Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world.
Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”
-Rumi

He burns. Slithers of ice and tongues of fire graze his skin, freezing him, engulfing him. There is nothing but the chorus he hears now, nothing but the screams of a thousand generations never laid to rest. He is infinite. He is nothing and everything and then suddenly, he just Is.
Everything, the howling winds, the burning, the endless light, it all just stops.
And he breathes.

Slowly, his senses come back to him. Muffled voices and bursts of noise are wobbly and faded, as if underwater, but he hears them. Shapes are undefined and blurry but he sees them. He feels little sensation other than pressure but he feels it.
And then his senses begin to sharpen.
The bursts of noise become explosions, the voices become screams. For a moment, he is terrified that he has failed, that he has simply moved place, straight from the safety of Hogwarts’ walls to the chaos of wartime London. Then the shapes sharpen and he sees it- his beloved Hogwarts in flames.
This is the future Hermione told him about. This is the time of the Girl in the Smoke.

Pushing himself up, off of the hard ground, he looks around him.
He is just beyond Hogwarts’ walls, out on the grass, and he can see the Groundskeeper’s hut in the distance with the Forbidden Forest not far behind.
The majority of the noise seems to be coming from roughly around the entrance courtyard, although it’s falling quieter, now.
He can just make out a parade of dark figures moving swiftly from the Forbidden Forest along the bridge leading to the Courtyard. One stands out beyond the rest and even from this distance Tom can see their skin is unnaturally pale and grey as a corpse. His pulse quickens.
He may not have long.
He feels a sharp prick in his chest as he turns.
Definitely not long.

Tom Riddle sweeps past the standing stones and into the school. It is chaos. Spells fly madly around him, green, red, yellow. They are thrown haphazardly, with little care, the casters simply meaning to take out as many of their opponents as they can as quickly as they can.
There is no elegance in war, he knows this.

People pay him little mind as he passes through the fray (they are too busy focusing on their own battles) but as the fighting dies down and people begin to move, to shuffle towards the courtyard as if pulled by invisible strings, he casts a quick invisibility spell and hides.
The Head Boy observes them carefully. His uniform is clearly outdated, for a start (and he doesn’t even have all of it- he’s still missing socks and shoes for the ritual had required him to be grounded to the earth through touch and he hadn’t exactly been able to bring spares).
They all appear quite war torn, too- injured, bruised, beaten and bloody. Their faces are gaunt and haunted, devoid of almost all hope. These are the faces he sees everywhere in Muggle London.
These are faces he has caused.

He scans the bodies at his feet, at the beaten and broken corpses of Hogwarts students- Hogwarts students- Children, young adults at best- and tries to beat down the rising horror, the rising nausea in his throat.
I did this. I did this.
That stills him, for a moment.
Then he swallows and gets back to the task at hand.

Quickly, he finds one suitable to his needs. He checks for a pulse and finds one- faint, but there. Tom hesitates.
He casts a quick diagnostic spell (one of his own design, one he’s particularly proud of) and checks the boy’s vitals.
He’s unconscious, and badly injured, but he’ll live.
He’s also roughly Tom’s height, age, and build.

He studies the boy- teenager- for a moment, analysing his sharp cheekbones softened by smiles, the neat sweep of his hair, and the careful put-togetherness of his uniform. Tom wonders if he, himself could’ve looked a little like this, in better circumstances. 
Just a brilliant boy from Slytherin. Brilliant, great, and most importantly, good.
And then Tom begins to cast.
He transfigures his clothing to match the teen’s and his hair to follow the same careful sweep. He burns and distresses the fabric of his new uniform and, after a brief hesitation, takes his cloak, tie, and shoes. They’re a decent fit and don’t pinch not hang too loosely on his lean frame. The colours are odd to wear but blue looks good on him and that really doesn’t matter now-

He throws another student’s cloak (this one definitely gone) over the boy and runs after the students, hoping that whatever is going down in the courtyard, he is not too late to stop his future self and save Hermione.

Chapter Text

"Eveybody wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die."
- Albert King

Hermione stares out across the battlefield, eyes boring hatefully into the face of her enemy. They rake across mottled grey skin stretched thin over bone and burn fiercely as every word from his lips adds fuel to her fury.
She hates him. So much.

