A/N: I'm really sorry for how long this took - there was no good excuse. Don't worry, I've no plans to abandon, though I probably wouldn't have made it this far without encouragement, so... thanks. Bear with me through this awkward transitional phase in the story.

~oOo~

The weeks rolled by at Wool's orphanage, each day inching slowly by with nothing much to distinguish it from the last. Tom was caged; by the high grey walls, by the atmosphere, by the monotony of the small rooms and the insipidness of their occupants – by the inside of his own mind. He was not allowed to wander, and whether this was upon Dumbledore's instruction or purely Mrs Cole's initiative, he didn't know. It didn't much matter anyway.

He was angry. Not white-hot angry, like that morning in the boys' dormitory, but something deeper and slower to burn. It was an old, familiar sort of anger that had often accompanied him growing up, born of being forever treated as if he didn't matter and looked down upon as if others would always be in possession of something he was not. He noticed in passing that it was something he had not felt strongly for some time, but was in no mood to contemplate why.

Confined to the orphanage with the youngest children, there was nothing to do but fan the flames of anger with thought.

Dumbledore. Always him, with his stupid smug expression. Thinking he knew everything about everything! He imagined with delight the day when he would be able to say the things he really wanted to say to him – the day the old man would no longer have any available sanctions that would deter him. He imagined, too, how over time others would realise how wrong they had been to dismiss him and deride him: all those purebloods would queue up to be associated with him when he proved his power. He imagined the way he might charm them, then, and string them along until they had given him everything. He imagined the contortion of Malfoy's father's face as he writhed under his wand, begging for forgiveness. He imagined what he would look like, dead – could you really see light leaving the eyes, like it said in books? He longed to find out.

Tom knew that he was intelligent, powerful, and charming if he wished it – he knew the meaning of work, and struggle, and starting out from the bottom. He read; he watched; he listened; he observed. He was thirteen-and-a-half, now. Getting tall. No longer a child, but soon a man they would not be able to sweep aside.

The more he went round in these thought circles, the more he realised that it was people he hated. Not wizards, and not even muggles. Just, with very few potential exceptions, all people. All people were dull, stupid, lazy, and set in their ways. All people were self-serving, disliking anyone at all different to themselves. Muggles were prejudiced against having magic and wizards were prejudiced against not having it; everyone was prejudiced against people with no money, no family and no connections. No matter. He was going to rise higher than all of them.

As a personality trait, Tom was not predisposed to patience. But he was also not predisposed to rash idiocy, so he knew that there was nothing to be done but accept the cage of the orphanage until September. Accept the (admittedly infinitely preferable) cage of Hogwarts for several more years. Learn and practice and observe and discover and bide his time. Because one day, his time would come. And then they would all be sorry.

~oOo~

She meant to argue with him that first morning – and when that opportunity came and went, she thought perhaps after lunch. By the time that, too, had passed, she was beginning to wonder if she was ever going to bring it up, or if she even wanted to.

Two years ago, there would have been no question in her mind, she thought; she was practical, a problem-solver; not one to sweep anything under the rug rather than deal with it. But she had changed. Was it the night she had been hit by the killing curse? Perhaps later, collapsed on a flagstone floor after strangling Malfoy. Or maybe it was not until all those hours in the hospital wing, talking to and then dreaming of a man as old as ancient history and yet as human as herself. Maybe it was even somehow in the last two days, as if she had gone from a child to a woman in one action and was desperate not to look backwards. She was exhausted, that much was certain. Exhausted from thinking and feeling and caring too much.

When he held her, she could forget about everything for a little while. Was this why people drank? Or took drugs? Such things were outside of her experience, but she thought perhaps she could empathise all the same. The calm, the relaxation – the oblivion – was addictive after so long on edge. And so the days and weeks passed, and the argument was left unsaid, and each night she found herself falling into his bed instead of into hers. Still she refrained from calling him by any name, and she knew that he had noticed. Sometimes he would have a far-away sort of look, as if wondering whether to bring up the subject, but seemed to conclude that maintaining their awkward truce was preferable.

