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Chapter Text

"By your many sins and dishonest trade you have desecrated your sanctuaries. So I made a fire come out from you, and it consumed you, and I reduced you to ashes on the ground in the sight of all who were watching." -Ezekiel 28: 18-20.

The chain of the Horcrux closed tight around Harry Potter's oesophagus. Harry thrashed, the dark water weighing upon his torso. Distantly, he could hear the sound of splashing water—someone was kicking wildly towards him from the rocky side of the pool. However, they would be a little too late. He was going to suffocate, or drown or—

Harry and Ron were hoisted magically to the water's edge. 

Someone had cast a warming charm on them.

Harry felt his saviour lifting the golden chain over his head, at once, he felt like a great burden had been lifted off of his back. Opening his eyes, he blinked owlishly and rolled to his side—retching onto the snow, struggling to draw breath into his frozen lungs. Shakily, Harry sat up, distantly he noted his windpipe felt like someone had scraped his throat with an angry toothbrush. 

But nothing could have prepared him for confronting the sight of Ron, groaning beside him, drenched, his ginger hair plastered to his cheeks.

Ron's hands were clasped around the hilt of sword of Gryffindor, as though in some sort of prayer. He used it to stagger to his feet. Ron's lips parted, his eyes wide and fixed solely on their third companion in the clearing, their saviour.

"Are both of you insane?!" Shrieked a familiar voice. "You could have drowned, or WORSE" Yelled the third member of the trio, sounding rather like Mrs Weasley. 

There before them stood Hermione. She had come to save him, again, just as she had on the night at Godric's Hollow. Dressed in a set of witches robes, Hermione had her beaded bag slung over her shoulder, the knuckles of her hands had turned white from gripping her recently retrieved wand. In her other hand, Slytherin's locket swung like a pendulum. 

Harry, Ron and Hermione stared at each other as though they were seeing each other for the first time. 

"How did you find me?" Panted Harry. He wasn't entirely sure who the question was aimed at, perhaps the both of them. Suddenly embarrassed, Harry realized he was only in his boxers and began hastily pulling his trousers back on.

Hermione's eyes did not so much as waver from Ron. 

"Hermione," croaked Ron hopefully, smiling weakly at her. He timidly held up the sword of Gryffindor to her "We've found the sword?"

"—Don't—" Hermione hissed, cheeks reddening furiously, foot stamping in the snow. Absentmindedly, she thrust the heavy golden chain of the locket around her neck, tucking it further into her robes. It burrowed into her like a serpent that had found a new nest. Hermione advanced upon Ron, pointing her wand at his jugular. Ron held up his hands, dropping the sword and slowly backed away. She looked half ready to hex Ron into next week.

"—You dare crawl back to us after WEEKS—"

"I know," Ron said, glancing at Harry imploringly. "I'm sorry—"

"—Oh, you're SORRY!—"

Harry cast his eyes around the pool, wishing he could just melt into the climate. 

"—You come back after weeks — weeks — and you think it's all going to be all right if you just say sorry?"

"Now is not the time!" interrupted Harry, exasperated. "We've got the sword, we need to destroy the locket!"

She let a high, brittle laugh, sharp and thin, teetering on the edge malice. 

As though anticipating the imminent danger, the locket began to pulse and twist like a reptile awakened from a winter slumber around Hermione's neck. 

Hermione and Ron did not seem to notice. Instead, Hermione began to circle Ron like a shark scenting blood in the water. Ron looked beseechingly at her, looking rather dejected.

"Well, what else can I say?" Ron demanded in half a blubber, half in indignation. 

"Oh, I don't know!" Hermione screamed, completely ignoring Harry. Her lip curled disdainfully at Ron. "Rack your brains, Ronald Weasley," she gestured mockingly, voice rising higher and haughtier by the second, thoroughly intending to wound. "Come, regale us with your pitiful pleas, I'm sure we'll expire when you come up with an answer in a couple of months." Her voice dripped with venom, utterly remorseless and condescending. 

"Hermione, will you please calm down." Interjected Harry, grimacing; feeling that she was being rather merciless in her tirade.

"I wanted to come back the minute I'd Disapparated, but I walked straight into a gang of snatchers," burst Ron. "I splinched myself and nearly got caught trying to get back to the two of you—"

"Oh, did Mrs. Weasley not want you home? Was she displeased that her least favourite—least accomplished—son returned, empty handed? Is that why you're here with a sword like a kicked dog?" Hermione's eyes darkened, glinting scarlet. Ron flinched backwards as though slapped. "Did you finally comprehend that you're nothing by yourself? You're nothing unless you're next to Harry, next to us?" 

