Chapter 33: The Countdown
Saturday, January 8, 1945
7:30 A.M.
An electrically charged moment of silence passed, as Hermione stood rigidly under Harry's brooding gaze, her eyes returning the pensive stare as evenly as she could, her heart thudding painfully, resonating in every inch of her body, her back to a angry and confused Ron. Then, to her shock, Harry nodded once, tense, his jaw still set. "So what do I do?"
Hermione's knees sagged slightly, and she could have cried in relief as he turned to the Defence door, eyeing it as if it was his next duelling opponent. Harry was going to help her, he was going to help her! With a shaking hand, she swiftly fished around in her pocket and placed Tom's Slytherin amulet in Harry's outstretched hand. "Hold this to the door and say something in Parseltongue", she instructed quickly.
"Say something", Harry echoed thoughtfully, apparently ignoring his best mate too as he briefly scrutinised the glittering snake-eyed emerald and diamond-encrusted silver amulet and then lifted it, pressing it flat against the wood like Tom had done two weeks before. He glanced back at her like Tom had also done, although not with uncertain, fervent grey eyes, but with curious green ones. "Like what?"
A wave of hysteria abruptly surged through her nerves, sending her heart into a panic and her head into a tizzy, and before she could stop herself she snapped waspishly, "Like 'open!' "
"Oh, er... right". Smiling sheepishly, Harry turned back to the door, his gaze locking onto the tiny, twisted metal snake. He didn't seem to be especially concerned with hearing Ron noisily, angrily stalking back and forth in the background, and he hissed.
The snake's miniature emerald eyes flashed, and two tiny rays of haunting, brilliant green shot like twin lasers into the hall, although the cool glow of the approaching morning shining through some large bay windows farther down the way, dulled the dramatic effect of it somewhat.
Like before, the Defence Against the Dark Arts door swung open with a small, ghostly creeeeek, and Hermione noticed that even Ron had frozen and was staring at the angled polished wood and subsequent, gaping darkness as if a much-loved and trusted friend had unexpectedly morphed into a demon from hell.
Harry, though, briefly, almost lovingly fingered the familiar Defence doorframe before his gaze darkened, travelling into the shadowy spiral-down passage beyond. "Slytherin must have had a right enjoyable time building this". A wry little smile broke out on his face as he unhesitatingly stepped past the frame and onto the top stone stair. "Imagine, making the main entrance to the Chamber of Secrets run right through the Defence Against the Dark Arts door. It's the perfect irony."
At that point, Hermione really didn't give two hoots about what Salazar Slytherin was thinking while he was planning the construction of a monster-housing chamber; all she knew was that Tom was so close she could practically feel his presence desperately calling her name from within the depths of the dark passage. "We have to hurry, Harry", she said in a tight voice, voicing the thought that had been screaming through her mind for the past... well, Merlin knows how long, and, pausing momentarily, she quickly lifted her wand and muttered, "Horus."
A misty, red clock showing the time - two minutes past half seven - floated upward like a ghost out of the end of her wand, fading into transparency and eventually vaporising into thin air. Merlin help her, she only had twelve minutes left. He only had twelve minutes left.
Without looking back up, she practically sprang into the stairway— and plowed headfirst into Ron, who in the past two seconds had somehow maneuvred from her left to suddenly barring the way down to the Chamber of Secrets, his towering frame taking up most of the door as he held out his arms.
Hermione's heart stopped in dread, because she knew she was going to do whatever it took to save Tom's life... and Merlin help anyone who got in her way. Gripping her wand tightly in one hand and Un Amour in the other, she growled dangerously, "What are you doing?" like an angry mother bear, returning home to find an intruder standing between her and her cubs. The sudden, chilly venom in her voice didn't seem to daunt nor deter him. Instead, he lowered his capped butterbeer at her as if pointing a knowing finger and wagging it, an expression of complete incomprehension on his face. "Hermione, you do realise that if he doesn't die, we all know what he'll go on to do!"
