1940
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Hermione couldn't think of a good name to call the holiday between her Second and Third Year. So in her mind, it went by "The Summer That Tom Riddle Lived In My House".
She hadn't noticed until now that she'd divorced her life into two distinct categories: Magical Life and Muggle Life. They were separate entities in her mind, not ones whose separation she acknowledged on a day-to-day basis. But they were always in the background, in the shape of her thoughts, as natural and intrinsic as the distinctions she made between Right and Wrong or Like and Dislike.
Magical Life was Hogwarts, her future, a new world to explore, an escapist fantasy for a lonely girl who liked books more than people, and had been called 'Peculiar' since she was eight. Muggle Life was London and the house in Crawley, living with Mum and Dad, a world of familiarity and logic, with sensible rules and adult supervision.
Now the categories were converging, the solid lines between the groups intersecting, knotting together into a tangled cat's cradle of mental associations.
Tom Riddle had been a form of escapism for her when she was ten years old. He was the boy on the other side of the letters whose passion and fire made her forget that he was a penniless orphan living on the rougher side of London. On paper, it didn't matter who he was or who he wasn't; she never saw his face, only his words—and such beautiful words he wrote! From there, she'd built an image of him in her mind of what she thought he was, an ideal of sorts. But paper was paper, and reality was more than two dimensional, and although her image had been shaken in the first few weeks of First Year, it hadn't crumbled. The distance had closed somewhat the following year, after they'd made their peace with each other.
...But now, the remaining distance was fast disintegrating.
How could it not?
More than one morning, she had trudged across the hall half-asleep, and stumbled into Tom Riddle in her bathroom, brushing his teeth in his pyjamas. His hair wasn't combed into its normal ruler-straight side part, but dishevelled from sleep, in a way that was more windswept and debonair than outright scruffy. Tom was never scruffy.
"Good morning," said Hermione, reaching for her own toothbrush.
Tom rinsed his mouth and dropped his toothbrush into his cup with a clatter. "I may be used to sharing a bathroom, but I don't think I will ever be used to seeing foot-long hairs in the drain."
"Not all of us were lucky enough to be born with perfect hair," Hermione retorted. "And don't you think it's too early in the morning for sarcasm?"
Tom shrugged. "I always make time for it, somehow."
That about summed up Hermione's ten weeks of close quarters interactions with Tom Riddle. Infuriating half the time, enlightening the other half, but at no point during the holiday did she ever feel like Tom would have been better off at the orphanage. She wasn't heartless; despite her belief that his descriptions of life at Wool's were mostly hyperbole, she certainly wouldn't want to live there herself. And whilst Tom allowed his natural caustic charm to shine in her presence, he never forgot his manners around the adults.
Close quarters interactions with Mr. Pacek were a more interesting experience.
The wizard reminded him of their Potions Master, Professor Slughorn. Mr. Sigismund Pacek didn't slaver over famous names and prominent families like Horace Slughorn did, but similar to the professor, Mr. Pacek seemed to have been born of good family, and was accustomed to good living. He liked his comforts: hot food in quantity, top shelf drink, and quality company, and for the first time in a long while—perhaps for the first time in his entire life—he'd resorted to working for it, instead of expecting it as a given due to his social position or the prestige of his occupation.
Like Slughorn, Mr. Pacek was knowledgeable beyond the field of his qualifications. Professor Slughorn, Hermione remembered, was reputed to be an excellent consultant and advisor, a deft hand at guiding his protégés from entry level employment to fully fledged professional careers. He had a silent partnership in a profitable apothecary enterprise, Slug and Jigger's on Diagon Alley. Tom had looked up Potions Mastery programmes, and it turned out that whilst Professor Slughorn didn't take many apprentices of his own, being too busy with teaching and collecting dinner party invitations, he did funnel promising ones off to his business partner, Arsenius Jigger.
("If he's such a successful businessman," Tom had grumbled, "then why can't he buy his own pineapples?")
Mr. Pacek was a qualified wardmaster by trade, but the breadth of his knowledge extended beyond that. He had a good eye for colour—"And I can lay enchantments on house fittings and furniture," he'd said, "because what is enchantment but warding on a smaller scale? The fundamentals are very similar, just the runes compressed here and inverted there, with a few reversed incantations to keep the magic in and stable instead of on the outside—but do not ask me to do your jewellery and lock boxes and pocket watches; I do not like dealing with the fiddly things!"
Besides that, he knew quite a lot about wizarding culture and history.