Hermione let out a deranged cackle. Her smile was a taut leer, savage and more terrifying than her look of rage. Her face contorted malevolently, she was almost unrecognizable. 

All the while, the locket glowed jubilantly, charged and eager. Harry felt his stomach turn in dread. 

"Hermione, th-that's enough. You're not yourself right now." Harry said. 

But Hermione ignored him and continued to prowl scathingly around Ron. 

Without her noticing, Harry attempted to reach for the sword in the snow with his foot and kick it towards himself. 

"Do you know what I realized after you abandoned us?" She continued, her hair swirling around her like a livid gorgon. Ron looked petrified. 

"We don't need you. What could you POSSIBLY offer us?"

"Hermione," whispered Harry urgently. "Take off the locket." Blood thundered in his brain. He inched himself towards Ron and the sword, priming himself to wrestle the locket from Hermione's throat. 

As though she finally heard him, Hermione stopped abruptly, brows furrowing.

For a second she remained swaying and reeling like a kite, to and fro in the snow, then with a tiny 'oh' as though in awe, she was levitated gracefully into the air. Like lightening to a blade of grass, Hermione's chest positively exploded. 

Ron opened his mouth in a silent scream. Howling, Harry lunged for the sword. 

Blood gushed in scarlet pain, hot and fast and unstoppable from the open cavity at Hermione's breast. At the centre of her chest the locket beat like a demented, beating heart. With a hiss the clasp snapped open like a mouth, flashing phosphorous. Beneath the windowed compartment sat an hourglass, writhing and shooting sharp sparks. 

Her hands trembled, making to rip the locket from her chest. Hermione gave a low moaning cry of anguish. 

"No, NO!" Bellowed Ron, jumping and trying to seize her by the ankles to tug her back to the ground. His hand dug into his pocket, retrieving his wand and frantically casting spell after spell to no avail. 

Hermione convulsed.

Harry whirled in the snow with the sword in his hand and slipped—

—Hermione crumpled to the snow like an offering, chest igniting in flames.

The Horcrux began to emit a macabre ticking sound, as though it were in a countdown. 

Her body combusted, smoking in a deep volcanic yellow. Her spine gave a sickening crack and her limbs bent into unnatural curved angles, spiralling around the locket in a terrible, broken display. The gaping windows expanded, looking like a gloating smile and sucked Hermione's form inwards. 

"HERMIONE!'" Ron screamed, half sobbing and pounding his fists on his skull.

Harry leapt into the air, sword flashing silver and plunging. 

There was a loud slashing noise as silver met gold. Harry felt a sudden stab of pain in his abdomen and thigh. The glass from the window of the locket had shattered onto him. Suddenly, the locket's magic threw Harry backwards. He could feel himself colliding painfully with Ron who barely seemed to register it. It's not enough, Harry thought numbly, he staggered upwards still grasping the sword. He caught sight of Ron shakily crawling towards the remains of Hermione's crumpled form.

"DON'T TOUCH HER!" Harry yelled.

Deaf to Harry's cries, Ron had already flung himself at the burning witch, his heavy hands wound into the flames. The fire ate his blackened fingers until they looked like stumps, the locket's magic spat him out.

"Hermione...Harry," Ron uttered and collapsed aflame onto the ground beside her. Fire littered the forest floor, burning away at the snow bitten trees in a rapidly spreading fire. 

The locket's flames guttered unsteadily. The Horcrux let out a painful scream, guzzling up the rest of Hermione. The sword had gouged out the window of the locket, and the lid of the locket shook. The Horcrux's flames gave a spasm, turning from confused shades of blue, then green, then red, then black again. 

The locket swallowed Hermione's feet like a serpent eating its own tail. 

In a tremendous blaze the Horcrux exploded—

—and the golden trio was no more. 

Chapter Text

"It is very hard for evil to take hold of the unconsenting soul." - Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea.

It was like being an insect suspended in a jar of alcohol.

How much time had passed? None? Some? An eternity? She had no hands to fight with, no voice to speak with, no limbs to flee on—only the imposing sensation of immutability.

She felt not a trace of meaning.

Did she exist at all? Was she allowed to cease existing? 

But as though “it” lived to prove her wrong, the distant “it” made noises.

From hisses to whimpers, laughter to desperate pleas, jubilant then seething, morose then manic—the voice was unstable, yet always hungry.

Hermione felt that it was like living next to a capricious orchestra without a conductor. 

Nevertheless, his presence came both as a source of relief and constant fear. 

That voice is not mine. It exists but he is not me, observed Hermione. I cannot be an ‘I’ in isolation, because ‘I’ is only used to differentiate oneself, she conjectured, ruminating. I am because we are; therefore, I must exist.