Hermione bristled instantly. "We don't know that; the future isn't set in stone anymore! You saw that! He got sick, which he hadn't the first time; he... he fell in love! He would have rather died than not having been in love!"
When Ron simply rolled his eyes at her dramatics, she swallowed back the urge to throw up and, letting anger overpower her desperation, she added with a short laugh, "But you wouldn't understand that, would you? Have you ever really been in love with Lavender, Ronald?" It was a low blow, but Hermione was furious, and while his gaze immediately darkened, he didn't warrant her with an answer, so she vehemently reiterated, "We don't know that he will!"
"Yeah, well, we don't know that the bastard won't, either, do we?" he countered cuttingly, swinging his bottle near his head in an exasperated arc, his face steadily reddening by the minute.
Her mouth fell open. "Ron!" she exclaimed sharply, eying his leg. Merlin knows she should have hexed him, but for some reason, she didn't have the heart. "Let me through!" But when he crossed his arms and made no attempt to move aside, she blew out a pent-up breath of utter frustration and kicked out hard without any feelings of guilt whatsoever.
"Oi! Merlin, woman—" Ron dodged the blow from her foot and held up his hands in an 'I'm just an innocent victim' sort of way, but didn't surrender the doorway. "I know, I know; look, Hermione, I'm sorry, okay, but he's already become Lord Voldemort, don't you see?" Ignoring the sudden, dagger-like glare that sprang to her eyes, he was now the one who sounded desperate as he continued, "I mean, if not when he made up the bloody name in the first place, he sure became him when he opened the Chamber of Secrets—"
"I don't believe that", Hermione retorted flatly, and she wondered whether the best way to get around him would be by simply walking straight through him.
Ron was deflating, but not by much, and he appeared to be falling back on the last legs of his argument. His face now a deep shade of tomato, his hazel eyes wide and wild, and, violently raking a hand through his thick red hair and holding it so that it stuck up unnaturally, he shouted, "Hermione, he's Tom Riddle!" As if that fact alone was justification and reason enough.
"That's not his fault, Ron!" she snapped tightly, steeling herself for her next move. Damn it, she didn't have the time to be playing Ron's little games like this! And so what if he was Tom Riddle? What did that even mean, anyway? Icily, she added, "Does his name take away his right to live?"
"Well... yes!" he spluttered, the baffled expression that had been glaring in his eyes, scrawled across his face now replaced by complete, furious disbelief as his voice escalated about much louder, "Hermione, what the bloody hell is wrong with you? He... he killed Harry's parents! He killed your parents!"
"He didn't yet!" Hermione countered, her impatience boiling over, and she rounded on him, spontaneously combusting. "Please— d'you want to go back? Go back! I didn't ask for your help with this! I understand that you are completely ignorant where my Tom Riddle is concerned, and that's exactly why I don't expect you to understand what I'm doing, Ronald, I just expect you to get out of my way!"
With that, without even realising that she had just referred to Tom Riddle as hers, she both shoved him aside with every ounce of strength she had and swiftly ducked under one of his arms, scooting beyond him into the narrow passageway and into the stairs without a second glance backward, and he made no effort to stop her.
A sudden, frigid gust of stale air encased her, blew and whirled around her as she stepped into the murky, shadowy gloom, but she found it had little effect on her fury. She was still shaking furiously, still ready to spring to Tom Riddle's defence, and distantly her mind registered that Harry was already gone... Had he already started down?
In any case, the staircase wasn't spiralling downward on its own as it had when Tom had taken her down, so Hermione did not wait even a half second before she gripped the singed French book of cures and plunged down the ancient steps on her own. She could vaguely see the glow of torchlight illuminating the staircase ahead of her, intermittent torches spluttering to life, as if someone was moving past them to make them do so.
"Harry, there's one more block you have to open!" she breathlessly yelled on a whim, trying, at the same time, to figure out what in Merlin's name she was going to do once she got into the Chamber, watch where she was going, and sprint down the small steps without tripping and killing herself. She could feel her hair bouncing, tumbling out of the bun, but she didn't care, and her mind was doing so many other things at once that reaching out and putting it back up was out of the question.
