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alt_potterverse

Dataset card Data Studio Files
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June, 1945. The Three Broomsticks.
She wants to kill him. She doesn’t want to kill him. She does. She doesn’t.
Somewhere in the past two years, she thinks it’s possible that she’s lost her mind. Or maybe it happened before then. Maybe it happened the moment she saw Harry’s dead body. Maybe it happened when she obliviated her parents. Maybe it happened back in first year when she realized that people would be trying to kill her for the rest of her life.
Tom Riddle sits across from her in a booth at a tavern, drinking butterbeer and telling her that he’s accepted a position at Borgin and Burke’s. She should be tossing hexes at him. She should be throwing unforgiveables his way. She should be burning him to the ground, along with everything he’s ever even remotely cared about.
Instead, she frowns.
"That’s beneath you," she says. The words are not what she intended to say, but she means them, and they both know it. "You have a lot of potential, Tom."
He rolls his eyes at her. When did he get comfortable enough to roll his eyes at her?
"Obviously," he says. "But I don’t want to push papers at the ministry, and everyone has to start somewhere. Even me."
"But what do you want to do?"
Why does she care? Part of her still screams to kill him. Kill him. Kill him. But...
Why bother with that either? She’s stuck here in 1945. Everyone she loves isn’t born yet. And Tom...well. Tom is not what she expected. Tom is everything she expected. She should have killed that day two years ago in Diagon Alley. She should kill him now.
"Something great," he says, and his eyes are the most alive she’s ever seen. She thinks she knows what he’s talking about, and so she doesn’t ask.
They both leave the pub alone.
They are both disappointed.
Tom is bored at Borgin and Burke’s. Bored but busy. There are always customers to deal with, to woo. He’s good at it. Borgin likes him because he brings in more customers. Burke likes him because Tom always gets the best price for anything. They both tell him that this job was made for him.
He hates the slimy men that try to cheat him out of money. He hates the pureblood elite who treat him like scum. He hates the women – rich, poor, young, old – who bat their eyelashes and stand too close. He hates that Abraxas has been at the ministry for less than six months and has already been promoted twice, while he is still working at a second-hand shop for minimum wage.
He reminds himself that this is his plan. Once everyone is in position, he’ll be able to take over without difficulty, and without all the ass-kissing he would have had to do if he had taken that ministry job. Although, he admits, he’s doing more ass-kissing here than he would like.
He has not heard from Hermione since their dinner – was it a date? – at the Three Broomsticks nearly six months ago. He tries not to think about it.
When Tom gets home – a shabby, sparsely decorated apartment above a bakery – there is a small, wrapped box sitting on his kitchen table. There is no tag, no owl waiting around, but he knows who it’s from just the same.
He reads the letter first.
"Meet me in Cairo. Or not. Your choice. We could do something great. P.S. Happy Birthday Tom. P.P.S. It activates at 3 PM. Don’t be late."
His gift is a portkey.
Tom packs and unpacks four separate times.
He’s determined not to go.
At 2:59 PM, he’s packed with portkey in hand.
It takes Hermione a month after inviting Tom to travel with her to realize that she’s trying to save him. They are sitting together at a café in Argentina, sipping on iced water and going over their plans to hike a mountain in search of signs of ancient wizarding communities, when he suddenly looks up at her.
"How did you know about the horcruxes?" he asks, casually, as if talking about the weather.
"I..." She pauses. "It was a calculated guess. I wasn’t sure, but I have seen quite a bit of dark magic, you know. I know the signs."
He hums in agreement. "But you didn’t tell anyone."
She blinks at him. "Obviously. If you recall, you did threaten to kill me."
"Ah, but only because you first threatened to destroy a piece of my soul."
"Hypothetically," she corrects him. "If you turned the locket into a horcrux. Did you?"
She wants the answer to be no. A firm, resounding no.
"Not yet, although I’ll admit it was part of my plan."
Hermione knows she looks crestfallen, and she does not bother to hide it. To her surprise, Tom seems at least a little bothered by her expression.
"Your position on horcruxes, combined with your expertise on all things ancient and obscure, has forced me to reconsider," he says, eyes averted. He almost does not catch the smile she inadvertently shows him.