As soon as she surmised this, something gave way—the idea itself conjuring a cold surface beneath her. She twisted, becoming very conscious of the fact that she was curled up in a foetal position. Hermione untangled her limbs. A prickle of alien dread rose in her, source unknown. Yet, when examining herself, her body appeared unharmed. Hermione’s thoughts stirred:

Where is this? Why am I?...

Barely had the question formed in her mind, she knew her answer.

Hermione blanched and stiffened. 

It is dingy inside Lord Voldemort's soul.

This was not the afterlife—not exactly. She stood at the edge of entropy, where time itself refused to linger. 

Whatever foul scene the Horcrux had conjured to confine Lord Voldemort’s soul fragment was dark, suffocatingly small, and obviously failing. There was an odd perfume that proliferated her senses which smelt distinctively like rot. The floor she lay on was thin, cracked, haemorrhaging streams of colourless ink onto the backs of her thighs with an odd grainy sensation to it. It was like being trapped inside an enormous, infected wound.

Which is certainly not mine to suture! Thought Hermione to herself rather sternly.

She rolled forwards and stood up in the dark. Hermione held out her palms in front of herself, determined to feel her way around her surroundings.

"Stop."

Lord Voldemort spoke directly to her for the first time.

His voice was a cold whisper and had a preternatural ringing force to it. Two gleaming red eyes opened and glowered contemptuously at Hermione. 

"You will move only if I will it, Mudblood-wearer." said the Locket and it struck like a command. 

Hermione clenched her jaw and chewed on the inside of her cheek. She noted his instantaneous presumption—she was less than a speck of dust, as malleable as clay, his to command and control—and the realization was enough to ignite her. It wasn't simply terror or horror she felt right now. It was far worse, far more reckless. After all, she was basically trapped here with a portion of Lord Voldemort's soul for the rest of eternity.

Arrogant, self-deluded tyrant, she thought scathingly. 

No, it was far worse.

Hermione felt defiant in the presence of the dark lord. 

Outwardly, her expression hardened, considering him boldly for a moment before speaking. 

"Why am I not dead?" She asked simply. Riddle's eyes grew ravenous for an imperceptible second, then hardened and went impassive. 

"Miss Granger," said the Locket smoothly. "It appears I have a great use for you." His eyes examined her coolly, but his voice was so hushed that Hermione had scarcely heard him. 

Hermione blinked, incredulous. A great use for me? She repeated suspiciously in her mind.

Hermione narrowed her eyes at him, giving an irked twitch, she frowned at him, waiting. 

"I have destroyed you; I have eliminated those buffoons you refer to as friends and very soon I will eliminate what remains of you. In this space, I have absolute control. You cannot hope to fight me and succeed. Give yourself to me, and you shall find that I can be most lenient. Refuse now and you shall beg for my mercy."

There was a long, drawn-out silence. 

Hermione gasped and gulped as tears filled her eyes. She gave a tremendous shudder.

I failed them… it’s my fault that the Locket—

Hermione let out a great sob. Her nails tried to puncture the skin of her flesh.

I deserve to die… let me bleed… it is my fault that they…

She could barely finish her train of thought.

If only I had died with them.

Riddle's expression remained pensive. His blood red slits merely expressed disgust and perhaps disappointment.

Hermione sniffled and wiped away her tears on the backs of her hands.

He studied her scornfully, looking as though he wanted nothing more than to reach out and banish a pesky roach. 

"So, this is attachment?" He sneered, disbelieving. "Breeding nothing but insecurity, disbanding all logic, courting failure, and culminating in loss? Nothing but the ultimate weakness."

Hermione stiffened, hiccupping softly and raptly assessed Riddle as curiously as though he were a living potions project. Her lips settled into a thin grim line. 

Riddle’s eyes narrowed at her. He spoke again, "I offer you mercy, yield now—"

"No." said Hermione.

"No, I will not." A hollow smile tugged at her lips.

Riddle did not answer at once, but Hermione could see shock flit across Riddle’s eyes, immediately quashed by a stab of outrage.

Hermione continued, "whatever dark magic you used to cast asunder my body, I know this: my soul will remain unscathed."

Tentatively, Hermione pulled back the sleeve of her robes and held out a single arm.

The nails that she had tried so desperately to dig into the flesh hadn't left a single mark on her skin. 

"What desperate illusion is this?" 

Riddle growled, his eyes were flickering back and forth between Hermione's and he threw her a long cold look.

"You mistake my indulgence for patience, Miss Granger."

It came not as a question, but a low warning.

