Author's Note:
To evening's shore: Since you're a guest, I can only reply to your review here. First, thank you for leaving a thoughtful review—this makes you already a cut above the average reviewer. So, you were "wondering why Tom didn't require an Unbreakable Vow for the exchange"? Well, funny you should mention that, because it's as if you read my plans for this chapter—you're 80% there.
To all the guests who reviewed: thank you for the reviews! This is especially true for the ones being more specific about why you feel my character interpretation of Hermione or Tom worked. Feedback helps improve the writer, or at the very least assure them that they're on the right track.
So, I was still hacking through a critical scene in this chapter when I saw that it kept getting longer and longer. This is why I decided to just split it into two. Then, I realised that it meant I can certainly upload this one this week, even if the second part isn't done yet.
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07 Agreements: Trust or Lack Thereof I
In which Hermione manages to escape to the library but doesn't quite get the peace she was looking for. Tom Riddle does not actually like riddles. Hermione answers some random questions about the future.
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Once they reached the library, Hermione had carried several books with her and Tom took one or two for his own perusal too. He saw her lean against a bookshelf once, and she'd even hung onto him a few times when she felt her limbs weakening. He did not complain, even if she would swear that he regarded her with the same attention to detail that Charles Darwin gave to a new finch species—right up to the point where he might even be considering to preserve her carcass as an interesting specimen, complete with an ankle tag.
She ignored it since it wasn't as if he meant to act upon it.
Frankly, she had gotten really good at ignoring anything short of outright physical or mental attacks after she constructed and cast the howler screening charm at her apartment and office.
Where an actual concerned prefect would've asked her if she wanted to go back, and perhaps ask her if she wasn't too tired already, he had simply watched her struggles with an even composure.
There was not an inch of sympathy in it. Surprisingly, it suited Hermione just fine.
She was tired of constantly being asked about how she was doing whenever one of the professors happened to drop in, or even from Nurse Edelstein herself. The discussions she entered with them were nice, goodness knows she'd go spare from the boredom otherwise, but she could do without the almost-smothering concerned looks.
For all the holes in her memories, her gut feeling told her that she'd survived worse.
This was how they found themselves in one of the private study carrels in the library, sitting at right angles to each other. Hermione lowered the book she was reading to give Tom a flat stare.
"Would you please stop that?"
"Stop what?"
He had the gall to seem mildly befuddled.
"You've been staring at me for a while whenever you think I'm not looking. Don't say you don't, since I know what I see. Since I'd rather cut to the chase, you can just ask me whatever's on your mind right now. Go on."
Hermione might've taken the bait if she was less experienced—like, say, her exposure to the wizarding world had only been the idealistic Hogwarts. She had found out that the real world was filled with people with murky motivations and accepting things at face value did not serve her well.
("Whoever told you that you could learn politics from a book needs to get Avada-ed. Yes, this applies to office politics too, Granger." Draco said it in exasperation. Another flash of memory that she could not place. She recognised the harried look in his face and hers from the reflection at Florean Fortescue's window—they'd both had only entered the Ministry recently, both of them still overworked junior peons.)
His curiosity was clearly larger than the consideration to act normal.
"You've expressed your interest in assisting me." he said.
"You didn't suddenly forget the deal we agreed to, did you?" She raised one eyebrow.
"Just like that."
It was a simple statement, but a hundred questions lurked behind it. His eyes as fathomless and cold as the polar seas and he had a predatory stillness to him that most people could only aspire to. He did not fidget or tap his foot. A snake in the grass, she thought. How fitting.
"Well, I chose so. Why shouldn't I?" she asked.
"It seems too easy."
"It's the last thing from easy," she disagreed. "Any agreement that lasts beyond a single goal or a simple task is one that is constantly renegotiated whether implicitly or explicitly, simply because the future is never that predictable."
"True," he conceded, "and yet you still play me as a fool."
"Oh, trust me, you're one of the very few people I take utterly seriously here. Really, what is your problem?" She had almost thrown her hands in the air at this point. Curse the Slytherins and their paranoia to the depths of Moria.
"If you would swear fealty to me—"
"I am not one of your underlings, Tom, and I'll never be one." She warned.
"Bold words for a half-dead witch." He pointed out.
"Oh, I don't care about death. What do I actually have to lose if I fight you? I can kill you and remove a potential dark lord early if I'm lucky, and if I'm not, perhaps I'll finally see my family and friends from home again if I died. Who knows? The way I see it, I win either way." She smiled, the way her cats bared their canines at overly-confident rodents trying to sneak into the kitchen and steal food.
"Wouldn't you have failed if I lived, then?" he asked. To his credit, she could barely discern his tension in his perfectly-even voice.
She shrugged. "Oh, no, it's just a delay. You heard what I've said, didn't you? You'll get mad and it would make an unexpectedly high number of people to band together and take you out. Sooner or later, you'd die an ignoble death all the same if you keep on your current path. Right now, your death and fall is just a matter of when, not if."
"If I were to bind you with blood, we would have already dispensed with these tiring arguments," he murmured.
Most would think he was only referring to blood oaths, but her memories provided a darker meaning; the use of blood magic to subjugate her will under his. It was less powerful than an Imperius as you could only define the terms at the beginning and it could not be too general, yet it was harder to detect.
