Mirror Image

The students were banned from the Hogwarts grounds, Dumbledore saying they would need the Quidditch pitch and the central grounds for the last trial. It was a bit of a disappointment to Hermione, Draco, and Theo as they wouldn’t be able to meet by the Black Lake as the weather continued to warm up, but they were happy enough to stick to their late nights in the library, or their stolen moments in abandoned classrooms and hallways.

Hermione wasn’t sure what the last task was, but Neville said he’d been helping Professor Sprout with some extracurricular project, and she imagined it would have something to do with plants.

And it was going to be big, bigger than the Quidditch field of the Black Lake. There were only so many trials one could conceive of with plants - Devil’s Snare, maybe? But they’d seen that in the Chamber of Secrets, it was so tame - and Hermione didn’t have time to think about it too much.

Hermione had been in contact with Voldemort over the last few weeks, only once, and he’d told her he wanted to see what she could do on the night of the last trial, when his followers had initially planned to bring him back. He hadn’t given her any other notes, nothing to bring or work on in preparation. Whether that was because he was hoping she would fail so he would have an excuse to kill her, or because it was a kind of test to see just how smart she really was, Hermione wasn’t sure. She was too focused on the immediate issue at hand - how she would get to Voldemort on the night of the third trial.

It would be difficult to get away, especially with Harry competing, but Hermione had a plan for that.

A plan that might get Hermione into some serious trouble, but it would work out in her favor ultimately. Maybe. It would certainly keep her out of the way with the trial. It would mean a poor grade for the first time in the entire time she'd been at Hogwarts.

Hermione was sitting in potions, opting to work with Lavender for the first time in her entire academic career, and waiting for the right moment. She leaned over the cauldron to add the crocodile heart and as she turned away, she hastily scooped up the vessel meat that Lavender had cut away from the heart and dumped them into the cauldron, too. It was something childish, something they learned about in their first year with Snape, but those kinds of mistakes made Snape particularly short with students. It was almost certain that he would give them detention.

It took a few moments, the potion bubbling and hissing a bit before Lavender turned back to stir it, and then it exploded. The half-brewed Calming Draught flew through the air, still popping and transforming in the air into something thick and sticky, and Snape gave a dissatisfied huff as a good portion of it fell onto his desk. Hermione stomped a foot and spun to Lavender angrily, potion dripping down her face.

“You complete idiot, Lavender!”

“Misses Brown, Granger,” Snape drawled, waving his wand through the air and vanishing the mess. Lavender was sniffling, her eyes wet and her nose red, and she wailed a little. Hermione huffed again, the only noise she could make without rolling her eyes or snapping again at the girl to her side, and made a show of blaming Lavender fully. She kept her eyes away from where she knew Draco and Theo were sitting, because she knew they’d be surprised at her. She didn’t need any extra questions so close to when she was-

Snape made his way to the cauldron between them and sniffed, then dragged a finger through the remains of the potion at the bottom of the cauldron. “You’ve added vessel meat alongside the heart,” he said. “A rudimentary mistake. It is a wonder either of you can dress yourselves in the morning. 20 points from Gryffindor each, and detention this weekend.”

“The last trial is this weekend!” Harry protested, but Snape only snapped around to glare at the boy behind him.

