Keepsake

The Knights of Walpurgis were gathered on a Friday evening for their weekly rendezvous in the Room of Hidden Things when Tom announced that he had been practicing a spell that he wished to demonstrate. It was commonplace at the beginning of each lesson for Tom to select two members to participate and his gaze was immediately drawn to the lone knight who looked as though he were trying to appear invisible.

“Avery.”

The knight in question started, nearly tripping over his own feet despite the fact that he had been standing still. Tom cocked his head and arched a brow.

Avery was normally the poster boy for pureblood high society. He had the etiquette of a gentleman, a natural confidence that could easily be confused with arrogance and his personality had been so carefully curated from birth that he could probably charm his way out of a hurricane. However, for reasons unknown to Tom, Avery turned into a right proper bungler at their weekly gatherings. It was remarkable to witness.

“Alright there?” Tom asked.

Avery was now bent forwards, pretending to brush away an invisible stone from the floor as though the object were the source of his stumble. He stood back up, his face flush, and gestured with a short jerk of his thumb over his shoulder.

“Yeah, I’m alright, thanks. Nearly rolled my ankle on a stone just there. I got rid of it though, so it’s gone. Just didn’t want anyone else to slip on it.” 

“Mmm.” Tom nodded. Simply remarkable. “Are you still having difficulty casting the Body Binding Jinx?” 

Avery was always the last of his knights to master the most basic of spells and naturally, Tom took it upon himself to ensure that progress was made. 

“I…don’t think so, my lord.” 

Tom grinned and rocked on his toes. “Your confidence is an inspiration. Now, at some point during the demonstration, the Body Binding Jinx will likely be required and I would like you to be the one to cast it.”

“Me? How will I know when to use it?” Avery asked, voice sounding oddly meek for someone normally so cocksure.

“If you are unable to discern its necessity on your own, I’ll give you a signal.”

“W-what sort of signal? Will it be verbal, or a hand signal? Or something else to indicate—“

“For gods’ sake Avery, a simple ‘Yes, my lord’ will do.” 

Avery paled and swallowed audibly, “Yes, my lord.”

“That’s the spirit!” Tom gave him an encouraging pat on the back. “And I expect to be nothing short of impressed.” Tom turned from Avery and scanned the room until he found the knight he sought. 

“Mulciber.”

“Present.”

“Yes, Mulciber.” Tom silently counted to  five. “I am aware of your presence.  Your task will be to cast a permanent silencing spell in a manner of your choosing. Feel free to be creative . No—not right now, I haven’t told you who you’ll be casting on, have I? No, no, don’t put your wand away. For the time being, I would simply like for you to have it in hand, at-the-ready.”

Despite himself, Tom smirked at the boy’s familiar eagerness to hex his peers. Judging from the wary expressions now present on each of the Knight’s faces, he doubted his amusement was shared.

“Right.” He addressed the room, “I’d like you all to gather around in the same circular formation as you were in last week. This will provide everyone with a front row seat for equal and optimal viewing.”

Eager to comply, the Knights silently moved into position. Tom undid the cuffs of his button-down shirt and rolled up the sleeves. He retrieved his wand from his back pocket and began twirling it through dexterous fingers, humming to himself as he often did while wearing his usual apathetic expression. 

The sounds of shuffling feet on stone ceased as the Knights found their places, standing ready at attention. Tom stopped humming and allowed the stillness to invoke an ominous tone to the meeting. He found that fear was an excellent tool for motivation, for heightening the senses, and for coraling finicky adolescent attention spans. 

Cultivating tension and stoking fear into others was something of a forté of Tom’s. But in this particular instance, the atmosphere he’d intended to create was ruined when the silence was broken by the distinctly high-pitched feminine shrill of the sole female member, Walburga Black. 

“Quit breathing on me you, dung-eating troll!” The witch snapped over her shoulder at the towering Mulciber who was, in fact, standing far closer to her than necessary. 