During the days she tried to keep busy, thinking that spending too much time with him was only going to break the peace. She spent time instead with the thestrals, and time with Nifty, and she visited Diagon Alley and muggle London and even some places she had never been before. She went to the cinema – where the newsreel told of the surrender of France, and she bought an ice cream for tuppence from the attendant that came round in the interval and felt like she was living in a movie. She ate fish and chips from newspaper on Brighton beach and won a stick of rock from the amusement arcade on the pier, then gave it to a child who took it as if it were the Philosopher's Stone. She went shopping for clothes and books, and attended a tea dance at the Pavilion, and got given a rose by a boy named Frank who was on a week's leave from the barracks. She walked in the Lake District and on Dartmoor and in the Cairngorms.

In short, she lived. Lived for a brief time in an uncaring bubble while Operation Sea Lion was planned just across the Channel and Grindelwald dismantled the French Ministry and Tom Riddle dreamed of revenge.

Like all bubbles, it was only a matter of time before it burst.

It was a Tuesday in late August when she ventured into Diagon Alley to purchase her new school things – an odd venture, admittedly, for a woman appearing around eighteen, but one she got away with notwithstanding several odd looks. Afterwards she decided to apparate to Brighton for lunch, arriving in a secluded alleyway just off the seafront. Stepping onto the promenade, she took in the scene below and stopped dead.

The beach was deserted, barricaded off with coils of barbed wire. In approximately the spot she had been sat in several weeks previously, a large sign read DANGER: MINES in block lettering. It was the kind of scene she had only encountered in black and white photographs; seeing it for real, in all the colour of a fine summer's day, was overwhelmingly real. Somewhere out there in this time that was not her own, Hitler and Churchill still lived. People were building air-raid shelters and carrying ration books and kissing their sons goodbye. Sons like Frank – barely out of school – younger than her.

She couldn't stop any of it. Not only was it all wildly beyond the scope of a single person, time-traveller or not, but there was no telling what might be the unintended consequences. Not in terms of erasing herself – that would hardly be a loss, and at any rate it was likely impossible – but in terms of the future of… everything. She had that terrible, dangerous thing: a little knowledge. Enough to care, but not enough to understand, and so she was condemned to feel in some way responsible for a host of things effectively out of her control. And with that thought, all the worries she had been suppressing over the past weeks came rushing back.

After a few minutes of wallowing in self-pity staring out to sea, she finally came around to remembering all the things that were in her control. The life of Myrtle, for instance, and Tom Riddle Senior – the lives of Lily and James Potter. The sanity of the Longbottoms and the happiness of the Weasleys… the happiness of her parents.

She had allowed herself to get lost in this time and forget her purpose – not the purpose he had later declared, which was immaterial – but her constant purpose, the path she had been walking since she had first befriended Harry Potter. The purpose of making a better world, in which there was no Voldemort, and in which muggleborns and house elves and centaurs – and everyone else – would be treated with respect.

She turned sharply on her heel and traced her steps back to the apparition point: the holiday was over and the work was about to begin.

~oOo~

He raised his head from his book as he heard her footsteps approaching the courtyard, deliberate, slightly faster than normal, and knew immediately that this was going to be the moment. Perhaps something had happened while she was out – he didn't know, hadn't ever dared to follow – or perhaps she had simply decided that enough was enough. His heartbeat accelerated, belying his aching nervousness even as he arranged his features into an expression of calm interest.

"We need to talk," she said, predictably, with no preamble. He contemplated an attempt at levity but decided against it and instead merely indicated the adjacent chair. She sat down, warily, as if it were some kind of trick. There was a long pause in which she was evidently wishing he would speak first – he didn't.

"Tom Riddle is looking for the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets," is what she eventually opened with, and whatever he had been expecting, it wasn't quite that. He wondered where she was going with that line of enquiry, his face habitually blank as he thought. She narrowed her eyes.

"You will tell me where it is. But firstly, you're going to explain to me why the fuck you thought it was a good idea to put one of the most dangerous monsters known to wizardkind in a school. Furthermore, you're going to tell me why it's still there. You're going to tell me why you haven't killed it. Were you proud when it killed Myrtle?"

"No! I –"

"How many other children have you murdered, Salazar?"

She spat out the name as though the very sound of it was poisonous and he flinched involuntarily.