She hadn’t expected Voldemort to be leader of the Free World, handing out equal rights and opportunities to muggleborns and purebloods alike but she’d thought- She’d hoped-
She’d hoped that something would have changed. But no. She’d arrived in the same devastated world she’d left and collapsed immediately into the arms of her closest friends. She’d had a quick recovery and other than some… Unusual… Questioning from Ginny, nothing was different. Riddle had still made his horcruxes. Riddle had still delved too deep into magic to turn back from. Riddle had still become an inciter of prejudice and the slaughterer of millions.
She didn’t think ‘monster’ was a hateful enough word for her to use to describe him. And now she is face to face with her enemy, the callous tyrant she had briefly, briefly cared for and she finds not even the slightest flicker of recognition nor remorse in his eyes. He had no guilt for what he had done… He was beyond redemption. Whatever ‘progress’ she thought he had made was clearly a clever ruse on his part and she’d fallen for it too easily, just like every other individual he had charmed, flattered, and fooled in his rise to power.
Hermione swallows down the rising storm of regret and sadness that threatens to break out within her again and fuels the emotions into anger. She really, really hates him.

(And what she hates most of all was that it meant that she cared- because hatred isn’t the antithesis of love. That was indifference. No, to truly hate someone, they had to be able to hurt you, to break your trust and leave some small part of you utterly broken and wishing for the world to make the slightest bit of sense... But it didn’t).

Her best friend is dead as well as countless others, Hogwarts is in ruins and they have all but lost the war.
Voldemort is gloating, laughing even, over the heartless murder of her best friend and it is all her fault. If her magic hadn’t turned against her, failed her, turned her into a walking flower garden then perhaps she would’ve managed to kill Riddle… Perhaps Harry would still be alive.

The cruel laugh is still echoing throughout the courtyard as Hermione’s focus returned to the battlefield.
“Now… Who of you will join us? There’s room for anyone within our ranks.”

Hermione watches, legs unsteady, as Neville steps forwards. She watches, still trembling with betrayal and grief and rage as he begins his speech in Harry’s memory. Something like pride begins to flicker in her too as he pulls out the sword but it is not enough to bring her back to her senses, to stop her from stalking forwards, eyes burning, snarl forming on her gestures and wand held so tightly that her knuckles go pale.
People see her, move forwards, shout, she supposes. But she doesn’t hear a word, only the roar of blood in her ears. Ron is too far away to stop her. Neville is sidetracked. Ginny is too slow…
There is no one here but her, and his betrayal.
She remembers what he taught her, so long ago and she smiles. “You’re going to regret what you did.” She promises, before launching herself into a fight.

~•~•~~•~•~•~•~
Tom slips into the back of the courtyard quietly and as unnoticeably as a tall, apparently very popular boy from Ravenclaw can… He’s lucky that the audience is too transfixed by what’s going on to notice.
When he does look up, sees what he has caused, his heart constricts. Hermione is battling the- the Thing, as an army watches on, laughing and jeering. She is wounded, blood trickling from a dozen cuts, seeping through clothes he does not recognise and down the edges of an expression that he does. He’s not sure who to be worried for.

He watches her coax magic from the air, twisting it to suit her needs, fashioning it into shields, arrows, birds, spears. He watches her work and he marvels- she’d taken his teachings on Old Magick and created something entirely of her own. The army isn’t laughing now, that’s for certain.

But Voldemort’s strategy changes.
Serpentine face twisting into an eerie smile, he begins to pull from his own knowledge of the Old Magicks and Hermione falters. The battle increases in intensity and one of the Army steps forwards to step in- this isn’t Harry, after all, it’s just some girl- but is stopped. Another tries, and another, but no one can match Hermione, not anymore- no one except Him. All meet swooping birds and ghostly tendrils that chase and drag them away.
…But Tom knows it won’t be enough.
This, “Voldemort” may have none of Tom’s finesse, nor his skill, but he seems to have more of his knowledge than Granger does, and twice Tom’s experience.
If she keeps up this fight (which she will, if the look of utter rage in her eyes is anything to go by) then she will lose.

“You are talented, girl… Why do you fight me?” The monster questions, not giving her a chance to fire back a response, “You could have a place among my ranks with that talent. Who taught you to use the Old Magicks like that?”

Eyes narrowing, Hermione nearly snarls in response. She yanks up her sleeve, proudly displaying a crimson scar.
“What, a filthy mudblood like me?”

She grins and Riddle’s blood runs cold. 
Hermione… Wasn’t a pureblood.
He thinks back to all of their arguments, every time her curious eyes, clever smile had faded into quiet disappointment as he began talking about blood purity. He thinks about her careful questioning, her stubborn use of his muggle surname. He thinks about her initial stumbling over the slur until the ugly word had become second nature to her.
Mudblood.
Impure, just like him…
Brilliant, just like him.