“You’re in my place, Black! Move it! He said the same formation as last week and I was right here,” he indicated the area where she stood with a point of his wand.

“Enough!” Tom hissed, immediately quieting the bickering Knights, though not before they’d each managed to jab the other in the ribs with their elbows. Tom snapped his fingers, locking eyes with Mulciber and wordlessly pointing to the empty space a meter away from Walburga. The Knight’s shoulders slumped a fraction but he obeyed.

From the center of the circle, Tom reached into his pocket and removed a small object that he held in the palm of his hand. The Knights all leaned forward, squinting their eyes, but it was still difficult to see what it was. Tom lifted the item from his palm with his index finger and thumb before raising it to the light for better viewing.

“Look closely.” Tom urged. “Can everyone see?”

His question was answered with simultaneous murmurs of “No, my lord, could you pass it around?” And, “May we hold it, my lord?” But it was Walburga’s voice who was heard the loudest of them all. 

“Is it some sort of dodgy muggle chess piece, my lord?”

“Not quite, Walburga, although I daresay, you are on the right path.” He looked around the circle. “Anyone else? Dolohov, care to take a guess?”

“Um,” the youngest Knight began, blushing from the pubescent crack in his voice when he spoke. “Is it a figurine? A ha-hand painted figurine? Of sorts?”  

“Very close! What I am holding in my hand before you is a living, breathing—well, not breathing currently , but, it is alive. What I am holding in my hand is a living, albeit petrified, muggle—“

“Merlin’s bloody bollocks!” Mulciber interrupted in a voice an octave higher than normal. “Are muggles really that small, Tom?”

Walburga audibly scowled and reached over, flicking Mulciber behind the ear. “No, you sodding twat! It’s obviously been shrunken! Don’t interrupt!”

“Furthermore,” Malfoy cut in with a sneer, “the correct form of address is ‘my lord.’ The same as it’s been for the past three years, imbecile.” 

Mulciber rubbed his aching ear and glared back at the irritated witch, ignoring Malfoy entirely. “Well, begging your pardon !” He held a hand to his heart in feigned humility, “I wasn’t aware we had an aspiring Professor of Muggle Studies in our midst!”

Tom blinked with an exaggerated slowness and the Knights, understanding the action for the warning that it was, stood up straighter at attention. 

“Walburga is correct.” Tom continued. “This muggle has been safely miniaturized for easy transportation. Can anyone guess the cause of its petrification?”

The Knights all raised their hands and Tom smiled knowingly. 

“Of course, you, my most loyal Knights, know the cause. You are my select few, after all, who know of my beloved Hespa. And it just so happens, I will be returning this nasty creature to her after the demonstration—,” he tossed the muggle in the air where it spun a number of times before he caught it, “—as I’ve promised her a meal. In its full size , of course,” Tom finished with a pointed look at Mulciber.

The Knights all cheered their approval of the muggle man’s fate. Being on the same side as the great Basilisk living below the school was not only a point of pride, but it afforded them the opportunity to revel in the demise of the unfortunate muggles who were not. 

Tom kneeled down and carefully placed the tiny figure in the center of the circle, pointing his wand. 

“Engorgio.”

The petrified muggle returned to his full size, and the Knights were surprised by his considerable height. Other than that notable difference, the man appeared oddly… normal . If he’d been walking down Diagon Alley, none of the Knights would’ve even known he was a muggle. Not that any of them voiced this observation. 

Tom cleared his throat, drawing the focus away from the man and back to himself. 

“In Potions, we learned —and I’m using that term generously—that the only way to reverse petrification is by giving the victim the Mandrake Restorative Draught. However, as is the case with most of the Hogwarts curriculum, this information is false. The Mandrake Restorative Draught is merely one way to reverse petrification and it is probably the worst—which is why, of course, it is no surprise that the staff at Hogwarts have deemed it a satisfactory method worth teaching.”

The Knights snickered, united in their disdain for the school’s watered-down magic practices.

