Chapter 31: Dawn(ing)

Saturday, January 8, 1945

7:43 A.M.

A strangely familiar, heavy, musty, earthy smell filled the air. She was cold, terribly cold, which was strange considering that she was covered with a warm, thick Slytherin-green blanket. Shaky and more weak than she had ever felt before, even worse than when she had caught the flu the summer of her third year, and scared beyond recognition— Suddenly cold, dark walls began to close around her...

Hermione let out a throaty choke, and her entire body jerked as her eyes flew open, her chest heaving, her heart hammering as her eyes wildly darted, trying to identify her surroundings in the muted light. Green... green everywhere, all around... where was she? In his bedroom, silly. Relax, it was just a dream.

Yeah, dream, more like a nightmare.

Heaving a huge sigh of relief, Hermione yawned and sleepily turned her head in the pillow, glancing to her right. Rumpled sheets and an abandoned, forest green pillow were all that greeted her. Tom wasn't there.

Hermione groaned and rolled over in the bed, becoming tangled in the blanket as she checked the hands of his clock, perched on a bed stand all the way on the other side of the gigantic mattress. A pair of dull grey hands pointed to a seven and a forty-four. Merlin, where on earth had he gone this early?

Suddenly, something large, thin, and antiquated yellow materialised from nowhere before her fuzzy vision.

Blinking woozily, cobwebs still strung across her brain, Hermione sat up and plucked the folded but full-sized sheet of parchment from the air, staring at it warily. It was Tom's type of parchment, but he had never written her anything nearly this long before. Cautiously running a finger down the edge, she opened it and a shiny silver pendant slipped out, landing on her lap. Confused, Hermione fumbled around, managed to wrap her fingers around the chain and lifted it up in front of her face. Tiredly, she squinted at the pendant as best she could, considering the time of morning.

She found a pair of tiny, emerald, glittering eyes coldly gazing back at her. Her breath hitched. It was Tom's Slytherin amulet. But why... why on earth had he given it to her?

Confusion rapidly giving way to worry, Hermione snatched the note back up and exasperatedly pulled her wand from her back pocket, pointing it at the parchment. With a flick of her wrist, a small pearl of sparkling light appeared over the letter, hovering, illuminating the hand-scrawled words.

Yes, the writing was unmistakably Tom's as well, but it was different, somehow...

It was wobbly, Hermione realised in concern, as she looked at the first few words without really reading them, but then the mist fogging her mind cleared and she did read them, scanning the lines quickly, her alarm growing with each word.

'My dearest Hermione,

I will begin with the curse. Anima Adflictatio. I know you know about it; you have for several weeks now, or at least a month, so I see no need in describing it to you— the day you stopped incessantly asking me about my condition was around the time you must have found out.

One of the reasons I'm writing this is because I don't want you to feel guilty that you haven't done enough for me while I was sick, because you have. There had never been anything like you in this world for me, and here I've given you practically nothing in return. So I want you to keep the Slytherin crest. Don't try to use it to come back to the Chamber — it isn't a safe place for anyone but someone of Slytherin descent, and it's not a place where I want you to be, either.

And it's also why I've enchanted this letter to appear after I have died.'

Horrified, Hermione jerked the letter away, then brought it back to her face and re-read the last line to make sure her eyes weren't playing some sick joke on her mind.

That... that was impossible... Tom... She had been with him the entire night, and he had been okay! There... there had to be some mistake! Blinking back a disbelieving, dizzying wave of emotion and dread, Hermione picked up where she had left off.

'Maybe thirty, forty, fifty years from now, even, when you've retired from being ridiculously successful at whatever you've decided to do, with children, with grandchildren, with all the happiness someone like you deserves to have... maybe you'll pull the crest out of some forgotten drawer where you left it decades earlier. And maybe you'll remember, for the briefest of moments, Salazar Slytherin's last heir— nothing more than a seventeen year old boy who allowed himself to be overrun by a curse, simply because he fancied a girl.'

She choked back a humourless, miserable chuckle at how he had so brutally to-the-point summed up the past two months, beginning to have a ghastly idea of where this was going... and she didn't want to get there. But she couldn't bring herself to tear her eyes from the scripted words.

'And, lest you look back on him as the most complete idiot you have ever had the misfortune of meeting' —

Hermione couldn't help but smile at that —

'allow me to assure you that he was well aware of what he was doing. He had always known what the curse could do to him, and so he had decided that solitude and hate were better than love, because solitude and hate kept him alive, and they were all he had ever known'.

'But then she came along, and everything changed. Not only was she intelligent, beautiful, and hardly afraid of anyone or anything, she didn't judge him by his blood or the wretched place he came from. She talked to him, listened to him, argued with him, she made him smile. She made him want to become a better person. Suddenly, he had someone, and she wasn't just someone, she was everyone, and she was all he had ever had. Ever. And he realised that one minute, one second with her was worth more than an entire lifetime without her'.