“Another 10 points from Gryffindor,” he sneered. “And Misses Granger and Brown will serve their detention as I’ve already said.”

~~~

Hermione found it was easy to slip away from Lavender once they were alone. Snape was requested down on the grounds for the opening of the Maze, and Hermione rushed away then under the guise of grabbing more stone shine soap for the floors as Lavender got to work scrubbing the floor outside the potions classroom. She would deal with the consequences later, when she was back from her task. She’d been given yet another Portkey, and it was hidden away in her bag, stuffed with a few other things she needed.

Running from the castle, towards the edge of the Forbidden Forest, Hermione felt free. It was strange, to feel free while running to serve some new, unknown, terrible master. But it was true - she felt free when she was preparing Natural magic, when she was working on some pet project she couldn’t tell the others. Even now, when she desperately wanted Draco and Theo at her side, she was so relieved to be doing something for them. To protect them. Something only she could do.

Everyone was focused on the trumpeting of the music, the start of the trial. A cannon went off - the first of the Champions was being released into the Maze - and there was a great uproar that drowned out the noise of her Portkey activating and Hermione’s trip into the air.

Voldemort was waiting for her, Wormtail holding the man in his arms and an appropriate cauldron for the potion behind them both. Or at least, the potion he believed they would be using. Hermione greeted him with a deep bow, half in jest and half to put him at ease. When she stood up again, Wormtail was holding out a small key. Her Portkey home for when all of this was over.

“You should know,” Hermione said, unpacking her things once the key was safely in her pocket. “I had help with this project.”

“You have accomplices,” Voldemort hissed out. “Not Potter I would imagine.”

Hermione gave a snort. “No, most certainly not.” With her back turned like this, it was like… It was like she was speaking to a friend. Not the darkest wizard to ever live, just a friend. Someone she was helping with homework. “Draco Malfoy and Theodore Nott. Two Purebloods of the Sacred 28 families.”

Voldemort made a noise of appreciation. Hermione wanted him to know now, before anything else tonight. If she died here, she’d be a forgotten footnote in the history of the Dark Lord. But Theo and Draco needed to be appreciated and cared for, and they needed to be important. It was the only way to keep them truly safe, and Hermione saw no better way to do that than to make them important to the Dark Lord here and now. She couldn't trust Theo's family to flee a second war alongside the Malfoys, and she couldn't expect people to continue to sacrifice themselves for her sake. Narcissa and Lucius had already sacrificed years to the way, running to France before. They couldn't do it again.

Hermione told Voldemort stories as she worked to prepare the potion - Draco discovering the secrets of the journal, and Theodore working to translate the ancient text on resurrection potions. Both of them coming to Hermione with Voldemort’s plan already dissected for her.

“You understand the premise of this potion?” Hermione asked after her stories were done and she was prepared. “Ritual, really.”

“It is not a ritual. It is a manifestation of pure, Natural magic.”

Hermione nodded. “Yes, and I’ve got the hard part of channeling the intention here. So you must focus on being whole again.”

Those words exactly. Whole again. She needed those words in his mind, stuck in his subconscious. His intention needed to be focused there so hers could be focused on turning back the clock. On changing this creature before her into a man.

“And I will need the blood of your servant.”

Wormtail’s head jerked. “It is the flesh of the servant, you stupid gir-”

A weak wave of Voldemort’s hand silenced the man, and Wormtail choked on nothing at all as his throat worked to make a noise, any noise. Voldemort threw the man to the ground with a sad, pathetic fall of his hand, and he coughed from the exertion as he tumbled from Wormtail’s arms. Hermione watched impassively.

“Get the man,” Voldemort hissed, and Hermione grabbed Wormtail’s arms. She didn’t know why she was doing anything this man said. Except-

Death Eaters kidnap, torture, and murder for fun...

Death Eaters make destruction the point of war, not change...

There was a man outside her parents’ house...

The Blacks were going to get their way, and Narcissa and Lucius couldn’t run away this time…

He was easier to subdue than Hermione expected. He was either much weaker than she had anticipated, or he was being restrained in some way, some kind of invisible, magical chain that bound him to Voldemort. Hermione hauled him to the cauldron and forced his chest against the edge. The strength of the situation was addicting - she was holding down this man, this excuse of a person who had betrayed his friends and family over and over again. Even now, he was trying to betray his master by squirming, denying his role in this ritual. The power was intoxicating. Hermione’s mind was almost fuzzy with the mixed messages here - her power, the feeling of having someone at your mercy, revenge, protection, mutually assured destruction, fighting back in the only way Hermione could.

