In the morning Hermione tucked herself into another one of the dresses Abraxas had looted, thinking that this felt very much like wearing a costume, and Tom Riddle suggested they go for a walk on the grounds so they could talk in private while they got fresh air. Once they were free of the Manor, and Hermione was wishing Abraxas Malfoy had managed to get her shoe size right and hoping she wouldn't turn an ankle on the gravel paths that wound through the impressive gardens, Tom said, his hand on her elbow so he could 'assist' her along the walk, "Horcruxes."

"Evil things," Hermione said. "Splitting your soul." She smiled at him again. "I destroyed one of yours."

"Will destroy," he corrected her. "Maybe." He helped her down an uneven step. "Be careful," he admonished before adding. "I could kill you."

She shrugged. "I already did it so, my love, it's too late."

"Mmm," he said and led her to a small overlook, shooing away one of the white peacocks that had approached them in search of food. "Pesty things," he said.

"Horcruxes?" Hermione asked. "I'd call them evil and poorly thought out, but pesty wasn't a word that ever came to mind."

"Poorly thought out?" Riddle sounded offended though she suspected that tone was false. He was a good actor.

She shrugged and leaned on the stone railing and looked out across the extensive park. "I admit I never quite understood what you wanted," she said. "I always laid that at the feet of you being round the bend; one doesn't expect a madman to make sense."

"I'm quite rational now," he pointed out.

"Debatable," Hermione said. "Still, you could explain what it was you wanted to do. Want to do."

"Be the most powerful wizard alive," Tom Riddle said. "Never die."

She eyed him. "Are you lying to me or yourself?" she said. He made an inquisitive sound and she said, "Done. You've got - what? - two horcruxes by now?"

"Three," he said.

"Ah," she nodded. "The locket."

He gave her one of those smiles that seemed amused and angry at the same time. "Yes," he said. "Do try not to mention that to the gentlemen at the Manor," he said. "I would become annoyed with you and I tend to hurt people who annoy me."

"Gentlemen?" Hermione asked as archly as she could. "And here I thought I met all of the guests last night. You've been hiding gentlemen somewhere?"

Tom chucked her on the chin. "You're cute when you're being clever, Miss Granger," he said. She pulled away from his touch in revulsion and, mockingly, he laid his hand along her cheek as if in a caress. She stared at him, her heart pounding and trapped; it felt like fire everywhere their skin touched and, based upon his sudden intake of breath, he noticed it as well. He left his hand there for a long moment in defiance of the unwanted chemistry and then pulled it away. "Explain more why you think I'm lying," he said.

She resisted the urge to reach up and wipe at her face where he'd touched her. "If all you cared about was eternal life you'd take your filthy little horcruxes and go find some isolated cottage to live in. Never grow old. Never die. Just you and your scattered bits of soul for forever."

Tom Riddle regarded her with his steady eyes. "That wouldn't meet the requirement of being the most powerful," he said.

She felt caught in that gaze. "Aren't you already, though," she asked, hating the way her voice shook. "You disarmed me without effort and I've lived through a war." He made a dismissive sound and she said, "No. I'm very, very good. People called me the brightest witch of my year, some said of my generation. And you've silently pulled my wand out of my fingers without even trying. You have power and you have eternal life." Her voice had become almost pleading. "Take them and be happy and go away, Tom Riddle."

He murmured, "The brightest?" in a tone of disbelief and then shrugged and bent down to scoop up a handful of gravel. "Put out your hands," he instructed and, confused, she did so. He poured the gravel into them and, as each stone fell, it was transformed into a pearl.

Hermione felt the pearls in her hands and stared at them, transfixed by wonder. "Illusion?" she asked.

"Transfiguration," he corrected her. "They are true pearls."

"Until I do a finite," she said.

"Which you, at least, cannot do with a wand," he said. He held his hands out. "Give them back."

She did, letting the white gems slide through her fingers with some regret. He watched her expression with an unreadable one of his own and then, when he had the pearls all held within his fingers, he tossed them into the air and she gasped as they turned into white flower petals and drifted down like snow to settle at their feet.

"Do you forget in the future that magic is wonder?" he asked, amused and pleased by her reaction.

She shook off the spell he'd woven around her. "If I did, it was your doing," she said. "I didn't have a lot of time to play with pearls and flowers because I was trying to stay alive."

"I sometimes wonder," Tom said as if she hadn't spoken, "whether the ones raised to it ever properly appreciate how incredible magic is."

"Maybe not," she said.

"I would like to give you your wand back," he said abruptly. "The men I've collected, they respect power and little else. As long as you have no wand, you're vulnerable and I can't watch you every moment."

"Why do you care?" she asked, bending down to pick up one of the petals and rubbing it between her fingers. "You do keep threatening to kill me and you know I plan to do the same to you."

"You don't need to understand my every motivation," he said, "and I have no intention of explaining myself to you any more than I already have. Promise me you won't attack me and I'll hand over your wand." He reached out a hand to tap her on the nose again in one of his condescending little gestures and then seemed to think better of it. "One week," he said. "Promise me a week and you can have your wand."

Hermione turned away from him. "It's already done," he said. "Time is changing and shifting because you're here. I was going to go meet with a Dark wizard today and didn't because you are a more interesting puzzle. That's one change. Will it be important? Perhaps that meeting was the one that spurred me into the war you fought. Maybe now I'll do something else. You have the power to influence me - "

"Maybe," she said.

