1942
.
.
For the first time since First Year, Hermione returned home for the Christmas holidays.
She missed her parents, and though she worried less about their safety now, some part of her had never quite gotten used to spending almost ten months away from them. Hermione's family had never been the kind to have passed the children off to an au pair at the age of five or six, as had not been uncommon with the other families in their neighbourhood, where having hired help was considered a badge of status.
Mum and Dad were familiar lifelines to her, reminding Hermione where she'd come from and why it was worth it to work as hard she did, and how important a gift it was to have been born with magic. A gift and a responsibility rolled into one.
She could admit that she was lonely too.
There was, of course, Tom. But Hermione had observed that Tom was busy doing his own things in recent months. He'd told her in confidence that he was sharpening his writing chops, and that he planned to use the pen name she'd come up with that Saturday in the library. Since she was the one who'd encouraged him to re-direct his efforts into productive pursuits like writing original works, she could hardly justify an excuse to pull him away from it because she had nothing better to do.
Hogwarts during the holidays just wasn't the same. She enjoyed attending lessons, and the daily bustle of school life, and without them, the Hogwarts experience felt less magical; to her, a school without students was like a bookshelf without books. She always finished her assignments within the first few days of the holiday. Without classes to go to, and an empty dormitory, more than a few mornings had passed where she'd been at a loss for what to do.
Hermione knew she would have been restless if she'd stayed at Hogwarts. There were only so many walks she could have taken around the draughty castle in mid-winter, so many conversations to be had with the moving portraits who soon grew bored of answering her questions and tried to talk her into delivering messages to portraits in other parts of the castle on their behalf. There was the school library, a place where she'd spent many a free hour, but she had begun to realise that it was limited in what it could offer a student of her age, with no signed teacher's pass or outstanding O.W.L. credentials to her name.
In recent months, her extracurricular reading had been occupied with books that weren't exactly school approved.
It had begun when she'd learned of the existence of the Unforgivable Curses.
The books in the library gave her examples of historical uses when she knew what words to search for. They were more helpful than the legal codices, but her scholarly side objected to the way that the authors didn't touch on the magical theory; most instances of the Curses' mention was to demonstrate that this or that historical figure was a dark wizard who had done evil deeds. It left a bad taste in her mouth, the same feeling she got when she read military histories recounting incidents where a commander had ordered a mass execution or the capture of women of the opposing nation.
(She knew that a thousand or more years ago, both sides of any conflict would be committing atrocities left and right, but the official narrative often maneouvered the victors into the position of moral superiority.)
In her search for more information, she'd written to Mr. Pacek, and he had recommended specific authors and stockists. They were not books that made it to the window display of Flourish and Blott's. She'd had to turn to Glimwitt's Biblio-Antiquities in Knockturn Alley, a shop that offered customers a 'gift-wrapping service' for their purchases, which turned out to be a euphemism for disguising their books with false covers and layering on the repelling charms.
There were three Unforgivable Curses, and it was illegal to use them on other people. The first caused instant death, the second caused immense pain, and the last was the mind control spell that she was absolutely certain Tom Riddle had wanted to master at the age of eleven.
If she'd been younger, Hermione knew she would have been horrified by the idea of wizards turning their wands on each other with the intent to harm and kill. The Hermione of the present knew that death and pain were not the sole dominion of wizards. There was a Muggle war going on right now, with millions of young men conscripted to fight the conscripts of other nations, armed with rifles and tanks and rocket artillery. There were men dying in foxholes and forests; in the occupied cities of the Continent, partisan forces were struggling to survive on smuggled resources, each day of resistance bought at the cost of their own blood.
When she'd read in more detail in the books she'd ordered by owl mail, she found that the Killing Curse caused instant, painless death. The Torture Curse targeted the minds of the victims, but left their physical bodies untouched. For both of those, she could find worse alternatives in the Muggle world. What were these spells in comparison to dying of sepsis in a triage tent, or an amputation without morphine by a surgeon spattered with the viscera of a dozen dead men?
It was the mind control curse that she was the most apprehensive about. There was no direct Muggle equivalent.
No spell or potion replicated its effect, unlike the other Curses. It was not hard to think up a way to kill someone with the right spell—Tom's Incendio, the one he'd used on the boggart, could have done it with less mercy than the Killing Curse, and the incantation was taught to First Years. Or, with the right potion, one could cause pain without incurring bodily harm. Vanishing a person's bones, then feeding him Skele-Gro would not affect his physical health, but it would be immensely painful, especially if done multiple times in a row. On top of that, it could be carried out by anyone who'd studied a basic Healing manual and had access to a potion that was available in every apothecary and household medicine cabinet.
None of this was anything Hermione would have done to another living being. However, she took a logical approach to understanding magic, and from her years of knowing Tom, she had had plenty of practice in finding legal loopholes, reasonable alternatives that would have been overlooked by the average wizard or witch.
This didn't apply to mind control. There was no ersatz for it, no other spell that was as fast, direct, clean, or undetectable as the Imperius Curse.