One of the often-confiscated heirlooms by the Aurors that get handed off to the Unspeakables is the wedding ring that binds the wearer under anyone who wore the other ring. Some of those rings have teeth on the inside.
Their gazes locked against each other, appraising each other—his, calmly observant while hers was a stern warning, telling him that she knew exactly what he was referring to.
The only reason peace was kept was because they could see each other's hands on the table.
For now.
She was frank with her answer. "As if I would ever agree to enchain myself to someone else. Are you going to fight me now? If you are, it would be to the death."
Hermione herself had doubts about her ability to kill in cold blood, but he didn't need to know. There was also a good chance that her survival instinct would win out once he started sending dark curses and hexes in her direction.
His lips curved upwards without a concern.
She smiled back just as easily even if it didn't reach her eyes.
There was a reason that Harry (and her, and a couple of others) signed an open letter to be circulated in their office—under no reason should any of the people who signed it should be given a surprise birthday party, or a surprise event anything. Ron had blown a poor delivery boy through his apartment door and down the hall once because his then-girlfriend was foolish enough to send him a surprise gift by giving the deliverer access to his apartment. Was it a surprise that he thought it was an intruder?
(And I thought he couldn't have done worse than Lavender, a mature voice mused in her head, a rapidly-vanishing figment.)
She could feel magic gathering around him as the intent to cast was probably at the forefront of his mind right now. She didn't blink or look away but merely did the same, her fingertips sliding against her wand point. Several spells that would work in closed areas came to mind—she had to take a moment to come up with them since she'd specialised with wide-area spells whenever she supported Harry or Ron's Aurors in the field.
The witch didn't know what convinced him to hold back for now, whether it was how she held up under pressure, or if it was something else of which she had no idea of. When he didn't act rashly in the next minute Hermione huffed, out of both boredom and annoyance.
"Damn it, Riddle! If you want to back out, just say so, and I'll go my own way."
"And then you'll leave me alone?"
"Who said anything about leaving you alone? I'll keep watch—I can't stand actual people-killing and people-torturing dark lords, remember? But I won't interfere in your life otherwise." She made a long exhale yet again before pushing the book she'd been reading forward as she drew back.
"Sheesh, the one time I try to help someone and it blows up completely. Why do I even bother? Really, maybe I should just…"
The brunette witch was murmuring mostly to herself as she stood up, but Tom had stood up just as quickly and barred her path. She only folded her arms in front of her chest and gave him a jaded look.
"Don't leave."
"Is that an order or a request? Because I won't listen to the first, and if it's the second, you're missing a magic word."
"Please."
It was said with completely insincere flatness, but she supposed he never did get enough practice at saying it for real instead of faking it.
"Alright. Talk."
"You can swear an oath not to reveal my secrets."
She didn't hold back from the urge to slap her forehead. "And who would decide what is a 'secret' and what is not? Good grief, Tom! What do I get from agreeing to an oath that binding? You're not gifting me the bloody British Library to be able to ask that much of me! Could you, I don't know, start actually negotiating instead of just demanding things?"
"I can bind all the people under me with an oath to never make an attempt at your life."
"Isn't that something that most people in a civilised society take for granted? You know, to not have people suddenly trying to kill them?" Hermione asked, incredulous. Not to mention that he'd conveniently exempted himself from such an oath so he could still try to kill her if the mood struck him.
She sat back down once it seemed that the Slytherin was actually going to try to talk to her for a while. Well, she wasn't too eager to test the limits of her current endurance either, so there's also that. Tom returned to his previous seat as well.
"An oath of loyalty for an oath of protection against anyone from the continent trying to kill you." Tom said.
He was getting better at this—at least it started to sound like a deal than a one-sided command. She shook her head. "First, Hogwarts has fantastic, dense weave of wards that's been layered by more than one generation, as Hogwarts: A History has kindly informed me. Secondly, I can defend myself just fine, and if that's not enough, I can always go to ground."
Compared to most wizards, she does know how to live in the muggle world and lay low.
She raised a hand to stop him from speaking up just yet.
"Lastly, I don't give an oath of loyalty to anyone. Not even if it was to, say, a hypothetical someone who happened to be both my best friend and hero of the wizarding world. I protect my family because I love them. I'll stand by my friends for the same reason, and because I respect the people that they are. If that respect is ever lost, if…"
Her throat felt dry. Hermione pinched the bridge of her nose, closing her eyes for a moment as she pulled herself together.
"If any one of them suddenly became a dark lord or dark lady, trust me, I'll be the first to go after them."
At the very least, I need to hear the explanation from their own lips. And she wanted to see their apparent evil and destruction personally, to allow no room for her doubt or love to drag her feet.
She saw curiosity flaring up in his eyes, his attention completely on her.
"Even if they're your friends?"
She bit her lip. "I hope it never comes to that, but yes."
Harry was the one who'd asked her about it, actually. She wasn't actually surprised that the memory was seared into her mind stronger than other details about her own life.
("If there's ever a dark artefact that takes over the soul and turns me into some sort of a monster, promise me that you'll take me out, Hermione."
"You're the only one who I know can do it and would actually do it.")
"This would be simpler if I were to just kill you," Tom broke the silence. His slight sigh passed for other people's irritated looks.