Gambling with power was, Hermione realized, exactly how people became so entrenched in their beliefs, their sides, their gangs. She was gambling with power now, and in that moment, she didn't really care what happened next.

Voldemort waved his hand once more, and a thin cut appeared at Wormtail’s throat. It opened, no longer thin, and his insides were on display. Blood poured down the man’s throat and chest, running over the metal of the cauldron and spilling inside. It all happened in a second, a breath of air and then the scent of blood was all around her. Hermione stumbled backward in surprise, her hands wet and warm with the blood that had bloomed over Wormtail’s shirt, and she rubbed them on her jeans frantically. This wasn’t the plan. This wasn’t the plan. Wormtail's body slid down the edge of the cauldron, lifeless and limp.

“You’ve killed him,” she said, shock setting in and panic edging into her voice. “That wasn’t the plan!”

She spun around, finding Voldemort’s body in the grass. It was absurd, this gollum-like creature in the grass, killing men at Hermione’s hands, taking control of the situation even when he could barely lift his head. She laughed, shrill and confused and humorless. “He’s dead! His blood... He’s dead!”

“His death will give the potion strength.”

Hermione’s eyes were wide, her mind scattered. He was right - of course he was - but it was only by the grace of their intentions it would truly strengthen the potion. Wormtail had lived to serve, but his blood had been spilled unwillingly. His death had carved open a place in Voldemort’s remaining soul. It was ture. Voldemort was right, Wormtail's death would lend power to the potion.

And yet... he'd died here in the grass. He'd died for the potion that Hermione was... For Voldemort to... For...

Hermione’s breath picked up, great heaving inhales and exhales that seemed to shake her very core. Power was one thing - a heady, addictive thing - but it wasn’t this. This was something sick, something burning in her stomach, ruining the high of the power from before.

There was still red on her hands, stained in her skin and caught in the crevices around her nails.

The stench of blood wasn't dissipating, not even in the breeze. It clawed at her senses - sticky on her hands and burning in her nose and somehow, it was caught in her throat, and she swallowed thickly.

“Okay,” she whispered. “Okay. I’m sorry, I can- One moment.”

She turned and fell to her knees, heaving as she threw up. She heaved again, and the rest of her dinner spilled from her mouth, leaving an acidic taste in her mouth. Her eyes wandered from the grass and vomit below her to Wormtail’s body, just his feet in her view, and she heaved again. This time, nothing came up. She spat into the grass, clearing her mouth as much as she could without water.

“You are proving yourself to be useless,” Voldemort hissed, and Hermione flinched. “Weak child.”

She took a deep breath, and another, steadying her nerves and her heartbeat. She was so close… so close.  “I’m not weak,” she bit out finally. “I’m sorry for the momentary loss of composure.”

Hermione got to her feet and kept her eyes on the grass below her. She could do this. She could use this. She just needed to focus, to think about the dew clinging to the grass and not the body at her feet.

“We can use him,” she said finally. Voldemort nodded, and Hermione pulled her wand from her robes. She wasn’t strong enough, nor in control enough, to use her Natural magic for such a menial task. She needed her Natural magic later. She levitated the body of the man into the cauldron and spoke aloud to lend strength to her convictions, her intentions.

“The flash of the servant, powerfully taken,” she said, feeling out every syllable for the right words. She stooped down to pick up Voldemort’s body and carried him to the potion. “The body of the master, enduringly strong.”

With a blast of magic, the cauldron suddenly swirled and the fog inside seemed to catch Voldemort’s body as Hermione lowered him inside. Lightning, controlled and slight, lit up the inside of the cauldron, rusted rivulets of blood shining alongside the dark pewter.

Hermione kept her mind on the Dark Lord, on making him a new man. She pushed the thought of Wormtail’s body, of Voldemort’s boney frame firmly out of her mind, even when she heard the terrible sound of bone breaking and skin tearing and blood splattering.

“The soul of the Master, once concealed,” she yelled, and she threw the black, leather journal into the pot alongside the other things. Draco and Theo hadn't noticed when she'd taken it during the holidays, and surely they wouldn't notice it missing now. Again, there was a flash of light and sparks hissed from the cauldron. Hermione only hoped Voldemort couldn’t hear her, that he wouldn’t be able to stop the process before she was done.