"As you undoubtedly know, my lord, there are few substances that can vanquish a Horcrux, like the very goblin-made sword that maimed you. In fact, moments ago, you should have ceased to exist."

Hermione paused, licking her lips.

"You sensed this. So, you murdered Harry and Ron—" she inhaled sharply "—you devoured my physical body, using it narrowly to sustain an already pitiable existence."

"You forget yourself, Miss Granger."

Riddle’s voice burned in the magical space, a controlled fury building. "Capable witch that you are, you still mistake intellect for true power. Lord Voldemort takes what is his to claim.”

"You see, I don’t believe I am mistaken. You have already taken what was within your powers to take."

Hermione hurled the words back at Riddle; her tone growing evermore accusatory.

"You said so yourself, you destroyed my physical body. But you failed to mention that you need what remains of me."

Her arms crossed and her foot tapped, impatient and uppish.

"You require my soul, willingly given." 

Riddle’s red eyes flashed from her impudence but still he did nothing, enraptured though he was.

"You possess less than a quarter of the original portion of Tom Riddle’s soul, trapped inside your enchanted trinket. From my understanding, your existence is much like an unstable nuclear element; deriving destructive energy by possessing and feeding on human emotion." 

Hermione lectured, placing her hand on her hip.

"But to escape—to truly be alive—you need a magical host. And now, ironically, you need what you once forfeited: a whole, undamaged soul. So, you sought to intimidate me, to frighten me into submitting myself to you. But it is you that is mistaken, Lord Voldemort."

Hermione’s magic flared, emboldened, illuminating the Fragment with a magnificent beacon of amber light.

For an instant, the space brightened as if remembering what light was. The inside of the Locket was cracked and splintered like a degrading snow globe.

The Horcrux recoiled from her magic, unnerved.

"I am unwilling." Said Hermione.

She could see him now.

Curled on the ground, Riddle took the form of a small albino asp. Clearly starving, its scales were raw and peeling, vertebrae jutting out grotesquely, he looked ashen and sickly-looking. The end of his bloodied tail looked had been cut cleanly off, bleeding profusely and refusing to clot.

His eyes were greedy red holes that flickered with insatiable intellect and something furtive, something shameful, but Hermione recognized it at once...

Lord Voldemort feels...vulnerable, Hermione observed. Not weak, not uncertain, but exposed in ways no one would suspect.

Hermione sensed it: each piece of him—the Locket, the Fragment—resisted the truth, he longed for the completeness of an undamaged soul.

She drew nearer to the asp cautiously, close enough to reach out and touch him; crouching as an adult may crouch before a lost child.

Infuriatingly, her magic—distressed—encircled him, almost...sympathetic.

The asp flinched and cowered from her, looking bewildered but wary. He growled threateningly.

Hermione was reminded that this was the soul of a creature, no, the soul of a man that had probably never known closeness nor compassion.

Her palm drew closer slowly, hovering scarcely a centimetre above his head as if she were seeking his permission to draw nearer.

Riddle’s magic flashed; Hermione observed the suppressed yearning and distrust there.

Hermione studied him, appraising her possibilities. 

"I don’t want your pity, Mudblood." Riddle spat, in his soft snake hiss. "I don’t need your understanding."

His voice came contemptuously but it was not high enough to fool her.

It was him that was afraid.

Hermione laughed. "Don’t misunderstand, I don’t pity you. I don’t even want to know how to begin to understand you. Perhaps, even just a little, I recognize a bit of me in you."

Hermione recalled what Professor Lupin had once called her all those years ago, in the Shrieking Shack. She turned to Riddle. "Such a waste of the brightest wizard of his age I’ve ever met." Recited Hermione, a joyless parody of the most flattering compliment she had ever received. But I'm not, Hermione thought, I'm not the cleverest witch. If I had a little more sense—

So, Hermione touched him.

Tracing the line of a wounded set of scales on his skull with her index finger. Hermione drew the back of her nails up and down the tender skin of his serpentine neck, cradling his face in her hand.

Riddle’s reaction was instantaneous—

—He melted into the palm of her hand, self-folding like a flower towards the sunlight.

He emitted a relieved hiss and the blood at the end of his tail began to clot at a blistering pace.

Hermione contemplated it with rapt fascination. 

She ripped her hand away.

With a great blow, her magic had thrown him forcefully back.

The asp thudded against a cracked wall with an enraged hiss. He regained his composure instantly.

Riddle poised to strike, barring sharp fangs and spitting. 

She withdrew and stood. Hermione licked her lips.

"You're right you know. You don’t need my pity, nor do you need my understanding." She said as if to herself.

