Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Hogwarts is aflame.

Jets of green and violet cut through smoke. Screams pierce the air. The Dark Mark stains the Fiendfyre sky, inky and ominous. 

It’s a mosaic of war, painted in blood.

Hermione Granger sprints through the chaos.

Curses spill from the lips of her enemies, neon rays darting in every direction as she zig-zags between skittering Acromantulas and snarling trolls. The Death Eaters raze Gryffindor Tower in their hour of victory, their triumph unbridled. 

Hermione stops to bear witness. Fire glitters in her tearful stare as her most treasured memories become cinder, smoldering like the flags of red and gold.

“Crucio!”

She ducks, only just avoiding the spell. The battle still rages on, even though the Order of the Phoenix has already fallen. Harry is dead—murdered. Ron has defected.

She’s alone. To survive, she must leave Britain.

The Death Eater is closing in on her.

She runs.

“Diffindo!”

The spell nips at her heels, slashing the tips of the grass just behind her, but she won’t let them bait her into a duel. Panting, she fixes the slipping Invisibility Cloak and races towards the Whomping Willow. Beneath its roots, there is hope. The path to the Shrieking Shack may be her only chance to escape and Disapparate.

But the troll could pose a problem.

He storms towards the owlery, the ground quaking beneath his feet, and Hermione can only watch in horror as he swings his club. The tower topples; a parliament of owls soars away in a panic. Feathers rain from above, and the troll waddles towards the bridge, leaving the mess for the wizard who stands on a nearby hill. Amycus Carrow aims his wand upward.

It isn’t Morsmordre that he casts.

The Killing Curse sails into the fog of war, and a small owl spirals towards the earth.

Hermione stops in her tracks. To kill an enemy is reprehensible, but to murder an innocent animal? It’s a monstrous deed—the type of pointless sadism she’s heard rumors about, but could never understand.

Amycus trains his wand on the fleeing birds once more. Hermione’s blood thunders in her ears; her grip on her wand tightens. If she does something, she’ll give away her location. The cloak will be virtually useless if she misses or if she’s seen.

She mustn't do it.

“Stupefy!”

The pandemonium of battle muffles the voice, but she would recognize it anywhere. Luna Lovegood’s wand follows Amycus as he falls forward. The owls scatter in the sky—free, alive.

Luna is alive too. 

Hermione assumed she would be gone like the rest, a casualty of the cause. The battle has taken so many, yet, here she is, still fighting on, still resisting.

Hermione cries out her name. 

“Luna!”

Cerulean eyes search for her on the horizon, but invisibility betrays them both, and Luna frowns, spinning in search of her.  

Hermione doesn't shed the cloak as she stumbles uphill. The remnants of the Order are scant; they must stay safe, the both of them.

“Hermione?” Luna asks.

Hermione keeps moving in silence. Together, they can escape. If she can reach her, they can both become invisible—phantoms until they get to Hogsmeade and leave the country. They’ll never have to suffer under Voldemort’s reign again. It’s the future they deserve.

“She’s gone, Luna!” 

Padma Patil is seizing Luna by the arm, wrenching her in the other direction.

“She’s not! I just heard her!”

“Luna! We have to go!”

They scurry away from the rubble, and it’s just in time. As they skirt the Quidditch pitch, a crowd of children pours out from the courtyard, a duo of masked Death Eaters at their flank. The students scream and scuffle in an attempt to get to the front, to avoid the hexes that strike those at the rear.

Hermione sinks to the ground behind the ruins of the owlery, readying her wand. These Death Eaters are callow, likely no older than herself. If she can Stupefy them, she can put an end to their terror.

Fire erupts.

Fiends sprout from the flames—serpents and dragons, wolves and chimaeras. They edge towards the crowd, looming over the students trying to stampede out of the curse's hellish path.

It’s no use. Shrieks ring in Hermione’s ears. The living push and elbow one another through the stink of burning flesh as wool robes catch fire, then hair, then skin. Bodies blister and peel until they diminish to ash and singed piles of blackened bones, the magic of their fallen wands crackling as they’re reduced to kindling. 

“MERLIN’S BOLLOCKS!”

“Try Aguamenti!”

“It’s fucking Fiendfyre, we can’t put it out!”

“Try anyway!”

“HE’S GOING TO BLOODY KILL US!”

The Death Eater violently shakes his wand. “I can’t stop it!”

If Hermione didn’t know better, she might think it was Vincent Crabbe yelling under that mask, but Crabbe failed Defense Against the Dark Arts twice over. Surely, he can’t summon Fiendfyre—and even if he could, would he cast it at children?

No—she doesn’t think him capable of such violence. It’s someone else, she decides. It must be. 

“You fucking idiot!”

This one is unmistakable—distinctive. The boy speaks as though he stuffs his nose with cotton and chews on Gobstones for sport. Uttered jokes about her dirty blood. Snickers after tripping her in halls. Like Crabbe, he failed his courses, but he had mastered tormenting her and her friends.

It’s Gregory Goyle.

Which means the other one has to be Crabbe, even if it’s a version of him she cannot recognize. Brainlessness kept him out of trouble for so many years. Now, he’s responsible for the death of children—all in the name of his hatred for people like her.

She doesn’t know how to grapple with that.

Alas, there isn’t time to try. If Crabbe has lost control of the curse, he could destroy what's left of the grounds within the hour, and probably most of Hogsmeade too. 

She forges on.

The temperature climbs as the grass burns behind her and black smoke fills her lungs, robbing her of oxygen as she dashes towards the Whomping Willow. She swallows a cough. A boy and a girl crouch down in her peripheral. They sob over a corpse—presumably that of a friend.

They’re making a mistake. War doesn’t grieve.

In another life, she might have told them this, but she’s hollow now—a mere shell of herself, driven by her sheer will to live. Their missteps on the battlefield are their own. 

She blasts a jinx at an Acromantula and bounds around it.

“Where’d that come from?” Goyle yells.

Hermione keeps running. He’s seen something, and if he and Crabbe come after her, she’ll become one with the students in the courtyard, echoes and ash swept away in the Highland breeze.

She must be fast—and careful.

Faraway hexes zip into the fiery twilight. She looks behind her to make sure none are headed her way, and that the fight is still moving southward. Lone threats could be anywhere—but there are none other than Crabbe and Goyle, and they still haven’t placed her. She doubts they will too. The Fiends are growing mutinous, circling above Crabbe like a flaming tornado prepared to descend upon him. 

Goyle shouts from the knoll. 

“Just toss it!”

The Fiends suddenly become one, morphing into an enormous flaming bear. It roars down at Crabbe, who screams and drops his wand, once and for all. He and Goyle jog in the other direction. They disappear into the smoke, the bear just behind them.

She’s surely alone now. The Willow is only a mere moment away, an ancient beacon amidst dark smog—

She turns back around, and skids to a halt. Malfoy and Pansy Parkinson have clomped right in front of her, blocking her path to the roots of the tree. If these two are the reason she doesn’t make it to Hogsmeade, she may resort to Unforgivables. 

"You were supposed to protect me!" Pansy shrieks.

Draco grabs her shoulders and says something that Hermione cannot hear, and she doesn't care to. She only wants them to move; sneaking around them unnoticed will be nearly impossible—even with the Invisibility Cloak.

She considers trying, but if Malfoy feels her presence, or hears her breathing, or even notices footprints in the dirt, he’ll strike.

She glances behind her. Crabbe's wand is still emitting fire, an army of Fiends marching across the grounds they’ve claimed.

The only way out is forward.

Slowly, she takes a risky step—then two.

Malfoy hulks over Pansy, making wild gesticulations Hermione cannot puzzle together from so far away. Finally, he jabs a finger towards the Forbidden Forest, and Pansy peeks around him. She’s favoring a leg, likely injured.

Apparently, Hermione isn’t the only one trying to flee.

The couple’s fingers intertwine, and Malfoy tugs Pansy in the direction he’d pointed. She howls in pain as she limps behind him, blood trailing in her wake, and Hermione stays put as they creep into the forest. 

Hope flickers from within. 

The atmosphere is cooler here, away from the heart of battle. Salvation lies ahead at the Shrieking Shack—and no one is here to stop her.

She takes another step.

Fabric slips off her shoulders. 

She gasps and spins, but the Invisibility Cloak only falls away faster, caught on a rogue twig. Clambering to pick it up, she’s overcome by the urge to vomit. She’s beaten the odds, surviving this long. To fail now, when the passage is a mere stone’s throw away, it would be a sick joke, a cruel twist of fate even Arithmancy couldn’t explain. If she can get to the Whomping Willow, she can get to Hogsmeade—then to Heathrow. To Australia and her parents.

“Granger!”

She blanches. Quickly, she pulls the Invisibility Cloak back over her head. The Willow is so close she can smell the damp from the passage beneath; if she’s stealthy, perhaps she can make it. 

“Damn it, you swot, don’t make me yell!"

The tone isn’t threatening, though yelling is far from ideal. Unsure what else to do, she takes in her surroundings, but she sees nothing through the smoke.

“I’d be quick if I were you!”

The proclamation echoes from the north. She pans the area again, and that’s when she sees him. Near the edge of the wall, a body lies in the grass, with mud-caked boots and student robes. Anxious, she squeezes her wand and approaches.

It’s Theodore Nott.

Though he was in her year before she left Hogwarts, he was always quiet—a boy she wouldn’t remember at all, if it weren’t for his long history of colluding with Malfoy, and in this state, he’s even less recognizable than usual. Dark locks cling to the sweat on his brow; a deep gash cuts across his left cheek; his robes are threadbare and wet, burned and stained with blood. He stares at the heavens with fading eyes. 

She points her wand at him and peels back her hood.

“What do you want?” she barks.

Glazed pupils slowly move towards her. Death is coming for him.

“The Dark Lord must be stopped."

Hermione circles him, her wand still aimed at his chest, because this could easily be a trick, a final attempt to appease Voldemort himself.

“He’s won,” she admits. It’s the first time she’s said it out loud, and the words taste like poison. “Harry’s dead, which means it’s impossible now, so if you’ll excuse me, I'm going to get out of here while I still can.”

Wasting time on Nott will do her no good. There’s no saving him, and there is certainly no saving Hogwarts or the Order. She pulls the Invisibility Cloak back over her head and lifts a foot. 

A hand wraps around her ankle.

She kicks him away, but his fingers curl around the hem of the cloak and he gives it a hard tug, exposing half of her to the abandoned war zone around them. 

“Let go!”

“Wait!”

Hermione yanks the cloak from his grip and gathers it around her shoulders.

“Touch me again, and you’ll regret it, Death Eater.”

“Fine,” he chokes out, grimacing as he tries to sit up. He fails and drops his head. “But you need to listen to me.”

“You're stalling so one of your little friends can Avada me from behind. I'm not falling for it."

“If I wanted you dead, I’d kill you myself.”

Fear pleads with her to make an escape, but dangerous curiosity is deeply ingrained in her, and after all the time she’s spent in the war, after all the friends she’s lost, she can’t help but wonder what he knows.

"Fine. Make it fast."

"I would've been done by now, if you didn't try to run off," Nott says.

Hermione doesn't entertain his attitude. There isn't time to.

“You said Voldemort has to be stopped. Explain."

"Don't know how I could be any clearer. You’ve got to beat him, Granger . . . I'd do it myself, but as you can probably tell, I'm a bit too fucked up."

She barks a laugh. "Beat him? What is it you expect me to do? The prophecy is fulfilled, and your side is out there celebrating by killing what's left of mine! There’s no one left to beat him.”

“I know that. I’m saying that you have to fix it.” 

“And I’m saying that there is no fixing it. Harry was the only way and your precious Dark Lord murdered him. You might be feeling guilty, Nott, but that’s not my problem. It’s too late."

She starts to stalk away again, furious he's robbing her of precious seconds.

"First of all, Potter wasn’t the only way," he calls after her. "Second of all, it was never about sides for me. It was about survival, and unless you think you can heal me, I think that's out the window."

She stops and turns around. 

“I don’t have any dittany left," she says honestly.

“Yeah, I figured . . . In that case, you’ll have to—ARGH! Fuck!” He winces and clutches the wound in his stomach. His arms are ruby-red with bloodstain, his face pale as snow. They may have minutes, possibly less. “You have to restart the timeline.”

“Restart the timeline? Do you think I just happen to have a Time-Turner?”

“No—but I do.”

Hermione freezes. Questions flood her senses. A Time-Turner could reverse everything. Harry could survive. They could change the entire course of history.

But who on Earth would give one to Theodore Nott?

“What are you talking about?”

"I have one. It's with me, on my person. I'd swear it on my mother's—FUCK—fucking grave."

"What?" Hermione bends down beside him, overwhelmed by the sudden possibilities. “I swear, if you’re lying—”

“I’m not. It was my task, the same as killing Dumbledore was Draco’s. If we lost, I was supposed to set everything back.”

“Then why are you all the way out here?" Hermione inquires, doubtful. Maybe it is a trick. "Why would he let you anywhere near the battlefield?”

“I was running! Lestrange told me to wait in my common room, so I did. Said they were going to leave it alone, but she didn’t exactly account for your side.”

“My side?” Once upon a time, Ron Weasley told her the Slytherin common room would be the first place he’d attack if it came down to it. Maybe he hasn’t defected after all. Maybe he’s still out there, searching for her the way she searched for him. Even if this is the end, she has to know. “Who did you see?”

“Finnigan,” Nott answers, and her heart falls. “He hit me with a—bollocks! ” He grits his teeth together and reaches into his robes. “Here, if you don’t believe me, maybe this will convince you.”

She presses her wand to his throat.

“Slow.”

“Do I look like I could be fast?” he pants sarcastically.

He pulls his hand out.

Gold glints against the distant hellfire, and Hermione lowers her wand. The chain of the Time-Turner sways with his every tremble. She seizes the object with inquisitive fingers that emerge from the cloak, her hand a seemingly severed extremity hanging in midair like that which grips her weapon. Nott doesn't let go of the chain. If she tries to take it from him, it will snap.

“Voldemort gave you this?” She fingers the delicate hourglass. The sand is garnet red, like it’s been replaced with thousands of chipped gems, suspended by time. 

“We engineered it,” he answers, winded. “With . . . Portkey magic.”

“Portkey magic?” 

He manages a feeble nod and lowers his arm, taking the Time-Turner with him as Hermione lets it slip out through her fingers, unwilling to let it break. It lies against his chest. If he dies, it’s hers for the taking.

“Nearly went mad modifying the fucking thing—but it works. It will—” He coughs. “—take you exactly where . . . you need to be.”

“And where is that?”

“No bloody idea.”

“Then how do I know it’s real?” she asks angrily. “I could be walking straight into a trap!”

“It’s not . . . a trap,” Nott wheezes. “We spent two years on it—”

“Who’s we? ”

“Lucius Malfoy and me . . . The Dark Lord himself tested it . . . Look, Granger, I’m telling you . . . the thing bloody works.”

“It was meant to help him, though,” Hermione points out. “It might work, but you don’t even know where it goes! How do you know it won’t just make things worse?”

Nott coughs. This time, blood splatters into his fist. “How could things . . . possibly . . . be worse?”

“I don’t know, but Voldemort told you to do it, and he wouldn’t have if he thought there was any chance it would lead to his defeat.”

Through labored breaths, Nott says, “It was . . . only . . . for if he failed . . . Like I said, it was . . . fuck. It was my task."

“Why you, though? Why not Lucius or Bellatrix?”

“It had to be someone . . . they didn’t . . . need in battle.”

“But how can I know that?”

He laughs. It robs his lungs of what little air he has. “Why else . . . would he let someone like me . . . have a fucking Time-Turner?”

Hermione opens her mouth to protest, but something is barrelling towards them—and it’s on all fours.

“Greyback,” she whispers.

A devilish snarl rips from the werewolf’s throat, and it’s clear she’s officially run out of time. Cloak or not, he’ll track her down and kill her far before she makes it under the Whomping Willow. 

Nott thrusts the Time-Turner towards her.

“Six spins!”

“But what will—”

“Go!”

With no other option, she loops the Time-Turner around her neck, her wand still tight in her grip and her thumb trembling with every revolution. Panicked tears begin to stream down her face as Greyback sprints nearer, almost within reach, with his claws outstretched and his fangs bared—

Six.

A vacuum of obsidian and gold bleeds from the Time-Turner into the atmosphere, blossoming over Hermione’s head. Golden threads weave around her arms and legs tying her to a new timeline, heaving her into the cloud of a world before. She watches Nott and Greyback helplessly as the threads coil around her. Her lower half is swallowed by the vacuum, trapped somewhere between past and present, a black abyss speckled with gold.

The shimmering tendrils then wrap around her torso. The Invisibility Cloak slides off her shoulders and floats towards the earth. She tries to Summon it, but it’s no use; the golden strands tighten the more she struggles, rendering her unable to move her arm.

Fenrir Greyback lunges for Nott.

She cannot stop him.

Chapter Text

There is no time to mourn Theodore Nott, and technically, there’s no need to.

Threads of gold release Hermione into the past, her thoughts still streaked with gore—but as she lands in an empty corridor, she reminds herself that didn’t happen, because she’s here, in an unfamiliar place, in an unknown time.

This is the new puzzle that awaits her. Eggshell linoleum is as sterile as the peeling, white walls. A clock ticks, the hour hand just past twelve. Rust stains encircle exposed pipes, and the lights above flicker ceaselessly, casting strange shadows all around.

Electricity. 

Wherever she is, it isn’t magical.

She sleeves her wand and unloops the Time-Turner from her neck, shoving it into her bra before starting her journey down the dismal hallway, a labyrinth of boring, beige doors. Their narrow window panes lead to nothing but blackness.

Curious, she cups her hands around her eyes and tries to peer through one. It’s too dark to see.

“Who’re you?”

Hermione gasps and spins around. The woman is stern-faced, with thin lips, pinned hair, and a peek of pantyhose below a calf-length dress. It's a dated style, by Hermione's standards—conservative and straight-laced like something from an old black and white film—but she hasn't any room to judge. She herself is a mess of singed witch's robes and tangled hair. 

“My goodness,” says the woman, sizing her up.

"I'm sorry, I'm—"

“Lost, clearly. It’s obvious why you’re here dear, but we do have procedures." She gives a jerk of her head. “Come. We’ll sort this in my office.”

Oxford pumps sound against the floor, and Hermione does her best to keep up with the woman’s long strides as she leads them out of the gloomy corridor and into the one adjacent. It’s daytime, Hermione realizes. Sunlight pours in from wide windows. Flowers are in bloom. It must be late spring, perhaps summer.

They pass a dining hall—empty, sad, undecorated—just like the rest of the building; a collection of broom cupboards and endless hallways, all near-carbon copies of the one she first landed in, are studded with portals of darkness embedded in the same beige doors.

They stop.

This door is the first splash of color she’s seen. Unlike the rest, it’s slim, blue, and unassuming, and the woman jiggles the knob and sinks her weight into pushing it open; with some reluctance, it gives way.

The office within is unassuming too.

It's small, with shelves lined with a number of books and baubles, the sort of knickknacks someone could expect in any office, really: book-ends, ceramics, a tissue box, a porcelain dish half-filled with foiled sweets. 

The woman sits behind the desk and gestures a chair opposite her.

“Please, sit,” she says.

Hermione obeys.

“Would you like a chocolate?”

“Oh, no thank you.”

“If you’re sure.” The woman plucks one from the dish and wastes no time unwrapping it. “There are plenty, if you change your mind. My father’s recipe . . . He was a chocolatier in France before the First World War. Delicious little things.”

Hermione nods along distractedly, squinting at a plaque that hangs upon the wall.

Mrs. Ruth Cole
Head Matron
Wool’s Orphanage

The woman chews on the confection. “Now, onto business. Do you know your given name, dear?”

“Erm—yes. It's, er—it's Hermione.”

“Well, it’s lovely to meet you, Hermione. I’m Mrs. Cole—the head matron here at Wool's."

Hermione doesn’t answer. Exercising caution is paramount. 

“Shy, are you?” asks the matron. Her mouth is still full, and bits of toffee stick to her teeth as she speaks. “That’s all right. You’re hardly the first. Most children under my care have faced challenges many adults couldn’t imagine . . . They’re learning it all affects the mind, you know, troubles in childhood. Though, I could’ve told them that . . ."

She trails off and opens a notebook atop her desk. Hermione eyes it, hoping for a glimpse of something inside.

It’s only a blank page.

Mrs. Cole sighs. "Anyway, I’m here to help—but I will need some information from you. For record-keeping."

Hermione nods. The Time-Turner has determined this is where she’s meant to be, and until she knows more about this place, all she can do is trust it.

“Do you have a surname?”

“Yes, it’s—” She pauses. A fib will do. “Weasley.”

Ink splatters as Mrs. Cole dots the "i" in "Herminey Weasly," a series of misspellings there's no sense in correcting. Hermione is nothing here, a glitch in a time that was never meant to be hers. Identity means little to a ghost. 

“Do you know your parents?”

"I knew my mother. She isn't alive."

It might be a lie. Until she knows the year, she can't be certain. 

Mrs. Cole frowns and notes this with a quick scribble. Hermione watches what she writes closely, pasting it in her memory in case she needs to remember it later. Muggle paperwork could be the nail in the witch’s coffin, especially if someone unsavory were to discover it.

Nothing a wand couldn’t fix.

“I'm sorry to hear. How long has it been?"

“A while.”

The matron nods. “Do you have any other family? Siblings, maybe?"

“No."

“Aunts, uncles?"

"Not that I know of.”

"I see. And how old are you, dear?"

Hermione opens her mouth to answer, but an orphanage is no place for an eighteen-year-old girl. Dishonesty is her friend today—maybe her only one.

“Fifteen."

Mrs. Cole writes the number down and circles it twice over, as though it's somehow more important than everything else, like children can be reduced to nothing more than their age. If she were Herminey Weasly, she might have been offended—but since she’s Hermione Granger, a war criminal from the late nineties, she decides she likes being a number. Numbers blend in.

“All right, then. Now that we've done this the right way, we can get you settled . . . It looks to me like we ought to start with a hot meal, yes? Get some fat on the old bones?"

Hermione looks down at her loose robes. Gaunt cheeks and protruding ribs have been a part of her for so long she’d nearly forgotten about them. Her stomach rumbles. A deep, war-time hunger has lain dormant in her belly for some time, suddenly awakened by the matron’s words. 

“I'll take that as a yes,” Mrs. Cole chuckles, standing. “I’ll have Martha fetch you something from the kitchen after she shows you your room. You’re still welcome to a chocolate in the meantime, if you'd like."

"I'm fine, thank you." Her gut gurgles in protest, but somehow, accepting one seems impolite. 

Colored foils taunt her from their porcelain fortress.

“I'll be back in a moment.”

Distance drowns the sharp clacking of heels, and Hermione looks around the tiny room once again, this time more closely, now that she isn't being watched.

What could a Muggle orphanage have to do with Voldemort?

Everything here seems innocent enough. Figurines of youngsters playing instruments litter the shelves, placed in front of books like Professional Child-Rearing and Tots on a Pence. A series of encyclopedias is tucked between brass book-ends—New Standard, not Britannica, with cracked spines, but little use. Jars brim with candle wax; others are empty, save for one crammed full of fountain pens.

A final pen lies across Mrs. Cole’s open notebook, crowned by intricate cursive.

Hermione considers it.

All she would have to do is slide the notebook across the desk—a quick peek, and then she’d push it right back. The matron would be none the wiser, and she may finally have some understanding of this place.

Besides, if she’s caught, there’s a wand in her pocket, and she’s spent a whole summer studying the Confundus Charm. With a bit of magic, Mrs. Cole would happily allow her to read the whole thing . . .

Footsteps.

Hermione sits up and crosses her legs. Circumstance has made her decision for her, and it’s probably for the best. The Ministry of Magic wouldn’t take kindly to a time-traveler Confunding Muggles, no matter the reason.

The door opens.

“Martha, this is Hermione. Hermione—Martha. She’s one of our floor matrons.”

“Pleasure.”

“Likewise,” says Martha, but it doesn’t sound as though she means it. While she’s certainly younger than Mrs. Cole, her expression is sour, like the nuns at Hermione’s old primary school. 