"It's got two huge snakes carved into the wall on either side?" she heard Harry call back. She didn't stop to question why he was suddenly so willing to help her with this, to wonder what he had been thinking about when he had relented and agreed to open the Defence Against the Dark Arts door. "That's the one!" she shouted back, and could just barely make out a muffled grunt from somewhere down the winding, tower-like staircase in reply.
Risking taking a wrong step and breaking her neck, Hermione doubled her pace, taking the stairs two at a time to catch up with him. She hit the bottom level running and was just in time to see the back of his robes disappear around a bend in the damp, shadowy stone tunnel. Luckily, sprinting like mad was enough to drain some of her anger out of her. Finally, she caught up with him, standing before the great, towering, and closed entrance to the Chamber of Secrets. Her hair now tumbling in wild curls around her face, she stumbled to a stop beside him, panting, and glanced at him questioningly, but he didn't look impressed with the enormity of it.
"I passed these when I came in the way through Moaning Myrtle's bathroom", he explained tonelessly, apparently following her line of thought although he wasn't even looking at her, merely standing rigidly, his arms crossed, his glasses slightly askew as he tilted his head back and warily stared up at the huge stone snakes as if gazing upon an old nemesis.
"Suppose the two entrances have to meet up somewhere", she agreed breathlessly, her breath visibly exiting from her mouth in tiny, vaporized puffs— the trip between Defence door and giant stone panel seemed to have passed much more quickly now than it had the last time, thank Merlin. And her mind told there that she should be cold, freezing cold right now, but her blood was boiling, pumped with so much adrenaline, that she wasn't.
Suddenly, more pounding footsteps sounded behind them, and Hermione stiffened, standing, still trying to catch her breath... and groaned to herself when Ron's unmistakable voice shouted from somewhere still in the tunnel, "Merlin's beard, what the devil are you doing? Have you forgotten there's a basilisk in there that fancies a good kill every now and then?"
Hermione sighed heavily, her heart beginning to pound faster. You just can't accept the truth, can you? she thought, disappointed. She wasn't going to deny that she wasn't fuming at him, because she was; his voice alone had begun to grate on her nerves, and she just wished he'd stayed out of this. After all, it was obvious he didn't want to be here anyway, and his being around was only going to make things that much more difficult.
"It only comes when it's called", she retorted caustically without turning around to acknowledge him, inadvertently quoting Tom's earlier reassurance to her. Her gaze locked on one of the gigantic twin serpents' glittering emerald eyes, still on the defensive from his earlier inquisition. "And he's obviously not going to have called it if he's come down here to die."
" 'Obviously,' eh?" Ron scoffed, and she heard his feet crunching on the ground behind them. He still sounded both miffed and suspicious. "And since when did you become such a Tom Riddle expert, may I ask?" Luckily, Hermione didn't have to come up with an answer, because at that moment Harry intervened by loudly hissing a command.
Ron's attention was ultimately diverted to the Chamber of Secrets as the solid stone wall parted with a low rumble and a rush of icy and musty air, revealing the dramatic splendour of the cavernous, gaping chamber, the intricately carved, huge towering stone pillars, each one stretching up and up until it vanished into darkness, and she heard him whisper, "Blimey..."
Hermione, however, was far less impressed by the display as she had already seen it recently, and her sharp gaze immediately strayed farther inside the green haze of the Chamber, searching, searching, searching for what she had been seeking for the past half hour, for what she had travelled back in time to find...
She was not disappointed. On the shimmering black onyx floor, about halfway between where she was standing and the far, towering statue of Salazar Slytherin was a crumpled form that was clearly out of place amidst the regal, towering columns and razor-straight, liquid-like smooth marble.