When Mr. Pacek was in her room, a carpenter's pencil tucked behind one ear, and his wand behind the other, it was then that Hermione had worked up the courage to ask him about magical academia... and the less academic side of magic.
He was, as he'd promised, creating a linked window for the cellar, using her bedroom window as the base. It was good that Mr. Pacek was doing this now, as Mum wanted to install blackout curtains on all the windows of the house, and until then, Hermione wasn't allowed to turn on the electric lights after dark. It was advice given them by a government pamphlet that came with the month's ration booklet.
If Hermione wanted to read after sunset, she'd need to go down to the cellar—where Tom all but lived these days, ever since her Mum had put her foot down and told him he needed to sleep in the guest room and eat at the dining table, because she wasn't going to make up a tray for him and leave it on the cellar stairs, as he'd had the nerve to request. When Mum had told him off, Tom had sent Hermione a sideways glance, one eyebrow raised, and she could tell he was running a mental commentary on the uncanny resemblance between Mrs. Granger and her daughter.
Mr. Pacek was pencilling in numbers and symbols on the wooden frame and sash of Hermione's window, a step ladder propped against the wall. Hermione had asked to observe, since she'd picked Runes and Arithmancy as her Third Year elective subjects, and had already started reading the textbooks, with the older wizard patiently answering the thick stack of jotted-down questions she'd saved up for his weekend visits.
He was a good teacher, she'd told him, and asked why he didn't advertise tutoring services in the Daily Prophet.
"Most students do not need tutoring except for their two exam years," he explained, laying out his tools on a drop-cloth on Hermione's bedroom floor. She'd spotted a bow compass, a pair of set squares, and a rattling tin which turned out to be full of coloured chalk. "And I have not taken the British qualification exams. What do they call them here? B.A.T.s and F.R.O.G.s? No matter; I can tell you that wizarding parents would not hire me to tutor their children specifically for the exam unless I could provide proof of my own exam scores. And to take them at your Ministry of Magic is not so simple—I would have to take several months off per exam to study to the British examiners' standards. Of course, I have passed them all with high distinction at the Durmstrang Institute, but the theory is taught differently there, although the principles have much in common no matter what school teaches the subject.
"We, for instance, studied Norse runes like you shall in your class, but not the Celtic and Anglo-Saxon runes as you have shown me in your textbook. Contrary to the Hogwarts syllabus, we were taught the Slavonic alphabets, and in my senior years, we studied Semitic and Phoenician scripts. I believe the French school of magic teaches Celtic and Phoenician scripts, but not Norse runes—so as you can see, this inconsistency in standards goes both ways."
"That sounds unfair," said Hermione, who considered herself a self-appointed ambassador to Fairness and Justice. "You can cast the same spells and create the same wards as a British wizard, can't you? The tools might be different, but you're able to build the exact same things."
"It is to the discretion of the governing body," said Mr. Pacek, with an unconcerned shrug. "It is just the way things are. I do not believe your father would be allowed to practice his craft on the same day, if he moved to Argentina." He tied a knotted rope to Hermione's curtain rail and marked off the lines with his pencil, his lips moving as he counted in a language that Hermione didn't recognise. "But I daresay that if he moved to France tomorrow they would not complain much, if at all. France is hard up for doctors at the moment."
"In fact," he continued, rifling through his leather roll of tools for a chisel, before he began to chip small divots into the paint of the window frame. "The French Conseil is openly seeking wands and warders to defend their official buildings for when the Grand Minister decides to turn his eyes to the west. I have had letters from my classmates saying that they will not look into one's papers or past, or even species. I am sure they would offer me a place in their Légion étrangère, should I wish it—but the dowagers and housewitches of Britain pay me just as handsomely, and do not ask me to leap headfirst into the dangers of war."
"Is it that dangerous?" Hermione asked, and then stopped herself. Of course war was dangerous. "I—I mean, I know about the casualties in the Muggle war—my father served in the Medical Corps twenty years ago—but I also know wizards have all sorts of potions and healing spells, not to mention they can Apparate. Is it that bad?"
She knew Tom wanted to join the fight when he was old enough, and though she personally disapproved of war as a concept, she acknowledged that sometimes one had no choice. It was not always possible to be a pacifist when there was an enemy knocking at the gates. But Tom had not wanted to join for patriotism, and he cared little about the preservation of Magical Britain. He didn't want honour and glory so much as he wanted other people to honour and glorify him.
And he wanted an Order of Merlin. First Class preferably, but Third Class would do. A gold medal was a gold medal, and according to the book he'd found in the library with the current list of recipients, it was only the colour of the silk ribbon that differed between the Orders, and not the medal itself.
