Tom, everything's just fine; I'm mostly sticking to what we finalised before you had to go back in here" — she gestured at the surrounding Hospital Wing— "so you shouldn't have too many surprises when Madam L gives you Infirmary leave for the Soiree. Honestly, it's going to be great. I don't doubt it".

"The only time it'll be great is when the clock strikes midnight and the damn thing's finally over", Tom noted flatly, his eyes distant as they stared off into the darkening Infirmary.

"Party pooper", she teased, but a relieved grin jumped to her face just thinking about the moment she would collapse into her soft, stress-free, king-sized Head Girl bed tomorrow night, her eyes lighting in both anticipation and relief at the light at the end of the tunnel. Soon, though, the smile fading as quickly as it had come, and she hesitated over how she should go about saying what she needed to say. Finally, she worked up the nerve to quietly add, "And Tom, you know that's not what I meant... about tomorrow."

Hermione had anticipated the subdued silence that greeted her last words... but she had also anticipated that he would answer her, eventually.

He did. "What about tomorrow, then?" he asked neutrally, his tone tremendously blasé as he shifted his piercing gaze toward her, but Hermione could just detect a hint of wariness in his tired voice, his back noticeably stiffer than it had been seconds before.

Her pulse speeding up again, hammering heavily in her temples, and this time for reasons that didn't involve a physical injury, Hermione studied the Slytherin before her, sighing heavily. She was... hopelessly torn, there was no other word for it; her entire heart was being mercilessly wrenched in two by whichever fates found this situation entertaining, and there was very little she could do to stop it.

It wasn't that she loved Tom Riddle... Hermione couldn't help but laugh to herself at the complete ludicrousness of the idea, shaking her head slightly. No, what she felt was still a far cry from that, but she didn't hate him, either. Not enough to see him die on her account, anyway.

This Tom Riddle, the one she knew right now, the only Tom Riddle she had ever known, had never given her any reason to feel that strongly against him. And what he would do in the future... Well, his future was no longer set in stone, the Anima Curse had proved that much to her. On the other severed side of her heart, however, Hermione knew that Draco, Ron, Ginny... well, they would all kill her if she said what she wanted to say to him. Oh, she could hear what they would say: "Hermione, he's Tom Riddle for Merlin's sake!" as if that explained everything, but the thing was, it didn't explain everything; in fact, the only thing it did explain was that Tom Riddle had been fated to be surrounded by people who didn't —or wouldn't— try to understand him.

This time, this time in 1944, was as much a part of her life as it was any of her friends, Hermione decided resolutely. They had promised that they wouldn't interfere in how she dealt with Tom Riddle; she had all the liberties to make of it what she wanted... and if that included wanting to try and clean her slate, then, by all means, she would try her damnedest to clean her slate.

Determined, Hermione met Tom's questioning eyes, and, before some logical side of her tried to back out in any way, shape, or form, the words tumbled from her mouth in a jumbled rush. "Tom, I want you to listen to me, all right? If you don't feel up to it tomorrow night —going to the Soiree with me, I mean— I don't want you to even get out of this bed. I can cover for you, I can find ten people who can give the professors a tour, but you don't have to do this".

It occurred to her that her voice had steadily begun to raise a few notches in desperation, and she quickly reigned it in as she finished with a professional, detached air, "There are other ways." Tom nodded to himself, apparently able to make sense of her stream of consciousness, and then glanced sidelong at her, saying almost roughly, "Is that your way of getting out of this, Nefertari? Because if it is, you could've just come straight out and asked."

"No!" Caught off guard, Hermione's mouth flopped open - she definitely had not expected him to respond to her escape offering like that, and, fleetingly, she wondered why he had immediately jumped to that assumption. "No, it's not... I..." Her throat went dry. "That's not it, I promise you I'm just—"

Out of nowhere, the word suddenly surged through her mind like an electrical current. Yes, tell him this is your way. Tell him to go away. Tell him you hate him, tell him anything that will force him to stop liking you!

Wait... What? She wasn't making any sense, what was she thinking? She didn't want to make him hate her... did she? Frustrated with her own confused indecisiveness and acutely aware of his cold stare silently burning into the side of her head, Hermione felt a prickle of hot emotion behind her eyes, but she stubbornly pushed the sensation away. What is wrong with me tonight?

Honestly, Hermione plunged ahead, seeing as it was too late to go back. "I'm just afraid... that you'll go, you'll go like you went to Hogsmeade and... and end up getting worse". Her voice lowered a notch and, her stomach twisting embarrassedly for reasons yet unknown to her, her eyes shimmering seriously, she whispered, "And I don't want that."

Instantly, Tom's indecipherable grey gaze froze, and he stared at her in an entirely different manner than he had been seconds before, stock-still, his eyebrows raised very slightly as if he couldn't quite comprehend what she had just said.

