"You are upset."
Tom had led Hermione on a walk after breakfast, a breakfast she hadn't eaten, and he was watching her with that damned half-amused smile on his face.
"You made me kill a man," she said to him. The blood had yet to return to her own face since she'd cast the spell and she still looked pale and wan and as if she would return to retching any moment. "Yes, I'm upset, Tom. Normal people feel upset after that." She crossed her arms across her stomach and bent over a little as she stepped away from him on the gravel path that wound through the gardens at Malfoy Manor. She wondered, briefly, if Draco Malfoy had played on these paths - would play on these paths. The echoes of past and future almost hurt sometimes. "Not that you would know how normal people feel," she muttered.
"Normal is not a standard for which I've ever striven, no," Tom said as he reached over to a bush and yanked a handful of leaves off. "But, let us be honest here, my love; you aren't some sweet bit of fluff yourself."
"I'm not a murderer," she said, not looking back at him. "Or I wasn't until this morning."
"Oh, really?" Tom came up behind her and stood there. She'd stopped at a small bridge that curved over a decorative stream and waited there as if unsure what to do. Tom released one leaf from his hand and, as it fluttered to the ground, it turned into a bright yellow bird that flew away, chirping at them with a scolding call that seemed to call out all their sins. "I believe you mentioned you obliviated your parents?"
"That's - "
"Different?" He pressed his cheek up against her hair and murmured. "You asked their permission, then? You said, 'Mum and Dad, there's a group of men who want to kill me and I think they might go after you so I think I should erase your entire existence and send you away. Is that acceptable?'" Tom paused. "You asked them that?"
"Of course not," she choked out.
"So you killed them, took their memories and their lives without their consent, killed them as surely as if you'd cursed them - and, my love, most people would considered a memory spell of that magnitude a Dark curse - and sent their bodies, inhabited by what might as well be new people, away?"
"It wasn't - "
"Don't be naive, Miss Granger," he said. "You killed them."
"I hate you," she said, the sound hoarse and broken as she stood, unmoving and held in thrall by his voice.
"But it was probably better than the other choice," he conceded, ignoring her words. "Would my idiot followers have been brutal?"
His voice almost caressed the word brutal and she shivered against him before she spit out her answer. "Yes."
"So you spared them." He ran a hand down her arm. "As you spared dear, sweet Dolohov the torment he was enduring today."
"You were torturing him," she said.
Tom didn't respond to that directly, just turned another leaf into a a brilliant turquoise bird and said, "I have a feeling, sweet Miss Granger, that your obliviation of your parents wasn't the first time you dipped your toe into the Dark arts."
"It wasn't the Dark arts," she said, but her voice wavered and she sounded less sure.
"It was," he said dismissively. "You used a usually benign spell to erase their identities and recreate them. Dark; very Dark. I am impressed with you, my Hermione. But no one starts there. Did you never cheat to make things a little easier? Maybe not for yourself, little self-righteous love, but for a friend, perhaps?"
She tensed and he saw that and laughed. "Oh, yes," he murmured. "You did, of course you did. Ever use magic to punish someone who upset you? Betrayed you, perhaps?"
"That wasn't Dark arts," she said, her voice shaking. "It wasn't. It was to fight against you, it was - "
"Acceptable because the ends you wanted justified the means you used?" he said. He released another leaf and this one turned into vibrant red sparrow and landed on a nearby statue of Daphne and Apollo where it cocked its head to the side and watched them. "What else? Did you ever make anyone suffer? I'm the one, you know, who will never condemn you for those choices, never see them as anything but you exercising the power you have. You can confess your so-called sins to me without fear."
"I kept a woman in a jar," Hermione whispered, the words seemingly pulled out of her. "She'd… she was an unregistered animagus. She… she had written terrible things about a friend in the paper. She was… I captured her in her beetle form and kept her in a jar."
Tom Riddle pulled her hair back and pressed his lips to her neck. "You are not the innocent you would like to be," he said. "You are far more like me than you want to admit. Try, my love, to be honest enough with yourself to face that."
"I am not - "
"You are," he said. He nipped at her skin with his teeth and she made a tiny sound, half-protest, half-plea for more. "My love, I mean. You are, Miss Granger, the most interesting woman with whom I have been acquainted. You appear in my bed, you try to kill me, you turn out to be a Dark witch of some talent if, alas, also, a woman hiding in the delusion she's one of the virtuous. You are clever and lovely and your skin tastes like cinnamon and power." He ran his tongue over the spot he'd bitten. "And there are very few things I like more than power."
He let the rest of the leaves he'd plucked fall to the ground and, even as he wrapped his arms around her and pressed his lips to her skin he cast the spell to turn them to birds and a rainbow flock flitted away into the trees.
"They aren't real," she said, her eyes on the birds.
"No," he admitted. "They will fade back into leaves before long. Creating true life is magic quite beyond mine."
"I'm glad you think something is beyond you," Hermione muttered. She stood, shivering in his embrace but didn't try to pull away from him and he chuckled at her sour tone.
"Am I forgiven for punishing a man who hurt you?" Tom asked. They looked, from a distance, like any happy couple. HIs arms remained around her and she'd tipped her head so it leaned back against him. "Or do you plan to continue to wallow in needless guilt that you killed a man who would have done the same to you, probably after raping you for hours, if I told him you were no longer under my protection and he could do as he pleased?"
