The rest of the week passed fairly uneventfully, after Valentine's Day was over. The professors seemed to have collectively decided to overload their students with homework to keep them from fussing over their new sweethearts or the dementors, and Hermione was gladder than ever to have the Time-Turner to use to keep her sane and give her time to complete all of her assignments.

The overload of classwork also kept everyone else preoccupied, making it easier for Hermione to slip away for a while, small black book tucked away in her robes as she went to the first-floor girls' bathroom.

"It's been a while," Tom Riddle said, stretching theatrically as she pulled him out of the diary. He glanced around the Chamber. "I thought maybe you'd given up."

"The Chamber was occupied for a while," Hermione said, pulling a heavy wooden box from her bag. "I couldn't practice safely here until it was empty again."

"Occupied?" Tom Riddle said, delighted. "You held a captive here, Hermione?"

"He was my prisoner, but really I was protecting him," Hermione defended, annoyed. "The Ministry is after him. I wouldn't say he was my captive…"

"Could he leave?" Tom asked. "Could he escape?"

Hermione frowned. "No…"

"Then he was your captive," Tom said simply, eyes gleaming. "Whether his capture was justified or not."

There was something in the way Tom was saying it, the vicious joy in his tone, that annoyed Hermione immensely. It was like he thought her holding Sirius Black prisoner was some major step on the path for her to become evil or something, when she'd been doing it for his own safety so he wouldn't be Kissed by a dementor and end up a soulless husk.

And on that note of dementors…

"We're going to try something slightly new," Hermione said, setting the heavy wooden box several yards away. "Right before I try and cast, I want you to open this box."

"Manually?" Tom said, raising an eyebrow.

"No, no, stay close to me," Hermione said hurriedly. "But… I've given you enough magic to be able to levitate the lid open, surely?"

Tom left his eyebrow raised, but he nodded, and Hermione turned back to the box, readying herself with her wand.

"Right. So: there's a boggart in there," she told Tom. "The idea is the boggart will turn into a dementor. And I hate dementors, so having something I want to destroy might help me actually cast Fiendfyre this time."

Tom looked intrigued.

"Your boggart fear is a dementor?" he asked. "Really?"

"Yes. Well, I think it is," Hermione admitted. "When we were practicing the Patronus Charm, the boggart seemed to still be a dementor when it was targeting me, so I think so."

"If you know the Patronus Charm and can protect yourself, how can a dementor still be your biggest fear?" Tom wanted to know.

"What if I'm injured?" Hermione shot back. "What if I'm incapacitated? With any other situation, the worst fate I might face would be I could die, but with a dementor, I could lose my soul." The look she gave Tom was a dark one, full of loathing. "And in case you've forgotten, having one's soul destroyed is the worst thing in the world."

Tom had the sense to drop the subject, looking away from her.

"Where'd you get a boggart?" he asked, and Hermione brightened.

"Boggart farm," she said, pleased. "Blaise and I did our best to push our raw magic and leave it contained in dark places, and a few of our attempts actually turned out."

Tom snickered.

"I've never heard of a boggart farm," he said, amused, "but what havoc I could wreak with such a thing."

"We are not wreaking havoc today," Hermione said firmly. "We are teaching me this charm. Now, help me."

"Teaching you this curse," Tom corrected, eyes gleaming. "Not charm. But very well."

Her stance wasn't quite right, and Tom helped her shift, adjusting her hand on her wand to hold it a little differently.

"You need to focus not only on your magic within you, but your emotions," he told her again. "This is an advanced spell, driven by more than just a desire to have it succeed. You must truly want to completely obliterate what you are targeting with the spell."

"Right," Hermione said, biting her lip. She focused on her hatred for dementors, summoning up her fear of them, their aberrant nature and their stain upon the world, how they could eat souls, and she could think of nothing more evil than that…

"Ready?" Tom asked.

Hermione took a deep breath.

"Ready." Her voice was firm.

With a gesture, Tom wordlessly opened the box from across the chamber, and black smoke poured out, coalescing into the tattered robes of a dementor, and the chamber went cold.

"Malignis Fiendfyre!" Hermione cried, glaring at the dementor. "Malignis Fiendfyre! Malignis Fiendfyre—"

It was as if she were back in Lupin's office, though – cold and darkness crept into her mind, an echo of a true dementor's power, and before the boggart-dementor could get too close, Hermione whipped her wand through the air in a different gesture, summoning up the memory of when her coven had successfully bound together.

"Expecto Patronum!"

A silver fox burst out of her wand, pushing the dementor back away from Hermione, and the cold feeling receded. The fox corralled the dementor-boggart back to the wooden box, and Tom flicked his wrist, the box shutting on the dementor, somehow forcing it back inside once more, and the fox turned to look at Hermione, flicked its tail, and disappeared.