“Martha, if you wouldn’t mind finding Hermione a room and some more appropriate clothes?” Mrs. Cole asks. “Then some lunch, please. She’s a tad thin.”

The floor matron bobs her head in agreement.

“This way,” she barks.

The plain hallways seem much longer than before, though Hermione swears they’re the same ones she walked through mere moments ago. Starvation and her new company may be to blame for her warped perception; Martha is all sharp edges and rigid posture, a cold front carrying her through a bleak, beige maze.

“Stay here."

Hermione parks where she’s told to. The floor matron flings open the broom cupboard and fishes around inside of it, sputtering complaints all the while. It’s not unlike the Hogwarts caretaker, Filch, to do the same; the only difference is that Martha uses fewer curse words. 

"Why’d he put that there?" she mutters instead. "Lazy nitwit . . . And again with the trousers? How many times have I said—oh, this looks the right size . . ."

After much fuss, she returns with a heap of ugly, taupe fabric and shoves it into Hermione’s arms. 

"You'll get another after next washing. We’ll need to do something with that hair too. I don’t know what you’ve learned out there, girl, but in here, we expect some propriety. Come.”

Hermione follows, and they turn a handful of corners before they finally stop again—this time, in front of one of the many doors.

“This’ll be your room. Don’t get too cozy on your own—your roommate will be in after Sunday school.” She looks Hermione up and down. “And bin that dress once you’re done. It’s well beyond saving.”

Hermione doesn’t argue.

Martha pushes open the door. “Be quick.”

Hermione palms the wall until she finds the light switch. The room is windowless—set aside the glass panel in the door—with two beds pushed against opposite walls, a single nightstand between them. One is messy. The sheets are tangled around the foot of a stuffed animal with a dangling eye, and the comforter hangs off the end, brushing the floor. The other is neatly made, the dressings tucked under the mattress, likely unused. 

The heavy door clicks shut. Through the glass, Hermione can vaguely make out the back of Martha’s bonnet.

It’s a false sense of privacy. She’s uncomfortably close, and she could easily turn around if she wanted to. Hermione attempts to step out of any possible view before shimmying out of her robes. A waft of battle stench tickles her nostrils as they fall to the floor, her wand unceremoniously along with them, clattering and rolling towards her new bed. Wide-eyed, she bends to pick it up and glances at Martha.

Her back is still turned.

Thank God, Hermione thinks. She then pats the cup of her bra to account for the only other magical object on her person—and easily the most important. 

The Time-Turner is still there, safe and sound. 

Relieved, she pulls on her new, ill-favored dress and wrestles with the sleeves, eager to cover up as quickly as she can. It looks even worse with her inside of it—something like the potato sacks the kitchen elves would wear. 

She peeks at Martha again.

The matron shifts her weight but doesn't turn. Now disguised, Hermione opens the nightstand drawer. 

It squeaks as it slides.

She grimaces and checks to see if Martha heard, but the matron hasn’t moved, so she starts to dig through the contents. To her dismay, there isn’t much of interest: wrappers, yet another fountain pen, a handful of marbles. Her new roommate, whoever she is, must be a simple girl. She shoves aside the rubbish.

And that’s when she finds it.

Settled at the very bottom, beneath all the sweets foils and bubblegum papers, is a navy book with an unmarked cover.

Immediately, she opens it, and discovers it’s not a book at all, but rather a planner, not terribly unlike the ones she gifted to Harry and Ron in their fifth year. It’s filled with circled and crossed-out dates, arrows that seem to have a purpose she can’t figure out, and the occasional birthday—one for a girl named Bonnie on the tenth of February, and another for a boy named Peter in March. Bold penmanship sits idly in the margins, bearing odd, repetitive notes like “LATE,” “EARLY,” and “DIZZY,” all of which suddenly stop on the sixteenth of May. Hermione cannot make sense of them, but something else is more important, something she can make even less sense of.

At the top of each page is the year.

It follows her with its utter impossibility each time she flips to a new week, chasing her like an absurd, unrelenting omen.

—1943—

It’s the same year Tom Riddle opens the Chamber of Secrets. The same year Myrtle Warren dies and he creates his first Horcrux, placing blame on Hagrid to escape the consequences. Never in the history of time-travel has someone made it so far in the past, yet everything she’s seen so far points to its validity.

Her purpose is clear.

She must stop Riddle from opening the Chamber of Secrets.

Chapter Text

The throes of World War Two have left the cupboards scant at Wool’s Orphanage. Hermione finds this out when she’s escorted to the dining hall and given a tragically pale slice of Woolton Pie—named after Lord Woolton himself, and nearly inedible.

“You’ll eat it all or you’ll eat it cold—at dinner,” Martha warns her. “I have no tolerance for scraps.”

The crust is almost raw, as are the vegetables in the filling. Hermione tries to school her expression as they crunch between her molars, but it’s a tall task that takes more focus than she can spare. Riddle could be opening the Chamber of Secrets any day now, yet she’s wasting time eating this slop. 

She forces it down quickly and pushes away the plate. 

“Took you long enough. Come on now, back to your room.”

The floor matron marches Hermione back down the hallway. Hermione picks bits of cauliflower from her teeth and pats the tight, false curls that have been wrestled into her unruly hair; under Martha’s eye, the orphanage seems more like a prison than a home for children, complete with unusual methods of torture involving too many hairpins and tiny, thirdhand shoes. Still, Hermione has been worse places. At least here, she has a bed.

She lies down and closes her eyes. 

The coils crumple under her weight, but even so, it's heavenly compared to sleeping on the hard earth. She hasn’t gotten a full night of sleep since Death Eaters burned down the old Weasley tent, and in spite of her mission, her baser instincts beg her not to move. How easily she could drift off here, undisturbed, with no enemies waiting just outside her door . . .

Her eyes snap open.

War has changed her—erased all that is natural—and a searing hot adrenaline she cannot ignore urges her upright. Rest feels foreign, like a luxury reserved for those of higher privilege.

She digs in her bra. The gold is warm and slick with sweat. Electricity rushes through her fingertips.

“It will—take you exactly where . . . you need to be.”

Rest is a privilege.

The Time-Turner has led her here, and she should waste not a moment figuring out why. 

She looks around the room, but it’s sparse, and apart from the nightstand she’s already searched, there’s little to inspect. There's a lone wardrobe against the wall—likely meant to be shared—as well as a near-empty wire bin by the door, only containing her old robes and a dark, stoppered bottle. While it didn’t seem important before, she decides to get a better look at it. So far, it’s her only lead.

Ner-Vigor
OR
Compound
OF THE
ACID
GLYCERO-PHOSPATES

The tonic is as indicative of the time as the creaky bed. According to the label, it treats anemia, depression, and sciatica—a versatile list for a single treatment, even by magical standards. One of these must ail her roommate. 

She drops the bottle back in the bin.

Inside the wardrobe, she finds an underwhelming collection: three nightgowns, two school uniforms, a pair of rain boots, a jacket. More chewing gum wrappers flutter out of the jacket’s pockets as she turns them.

None of this will help her stop Riddle, and if there is something important within the walls of the orphanage, the odds are low that it would be in her assigned room. She continues to explore anyway. The stone left unturned is sometimes the one with the answers.

More often, it’s one more unremarkable rock.

There's nothing under either bed, nor under the mattresses, nor tucked between the blankets. Her roommate’s stuffed animal—which she thinks is a cat—is just as innocuous. No hidden pockets. No questionable stitching. It’s a harmless toy for an orphan, a simple war-time comfort, worn with use and age.

Theodore Nott claimed he sent her here to defeat Lord Voldemort—but she cannot fathom how. Did he trick her?

She sits on the bed to think. Maybe, this has all been some elaborate hoax, a distraction to keep her away so Voldemort and his followers can complete their Dark revolution without friction. The Notts were on the other side, after all. They had been for years.

It's a flawed theory. 

If Nott’s aim was to keep her out of the way, why wouldn’t he just leave her for Greyback? Death was a surefire method to stop her. Plus, was he such a loyal follower he’d spend his final breaths on Voldemort’s cause? Not to mention, the timing was too coincidental—she’s here in the very year Riddle opened the Chamber of Secrets, near the very time that he does it.

The door swings open.

“Who’re you?”

Hermione sits up. Standing in the doorway is a girl: small and slim, with stringy, ash hair and a dress to match her own. Her face is rosy, pimpled, and smudged with dirt, but most notably, it’s twisted into a sneer.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. Martha brought me in here,” Hermione says. The bed squeaks loudly as she stands for a more proper introduction. “I’m Hermione.”

“That’s an unusual name,” the girl says, glaring at Hermione’s outstretched hand.

It doesn’t sound like a compliment.

“It’s from Greek mythology,” Hermione replies defensively. “She was the daughter of Menelaus and Helen of Troy.”

“I see . . . Well, I’m Agnes.” She closes the door and slips past, making a rather dramatic show of avoiding touching Hermione, as though she’s a wall of poison oak or a dirty toilet stall in London. Worse yet, she asks, “So are you in here for good or just ‘til your johns get back?”

“Excuse me?”

"They're all at war, no?"

“I’m not a prostitute, if that’s what you’re asking,” Hermione breathes in disbelief.

“Sorry,” Agnes says. She sits on the edge of her bed and plucks off her shoes. “Probably for the best. Dangerous work, that. Did Martha tell you what we're having for dinner?”

Hermione never thought she would miss her obnoxious Hogwarts roommates, but after meeting Agnes, she suddenly longs for her four-poster in the Gryffindor girls’ dormitory. Even Lavender's tales of Won-Won and Parvati's misinformed tea leaf readings were better than this.

“Sorry, no.” 

"Well, if it’s Woolton bloody Pie again, I’ll hang myself with my own shoelaces. Six days straight, we’ve had it. Might be sick if I have to so much as smell another ruddy carrot."

Hermione makes a face and plonks back onto her mattress. “Is it really that often?”

“More than that sometimes—stretched it for a week and a half just after ration cuts." Agnes wrestles with a stocking, peeling it off her pruny foot. She wiggles her toes. "You’d think she'd figure out how to cook it by now, but it still comes out raw as a dog’s dinner . . . It’s almost like she tries to make it bad.”

“That seems unlikely.”

Agnes shrugs. “Dunno. Either way, she’s given us food poisoning twice. Makes a good Christmas stew though.”

Hermione has no plans to try it, because with any luck, she’ll be spending Christmas back at the Burrow or Grimmauld Place, in her time, with a table fuller than ever before. Maybe Harry’s parents will join them—maybe Sirius too. Maybe Harry will have siblings.

Her heart soars at the thought. If she stops Riddle now, the entire world changes. Everything will be better.  

But time is of the essence, and she won't unravel any mysteries making small talk with a teenage Muggle.

“Hey, do you happen to have the date?” she asks. “And are we ever allowed out of our room?”

Agnes balls up her stockings and, to Hermione’s chagrin, tosses them onto the floor. 

“Er—no, I don't. And of course we are, we aren't criminals.”

“Oh. Martha made it seem like I wasn’t really supposed to leave,” Hermione replies, confused. 

“She probably didn’t want to deal with you is all.” Agnes opens the nightstand drawer and searches inside; Hermione silently hopes she left nothing noticeably out of place. “I wouldn’t take it personal, she doesn’t like kids.”

“She doesn’t like kids and she chose to work in an orphanage?”

Agnes snorts. “Think Cole’s the only one that does like them.” She peers inside the drawer, searching harder. “Unless you count liking to hit them.” 

“I don’t,” Hermione says seriously.

“Yeah, me either. Have you met Ladley yet?”

“No, who’s that?”

“Brute of a bloke,” answers Agnes. “Does all the canings." She’s sifting through wrappers. “Have you seen my bubblegum?”

“No—I’m sorry, did you say canings?”

“You won’t get them if you don’t break the rules. Cole'd have him sacked if he did it for no reason.”

It isn’t a shock that they use corporal punishment, given the era, but it’s jarring, nonetheless, to hear it mentioned so openly, like a mundane headline out of the Daily Mail or a change in the weather.

“Right . . . Suppose I better learn the rules, then.”

“They’re common sense mostly,” Agnes says. She slams the drawer shut, at long last. “Don’t be provocative, no swearing, no wandering about past curfew, no hitting or fighting. Oh, and never leave scraps after a meal. Martha’ll have your head for that.”

“She did tell me that one.”

“Yeah, she’s a bit mad about it. Anyway, you needn’t worry so long as you don’t fuss. Only a few kids get the cane real often, and they all deserve it."

"Deserve it how?" Hermione asks doubtfully.

"They're troublemakers. Get up to all kinds of things they shouldn't. Stealing, swearing, skiving off school . . . My friend, Bonnie? She once caught Charlie Bleaker taking girls’ underwear from the laundry bin, if you can believe it. Bloody creep.”

Hermione makes a face, reminded of the time Cormac McLaggen attempted to break the stair charm to get into the girls’ dormitory in their third year. To do what, only Merlin knew.

“That’s disgusting.”

“Paul’s just as bad. John Maiser’s fine most of the time, but he can be a bell-end if he's had a day.” Agnes’s tone darkens. “Oh, and there’s Tom, but he’s off at boarding school for now. Won’t see him for a while.”

Tom.

The name sends a chill down her spine, because though it’s been lingering in her thoughts, to hear it aloud is something else, something tangible. She remembers the first time it rolled off Harry’s tongue in their second year. How quickly she was convinced of his accolades, only to discover that same boy became Lord Voldemort himself.

He fooled her, the same as he fooled everyone. 

Back then, she’d beaten herself up over it for months, but as a girl of only thirteen, she believed the things she read, and according to history, Tom Riddle was a pillar of a student. He was top of his class, he solved the mystery of the Chamber of Secrets, he was beloved by nearly all his professors—an academic, not easily distracted by silly games like wizard’s chess or Quidditch.

He was also an orphan.

“The orphanage can afford a boarding school?” she asks coolly.

“Dunno, I assume it’s some kind of place for waywards.” 

“He must be really awful, if they’re sending him somewhere like that . . . ” Hermione says. Hogwarts, aside from personal materials, is free to attend. She dares to ask her real question—the only one that really matters now. ”Do you know his surname, by chance?”

“Haven’t the foggiest. He’s only here a few months out of the year, and Martha and Ladley make him stay in his room most of the time.” Agnes narrows her eyes. “Why’re you so interested in him?”

“I’m not!” Hermione says at once. “I just erm—I just knew a Tom. Before I er—before I came here. I was curious if it was the same one.”

“Doubt it. He’s been here forever, same as me.”

Hermione wrings her hands. It’s a common English name—it could be an entirely different Tom, a small coincidence in a world full of Toms and Johns and Charlies and Pauls.

He goes to a special school.

He’s a troublemaker—quarantined to his room.

Nott sent her here—he told her the Time-Turner would take her where she needed to go to reverse the damage, to burn and mend the threads of time . . .

“Anyway, dinner’ll be soon,” Agnes says after a few moments. “You can join me, if you like.”

The invitation is unexpected, but Hermione accepts it anyway. Maybe she was wrong to think a teenage Muggle wouldn’t be of any use to her . . . Maybe, Muggles will help her most of all.

Dinner is, indeed, a repeat of lunch. It’s just as raw and somehow blander, but that doesn’t slow the buzz of evening conversation. Several boys have made a game of bending their arms in unnatural directions, twin girls braid each other’s hair, and schoolyard gossip pours from Agnes and her two friends, Bonnie and Meredith. 

To play her part, Hermione remains silent.

“And did you ‘ear Lucy Quigley today?” Meredith asks. “Claimed to know the king—said she spent Easter with ‘im."

“Lucy Quigley is a liar,” Agnes chirps. “If she knew the king, she wouldn’t have holes in her shoes.”

“Or in ‘er ‘ead.”

“Last week, I heard her telling Andrew Kimber her father worked in cinema,” Bonnie says. “Hollywood, she said! In America!"

“I 'eard that one. Bein’ fair to ‘er, it’s more likely than ‘er story ‘bout Edwin an’ ‘er down by the banks. Lyin’ chit.” 

Their laughter dwindles, and Meredith’s attention darts to Hermione. She’s avoided any lines of interrogation after their short introduction—a streak of luck that was sure to be short-lived.

“So ‘ow’re you likin’ Wool’s so far, ‘ermione? Better’n livin’ out on the streets?”

“Er—yes, definitely so."

“Rough out there, it is. 'Specially for girls. Dunno ‘ow they do it.” She takes a bite of her Woolton Pie, and with her mouth still full, she asks, “‘Ow long was you on your own for?”

“A long time.”

Bonnie leans in. There’s an air of fascination about her—or perhaps, disbelief. 

“How were you getting by?” she asks. “Did you work?”

“‘Course she did,” Meredith quips. “Prob’ly on ‘er back like the other street urchins that come in.”

“I did nothing of the sort,” Hermione growls.

“Then how were you managing, exactly?” presses Bonnie.

Panic sets in. 

Hermione knew this moment would come. It’s the price of time-travel—a toll she’s been holding onto since she first arrived—but she has spent her every idle moment obsessing over Riddle and his potential Achilles heel, about being caught by the Ministry, about keeping the Chamber of Secrets closed for good, about rules and paradoxes and other potential catastrophes. Explaining herself to the resident rumor mill has been low on her priority list. Unfortunately, she has to.

“Erm—I slept outside,” she starts. “The same as most people without a home.”

“Yeah, but how did you eat?” 

Hermione frowns. She did sometimes shoplift from Muggle markets when she, Harry, and Ron were camping. It was a rare reprieve from eating wild berries, binned loaves of bread, and fire-roasted rabbit, the latter of which made her ill. 

"Well, I’m not proud to admit it, but I—erm . . . I stole—from markets.”

"Which markets?"

"Any I could find."

“So you’re a thief,” Bonnie points out.

Hermione flushes. This isn’t going the way she’d hoped.

“Only sometimes!” she amends quickly. “I foraged too. Like . . . in the park and . . . from . . . bins."

It isn’t likely to earn her any popularity points, but it’s true, and believable enough to help her escape the discussion. Their judgments won’t matter in the long run, anyway—she’s only going to be here for a short time, and then these girls will be a footnote in history, passersby in her perilous mission. 

“Thief’s better’n an ‘ore, I guess,” Meredith mutters.

“Depends who you ask,” Agnes retorts.

Bonnie tucks a dark curl behind her ear. She studies Hermione’s expression, as though she's trying to solve a difficult problem. Of the three, she’s going to cause the most trouble, Hermione knows it.

“But why come here now?” she inquires.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you were obviously out there a long time,” Bonnie explains. “What happened that made you decide to come here?”

“Erm—” Hermione thinks hard, and settles for another sliver of reality. Apparently, camping with Harry and Ron wasn’t all for naught. “It was a—erm—it was a hard winter. Very cold."

“But it’s spring now. Seems like a strange time to trade your freedom for a stint in an orphanage, don't you think? Unless it wasn't only the cold that bothered you?"

“Oh, c’mon, Bon,” Meredith scoffs, “don’t be such a prat.”

“It was only a question.”

“You’re tryin’ to dig into ‘er business, is what you’re doin’.”

“I’m doing the same as you were. She’s our new friend—I’m curious about her.”

“If you don’t believe she ain’t an ‘ore, just say that!”

“It’s not her being a whore that I’m worried about.”

“I’m not a . . . a whore,” Hermione interjects, reluctant to use the word. “I came here because—" She pauses, then remembers the moment in Mrs. Cole's office when her stomach rumbled like thunder in April. She can sell the same story. "I came here because I was hungry."

“Are you anemic too?” Agnes asks.

“Er—I don’t know, actually,” answers Hermione. “I haven’t seen a doctor in a while.”

Meredith nods, still chewing, then points at Hermione with her fork. For a brief second, Hermione’s heart pounds faster. Maybe she’s thought of another question, or maybe something hasn’t added up, or—

“Don’t look now, but Ladley’s starin’ at you.”

“Ladley?” Hermione repeats, confused. She has to stop herself from turning around. “Isn’t he the one that does the—” She pauses and lowers her voice. “ —canings?”

“Yeah, the one I told you about,” Agnes says. 

“He doesn’t want to cane me, does he?”

“Nah, ‘e’s just leerin’,” Meredith replies. “‘E does that. Rancid bloke.”

A grown man who canes children for a living is bad enough on its own, but a grown man who canes children and leers at teenage girls is much worse. Of course, Hermione is eighteen, but he doesn’t know that.

“I don’t want to turn around, but could you tell me what he looks like?” she asks, folding her hands in front of her. 

“Why? You interested?” Bonnie asks drolly. 

“No, I want to know so I can avoid him.”

"Well, you’ll smell ‘im ‘fore you see ‘im,” Meredith remarks. “Stinks of armpits somethin’ foul.”

"It’s awful," Agnes echoes. "But to answer your question, he’s an older bloke, only one that works here. Mismatched eyes, drinker's gut. Impossible to miss, really.”

Hermione wrinkles her nose. The more curious part of her wants to twist around to get a look for herself, but she doesn’t want him to know they’re talking about him.

Besides, he isn’t the only one watching her.

Bonnie’s amber gaze cuts into her from across the table, razor-sharp and unceasing.

For the first time in months, Hermione falls asleep bathed, and in a real bed. There is only one problem: She hadn’t planned on falling asleep at all. 

She wakes to the sound of the squealing drawer and cracks an eye.

“You missed breakfast,” Agnes says, pulling out her pen and planner. The silver cap glints under the fluorescent lights, almost blinding Hermione as her morning haze starts to lift. “Wouldn’t worry much on it, though—it was only porridge.”

It isn’t the lost meal that Hermione regrets, but rather the lost hours. She sits up and stretches.

“Are you leaving for school soon?” she asks.

“School doesn’t start ‘til nine,” Agnes replies. She flips through her planner and quickly jots something down; Hermione cares little for what it might be.

All she sees is the shining navy leather.

“Do you have the date now?”

“What?”

“The date,” Hermione repeats, gesturing to the planner. “Can you tell me what it is, please?”

“What is it with you and the date?” grouses Agnes, as though Hermione is asking her for a favor far beyond her ability. She takes another look at the page. “It’s June fourteenth. Need the year too, or can you remember that one on your own?”

June fourteenth.

Hermione’s stomach drops.

She’s a day too late. The Chamber of Secrets is open, because June thirteenth is the day Riddle opened it , the very day she must have arrived at the orphanage. It’s a day she knows well—not only from textbooks, but from Moaning Myrtle herself. She’d spoken of her death-day over and over again, obsessively even, drumming her murder scene in Hermione’s mind for many a waking hour—describing the same pair of yellow eyes Hermione once saw in an old hand mirror . . .

“If you were polite, you’d get me something for my death-day. I’ve let you use my bathroom so many times . . .” Myrtle had rattled on. “I always celebrate just before noon, if you’d like to join me . . .“ She giggled then. “That’s when I was pronounced dead, you know. You’ll bring Harry, won’t you?”

Myrtle is dead. Hagrid is likely expelled by now, an innocent child blamed for Riddle’s crime. He was no match for Riddle’s silver tongue, doomed by his naivety and his affinity for taming treacherous beasts.

But Hermione wasn’t here then.

She is now.

“I’ve got to go to the bathroom.”

Agnes watches her with confusion as she trundles to the door with purpose, still barefoot and dressed in her borrowed nightgown. Hermione doesn’t care if she looks mad. Injustice has prevailed, and she has a duty to put an end to it.

The hall is empty. Eager to make time, she breaks out into a run, prepared to war with anyone that gets in her way. The white walls are closing in on her, narrowing and filling her head with sudden doubt.

This could go terribly wrong.

After all, she’s giving herself away as an illegal time-traveler—and one capable of shifting through time far beyond the laws of magic. There will be no arguments for the greater good. The Ministry will arrest her, question her—likely collect her memories. They could use Veritaserum. They could take the Time-Turner away from her, refusing to give her passage back to 1998, trapping her in this era so they can study her like a rat in a Muggle lab. 

She shakes off the thought. Riddle has to be stopped now, no matter the cost.

Someone will believe her. 

Dumbledore.

While he’s not yet the headmaster, he’s who she must speak to. Of this, she’s certain. He’s familiar with the laws of time-travel—and the Ministry respects him, even now, according to the history books. He knows how dangerous it is for her to remain on this plane of existence—not just for herself, but for everyone else in the world. 

