When Hermione pulled Tom from the diary, his eyes were sharp and alert. Once it became clear he was in her childhood bedroom and not Azkaban, he relaxed immediately and turned to her, eyes alight.
"How did it go?" he asked, unable to entirely hide the eagerness in his voice. "You haven't written. Did you finish it?"
Hermione beamed.
"I got them all," she said, unable to hold back her excitement. "If there were any that weren't at Azkaban, I haven't heard of it. But unless there's a hidden dementor somewhere, they've been eradicated. Entirely."
Tom laughed. "Well done, you." He smiled at her, eyes sparkling. "How's the reaction been?"
"I don't know, honestly," Hermione admitted. "I half-expected to be called in to the Wizengamot early for an emergency session, but I've heard nothing. The Department of Magical Law Enforcement has locked down all communication about it. There's been nothing new for over a week."
"How long has it been?" Tom asked.
"Oh! It's been… just under two weeks," Hermione said, mentally counting back. "There were some complications at the end, after you left, but it went very well." She grinned. "Letting the prisoners see me was a good idea. The paper reported a Valkyrie was responsible for the attack."
Tom whistled. "Nice. Couldn't ask for better branding, really."
Hermione grinned.
"I actually pulled you out to ask you some questions about your school years," she told him. "Did you know Klaus and Kevin Broadmoor in Hogwarts?"
"Broadmoor?" Tom hummed. "They were twins a couple years younger than me. They were on the Quidditch team, which is the only reason I remember them."
"Any chance they would have joined your little club?" Hermione asked, and Tom snorted.
"If they thought it would have gotten them power? Absolutely," he said. "They were constantly on the verge of getting thrown off the Quidditch team for their marks being too low. Neither was very accomplished."
"Wait, you took bad students?" Hermione asked, surprised. "I thought you had been trying to build, like, an elite group of people to explore forbidden magic—"
"Sure," Tom cut her off, "but if I was going to be busy doing that, I needed generic henchmen to carry out the boring parts of everything."
Hermione paused, lost, and Tom sighed.
"If you're building a political movement, Hermione," he told her, "you need to be able to find a place for everyone. The smartest, the richest, the elite, but the disadvantaged and the weak, too."
"You didn't have a place for Muggleborns," Hermione shot back.
"Of course I did," Tom said. His eyes glinted. "They were 'the enemy'. It's as an important role as any. Uniting people around a common enemy works. I saw it happen, growing up."
Hermione shuddered, cringing. That's right – Tom had grown up during The Blitz. Tom watched her, eyes glowing, but said nothing.
"Apparently, Voldemort instructed the Broadmoors to buy part of the Daily Prophet," she told him, redirecting the conversation. "They're still hanging onto it, obedient to the last. And I want to buy out their share."
A slow grin was spreading across Tom's face, one Hermione determinedly ignored.
"If you are willing," Hermione went on, "I am hoping that counter-instructions from the presumed Dark Lord might persuade them otherwise. To accept a deal offered blindly and obediently, even."
Tom was looking at Hermione with a glitter in his eye that made her nervous. A sly smile was on his lips, one Hermione didn't trust one bit.
"Let me get this straight," he said. "You would like me to go to the Broadmoors, who are old men by now, appear to them as my schoolboy self, imply I am the Dark Lord himself, and order them to sell their shares in the Daily Prophet? You would have me impersonate my older self, practically speaking, to demand their obedience?"
Hermione bit her lip. "Um. Yes."
Tom's eyes gleamed.
"Hermione," he purred, "I would love to."
The Broadmoors, as it turned out, did not live in an enormous stately manor somewhere. They lived in a house on the outskirts of Fordwich in east Kent, northeast of Canterbury. Given the isolated location and her inability to Apparate, Hermione chose the most direct method of transportation.
At midnight, after her parents were asleep, Hermione silently dressed in her blackest robes. She took her wand, Tom's diary, and Harry's invisibility cloak, as well as her Adventurer's Kit, and she silently crept out of the house to the street, where she threw out her wand hand to summon the Knight Bus. She gave careful instructions on exactly where to drop her, so no one would hear the bangs and loud pops of the nightmarish transport, but there was only so much she could do – the Knight Bus would do what it wanted, she'd long since realized, and the driver barely managed to hold it at bay.
