A/N: Thanks for your reviews and follows. Sorry this chapter was a bit slower coming, and a bit shorter - we've hit the first turning point in the story now, and I'd love to hear your thoughts so far.

~oOo~

Hermione was back in the surgery's waiting room, thoughts racing but mood strangely calm again. It was altogether a unique sensation, being dead, and none of the oddness had disappeared with it being her second time experiencing it.

Her first train of thought was thankful; thankful that she could no longer feel the freezing lake or hear the roaring of the blood in her ears and her own choking gulps, inhaling nothing but water. Thankful that her brain was now functioning again, having been starved of oxygen and slowly shut down. There was no doubt about it – the killing curse had been a wonderful death compared with all of that.

When she could finally formulate a thought which was not centred on the horror of drowning, she began to wonder what Death would do. Was he truthfully incapable of returning her to her own time? Failing that, she considered if she would prefer to truly die or to go back – to Hogwarts in 1938 – to her lonely purposelessness, to Tom Riddle.

There, on cue, the anger finally arrived. Oddly enough, it was not Tom Riddle who bore the brunt of it – though that would undoubtedly come later – but she herself. How stupid! How utterly, embarrassingly foolish to allow him to catch her off guard like that! Perhaps she had created a false sense of security since he was only eleven. Perhaps she would have reacted faster if she hadn't been so upset, and so sure she would not be found out in the boathouse. Neither of those things diminished her internal rage at all. She had known exactly who she was dealing with, the whole time, and yet she had dropped her guard enough to let him kill her. She felt so thoroughly ashamed that for the barest fraction of a second she was actually glad for the absence of Harry and Ron.

It was at about this time that the front door opened and Death shuffled inside.

There was a pregnant pause, in which Death swished his cloak theatrically as if trying to get some sort of reaction out of her. She was thoroughly confused, and wondered why he thought she would be scared of him. Death seemed to give up, shrugging, and spoke in a bored tone.

"On or back?"

Given the wider context, she wasn't sure that she understood the question. She settled for an unambiguous answer.

"Send me back to 1998."

Death did a double-take, and she became all the more confused. It was like he didn't recognise her at all!

"What's your name?"

Her eyebrows rose of their own accord. That seemed like the kind of thing that Death would probably know, even if he hadn't recently met her and written her letters.

"Hermione Granger."

There was a spark of understanding.

"Ah… Ah. Yes. I remember." Eventually, when nothing more was forthcoming, she reiterated her original request. Death jumped slightly, as if he'd forgotten she was still there.

"What? Oh, no. No, I can't. Impossible, I'm afraid – can't be done. Wait here a minute."

A sarcastic retort formed in her mind, but he was already gone. What the hell?

It was barely a few seconds before the door opened again, admitting a pair of figures this time. She couldn't help herself.

"How many of you are there?" Two identical chuckles emerged from identical hoods.

"Still as polite as before, I see," remarked one, who she took to be the one she had originally met. He waved away her protests before she could voice them, and continued, "It's just me. Us. A duplicate caused by the time travel, but never mind that. Why are you here?"

She utterly ignored his question.

"Send me back – to the future – you must be able to."

"Gosh," said the Death who had not recognised her, "I've heard more diversity from parrots."

"Indeed," agreed the lookalike. "Very tiresome. Honestly, if I could go forward in time, I certainly wouldn't have spent that night in the woods a few weeks ago. Damn back's still acting up."

"Mine too – not a surprise, at my age."

"Your age? Think about my age!"

Hermione could not suppress a huff of impatience, which drew the two hoods magnetically in her direction.

"She drowned," supplied the younger Death, finally, with a tinge of smugness. "It was the Riddle boy. Capsized her rowing boat on the lake."

Older Death laughed. Not just a little sound vaguely suggestive of amusement, but a full belly laugh. Soon it was both of them, and Hermione's mood escalated from fractious to irritated and then on from irritated to angry.

"There is nothing funny about this, not a single thing! I want to go home. SEND ME HOME." She was shouting now, becoming more and more annoyed at the infantile sight of both Deaths trying to control their sniggering. "For fuck's sake, shut up."

If Ron had used that particular word, she would have chastised him immediately, but in her anger she didn't even register saying it until –

"Language." Younger Death still sounded quite amused.

"It's hardly our fault that you can't best an eleven year old," added Older Death rather testily. "Honestly, I thought you'd be better. Perhaps I chose the wrong person, but either way – there's no sending you back. Just get on with it and stop whinging."

Her mind had gone horrendously blank, as kept happening in overwhelming situations. Not a single retort came to mind, because somewhere in her chest the last nail was just being hammered into the coffin of her dream of going home. Younger Death was speaking again, but she had stopped listening.

Something was waving in front of her, and she eventually snapped back to attention.

"I said –" he repeated, "- you might find this to be topical."

Younger Death waved the object at her again, and she saw that it was another stupid frog card.

Elladora Ketteridge (1656 – 1729) is remembered for discovering the use of Gillyweed. After accidentally consuming the plant, Elladora nearly suffocated but recovered when she stuck her head into a bucket of water.

"Oh, very funny," she bit out.

As Death returned the card to his cloak, Hermione noticed with some interest that his hand looked, well – normal. That was the only word for it. Not a skeleton, not some rotting piece of flesh, not greying or clawed or hooked or scaly; just a regular hand.

She did not have long to think about it, because the waiting room was falling away. With a shout of surprise and rage, she was plunged head first into freezing water.

~oOo~

Tom made his way to the dungeons swiftly and unseen. Once he had changed into dry robes, he hurried on to the library where he settled himself into his usual corner and surrounded himself with a huge pile of books and parchment. Like I've been here the whole time.