"You nearly killed my best friend, when he was twelve, does that make you feel big? And –"

"SHE WAS THERE FOR PROTECTION!" He hadn't meant to shout – hadn't meant to lose control like that, but couldn't take those accusations, not from her – was about to apologise – elaborate – but she was already shouting back at him.

"SHE? …SHE?! WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?"

"Look, I'm sorry, please, calm down a minute and I'll explain –" She laughed humourlessly, but neglected to actually speak again, waiting for him. He swallowed hard and wondered where to start. The words, when they arrived, came out in a stilted rush.

"I've always – erm – liked snakes –" he tried to ignore her snort of derision – "I suppose it's inevitable, you know, when they keep… chatting to you. We always had them in the house, you see… Not surprising that I always wanted to hatch a basilisk…"

"Not surprising? I'm sorry… it's apparently not surprising that you wanted to create something that will kill you by just looking at you?" He waited patiently for her to quiet.

"Well…I was curious… I thought it would make quite a unique pet. The stare's not dangerous, you know, until they're several years old –"

"Oh," she interrupted, voice laden with sarcasm, "that's alright then." He pressed onwards.

"It was a project I began while the others were laying the castle's enchantments. They weren't really my area, I'm afraid, and I had perhaps too little faith. I argued that we needed a final defence, if the muggles made it past the perimeter. A basilisk was perfect; controllable, causes a clean death, and can distinguish friend from foe –"

"It. Has. Killed. Children." It was an undeniably, regrettably, almost perfectly accurate point. He gulped.

"Yes… well, just the one, actually, but – I know, look, I know that's not the point – she was just doing as she was told!" Hermione stared at him, wide-eyed, for several seconds, and when she spoke again it was in a much quieter voice.

"And that makes it alright, does it?"

"No, of course not, but… it's Tom that killed Myrtle, isn't it, not… her."

"Under that logic," she said, coldly, "It was you that killed her. And either way, the point is that people with murderous intentions are rather more dangerous if you provide them with a basilisk."

He didn't know what to say. In truth, he had never thought all that much about any of it. Boudica had never been any trouble until Tom Riddle had come along – in fact, he had thought, until then, that she had probably died over the centuries down there. The death of Myrtle had therefore taken him by surprise. It was regrettable, of course, but the bottom line had been that Tom wasn't going to open the chamber again. And he had even bothered to keep watch on him, the last of his line – he had never had a child. No heir. He had thought the chamber was sealed forever.

He had not, at the time, been aware of Boudica's fate, given that it had not been accompanied by the demise of anyone requiring his professional attention. The news reached him much more recently, via Hermione during one of their conversations in the Hospital Wing. And she had said herself how they had needed the fangs to destroy the horcruxes. He thought better of bringing that up now.

"I'm… sorry," was all he said, eventually.

"Don't be," she spat back. "It's not going to happen again because you're going to tell me where the entrance is, and then I'm going to do what you should have done a long time ago."

He hesitated for a moment and her expression grew steadily more thunderous. It had been a very long time since he had been on the receiving end of a look like that – he hadn't missed it.

"Um – yes – look – I will tell you –"

"You're damn right you'll tell me."

"Honestly, can you just let me finish – I will tell you but… It's too dangerous. For you. You can't talk to her. I'll – I'll do it. You need to trust me."

"You must take me for an idiot, Salazar." He sighed.

"Far from it, I assure you… When I've… done it, I'll take you there, to prove it." She observed him steadily for a moment. He imagined her thinking it through, presumably concluding that he would have no reason to lead her into a trap when it was he himself who kept bringing her back from the dead. She nodded bluntly.

"Do it before term starts," was all she said, and then she was gone, leaving the bright courtyard seeming somehow gloomier than it had been several minutes ago. He put down his book with a sigh and marked the place with the first thing that came to hand.

Babayaga (Medieval, dates unknown) was a Russian hag who provided the basis for many stories passed into both muggle and magical folklore, often involving kidnapping or eating children. It is unknown whether any of the events described actually took place.

He tried to ignore the stab of pain that came with the realisation that Hermione now thought of him as a child murderer not so different from the old hag. Was it true? In a sense. But the child in question was still currently alive; he had something of a second chance. First he would go and find a rooster, and then… well.

~oOo~