1943
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The next few weeks were excruciatingly awkward for Hermione and her family.
Tom refused to leave London for his grandparents' home in Yorkshire. Mrs. Riddle couldn't impel him while the solicitor was still finalising the adoption, transferring Tom's status from a Ward of the Crown to being in their charge, a beneficiary in equal standing to their own son, whose existence Mrs. Riddle did her best not to acknowledge in casual conversation.
The Grangers' home was used as a sort of No Man's Land, neutral ground where the two contentious parties could meet in as much mutual cordiality as each side could muster.
And meet they did: every weekend, Mrs. Riddle would take the train down from York, let a room at a first-rate hotel, and come to the Grangers' house for tea, or else invite the Grangers—and Tom—to the tearoom of her hotel, where she would turn back and forth from interrogating Tom about his childhood and the state of his education, to attempting to cajole him into moving into the Riddles' stately home in the Yorkshire countryside. She didn't quite try to present Tom with a freshly-weaned puppy or a pony tied up with a bow, but Hermione had a feeling that if it would work, then Mrs. Riddle would offer.
Mrs. Riddle was firm on one thing, however: the paperwork would be completed by October, Tom's official address settled for good, and so he would be expected in their home for the Christmas holidays, and the summers away from school as well.
Tom had looked irate at that, and the conversation had gone stilted.
"The school allows students to stay for Christmas," said Tom, glaring across the table at Mary Riddle. "The professors organise a supper feast so no one misses out on any holiday festivities."
"Ah," said Mrs. Riddle, swirling her tea around with a languorous twist of her wrist, the silver bowl of the teaspoon never once jangling against the side of her cup. "I've written to the professor in charge of student enrollment. The matron gave me the directions to one Professor Dumberton, the man who brought over the scholarship offer—and he's assured me that he'll do his best to see you off at the school station come December."
"Pardon me," said Tom in a rather strained voice. "You wrote to Dumbledore?"
"Yes, darling; do keep up," replied Mrs. Riddle. "Furthermore, he seems like a sensible chap; he was delighted to hear the news that you've left that awful orphanage to be reunited with your proper family. A family man, I take it," she declared emphatically. "We surely need more men like him in this day and age."
Tom grimaced, looking as if he was debating the merits of debating his grandmother in a public venue. Hermione knew that Tom had never liked Dumbledore from their first meeting; she also knew that Dumbledore was unmarried and had no children, and for all their years at Hogwarts, had shown no evidence of his romantic inclinations, either Magical or Muggle, British or of more exotic persuasions.
As much as Tom might dislike it, Hermione was glad that Professor Dumbledore had written back; many wizards would have ignored post that arrived in the Muggle fashion, and would never have gone to the effort of sending their responses through the same. By the way that Mrs. Riddle hadn't mentioned an owl flying through her drawing room window, Hermione assumed that the response had been sent in a standard postage-stamped envelope. Which represented more than the Professor's sympathy toward Muggle sensibilities, but also his active interest in Tom's personal affairs.
Hermione hadn't appreciated the ambivalent way the Hogwarts professors had dealt with student safety during the years of London's evacuation and the ensuing aerial bombings. Professor Dumbledore had been one of the teachers who had disappointed Tom in that regard, to the extent that Tom no longer appreciated the man's advice when it wasn't related to schoolwork or academics. But she did appreciate—to Tom's annoyance, no doubt—that drawing Dumbledore's notice meant any clandestine plans Tom had made to "get rid of" Mrs. Riddle would have to be abandoned for good.
(She wasn't sure to what extent that off-the-cuff comment had been made in Tom's brand of sarcasm, but Tom was capable of many things in a moment of great passion, and nothing made him more passionate—in an overzealous, reactionary way—than being told what to do by white-haired elders.)
"I'll come and visit you during the holidays," Hermione ventured, glancing at Tom, Mrs. Riddle, then at her Mum, who had been shafted by necessity into the rôle of mediator, just as she had been. "If you'll have me, that is."
It was uncanny how alike and unalike they were at the same time: Tom was decades Mary Riddle's junior, dark of hair and eye, the softness of his chin and cheeks dissolving into the more angular lines of true adulthood, blooming with the energy of youth, with the subtle hum of magic crackling from his eyes and the ends of his fingers when he was feeling particularly incensed. Mrs. Mary Riddle was thin and straight-backed, fair of complexion, with papery skin and greying hair; she was stiff and polished like a department store mannequin—and she was as modish as one, judging by the parade of furs and jewels she wore to tea and dinner each weekend.
But in common with Tom Riddle, Mrs. Mary Riddle possessed a certain commanding air shared by any person who, for most of their life, was used to being obeyed and unquestioned, who had rarely if ever been confronted by the evidence of their own shortcomings. In them was such an ingrained surety that the universe was more likely to be at fault rather than themselves.
So of course they'd find it difficult to agree on anything, and to get anywhere, it was up to Hermione to step in and force a compromise.
"I seem to recall that I'd have a room appointed for me," said Tom, inclining his head in grandmother's direction. "Would it be so difficult to slip in a trundle bed? If you can't spare the space, I'm sure Hermione wouldn't mind sharing with me, however it can be managed."
