Part XXV
They were fretting, but she was too exhausted to pay them much attention.
Professor Lupin had given her a large chunk of chocolate after she came to and ordered her friends to make sure she managed to eat it. Apparently he'd vanished to the front of the train after making sure that no one else had been attacked and she didn't see him again for the rest of the journey.
Tracey had to help her change into her robes before they arrived. Draco took Crookshanks' carrier for her and Harry helped her climb into a carriage. Tracey tried to get her to eat her chocolate faster, but Hermione wasn't hungry and her head was throbbing. It was Theodore who finally told Tracey to leave her be and insist that Harry would no doubt take her to the hospital wing after dinner if she still wasn't well.
But despite her fatigue, Hermione still noticed that people were staring, whispering, when they left their carriage and slowly made rest of the trek towards the Great Hall. Word had spread fast, apparently, that a third year had been attacked by and fended off a Dementor. Or maybe they were just shocked to see a small band of Slytherins willingly socializing with two Gryffindors.
She couldn't be bothered to care.
Draco told her he was giving Crookshanks to a house elf so he could be taken up to her dorm and Hermione managed to quietly thank him. The rest of her belongings were in her satchel, which she refused to take off. It was charmed, after all, and with the diary in her bag instead of in her pocket, the hum couldn't irritate her head as much.
She'd need to check it though. Tom would probably be wondering why she'd been so quiet. And he was likely awake by now.
She might've been dead, or as good as, if he hadn't insisted on teaching her the Patronus Charm the year prior. The thought made her shudder as she and Harry broke apart from their friends in the Great Hall. The quickly filling tables were growing louder by the second, making her headache worse instantaneously. She wanted to gouge her eyes out to claw at the throbbing behind them.
She ignored Dumbledore's start of term speech entirely, could barely bring herself to focus on the sorting enough to clap appropriately when new Gryffindors joined their ranks, and managed to take two more small bites of chocolate before Ronald was led into the Great Hall by Professor McGonagall —Hermione hadn't even noticed that the two were missing from their respective tables— and unceremoniously left to seat himself at Gryffindor table. He didn't sit with them at first, to her relief, but it wasn't long after chatting with Seamus and Dean that he did hop up and switch seats.
Harry sighed under his breath as food started to appear on the table and Ronald threw himself on the bench across from them.
"Bloody hell, Hermione!" he shouted. "The whole school's talking about you! Did you really fight one of those things off by yourself?"
Why was he so insufferably loud all the time?
She managed to lift her gaze from her empty plate long enough to stare at him, which was more than enough time for Harry to read her expression and chime in before she decided to try and speak.
"Keep your voice down," he said tersely. "She's still recovering and it's loud enough in here as is."
Ron shrugged, acknowledging Harry, but kept his eager gaze on Hermione, waiting for her answer.
The noise plus the mixture of scents from the feast around them and Ron's unwanted presence crashed down on her like a mass of bricks. She needed to leave before she vomited or hexed him — or both.
She managed to wrap up her barely-eaten chocolate and met Harry's gaze. "I can't eat, I don't think," she said softly. "I…I'm just going to find some place quiet…"
She made a point to tap his foot, then her satchel under the edge of the table where he could see it. If she'd get peace and quiet anywhere, it would be with Tom.
Still, Harry gave her a worried frown. "I can walk you, if you'd like? I'll still have time to come back here and eat."
She tried to give him a grateful smile. "Thanks, but I'll manage. See you in the common room?"
He helped her stand, which proved to be a struggle, but once she was upright it was easier to stay that way. She still shuffled out of the Great Hall slowly, ignoring the eyes and gossiping that followed her. The dizziness and nausea vanished once she was in the quiet halls, making it easier to go forward, but she nearly collapsed from despair when she remembered that the Room of Requirement was on the seventh floor. She let herself lean heavily against the wall when it hit her that Gryffindor Tower was no easier to get to.
She ought've swallowed her pride and let Harry help her, especially now when she refused to make a fool of herself by going back.