The Ministry will listen to him—about both her and Riddle.

She has to get to Hogwarts.

Of course, Apparating into the castle is impossible, but she can travel to Hogsmeade and take the road. The clock will then begin to tick. The Ministry will notice an unlicensed Apparator, which will, considering the recent murder, be sure to raise alarm bells. It will be a race against the Ministry—one in which she must get to Dumbledore before Aurors get to her.

She shoves the bathroom door open and locks herself in a stall. 

Destination, determination, deliberation.

Apparition is something that comes easily to her now, something she’s been doing for months, since the start of the Horcrux hunt. Yet she’s rooted to the ground—stuck, like her feet are sinking in quicksand. She frowns and clenches her fist. Maybe she wasn’t deliberate enough.

Destination, determination, deliberation, she thinks again, firmer this time—with intention.

The floor holds her steady, and then the sensation of sinking grows stronger, like something is trying to drag her into the core of Earth itself.

She knows this feeling.

Anti-Apparition Charms.

Enchantments on Muggle buildings are illegal, but there is no mistaking it. The first time she felt this was in Gringotts, then again in Malfoy Manor. Ron told her he felt it when he tried to Apparate out of Hogwarts—so strongly it knocked him on his backside.

Someone warded this place—but who, and why?

She has a feeling it has to do with Tom.

Maybe the Time-Turner does know what it’s doing. She reaches into her bra and pulls it out, tracing the golden curves. An artifact created for Voldemort himself lies in the palm of her hand, and while this should be unsettling—scary even—it’s not.  

Tiny, golden threads coil around her thumbs. 

It wants her to stay.

Chapter Text

Wool’s Orphanage is sluggish, boring—a monotonous blueprint for dwelling thoughts and restless legs—and for Hermione, the weight of guilt only makes time pass slower still, the days stretching for what feels like weeks.

She stares at the wall, her Time-Turner held close to her chest.

Occlumency is like a muscle, McGonagall once told her. Repetition is key.

She tries to focus, but she can’t. She is safe and warm in a bed while Hagrid, only a third-year, faces expulsion. Information that could lead to his immediate exoneration lives in her head—swirling, silver memories anyone at the Ministry could extract to prove it was, in fact, Tom Riddle who opened the Chamber of Secrets, and that the monster was not one of Hagrid’s, but rather an ancient basilisk with a taste for Muggle-borns. They probably don’t even know Riddle is a Parselmouth, let alone capable of training such a beast.

In every scenario she can imagine, she would turn herself in to expose him for the murderer that he is—yet, she is still here, sedentary. The Time-Turner hums soft whispers of magic in her ears. An inexplicable, primitive instinct begs her to trust them.

Is it the wrong choice?

Nothing of note has happened here since she first arrived, and Martha has quietly barred her from searching for clues when it would be most sensible. During school hours, she is the only teenager in the entire building, and to the floor matron, this means she's meant to act like she's not here at all.

Agnes lied. 

Maybe she didn’t mean to, but she was wrong when she said they could leave their room whenever they wanted. Martha has the ears of Filch's snitching cat, Mrs. Norris, and Hermione is her newest prey. 

“Where are you going?” she snaps, any time Hermione dares to go into the hall.

“To the bathroom."

It’s the only acceptable answer, if she doesn’t want to endure a full-fledged interrogation.

Like the other girls, Martha seems to think Hermione has a colorful past she may return to, if left unsupervised. She's all but said it.

Mrs. Cole is different, fairer—and entirely in opposition to the floor matron's commands.

"Oh dear, you ought to be outside, with the younger children," she often says, in some way or another. "It's a beautiful day out."

Hermione always agrees, but never goes, because it isn't Cole that does the rounds, and Martha explicitly told her not to roam the garden until the other girls were off school. She isn’t keen on being labeled a troublemaker like others. 

It’s best she obliges.

Tethered to Martha’s leash, her investigation is at a standstill, and she is utterly alone—useless.

The dormitory wall is a blank slate. Raindrops splatter against the roof. 

Hermione squints through her unrelenting migraine, trying with all her might to concentrate. Someday, she will learn to do this without pain. Until then, she can bury the feeling beneath the white noise of the storm—a source of focus, something to think about as she struggles to construct another shield. 

She misses Tonks. This sort of training isn’t easy without a Legilimens to spar with. How can she know if her secrets are safe if someone isn’t trying to steal them? 

She squeezes her eyes closed and adds another layer to her psychological fortress. The trick is to build it with mirrors. If someone attempts to visit her mind, they should only see themselves. 

Someone raps on the door. Her mirrors crack and she looks up, unsurprised to see Martha glaring through glass. She rolls off the bed and goes to the door.

“Yes?” she asks, opening it.

“Good afternoon,” Martha says. “You seem to be settling in well enough.”

“Yes, I’m er—I’m getting used to things. Did you want something?”

“That depends. Do you know how to change a bedsheet?”

The question is as transparent as a question could be. Cleaning up after the other children isn’t quite how Hermione imagined her day, but staying on Martha’s good side seems like it could work in her favor.

“Of course I do,” she says.

“Splendid, I can put you to work then.” Martha looks at Hermione’s feet and frowns. “You’ll need shoes, though, dear. It can be messy work.”

Changing linens shouldn’t be messy work, but Hermione has a sneaking suspicion she knows why it might be. She swallows her grievances and pulls on a pair of socks and Mary Janes.

They clack loudly in the hall, out of sync with the floor matron’s.

“You’ll be at the north end. The children are having their lunch, so they shouldn’t be in your way,” Martha says. Her strides are long and fast; Hermione has a hard time keeping up. “The linen closet is next to Dr. Calpin’s old office, you’ll find enough sheets there to cover all the rooms in that hall.”

“Dr. Calpin?”

“He used to work here.” 

“What happened to him?”

“We couldn’t pay him,” Martha answers simply. “Anyway, it should be easy enough to find. It’s the only door with frosted glass.”

Hermione nods. She knows the one.

Martha stops at the corner. “Dirty sheets go in the hall bins. Once you’re done, you’re to meet me by the boiler room. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I’ll expect you at two-thirty.”

The clock hanging on the wall reads five before two. Hermione must work quickly—and she does. Just as Martha said, there’s a shelf full of stained white sheets in the northernmost linen cupboard, but they're stacked too high for Hermione to reach; she automatically unbuttons her sleeve to retrieve her wand.

“Darn it,” she mutters. 

Occlumency is the only useful form of magic she can perform safely, meaning she’ll have to manage the chore the old-fashioned way. At least she can still practice the magic that lives in her mind. It’s completely wandless: untraceable by the Ministry, invisible to any unsuspecting Muggles.

Most importantly, it will come in handy if—or when—she’s forced to face Riddle—which could happen soon, if this Tom is who she thinks he is.

She stands on her tiptoes and stretches as far as she can. Still, she cannot touch the top of the pile, so she pulls at the bottom sheet to bring the others down, hoping to catch them mid-fall.

Instead, they topple onto her head in a tangled mess.

She groans and collects them in a rumpled armful, then blows an errant hair from her face as she trudges into the first bedroom. Fortunately, the task is easier than fetching the tools. The sheets she strips away seem unsoiled enough, contrary to Martha’s earlier implication, and she finds most of the rooms to be the same—not only in their cleanliness, but also in their utter emptiness. They are scant, with few toys and even fewer colors.

The lack of enrichment is concerning.

War weighs heavy on the orphans, the same as it has weighed on her. She approaches the final room, expecting more beige and eggshell, shadowed by the darkness of the children’s absence.

Yet, this room is different. 

The door is closed and the light is on, flickering like those in the hall. She peeks through the window.

There’s a boy.

He is lying in one of the beds with his blanket pulled up to his chin, staring boredly at the ceiling, just as Hermione often catches herself doing, on days like these.

Atop the nightstand is an empty plate. Whatever reason he has for not eating with the other children, she imagines it’s the same reason that colorful sketches hang all over his side of the room—typical children’s drawings, of stick figures and cars, some of them all in a single shade, as though he only had one colored pencil at his disposal. 

Unsure what else to do, Hermione knocks. 

“Come in!” he shouts.

She pushes open the door and trundles inside, the last sets of linens held close to her chest. The boy goggles at her.

“You aren’t Martha,” he says.

“No, I’m not,” Hermione agrees. “My name is Hermione.”

“That’s a funny name.”

“So I’ve heard,” she laughs. “Martha’s asked me to help her today. I’m supposed to be doing the sheets on your bed, if you’ll let me?”

“Yeah, that’s fine,” the boy replies. 

Hermione waits for him to move. He doesn’t.

“Sorry, what I meant is I’ll need you to get up. It’ll just be a moment.”

“I can’t.”

Hermione frowns. “You can't get up? Are you all right?”

The boy pulls his blanket off, exposing small legs. They’re thin—atrophied, pink extremities that don't fit the rest of his body. They peek out from a nappy he's far outgrown.

Embarrassment stings Hermione’s cheeks. How insensitive could she be?

“You’re paraplegic.”

“Dunno what that means. All I know is they haven’t worked since I was little . . . Martha says it's 'cause I got sick.”

The world is cruel—both magical and Muggle, and the Statute of Secrecy makes it crueler yet. There are potions that could fix this—with eleven ingredients and a cauldron, she could have this boy walking to his next meal.

Changing his bedsheets seems like an insult, but it’s all she can do.

“What does Martha usually do when she needs to change your bedding?” she asks carefully.

“Picks me up. You can put me on Louis’s bed, he doesn’t mind.”

“All right." Picking up a child his size makes her uneasy, but she supposes all she can do is try. Martha could’ve at least warned her of the boy’s state. “Then that’s what we’ll do.”

He lifts his arms, and she hooks her own beneath his armpits to hoist him over her shoulder. He’s heavy, as she expected, but she's able to plop him softly onto the opposite bed without much trouble. He settles onto his back.

“Martha says I’m going to get a wheelchair someday,” he tells her. “Once the war’s done.”

Hermione folds the wool blanket into quarters.

“You will.”

She hopes it's not a lie.

She also wonders why Martha hasn’t been changing his linens more often. Yellow outlines the fitted sheet where he’s been lying, because obviously a boy who doesn’t move ought to have his bed changed every few days, rather than however long it’s been. She quietly tugs at the bedding, praying the grime hasn’t seeped through to the mattress.

“I'm David, by the way,” the boy says. "You're new, aren't you?"

“Yes," she replies, stretching the new sheets over the—thankfully—clean bed. "I only arrived a few weeks ago."

“Yeah, I thought so . . .” he says sadly. “I’m real sorry about your parents.”

“What?”

“Your parents—they died, didn’t they?”

They haven’t even been born yet, she thinks to herself.

“I don’t know, actually,” she lies. “I haven’t seen them in a very long time.”

“Oh. Sorry for assuming . . . Usually they bring kids here when their parents die, so I just thought . . .”

"You have nothing to be sorry for,” she says warmly. Conspiratorially, she adds. “I think my situation is a bit unusual.” 

“How so?”

“Well, I was living outside up until now. That’s kind of strange, don’t you think?” With the linens now finished, she turns to him and smiles. “Ready to go back?"

"Yes, please."

She picks him up again and sweeps him across the room like an airplane, the same way her father did for her when she was a young girl. He giggles as he lands on his bed.

"Comfortable?"

He nods, still grinning.

"Good,” says Hermione.

She gets to work on Louis's bed next. Unlike David’s, it looks like it’s barely been slept in, and as she strips it down, she realizes that this boy—a shut-in, and no older than ten—may have the very answer she’s been seeking.

Better yet, anything they talk about will make it no further than Louis or the floor matrons. Bonnie will be none the wiser.

She airs out Louis’s blanket.

“You know, David,” she starts, “I've been trying to figure something out. I was wondering if maybe you could help me."

“Yes, of course," he replies eagerly. Hermione suspects he isn't often given the opportunity to feel useful, being anchored to his bed the way that he is. This will only compel him. "What is it?”

“Well, I’ve been hearing about this boy—Tom—do you know him?”

His smile vanishes. Hermione almost regrets asking him at all.

After a long moment, he finally replies.

“All I’ve heard is stories.”

“What stories?”

“He hurt two other kids real bad once," he says, lowly. "That’s what everyone says, anyway . . . And he’s weird. Stuff goes wrong when he’s around, always has.”

Hermione tucks the corners of the blanket and sits on the edge of Louis’s bed. David is looking down at the floor, and while it’s unseemly to press him, she must. The world depends on her. David’s own children and grandchildren could depend on her.

“And do you know his surname?” she asks.

Wide eyes meet hers, clouded and frightful. Even Muggles fear the name.

He breathes it anyway.

“It’s Riddle.” 

At precisely two-thirty, Martha finds Hermione beside the boiler room. She thrusts a bucket and mop into her hands. 

“May as well keep you busy,” she says before firing off a list of tasks.

Hermione’s new responsibilities range from weeding—which will at least permit her to go outside—to scrubbing tables and a number of things in-between, and by the sounds of it, Martha doesn’t plan to help. Honest work, she calls it.

"It'll teach you some discipline.” 

Little does she know, Hermione actually likes staying busy. Being active helps her think, and she certainly wasn’t concentrating in her miserable room.

She pushes dirty water around in the silence of the empty halls, the cogs of her mind clicking, snagging only on the reality that Tom Riddle will be returning soon, and she is in no position to face him.

She needs a strategy—and she needs one fast.

Of course, murder is the most obvious solution, and a bolder Gryffindor would be so audacious as to try it. Hermione, on the other hand, knows it would be a fatal mistake.

Myrtle is dead. The first Horcrux would live on. Riddle will win, and her efforts will be for nothing.

By the time she’s done mopping, she’s still no closer to a plan. Maybe the fresh air will help.

She slips outside. It’s cool, and she greedily inhales the scent of fresh rain and roses, a welcome reprieve from Ladley’s noxious odor, which seemed to linger in the halls even when he was long-gone. Fortunately, the earlier storm is now over, leaving only the aftermath. A car hydroplanes through a puddle.

It’s a unique dueling field, the Muggle world—and an unexpected one, at that. Considering Riddle’s magical prowess, somewhere he cannot use it could be ideal. That is, if he follows the rules.

It’s fair to assume he won’t.

Thorns prick her skin as she tugs on a weed. The ground relinquishes it, and she tosses it into the wet grass. Tom Riddle could toss her aside just the same, if he really wanted to, and if he finds out why she’s there, that’s exactly what he’ll do.

She fights off the thought and wraps her hands around a rather temperamental bundle of ragwort. It bests her, and she falls onto her bottom, hard enough to leave a nasty bruise and stain her dress with mud. She glares at the weeds from afar.

The peonies tremble.

Hermione is almost convinced it’s a catch of the breeze. The movement is slight, barely enough to be anything other than a soft wind.

It happens again—only this time there is no mistaking it for the weather. The flowers rustle and shake, a disturbance that has to be something alive, something—

A snake slithers out into the rocks.

Hermione screams and reflexively pulls out her wand, prepared to blast the reptile with whatever wretched curse first falls from her lips. Riddle’s history with snakes is boundless; it could be his pet, the eventual Horcrux that’s yet to be slain—

Yet, it pays her no attention.

It slinks into a sliver of sunlight and curls into a perfect spiral, soaking in the warmth stolen by the rainstorm. It isn’t Nagini at all. It isn’t even a python, but rather a common grass snake, the very same kind that once lived in her own garden when she was a girl in Muggle London. 

The lewd stare it gives her is not that of a murderous beast, but of a small creature who has had its home invaded.

Feeling rather stupid, she laughs and lowers her wand. 

“You scared me, you silly thing,” she says.

War has heightened her awareness, it seems—perhaps, to a fault.

Chapter Text

Agnes snatches a handful of jacks from the concrete. A red rubber ball plummets towards the earth, no larger than a Snitch and moving just as fast. She swipes it from the air with haughty glee.

"I win!" she shouts.

“You cheated,” complains Meredith. 

“I did not.”

“You bounced it too ‘ard!”

“That’s the point of the game, you twit. Hermione, what d’you think? Did I cheat?”

“Erm—no,” Hermione decides. She isn’t sure she’s the right person to ask, since this is her first time playing the game and she’s been paying little attention. More pressing things are in her thoughts, a small voice echoing from the corners of her mind as loudly as battle.

“It’s Riddle.” 

Agnes smirks and spreads the jacks again. “See. I told you.”

“Bonnie’d never let you get away with that,” Meredith mutters. She leans back on her palms and glances at the flower-bed. “Did Martha actually weed today?”

“No,” Hermione answers. “I did.”

“You did?”

“Martha asked me to. She had me help with chores.”

“You mean she’s having you do her job because she doesn’t want to," Agnes says dryly.

“I didn’t mind. It was kind of nice, actually, having something to do.”

Not to mention, she made a friend. The garden snake was the most innocuous thing she’d come across since arriving in this timeline, despite her brief scare.

“You say that now, but your tune’s gonna change once she has you doing it every day. If she can get out of work and make you miserable, she’s going to. Trust me."

“It’s less boring than sitting in our room."

The other girls can’t even begin to understand how isolating it is to be trapped in such a cramped, unfamiliar space, especially with so little to do and no one to talk to. Perhaps they moan about their Muggle school, but it’s an escape—one she won’t ever know.

“Well, if you like chores so much, I’ve got one for you,” Agnes says with a smirk. “You can take over cooking for Mary. Think we’d all appreciate that.”

Meredith snickers in agreement.

“I suppose I could ask," Hermione laughs along with them, but it’s short-lived as she remembers the bad news she overheard while she was cleaning. It was terrible enough even Martha turned up her nose. “Speaking of which, you might want to prepare yourselves. It's mushy peas again today.”

The other girls grumble in response. The peas are better than the lord’s dish, but only marginally, and they’re even worse as leftovers.

“You’re sure?” Agnes asks.

Hermione nods. “Mary was talking to Martha about it when I was cleaning the dining hall.”

"Cleaning the dining hall? Are you the new resident caretaker? What else did Martha have you do?”

"Erm—I changed some linens, mopped the floors. That was it, really."

“Mopping floors doesn’t count , everyone does that.”

“You’ve never done it,” Meredith points out.

“Yes, because I’m anemic. I might faint.”

Agnes bounces the ball and takes a jack, with a loud declaration of “onesies.” Meredith goes next and raises a celebratory fist, grinning and shouting, but her voice is distant and muffled, something miles away as Hermione retreats back into her thoughts, succumbing to the niggling guilt she can’t shake, because she shouldn’t be gossiping or playing games.

She needs to prepare. 

Riddle will be coming soon, and she ought to be working on her plan to defeat him, yet she’s out here, wasting time with two Muggles that don’t even know who Voldemort is.

"'Ermione!"

She's jerked back into reality. Meredith is reaching out to her, ball in palm.

"It's your turn.”

"Right, sorry."

Clouds bury the sun. Hermione makes her play, bouncing the ball as high as she can and picking up the jacks from the concrete, the way she’s watched the others do. They’re cold against her skin.

"What was that? Threesies?" asks Agnes.

Hermione counts. "Erm—yes, threesies."

Agnes nods and takes her turn, easily besting Hermione by picking up four well before the ball hits the concrete. There’s a certain smugness about her that makes Hermione want to win, and the guilt grows, because the only fight she should worry about winning is the one that brought her here in the first place.

Although—blending in is important.

People like to win games. It would be odd if she didn’t at least try.

So she watches Agnes closely, and Meredith too, and each time she takes her turn, she gets a little faster, learning from both her mistakes and theirs. By the sixth round, she's finally worked out the timing—how hard she should bounce the ball, how long it takes before it comes back down, how many seconds it takes to pick up the jacks. She can partake idly while she practices her Occlumency.

This life is about balance. She can be a normal girl at Wool’s Orphanage, as well as a war heroine. She's the brightest witch of her age, after all.

Her mind is a hall of mirrors.

"Decent grab."

Hermione jumps and looks up. Bonnie stands over them, arms crossed as she watches on. Her scrutinous gaze is enough for Hermione to forget about the ball.

It bounces a second time, and Agnes and Meredith cackle in triumph.

"You ought to turn up more often," Agnes says, giddy. "She's been on a streak 'til now."

Bonnie plops onto the concrete beside them. "Sorry about that, didn't mean to make you lose."

She doesn't sound sorry at all.

"You joining the next game?" Agnes asks.

"No," Bonnie replies. "Just watching."

Her silence is deafening as she observes them. Jacks is hardly a spectator sport, but she makes it so, leaning in closer whenever Hermione makes a play, as if she's trying to throw her off.

Occlumency practice will have to wait. There’s no concentrating with the way Bonnie loiters, not on a simple children’s game, let alone advanced magic.

“Are you sure you were winning?” Bonnie asks, as the ball bounces not twice, but three times.

Hermione retrieves it with utter annoyance and tosses it to Agnes.

"She actually was,” says Agnes. She easily catches the pass and glances at Hermione. “Bet you’re excited to get out of this place tomorrow. Little break from your caretaking duties and all.”

“What?” 

As far as Hermione knows, there is no getting out of this place.

“For Sunday school?”

"Sunday school?" 

"Yeah. You know, Christian school? Surely, you’ve been before? That’s ninesies, by the way.”

By Hermione’s count, Agnes has only scooped up eight. Perhaps she does cheat.

“Yes, I’ve been,” Hermione replies, and it’s true. Her parents sent her when she was a small girl, but she was quickly pulled from the class after she broke a window with a bout of accidental magic. Common Muggles, her mother and father hadn’t understood that she was a witch just yet, but they were well-acquainted with the fact that things happened around her—things she couldn’t control.

They knew Sunday school was not for her. She never went back.

“You didn’t like it?” Bonnie presumes.

“Well, no, not really,” Hermione says honestly.

“Yeah, it’s a bit bollocks,” Agnes agrees, “but they feed us better than they do here. Make good with Ms. McFray and you might even get extra.”

Meredith nods. “Gave me a whole ‘nother portion just after ration cuts. Dunno where they get it all.”

Bonnie gives Hermione a cynical look. “Which one did you go to?"

“What?”

“Which Sunday school was it?” she clarifies coolly. “The one you didn’t like?”

Hermione’s answer is tight, as it takes her every effort not to grit her teeth or Confund the girl into finally leaving her alone. “I don’t remember. It was a long time ago.”

The game has come to a halt, the ball forgotten between them.

“How long ago?”

“Shut it, you two,” Meredith hisses. She stares out into the garden as she picks up the ball. “Charlie Bleaker, over by the tree.”

“He fancies you,” Agnes teases.

“That’s disgustin’, Ag, he does not.”

"You brought him up," Agnes points out.

"Yeah, ‘cause I’ve been avoidin’ ‘im, and ‘e’s been makin’ it bloody impos—”

She's interrupted by a scream.

Hermione turns to see where the sound came from, and she doesn't have to search long, because the other children are backing away, making a chasm in the crowd around a heavyset blond boy. Another falls from his mouth, and this one is blood-curdling, a ceaseless, sobbing shriek she'd only ever heard on the battlefield. He cups his ears and squeezes his eyes shut, rocking back and forth on the grass as he becomes pandemonium all on his own.

Ladley and Martha barrel towards him.

“‘Ere we go again,” Meredith mutters.

“What do you mean again? ” Hermione whispers, curious what ails the boy and if these people are even equipped to handle it. “Does he do this often?”

“Oh, ‘e does it all the time. ‘Im an’ Amy Benson’ve been weird since we was kids."

“They were normal when we were real small,” Agnes amends. “Turned odd after that whole thing at the lake."

Ladley and Martha drag the boy towards the doors, his howls echoing across the grounds as the other orphans continue their games and chatterings as though nothing happened, constellations of happy, undisturbed faces. 

Bonnie, on the other hand, watches the boy.

“What whole thing at the lake?” Hermione asks.

“Another kid took ‘em up to some cave,” Meredith explains. She bounces the ball on the concrete. “Drove ‘em mad, whatever ‘e did.”

“Remember Tom?” Agnes adds. “The one I told you about? It was him that did it."

A chill runs from Hermione’s neck to her toes. For weeks, she’s been trying to figure out how to bring Tom up to them again, to learn more about him without raising Bonnie’s suspicions—and now that she knows who he is, she's more inquisitive than ever. 

