“HERMIONE.”
She flattens herself against the damp tiles, the back of her shirt becoming uncomfortably wet. He doesn’t usually come into the showers. He prefers baths. Something about traumatic memories from his orphanage days or whatever the fuck is going on in his fucked up mind. The point is he doesn’t usually come into the showers. So that’s where she’s hiding.
“HERMIONE!”
His voice bellows once again, a rasp in it, the scream coming from deep within him, a telltale say that she won’t be coming out of this with minimal damage. She squats and hugs her knees to her, her hands over her head. She really doesn’t need to be hiding. Not under her hands, not under the disillusion spell she keeps recasting on herself, not when it’s him looking for her. When he finds her, none of these things will save her.
“HERMIONE!”
She’s been here for months, maybe years, probably decades. Time is weird here. An invention of Dumbledore himself. The benevolent headmaster couldn’t kill Grindelwald, granted he was his lover once, but he couldn’t. He could never condone murder. So when he started researching Voldemort’s horcruxes, he couldn’t stomach the cold murder of his former student, despite all his crimes. But he couldn’t trust him in a simple prison. Grindelwald was honourable, relatively speaking. He accepted his defeat. Tom would never. So he came up with this concept. A prison world, outside of Time and Space, from whence he could never escape, with no guards that he could manipulate.
“Hermione.”
There it is, that deceptively calm voice dripping with honey and venom. She fell for it once, she will not be making that mistake again. She renews the disillusion spell and the silencing spell, she can’t have him tracking her heavy breathing now. She’s been here for so long. It must be a mistake. She just needs to stay alive until Harry fixes it and gets her out. She should not be here. She didn’t commit genocide. She didn’t split her soul seven times. She doesn’t deserve to be banished in the prison world with Tom Riddle. It must be a mistake.
“Hermione, sweetheart, talk to me.”
He’s pleading now. She scoffs. She never should have talked to him. They should have split the estate in two and stayed leagues away from each other. Because yes, it’s an estate. They were banishing the Dark Lord for the rest of eternity, they gave him some creature comforts. She can’t remember whose idea it was, probably Snape. He may have turned on his master but he still had a healthy amount of respect for him. And why wouldn’t he? He was a brilliant wizard, if one ignored all the atrocities. So they designed an estate, nine bedrooms, ten bathrooms, and a library. Nothing educational of course, only fiction. Couldn’t have him soaking up more magical knowledge and getting out. No, just enough books to keep him entertained. So every single fictional book ever written in existence. They have each read every single book there twice. Shit, maybe she’s been here longer than mere decades. Where the fuck is Harry? Where is her rescue?
“Hermione, my heart, don’t be like that.”
Hermione scoffs again. His heart, right, he doesn’t have a heart. She should not be here. She has done nothing wrong. This was such a massive mistake that when she first showed up here, she didn’t even recognize the Prison World, because it couldn’t be. She didn’t recognise him either. She never saw the memories of him before he became snakeface. But he recognised her. He had recovered his human appearance but he had all his memories of the final battle. He immediately recognised her as Harry Potter’s best friend. First he interrogated her, hard. Torture, it was torture, he tortured her, she doesn’t know why she’s using euphemisms in her own mind when she remembers every fucking detail. She has always had an excellent memory, eidetic some called it. Who is she censoring this for? He tortured her for days, weeks, to bleed every piece of information out of her. Once his crucio hit her and his eyes shone red, she recognised him. She had no information for him though. This was a mistake, she wasn’t supposed to be here. How would she know how to get out?
“Hermione, sweetheart, you’re scaring me.”
Like he would ever get scared. She presses her hands against her ears to tune him out. When torture didn’t work, he seduced her. And it worked, alright, it worked. Sue her. She was alone and he was literally the last guy on earth. Sue her for seeking human touch. But then he became obsessed. Because the Dark Lord doesn’t do anything in half. And the honeymoon lasted for weeks, maybe months, probably decades. But everything ends, except the fucking Prison World. He found out she was waiting for Harry to come free her. He found out she was planning to abandon him the second she got the chance. He did not like that.
“Hermione, show yourself!”
There’s that temper again, so predictable. He got so mad. He did not want her to leave. And that’s why she’s hiding here in the shower. She doesn’t want to taste his wrath. But she can’t stay here forever. She has to leave. It’s been weeks. And she misses Harry. And she has a job, responsibilities, a life she has to get back to. She can’t just stay in an endless honeymoon with the Dark Lord.
The curtains zap to the side, the sound echoeing against the bathroom walls. Her flimsy disillusion spell easily melts against his magic. Strong hands grab her upper arms and shake her, fingers digging into her soft flesh hard enough to bruise. Her hands are still pressed against her ears, she can’t hear him now that he’s not screaming. He’s saying something though, his dark eyes bored into hers, his forehead scrunched in an emotion she can’t read. He shakes her once, twice. Her head lolls back and forth. He sighs and lets her go. He snakes one arm around her shoulders, the other under her knees, and he pushes on his feet to stand up with her weight snug against his heart.
“Let’s get some air, sweetheart.”
His chest vibrates against her cheek with the words. She doesn’t argue. Her breath is laboured, her pants loud even to her. She does need air. He walks through the manor, slow, his arms tight around her, so he won’t jostle her. Through dark hallways, down padded stairs, out to a brightly lit sunroom and finally out to the gardens. The sun is shining. The sun is always shining. She hates it. It’s obnoxious. It hurts her eyes.
As soon as he sets her down she whips her wands out and sends a stupefy his way.
“This again.” He easily side steps it. “Must we?” his eyes plead with her, a bone weariness weighs upon his shoulders.