With a sudden, alarmingly desperate air, Hermione wished she knew what was going through his enigmatic, unreachable mind... until he suddenly turned away from her as a jagged cough ripped through him, and then another, and other, and then she did knew what was going through his mind as he went into an Anima attack more violent than even the one she had seen in his bedroom the morning after Hogsmeade, his shoulders hunching over, dropping his wand and tightly clutching an arm about his stomach...

Not this! Not now! Hermione thought helplessly, feeling like collapsing to the floor and crying herself to an exhausted but blissful state of unconsciousness. She hopped up from her chair so quickly that the blasted thing flipped over with an unceremonious bang, but she hardly noticed.

Stumbling backwards until her back ran in to the next bed over, she couldn't help but be briefly hypnotised as the Curse unfolded in all its atrocious glory, and knowing that even someone as powerful as the Heir of Slytherin could be affected by it as brutally as he was... well, it was chillingly terrifying, what magic could do.

Urgently, Hermione threw a frantic glance over her shoulder at Madam L's distant office door, knowing it was empty. With the harsh sound of Tom's cruelly relentless coughing ringing in her ears, she swung her gaze in an even greater arc so she could see the Infirmary entrance, hoping against all hope that Madam L would walk right in... any second now... But she didn't.

Honestly, the Mediwitch had been gone for hours, for ages, why wasn't she back in her Hospital Wing where she belonged, where someone needed her?

Shoving herself off the vacant hospital bed behind her, Hermione crouched at Tom's bedside, desperately searching for any potion on his relatively empty counter that might be able to help him. To her horror, she felt the same emotion she had felt at her dead parents' sides rush through her: that feeling of frustrated, utter powerlessness, knowing what was wrong with him but not being able to do anything that might help him fix it, like he had fixed her hand. In a voice loud enough for him to hear over his immobilising cough, she shouted, "Tom! What do you want me to do?"

Weakly, the Slytherin's right hand left his fixed grip on his stomach and, his head still turned away toward the wall, fumbled blindly for his bedside table. He had to be going for the only items on it: a pile of thick, expensive cloth handkerchiefs in the far corner. Without delay, Hermione snatched one up and pressed it into his outstretched hand. "Here!"

Without a word or even a glance of acknowledgement, Tom grabbed the kerchief from her hand and held it against his mouth, his eyes squeezed shut in pain, each powerful cough wracking ruthlessly through his body. It was a scene that had become eerily familiar to Hermione, now, as she hovered anxiously nearby, and she could only pray that it wouldn't carry on much longer.

She could only wish... or could she do more than that? After hesitating for only a heartbeat, Hermione scooted next to Tom on the edge of the hospital bed, even now appearing all the more petite when compared to Tom's towering but slight build, and lightly rested her left hand on his doubled-over, sweater-clad back.

Tom immediately stiffened, but made no effort to push her away, and she soothingly began to rub her hand in circles over the warm, knitted material, feeling each of his coughs erupt beneath her fingertips as if they were her own.

"Breathe... breathe... That's it, good boy", she murmured softly as his attack almost instantaneously began to lessen. Still massaging his back in a light, circular motion, she reached over with her right hand and lightly smoothed his sweaty yet exorbitantly neat, soft locks of dark hair back from the side of his bowed head, repeating in a relieved whisper, "Good boy".

The entire rhythm of it all seemed to calm Tom somewhat, and although he continued to gasp in deep, ragged gulps of air like he was drowning with no hope of rescue... at least the coughing stopped. After what seemed to Hermione like ages, he straightened up, still struggling to catch his breath, his already ashen complexion now drained to a definite peaky pallor... and pulled the cloth away from his mouth. And the bottom fell out of Hermione's stomach when she saw that half of the handkerchief was no longer white. Frozen in time, she stared, horrified, at the dark red blood soaking into the stiff fabric before Tom hastily crumpled it up into a ball.

Hermione, though, stopped rubbing his back and snatched the handkerchief from his hand before he could throw it away, being careful to hold the blood-free part of the crimson-stained cloth. "Tom, do you see this? Do you?" She waved it in front of his face like a war-torn flag, just in case he hadn't. "There is no way I'm letting you come tomorrow, not like this! It's not sa—"

"Nefertari!" Tom interrupted forcefully, having regained his breath enough to enter the fray, his usually smooth, harmonic voice now hoarse from the coughing. He had to shift his head in nearly ninety degree turn to meet her concerned gaze with a steely one of his own, as she was sitting right next to him, so close that her shoulder would occasionally brush against the side of his arm. "I'm going".