"Did you see that?" Hermione exclaimed. She turned to Tom, wide-eyed. "Did you see that?"

Tom frowned. "Yes…?"

She couldn't keep the excitement from her voice. "My Patronus? You saw?"

"You said you'd already cast a proper Patronus," Tom said, raising an eyebrow.

"But this was a different Patronus!" Hermione exclaimed. "The first time I cast it, I got a Komodo dragon! This time, I got a fox!"

Tom looked caught off guard, then curious.

"Really?" he said, clearly interested now. "I've never heard of such a thing."

"Really really," Hermione insisted. "It was an entirely different animal!"

"What changed?" Tom prodded. "I don't think the setting where you cast it would have any bearing on the results…"

Hermione considered, tapping her wand as she thought.

"The memory I used, I think," she said slowly. "I used a different memory in Lupin's office than I did here."

"The memory?" Tom raised an eyebrow. "You think that caused it to change?"

"Well, maybe?" Hermione said. "The memory I first used – it, um, was not a very nice memory—"

The memory of the look on Rhamnaceae's face when she'd been carried off and arrested did carry a sort of cruel satisfaction and vindication with it, even though it unquestionably remained a positive memory in her mind.

"—even though it made me happy, so maybe that's why I got the Komodo dragon?"

"And this time?" Tom prompted.

"This time, I used the memory of bonding with my coven," Hermione said. "It was the first and brightest to come to mind – I'll never forget the feeling of that moment – and I got a fox, instead."

"I wouldn't think a fox would be representative of that," Tom commented, eyes thoughtful. "They're known for being sly and cunning, not happy and friendly."

Hermione paused.

"My House sigil is a fox, now," she told him.

"…your House sigil?"

Hermione worried at her lip, not sure why the glint in Tom's eyes made her nervous.

"I want to establish the House of Granger," she told him, trying to keep her voice neutral and steady. "Remember? So – in order to do that – I've been making the trappings of a proper wizarding House. The House motto, the sigil, the coat of arms…"

Tom's grin was slow and sly.

"You are a fox, aren't you?" he said. "Creeping into the chicken coop, not letting the Purebloods realize the threat lying in wait among them…"

"It's not like that," Hermione argued. "In order to join them, I have to—"

"You are actively working to completely disrupt the means of production and source of wealth for at least two-thirds of the Great Houses," Tom said flatly, his eyes glinting.

Hermione squirmed. "That's a bit of an exaggeration…"

"Is it?" Tom prodded. "Last you told me, they'd already moved up to sacrificing large animals and were about to start making staves instead of wands." His eyes bored into hers. "And this is somehow not a threat that could upset the order of things with the Great Houses?"

Hermione felt uncomfortable. "…well, it's wrong. They shouldn't be able to oppress a class of people so entirely like that…"

Tom Riddle cackled, cutting off her impassioned defense.

"Admit it or not, but you are the fox in the chicken coop, Hermione," he said, his eyes gleaming. "You just haven't quite realized it yourself yet."

"I am not," Hermione snapped. "I gave the hedgewitches the tools to help themselves. They can do whatever they like with them. I'm not trying to push them into seizing the means of production, merely make a bit of a better life for themselves. They couldn't even use magic, Tom!"

"Sure," Tom said agreeably. "You gave them the tools. And in turn, you will have their undying loyalty, and when they start their Reign of Terror, you alone will be safe from their guillotine."

"You are being ridiculous." Hermione rolled her eyes. "Hush, Tom."

She ignored Tom's smirking as she walked over to the box that contained the boggart, nudging it with her foot, curious.

"A fox represents people very close to me, my family," she said, musing, "and a Komodo dragon my successful revenge." She glanced over at Tom. "I wonder what else I could get, using a different memory."

Tom looked thoughtful.

"There are old stories of a person's Patronus changing when they fall in love," he said slowly. He sneered. "I dismissed such things as nonsense, of course, but if the core of a changing Patronus is not love, but the memory you use…"

"Harry's is a stag," Hermione said, thinking out loud. "His father was a stag Animagus. And he said the memory he used was us bonding as a coven, too – so that's representative of his sense of family, I think."

"Do you know anyone else's?" Tom prodded. "We need more data points than three."

"Luna has a rabbit, Susan got a horse, and Blaise got a panther," Hermione recalled. "None of them mentioned what memory they were using though. I suppose I could ask."

"That might not go well," Tom warned her. "They might be using something incredibly personal to them."

"So?" Hermione shrugged. "Then they won't tell me. But it doesn't hurt to ask."