("You'd hardly notice the difference between ribbon colours, wouldn't you?" Tom had remarked, his eyes lingering on the coloured illustration plate in the centre of the book. Like most magical pictures, it was animated. "Once you've got that shiny bit of gold winking from your chest. I bet wizards don't bother with gold plating or alloys. It'll be solid gold all through, with a hardening charm or something, to keep the design from rubbing away after a few polishings.")
"It can be," said Mr. Pacek. He scratched his goatee and gazed out through Hermione's second floor window, deep in thought. "A capable wizard can cast an Anti-Apparition Jinx, which can be dispelled if one knows the counter-incantation. An even more skilled wizard can create an Anti-Apparition Ward, which takes longer to anchor, but does not risk being dispelled so easily. And with that you have taken the average wizard's advantage of mobility. If your opponent loses his leg with the right curse, he must resort to more mundane transportation to get himself to a Healer or infirmary. If he tries to Apparate, despite the Ward, despite the pain of his injury, then he will splinch himself and lose the other leg and perhaps half of his body.
"And that is fighting someone with knowledge and preparation, which many wizards are, especially those who call themselves soldiers of fortune. It is an entirely different matter to meet Minister Grindelwald on the field."
Hermione swallowed. "I heard he was expelled as a student, before he even graduated. He must not have been a good student, mustn't he?"
"'Good'?" Mr. Pacek laughed. "A man like the Minister does not need papers and certificates to prove what he is capable of. He was never good. He was—is—brilliant. That is what makes him so formidable: illegality is no obstacle to him; neither is immorality. I have heard that he has, or has sought a means to, bring puppets of the dead to the field of battle." He gave a low chuckle, drawing his wand out from behind his ear and twirling it between his fingers. "But these things are difficult to verify—there are never any witnesses to it, you understand? However, it is too easy to believe for a man of his capability."
Illegality is no obstacle to him.
In that moment, Hermione was uncomfortably reminded of Tom Riddle. She took a deep breath and sat herself down on her bed. The quilted blankets were patterned with pink and purple flowers, the exact design replicated on the blankets over her bed in the cellar. Mum and Dad's bed and furniture had identical copies too; their corner of the cellar looked like their bedroom transferred to an open plan studio apartment the size of the house's ground floor.
Hermione decided to ask the things she had wanted answers to for ages. She would have written them down with her big list of school-related questions, but wouldn't have put it past Tom to read her notes when she was in the loo. And now that he could do magic in the cellar, he could duplicate them wholesale with a wave of his wand. It was best not to arouse his suspicions if she didn't have to. She knew Tom was very touchy when it came to trusting other people. For someone who didn't care about laws or codes of conduct, it was funny how he considered betrayal as the worst crime of all.
"Is there such a thing as a ward that acts as protection against being mind controlled?" Hermione asked. "I've read that there are spells—illegal spells—that can do it, and if there are dangerous wizards roaming about who don't care about what's legal and what isn't, surely someone would find a way to protect themselves against it?"
"You are referring to the Imperius Curse, are you not? The third, but no less dark, of the Unforgivables?" said Mr. Pacek, his wand stilling in his hand. He straightened up, joints creaking, and peered at her intently. "An unexpected subject for a young lady of your age to be reading into, I should think."
She wasn't going to tell him that she had been looking into it from the first week of her First Year.
But... The Imperius Curse? The Unforgivables?
Mr. Pacek had inadvertently given her more information to continue her search, one she had been contemplating putting off until her Seventh Year, when she could apply for the teacher's note and gain legitimate access to the Restricted Section. She knew that the lack of information had stalled Tom as well, and he had been forced to skim through shelves of dusty legal tomes for any extra nuggets of knowledge.
"I..." Hermione began, wishing she was as good a speaker as Tom, "I think that as wonderful magic is, it's also... terrifying. And there is nothing more frightening to me than having my will, my agency, my freedom of choice, and sovereignty over my own mind and body stripped from me. I think that it's the most horrific thing you can do with magic. If it is called Unforgivable, then I fully agree with that. Sir, I only want to protect myself, and my family, if it's at all possible."
"The main reason why they are called Unforgivable," said Mr. Pacek carefully, still watching her, "is because there is no way to block them once cast, short of conjuring a physical barrier. Standard Shield Charms, defensive wards, and most enchanted artifacts will not work against them. The secondary reason why they are Unforgivable and illegal is that casting them, like most spells, requires a concentrated power of intent. One must want to strip away the autonomy of another living being; they must truly desire the act of domination. If such a defensive ward against the Imperius existed, someone with the power and ability to cast it would be determined enough to find an alternative. An overpowered, mass Confundus, perhaps. Or a potion laced with hallucinogenic ingredients, administered in the form of a vapour, or an unguent absorbed through the skin."