“The sand of time, harnessed by pure magic,” she yelled, and her Time Turner from third year was smashed against the side of the cauldron. The fog inside was now a deep, angry red, and the sand whipped from the edge of the pot to join in the storm of light and clouds inside. There was a roaring wind from the edge of the cauldron, sand flying into Hermione's face harsh and painful.

She turned her head away, but she didn't think of the pain in her skin. The prickling in her blood.

“The magic of a soldier,” Hermione whispered, quiet and concentrated as she willed her blood to the palm of her hand and pressed, pushing her magic, willing it to spring forward. It slipped down her hand and into the cauldron, and the fog inside cleared suddenly. Everything went still, quiet, and dark. “Willingly shared.”

And then a green flash of light blinded Hermione and a harsh wave of magic bowled her over. She fell to the ground, her blood retreated as quickly as it had answered her call, and her hands flew up to shield her eyes. It was like a storm of lightning, a single flash worth several strikes, and burning white into Hermione’s eyes.

And there, standing in the eye of a storm, stood a teenager with dark hair, dark eyes, and an expression of livid, unbridled rage.

“You lying, deceitful bitch,” Tom raged, spitting his anger at Hermione on the ground. It was the voice of a teenager. “Do you know what you’ve done?” He roared, angry and bitter, and the scent of saltwater and smoke was the only warning Hermione got before her body was thrown across the ground. She screamed in pain and bloody wounds opened across her body, and she didn’t have time to think about her magic, her blood, her control before another wave of tortuous pain washed over her.

Her screams were shrill, angry. They were sudden, and unlike anything she’d ever experienced before. It was like the sound itself was inhuman, inhumane, and entirely foreign to her own ears. She wasn’t screaming, someone using her body was.

Hermione screamed for what felt like minutes, thrashing and clawing her nails into the dirt, and she felt something rip behind her clavicle. She tasted blood in her throat and her voice swooped in pitch before cutting out all together, and only then did the pain stop. When it was no longer entertaining. She rolled over, fingers clawing into soft, pliant dirt with her permission this time, and she heaved. Blood continued to pour down her throat and Hermione tried to reach out for it, to grab hold of whatever had happened inside her body and make it stop.

When she’d finally gotten some semblance of control over herself - the bleeding stopped and her magic stitching together folds of delicate tissue - she rolled over again, and there was Tom Riddle.

He stood above her, his eyes cold and hard. He seethed, and spit flew from his mouth when he leaned closer, looming like some vulture of darkness, and said “you have ruined me, you filthy fucking Mudblood.”

“Thah- that word has no meaning to me,” Hermione said, coughing. Her voice gave out, trying to find itself again, and she winced at the pain lingering in her chest. “I have done you a favor!”

“You’ve made me weak,” Tom yelled, and again, saltwater and acidic pain came crashing over Hermione. She bit her tongue, but it only delayed the inevitable as she let out a scream of pain.

“Don’t be shortsighted,” she bit out when the pain lessened. Before Tom had a chance to raise his wand again, she held up a hand and blinked slow, asking for just a moment. A moment to stop the stinging in her eyes and throat, a moment to gather her magic around herself. He granted it, a strange, ancient feeling in his chest moving him to mercy. After a moment, a half-minute at most, Hermione sighed and nodded her head. Her chin dropped to her chest. “My Lord,” she started. “Please. Listen to me.”

“Against my better judgment, I am.”

Hermione nodded again. “The last war- The Death Eaters who followed you were marked for life. They were one torn sleeve from being discovered. Those who were caught- caught early. They turned on each other, they sold one another out. Those who survived the prosecution of Dumbledore were left- were left to fend. For themselves.”

“I know this,” he warned, his voice biting and unforgiving.

“Your cause- it was lost. In the violence, people were afraid. There’s only one thing more powerful than fear, My Lord.” Hermione brought her eyes up to the man before her and smiled, blood and spit coating her teeth, her lips, her chin. “Love. Affection. Admiration.”

A sudden wash of cool magic - sweeter, smoke but cleaner, and less salt, more water - bloomed in the air and Hermione felt the pain in her body recede. The blood on her face washed away. The sticks and grass in her hair blown away in a breeze.