A veil of tears suddenly blurred her vision, and she blinked rapidly, covering her mouth and biting her lip to keep her chin from quivering, from breaking down completely, hating herself so much... hating herself - She had brought this on him! She had...

'By now his rather pathetic story has probably bored you quite successfully, I expect, so I'll leave you with only one regret — his main regret, really: That he hadn't the chance to tell her something he had never told anyone else before, because he never had anyone to tell it to.'

'But it's something he's wanted say to her from the moment the curse moved into Irreversible.'

With the utmost dread, she read the last line, and she immediately closed her eyes in agony and turned her head away from the words, praying that this was all some sort of awful, awful nightmare.

'Hermione, I love you.'

The letter fell from her cold, limp fingers and hit the ground with a soft, whooshing brush before her perusing eyes even reached the conclusion: three simple letters.

'Tom'

Tears were streaming from her eyes, and that horrible ache had begun eating away at the pit of her stomach, but she didn't even realise it. No. This wasn't happening. It wasn't real. It was a lie, it was all a lie. He wasn't going to die; she wouldn't let him. Damn his stupid enchantment to hell, he was not dead!

Thankfully, her rational side chose that moment to kick in and take control before her panicking emotions could send her into hyperventilation. The only way you can help him is if you breathe. Breathe! it instructed harshly, and Hermione did, gasping in great gulps of air while attempting to calm her panicking mind. All right, now think this through: Why did he enchant the letter after he had died?

To stop anyone from finding him, trying to help him, and prolonging the pain, Hermione automatically answered herself. ... or to make sure I didn't come looking for him. Was that it? Had he been afraid she would have tried to get to him before he had died, seen more than she should have to see?

Well, he had been right, I would have—No, she corrected stubbornly, I will. She was going to see him again. There was no doubt in her mind. So where had he gone? Obviously not the Hospital Wing. Hermione had come to the conclusion that he hated that place just as much as he hated the orphanage. Ignoring the blatant, horrible truth glaring off the paper in front of her, Hermione gulped in a another breath and snatched up the letter, forcing herself to systematically look back over the second paragraph. 'You've done enough... keep the Crest... don't come back to the Chamber'.

For some reason, the line struck her as significant, and she stared at it for a moment swiftly continuing reading, the beginnings of a theory starting to form in her mind. 'Not safe... not a place I want you to be... and it's why I've enchanted this letter'.

Yes. That was it, it had to be. He had gone to the Chamber of Secrets. And it made complete sense, she thought, nodding to herself in reassurance as she snatched up the invisibility cloak off the back of the chair, and jammed both the letter and amulet deep into a pocket. What better place for the Heir of Slytherin to go to his resting place? Anyway, it was the only lead she had, and Hermione clung to it desperately.

Without pausing to think of what she could possibly do for him considering that he had already died, Hermione leapt to her feet and ran like a bat out of hell itself, bounding down the flight of stairs to the Head common room. Only one thought filled her mind: Get to Tom.

7:59 A.M.

And the only way she was going to get to Tom was if she found the only other person in Hogwarts who spoke Parseltongue and had him open the Defence Against the Dark Arts entrance to the Chamber if Secrets— or the bathroom entrance, or whatever entrance, she didn't care. She just needed Harry, and she needed him now!

Which is why Hermione found herself flying into the cold, gaping abyss of a Slytherin common room, wheezing for breath. A wave of dizziness washed over her, and she rested her hands on her knees, dangling her head toward the ground as the Common Room wall entrance closed behind her, thanking everything holy that the Head Boy and Girl were privy to every House's password.

Get up! You don't have much time!

Quickly reassuring herself that the light-headedness was gone and she wouldn't pass out on the Slytherin floor, Hermione sucked in a deep, steady breath and lifted her head, anticipating a hoard of Slytherin students staring at her, one of them preferably being Harry. Or Ginny or Draco, she would take anyone who could point her in the right direction... and she froze in horror.

The bloody common room was completely abandoned. And, as there were no staircases to distinguish or even indicate the location of the dormitories, she had absolutely no idea where the entrances were.

Desperately, Hermione contemplated throwing her hands up and screaming bloody murder in the hope that at least one student would hear her, would come down to see what was wrong, and could then show her the way to the Seventh Year boys' dormitories. Then again, that one student would probably be Abraxas Malfoy, or, even worse, Abraxas Malfoy plus his band of Crabbes, Goyles, Lestranges, and Blacks.

She blew out an aggravated stream of air, a lock of curly hair gusting up out of her face and over her head. Yes, it was the weekend, and yes, it was early, but it wasn't that early! Stupid... blasted... no good, lazy Slytherins—

"Damn it!" Hermione shouted furiously, kicking the leg of the couch beside her in frustration, but just as quickly winced at her stupidity and hopped around as a spike of pain pulsed up her foot. But no, she wasn't giving up, not yet... this was a huge common room... Surely someone was in there somewhere!