Which explained Tom's inordinate interest in it.
So Hermione went home that Christmas, looking forward to seeing her family, at the same time conscious of the fact that Tom had chosen to remain at Hogwarts. She had questions to ask without Tom's constant loitering about as he had done during their summer holiday, his ears perked for any discussion of magics that appeared to be obscure or powerful.
Rare magic was Tom's catnip. He was the kind of person who'd put in the effort to learn a complex spell that grew furniture out of the floorboards, when it was simpler to use a textbook Conjuration if one wanted a place to sit or prop up their feet.
("Everyone treats magic like it's something mundane," Tom had said. "As if it were nothing more than a time-saving convenience, no different from electric toasters or laundry mangles. I don't. I want magic to be as magical as possible.")
.
.
London in the winter was... bleak.
The aerial bombings had ceased for the last few months. Evacuees had slowly been trickling back into the city from their extended holiday in isolated villages across the country. Things felt like they were returning to normal, whatever level of normality could be found in a country at war.
The city's destroyed buildings, however, had been left untouched, because property owners didn't want to re-build when there was a possibility that the German planes would one day return. Not to mention that acquiring the materials, equipment, and labour to repair private buildings that were deemed unnecessary for the war effort was an impossible task, even for the wealthy.
The money was there—for a loose definition of there: she'd read that several banks had transferred their bullion to Canada—but nothing else was. It was in this instance that money couldn't buy everything.
Hermione was grateful that her money had guaranteed the safety of the things that mattered to her. Her family's house was intact. Shortages, recruiters, and looters had not touched Mum and Dad.
Her parents met her on the Muggle side of the station.
Dad looked tired. He had looked tired when she'd come home for the summer holidays in late June—in his letters, he'd written of working long hours in the spate of bombings and subsequent fires—but now it seemed that the fatigue had made itself at home for good, settling into the grey wings of hair along his temples, and the heavier wrinkles above his brows and in the corners of his eyes. And Mum, she noticed, looked pale, her skin blue-tinged as she stood in the shadow of a luggage cart, the brightest colour on her face from a coral-red sweep of lipstick; Mum's brown eyes were still sharp and animated, but they had lost much of the merriness and warmth that normally lit up her features during the season of Christmas festivities.
In any other year, her family would have spent their summer holiday in hired cottages at the seaside, or exploring sites of historic castles and ancient Roman forts in the British countryside. This year, and the last few years, they hadn't. Instead, the family had spent most of their time, when they weren't needed at work or shopping for essentials, inside the house and within reach of the cellar, because no one knew if or when the sirens would go off again. And thus, not one of them had gotten much of a summer tan.
Now in the shortest days of winter, all three of the Grangers looked rather pale and wan, like potted plants kept inside a cupboard. It seemed to Hermione that something in her Mum and Dad had been worn down by the stress of the times, despite official efforts to boost morale and the implicit pressure of people of their social set to maintain minimum standards of appearance.
But it didn't mean they couldn't try to bring back the Christmas cheer reminiscent of the carefree days of Hermione's childhood. Hermione was fifteen now, and whatever was left of her childhood—if it was possible for a child to be a child in the middle of a war—had not long left before it was gone for good. The circumstances might be strained at the present, but the Grangers had alternatives. They didn't have to condemn themselves and each other to misery out of solidarity with the war effort.
So Mum and Dad made that year's holiday a nostalgic Christmas, with a roast goose dinner on Christmas day, presents under a tree, and a whole new set of clothes for each member of the family, including new robes and charmed no-run stockings for Hermione. Some part of her was acutely aware that the rest of London was getting by on canned pork sent by the Americans, and that clothing rationing had gone into effect in June. As such, most other households would be saving their tickets to replace an outgrown coat or afford a pair of winter gloves.
Another part of her, one she didn't like acknowledging, was glad that Tom had stayed at Hogwarts. This was her family, and she liked spending time with them without him nearby; when he lived with them, she practised restraint to the extent that she felt guilty for any gestures of open affection with Mum and Dad. Her parents had made an attempt to be inclusive to Tom, but it had still felt like she was flaunting her family in front of him when he had none of his own.
She was glad that she didn't have to share a family—her family's—Christmas with him.
He'd spoken of his disinterest in family connections, past and future, and she remembered the few references he'd made about his own mother, the woman who'd saddled him with his plebeian name, and her death in childbirth...
He had never outgrown his resentment about families in general—it was one of the first things she'd observed about him when she'd first met him at Wool's all those years ago—that, and his apathy toward observing the tenets of common decency. This resentment flared up whenever she'd mentioned the possibility of adoption; it hadn't been more than a handful of times, and only approached as a hypothetical, but he'd been incredibly vehement about it.
For someone who presented himself as so disinterested, he took it so personally.
(For someone who presented herself as sympathetic to those of lesser circumstance, why on Earth did his opinions irritate her so much?)