Hermione kicked Tom's shin under the table, which caused him to wince and glare at her.
"Tom's joking about that—obviously, a separate room would be the most proper thing to do," Hermione said quickly, biting back a nervous laugh. "I also know that Tom reads in bed all night and never turns the light off, so I wouldn't want to share with him anyway. Even if he was gracious enough to offer."
Tom's lips twisted into a faint smile. "At least I don't talk in my sleep," he countered.
"That was one time!"
"And you never told me what that was about."
"Well, you'll never find out, so that's that."
"We'll see," Tom began, before he was interrupted.
Mrs. Riddle cleared her throat. "Hermione, dear, if you see to it that Tom arrives to the station at the right time and place, you can have your pick of our spare rooms. We've a dozen guest suites and a library, too. Your mother has said how much you enjoy reading; we hardly use the library ourselves, so you'll be free to make use of it as you wish. You can even pick out new additions, if you'd like—my father-in-law had an interest in buying first editions, but the collection hasn't been touched since then."
"Hermione's too clever to fall for that—"
"First editions?" said Hermione eagerly. "Oh, I just can't wait to read them, Mrs. Riddle."
Tom grumbled to himself, probably about being condemned to a Circle of Hell lower down than the "Suburban Purgatory" that he called living with the Grangers. Purgatory was one of Tom's overly theatrical exaggerations, because Mum and Dad had always tried to be welcoming to him, and didn't expect him to take on any household chores outside of changing the linens, folding his own laundry, and tidying up after himself in the bathroom—which was what students were expected to do when living in the Hogwarts dormitories.
But Hermione still wondered whether Tom had a point about the downsides of living with the Riddles, because their country house was on the edge of a village, which was as far a cry from the clean, lamp-lit neighbourhoods of Crawley as Crawley was from the hustle of London's Oxford Street during the morning shift change. Villages didn't have well-stocked news agents with dozens of different papers and magazines on offer every day, so that Hermione could pick and choose the one with the most informative articles. Villages had small, closely-knit communities where all the residents knew one another and had a shared disdain for uppity city folk with their airs and graces and dissolute city ways.
Hermione had always tried to be open-minded about things: while she supported Britain's contributions to the war, she also sympathised with the civilians on the other side, whom she couldn't lump into the category of being a "Danger to British Sovereignty and Freedoms", as the morale broadcasters wanted the population to believe. To add to that, she'd never prayed for the souls of British soldiers overseas, and her church attendance was also rather spotty—yet another black mark against her as far as a hidebound village traditionalist would see it.
Soon after, their Christmas holiday plans were arranged between Mum and Mrs. Riddle, and the dates set in stone. After Hermione examined her reservations about the matter with a logical eye, the only person still unhappy about it was Tom, but then again, he did like to complain—but that was his problem for having such ridiculous standards about everything.
(She was sure that if she quoted the Beggars Can't Be Choosers line at Tom, he would just grace her with one of his inscrutable expressions and ask her why she thought it had any relation to his situation. Tom Riddle had no equal, in more ways than one, and that was not always a good thing.)
The final weekend of the summer was marked by a dinner party at the Grangers' house, to which the Tindalls, the Riddles, and Mr. Pacek were invited.
It was strange for Hermione to think of The Riddles in plural; for almost ten years, she had thought of Tom as the Riddle, a singular being whose uncommon appearance and temperament she had never encountered in anyone else, before or since going to Hogwarts. At school, whenever someone, teacher or fellow student, referred to Riddle, she knew instantly that they were speaking of Tom Riddle, the top duellist and all-around star pupil, a credit to his House and a standing counterargument to the common-held attitude that Slytherins were arrogant or unpleasant.
But then she met Mr. Thomas Riddle, who had arrived with Mrs. Mary Riddle the evening of the dinner party. When he hung up his hat in the vestibule and turned around, arms laden with a fine vintage cognac and a box of cigars for Dad—who didn't smoke—she saw why Major Tindall had only taken an instant to make his guesses at Tom's paternity.
Thomas Riddle was an older gentleman, tall and lean and looking distinguished for his years, his hair thick and shiny, though lightened with streaks of grey about the sides and temples. He wasn't an exact copy of Tom, far from it, but the more Hermione looked, the more similarities she saw: the perfect waves of hair, of course; the same high-set arch of the brow; the angular structure of jaw and chin; a trim and elegant figure that could make second-hand robes look brand new. Mr. Riddle had a greying bottlebrush moustache and longer sideburns; Tom's eyes were darker, his skin paler and much less lined—but the familial connection between the two of them was undeniable, and if the truth had not been made known, Thomas Riddle could have passed as Tom's much older father.
Tom noticed it too; it was unavoidable that the subject come up, as the arriving guests could not help but comment on it, crying: "Oh, here's Tom! He looks just like your old tintypes, Thomas; I saw the resemblance in one glance!"