She was tempted to just let herself be found collapsed in the hallway when a slow, quiet creek sounded from her left. She squinted at the wall and the open door, certain that it hadn't always been there. It took some measure of effort to cross the wide corridor, but once she was close enough to peek inside, she found herself looking at Barnabas the Barmy attempting to teach his trolls ballet. And there was already a door waiting for her, sans three paces and mental effort to make it appear.
She could have cried, she was so relieved, and shuffled through to the doorway. The passage closed behind her and faded back to plain stone wall, which she pressed her hand against.
Thank you.
She wasn't sure how sentient the castle was, but she hoped it heard her.
Tom had started to pace impatiently. Hermione hadn't responded for hours and he knew she should be at the castle by now. He glanced at his watch —10:02am— and let out an annoyed growl.
What could possibly be keeping her for this long? She prided herself on punctuality. Not to mention she'd never been late to meet him. So where could she possibly be?
The door creaked, causing Tom to still mid-step and straighten. She was dragging her feet, her head was down, and her aura was all wrong. He briefly took notice of the orange mass that slinked in behind her, sticking to the shadows while she gently shut the door behind herself.
Despite her posture and concerning state, he could tell that she'd…changed since he last saw her.
She'd grown a bit. She looked a little less boyish, a little less like a girl and a little more like his peers. There was a slight curve to her waist now that he'd never noticed before. He thought she might've tried to tame her curls with something that likely held them captive earlier in the day, but had failed to keep them compliant indefinitely. There was something about the way her uniform and robes sat that made her look more feminine, more like a young lady, than she had seemed to him before she left.
But she also looked like she'd been trampled by a herd of hippogryffs. Or hit by a train. And the longer he studied her, the more he noticed, and his irritation evaporated, replaced by more unpleasant worry.
Nothing about her looked right. She was too pale. She was exhausted. She looked weak, which made his blood boil. Seeing her so…not herself, so, dare he say helpless, made his temper flare beyond reason.
"What the fuck happened to you?"
She lifted her head just enough to meet his eyes, though hers were blank. If she fell over any second, he'd hardly be surprised. Were her prefects and professors blind, or did none of them pay enough attention to notice the dazed third year in dire need of a trip to the hospital wing?
She blinked at him for several beats before managing to respond. "There was an accident…on the train…"
His eyebrows shot up with impatience. She could barely speak. "Did Weasley push you out of the bloody thing? I will ruin his miserable life in fifty years if he did."
He thought she tried to smile, but couldn't manage to hold the expression for more than a moment. "No," she muttered. "Dementor."
He stared at her, blinking as he tried to comprehend. "There was a Dementor on the train?"
She hummed a soft affirmative.
"And it attacked you."
She hummed again and Tom wondered if he'd ever been so angry in his entire life.
"There was a Dementor on a train full of sodding children and it got close enough to attack you?!" he shouted, regretting his lapse in control instantly when she winced and shuffled back a step.
He growled under his breath and moved forward, taking her by the arm and leading her to the stuffed chair she usually read in. The mass of orange revealed itself once she was seated, bolting from the door to her feet before gently jumping into her lap.
He could only assume the squashed-faced creature was her mostly-disagreeable half-kneazle. She blinked in surprise as the little beast stuck its head under her chin and started to purr gently.
"How did you get here?" she asked it, receiving a meow in return that seemed to satisfy her.
He could tell by watching her that her vision wasn't consistently focused and felt his stomach twist with unease. She seemed to be drifting between degrees of lucidity and it did nothing but fuel his temper.
He wanted to know why no one had dragged her to the hospital wing. He wanted to know who in their right bloody mind decided to allow Dementors anywhere near school children.
He crouched in front of her so she wouldn't have to look up at him, regaining her attention in the process.
"Can you try to tell me what happened?" he asked. "How did you even get all the way up here in this state?"
Her shoulders twitched. He assumed that was as much of a shrug as she could muster at the moment.
"Pettigrew is still wanted," she told him slowly. "Dementors are for security until he's found."
