A/N: A personal appeal...
My employer has become gradually more and more abusive over the past six months. There's been a significant turn for the worse recently, and it's reached a point where I can no longer keep both this job and my mental health.
I work as a certified Project Manager in software. I specialize in Release Management, Release Readiness, SDLC, Jira, and the intersection of waterfall and Agile. My resume can speak for itself - I just need to get it in front of people to read it.
If anyone has any power or influence with hiring or recruitment that may be able to help, please reach out to me via PM. I would be forever indebted to anyone able to help me safely escape this situation and find a new job.
The celebration began to wrap up around eleven, with the Blackwell students all-too-aware of midnight approaching, as they had to jump a line back to their school.
"Ol' Iron Man is never gonna believe this," Andy said, shaking his head and grinning. "He used to talk about stories he'd heard of a secret society of sorcerers. I don't think even he imagined this."
Everybody said their good-byes, promising to meet again soon. The hedges too began to leave and head home, leaving the Shadows to clean up from the ritual. Draco and Harry were both somewhat lost on what to do with the remains of the goat.
"Do we keep the horns?" Harry wondered aloud. "We're probably supposed to use the entire thing."
"Don't be ridiculous," Draco scoffed. "Not everything. We're not using the bones either, Potter."
"The hedges took the bones with them," Harry objected. "To make bone broth with, they said. The horns and the hooves are all we have left." He paused. "I'm surprised the horns weren't attached to the skull."
"You're friends with the Weasley Twins, yeah?" Draco said, glancing at him sideways. He smirked. "Bet they could put weird horns and hooves to good use."
"You know…" Harry said thoughtfully, starting to grin back. "I bet they could."
As people began vanishing, hopping to Hogwarts to take things back, Blaise approached Hermione, both of them looking out over the remnants of the celebration.
"How do you want to do this?" Blaise asked her quietly. "The equinox is almost over, so I'm presuming you'll Time-Turn back before doing this with Tom." He looked at her sideways. "Do you want anyone there with you?"
Hermione bit her lip.
"I don't, but I probably should have someone there," she admitted.
"Okay," Blaise said. "How many people do you think you can Time-Turn at a time?"
Hermione pulled the Time-Turner from her robes, looking at the chain.
"Maybe three?" she hazarded a guess. "Me and two others, if we all stood very close together."
"So there's you and me, so that's two," Blaise said, not leaving room for discussion on the matter. "Who do you want to be the third? Susan? Luna?"
Hermione considered.
"As much as I'd prefer someone else from the coven," she began, reluctant, "Theo would probably be the smartest choice."
Blaise's eyebrows rose. "Really?"
Hermione nodded. "He has the most experience with Dark magic out of any of us—"
"I sincerely doubt that at this point," Blaise cut in, scoffing and folding his arms.
"—and if something goes horribly wrong, he's the most likely to know what to do about it," Hermione finished. She gave Blaise a pointed look. "Do you have a problem with Theo coming along?"
Blaise made a face.
"No?" he said. "He just—he makes little remarks sometimes, things that annoy me. No matter. Here—hey, Nott!"
Theo turned towards them, and quickly Theo was up to speed and had agreed to come along.
"A Time-Turner?" he murmured, his eyes coveting the tiny hourglass on her chain. "I've always wanted to try one of these…"
After everyone said their good-byes and headed back to Hogwarts, Hermione hopped the line she'd created further north to somewhere else in Exmoor, another empty plain. A pulse of her magic through the pendants gave Blaise and Theo a location to lock onto, and they appeared next to her a moment later, though Theo reeled and looked decidedly green.
"You need to practice more," Blaise informed him, and Theo shot him a venomous look.
"Some of us actually care about our marks, Zabini," he spat.
Blaise shrugged, carefree and grinning. "There are more important things than school."
"Enough. Come on," Hermione instructed, shaking out her Time-Turner. "We're going to have to stand very close to each other – I think the only way this is going to work is if we're all back-to-back-to-back. I'll hold the Time-Turner, and you two will have to link the clasp again." She looked at them both. "Got it?"
There was a bit of a scuffle as everyone got into position, Blaise and Theo crowding against Hermione, everybody bumping into each other. The golden chain was pulled horribly taut across Hermione's throat, but there was nothing to be done about it. Blaise and Theo argued and hissed with each other as they fiddled with the clasp, the chain tight around their necks too, and when there was finally a triumphant "aha!", Hermione let out a breath of relief.