Hermione turned at that and tried to glare at the man but he just smiled at her. "He liked to break his toys," Tom said softly. "Abraxas is too fastidious for rapine, as am I, but Dolohov always enjoyed it. He liked to make his victims beg to be hurt, a plea he always acceded to."
Hermione closed her eyes.
"Are you glad he's dead yet?" Tom asked her. "I could go on. I could tell you how he struggled to learn - "
"Stop," she hissed. "Just stop."
"As you like," he said. "Do remember, however, that I shall not permit people to harm you."
"I don't need your protection," she said, her eyes still closed. He made a scoffing sound and she added, "I don't want your protection."
"Need I remind you that you are adrift in time?" he asked. "Helpless, friendless." He put a finger on her chin and tipped it up so he could layer taunting, soft kisses along the side of her mouth. "How fortunate you are that I find you so interesting."
"How fortunate you are that I don't slit your throat in your sleep," she muttered. "My promise not to hurt you has ended."
"Indeed," he whispered against her skin. "I shall endeavor to continue to be too fascinating to kill out of hand as I continue to keep you from harm."
"Your pureblood supremacy policies are not going to keep me from harm," she said.
"Bravo," he said, his tongue licking at her mouth. "Well done. You take the power I give you and you play it so very neatly. Yes, Miss Granger, I shall have to ensure a future where your blood status doesn't result in torture or condemnation, shan't I?"
She stepped backward and he released her, his eyes sparking with curiosity and a bit more when she pulled out her wand and pointed it almost at him then, as if remembering his earlier injunction, slightly to his left. She whispered the avis charm and a flock of birds erupted from the end of the wand with a bang that startled Tom's earlier creations. Hermione's conjuration joined their more colorful brethren in a nearby tree after flying about in mad circles for a few minutes while both magicians watched in silence.
"I could show you how to do that without a wand," Tom offered.
"I did that once and had them attack someone," she murmured. "Maybe you're right. About me, I mean."
"What had he done?" Tom asked, pulling another leaf off a tree. "Same spell," he said, "just instead of channeling your power down the wand pretend the leaf is your wand."
"Kissed his girlfriend instead of me," Hermione said, taking the leaf from him and not meeting his eyes.
"Not to save the world?" Tom asked. The teasing tone was fond and she turned her back on him as she concentrated on the leaf in her hand.
"Don't try to do it silently at first," Tom advised her. "It will be too hard to just call up - "
But she'd done it. The bird had the same coloring as the leaf rather than one of the jewel tones Tom's creations had sported and the leaf-bird fluttered more than flew, but it still floated its way to a tree branch and perched there, confused and chirping. Excited by her success, Hermione went to grab another leaf from a tree but Tom already had one waiting that he slipped into her hand. Her second bird flew with more confidence. Her third was a shocking green.
She turned to Tom who smiled at her with genuine pleasure. "An enchantment to delight the soul," he said. "Magic at its finest."
"What of your soul you have left," she said but she couldn't quite control the smile that pulled her own lips up as her birds called to one another in the trees.
"I have all of it," Tom said. "Just in multiple places."
"It was important to be on the right side," she said. The words were short and sharp and one of the birds flew from its branch, calling out a complaint about the way she'd startled it. "Your side wanted me dead, wanted my friends dead. You were a monster - a literal monster - and insane. Raving."
Tom didn't mention her sharp jump in topics, he just nodded as he watched her face. "You only had one possible side," he agreed. "Nothing else would have made sense."
"My side didn't… Dark magic wasn't allowed," she said. "Dabbling in anything Dark was… there were no gradations. It was - "
"They were zealots?" he asked, still watching her.
"You were zealots," she countered.
He nodded again and, picking up a stray twig, turned into a begonia that would have won first prize at any fair. He handed it to her and, bemused, she took it. "Like the tedious but powerful Orion Black?" he asked her.
"Mixed with the violence of Dolohov," she said. "Pure blood supremacy, thuggery, violence. That was what Dark magic was."
"You can be yourself with me," he said. The quiet words hung in the air. When she didn't answer he added, "None of it is truly Dark, Hermione. It's intent that makes the spell light or dark."
"Horcruxes," she said, throwing the word out there.
His lips parted and then closed and when they opened again it was to let out a laugh. "You win," he admitted. "Horcruxes."
She reached her hand out to him and, when he took his, let her fingers twine through his. "I am still upset with you," she said.
"He wasn't a pleasant man," Tom said. "And his personal hygiene was, upon occasion, unacceptable." He tugged on her hand and she let him pull her closer until there was only a hand's breadth of space and a crushed flower between them. "I see I shall have to purge the ranks and ensure only people who will be amendable to you remain."
"More murder," she said.
"They are - "
" - not pleasant men." she said. She hesitated. "Not Abraxas."
"No," Tom agreed. "It would be unthinkable to slaughter your cousin." He brushed his lips over her forehead. "He will be pleased to know he has an ally in you," he added.
"Well," she said, leaning the forehead he'd kissed into Tom. "He's family."
Tom lifted his fingers and ran them through her curls. "I suppose he is," he said. "Plus he has this lovely house."
Hermione laughed a little at that and then asked, almost shyly, "Would you teach me how to turn the rocks into pearls without a wand?"
"My love," Tom said, "I will teach you anything you like."
. . . . . . . . . .
A/N - 2 more chapters after this one and then the epilogues.