She chuckled with relief, because she didn't want to even try to remember what made Harry said that. Something ominous hung in the back of her mind; a burning night sky, grass the colour of blood. Even if she couldn't remember a thing about it beyond the weird flashes of images and Harry's words, there was a sense of uneasiness blanketing everything associated with that event.
Tom had just given her a convenient distraction.
"Well, it would also be easier if I choose just to kill you and act on it. Yet a life worth living isn't made of easy choices."
It was the strangest thing; Hermione felt more drained by the conversation than the walk to the library. "Look, if you decide that you can't trust me enough to let me advise you and be your friend, then walk away."
"We're not done yet." His tone brooked no disagreement.
"Then make up your damned mind!"
His wand was against her throat in a flash, but hers was pointed right over his heart in a blink. Really, she'd gotten very good with the CPR spell—it came to her mind's eye in a second. It is very unadvised to add an additional electric current to a heart that's already working normally. One might just cause the cardiac muscles to seize up, after all.
And the Living Heart Spell was just one of many she had already come up with in the two seconds.
"Well, this is awkward," Tom said, the smoothness of his voice at odds with his own words.
"No, this is just…what would a pureblood etiquette instructor call it? Ah, inconvenient. This is only a little inconvenience." The chipper tone that she used was one she learned from Daphne whenever she had to herd stubborn wizards.
Tom seemed completely unconcerned by the threat she posed. Hermione was still slightly numbed by what little memory she could still recall and by the loss of a world that she feared she'd left behind permanently that she couldn't care less about it. She hadn't lied to him—she was still rather apathetic towards life and death right now, though she hoped it would improve with time.
"You have to understand my position. You're a threat, Hermione." He trailed his wand very delicately down her jugular, towards her clavicle. She cleared her throat. There was something unnerving about it to her, and not in the mortal danger sense.
"I'm not a threat to you—unless you make me."
"Ah, but you're a force of good, didn't you say that? I'm sure you'd easily mark someone like me as not good, isn't it? And then where would we be?" He sounded so reasonable. If only he wasn't tapping the tip if his wand lightly against her collarbone.
He'd be a fantastic jazz singer—the completely random thought crossed her mind. That voice was made to croon.
"Yet what is good, what is evil?" she asked, quickly pulling herself from that brain glitch.
Tom was staring at her with mild disbelief.
"Are we truly going to delve into ontology, right now?"
"I don't have that much patience for most philosophy either," she answered, slowly shifting the arithmancy book on the table to support her right hand—she was going to cramp after five minutes if she had to keep her wand up all the time. It was still pressed right over his heart. "But you think I'm a threat precisely because you have an idea of what 'good' is like, and you feel you don't fit them, and therefore I'd be opposed to you. Yet you didn't even consider that my definition of 'good' might not actually be that similar with what you think 'good' is."
"You did mention your aversion to killing and torturing."
"Well, are you going to collect some number of young people to kill in a blood sacrifice to give you more power?" she bluntly asked. He actually thought over her question.
"Hmm, I don't think I've read of any such rituals that don't have a questionable success rate or side effects, so not yet, unfortunately."
Hermione glared at him for baiting her, but she said nothing still. The innocence in his answering smile could shame a seraph, dark blue eyes glittering with humour. His wand was still at the base of her neck.
"Truly, Tom, if you want power, you're not someone who would even need to risk their souls, their very selves, with dodgy rituals."
"But magic is such a potent source of power." he idly mused.
"Not all risks are worth their rewards—there are other, less dangerous paths for someone of your intelligence. You could be king of all wizarding world for all I care as long as you don't start with the senseless killing, torturing and what have you." She let out an annoyed sigh. "Look, can we just both bring our wands down? We can do it slowly if you like, but I'm getting a cramp."
She didn't have a cramp yet, but it was a pre-emptive move as she wasn't looking to having one. He nodded, and Hermione lifted her wand slowly, moving it downwards. He followed suit. Both of their wands were on the table now. It probably only made for a second or two of difference if either of them decided to hex the other and started a fight right then and there, but it was certainly more comfortable.
"Yet we have a Minister of Magic, Hermione, unlike say, one of the magical German kingdoms, or one of the under-kingdoms of Italy."
It was odd to remember that the sovereign borders in the magical world and the non-magical one did not always match until very recently, as the borders of nation states stabilised and the long arm of state bureaucracy reached everywhere, even the magical nations.
"A king in power does not always have to be a king in name," was her answer to him.
"A king…really?"
His gaze was dark, mesmerising and she met him head on. Hermione didn't even care if he picked up slightly more than her surface thoughts, because her thoughts on it was that she really didn't care. She was sure that her friends thought the same. What she wanted was for the Aurors to have the budget they needed to keep themselves in fighting fit and be able to take on the people aspiring to be dark lords (unlike say, Fudge's gutting of the corps). She wanted the Wizengamot to be monitored enough to ensure there it could not be sabotaged and used to act as a kangaroo court like in Sirius' case. She wanted the Unspeakables to not be ignored whenever they issued a warning about some esoteric branch of magic or some strange artefact. She wanted people's complaints and dissatisfaction in the wizarding world to be heard and responded to by the Ministry…
Everything else after that was mostly details.