“Quite possibly the most obvious problem is that the draught is unusable on victims whose mouths had been closed at the time of petrification.The method I am about to demonstrate has no such limitations. That is to say, its efficacy is not limited to the mouth-breathing portion of the populace.”

“Anyone who isn’t Mulciber, in other words.” Walburga smirked. 

“Oi! And what about you, Wally?” Mulciber quipped. “Last I checked, you can’t suck off half the Quidditch team with a closed mouth.”

Mulciber’s smug grin indicated that he clearly expected Walburga to be offended by this latest remark, but she only responded with an unladylike bark of laughter.

“It took you half the entire Quidditch team to arrive at that conclusion?” My goodness,” she cackled, “I do admire your diligence.”

Mulciber crossed his arms and chuckled, entirely unbothered. “Don’t deflect, luv, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. No one here gives two hot shites about how you spend your free time.” 

“Oh for the love of Salazar, will you shut it!?” Avery snapped.

Mulciber did indeed “shut it”, but not before sending a cheeky wink in Walburga’s direction. 

Tom resisted the urge to reprimand his Knights for the second time in less than five minutes, opting to continue the lesson without further comment. If Mulciber was too busy flirting with Walburga when it came time for him to perform, Tom would simply complete the task in his stead and Mulciber would have nobody to blame for the missed opportunity but himself.

Closing his eyes and focusing on his breathing, Tom began to draw upon his magic. He exhaled slowly, reopened his eyes and began to wave a series of wand movements before speaking the incantation. The muggle’s body began to glow orange around the edges, as though being lit up from the inside like a lamp. The light expanded and expanded until it became a shimmering blue sphere that engulfed him completely. 

Without warning, the light vanished with a ‘pop’ not unlike the bursting of a bubble and the muggle, who had been standing upright, supported by his hardened form suddenly collapsed, an indication that his body had returned to its original composition. 

The man hit the floor hard, without the assistance of a cushioning charm, and the sound of something snapping may have indicated the breaking of a bone. He began to gasp and cough while his lungs readjusted to a state of functioning and his muscles began to twitch and seize while he suffered through a series of full body spasms. 

The Knights stared at the muggle, transfixed, eyes unblinking with glazed expressions. Noting the continued diversion of their attention, Tom allowed his normally stoic expression to slip away and he laughed. The sound would’ve been unsettling to anyone who had been paying attention. It might have sounded maniacal, unnatural even and yet, it was entirely genuine. If the Knights hadn’t been so focused on the vision of the convulsing man before them, they might have been witness to the rare display of their leader’s unguarded face. 

Tom’s pupils had blown so large at the sight of the fully restored and reanimated muggle that they now resembled the eyes of a shark. His breath hitched, his heart rate increased, and he forced himself to exhale deeply through his nose, causing his nostrils to flare like a wolf who’d just caught the scent of a rabbit. As he continued to watch the muggle, he dragged the tip of his tongue along the jagged peaks of his teeth, basking in the afterglow of the perfectly executed spell. 

It was just so easy.   

After several minutes of reflexive clenching and twitching the man began to settle until the only sound in the room was his heavy breathing and the only movement was the rise and fall of his heaving chest.

Tom knelt by the man’s face and shined the lit tip of his wand in each of the man’s eyes, humming in approval at the constriction of the pupils. 

“Do not be fooled by its current docility, lads,” he said over his shoulder. “And lady!” He amended, but Walburga hadn’t noticed. She was too enthralled by the strange muggle lying on the floor in front of her and in such close proximity.

”In just a few moments, it will experience a flood of adrenaline that will have it raging around like a Spanish fighting bull. The worst of its tremors are over and it looks like it hasn’t suffered any neurological damage. Not that it matters in its case, but if it were an actual person and not something destined to be the evening’s main course for Hespa, I would have given that witch or wizard a potion to treat the spasms. Ah! It appears the ugly brute is beginning to revive.” Tom nudged the man with his shoe. 