Harry must have seen it, too, because from the corner of her eye she saw his head sharply turn toward her, his piercing gaze burning into the side of her face. "Hermione", he began warily, "We don't kno—" But his words fell upon deaf ears, because she had already begun to run, her arms and legs numb from the cold, her mind and heart quite nearly the same way for another reason entirely. Some part of her was so happy she had managed, against all odds, to get to him, so happy... but the other half was reeling in absolute horror. What if she couldn't do it? What if the cure was a fluke?
She made it to the form before she realised that she had even left her original position at the entrance to the Chamber... and it was exactly as she'd feared. Like a giant wrench had closed around her heart like a vise, squeezing painfully, she numbly stared down at Tom Riddle. Her Tom Riddle.
He was sprawled on his side as if he had already been unconscious by the time he hit the floor, still in his uniform down to the very robe he had worn the night before. Against the dark floor and with a shower of dark hair spilling, mussed, across his forehead and upper portion of his painfully thin face, his skin appeared even more ghostly pale than it already was, nearly translucent, eerily shadowed in the green haze of the Chamber. He already looked dead.
Even though she'd eaten nothing in the past twelve hours, she was feeling ill; tears flooded her horror-struck eyes and her mind filled with ghastly images of her hardly unrecognisable parents when she'd come upon them in her nearly-destroyed house; she hadn't even realised that Harry and Ron had followed her until she heard Ron's voice state flatly, "Well, there you go, Hermione. It's too late."
"He's still got a chance", she countered automatically, her body, her mind still paralysed, and her voice emerged no louder than a hoarse whisper. Ron held his hand out at Tom's limp, unmoving body as if the answer was obvious by simply looking at him. "Slim to none".
Desperate anger surged through Hermione, then, quickly thawing her frozen senses and her nerves; how could he just accept a death with such a ho-hum shrug off? Even if she hadn't been in love with Tom, his was still a human life, for Merlin's sake! Who was he to give up so easily; what gave him the right to determine that there was no hope left?
"It's not slim to none, Ronald, because that's not a chance!" she exclaimed shrilly, and her shouted words eerily echoed like an otherworldly spirit off the walls of the vast chamber: 'Not a chance, not a chance, not a chance...'
She must had stunned Ron into silence because neither he nor Harry said anything, just stood there, watching. It was disconcerting, to say the least, but she unhesitatingly fell to her knees beside Tom's chillingly inert body. Taking his cold wrist in her shaking hand, forcing herself not to lose control of her unstable, hanging-by-a-thread emotions, she held her breath, her stomach clenching in dread—but yes! Hermione gasped in a breath of relief, her eyes briefly closing as she muttered a quick prayer of thanks to whichever god had looked down upon her hopeless situation and taken pity. There was a pulse, but it was so painfully faint.
She twisted around so quickly, so unexpectedly that Ron actually jumped an inch in surprise. He was standing a few feet to the right of Harry, thus being the closer of the two, and she reached out, grabbed his free hand, yanked it toward her as he let out a little yelp, and shoved Un Amour into it. "Page 45. Read me the first line. Now!"
Ron squinted at her peculiarly, a trace of malice still clearly shining in his hazel eyes, but he slowly opened the cover, his gaze moving back and forth as if he was scanning the words as he flipped through the pages.
A second later, he looked back down at her, his voice asserting that their fight from above wasn't finished. "It's dark", he said plaintively, sounding, in Hermione's opinion, like a whining five-year-old who was trying to come up with any excuse not to do his homework. "How am I supposed to read this?" Hermione's mouth fell open, and she gaped at him in disbelief. "Are you or are you not a wizard? And I happen to remember you telling me how Fleur forced you to learn French, so don't tell me you don't understand it!"
"All right, you two", another voice interrupted tiredly, silencing them both, and Hermione quickly shifted her gaze toward Harry as he stepped forward next to Ron stiffly and muttered, "Lumos." He held his lit wand out, casting a glow over the book, and Hermione weakly sent him a grateful smile. His eyes remained serious, but one corner of his lips —just one— twitched upward slightly in response. Ron, meanwhile, glanced between them and let out what appeared to be a deliberately loud and pointed sigh.