"Maybe," he conceded. "But are you so cowardly you won't even try to take it? So resigned to your future you won't try to turn me into a tool you can wield?" He set a hand on her shoulder. "So many opportunities," he whispered in her ear. "So many possibilities. How can you resist them?"

"I remind myself you want to use me so you will win," Hermione said. "Your world had beggars in the streets and people like me homeless and wandless and helpless. Your world was dark and - "

"And hasn't happened yet." The man slid his hand down her arm and kept his mouth at the side of her neck and he whispered. "If you do nothing that will all happen. If you act, what will be?"

"Something worse," she said. Despite trembling against her will she kept her voice cool and steady. "Something where you aren't defeated. Something where - "

"Or something better." The feel of his hot breath on her skin made her clench her fists. "Something where my dear, sweet love influences me toward kindness."

"You have no kindness."

"Where she uses my love for her - "

"And you are incapable of love."

"Are you so sure?" He set his hand on her hip, the fingers pressing in and pulling her back toward him. "And even if I am, even if the blandishments of a pretty woman have no power over me, do you think I would be fool enough to disregard warnings on how I did it wrong? If your world of death and war ends with me losing and dying, I have quite the incentive to listen to you. Maybe a world with no war accords me both the power and eternal life I desire."

"One week," she said, wrenching herself away from him and nearly falling as the too large heels slipped on a bit of loose gravel. She caught herself against the railing and hid the pain of the sudden impact. "One week," she said and turned to face him with her hand held out. "Give it to to me."

"Break your word," Tom said, "And I will torture you."

"It would be worth it to suffer if you were to die," Hermione muttered.

"Horcruxes," he reminded her with a sly smile. "And you don't know where they are. So you can attack me. You can annoy me. If you got terribly lucky, you could even hurt me. But you can't kill me."

She kept her hand held out and said, "I promise not to try to hurt you for one week."

He pulled her wand out of his pocket and tossed it over. Her fingers closed around the wood and she shuddered with the relief she felt. "I make no promises about the rest of your evil crew," she added as she used a charm to resize her shoes so they fit better.

He shrugged. "I, myself, am frequently overcome by the urge to cast the odd Cruciatus or two at them. I would hardly fault you for feeling the same way."

Hermione hefted her wand in her hand, spun it from one finger to the other, leveled it at Tom Riddle, and finally cast a finite on the flower petals that still littered the ground at their feet and smiled to see them shift back to pebbles.

"Show me something," he suggested and she eyed him and then cast her Patronus. The otter sprang from the tip of her wand and gamboled about in the air between them, ignoring the wizard. She felt her lips tug up the way they always did in the presence of the raw joy her otter exuded. Tom studied the silvery animal and then said, "Bit obscure," he said. "You didn't learn that at school, I'd wager."

"Not from the staff, no," she said, still smiling as she remembered Harry teaching them all how to pull up happiness at will and use it to fight back against the despair of everything. Nothing had ever dimmed Harry's light, not his horrible family, not abusive teachers, not Dumbledore's manipulations. He had been a boy, and was a man, made of love. She looked at Tom and the smile faded as she regarded Harry's nemesis. "The boy who kills you taught it to me," she said.

"The pureblood boyfriend?" he asked, misreading her expression.

She laughed at that and the otter wiggled with pleasure at the sound. "No," she said. "A halfblood. A hero."

"Not a villain like me?" Tom asked, amused half smile on his face.

"Nothing like you," she said, then rubbed at her face and admitted, "Nothing like you in ways that matter. Like you in… other ways." At Tom's silence she said, "Both orphans, both raised in environments designed to crush all hope."

"You do know a lot," Tom said. She watched him lean away from her, the gesture probably the first unconscious movement he'd made in her presence.

"I know you're the last descendent of Salazar Slytherin," Hermione said, watching his face. "I know your father was a Muggle." His eyes tightened at that and she could see where, assuming he aged, he would have lines when he was older. He would wear them well. "I know you killed him."

He smiled at that and she was chilled.

"Yes," he said. "I did. Do you want me to describe how he pleaded with me for mercy? The idiot girl at school had been a mistake but I was able to take my time with him and so I did."

She controlled her shiver and said, "You can keep the tedious details of how you are a monster to yourself." The otter gave her reproachful look as it faded and she cursed internally at the blatant way the thing revealed her own emotions.

Tom took a step toward her. "What do you think of, Miss Granger?" She didn't answer and he pressed the point. "What memory do you summon up to bring your pretty Patronus to your side? A childhood memory? Your first kiss? The first time a boy slipped his sweaty hand under your jumper and fumbled with the clasp on your brassiere?" He took another step and curled his lips up in a half smile he had to know made most women's hearts beat faster.

Hers too, but she'd be damned if she let him know that.

Literally.

"I remember the sound of your body hitting the floor," she said, meeting his eyes.

Tom Riddle didn't react the way she expected. He reached a hand out and brushed his thumb across her lips and she had to force those lips to stay pressed shut when every part of her wanted to open them nervously and lick at them with the tongue she bit down on. "Fascinating," was all he said and she wasn't sure whether he was talking about the memory she claimed to use to summon joy or the way they kindled at each other's touch.