As if on cue, the muggle released a low, drawn out groan before sitting fully upright, clutching his head with his hands. The man looked around the room in a sort of dazed expression before his sight fell on the Knights. It was as though he was seeing them for the first time and like a light switch being flipped, the man narrowed his eyes, his expression darkening to a point of hostility. His hands, no longer holding his head, were now by his sides in two mallet sized fists.  

The muggle bellowed before jumping to his feet, agility restored. The man was enormous and his anger was terrifying to behold. If it had been a question of brute strength, the odds were clearly in favor of this stranger, despite being grossly outnumbered by the Knights. The infuriated muggle seemed to come to this conclusion on his own and began to charge in the direction of Dolohov and Mulciber. 

“Mulciber! Avery! Now!” Tom shouted. But before he was even finished giving the signal, Tom was pleasantly surprised to see that both wizards had already cast. Quicker than the blink of an eye, the beast of a muggle was once more lying upon the ground thrashing about like a worm on a hook after being hit by Avery’s successful Petrificus Totalus. 

The man’s face began to turn a deep shade of red following the successfully cast Silencio by Mulciber; the stream of oxygen-depriving insults and threats becoming inaudible and therefore, pointless. But Mulciber wasn’t finished. His instructions to silence the man permanently had been clear. He pointed his wand one final time. 

“Oris dispareo!”

Most of the Knights had never borne witness to  such a spell and they watched on, frozen in an awe-filled kind of horror.  The tortured man’s mouth began to wither like two raisins in the sun before  disappearing from his face entirely, leaving behind a graft of shiny pink skin in its place.

The room erupted. 

“Nicely done, nicely done! You have made your lord proud.” Tom applauded enthusiastically and the other Knights immediately followed suit. Mulciber and Avery blushed like two school girls with a crush, trying and failing to restrain their smiles. 

No one paid any mind to the hysterical muggle who had begun to inch worm himself away from the group until he knocked into a tower of vicariously stacked urns. The Room of Hidden Things was filled with a cacophony of sounds ranging from the ringing echo of silver colliding with stone, the crash of shattering ceramic and the sickening squelch of pounding flesh. 

Tom sighed and stalked towards the muggle for no other reason than sheer obligation, as though the man were nothing more than a pile of dog droppings that required removal. He levitated the fallen urns that hadn’t broken and fished the muggle out from under the pile with a silent Accio. His nose was bleeding and appeared to have been crushed and there were a number of visible welts on his head. Having had enough interruptions for the day, Tom pointed his wand and cast a stunning spell, returning the poor captive back into a state of unconsciousness. 

The meeting was adjourned soon after and the Knights began to gather their belongings before returning to their rooms. Dolohov, who rarely carried anything on his person except for an heirloom dagger tucked in his boot and his wand in the pocket of the school robe sleeves, was already ready to leave. However, instead of returning to the dungeons, he approached Tom with a contemplative expression on his often too serious face. 

“My lord—“

Tom tsked and held up a staying hand. “None of that now, Antonin,” he interjected with a perfect smile. “The meeting is over, no need for such formalities between friends. You may call me ‘Tom’, as do the others, in casual settings.”

Antonin blinked, the offer apparently having taken him by surprise, much to Tom's amusement. In the years they had known each other, Tom had never inferred that their relationship was anything resembling friendship. But he was in a good mood and feeling generous. 

Truth be told, he quite liked the boy and his little owlish face. The Russian wizard was indeed the youngest of his Knights and he looked positively harmless, but his potential by Tom’s side could not be understated. He was, unquestionably, the most dangerous if not the most gifted. Where older, more seasoned wizards fumbled, Antonin excelled. He had a natural talent for spellwork and an agility with casting that were second to none, save Tom, of course. Still, Tom didn’t give insinuations of friendship easily, lest his Knights begin to take their positions lightly and start believing they stood on equal footing. 