November, 1946. They stand on the shore of a lake in Wales – which possesses a name that even Hermione had not bothered trying to pronounce correctly – arguing over the origins of Merlin.
"He could have been a druid," she says. "Several different sources suggest –"
"Oh, come off it," Tom says, rolling his eyes. "Merlin was a pureblood wizard. Everyone knows that."
"No, they don’t. Nobody knows anything for certain."
"And what?" Tom scoffs. "I suppose you’re going to tell me that King Arthur was real too? That Excalibur exists?"
Hermione folds her arms. "Well I don’t suppose you’ve seen Godric Gryffindor’s sword before, but I’d say there’s a pretty good chance they’re the same thing."
"Hermione, do you have any evidence to back up that claim? Is it so difficult for you to admit that I’m right?"
"You’re not right nearly as often as you think you are. Prat," she says, all but shoving him into the lake.
He loses his balance on the slick rocks and tumbles into the water anyway. For a moment, they both stare at each other, waiting. Then he gabs her by the leg and pulls her into the frigid water with him. He looks supremely pleased with himself.
Hermione, though, is looking at his lips, and then at his hand on her hip and her hand on his chest. He follows her eyes with his own. Close proximity is nothing new for them; they’ve been sharing the same space for almost a year now. But it’s never been quite like this, almost intimate. Less platonic than either of them have ever allowed it to be.
They are both shivering when he kisses her. They are both pretending it’s only from the cold.
"Happy Birthday Tom," she whispers in the darkness of their shared tent. He pulls her closer, eliminating the space between them.
Hermione wonders, not for the first time, what he would be doing right now if she hadn’t been there. She decides that it doesn’t matter.
"I have to go," he says at dawn in early April of 1947. There is a letter in his hand, the writing neat and tilting. "There’s a position open at Hogwarts. Defense Against the Dark Arts. I’m going to apply."
Hermione nods, but says nothing. She knows she should have suspected that she could not keep him away from his goals for long. She knows that his return to Hogwarts would be for the sole purpose of recruiting more followers. She knows he will be denied the job, and that everything will keep going south from there.
"Come with me," he says. "Return to England and –"
"Give up what I’ve done with my life? To do what, Tom?"
"Marry me." The words spill out before he can stop them, before he can think. "Marry me, and together we can shape the future. We could accomplish anything. We could rule over the whole world."
"Say yes." He is staring at her, the most raw and honest he’s ever been with her. The most vulnerable. "Please."
She should kill him, a part of her is still screaming for that. She should kill him now.
"Yes, okay. Yes."
Tom doesn’t tell her what his plans are; she overhears them. At a party thrown in their honor only a month before the wedding. Tom and his followers from Hogwarts, still talking about blood supremacy. He hasn’t changed at all, not even a little.
Hermione leaves to go vomit in the bathroom.
It’s Tom, unfortunately, who finds her there.
"Are you alright?" he asks, and she resists the urge to Avada him right then and there.
Because Merlin’s beard it hurts. It feels like time is ripping her apart all over again, only this time it’s centered in her chest and she’s stupid. Stupid. Stupid. This, the snide part of her mind says, is why we don’t mess around with dark magic. Or dark lords.
"Hermione," Tom says, his voice steely. "If you don’t tell me what’s wrong right now, I’m flooing you to St. Mungos."
"You." Her voice is not steady or strong, and perhaps that is what terrifies Tom the most. She sounds broken. "You still want to burn the world down."
This is clearly not what he was expecting.
"No," she snaps. "You would claw and slaughter and torch your way to the top. You’re plans, Tom, are barbaric."
"Stop it," he demands. She could see that he was getting angry, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself.
"You’re talking about murdering so many innocent people. You –"
"You’ve known who and what I am for a long time." He is furious, shouting at her. "You knew about the horcruxes. You knew what I had already done, what I’m willing to do."
"And I tried to give you a different option!"
"I don’t want a different option, Hermione," he says. "You asked me what I wanted, once."
"This isn’t great, Tom. This is...this is horrible."
"So I guess I can’t count on your vote of support," he sneers at her.
"I won’t let you-"
"You won’t have much of a choice, wife."
"If you think I’m marrying you after this, Tom, you’re even more deluded than I thought."
