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Chapter Text

Hermione couldn’t make it.

There was no way she could make it.

Her entire body was in excruciating pain—every nerve frayed, every muscle burning from the repeated Cruciatus curse. Her vision swam with flickers of gold and black, and her ears rang with the ghost of her own screams. 

Half-conscious, all she knew was that one moment someone was supporting her boneless frame—rough hands and long nails digging into her skin, something sharp and cold pressed against her throat—and the next…

CRASH.

A thunderous roar shattered the air, followed by the high, piercing shriek of Bellatrix Lestrange and multiple other shouts—some voices familiar, some not. The arm snaking around Hermione’s neck loosened and the ground immediately disappeared beneath her feet. 

Shards of crystal rained down on her like razors, a few plunged into her torso, others into her thigh. The cold marble floor beneath her cheek was sticky with blood—hers, she thought vaguely, though she couldn’t feel the individual wounds anymore.

The pain didn’t register as new—it simply folded into the layer of torment Hermione was already suffering from.

She was probably gonna die.

Hermione had already prepared herself for this from the moment she decided to go with Harry. Which was why the thought brought no fear. Just…resignation. Maybe even relief. 

Because it meant no more Cruciatus. No more ‘Mudblood’ carving. No more Bellatrix’s laughter. No more—

“HERMIONE!!”

Ron.

Her sweet, brave Ron. The boy she had been in love with since the moment he boldly defended her against Snape in their 3rd year. The boy who had made her laugh, made her cry, and broken her heart more than once. 

She didn’t want to leave him.

Hermione’s fingers slightly twitched, as though she was trying to reach Ron as well. She heard him more than she saw him—his voice cracked, terrified, and so close to her. A pair of hands skidded against the floor near her. He was crawling over the shards, trying to lift the wreckage of the chandelier to get to her.

He almost made it.

But another arm closed around her shoulder first, yanking her backwards just as Ron’s fingertips brushed hers. 

Hermione let out an agonised groan, her heels scraped uselessly against the marble as Lucius Malfoy wrenched her away from Ron and shoved her bodily between Narcissa and Draco. Draco caught her by instinct, his expression was one of horror and alarm as her broken, bloodied weight collapsed into his arms. 

“NO!” Ron bellowed desperately, trying to lunge forward again. “HERMIONE!”

“Ron!” Harry yelled. “Let’s go!!”

“Not without her!” Ron shouted back.

It wasn’t until then that Harry’s head snapped toward where Hermione was. His mouth fell agape and he took in the sight of a barely conscious Hermione draped against Draco, her head lolling against his shoulder. 

Harry took a step forward, his hold on the Griphook slackened. “Hermione?!” This couldn't be happening. He thought Ron had gotten her while he was busy dealing with Bellatrix and Greyback.

Upon hearing his panicked voice, Hermione’s eyes fluttered open. A shallow breath escaped her trembling lips. And then, with the smallest movement, she found Harry’s gaze and mouthed a single word.

“Go.”

Harry’s green eyes widened. Before he could do anything, Dobby grabbed both him and a struggling Ron. “It’s too late!” The elf cried out, his tiny body shaking with grief and fear. “Dobby must take Harry Potter and his friend out now!”

“WAIT—!” Ron and Harry screamed in unison.

The unmistakable crack of Apparition split the air. And just like that, they were gone.

Everything that happened next was like a blur to Hermione.

For a moment, no one moved or even breathed. Then Bellatrix’s guttural screech of rage exploded through the grand drawing room. 

“NOOOOOOOOOOO!!” She spun on the spot, feet stomping, face contorted in madness. “Dobby that disgusting, low-class creature!! He got them out!! They’re gone—HARRY POTTER HAS ESCAPED!!!”

Bellatrix’s wild eyes stopped on Hermione, who lay crumpled in Draco’s arms, bloodied and motionless. Within few strides, she closed the distance and striked Hermione hard across the face with the back of her hand.

“YOU!! YOU FILTHY MUDBLOOD!! You were stalling me! Buying them time!” Bellatrix screamed. “They even took my wand!!” 

A sharp, stinging pain exploded across Hermione’s cheek as the mad witch’s hand cracked against her the second time. Her head snapped to the side, coppery blood spilling into her mouth, too weak to raise a hand in defence. 

Somewhere behind the ringing in her ears, she could hear Draco’s voice, even feeling his body shift as though to shield her from the brutal onslaught. “Stop it. Stop, Aunt Bella!” He said weakly. “She is—she is bleeding already. At this rate she is gonna…”

“Get away from her! MOVE!” Bellatrix shrieked, shoving Draco aside with surprising strength for someone so thin. He stumbled backwards, yet the arms around Hermione only tightened. 

Bellatrix was beyond reason regardless.

“Lying little Mudblood! I should skin you alive!” She spat, scrambling to grab the nearest wand, which happened to be Narcissa’s. She pointed it at both Hermione and Draco. “Cruc—”

“Bella, ENOUGH!” Narcissa's furious voice rang out sharply. She seized her sister’s wrist before Bellatrix could finish the curse. “That’s my son you’re aiming at! And if you continue, the girl will die. We need her alive to present the Dark Lord. He shall decide her fate!”

Bellatrix froze, her wand hand began shaking uncontrollably. “H-he’ll kill me.” She breathed heavily like a cornered animal, twitching and muttering to herself. “I was the one calling him back. The blame shall be on me. Harry Potter is gone…”

She turned on Lucius, who had been silent until now, his face grey, gloved fingers clutching his cane. “You did nothing, you useless coward! You just stood there while they ran away!”

“At least I managed to grab the Mudblood.” Lucius said icily. “Leave it all to you, and even she would have been lost. Then what would we have left to offer the Dark Lord in recompense?”

“How dare you, you piece of—!”