“Very well,” Antonin nodded before doing something with his mouth that was likely intended to be a smile of his own but was more closely akin to a grimace. “Tom it is, then,” Antonin winced at that, and his face flushed a bright pink all the way from the apples of his cheeks to the tips of his ears. Tom bit back the laugh that was fighting to be released and allowed the boy a moment to collect himself without comment.

After a moment, curiosity seemed to override whatever nerves Antonin had been struggling with and he continued. “I know that none of the books in Hogwarts, including the ones in the Restricted Section, teach the particular restoration spell you used. And I noticed that the second part of the wand movements you used…well, they are—from what I could tell, they appeared to be identical to the first movement in Restituo… and we were taught that by Professor… ”

Antonin trailed off, leaving his question unfinished and unasked, and began looking all around the room as though he’d rather look anywhere else besides Tom.

Tom regarded the younger wizard, with his too large nose and oversized eyes. The boy had a repertoire filled with torture curses that could scare a boggart, and yet, he’d been afraid to voice a seemingly innocuous question. Tom gave him his most disarming smile. Unlike Antonin, Tom rehearsed an array of smiles daily before breakfast and knew this particular smile popped not one, but both of his dimples. 

“You are wondering if I acquired the original restoration spell from Professor Granger, yes? As it was she who invented the Restituo spell and taught it to us in third year?” 

Antonin swallowed, his throat bobbing. 

“Well, yes, my—I mean, Tom.”

“But that isn’t a question anyone would take offense in being asked, is it? So I find myself,” Tom paused, rubbing his jaw, “rather curious… What is it about Professor Granger that’s got you so” he gestured with his hands, “keyed up, hmm? You’re like a kneazle on a hot tin roof.” 

Antonin averted his eyes once more, working his jaw as though attempting to find the words he was searching for—or, hoping to draw out the moment longer before speaking them.  

“Oh no, no, no! Please don’t tell me we are talking about her again!” 

The porcelain smooth hands of Abraxas Malfoy fell atop Antonin’s shoulders, causing the younger boy to flinch.

“You should know better, Dolly!” Abraxas grinned, “I thought you were smart. One does not simply speak of She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.”

“I didn’t—“

Antonin looked up at the blonde towering over him with widened eyes that quickly darted back to Tom, his voice seeming to have been stolen. 

Before another word was spoken, they were joined by Avery and Mulciber with Walburga following behind in an unhurried step. 

“Why is everyone still here? I thought we were going back to the common room?” Avery asked with an edge of impatience, all signs of any previously displayed meekness now gone following the successful casting of a single spell.

“Let’s finish this discussion later, shall we?” Tom spoke softly, but loud enough for Antonin to hear him. “You’re not in trouble. There’s no reason to worry. There’s no such thing as a bad question, hm?” 

The younger wizard appeared to relax and nodded his head, relief apparent. 

“Thanks, Tom,” he said before turning on his heel and sprinting towards the door as though being chased by a Wendigo.

Curious little fellow, Tom thought while watching him go. Admittedly, the topic of Professor Granger had become…somewhattaboo in the past. But the thought that anyone had noticed beyond his closest peers was a little irksome, to say the least. 

Antonin had always been rather keen on her, he supposed. He’d been practically a teacher's pet, always offering his assistance after classes, always sitting in the front row. And there was the way that he’d seemed rather unsettled by her sudden departure. Tom had assumed that his interest in her had been entirely fueled by his fascination with the Dark Arts. But it was possible that his enthusiasm had been driven by something else entirely. Hmm. Perhaps he’d need to revisit the topic later.

“You coming, Tom?” Abraxas asked. 

“You go on. Don’t wait up. I still need to feed Hespa, remember?”  

“Oh! Right… I’d nearly forgotten. Would you like company, or…?” 

Tom laughed, hands in his pockets. “No, Malfoy. I think I’ll manage.”

The blonde wizard visibly relaxed before adding, “It’s not that I don’t want to see her—she just… scares the ever living shite out of me.”

Tom grinned. “I understand, no worries. It’s rather tedious having to translate back and forth all the time anyway.”

