A/N: Thank you so much for your reviews, favorites and follows after last chapter! Huge thanks to lanamarymack and Angela 007 for alpha/beta reading. You can follow me on tumblr where I go as nauticalparamour.

Please let me know what you thought of chapter thirty-nine (I am truly so curious) and be on the lookout for chapter forty soon!


It was as if the whisper of the horcrux had unlocked something hidden away deep inside of Hermione.

The overwhelming flood of memories made her mind ache. Gaps in history were suddenly filled where there was nothing before, bringing an overwhelming sense of relief as she was finally able to make sense of questions that had plagued her for years.

She had not been sent away by her parents, but she had still obliviated them. She had not learned magic from a classmate in a grand country house, but she had cultivated her skill at Hogwarts. She had not come back in time willingly, but it had been her fault for wearing that time turned during the final battle. She had not merely had an unpleasant beginning with Albus Dumbledore. He had obliviated her, too.

Help will always be given to those who ask for it at Hogwarts. What a lie that had turned out to be.

How reckless Dumbledore had been, Hermione thought, thinking of how he'd turned away such knowledge of the future. Worse than turned away, really. If she'd kept her memories, well…she didn't think that she would be where she was right now at all.

Bile began to rise in her throat when she thought of the wizard that she had married. Voldemort. Oh Godric, it was ghastly, it was unthinkable, it was a betrayal beyond imagining! What would Harry think of her if he could see her now?

And yet, tears sprang to her eyes when she thought of Tom, the wizard she had come to know, who she had vowed her life to, whose child she had born.

She wanted nothing more than to throw herself into the pillows and cry the whole night through, but she quickly dismissed the idea. Hermione was nothing if not practical. She needed time to think, time to process what she'd learned and what she had done in the past five odd years. She couldn't stay here, not now anyways. She couldn't bear the thought of facing Tom. But, she wasn't going to leave her sweet Caro either.

Wiping the tears from her cheeks, Hermione called for Honey, cringing at the thought of ordering a House Elf around, more than she even was before. When Honeysuckle popped into the room, she stared at her imperiously. "Who are you bonded to? Tom? Or the Riddle family?" she demanded.

Honey flittered from foot to foot, uncomfortable with the question. "To Miss Caroline primarily," she revealed eventually. "Though all in the Riddle family as well."

"But her best interests would take precedence if you had…conflicting orders?" she asked, feeling her shoulders sag in relief. Her first concern was getting Caroline and herself out of Tom's grasp and without him realizing it until they were safely tucked away at Riddle Manor. She'd had a sense that she might need to keep herself safe for weeks now, she was just disappointed that it was actually coming to fruition.

"What do you mean?" Honey asked, looking at her with her giant eyes.

"Honey, Caroline and I need to leave here," she explained, solemnly. "And, without Tom knowing where we are. We would bring you with us, but I wouldn't put it past him to call for you to find us. When he learns that we aren't here, he is going to be...very upset."

"I will be loyal to Miss Caroline," Honey answered.

It was a promise that Hermione was not sure the house elf would be able to keep, but she hoped that she would. She felt absolutely horrid about putting the poor creature in any danger, but she had no other choice at this point.

"Thank you, Honey," she said, before her mind quickly began spinning with all the tasks that they would need to do. "Quickly, gather only the essentials and then bring them to our new home. Riddle Manor is in Little Hangleton," she instructed, revealing the secret location. "Her bassinet, some clothes, nappies, bottles. Essentials only. We can replace anything that we leave behind."

"Are you sure Miss Hermione?" she asked, looking concerned.

"Yes," Hermione responded. "I will gather what I need and then I will come get Caro. No need to wake her up before necessary. Then we can apparate over together. We need to work quickly because I don't know when Tom will return home."

The house elf nodded and popped out of the room to take care of her tasks. Hermione stood still for a moment before she snapped into action, getting out a trunk that she could fill with a few essentials of her own. Standing in her closet, she realized that her hands were shaking as she reached out to grab this piece and that.

"Fucking Malfoys," she whispered under her breath. If she were not so panicked, she would probably laugh at the idea of Draco Malfoy's grandparents trying to control her image. That his grandmother was so obviously threatened by her presence that she made her wear the most hideous robes. Hermione left every stitch of clothing Aurelia had left for her, instead pulling the muggle styles that she preferred.

It felt silly to care so much about books, but Hermione wasn't going to leave them behind either. She hadn't even begun to think about how insane it was that she had been living decades in the past, but she wasn't going to give up the possibility of returning. Only, Caro...

No matter, she grabbed any book that looked remotely like it would help her. She stilled when she came across Oster's Compendium, before adding that to the trunk as well.

"Wish I had time for an extension charm," she said, looking wistfully at the overfull trunk, before shaking her head. There wasn't time. Tom - Voldemort, she corrected herself - could come back at any moment and thwart her escape.

Once she had everything essential, she strode through their home to Caroline's room, finding Honey waiting there already with a small bag packed. Hermione plucked the sleeping baby from her bassinet, staring down at her perfect little face, feeling as though her heart was being pulled through the wringer.