“Stop it both of you!” Narcissa snapped. “You’ll have time to point fingers later, and that’s only if we survive the night.”

Then, the air shifted.

They all felt it before they saw it—even Hermione who was losing more and more of her consciousness. It started as a whisper that was no louder than wind under the door gap, then came a low, inhuman hiss. The candles flickered violently, and shadows curled along the four edges, slithering unnaturally across the walls.

Lucius stepped back. Draco bit back a whimper. Even Bellatrix stopped breathing. 

A rush of cold wind blew through the room though the windows remained shut. 

CRACK.

The Dark Lord had arrived.

-----oOo-----

Hermione was slipping into darkness. 

Her vision swam in and out of focus, sharp and dizzying pain stabbed through her skull. Her limbs were limp and boneless, she couldn’t lift her head to get a grasp of her surrounding. She couldn’t even feel her own injuries, only the metallic tang of blood in her mouth. 

Somewhere in the haze of her mind, she registered that someone was holding her in their arms—they were trembling, but they didn’t let go. When she stirred, trying to crack her eyes open, the hand clamping on her shoulderblade squeezed harshly like a reprimand, forcing her to stay still.

Why, though?

Hermione’s memories were scattered. Harry. Ron. The Snatchers. Greyback. Bellatrix. Mudblood. Pain. A crash. Pain. Dobby. Then they were gone. 

She barely remembered what happened after Harry and Ron vanished with Dobby. There had been shouting—the Malfoys, arguing with Bellatrix. Bellatrix had wanted to kill her—one side of Hermione’s face throbbed where the crazy witch’s ring had sliced open the skin—but Draco…had he tried to protect her?

And then—

A sudden chill in the air. Magic—more powerful than anyone’s Hermione had ever known, yet also extremely dark and malicious—pressed in on all sides and wrapped around her shattered frame. It slithered over her skin like a serpent, dragging ice into her marrow.

Hermione’s heart lurched.

He was here.

Voldemort.

Terror slammed into her chest so hard it made her gasp audibly. The person carrying her immediately tightened their hold in warning again, sending a ripple of pain through her broken ribs, but she barely paid any attention. 

Even with her vision clouded and her ears ringing, she could still sense Voldemort’s suffocating presence and malevolent aura. The sinister enchantment from the Slytherin locket was almost childish in comparison. That had been a shadow. This was the source.

She could hardly felt her own magic in her current wounded state, but if she knew it must have had recognised the predator in the room and was instinctively trying to shrink away, to make itself small and invisible.

For the first time, Hermione had to wonder how Harry could have faced this monstrous being and lived to tell the tale.

Suddenly, two screams tore through the room—high and agonised, reminding her awfully of her own just earlier. The arms around her shook even harder, and she was partially grateful for it, because that meant they wouldn’t notice her visible flinch. 

Voldemort was enraged.

“You dare let him slip through your fingers?” The Dark Lord’s voice was a low, deadly rasp. “You called me back, merely to inform me that you have failed me?”

“No, my Lord!” Bellatrix sobbed frantically. “We had him. Harry Potter was here, we nearly had him…”

“Nearly.” Voldemort hissed. “A word for fools and corpses. Crucio!”

Bellatrix screamed again. 

“My Lord, please.” Lucius’ hoarse voice came next. “It was the elf, Dobby, he Apparated them…”

“The elf.” Voldemort repeated, cold amusement woven into his contempt. “You were bested by your own house-elf? Oh Lucius, Abraxas must be truly disappointed.”

“No—no, my Lord! We tried, we tried to stop them…”

Another wand raise, and Lucius’ voice turned into a gurgled cry of pain.

Hermione shivered. The overwhelming pressure of Voldemort’s magic clawed at her like icy talons, sinking deeper into her skin. Her stomach twisted violently, bile rose in her throat. She fought to keep it down, swallowing hard against the acrid taste, knowing that even that small motion might draw his attention to her.

That was when the realisation dawned—she was utterly, horrifically alone.

No wand.
No plan. 
No friends.

She had told Harry and Ron to go, hadn’t she? Told them to leave her behind, to to save themselves?

And she didn’t regret it, not for a second. She would do it again in a heartbeat if it meant her boys were safe. But the ache of that choice, of the cost of it, still settled heavily in her soul.

She would never see them and her parents again. 

Tears stung at Hermione’s eyes—not from the pain nor the blood congealing beneath her, but from the unbearable sense of finality. 

This wasn’t a duel she could strategise her way out of or a riddle with an answer waiting to be found. She wasn’t Harry, the odds had never been in her favour. There would be no miracle for her this time, no last-minute solution tucked away in some forgotten corner of the library. 

But she was ready.

If this was how it ended—if her life had to be the sacrifice that bought Harry time, that gave Ron another chance—then so be it.

She was Hermione Granger. She didn’t beg when Bellatrix tortured her to near insanity, and even now, broken and alone, she would not beg either.

With her mind clearer than ever, Hermione summoned every last shard of focus she had left, pretending to unconsciously shift her weight to a side. Draco—yes she had realised it was Draco holding her—instantly tensed and forced her still, but he didn’t notice that her right arm had managed to settle across her abdomen.

So slowly it almost wasn’t movement at all, Hermione’s hand began to inch upward. Every nerve in her body screamed in protest, and blood from the gash along her chest soaked her fingertips, but she kept going. Her fingers trembled, slick and unsteady, but she found it—the familiar chain tucked just under her collarbone.

The plain silver necklace had once been what she used to carry her beaded bag on her neck. It appeared harmless to any onlooker, but she had modified it a bit, charming one of the links to contain a tiny purple pill.

A poison.

Fatal. Quick. Painless.

Hermione had brew it months ago—alone, in the dead of night, after Ron had left and Harry had already fallen asleep, allowing the utter silence to make way for the fear to creep into her thoughts, whispering to her all the things that could go wrong.