Mr. Pacek visited on New Year's Eve, bringing a hamper of imported champagne—the real stuff, not the sparkling white wine that the London hotels had begun watering their stock with, as France had been taken by Germany last year, and the Channel had been under blockade for longer than that. Blockades were of no inconvenience to wizards, and apparently there were consortia on the fringes of the Statute of Secrecy who had made a fortune in acquiring luxury Muggle goods, duplicating them, and supplying the wizarding market. It explained how the Diagon Alley grocer's cheese and smallgoods counter had dozens of imported varieties on offer, while the local Muggle delicatessens were putting out horse meat.
The wardmaster had also brought her the books she hadn't dared to order while at Hogwarts. She didn't know what kind of protections the castle had against students bringing in dangerous magical artifacts, but this subject was uniformly labelled as 'Dark Arts', even though the books she wanted only addressed it from an academic perspective. She knew the school had a list of banned objects, which was comprised of prank items such as Dungbombs and cursed trinkets that many old families collected in their drawing rooms.
But she hadn't wanted to risk it; she had a perfect, unblemished disciplinary record and wanted it to remain that way, or at least until she'd earned her very own Prefect badge. (Hermione had found out back in First Year that Prefects got five extra books added to their library borrowing limit.) Nor did she want to chance spending her birthday money on a rare and expensive book, only to have it confiscated before she'd even opened the cover.
The book she was most interested in was a translated dissertation published in 1712 by the Academy of Magical Scholarship in Padua, a first-hand investigation on the Imperius Curse written as the third of a three-part study on the Unforgivables. It had been commissioned by the ICW after the ratification of the Statute of Secrecy to discover the full effects of the Curses, and determine whether or not unregulated usage would reinforce fears of devilry and witchcraft among Muggles.
In that time period, Muggles died all the time from childhood illnesses and contagious plagues. Those deaths left signs in the form of pustules on the skin or nodules in the lungs; important Muggles killed by wizards left no signs to be registered by the coroner's court, which fanned the flames of paranoia among the churchgoing public. And that endangered magical communities, many of which were closely integrated with the nearest Muggle villages, and until the Statute came along, were under the technical jurisdiction of Muggle authorities.
.
'Upon casting the curse, the subject immediately exhibited the following attributes: a vacant expression, glazed eyes, slurred articulation, and impaired faculties; he could not produce answers from a pre-supplied list of questions until compelled under intensifed magical pressure, in conjunction with additional clauses to further explicate the parameters of the original commands. Veritaserum is strongly recommended as an alternative for purposes of efficient and humane interrogation...'
.
Hermione devoured the book in an afternoon, and when she'd finished it, she had questions.
"Sir," Hermione asked, setting down the book and pulling out a roll of parchment and a pencil. "The study says that the Imperius Curse is better at making someone act, rather than making him talk." In the book, she'd read that a long-term subject kept in an underground laboratory would not be able to tell the day of the week when asked by the interrogator. That made sense; Gamp's Law of Principal Exceptions said it was impossible for a wizard to create information by magic; if one did not have an answer, no amount of magic could make him give it. "So the Curse isn't useful for all circumstances—it has obvious limitations."
"Most spells have limitations," said Mr. Pacek, summoning a chair and transfiguring cushions and upholstery over the seat. "Unlike with certain potions or enchanted objects, you must be within casting distance of the, ah, shall we say—volunteer—to use the spell. And casting it leaves traces, most noticeably the flare produced by a concentrated burst of magical power. The book calls it 'yellow-green', but it has always been 'chartreuse' to me. The precise shade and colour of a spell cast with proper intent is recognisable to those who have seen it before, and to my knowledge, the majority of those convicted of illegal use were caught because they were witnessed."
"That must mean that anyone who uses Unforgivable Curses can get away with it so long as there aren't any witnesses," Hermione mused. "And there are plenty of ways people in the Muggle world discredit witnesses that I can't see wizards being incapable of doing it too. Cases of divorce are still nothing but the leverage of a husband's reputation against his wife's."
Until 1923, a divorce was only made possible if initiated by the husband, and only on the grounds of adultery. Today, it was possible for either the man or the woman to file for divorce, and not only for adultery. Now it was for grounds of adultery, cruelty, or insanity. From this perspective, she could understand Tom's disinclination to have anything to do with families and marriage; even if divorce was possible, applying for it would mean making the reasons public. And to most people, revealing details of this nature was considered scandalous and simply Not Done.
"Very true, Miss Granger," said Mr. Pacek, who was in the process of decorating a conjured footstool. "I have heard rumours that Minister Grindelwald has put political opponents of his under the Imperius—those, of course, who are more useful where they are than under what he calls 'house arrest'. But they shall remain only rumours because he is very good indeed at hiding what needs to be hidden."
"I wonder how he's doing it," said Hermione. She frowned. "Exploiting a limitation somewhere, I'd assume. What happens if you Imperius someone into Imperiusing someone else? Is that possible? How far can you keep doing it?"