“Alright then, glad that’s settled,” Abraxas smirked, nodding his head in farewell. He only made it three paces when he spun back around. “Oh, and Tom? What I said just then, about the Professor, you know I only said what I did to wind up Dolly…”

Tom scoffed. “Don’t insult me. That was ages ago and nothing more than a boyhood crush. I hardly even think of her. Besides, she was what, ten years our senior? She more than likely took up with some boring blood traitor after she left Hogwarts. Probably popped out two children of her own by now. I think I’ll survive, Brax.”

“Yeah, fair point, mate. Alright, I’ll just be off.” 

“So you’ve said.”

Abraxas laughed and began walking towards the door, calling out in a falsetto voice with a tap of his wrist watch, “Home before midnight, eh, Tommy, boy?” He pointed his finger like a parent instructing a child. “Don’t talk to strangers. Make good choices. If someone touches you funny, kick him in the bollocks and yell, "fiendfyre!” 

“Thanks, Mum. Now fuck off.” 

“I’ll cast a warmer on your bed and lay your PJs out, my darling!” Abraxas yelled before the sound of his laughter was stifled by the closing door. 

Tom's eyes stayed locked on exit for a few moments after Abraxas left and waited for the magic of the room to turn the door into a wall of polished stone. He then proceeded to weave several locking wards that would disengage the room’s accessibility from the other side. 

He summoned the nearly forgotten muggle, not bothering to levitate him and not caring when his heavy body crashed into several chairs on its journey across the floor. The streak of blood he left in his wake was easily spelled away, and without further ado, Tom shrunk the man back down to his miniature size and returned him to his pocket. He was pleased to note that the man had still not regained consciousness and Avery’s binding spell had continued to hold. He needed to feed Hespa, and he would. But there was one other thing he needed to tend to first.

Tom inhaled deeply and his heart began to pound, a familiar swelling of emotion overtaking his senses. No one was around to witness it, however, so he didn’t bother suppressing it with Occlumency... Still, he despised the ache in his chest that accompanied it and he rubbed the troublesome area over his heart as though it would soothe the wound. It never did.

He pivoted from where he stood and began walking determinedly towards the farthest corner of the room. He walked past an aisle of enchanted books that grumbled in irritation at having been awoken. 

He cut through a section of antique cabinets, sofas, and settees, stacked up high with preservation enchantments that made them glow and flicker like firelight. 

He passed shelves of crystal balls perched atop pillows with faces that appeared in the glass spheres when he passed them by. The faces called out to him, coughing dramatically; “It’s from all of this dust! We long to be cleaned!!” They cried to his retreating back.

He continued past an ancient looking and ornately carved frame with an etching in gold that read:

 “ Behold with thine eyes

 a certain fate, 

The Soul Glass reveals 

thy one true mate.”

The missing glass had always made Tom snicker in amusement, imagining the disgruntled idiot who’d surely fallen for the mirror’s false promises before they’d undoubtedly taken out their disappointment from their findings upon the glass itself. 

When at last he reached his destination, he slowed his step and approached the object he sought with a deep appreciation for the magnitude of the moment. It was covered in a white sheet, just how he’d left it, but he was surprised to discover that, due to his growing height, it now only stood as high as his shoulders. 

He reached out, grazing his fingertips along the surface of fabric before bunching up a section in his fist and pulling it away. He’d known what to expect of course, and yet, nothing ever compared to seeing it again with his own eyes; the reality of what he’d done. He was self-aware enough to know that his reaction was atypical. He should be horrified, remorseful, he should be filled with regret. But in truth, all he felt was a sort of transcendental excitement, a feeling of rapturous pleasure, impossible to quell. 

What he’d said to Malfoy earlier had been a lie, of course. Not merely a portion of what he’d said, but all of it. Every word. While it might have been true that it had been ages since anyone else had seen their former professor and Tom’s one-time guardian, it had not been ages for Tom. And the way that he’d felt about her was not a thing of the past, as he had claimed, but a thing so alive and so present that it practically had a pulse. 