"No, much more so, it’s my help that you require."

Tilting her head to the side, appraising, her voice came clear and high. "So, what can you offer me to get what you want?"

Riddle’s eyes widened; his black, slit-like pupils dilated till they appeared almost round, eclipsing his red irises.

“I am not above the simplest instinct of all—survival,” he spoke as though to himself.

Withdrawing, he chuckled, ecstatic, it was the most normal sound he had emitted thus far, but his smile remained in a taut and bestial leer.

“Curious witch,” he murmured. “What you seek would mean mutual cooperation.” He spoke slowly as though relishing every word, "how…fortuitous."

Hermione bristled. "I have spent the past seven years trying to aid in your defeat, you and your other incarnation have taken everything from me! If you think for a single moment that anything short of extraordinary can compel me to cooperate with you, you are woefully ignorant of the truth. I am perfectly content to wait and watch you rot here or—better yet—it would bring me no greater joy than to see you perish with me." Hermione spat waspishly.

Riddle’s expression sobered: He was gazing at Hermione as though he had never seen her plainly before.

She could tell he was considering his words very carefully before he spoke.

"Those boys. I can offer the opportunity to undeniably spare them from their fates...” said Riddle.

Stricken, Hermione's spine went rigid. She did not need a clarification on precisely who he was talking about.

"...All this I can give and more." Riddle drew closer still. 

His voice was carefully controlled, but Riddle’s desire was now apparent; his expression was greedy, he could no longer smother his longing.

His tongue darted out tickling her skin.

Two hypnotic red eyes filled her vision; she did not protest.

Her mind flung back to another pair of luminous eyes; flashing in a hand-mirror at her. As she had then, she gazed back in captivation. Her resistance melted into a kind of weary interest. The world narrowed to his eyes, his voice, the promise of purpose in the void.

Perhaps surrender wasn’t weakness at all, but the rare moment when choice and inevitability met — and she had chosen her path.

"Hermione Granger, I have seen your soul." The Locket crooned enticingly. "I have seen your most desperate desires and now...I offer them all."

The serpent encircled her, his cold skin weaving in and out of her limbs.

"Now all you have to do, is share."

Lips gently parted and eyes alight with an intemperate fascination, Hermione nodded.

Riddle lunged for her lips.

Hermione did not know where Riddle ended and where she began. 

Chapter Text

"The night in which distinctions and definitions cannot be readily made is the same night in which love is made, in which things merge, change, become enchanted, aroused, impregnated, possessed, released, renewed.” - Rebecca Solnit, Men Explain Things to Me.

Hermione surged upright.

She felt as though she'd been flayed, shoved down a narrow pipe and ejected like waste.

She blinked — once, twice — and nothing cleared.

A milky, desiccated film clouded her vision and clung to her naked skin.

Scandalized, she pulled her knees to her chest and felt blindly at her face. Her body was crusted in dense snakeskin, like the pith of an orange. Instinctively she dug in, peeled a scaly strip from brow to navel, tore the rest from her limbs and cast the shards aside.

Her skin prickled, raw as a hatchling’s.

On her hands and knees, Hermione retched loudly. Her throat felt like it might tear.

She wiped the bile from her mouth. The rocks beneath her were damp and slippery. Hermione beheld her surroundings.

It was a cave.

Hermione knelt upon a small island of rock in the centre of a cavernous lake. From a fissure in the distant rock-face, a slim sliver of moonlight broke through, casting a deathly white glow across the island. The air reeked faintly of copper, salt, and sea.

The water lay eerily still—black as marble—and the only sound was the distant roar of the ocean.

Hermione got up and walked around the small island. Her breathing came rapidly from mounting panic, her thoughts racing faster.

I'm alone, she thought.

Tears threatened to overflow.

Hermione wept.

She wanted to run to Harry and Ron, to wrap them in her arms so tightly that they would never ever come to any harm. Hermione wanted to laugh with them, traipsing down towards Hagrid's hut.

But Hermione Granger always had to think...there was no respite.

The memories welled up like blood in a cut.

It was her fault Harry and Ron had died the way they did. If she hadn’t worn the Horcrux… if she’d been more logical, if she hadn’t unleashed her anger on Ron—Hermione released another sob—if only she had listened to Harry, if she hadn’t succumbed to the Fragment, not once, but twice…

"Harry, Ron," Hermione croaked to thin air. "It’s all my fault."

Hermione moaned it again as though it were a hymn.

She sprung up and wrung her hands, circling the rocky island. 

Her mind rushed back to You-Know-Who’s promise.

'I can offer the opportunity to undeniably spare them from their fates...'