At eleven, he was no stranger to the idea of breaking various rules. The way he saw it, everyone would want to if they could; it was just that everyone else was too stupid to manage it without getting caught.

There had only ever been one proper exception to his clean streak of avoiding punishment for doing whatever he wanted, and that exception was called Dumbledore. It didn't seem to matter how much charm he directed at his Transfiguration professor, he would still be regarded with an expression of mistrust. It was vexing, and had taught him the danger of dropping his act; five minutes of real-Tom had not been erased in the old man's head even by several weeks of charming-Tom. He was beginning to fear that it never would be.

Tom had spent a considerable amount of time wondering how exactly Dumbledore had known about his thefts at the orphanage. It left him uneasy and frustrated, because it forced him to consider the possibility that the man might somehow find out about this afternoon, too.

He had acted in anger, without really thinking. Had he killed Granger? Had he meant to? Certainly he had meant to cause harm, meant to punish her for her lie. If she lived, she would be able to tell on him, which was extremely problematic. If she was dead, and Dumbledore knew what had happened…

It was a no-win situation, and for the first time he began to feel a kind of remorse for his actions. He should have found a better way to punish her. He tried to focus on his Charms essay, but the words were twisting on the page and making no sense.

He needed to find out how Dumbledore knew. He needed to know more than him. It was the only way – be better, stronger, more powerful than everyone else. Then, nobody would be able to stand between him and – and what? – him and anything.

There was work to be done.

~oOo~

She kicked her legs and flailed her arms, fighting the weight of her saturated robes in order to bring her neck above the surface. It was so sudden; one second she had been safe in the waiting room and the next, fighting to keep from drowning a second time. Shock, rage and terror were competing to be her foremost emotion as she gasped for air and frantically looked around for the shore.

If she had been in a mood to be grateful to Death – and frankly she couldn't imagine a more unlikely scenario – she might have been pleased that he had at least sent her back significantly closer to the boathouse than she had been before. Swimming fully clothed in a Highland loch in autumn was not something that could ever class as enjoyable even if one hadn't had a very recent drowning experience.

It took all of her strength to haul herself out of the water and up onto the wooden jetty. Tom was nowhere to be seen. Since her most pressing concerns were therefore dealt with, she began to become more and more aware of the chattering of her teeth and of the rain still pelting against her back.

Through some miracle, her wand had remained in the inside pocket of her robes. She drew it, hand shaking wildly, and cast every helpful spell that came to mind. Charms to repel the rain, dry her clothes, warm herself up, repel prying eyes. Finally, she disillusioned herself and silenced her footsteps out of recently-acquired habit. Not that it had stopped him finding her earlier.

Her satchel rested against the wall where she had fortunately dropped it before climbing into the boat. Another bizarre stroke of luck that she somehow felt was undeserved, given how careless she had been. She snatched it up and headed back to the castle, noting the footprints that already led up the path. It was some small comfort to know that he was in front rather than behind.

Inside, the corridors were busy with students, ringing with the echoes of Friday afternoon laughter. She slipped past everyone swiftly and silently, not pausing until she was safely inside the room of requirement.

4:28 read her clock. Hours until Astronomy class, and she was worn out in every possible way. A shower to remove all traces of the lake (and, oh, if only the memory would wash out so easily) then under the duvet, where safe and warm and breathing never felt so good.

Sleep would not come. The charmed shadows moved steadily across the walls, lengthening, until the room was cloaked in darkness. Behind her eyelids, the darkness swirled and shifted, becoming the bottom of an empty ocean. After a while she could truly believe herself to be suffocating, gulping in water until she opened her eyes, coughing and gasping for real although the reason was simply imaginary. Once this had happened four or five times she could not stand it any longer.

A plan. She could not truly find rest until there was a plan. If there was no going home – and here, she forced down a wave of emotion and grasped desperately onto the thread of logic – if there was no going home, and there was no dying, then there was only going forward. She could run away, or live out this twisted idea of Death's, pitting herself somehow against Tom.

There had never been any doubt between those alternatives, of course; every fibre of her being, every moral told her that the only option was to stay. Stay, and try somehow to protect everyone she had ever cared about, though they were not yet here. Stay, and maybe one day see them again, safe and happy even if it was without her.

A month without a clear purpose, lost and grieving, had been exhausting. She had tried to change the situation, tried research, tried pleading with Death – nothing. It was time to change tactic, give herself a goal to make the passage of time more bearable. An occupation so that the past (the future, in fact) could not absorb every waking thought.

Stopping Tom from making horcruxes seemed a long way off, until she truly considered it.

It would be stupid – less than helpful – to stop him creating horcruxes on a one-by-one basis. It would require her following him around forever, just in case, and surely would end up in some sort of showdown. Could she beat Voldemort in a duel? Well, yes, now. If she put her mind to it. But in five years' time? What about twenty? It was uncertain at best.

One thing was absolutely clear in her mind, and that was that she could not murder a child in cold blood, for crimes not yet committed. Even if it was by far the simplest solution. Murder of any kind could not possibly be her first plan, could not possibly be a grand moral act.

No. Tom Riddle was on the road to power, to dark magic, to horcruxes – but he was not there yet. A particular future is never fixed. There must be a way to turn the tide, not through senseless violence. Some subtle way, some chain of events as yet unplanned. She needed to think, to learn, to observe. Beyond that, she needed to be prepared, to be confident, to keep herself one step ahead of Tom's knowledge. To know she could always beat him, if that was what it took. Today had been an embarrassment, and she vowed not to let it happen again.

Hermione dragged herself out of bed and lit the lamps.

There was work to be done.

~oOo~