“Tom is the one who made him like that?”

“Yeah, 'im and Amy both tend to get more riled up this time o’ year,” says Meredith. “Tom'll be comin’ back soon, ‘e will. From ‘is boarding school. They get their 'eads all spun up over it."

“That's why that boy is upset?" Hermione asks. "Because Ri—Tom will be back?”

“If you knew him, you wouldn’t blame Dennis one bit,” Bonnie remarks. “Honestly, I can’t believe Cole didn’t kick the criminal out. He should’ve been transferred to Mickham's.”

“I ‘eard they wouldn’t take ‘im.”

“Then he should’ve been turned over to the police!” Bonnie hisses. A blush blooms across her cheeks. “Ahem. All I mean is Amy and Dennis shouldn’t be forced to deal with him every year. It isn’t right."

It’s an unexpected overreaction—a far cry from her usual sense of poise.  Hermione wonders why, and files the curiosity away for later.

Riddle has made his fair share of enemies—and for some reason, Bonnie is one of them.

There is little small talk during dinner.

Silver scrapes porcelain, screeching and purposeful. A glass is set down with a heavy hand. Nobody dares to make eye contact with Bonnie as she eats, let alone speak to her. Instead, the other three girls peer into their bowls and chew their mushy peas in near silence.

Hermione shares Bonnie's frustration, although for a different reason. Discussing Riddle has always been risky, but now more than ever with her around, just as Hermione is finding some momentum in her research. Something broke in Bonnie at the mention of Dennis and Amy—and she intends to find out why.

Her dormitory door shuts behind her. She kicks off her shoes.

“Bonnie seemed pretty upset earlier—about what happened with Tom.”

“She was just being dramatic.” Agnes doesn’t bother taking off her own shoes, and is already elbow-deep in their nightstand drawer, attempting to fish something out of the very back. It’s her usual routine. “She doesn’t even like Dennis.”

"What about Amy? Does she like her?"

"They used to be roommates, got separated last year, though.” 

“Why?”

“Assumed it was ‘cause of Amy’s fits.” The pop of a cork punctuates her sentence, the telltale sound of Ner-Vigor. “She gets them something awful.”

Agnes grimaces as she takes a swig of the tonic. She claims it tastes worse than Mary's cooking, an impressive feat, really, but it’s her own fault. The instructions say to add a teaspoon to a glass of water—Hermione’s told her this—yet Agnes insists on drinking it alone.

“Did they seem close?”

“Why do you care? ” 

Hermione sits on the edge of her bed. Agnes is now unpinning her hair, the next step in her unchanging evening schedule, and something that doesn't at all explain her sudden hostility.

“I’m erm—I’m just curious, I guess.”

It’s the wrong answer.

“Curious,” Agnes repeats, skeptically—judgmentally, even.

“Yes, curious. Two people are having fits over some boy and I want to know why Bonnie is so bothered about it.” Shrugging, Hermione adds, “She doesn’t like me much. I thought maybe if I understood her better, we might get along.”

“First of all, Bonnie doesn’t like anyone.” Agnes drops a handful of pins onto the nightstand. “Second of all, I hate being lied to, so don’t.”

“I’m not—”

“I mean it. It’s okay to want to gossip, but don’t pretend it’s so you can befriend Bonnie. You don’t like her, and that’s fine—there’s not much to like.” She plucks out another pin. “As for Dennis and Amy, I don’t know what to tell you. No one knows what happened—except for them and Tom.”

“Not even Cole?” Hermione asks.

“Maybe. Wouldn’t tell us if she did, though.”

Hermione nods. Mrs. Cole protects her children, even children like Tom—a boy that did something so cruel, so wicked that it drove two other children to absolute madness. Cruelty is the trademark of the Dark Lord too, the very thing that makes him capable of everything he becomes in her time.

The Time-Turner is flush against her breast. Here, there are no Death Eaters standing in her way—only Riddle and the unimportant politics of this dreadful orphanage.

Somehow, war seems easier.

“Nearly there,” says Meredith, but Hermione thinks it’s a lie because she’s said it thrice already and they still haven’t arrived at the church. 

Muggledom is draining—at least, here it is. She once lamented about the long walk to Hogsmeade—there was a great hill that took every bit of energy for her short legs to climb and by her fourth year, Ron and Harry had grown so tall that to keep up with them, she was forced to sprint. She was always out of breath by the time they reached the top.

This walk is much longer. 

It feels longer yet with the frustrated silence Bonnie carries with her the entire way, and Hermione considers asking if she’s all right, but her feet ache and she’s afraid she may react poorly to the inevitable “no.” Borrowed shoes are too small, cramping her toes between worn leather and disintegrating soles. Blisters are forming at her heel.

A Cushioning Charm could easily fix this. She walked much more during the war—ran too, through branches and uneven terrain. So did Ron and Harry, and they scarcely complained of mundane things like blistered feet.

“Here ‘tis,” says Meredith.

A boy at the front knocks, and the church doors lurch open to reveal a round-faced woman. She hurries the line of teenagers inside, waving Bonnie, Meredith, and Agnes past her without delay; Hermione isn’t so lucky.

“Oh, praise be! A new daughter of God!” The woman clasps her pudgy hands together, which are almost as red as her wide, chapped nose. One of her front teeth is dead and cracked, crooked and contrasting against the pearly-white one just behind it. “You must be Hermine.”

“Hermione,” Hermione corrects her.

“Right.” The reply is brisk, as though Hermione has inconvenienced her with the pronunciation. “Well, I’m Ms. McFray, I teach the Sunday school classes here. Have you taken catechism classes before, dear? Mrs. Cole mentioned you mightn’t.”

“Not in a long time.”

Ms. McFray nods and places a hand lightly on Hermione’s back, leading her across the tiny room as the others settle into their seats. There’s a sense of pity about her, a sadness that seems to have sprouted from her chest since their brief introduction.

“We’ll have to get you caught up then,” she says softly. “You can sit here for the day. You’ll find your Bible in the basket under your chair. Beatrice, help thy neighbor if she has questions, yes?”

Beatrice’s blonde braids are pulled so high that there’s visible tension at the edge of her hair-line and she sits up straight just the same, a picture of dedication to her studies; in some ways, she reminds Hermione of herself. 

Ms. McFray, unfortunately, is unlikely to see that version of Hermione. She pulls the Bible out from beneath her chair and, for the first time in her life, she only pretends to read. The pages have a texture that doesn’t agree with her fingertips and she hates the feeling each time Ms. McFray instructs her to turn them.

The day passes slowly, and it isn’t until the next that she finds any comfort. A pink petal reminds her of what book pages are supposed to feel like—delicate and precious, something that is meant to be handled with the utmost care.

Gardening has quickly become her favorite chore. 

The welcome reprieve of fresh air is not accompanied by the sound of Bonnie’s voice, nor the fits of unfortunate boys or Ms. McFray’s lectures. The loneliness of her dormitory is cold, but the solitude of the garden is soft and kind.

Better yet, Martha isn’t supervising her—at least not for today. Hermione is half-convinced the woman’s presence was affecting the poor flowers, because without her lingering there, the roses are thriving and the once-struggling peonies are starting to open.

The ragwort problem has been persistent, though. 

Hermione grunts and pulls on a clutch of them, her palms already raw and friction-burned. 

“You—ruddy—weed!”

This is the part she doesn’t like.

With another tug, the earth releases it and Hermione stumbles backwards, soil falling from severed roots all the while. She wipes the dirt on her dress and sighs. Scrubbing tables is next on her to-do list, now that the younger children are finished with their lunch, and as much as she’d prefer to stay outside, she best make haste. Martha will have her head if she’s not done by noon.

She leaves peace at her back.

The halls are empty, as they always are at this time, the young children napping in their beds with full bellies, while the rest are still away at school. Martha always asks her to whisper, if she must speak at all.

"If you wake them, they'll be ornery 'til bedtime," she'd warned.

The broom cupboard creaks on its hinges. Hermione lets the silence settle, to see if she's disturbed anyone.

All remains quiet. She retrieves the vinegar and a rag, though she’d much prefer to use magic. The acidic stench is thick as she wipes down each table, and in spite of its pungence, it’s hardly enough to do the job efficiently. The dining hall is caked in the grime of youth—smatterings of pureed vegetables, spilled milk, and what she can only hope is mud. By the time she's finished, the rag reeks of the vinegar and something much worse.

She tosses it into the nearest laundry bin and treks down the hall, her hands now in dire need of washing.

Voices stop her in her tracks.

“. . . not your fault, Joseph. Those people never give us enough notice.”

Hermione shrinks against the wall, wanting nothing less than to be caught eavesdropping. She doesn't know who Joseph is, but it's Martha that's talking to him, and her tone is serious.

“Yeah, but I shoulda bin prepared. They do this every year, they does.”

The man’s words are those of a long-time smoker, thick and throaty. A hammer sounds loudly, then stops.

“God himself couldn’t prepare us for that boy,” Martha retorts. 

“Well, we’ve got ‘im set now, an’ 'e knows what ‘appens if ‘e crosses us. I’ll keep 'im in line."

Martha scoffs. "There is no keeping him in line. You know that."

"We can try," the man says conspiratorially. "Got me cane nice an’ polished for ‘im.”

Ladley.

“Don’t let Ruth hear you say that. She’ll have you fired in a—” Clinking metal interrupts her. “Is this the last one?”

“An’ the best o’ the lot. ‘Ad the boys down at the factory make it special for me—pure iron. Ain’t gettin’ past that, ‘e ain’t.”

Hermione steadies her breath, attempting to keep quiet, but another metallic cacophony saves her the trouble. Whatever the two of them are doing, it’s raucous, and she’s willing to bet gold it has to do with Riddle.

“There we are,” says Ladley.

“Are you sure these will hold him?” Martha asks. “That one looks loose.”

“The devil ‘imself couldn’t get outta there, trust me.”

“Lord, I hope you’re right.”

Footfalls approach and panic rises in Hermione’s chest. She hadn’t thought about what she was going to do once they were done talking, but she has to be fast, because they’re approaching swiftly, sure to punish her for spying.

Without any other choice, she pushes off the wall and starts walking with purpose. They can’t be angry with her for a chance encounter.

As she turns the corner, she nearly runs into Martha.

“Sorry!” she apologizes with a sidestep.

“Such a rush,” Martha replies. She folds her arms. “Did you finish the dining hall?”

There’s no hint of suspicion in her tone, but Ladley narrows his eyes as he circles around them. Heavy heartbeats pound in Hermione’s ears. 

“Yes, all clean,” Hermione says quickly. “I’ve finished the garden as well.”

“How are the roses doing?”

“Brilliant! I’ve pulled up all the weeds and the peonies are finally opening. I think they’ll be shaping up soon.”

Martha squeezes her arm lightly, almost affectionately. “Good. Mrs. Cole will be happy to hear it.” She then crinkles her nose. “Do change before dinner, though, Miss Weasley. You wouldn’t want to spread consumption.”

The floor matron passes her by, and Hermione lets out a sigh of relief. With her intentions undetected, there’s only one thing left to do.

Martha’s footsteps disappear in the distance, and Hermione glances behind her—just to be sure she won’t be caught. Properly alone, she looks around the hall, and at first, everything seems impossibly normal, with closed dormitory doors, the lights doused, and the floors shining brightly from her earlier sweep of the mop.

“The devil ‘imself couldn’t get outta there.”

The answer is in the doors. She looks the first up and down, then spins to examine the next. Both rooms seem the same as any other, set aside a lone doll sitting atop one of the beds, silhouetted and ominous from inside the near-windowless space.

The third door is just the same—perfectly beige, perfectly regular.

But upon the fourth, something glints under the flickering lights. Steel nearly blinds her, because it’s everywhere—six silver locks of all different shapes, and one of iron, the largest of the lot.

Tom Riddle’s room isn’t a room at all.

It’s a cell.

Chapter Text

The mop squelches as Hermione lifts it from the bucket. It’s a common chore for a boring, bleak Wednesday, and the only one left since the weather has foiled her gardening plans. In an attempt to avoid her room, she scrubs the same spots over and over again for as long as she can get away with; if the lights were on, the floor might gleam.

Unfortunately, they’ve limited the electricity again, leaving her to work in the darkness.

She stops. Something is out of the ordinary.

A car approaches.

She watches it through rain-kissed windows—a wide, smoking thing, all black and round everywhere, save for the shining, silver grill. It cuts through the grey of the afternoon storm, wheeling slowly like a Dementor floating through fog.

Cars don’t often come to the orphanage. There’s only one reason she can think one may show so suddenly, at such an odd hour.

It jerks to a halt, and her heart does too.

Mrs. Cole slides out of the passenger’s side, the heavy wind whipping at her skirt. She holds her hat firmly in place as she circles the vehicle and speaks briefly to the driver.

A rear door opens.

Out steps a boy.

He's tall with dark hair and a black peacoat, pale against the ashen English sky. Beyond that, he’s hard to see through the droplets splattering against glass, blurry and warped. Mrs. Cole raises an umbrella over the two of them, and he follows her towards the orphanage doors, his hands in his pockets.

The car backs out and rolls into the street.

“Are you almost done with that?” Martha barks.

Hermione works with fervor, almost certain she knows who the boy is, but she’s too afraid to ask. She’s glad she saved his hallway for last.

Martha supervises, until she tires of watching.

“That’s enough, you’re wasting the soap, girl!”

Hermione doesn’t need to be told twice. She quickly makes her way through the labyrinth of beige doors, mopping quite carelessly until she reaches the place she stood and eavesdropped just days before. Something coils in her gut like hot wire.

You have to do this, she tells herself. Harry dies if you don’t. 

The course of history is in her hands, pliable, yet delicate.

She turns the corner and frowns.

Ladley is where he and Martha had been before, only now he’s doing nothing, simply loitering outside Riddle’s door like a prison guard. He wrings his hands violently, as though preparing to punish Riddle for a crime he’s not yet committed.

Echoing heels are headed her way. Martha is keeping a closer eye on her than usual.

“Dawdling some more, are we?” she accuses.

“No, I was just—”

“Wasting time,” Martha decides. “Have you cleaned the dining hall yet?”

“The children are still eating. I haven’t mopped this—”

“Off to your room, then.”

Little does the matron know, Hermione’s pleased enough to do as she’s told. A glimpse is all she needs, after all—to confirm what she suspects.

The short walk feels longer than it is, her hairs standing on end as she approaches who she believes to be the most dangerous wizard in modern history, Martha and Ladley watching her the entire way.

She turns to peek inside through the narrow window, heart thundering as she prepares to see him up close for the very first time—the same boy that has the power to destroy everything and everyone she will ever love.

Behind seven locks, Tom Riddle sits on his bed.

Dark eyes meet hers.

Riddle’s return is the talk of the dinner table—a conversation Hermione chooses not to partake in, and one that carries on during breakfast the next morning.

“You ‘ave to admit ‘e is awfully ‘andsome.”

They’ve all been given slabs of toast, yet no butter. Hermione assumes this isn’t contributing anything good to Bonnie’s mood, who launches a spoon at Meredith and scolds her for her tasteless declaration.

Hermione says nothing, keeping her eyes low as she picks at a thorn in her palm.

It’s a minor inconvenience that she works at for two days, a small thing compared to the proverbial thorns that are embedded in her side: Martha and Ladley. They keep lurking by Riddle’s door, making him more difficult to observe than any sane person could have possibly predicted, a shadow in the background as the duo mutters to each other like they’re holding onto some secret no one else can know, sleepless and obsessed.

The boy is their prisoner.

His world is even more limited than Hermione's ever was—four walls, completely alone with no time permitted in the dining hall or in the garden. He is all but tethered to his bed.

Hermione passes his room often. Glass divides them like a sea between continents.

The only upside is that she’s now left to her own devices, eating her lunch entirely uninterrupted for the very first time. Martha and Ladley are too distracted to pay her any attention, too busy standing watch over the numerous locks and the mentally disturbed teenager they deem so problematic. Riddle keeps them so busy, in fact, that Martha doesn't notice when Hermione skips half her chores.

She has to get him out of that room.

"I wouldn't mind if Tom joined me for lunch," she tells Martha, exactly three days after his arrival.

"He stays in his room," Martha says flatly. "And if you see him anywhere else, you're to report it to me at once, do you understand me?"

"Of course. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to bother you."

Martha softens. "I know you mean well, Weasley, but I'm afraid he has to stay far, far away from you and the other children. The boy is not right in his head."

Hermione knows this, but she can't tell Martha that's precisely why she wants him to come to lunch with her.

Defeated, she forces down another lonely meal as quickly as she can. The garden needs tending to before more rain waters the weeds that’ve been trying to choke out her peonies. They're fragile right now. They need her—someone to help them win their battle beneath the soil.

She could use a victory.

She gets on her knees and pulls and plucks with all her might, storm clouds rolling overhead all the while. By the time she's half-done, it's starting to shower, and her face is caked in dirt and sweat, only made worse by the July heat. She wipes her forehead with her sleeve.

"I think this is the loveliest they've ever looked."

"Oh, hi, Mrs. Cole."

Hermione doesn’t let the woman become a diversion, wrapping a fist around a bunch of knotgrass. Time is of the essence.

"Hello, dear,” the matron coos. She breathes in the air. "They even smell better."

"Well, thank you. I'm trying, anyway."

"And succeeding. It would’ve been impossible without your help, you know . . . I tend to kill everything I touch and we can’t afford a gardener now . . . not since the war . . .”

Of course, she's exaggerating. If she actually did kill everything she touched, the orphanage would be a house of horrors rather than a fortress of tedium and era-typical consequences. Aside from what’s happening to Tom, Hermione suspects most orphanages are like this one or worse—and if the rest of the staff were as warm as Mrs. Cole, it probably would be quite tolerable.

Suddenly, she has an idea. She spins on her knees and smiles.

"You say that as though you don't have the most difficult job of all," she says saccharinely. "A few flowers are nothing compared to raising so many children."

"Oh, well I don't know about that—"

"And often straight after losing their parents . . . A lot of people wouldn't dare. I know I couldn't."

Pink stains Mrs. Cole's cheeks.

"That's very sweet of you, dear, I do do my best . . . Anyway, I suppose I ought to get back to it—"

"Actually, I did have a question, if you don't mind."

"Sure, dear. What is it?"

Hermione swallows and says, "Well, Tom—the boy that's just gotten here—he seems quite unhappy whenever I walk by his room . . . I was thinking maybe—well—he might, erm—he might be happier if he could come out and see the garden, or at least join the rest of us for meals? Or he could have lunch with me, while the others are gone, if that's easier?"

Mrs. Cole is quiet for a long moment. Hermione worries her plan may not work, and that Cole is on the side of Martha and Ladley, a believer in damming Riddle behind metal and fear. 

Finally, she speaks.

"You have quite the mind, Miss Weasley . . . And you may just be right."

After what Hermione imagines was a heated confrontation, it becomes clear that Martha’s opinion matters little in the end. Cole makes all final decisions.

Tom Riddle is at dinner.

As Hermione watches him, she realizes everything she’s learned of his time at Hogwarts pointed to him being quite popular—magnetic, even—but in the Muggle world, he has the opposite effect.

The corner table is nearly empty except for him. He sits directly in the middle, a scarecrow to a flock of birds—or in this case, children. Ladley is much like a bird too, but a predatory one, hovering over Riddle like he’s stalking his prey.

"They'd finally gotten it right keeping him locked up!” Bonnie hisses. “Then they turn around and change their minds! Idiots!"

Meredith arches an eyebrow. Both girls have been observing Tom from afar—each wearing a very different expression.

"I dunno, maybe it ain’t so bad, ‘avin’ ‘im out an’ about. Never seen a boy look so good eatin' gruel before."

Hermione tries to stay more inconspicuous than the others. She holds her head low as she’s been doing more and more, watching him through full lashes as she sips her evening stew, vaguely aware of Agnes fidgeting to her left. She grimaces when they knock knees.

Riddle smirks and scrapes his bowl.

Did he see that?

He has been staring quite a lot, either at her or somewhere beyond. She’s written it off—she’s directly in his line of vision—but now, she wonders if she’s accidentally drawn his attention. Being new could be reason enough—or perhaps he remembers their brief encounter when she passed by his room.

“Time’s up, boy,” Ladley spits.

Riddle rises without argument, and her inch of doubt is no longer. Obsidian eyes are fixed on hers, unblinking as his spoon clatters back into his empty bowl.

Discretion wasn’t enough.

Chapter Text

Noise is the theme of the afternoon, much to Hermione’s chagrin. Triumph soars through the stagnant air of the halls, but sadly, it isn’t the kind she’s been yearning for. It is, instead, the triumph of the orphans, who have all been liberated from school for the summer, their final day trailing closely behind Riddle’s.

Agnes bursts through the doors.

“We’re bloody done!” she exclaims.

Hermione cannot relate, as she longs for the comfort of school, to be settled in the Gryffindor common room by a roaring fire, her palms stained with ink and her robes reeking of Ron’s cheap cologne and Sleekeazy’s Hair Potion. 

The Time-Turner grows hot against her breast. Maybe someday she’ll relive the comfort of those snowy, Highland nights—those many moons she unknowingly took for granted.

For now, she keeps scouring the grout.

“You seem excited,” she mutters.

“Can you blame me?” asks Agnes, unfazed by Hermione’s unnecessary snappishness. “Another day in that hole and I would’ve lost my head. Been counting the hours all week.” She leans against the wall. “You think Martha’ll let you off chores now? Since we’re done?”

There’s something dreamlike about her today, something that almost reminds Hermione of Luna. It should be comforting, but it only worsens her mood.

“Dunno. We haven’t discussed it,” she says shortly.

“Well, maybe you ought to, she’s practically made you her slave. No sense in getting stuck with all the work just so she can skive off.” Agnes shrugs. “Could always take it to Cole if she fusses.”

The girl is clueless to Hermione’s real predicament. Nevertheless, she means well, so Hermione stops mopping and forces a smile, regretful of her tone. It’s not Agnes’s fault she bears such burden—to Agnes, they are both simple teenage girls set to enjoy the warm months ahead.

Hermione offers what little kindness she can.

“Yes, I suppose I could.”

Yet, she doesn’t.

Two days pass, and still, she doesn’t mention her workload to Martha, nor does she intend to. It’s a rare sunny day and her knees are sinking into soil, a heap of weeds littering the earth beside her. 

The Time-Turner sings.

It's a language only Hermione can hear and understand, one that lives in her head and nowhere else, but it’s quite real—she’s certain of it. This must be what Harry felt when he heard chants of Parseltongue in their second year, the recipient of a message meant only for him.

Theodore Nott had been right about the Time-Turner’s magic all along—she is precisely where she’s meant to be. 

The humming reaches a crescendo.

“Do you do all the gardening?”

Startled, she turns to see who's uttered the question. The low, silky voice isn’t one she recognizes, though she has, admittedly, not spoken to many of the boys here. It could be anyone: the oafish redhead with the odd hat, or the boy with the broken nose.

But it’s not just anyone.

It’s him.

He’s the last person she expected to see exploring the grounds, yet he is here, unsupervised and entirely unpredictable. It’s a challenge not to gasp, to scream, to draw her wand on him right then. He’s so close after all—not to mention, infuriatingly haughty.

A bemused smirk graces his lips and his hands are deep in his pockets as he looms over her. Hermione flushes, feeling quite small under his predatory gaze. She wonders how many girls he’s used that same smirk on, how many reddened the same as she did, though perhaps, for different reason.

“Well?” he asks.

“Erm—er, yes. I do,” she finally stammers, both annoyed with herself for sounding so flustered, and shocked she's managed to speak at all. 

How long had she been staring at him, anyway? It was long enough that he noticed, and that alone could pose a problem—nothing good would come of Tom Riddle thinking she’s taken special interest in him. In fact, such a thing could only end poorly, she fears.

“Impressive.”

He cups a pink rose between long fingers—gently, unflinching even as a thorn pricks his thumb. Hermione avoids meeting his eyes, instead busying herself with more weeds. There aren't many left, and idle hands would allow Riddle to corner her into a longer conversation—one she’s not wholly prepared for.

“Thank you,” she says evenly.

