NINETEEN

Saturday 1 December 1945

Three weeks.

That's how long it had been since Tom sat beside Hermione on her couch. A month since she had opened up her mind to him, showing him things that couldn't possibly have happened. Nothing made sense, but he had been in enough people's heads, messed with enough memories to know that they were real. The amount of things she had shown him were overwhelming. To the point that when she withdrew from his head, he took the risk of Apparating back to the Manor just so he could process it all.

Whether he was awake or not, every scene she had showed him plagued his thoughts. He couldn't concentrate on anything else as he put all his efforts into making sense of what she'd shown him. It was a struggle to keep his emotions at bay when reliving certain parts. Anger, jealousy, and heartbreak reared their ugly faces more than he cared to admit.

Especially the latter.

He was used to anger. The emotion had fueled him since before he could even understand what it was. It led him to discover his true nature as a wizard.

Jealousy, despite his best efforts, wasn't something he was immune to either. He had been jealous of kids on the street walking with their parents. Jealous of the kids in the orphanage who got adopted into families of their own. And as of late, jealous of Draco's every move when it came to Hermione.

But heartbreak…

That was all new.

It was strange to see himself in what could have been his future. What should have been his future. He could see the change in himself from when he'd first met Hermione, to the monster he was to become, and then to the ruler he eventually became.

"What am I to you?"

"A monster."

She'd shown him once, what he would look like in her time. A monster in every sense of the word. His soul split so much that his body had succumbed to the power of the darkness. The thought of pale skin, beady eyes, and small slits for a nose like a snake had disturbed him.

But had it really been the consequences of splitting his soul or had it been Hermione's absence that turned him into the monster she knew? He had seen himself transform back to what he was now; a handsome charismatic young man, a face that no one would suspect of evil. But he had only gone back to that once he had her at his side. Once he declared her his queen so they could rule together.

Which only brought forth his anger anew.

His nails dug into his palms as the thought crashed through his mind yet again. He'd been doing well on his own, but it was taking more time than he would have liked. Especially with Grindelwald making headlines in both the Muggle and magical news. If he wanted to make real headway in this world, he needed her.

He just hated that he needed her.

She hadn't come back to save the world; she'd come back to save him.

And in order to do that, she was demanding Tom unmake his horcruxes. To destroy pieces of his soul he'd already stripped from himself. All to potentially make a better future than the one she'd come back from.

Tom stopped his pacing in the Malfoy gardens and looked up to the dark night sky. The absence of the moon brought memories to the forefront of his mind; ones he wasn't ready to relive. Not when he was trying to hold onto his anger rather than lament the feel of her hand in his. His palm itched at the thought, the one that bore the scar from their encounter nearly a year ago.

An encounter where he had created a horcrux without even knowing. A horcrux that housed a piece of her soul along with his. A piece of his soul she'd kept around her throat all this time and never told him about.

Which led his thoughts to the other part of him she had kept to herself.

The part of him she had destroyed.

Anger struck him anew and before he even realized what he was doing, Tom found himself standing in Hermione's living room. The protection of her wards was warm as he slid through them. Hermione's eyes went wide at the sight of him. She herself was just emerging from another room; his presence bringing her to a halt. Just as she straightened her spine, he moved forward, stopping only when he had her pinned against the wall next to the door..

"I had my reservations on sharing the knowledge of horcruxes with you," he said, his voice a low rumble in the dark of her apartment. "You said you wanted to learn how to make one. Yet, you showed me your memories, Hermione. I saw you destroy a piece of me."

Her throat bobbed beneath his palm as the smallest flash of fear crossed her gaze as it met his. Her shudder reverberated through him, setting ablaze both his anger and desire. Her lips parted as if to speak, but he pushed forth with his magic, silencing her.

"You said you came back to save him," he added, venom weighing heavy on his tongue at the thought of Draco. "But we both know how far that is from the truth, Hermione. You came back to fix time. To erase your mistakes. Erase us."

Hermione's quiver made the blood in his veins pulse faster as his hand began to slip from her throat. She swallowed hard as it trailed between her breasts and wet her lips as it rested on her stomach.

"To do so, you destroyed another part of me. Of us."

The shine of unshed tears in her eyes made Tom's jaw clench.

"You killed our child for him."

For the first time in a long time, she flinched.

"You could have gone back to any moment in time," he breathed, his hand sliding its way back up her chest until it wrapped around her throat once more. "You could have fixed your mistakes any time you chose. You could have done a number of things, Hermione, but you did not."

Hermione's eyes fluttered as she turned her head to the side. Tom allowed it and moved his hand to the back of her head so he could press his lips close to her ear.

"You came back to me," he whispered, a shiver running down his own spine.

She trembled against him in a way that made him both weak and powerful.

"You made your choice, Hermione," he drawled, pulling away to look at her once more while relinquishing his hold on her voice. "And it wasn't Draco." The corners of his mouth tilted up ever so slightly. "It was me."

He felt her anger bubbling to the surface, replacing her fear the moment she realized he'd withdrawn his magic. "Coming back to the moment I did wasn't a choice," she seethed. "The magic brought me back. I didn't get to choose." Tom could feel the rage inside of her building as she stared back at him with her signature defiance. "And since the cost of moving through time is too great, I'm stuck here."

For a brief second, the thought of her memory wrenched through his gut, but he made sure she didn't see it. "Believe what you want, Hermione, but I know better. You know better."

Had he not felt the desire behind her rage, her glare might have been enough to frighten him.

"By being here, everything's changed. I know that. There's too much damage to try and fix it all," she said, straightening herself against him. "But I will use every ounce of Grey magic this world has to offer to make sure the future we shape isn't anything like the one we ruined."

At that, Tom stepped away from her.

Everything she had shown him came rushing to the forefront of his mind yet again.

"And your solution to a brighter future is to destroy my horcruxes," he stated after a moment, both boredom and anger in voice.

"Yes."

There was no hesitation in her answer.

He recalled the memory of her attempts at destroying the one she wore around her neck. His eyes dropped to where it currently laid against her flushed skin.

"If you were unsuccessful with yours, why are you so confident we can rid the world of mine?"

"Because it wasn't just mine," she said, pushing herself away from the wall. "It was ours. Clearly Grey magic doesn't abide by the same as Dark and Light. You saw," she said, shoving some of her curls behind her ears. "I tried everything that worked for us before, but nothing worked."

Tom went still as she made her way towards him.

"I have a few theories and ideas that I want to try, but I need you to work with me, Riddle. It's the only way I can even begin to fix the state of things I left this world in. Grindlewald wasn't supposed to win his fight against Dumbledore. Everything about this timeline is new and it's terrifying. Do you honestly think I would be asking for your help to do this if I thought for one second I could do this on my own?"

Her hands balled into fists at her side as she took another step towards Tom.

"You certainly had no trouble doing it yourself the first time around," he fired back, his eyes narrowing into a glare as she stopped just shy of touching him.

"That's because we were destroying them," she said, her voice a tad lighter.

Tom's brows furrowed as he mulled over her words, but his thoughts scattered as she lifted her right hand. Her fingers unfurled, revealing the ring she had stolen from him a month prior.

"I fail to see the difference."

A faint smile crossed her lips as she reached for his hand with her free one. Tom held her gaze as she placed the ring in his palm and closed his fingers around it. Where he should have felt relief from reconnecting with a piece of his soul, Tom only felt anguish.

"You will," she promised.

But instead of elaborating, she pushed with her magic, sending him through her wards until he was in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by pure darkness from a moonless night.