She paced back and forth furiously, you promised, she thought, despairing.

Liar.

"WHERE ARE THEY?" Hermione screamed.

Her voice echoed back at her in the cave. She truly was alone.

Hermione paced and kicked something soft; it landed with a splash at the bank of the rock. Unsettled, she approached the edge of the water.

She stared disbelievingly into her palms.

Wet and charred almost to black, but otherwise intact, lay her beaded handbag. Hermione drew in a ragged breath. In the Forest of Dean—panicked—she had noticed Harry vanish from his watch outside their tent, and in her haste to go after him, she had packed their things and snatched the bag.

"At least I have you," she whispered to it sadly.

Hermione dropped her eyes, but in glancing away from the beaded bag, she caught sight of herself reflected for the first time—refracted in the water’s dark surface.

Hermione saw herself.

Hermione was no longer simply herself. Every feature had been sharpened, aligned, measured — with an unnerving clinical geometry.

The faint irregularities of life, the tiny quirks that made her human, were gone. A gleaming scar traced a circle over her right breast, a serpent devouring itself. A nauseating awareness prickled beneath her skin — two pulses, not one. His and hers.

Her eyes glowed scarlet — no longer warm brown, but a flashing, arterial red.  

"Now all you have to do, is share." 

Appalled, Hermione dashed a stone at her burnished reflection, still imprinted on her retinas and howled.

"Of course," Hermione hissed out loud. Her mind throttled alive.

"How could a man so consumed with the idea of eternally sustaining himself, have any normal conception of cooperation?!"

She mentally berated herself. All her life, Hermione had prided herself in her intellect, yet she had been outwitted by the temporary but nonetheless idiotic expectation that Lord Voldemort would have any normal solutions to a magical dilemma — to their bargain.

No, the lunatic thought himself too sly, too extraordinary, too special to use more feasible, natural methods.

Hermione had been narrow-minded.

She swooped to the floor to examine a piece of snakeskin that had sloughed off of her, inspecting it with clinical aggression.

She deposited it into her beaded bag for a further inspection later.

In one fell swoop the Fragment had ensured that his maimed soul had found a new, whole vessel while on the brink of its destruction. Albeit one which was much more conscious than what he would have originally intended. However, in doing so he had simultaneously eliminated the possibility of her destroying him.

Destroying him now would mean literal suicide.

Fool me twice, Hermione thought harshly at herself. The macabre realization was galling.

Morbidly, Hermione contemplated it: ending it all here on this rock. She had packed a few kitchen knives in her beaded bag.

But could a human-Horcrux die from a normal knife?

She shook her head.

Is that what she is now? A bearer for his Fractured soul?  was she the first?

Long since the night at Godric’s Hollow, Hermione had suspected Harry had been a human-Horcrux. It was why he could see into Lord Voldemort's mind, why he could speak to snakes, why his temperament was so volatile. In her darker moments, Hermione speculated whether Harry would need to be told what he truly is, if what she suspected of him is true.

By extension, did this mean she was also capable of the same feats as Harry was? 

Hermione flung a rock at the lake, seething at the ceiling of the cave; onyx stones blinked innocently back at her.

"Voldemort kept his locket in a stone basin in a cave." said Harry.

Eyes darting around the large black lake, Hermione could make out distant banks that glinted like black glass from what was presumably wet tar. 

There was a slim orifice that led out to the sea. The light was growing brighter still.

It's dawn, Hermione registered.

"The Dark Lord took Kreacher with him to a cave beside the sea. And beyond the cave there was a cavern, and in the cavern was a great, black lake" Sobbed Kreacher.

Harry and Dumbledore had left the cave largely untouched, trusting that Voldemort’s arrogance would make him believe his soul fragment safe. But Hermione knew with absolute certainty that the Locket had placed her in the very cave it had once terrorized, the very place it had housed its Horcrux — and now it had left her there too.

Hermione turned, eyes roving. No potion, no basin, no boat, and no Inferi.

The eerie stillness seemed to indicate this place had known some magic, but it did not show the same dark taint of the magic that Harry and Kreacher had once described. The cave was younger somehow — the darkness less saturated with evil, the air still raw.

This is beyond maddening, Hermione thought. She threw herself to the floor then rose again almost immediately.

I cannot stay here, Hermione concluded.

Hermione's mind whirled hysterically. She had no wand to Apparate with.

Even with her altered appearance, taking the Knight Bus could spell trouble for her. She was still an undesirable and a Muggleborn.

She shrugged nervously at the lake, I suppose I'll have to do this the Muggle way.

She undid her beaded bag, pulled on a change of clothes, and tied her bag to her back.