It was a failsafe she created for herself, for Harry, for the war, and for the future of entire Wizarding Britain.

She had known too much, seen too much, guessed at things even Dumbledore hadn’t fully explained. She had peered too far beyond the veil of what the light side permitted, and what she had discovered had left her frightened of her own mind.

Hermione had always been curious and hungry for knowledge, yes. But this had gone far beyond schoolwork and theories. Horcruxes. Soul magic. Blood rituals. Dangerous topics that weren’t meant for any Hogwarts curriculum, all buried in the back corners of Grimmauld Place library.

She had devoured it all. Page after page. Night after night. Not because she had to, or because Harry had needed her to, but because the Horcrux had told her to.

Slytherin's locket. 

She still remembered its voice—Tom Riddle’s voice. Silken, measured, not the high, cold hiss of Voldemort, but younger, deadlier in its charm. 

Hermione had never told Harry or Ron how differently the locket had affected her. While it tormented them with cruel visions and venomous whispers, it had spoken to her in soft, coaxing tones, murmuring flowery words into her ears. 

It praised her brilliance, told her she was special—the only one among them capable of true understanding. It urged her to read more, to think deeper, to explore the intricacies of dark magic—not for power, but for a purpose. Because, it had said, to defeat the darkest wizard in history, you must first understand the darkness itself.

And she did.

By the time she realised what she had done, it was too late. The knowledge was already etched into her mind, and Hermione had crossed a threshold that should never be crossed.

Which was why she needed the pill.

If Voldemort ever captured her—if he ever managed to break through her mental defences, to peel open her thoughts layer by layer—he would learn everything. And it wouldn’t be just the fact Dumbledore and Harry had known about and destroyed some of his Horcruxes. 

Hermione couldn’t let that happen. 

He couldn’t have it.

He couldn’t have her.

Across the room, Bellatrix and Lucius were screaming again. Hermione’s hand trembled, but her fingers had found the special link, her fingernail wedging beneath the nearly invisible seam until it popped open, and the pill dropped into her palm. 

"Please, my Lord." Bellatrix sobbed, and despite herself, Hermione couldn’t help the flicker of vicious satisfaction that stirred in her. "I swear, I won't ever fail you again!"

"We have the Mudblood!" Lucius croaked hoarsely. "Potter's Mudblood is still here!"

"Potter's Mudblood?" Voldemort's voice was soft and musing.

Hermione's breath hitched. 

“Yes, my Lord! She is right there, Hermione Granger—the Mudblood that is traveling with Potter!”

Hermione’s heart was thudding so loudly she thought it might rupture. She had to act now.

She squeezed her eyes tighter, and with a sudden burst of strength she didn’t know she had, jerked her hand upward, aiming the pill toward her mouth. Her ribs screamed in protest, her bloodied muscles pulling taut, but she didn’t care.

She imagined her loved ones standing in front of her. Her parents. Harry and Ron. Ginny, Neville and Luna. All her friends from Hogwarts and the Order.

Forgive me. Hermione thought, a tear rolling from a corner of her eye, her fingers brushing her parted lips.

But Draco had struck.

His hand came down like lightning, grabbing her wrist just before the pill touched her mouth. He easily wrenched it from her hand and hurled it away. 

"No!!" She cried out brokenly. Her body followed the momentum of Draco’s sudden movement, toppling sideways. She let out a pitiful whine as her lacerated back slammed into the ground with a loud thud.

Hermione forced her eyes open, vision swimming with black spots. Draco was above her, his face twisted in fear, shock and fury, grey eyes wide as if he couldn’t believe what she had just tried to do.

Yet it lasted only a heartbeat, because in the very next breath, he was there.

Voldemort appeared beside her without so much as a sound, the hem of his dark robes dragging behind him like a shadow. With no warning, he lifted one foot and brought it down upon her throat. 

Hermione gagged, coughing uncontrollably under the suffocating pressure. His heel ground into the soft hollow just beneath her jaw, pinning her to the cold floor like an insect under glass. 

The force wasn't enough to cut off her windpipe. Not yet anyway.

Her vision blurred at the edges, but through her wet lashes, she could still see Voldemort’s long frame looming above her, spine straight, hands clasped behind his back in calm observation.

It was the first time Hermione had seen Lord Voldemort up close.

Just like Harry had described, his features were inhuman and distorted. Tall and skeletally thin, his skin was a ghastly shade of bone-white. Not a trace of hair marred his head or brows. His mouth was lipless, his nose had all but disappeared, leaving only two snake-like slits where nostrils should be. 

He looked exactly like the cold-blooded, disgusting monster that he was. 

But what scared Hermione the most was his aura.

Darkness coiled around Voldemort like smoke, shadows clung to the edges of his robes and pooled unnaturally at his feet. Dark magic radiated from him in silent waves, smelling of decay and graveyard. 

It was like he was Death himself. 

His boot pressed down harder.

Hermione choked, her throat convulsing beneath the crushing weight. Her fingers clawed frantically at his leg in a blind, desperate attempt to breathe.

And then she sensed it.

A strange, dizzying warmth where her palm met his skin, sending a tingling vibration deep inside her ribcage and directly to her heart. Her blood roared, as though her magic shivered awake to respond to his, like something within her was calling back to him in recognition.

Hermione’s hand snapped back instinctively.

No, that wasn’t possible. She was concussed. Delirious. The blood loss. The pain. It had to be scrambling her brain. Because there was no other explanation for the strange pull she felt toward Voldemort—like some kind of twisted, cosmic harmony.

He had noticed it too.

Blood-shot eyes widened slightly, then the narrow slits of his pupils dilated, sharpening with clarity. For a moment, he looked...sane as he stared at her bloodied face, the manic fury that had promised her a painful death earlier was gone, replace by something even more unsettling: curiousity and intrigue.