This was the final piece of proof that he needed. He was convinced. He had at least had the power of Salazar Slytherin’s blood in his veins- such ‘pure’ blood could easily have accounted for his talent for magic in the eyes of the Pureblood community… But Hermione? Fantastic, clever, quick Hermione? She didn’t have a single drop of Old Blood in her veins, wasn’t even a halfblood, and yet her magic (and her talent for it) was the strongest, most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
Muggleborn… And brilliant.

And scarred.
He’d almost forgotten in his shock, the hateful red script literally carved into her arm.
It didn’t take a genius to guess what it said.
‘Mudblood’.

It sickened him that only months before he might’ve approved of such a thing.
Now? Now… If he ever got his hands on the witch or wizard who did it…
His eyes flickered to her face and he felt the burn of roots spreading through his chest.
He’d hold them down for her. This was a revenge that wasn’t his to take.

The boy gazes at her with fresh eyes as she lets her arm fall back down and settles back into a defensive stance.
“And as to who trained me… Don’t even pretend.”

Tom watches with bated breath as the witch raises her wand again, starting the battle anew. He quickly scans the courtyard, evaluating his options. He was hidden behind a thick crowd of students. There were few escape options in sight, as if they fled they would likely be picked off by any lurking Death Eaters, it was (almost) impossible to apparate off of school grounds (and even if Tom could manage such a ritual that would bypass the school’s magical security system, he would struggle to take so many students with him without splinching them), and of course, Voldemort’s army blocked the bridge even if the students could get past Hermione’s furious duel...
He has no choice but to wait, for now. Intervening would only distract her, and likely finish with several hundred wands pointed at his face, from both sides. He had to be patient but ready to step in if she became overwhelmed. No one could fight a whole army by themselves.

His eyes fly back to the battle.
Spells flash through the air, red, gold, blue- Hermione’s forcing the Thing to get creative, that’s for certain- and as much as the mumble of the crowd is concerned, no one pushes forwards to help. All seem stunned, too afraid to step in, and yet scared for her life.
All house traits seem forgotten, now- loyalty, bravery, and wisdom shuttered away, only fear and an oddly Slytherin-like sense of self-preservation remaining. They are only children, after all.

She's growing tired, now, he realises- but she refuses to stop. Her hand twitches as she forces herself not to clutch at a steadily blooming red stain on her side, and her hands are beginning to tremble. She's the most capable duelist he knows, yet holding off an army on one side and battling Voldemort on the other... That would quickly take its toll on anyone. Fury burns in her eyes, however, fueling a fire that rages in place of the normal honey hue, keeping her on her feet and fiercely flinging spells across the courtyard. Riddle looks again for the variable he’s missing and-
Ah.
He would know him anywhere. Granger’s lengthy descriptions and the Girl in the Smoke's taunts had painted a perfect picture in his mind's eye.
Harry Potter.
His eyes ruefully flick over the limp body of the boy, cradled in the arms of a half-giant.
The Boy who… no longer Lived.

No wonder the students have lost their spirit. Their hope is gone, and his friends are throwing themselves under Voldemort’s wand to get killed alongside him.
The only sounds in the stillness are spells ripping through the air, and the hushed arguing of what he assumes must be ‘Ron’ and his family (the only gingers in the courtyard) as they fight to keep him from joining his friend in the fray (and the grave).
He’s distracted now, attempting to eavesdrop on the conversation- “-not losing another child-!” and he almost misses it.
For the second time that day, time seems to slow and noises muffle as if travelling through water before two fatal words cut through.

“Avada Kedavra!”

Riddle’s head whips around.

No thoughts come to mind. His shoes crunch on the gravel as he shoves students aside, wand instantly travelling to his hand. Green flashes, crackles through the air, reflects in her eyes and he isn’t going to reach her in time-
He grabs at the magic in the air and tears it, forces it through his body and hands without time or sigils or a conduit to temper it and a sound that isn’t quite words, isn’t quite human, passes his lips.
“Protect her .” He orders.

Hermione turns to look at him just as the world explodes into grey.

Chapter Text

“Your task is not to seek for love,
but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself
that you have built against it.”
- Rumi

Hermione turns to look at him just as the world explodes into grey.
Dust bursts from the ground, rock shattering as a thick column of stone is briefly seen forcing its way out of the ground. Emerald light makes the billowing clouds glow and chunks of steaming rock fly from the darkness, scattering across the courtyard.

“Hermione!”
Riddle and Ron’s voices echo across the courtyard in unison and now the redhead is running, stopping to hesitate at Riddle’s side.
The crowds begin to murmur, some more rowdy than others as Riddle and Ron slowly approach the last place they saw Hermione, wafting away the thick smoke. The redhead seems too shaken, too panicked to even question who Riddle is.