"Legal precedent rules that the person under the Imperius is not responsible for his actions. Although he might cast an Unforgivable Curse on someone else while under orders, he cannot be convicted of it," he answered. "From that, I do believe it is possible to create a chain. As for how many people can be linked in a 'curse chain', I suspect that once you get past three deep, the command boundaries become unstable. If you tell a 'volunteer' to order the next one down the line to fetch food for your supper, and so on, the last one may come to your doorstep bearing a live cockerel."
"That precedent means someone could get around the law if he had an accomplice under Imperius," said Hermione, scribbling notes down on her parchment. "Even if the accomplice was witnessed casting an Unforgivable, or even committing murder in a public area, there would be no consequences if he shows symptoms of being under the Imperius, or even if he claimed he was under magical coercion. That's if wizarding court follows the same guideline of 'beyond all reasonable doubt' as British common law does."
"Exactly." Mr. Pacek nodded. "For someone like Gellert Grindelwald, underlings do much of his visible dirty work. And for the things he does in person... well, it would be a troublesome task to find someone willing to speak against him at trial. Political writers and opponents, if they dare to denounce him, criticise his policy instead of his person."
"And what happens if multiple people cast the Imperius on the same subject?" Hermione asked, pencil hovering over the page.
"The commands are obeyed until they contradict, and the volunteer should defer to the more powerful wizard with the strongest will," answered Mr. Pacek, stroking his goatee in thought. "Dark magic leaves traces, so if that is being done, it would be safe to assume that someone is attempting to cover his traces up. It confuses certain magical instruments. Dark Detectors, Foe-Glasses, and the like," he said. Noticing Hermione's look of confusion, he added, "They are enchanted mirrors that show the shadows of one's enemies, but too many at once will cause the instrument to malfunction."
"That's interesting," said Hermione, making a note to look up Foe-Glasses. She remembered seeing them mentioned in the upper year Defence textbooks, but she couldn't recall what one actually looked like. "Based on what you said, does that mean you could negate one Imperius Curse by casting a stronger one in its place? In ordering the victim of an Imperius to disregard all previous orders, you'd create a blanket contradiction without having to know the exact details of the original instructions. Then you could cure victims who've been controlled, without having to track down the original caster... and kill him, I suppose. It would be best if nobody had to kill anyone."
"You might," said Mr. Pacek. "But only if you trusted someone to cast the Imperius Curse and then immediately rescind it without seeing it as an opportunity to take advantage. And that is if you choose to overlook the ethical implications around casting an Unforgivable Curse on another witch or wizard, who, being under spell, cannot give true consent."
"Is there any ethical question about it?" Hermione said, pursing her lips. "You'd be curing someone who's being mind controlled, because while they're under, they could be a danger to themselves and other people. It might be illegal by technicality, but it'll fix them, make them better. Surely that makes such an act forgivable. It wouldn't be much different than an inoculation—giving someone weakened cowpox so they'll be immune to smallpox."
Mr. Pacek chuckled. "It is times like this that I begin to understand why someone like Mr. Riddle is so fond of you."
Hermione's pencil skidded over the paper. "Excuse me? What does that mean?"
"You are conscientious; you strive to defend others," he said, "but in doing so, you can find reasons to justify the usage of Dark Arts."
"I'm not using them, or planning to!" said Hermione adamantly. "Studying them isn't the same as using them. You studied them yourself when you were in school."
"I did," he conceded, "but I do not look for ways to rationalise their use, or detect inadequacies in the law that would allow me to do so."
"I think it's best to be as well-informed as possible," Hermione said primly. "Why shouldn't I want to know everything about the magical world? The good parts are as important as the bad parts. Even if our society or social systems have shortcomings, it only means that there are places where improvements might be made."
"And in knowing the legal loopholes, and wanting to study such magic, I do not think I am wrong to guess that the next thing you will ask me is to demonstrate the spell, in the name of academic curiosity," Mr. Pacek spoke in a very amused tone of voice, his eyes glittering. "As we both know, the law only protects humans, and Conjured animals, being magical constructs that do not have the internal structures to eat and breed, are not properly alive by the biological definition."
"But are they alive enough for the spell to work?" Hermione asked, pausing as an avalanche of questions began to gather. "Can you even use it on inanimate objects? What about the in-between things like ghosts and plants? And what about real living animals Transfigured into inanimate objects?"
"I may as well indulge my curiosity too," Mr. Pacek said, sighing. "The wards are well-maintained here, but I do not recommend doing this anywhere else—and never at school, for I should not like to see you following the path of Herr Grindelwald. Even if you might have the most well-intentioned reasons, and a true scholar's appreciation of the magical essentia, you cannot expect other people to see it that way." A grim smile crossed his face. "Other than young Mr. Riddle, of course."
He drew his wand and Conjured a small dove with soft grey feathers and pink legs. It flapped around on Mr. Pacek's vacated footstool, its head bobbing up and down. It cooed and scratched, and would have been indistinguishable from a real bird.