"Everybody ready?" she asked. "Here we go…"
She turned the hourglass over six times, and the area around them blurred, out of focus. Animals darted by, hopping backwards across the plains while the sun wound itself back up into the sky. When it was finished, Blaise and Theo couldn't take the chain off of them fast enough, and it was with relief Hermione reclasped it behind her own neck, a thin red line across her throat from where it had been pulled taut.
"So," Blaise said, flopping onto the ground. He looked at Hermione. "What's the plan?"
Tom would be pulled from the diary, Hermione explained, and given time to meditate and dwell. He would need to be mentally and emotionally prepared to attempt reintegration, she emphasized, and none of them really knew what was about to happen.
"Only genuine regret and remorse will undo this," Hermione emphasized. "Apparently the pain of it can destroy you."
Theo snorted. "Is Tom even capable of remorse?"
"Well—" Blaise said, shrugging "—I guess we'll find out."
Hermione took the diary out of her bag and put it on the ground. Taking a deep breath, she reached into it with her magic and felt Tom catch hold of her. She imagined it like a hand lost in a dark pit reaching up and grabbing hers, her magic slowly pulling him up and out of a pit.
Tom emerged from the diary slowly, Hermione taking care to focus on all the parts of a body as she pulled him free. She didn't know what all he was likely to need for this exercise, but she wanted him as well-equipped as possible.
Once he was whole, Tom took a deep breath, nodding to them all.
"I presume it's the equinox?" he asked.
"It is," Hermione confirmed. "Are you ready?"
Tom's lips formed a wry smile. "Does it matter?"
They all sat down on the ground. There was an hour or so until sunset would start, the perfect balance of day and night, light and dark.
"Is that what we want?" Blaise asked, curious. "If we want to undo Dark magic, shouldn't this be done at high noon when it's the most Light?"
"It's not about the physical light or dark," Hermione tried to explain. "It's about the balance, the liminality of the space between day and night. That thinning of veils and balances is what will help Tom, I think. Not actually anything to do with Light and Dark."
Blaise and Theo exchanged a look with each other, but Hermione ignored them, choosing to focus on Tom instead.
"You've read the same books I have, I take it," she said quietly, "so all I can say here is that you've got to feel genuine regret and remorse for what you've done. Focus on those emotions and let them guide you, I guess, as you reach out to the other horcrux."
"I don't even know what act of violence created the other horcrux, Hermione," Tom said, his eyes dark. "Can one truly regret without specifics? And if I do, will I end up regretting my own existence and undoing myself?"
"The other horcrux won't be regretting anything, so I doubt it," Hermione said firmly.
"Do we even know if this is possible without him having a body?" Theo asked. "His body now – that's a magical construct, isn't it? He doesn't even have his own magic."
Hermione ignored Theo.
"If you have to, Tom," she said, holding his eyes, "pull on my magic through the diary, and I'll feed you more."
"Hermione!" Blaise protested.
"You can hold me back," Hermione promised Blaise. "With our bond – I'm sure you can tether me here, so I don't get pulled into the diary. But this is a fight for his soul, and with stakes so high…" She trailed off, uncomfortable. "Well. We all want Tom to have the best possible chance."
She could feel Tom's gaze boring into the side of her head, which she did her best to ignore. Tom didn't need to be feeling emotions about someone risking themselves to help him, now – he needed to only focus on his remorse. And this shouldn't be news to him, really, anyway – she'd trusted her life to him at her siege on Azkaban, hadn't she?
They all settled down, meditating on their magic. Tom was perfectly still, his eyes closed and his breathing even, and Hermione was impressed by his ability to immediately focus so intensely. Theo complained about the pointlessness of them also meditating, annoying Hermione. She snapped at him about stretching his core and practicing expanding his magical reserves, which seemed to catch Theo's attention and interest. He seemed to be trying to stretch his magical container by pulling in as much ley line energy as he could, holding it, and then letting it flow back into the line. Hermione didn't know if that would work, but he was finally being quiet now, so she wasn't about to stop him.