The introductions wore on, with Tom getting grumpier and grumpier, because there was nothing he liked less than being compared to someone else. In Hermione's experience, Tom was used to being the standard of comparison to whom other people were compared, and when it happened, it only made the ways in which they fell short of Tom's accomplishments even more obvious. Tom's sulking grew when Mrs. Blanche Tindall complimented his darling manners, which caused Mrs. Riddle to lay her hands over Tom's shoulders and preen over him like a horticulturist and her blue-ribbon begonias. It was all very disturbing to Hermione, who had years ago tried to imagine what Tom would be like adopted into a family of his own, and given it up after drawing a blank.
"I don't think anyone expected this," Hermione remarked to Mr. Pacek in a corner of the room, a glass of iced grenadine soda dripping over her hands in the heat of late summer. "Least of all Tom. He looks like his soul is shrivelling up."
"They lack a certain je ne sais quoi, to put it delicately," said Mr. Pacek, observing the Riddles out of the corner of his eye. "I expect young Mr. Riddle was disappointed about it—I have long since taken him to be one who puts stock into the distinction between 'our kind' and everyone else."
Hermione sipped her grenadine, wiping off the sweaty glass on the hem of her skirt. "That's funny, because I'm sure they see themselves as a different kind than the rest of us."
"'Apples and trees', or however the saying goes," Mr. Pacek said, nodding sagely. "I do not agree with many of our dear friend Gellert's ideas, but I believe he is correct in the notion that what we are is borne in the blood—and some people may find that it is further up the line for them than it is in others. But perhaps it will do Mr. Riddle some good to accept that there are few, if any, inherent differences between us and them."
Further introductions were made when the guests were led to table, seated in the formal dining pattern of alternating male-and-female, which had only been done in the Grangers' house once or twice over the course of Hermione's entire life. Having been accustomed to one knife and fork per person, she was surprised to see that her family even owned this many sets of tableware.
"I'm given to understand that you are Hermione's private tutor?" said Mrs. Riddle to Mr. Pacek, her tone shying just an inch short of sounding overly intrusive. It was her genteel, ladylike presence that did it, turning prying questions into a matter of well-meaning concern.
"I am," Mr. Pacek confirmed, brow arched and returning her question with an equal amount of frosty politeness.
"And what do you teach? Music? Dance? Déportement?"
"Languages."
"Hmph," said Mrs. Riddle, with a disdainful toss of her head. "Children these days are not getting as much of a comprehensive education as they used to. I had a French governess as a girl, and my son had an Austrian piano master when he was a boy. But nowadays you can hardly find proper help—the ones these days have the gall to interview you, instead of the other way around!" Mrs. Tindall put in a polite chuckle at that, and Mrs. Riddle continued, "Though I do admit that finding service was a much easier task back then; during the last war, so many of us had to resort to foreigners, which was still better than it is now—so long as one didn't mind the unintelligible Continental accents. Of course, I do compliment you on your English skills, sir; they are very good for what you are."
Mr. Pacek put on a pained smile, while Hermione winced internally.
Her tutor was fluent in at least five languages, having being taught Czech and German from birth, the latter of which had various dialects he'd also learned, as the Viennese-style German he spoke was disfavoured by his Durmstrang professors, who preferred the Saxon and Prussian ways of speaking. He was expert in a dozen written alphabets as well, but these he didn't speak as they were historical languages and all the original speakers were dead. And here Mrs. Riddle was, blustering on and on about her French governess!
As for Tom, if Orion Black's notion of a 'Killing Face' was a real thing, then it would apply to the expression which was slowly creeping over his features. Hermione didn't think that Tom cared about someone else being complimented so back-handedly, but rather that it was his own relatives doing so, and in such a low and common manner. For someone of Tom's level of self-regard, he must have considered it unnecessary to verbally demean other people to establish one's own state of superiority; instead, that superiority should be made obvious by the manner and authority in one's very presence. It was not one's place to remind other people of their own inferiority, but other people's place to acknowledge it in themselves.
(It had taken her years to understand Tom's distorted approach of looking at the world, and even Hermione, being the one person that he was closest to, struggled to comprehend it. It was like immersing herself in a strange sideways, upside-down universe; she likened it to moving to rural Australia, a locale where she knew the meanings of each individually spoken word but couldn't discern their meanings put together, because their version of spoken English was a subspecies of the King's English she was used to.)
Roger Tindall, who had hitherto remained silent, ventured a question to deflect the growing awkwardness: "Whatever happened to your son? I heard that he went to Harrow as a boy, but I don't recall seeing him on the registers at Sandhurst or any other finishing college."
That shut Mrs. Riddle up immediately.
"He's retired to the countryside and sees to estate business," said Mr. Riddle, speaking up for once. "We've never been one for city living, never have been. The smoke and noxious airs are the least of the things we object to about the city. The war's made things dangerous; these past few years have been troubling indeed for Britain and her cities: all those German bombs, and then the hordes of refugees from who-knows-where. I'm not sure how any of you have managed to put a foot out of doors without fearing for your lives."
"Of course," added Mrs. Riddle, her words dripping with lofty pomposity, "danger or not, we'd brave them all for our darling Tommy, wouldn't we?"
"Of course, dearest."
The flowers on the sideboard wilted under the force of Tom's glaring.