Hermione waded into the icy seawater and began to swim.

The snow was drifting down and down.

How odd, Hermione thought.

In the forest the snow had already stuck. Drifting snowflakes brushed her cloak.

Hermione shivered and took a black cloak from her beaded bag. She was absolutely drenched and freezing from her swim and climb up from the cave.

Hermione trudged up a winding cul-de-sac strewn with party poppers, drink bottles, and dud firecrackers.

Tilting her head upward, she judged the height of the sun — it was at least ten in the morning.

Not a Muggle in sight.

She passed a series of dated seaside cottages; their letterboxes stuffed with newspapers. There was a very old-fashioned blue Fiat parked on the side of the road, one which she was certain Mr. Weasley would adore.

She pulled the hood of her cloak further down.

Two Muggle children had drawn on the road with chalk and were playing hopscotch. Hermione smiled softly at the sight. Her eyes roved around the closed shops examined oddly vintage looking posters advertising sweets.

She hunted for some kind of indication of where she was — or better yet, a map.

One of the Muggle beamed at her.

"Happy New Year Miss!" One of them said.

She saw the boy's smile falter as he walked near enough to see underneath the hood of her cloak. Hermione saw the fear bloom on his little face when his eyes landed on her scarlet eyes. Before she could say a word, the little boy backed away, his hand coming to find his sister's and pulling her back into a white house.

Hermione pressed her lips together. 

New Year? she thought, perplexed. She could not recall when the last Potterwatch had been. How long have I been out cold?

Hermione paused at the window of a closed shop.

E & N. LONG Charmouth Post Office.

I'm in Dorset, Hermione noted. 

Her eyes flickered down to a poster hammered to the front door. She stopped dead.

CLOSED FROM THE 31st OF DECEMBER 1946 TO THE 2^nd OF JANUARY 1947!

HAPPY NEW YEAR'S EVE TO ALL!

SEE YOU ALL NEXT YEAR.

Unconsciously, her face had drawn so close to the door that the tip of Hermione’s nose had bumped against the wood.

Unmoved, she poked the poster with a single digit, testing for signs of it being bewitched, muttering to herself.

"I can offer the opportunity to undeniably spare them from their fates..."

She jumped back as though she had received an electric shock, tripping backwards onto the pavement.

"Awful things have happened when wizards have meddled with time…"

Hermione began to laugh hysterically.

“Awful things have already happened,” said a derisive voice.

A dog in a Muggle's garden barked in response.

Underneath her cloak, Hermione's fingers fingered for her coin purse in her beaded bag. She stepped backwards; she cast a quick look around for muggles. 

Grinning, Hermione stuck her wand hand out in front of her as though stopping a bus.

There was a deafening bang.

An obnoxiously purple triple-decker bus screeched to a halt in front of her.

I love magic, Hermione thought with glee.

Then a corpulent conductor in a much-too-small purple uniform, sporting an equally purple walrus mustache, jumped off the bus with far too much gusto.

"HAPPY NEW YEAR MA'AM!" Boomed the purple conductor.

"Welcome to the Knight Bus! At your service! I am your conductor Frode MacClivert. This beautiful beast is emergency transport for the stranded witch or—"

"—Diagon Alley, please. I need a new wand." Burst Hermione, flustered. "Oh yes, and Happy New Year," she said, remembering herself.

"Need a new wand, do you?" The conductor nodded cheerily, unperturbed. His purple walrus Mustache wiggled comically.

"That'll be five sickles. Six sickles gets you a hot chocolate, eight sickles gets a water bottle and a toiletry kit, and ten sickles will get you snacks along with this morning's Daily Prophet—or any paper of your choosing. Now, name please?"

"Mafalda Collins," she said, stepping onto the bus. Hermione reached into her handbag, extracted her change.

Thank Merlin for inflation, she thought, placing ten sickles into his waiting palm. She could hear her stomach growling.

MacClivert nodded excitedly at the driver and there was another colossal BANG!

They were off.

Hermione lowered the hood of her cloak. MacClivert's eyes instantly zeroed in on her red irises and his hospitable demeanour instantly plummeted.

"Will that be The Daily Prophet then, Miss Collins?" MacClivert asked, far less enthusiastically this time.

Hermione worried her bottom lip.

"Yes please. Oh and Mr. MacClivert?" she said very carefully. "If I give you the snack, would you mind transfiguring it into a pair of dark glasses, perhaps?"

She tried to plaster a sheepish expression on her face and gestured to her eyes.

"A wonky colour change charm,” she laughed uncomfortably, feeling like she wanted to kick herself while she lied through her teeth. “My little brother was practicing with my wand and then broke it during our New Year’s Eve celebrations. My Mum still isn't awake yet to fix my eye colour."