“You’re most welcome, Miss . . . Weasley, was it?”

She freezes, gripping a clump of bittercress so tightly that her knuckles turn white. Riddle shouldn’t know her name, even if it is false.

“My apologies, I know we weren't formally introduced,” he adds. “I heard it in the dining hall.”

Hermione clears her throat and nods, finally giving the weed what appears to be a firm pull. In truth, the plant is little trouble. The struggle is a ruse to hide the fact that her work is quickly waning.

“Yes, yes of course,” she says. “That makes sense.”

“I have it right, then?” he asks. “It’s Weasley?”

There’s something accusatory in his tone, an octave of disbelief that makes a wave of panic rise in Hermione’s chest. Even at the age of sixteen, Riddle has a list of enemies, and they often wind up dead.

The boy is a bloodhound, and she needs him off her trail.

My mind is a hall of mirrors.

“Yes,” she lies.

“I see—and do you have a given name, Miss Weasley?”

“Hermione,” she answers, digging at the soil with her trowel, now pretending the weed has grown so deep she cannot yank it from its roots at all. Eventually, the jig will be up and Riddle will sense she has nothing left to do.

“Hm, Greek,” he notes. “Interesting.”

"Is it?" she asks briskly.

"It is, yes, as I believe Weasley is the furthest thing from Greek."

“I suppose it is.”

Lingering on this topic isn’t in her best interest—she needs to find her footing, to make Riddle think she knows so little about him that he doesn’t scare her. “And what about you? Surely you have a name too, or are you trying to play the mystery?”

He wears a wolfish smile, an untrustworthy one that she would know was devious even from a stranger.

"It’s Tom,” he says, extending a hand. “Tom Riddle."

A hall of mirrors, she reminds herself.

"Well, it's nice to meet you, Tom, and I would, but—" She holds up the trowel and her empty palm. Dirt is caked in her nail beds and ingrained in the lines of her skin, an ample excuse not to touch him, she hopes. Physical contact with a Legilimens is dangerous, often working like a key to enter the mind of even the most practiced Occlumens, a title Hermione does not yet boast.

He shoves his hands back in his pockets.

"The pleasure’s all mine."

Hermione starts to dig again, but the exposed roots give her away.

“Do you need help with that?” he asks.

“No, I’ve got it.” Defeated, she removes the weed from the soil and drops it in the pile beside her. “I do appreciate it, though. Very gentlemanly of you.”

“It would be rude not to help a lady in need,” he says. He continues on. “Actually, while I have you here, I have been curious of something—if you don’t mind me asking, that is.”

Hermione pauses. “I suppose that depends on what it is.”

Again, Riddle is visibly amused, and Hermione realizes while her apprehension is justified, it’s also a misstep.

“You seem wary of me, Hermione.”

“Well, another boy started a question like that once and what he wanted to know was terribly inappropriate,” she fibs, tearing out a fistful of creeping buttercups. “So please excuse me, but I do like to keep my decency.”

Riddle chuckles. “It’s nothing like that, I promise. I was only going to ask why you haven't been in school like the others.”

From anyone else, it would’ve been innocent. From Tom Riddle, it’s far from it.

"Pardon?"

"Usually, I'm on my own for my first week back,” he explains. “Yet this year, I’ve found myself blessed with the company of a pretty girl, even if it has been from afar. It’s only natural I wonder what brought her here.”

Charm is his weapon. He approaches with beauty and grace, disguising his interrogations as friendly conversation—flirting, even. This is how Tom Riddle becomes Voldemort. He hides his teeth behind full lips and a sharp jaw.

"I didn't go to school before," she answers, and it’s not entirely a lie. Riddle’s cause robbed her of her seventh year, as she and all other Muggle-borns were banned from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. That part, she leaves out.

He scrutinizes her in silence. It takes him far too long to say, "I see."

"I'm hoping to go next year, though," she babbles. "Assuming they’d let—"

"TOM!" 

A yell so shrill could only come from Martha. Hermione cranes her neck to see where she is and sure enough, she and Ladley are scrambling out the orphanage doors with great haste, Martha holding her skirt up to make her way down the stairs and Ladley flailing his cane like a madman. Usually Hermione would curse the interruption, but for once, their fixation with Riddle has proven useful. It’s a narrow escape.

Ladley plows towards them, huffing and puffing all the way. He drops the cane.

“AWAY—FROM THE GIRL—BOY!” he booms.

Riddle’s scowl stretches into a grin and he fastens his hands behind his back, as though preparing to be handcuffed. He’s been through this routine before—that much is obvious.

“Well, it was fun while it lasted,” he muses. “Thanks for the lovely chat, Hermione-who-isn’t-Greek.”

“Get over here,” Ladley growls. He seizes Riddle’s wrists and knees the small of his spine, urging the young man forward with unnecessary force. Riddle doesn’t resist. Ladley still shouts the order: “MOVE!”

Riddle obliges, still calm, still quiet. He watches Hermione over his shoulder, almost all the way back to the doors.

Something cold washes over her.

“What’s wrong with you?” Agnes asks, concerned. She's acquired a needle and thread from somewhere, and as such, she's attempting to fix her stuffed animal’s dangling eye. Apparently, sewing is not her strong suit. Half an hour has passed and the eye still hangs.

"Nothing," Hermione answers shortly.

"Really? Because you look like you saw a ghost."

"I'm fine, just a stomach-ache.”

The truth is something has rooted itself in her brain, rendering her foggy and exhausted, and even though she is safe, perched on her bed the same as she is every night, some part of her is still outside in the garden.

There was Dark magic in the way Riddle looked at her. 

He captured her warmth and he’s been holding it hostage ever since. The encounter was free of violence, free of spells, but it stripped her of all her fortitude, leaving her hollow and frigid.

The more she thinks about it, the more pathetic she feels. She needs to put herself together again, to prepare for their next mental sparring match. Losing isn’t an option next time—Martha and Ladley may not be there to save her.

"Bet it was the bread,” Agnes says. “Millie was sick earlier too."

She drives the needle through the weathered, orange fabric, but fails to weave it through the eye. If Hermione wasn’t so distracted, she’d just do it for her.

“Probably,” she agrees instead. "Actually, I erm—if you'll excuse me, I think I need to go to the bathroom."

"All right, hope you feel—ow! "

Agnes sucks on her thumb to nurse the injury; while Riddle may be immune to thorns and pinpricks, she isn't, and she’s learned that the hard way nearly a hundred times now. A filthy stuffed animal hardly seems worth the trouble. 

Hermione leaves her to her project, nonetheless. The floor chills her feet as she crosses the room.

The hall is empty.

It offers her space, room to breathe—yet she still feels suffocated, stuck, covered in dirt and pierced with rose-thorns just as Agnes has pierced her fingertips. Tom Riddle's very presence splinters her nerves, but speaking to him is like a punch to the diaphragm, and raising his suspicions is even worse.

Dark magic seeps into her, oozing from the memory of his dagger-like stare.

Without potions or spells, she can only think of one thing: wash. 

Perhaps it’s silly, but she knows it does have its benefits. She spent hours scrubbing herself clean after Bellatrix Lestrange marked her arm with the word Mudblood, and her talk with Riddle was certainly no worse than that.

The fluorescent lights buzz above the bathroom door. She wraps her hand around the knob and almost turns it until—

She hears muffled sobs. They're deafening and hysterical, enough to rival even Moaning Myrtle’s most notorious of tantrums. 

She presses her ear to the heavy oak.

"Shh, come on, Ames, please don't cry."

Whoever Ames is, she’s blowing her nose. Hermione winces at the sound.

"Look, he can't do anything to you now, all right?” the voice continues. “Ladley won't let him. You know that. You're completely safe, I promise you are.”

Hermione frowns. While she’s never heard her use this tone, she recognizes who's speaking almost at once—the cooing is a stark contrast to the malice she’s used to, so much so that she nearly second-guesses herself.

It’s Ames who confirms it.

“You don’t know what he’s capable of, Bon,” she blubbers. “You weren’t there.”

“Then tell me. I want to help you, but you have to let me.”

There's a slew of watery shrieking Hermione can’t at all understand. She’s never handled a Mandrake without earmuffs before, but she imagines they might sound similar to this.

“Amy, Amy, shh! I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t mean to upset you!”

“Then stop asking me about it!” Amy sobs angrily. 

“I’m sorry, I—”

“I’ve told you time and time again that I don’t want to talk about it, but you keep bringing it up!”

“I know, and I shouldn’t have,” Bonnie admits. “Let's just forget I said anything. We won't speak of it ever again, yeah? Not unless you want to.”

Amy sniffs. "You mean it this time? Because you've said that before.”

"I know, love, and I’m sorry, it's only. . . I worry about you. Whenever he comes back, it's like—it’s like you're a different person or something, and I—I . . .”

She tapers into a whisper, far too quiet for Hermione to hear through the thick wood of the door. Amy whispers back, just as inaudibly.

She blows her nose again. 

"I better get back to my room. Martha's going to wonder where I am."

"Yeah, fine," sighs Bonnie. "I love you. You know that, right?"

"I love you too," Amy says solemnly.

"You're going to be okay?"

Hermione doesn't hear Amy respond, but she must have, because footsteps are approaching. There's no way to hide without using magic—losing the Invisibility Cloak was a terrible mistake.

The door swings open.

Two pairs of widened eyes goggle at her, and Hermione can do nothing but stare back. Amy’s cheeks are flush and her freckled nose is raw, but most importantly, her pinkie is hooked with Bonnie’s—romantically.

Mortified, she retracts her arm.

"Were you spying on us?" Bonnie demands.

"No! I was just—I was just going to wash my face.”

Amy swallows hard, terrified not only of Riddle now, but of Hermione too. Bonnie's rage clouds the air between the three of them, threatening to boil over. 

"Tell me the truth, Weasley."

"I am. I—"

"Stop. You're not a good liar,” snaps Bonnie. “I see that look you’ve got on. You think you heard something funny, don’t you?”

“I’m not sure what you’re talking about—”

“Amy and me are good friends. That's it."

“Exactly,” Amy cuts in. “Just friends.”

"Right, so don't go making rumors.” Bonnie’s posture is as tight as ever, nervousness emanating from her in a way Hermione has never before witnessed—not from her anyway. “You know how people spin up stories here. If they knew we were in here . . . well, they might make assumptions."

Solitude is within Hermione’s grasp, and although it’s what she’s been craving most, she cannot help but want to claim her modicum of payback for all of Bonnie’s ceaseless torment. In fact, this is the best she’s felt all day—not because she’s judging, but because for the first time, she has something on her.

Innocently, she asks, “Assumptions like what?”

"Wrong ones.”

“Very wrong ones,” Amy quips. “We’ve been accused of some unnatural stuff before, and we don’t want to be accused of it again.”

Bonnie pinches the bridge of her nose. Amy isn’t helping, and while Hermione actually feels quite bad for them, weeks of being sized up by Bonnie have worn down on her. Blackmail is a familiar friend.

This version of it needs no formalities.

Chapter Text

The orphanage—despite Riddle—has somehow become more pleasant.

Hostility is an expectation, something Hermione braces herself for any time she has to endure Bonnie—a reflex, based on her every experience with her up until now. Yet, over the past four days, things have changed. 

Bonnie has abandoned her own nature.

Ever since the incident by the bathroom, she's used "please" and "thank you" more often than necessary. She's taken to asking Hermione about her day. She’s even started scrubbing the dining hall tables and the bathroom sinks, responsibilities Martha never did try to pass off to the others.

The old Bonnie snarled. The new Bonnie simpers.

“Do you want more mash, Hermione?” she asks, pushing her plate across the table. “I’ve had my fill, if you’re still hungry.”

“I’m fine, thanks.”

Agnes arches an eyebrow as Bonnie meekly pulls her plate back towards herself.

“You’ve been acting odd lately.”

“I’m not sure what you mean,” Bonnie replies at once. Apparently, she lied about having her fill too, because she sinks her spoon into the heap of potatoes and greedily rams it into her mouth. Hermione tries to hide her glee.

“First of all, you’ve been being much nicer to her,” Agnes points out. “You’re also signing up for chores? The Bonnie I know would never do that.”

“I’m just doing my share,” Bonnie says briskly.

“You’ve never wanted to do your share before.”

“That’s rich, coming from you! You’ve always gotten out of helping out around here!"

"Shall I just pass out, then? Work 'til I get dizzy and my legs give way?"

"Will the two of you shut up?" Meredith interrupts. "I think somethin's goin' on."

The bickering duo seethes in silence, but Meredith is right. Several children—no older than ten or eleven—point at a table, shouting for Martha. It's difficult to see past them, but a bone-chilling yowl rents the air, one Hermione recognizes from before.

Martha deserts her post by Riddle. He grins devilishly as he cuts into his serving of tinned fish.

"Out of the way!" she roars, breaking past the orphans' circle. Through the gap, Hermione sees Dennis, hammering a fist against the tabletop. "Back to your seats now, I'll have no scraps! If it goes cold, you’ll eat it cold!"

The children shuffle back to their seats, and Martha lays a comforting hand on Dennis's shoulder. The room has gone silent, save for the sound of busy silverware.

"Dennis," she says gently, "I'm right here. Will you stop hitting the table now, please?"

Dennis doesn't answer. He keeps a rhythm with each heavy bang, his puffy, red face screwed up like he wants to stop, but can't. Hermione glances at Riddle.

He wouldn't dare use an Unforgivable here—would he?

She watches him from the corner of her eye, searching for a tell. Voldemort is a master of wandless magic in her time, but to perform the Imperius Curse without a wand? It seems impossible, especially at Riddle’s age.

He keeps eating, his elbows jutting politely off the table, each bite dainty and refined, as though he's a guest in a pure-blood country-home, which, actually, may be where he’s learned such etiquette. It's nothing like the hurried chomping of the other orphans. 

It also isn't like someone casting a difficult spell.

"NO!" Dennis shrieks.

It’s sudden. Martha jumps at the outburst, but Dennis ignores her, seizing the roots of his own hair with his fat, pink fingers. He rocks back and forth, muttering to himself like a patient from St. Mungos’s Janus Thickey Ward—one notably more insane than the rest.

Bonnie stiffens as they bear witness to his misery. 

"Hurting yourself is no way to cope," Martha scolds. "You've only just grown back your hair from the last time, do you really want to be bald again?"

Ladley emerges from his corner in the shadows to stand behind Riddle. Unbothered, Riddle takes another small bite of snoek, not even wincing at the horrendous texture.

"I mean it, Dennis! Stop it this instant!"

If Dennis hears her, he doesn't show any sign of it. He continues to pull, baring his buck teeth as he grinds down on his molars. 

"'E's gonna yank it out if 'e keeps it up," Meredith says.

Martha stays firm. "Dennis, I'm asking you—"

Dennis yells. Amy rises from a nearby table. Bonnie's gaze follows her movement, and when Dennis opens his eyes for a split second, he watches her too—fixed on her, the only other person here who has experienced Tom Riddle the way that he has.

Hermione would kill to know what happened at that lake. 

Dennis remains frozen as Amy faces him from across the room, silently begging him to stop with wide, doe eyes. 

He's too far gone.

He lets out a sudden, terrible wail and beats his palms against his skull like a war-drum, deaf to Martha's shouts as she tries to grab him. She really doesn't stand a chance. Dennis is a large boy, and he's flailing everywhere, nearly catching her in the chin with his elbow—then, her nose. She shields her face, and he bellows like an animal, slamming a fist down onto the table again, so recklessly that he flips the lip of his plate and knocks it to the floor. 

It shatters into a hundred pieces. Fish and potatoes land in an ugly pile on the linoleum. Amy gasps and covers her mouth.

"That was an awful lot of food to waste," mutters Agnes. "Martha'd be raging if that was any of us."

Hermione frowns and glances at Riddle again. Ladley pulls up his sagging underpants just behind him, then taps Riddle on the shoulder. Riddle looks up at him with something between apathy and subtle irritation.

Martha pays them no mind. She’s still attempting to calm Dennis down many paces away, wrapping her arms around him as he wriggles in her grip. She’s barely able to encircle his middle.

"Okay, dear," she coos. "It's time to calm down now, yes? Ouch! Be still, boy! I can't help you if you knock me on my backside!"

Hermione’s attention zips back to Riddle. Ladley is wrenching him out of his seat by his upper arm now, so hard that he could easily pull it out of its socket. Tom remains expressionless as Ladley drags him out of the dining hall.

Half his meal is left uneaten.

Half of Dennis’s is on the floor.

Tom isn’t at dinner, nor at lunch the next day.

“Seems like they learnt their lesson about letting him eat with us,” Bonnie says, nodding in Ladley and Martha's direction. Martha hovers over Dennis’s shoulder, and Ladley stands in his usual corner, his nose wrinkled as though he may have had the dissatisfaction of smelling himself. “He was still locked up when I came through. Serves him right."

“But he didn’t do anything,” Hermione points out. “He was only eating.”

Bonnie reddens and looks down at her plate, embarrassed—yet for once, Meredith seems to agree with her.

“Don’t matter if ‘e did anythin’ or not. Dennis can’t be in the same room as ‘im—not for long, anyway. Loses ‘is ‘ead, ‘e does.”

Agnes nods along with her, and Hermione can understand why. Reprehensible actions should have consequences, and there is little doubt Riddle did something terrible to Dennis and Amy, all those years ago. However, otherizing children only isolates them, and she has a good idea of what Tom Riddle does when he’s left to his devices. 

Under lock and key, he thinks. He plots. He calculates precisely what he must do to rise to power as Lord Voldemort.

He’s dangerous alone.

“Well, I for one don’t think he’s going to act any better if he’s punished every time someone gets upset,” Hermione says. She stands and grabs her bowl. “In fact, I have a feeling it makes him worse.”

“Where are you going?” Agnes asks.

“I’m going to go visit him. Maybe if someone treats him with a shred of decency, he'll stop making enemies of us.”

All three girls look up at her in horror.

“Hermione, you can’t,” Bonnie cautions.

“Doesn’t look like anyone’s going to stop me,” retorts Hermione. Martha is still well distracted by Dennis, patting him on the back as he shovels in his second helping of stew; Ladley is making his way to Paul and John Maiser, his eyes locked on them with such hatred that nothing short of an air raid could prevent him from spouting his rebuke. Two perfect diversions—neither to be wasted.

Hermione seizes the opportunity.

“Hermione!” Agnes and Bonnie hiss.

Meredith shakes her head and mutters something as well, but Hermione is halfway across the dining hall, unable to hear her through the low lunchtime chatter.

Her prediction was right: Nobody stops her as she slips into the quiet hallway. She looks to her right and to her left—for Cole or loose children, or anyone else, for that matter—but she’s wholly alone, and so she continues, anxiously anticipating the inevitable darkness she’ll feel in the presence of Riddle, and for the hours that follow, when that ache in the pit of her gut still festers.

The walk is too short. She hasn’t had enough time to work out exactly what she plans to say or how she's going to say it. Now, she's parked in front of his door, her words like ash in her mouth.

Inside, he lays across his bed, his gaze fixed on the ceiling.

With all things considered, he’s impressively groomed, his curls swept impeccably, even with his hands intertwined behind his head. His shirt is fully buttoned, and he wears leather shoes that hang off the end of his mattress, shined so well that they glint under the flickering lights. If Hermione didn’t know better, she may have thought he’d even had his trousers pressed.

The locks remain, clasped tightly across the door and the jamb. 

Softly, she knocks.

Riddle’s head whips in her direction. There’s something feral about the way he does it, like a cornered animal that’s heard a limb break beneath heavy boots. But upon seeing Hermione, he must realize he’s the hunter here, for a predatory smile stretches across his lips and he swings his long legs over the edge of the bed. There, he stays. It’s almost as though he's waiting for her to do something interesting, to give him an excuse so he can stalk towards her and lunge in for the kill, to take out the floor from beneath her very feet.

She has no doubt he could.

Still, she holds fast onto the bowl and schools her expression. The locks wouldn’t be an obstacle, if she could use her wand, but she can’t, so they are. 

You knew they were there, she tells herself. Why did you come all the way over here?

Over the years, she’s grown too used to doing magic, perhaps. After all, she still finds herself reaching for her wand at minor inconveniences when she’s cleaning, or things that bother her, like the wonky eye Agnes still hasn’t fixed. She even considers it now: Maybe she’s been wrong to hide her talents. Maybe if Riddle sees her perform a spell, he’ll let her grow closer. Maybe it’s precisely how she learns more about him.

It’s a silly justification.

In the end, it’s too dangerous. The Ministry still lingers in the back of her mind, and if Riddle knows what she is, there’s a good chance he’ll perceive her as an unnecessary risk, rather than an ally—someone he needs to dispose of to ensure he succeeds.

Instead, she offers an awkward wave through the window.

He stands and approaches the door. He looks down at her with lidded eyes. 

“Shouldn’t you be at lunch?”

It’s a question he knows the answer to, and it’s not really the question he’s asking.

“I erm—I was thinking of you, being stuck in here,” she tells him. The words are thick and bitter as they slither off her tongue, and the worst thing of all is that they’re true; she thinks of little else, other than Tom Riddle. He is her entire purpose, her reason for existing in this place and in this time. How couldn’t she think of him?

“Is that so?” he asks.

“Yes, I thought you might be hungry.” Hermione holds up the bowl and sighs. “But I’m feeling awfully stupid now, because I’m realizing there’s no way for me to actually give this to you.”

He examines the bowl through the glass. “Pity. I was so craving Mary’s infamous slop.”

Hermione laughs. “You know, she really ought to rename it that.”

His darkness clouds her insides, and it’s starting to feel like her darkness too. What does it make her, if she jokes with the devil? 

The boy before her is the reason people like her die. He murders her best friend. Bonnie was right. If Martha is starving him, it’s what he deserves.

He’s not Lord Voldemort—not yet, she reminds herself. He’s a boy, and he’s being treated worse than an animal. Animals bite back. Give him a reason to think twice about it.

Sometimes, there is no obvious right thing to do. War taught her this the hard way.

She clears her throat. “Anyway, I erm—I hadn’t seen Martha bring you any meals, so I assumed . . .” She trails off, completely aware that she must sound bizarre, obsessive even.

“That she hadn’t been feeding me?” he finishes for her, amused. “Fascinating that you noticed. Most people in this place can barely tie their own shoes, let alone pick up on what’s happening to those around them.”

“I grew up on the street,” Hermione says quickly, avoiding looking at him, because she still gets the sense that he can see right through her, read her like the books she knows he consumes, the same as she does. “I had to learn to keep a keen eye.”

“A street girl that speaks the king’s English?” 

“I speak no differently than you.”

“Because Cole taught me.” He gives her a scrutinizing look. “I daresay you and her are the only ones that would even think to bring me a meal . . . The others would spend their days counting my ribs ‘til I withered away."

“I doubt they’d be that cruel.”

She knows they would be. She understands why too.

“They would, but what is cruelty other than being human?” says Riddle. He pauses, then taps the glass. “I think I’d like that slop now. I am famished, after all.”

Confused, Hermione furrows her brow. “I’m sorry, like I said, I can’t—”

“You can’t, or you won’t?”

“I can’t,” she insists. “I’d be happy to, of course—that’s why I came here—but short of nicking the keys or breaking the window, there's no way for me to open the door . . . I can tell Cole what's going on, but that's really all I can do."

The darkness swells inside of her and all around her, descending on her like an unkindness of ravens. Tom Riddle leads their hierarchy.

“Let me summarize the situation, so I can try to make sense of it . . . You’re the type of girl that notices Martha hasn’t left a room, and that I’m not in that room—yet you forget about over a half-dozen locks you see every day?” he asks slyly. “Come now, Hermione, am I to believe that?” 

“I didn’t forget them, I just didn’t think about them.”

“Which is just as unbelievable,” he replies airily.

“What’s unbelievable about me trying to be polite?" Hermione asks at once. "I was only worried about the fact there was someone potentially being starved, excuse me for my poor planning but I hadn’t exactly thought through every minute detail!”

"Most would consider those locks a rather important detail, but maybe for you they aren't . . . I have a feeling a simple lock wouldn’t usually stop you." He speaks in purrs, murderous and intoxicating all at the same time. A lesser witch might fall for it. "In fact, I’m almost certain you've gotten past them before—more than once, I'd wager."