Real birds, she reminded herself, can't be disappeared with a simple Finite Incantatem. And this bird Conjuration is better than using a real bird. I wouldn't do it to a real animal, and never to a sentient being.
Hermione pulled out a fresh roll of parchment and a sharp pencil for some intensive note taking.
.
.
When Hermione returned to Hogwarts for the new term, she'd begun to see more differences in scholarship between herself and other people.
Hermione loved school and enjoyed studying and learning new things, especially if they had to do with magic or wizarding culture. But in the end, it wasn't for the sake of learning that she studied—she wanted top marks, but she also wanted to do something with her knowledge. She wanted to make things better; she wanted to improve the world that was meant to be her birthright, whose existence she'd only been informed about when she was months from starting Muggle preparatory school.
Mr. Pacek was studied in magical theory, but he only pursued in depth the subjects that personally interested him. He was a specialist in warding buildings and fixtures, although his true passion was in the craftsmanship of magical windows and glassware. In other subjects such as Defence or Potions or Magical Botany he was no better or worse than the average wizard.
And just as she did, Tom enjoyed learning—he was obsessive about collecting knowledge—but he preferred magical disciplines for which he could see a practical use. The ones he didn't were disregarded: History of Magic, Divination, Muggle Studies, and Flying Class. (Hermione could see what made that last one somewhat useless: Why would wizards need to learn to ride broomsticks when the other methods of magical travel were faster and didn't involve breaking the Statute of Secrecy when going further than the outer limits of Hogsmeade? Not everyone wanted to play Quidditch. And even if they did, there were only seven player positions per House team.)
Top marks were secondary to Tom's stance on magical scholarship. His entire reason for studying was the pursuit of self-improvement.
In some ways it bothered her, because Tom excelled as a student and a wizard. He had an intuitive grasp of practical magic where Hermione's neat and logical mind struggled with the fine details—when it came down to it, magic made no sense. (Why did the official rules state that it was impossible to Conjure or Transfigure wizarding money, which was made of gold, but entirely possible to create gold through Alchemy? They'd made metal snuffboxes in Second Year Transfiguration, so why was one metal an exception, and the others not?)
For all that she had the capability of becoming a great researcher, she could see where Tom could become a great innovator. But she couldn't imagine a Tom Riddle whose priorities weren't firmly concentrated on making himself better or more powerful. The idea of a humanitarian Tom Riddle boggled the mind; she just couldn't imagine any version of him behaving that way, helping a world that had never given him a genuine crumb of concern. If Tom was altruistic, then there must be some ulterior motive behind it.
(If Tom could be cynical about the world, then she could be cynical about Tom. It wasn't cynicism so much as being... realistic.)
Speaking of Tom, she scarcely spoke to him; by the time spring had arrived, she was seeing him less and less. It seemed that after Christmas, he'd started making "friends" with more of his Slytherin Housemates, and his side of the House dining table was looking more crowded than ever.
At breakfast she observed Tom and his dining companions. They were all of them boys and she didn't recognise some of their faces from shared classes, so they mustn't have been Fourth Years. Wherever Tom sat, they gathered around him. Without conscious intention, he was at the centre, the heart of the group around which the other boys circled. They ate their meals, played card games at the table, conversed among themselves, but when Tom looked up from his books and gave any single one of them his full attention, the rest quietened.
It was... curious.
She wasn't sure what to make of it. She knew him well enough to know that he didn't enjoy it—he enjoyed shows of respect and deference, obviously, but it was hard to believe that he'd enjoy having people near him all the time, having their shallow conversations within earshot, annoying him with the pointlessness of their existence. (When Hermione tried to put herself in the mindset of Tom Riddle, she couldn't help picturing him as a mean and snappy old tortoise.) Now and then she could see a flash of irritation in his eyes; although he must have noticed that she was watching, he never turned his gaze in her direction.
The morning owl delivery arrived, and her line of sight was broken by a mass of feathers and hooting birds and the slap of rolled newspapers hitting the table from six feet up, and the occasional metallic clatter when a paper hit the hot chafing dishes containing oat porridge and cream of wheat, sending the serving ladles flying over the breakfasting students.
There were few reactions and even fewer screams; most Ravenclaw students continued with their reading and eating. Some of the older Ravenclaws waved their wands to Vanish the mess on their laps and on the faces of the youngest students around them without comment.
This was considered a regular morning at Hogwarts.
"Oh, look," said Twyla Ellerby on Hermione's other side, flipping through an owl order catalogue full of bright, animated fashion plates of witches twirling in place and blowing kisses. "Gladrag's has got their spring collection out this week. I think I'll pop in and have a look the next time I'm in Hogsmeade."
"Have they?" asked Siobhan Kilmuir, Hermione's dorm mate, who'd dropped down to the seat next to Twyla and began looking over her shoulder. "It looks alright, I suppose. But they hardly look much different from last year's—a little less darting on the hip and a bit more tailoring on the shoulder. Couldn't you just re-use last year's, and change the colours for the season? Witch Weekly ran a good article the other week on colouring charms by Mr. Bertram, and it'd be a good chance to try them out."