Mum and Mrs. Tindall exchanged meaningful glances several times during the course of the dinner, neither of them impressed by the Riddles' opinions; both of their families had been living in London for the last few years of the war, including the Blitz—and they'd each done volunteer work during the worst of it. It was clear that the Riddles hadn't lifted a finger to help, not even going to the effort it took to observe simple rationing courtesies. Mr. Riddle carelessly slathering his bread roll when the butter dish came around proved that point, as everyone else had taken a small scrape, even the Grangers, who got butter from the wizarding grocer and had no need to conserve it, but did so anyway to be diplomatic about the short portions everyone else in the city was getting.
Roger Tindall kept his eyes trained on his plate to stop himself from laughing, while Tom's expression grew blanker and blanker, as if he was retreating into the depths of his own imagination as a means to escape the vacuous mediocrity that had become his current reality.
Afterwards, when dinner was finished and the adults had retired to the formal parlour, with the children heading to the family sitting room, Roger clapped his hands and said, "Top show, Riddle! Absolutely smashing! I've never had dinnertime entertainment quite like that before—though my own grandfather has cut it close after a bottle or two of the good sherry. I'm certain I'll remember this night for the rest of my life."
"Roger!" cried Hermione, glancing at Tom and hoping he wouldn't take the phrase 'rest of my life' at face value.
But Tom didn't seem to have noticed or taken offense. "They were lying," he said slowly. "He's in the countryside, but he's not had anything to do with estate business. Now why would they lie about that?"
"Your father, do you mean?" Roger asked, finding a vacant armchair and propping up his feet on the nearest ottoman. "Rumour has it that he's an invalid. The Riddles must be trying to hush it up like a Mad Bertha."
"They made you an equal beneficiary," said Hermione. "It's nice that they would ensure a trust for you directly, instead of following tradition and giving it all to your father, but they haven't struck me as people who'd care about being... nice."
"No," Tom said, "the quality they've displayed best was how very ordinary they are." His tone indicated that ordinary was the worst possible insult anyone could receive.
"They're certainly not the highlight of anyone's social calendar," Roger agreed. "I'd offer my congratulations on finding your long-lost family, Riddle, but it'd be off-colour in these circumstances—you can have my sympathies instead. Rather you than me, it goes without saying."
"You ought to save your sympathies for Hermione," said Tom, his dark eyes turning to look at her. "She'll be suffering through Christmas in Yorkshire with me."
"Oh?" said Roger, leaning forward in his armchair. "Is that true?"
Tom and Roger gazed at her expectantly. Tom had one eyebrow cocked in anticipation of her response.
Hermione couldn't stop a red flush from blossoming over her cheeks. She held her hands up to cover them, feeling the heat through her fingers, though she couldn't properly articulate why she was feeling this way. These were people she knew, had known for years, so why did she suddenly feel as if she were standing in front of the wizarding examiners at the O.W.L. practical demonstrations?
Perhaps it was because she was as tongue-tied for a reply as she had been back then. The Defence examiner sitting in the centre seat of the judging panel was Mr. Arsenius Jigger, Professor Slughorn's old business partner and author of The Essential Defence Against the Dark Arts. She'd felt a sudden shyness strike her when she'd asked him to autograph her textbook, and this—whatever this was—was the exact same thing.
"It's not important news, nothing of the sort," said Hermione, her tone guarded, swallowing her self-consciousness because right now such a sentiment was both useless and unwanted. "But Tom's lived in London his entire life, and now he's moving away, so I thought there should be one familiar face with all these new changes. The Riddles might not be the most pleasant people, but they own a big house in the country with hundreds of acres; surely with that much space, it won't be too difficult a job to run and hide whenever we see one of them coming down the hall."
"Huh," said Roger, "well, many happy returns in advance, then. If you'd rather spend Christmas in London, I can arrange passage for you on one of the military trains. Civilian tickets are hard to get these days, and it'll be worse by the holidays—but I'm an officer cadet and that ought to count for something." He met her eyes and added, "But that's if you get tired of the Riddles, obviously."
Tom made a noise of disapproval, and his mouth opened to speak, but before he could, Hermione elbowed him in the side and said, "That's a very generous offer, but I'm afraid I've already promised Tom that I'd come. I can't possibly imagine it would be that bad."
"One never knows," Roger replied tactfully and left it at that.
Tom quietened after she'd set down a firm refusal to Roger's offer, but he didn't leave her side for the rest of the evening.
She engaged Roger in a discussion of technological miniaturisation, and how the war had restricted resources in the civilian markets, funnelling them off into military research and production. It appeared that many new inventions were being kept top secret in the name of the war effort, but once the war was over—which Roger hoped was far enough away that he could graduate and apply for a spot on one of the cutting-edge research teams, but not so far that he'd be pressed into the service for the rest of his life—there would be a veritable rush of inventions ready to revolutionise the average British family's standard of living. An affordable television set in every home, imagine that!
Hermione clasped her hands together in clear enthusiasm at the idea, while Tom just snorted to himself, patently unimpressed by what he no doubt deemed 'Muggle ingenuity', an oxymoron of the highest degree.