The Boy-Who-Lived's gaze shifted over to his best friend, and in an unusually even, neutral voice, he said simply, "Ron. Read."
They were only two words, two short, little words, Hermione thought, but she felt a strange stab of satisfaction at the command. It was almost as if Harry had chosen sides, between her, the loony who wanted to save a potential Dark Lord, and Ron, the pedestal of logic who had readily voiced all the reasons why she shouldn't. And somehow, against all odds, against all reason, he had decided to side with her. Which meant that he had also decided to side with Tom Riddle, too.
Ron must have figured this out, too, because although he mutinously sighed again, muttering darkly under his breath, he started to read obediently through a set jaw, gritting out the words, his pronunciation rather questionable:
"Seul un remède connu a été découvert pour la Malédiction fatale de l'Amina. Cependant, la rareté des cas de ceux ayant été touchés par la Malédiction, ajouté à l'extrême talent nécessaire pour accomplir le contre-sort, ainsi que la complexité des circonstances l'entourant, ont entraîné la connaissance du remède à devenir obsolète à travers les âges. Pour accomplir le contre-sort, il faut d'abord former un cercle élémentaire magique."
He glanced up, his expression akin to a school-hating child whose teacher had made him read aloud too much in class, one throbbing vein visibly protruding from the temple of his reddened face. "Should I keep going?" he asked flatly, not sounding very eager.
"Yes!" she snapped briskly, her mind systematically travelling back the conclusion of her first seventh year's NEWTS charms class. Let's see... Magic boundaries, magic lines... but magic circles... 'In order to make a magic circle, one must first decide upon a containment medium...'
"Si l'auteur du sort n'est pas un membre de l'une des anciennes lignées magiques—"
A medium, a medium, hmm, where to find a medium?...
Hermione snatched Ron's bottle of butterbeer from his hand and unceremoniously spilled its entire contents in a wide, circle around Tom and herself. A second later, she pushed the empty bottle back into his still open-in-paralysed-shock hand. He spluttered angrily, his eyes bugging out, but she cut off any complaint— "Keep reading, Ronald!"
In the soft green light of the Chamber, Ron's incensed face had turned a strange shade of purple, but he continued in a low, angry voice, "Si le sort est accompli incorrectement, ou si les intentions derrière le lancer du contre-sort sont autres que celles animées par un amour pur et véritable, le contre-sort agira comme une malédiction mortelle, et l'un et l'autre périront instantanément."
He stopped with a note of finality and treacherously glanced between Harry and her again. "What does that mean?"
Hermione positioned herself on the ground at the dying Head Boy's right and, steeling her resolve, carefully hefted his slight shoulders up a bit, cradling his limp head in her lap. Pausing, but only for a moment, she tenderly brushed back some of the damp locks of hair that had spilled across his ashen forehead, her fingers gently tracing their way in sort of morbid horror over the inhumanly cold skin of his lifeless face. A face that had been so alive last night...
"Hermione?" Harry's voice suddenly probed from behind her, uncharacteristically soft and almost... sympathetic.
His voice shook her out of the trancelike state, and momentarily, she closed her eyes. Eventually, she opened them and answered matter-of-factly. "It means that if I don't do the spells exactly right or I don't truly love him, the counter-curse will fail and kill us both instantly."
Taking a deep, shaky breath, she tore her eyes away and snapped on to the makeshift, watery circle around her, again summoning back Professor Flitwick's voice, '...one must secondly, and most importantly, illuminate the magical boundaries with fire...'
"Well, that screws that, then, doesn't it!" Ron threw up his hands in exasperation as Hermione held out her wand and, with short, upward wrist flicks, carefully conjured small, stubby white candles along the ring of butterbeer. "And hmm, I don't know why", his voice began to lower until it was nothing more than a hiss, "but am I the only one here who thinks this entire situation creepily has the feel like we're bloody resurrecting a Dark Lord? Or have the both of you just lost your bleedin' minds!"