Your priorities change when you've been hunting wannabe dark lords for a while and see the sort of chaos they sow in society. She just wanted peace.
"A King, a Prime Minister, a Minister of Magic—all positions have their limits, and all that goes up can go down." Hermione said this with ease.
She had walked in on Harry and Ron in the Potter family home once, wargaming a scenario where their teams actually had to take down a Minister of Magic that had become a dark lord's puppet, along with a few other people they trusted from the Auror corps. She didn't even blink when they froze up at her arrival, only asking them all what everyone wanted for lunch because she might as well order for everyone while she was at it. The only sign that she heard the relieved sighs going around the room was the slight upward quirk of her lips.
He did not reply to her immediately, only observing her for a while with that unreadable stare.
"Ah I see. You wanted to be a kingmaker."
Hermione rubbed her face with her left hand, holding back a groan of frustration. Speaking of the one-track mind of many Slytherins about ambition… She lifted her head—she was about to say that she couldn't care less about whether she had any position or not when she saw his expression was more thoughtful instead of the confident one she'd seen before. He might've made that erroneous conclusion some moments ago, but he could read the emotions clearly on her face and had revised his opinion immediately.
"You are a puzzle, Hermione." He mused, his right hand lightly tapping the hilt of his wand. "And I don't like riddles."
His reply had more than one layer to it. She cracked a small grin at that.
"I'm really not. I'm just very different from most people you know that you need to adjust your assumptions—I suppose most of the people around you are very ambitious Slytherins."
"It would be a lie if you said that you have no ambition. You are driven in your foolishness."
She nodded, acceding his point about her stubbornness, even if she knew that they had very different opinions as to what constitutes foolishness or not. He might think her having and maintaining her conscience is one, while she considered his splitting his soul to be just that.
"And so are you. Yet I don't believe in destroying my rivals to get ahead or unnecessary violence."
He tilted his head slightly to the left. "You believe that some violence is necessary."
It was hard not to grimace at the ease he read between her lines, and she was sure that he noticed even the aborted twitch of her face. She sighed.
"If only it wasn't so, but the world isn't as nice as I wish it to be."
The tension and wariness between them was not as high as it had been during their first confrontation, but she could feel that they hadn't exactly bypassed the possibility of a fight yet. Their apparent ease right now was simply the canniness of two experienced predators, constantly watching each other for weaknesses, just in case the other decided to go for the jugular.
"I still don't know you enough. You would not swear an oath to me, which would easily remove any doubt that I may have. You believe in the meddling force of Good, from which I've actually seen little good from."
Hermione had to suppress the reflex to defend that just because he didn't have a good experience with Dumbledore meant he had to paint everyone else who wanted to preserve what goodness still exist in the world with the same brush. She had to admit that at least they were still talking instead of fighting.
"If you'd let me peel back your surface appearance with judicious use of pain, so I can see who you are underneath the shell of civilisation, I would've trusted you more."
She sniffed. "Well, I think it's an overly expensive price for me to pay for something with a shoddy return policy."
"Do you know just how much more sensitive the hands are compared to most other surface of the body? I've just read about how many nerve endings they have, the reason why our sense of touch there is very acute. It's interesting. No wonder there are so many methods of torture that applies to the hands. It's hard not to appreciate the elegance of whoever came up with driving needles under the nails—such exquisite pain. Of course, the downside of such physical torture is that you are also destroying the body as you do it, possibly also destroying the nerves and making it hurt less the next time you try it again."
The young witch didn't bother hiding her wince, or the glare she sent him. She had a feeling that she was going to regret telling him that mere threats were nothing as long as neither of them actually tried to kill the other. Hermione was starting to sympathise with the criminal psychologists whose books she'd read, especially those who had to interview more than one psychopath in maximum security prisons again and again to build their set of criminal profiles.
"Ha, ha. You're currently not very amusing at all, Tom."
"Are you withdrawing your offer to assist me?" He leaned forward slightly. The grace in his movements, the efficiency of his actions didn't change. He reminded her of a lounging panther.
"If you do accept my offer in good faith—and none of this talk of oaths to you or paying a blood price—I'd do it. Right now." Hermione answered. She'd known that doing the right thing would not always be easy. "It doesn't mean I won't just walk away for the moment if you're being an annoying arse like you currently are."
"I've been customising the Cruciatus Curse to create a version that can localise the pain to select areas so as to not burn out and numb the nerves too fast." he said, as remorseless and relentless as the rising tide. He was raising her hackles and she snapped back before she could think about it.
"You could try casting that at me, and I'll show you just how many medical spells can easily inflict harm as they can heal. You wouldn't want me to cut out a section of your colon from the rest and leave it inside to rot you from the gut out." That was a spell to take out a damaged section while automatically reconnecting the remaining ones together. She just skipped the logical next step of casting another spell to take the cut piece out of the body. Hermione regretted the threat the moment she'd said it because it was a nasty and painful way to die, and she'd never wish that on anyone.
Pieces of memories pass by her mind in seconds. (The black kneazle Othello gave a warning growl to the new white cat that had just scratched her.)
Even with the too-sharp gaze that never left her, the threat actually earned her an impromptu smile from him, while the magic they've both gathered churned the air with volatile crackles as they buffeted each other.
"Ah, and here I was wondering whether you'd been underestimating me or not."