Later that night, after the Tindalls had gone home, and Dad had driven the Riddles back to their hotel on Hyde Park, Tom came down to the cellar while Hermione was picking through her book collection to decide which ones would earn a spot in her Hogwarts trunk for the upcoming school year. They were going back for the new term in a week, so she was already halfway through her packing, a task that she undertook each year with the utmost gravity.
Tom had elected to stay in his old bed in the Grangers' cellar that night, instead of sharing the motorcar with his grandparents. Hermione's dad had firmly declared that he wasn't going to take two round trips to central London and back just because Tom couldn't stand to be alone with them.
She'd kicked off her shoes and peeled off her stockings, while Tom had his jacket unbuttoned and his necktie off, all new things that Mrs. Riddle had bought him. Every visit, she brought Tom expensive presents: a shaving kit with a folding blade and several bars of fine Castile soap, a wristwatch in a polished silver case that had his initials engraved on the back, and boxes of clothes that were more 'befitting of his station', which was not only an excessive gift due to the current clothing rationing, but made worse by the fact that Tom would likely outgrow them in a year or two.
Tom had accepted these gifts with a look of resignation on his face, and although he didn't contradict his grandmother's high-handed estimation of his 'station', it was clear that he neither appreciated her taste in gifts nor her coddling. Over all the birthdays and Christmases they'd shared, Hermione knew that Tom preferred books and magical appliances over anything bought in the Muggle world. She'd noticed that he still used the lunchbox that she had given him for Christmas of Second Year, the one with a permanent stasis enchantment.
"Your mother likes Roger Tindall," said Tom, flopping onto his bed and throwing the neatly stacked pillows into disarray.
"He's a very likeable young man," Hermione's response was distracted, as she'd drawn her wand to Summon her hairbrush from the bathroom. Magic came in useful in so many ways; she never had to poke through five different drawers for a lost hairpin, not when a simple Accio would fetch it for her. "He's an officer and gentleman, and not one of the silly ones who'd send a cavalry brigade against entrenched artillery. Those are rarer than you'd think."
"Do you like him?" asked Tom, his tone of voice strangely lacking of any inflection.
Hermione shrugged. "I don't have any reason to dislike him."
"But he's a Muggle."
"What has that got to do with anything?"
"He's not our kind," Tom insisted. "We're bending the Statute by fraternising with outsiders. In America, they outright ban non-family interactions—and even here, you know it's highly discouraged."
Hermione let out a huff of disapproval. "I'm not the one drawing my wand during morning tea, unlike someone else whose name I've conveniently forgotten. And anyway, if you're going to quote the rules at me, then you must already know that they allow certain exceptions."
"Yes, I know," said Tom impatiently, scowling darkly at her. "But you're not going to marry him."
"Who says I'm not?"
"I do!"
Hermione tossed a pillow at him, which he deflected with a non-verbal Shield Charm and Banished back to her with a flick of his wand. "This is just like your silly childbearing license idea again, isn't it? 'Anyone who can't multiply four-digit integers need not apply', et cetera. I told you then that you can't go around giving people 'lifestyle advice' like that. Not that they'd ever listen to you."
"They already listen to my 'lifestyle advice'," Tom grumbled under his breath. After a few seconds of silence, he propped his chin up on the heel of his palm and asked, "You've already thought about being married?"
"A bit," said Hermione. "Not much. I don't know—it seems so far off in the future right now. I'd rather concentrate on finishing school first, because marriage is only a possibility, while the exams are a certainty." She sighed and pointed her wand at the silencing screen between their beds. "I'm tired and going to sleep. If you've any more questions, ask me in the morning."
The screen unfolded itself and slid across the floor, separating Hermione's area from Tom's. The lights on her side dimmed to nothing.
When she rolled over, she could see the faint glow around the edges of the screen where Tom still had his lights on, but after she pulled the blanket over her head, complete darkness enfolded her.
.
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On the First of September, Hermione met Tom on Platform Nine and Three-Quarters.
He was dressed in his uniform already, tie in a perfect knot and Prefect badge pinned to his lapel, having come through the Floo via the public fireplace at the Leaky Cauldron. What stood out the most to Hermione was how polished he looked compared to the press of harried parents chasing after their half-dressed children, who had on Muggle coats to cover the House emblems on their uniform jumpers, or wore their Hogwarts robes over the loose smocks and breeches that made up wizarding children's casual clothing.
Tom had always taken care with his appearance, so this wasn't unusual. But today, his turnout was flawless to the extent that the crowd left a bit of space around him instead of pushing through as they did for every other bystander. It was something about his indefinite air of self-assured authority, his uniform as well-cut as the ones in the display windows of Diagon Alley, or the way his eyes searched through the masses of wizards, witches, caged pets, uncaged pets running free, and levitating stacks of luggage, his attention directed to something beyond the ken of the common man.
Or something like that, Hermione guessed. Tom always did like putting forth a perfect first impression.
"Tom!" cried Hermione, and his head snapped around to look for her.
She elbowed her way to him, dragging her trunk behind her, and threw her arms around him in an enthusiastic hug.