"Was that the one on the forty-eight hour weekend makeover? Philippa Boyne—you know her, she was your Herbology partner back in Second Year—asked to borrow my copy and hasn't given it back. Do you know, I think she borrowed my Defence notes before the final exams last year and never gave them back either; is it too late to ask for them back too—"
Hermione had been half-listening to the conversation as she paged through her own mail delivery, a Muggle newspaper from London. It had a front page article on the recent spate of German bombings in York, Exeter, and Bath, with a casualty count of well over a thousand souls. The second page had information on National Service, and the mandatory registration of all British men and women over the age of eighteen.
National Service is nothing but another name for conscription, thought Hermione, skimming through the details. Minimum age of eighteen, maximum age of fifty-one years old—Dad wouldn't be exempt from this. Mum has a child under the age of majority in her care, so she could apply for an exemption for the next few years, and Dad is an experienced doctor; they'd never be moved to the front, surely—
—Wait a moment.
Her thoughts stuttered as she heard a name she recognised.
Bertram?
Could it be...?
"Sorry," Hermione interrupted, not the least bit apologetic, "did you say 'Mr. Bertram'?"
Twyla and Siobhan shared an amused glance. Twyla nodded, saying, "I didn't know you read Witch Weekly, Hermione."
"I don't," said Hermione, "I read the Prophet when I see it in the Common Room, but I haven't seen anyone leaving Witch Weekly lying out."
Hermione tried to keep up with wizarding news, but it was hard to call it 'news'.
The Minister for Magic, Leonard Spencer-Moon, celebrated his birthday yesterday with a surprise gala thrown by his supporters. A Quidditch supplies shop in Diagon Alley was running a draw for a ticket package to the Quidditch World Cup that was to take place that summer, open to anyone who made a purchase at their store before August and registered their owling address. There was a notice to wizarding gardeners to keep their magical plants in charmed beds or secured hothouses, due to a recent incident with a wandering Muggle and a flesh-eating shrub.
It was interesting to see how wizards lived their daily lives, but overall she found what they did to be so... incredibly inconsequential. Where was the news on Grand Minister Grindelwald? What about the uneasy pact of non-aggression made between Grindelwald and the Headmaster of Durmstrang? The reports of infiltrators in various European magical governments, including Italy and France? Mr. Pacek had given her smuggled Dutch newspapers from his contact in Leiden, and had translated the cover articles when she'd asked about them.
Did the British Ministry have some hold on the Daily Prophet, enough to censor the final product delivered to subscribers? Hermione could see the Ministry of Magic not wanting to panic its citizens; they could not be unaware that its fellow European Ministries' vulnerabilities being exploited by hostile forces meant that there must be vulnerabilities at home. She knew that in the Muggle world, the British government sanitised its official statements, and the wartime Emergency Powers Act granted it the ability to censure criticism whenever a publication was found to be "damaging to morale".
But there is no excuse for total ignorance, Hermione concluded.
For that reason, she couldn't bring herself to give money to the Daily Prophet or any other wizarding periodical, so she only read them when she could get them for free.
"No one's throwing out their Witch Weeklies, that's why," said Twyla. "There's always something in it these days that I want to save for later. All the tailoring tips don't work when we're only allowed our school uniforms."
"What about Mr. Bertram?" Hermione asked. "Who is he?"
"He's an advice columnist," Siobhan put in, "and an expert in Charms. Mum saves his recipes in her kitchen scrapbook."
"Is his given name 'Thomas', by any chance?"
Twyla sent Hermione a sidelong glance. "Are you sure you don't read Witch Weekly, Hermione? We wouldn't judge if you did."
"I know you prefer harder subjects like Arithmancy, but Mr. Bertram's Charms articles aren't so bad," said Siobhan rather reasonably. "It's nothing revolutionary, but he did write a section on spellcasting patterns to help improve the charmwork of left-handed witches. People forget about us lefties, even the school textbooks."
"He's so thoughtful," said Twyla breathily, holding her Gladrag's catalogue to her chest.
Siobhan sighed. "You haven't even met him, how would you know?"
"He sounds nice," Twyla said. "Anyone who sounds as nice as he does would never be a bad person. Believe me, I know these things—I'm top three in our year in Divination. From his signs, he sounds like he's in the house of Saturn, and do you know what that means?"
"What does it mean?" asked Hermione, who had chosen Muggle Studies in favour of Divination as her third elective subject.
What little she knew about celestial forecasting she'd learned in Astronomy, a core subject that was much more scientific than the guesswork and fanciful interpretations of Astrology. Astronomy was useful for tracking the life cycles of magical animals and plants, and could be combined with Arithmancy to calculate the most powerful days to brew certain potions and enchant certain objects; Astrology in her experience, however, was "useful" for determining the romantic compatibilities of every other boy in their year.