Tom’s patience thins and he clears the smoke with a wave of his wand, revealing the devastation left behind.
The steaming column of rock is entirely blackened and glass-smooth on one side, stone polished to a mirror-gleam by the energy of the spell. Chunks of rock are strewn everywhere, gravel still breaking and crumbling from the structure… But a faint blue light glows from beneath the rubble. Riddle sighs in relief.
“Granger.”

They dash forwards and remove the rubble by hand, Tom’s emotion too high to care about the tiny cuts and dust he’ll gain from it with how wrecked his robes are already. 

A tickling is building in his throat. He fights back a cough.
It’s too soon.
The flowers are growing back quicker than ever, more potent than ever. He knows that if he dares clear his throat from the smoke a coughing fit punctuated by perfect yellow petals may soon follow.
Instead, he looks up, takes a long, slow breath to ground himself, and almost misses the tiny, almost imperceptible movement in the right of his eye.
His brows furrow. He risks a quick glance and his eyes meet brilliant green. Curse-green.
Harry’s eyes, widened in worry, flared right open in shock and recognition.
Then they blink closed in an instant, like they were never open in the first place.
He’s alive.
Riddle isn’t certain what the boy’s play is, but it’s clear that his friends think he’s dead. From Hermione’s stories he doubts it could be cowardice, so he must have some kind of plan.
Looking away quickly, he returns his full attention to clearing the rocks, filing the information away for later.
At least that’s one less thing she can hate me for.

As the rocks clear, Hermione’s face becomes visible, white with shock. Tom removes the final rock and as her shield quivers and disappears, he opens his mouth to talk but a wand is already at his throat.

“Expelliarmus!”

He swallows and raises his hands.
“Hermione.”

“Woah, ‘Mione, calm down!” Ron cautions.

Tom’s mind is racing- the boy clearly assumes she is panicked and disorientated from the explosion but it’ll only take two words to explain and another two to end his life.
“It’s just that Prefect guy from Ravenclaw- Fletcher-something, remember?”

Their eyes flick to Ron, then each other.
“Hermione?”

Tom watches her, waiting for her response.

“You… saved me.” She says guardedly.

He nods. She glances across the courtyard to where Voldemort is staggering to his feet, clearly knocked back by the force of his spell.
She needs Riddle’s help and she knows it.

She shoves his wand back into his hand and nods at him. Questions clearly burn in her eyes and her manner is… Distant at best, but she stands at his side, wand drawn.
Ron glances at her again, then at Riddle, a little more suspicious than before, but doesn’t speak up. Now that the shock of the moment is wearing off, he’s clearly starting to question just how the boy had pulled off such an unusual spell, and from the sounds of the whispers in the courtyard, it’s not only he who noticed that at least part of the magic had been transferred through Riddle’s hands instead of his wand.
He also clearly wants to hug Hermione, a realisation that sends a slight spike of- something- through Riddle’s chest but they all know that has to wait, thankfully, now that they’re in the centre of the courtyard, bare metres from Voldemort and his army.
It is not your place to be jealous. Control yourself.

“What’s the plan, Hermione?” Ron whispers.

Slowly, she shakes her head.
No plan.

Ron gulps. “We’re improvising, then. Nice.”

“Be quiet, Ron.” She hisses, voice sharp with worry.

Riddle glances at Hermione but she offers him no cues, waiting for him- or someone else to make the first move.
“Prove yourself.” Her stare seems to say.

Death Eaters begin to crowd around Voldemort as his backup, wands drawn. The students murmur uneasily and teachers hesitate at the sidelines, clearly uncertain as to whether they ought to intervene or keep the remaining students back and safe. A grey haired witch nearly steps forwards but Hermione shakes her head and the teacher (?) reluctantly hangs back, opting to watch in concern, shielding the other students with her body.

Voldemort stares Tom down and he suppresses a slight shudder that threatens to run through him.
That face… He barely recognises himself in it. He can’t decide if that’s comforting or if the fact that he CAN see himself at all in it overwhelms all comfort he could gain from it.
“You… Who are you?” The creature hisses.

Riddle steps forwards, holding himself tall, gracefully, carefully. Appearance is everything with Purebloods and if he can sway even one of them it will make it infinitely easier to integrate his new ideas- discoveries- into Wizarding society.
“Someone who intends to stop you.”

A wild-looking witch snarls in anger at his words but Voldemort just laughs.
“Again, who do you think you are, boy? The only one who ever had a chance is dead, a coward who ran from the battlefield the moment he got a chance.”
Tom didn’t have to be a genius to figure that that was a lie.