It seemed that hugging Tom had also changed from what she remembered of it from years past, and she was a little sad about it; everything about today was so different from the first time she'd arrived to the station with her parents in tow and the train ticket clutched tightly in her hands, looking around for Tom, not finding him anywhere on the platform, and realising that she was going to have to ride the train to Hogwarts alone.
Where Tom had been thin, almost bony, in First Year, he had filled out through years of better eating than what the orphanage provided—though he still remained lean of build with sharp, angular features, neither of which would ever disappear with age. Upon hugging him now, she couldn't tell each rib apart from the next; he wore uniform robes over jumper over shirt, but beneath all the fabric she could feel a firm layer of flesh, something she had never paid attention to before but couldn't keep herself from thinking about now. A tinge of nervousness crept into her thoughts, and would have induced her to let go of Tom if he wasn't hugging her back and in no rush to let her go. Yet another change on the ever-growing list.
Tom must have felt the shift in mood, because he looked down, a small crease forming between his brows. "Is something wrong?"
"I'm just..." Hermione stammered, "just a bit sad. We'll only have one more 'First Day of School' before we're done with Hogwarts for good. It's been so fast that it hardly seems real sometimes." She sniffled. "It's just a touch of melancholy; I'll get over it by the time we find a compartment."
She definitely wasn't going to tell him that she was thinking about their hugs and his recent habit of reciprocation thereof. Ever since the day of the Veterans' Charity Gala, he no longer stood still and let her 'do all the work', so to speak. It was as if the act of hugging had crossed some sort of internal line from endurance to enjoyment, and now that he'd decided that it wasn't unpleasant—having taken him years to get there—he was free to return the physical demonstrations of her affection. It was strange, and rather startling at first, but it was nice, and despite Tom not being a soft person in either form or demeanour, she could admit that she enjoyed it too.
She felt Tom's hand smooth down the creases of her blouse, an unexpectedly comforting gesture. His open palm lingered on the small of her back. "No slight against you, Hermione, but I don't believe your imagination could come up with someone like me. Nor, for that matter, could mine create you. That means this has to be real—or at least we have to be."
"That encouragement was... something," said Hermione, giving one last squeeze before she untangled her arms from his robes. "But thank you anyway."
On the train, a number of their fellow students stopped them during their Prefect patrol to congratulate them on their O.W.L. scores.
"Eleven Outstanding O.W.L.s," Siobhan Kilmuir exclaimed. "And ten Outstandings for Hermione! The examiners wrote an editorial in The Prophet saying that Hogwarts hasn't had such a promising cohort in years!"
"Is that how everyone knows about our marks?" asked Hermione, who had received her sheet of exam scores with the Hogwarts supply list in the second week of August. "They published them in The Prophet?"
She hadn't expected they'd be made public—not that she was ashamed of how she'd done—but she didn't subscribe to any wizarding publications and had no access to them when she was away from the Ravenclaw Common Room for the summer.
"They only post which students got Outstandings for the O.W.L.s and N.E.W.T.s in each subject," said Siobhan, turning around to dig in her bookbag for a rolled newspaper. "It would be embarrassing to name who failed which subjects, especially if it was a student whose family might send daily Howlers to the editor, so it's only the top students, ranked by the points they scored in the exam."
She offered a battered-looking newspaper to Hermione, who flipped it around and tried to read around the creases. Tom, giving a small sigh, reached around her and tapped the paper with his wand, which caused the folds to flatten themselves out.
"'Hermione J. Granger: one hundred and three percent in History of Magic, highest O.W.L. score for the subject in the last fifteen years'," she read aloud. "That's interesting—the score card in our Hogwarts letters only gave us our letter mark, with no numbered grade. No past exam rankings either."
Looking over to the next page, she was gratified to see that the Outstanding mark Tom had gotten for the class he hadn't attended, Muggle Studies, wasn't a perfect O of one hundred percent. It was still an O, a score of ninety percent or higher, which was what most people cared about, but it did support her personal belief that listening to the class lessons—actually going to class—was just as important as reading the assigned textbooks from cover to cover.
Tom leaned over her shoulder. "'Tom M. Riddle: one hundred and ten percent in Charms, highest O.W.L. score in forty-six years. Acquired all possible points in the written portion, and all extra credit in the practical component.'"
"Forty-six years seems oddly specific," remarked Hermione, eyes darting over to Tom.
Tom's eyes narrowed, as if he'd come to the same realisation as she had. "It doesn't matter anyway, since O.W.L. marks only determine which N.E.W.T. subjects the teachers will let you sign up for."
He pocketed his wand, then stalked off down the aisle, younger students shuffling out of his path without his having to say a word to them.
Siobhan gave Hermione a sideways glance. "Maybe he needs another hug."
Hermione let out a deep breath, folding the newspaper up and handing it back. "Is everything that either of us does going to invite commentary from now on?"
"You two were on the platform, and it didn't look like you were trying to hide anything," said Siobhan, giving a careless shrug. "So don't be surprised to get more than one type of congratulations."
"It's not even like that!" Hermione said tetchily, but as the words left her mouth, she found herself wondering what exactly that was, and if it came to it, would it necessarily be bad if that was a thing?