Tom rolled his eyes at the utter idiocy of that logic. He could only assume his older self had allowed such an asinine board decision because he remembered being told about it. Still, Tom hoped he could sack anyone who supported the choice earnestly in the future.
"I take it you haven't been to the hospital wing?" he said.
She shook her head and he considered the ramifications of having Peter Pettigrew murdered at birth to calm himself.
Hermione managed to keep talking. "There's chocolate in my pocket. Couldn't eat. Too many smells. And it was so loud. And Ron. So I left…" Her voice cracked on the last word and Tom felt his stomach sink as her expression pinched.
Her eyes filled with tears that a trembling hand struggled to wipe away. "I was already having a bad day," she whimpered. "So was Harry and he was so upset when I came to…"
They'd probably lured the damn thing without realizing it. He ground his teeth before asking her why.
"Mum and Dad didn't make it," she mumbled. "I knew they wouldn't and it's not their fault the conference ran long. Murphy's Law and all that, but I really wanted to see them again…"
Tom frowned as she cried. He didn't know what to do about tears. He could cause them in an instant, but warding them off? He'd never needed to before. Something about her being too weak to even cry properly made the situation even harder to comprehend. She didn't even have enough energy to sob or wail, which might've been easier to sort out. He knew calming spells. He did not know what to do with a barely lucid witch half folded in on herself with tears painting her cheeks and broken whimpers occasionally escaping her throat.
He didn't know what to do. He realized, rather suddenly, that he might have benefited from studying the bloody Hufflepuffs more thoroughly.
With a heavy sigh, Tom tried to push aside his discomfort and frustrations as he took the chocolate from her pocket and started imbuing a series of complex healing charms into it. Another spell broke the barely eaten candy into small chunks that hovered in the air before him. With more patience than he thought he'd possessed, Tom slowly spelled pieces into her stomach until her weak crying turned into faint sniffles.
It was better than nothing, but he still wanted her back to rights before he sent her off to bed. He got her to lay down and nap for an hour, making sure to mind the time on her side, and woke her up thirty minutes before curfew.
"Go to bed," he ordered. "Write me when you get there. If you're still out of it when you wake up, tell me before you go to the hospital wing."
Her eyes were red but dry when she made her way out the door with her bag, marginally steadier than she had been when she arrived. Her cat followed her halfway to the door before stopping and turning around.
Tom raised a brow at it, unimpressed with its equally bland stare. "What do you want, cat?" he asked. "Go make sure she makes it to bed."
Crookshanks padded back over to Tom's feet and wove between his legs several times. Tom didn't move, even when the little beast purred and leaned down to rub his head against his ankle one last time before meowing and following after Hermione.
"Peculiar little beastie, aren't you?" Tom muttered to himself.
He'd never seen a cat give affection and leave as if you owed it a life debt for taking the time to validate your existence.
Tom wondered why she'd bought such an arse of a cat in the first place.
He didn't get to see her again until that evening, which made his skin crawl with irritation. One day for him was two for her. She'd written throughout her days, but not enough to satisfy him. He needed to see if she was better with his own eyes.
Thankfully, with their evenings aligned, that meant they could spend several hours in the Room of Requirement undisturbed. He could look her over and still have time to evaluate how much she'd learned without him over her summer holiday.
She wasn't worse, but she wasn't what Tom would consider back to normal either.
She was almost skittish around him. Maybe if their separation had been shorter, the change wouldn't have seemed so stark to him, but the slightly shy second year he'd met last fall was now an anxious third year who could hardly meet his eye and didn't carry herself with the same airs.
He hated it. Hated seeing her not assured her herself. She was meek compared to how she'd left him. Where was her confidence, her fire? Where was the witch that sometimes stood up to him without making him viciously angry in the process?
Now it was like she wished she could go through life halfway curled in on herself.
"What's gotten into you?" he asked suddenly. "Being out of sorts after facing a Dementor I understand, but you seem better in that regard. What's making you all fidgety?"