She walked around the box a couple more times, wondering, before she looked back up at Tom.

"We'll try again?" she said. "And if I can't cast Fiendfyre properly, I'll try a different memory for the Patronus to push it back into the box?"

Tom laughed.

"You're not going to be able to cast Fiendfyre properly when you don't actually want to destroy the boggart," he said, smirking as he folded his arms. "You're too curious about this new little experiment of yours."

"Well, maybe," Hermione amended as she readied her wand. "But it'll still be good practice."


By the time she was done practicing for the day, Hermione had gotten a Komodo dragon twice, a fox five times, and a phoenix once. She'd had to stop once Tom had started fading away, and she stashed the boggart box in the Chamber of Secrets before gathering up the diary and heading back up the slide-stairs to the bathroom.

Any sort of memory associated with justice or revenge got a Komodo dragon from her, she'd found. The memory of fusing three boys' legs together into one when fleeing from bullies resulted in the giant lizard, as well as the memory of Rowle's face underneath the Whomping Willow when he realized what she'd done. And the memory of her revenge on Rhamnaceae had been the original one to cause a Komodo dragon, so that was three examples so far.

Anything to do with just happiness with others, it seemed, got a fox. Bonding with her coven caused a fox, as did memories of long evenings spent on the beach with Fleur, as did happy moments with her coven in the long grass over the summer. She'd gotten a fox from the memory of her kiss with Blaise, and even a weak fox with a memory of the first time Cedric had taken her out in Diagon Alley. Hermione wondered if it was because love of any sort, platonic or romantic or anything and everything in between, was held in her heart, which was now represented with a fox.

She'd managed a phoenix once – the memory of the helping Myrtle ascend into the next world, and the echo of her surprise and freedom and sheer joy back down the pillar of light. That, Hermione mused, was a memory of pure good. It made sense it would manifest a phoenix, a symbol of Light magic and rebirth.

She needed more data points, though. She'd have to ask Blaise to try casting with different memories, to see what he got. It made sense that once a person found a memory that worked, they were likely to just stick with that particular memory, so Patronuses weren't likely to change. Falling in love caused all kinds of new happy memories, though, so it made sense that it would be the most common trigger people would see for them to shift…

Hermione mused to herself all the way up the stairs, through the bathroom, and through the hallways. She'd utterly failed at casting Fiendfyre, but she'd learned something else that was just so interesting instead. Lupin had never even mentioned this sort of thing during Patronus lessons.

To her surprise, she ran into Jade and Milan on her way toward the Slytherin common room, barely registering them the first time as she passed by.

"Granger."

Jade's snappish voice startled Hermione out of her thoughts, and she looked up, confused.

"Me?" she asked.

"Yes, you," Jade said, terse. "Do you see any other Grangers here?"

"Sorry," Hermione apologized. "I was lost in thought. What is it?"

Now that she was paying attention, Hermione could tell that something was wrong. Milan looked anxious, biting her lip, while Jade's expression was inscrutable.

"Do you have a moment?" Milan asked. "We need to talk to you."

"Privately," Jade said, folding her arms.

Hermione blinked. "Umm. Sure."

The girls led her into a warm-looking classroom on the 5th floor, one with a rich red patterned carpet. Jade closed the door behind them, and both older girls turned to regard Hermione.

"What is it?" Hermione asked, slightly anxious. Their silence was making her unnerved.

The two older girls exchanged a heavy look.

"I got my period yesterday," Milan said finally.

Immediately, Hermione's face crumpled with sympathy.

"Oh, no," she said, her heart sinking with grief and sadness. "Milan, I'm so sorry. I really am – we did everything we could—"

"I didn't."

Jade's voice cut through Hermione's apologies like a knife, and Hermione paused, turning to look at the Head Girl.

"What?" she asked.

"I didn't," Jade said darkly, her eyes flashing, "get my cycle."

"And if we ovulated at the same time…" Milan said, trailing off.

Hermione's eyes went wide, and she looked at Jade's stomach.

No… surely…

They couldn't mean…

The check was a simple spell, one Professor Sprout had taught them earlier in the year. A circular gesture with her wand and murmured word, and Jade's middle lit up with a soft green and white light, before it faded into nothing, and Hermione's eyes went up to meet Jade's.

"Oh," she said faintly.

"'Oh' indeed," said Jade, sneering. "She's messed up my entire life, and all she says is 'oh'."

"Well, it was a complicated ritual!" Hermione defended. "If something was miscalculated, and you conceived instead of Milan—"

"I don't care how it happened," Jade snarled, her eyes sharp. "Just fix it, Granger. Now. Do you understand me? You will fix this."

Hermione swallowed hard. "I understand."