Hermione had until now forgotten the conversation she'd had with Tom a week ago, the night of the dinner party. She'd gone to bed, and Tom hadn't asked any other questions in the morning, so she hadn't thought further on the topic he'd brought up: the future, or the part of it that was unrelated to her career prospects.
Had she thought about being married and having a family of her own one day in the future?
Truthfully, it was a distant concept to her, as far removed from tangible reality as the end of the war. It was a concept that one appreciated from afar; it was as laudable a goal as it was vague, because she had no earthly idea how to get from her current state to such a far-flung situation. It was understood that if she met a special someone, and if they came to a mutual understanding, the next step was filing an application for a marriage license—or an elopement to Gretna Green to have it finished overnight. She knew the technicalities of such arrangements, but the finer details—how they pertained to her specifically—remained ambiguous.
The other girls in her year had discussed the subject in Potions, waiting for the liquid in their cauldrons to come to a boil. They spoke of it in the back of the classroom, in the few minutes of free time they got after finishing the assigned classwork. Hermione herself spent this time on her homework, because starting on it now meant that she wouldn't have to do it later. There weren't many Ravenclaws who participated in these conversations; it was mostly Slytherins, as they were the ones whose futures were arranged for them by their parents. Marriage to them was an inevitability just like the final exams, as they had their husbands picked for them, or else picked their husbands from a selection offered to them at a summer garden party.
It was an archaic tradition, but she kept those thoughts to herself. It wasn't so long ago that a King had been forced to abdicate because the general public—the citizens of Muggle Britain—had refused to let the twin crimes of divorce and Americanism taint the Royal Establishment.
The details might be vague, but from Hermione's own perspective on matrimonial unions, she was sure about some things: if she married, it would be out of love and choice. She might love someone and welcome a family one day, but it wasn't something she could contemplate sacrificing her career ambitions for. Someone who loved her and supported her goals without asking for—demanding—a sacrifice...
That was an ideal she favoured.
But there was a reason why this future was kept at a distance for now. The minutiae of it seemed too complicated for her current situation, being as it involved finding some other person to stand the rôle of her 'better half', or so it was called. She knew she wasn't the most popular student in her year. She liked things done a particular way, whether it was books organised on a shelf, potion ingredients prepared in a certain order, or group projects completed by a specific date (which was always weeks before the final deadline). She'd earned herself a certain reputation, one that put her as someone far from making the most affable company. She took it as a mark of merit, because she, out of all the other girls in her House, wore a Prefect badge as the proof of her diligence.
Few people understood what the badge meant to her. Yes, she was aware that some of her fellow students respected neither the office of Prefect nor the badge as a symbol. And there weren't many—outside of Ravenclaw House—who would have liked to be known as a human encyclopaedia, or a friend of one. She also knew that the badge was inconsequential in the grander scope of things, when every year two people of each House were picked for the job, even if they fit the description of being the least offensive in their year, rather than being a truly excellent student.
When she thought about it, it seemed like the only person who could understand the personal significance was Tom Riddle.
It made an intriguing prospect to envision Tom as the other relevant party, as he was one of the few people who liked her without reservation, without adding on stipulations that she brush her hair, keep her mouth shut, or listen to her betters. But that vision was also highly unrealistic; the first letters he'd written to her had showed his disdain for conventional institutions like marriage and family—and religion and government too, but that was a debate for another time—and now that he had a family of his own, he had not shown himself to be very pleased about it or willing to change his mind about it. She couldn't imagine that he would change his mind about the Riddles anytime soon, and thus she couldn't expect him to reverse his opinion on one day founding a family of his own, which, for most people, had the prerequisite of a legal marriage.
Tom was very stubborn in that regard. It was one of his defining quirks, and was immensely irritating when it was directed at her.
That reminded her: when Tom was done having his little tiff, he'd be in the Heads' compartment with the other Prefects for their annual induction meeting.
Later on, she saw that Siobhan's assumption was correct; there were other people who'd observed her and Tom from the windows of their train compartments. And judging by Clarence Fitzpatrick's dispirited expression when the Prefects met up with this year's Heads, he was one of them.
But that might just be due to Hermione giving away the seat he'd been saving for her to the newest Ravenclaw female Prefect. Or perhaps it was Hermione informing Fitzpatrick that she could no longer be his Potions partner, now that she was taking her N.E.W.T.s. At this level, it was a mixed class that included all four Houses, not the Ravenclaw-Hufflepuff split they'd had since First Year. She didn't tell him that his own Outstanding mark in the Potions exam, as reported by the The Daily Prophet, was largely due to sharing her notes with him the previous school year, as his written essays had a tendency to meander—in sharp contrast to his competent practical brewing. For N.E.W.T. Potions, Hermione needed a partner who could pull their weight in both theory and practical, and there was only one person who met that standard.
(There was only one person, observing Hermione break the news to Clarence Fitzpatrick from his side of the train compartment, who could exude that much smugness without opening his mouth.)
The Heads' meeting followed the same format as the previous year's, with a different pair leading them this time: Ashley Bledisloe of Gryffindor for Head Boy, and Lucretia Black of Slytherin for Head Girl, which must have been yet another feather in Slughorn's pointy hat, as last year's Head Girl was also a Slytherin. Slughorn must be counting on a hat trick for next year, Hermione suspected, as the recent O.W.L. results put Tom ahead of all the boys in their year.