Refusing to let it go, she frantically dashed around the dungeon-like cavern of a common room, irrationally checking on top of, under, over, behind partially-obscured couches, oversized chairs, nooks, crannies, tucks under staircases. A part of her dully began to accept defeat, but she couldn't stop searching, her mind on a crazy overdrive as if she had lost control of it completely, until she had circled the entire Slytherin common room.

No, the only signs of life were the dying embers of the black, yawning, furnace-like fireplace next to which she was currently standing. Hermione had never hated the House of Snakes as much as she did then.

In that moment of absolute hopelessness, she finally allowed herself to open up to the ugly truth. You are ridiculous, that same, rational part of her scorned cruelly. Ignoring the facts won't change them, you know that. It Tom Riddle said he enchanted a letter to appear after he had died, then it appeared after he died.

The exhaustion of running clear across the castle from the Head dorms to the Slytherin common room suddenly slammed into her, she dropped the balled-up invisibility cloak on the ground and sank down on the still armchair nearest the hearth, absorbing what little heat it was still giving off, rubbing her temples, no longer fighting back tears.

And yet you've just wasted half your energy running around harbouring the mad idea that you could somehow... What? Bring him back to life? No one has that power! You couldn't even do that for your parents!

She couldn't find Harry. She couldn't get into the Chamber of Secrets. Tom was dead.

And all she could hear was his voice, his weak, forlorn voice pleading over and over again, Don't leave me, don't leave me... The tears began to flow freely now, not so much burning, but more a constant, cool flow, and she stared without blinking into the glowing red and black coals. Her entire body felt numb, void, dead, the same horrible lack of sensation that she had experienced three years ago when she had discovered her parents dead. This is my fault, this is all my fault...

In her original scheming to ruin his life, she had, in the long run, inadvertently ruined hers, too. Just when she had found someone with whom she could move on, someone with whom she was truly happy, and someone who had been truly happy with her as well... he was gone. Every person she had ever loved as something much, much more than a good friend... they had died. She identified with Harry more than he knew. Would it ever end?

Why me? she screamed fiercely, bitterly, and, were the am in the room, she probably would have shook her fist at him. What did I do to deserve losing them all? What did any of us do to deserve sacrificing our life to travel back in time in the first place? Why did I have to live in a war, and why did my best friend happen to be the sole person the Dark Lord was after?

The silent minutes agonisingly ticked by, but time held no meaning for her anymore. Wallowing in her own-self pity, Hermione's vacant gaze was eventually, absently drawn to a rather large pile of chunky ash near the far right corner of what had once been part of the fire— in particular, a rather large, sharply triangular remain, one that strangely reminded her of the corner of a book cover.

Suspiciously, Hermione sniffed once, swiped a hand across her wet cheeks, and narrowed her eyes, disgust replacing some of her emotional impassiveness. Sacrilege! Book burning Slytherins, if that doesn't just put the cherry on top of my perfect day, she thought sarcastically. She was tempted to launch off into another round of Oh woe is me, but, for some reason, she stopped. It was funny in an ironic way, almost, how the strangest, most random things could upset her in a moment when she had been solely focused on one of the worst things that had ever happened to her in her life.

Curious about what some Slytherin had been so intent to destroy, Hermione limply held out her wand and deadpanned, "Accio."

Immediately, what remained of whatever had been burned shot from the fire, tiny, ashy specks flying out behind it. Inches from her face, she stopped the charred, faded, curled-around-the-edges section of black book binding and squinted through a veil of fresh tears as she read what was left of what she assumed was the title, glossed with glittering red letters: -lèges Tragiques.

French. –lèges Tragiques. Why did that sound familiar to her?

"Hermione", Lavender insisted stubbornly. Her voice rose to a whine as she urgently jabbed a slender, manicured fingernail at her French book's unmistakable, almost blood-red writing. "I think this might be important!"

The memory came back into Hermione's mind for the first time in practically a month. Un Amour Mortel et D'autres Sortilèges Tragiques. That's what the full title had been, she recalled clearly, sitting up straight and leaning forward, her elbows resting on her knees as she examined the thin remnant, her tears instantly drying on her cheeks. A Killer Love and Other Once Tragic Enchantments.

And, suddenly, Lavender's insistent whining made complete sense. 'A Killer Love.' Obviously, that part of the title could have been referring to the Anima Curse, she thought, her heart beginning to hammer in anticipation, like the way one gets when she doesn't yet understand the full significance of something, but still knows that it is important. But... once tragic? Did that mean to imply that... it wasn't tragic anymore? But how... how could it not be tragic, unless... Unless the book had held a cure.

Hermione gaped at the glaring pile of ash in the fireplace in absolute horror, stunned realisation dawning on her face.