His cold gaze raked over Hermione like a scalpel, dissecting her as though she were a newly discovered specimen. There was hunger in his eyes—a thirst for knowledge she knew all too well, because it mirrored her own every time she opened a book she couldn’t put down.

Her skin crawled, and she had to force herself not to flinch.

She still did, though. 

Voldemort’s mouth curled up into a vicious smirk. He lifted his foot from her neck with eerie slownes, ruby orbs watching in cruel amusement as she gasped and coughed for air. 

Then, he raised his wand—not toward her, but sideways, and the discarded pill Draco had flung away earlier zipped through the air and landed neatly in his open palm.

Hermione froze. 

Voldemort rolled the small pill between his long, bony fingers. The faintest glint of admiration flickered in his eyes.

“Foxglove and hemlock.” He murmured, holding it up against the light. “A masterful brew that could take down a Giant outright the moment they swallowed. It might even rival basilisk venom. Hogwarts must have never taught you this.” 

Hermione’s stomach dropped. Draco gaped at her like he was seeing her for the very first time.

The pill burst into a tiny flame in Voldemort’s hand and disintegrated into ashes. With unsettling grace, he crouched down beside her, those crimson irises never left her own.

His grotesque features were even more intimidating up close, like a serpent freshly shed of its skin. Hermione desperately wanted to shrink, to crawl back, to create as much distance between them as possible, but her body had long stopped following her command.

Voldemort tilted his head, studying her like a hawk. He used his menacing-looking wand to lift a lock of her thick, tangled hair from her face. A non-verbal Scourgify followed, vanishing the blood, sweat and dirt from her skin.

They stared at each other.

“So this is Potter’s Mudblood.” Voldemort mused. “You’ve caused quite some trouble for my Death Eaters with this clever brain of yours, Miss Granger.”

Hermione flinched. Names came rushing back like ghosts. Yaxley and Dolohov. Greyback and Bellatrix. Even Skeeter and Umbridge who weren’t Death Eaters yet still supported this new regime all the same.

She had made far too many enemies for her own good. She didn’t want to imagine what would happen if Voldemort decided to give her to one of them.

Voldemort chuckled. “I might. You shall make quite a valuable prize.” He grinned at her shocked expression. “You didn’t think Lord Voldemort needs a wand to read your thoughts, did you?” 

Blood drained from Hermione’s face. Her trembling lips parted but no sound came out. Everything inside her head scattered like frightened birds.

What a bloody fool she was. How could she forget that Voldemort was the best Legilimens in the world? A single glance into her eyes and he could easily peel her thoughts from her mind.

Hermione thought she might be sick. Her stomach churned violently and tears began to burn behind her eyes. She longed to scream, to fight, to cry, and more than anything, to murder Draco Malfoy.

This was all that ferret’s fault. 

She could have had her peace—a quiet, painless death by her own choice. Without implicating Harry, or Ron, or the Order. Without dragging the whole fucking war down with her.

Her fate was hers to decide—hers!

And Draco had robbed her of that.

Hermione’s gaze snapped to Draco, full of venom. He met it for half a second before glancing away, shame blooming across his pale face.

Coward.

Voldemort cackled like a madman. “Oh Miss Granger, I wouldn’t think so harshly of him if I were you—knowing his actual thoughts.” He turned his head, eyes gleaming with cruel delight and cold calculation as they slid toward the Malfoy heir. “Good job, Draco. Perhaps I can count on you a bit more than your failure for a father.”

Draco bowed deeply, nearly stumbling over his own feet.

Hermione almost sneered in disgust, but Voldemort’s attention was on her again.

“I can see that you’re very eager to die, little Mudblood.” He drawled, his voice almost gentle, mockingly so. The softness only made the implication behind his words more horrifying. “Rather clever of you, really. There might be fates far worse than death waiting for a little witch like you at the end of this road.”

Crimson eyes slid down the length of her body as though for measurement, like assessing the quality of piece of meat. The stare was invasive and dehumanising that Hermione’s skin crawled under it. She wanted to tear her flesh apart just to rid herself of the sensation, to erase the feeling of being seen like that.

Voldemort smirked, pleased by the reaction.

Then he raised his wand ever so casually, a malicious smile curved at his lips.

“But first…”

The wand tip touched her temple.

“Legilimens.”

Chapter Text

He first showed up two weeks after Ron left.

Hermione had been reading by candlelight, her back aching from hours hunching over The Tales of Beedle the Bard, searching for anything that could help them make sense of Dumbledore’s clues and find Gryffindor’s sword. 

Earlier that evening, Harry had all but snapped at her to give it up. “We’re chasing fairy tales, Hermione.” He muttered bitterly before disappearing into his room, the canvas curtain fell heavily back into place. “Dumbledore left us nothing.”

She didn't reply, merely clutching the Slytherin's locket resting against her collarbone and burying herself deeper in the pages.

The heavy silence had become a constant companion to them both. But Hermione had grown used to it. She even preferred it now to the days before, when sorrow and heartbreak had cracked her open and left her sobbing into her pillow while Harry pretended not to hear.

Ron wasn’t coming back. She knew that now.

So instead of spending her nights crying herself to sleep, she worked.  She read. She made plans. She fought to be useful. Because if she stopped even just for a second, the grief would rise again, shattering her and reducing her to nothing but a wrecked mess.

And that simply wasn’t an option—not when she had chosen to stay by Harry's side and she was literally the only remaining person for him to hold on to. Harry needed her, and she couldn't let him down.

Then, at midnight, the shadows shifted.

At first Hermione thought it was just the flicker of the candle, flames dancing on the walls of their enchanted tent. But when she looked up, a man was standing just a few feet away from her.