He smiles, cold and thin. “Somehow I doubt that that’s how it happened. Whether he did or not, I don’t think that’s quite true...”
He stalks forwards. “Anyone who knows you… Who can really get inside your head could defeat you.”

Voldemort’s smile thins. “And you think that’s you?”

Tom grins. “From one half-blood bastard to another, I’d say so, yes.”
Fury instantly twists the monster’s face and Riddle leaps to the side as Voldemort unleashes a barrage of spells. 

“You dare say such a thing-” Voldemort hisses, briefly halting in his wild assault of magic.
The wild-haired (and wild-eyed) woman from before- likely of Black descent from the look of her features- steps forwards. Tom doesn’t miss the slight flinch from Hermione as the woman raises her wand.

“Let me, my Lord- let me break that little weasel and bring him to his knees for you-” She gabbles excitedly, eyes bright at the thought of torturing him.

Tom's brow furrows and his gut twists uneasily.
The last thing he needs is these fools being completely beyond reason.
He'd relied on his easy charisma and magical talent to win over Purebloods before... If they'd fallen so far as to follow a madman, maybe he'd be of less use than he thought.

The whispers are louder now, too- he faintly recalls that Ron named him as a Pureblood in the year or so below, a ‘Fletcher’-something.

“Hermione, did he just say he was a-”

“Ron, not now. I promise, I will explain later.”

“But Fletcher isn’t- Fletcher-”

“Ron. Not now.”

“You follow a fool-” he begins, looking back and forth across the crowd of Death Eaters. “You follow a monster who has forgotten the path he started down. Who has lost his soul, his sanity in the pursuit of a nonsensical goal.”

The crowd stirs but no one dares make a sound against their Lord. There’s clearly dissenters among the Thing’s ranks, some clearly young (likely too young to resist their families’ ideals), some older who had perhaps made foolish decisions in their youth but had since moved on and were only back because their new families’ lives depended on it…
His eyes fall on such a family-  one of which can only be the descendant of Abraxas Malfoy- platinum-blonde hair, haughty expression, robes expensive enough to feed a family of six… And next to him-
Tom’s mouth nearly falls open and he almost fails to deflect the next hex that comes soaring his way.

They aren’t supposed to be here!

But after a moment, he realises he can’t be correct.
The boy- the spitting image of Abraxas- must be his friend’s grandchild.
Tom’s stomach twists. As strange as that is, that isn’t what’s most important right now.

Abraxas wouldn’t have wanted this.

None of his friends would've wanted such destruction.

He shakes his head as if to clear it, and addresses the Death Eaters again.
“You follow a hypocrite in your desperate need to cling to outdated ideas, incorrect ideas which you parrot from those who came before you-”

“Enough!” Voldemort roars and Tom, Tom abandons all caution and rips away the charm masking his features once and for all.

He opens his mouth and hisses, commanding Voldemort’s enormous snake to approach him, to the gasps of the crowd.
“I know this because I walked in his path. I am Tom Riddle. I am the half-blood bastard borne of a descendant of Slytherin and a common muggle. I subscribed to those ideas, those foolish ideas about blood purity, muggles stealing magic from Purebloods-”
He glances back to look at Hermione, layering as much sincerity into his tone as he can.
“And I was wrong.”

She stares at him. Really stares, like she barely recognises him, like the world has ended and started anew.

He faces the silenced Purebloods again.
“I was wrong.” He repeats, firmly.

He feels a tickle in his throat and he clears it and fuck that was a mistake, he can feel the petals lift in the air he sucked into his lungs, brushing maddeningly against the walls of his chest-
He swallows, hard, and his voice loses that cool, collected edge, becoming a slight bit hasty, desperate in his attempt to say all that has to be said before he succumbs to the perfume hanging thick in his throat-

“Now, I don’t care what you’ve done, who you’ve killed. I don’t care how bad your pasts are… I can’t say the same for the courts or the families of your victims but I will say this- stop now. Stop, before it gets any worse. Because if you keep following this man out of fear, out of blind hope that one day you will fade into a position of little importance, that you will have some freedom from the cursed lives you are living, you are wrong. You will never escape. His ideas, his influence will spread and you will never find peace, never find comfort. You will become trapped in the ideals you so desperately upheld in the desire to feel special, superior. They will be your undoing.”
He’s not quite pleading with them, he hasn’t sunk that far yet, but from the looks on the faces of the Malfoys he must be getting across to them, although he knows they won’t act alone. Their sense of self-preservation is strong enough to ensure that.