"Sir," Hermione choked out, feeling her toes curl in horror, "you're saying there's no way to protect myself against being—being taken over, if someone really wants it?"
"There are ways," said Mr. Pacek, in a soft voice, his eyes softening at her shocked reaction. "You must be careful with yourself, Miss Granger. You are a young witch brought up as a Muggle—you know what I mean by this. Trust the right people, and keep your friends close. And do not make the wrong enemies. Why do you think I choose to stay away from the war? I do not seek to make enemies when I know my weaknesses too well. I know I am a good wardmaster—and widely recognised in Bohemia as a master of the craft—but I was never a great duellist, and that is also known by anyone who studied at Durmstrang when I was there. These are spells one must have the reflexes and spontaneity of a duellist to neutrallise."
"It wouldn't go amiss to brush up on my Defence skills," Hermione said, half to herself. She was great in theory for every subject, but in wandwork she was not nearly as perfect as she wished. She could memorise the class spell lists, but she didn't have instantaneous reflexes, which she'd found out the first time she'd gotten on a broom in Flying Class and had almost rammed face-first into a Quidditch goal hoop while everyone else was turning the corner.
"Your young friend appears to have a natural aptitude at Defence," Mr. Pacek remarked. "I have noticed that he can produce a tangible Shield Charm, which I recall studying in my own Fourth Year. It was a small thing, but it was symmetrical around the axis, not ovoid and dim as were my first attempts; his were impervious to minor to moderate attacks both magical and physical, which indicates a very powerful caster." He gave Hermione a considering look, and when he spoke, it was in a low, tired voice. "He would be a good friend to keep close, if you trust him. I do not think you would enjoy him as an enemy of yours."
If you trust him.
The implications behind that were puzzling.
Did he think that Tom was untrustworthy? Had Tom done something?
Tom usually behaved himself around adults, most of whom thought him a charming lad with good prospects and good wits about him, whose parentless background made him endearing and brave, instead of an object of scorn and pity. Tom acted as if the fawning disgusted him, but she knew it ruffled him something terrible if he didn't get his special sympathetic treatment on a regular basis.
Perhaps that explained why he hated the orphanage so much. Wool's and the likes of Mrs. Cole couldn't provide him with the kind of stimuli that Hogwarts offered.
Tom liked that Hermione was honest around him, and refused to give him 'Special Treatment'. He encouraged her to be brutally honest, particularly when it came to their professors and classmates, and her sorry attempts were amusing to him. Not that she indulged him by trying very hard. She didn't care for senseless cruelty. Or Tom's sense of humour, for that matter.
He'd told her that watching her struggle with criticism—even if it was valid—was on par to the entertainment value in watching one of the orphans eat soap.
("I can tell you're just about frothing at the mouth," he'd observed. "It's not quite as good as the real thing, but I'll make allowances for you.")
"Why wouldn't I trust him?" Hermione asked.
"Do you?"
"Yes?"
"Why is your answer a question, Miss Granger?"
"I don't know?" said Hermione. She wrinkled her nose and attempted to explain herself. "I don't think he's my enemy, or that he ever would be." She made no mention of their being friends. "But I do know that he wouldn't hurt me. Not knowingly, or intentionally."
That... sounded slightly bad once the words had passed her lips. Caveats and exceptions made a statement refutable. They were like missing bricks in a structure: take out one too many and you wouldn't have a house anymore. And when it rained, you had better hope you had another house tucked away somewhere.
Tom would never hit her, push her down a staircase, or tear the ribbons out of her hair, as had been done in her primary school days by other children during their lunch recesses. He wouldn't call her the names they used, or denigrate her physical appearance; he considered that sort of behaviour shallow and juvenile, and above all, Muggle.
That didn't preclude the possibility of using magic on her, if he was experimenting on something and thought it was for a good purpose. He wouldn't use any lethal spells on her, or non-lethal ones with lethal intent—she still remembered that conversation from two years ago where he'd contemplated the possibility of using a Knockback Jinx on a moving staircase. They had used the Knockback Jinx on one another in a later Defence class, and practising together for their First Year exams. Nothing had happened.
But a magical accident wasn't out of the question, she concluded. A calculated risk gone wrong.
"Such a double-edged sword is one's freedom of choice," Mr. Pacek sighed. "Ah, the vagaries of youth."