She looked up at Tom and her eyes were grateful. His were thoughtful. “Your Horcruxes kept you alive. They also robbed you of your mind, they led you to senseless actions. People were afraid, and so they were easily moved against you and your people.”

“And you believe making me a child will alleviate people’s fear?” The anger was back, but it was not nearly as strong, as harsh, as hot. “I am still, at 16, the greatest wizard who ever lived. I will be worshiped.”

“I believe that you will make different decisions now than you did before.”

It was not an unthinkable theory, and Hermione had been sure about it. Sure enough to go through with this suicidal plan. Hermione had read about Horcruxes, she knew what they were. And she knew that if Tom Riddle had made one in his sixth year, he was bound to have made more. It wasn’t hard to piece together Lord Voldemort’s plan to become effectively immortal. The journal hadn’t been the only one, then. The soul didn’t act with the intention of being split, it didn’t behave as an object of equal proportions. The first Horcrux made by Tom Riddle back in 1944 would have contained ½ of his entire soul, the largest denomination of all the Horcruxes. Of even Voldemort himself - the next one carried only ¼ of a soul, the next only ⅛, and so on and so forth until even he himself was left with less than one hundredth of his original soul. Hermione had, in one ritual, made him as human as he’d been in 50 years. She’d made him a man again, one that most wouldn’t recognize.

Dumbledore would. Perhaps some of the older witches and wizards still living in the world. But to the vast population of Magical London, he was a new man. No past, no preconceived notions. Only the face he wore now.

He could be reasoned with in this form. Hermione could convince him, guide him. Act as both a servant and a regent in this new war. The only person strong enough to to defeat the remaining Death Eaters was Voldemort, and the only person with a strategic plan strong enough to build this new world was Hermione. She needed him to undo the violence he'd created in the first war. She needed the greatest Dark wizard of all time to keep her and her family safe.

And in return, Hermione would make him powerful. She would give him a political strategy, a pathway to power and influence, and she'd do it willingly. All she would ask for is safety.

Tom Riddle pushed the hair out of his eyes and narrowed his eyes. “You expect me to play nice with the scum of the world? To enchant them before they’re shown their place?”

“I expect you to show gratitude to the witch who just brought you back to life,” Hermione snapped. Tom stepped back, taken by surprise, and Hermione scoffed as she got to her feet. It was the adrenaline wearing off, or maybe the pain was making her brave. Her magic was swelling around her, her body was in shock. Hermione felt a wave of energy, a wave of something strong and determined and it drove her to her to step forward, into Tom Riddle's space and then onwards, past him. She stomped towards her bag, turning her back on the man she was supposed to serve now, and pulled a small, bound stack of papers.

“You can read my thoughts on the matter,” she said. “And my proposed plans for the future. I’ve done my part tonight, and you owe me a life debt. There’s greater power in that one debt than you know. You cannot kill me, you can try. But it won’t work. You cannot take my life because it was my magic that gave you yours. And like it or not, your soul likes me just a little bit, because I’m brilliant and I’m the one who stitched it all back up.”

She turned on her heel and grabbed for the Portkey that Wormtail had given her before, still safe inside her pocket. It began to hiss and heat in her hand, and she turned back to Tom one last time.

“You can write when you’ve thought about if you want to win the war this time.”

And then she was gone.

~~~

Hermione landed in the forest hard, falling to her knees and laying in the dirt there, just catching her breath. No matter if it had been a mistake or not - whether Tom Riddle killed Hermione or helped her, changed his ways or picked up a baton of violence, it was done. He was back. She couldn’t change her mind now.

The dew in the grass was cold and Hermione rubbed her hands in the wetness.

She knew she must have looked like something from a horror movie - her hair knotted and messy, the stain of blood on her chin and scattered across her body, her voice still scratchy and strained. She couldn’t possibly go back to the castle to meet Lavender this way, and she couldn’t go down to the Maze, so she simply laid there until music and screaming and resounding silence came wafting over the hills. She laid there until the stars began to fade. She laid there until she felt the dew of the grass soak into her shirt and her sweater and her robes. She laid there even as the centaurs thundered past, and the sun peeked up over the trees. Until she was sure she could stand up.

Hermione watched the sun rise on this new world, and she wondered if she would live to see it take shape.