Tom struggled to reconcile the memories being rewritten in his head as he and Abraxas waited in the hospital room Hermione would inhabit for the next two to three days, assuming her recovery wasn't affected by removing the obscurus. He was also assuming that he'd be successful in his removal attempt…
It was difficult enough to deal with the clashing memories without the added fact that he was occluding as best as he could under the circumstances.
When he was fifteen, he'd been detached from his fear and anxiety while watching her get attacked. Now? He almost forgot how much she changed him, how much of his trauma she helped soothe when they were younger. Well, when he was younger, he supposed.
Except not only did it ache so much worse this time around, but he had to try and conceal the emotions burning through his control. Hiding the truth of his future from himself , from a boy who wouldn't even understand the truth no matter who told it to him.
Part of him wished they could tweak just a bit of his past while they tried to change Hermione's future. Even if all that entailed was the ability to write a single letter to himself. If he could guarantee it would make a positive difference, he'd write that letter in a heartbeat.
Dear Tom,
You're fifteen and brilliant, at least until she enters a room. Then you're out of your depth and you don't have time to read the books that would explain the things she knows that you were never taught. You'll be playing catch up for quite some time, mate, but if you keep hold of her hand, she won't let you get lost.
You can't breathe when she's hurt because you're afraid of losing her. You're afraid of losing her because she's the only person who's ever mattered. The only person who's ever seen you for who you are, not just who you turn into when you're protecting yourself from the world around you.
She sees who you could be and without even trying makes herself a safety net for you. Have you realized that yet? You're safewith her. She can't hurt you intentionally because she doesn't want to. She'll never want to.
You know her smiles are different for you. You know she hides her thoughts around you. But you haven't figured out why. Brax and Flynn did. All of her friends did. Everyone has, but you don't know what you're looking at because you've never seen it aimed at you before.
She loves you. She's falling in love with you a little more every day.
You've been falling since that first night in the Room, but you have detours to take. Falling into friendship takes the longest, because that's admitting how much she matters to you. That's giving her a label that isn't drenched in flimsy excuses and feeble promises of combined power.
Of course you're more powerful with her beside you than away. She's your strength, not your weakness. She's your inspiration, not your headache. Look at how much she's changed you already.
You've forgotten all about horcruxes. You don't even want to open the chamber and force Cherie to go on a reign of terror to appease the prejudiced purebloods you were so worried about recruiting before you met her. Then you realized that your power was your own, not just some ancient legacy from your magical line. Because if a muggleborn could be stronger than you — and she is, you know — then being a halfblood doesn't actually make you lesser. Sure, it's politically advantageous for people to forget your father's a muggle, but it will take time to help shift the culture of the wizarding world in the proper direction.
You've switched tactics with the Knights. Positive reinforcement is a must for her. It works with them too, though fear will also motivate them at times. You'll find the balance. One day, you'll wake up and realize she taught you how to secure unwavering loyalty without violence.
But first you need to wake up and accept that it's too late to turn back. You could try to stop loving her, I suppose. But you'd only accomplish two things: Hurting yourself and hurting her. You'll learn something by hurting her, you know. Her pain is your torment. Whether it's smacking her head on two inches of ice or feeling betrayed at your hands, her pain is your suffering, which will feel so much worse if you know you're to blame for that pain.
You only have until graduation before you lose her. You'll never be ready for how quiet those decades were. You have no idea how empty our life is without her in it. So hold fast. No matter how much you both grow every summer, her hand will always fit in yours.
You only have a few more years to do it, so hold her while you still can. She needs you.
Tom snorted under his breath. As if he would've taken such sentimental words with grace at that age.
He didn't deserve her patience or the unintentional devotion she'd given him long before either of them had realized it was there. Just as he hadn't meant to prevent her from having enough of herself left to share with anyone else the few times she had connections with other wizards that likely would've been much easier to love than Tom had been.
Then again, she always had preferred a challenge, hadn't she? Too stubborn for her own good. Too brave, too loyal, too clever, too—
The door opened. Theron and one of his head nurses levitated Hermione in on a stretcher. Her insufficient clothes from the match were folded neatly in the mediwitch's arms. Her white hospital-issued gown and blanket did nothing but accentuate just how pale she was. Just how close to death she'd come.
Too fragile .
"Please ensure this room and Mr. Potter's room remain undisturbed, Healer Augustine," Theron said once Hermione was safely levitated into her bed. "It's better to lessen the chances of Lord Riddle offending my entire staff for the duration of his sponsee's stay, I think."