"Do you not trust him?" asked Hermione, who was perplexed at his reaction, and still trying to work out why. She wasn't sure she was comfortable with someone making insinuations, however subtle, about Tom's character. Who were they to judge him? They didn't even know him!
She was allowed to judge him, though. She, out of everyone else who thought they knew him, actually knew him.
"I am a guest in this house; I am employed by Madam Granger. I do not see it as my place to trust or distrust a stranger's child," he said, turning to the window and resuming his work. "If you asked me if I liked him? I could not say. But I... I am conscious of reasons to be wary around him."
"Has he done something?" Hermione frowned. "If he's pranked you, I'll talk to him about it."
"So," replied Mr. Pacek, as he picked up the tin of coloured chalk. "It appears that you do not know."
"I'm sorry?" said Hermione, "I'm afraid I don't understand what you're getting at. You think Tom is evil and you don't like him, but you can't tell me why?"
"I was merely being tactful about it," he said. "Magical theory about illicit subjects is one thing, how they relate to individuals in one's acquaintance is another. Are you not aware that Mr. Riddle is... particularly perceptive in a certain manner? Sensitive around some people, able to deduce their intent, and mistrusting of others?"
"He's always like that," said Hermione, defensively. "He doesn't come from the best part of London, so of course he's learned not to listen to anyone trying to lure him into a dark alley."
"Have you ever looked in his eyes?"
"Y-yes," said Hermione, her sense of certainty wavering ever so slightly.
Tom's eyes were a few shades of brown darker than her own. Indoors, out of direct light, they looked black. It reminded her of the Lake in early spring, the dark waters still and placid, the squid and merfolk tucked away and waiting for warmer days. Black water, twenty feet or two hundred feet down—there was no way to tell—but she was drawn toward it for some inexplicable reason, until he blinked and the moment passed and she found herself wondering why she was staring at him.
"I do not know what names the English use for it. But the boy has what some call a form of 'true sight'," said Mr. Pacek. "A gift such as true Seers have, a type of magical perception that can be taught and learned, but most effectively in those with some natural proficiency. It is an illicit subject at Durmstrang, more than even the Unforgivable Curses, which is permissible to discuss in their theoretical aspects. But the theory of this form of perception is heavily restricted—and it is as valuable as it is dangerous. He should not be using it so openly."
He's talking about Tom's ability. The one Dumbledore knows about, and has warned him about.
The one she had warned him about, because she didn't want to see him expelled just when he'd gotten his chance at a better life than either the orphanage or the Muggle world could offer him.
"Will you tell him you know about it?" said Hermione. "One of our professors at school knows about it, and knows what he's doing, but won't teach him until he's older."
"Your professor is wise," said Mr. Pacek. "And a more experienced mentor than me, I expect. I can tutor, yes, but I am no one's parent. I shall not tell him."
"If he suspects you know anything," Hermione spoke unhappily, wishing she didn't have to, "he'll try to persuade you. And he can be quite persuasive when he wants to be."
"I can protect myself, Miss Granger. I have learned enough of the magical arts to divert his attention elsewhere if he comes to me seeking knowledge," said Mr. Pacek, and her concerns were pushed aside with a dismissive flap of his hands. "But you should consider protecting yourself."
"How? Is there a way?"
"You must know when not to look him in the eyes when he speaks to you. And if you do speak to him, think of something with no relation to your words. The pattern of warp and weft on the bedcovers, or a flickering tongue of flame of a candle in a dark room—think of one thing, imagine it in perfect detail to the exclusion of all else, and speak of another."
"I don't know if I can do that..." said Hermione dubiously. It seemed as absurd as rubbing her stomach while patting her head, one of the exercises she'd done in primary school when the teachers had taught a lesson about brains and muscle co-ordination. She'd found out later that they had also been checking to see which of their students were left-handed, but that was another story...
...The point was that her thoughts flowed on connections and strings of associations, drawing from her personal experiences and books she'd read and half-memorised, and the things she'd heard other people saying, but Mr. Pacek wanted her to—to detach her thoughts like a caboose from the end of a train, and send it down another track, while she was in another carriage altogether, in the midst of holding a conversation with someone else.
"Many things require practice to master," he said. "It is the way of the world."
For a few minutes they spoke of practical exercises that would help expand one's mental flexibility. Mr. Pacek was a good teacher, as Hermione had noted earlier, but he was incredibly unconventional. She was used to studying from the dry step-by-step descriptions given her by a textbook author, and even in class, the teachers followed the general techniques as described in the book. Except for Flying Class, where there was no textbook, just skill and aptitude and a head for heights, of which Hermione had none—but Flying hadn't been a real class anyway; they weren't marked or examined like a proper class subject.
