Hermione had made bad decisions before. She had made several very bad ones by this point, really, not the least of which had been messing up her magic by trying to force her period to come early. It was only because she'd managed to stabilize her magic through a coven bond that she wasn't going crazy, and she was well aware of it – her core still wobbled off-balance at times, in a way that would never be fixed.
Her hands and arms were another scar left behind of an impulsive decision. Her deadened nerves didn't really affect her life, not really, but sometimes when she was doing very precise work, like in Potions or Charms, little blackened bolts of lightning would appear on the skin of her hands, and she'd get shooting, aching pains up her hands and arms. She mostly gritted her teeth and worked through it, but the nerve damage lingered as a reminder not to be too hasty or grab onto magic too powerful for her to properly channel and use.
Hermione was trying to get better at decision-making. She really was. But when she felt particularly passionate about something, it was hard to reflect on what she wanted to do with caution, when instead she just wanted to go out and do the thing.
So this time, with her course of action already decided, Hermione tried to reverse-engineer the situation backwards from the intended outcome and result, in an effort to make it as safe as possible.
Even though there was really no 'safe' way to try and control a fire elemental.
Snape had been present and controlling the ritual where she'd assimilated an air elemental, as well as the ritual where she'd gained mastery over an earth one as well. Hermione didn't think Snape would take kindly to being asked to help her with this ritual, especially after he learned why she wanted it so badly. Hermione knew she needed to pull someone else in to perform the ritual for her, someone she could trust to say nothing and never betray her to anyone.
Tom Riddle was drafted into that role.
He had volunteered with a glint in his eyes, saying he could guide the ritual if Hermione charged the diary regularly enough with her magic leading up to it. Hermione knew that Tom could and would do it, and he do it well in an attempt to regain her trust. She also knew that even if he had the impulse to purposefully sabotage it, he could never – the risk of her surviving and destroying the diary in revenge was too great.
She didn't like it, but she also didn't really want anyone else involved.
And so she had been draining her magic into the diary each night for weeks, in preparation for this ritual.
Hermione picked a field that was wide open and deserted to do the ritual on, one heavily laden with snow. She figured if the fire elemental did go out of control, it'd be better to have it melt snow than catch buildings on fire. That was a good way to reduce the risk of her plan, right?
It was probably still a bad decision to do this. But at least she'd made it less of a bad decision.
And she was determined to get it done.
Tom Riddle stood by quietly as Hermione melted a ritual circle in the snow, followed by tracing it with moonstones that glittered in the faint moonlight. The pile of fire opals she put in the center shone in a very different way, and Tom's eyes were sharp.
"Pricey ritual components, Hermione," he murmured. "Hopefully they aren't destroyed…"
"They haven't been in any others of these rituals," Hermione told him. "These had better not be either – if this works, and it's not too bad, then I might want to do this with my coven someday."
"Do you think they'd go along with that?" Tom quirked an eyebrow. "I thought you didn't want them casting Dark magic."
"Shut up." Hermione scowled at him. "And there might be other effects of this. What if it means you can conjure fire with your hand on a whim? Or throw fireballs? Or if it makes you immune to getting burned?"
Tom's smirk was one of dark amusement and satisfaction. "I suppose we shall see."
Snow was slowly drifting through the dark sky, settling onto the snow already on the ground, but not enough to obstruct her ritual lines. Once everything was ready, Hermione took a deep breath to steady herself.
"I'm going to use the original Latin," Tom warned her. "I understand you're comfortable revising rituals, but I'd really rather not. Got it?"
"That's fine," Hermione said. "Better for you to do it in a way you're familiar with, than risk something going wrong because you're not."
Tom's eyes were sharp on her. "Are you ready?"
Hermione took a long, deep breath and settled into her magic. "Ready."
Tom's eyes gleamed. "Then we will begin."
Hermione had picked the winter solstice as the day to do this to make it easier. Fire was the weakest on the winter solstice, so hopefully the elemental would be easier to subdue on this day than it would be on any other. Tom stood straddling two of the points of the triangle of the ritual circle while Hermione stood at the other one, preparing herself. After nodding to her, Tom closed his eyes, drew a symbol in the air with his hands, and began to chant.