Godric, how could she have made a child with him? How could she have been seduced by such evil?

If she was honest, it had been quite easy when Hermione didn't know the real person who lurked beneath the shadows. Of course, if she had known the kind of wizard that he would eventually become there would have been no way that she would have even agreed to go on a date with him. But, a more emotional part of her was quick to remind her of all the good times that she had with Tom over the last few months. There was no denying that he was funny, charismatic, and so smart. He'd built her up and indulged her curiosities in magic in a way that no one ever had before. In a way that no one allowed her to before then.

As much as she wanted to outright condemn everything about dark magic, now that she'd used it she could easily see the uses. She found her former mentors' steadfast aversion to anything classed as 'dark' to be stifling. Harry resisted every opportunity to use dark magic, believing that it would somehow taint him, even if it was often to his detriment. How much faster could things have been over with Voldemort if they hadn't stuck to the letter of Dumbledore's rules?

"Miss Hermione," Honey said cautiously, pulling her from her own thoughts. "Should we begin to go? I will come back from the bassinet."

"Yes," Hermione agreed, knowing that there was no time to waste. "I will bring us to the nursery." She offered her hand to the little house elf and in the blink of an eye the three of them were standing in the nursery of Riddle Manor.

The nursery was the first room that she had fixed up, seeing as her daughter's comfort was her first priority. She could sleep on the floor if she needed or conjure a couch. The room was a mixture of buttery creams and gold accents to go with the rich, dark wood that much of the house was built with. It was inviting and cozy and during the days, when the sunlight streamed in the window, it was quite airy and light.

Hermione immediately sat in the wooden rocking chair that was under the window and started to rock back and forth, holding Caroline close to her chest.

"The bassinet, if you could," Hermione instructed Honey to return to get what the baby needed. "I didn't see the point in getting a second one if I didn't need to."

Honey popped away and Hermione was left alone with her baby once again. She was completely undisturbed in sleep, her little rosebud lips pursed and moving periodically, as if she was dreaming about sleeping. Hermione kissed her on the forehead, brushing some of her black curls off of her brow.

There was so much of Tom in her look, leaving now doubt as to who her father was. At least, Hermione thought, hoping to find a bit of humor in the situation, she had inherited his good looks. Hopefully there wouldn't be too much of Tom in her personality, if Hermione had anything to say about it. She wasn't going to raise Caroline to detest muggles or any of the other pureblood beliefs that Tom and his Knights had.

Merlin! His knights. Biting her lip, Hermione realized that she'd basically become best friends with Alfred Nott in the last year, even asking him to be the godfather to her child. Was he really the same angry old man who was the father of her brilliant classmate, Theodore? How odd was all of this? How could she ever face any of them again?

Despite what she thought of herself and her convictions, Hermione was being forced to look at herself in a new way. Tom and his friends had all stoked something that was in her all along - her curiosity to learn and to master magic. Tom in particular had identified a part of her that longed for a certain kind of power and of a ruthlessness inside of her to do things as she saw fit. It wasn't as if Tom had corrupted her completely. She was still the same witch who'd trapped Rita Skeeter in a jar and permanently scarred Marietta Edgecomb.

And she'd do it again.

Honey came back a moment later with the rest of Caroline's essentials. "Come, let's let her rest," Honey suggested, seeing the forlorn look on Hermione's face.

Standing, Hermione nodded and placed the sleeping baby into her bassinet, pleased when she didn't even open one dark blue eye. Instead, she rolled onto her side and slept on.

Hermione and Honey walked out into the hallway, shutting the door behind them. "I am just in the room next door," Hermione explained, pointing to the room at the end of the hallway. "Take whatever room you want. The house still needs a lot of work, but there should be something to suit your needs. We can talk more in the morning. And now...now I order you not to tell Tom where Caroline and I are staying, even if he demands you to tell him."

It felt so wrong to give an order to the sweet house elf, knowing the kind of trouble or injury that she might face if Tom should give her a competing order. It went against everything that Hermione stood for, but she could also absolutely not chance Tom finding them. Not until she had her wits about her, at least. She knew that she would have to face him eventually, but hopefully she would have decided what she was going to do about it by then.

The house elf did not respond.

"Goodnight, Honey," Hermione said, before retreating to her own room, needing to be alone.

It had not felt right to live in the room that had obviously been inhabited by Tom's grandparents or father, so Hermione had selected a room on the opposite side of the manor. It had obviously been one of many guest rooms in the past, but had fallen into disrepair over the years. It was nothing that a little magic couldn't fix, though, so Hermione had fixed it up after she'd finished the nursery. With light blue walls and massive windows overlooking the back garden, Hermione felt quite at home there.

But tonight, there was nothing to admire, not when she felt so drained and exhausted at least. She fell onto the bed, face down and pressed a pillow tightly over her mouth and screamed into it as loud as it could. How could this be happening to her, she wondered for the thousandth time that night? How had she fallen directly into her enemy's arms? And why couldn't she hate him completely as she should? Why did she still love Tom Riddle despite everything that he'd done to her?

Her head was aching from processing so much in such a little time and ultimately she just needed rest. In the morning, she would figure out her next steps.