Another memory fluttered by like an old photograph flying in a snowstorm. (Snowflake bared his canines at her and hissed, even when she was approaching him with a bowl of food. Othello was giving the new cat a dead-eyed stare, disliking this unwanted interloper to his mistress' domain.)
"I could never underestimate you, burner of cities," her answer was filled with exasperation. He was…satisfied? It boggled her mind. Why on earth should he be satisfied with what she said?
"Yet you're still reckless in your lack of fear that I can't help but think that a lesson or three in pain might not be amiss."
Other people might say it like a threat. To Tom Riddle, it was merely an observation of the same tone as 'excuse me, your shoelaces are untied'.
"I'm afraid I'll have to decline the offer," she replied sarcastically.
"If you would not show me what makes your mind tick, I'll have to take you apart myself." he warned.
The threat of violence roiled the invisible nimbus of magic that had gathered around himself, and she was almost tempted to strike first just to dissipate the discomfiting charge that had built up around both of them. Perhaps they'd get their duel after all and it would finally end this uncomfortable détente.
"You could always walk away." She said this as calm as she could manage when she had to push out the words between gritted teeth.
"Only a fool leaves their back open to a strike by a known threat."
(Snowflake bit her hand when she placed the food bowl a little too close to him before he ran away. He growled at her from a safe distance.)
"I'm not going to backstab you for no good reason! I've told you that already." she snapped, annoyed both at him and her glitching memories.
"As they say in Slytherin, it costs nothing to speak with a forked tongue."
Hermione was beginning to think that she'd needed a break to also sort through the annoying images she kept seeing of Snowflake, of all things, that would not quit when a flash of insight illuminated her mind. Tom's words had been the last piece of the puzzle. Her brown eyes widened.
Fear.
It was very easy to channel fear to aggression. It would ease your own fears to attack first instead of waiting warily for an attack that may or may not come. It was also one of the oldest reasons that groups of humans warred against each other—the apparent threat the other poses, regardless of whether or not that threat was real or merely imagined. Fear was an extraordinary spur that can drive species to migrate, for mothers to fight back ferociously against predators as they fear the death of their young. There were good odds that it was one of the oldest emotions from the first creature that swam in the oceans, as it was the foundation of any species' survival.
(Snowflake's fur was half-standing the first time she entered his cage at the shelter, all-too-ready to fight).
He had more in common with her ex-feral cats than she'd realised, and her subconscious had been trying to tell her something. She unsettled him—she was not an average Hogwarts student who would either accept his charms at face value or buckle under his intimidation, and he knew that her skills were far from mediocre that he couldn't ignore her. Tom bared his fangs at her because he considered her a threat. Hermione had the weirdest urge to extend an open palm slowly in his direction to show that she meant no harm, and oh-so-gently pat his cheek.
"Oh my God," she blurted out, "I can't believe some part of you is cute."
She clapped her hands to her mouth. Hermione turned beet red at the verbal vomit she just did, intensely mortified. The gathering magic between the two of them collapsed immediately between her embarrassment and his bafflement. She was sure that none of the people in his house had seen him at such loss for words. Instead of mortal peril, there was this weird awkwardness rising and she was desperately wishing that the threats against her life was back.
Yes, really, she would like to duel him right there, right now, even with a partially-recovered body that might mean there's larger odds than winning a coin toss that she'd be the one dead—
"Did you just say—"
"I mean, I can't believe your fans, um, admirers would think you're cute. They'd have been very disappointed if they can see you for who you are right now!" She spoke rapidly.
From the way he was still staring at her with the uncertainty of a man who just saw a flying unicorn stop right in front of him in broad daylight, she had her doubts on how much he bought her insistence that he didn't hear what he thought he heard.
"My…admirers." he said, slowly. To her eternal regret, he'd suddenly recovered his common sense and was clearly unwilling to fulfil her strongest wish to fight right there and then.
"Yes. Your admirers." Hermione firmly insisted.
"How would you even know I have any? You haven't even attended any classes."
She bit her lip before she answered with, 'I'm sick, not blind.'
"Witches have a sixth sense about these things, don't you know?" she said instead, hoping to hell and back that her know-it-all tone would've stopped any argument short. He only nodded slowly instead.
"Of course," he replied, and she didn't miss his disbelief.
"I need some fresh air. It's too easy to deplete the oxygen levels in closed spaces like this." Hermione said all this at the same time that she stood up. Tom stood up at the same time.
"And I'm sure that none of the Founders could even come up with a decent Circulation Charm to cast here. Such a terrible shame. Would someone please think of the fainting ladies." his reply was droll. She pretended not to notice his sarcasm at all.
"Do you think Professor Slughorn wouldn't mind if I asked him for two of his potion bottles? I promised Nurse Edelstein that I'd show her how a thermos works. It's a good idea to help preserve potions that would keep better at certain temperatures without having to carry a list of a hundred warming and cooling charms and constantly checking which ones react badly to certain ingredients in the potions."
He offered her his arm again the moment she was about to walk out. She stared blankly for a few moments before shaking her head and taking it.
They walked out arm-in-arm, the very picture of amiability and courtesy to any student.