After dinner, Hermione helped the two new Prefects escort the Ravenclaws up the corkscrewing stairway to the door of the Common Room, where the eagle-shaped door knocker asked a word puzzle and they had to stand there for five minutes, waiting for one of the new First Years to come up with the answer. She was glad that this year she wasn't required to walk the new students back and from the Owlery and all their classrooms the day before lessons began, as this was an official duty of the Fifth Year Prefects. She did, however, have to help them choose what electives to take for Third Year, but the sign-up slips were only due to be handed out in May of next year.
When she finally got up to bed, she spread her study planners out on the quilted silk bedcovers and eyed each of them in turn.
The first was her original planner, battered around the corners, the pages wrinkled where she'd knocked a cup of tea over it during breakfast last year. She'd applied a Hot Air Charm to dry it off, but the last two dozen pages had soaked for too long; drying it had only warped the pages and left them stained. The tea stains had been transferred to the second planner, the linked duplicate she'd made in case the original was lost or destroyed. She found it interesting how the physical signs of use had not been copied from one planner to its linked pair, only the stains and written ink, so that the second planner looked almost as clean and new as it had when she'd bought from the stationery shop.
The third and fourth were her study planners for the 1943-1944 school year, crisp and empty apart from where she'd copied her class timetable into the front pages.
In having the four books before her, Hermione realised that the convenience of the linked book system would diminish within a handful of years. At that point, she'd have to carry a dozen journals around, as she'd copied important passages from supplementary textbooks and referred to them regularly after the original books had been returned to the library. And whenever she tore out a page to keep someone else in contact, she'd have to hold onto the corresponding book to check for new messages.
It was already unwieldy, since the four books she'd packed in her trunk this year meant four books she couldn't bring from her private library at home.
She thought of Roger Tindall, and his interest in innovative technologies. In the past, semaphore and telegraph had been the primary mechanisms of communication; they were both methods of relay transference, and relied on an unbroken chain to ensure the person waiting at the end of the line got their message. The most common tool of mass communication today was the wireless, a method of information transfer that involved a central broadcaster sending out to a number of recipients, and it didn't matter if one person turned off their set that day, because hundreds of other people would have heard the message.
There were advantages in both types of communication, but she saw the disadvantages, too. The technology allowing for multiple-way communication, in which listeners could respond to the central broadcaster and each other, was so complex as to be beyond her level of knowledge, even though she'd kept up with her Muggle school textbooks and took Arithmancy at Hogwarts. (Numerology was an important subset of Arithmancy, but she couldn't take it as entirely scientific, even though it was much less wishy-washy than Charms. Because how on Earth had Wenlock decided that seven was the most magical number? With other counting systems, she could prove two, three, or ten to be just as powerful.)
It was something Roger was interested in, with how much he talked of setting the new tabulating machines to solve iterative functions that a human mathematician would have taken weeks to complete. Hermione was an instant convert; this was a subject beyond the level of wizards: the Floo Network, the most advanced magical example of Muggle communications technology she could think of, was limited to linking only two people or locations at any given time.
She sighed, then looked down at her study planners. The second pair she'd made for this year were cleaner looking than the old pair, no messy glue and crooked seams, the interior runework she'd refined during the summer at the same time she'd worked on enchanting the fuel tank and chassis of her family's motorcar.
Perhaps it would be possible to further refine her enchantments so she could fit in more features in the same amount of space. The redirection effect was good, and so was the disguising enchantment, although that one was a little rough—any sheet torn out retained a link to its matching pair, but could no longer switch from an innocuous datebook page and back.
She remembered that she'd torn out a page last year and given it to Nott not long after Christmas break. She'd barely thought about him during the summer, being too busy with her own projects, then dealing with the intricacies of Tom's complicated personal life...
She hadn't written to the owling address he'd given her; he must be tearing out his hair right about now, having seen her from across the Great Hall during the Welcoming Feast.
With a snort, she opened the duplicate of last year's study planner, flipping to the page whose pair she'd given to him.
It was covered with variations of the word "Granger".
.
Granger?
Granger!
GRANGER! ! !
GrAngER!
.
She flipped over to the other side, on which Nott's incoherent rambling continued.
Summoning a pencil from her nightstand, she wrote, What do you want? down at the bottom, where there was still some empty space.
Not long after, words appeared, black ink with blotted cross-strokes, crooked letters hastily scrawled.
.
Something's different about Riddle. He's much too smarmy about himself. It's unnatural... Please tell me that you and he didn't—
.
Before he finished his sentence, Hermione wrote, NO! in big letters.
.
You have to know something about it.
.
Pure speculation, she wrote back.
.
They don't call you a know-it-all for nothing, Granger. Unless you're really a know-nothing-at-all. But if that's so, I can help you. I've a book on Occlumency memory retention exercises that has your name on it.
.
Argumentum ad hominem? Did you think that would be convincing rhetoric, Nott? Good night.
.
GRANGER!