Dark hair, dark eyes, high cheekbones, perfectly sculpted mouth. He appeared to be around ten years older than her, and he was easily the most attractive man she had ever seen. 

She screamed.

The sound she made was loud enough to wake Harry up immediately. Five seconds and he had already reached her side, his glasses nowhere to be found yet his wand had been drawn out and ready for any duel. 

The mysterious man vanished.

No sound of Disapparition, no signs of entry or exit. Just...disappeared.

Hermione told Harry what happened, and after carefully inspecting the whole tent and checking the wards, he awkwardly patted her shoulder in a pitiful attempt to comfort her and said. "We’re both exhausted. Perhaps I can take the watch tonight, you should get some sleep." 

She smiled weakly, declined and urged him to go back to bed. As much as she wanted to argue with him, she knew what she saw simply made no sense. 

But the man came back.

It was subtler this second time. Hermione was alone again—sorting their dwindling supply of food—when she caught his reflection in the kettle just behind her shoulder. She spun around so fast she nearly knocked over the camp stove, and he was there staring at her with those bottomless eyes, a small smirk tugging at the corner of his lips as though daring her to scream.

She bit her tongue, the locket heavier than ever on her neck.

She said nothing to Harry.

When he returned a third time, Hermione wasn't even surprised anymore. Because she had recognised him this time.

Tom Riddle.

Not Voldemort as the world knew him now, all deformed and serpentine. No, this was the man before the monster, the ghost of who he once was. A Tom Riddle forever in his early thirties, preserved and frozen from the exact moment he killed that Muggle tramp to split a part of his soul into Slytherin's heirloom. 

It hadn’t been hard to piece it together. He only ever appeared when she was wearing the Horcrux, and Ginny had told her everything about what the diary had done to her—what the mere memory of a 5th year Tom Riddle was capable of.

If the very first Horcrux he created at sixteen had been powerful enough to manipulate Ginny and terrorise all of Hogwarts, then it would only be reasonable to assume that the locket—forged much later when he had begun to learn true Dark Arts—could be far more dangerous.

The fact he was able to materialise after such a short time being in their possession spoke volume.

Hermione decided to ignore him.

Naturally, he showed up more often.

It was weird, really, that he never uttered a word to her while in his human form, only kept those calculating obsidian eyes train on her all the time. Whenever her will faltered and her gaze landed on him stealthily, he would merely smirk and title his head mockingly.

Back when he was just a cursed object pressing coldly against her skin, he couldn’t seem to shut up, whispering all kind of nonsense into her ears like an old, insufferable coot. This version of him was unnervingly quiet, yet somehow Hermione could still hear his velvety voice ever so constant inside her head regardless.

It was maddening.

She had half a mind to ask Harry whether Riddle had been tormenting him the same way, whether he had ever looked up to find a young Dark Lord lounging in the shadows, watching them with cruel intent. Perhaps it was the reason for the dark circles around Harry's eyes every morning he woke up after wearing the locket.

As though reading her thoughts, Riddle flashed a wicked smile, perfect teeth gleaming in the candlelight.

Only you, butterfly.

Hermione had furiously worked even harder on her research for the whereabouts of Gryffindor's sword, driven by the desperate need to get rid of him before she completely lost her mind over thinking about how pitiful it was that someone so devastatingly handsome had turned out to be such a monstrous freak—both mentally and physically.

Riddle's lecherous grin only widened, and she had to restrained herself from lunging forward to throttle a ghost. Right in front of an utterly clueless Harry, no less.

The first and only time his materialised form spoke directly to her was after she returned from Godric’s Hollow.

Well technically, she was the one initiating the conversation, and she didn't even try to be polite. 

Nope, she was livid.

“You fucking psychopath!”

Hermione roared at Riddle’s face, once she had ensured Harry was safely asleep inside the tent and stormed off to the furthest corner of their campsite—still within the protective wards, but far enough that her screech wouldn’t reach her best friend’s ears. She didn't even care that it was freezing outside and she was wearing nothing more than a cardigan.

Riddle leaned his upper body against the tree behind him (how was that even possible for a memory?!), his arms crossed leisurely over his chest. “That's no way to speak to your superiors, butterfly."

"Go to hell!!" Hermione snarled, wand snapping up at him, though she knew it would do no good. "You refused to get off Harry! I had to cast a Diffindo to cut you from his flesh! Do you have any idea what that did to him?!"

Riddle clicked his tongue, sneering in distaste. "Not my intention. The snake coiled too tightly around him. I was forced into that ridiculous arrangement. As if I wanted to be stuck on someone that pathetic." 

Then, suddenly, the curl on his lips twisted into a seductive smirk, his voice a low purr. "He is never as warm or inviting as you, you know. None of them is."

Hermione's face burned. "SHUT UP!!" She shrieked. "Explain it! What the heck had happened at Godric's Hollow? Where did the snake come from? Why is Harry suffering?"

Riddle raised an elegant eyebrow in a bored manner. "You must be aware that I'm just a—as you have reminded me multiple times during our previous conversations inside your pretty mind—mere memory. What makes you think I’d suddenly have all the answers now?"

"Bollocks! You might not be him now, but you definitely know things." 

"Perhaps. But why should I tell you, little witch?" He smiled coldly. "A s far as I'm concerned, you and your friend are trying to find a way to get rid of me." 

Hermione flinched, a sudden chill running down her spine. She nearly slapped herself. How could she forget who she was speaking to? He was a Horcux for Merlin's sake!

She had been so frustrated—at what happened in Godric’s Hollow, at herself for being so useless, for failing to protect Harry and even destroying his wand. Guilt was crushing her, so she turned it into rage instead and lashed out at him because she didn’t know where else to put it.

At that, Hermione's eyes widened, realisation hitting like a punch to her gut.