Tom let her prattle on about thermoses, vacuum, and the transference of heat (energy) through radiation and how it was much slower than conduction or convection. They made their way out of the carrel and into the library while she had fully entered into her lecture mode that usually earned familiar groans from her friends. From the side-glances he kept sending her when he thought she wasn't looking, both pondering and perplexed, she knew that he hadn't forgotten about her careless comment in the slightest.
She just hoped it wouldn't come back and bit her in the backside later.
'-
Tom did not only escort her all the way to the Potions labs once more, he actually told Slughorn about just why exactly Hermione needed two potion bottles of different sizes and commended her on her brilliant idea of how to preserve certain potions at close to their optimum temperature without resorting to possibly-contaminating magic. The Slytherin easily ignored the confused and suspicious look she was sending him at his inadvertent promotion and compliment.
Slughorn turned his bright eyes on Hermione, giddy with excitement.
"Truly, Hermione? This is fascinating! Are you sure the muggles actually managed to make this work?"
"Hermione can tell you about the details." Tom said, putting her under the spotlight immediately as he turned to the witch next. "I'm sure you can take the time to recover your strength while you delve into the philosophy of radiation?"
The words 'recover your strength' sent Slughorn on a fit of excessive worry and concern as he ushered her to the plushest armchair he had in his office, sprinted off to retrieve a cosy quilted blanket and a pile of pillows before he started barking orders for 'tea and biccies' to Tom—the prefect had already seen it coming and had put the kettle on the moment Slughorn sprang into action and was now laying out the potion master's china tea set (he'd been here so often he knew the location of many things in the cupboard). All of this made her blush and sent annoyed glares in his direction.
Tom, of course, was unrepentant.
"Really, half an hour or so of sitting would not affect your plans for the day, much, isn't it? Besides, it's better to err on the side of caution and avoid actually fainting. Nurse Edelstein is going to hang me otherwise."
"Yes, yes. Very prudent of you, Tom." Slughorn agreed.
There was no way Hermione could get out from his quarters sooner than half an hour now. Seeing the potion master's concern, she finally relented to staying put with an explosive sigh. It didn't stop her from sending vexed looks in the prefect's direction that clearly said 'this is all your fault'.
Tom acted as if he hadn't noticed that at all while inwardly smirking. It was not long before the kettle boiled and he carried a full tea tray to the table.
"Only two cups, Tom?" Slughorn asked.
"I've just remembered that there's the Advanced Charms study group that I need to at least drop in for a while today. It wouldn't take me long, Professor. I'll be back before you know it to escort Hermione around once more."
"But you'll miss my explanation," Hermione started.
He shook his head. "I'm sure you'll demonstrate exactly the same thing with Madam Edelstein, wouldn't you? I can listen to you just then. I do have other things to manage."
She was grumpy, but Hermione knew that she couldn't exactly argue against all the points he had made even if she hadn't stopped with her suspicious looks. With that, Tom left them both to it.
He had an entire board to set up.
'-
A little rummaging into his bag gave Tom an old letter-opener with the Nott family crest embossed on the hilt. He used it as the link in the sympathetic locator spell to find its last owner.
'-
Melchior Nott was sitting at one of the library's reading and studying areas when his liege lord in all but name found him. Melchior might not have known it, but he was doing more-or-less what Tom had predicted him to do—he was working on his Advanced Charms essay when the other Slytherin had arrived.
Like the titans of literature, the Alexanders Pushkin and Dumas (father and son), Melchior could trace a part of his ancestry to the children of the African continent—in his case, it was mostly the progeny of Witch-Kings who experienced such strong wanderlust to explore Europe and ended up marrying into the magical families there when they settled down. It gave him a warm and lively complexion even after spending all these years under the clouded Scottish skies, unlike the ghostly pallor of day-old squid that some of his peers had—the Malfoy heir came to mind, as did the even more unfortunate scion of the Pendleton family.
"Melchior. Just the person I was looking for."
He looked up in surprise at the unexpected visit. "Morning, Tom. I thought you had other plans for today?"
"I do. I merely happen to have some time to chat, that's all."
Melchior did not express further disbelief that Tom happened to meet him in his spare time today, and simply waited for some sort of command or request that he knew was coming.
"Well, do take a seat and stay around for as long as you wish." Tom would have stayed regardless of what he said, but really, he was a pureblood. Politeness made the gentleman.
"Thank you."
He turned his chair slightly towards Tom. "So, what brings you my humble presence?"
Tom placed several trinkets on the table. Melchior recognised all of them—a key with the insignia of the Malfoy family on its head, a small measuring beaker with the Starkey family crest embossed on the side, Gallus Rosier's favourite fountain pen, a finicky technological marvel (well, before Tom asked for it), as well as several others. These were the personal items of many of the Walpurgis Knights.
"Locate as many of them as you can, but no less than two. Borrow the librarian's fireplace to floo to the Slytherin dorms, and if they're not there, use a locator spell to find them. You have ten minutes."
Melchior would've asked what this emergency meeting was about if he didn't know that Tom was completely serious when he said that he only had ten minutes. He was not an ignorant greenhorn anymore and he wasn't looking forward to finding out what will happen if he failed. Melchior simply swept the trinkets into his bag and nodded.
"Of course."
'-
"Tom!"