Something lurches in Hermione's stomach. He knows her secret. She can feel it. He's dug his way under her skin and into her brain. It isn't Legilimency—she doesn't think so, at least—but something else entirely. Unmatched intuition, maybe.

All she can do is hold her stance. She sets the bowl of soup by the door.

"Martha hates wasting food," she says resolutely. "She'll probably give it to you on her way through."

Riddle doesn't respond, and Hermione doesn’t wait for him to. Her chest is tight as she hurries back to the dining hall and finds her seat with the other girls, who pummel her with questions she refuses to answer.

She never should have left in the first place. She wasn’t prepared, not for him, anyway, and having talked to him twice now, she’s not sure she ever will be.

Chapter Text

Loose soil mars the garden. Hermione pats it down.

The weeds are persistent, much like the weed that lives within the walls of the orphanage—the creeping, invasive entity that attempts to squeeze the life from everyone around him. Hermione much prefers the plants. In fact, gardening is the last of her chores that she actually enjoys, and the only one she won't offer up to Bonnie. 

Here in the dirt, Riddle cannot leer at her, nor taunt her, even through divides of steel and glass—at least, not if he follows the rules Martha and Ladley have crafted for him. There is always the chance he will surpass the padlocks that separate him from the outside world, if only to find her. He's done it before, after all, and now that she's sought him out, she's given him every reason to do it again.

She's made a dozen errors, all with one bowl of stew.

He probably didn’t even eat it.

Whether he did or didn’t isn’t exactly relevant to her predicament, of course, but she still wonders if the bowl made it into his hands. Some part of her hopes that it did—a small part, eclipsed by immense disgust for him, and crippling anxiety over what’s to come next. She can only assume he didn’t tell Martha or Ladley where it came from; they’ve not approached her about it, and to both undermine them and waste food would earn her a tongue-lashing or worse.

Lesser minds may think Riddle was protecting her by withholding such incriminating information. Hermione, however, is certain it's a calculation. The fact that it spites authority is only an added bonus.

Riddle spends several lives shedding himself of his namesake, yet he’s embodied it perfectly. 

He revels in being a mystery—a riddle. It makes everyone around him into a mockery, and humiliation is power, the very thing he’s willing to tear apart the wizarding world to seize. By refusing to give up her name, he makes Martha and Ladley look stupid, and he forces Hermione to ponder his motive. Even with three separate opponents, he wins.

That’s what he probably thinks, anyway.

There is no denying the Dark Lord’s brilliance, but he’s never had an adversary that knows his future. If Hermione must play his game, she’ll choose her matches wisely, for she must win every one. There isn’t room for any more mistakes.

The front doors open. Her heart jumps.

To her relief, it isn’t Riddle, nor is it Martha. Instead, Bonnie and Meredith skip towards her, grins plastered across their faces.

Maybe it's these two that are mocking her.

“Always workin’, this one,” says Meredith. “D’you like doin’ all that?”

“Kind of, yeah,” Hermione answers honestly. “It’s relaxing.”

Meredith wrinkles her nose in disbelief. Hermione is covered in dirt, and sweat rains down her face from the blazing summer sun. Nothing about the scene would look relaxing—not to an outsider, anyway.

“Right, well Bonnie an’ me found some playin’ cards, if you wanna join us?”

“Erm—maybe. Is Agnes playing too?” Hermione asks.

“Martha’s made her go to bed,” chimes Bonnie. “She was looking a bit sick.”

“What do you mean by sick?”

“Her anemia’s been acting up, I think. She gets green in the face sometimes, when she’s not doing well . . . Looks like someone that caught fever.”

Suddenly, Hermione wishes she had a different roommate. Anemia doesn’t usually make people turn green that she’s aware of, and the forties are notorious for illnesses of the more detrimental sort. Whatever Agnes is suffering from, she’d prefer not to catch it herself—especially without access to magical remedies. 

Avoiding their room is probably wise.

“I suppose I should leave her to get her rest, then. Hopefully she feels better soon.” She gestures to a nest of knotgrass—one that keeps growing back, to her annoyance—and says, "I just have a few more weeds, then we can start—if you don’t mind waiting a few minutes, anyway.”

“Think that’s fine,” Meredith replies. “Fine with you, Bon?”

“Yes, absolutely,” Bonnie answers, with much more enthusiasm than the situation calls for. Beaming, she adds, “If you’d like, I can help you finish up."

“Yeah, that would be brilliant. Thanks.”

Bonnie sinks to her knees and starts pulling the clump of knotgrass with vigor, leaving Hermione with nothing to do but be in her way. The girl’s been doing so many of her chores, Hermione’s starting to feel lazy.

"Your hands must be so tired," Bonnie rattles on. "You’ve been out here over an hour.”

"They're a bit sore, yes," Hermione lies, standing. She claps away the dirt and peels off her gloves. “What game are we playing?”

“We was thinkin' whist, but we need four for that,” Meredith replies. "Got any other ideas, Bon?"

“Hermione can choose,” Bonnie says, tugging out a clutch of creeping buttercup—one Hermione might not have noticed herself, as it was nestled perfectly behind a large stepping stone. “I’ll play anything.”

Hermione pauses.

Being Muggle-born, she usually blends in as well as any time-traveling witch could ever hope to, but it's moments like these that her history works against her. She’s not played many Muggle card games. Friends were a luxury she didn’t have in primary school, because she was odd, a loner with big teeth, a penchant for reading, and anyone that bothered her seemed to end up with overgrown nose hairs or twisted knees. Of course, she played plenty of games once she went to Hogwarts. They were the magical sort, though—ones she learned in the common room and at the Burrow. Tossing Gobstones with Ginny on her bedroom floor. Wincing at Seamus’s Exploding Snap deck in the Great Hall. When she thinks on it, the last time she played cards with Muggles would have been with her father when she was ten. Recalling the rules will be a challenge, but if she thinks very hard . . .

“Do you know how to play old maid?” she asks after a moment.

As soon as she says it, it occurs to her that old maid may not be as old as she hopes, and if it isn’t, she’ll be the first to introduce it to this timeline. Technically, this could be a paradox, and an unfortunate one for the inventor of the game, but in the grand scheme of things, it's harmless enough. Her mere existence is a paradox pending. In many years, when her birthday approaches, she’ll be facing one much more critical than a game of cards.

She’ll have to worry about that later.

“I do,” Bonnie replies.

“Been a while, might need to remind me of some o’ the rules.”

Whatever overcomplicated scenario Hermione was picturing is quickly binned, and she follows them back inside. After she and Bonnie wash up, they find a table in the dining hall and Meredith deals their hands.

Hermione picks hers up. Dead in the center is the king of spades. She hasn’t a match.

It’s two days later when Agnes is finally allowed out of bed, but whether or not she should be is another matter entirely. Her mint complexion has barely changed, and her breathing is labored, like someone that’s ingested far too much Dreamless Sleep. Her eyelids droop, purple and swollen.

Hermione may not be a doctor, but she’ll eat her own sock if anemia is to blame for this.

“Are you sure you’re feeling up to breakfast?” she asks, as they walk towards the dining hall. “I doubt Martha would mind if you stayed in bed again.”

“I’m fine,” says Agnes, but she sounds far from it. “It’ll get worse if I don’t eat.”

Hermione remains unconvinced. “Right . . . And you’re certain it’s just your anemia? You don’t think it could possibly be something else?”

“Like what?” 

“I don’t know—influenza or something?”

Agnes raises a fist to her mouth to stifle a cough.

“Influenza?" she scoffs. "I think I’d know if I had influenza.”

“Agnes, you’re having trouble breathing. You’ve been blowing your nose constantly. You kept me up all night, wheezing like the dead. All I’m saying is that it doesn’t seem like an iron problem.”

“It is. Trust me, I’ve had it three years now,” Agnes croaks. “It’s just acting up, is all."

"Acting up," Hermione repeats. 

"Yes, acting up. It’s more serious than people seem to think, you know. If it was just dizzy spells and cravings for beef, everyone'd have it."

Hermione doesn’t challenge her further, instead continuing their short journey to the dining hall in silence. There, they find Bonnie and Meredith lined up for what appears to be porridge, though Hermione can’t be sure. 

“No sausage or eggs, I see,” Agnes jokes.

She slips behind Meredith, who shifts to make room for her. It’s automatic. Saving spots is part of the routine at Wool’s, something the orphans don’t always do, but it’s typical enough between friends. Unfortunately for Hermione and Agnes, they just so happen to be cutting in front of the one girl at Wool’s with no friends at all: Elizabeth Dunning. 

“No jumping the queue!” she scolds.

Elizabeth is somewhat notorious here. She looks to be about twelve, with large glasses and gapped teeth, but it’s her stern presence and her compulsion to snitch that nobody likes. With fiery red hair and thick freckles, she reminds Hermione a bit of a smaller, angrier Percy Weasley. 

“We weren’t,” Agnes lies. “We just wanted to talk to—”

“MARTHA!” Elizabeth shrieks without warning. “MARTHA, THEY’RE JUMPING THE QUEUE!”

“All right, all right, we’re going,” Agnes concedes, sliding out of line.

Elizabeth watches as the two of them drag their feet to the back. She only turns around after confirming they’ve gone all the way to the end, obviously pleased with herself for making them follow the rules.

“Miserable little chit,” Agnes rasps.

“We do cut the line a lot,” Hermione reasons. “We were bound to get caught eventually.”

Agnes grumbles in disagreement. She carries her irritation like a grey cloud, one that only blackens when a boy takes his bowl and they’re forced to trudge forward.

"Where is Martha anyway?" she mutters, standing on her tiptoes. "I don't even see her."

Hermione shrugs. "Watching Tom, maybe?"

"Effing hell. We probably could've just stayed where we were—not like Mary would've done anything."

In truth, Hermione doesn’t mind waiting her turn. The back of the queue gives her room to create some distance between her and Agnes—and by extension, some distance between her and Agnes’s germs. 

A coughing fit only makes her more grateful. It’s a miracle the entire orphanage isn’t sick.

Suddenly, Agnes’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise.

“Hermione?” she leans back to whisper. Her terrible, green glow has been replaced with a hint of color, and her gaze is fixed on the crowded tables. “Am I seeing things or is Peter looking at me?”

Hermione has a hard time spotting him amidst the sea of children. When she finally does, he blushes and shoves a spoon in his mouth, his overly large ears going as pink as the morning sky. 

“Yes,” Hermione replies. “He is.”

Agnes turns redder yet. “D’you reckon he fancies me?”

Hermione considers it. "I don't know. Maybe?"

"Come on, you must've had your fair share of boys before you came here," Agnes presses. "Does he seem like he does?"

Contrary to Agnes's assumptions, Hermione has little experience when it comes to romance. Only three boys ever took any interest in her at all, and none of them lasted.

First was Viktor Krum. 

At the time, Hermione was fifteen, and he was a famous Seeker for Bulgaria, as well as Durmstrang's Triwizard Champion. Few would ever know him as more than that—but to Hermione, he was kind and intelligent, watching her in the library for hours while she studied, often asking questions, and listening intently when it came to her many lectures on counter-curse theorems and English potion ingredients. According to Ginny, his intense staring would be creepy, had it been anyone less handsome. 

Hermione glances at Peter again. He's eating his porridge now, but he hadn’t been looking at Agnes like that. Although, maybe that's a good sign, if Ginny's opinion means anything.

This brings her to Cormac McLaggen.

Cormac claimed to fancy her just as Viktor had, yet it was different with him—uncomfortable. She tried to look at him as little as possible, but from what she can remember, Cormac was a bit of a leerer, and handsy to boot . Set aside a single date—during which she attempted to evade him for the entire night—she’d only watched him closely when she was Confunding him to fail his Quidditch tryout. 

Besides, she isn’t sure Cormac is a good example of how a boy should look at a girl.

This leaves her with one: Ron. He had fancied her—technically—but when it started, she wasn't entirely sure. They were best friends, and she was interested in him by third year, yet it wasn't until their sixth that she knew he felt something for her too. There were no stares of longing, nor blushing mutters between Ron and Harry like there had been when Harry fancied Cho. It was organic. Their affection started as something else—something pure—growing agonizingly slow until it finally sprouted into the thing she'd been longing for.

Then, it was ripped away from her.

Even if Peter does fancy Agnes, maybe Hermione ought to warn her. Matters of the heart are delicate, and boys cannot be trusted with them.

That's ridiculous, she thinks to herself.

Peter isn’t Agnes’s best friend. There's little risk if he hurts her; Agnes's world won't come crashing in on her like Hermione's did when she learned of Ron's sudden defection. The stakes are low, mere flitting affairs between flaky teenagers.

Maybe that's all she was to Ron too. 

Agnes tilts her head, in search of an answer.

Hermione quickly shakes off her heartache and asks herself: What would Lavender or Parvati say, in a situation like this? What would a normal girl say—one that didn’t have their entire childhood uprooted by bullying and studies and violence? 

For all she knows, Peter could be smitten. There’s also the possibility that he’s only watching Agnes because she looks positively dreadful today. Even after countless hours of bed-rest, her lips are white and crusty and a nest of tangled hair sits atop her head. It doesn’t seem unusual for such things to draw someone’s attention. It would explain why he was embarrassed to be caught too—nobody wants to seem rude.

"He doesn't, does he?" Agnes says, deflating.

Hermione has taken too long to answer, and before she can stop herself, she says, “No, I think he might. That’s usually why boys stare like that, anyway."

Agnes brightens, and for a second, Hermione thinks she's done the right thing—that this conversation will be well behind them now and she won't have to waste another second on it. 

Then, Agnes lets out a cough and chews on her thumb.

“Would you ask him for me?”

“Ask him . . . if he fancies you?” Hermione repeats.

Agnes nods eagerly. “Yes, would you?”

Hermione's first instinct is to say no. She doesn't want to be the bearer of bad news, and it isn’t just love that she has a limited history with. She’s not had many close friendships with girls either. In fact, Parvati and Lavender disliked her so much, they would cast charms at night just so she wouldn't hear them talking.

It was rare, that girls trusted her with things like admiring boys.

Truthfully, she didn't mind either. 

She had no interest in hearing their gossip, let alone participating in it, so she left well enough alone and kept to her books. In fact, she was pleased to be different. Other girls were wasting their precious time worrying about snogging and sex and makeup and clothes. She helped Harry Potter fight Voldemort. She was the top of her class. She was one of the most brilliant Muggle-borns to ever walk the halls of Hogwarts—McGonagall herself had said so.

It seems a cruel joke that she now has to pretend to be like one of the very girls she spent all her days avoiding. The most important mission of her life should rely on her magical skill and her sharp intellect—not frivolous things like helping other girls with boys.

Alas, the reality is she’s supposed to be a teenage girl—and a Muggle one, nonetheless.

“Hermione?” Agnes asks.

“Oh, yes, sorry, of course. I can erm—I can go ask him now, if you’d like.”

“No!” Agnes hisses. “Wait until I sit. I don’t want him thinking I put you up to it.”

An annoyed sigh is begging to make its way out of Hermione, but she holds it in and budges forward with the rest of the queue. Meredith and Bonnie have finally reached the front. They get their porridge and head for their usual table.

“Move faster, Mary,” grouses Agnes. She coughs again, this time covering her mouth. “Oi, I think he just looked at me again. He didn’t see me cough, did he?”

Hermione glances at Peter, who has turned back to the other boys at his table, laughing along with them at something as he dips his spoon into his bowl. It could be Agnes they find so funny—or anything else. Hermione can’t find it in herself to care.

Peter isn’t who she should be spying on. She’s here for Riddle—and she's been dodging him.

“Probably not,” is all she can muster.

The queue is at a standstill. Elizabeth Dunning is accusing Mary of giving her a half-portion, and as Hermione waits, she watches Bonnie and Meredith. They become blurs in the distance as her thoughts travel.

She has to see Riddle.

“. . . and that’s the normal portion, dear. I don’t know what to tell you,” Mary explains.

But how is she to get to him, with Martha and Ladley standing watch like they’re members of the King’s Guard? They’re never going to let her see him, let alone have a conversation with him.

“It’s not! I saw how much you gave Bonnie, and it was twice that!”

There has to be some way she can distract them.

“Your eyes must’ve deceived you, dear.”

A Confundus would work—she’s had enough practice on Cormac and goblins—but magic is still too risky. She promised herself she wouldn't resort to charming Muggles.

“You’re lying!”

The only thing the two of them really care about is keeping all the orphans in line, and short of misbehaving herself, there isn’t a surefire way to create a diversion. Bonnie has been agreeable lately, perhaps she could ask her to help . . .

“I’m not, child. If I give you more, then someone else gets less. Now, there’s nothing fair about that, is there?”

What an absurd idea that is. Bonnie will never sign up for a caning.

“If you would’ve given me the right amount in the first place—”

Meredith snickers about something, then lifts a spoonful of porridge, aiming it like a catapult. Hermione’s vision refocuses on the scene, and just as she realizes what she’s witnessing, Meredith flicks it across the table. 

The glob of porridge lands in Charlie Bleaker’s hair, and everything after that is pure calamity. The boy across from Charlie—one whose name Hermione can never remember—points at the pile of porridge with his spoon. Charlie pats his head, then looks at his palm, frozen in utter disbelief. 

Then, he collects himself. 

“WHO DID THAT?” he bellows, furious as he wipes the mess onto his shirt.

Nobody takes the blame. Instead, there’s a great roar of laughter.

Charlie turns beet-red and pans the room, searching like a wolf that’s caught the scent of its target, but can’t quite pin it. When he lands on Meredith, she simply shrugs. Bonnie has spiraled into a fit of giggles.

“Was it you?” he barks at her.

“No, it wasn’t ‘er,” Meredith spits. 

“Who else could it’ve been? It came from this direction!”

“No idea. Flew over our ‘eads, it did.”

Rage still boiling, Charlie turns back to his friend and throws his hands up. The friend frowns cluelessly, and the other orphans continue to laugh and nudge each other at his expense. Benjamin Bartford even makes his own little porridge catapult and aims it in Charlie’s direction, a taunting bluff he quickly eats instead.

“Nobody’s going to tell on her, even if they did see,” Agnes says. “Everyone knows he deserved it.”

Hermione nods in agreement and the line moves again. Apparently, Elizabeth has abandoned her crusade for more food.

“Was it you?” Charlie shouts at John Maiser.

John slings several swear words back at Charlie. They keep this up for some time, before John stomps to Charlie’s table and balls his fist—a threat Charlie takes seriously enough to stop accusing him.

The boy in front of Agnes takes his bowl from Mary. Agnes moves to do the same.

“It was somebody!” Charlie exclaims.

Meanwhile, Hermione keeps her eye on the open door, expecting to see Martha and Ladley show any time now, with all the cattywampus they surely can hear from beside Riddle’s room. If the chaos draws them in, perhaps she can slip away, undetected.

“Did you need something, dear?” Mary asks, dragging her back into reality. “That’s all I can give you, I’m sorry to say.”

“Oh, no, sorry,” Hermione says, embarrassed. She picks up her bowl and heads to the table with the other girls, only to earn a glare from Agnes.

“Did you ask him?”

“Sorry, I forgot.” She clears her throat. “I’ll go ask now. Just give me a moment.”

“If you ask now, he’ll know I told you to!” 

“But you still want me to ask him?”

“Yes, just not now.”

Hermione sinks into the seat beside Bonnie and digs into her porridge. Agnes pouts across from them, but Bonnie and Meredith are still too giddy about Charlie’s misery. They keep looking up at him, wearing smirks as he laments to his friend; the two boys look around the room, keen to find the guilty party.

The porridge tastes worse than usual.

Close to Hermione’s chest is the very Time-Turner that brought her here. Lord Voldemort is within her reach, and if Harry were in her shoes, he wouldn’t have wasted a second, yet she’s been wasting days. These girls have the luxury to revel in things like jokes and being perceived by big-eared boys. Hermione doesn’t.

“All right, Weasley?” Meredith asks.

Hermione pushes away her bowl. “I’m not hungry.”

The other girls look up at her as she stands, perplexed. Agnes then seizes the extra porridge and drags it towards herself.

“More for me, then.”

“Why do you get it?” Meredith grouses.

“You wasted yours!”

Hermione leaves them to argue and hurries out of the dining hall, a new determination in her step. If anyone watches her as she storms through the corridor, she doesn’t notice. 

In front of Riddle’s door, she finds Martha and Ladley, ogling at him through the glass.

“Martha,” she breathes. “Thank goodness I found you.”

“Why? What is it, dear?” Martha asks, snapping out of her daze. It’s probably the first time in hours that her attention has been torn from Riddle.

“Someone tried to start a food fight. They flung porridge at Charlie Bleaker, and I’m pretty sure he was about to do it back.”

“They were doing what?” Martha asks shrilly. She turns to Ladley. “We best get in there.”

The duo rushes away, leaving Hermione all alone in front of Riddle’s room. She watches them shrink into the distance, then swivels to the door as soon as they’re gone. He tilts his head at her, his interest clearly piqued.

She plucks a pin from her hair and holds it up.

He smirks as she sticks it in the first lock.

It’s a challenge, jimmying through it, and it takes her longer than she might have expected. She’s relied on magic for so long that she’s well out of practice. In the Muggle world, she’d broken into her parents’ garden shed a time or two—never for anything unsavory, of course. Her mother had a tendency to take the kitchen shears to trim the flowers, but she always forgot to return them to the knife block.

The first lock breaks free.

Inwardly, she thanks her mother, and she starts working on the second. Riddle watches her all the while, pupils blown wide with noxious fascination.

The second lock clicks, then the third, and the fourth.

It isn’t long before the final lock opens—the large one that Ladley swore was impenetrable. Hermione takes a deep breath. Riddle still stares at her, waiting for her to make the final move that will eliminate the last barrier between them.

Terror runs through her veins, ice-cold and dead-set on ripping her away. She cements her feet to the floor and wraps her hand around the doorknob.

She turns it.

There are no walls left.

“Hi there,” she says, compelling herself to step inside, fighting her every instinct, because each cell inside her body is begging her to run from the man whose den she willingly enters.

“I see you haven’t any gifts this time.”

“I didn’t want Martha to ask questions.”

“A calculated choice,” Riddle replies.

His low lilt summons the darkness, and it crashes into Hermione like a train, enveloping her, frigid like snow and as crushing as the pits of Hell. 

Like any self-respecting Gryffindor, she will do what she must.

“Yes, but I am sorry,” she says. It’s a cheap attempt to build rapport, but making small talk with the Dark Lord is even more difficult than it sounds. To be near Riddle is to walk on eggshells; to be in his bedroom is harder yet. “You must be awfully hungry.”

He lets out a small, derisive laugh—one that comes from his nose. “For being so astute, you still fail to notice even the most obvious patterns.”

“Excuse me?”

“Martha brings me meals twice a day,” he replies, clasping his hands behind his back. “Once right after noon, and again after six. She’s been doing it every day since they locked me in here.”

Hermione suddenly feels daft. Less time in the halls translates to keeping poor track of everyone’s comings and goings. Maybe she shouldn’t have given Bonnie so many of her chores.

“Oh.”

Riddle reaches past her to close the door. Bile rises in her throat as their proximity grows even closer, but he doesn’t linger there. Instead, he leans against it. 

He’s blocking her exit.

“Your trick with the hairpin was most impressive,” he says. “Seven locks, all with that . . . One might say it’s almost impossible.”

“Except they’d be wrong, because I just did it,” Hermione says flatly.

“Indeed.”

There is a humored timbre to his voice, as though he doesn’t believe her, even though he watched it with his own two eyes—intently, at that.

“I learned it on the streets,” she supplements.

“Of course,” he says, but he still carries that cadence, unconvinced. “The usual place where one learns how to break into places they oughtn’t be.”

“Are you saying I shouldn’t be here?” she asks.

“I think the seven locks told you that.”

Perhaps, he’s right. Coming here was a bad idea the last time, so why would it be any different now? Alas, she’s trapped, her only escape shielded by Voldemort himself.

She tames her fear.

“Fair point,” she concedes. “Why are they there, anyway?”

Riddle grins. “Let’s just say I have a knack for trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?” 