“That’s quite enough.” Voldemort says coldly, raising his wand at Riddle. “I don’t know who you are. I don’t know why you claim to be me, think that a simple command in Parseltongue is enough to claim my identity… But I do know a few things.”
His wand twitches and Riddle barely manages to deflect the attack, overwhelmed by the sudden intensity of the blow from such a tiny movement.
“One- I have no memory of such an event as this… If I truly travelled through time, I would remember this moment. We wouldn’t even be here.
Two- I would never trust Avery or Nott with my safety in such a complex ritual.
Three-“
He smiled coldly.
“You’re much too predictable.”

Riddle’s brows furrow. Then he realises the crazy witch from before has disappeared from Voldemort’s side. He hears the shout- “CRUCIO!”- and Her scream, a blood-chilling sound he was so goddamn glad he’d never been foolish enough to cause. He hears it before he can turn, and he feels a spell hit the small of his back, sending him flying the moment he tries.
He is dimly aware of the chaos erupting around him as he falls. Ron tackles the mad witch to the ground and Hermione draws in shaking breaths, scrabbling desperately for her wand as soon as she’s able. The world tilts, sliding in and out of focus.
Riddle groans and coughs, he can’t help it, the scent is thick in his throat now and ever so heady-

“Hermione-“ He manages, wincing as he attempts to stagger to his knees.

Voldemort stalks towards him, a monstrous blur in Tom’s vision, splitting into two and back into one as his eyes fail him.
“Pathetic- Crucio!” The red lightning whips towards him and as Tom makes the words to counter it, no sound comes. He is struck with a terrible irony- tortured by his own creation, his future self- all because he learned some form of affection for another being.

This really is pathetic.

He raises his hand, tries to call on the power he’d used before, but his limbs are like lead and he can’t quite focus.

“CRUCIO!”

His body convulses as tiny pinpricks of lightning dance through every particle of his body, setting each individual nerve alight with agony. He hears sudden shouting, excitement from the crowd. Hermione’s voice, joyful, tearful.

Another voice- rough, pleased, desperate- “POTTER!”

A flash of white dashing across his vision, Voldemort turning too late.
Riddle’s eyes flicker shut as he sees Abraxas- no, the young Malfoy- run to the boy with the brilliant green eyes, throw- something-

He feels the gravel prickling against his fingers, tries to breathe through heavy lungs, tries to focus the shifting, blurring world that seems to be tilting out of his control.
“Granger-“ He tries, but her name gets caught in his throat.

He coughs again, and agony lances through him once more.

Chapter Text

“By three methods may we learn wisdom:
first by reflection, which is noblest;
second by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.”

-Confucius

She isn’t sure what to think.
The fury, dangerously, has faltered in her chest, replaced by the slightest flicker of hope.

You fool.

She’d let herself hope once before, daring to hope again was madness but when she looked into His eyes, earnest and soft and green, something in her chest gave out. This was what Harry had wanted. His ideal, soft-hearted scenario of how to win the war- save Riddle from himself. She wants to scoff, or maybe cry, she isn’t sure- Harry, sweet and brave Harry had wanted her to offer mercy to the man who had killed his parents, devastated the world in a magical war had been killed and this monster was alive.
Some part of her couldn’t help but wonder if that’s why he lay in Hagrid’s arms, limp and lifeless- because he tried to do ‘the right thing’ yet again.
It’s not like she could beat back this whole army on her own, though. If she hoped to escape this situation that she’d run into with Gryffindor bravado (foolishness, as Tom might’ve put it) unscathed and get the students away to safety, she needed Riddle.

She had always been so careful to never get into a situation where she needed his help, before. Hermione knew he didn’t suffer fools lightly and while he tolerated her more than most, that was no guarantee of his loyalty or aid in a crisis… So she had tampered down her more impulsive side and played it safe as much as possible until the one time it was completely out of her control- a mad, magic-fuelled disease rather than a situation she had walked into on purpose... But then, Riddle had actually come through. He had saved her. And now he was here.
So, while she wasn’t sure if she could exactly trust him, she knew she could rely on him. She had given him his wand and stood at his side, ignoring Ron’s frantic and confused glances that increased in frequency the harder she ignored them and praying that she wasn't making the wrong decision.

For a few moments, all she can hear is the beating of her heart in her ears as she watches wizards and witches draw their wands, ready to fight. Time seems to falter and slow to a crawl.
She jerks her chin at Riddle, prompts him to do something, prove himself.
Prove he is not the monster he was.
So, in true Riddle fashion, he monologues. He appeals to the sanity of the assembled Death Eaters, carefully pulls deconstructs and pulls away their ideals, their thoughts on half-bloods and magic. He declares himself Tom Riddle, he speaks in Parseltongue, he begs them to change their ways before it is too late.