He raises his wand towards her, the first truly aggressive move he had ever made. Without even thinking, she apparates away, disappearing with a distinctive crack.
The first time he sees her, he initially mistakes her for a homeless muggle. It’s nothing in particular—although her hair looks as though it’s been the direct victim of a German bombing—but there’s something manic about her eyes. Desperate.
And, of course, something manic about her magic, which he suddenly feels stretching across the space between them. Its power is...intoxicating. He does not mean to stare, but he can’t seem to stop. Neither can she.
Later, he will think that this moment, truly, was the beginning of the end.
Tom’s problems really start when he sees the woman in the Daily Prophet. She looks different, he notes, almost unrecognizable. Her hair has been smoothed back into a loose bun, and she’s wearing a quality pair of robes. She does not look homeless or murderous. She looks...normal.
Except, of course, for the fact that she is holding Rowena Ravenclaw’s lost diadem.
Archaeological prodigy, Hermione Granger. That’s what the article calls her. Prodigy. A word he has only ever associated with himself and, grudgingly, Dumbledore. If it were not for the proof of the glittering crown in her hands, he’d almost be inclined to disregard the praise. But the diadem has been lost for hundreds of years, since Helena Ravenclaw’s death.
Which means that Hermione Granger must be very good if she can find something that lost.
And she’s taken an apparent interest in him, Tom thinks smugly. How flattering.
He expects her to be intelligent. He figures that she has to be for her line of work. But he has also found that people with book-smarts are rarely entertaining, that they so often lack charm and wit and personality beyond their intelligence. He certainly has no expectation that she’ll be able to keep up with him.
Slughorn’s party throws him.
It’s not that the party itself is all that spectacular—Slughorn is as ostentatious and overbearing as always. Tom is bored with it, even though the Minister of Magic is there. Professional quidditch players, the head of the DMLE, even an Unspeakable or two—Slughorn’s guest list has never been this extensive. Tom makes his rounds, makes sure he gets introduced to everyone.
But his eyes are always on her. Hermione Granger, archaeological prodigy and guest of honor. Slughorn dotes on the poor woman, no doubt hoping to add her to his collection. Tom watches as Granger chats amicably with everyone Slughorn throws at her. She doesn’t falter once, not even when one of the curse-breakers from Gringotts explains Granger’s own job to her, saying she can owl him anytime she gets stuck. Not even when he tells her finding the diadem was beginner’s luck.
"Oh?" she says, though Tom can just barely hear her over the rumbling voice of the Bulgarian team’s star keeper. Her voice is light and curious, innocent even, but Tom can hear the humor lacing her tone. "What was your "beginner’s luck’ find?"
The man stumbles. "Excuse me?"
"I’ve always thought being a curse-breaker would be interesting," she continues as if the man hadn’t spoken at all. "But far too limiting for me, I’m afraid."
"Limiting?" the man splutters. Tom barely keeps himself from smirking. It wouldn’t do to tip off the Bulgarian keeper—Edvard? Ivan?—that he’s no longer paying attention.
"I mean no offense," Granger says. The glint in her eyes says otherwise. "It’s just that I’m research-minded. I could never stand someone telling me where to go, just handing me an assignment. Half the thrill for me is tracking the object down in the first place. But curse-breaking is more than enough for other people, I’m sure."
It's beautiful, Tom thinks, the ease with which she trivializes the man’s job, how she cuts through his undeserved pride with only a few words. And clever, too. Because she has not once let a drop of condescension drip into her voice. She seems so earnest, so well-meaning.
He has to meet her.
They’ve been dancing around each other all evening. He’s not stupid; he’s seen how she watches him just as much as he watches her.
She’s talking to Slughorn again by the time he comes up to them. Or rather, Slughorn is gushing about her again, bringing a small pink-tinge to her otherwise bronzed cheeks. Tom wonders if she fakes her blushes like he does. Tom wonders if they’re as similar as he suspects.
Hermione is...shorter than he thought. He has previously only seen her at a distance and in photographs, and her presence—more than that, her sheer magical force—gives her the impression of someone grander. Standing next to her now, she is confusingly, charmingly petite. He could probably rest his chin on her head if he so desired.
Which he doesn’t. At all.