She didn't know what he was chanting – she didn't know Latin, after all – but the feeling of magic surrounding her and swelling in the circle was familiar to her. Flickers of fire began to flame and disappear in the air over the circle, brilliant orange ribbons lighting up the night for a scant second as the moonstones began to glow.
There was a crackling from the center of the circle, growing and growing, the flickers of fire becoming more and more frequent, the heat lighting up Hermione's face and melting the nearby snow. The flickers of fire began to coalesce into a being, a tiny dragon made of fire, almost, swirling in the air above the snow, only no, there were no wings, it couldn't be a dragon—
Salamander, her mind reminded her helpfully. Fire elemental. Very aggressive.
Tom's chanting got louder, the crackling of the fire in the center of the circle intensified, and Hermione braced herself.
A moment later, the fire creature disappeared inside of her, and Hermione fell to her knees, screaming.
Pain like she'd never felt before bloomed through her body, as if she were being burned alive from the inside. Her lungs were superheated, the very air she was breathing so hot she thought she could feel her throat start to burn and peel, and her blood felt like it was on fire, agony coursing through her veins as the fire elemental lit her body aflame. Hermione screamed, her eyes clenched tightly shut, and she fought to grab her magic and force the salamander inside.
The fire elemental was having none of it. It found her innards, and suddenly her kidneys and womb exploded with pain – it felt like there was a rock of solid fire burning up inside of her, this was how it ended, this was how she would die—
Hermione grabbed at her magic, desperate, and threw everything she had at the fire creature tearing through her.
Air was no help, feeding the fire elemental even more, but the earth elemental within her, the helpful, protective Earth – a feeling of solidness and protectiveness surged through her magic, and Hermione could feel the fire elemental begin to panic and struggle as it was suffocated under what felt like dirt filling up her chest.
Go out, Hermione thought desperately, gritting her teeth and unable to breathe. Come on, please, go out…
The fire elemental hung on, screaming with its remaining strength, sending ribbons of fire out into her veins that Hermione had to ignore, though her eyes streamed with tears from the pain of it all. Inch by inch, the earth and her magic slowly submerged the fire elemental into her core, and suddenly Hermione felt it give, the elemental assimilating into her core as part of her magic as she stumbled forward, sucking in a deep breathe. Feeling faint, she could now feel a bright burning presence within her that no longer meant her harm, nestled into her magic near the air and earth.
She had done it. And she was still breathing, and it still hurt – which meant she was still alive.
Satisfied she had done what she needed to do, Hermione toppled over into the snow.
"Are you ready to wake up yet?"
Hermione came to slowly, blinking up at Tom Riddle, who was looking down at her with a frown. There was an odd smell hanging in the air.
"Aahhh… maybe?" Hermione ventured. She shifted and winced, a hand coming to hold her head. "I hurt…"
"I'm not surprised," Tom said conversationally. "Your hair was on fire."
Hermione sat up abruptly, her eyes going wide. "What?"
Her hands went to her hair immediately, running through it. Sure enough, her hair was singed, distinctly shorter and ragged in some places at the ends, smelling of burnt hair and ash. Tom's eyes glittered.
"You're lucky it was snowing," he told her. "Your scalp was damp from the melting snow. And the rest went out when you fell into the snowbank…"
"How long?" Hermione demanded, her voice hoarse. "How long was my head on fire?"
Tom shrugged.
"Not long," he said. "Seconds. It happened toward the end, I think. It was all over before I could think of what to do."
Hermione looked at her burnt ends again, dismayed.
"There's no way my parents aren't going to notice this," she groaned. "This was supposed to be a secret ritual – I didn't want anyone knowing that I'd done anything special."
Tom smirked.
"Be glad that's all you ended up with," he remarked. "For a while there, I thought your lungs were going to explode."
Hermione shuddered, remembering the horrific pain of air catching fire inside of her and burning her from the inside out. Her organs exploding had seemed a frighteningly realistic possibility.