When Tom returned to the Potion Master's quarters (right next to the potion labs), Hermione gave him a look that was equal parts annoyed and relieved. It was as inexplicable as it was amusing, and he didn't bother to hide his thoughts on it even if it meant that her glare was getting more pointed.
"Yes, Hermione?" he asked.
"Weren't you about to show me the rest of Hogwarts?"
"But surely, there's no need to rush," Slughorn cajoled, and Hermione's smile was turning increasingly plastic on her face as she started to make her excuses. Tom assisted her this time, simply because it served his interests too.
"Ah, but the sooner we're done, the sooner she can return to the infirmary. I'm afraid that despite seeming to the contrary, she's not fully recovered yet." the Slytherin prefect said.
"Then a little more rest wouldn't be amiss, don't you think?" The professor wondered with not a little concern in his tone. His bushy eyebrows were lowered in thought.
It has to be said that Slughorn's consideration and care was actually rather genuine, and not just by Slytherin standards. On the other hand, it made extricating themselves from his hospitality to require their combined efforts as the conversation continued for a while. At one point, Hermione outright offered her hand in his direction, a wordless request that Tom answered by pulling her up easily even when she leaned her weight against his arm for support.
"Really, I've taken too much of your time, Professor. I'm sure there are other students you'd wish to see, articles and books you want to read…" Hermione started.
It seemed that she'd decided to just make her getaway while fast-talking Slughorn than be stuck here for yet another half an hour.
Hermione stumbled against him and he had stopped himself from stiffening, forcing himself to relax. She was still frail and certainly not a risk to him, but the contact felt alien (a part of him still reflexively categorised it as threat). He'd never voluntarily let people touch him before. It was not as if he was unaware that he would need to habituate himself to personal contact now—not impossible, merely inconvenient. She glanced up with a puzzled look on her face that he ignored in favour of facing Slughorn.
"Thank you for your time, Professor. I hope you have a good day."
'-
Even if he had not known much about Hermione Curie, Tom can conclude that she did face the terrible dangers that her current injury only alluded to, and it was more than a few rare times.
For all that she'd said she saw his future self as a dark lord, she did not seem to display any sort of wariness towards him. Courtesy dictates that he lent her his arm and always try to support her, but there was really no need for her to frankly accept it within a second and keep relying on him like some overly-trusting Hufflepuff. Tom might just decide to throw her over the bannisters near a stair's landing, for one, or use his left arm to restrain her while his right cast something deadly. Not that he intended to do so (why? What could he possibly gain from doing that?), yet the possibility still stands.
It was only the speed that she'd pointed her wand at his heart in the library that convinced him that she was not careless. The witch simply had that much trust in her own reflexes. She had probably gone through enough similar situations that she did not regard her current situation to be in any way extraordinary. Hence her current ease in walking arm-in-arm with a probable dark lord.
A part of him was vexed that she could even consider him safe to some degree.
"What was the future like, if you've seen it?"
"You have to be more specific," she replied. "I've seen it too often that I've taken for granted things that might have been extraordinary to others."
"Have we gone 20,000 leagues under the sea?"
She chuckled. There was unexpected joy in it that surprised him. "I can't imagine you ever agreeing to be 'Captain Nobody'. You would've taken a more bombastic pseudonym if you could help it. Well, let's see… Mariana Trench is the deepest place on earth at around eleven thousand metres. Even if we assume that one league is one kilometre—and I know it's at least twice than that—that's barely eleven leagues."
"Not as fantastic as it sounds, then." he mused.
"Oh, it is fantastic. The sort of life that evolves under immense pressures there is practically alien to us surface-dwellers—if bones are only going to get pulverised under hundreds of tonnes of water, why bother with hard and brittle bones at all? That's one evolutionary path that many creatures take. Others make their bones light, only to serve as the framework for their organs."
Her brown eyes sparkled with excitement as she spoke, her left hand becoming animated as she described the strange dwellers of the bottom of the sea beyond even the abyssal depths.
"It's so dark, the food scarce and the fishes sparse that in several species of anglerfish, the male and female fused together after they first met! All because the odds are low that they'd see other fish from the same species and the opposite gender throughout their lifetime. His skin dissolved and his veins and circulatory system truly linked up to hers and he can even take food and pass his waste products. The female now hunts for both of them while the male is practically her boytoy. Get this, in some species, the females even collect males. It makes sense if you know that in these species, the she's several times larger than he is."
If she had expected him to be stunned, she was mistaken. The sexual life of other people (or other species, in this case) was something he barely batted an eyelash at. On the other hand, he had to admit that it was morbidly fascinating.
"That explains the clinginess of one of Abraxas' ex-girlfriends. Uncertain of her future mating prospects in the abyssal backwardness of her family's country estate, she'd rather fuse with him." he added wryly.
It startled her into a laugh.
"Well, aren't you wondering about whether we've reached the centre of the earth or managed flying machines?" Hermione asked back.
"Have we?"
Hermione snorted, apparently unconcerned that it was a markedly inelegant move. "Unfortunately, once you dig beyond the earth's crust and you're immediately faced with the magma of the earth's mantle. Airplanes can carry up to a thousand or so passengers for intercontinental travel, and hundreds of them criss-cross the globe at an average day. The personal flying machine is still nowhere in sight—the magical world is still ahead of the non-magical one in this case."
"How mundane."