"He's 'saturnine', which makes him deep and brooding, associated with maturity," said Twyla. "Saturn relates to intellect and authority, in the context of leadership and fatherhood—Saturn was the father of the main Greek pantheon. See? The signs point to him being a good father, if he's not married yet." Her brows furrowed in a look of consternation. "I hope he's not married."
"Saturn in the tenth house could mean maturity with a solitary nature," Siobhan pointed out doubtfully. "Which also twists the 'fatherhood' interpretation. You forget that in the Greek myth, Saturn fought and deposed his own father, Uranus."
"Alright, 'fatherhood' is a stretch, but it still indicates a personal affinity toward responsibility and tradition. He's also powerful and a thinker. I wonder if he was a Ravenclaw?"
"He still wouldn't want you—Saturns in cadent are independent thinkers."
"How could he be solitary by nature if he's strong in leadership?"
"Well, you can be independent and a leader—"
"Oh, Siobhan, don't be such a Cancer!"
"What's that suppposed to mean?!"
"Aggression and confusion, according to Cholmain's Astrologia."
"At least I'm not a Gemini; air signs are never compatible with cadent Saturns..."
Hermione rolled her newspaper up and stuffed it in her bag, deciding that it was better to go to class twenty minutes early than sit and listen to her dorm mates throw horoscope interpretations at one another. She could always revise her notes in the back of the classroom before the teacher arrived.
As she was waiting for a bunch of Hufflepuff First Years to move out of the way of the door—for some reason, Hufflepuffs always travelled in herds—she noticed Tom and his friends finishing up their breakfasts and heading for the door as well.
She left the Great Hall, deliberately slowing her pace so Tom could catch up, and when he was behind her, she took a step to the left and hissed at him under her breath.
"Tom!"
"What do you want?"
"Can we talk?"
He jerked his head toward an approaching intersection. There was a lesser used corridor that held rooms used for club meetings on the weekends; the doors would be locked because everyone would be going to class, but the corridor itself was deserted.
There was a small alcove between a carved stone column and a suit of armour. It was a close fit for the two of them ,since Tom appeared to have grown an inch or two over the Christmas holidays. The toes of his shoes brushed her own, even as the cold stone pressed up against her back. Tom applied a few non-verbal Silencing Charms before he slipped his wand back in his robes; she felt the hem of his robe brushing against her knees, it was such a tight fit.
"What's so urgent that you had to stop me?" said Tom, looking down at her. "You normally save your complaints for the weekend."
"I found out about your articles," said Hermione. "One of my dorm mates told me."
"Oh?" Tom lifted an eyebrow. "What did she have to say about me?"
"She had plenty of things to say about Thomas Bertram," Hermione huffed, still irritated about the ridiculous horoscope reading. Really, even in a world where the Sight was considered a legitimate magical gift, the art of Astrology still had a strong association with quackery.
And a well-deserved one at that, she thought.
"You're not jealous, are you?" said Tom, his eyes fixed on hers, and his expression darkening. His nostrils flared, and he continued in a low voice, "You know, Hermione, I wouldn't be averse to offering a collaborative writing credit—if I didn't think the idea of magical cheesemaking would be too superficial for your tastes."
"Of course I'm not jealous!" said Hermione heatedly. There was a tiny part of her, the tiniest, most microscopic speck, that was envious, because she'd liked to have seen her words printed and delivered to a thousand households, or have a prominent segment of the population following along with her personal opinions. It wasn't envy directed at Tom so much as it was a driving urge to see herself there, successful, one day in the future. Yes, she decided, it was more like a jealousy of a person's accomplishments than jealousy of the person's innate talent. And accomplishments could be earned by anyone, whether they were born gifted or not. It just took work.
Thus heartened, Hermione asked, "Why should I be? You're doing something productive to fight wizarding complacency. Maybe I'll never use your spells myself, the same way I'll never need a snuffbox like the ones we make all the time in Transfiguration, but it doesn't mean I don't see the value in teaching or learning new things. I just wish you'd told me about it instead of thinking you had to hide it."
"Good," said Tom in clipped tones. "Is that all you wanted to say to me? I do have to ask that the next time you want to discuss this topic in particular, you'd wait until we're not somewhere so public. I hope you understand that it's meant to be a secret."
Hermione ignored the fact that this tiny alcove was hardly a public place. It was rather too private, when she spent a moment or two to take in her surroundings—the alcove was so small she could touch the three side walls without straightening her arms, and the overhead column's carved cornice could brush the top of Tom's head if he stood straight. He had to stoop a little and lean forward to keep from knocking himself out.
He was so close she could feel him breathe; from where she stood, she could count the silver stripes on his green Slytherin necktie, or the knitted purls on the neckline of his woollen uniform jumper.
"Have you heard the news about the bombings?" said Hermione, tearing her eyes away from his chest. She dug into her book bag and drew out the morning's paper from London, setting her bag on the floor between their feet.
.
Union Jack Flies at Half-Mast, RAF to Fly for Retaliation.