No. No, no, no—this can't be happening again.

What was she thinking? She couldn’t afford to expose too much of herself to him like this. She was supposed to ignore him—whether it was his soft and alluring whispers or his quiet and suffocating presence—the same way she did the last few months! 

Emotional dependency was exactly what the diary had used to manipulate Ginny, because the naive 1st year had poured her feelings into it, letting the fragment of Tom Riddle inside it wrap his poison around her heart until she couldn’t tell the difference between her own thoughts and his.

That was also what the locket—he—had been trying to do to Hermione all along.

No one could ever know that he had succeeded.

Hermione’s trembling hands curled into fists at her sides. She had to stop this. Now.

But before she could even move, the dark-haired man in front of her began to laugh.

At first it was just a breathy chuckle, then it soon boomed into a full laughter that echoed through the vast forest. Hermione stood frozen in bewilderment, completely caught off guard. 

Tom Riddle was laughing. At her.

Her cheeks flushed bright red. Against her better judgement and the ironclad resolution she had just forged mere seconds ago, she snapped at him hotly.

“What’s so funny?!”

Riddle smirked, eyes glittering with a dark, hungry gleam. Hermione nearly took a tentative step back in fear. 

“You see, butterfly.” He said softly, almost fondly. “This is what makes you different from your friends. Far more...interesting.”

“…what?”

Riddle smiled benevolently, yet his next words were like a slap across her face.

“How is your study?” 

How is your study?

Your study.

Her study.

For a second, Hermione thought her heart had ceased beating inside her chest. Then it began to thunder so loudly and painfully against her ribcage she suspected it might jump out.

She stared at him, her stomach twisted, breath caught in her throat. “I-I don’t…” She stammered, trying to force out some denial, yet one mocking arch of Riddle’s eyebrow and her mouth instantly snapped shut.

“Tch tch." He tutted, voice gleefully cruel. "No need to lie, butterfly. As long as my locket still touches your skin, you can’t be untruthful to me.”

Riddle took a leisure step forward. Then another. And another.

Hermione’s boots scraped instinctively against the forest floor, leaves and twigs snapping underfoot as her body retreated before her mind could catch up. 

She knew he couldn’t harm her, at least not physically. He was just a ghost, a phantom, a soul-splintered echo of a charming man that had long turned into a cold-blooded monster. Yet somehow he still felt so real. So was the dread of him rolling off her in waves.

Her back bumped hard against the bark of an old pine, and Hermione let out a low groan. Riddle stopped in front of her, his chest merely few inches away from her nose. Moonlight caught the edge of his cheekbone, lit the sharp angles of his face with ghostly silver and turned his eyes into pits of obsidian.

He was breathtaking.

She had met many good-looking men in the past. Gilderoy Lockhart, Cedric Diggory, Bill Weasley, even Sirius Black. But none of them had ever made her heart race the same way this young Voldemort did.

Every part of Hermione was aware of him—acutely and shamefully so. The suffocating pressure of his presence. The weight of his gaze against her skin. The imagined heat of his breath brushing along her neck. The ghost of an arm wrapping possessively around her waist in her mind.

Her whole body shivered, but it wasn’t entirely from fear.

The curl on Riddle’s lips deepened. Fine strands of dark hair fell across his brows as he lowered his head, bringing himself to her eye-level.

“My clever, lovely little witch.” He whispered, his hand lifting up as if to cup her cheek. 

Hermione held her breath. He can’t touch me, he is just a phantom, she chanted to herself over and over again.

Riddle chuckled. “Oh butterfly, I certainly want to do more than just touching. But I suppose you aren’t ready for that, are you?” 

Her fists clenched at her sides. “It doesn’t matter. You aren’t real. There is nothing you can do to me.”

“And yet it’s fascinating how unreal things could still make you feel so much, no?”

Hermione’s cheeks flushed crimson. She glared at him scathingly but said nothing. 

Riddle’s smirk only widened knowingly at her grudging silence. 

Merlin, she hated him!

It had been exhausting enough to endure his silver tongue and silken voice when he was nothing more than a cursed locket at her throat. Now that he stood before her—real enough to see and almost touch—his pretty face became a fresh new kind of torment.

A sudden flare of fury burned through her, Hermione snapped her wand up and slashed a sharp line across Riddle’s torso. His body simply dissolved into smoke before knitting itself back together. 

He smiled indulgently at her like at a spoiled pet throwing tantrum.

“Fuck off, Horcrux.” Hermione hissed shakily, the tip of her wand stayed level with his chest. “I’m done playing your games.” 

Riddle raised an eyebrow. “I’ve stopped trying to play games with you a long time ago. You’re too smart to fall for any of them.”

Clearly not smart enough, or else I wouldn’t still be talking to you. She thought bitterly.

His low, taunting chuckle rippled through the air. “Ah yes, I'm just that irresistable. Do you know that of the three of you, you’re the only one reckless enough to actually converse with me? And yet you’re also the only one whose mind is strong enough that I couldn’t influence your emotions, even when you were at your lowest after that ginger loser left.”

Just the mere mention of Ron hurt. “Don’t talk about him like that!!”

“He doesn’t deserve you.” 

"It's not your place to judge!"

"Haven’t I already told you? You're too good for them, little witch. Your so-called friends either abandoned you or never appreciated you enough. How many times had the four-eye boy ignored your wise advices and had to pay the price? How many times had your brilliance been dismissed as nosiness?"

"That's not true—"

"Denial doesn't look good on you." Riddle stepped closer. "I see you, you know? Bright. Extraordinary. Ambitious. You're so much more than just a pawn on a grand chessboard—a know-it-all sidekick who stayed behind the curtain while your friend took all the credit. You want to be more as well."

Hermione’s knuckles whitened around her wand. “No I don't. You're just manipulating me."