Can you summon a Dark Mark of Fiendfyre? Tom wrote to her as they rode along. I might need to give a display of my power to convince them.
I can manage a snake, Hermione wrote back. I don't know about a full Dark Mark – I don't know how to do a skull. That's not exactly an animal.
A snake should do fine, Tom dismissed. Just pay attention and listen for a cue.
Do you think I'm not going to be paying careful attention? Hermione wrote back, annoyed. That I'll just let my guard down around a couple of rogue Death Eaters who are already going to be scared to death at seeing their vanquished master?
Who knows? Tom was ambivalent. How are we getting into the house?
We'll see, Hermione admitted. I don't have much experience with breaking and entering.
When the Knight Bus dropped her off on the outskirts, Hermione took a moment to pull Tom from the diary, and together they crept the rest of the way over to the house, examining it as best they could in the dark.
"There's definitely some magical protections here," Tom whispered to her. "Anti-unlocking jinxes on the knob, blood ward on the door itself for people of impure heritage."
"I am going to have to have you teach me how to detect Dark magic someday," Hermione whispered back. She knelt down, digging through her Adventurer's Kit.
"What are you doing?" Tom asked. "We don't have much time."
"Exactly," Hermione whispered, pulling a crowbar from her pack. "We don't have time to mess around with unknown magic."
Quietly, she cast a silencing spell on the area with the door and put on Harry's invisibility cloak. She took a careful stance, avoiding the door itself, and wedged the crowbar into the door near the handle, where the lock was. She began leveraging it back and forth, the door frame splintering silently until the lock popped, allowing them to push the door open with the crow bar and creep inside.
While Hermione was casting Reparo as silently as she could, Tom was fixing his hair and looking around, eyes gleaming softly in the dim light.
"Ready?" he murmured to nothing, and Hermione abruptly remembered he couldn't see her when she was under the cloak.
"Ready," she whispered, and with a nod, Tom crept forward into the house.
As Tom prowled up the stairs like a cat, Hermione began to wonder what she'd gotten herself into. She was good with magic, sure, but would she really be able to face down two fully-grown Death Eaters if it came to it? She could cast Fiendfyre, sure, but that would only do so much and would probably result in dead bodies, which were a very suspicious and undesirable outcome. She could use her elemental magic to a degree, she supposed, but she doubted that would hold up much against people able to cast Avada Kedavra.
It had seemed so simple from the outside. Break in, have Tom intimidate them into submission, sneak out, get their Daily Prophet shares. But now, in the moment, Hermione found she was bordering between nervousness and genuine fear. What had she gotten herself into?
The successful siege on Azkaban had clearly gone to her head.
Tom eased open the door to the bedroom, and Hermione closed it silently behind him. There were two full beds in front of him, an old man sleeping on each one. Hermione idly wondered what had happened to their wives, and then what had caused them to want to move back in together again.
"It's too dark," Tom said under his breath. "Let's get some mood lighting and get this going, shall we?"
Hermione took up her invisible position at Tom's side, slightly behind him. Considering her goals for a moment, she reached for her fire elemental and conjured bluebell flames to float in the corners of the room, tinting the flames green with her elemental and her will. Gradually, the floating fires increased in luminance, and then the brothers were stirring, and suddenly they both gasped awake, sitting bolt upright in bed.
"Karl, Kevin," Tom said, his voice charming, warm. "My loyal knights. How peacefully you sleep, untroubled."
It took a moment for their sleepy brains to realize what was going on. Hermione could tell the moment it happened - the two stumbled from their beds, eyes wide in alarm, and both knelt on the floor as fast as they could.
"My Lord!" one of them gasped. "My Lord, how is it you are—"
Tom laughed. It was cold.
"Do you think you are in a position to ask anything of me?" he said cruelly. "You abandoned me in my time of greatest need. You did not seek me out, you did not bring me back, and now, you presume to demand answers."
The men fell silent, quaking in their sleeping clothes.
"I have a mission for you," Tom said coldly. "If you have any hope of redeeming yourself and taking your rightful place in the New World Order, you will listen to me, and you will obey. Do I make myself clear?"