"I'm fine," she told him, without even looking up from the textbook she was reading.
His eyes narrowed at her still form.
He kept trying to pry the truth out of her, but nothing worked. She continued to insist she was alright despite how obvious it was to him that she wasn't.
If she wouldn't help him fix her, he'd find the information he needed without her help. Tom cast a silent legilimens and started to gently weave his way through her mind, searching for something, anything that might give him a clue as to her sudden shift in demeanor.
What he found wasn't very helpful.
He combed through muted happy memories and skimmed over bouts of negativity and self-loathing until a headache started to build in his temples. An overwhelming sense of inadequacy seemed to stem from everywhere and nowhere all at once, but he struggled to find the cause.
The best he managed to find was a single thought strand housing the idea that he only put up with her because she was useful and all that managed to do was make something bitter and cold stir in his chest as he finally withdrew from her mind.
Surely she didn't believe something so illogical? He wanted to scream at her, to demand to know how she could be so very clever while also being so unfathomably blind? They were near equals for Salazar's sake. Was she oblivious to how significant that was, to how valuable she and her brilliant mind were to him? Did she really think he found her no more interesting than the rest of the common swine they called peers?
He didn't understand. He most certainly wouldn't have gone out of his way to ensure her wellbeing after being attacked by a Dementor if she was just a tool in his arsenal. She was a…a friend — she was his protogee!—someone capable of keeping up with his intellect when he chose to share it with her.
With a frustrated snarl, Tom threw his book down on the couch, the muffled thump still loud enough to startle Hermione, and stood. Her worry turned into mild panic when he snatched her book next, marked her page, and threw it to the side before yanking her upright by her arms.
She started to stammer out a question, likely inquiring as to what he was upset over and why he'd grabbed her, but she never got to finish her thought. Before he could overthink his plan, Tom yanked her forward a few more steps and wrapped his arms around her. Her surprisingly soft curls were tucked under his chin and he rested against them patiently while waiting for her to stop trying to pull away or batter him with questions he didn't care to listen to.
It took her a moment to fully realize what he was trying to accomplish before she, quite hesitantly, snaked her arms around him in return. It was an odd feeling, being held while holding onto someone in return, but aside from the foreignness of it, Tom didn't much mind the action. He still wasn't quite sure just how it apparently made people feel better to briefly entangle themselves with another person while obliterating their own ability to multitask, but if it helped fix her… It was a small inconvenience to bear if it offered her any measure of comfort.
"Welcome back, my insufferably obtuse little lost girl," he said quietly. His little Wendy. The oddity of a witch he'd be miserably bored without, he'd learned while she was away.
She sighed quietly and seemed to relax against him more snugly somehow, but he didn't mind. She was comfortable enough to lean against for a few moments.
"Hi, Pan," she murmured.
When they separated a few moments later, she was better than she'd been before. Her small smiles were shy, but present again. She was consistently meeting his gaze. He didn't expect it to last very long, especially with their daily separations being far longer stretches for her than they were for him, but if this…hugging ritual needed to continue until she was fully back to rights, then that was an acceptable sacrifice on his part.
She ought to be thankfully her fuzzy curls were as soft and warm and he'd discovered them to be. If he had to put up with physical interaction for her sake, then at least he'd be comfortable while doing so.
Not that it had been an unpleasant experience on his part.
Happy Tuesday! She's back at Hogwarts! Finally!
Forgot to bring this up last chapter, but somehow I actually have to say this despite this being the new, heavier-handed version of The Diary:
Hermione's parents aren't negligent. I don't even know how that assumption is being made, to be perfectly honest. I purposefully gave them more "screen time" in the rewrite to put their relationship with Hermione and respect for her independence at the forefront, but somehow I still had at least a few people jump to the confusing "negligence" conclusion.
Anyway. Clearly Hermione isn't at all upset with her parents after this chapter, just the situation (which was out of everyone's control, mind, and she encouraged them to stay at the conference for the entire time since it would benefit the practice).