Mr. Pacek, for all his imparted knowledge, didn't resemble anything like a textbook. His hands fluttered when he spoke, like darting butterflies in front of his face. He was always moving around, doing something with hands, working or drawing or gesturing for emphasis.
"You have heard of the artists, the Impressionists, Seurat and Van Gogh?" he asked, wiping his hands of powdered chalk with a stained handkerchief. "They employed a technique called 'Pointillism', where the final image is made of thousands of individual dots of paint. From far away, you see the picture, but up close, only patterns of dots. Consider the process of the artist putting down each dot, deliberating on its placement and texture and colour, and how he holds this process in his mind parallel to the final image he wants to create. This is the level of thought one must master."
Later that night, at dinner, Hermione watched Mr. Pacek as he ate with her family and steered the tone and direction of the conversation with a few pleasant comments here and there. He was like Professor Slughorn, but not like him at all. He enjoyed simple pleasures; he ate their food with hearty appetite, praising Mum's cooking at every remove. He lauded the quality of the coffee she served with the pudding course, which was a brand of roasted bean that he had personally recommended at the Continental supermarket.
But unlike their Potions Professor, Mr. Pacek wasn't blinded by favouritism; he didn't see dinner company as a means of aggrandisement or self-congratulation. And unlike Professor Slughorn, he wasn't smitten by Tom's perfect manners, his perfectly phrased answers, his perfect hair—in that same irritating way that butter didn't melt in his mouth, Tom's perfect hair never got stuck in the drain—or his perfect—false!—smiles.
The wardmaster was different than what she'd expected from the first letters he'd sent her. She had expected a scholar, and had got an... an Epicurean. He was scholarly, that couldn't be denied, but he was a worldly one, when she hadn't known that scholars came in more than one type. She'd always thought that true scholars were those who loved books so much that everything else paled in comparison, even—especially—the company of other people.
Like her. And like Tom.
She and Tom didn't really have other friends, or "friends" in his case, except for one another. In Tom's case, it wasn't that he couldn't make friends. He just didn't want any. (Hermione was prone to bouts of self-consciousness, which made introducing herself to new people a nerve-wracking endeavour, while Tom's innate arrogance granted him a blanket immunity to social awkwardness.)
By the end of summer, Hermione supposed that she respected Mr. Sigismund Pacek, and even liked him. He was of an amiable disposition, and a good conversationalist; he presented a certain evenness of temper that she saw hints of in Tom, but Mr. Pacek's was genuine, while Tom used it as camouflage for the bitter dregs of dissatisfaction that roiled beneath his skin.
She might even miss Mr. Pacek's company by the time September arrived and they had to return to Hogwarts.
Although, this year, the return to Hogwarts wouldn't be such a drastic transition between Muggle and Magical Life, not when they could freely use their wands by descending a flight of stairs, and she could show her family everything she'd learned in the ten months a year she was gone. And while she'd miss her parents—of course she would miss Mum and Dad terribly—they knew, and she knew, that it was better for her to go away to Scotland where it was safe.
Because the war was no longer confined to Germany, or Norway, or France.
It had reached London.
.
.
For most of the summer, Tom had sequestered himself away as often as he could, only appearing above ground to eat his meals, change his clothes, and sleep in the guest room. The last week of holiday, after the bomb scare, he'd taken to sleeping in the bed made up for him in the cellar, and Hermione's Mum hadn't opposed it. Mum had even asked if Hermione wanted to join him.
Hermione had.
Although there was a folding screen enchanted with a Silencing Charm between her bed and his—it was a similar level of privacy to the Hogwarts Hospital Wing—she could tell by the glow of light through the semi-translucent screen that he kept late nights. He wasn't just studying ahead for their regular subjects and the three electives each they'd picked for Third Year, he was prioritising Defence to a level beyond the upcoming year's curriculum. She only knew this because she'd seen him scribbling in his textbook on the way back from the bathroom.
She'd observed how he'd kept to himself for the last fortnight of their holiday, especially the last few days, devouring his books and practising magic with the frenzy of an O.W.L.s student the night before the exam. She would have called him out on his lack of sociability, but he wasn't so far gone as to treat her parents poorly or ignore their requests. Besides, she'd reminded herself, it wasn't like she hadn't been much different the first few weeks after receiving her Hogwarts letter.