The men exchanged a look, and Tom twitched. Grabbing onto her hatred of Death Eaters, Hermione whispered "Malignis Fiendfyre", and a serpent of flame burst forward. Karl and Kevin both cried out in alarm, while Tom stood perfectly still, nonplussed.
"Do I make myself clear?" Tom hissed, the serpent of hellfire curling around the room and spitting at the men.
"Yes, my Lord!" they both cried. "Yes!"
As Tom airily gestured, Hermione dismissing the Fiendfyre with relief, both men were blubbering out apologies – they were simply so astonished at seeing their lord again, and they were still half asleep, they would do anything desired of them—
"Cease your pathetic groveling," Tom said coldly. "I have not the time for it."
Both old men immediately grew quiet, still kneeling on the floor.
"As you are well aware, I am not publicizing my return," Tom told them. "I intend to keep the public in the dark as long as possible. To further these efforts, I intend to leverage your ownership of the Daily Prophet."
"Yes, my lord," said one of them.
"Yes, of course my lord," said the other.
"Good," Tom said. "You will shortly receive a contract from Gringotts. It will appear to be a benign business contract – an offer of gold for your share. You are to accept this offer. You will even receive the gold – everything must appear above board. But do not tell anyone the truth of why you transferred your ownership."
"I understand, my lord," one of the brothers croaked out. "But my lord, who—who is now—"
"One of my loyal servants will run the paper," Tom hissed, and Hermione made the green flames glow brighter. "One who came looking for me. One who did not wait and hide."
Both brothers bowed down again, heads touching the ground, and begged Tom's forgiveness for their impudence.
"You will sign the contract, or you will feel my wrath," Tom informed them. "And none of your family will survive that."
"Of course, my lord," they said, voices quaking. "Of course."
"Tell no one why you sold the Prophet," he instructed them further. "My return must be hidden until all the pieces are in place. Tell no one."
Hermione rather wondered if he was emphasizing the 'tell no one' bit so they would tell someone, or so they would imply it to other Death Eaters who'd avoided Azkaban. The brothers were tripping over their words, both agreeing to his terms, and Tom glanced to his side where Hermione was. Taking that as her cue, Hermione stood and quickly stunned them both, both brothers toppling over onto the floor, motionless.
"I'm so glad that worked," Hermione said, ripping the invisibility cloak's hood from her head. "I was panicking that I'd set the coverlets on fire for a moment."
"It would have been dramatic," Tom said, shrugging. "Can you levitate them back onto their beds?"
Hermione didn't know which one belonged on which bed, but she decided she didn't care. She purposefully put them on the beds upside-down, their heads hanging just at the edge with their feet under their pillows. Let them wake up and be reassured it wasn't all a dream.
Tom seemed to be thinking along the same lines.
"Should we transfigure a dark mark into the carpet?" he asked. "So they know it wasn't just a nightmare?"
"That seems a bit obvious," Hermione said. "And it'd be visible proof and evidence if another Death Eater friend decided to come over. What else could we do?"
They eventually decided on leaving a copy of the Daily Prophet on the brothers' nightstand, where there had been no paper before. They crept from their room, closed the door, and quietly snuck out of their house through the front door and headed back into town.
"The Stunner will wear off, won't it?" Hermione asked, gnawing nervously on her lip.
"It wears off over time," Tom reassured her. "It's very safe. It's a favorite of the Ministry because it doesn't cause lasting damage." He paused, smirking. "Unless, of course, you're hit by more than one at a time."
Hermione wondered how he knew such a particular detail.
"I have to thank you," Tom said quietly as they crept down the dark road. "I haven't gotten to really do much in a while. That was… exhilarating."
"You helped me take down the dementors," Hermione objected. "At Azkaban. That's not nothing."
"You took down the dementors, Hermione," Tom told her, glancing at her sideways. "I acted as guard. Passively. Today, I got to be the active one."
Hermione fell silent at that. After a moment, Tom spoke.
"I'm good at people," he said. "Charming them, intimidating them, persuading them… and it's nice to feel useful, to do what I'm good at." His eyes cut over to look at her again. "I understand why you're wary of having me do too much, but I'm a good tool for you, Hermione. I could help so much more other than just being your Dark Magic tutor."
Hermione bit her lip.
"We'll see how the summer goes, Tom," she said. "We'll see."