Blaise was also meditating, but with his eyes open, his glittering gaze fixed on her. He didn't say anything, and he didn't ask anything, but Hermione suspected he was focusing his own magic on shoring up the connection between them so he could hold her back if she got pulled in too far.
Hermione herself just focused on her own magical core spinning and replenishing itself as she continued to feed bits of magic into the diary, which sat nestled in her lap.
When the sun began to set, Hermione spoke. "It's time."
They all sat in a diamond, and Hermione withdrew a dark black bag from her pack.
"Are you ready, Tom?" she asked.
Tom nodded. "Go ahead."
Hermione dumped the tarnished crown from the bag onto the ground. The sapphires flashed once, unnaturally, but nothing happened.
Everybody looked at Tom, who took a deep breath, closed his eyes, carefully picked up the crown, and set it on his head.
There was a silent, heavy tension filling the diamond as they watched Tom, who didn't move. Hermione's eyes darted to Theo's and Blaise's, both of whom were looking at each other to her to Tom and back.
"Is it working?" Blaise finally asked, his voice a whisper.
"I have no idea," Hermione hissed. "How am I supposed to know if a horcrux fight is audible or visible or not?"
"Why are we whispering?" Theo wanted to know.
"I can hear you, you know."
Tom's voice startled Hermione so badly she almost fell over, and when she'd regained her balance, Tom was looking at them all, a dirty crown sitting on his head.
"Is… did you win?" she ventured, her mouth dry.
"I didn't get a chance," Tom said. "This horcrux—I'm not in a real body. It's not trying to possess me."
There was a tense pause.
"But – the ring tried to get you, though," Blaise protested. "When we were at—"
"The ring had a necrotic curse laid upon it," Tom said, his lips quirking up. "All this diadem has is a mild compulsion charm to put it on. But the ring didn't try to possess me either, when I put it on – just the compulsion charm and necrosis charm."
"So… that's it?" Theo asked. "Without a body, we can't do anything about this?"
"I guess not," Tom said with a sigh, pulling the crown from his head and tossing it to the ground. "I really thought this would work, you know. But even like this, I'm not really a person, am I? I'm just a diary. And if you put a tiara on top of a diary, they're not exactly going to interact."
"Is a body the next step, then?" Theo asked, frowning.
"Hermione doesn't like that idea," Blaise said, glancing sideways at Hermione, who was still quiet. "She came up with a way to make one, though – one that would actually be his body, not just a simulacrum grown from mud or whatever – but the idea was that Tom would prove he's not still ruthlessly evil before we gave him a body, and that he'd do that by reuniting the horcruxes, proving genuine remorse."
"Well, I can't," Tom said plaintively. "What now?"
Theo started asking questions about horcrux destruction, which Tom answered very sharply and defensively, but Hermione had stopped listening, looking at the diary that lay on her lap.
If Tom really couldn't reunite with the horcruxes without having a body as a battle ground…
Millie had been possessed by the tiara horcrux, she remembered. Ginny had been possessed by Tom before, too. Tom had even tried to possess her, Hermione reflected, but he hadn't been able to cross the river of fire in her mindscape. Millie had also done the Occlumency ritual, though – so was it just because Hermione had control of her own mindscape that she'd been able to resist the possession? While none of the others would be able to do what she could?
Well, then…
Mentally turning inward and visualizing the land of fire, Hermione imagined herself building a bridge over the river of lava, lugging rocks made of her magic and will slowly into place. When she was almost done, Tom abruptly cut himself off in the middle of a sentence and turned to look at her wildly.
"Hermione?" His tone of voice sounded strained, tense. "Hermione, what are you doing?"
"Something incredibly stupid," Hermione said, tugging her coven ring from her finger and setting it on the ground between her and Blaise before taking Blaise's hand. "Keep ahold of me, Blaise, okay? Don't let go."
"Hermione?" Blaise's voice came out almost panicked. "No—Hermione—what are you—?!"
As Hermione mentally lugged the last rock slab into place in her mind, bridging the river of lava, she saw Tom's face react in shock – he could feel it and had realized what she'd done just as she'd done it, and his mouth opened to protest in a panic just as Hermione reached forward.
"Be sure you win, okay, Tom?" she said, giving him a faint smile, before she grabbed the diadem and dropped it directly onto her head.