Dark, glittering eyes look her up and down, sizing her up from head to toe, not even making an attempt to hide his inherent curiosity.

Her mind is a hall of mirrors.

“Tell me, Hermione, what streets did you grow up on?” he asks. “You speak of them so fondly.”

She feels her blood thrashing within, warning her that this is a trick. If he doesn’t believe her answer, he’ll think her a liar. If he does, he’ll ask more questions—clarifiers that will show her hand.

He’s the king of spades, and she has no match.

“Erm—local ones,” she starts. “Here in London. I’m—I’ve traveled—a lot, actually, I’m not sure—”

“RIDDLE!”

It’s Ladley.

Hermione’s panic grows into something beyond her control. Escaping Riddle’s question would be a good thing if it was anything else interrupting her, but an encounter with Ladley means they’re both sure to be punished. Short of using her magic, she sees no way out of this situation.

She’ll lose Martha’s trust. She’ll be locked in her own room, the same as Tom. She’ll be caned.

Her wand is hot in her sleeve. There are at least a hundred spells she could use to stop Ladley from making them pay a single consequence.

She can’t will herself to do it.

Perhaps Riddle will.

Ladley bangs on the door. Hermione watches Tom in horror, her expectations bubbling—yet she knows she cannot say a word. To her, he’s nothing more than a Muggle. They have no power here—none at all.

Riddle must have his wand somewhere in here. He can stop Ladley, if he really wants to.

He doesn’t.

The door bursts open, knocking Tom to the ground. Hermione expects Ladley to bolt towards her, but instead, he rounds on Tom. It’s almost like he doesn’t see her at all.

“BREAKING LOCKS AGAIN, ARE WE?” Ladley shouts, seizing Tom by the hair. “HOW THE HELL ARE YOU DOING IT?”

“Sir—” Hermione starts.

Tom’s eyes meet hers, a warning. She shuts her mouth and backs away, watching on helplessly.

Ladley yanks him upward by the roots, forcing him to his full height. Tom remains silent. He doesn’t twitch, nor smile, nor even argue. Ladley snarls an obscenity at him and shoves him out the door, and even with this, Tom complies. 

Hermione knows where they’re going. She knows she should stop it, that there’s a wand on her person that could put an end to the barbarism.

Instead, she stays where she is.

Chapter Text

The air is thick with the stench of illness; Hermione doesn’t know whether it’s Agnes’s or her own. 

She lays motionless on her bed, her stomach twisted in knots as she waits for the end of something intangible—something that afflicts her greatest enemy rather than herself. Hours have passed since Ladley dragged Tom out of his room, but for her, it’s felt like days.

She shouldn’t be waiting. She should be enjoying this, reveling in every second of it, the same as he would if it was one of his countless victims. Misery is Riddle’s favorite company, after all, and he’s getting intimately familiar with it now, experiencing only a fraction of the torment he inflicted upon her friends and those of her blood status. He thrives on death and violence—so much so he delivers it even to his own followers.

Such cruelty is inhuman. He’s getting exactly what he deserves. She reminds herself of this over and over again, yet for some reason, she cannot convince herself of its veracity.

He’s just a boy.

“. . . and if he says yes, I’m going to talk to him tomorrow once my iron’s up. Should be feeling much better then, won’t be such a mess.”

Agnes has been speaking for some time now, but Hermione has barely processed a word that she’s said. Visions assuage her, unshakable visions of her own making that feel so real she could almost touch them, wrap them around her frigid fingers like strands of phialed memories.

A cane meets skin. A sadistic grin is pasted upon Ladley’s unshaven face, growing with each vile lick. Smack, smack, SMACK!

In every timeline, Hermione is a woman of burdens, and it was her that entered Tom’s room. Had it been the other way around, the abuse would be his to bear, but Tom Riddle did not pluck a hairpin from his curls.

She did.

“. . . if the doctor would just give me more . . .”

Hermione ignores Agnes still.

He’s a murderer, she thinks to herself. He opened the Chamber of Secrets. He’s been torturing the other children for Merlin-knows-how-long. He’s more than old enough to know better, and he’s brilliant—anyone as intelligent as Riddle can figure out the difference between right and wrong. Besides, it isn’t all my fault anyway. He didn’t exactly tell me to leave.

Most would probably consider this a fair justification. However, Hermione finds herself standing against her own ethics. Sixteen may be his age now, but how long has this been the life Tom has known? Harry told her of Riddle’s history—that he was born into orphanhood. Has he been abused ever since, or was there a turning point, an instance of grievous behavior that caused the staff to snap and opt for corporal punishment?

The truth may never be revealed.

All Hermione can deduce is that her mission to stop Riddle may only be leading him further down his dark path. The abused often repeat the cycle, and it's moments like these that plant the seeds of evil, spinning up grandiose aspirations that stem from alienation and altered brain chemistry.

Violence begets violence.

She’s made another mistake.

“Are you even listening to me?”

Hermione blinks. Agnes stares at her, fully expecting Hermione to be as invested in her teenage infatuation as she is. It reminds Hermione of the three weeks Ginny spent obsessing over Miles Bletchley, only to decide he was “a wanker with a stupid nose” after she caught him bullying a second-year.

Back then, Hermione listened. She knew it would be fleeting, just as she anticipates this will be for Agnes. There was no convincing Ginny of that, though, and she assumes this will be the same. 

“Sorry,” she apologizes. “You’re going to talk to him tomorrow, you said?”

Agnes scowls through a cough. “Only if he says yes. You have to ask him first.”

“Ah, right. Yeah fine, I’ll do that.”

“At dinner,” Agnes says. “You said you’d do it at dinner.”

Hermione doesn’t recall this.

“Right, sorry. Dinner, then.”

“Please don’t forget. I’ll be up all night thinking about it if I don’t know.” She wrings her hands. “You really think there's a chance he fancies me?”

“Of course there is,” Hermione says automatically. “He was staring at you.”

Agnes beams and greedily seizes her stuffed animal. She plops it into her lap, its glass eye still dangling from its linty face, swinging to and fro as she looks down at it with great purpose. She wipes her nose with her sleeve.

“You heard her, Chester. Might be time to start practicing our kissing again.”

At this, Hermione raises her eyebrow.

“What? You didn’t practice before your first kiss?”

“Well, yes,” admits Hermione, “but not on a stuffed animal.”

“What’d you use then?”

“Erm—well, my friend, Gin—I mean, Jenny. She and I used apples when we were younger.” Hermione blushes, appalled to be revealing the secret she and Ginny swore they’d take to their graves. It was an innocent enough affair. One of her many stays at the Burrow had led to her confessing that she had taken ill-advised interest in a much older Ravenclaw called Timothy Togger. The apples were Ginny's idea. “It was silly, actually, but—”

A heavy-handed knock interrupts her admission. Whatever ails Agnes doesn’t stop her from jumping to her feet, and Chester tumbles to the floor, landing face-down.

“Yeah, she’s here,” Agnes says. “Hermione, Martha wants you.”

Hermione doesn’t move, glued to the mattress as anyone would be if they were facing the fate that she does now—the same as Tom’s.

Martha wills her to stand. “Come on, Weasley. We need to have a little talk.”

What’s to happen next is inevitable. Hermione follows Martha quietly down the hallway, avoiding eye contact with lurking orphans as they pass. It feels like everyone is looking at her, like they are picturing the same horrors she was picturing just moments ago, only with her at the center of them, rather than Tom.

Martha leads her through a door she immediately recognizes. Strangely, it is also one of the few rooms in Wool’s Orphanage that she’s never actually entered—not to mop, not to launder. That’s because like Tom’s room, it’s usually locked.

The desk is covered in a layer of dust, long abandoned and absent of any papers, books, or baubles. There is, however, a small plaque sitting on top of it, a glint of gold peeking through filth.

DR. W. CALPIN

Martha closes the door behind her. She takes the old, leather chair that would’ve once been the doctor’s, and a cloud of dust plumes around her, dirtying her dress. She doesn’t seem to notice. Hermione notices very much however, and she holds in a sneeze to map out the room; the doctor’s is the only chair there, placed opposite a raggedy, stained bed sized for a child. Tall, wooden cabinets would have once homed things like remedies and medical instruments, but now they are just as bare as the bed is—somehow, they’re more inviting too.

Hermione decides to stand.

“You know why we’re here,” Martha says seriously. “Now, tell me what happened.”

“I was in Tom’s room.”

“You were,” Martha agrees. “And what made you go in Tom’s room?”

Martha is hardly the type to care why someone broke the rules, but rather that they were broken at all. Hermione frowns, curious why she’s not already being punished.

“He was locked up,” she explains. “I was trying to get to him.”

“Yes, I know that, girl,” snaps Martha. “But something made you go in there. What was it?”

He’s a powerful Dark wizard who grows up to become immortal and murder thousands of people, Hermione thinks to herself bitterly. Surely you can forgive me for traveling decades back in time to try and stop him.

To divulge the entire truth would land her in a Muggle psychiatric ward. She decides to spare the details.

“I felt bad for him.”

“Bad for—” Martha starts, more shocked than enraged. “My dear, you do know what he’s done, don’t you?”

“No,” Hermione answers. “All I know is that he was nice to me.”

“Because that’s what he does!” Martha hisses. “He’s a charming little devil, just before he does his worst—it’s how he’s always worked, the cretinous—” She stops and closes her eyes. “What I mean to say is, however he convinced you to let him in . . . Well, you need to just tell me right now and you won’t be in trouble. I promise I’ll believe you, no matter how mad it sounds.”

Tom Riddle has broken her. The straight-laced demeanor Hermione has come to associate with Martha shatters at the very thought of him, of what he can do.

What does she know that Hermione doesn’t?

“Ma’am?”

“That boy is capable of nasty, nasty things, Miss Weasley—whatever it was he did to get you to open that door . . . you can tell me.”

It’s an unexpected offer—and a tempting one. If Hermione tells Martha he forced her or threatened her, she would stay out of trouble and Riddle would take full responsibility for the break-in. It should be a simple choice. 

It’s Ladley’s face that gives her pause. 

Only in the eyes of Bellatrix Lestrange has she seen such loathing. The way his teeth gnashed when he grabbed the roots of Tom’s hair, the way he basked in the boy’s agony—wickedness like that had marked her beyond repair. She wears the scar even now, cursed text that has followed her through time.

Smack, smack, SMACK!

She squeezes her eyes shut. 

As much as she wishes she could, she can’t place the blame on Tom. He would likely do it to her—he’s made innocent Hagrid into his scapegoat already, getting him expelled while Tom boasts the title of Prefect, and eventually, Head Boy. He’s murdered a Muggle-born, damning her to roam the toilets of the school even in death. These are the things that make her and Riddle different—the ideals of serpent and lion, ever at odds.

Hermione is a lion. 

“He seemed hungry . . .” she says. “And—and sad.”

Martha watches her in sheer disbelief. She laces her hands together and leans forward, as though she didn’t quite understand what Hermione said, or if she did, she must’ve imagined it. Hermione can relate—truthfully, she’s still trying to make sense of the decision herself. 

“He seemed hungry,” Martha echoes, “and . . . sad.”

The Time-Turner becomes warm and hums softly, a granule of reassurance in a desert of uncertainty. In spite of Riddle’s crimes, in spite of everything he is—he is still more human than snake, and this small gesture may be the very one that keeps it that way.

It’s the choice of a lion. She’s sure of it now.

“That’s right.”

Martha observes Hermione for a long moment. The wind whistles through the drafty window.

“Fine, then,” she growls at last. “Don’t do it again.”

Hermione waits for the other shoe to drop.

“Do you understand me?”

Startled, Hermione nods. “I do!” 

“Good. And if I ever see you in there again, it’s a caning. You’ve been a good help around this place, but I won’t have you breaking any rules. Now, off with you.”

Those who do right will be rewarded for it.

McGonagall used to say this often, claiming it to be one of Dumbledore’s many token phrases, though Hermione never heard it from anyone other than her Head of House. As the years passed, she started to believe it less and less, but at this moment, it seems to ring true.

She chose to bear her burden, and in the end, it weighed but a feather. 

The trip back to her room is slower than her walk to the doctor’s office—not only because Martha made her move quickly, but also because of the sudden evaporation of immense pressure. Fewer eyes follow her now that she isn’t accompanied by Martha, and those that do are pleasant and friendly. A young boy even waves at her. 

She grins and waves back, but her joy is cut short when she passes by Tom’s room. 

It’s empty.

Hermione wakes to something cold against her bosom. Groggy, she pats her chest, aiming to rid herself of whatever interrupts her sleep, eager to sink into the comfort of her bed once more. Fine metal wraps around her pinkie.

The Time-Turner is freezing—and so is she.

Agnes coughs, gasping and spluttering phlegm. Chester the stuffed animal is splayed across the floor again, thrown during one of her hacking fits or nightmares. Everything is precisely how it should be during the twilight hours, yet Hermione remains uncomfortable.

Gold sings in the shadows. It’s a hymn, a howling lamentation that makes her skin crawl with every miserable note. It means something, but she doesn’t know what it is—and some part of her is afraid to learn.

It lasts until morning. 

It’s still cold when she dresses for the day and when she wakes Agnes. It’s colder yet when she heads to breakfast.

She peers through Tom’s window on her way to the dining hall. He’s not there then, nor at noon, when she goes to lunch. He’s still not there when she does the gardening, nor when she takes the long way to the girls’ bathroom just before dinner. When the late evening approaches, she passes by his room one final time. Still, it is lifeless.

The Time-Turner cries its wretched song. 

With Martha’s warning in mind, Hermione retires back to her dormitory with Agnes, numb to all things other than the question that lingers.

Where is he?

Agnes fixates on a question of her own, one Hermione deems much less pressing.

“. . . and you asked if he fancied me,” she repeats, for the fifth time.

“Yes, I did,” Hermione replies, yet again.

“But how could he not know? Usually you know if you fancy someone,” Agnes moans. She pulls the pins from her hair and coughs. “I reckon it’s because of my—” She does it again, descending into a brief coughing fit before finishing her sentence as though nothing happened at all. “—anemia. Charlie used to tell the boys they could catch it if they got too close.”

Hermione schools her expression, but it’s proving to be a challenge. The Time-Turner is so loud and she longs for silence—she has been all day now. 

“Maybe you ought to tell Peter that.”

“And seem desperate? He’ll fancy me even less, then,” Agnes scowls. “What I ought to do is punch Charlie Bleaker in his stupid, ugly mug. He’s a right foul git, he is.” 

“That’ll certainly solve the problem,” Hermione mutters.

“Maybe not, but it’ll make me feel better.”

She slides under her bed-covers, not even bothering to change out of her dress before chugging a much-too-large serving of Ner-Vigor and reaching for Chester. She holds the toy close, clinging onto it for comfort as she sobs softly into its fabric. 

It isn’t long before she cries herself to sleep. Hermione remains wide awake, the song of the Time-Turner battering her brain with its dark melody.

It’s late when it finally falls silent—or perhaps, quite early.

Hermione frowns and sits up, half-convinced it was never singing at all and that she’s only been hearing things, driven to the edge of madness by grief and stress. She palms it idly as her migraine eases. 

It’s not cold anymore.

Quiet, she gets to her feet.

She glances at Agnes, and confirms she’s asleep when she rolls over and sniffles. Without any idea of the time, Hermione pads to the door. It’s a trip to the restroom—it’s completely within the rules. She’s simply taking a longer route, just as she’s done several times before—earlier that day, in fact.

The hallways are desolate. Barefoot, Hermione makes as little noise as she can manage. The night floor matron must roam elsewhere; Hermione does not see her, nor hear her steps.

The Time-Turner hums again. Its music is solemn this time, compelling Hermione to keep moving towards her destination. She takes a deep breath and crosses into Tom’s corridor. Even from afar, she can see the light refracting off of the seven locks, the very locks she recently outwitted.

The song grows louder.

It had brought her where she was meant to be to complete her mission—she knows she’s to trust it now too.

She stops in front of Tom’s door.

Inside, it is pitch black, a portal to an abyss she’s entered before without fatal consequence. It seemed much more dangerous then. Why is it now that she worries most?

“And if I ever see you in there again, it’s a caning.”

Beyond the cane, her opportunities to get to Riddle would become much more limited, Hermione fears. She swallows hard and looks over her shoulder. Wandering the halls is explainable enough; loitering in front of Tom Riddle’s room is less so, with all things considered.

Assured that she’s well alone, she leans closer towards his window. She cups her hands around her eyes so she can see better, searching for—

An eye stares back at her.

She staggers backwards, nearly letting out a scream before remembering how pertinent her silence is at this hour. Riddle smirks, and Hermione wonders how long he had been standing there, invisible until she drew close in the darkness, then ensnaring her in terror like a Venus flytrap. It’s almost as though he appeared out of thin air.

Maybe he does use magic here.

Hermione watches him carefully. If he is casting spells from his room, he needs to work on his healing charms. He tips his head at her, revealing his left eye—blacked, swollen, and cut.

His mouth is the same.

Chapter Text

It is the hottest day of summer yet, and Hermione’s hair is proving particularly challenging to tame. She fears this isn’t the reason everyone is looking at her. 

Hermione Granger—or in this world, Hermione Weasley—is a secret, a lie. Some say secrets are delicate things, fragile like glass and just as eager to be broken. Hermione, however, would argue that they’re more like disease—terribly hardy and intent on sticking around even under the most difficult conditions, spreading fastest in the hands of children. This has been her conclusion since she was in her first year and she trusted Lavender Brown with a small confession in the late hours of spring. By the next day, Lavender had told everyone it was Hermione who had charmed Daphne Greengrass’s barrette to chew off her fringe, and the Slytherin girls spent the better half of the day jinxing her. Hermione never trusted Lavender with a secret again. 

This secret feels much bigger than that—and it seems the entire orphanage knows.

Girls hiss into each other’s ears as she passes them. Boys sidestep when she approaches, making much more distance from her than necessary. Whispers of Tom’s name are on their ignorant tongues, rumors that tunnel their way into the thoughts of anyone that hears them.

“She’s alive?” asks a girl to her left.

“There’s the freak’s plaything,” snarls a boy from behind.

“Wonder what he did to her,” a child ponders as he crosses the hall.

Things that happen with no one around still crawl to the surface. It’s a lesson Hermione has learned a hundred times.

“Oi! You!”

Someone seizes her arm. Hermione spins on her heel. 

“What’re you—” she starts, but she stops short. Topaz eyes goggle back at her, those of a most unexpected assailant.

Amy Benson may conceal her history with Riddle, but she cannot veil her horror.    

“I need to speak with you,” she says gravely.

If it was anyone else, Hermione might refuse. The end of July nears and she hasn’t the time to explain herself to Muggle orphans, not with Riddle leaving for Hogwarts in just over a month. Her window to correct the timeline is narrowing by the day, and her patience for teenage girls wears thin.

However, this encounter might be her chance to strategize.

Amy is one of the very few that knows the depths of Riddle’s violence. She has seen what happens when his mental faculties slip, the dire consequences to his unbridled rage. If there is anyone that Hermione should be speaking to, it is her.

The Time-Turner remains at Hermione’s bosom, silent, tepid, and wholly unhelpful—unwilling to offer any guidance as she’s grown accustomed to. Nevertheless, she nods. 

“All right.”

Amy doesn’t miss a beat. She yanks Hermione through the hallway traffic, unapologetically bumping into other children that mill between the many rooms and corridors, ignoring their shouts of protest. She barges into the bathroom and lets Hermione go, only to round on her.

“What did he do to you?” she asks at once. Her tone is alarmed and demanding, as though they are on the precipice of catastrophe. Perhaps, to her, they are.

“Nothing,” Hermione breathes. “We only talked.”

“You don’t have to lie for him,” Amy says. “I know what he is.”

“It’s the truth. He didn’t do anything to me.”

Whatever happened to Amy—or whatever it was that she witnessed—has warped her senses. She begins to pace.

“He’s making you say that,” she pants, shaking her head. “He’s—he’s put a spell on you or a curse or—” She pauses, an epiphany rooting in her busy, scattered brain. “Has he sent you now?”

“What? No, of course not.” 

Amy stalks back towards her, vengeful prey determined not to become such again, wild and ready with her every defense.

“He told you to come in here with me, didn’t he?” she whispers dangerously. “To see what I’d say about him.”

“No!” exclaims Hermione. “You dragged me in here! Riddle has no idea where I am—nobody does, except for you.” She straightens her posture. “And I thought you wanted to talk, not accuse me of . . . well, whatever it is you seem to think I’m doing.” 

Scrutiny is the devil that accompanies them, and Amy is keen to hold her devils close. 

“Well if that’s true, then there’s nothing I can say to help you anyway.”

Finished, she starts towards the door.

“No, wait!” Hermione cries. She blocks Amy’s path, frenzied and desperate for answers. The key to defeat Riddle could be in this girl’s proverbial pocket, even if she doesn’t yet know it. “What do you mean by that? What’s he going to do to me?”

Hermione’s chest heaves with adrenaline as she awaits an answer. Amy locks eyes with her once again, but this time, the fire is gone. 

“If I tell you, it’ll be me he’s after next,” she says softly. “And I’m sorry, but I can’t risk that.”

It is rare that one can depend on a product of fear. Hermione sees it clearly now—Amy has given up, losing her will to fight in mere minutes.

Like so many others, the Muggle girl defects, slumping her shoulders and slipping past Hermione, defeated and unwavering in her decision. 

Beans leave a smudge across Hermione’s plate. She rests her chin in her palm and continues pushing them with her spoon, numb to the whirring conversations that surround her.

The Gryffindor table was always so much more comfortable than this. She misses Harry, Ron, and Ginny, for no matter how dark the world became, friendship lit the Great Hall like the hundreds of candles that hovered above the four house tables. Here, even with electricity, the room is dim.

In this timeline, Agnes and Meredith are the closest thing she has to friends, yet they are disconnected from her—Muggles of another era that judge her from afar, the same as everyone else. They utter nothing more than meaningless small talk today, glancing at her whenever they think she isn’t looking.

They wish she wasn’t there. 

Muggles gossiped about her when she was a young girl living in London too; she never fit in then, and she doesn’t fit in now. Worse yet, she’s failing her mission, and her best lead is terrified of speaking to her.

Theodore Nott hadn’t prepared her for any of this.

“All right, ‘ermione?” Meredith asks loudly.

“Yes, I’m fine,” Hermione lies.

Meredith nods, but gives Agnes a knowing look. They’re mocking her, sharing silent hearsay with their expressions the way she and Ginny used to do whenever Fleur Delacour entered a room at the Burrow.

Hermione doesn’t like being on the other side of such exchanges—she didn't when it was Lavender and Parvati, nor when it was Pansy Parkinson and her group of bullies. She liked it even less when it was all of Hogwarts and her face was stamped on the pages of Witch Weekly.

Why did she find it so funny when she and Ginny did it to Fleur?

Someone touches her shoulder. She gasps and turns, half-expecting to see Amy, with eyes like Bluebell Flames, eager to once again accuse Hermione of her apparent collusion with Riddle. Or maybe it will be Riddle himself, hexes waiting to spill from his wand as payback for her hand in his abuse.

Thankfully, it’s only Martha.

“Eat your lunch, girl. The little ones’ beds need changing.”

“Did Bonnie not do them?”

Hermione immediately regrets the question. Now is not the time for snark or defiance—not after Martha’s warning in the doctor’s office.

“Bonnie is ill,” Martha replies evenly. 

Hermione glances at Agnes, whose cough still lingers. Meredith leans closer to her and lowers her voice. At this rate, she’ll be sick next. 

“Right,” Hermione says. “Yeah, I’ll erm—I’ll just finish up and go do that.”

“Don’t dawdle. They’ll be coming inside soon and I’d prefer not to have them pulling on my skirt waiting for you . . . Lord knows what they’ll have on those grubby hands of theirs . . .”

She walks off briskly, leaving a breeze in her wake.

Hoping to stay on Martha’s good side, Hermione makes haste too. She pushes her lunch in Agnes and Meredith’s direction, nearly relieved to have an excuse not to eat it.

The girls seem confused, but they thank her, nonetheless. 

Hermione pretends she didn’t hear them. Their words seem as empty as the halls she then hurries through—lonely halls, with no sign of life, save for the soft echoes that come from outside where the younger children play.