“We must”, she squares her shoulder and gets her wand ready.
He sighs. “Fine.”
He lets her hurl spell after spell against him. He defends himself, wields his wand like it’s a part of him, erects shield after the other. But he doesn’t attack her.
“Fight me, you coward!” she shrieks and starts sending darker spells.
He clicks his tongue and sends a body bind spell at her that hits her right in the middle of her chest and sends her barrelling towards the earth, back straight like a rod, arms tight against her body.
He towers over her. She has to squint to make out his face against the sunrays that shine behind him. He kneels down and gets closer. She can see him more clearly now. His face is smooth, unreadable. But the rage is absent, she has to take advantage of it.
“I have to go, Tom. I have to. I can’t stay. As soon as Harry comes, I have to go with him. I will go mad if I stay here.”
His forehead creases again. He traces a delicate finger her cheek, follows the contour of the angry red blotch that mars it. He turns his hands and uses the back of it to wipe the sweat that dampened her skin. He turns his hand again and cups her cheeks in his palm, his thumb tracing tender patterns against it.
“Only the caster of the Obliviate can lift it.”
Hermione frowns at the seeming non sequitur. “I know. What are you…?”
“But some obliviated memories leave traces behind, threads that a talented Legilimens can follow.”
Hermione’s breath hitches. Something scratches against her inner ear, sending the most delicious tingles down her back.
“I cannot restore them, not permanently. But I can temporarily access them.”
His form over her becomes blurry. His wavy dark brown hair turns into black unruly curls. His smooth forehead grows a lightning bolt scar. His dark eyes turn bottle green and fill with tears.
“Seven hundred and seventy seven,” Harry’s voice is tight. He rubs the tears from his red rimmed eyes, his hand shaking, before putting his glasses back on.
“What?” Hermione wants to reach for Harry but her body is bound.
“Obliviate,” he chokes out and disappears. Tom replaces him again.
“Do you remember now?”
“I…”
“Seven hundred and seventy seven purebloods, men, women and children. You do not discriminate,” he smiles and reveals two rows of perfect shark like teeth, “I could not have been more impressed. Some people are all bark, no bite. But not you, my heart. You finish what you start.” He lets his wand clatter to the ground and brings his other hand to cup her other cheek, her face now trapped in his loving embrace. “You declared war on the purebloods who ruined your life, and you followed through. You killed seven hundred and seventy seven pureblooded wizards in a single day, friends and foes, allies and enemies. Not even the Weasleys escaped your wrath. You were magnificent,” he whispers and presses his forehead against hers. “I wish you could see the memories I can see, they are breathtaking.” He presses his lips against hers in a chaste, loving kiss that stops her heart.
He pulls back and smoothes her hair away from her face gently.
“Potter didn’t take too kindly to it, from what I saw. Not him, nor any of the cowards still left alive. Instead of thanking you on hands and knees for sparing them, they imprisoned you. They debated executing you, but Potter’s sentimentality finally reared its ugly but in this case useful head. He condemned you to my fate, an infinite stint in the Prison World.”
“But…” she shakes her head, confused. “Why would they obliviate me? Why let me think I’m here by mistake? That doesn’t make any sense, you’re lying.”
He wandlessly lifts the body bind. She sits up and looks at him, searching for deceit in his face.
“They weren’t trying to obliviate your deeds. Potter happens to have about as much magical grace as an elephant in a china shop. He was obliviating a very specific memory and ended up taking a whole chunk with him. That’s why I can still access these memories, they were only grossly wiped. The real target of his spell is much more important. It is our key out of here.”
Hermione frowns. “There is no way out of here. The Prison World can only be opened from the outside. That was the whole point of it, that’s why Dumbledore believed it to be a good enough solution, because he made it unescapable.”
“You…” Tom starts and loses it. His whole body is raked with laughter until his belly aches. Hermione watches him laugh at her, miffed. “I’m sorry,” he croaks in between peals of laughter, “this will never not be funny. You still believe Dumbledore created this.” He wipes the corner of his eyes. “No, sweetheart, Dumbledore didn’t create the Prison World. He came up with the concept before he died, but never got around to it. You created it. And you did a wonderful job, if I do say so myself.”
“No,” Hermione lets out a nervous laugh of her own, “no that makes no sense. I have no recollection of it. I think I would remember creating a spell of this magnitude.”
“Not unless it has been obliviated.”
“But why?”
“Because there is no way someone as smart as you would build a cage you couldn’t escape.”
Hermione lips open in a soft gasp.
“Somewhere in that beautiful brain of yours is our key out of this wretched place. Potter may have obliviated you. But I know that between your talents and mine, we will get it back.” He takes her hands and threads his fingers with hers. “I promise you, my heart, I will not stop until your mind is whole again. And when we get out of here, I will make sure anyone who dared temper with your wondrous brain will suffer my most exquisite of tortures.” He brings their bounds hands up and kisses her knuckles.
He lets go of her hands. Hermione’s eyes glaze over. She closes her eyelids and shakes her head. When she opens them again, she squints at the sun as if it has offended her greatly, then looks at Tom. Her eyes widen, the white stark against the whiskey colours iris.
“What do you want?” she tries to sneer despite the fear shaking her body.
Tom sighs.
“What do you remember, sweetheart?”
She raises her wand in front of her. “I won’t let you trap me here!”
She scrambles up to her feet and runs away from him towards the house, slipping slightly in her haste to escape.
“Hermione!” he calls out to her. “I won’t give up on you, sweetheart.”
Tom gets up slowly, stashes his wand in his back pocket, and strolls towards the house at a leisurely pace. He will keep every single promise he made her and more, of that he has no doubt.