.
Tom scanned the front page. "It's not London," he remarked with an indifferent shrug.
"I know," said Hermione. "London isn't as soft a target as the smaller cities. But they could still come back. I wanted to tell you that you can come and stay with my family again. The official word is that it's 'safe' for everyone evacuated to go back to London, but they still haven't closed the shelters or ended the blackout curfew."
"I'll consider the offer," said Tom, "but if things go to plan, I won't need to."
Hermione blinked. "What does that mean? You're going back to Wool's?"
"No," Tom said. "I'm planning to hire out a room in the magical world for the summer."
"But that's expensive! And you don't—" Hermione cut herself off. "You're going to spend your writing money on lodgings? You shouldn't, Tom—you have to save up; Parliament pushed the National Service Act through, and cut out most of the prior exemptions. Even I will have to worry about it when I leave Hogwarts, since they've put girls on the list too."
She opened the newspaper and showed him the interior, her finger jabbing at the relevant section and smearing black printers' ink over her skin.
"Look here: 'Female British residents under thirty required for vital industries at home'. Who knows when they'll extend the age limit, since they've already raised the men's from forty-one to fifty-one. My father was aged-out with the old policy, but with the extension, he's eligible again." She turned the page and showed him another passage. "The only way I can get out of it is to never leave Wizarding London once I step off the Express for the last time. If I wanted an official exemption, I'd have to marry and fall pregnant as soon as I'm done with school."
Tom made an odd choking sound from somewhere above her, and Hermione looked up from the paper. He'd leaned over to read the small lines of black print under her pointing finger, so the top of her head smacked into the underside of his jaw, which made him stumble on the book bag she'd set on the floor when she'd dug out the newspaper. As the alcove was so cramped, his toe whacked into her ankle and caused her to stagger into the wall.
Somehow, she ended up pressed flat against the wall, with Tom pressed against her.
He was much taller than her—it wasn't hard to recall that when she'd first met him, they had been around the same height—so her face ended up mashed into his collar, and their legs were tangled together by the straps of her bag. She could feel the rise and fall of Tom's chest; he was breathing heavily, and it was unexpected because Tom had always made himself appear so aloof and unflappable.
In this instance, however, it seemed like he'd been flapped.
"I remember you saying that your childbearing restrictions wouldn't apply to me," said Hermione, one hand reaching down to untangle her bag.
Her knuckles brushed his trousered knees, which weren't as knobbly and sharp as she'd expected from a boy of Tom's age whose rapid gain in height made them gawky and coltish until they'd filled out somewhat—but wouldn't it just be fitting for Tom Riddle to have perfect rounded knees along with his perfect wavy hair that had never touched a roller, and his perfect smooth skin that had never seen a spot?
(Some part of her recognised the absurdity of their situation, and how indecent it would have been had they been born a hundred years ago. If admiring a woman's bare ankles was considered the height of lechery back then, then touching a man's clothed knees wouldn't be quite so far up, but it had to be in the domain of the irredeemably saucy.)
"That's not funny," Tom muttered. He pushed himself off her, a strange expression on his face. He lifted his fingers to his mouth and pulled out a few strands of curly brown hair, connected to his lips by a fine string of saliva, like the silk thread of a spider's web.
Hermione could feel her ears growing warm. "Um," she said. "Sorry about that?"
Tom cleared his throat and glared at her. "I think it's best if we both agree that this never happened."
"Fine," said Hermione. "Now, what's this about you going somewhere else in the summer?"
"If I keep writing articles during the summer—which I can't do at Wool's—then I can afford to stay in a wizarding area," he said. "It'll be like a summer job."
"You're still underage," said Hermione, frowning. Tom had turned fifteen a few months ago, and despite his looks and self-assured manner, she didn't think he could pass as an adult. Not to anyone who gave him a second glance. "Most landlords wouldn't rent to you because of that, not without seeing an adult witch or wizard with you. And you'd have to pay for food on top of the rent." She shook her head. "If you can't find anything, you can always stay with us. I know you hate feeling indebted to other people, but the most important thing is keeping yourself safe."
"I can look out for myself, Hermione," said Tom. "But if it makes you feel better, I'll write to you as often as I can."
"It does," Hermione said, chewing on her lip. She tried to direct her thoughts away from Tom's lips, and that sticky trail of spit he'd wiped off his cheek with the back of his hand. "I worry about you. About the future."
"You shouldn't have to." Tom picked up her bag and shoved it into her arms. "For now, just worry about studying and getting to class on time."
Hermione gasped, almost dropping her bag. "We're going to be late for class! What if they give us detention?"
"Then you spend an hour or two before curfew sitting in the professor's office, asking her advanced questions that she couldn't answer in class because she had to teach the lesson," said Tom. "Simple."
"Oh, I'd have never thought of that," Hermione said, stepping out of the alcove and straightening her robes.
"And once you've done it, they'll never want to give you detention again," said Tom. "Things will all work out, trust me."