Walls and glass suddenly feel thicker than they are. They’re a chasm between the worlds of Muggle and magic, a reminder that these children don’t truly understand who Hermione is or why she is here. They don’t even know it’s her that’s stripping their beds.

The fitted sheets are intent on popping off corners.

“Ruddy—stupid—things!” she grits out, wrestling them into submission. 

As always, there is a wand in her sleeve that could be of great use right now, but she daren’t draw it. Nine rooms later, she’s changed all the beds but two without an inkling of charm-work.

She leaves David’s room for last.

The door creaks on its hinges as she steps inside. David sits up straighter, beaming at her from his usual spot atop his worn-out mattress. 

“Hermione!” he exclaims.

“Hi, David,” she says, gluing on a smile. The boy is a helpless vision, and Hermione is a helpless witch; she's avoided him for weeks now, carrying the guilt of denying him the gift he so longs for—a gift that Muggle medicine couldn't grant him, even in her era. “You’re looking well.”

“Yeah, I've been fine, I am real hungry, though.” He frowns. “You look well too, actually.”

“You sound surprised,” Hermione muses.

“Well, I guess I am . . .” he confesses slowly, gaping at her as she rips the linens off Louis’s bed. It's the same way the first-year Muggle-borns would stare at the castle ghosts during the Start-of-Term Feast.

Maybe it’s fair of him, considering that in this timeline, she’s a ghost too.

“Why? Aren’t I always doing well?"

“I suppose so . . ." he says. "It’s just—well, I've been worried about you a bit, you know . . . with what everyone’s been saying.” 

Hermione stiffens. Her playful tone disappears.

“And what’s that?” she asks.

“All the stuff about you and Tom . . . Danny and Louis said he hurt you real bad, that a doctor was here to check on you 'cause of him."

Somehow, the story has reached the boy who never leaves his bed.

“Then Danny and Louis have been making up rumors,” Hermione says resolutely. She pulls the fitted sheet over a corner. For once, it stays. “Nobody hurt me, I promise you."

David doesn’t look convinced. 

“All right, but how’d you get in his room?” he asks. “Louis says it's all locked up. And—and the doctor, I saw him walking the halls. Why was he here, then?"

“I was never in Tom's room,” she says shortly. "And I haven't seen a doctor, but I am willing to wager he's here because people have been getting sick. It’s been going around a few days now."

This, he seems to believe. 

“Oh, good,” he breathes. “I thought—well, I thought maybe Tom had tricked you. Danny told me he's put spells on people before."

“Spells?” Hermione repeats.

David nods. “Yeah, like in the storybooks. That’s why that Dennis boy always screams like he does. Tom did some kind of abracadabra on him and scrambled his head.”

Hermione drapes the covers over Louis’s pillow, then puts a hand on her hip, a false—and ideally reassuring—grin tugging at the corners of her mouth. Whatever David has been told is likely laced in truth, but it will not serve him to know the ways of her kind.

It won’t serve her either.

“Spells or not, Tom Riddle couldn’t trick me even if he wanted to. Now, arms up! Martha will have my hide if we don’t get your bed changed.” 

Questions are clawing at his chapped lips, but he doesn’t ask them. He raises his arms unceremoniously and Hermione picks him up, swinging him around before plopping him onto Louis’s bed. She hopes for his usual giggle. Alas, he is melancholy.

“You don’t believe he can do spells, do you?”

Hermione shakes her head. “Spells aren’t real, David—and even if they were, I very much doubt Tom Riddle is capable of them.”

He only deflates more.

“Wish he could,” he sighs. “Then maybe he could get my legs to work.”

The pit in Hermione's stomach deepens, reaching record depths of guilt. She busies herself with his sheets.

“I’m sure if he could, he’d set them right,” she fibs.

“He probably wouldn’t. He’s not very nice.”

Hermione doesn’t respond to that.

With deft fingers, she replaces the bedding, yearning to be anywhere else but here. Even being in Riddle’s room seems preferable to the enchanted truth that lingers in the stagnant air, two pieces of evidence flush against her skin—one to her forearm, and one to her breast.

Once she finishes, she inhales sharply.

“All done.”

David lifts his arms again and she drops him onto his mattress, this time much more purposefully. When he bids her goodbye, she barely manages to mumble it back.

The sooner she’s able to leave this orphanage, the better.

In the meantime, she can only hope Bonnie is well enough to do the next bed change.

Young children pool around her as she moves through the hallway, many of them pointing at her as she passes them by. Needing to clear her head, she weaves between them and heads straight for the garden, not bothering to stop even for a trowel.

There, she plucks the weeds with vigor, recollections of David and Amy obfuscating her every other thought. Everything that Tom Riddle touches seems to break, and after speaking with David, Hermione is afraid that she may have the same problem—a problem only defeating Riddle can solve. Harry always thought it was his destiny to face Voldemort alone. Little did he know, it was actually hers.

An aphid crawls on one of her beloved roses.

“Oh, no you don’t!” she scolds, swatting it away, but the aphid doesn’t budge.

Again, she bats at it—more violently, until she hits it so hard rose petals rain onto the soil below. The aphid is gone, but the flower is ruined.

She lets out a sob.

Usually, she doesn’t allow herself to cry—Gryffindors are meant to be courageous, and no amount of blubbering is going to change the war ahead. She sniffles and wipes away her tears.

When she looks up, a tiny pair of eyes glower back at her from the jungle of stems.

“Oh, it’s you again. Sorry to disturb you.”

The grass snake scopes at her, still staring.

“I know you hate me for messing with your home,” she says, wiping her nose. “But it’s looking much better now that the flowers have filled out, don’t you think?”

The snake coils in the remnants of a clutch of bittercress, clearly disagreeing with her. Bittercress is one of Hermione’s least favorite weeds, spreading unlike any other at an almost impossible pace. Still, she decides not to pluck it. It is but a small olive branch for one of the Earth’s living things.

Secretly, she hopes that living thing will eat the aphids.

Chapter Text

The Granger household was distinctly tidy.

Hermione remembers this not only from her childhood, but from her every visit during holidays too. Being dentists, her mother and father had a great distaste for germs and it was illustrated by her mother’s restless scrubbing and her father’s obsession with keeping a clean refrigerator. 

There was, however, the issue of laundry.

Nobody in the Granger household was particularly bothered by baskets full of washed clothes—her parents’ scrubs, her own jumpers. Their small utility room was always teeming with loose socks and unfolded piles, from which they would often dig and find an outfit for the day. 

Hermione thinks of this as she folds what must be the twentieth ugly, taupe dress. Like the rest, it matches her own, save for a dark blue stain across the back. 

Ink, she presumes. 

In this place, she is something of a stain herself.  

Orphans scurry past her, risking judgmental glances as she thanklessly stacks their identical apparel in neat rows. No one offers to help, not even three tall boys who watch her hop on her tiptoes to stock the uppermost shelves of the broom cupboard, a circus act that leads to the smorgasbord of janitorial tools falling out onto the linoleum. 

Etiquette disappears at the mere sight of her. 

While it was rare anyone offered to assist with chores in the past, it didn’t feel quite as personal back then. After all, she was alone, working tirelessly while the others were in school, unaware of her every effort. Now, she is something of a spectacle.

Riddle is an infection. To be exposed to him is to become a leper.

Low voices carry through the hallway.

“. . . and will you please stop swinging it about?”

“Why? I won’t break it.”

“I'm more worried you'll be seen with it. Cole banned them at Christmas, remember?”

The resident twins approach, but they’re too busy fussing with something to pay Hermione any mind. 

“Put it away!” one girl hisses. “Martha’s coming!”

“I can’t—fit it—in my pocket!”

The twins hurry, muttering and elbowing one another to avoid being caught with whatever contraband they've managed to smuggle in. It reminds Hermione of Fred and George Weasley, and the many times she caught them dodging Filch and Snape during her prefect duties. They always had banned items too—often of their own creation.

Fortunately for the girls, Martha doesn’t have magic on her side, and her heightened sense for rule-breaking proves faulty as they slip into the adjacent corridor. A ring of keys jingles in her grip.

She stops in front of a nearby door, then turns to look at Hermione.

“You’re not done with that yet?” 

The final laundry bin is still brimming, so much so that Hermione can barely see over it from her place on the floor. If she had a sharper tongue, she might tell Martha that anyone else would take nearly all day to finish the gargantuan task. Most would refuse to do it at all.

“I only started half an hour ago,” she says instead. 

“My foot! I told you—oh never mind, just make sure it’s done by three.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

Frazzled, Martha loudly fishes through the many keys. Her usually-tight bun is loose and messy, with errant hairs darting every-which-way. A splotch of gravy is on her skirt. She shakes as she finally unlocks the door.

It's easier than it would be, were it Tom's. 

This lock is unlike the ones that shield the world from him—it's normal, a hole below the knob and likely turned by the room's inhabitant, rather than the staff. 

Folding becomes automatic for Hermione. She stares down at the pair of socks in her hands and listens closely, curious what could make the floor matron so nervous, if not a teenage wizard.

“You missed breakfast again,” Hermione hears her say. 

“I want to see Bonnie.”  

The voice is one Hermione now knows—not intimately so, but it was mere days ago that this very girl pulled her into the bathroom to deliver a chilling message. Unusual encounters are hard to forget. 

“You can’t. She’s ill.”

“Ill with what?” Amy asks.

“I haven’t the foggiest, dear—but whatever it is, I assure that you don’t want to be catching it and I won’t have it spread about. Now come, Mrs. Cole wants to have a chat with you.”

The scene is magnetic. It pulls Hermione’s gaze as it transpires, but she resists her urge to look, reluctant to be caught eavesdropping. Wool feels unnatural against her fingertips. 

“It’s because of him, isn’t it?”

It’s such a low whisper that Hermione barely hears her from afar. She squeezes her eyes shut and keeps folding. 

“Not everything is because of Tom, dear.”

“Bit funny it’s happening now, though, don’t you think? He comes back and suddenly someone I’m close to gets sick.”

“That mind of yours is running wild again,” Martha says darkly.

“Oh come on, even you have to admit the timing is suspicious! He knows she's my friend.”

Hermione once more cements herself to her task, though it’s becoming increasingly difficult. Her work slows as her brain fails to connect to her hands, paralyzing her for seconds at a time. Martha doesn’t want her to hear this conversation, and Hermione has every intention of pretending that she hasn’t.

“I don't find it suspicious at all, actually. Others are ill too,” replies Martha. “They’re being separated the same as Bonnie is.”

This is only partially true; Agnes is on bed-rest again, but Hermione still shares a room with her. They've all but imprisoned her with patient zero.

“Bet one of them is the girl he had in his room,” mutters Amy.

“And what do you know about that?”

“Everyone knows about it! The real question is how it happened! You’re supposed to be keeping him in order!”

“You children go breaking rules all the time.” Nonchalance—perhaps, rightly so. “If I had a pence for every time somebody did something wrong around here, I'd be living in a mansion eating roast beef . . . Besides, I don’t think you have any place to be making judgments about others sneaking people into their rooms.”

If she’s making an accusation, Amy ignores it.

“But I thought you were locking him up,” she points out. “How'd he get a girl in his room if he was locked up?”

“How we discipline Tom is none of your concern.”

“It doesn’t seem like you’re disciplining him at all.”

“Excuse me?”

“He's up to his tricks again, everyone can see it but you and Cole,” says Amy. “He's done something to that girl, and now he's got to Bonnie too and all you've done is defend him.”

“Miss Weasley is perfectly fine. As for the bug, it's been going around town for weeks . . . a bit of rest and Bonnie will be better in no time.” There’s a clap, presumably from Martha. “Now, up with you! Mrs. Cole is—”

“I’m not going anywhere!” Amy spits. “Not until you listen to me! Tom is up to something. He’s clever—you know he is. So maybe he knew it'd be too obvious if he made Weasley sick. Maybe he’s using her, or he's put a spell on her or—or maybe he’s hypnotized her into doing it all for him! She's always in the dining hall, she could be poisoning the food for all we know!”

“Amy—”

“And did you notice she made friends with Bonnie right away? As soon as she got here, she wanted to be mates with her. He made her do that, I should've seen it before!”

“This is all quite far-fetched, dear.” 

“You said that about me and Dennis too.”

Martha pauses this time. Her smart answers have run their course, and the distraction has led Hermione to stack the laundered clothing all too poorly. Several pairs of trousers tumble over.

“I think you ought to talk to Mrs. Cole about all of this,” Martha finally says. “She's always been happy to hear your grievances, hm?”

Amy scoffs. “She won't listen to me either.”

“Amy,” Martha urges. “I'm not asking. It’s time to go.”

There is the faint sound of crumpling springs, then footfalls. 

“Fine, but I want to see Bonnie after.”

“If Mrs. Cole allows it, you may—but only through the window.”

The footsteps grow louder and faster, and Hermione swallows hard, realizing that Amy is about to enter the hallway. It will be the first time the girls have seen each other since their discussion in the bathroom—except now, Bonnie is ill, and Amy thinks she and Riddle have something to do with it.

“What's she sick with anyway?” Amy asks. “She’s seen a doctor, hasn’t she?”

“Not yet, but—”

Amy interrupts. “What are you doing out here?”

Hermione finally gives in to her desire to look up, her baser instincts warning her of danger, the same way they had dozens of times before. She had felt it in the Forest of Dean, in battle, and even in her second year when she went looking for a basilisk.

Paired with the advice of Remus Lupin, that telltale drop in her stomach had saved her more than once. 

“Trust yourself,” he had said. “Magic will only get you so far, but your gut? That is the most powerful defense you can have.”

Even in a Muggle orphanage, she hasn’t lost her intuition: Amy is stalking towards her, fists balled and eyes narrow with fury. 

“I asked you a question,” she snarls.

“Sorry! I was erm—I was just doing the laundry,” Hermione answers. She’s quick to add, “Martha asked me to.”

“The laundry,” Amy repeats.

“Amy, leave her be,” Martha says sternly.

Alas, Hermione has seen the look on Amy’s face before. It is not unlike that of Bellatrix Lestrange or Lucius Malfoy. It is an expression of pure, impassioned hatred that Hermione knows she could only reverse with her wand.

“So you do everything you’re told to do?” Amy asks, venomous.

“Of course I don’t. But since she’s a matron here—”

“He sent you,” she whispers. “You were listening to us.”

“No! It’s nothing like that, I didn’t hear anything, I promise. I was just—”

It’s a sentence that goes unfinished. Amy lunges before Hermione can speak another word, clambering to get her small, freckled hands around the witch's neck. Hermione wonders if Amy has fantasized about doing this to Tom Riddle—if she’s paying the dues that Riddle never will. 

“YOU’RE LYING!” Amy shrieks. 

Hermione falls onto her back and the feral girl takes her chance, straddling her to pin her to the floor. Amy attempts to throttle her once again, but her bony fingers are too frail, even in a fit of rage. Little does she know, Hermione could end this in an instant, if she could only reach her left sleeve . . .

“Let—me—up!” Hermione grits out.

“Amy, stop it!” Martha commands.

Hermione manages to push Amy over, but the orphan is fast and determined. She swipes at Hermione with her nails, landing a scratch that stings her cheek. 

It’s a weak attempt—Hermione once endured the Cruciatus Curse, after all, and by the end of her third year, she had been hit with her fair share of jinxes. Still, she touches the scratch. The slick sensation of blood coats her fingers.

“What does he want?” Amy spits. “TELL ME WHAT YOU KNOW!”

Hermione winces. Perhaps, this is why people fear banshees.

The shallow wound hurts little. The ache in her throat—the aftermath of attempted strangulation—is dull. Yet, Amy’s wretched screams are ear-piercing. Professor Lockhart once told Hermione she would likely never encounter a banshee in the wild, but if she closed her eyes, she might believe she was facing one now.

Amy seizes her by the front.

“TALK, YOU CHIT!” she screams. 

“I don’t know anything!”

“LIAR! He made you do something to Bonnie, didn’t he?” she asks, wild-eyed. “What was it? Poison?”

“I didn’t do anything to her!” Hermione yells back.

“STOP—LYING!”

Hermione tries to wriggle out of Amy’s grip, but it’s futile. Fueled by madness, Amy slams her back onto the floor with as much strength as her small frame can muster. Hermione’s head hits the linoleum—hard.

“I’m not lying!”

“That’s enough!” Martha booms.

She grabs Amy from behind and pulls her backward, but Amy does not let go. Instead, Amy’s grip tightens, a final attempt to milk Hermione for information, even if it means facing punishment.

“Did he put a spell on you?” she whispers fervently. “Is he forcing you to do it?”

“I said that’s enough!” Martha barks, yanking Amy back with all her might. This time, she wins, and Amy staggers, releasing Hermione from her clutches. 

“Is he in your head?” she asks loudly. Her chest heaves as Martha continues to restrain her. “Because he won’t stop until he—”

“Quiet yourself!” Martha breathes. She nods at Hermione. “You—go.”

“Yes, ma’am!”

Hermione has never been more willing to follow one of Martha’s orders. She scrambles to her feet and pulls down the hem of her dress, covertly patting her sleeve to ensure her wand is well in place.

Amy attempts to break free.

“At least let her answer me!” she exclaims. “If he’s up to his old tricks, then Mrs. Cole must kick him out! Martha, you can stop this! If he’s making people sick—OI! I’M NOT FINISHED WITH YOU!”

Hermione, however, is quite finished listening to Amy. She moves with haste and turns into the adjacent corridor—the same one the twins had taken to escape Martha’s potential wrath.

Hermione is relieved to find she’s perfectly alone. 

Safety envelops her, a rare embrace from a long-forgotten friend. The adrenaline starts to wear off, and fatigue sets in, welcoming her to finally let down her guard, if only for a few moments. She presses her back to the wall and sinks to the floor. Her eyes shut and she succumbs to the comfort of solitude. 

“Fancy seeing you here.”

Her blood runs cold. There were no footsteps to warn her of someone approaching this time, no shouts or declarations of anger. A quiet serpent is the most dangerous of all.

“Likewise.” The lie slithers off her tongue with ease, surprising even herself. To speak without tremor is not a gift she has been given, but rather one she’s practiced over the years. She has yet to master it. “How’d you get out of your room?”

Riddle’s pupils glitter under the fluorescent lights, bemusement gracing his features as it so often does. His hands are buried deep in his pockets as he looms over her—a detail that mightn’t worry her if he were someone else, but because he is Tom Riddle, she watches him intently, idly aware of the smirk that stretches across his face, but far more fixated on his pockets and what he may be hiding in them.

“The same way you got me out,” he answers slyly. “Hairpins.” 

The lie is obvious. Hairpins would only work if he were on the other side of the door.

“How clever of you.”

“It’s truly not,” he says seriously. Tilting his head, he adds, “That’s a funny place to sit.”

“I sit on the ground all the time.” 

“Maybe so, but judging by your heavy breathing, one might think you were running from something.”

The Time-Turner, which has been unusually quiet, suddenly turns cold.

At Hogwarts, the professors always told Hermione she was astute—brilliant, even. She could quantify things many thought to be unquantifiable, detect what was meant to be undetectable, and even solve problems that had stumped the entire faculty.

Yet, her every conversation with Tom Riddle makes her question herself.

Only Albus Dumbledore could not be tricked by the wizard in this time, and she’s beginning to understand why. In her world, he rules with fear—but before then, he led with wit. This is the Dark Lord that stands above her now. While she calculates her next move, he has already worked out his next three. She can see it—that look of complete certainty.

This is a vicious game, and she’s being outmatched.

Don’t do as he expects, she reminds herself.

She offers an admission. “I was.” 

The exchange in the hallway was pure cacophony. There is a chance he heard every bit of it—that he’s testing her to see if she will tell the truth. 

Little does he know, Hermione Granger does not fail tests.

“I see,” he replies tightly. “And may I ask what it was?” 

Hermione nods. “That Amy girl had some sort of fit. It was actually quite scary—one moment, she was arguing with Martha, then the next . . . she was attacking me.” 

“Attacking you?” he repeats.

“It’s mad, I know—I was shocked too.” She taps her cheek, a melodramatic detail to feign naivety. “Do you see that scratch there? That’s from her fingernails.”

Tom purses his lips, and Hermione can practically hear the gears in his brain clicking, because hers work just the same. He sits down beside her, revealing his hands at long last.

They’re empty.

“Did she mention me at all?” he inquires.

They toe a treacherous line—the secrets Amy keeps are some of Riddle’s most valuable, knowledge he does not entrust even to some of those in his Inner Circle of Death Eaters. The lengths he would go to protect such parts of his history is unknowable, and Hermione isn’t keen to find out firsthand.

Don’t fall for his tricks. He’s asking because he knows the truth. He wants you to lie.

“As a matter of fact, she did. She accused you of making people sick—which is preposterous, of course. She accused me of the same thing and obviously, I would never. She’s completely insane.”

The humor in her tone isn’t as contagious as she hopes. Riddle does not laugh. 

“She is, yes,” he sighs. “It’s a shame, really. She was actually a nice girl, once . . . That is, before the accident.”

Dread flowers in the pit of Hermione’s stomach. To misspeak now could be a death sentence. No matter how much she wants to know, she mustn’t ask too many questions, nor a single suspicious one. 

She teeters on a tightrope; beneath her is a predator beyond comprehension.

“Accident?” she asks carefully.

“She and a boy got lost in a cave when we were younger. They haven’t been the same since it happened.”

His words are buttery—casual. It is this very trustworthy timbre that allows him to capture such immense power. Nobody would ever suspect Tom Riddle of a thing. If she did not already know all that he is and all that he becomes, she might buy into his innocence herself.

After all, it is Amy that resorted to brutality, not the boy before her now.

“That’s terrible,” she says.

Riddle suddenly looks annoyed.

“Quite.”

The air is thick with tension. The Time-Turner is colder than before—frigid, in fact.

Hermione breaks a silence that is too long for her liking.

“You know, I’ve been meaning to apologize to you,” she says. “About what happened.”

He arches an eyebrow.

“It was—well, it was sort of my fault,” Hermione continues. She wrings her hands. “And—I’m—erm—well, I’m very sorry. I didn't know it would be as bad as it was.”

Tom sniffs. “It wasn’t anything I wasn’t prepared for.”

“Prepared or not, it wasn’t right. He shouldn't have done that to you.”

“And you shouldn’t have come to my room, but we all do things we’re not supposed to sometimes, don’t we?” He is staring at her now with remarkable intensity. A lesser woman might squirm. “We break rules. We swear. We lie.”

Blood thunders in Hermione’s ears. He has that look again.

He’s a move ahead.

“It used to be much worse, actually,” he goes on. “Mrs. Cole warned him not to take it too far after my school’s headmaster asked about a cut on my lip after Easter holiday. Rare he aims for the face anymore.”

“Well, he shouldn’t be hitting you at all,” Hermione says quickly, hoping that she's misread him—that he's posturing and that her paranoia is at play, steering a wheel she can reclaim. Her words tumble out far too fast. “But I’m glad Cole stepped in. Sometimes, I swear she’s the only adult here that even likes us.”

He scoffs. “Don’t kid yourself. She only wants to protect her job.”

“What do you mean?”

“Think about it—we’re at war. It isn’t the most ideal time to be out of work, and it wouldn’t be the most positive reputation on this place now, would it? Harming innocent orphan boys they keep locked up for no good reason.” He hollows his cheeks. “You’d best be careful, Hermione. It could be you next.”

“So I’ve been warned.” Her reply is sickly sweet, a desperate attempt to maintain rapport. “Martha knew I broke into your room—she wasn’t very pleased.”

“You can stop with the act now—it’s getting rather nauseating.”

Hermione freezes. “What?”

“I know you’re lying about who you are,” he says darkly. “I’ve been doing some reading, and there’s only one known Weasley family in Britain. I happen to know several of them—and none of them look a thing like you."

Time is suspended, and for once, it is not because of the Time-Turner around her neck. Hermione is unable to move, unable to think. The ever-moving components of her brain grind to a halt. Her jaw is agape, and while she tries to respond, her mouth only trembles.

Riddle rises to his feet.

“I will find out who you are, Hermione,” he says softly. “That, I can promise you.”