Hermione was so intent on finishing the circle, his livid words didn't even register—or her ears had simply decided to temporarily block out his voice. "All right", she said in a businesslike manner, "unless I successfully complete the counter curse, 7:44 is the time he's... he's— he's going to..." She was having more trouble with the next three words than she'd ever had saying Voldemort's name... ...going to die". She rushed out the words and then gulped in a deep breath.
"Don't ask me how I know", she added with a sharp glance at Ron as he opened his mouth. Instantly, his mouth snapped shut again, and she fumbled with her wand, checking and rechecking the magic circle. Butterbeer, er, containment medium... candles... fire... Everything seemed right. There was only one thing left to do, and Tom was still breathing, so that meant...
"What time is it, one of you?" she asked quickly. Harry raised his wand and muttered; glowing red numbers appeared out of the end of it, floating upward toward the yawning, indefinite ceiling of the chamber. "Seven o'clock, forty-one minutes and thirty-two seconds."
She was going to make it. It would be cutting it far, far closer than she would have liked, but she was still going to make it, Tom was going to make it. She felt like screaming and dancing in celebration but she couldn't, not yet, so without even pausing to think on it, Hermione briskly held out her hand for the book. "All right, I can take it from here."
Ron's gaze doubtfully darted between her and Tom, and it eventually landed on her again, wide-eyed. "Hermione, you don't lo—" His voice caught and emerged strangled, as if he couldn't bring himself to finish the sentence. He tried again, but still couldn't find it in him to say to words, so he simply demanded incredulously, "You don't really, do you?"
With his display at the Defence door, Hermione hadn't really expected him to be especially accepting of it. She wished that she was wrong, because the clock was ticking too quickly, and she was afraid of what she would do if he refused to hand over the book in about three seconds...
But she was right. When she didn't answer 'no' immediately, he momentarily stared at her in shock, and horrified realisation dawned on his easily readable face, which had begun to morph through several shades of increasingly deepening red; "Holy bloody hell, Hermio—"
"GIVE IT TO ME, RONALD!" she screeched so vehemently that Ron actually froze as booming echoes ricocheted off the Chamber walls deafeningly, serving only to better capture her anger and utter desperation—
'GIVE IT TO ME RONALD IT TO ME Ronald it to me Ronald to me Ronald to me Ronald Ronald Ronald...'
As the ghostly words faded away, Ron meekly handed it over, although he shot a bewildered look at Harry as Hermione swiftly snatched the partially burned book from his hand and deftly ran her finger down the lines of French, reviewing and mumbling under her breath. "D'you realise she's called me Ronald at least seven times in the past ten minutes?" he asked, sounding bewildered. Harry reply carefully, "I hate to say this, mate, but you really deserved it". Another second later, and she sensed rather than saw him come up beside her, outside the ring of candles, but close enough so that when he held his still-lit wand out directly over the book, it illuminated the print like a trustworthy lamp.
Completely engrossed in what she was doing, she could only briefly be grateful for her best friend. She waved her hand in a distracted thanks to Harry, trying to calm herself as she yanked out her wand with a shaking hand and scanned the well-drawn sketches illustrating the spell.
See, this isn't so complicated after all; you have at least a minute left, you can do this, just calm down—
Suddenly, her smoothly moving eyes staggered to a pregnant stop, and her stomach lurched so violently she was vaguely surprised it didn't explode. For a moment, she stared in absolute horror at the bottom of the page until she eventually found it in herself to choke out tightly, "How much time?"
As if the words were coming through a vacuum, Hermione distantly heard Harry repeat his earlier incantation, and after a slight pause, he reported, his voice abnormally low and hollow in her closing ears, "Thirty-five seconds."
She was vaguely surprised at the urgency in his voice, a voice that logically should have wished Tom Riddle dead, but she didn't exactly have any time to dwell on it or even be grateful. Instead, she could only gape incoherently at the charred bottom right edge of the page, her mind reeling in waves of disbelief and throbbing, pounding terror.