Tom closed his eyes and breathed through his nose as the mediwitch quietly left the room. "I did accidentally give you technical permission to be a cunt once she was healed, didn't I?"
Theron hummed to himself as he cast a diagnostic charm on Hermione, then a vitals display charm on a blank canvas on the wall above her bed. "Your mistake, yes. She's mostly in the clear by the way. Whatever you cast on her head healed most of the external damage. I did what I could to heal and prevent any further swelling in her brain, but we won't know for sure how well her body's going to respond to those treatments for a few more hours. If she continues to improve, then I'd say we're out of the woods and into recovery territory," he trailed off, giving Tom a withering look. "Then again, I can't really say any of this for certain. It's not exactly wise to let concussion patients remain unconscious indefinitely. I can't check her eyes or reflexes or cognitive function."
"She can't wake up until the obscurus is out," Tom said slowly, his patience already so very nearly nonexistent. She didn't have time for him to have a cock measuring contest with Nott, a contest the latter always inevitably lost since Tom was magically and intellectually superior even after all these years. "All I need from you is the spell you found that failed."
"It failed because there is no obscurus," Theron said. "All three of us cast the spell, Tom. There's nothing in her head yet."
Tom pinched the bridge of his nose, a dull ache forming behind his eyes. "We figured out why it failed for you already," he said. "It should work for me."
"I'm not letting an unlicensed civilian perform a parasitic extraction on a minor on my floor, Tom."
Always a bloody fight with you, isn't it? Tom thought. "I see. I'm left to presume your means of stopping me involve withholding the spells to both identify and extract the obscurus?"
Nott shrugged. "Should've asked for them before you decided to start messing with time."
"Well, that's partially accurate," Tom agreed, his voice falling into the false lightness he so rarely adopted these days. It wasn't often that he needed to threaten his Knights anymore, but Theron was one of the few still stubborn enough to argue with him at the worst times. "If I truly wanted to save myself the headache I would've helped you fall down the main stairwell when we were schoolboys."
"Careful, you'll give your younger self ideas now that changing the timeline isn't off-limits anymore," Theron said, his tone equally too cheerful.
Tom rolled his eyes. "That isn't exactly how time magic works, but sure, keep going on about magic you know next to nothing about. By the time you're done, I bet I could have her obscurus extracted."
"It's dangerous. "
"Not your call."
"It's my ward , Riddle!"
She's my wife, Tom wanted to scream. She wasn't yet, technically. But also technically, she was as far as his magic was concerned, even if her magic didn't possess the other half of the marriage bond yet.
"Nott," Flynn said sharply. "We don't have time for this. Give him the spell and fuck off if you don't want to be directly involved."
When Theron switched his ire to Flynn, Tom took the opportunity to move closer to the bed. Hermione was facing him, still blissfully unaware of the goings-on around her. They could cast any number of charms to keep her that way, but he wanted to check her motor functions too, just in case there was a nerve path or area of her brain that Theron hadn't healed completely.
But she was breathing, at least. She was still far too pale amidst the bright white sheets, in a white and gray hospital room, and entirely devoid of her usual vibrance. He noticed a hint of pink in her cheeks after a moment and his eyes narrowed. He brushed his knuckles under the splotch of color blooming on her skin.
She was warm.
He lightly rested the back of his hand against her forehead as he flicked his eyes up to scan her vitals. He expected her to get sick from being out in the weather, but Theron should've healed any potential infections or given her something to help prevent it.
Which meant the more likely cause of her slowly increasing temperature was, to his absolute horror, the obscurus . An influx of magical energy would have the potential to give her a fever until it was finished maturing and anchoring itself in its chosen home.
The little bit of patience he had left for the escalating shouting match behind him fizzled out in an instant.
"Theron, I need those incantations now ," Tom said softly. A dull, familiar ringing had started to grow in his ears.
Fear .
Theron, Flynn, and Abraxas were arguing in circles behind him, oblivious to the ice slowly forming in Tom's veins. He brushed his thumb over her cheek again. Too warm. Too risky. Except Tom would do anything to keep her safe, to prevent having to watch her become an obscurial again.
Even if that meant he had to relapse, to conduct himself in a way that would frighten and disappoint her if she was awake to witness it.
But she wasn't awake.
Drawing in a slow breath, Tom cast a silent shield charm around her bed, then left her side.
One of Tom's favorite things about Purebloods was how reliant they tended to be on their wands. They didn't consider using their physical assets to their advantage. They didn't expect their personal space to be invaded. It always gave him a unique advantage when his temper finally snapped.
