Tangled in Time

The silence between them stretched long and taut, a thread wound too tightly, threatening to snap at any moment. It was thick, suffocating, pressing in like the walls themselves had drawn breath and now held it, waiting—watching. The air had turned frigid, not with the tangible bite of winter nor the sharp sting of frost, but with something deeper, something ancient and lingering. A chill that did not touch the skin yet burrowed into the marrow, seeping through her veins, settling behind her ribs like an unspoken certainty.

Hermione felt it coil around her, a whisper of something inevitable, something she could no longer outrun.

Tom stood before her, poised and unhurried, his expression an unreadable mask of patience. He had not raised his wand. He had not needed to. There was no tension in his frame, no urgency in his stance—only the quiet, insufferable confidence of a man who had never doubted the outcome. He did not fidget, did not waver. He merely watched her, as if this moment was a foregone conclusion, as if he had always known it would end this way.

And perhaps, to him, it had.

Perhaps, to him, this had never been a battle at all.

Hermione had fought—fought until her limbs trembled and her lungs burned, until the magic in her veins thinned to nothing and the fire of her resistance dimmed to embers. But even now, standing before him with her strength stripped raw, with her wand lying somewhere in the dust and her body still aching from the force of his power, she realized something terrible.

He had never needed to chase her.

He had never needed to break her.

He had only needed to wait.

And now—now, she stood before him, her chest rising and falling in uneven breaths, her hands trembling at her sides, her lips parted around words she could no longer force past her throat. She had spent so long trying to escape him, but in the end, it was not the walls that trapped her. Not the magic that held her in place.

It was the weight of inevitability itself.

Her wand was gone, tossed from her grasp in the chaos, forgotten amidst the debris of failed spells and shattered defiance. The remnants of her rebellion lay scattered across the stone like brittle bones, fragile and broken and useless. And yet—despite it all, despite everything she had done to resist, despite every desperate attempt to defy the fate he had so meticulously laid before her—he did not seize her.

He did not bind her in place.

He did not strike her down, nor reach for the power he so effortlessly wielded to force her into submission.

No.

He simply looked at her, dark eyes gleaming with something vast, something knowing. Something that sent a shudder down her spine, because it was not cruelty. It was not amusement.

It was certainty.

And then, in a voice so soft it might have been a whisper, he spoke.

"Run."

The word did not lash like a whip, nor did it explode like a spell. It was quiet, deliberate—a single syllable, spoken with the kind of certainty that did not need force to be obeyed. It carried no sharp edges, no rage, no desperation. There was no plea in his tone, no fury, no command. He did not need to raise his voice to make himself heard. He did not need to shout to make the walls tremble, to make the very air in the room feel thick and unbreathable.

And that was what made it so much worse.

"Run, Hermione. If that is what you wish."

Her breath stilled, caught between her ribs, held captive by the sheer weight of those words. It pressed down on her, heavy and suffocating, wrapping around her like invisible chains, binding her to the moment, to the space between decision and inevitability.

The invitation was not kind. It was not mercy. It was not even an illusion of mercy.

It was a test.

A final, damning test.

Because he was not offering her freedom. Not truly. He was offering her a choice—one that was laced with inevitability, one that had only ever had one true outcome. It was the most dangerous kind of manipulation, the most insidious form of control. The kind that did not command, but rather allowed, offered, suggested—until the choice became inescapable. Until the decision did not feel like it had been taken from her, but rather as if it had always been her own.

Her fingers twitched at her sides, useless and shaking, phantom echoes of spells she could no longer cast, of a war she had already lost. The absence of her wand was like an ache beneath her skin, a wound that had never quite healed. Her magic had once been an extension of herself—her greatest weapon, her greatest shield. But now, she was unarmed. Now, she stood defenceless before the one person who had never needed a wand to wield power over her.

She should have moved. Should have turned and bolted, should have sprinted from this place and never looked back. Every instinct in her body, every desperate, clawing fragment of self-preservation screamed at her to run, to move, to do something—anything—but remain standing before him, ensnared in the quiet devastation of his voice. But her limbs would not obey. Her body would not listen.

Because she understood.

The choice had never been hers to make.

"Run," he repeated, softer this time, quieter, like the whisper of silk against skin. Like something that slipped through the cracks in her armour, weaving into the spaces between her fear and her defiance. His voice was not harsh, not cruel—it was not a demand, nor a suggestion.

It was a promise.

"But know this—"

He stepped forward.

Not abruptly. Not aggressively. Just enough that she could feel the warmth of him now, close enough that she could no longer pretend that the world had not already shifted beneath her feet. Close enough that the air between them felt thinner, heavier, unbreathable.

"If you run, Hermione, the world I have built will burn for every step you take away from me."

The words did not strike her like a blow. They did not pierce or shatter or explode in the air between them.

No.

They curled around her like smoke, slow and suffocating, creeping into her lungs until every breath tasted of consequence.

"For every mile you put between us, I will take a city."

The breath she had been holding shattered from her chest, a sharp, broken inhale that did nothing to steady the frantic hammering of her pulse. A single, ragged breath that did not alleviate the suffocating pressure in her ribs, the unbearable weight settling in the hollow space beneath her sternum.

She wanted to tell herself he was lying. That it was an empty threat. That he was manipulating her, playing a game in which she had always been the unwilling pawn.

But she knew better.

She knew him.