The corner was singed only slightly... but just enough of the paper had been burned away to cut off most of the last word of the spell.
All she had left to work with was 'A—.'
Absolutus was the most logical choice, but adiutrix also made sense...
"Twenty-five seconds, Hermione."
The rise and fall of Tom's chest so shallow and irregular, Hermione could hardly detect that he was breathing at all, and, desperately, she tried not to look at his pallid face, desperately tried not to centre on how eerily cold his body felt, even through his clothes; how his head lolled back in her lap like a broken toy...
"Nineteen seconds."
Hermione gripped her wand so hard her knuckles started to turn white. The little candles' lights were growing dim. Her head was pounding, her shallow breath coming in gasps nearing hyperventilation, her stomach twisted in such burning knots it was a wonder she could still function, the pressure at her chest so intense she felt like she might actually explode.
What if she picked the wrong word?
"Eleven seconds."
'Fail to complete the countercurse exactly as instructed, and they shall perish immediately...'
"Five."
Absolutus or adiutrix?
"Hermione!"
"Amor verus castus absolutus!" she desperately yelled with every bit of energy she had left.
With a powerful rush, gale-force wind burst through the Chamber, gusting around her, whipping her hair up around her head as, like an electrical surge, the dim light of the tiny candles simultaneously flew upward, and the make-shift perimeter of the magic butterbeer circle exploded into a blinding ring of fire.
The blast was so bright Hermione let out a muffled shriek and squeezed her eyes shut, instinctively heaving Tom's upper body up into her arms with a strength she didn't know she had, leaning her face against his cold, limp one, protectively wrapping her arms tightly around his shoulders as a sharp crackle and a blast of heat at her back, all around her seared away any remaining frigidness she felt from the chamber; she could distantly hear Harry and Ron's garbled voices yelling, shouting.
Somewhere in the chaos, in the roaring of the fire and the blistering temperatures and the shouts and the blinding light... Hermione felt her arms give a small but definite jerk, and her breath caught, her heart instantly leapt in an indescribable, unbelievable hope...
Because she hadn't been the one who had moved.
Suddenly, the wind whirling around her died down as quickly as it had come, the flames extinguishing as if a giant hand had reached out and snuffed them, the candles, the light vanishing in the blink of an eye, and now she could definitely hear Tom coughing weakly now; sliding her gaze to the left, she could see his ghostly white face beside hers regaining some colouring, his grey eyes cracking open in dazed confusion; she could feel him shift slightly in her arms; he was awake, alive...
He's still alive, she thought numbly, and, for a split second, she froze in paralysed incredulity. She had chosen right. Had the spell backfired, they should have been dead by now, but they weren't.
Her mind was screaming, dancing in joy, whirling and twirling and singing and laughing, but on the outside Hermione found that she could only choke back a broken cry, and before she realised it she vaguely felt tears begin to stream down her face until she was sobbing, but she didn't care. Reluctantly releasing her death grip around him with one hand, she shakily reached up and gently brushed some of his damp, tousled hair back from his dazed face.
The motion caused Tom to give a small, rather drunken-like jerk in surprise, as if he hadn't noticed anyone's presence but his own until then, but he continued to blankly stare straight ahead like his mind was still partially at the brink of demise.
Hermione needed to feel him, to breathe him and taste him and hear his voice, and with a tiny squeal she knelt and flung her arms around him like she had never hugged anyone else before in her life, whispering, over and over, over and over, "Thank you, thank you, thank you..."
For a moment, Tom stiffened, shivering violently, his heavy sweater and trousers apparently not enough to protect him from the chill of death he had nearly experienced, but then he choked out, "Hermione - You - don't – don't have to - bloody well suffocate me –"
Hermione let out a strangled sound that was a cross between a laugh and a whimper and loosened her hold around him only slightly, but that seemed to be enough for him to firmly identify her.