MacClivert brightened immediately, motioning for Hermione to follow him.

Hermione walked into the compartment, nervously assessing the bouncing beds around them. 

"Not to worry Miss. Collins, we get all sorts of funny requests 'ere. Comes with the job I 'spose."

He waggled his purple eyebrows, humming pleasantly to himself. MacClivert turned, picked up a chocolate frog card from a counter, flourished his wand and handed her a rather eccentric pair of purple, leopard print cat-eye sunglasses. He pointed at the bouncing beds.

"They're spelled not to romp about after you sit on one. If they do bother you, just lie your head on the pillow. Be careful not to switch after you choose one, they're the jealous types. Now is there anything else I can do to make your journey more comfortable, Miss?" He asked smilingly.

"A drying charm too please," said Hermione ruefully, holding up a single soggy sleeve.

"Rough night?" asked MacClivert with a chuckle.

Hermione nodded, grimacing. 

MacClivert waved his wand at her and she felt the familiar gust of warm wind.

"Well, we'll be in London by four this afternoon! I daresay you'll find that very few are as keen as Ollivander on a New Year’s Day. Rest of 'em will be shut up, or making merry, 'cept perhaps the Leaky or those folk in Knockturn. But they'd be open even on their deathbeds."  MacClivert rolled his eyes and bustled back to the front of the bus.

Hermione smiled fondly at his retreating back. She was alone.

Collapsing on a ricocheting bed, she unfurled the Daily Prophet.

1st of January 1947.

"Slimy Slytherins," Hermione uttered to the thin air.

In 1947, Tom Riddle would have just graduated from Hogwarts and begun working as an assistant at Borgin and Burkes. 

Hermione clenched her teeth. She withdrew her coins purse, jingling it.

Hermione had quietly withdrawn her life's savings before the Horcrux hunt, but it could only sustain her for so long.

"Who knew inflation would be a small mercy?" She muttered to herself, counting her savings.

Employment, she thought righteously. She gave the fragile bag a small shake, groping for a transcription of her grades. She had brought them along just in case the Death Eaters should ever decide to ransack her residence while it was vacated.

As if I'd ever let them get their blasted hands on my transcripts, Hermione thought viciously.

She wilted quickly; nobody would offer respectable pay to an O.W.L. level job applicant.

I'll need to falsify the dates, the examiner's notes and my N.E.W.T. grades. 

Her nose turned upwards in inward disapproval. 

She'd need to catch up on her N.E.W.T.s to be believable — and maybe seek additional training if the job was specialized.

Good Godric, she thought. She'd need to perform an obscene number of charms, Confund someone or worse if they found something amiss.

A trip to Flourish and Blotts would be paramount. She needed time, time to research, time to practice, and time to plan.

She rummaged around her beaded bag.

Reverently, she pulled out a bottle of perfume that Ron had once given her and Harry's Mokeskin pouch, staring at the objects mournfully. Shaking her head, she pushed them aside.

Another time.

Hermione shook open the Daily Prophet and skimmed the front page which was debating who would succeed Leonard Spencer-Moon for Minister for Magic (it would be Wilhelmina Tuft). There was a scathing opinion article on the superiority of Thiago Quintana's White River Monster wands (Hermione disagreed), and a short column on how muggle London was slowly rebuilding after (a second) tumultuous muggle world war. There was even an entire gossip column devoted to a haughty-looking witch, Belvina Burke (née Black), and her unhappy marriage.

Hermione sighed.

Her eyes snapped up to a misted window. 

"I have seen your most desperate desires...I can offer the opportunity to undeniably spare them..."

She narrowed her eyes.

"What is my most desperate desire?" She asked her impassive reflection in hushed tones, as if the Horcrux would decide now of all times to declare itself.

"I wanted the three of us together: safe, happy and unharmed. I wanted to help Harry make sure He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named would be gone." 

Hermione's voice was soft, as though she was afraid that someone might be listening. 

I didn't want to be lonely. Hermione thought longingly at her reflection, like someone in confession. 

Over the top of her purple sunglasses, her red eyes seemed to gleam knowingly back at her.

Hermione knew she was not speaking of the loneliness one experiences amidst friends, but of a yearning for an experience she felt she had been deprived of.

From the depths of her beaded bag, Hermione withdrew the Marauder’s Map.

The parchment flickered to life under her scarlet gaze. Her finger traced the inked corridors toward one forbidden location: The Chamber.

Hermione pressed her finger to the parchment like a knife, over where the Chamber of Secrets should have been labelled.