It took Hermione everything that she had, everything, to not gape at Tom Riddle in astonishment. She was stunned, unable to believe that he was going to go through with this even though she had given him a chance to get out of it. Why do you have to be so stubborn? "But you'll hurt yourself", she finally said delicately, speaking the truth, numbly returning the bloody, balled-up handkerchief.

Wordlessly, Tom accepted little orb of material and stared down at it, not speaking as he turned it over, gingerly dabbing a finger at the edge of his own blood and then, just as quickly, wiping it off. Sagging wearily, he glanced back up at her, and this time Hermione saw a new emotion on his face: determination.

"I'm going", he repeated dully, his voice a level softer than it had been earlier. And when his eyes met hers once more, there was a muted passion in those grey eyes that Hermione had never seen before. Merlin, he really was serious about this. Abruptly, Hermione made a noise under her breath, about to voice another strong disagreement, but Tom cut her off again.

"Nefertari, please don't", he whispered in a sombre yet fervent tone, three little words that carried more emotion than Hermione had ever heard pass his lips. He drew in a shuddery breath, shaking his head heavily, and she canned her protests immediately, simply listening in an astonished daze as he continued, "I've had little or no control over what's happened in so much of my life..."

His hoarse voice was abnormally strained, almost pleading. "Once, just this once... let me make my own decisions".

A moment of silence ensued, in which Hermione attempted to grasp the meaning behind Tom's words, and, with a bit of a jolt, she realised that he was no longer just referring to whether or not he could go to the Christmas Soiree.

The Anima Curse's course, and, subsequently, Tom Riddle's fate, was no longer simply in her hands. Tom had just told her that. It was no longer her place to be guilty about what was happening to him, because she had tried, she had given him an opportunity to say no to the dance, to avoid her at all costs so his little infatuation could pass and the Curse could go into remission, she honestly had. And he had just chosen to turn down that chance. Though it didn't exactly make her feel any better, what happened to him from this moment on was as much his doing as it was hers. Tom Riddle was obviously insane. Honestly, did he want to die, did he really?

Suddenly, a memory flashed before Hermione's eyes, a flashback of something her father had told her after he and her mother had had a fierce battle of sorts over where to take Hermione on her sixth birthday —the art museum or the zoo— when her own naive voice had piped in, curious and wide-eyed, "How on earth did you and mummy ever get married, daddy?"

Thinking back on it, Hermione couldn't help but smile to herself at the childlike innocence of the question, but her smile faded rapidly when she recalled his answer, could see the amused smile on his face as he picked her up and set her on his shoulders, could hear his rich, affectionate baritone.

"Well, sweetheart, you do know what they say about love, don't you?"

Hermione giggled and shook her head in a 'no.'

"You don't?" Her father gasped in mock exaggeration. "That simply won't do, that won't do at all! I can't have my beautiful, brilliant little girl left in the dark on one of life's greatest secrets, can I?"

From her perch on his shoulders, she eagerly lowered her tiny, curly head as her father lifted his lips so they was right beside her little ear, and he whispered confidentially, "Love can make you do crazy things, sweetheart".

Hermione giggled again, taking a playful swipe at his unprotected head. "Awwww, daddy, that's only in story books!"

He laughed, plucking her off his shoulders before the five-year-old Hermione could do any serious damage...

But now, for the first time in her life... Hermione believed that her father might, just might have been right. Tearing herself from her reverie, she stealthily checked Tom's face once more out of the corner of her eye, just to be sure... and saw that the rugged edge of determination had not vanished from Tom's features, but, rather, had strengthened and, strangely, had been joined by some kind of emotional struggle that Hermione was not able to put a finger on.

Tom must have seen Hermione's gaze refocus and re-land on him, because he added, his voice still gravelly from the Anima attack, "And Nefertari?"

It was painfully obvious to her, now, how ill he really did look. His ashen face had not regained any colouring at all, and although he had always had a bit of a thin face, his cheekbones were more pronounced than usual, and the circles under his eyes had only deepened. Over the past few weeks, Hermione had even developed the ability to be able to tell when the Anima Curse had given him an exceedingly rough day, because he would enter the Common Room at night more slowly, less like the vigorous, agile teenager that he used to be and more like a world-weary old man. It would be clear to anyone who didn't even know him that something was wrong. And the rumours that had been flying around for weeks now, the rumours that Malfoy had thrown in her face earlier, the whispers that Riddle was going to die, didn't help things much, either.

Carefully, Tom balanced his wand on his palm and studied it as if it was the latest scientific breakthrough, tearing his face from her evaluating eyes as if he seemed to know what she was thinking. Running his long fingers over the ridged handle and smooth overlay, he mumbled quietly, "It'd be far easier on you from here on in if you just stopped worrying about me".

Hermione's heart sank. She knew then that there would be no arguing with him so she stopped trying.