Jaw hanging ever so slightly, she cannot bring herself to look away- all she can do is stare at the boy. He looks back, eyes softened but determined, a blazing poison green.
Hermione is too busy trying to wrap her head around the time-travelling logistical nightmare that is Tom Riddle to notice Bellatrix disappear from her line of sight.
She realises this a split second too late, right as red lightning begins to course through her veins and she bites down on her tongue so hard it draws blood.

.

.

.

Her throat is raw from the scream that tore out of it moments ago, her knees scraped and bruised from crashing to the floor for the second time that day. Her fingers curl around her wand, and the world comes into focus briefly as she sees Ron grapple with Bellatrix, thoughts of spellcasting gone from his mind as he attempts to wrestle her wand from her.
Sharply, she glances up. Her vision takes a second to follow, still swimming. Bright light flashes again and she sees Riddle go down, convulsing as streams of red lightning course through him. 

Riddle.
Cruel. Powerful. Unstoppable…
And yet none of those adjectives seemed to apply to him now. Now, the only words that came to mind were the very same words she used to describe her boys- self-sacrificial, too-courageous-for-his-own-good, idiot.
She had no idea what rock had smacked into the boy’s skull while she was gone, leading him to have a rather early mid-life crisis and reconsider all of his life choices and deepest convictions but that didn’t matter right now. What matters is that if she can save him now, convince him to stay that way, all of this can be fixed. Maybe. If they don’t shatter time and space trying.

She crawls to him, head pounding, wand held tightly in her shaking grip.

Crucio!

Voldemort’s shout echoes out again across the courtyard and Riddle spasms once more. She huffs in frustration and as she drags herself to her knees she sees him. Harry.
He’s up, fury and determination glinting in his brilliant green eyes, wandless but ready to fight. All of Hogwarts cheers, and Hermione cannot help but shout along with them.

He’s alive.

She’s halfway to staggering to her feet to run towards him, Riddle practically forgotten, but she quickly realises she’ll be more of a hindrance than a help and oh-
Draco Malfoy has beaten her to it.

The ex-weasel is sprinting across the courtyard to Harry, shouts his name at the top of his lungs before throwing his own wand to him, leaving himself defenceless in the middle of two armies who hate him.

Damn.

Well, she wasn’t exactly shocked but also couldn’t say she saw that one actually happening. Draco gazes at Harry like he’s a lantern in an endless night and there would be no point in survival without him. Such a look is dangerous and Hermione can’t quite decide if she should feel some twisted pride in the boy for finally breaking away from his family’s views to aid Harry and chase what he actually wants, or if she should just pity him.
She had thought the blonde would be pining in silence for the rest of his life… Now at least if the Death Eaters immediately kill him, he had made his feelings known and might actually be remembered positively by more than just his closest family.

Her eyes flick back to Riddle who is shaking, still flickering with red energy, whispering her name, soft and fervent under his wheezing breaths.
Her lips twist into a frown but she doesn’t dare to acknowledge the heaviness in her chest.
Can people really change that much?
She hesitates for only the briefest moment longer before reluctantly dragging herself to his side. Voldemort is distracted, occupied with Harry, Ron is beating the living daylights out of Bellatrix (now with help from his furious mother), and she really has no excuses left to keep her from checking on the shaking boy in front of her.

“Riddle?” She questions, trying to keep her voice even.

He scrunches his eyes closed and blinks hard before tilting his head slowly, hesitantly towards her. His eyes take a moment to focus and she knows he has not felt the bite of the cruciatus quite so strongly before. Something cold and cruel twists in her chest, then, something along the lines of satisfaction before she banishes it.
He swallows, throat dry from screaming, and attempts to speak.
“Her-” He breaks off into a round of coughing, cheeks flushing red as he wheezes and splutters and even Hermione has to feel the slightest twinge of sympathy for him then.
“Hermione.” He manages eventually, gazing up at her from beneath lowered lashes.

Damn him.

For a moment she is transported back to the night of Halloween, when he smiled so sweetly at her, cast in firelight and the shadows sculpted him into a beautiful and unknown creature rather than a monster in the making.
Now he gazes at her again, pale skin coated in a fine layer of dirt, hands marred with bleeding scratches from when he clawed through the rubble to find her, eyes unnervingly soft.
It unsettles her, has her itching to cast.
She does not know what to make of this Riddle- this weird, eager side of him which he had shown more and more as time passed in the past, as she grew more trusted and rose in the Knights’ ranks… As she rose, in his eyes.