He put a hand on Flynn's shoulder as he passed him, watching Theron's eyes widen when Tom continued into his personal space. A quietly muttered hex knocked the wind from Theron's lungs right as Tom grabbed his dominant arm and jerked his wrist hard enough to feel and hear the subsequent pop .
He ignored the garbled moan of pain that Theron gave as Tom shoved his forearm against Theron's throat, pinning him to the wall.
"I understand why you're being a cunt," Tom said lowly. Theron's primary motivation was his family legacy. As long as the son he hadn't wanted was able to have a happier existence than Theron and his late wife had managed, then Tom had his loyalty. Changing the future threatened the promises Tom made him about the continuation of his family line. " However , you know what she means to me as well as they do. You know I'd sooner burn this miserable planet out of existence than relive watching her suffer now that I have the chance to change her fate — our fate."
Theron's attempts to occlude came too slow and too late. Pain was the easiest way to dismantle mental shields even in far more capable occlumens than Theron.
Tom forced his way into Theron's mind, plucking the information he sought with ease despite the havoc left in his wake. Theron's nose was bleeding when Tom released him, letting the other wizard sink down to the floor in a moaning, shaking heap.
With the spells he needed in his possession, Tom went back to Hermione's side. His pulse thrummed in his ears as he gently brushed a thumb over her temple.
" Obscurus ostentus. "
The core of it was blue, like her magic, then purple, then an angry red around the edges. Like a river of poison, it coiled through her brain, starting in the left side of her prefrontal cortex and bending its way deeper into her mind, like it was trying to burrow itself in her limbic system. Maybe it was.
It was moving slightly, slowly worming its way deeper, but he could barely tell it was making progress given how little it moved. He hoped it lacked energy because she was unconscious.
" When ," Theron began, his voice hoarse and warbled. There was an unsteadiness to him that would likely linger until Tom healed the damage caused by his forced legilimency. "W-when you…cast to sever…don't let go… 'til it's out…you'll kill 'er."
A tremor went through the fingers resting against her head. "Noted."
"And w-w-watch…watch her eyes…can cause lucid dreams…as it goes through memories…d-dangerous."
Tom briefly glanced over his shoulder. "I thought there was hardly any information regarding the extraction process? You told me yesterday that even if you could find the spells, you'd be going in blind."
Theron glared at him, though his eyes were unfocused. "Think I'd…do surgery blind…on your favorite ?"
Tom snorted under his breath, returning his attention to Hermione once more. "Why do you always make me hurt you before telling me why you deserve my thanks, Theron?"
"You're…a cunt."
Tom would've smiled if his blood didn't still feel too thick under his skin. Now or never.
" Obscurus abscisus ."
His magic left his fingertips, gently burrowing through her hair, under skin and through bone. He could feel her pulse and the quiet buzzing of her dozing consciousness as his magic sought out the underdeveloped obscurus.
The process was slow. He was being as careful as possible, as gentle as he could manage. The last thing he wanted was for the obscurus to realize it was in danger. Surely if its environment became vastly different, then it would lash out in some way trying to defend itself. He couldn't let that happen. Not when they were this close. Not when he could finally fix something that never should've happened in the first place.
So Tom clung to a reserve of patience his Knights rarely saw as his magic began to surround the obscurus. The vitals monitoring spell above her bed chimed briefly, but he wasn't willing to risk glancing up.
"It's just her temperature rising, but you already saw the fever starting," Abraxas told him. "I'm keeping an eye on it. She's only a bit warm right now."
Tom would thank him later.
The blue, purple, reddish tendril slowly obeyed his gentle pull as sweat began to prickle above his brows. Tom felt like he'd be trapped in a balancing act of patience and meticulous focus until New Year's.
He felt the shift in her mind when she started to dream, the obscurus playing through the same memories it had been growing out of for months — years . First the childhood memories of trying to repress her power so her parents wouldn't worry or be afraid. Then as she grew, as her magic matured, repressing became an unconscious habit, and began to coincide with her attempts to reign in the parts of her personality that got her ridiculed.
With the obscurus gone, he could give her ways to flex all the extra magic she'd been denying herself to survive.
Would his younger self react differently in the coming months with her power easier to sense? Would his memories of tripping, stumbling, crashing in love with her rewrite themselves too, or remain the same?
A ripple of almost awareness ran through her, slowing his barely-there momentum to a halt. In all, the unformed obscurus was perhaps ten inches long if stretched out. It looked smaller bunched up inside her head, curving and bending through her memories, so the few inches he'd pulled free made his stomach twist with unease.