He shook his head. "I've taken a glimpse of what is inside your mind, butterfly. Even your darkest thoughts and deepest fears. I see you for what you truly are: a ruthless witch that would stop at nothing to achieve her desires. You and I have more in common than you'd like to admit."

Hermione had never wished he had an actual body more than she did now, because if he did, she could punch him square in the face, preferably harder than she had Draco Malfoy in her 3rd year.

Instead, all she could do was whip her wand toward Riddle's insubstantial form, her fury lashing out in an useless curse. 

“Cease your forked tongue and perish!” She spat, shaking with anger. “I’m sick of your empty lies! We’ll find the sword, and then you’ll be gone for good!”

Obsidian eyes darkened at that, and all trace of amusement instantly bled from his handsome face. 

The air thickened all of a sudden. From his feet, shadows began to seep—inky tendrils coiling like serpents before slithering outward. Dark magic.

Hermione's heart lurched painfully, trembling for another reason rather than blinded rage. Her grip on the wand faltered for half a second before she tightened it again, determined not to show him her fear.

Then, once more, his lips curved up—a cold, unnerving smile of predator that had just caught the scent of blood. 

“Such brave, righteous words, my butterfly." Riddle murmured. "However, bravery means very little without the strength to back it. Then we'd call it foolishness.”

The shadows pulsed in rhythm with his words, brushing at the edges of Hermione's magic—probing, testing, making her skin prickle all over.

He continued in a soft voice. "You and your friend seem to be on the same accord to destroy me, don't you? But I wonder, have you told him about your...latest taste in books?"

Hermione stiffened, paling like white sheets.

"You're so clever, butterfly. You never weep, never let the grief over your ginger boy engulf you while wearing my locket. You guarded yourself carefully, never so much as touched your research when the chain was around your neck. Yet your Occlumency is nothing compared to my magic." 

Riddle raised his hand, and she swore she felt the ghost of fingers brushing her temple. His smile twisted ugly with maliciousness. "It’s all already here, inside this pretty head of yours, is it not? Everything I told you to consume?"

Hermione's mind reeled, panic flooding her veins.

She recalled the nights she let Harry take his turn wearing the locket, pretending to be asleep while she lay stiff under her blankets, the dim light of her wand illuminating page after page and book after book, all smuggled from the hidden shelf in Grimmauld Place’s library.

She had stumbled upon it back in her 5th year. Sirius said it was forbidden, and a good, sweet girl like her should never touch any of those titles. He promised he would clear them out as soon as he had the chance, yet the dark side claimed him before he could.

"You see that, butterfly? Ignorance had left you all defenceless. How many more of your friends have to die before you finally realised it? Cedric Diggory. Sirius Black. Even your precious Headmaster."

"Albus Dumbledore was nothing but a hypocrite. He was powerful, yes, but why is he six feet under the ground right now and not Severus Snape? He bound his own hands in the name of the light. He forbade others from learning the things that could have saved him. Saved you."

"You have been told you're The Brightest Witch of Her Age.You’ve pieced together the truth before others could even see the edges—the Chamber, the Ministry, the Horcruxes—but each time you still let Harry Potter make the decision and helped him face the consequences. Is that what you want to be? A well-behaved footnote in someone else’s war?"

"The Dark Arts are not evil in themselves. They are knowledge. Power. A language your foes speak fluently while you’re forced to guess at the words. Why should you not master it that no one could ever best you or harm those you care for again?"

"The darkness is not your enemy, butterfly. Ignorance is."

The illusion of Tom Riddle—the manifestation of the cursed locket that had been whispering all those twisted words smiled, and Hermione knew he had won.

She had lost to her own hunger for intellect, her sense of helplessness and the part of herself that had been stupid enough to be seduced by his alluring manipulations.

His voice was like a knife twisting inside her chest.

"Now, I suppose you have at least read Secrets of the Darkest Arts and The Nightshade Guide to Necromancy. Between two avid scholars, let me share a secret: those two are actually just child's play compared to Maleficium Arcanum: Beyond the Magic Veil. You might not have it in your current possession, but you could easily find it where I—"

"NO!!" Hermione shouted, almost dropping her wand to pressed her palms against her ears. "I DON'T WANT TO HEAR IT!"

Riddle smirked cruelly. "Oh but you'll, alright. You'll look for it and read it, because that's the curious little witch that you're." He cooed. "You can't resist the temptation of knowledge. It's beyond your control."

Tears prickled at the corners of Hermione’s eyes, blurring her vision. Her voice trembled, equal parts fury and desperation.

“Why? Why me? What are you doing this for? I’m a Muggle-born, for Godric’s sake! A filthy Mudblood, remember?! Luring me into practising the Dark Arts does nothing for you or your cause! You and your followers would kill my kind either way!”

His jaw tightened slightly, but the wicked smile remained sharp as a blade. “No, butterfly. The me currently walking this earth might be a monstrous maniac, but he is still me. And once he meets you—once he recognises you—I’m certain he’ll know exactly what to do.”

Hermione scoffed scornfully. “You talk as though you aren’t a monstrous maniac yourself.”

Riddle’s lips curved into an arrogant, leering grin. His dark gaze slid down her body with an unsettling intimacy, and she suddenly felt almost naked. “I’m sure you don’t entirely agree with the ‘monstrous’ part…considering your thoughts about my appearance.”

Hermione’s breath caught. Heat flooded her face—anger, humiliation, a tingling sense of something far worse all tangling together. Her hand twitched upward, the impulse to slap him burning through her, but she froze under his smouldering look.

He chuckled softly, obviously pleased, before straightening to his full height. “Until next time, butterfly.”

And with that, he was gone, vanishing into the shadows as if the darkness itself had swallowed him whole.