Knew what he was capable of.

Knew that Tom Riddle did not make idle threats.

His hand lifted, slow, deliberate, his movements controlled and measured—as if he had all the time in the world. As if this moment had already belonged to him long before she had arrived at it. He was always so precise, so meticulous, as if every single movement, every single breath, was something he had orchestrated long before she had even considered resistance.

The backs of his fingers brushed against the edge of her jaw, featherlight, a mere ghost of a touch. It should not have been enough to unravel her. It should not have been enough to send a violent shudder rolling through her bones.

And yet, it did.

Because it was not just a touch.

It was a brand.

An unspoken claim.

An undeniable truth.

"For every day you resist, I will unmake what you once fought for."

His fingers ghosted lower, barely tracing the column of her throat, and she hated herself for the way her breath hitched, for the way the warmth of his skin lingered like an echo long after he had pulled away. Hated the way her body betrayed her, the way it recognized something in him, something she had spent too long pretending she did not understand.

"I will burn it from the ground up, and you will watch as the world crumbles beneath your absence."

A sharp inhale—quick, unsteady, barely contained. The air in the room felt heavier now, as though something unseen had shifted, pressing down on her shoulders with a weight that could not be shrugged off. Every nerve in her body remained locked in place, wound so tightly that even the smallest movement felt impossible. She was caught in that unbearable liminality between instinct and inevitability, between the desperate, primal urge to flee and the cold, creeping certainty that running would not save her. It was like standing on the edge of a crumbling precipice, knowing that whether she jumped or fell, the ending would be the same.

The silence stretched unbearably long between them, thick and suffocating, filled with the unspoken understanding of what this moment truly was. Her pulse pounded against the inside of her skull, a frantic drumbeat that drowned out every logical thought, every desperate attempt to reason her way out of the noose tightening around her throat. She needed to move. She needed to do something. But her body would not obey her. She stood frozen beneath the weight of his gaze, beneath the crushing knowledge of the truth he had so effortlessly revealed.

This was not a threat. It was not an ultimatum. There was no anger in his voice, no fury, no need to raise his wand or demand her compliance. He did not need to. That was what made it so much worse. This was simply a fact, spoken with the kind of quiet certainty that did not need to be questioned.

She could run. That was the mercy he offered—the twisted, insidious mockery of a choice. He would not stop her. He would not chase her. He would let her go, let her believe, for a fleeting, fragile moment, that she had slipped free. That she had outrun him. That she had won. And for those first few moments, she might even believe it. She might let herself hope. But hope was a cruel, treacherous thing, and it would not last. Because the cost of her absence would be devastation. And it would not be her life he took in exchange.

It would be theirs.

It would be the lives of those she had sworn to protect, the ones she had fought for, suffered for, sacrificed for. It would be the cities she had once believed in, the people she had bled for, the cause she had built herself around. Everything she had suffered to preserve would crumble in her wake, piece by piece, until there was nothing left but ash and regret. He would take it all. Not in a fit of rage, not in an act of reckless vengeance, but with the same terrifying deliberation with which he had built his empire in the first place. Slowly. Methodically. Unstoppably.

And the worst part was that she knew he was telling the truth.

She could not fight him. She could not change what had already been written. She had spent so long running, so long resisting, so long convincing herself that there was still a way out of this. That if she just held on a little longer, if she just fought a little harder, she could still claw her way back to the girl she used to be, the cause she used to believe in. But that girl was gone. That cause had already been lost. And all that remained was this.

That was the cruelty of it. That was the brilliance of it.

Tom Riddle did not force submission.

He offered it.

And in doing so, he made it inevitable.

"Or…" His voice dipped lower, smooth and steady, wrapping around her like something tangible, something she could feel curling around her wrists like invisible chains. There was no need for sharp edges in his tone, no need for threats or demands. He did not need to command obedience when he could simply draw it out of her.

"You can stay."

The words slid over her skin like silk, deceptively soft, but carrying a weight that settled deep in her bones, wrapping around her like the slow tightening of a snare.

She swallowed, the motion difficult, her throat constricting against the unbearable tension coiled between them. Stay. The word echoed in her mind, looping endlessly, twisting itself into something dangerous, something that almost sounded like relief.

"You can accept what you have become."

His steps were slow, measured, deliberate. Every movement was calculated, intentional, designed to leave no space for doubt, no room for escape. There was no hesitation in the way he approached her, no uncertainty in the way he spoke. Because he already knew the outcome. He had always known.

"What you were always meant to be."

She wanted to deny it. She wanted to summon whatever shreds of resistance still clung to her and throw them in his face. She wanted to believe she had a choice. But the words refused to come. The fight had already begun to bleed out of her, slow and steady, like water slipping through cracks in stone. She had fought for so long, fought with every ounce of defiance she had left. But what was left of it now?

He was standing so close now that there was nothing between them, nothing except the fragile space of a single breath. And then, with a deliberate slowness that sent a violent shudder down her spine, his hand lifted once more.

This time, he did not hesitate.

His palm pressed fully against her cheek, his touch warm, searing in a way that had nothing to do with temperature. His thumb brushed along the curve of her jaw, featherlight, almost gentle. But there was nothing gentle about what it meant. Nothing gentle about what it did to her.

"Stay," he murmured, softer now, coaxing, promising. A quiet, insidious kind of comfort. "And nothing will have to burn."