The damage this one, thin parasite had done to her…
He slowly crouched down so he could watch her face as he kept his fingers pinched in the air, millimeters from the parasite's tail. Despite the stall, he didn't ease his pull. He was terrified of losing progress — of failure.
Her eyes fluttered open, but just like with legilimency, he could see that she wasn't fully conscious or aware, even if a wave of bittersweet recognition coursed through her when her eyes opened and met his.
The familiar, rich brown tones he knew were tainted with red and a bruised shade of purple, with the odd flicker of brilliant azure blue. Somewhere near its deepest point, a branch of the obscurus's winding form had to be connected to her optic system. Which made sense, he supposed. It was feeding off her perception. What quicker way for it to grow than to experience her heartaches and disappointments in real-time as she did?
"You're alright, Dove," he said softly. "You're still asleep and you're safe. I have you."
He saw, as her thoughts raced down two pathways, why the obscurus had to leave her today. Every time something negative happened on this side of time, she further convinced herself that those things only happened because he didn't match her level of emotional attachment. That the bad things that happened were a result of their incompatibility as friends, never mind what she considered a nonexistent potential for more , else he surely wouldn't be able to let such awfulness keep happening.
And of course, this new, painfully incorrect train of thought was a direct result of repeated dementor exposure. Because why would he let her get saved belatedly if he knew she'd be in danger? Why not save her sooner? Why save her at all?
The labels of 'Tool' and 'Future Best Friend' were at war in her mind, in her perception of her worth to him.
"Dove…" he said tightly. "None of those thoughts now. I've told you that everything in my power to do, I will do. I hate seeing you hurt."
Her eyes, full already of the wrong colors, flickered blue even though she wasn't really seeing or hearing him.
He blinked, a theory clicking together as the obscurus eased out of her head another inch.
Her magic was blue at her core. It was fighting for control of her eyes with the reds and purples. Her magic was rising up to help. But how did it know the parasite born from her magic was bad?
"Oh I'm an idiot," he murmured, unable to occlude well enough to prevent the stinging in his eyes. She needed to see his expressions anyway, even if his younger self would be woefully confused by the events taking place. "Her magic is following mine."
"How so?" Flynn asked softly.
Tom followed the pathway with the obscurus through her mind, through every memory it wove inside of. All of it added up to one simple truth: She loved him as much as she was emotionally capable of loving anyone. And that love was markedly different from how she loved her other dearest friends.
But the fact that she loved him at all, especially this early on, floored him. The attachment and attraction he knew about, but this...unconditional and unwavering devotion existed in her third year? So long before he even attempted to deserve it?
"The parselmouth ritual told our magics that the other was, in essence, a member of our family. Not in any specific way like the familial binding rites, but enough that her magic is trusting mine to do this instead of fighting to protect what her entire being thinks is just another piece of her," he explained slowly. The obscurus gave another half inch. "That's why Theron couldn't even see it."
The little glimpses of blue behind her eyes, like fire visible through a curtain of water, continued to make his eyes burn. In her sleeping mind, her dreams danced through the memories of him touched by the obscurus, halting his progress again.
"Enough of that," he said softly. With great care, he reached for his wand, and slowly went through the process of extracting the first innocuous memory he could think of. With his grip on the obscurus still secure, he copied the silvery tendril, putting the original back in his head. "How about a happier dream, Dove?"
It was a short, innocent memory. He knew that once Hermione was safe and the terror wore off, his past self would attempt to cast a patronus, only to find its shape changed from a basilisk to a fox. He never had pinpointed the exact moment between that day and the day he'd taught her the charm when his happiest memory had changed, but he supposed it didn't matter. He hadn't admitted to Hermione that his patronus matched her fiendfyre for quite some time, but when he finally did, her patronus was different as well.
Hermione's eyes glowed with a sudden flash of blue that turned brilliant silver as his thoughts, imbued with his magical signature, meshed with her magic.
Bittersweet nights in the Room were replaced by one warm, gray day in a time-neutral pocket of space by the lake that the boys had helped him create. She stood with him, sleep-deprived and worn out, but not much older than she was now, and Tom struggled with how to reveal the thing he wanted to show her.
His patronus, playful and energetic as she always was, sat surprisingly still atop the water once summoned, while Tom tried to hide his shaking hands by lowering his wand. Hermione had been quiet for a moment before silently casting her own patronus.