"Well, at least there are no Martian invaders either." she finished, noticing that his lips quirked as she said that.
"How about the less fantastic things, then. Let's see…was there a surprisingly competent and politically savvy Minister of Magic?"
"In your dreams." she said, not missing a beat. "And only if you were actually high on hallucinogens."
He nodded sagely. "The perpetuity of death, taxes and incompetent politicians."
"Or perhaps it needs actual interference to change." Hermione answered, betraying her convictions and intent in that one sentence.
He noted it down carefully. He had yet to see where her ambition is directed to (he can scarcely believe a young witch, one as accomplished as she was, did not have any), but it occurred to him just now that she might be the type to champion causes.
"Is there a rise of Britain's wizarding world as a beacon of progress to Europe?" he asked.
"Ha! As if. Men would land on the moon first." she replied. She did not even notice his sceptical expression as realisation washed through her. "Oh my, I almost forgot the moon landing! Damn. If only I can remember the precise time. I think it was around the sixties, though I'm sure it's not too early. I think I'll watch the rockets take off from Cape Canaveral—hmm, it was Cape Canaveral, wasn't it? Never mind, I don't think it would be that hard to check…"
Tom almost blurted out that it was impossible, but he saw that she wouldn't have cared the slightest. Lost in her own musings and future events that had yet to come to pass, this was not an act that she was putting up for him. She truly was planning on being at the critical places for the moon landing she could apparently see, one that she seemed certain was a non-magical effort than a magical one.
The implication galled him. Yet it was one of the most disarming things about her; she did not tailor her opinions to his preference, and he suspected she did not do it for anyone else either.
"Surely if you've managed to remove an immensely influential and powerful dark lord, it meant that you have managed to unify an astounding number of people and power?"
This time, her grin was stained with bitterness and self-mockery.
"You would think that, wouldn't you?" Oddly enough, it wasn't even aimed at him, it was more for herself. "War takes its toll, Tom, especially in a society as small as the wizarding world—do you really not know how many non-magicals are out there? Never mind that for now, I'll need to check out the exact numbers first, anyway."
He heard her take a deep breath
"It's not just the deaths that are the most visible costs, even less visible is the progress, the ideas that those dead people could have contributed. How much change could they have made, how many new things built, if they were not dead?"
He half-expected her to be in tears, but her eyes were dry. The bone-deep tiredness in her words were unmistakable, though. Perhaps the only reason why she did not break down was because she'd thought over it for too often, and now she had no more tears to spend.
"The last great war in Europe made people speak of 'the lost generation'. Well, I'll tell you right now that that's what my generation looked like in that future. Scores of classmates gone: the cunning ones would've ditched England altogether the moment everything went to hell, the unlucky ones got stuck in the middle of the conflict and ended up dead. Now, the idealistic ones—the best, the brightest—are the first into the meat grinder. We were that lost generation. Even once the mad version of you was dead, well…"
Her laughter was hollow.
"Victory? What victory? It was all rather pyrrhic from what I can see."
She smiled at him. He would not admit even under pain of torture that there was something unsettling about it.
"And you know what? That was a better outcome, where 'good' won. At least we're not outright burning things down like the madman that you could become. I suspect the world wouldn't even last in that particular possible future."
'-
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Author's Notes:
Hermione occasionally slips and shows her non-magical upbringing. She uses the word 'God' the same way a lot of Brits use it—as a curse word. It really doesn't reflect whether the person using it is a theist or an atheist.
'-
Additional Trivia:
'Captain Nobody': 'Nobody' is the translation of 'Nemo' from Latin. So, Captain Nemo from Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea is literally 'Captain Nobody'. One suspects that it's not the good captain's actual name…
'-
Meta notes on my characterisation of Hermione and her friends in the future (Doylist perspective):
Hermione's über-intelligence is easily explained by seeing her position in canon; Rowling saddles her with any and all skills the trio needs to get things done, and by that measure you can't argue that she's not a genius. Harry's fate-driven combination of bad luck in drawing enemies to him like bees to honey and his good luck to somehow still survive that meant that sooner or later he'd truly be very, very good at fighting as well as surviving, and he would be highly motivated to keep getting better (especially if the future is as unsettled as the one in this AU). He's the last wizard you'd want to get into a straight up fight with. Sometimes, you don't even want to try ambushing him because it doesn't improve your chances against him; it merely ensures that he's very, very pissed off, looking for a target to vent his wrath, and guess what would happen to the one that was the cause of that?
Now, Ron is a wasted opportunity. I don't like him as a character, but that doesn't mean I can't give him a chance to grow in my story (I pride myself on being at least fair with him). We see the potential for a strategic mind in the first book…and it stays undeveloped through the series. He seems more of a hanger-on of Harry's in the latter books than anything else, which is a shame. We know that Draco cares for his family more than being a fanatic, and as a pureblood I expect him to have been taught the traditions, skills, knowledge and whatnot required as a scion of the wizarding society's upper crust family even if we don't see him enough in the books to know what exactly that he knew or could do.
I developed their characters and skills further based on all this, because I think Rupert Grint and Tom Felton are swell guys who, at the very least, deserved interesting characters to play (in some other dimension, Hermione's past future in this story is actually the canon HP story and they had a great time fleshing out their characters…well, a writer can dream).
'-