"Fair point," she said weakly.
Tom shot her a devious look.
"So?" he said pointedly. "Did it work? What can you do?"
Hermione blinked. She slowly tied her hair back (out of sight, out of mind, she told herself firmly) and breathed deeply, reaching inside of herself.
The air elemental inside of her always seemed playful, and the earth one always seemed solid, steady, and gently amused. The new one, the fire elemental inside of her – it was not passive or playful. It burned steadily, feeling determined and passionate and alive.
"It's not… it's not angry…" Hermione said, faltering for words. "But it feels like it could get angry at any moment…"
"What can your magic do with it?" Tom pushed. "Try."
Obliging, Hermione reached for the fire elemental within her core, letting her magic transform through it. Fire magic burned at her fingertips, and Hermione found she could hold a handful of flames easily, a fireball conjured seemingly from nowhere just by her will. The flames flickered up the sides of the ball, but her hand remained unburned.
"Oh, excellent," Hermione said, grinning. "I wonder…"
She tried to throw the fireball, only to have it dissipate into flickers of flame that fell to the earth shortly after hurling it.
"Drat!"
"Try again," Tom advised, watching with cunning eyes. "If you focus on keeping the magic whole, embodying it with purpose and identity…"
It took several tries, but sure enough, Hermione was soon throwing fireballs. They didn't go very far, but that was more a product of her inability to throw things very far than an inability of her magic.
"That's wicked, though," Hermione breathed. "Fireballs! Oh, I wish I could show Fleur! Veela can—"
"Conjure a fire with your wand, and pass your hand through it," Tom suggested, eyes glinting. "Let's see if you're immune to all burns."
Hermione was reminded of the hedgewitches tossing feverfew into the air and reciting a ditty to protect from fire as she summoned small twigs to her, drying them as best she could before she made a small fire in the middle of where her ritual circle had stood.
"This is either going to be brilliant and work, or really, really hurt," Hermione said, hesitating. "I didn't bring burn cream."
Tom's eyes gleamed. "Just do it, Hermione."
Wrenching her face up in anticipation of pain, Hermione thrust her hand into the flames.
The fire was hot and burned, the flames tickling her, but to her astonishment, even though she could feel the heat of them, her skin didn't burn. The fire elemental inside of her was flickering and flaring, and Hermione traced the path of her magic in astonishment, realizing that a thin layer of magic was protecting her skin, and that the flames were somehow feeding the fire elemental inside of her instead.
"It works," she breathed, eyes wide. "Merlin and Morgana alive, it works."
She pushed more of her arm into the flame carefully, and though it was incredibly uncomfortable and hot, she continued to not burn. The fire elemental inside of her was getting antsy, though, flickering and flaring more sharply, and Hermione finally pulled her arm and hand from the flames.
"I think it protects me from fire, but only to an extent," Hermione summarized, looking up at Tom. "From sudden burns and flares, I'm probably fine. But if I were being burned alive… I think the elemental would get overloaded and I'd still burn and die."
"You could use your magic while the elemental sucks in the energy from the flames," Tom suggested. "It would give it more room to take in more."
"I'm not actually worried about being burned alive," Hermione snapped, getting to her feet and dusting the snow from her robes. "It was just an explanation of the limits."
Tom raised an eyebrow, smirking. "If you say so."
Hermione kicked snow over the small fire she had made, stomping on it with wet boots and firmly putting it out.
"My parents are going to murder me," she sighed. "I'll have to figure out something to do with my hair before they get home from work tomorrow."
"Oh no, poor you," Tom said, his tone sickeningly sympathetic, mocking. "To have your hair burned…"
Hermione ignored his jeers.
"Still!" she said brightly. "This definitely helps me with control of fire and fire magic, though! That's definitely progress, right?"
Tom raised an eyebrow. "Do you want to find out?"
"Not tonight; I'm exhausted," Hermione said quickly. She paused. "But… back at Hogwarts. In the Chamber. I can… I can practice there."
Tom's eyes glittered in the night.
"I can hardly wait, Hermione," he said softly. "I can hardly wait."