Her fox was a bit larger, calmer, male . His vixen patronus leapt up to snuggle and twist around her tod. The two foxes gave chase after a moment, bounding on the water's surface as they played. When Tom took her hand that day, she let him hold it.
The red and purple were burned out of her eyes by the silver glow, which raced deeper into her mind, following the taint back to its source as her eyes drifted shut once more.
Tom held his breath. The silver of their combined magic connected with the obscurus and paralyzed it, ceasing all of its squirming between memories as their magic finished encasing the body of the parasite.
He tugged his fingers. The obscurus slipped from her head with ease.
"Malfoy," he said. His cheeks were wet but he didn't care. "Can you contain it?"
"Yeah, mate. Birdie gave me a few pointers."
Flynn and Abraxas came closer to her bed, the latter with a glass orb in hand that immediately reminded Tom of the Hall of Prophecy. At Abraxas's urging, Tom guided the obscurus into the glass, coiling it around itself as the blue in its coloring faded. Without a direct connection to her magic, the obscurus was quickly becoming bright red.
Abraxas was whispering incantations under his breath, surrounding the glass ball in a myriad of colors that wove together into a series of chains. As they imbued into the glass, they left an imprint of their shape on the orb's surface.
"Don't freak out too much," Abraxas said.
Tom's brows pulled together, a question dying on his lips as the obscurus darkened to an inky black and started to thrash violently in its new confinement. Tom flinched a half-step closer to Hermione's bed, his wand in hand, summoned by reflex.
"I'd prefer that thing was as far away from her as possible if it's all the same to you," Tom said roughly. His chin itched with drying tears that he finally reached up to wipe away. "If I give you my main wand, can you take it to the office and find somewhere safe to tuck it away until we can deal with it properly?"
Abraxas nodded, eyeing the trapped obscurus warily. "Birdie mentioned that something we have tucked away is capable of keeping it in an observable state if we wanted to research it. But I'll still need your wand since I need to go to the office to get to it. You have your secondary?"
Tom flipped his wand over, offering its handle to Abraxas. "Always. Now get it the fuck away from her please ."
"Gladly."
Abraxas left the room, headed for the nearest Floo or apparition point. Flynn sighed and cast a tired look down at Theron's pitiful form on the floor.
"Suppose I'll take this one to his nurses, shall I?" he said dryly.
Tom nodded, ignoring the faint flutter of guilt when Flynn helped Theron stand. The bellend absolutely deserved the retribution he'd received, but in hindsight, Tom could've been a smidge gentler with his legilimency.
He summoned the chair in the corner to Hermione's bedside, sinking into it with a sigh.
It was too late to change anything now.
His skin was still buzzing with tension that wouldn't go away. Despite knowing his younger self was still aware of his every move, Tom ran a shaking hand through his hair. He felt like he'd been awake for a week, felt almost as exhausted as he had the first few years of their separation, even. A sentiment echoed by Flynn's hard sigh when he returned to the room a few moments later.
"Is this shite over yet?" Flynn asked.
"No," Tom muttered. "It's essentially just begun. Don't remind me. She's only fourteen."
"Closer to done than not," Flynn said softly. "Four more years. Not forty ."
Tom shrugged. "These last few years have almost felt longer than the beginning if I'm honest."
"Well, Theron said he had something for you in that regard once his head isn't on fire and he can stand," Flynn said.
"Poison?" Tom guessed dryly.
Flynn snorted. "He said something to the effect of ' If he'd talked to us then he'd know we all got notes from the crazy bint' ."
Tom hummed. "Coward. Calling her names where I can't hex him for it. What'd she give him?"
"Potion recipe," Flynn said. "Supposed to help with…certain side effects."
Tom squinted up at him, wondering if he meant the side effects of an incomplete marriage bond. "She sent a potion recipe back in time?"
Flynn shrugged. "Guess she's not the only one who's supposed to suffer less this time around. You'll have to ask Theron."
Tom glanced at Hermione, who was still sleeping for the time being. Her temperature was back to normal and she appeared to be sleeping peacefully. He could, for a few minutes, breathe easier again.
A/N: :) I finished 57 and I'm bored as all hell today so...hi again friends. Thank you for all the kind words and the warm welcome back. I have exactly one sentence written in 58, so no clue how well its gonna work with me, but it's Tom so...I'm prepared for the worst and hoping for the best.
Now we know what Grown-up/Future Hermione wanted changed, we just aren't really sure why, are we? I wonder what happened that was so terrible she was willing to risk their whole universe to change it... hm... ;) xoxoxo