"Oh dear", he breathed faintly, disbelievingly, as if still in a haze, "It really is you–" Slowly, she felt his arms wrap around her rather numbly. "How-" he choked out in a stunned voice, faltered, and tried again, "How did you...?"
"Ssssh", she managed to murmur, fighting back the tears that helplessly ran down her cheeks, clutching his sweater in her fists, closing her eyes and burying her face into the grove at the back of his neck, his warm neck, his very much alive neck. "I'll explain later. Just be here right now. Just be here with me."
It was as if Harry and Ron had completely disappeared; as if all that existed in the world were she and Tom, and, a moment later, Hermione felt his embrace on her tighten until he had pulled her flat against him, as if he was afraid she was going to disappear at any given second.
"Hermione", Tom finally murmured again, his voice a low, throaty rumble somewhere nearby her head in that wonderfully melodic voice, that calming, soothing perfect voice that she knew she could never live without. Suddenly, he mumbled tightly, his words muffled slightly against the side of her head, "If - you're expecting me to be an... an ideal white knight in shining armour... I can never be the person you expect me to be".
"No", she whispered vehemently, releasing his sweater and wrapping her arms around him even more tightly, reaching up with one hand and weaving her fingers into the tangled hair at the back of his head. "That's just it. I never expected any of this from you. None of it".
Breaking off, but without letting up her hold on him at all, she twisted her head slightly and pressed a loving kiss into the soft skin of his neck. His breaths quickened against her head, his heart thudding harder against her chest, and a moment later, she broke off and whispered earnestly, "Tom, I'm so proud of you, I'm so proud..."
The dark-haired Slytherin made a soft, unintelligible noise under his breath, pulling away just slightly, and, for the first time that morning, Hermione found herself gazing into stormy grey eyes that were swirling with so much unspoken everything, so much emotion and care and actual sparkle...
She watched as Tom's hand reached up toward her face, and then his other, and before she knew it her head was being cradled between two large, warm, slightly shaking hands.
"Your mother –" For a brief moment, his voice cracked, but he swallowed hard and continued in a whisper, "She - told me, on Christmas, that – that despite who I was, because of who I was – that you loved me. "He took a deep breath and then let it out, its shuddery discharge the only sign of anything other than calmness in his demeanour as he slowly asked in a voice so low it was hardly audible, "Is that true?"
Did he even need to ask? How could he not have known, not have realised? She could barely breathe; his presence, a mere heartbeat away, made her feel like she was burning and suffocating at the same time. He was so close all she needed to do was push herself up just a bit to reach his lips –
She hadn't even realised how long she'd been silent until she heard Tom murmur in a low voice that was shockingly unsteady, "Hermione... Please – say something..."
Swallowing hard, Hermione finally managed to choke out in the faintest of whispers, "She was right." Abruptly, Tom's head abruptly sagged against hers, as if he had been relieved of some great burden. His soft, warm breaths puffed raggedly into her wildly curled and tangled hair, and she desperately burrowed into the comfort of his arms, simply content to feel his heart thudding rhythmically against her chest, just him and her, alone, together...
In those few brief moments, when it seemed as if everything in this less-than-perfect world could not have been any more divine, words from a letter of farewell that she had read in the utmost despair only an hour earlier flashed though her mind.
'But it's something he's wanted say to her from the moment the curse moved into Irreversible. Hermione, I love you.'
What progressed from that moment onward wouldn't be easy, that much Hermione knew. There would be so many obstacles to cross. Her friends would certainly be against it. At the same time, she knew that whatever darkness was stirring in the Death Eaters' meetings of present would certainly be a danger as well. But at that moment – in any moment – it didn't matter.
As long as they had, trusted, believed in each other, it didn't matter.
Breathing deeply, Hermione Granger, Gryffindor, Muggle-born witch, resolutely lifted her eyes to the dark-haired Heir of Slytherin only inches away from her, willing every emotion, every ounce of what she felt into her expression, her words unwavering. "Tom... I love you, too."
The End