Tom had tested the wards in a corner of the cellar by flinging Incendios at the walls, while Mr. Pacek reclined on a conjured velvet fainting couch with a half-smile on his face, his eyes cast down on the rune-carved wooden frame that was to be Hermione's bedroom window. Now and again, he would offer advice to improve Tom's spellcasting, in his usual whimsical way.
"Your casting intent is incomplete—it is not just an image of fire you must focus on, but a true facsimile in your mind. Think of not just the height of the flame, or the richness of colour, not only what you can see, but what you can feel: the radiant energy, the exchange of light and heat for fuel and air; think of the brightest summer day at noon, when you lift your face to the sky and the light has strength enough to bring tears to your eyes," said Mr. Pacek, his voice rising and falling as if he was reciting a player's soliloquy. "Gather that light within you and then speak the incantation."
It seemed overdone to Hermione, who'd learned to cast Incendio in class last year, and had gotten a small, controlled jet of flame each time. Enough to light candles, dispose of scrap parchments, or work the burner under her cauldron in Potions class.
With the right visualisation and intent and many hours of practice, Tom eventually turned his version of Incendio into roaring fireballs the size of his head, splashing off the walls and dissipating, leaving shimmering waves of heat that whistled like a kettle on the boil. Then the energy of the spell was drawn out by the wards, and Tom was left panting, his cheeks pink and his hair plastered to his forehead with sweat.
Tom didn't even say 'Thank you'.
Hermione wondered if he even liked Mr. Pacek. In fact, she wondered if Tom liked her parents. He was polite to them, but then again, he was polite to their teachers, but that didn't stop him from making uncharitable comments outside of class, on their Transfiguration teacher's choice of attire wrought with custom animation charms, or their Herbology professor's off-key singing voice as he watered the Tentaculas.
Tom didn't exactly get along with most adults. Tom Riddle and authority figures was like oil and water, or as he would put it, "like Professor Slughorn and sobriety".
The journey to Hogwarts was the most subdued that it had ever been—even more than the first time, when Tom was nursing that petty, month-long grudge about nothing.
The whole family had driven to King's Cross, which had triple the number of soldiers as there had been a few months ago at the beginning of their summer holiday, many of whom looked quite young to Hermione's eyes. They were young men not much taller than Tom, with soft faces, smooth skin, and only a shadow on their upper lip showing that they couldn't even grow proper whiskers.
There were also very few children. The First of September was the day of the year that most schools across Britain began the school term, and the station should have been packed with well-to-do families sending their children off to boarding school. But the children of London had been evacuated months ago, and the local schools closed for the interim. Today, she and Tom and Mum and Dad made a rare group of civilians, surrounded by serious men in drab uniforms aiding the war effort.
Dad shook Tom's hand, and Mum gave Hermione one last hug, pressing a kiss to her cheek before pushing them off to the hidden platform and the scarlet locomotive.
"I'm joining the Duelling Club this year," Tom announced, after they'd locked the doors of their compartment and shoved their bags into the overhead rack.
"You have three electives on top of your regular class load!" said Hermione reproachfully, taking out her Arithmancy textbook and starting from page one for the second time that week. In her first year at school, she had looked into what kind of extracurriculars Hogwarts offered, but none of them had appealed to her. The student choir, the Quidditch reserves, Gobstones Club, and an invitation-only tea salon run by the upper year Slytherin girls.
(The fact that she wasn't good at any of their activities, and had no acquaintances among the current members of any club was not a factor in her decision to focus on her schoolwork. Yes, definitely.)
"You'd have to cut off my wand hand before I'd have a chance at dropping from O's to EE's," said Tom. "And even if you did, Slughorn would write me a note to let me re-sit my exams. Not that I'd need to, of course, but the thought still counts for something."
"You know, Tom," said Hermione, with a loud sigh of exasperation, "I wouldn't mind so much that you get better marks than me in half our subjects, if only you were more modest about it."
"Like I am with everyone else?" said Tom, propping his feet up on the opposite bench. Hermione noticed that his shoelaces were green. "'Oh, just read over the textbook and take good notes each lesson, maybe you'll get first next time around, eh?'" He let out a mocking laugh. "I think you know the reason why you ever earn first is not because you've read the textbook and taken notes. All the Ravenclaws read the textbook and take notes, but there's only one top mark."
Hermione rolled her eyes. "Yes, alright! But it's not nice for you to rub it in like that."
"What's the harm?" asked Tom. "Silencing Charm on the door. No one's going to hear. And you aren't going to tell everyone that Big Bad Tom Riddle slaps kittens around when no one's watching, are you?"