She had not gone off and married a blood traitor, she had not popped out any children, as he had so eloquently put it, and there were days, still, when his mind was so infiltrated with thoughts of her that he scarcely could spare a thought for anything else. 

Even the comment he’d made about the difference in their ages had been a lie. The first time he’d naively declared his love to her, he had indeed been a boy of eleven and she’d been a woman of twenty-one. She’d smiled at him and her laughter had been a devastating overture that she’d sung just for him. I’m practically old enough to be your mum... Just how do you suppose that would work, silly boy? But the age gap between them was now growing smaller with each passing day and he could hardly wait to tell her just how wrong she had been—not only about that but about everything.

With a hunger he reserved just for her— a greater hunger than anything he’d known as an underweight, impoverished orphan—Tom gazed into the vacant, unseeing stare of Hermione Granger and leaned down to kiss her. 

“Hello, beloved,” he whispered as he reached up to cradle her face, his eyes alight with reverence. “I know you’re cross with me, but I can explain. I’ll explain everything and more.” He spoke the words like a prayer rather than a promise, knowing she couldn’t hear him. At any rate, it mattered not. In a few moments, that all was about to change. 

She looked so small now and more beautiful than ever, despite remaining entirely unchanged. Tom found that he quite liked this difference between their sizes. With that thought in mind, he pressed his body against her own, wrapped his arms around her and kissed her pouting lips once more.

He hummed a satisfied purr low in his throat and retrieved his wand from his pocket and touched its tip to her brow. He could fully restore her, he knew now for certain. The ease in which he’d restored the muggle had been evidence enough for that. But though he wanted it with every fiber of his being, it wasn’t quite the right time yet.

He knew from siphoning her memories that her last waking thoughts had been those final moments just before petrification. Diagnostic spells had revealed that her petrified mind was neither alive nor dead; she’d been existing in a sort of neurological purgatory, unable to make new memories while retaining the old. He couldn’t help but wonder, had she been reliving those last waking moments? Had she been watching the sight of Tom’s face twisting with rage playing over and over in her mind on a loop?

If he fully restored her now, her fury would be something far worse to contend with than that pitiful display earlier by the muggle. Once Hermione learned that he’d been stowing her away all this time like some forgotten keepsake, hidden away in a room of forgotten things, well…The odds of her wanting anything to do with him at all were decidedly not in his favor. No, he needed to wait until he was certain that she wouldn’t refuse him. When it became clear that there was only one path for her to choose. He could only do that by making her see reason. It would make the next part of his plan the most difficult, but it was essential.

“Restituto conscientia.”

It was the most recent of many spells he’d created just for her and it was the purpose for this visit. It was not intended to restore movement or return the use of one's faculties like the spell he’d performed on the muggle. This particular spell was only intended to revive a petrified mind. 

The telltale sign that the spell had been effective was the appearance of a small white light that appeared just over her head. “Yessss,” Tom hissed in relief, his thudding heart feeling ready to burst. He continued to watch the light as it began its downward descent, gently swinging side to side like a falling feather until it landed atop her head. The moment the light made contact, it branched off into a thousand white lines that ran throughout her entire body like a thousand tiny rivers made of starlight. 

He put his wand back in his pocket and, without pause, stroked his fingertips and slid his palms along every area of exposed flesh that he could reach. Her skin was cold and solid to the touch but it didn’t disturb him as much as it probably should. It was still her skin, her body, and he would relish it, cherish it, in any incarnation. 

Tom brought his hands back to her face and cradled it once more.  He gazed deeply into her unseeing eyes, his own darting back and forth between them. What she could or couldn’t see mattered not, he was looking for his own pleasure, not hers. 

He’d successfully awoken her mind which meant that at long last, she’d be able to hear him. He had so many things he’d been longing to tell her and he’d imagined this moment for so long that he could hardly decide where to start. He opted for a token of honesty:

“Hello, Hermione. I’ve missed you.”