When she had returned and all was the same, she had hardened her heart against him once more, had crushed any fledgeling affections she might still harbour for him… And now.
Now she was lost, completely and utterly. She was as thrown by this new development as she had been thrown by Abraxas Malfoy taking a fancy to her. Tom Marvolo Riddle had shown up, out of nowhere, saved her from the killing curse, ranted about how Voldemort and his Death Eaters were wrong in their assumptions about blood purity and had then revealed himself to the entire courtyard as Tom Riddle (not that most of the school’s population would actually know who that was).
It was laughable. It was absurd. She had no clue how the hell he had done it, given that he had given one of their timeline’s only remaining true time turners to her so she could return to the past, and his actions had not affected the present one jot, let alone why. It was almost as if…
She regarded him with a level of shrewdness, glancing back and forth between the boy and the monster in the courtyard.
It was almost as if this change in his opinions, his memories, could or would still be reversed.

She shakes her head. This is not something to think over on the battlefield with spells flying back and forth above their heads. She will think on it carefully later, tear the theory apart and interrogate Riddle until she understands exactly what is going on here but for now?
The Gryffindor reaches out to him hesitantly, helping him sit up.
For now they need to move.

“Come on…”

Slowly, he pulls himself together, hesitant as she is to make contact. He doesn’t lean on her for help, almost flinching away from her touch, and gets into a seated position.
“Granger.”

Her eyes dart to his face.

The Prince of Slytherin, so much less regal now, clears his throat and gazes up at her, leaning back on shaking arms. “I’m sorry.”

Hermione’s face twists into something unreadable. Her mouth opens then closes. What can she even say in the face of Riddle’s apology, when so many lie dead around them, when Ron’s brother and Harry’s family are dead at his hand? When Harry still duels Tom’s future self a mere hundred paces away? She is only one of the hundreds who has lost, here- lost her childhood, her parents (albeit temporarily), and the final year of her education. Hogwarts has sheltered her from much of the blood prejudice but it still cuts at her keenly in the brief moments she is faced with it and she has no doubt that the minute she left Hogwarts’ blessed grounds there would be no escape from mistreatment Voldemort had fed and encouraged. All of this mashes together in the most confusing jumble of responsibility, fear, and loathing and she feels woefully unable to address Riddle’s wrongs- wrongs that he has only just begun to commit. 

“I don’t know what to say to that, Riddle.” She manages eventually, “but we have to get off of the ground, and out of the way.”

He nods and she braces herself, before offering him a hand to drag them both to their feet.
Around them the battle seems to have reignited, spells and wands flying again, spurred on by Harry’s return to the battlefield, Tom’s speech, and Ron’s tackling of Bellatrix. Chaos reigns as the dusk lights up like a macabre Christmas display- flashes of red and emerald shining out through the smoke.

It was a fight that nothing but an earth-shattering display of power could hope to halt.
Unfortunately for Tom, he knew a furious wizard more than capable of such a task.
Sparks flickered at the centre of the courtyard, slowly increasing in number until those battling around it who were purposefully ignoring all but their enemy before them were forced to take notice. The embers grew and crackled as they hit the ground, not winking out of existence but forming a strange sigil on the cobbles of the courtyard.
Hermione risked a glance at Riddle, confusion and panic clear on her face- she recognised old magic when she saw it after enough time with Tom- but the boy looked just as confused and horrified as her.

Fizzing and spitting, the last of the embers settled into place and the sigil suddenly glowed a fierce white, lighting up the courtyard like a dying star. Hermione flinched away instinctively, closing her eyes and when she looked back-

“Impossible.” Voldemort snarled.

Albus Dumbledore stood in the centre of the sigil, countenance dark and stormy.
The members of the courtyard look around at each other and a low murmur begins, a mixture of exclamations and suspicion. The battle has abruptly paused yet again and everyone is feeling quite on edge. The apparent resurrection of their beloved Headmaster is not exactly helping matters, either.

Dumbledore glances at Voldemort briefly and an emotion flickers across his face and disappears far too quickly for Hermione to read.
“So, this is the future…”
The professor instantly picks Riddle out and Hermione sees the boy stiffen in the corner of her vision.
“The future you would risk all of our lives and all of time and space to prevent, Tom.”

As Dumbledore trains his eyes on Riddle, wand in hand, and Hermione watches Tom shift into a defensive position almost instinctively, she understands why the present (or future) has not and will not change.
Dumbledore, for the sake of the future, is determined not to let Riddle purge himself of Voldemort.