She was relieved to see that he was back in top form. No longer the silent and almost manic version of himself, but the regular old Tom who'd torn himself out of his books... to tear into other people. She'd never admit to enjoying his comments; it wasn't light-hearted comedy, and he wasn't a light-hearted person.
But it was him.
And Tom without his misanthropy was like Professor Slughorn without his nightly tipple.
When they arrived at Hogwarts, the holidays soon became a distant dream under a barrage of essays and assigned readings and half-awake evenings spent charting the rise of Mars in the Astronomy Tower. In the quiet peace of Scotland, the London newspapers arrived only sporadically. There was not a single wireless set in sight, and not a single air-raid siren had broken her sleep. The dangers of the Muggle world seemed far away. Even the unrest on the magical side of Continent under the rising Grand Minister felt like it would never reach them.
The first half of the school term flew by, their teachers emphasising that this year would be the most intensive they'd had yet. First and Second Year were introductions to magic and basic technique, as well as studying habits for all the students who'd been taught at home or with the village tutor until they'd gotten their Hogwarts letters. Third Year was the beginning of their O.W.L.s preparation.
Hermione found that she excelled at Arithmancy and Runes. It hadn't been much of a surprise: Tom had spent his holidays challenging himself with intermediate Defence spells and learning to cast the lower-level ones at full power—although why he wanted to be able to cast Lumos brighter than a bundle of railroad flares going off at once, and in different colours than the standard blue-ish white, she didn't know. She'd only ever used it for reading books at night, or going to the loo in the dark.
In comparison, Hermione had spent her holiday going through her electives' textbooks. She'd spent two years on her core subjects, but this would be her first year with her three electives. She wasn't going to start on the first day without knowing a single thing. And her family had a professional wardmaster calling on them once a week, an opportunity for advance preparation that not even her wealthy, wizard-raised classmates could boast.
Not that she boasted about it. Tom couldn't understand modesty, but Hermione could.
(That didn't sound like boasting, did it?)
She cared about fairness—or the outward observation of fairness, at least—and personally, she would have been irritated if one of her classmates went on about their private summer tutoring, having tea with members of the examinations board, or hands-on lessons with a notable textbook author. Even if they had enjoyed such an advantage over the rest of their year, and she was sure that a couple of her Housemates did, or had a wizarding parent on hand or an owl away, ready to explain their coursework—which none of the Muggle-raised students had—it was in poor taste to make it public.
Well, it would have served them quite right if, for all the perks of their wizarding connections, they still couldn't take the coveted first rank in any subject.
Even with the extra classes, school seemed duller this year than it had the previous. She put it down to not having an extracurricular project weighing on her mind, as she'd had when she worried about the war, the safety of her parents, and her own well-being during the summer. The war had come; there was no longer any political bickering about appeasement or concessions. Mum and Dad were protected now, and so she could relax, but somehow she felt... listless.
Because she'd found her solution, and yet Tom was still chipping away at his own personal projects.
Hermione decided that the best course of action was the one that had never failed her: going to the library. She'd learned the name of the spell she'd discovered back in First Year, and she was aware that the most comprehensive information would be locked away in the Restricted Section for the eyes of older students only. Well, it wasn't as if she wanted to cast those illegal spells anytime soon. Or even better, at all.
So it didn't matter to her that none of the books would teach her how to cast them; in fact, she thought that it was probably better this way. Tom would have found them in First Year otherwise. She wanted to know more about the general magical theory, more than the glancing references she and Tom had found from reading law proceedings published over a century ago. Because, truthfully, some part of her was still very anxious about the concept of magical mind control, and the many forms it could take in the hands of wizards.
And having it confirmed for her by a trusted adult authority?
It was frightening, and she didn't want to be frightened. She wanted to be well-informed, and well-prepared.
If she could find information in the regular sections of the library—and not in the Restricted areas—then it would hardly be dangerous information, would it? They wouldn't let dangerous information be accessible for anyone who stumbled upon it.
Mr. Pacek had said that the theory of Unforgivable Curses, if not the practice, was not against the rules to discuss when he had gone to school. It wasn't against the rules at Hogwarts, as far as she knew, because there were books about them in the library, albeit restricted. She also knew that Durmstrang had a reputation for the Dark Arts, but the wardmaster had studied there, and it was very clear that he was a wardmaster, and not a Dark Wizard.
With a research project to focus on, Hermione felt a renewed sense of purpose.
She would make Third Year interesting. She was far too young to be jaded about the magical world.
And later, Hermione rescinded her judgement of Third Year being boring when Tom Riddle set a wardrobe on fire in Defence, along with a good half of the classroom.