The forest felt suddenly warmer without the dark magic that was the source of his materialisation, and yet Hermione could still feel the ghost of his presence. She stared at the space where he had stood, ears burning crimson, heart hammering against her ribs. 

Riddle's velvety voice still echoed in her head. The weight of their exchange pressed down on her until her knees buckled, and she sank to the ground, breaking into uncontrollable sobs.

She had messed up. Badly.

Hermione had thought she could outmanoeuvre him, keep him at arm’s length. She had told herself she was in control, that she was only listening to the locket's whispers for knowledge—knowledge that could help win the war. And yet it turned out to be all just her illusion. Her selfish desire that he had seen and taken advantage of.

What if Harry and Ron knew? What if the Order knew? Even when she argued that it was simply for the greater good, what she did was still unforgivable and intolerable. 

And worse, what if Voldemort ever captured her and found out what his Horcrux did?

Hermione snapped her puffy eyes open. The thought of him—present or past—turning her into a weapon for his own ends made her stomach churn. No, she needed a failsafe, something to ensure that vision would never happen. There was no way she would risk being in Voldemort's hands.

She would rather destroy herself first.

The mere idea was terrifying, yet she simply had no other choice. She would gladly pay the price for her greed if that meant no innocent would be dragged into her mess.

With her mind made up, Hermione wiped her cheeks with her sleeve and rose to her feet. Without hesitation, she unclasped the locket, its cold weight leaving a faint ache against her skin. She closed her fist around it, then stuffed it into her beaded bag.

She would never put it on again—never see him again, never let him worm his way into her mind again. The next time they met, it should better be when she used the Gryffindor’s sword to tear off his locket into pieces.

Too bad she had yet asked him why he kept calling her butterfly.

Chapter Text

Hermione had been subjected to Legilimency before.

In her 5th year, while desperately trying to help Harry survive the devastating Occlumency lessons with Snape, she had decided to study the subject herself. Once finished scouring every book on the topic in the Hogwarts library, she marched up to McGonagall’s office and asked to be allowed to practise under supervision.

McGonagall blinked once, then twice, then sent her directly to Snape without another word.

Needless to say, it had been—without a doubt—the most horrific academic experience of her life.

Snape had already been more than displeased with the task of tutoring Harry, and being saddled with another Gryffindor had clearly pushed him to the edge. He practically sneered his way through every session and called her an insufferable know-it-all at every chance he got.

By the end of the first week, Hermione had gained a newfound sympathy for Harry’s refusal to continue with Occlumency. It wasn’t just Snape’s temper or cruelty, it was the feeling of being ripped open, of having your most private thoughts rifled through like second-hand trinkets at a charity stall. 

And yet Snape had still been gentle with her. 

He never dug too deep, never lingered too long. He clearly didn’t enjoy it any more than she did. All were just lessons, a grim necessity.

Lord Voldemort didn't bother with such mercy.

The world collapsed around Hermione the moment the tip of his yew wand touched her temple. The brutal force of his Legilimens hit her like a tsunami. The sadistic bastard had intentionally made his invasion so much more violent than Snape had ever done, clearly taking pleasure in her pain and distress. 

He wasn’t simply peering into her thoughts—he was tearing through them.

A searing heat poured into her mind, splitting her skull open from the inside out. Her senses frayed, her mind became a long corridor lined with memories as rooms, each one holding a vulnerable fragment of her life, doors swinging wide open without her consent, waiting for Voldemort to enter.

Snape had once told her Gryffindors were the worst Occlumens—too emotional, too honest, too bold. Hermione was no different, but she was still much more decent than most. Yet even after summoning every ounce of Occlumency she had learned, every mental shield she had practised, there was nothing she could do as Voldemort broke past her defences with ease. 

To her utter horror, instead of searching for a specific memory, he was walking through all of them.

Childhood. Schools. Doubts. Fear. Love. Nightmares. Shame. First kisses. Rage. Joys. Grief. Recklessness. 

Tears quietly spilled down Hermione’s cheeks as she stood numb and helpless while Voldemort wandered inside her mind as though he had every right to it. She could feel his presence so vividly, even his growing amusement as he slithered into her core memories, tainting them with his darkness.

He was there when she sat alone at the edge of a Muggle school playground, an awkward little girl with wild hair and an unshakable certainty that she didn’t belong.

He was there when McGonagall arrived with her Hogwarts letter—when her parents held her as she cried, overwhelmed by joy and relief that she wasn’t mad and magic truly existed. 

He was there when she sat on the bathroom floor, weeping her heart out because not even here did she seem to fit in. And then just an hour later when Harry and Ron came crashing in to save her from a Troll—the moment their eternal friendship had begun.

He was there when she pieced together the puzzle of the Chamber of Secrets and the Basilisk residing in it—only to be petrified and lie in the Hospital Wing as the world moved on without her, all the credits went to her best friends.

He was there when she couldn’t stop herself and slapped Draco Malfoy across the face, fiercely furious by what he had said about Hagrid and Buckbeak.

He was there when she walked into the Yule Ball on Viktor Krum’s arm, her spine straight and her heart fluttering because for the first time, she felt truly beautiful.

He was there when she fought alongside Harry in the Department of Mysteries, Dolohov’s curse slashed her chest and purple flames danced across her ribs, leaving a hideous scar she would have to carry for the rest of her life.

And he was there when Harry told her and Ron about the Horcruxes.

Lord Voldemort's Horcruxes.

That phrase shattered everything.

Voldemort stayed completely still for a moment, frozen and dumbstruck as though he couldn't quite believe what he just saw and heard. The most Gryffindor part of Hermione—fearless to the point of suicidal—almost burst out laughing at his sheer arrogance. He really thought he was so discreet that no one would ever find out his secrets, did he not?

The amusement didn't last long, because he soon lunged at her.

A white-hot spear of agony shot through her head, and her mouth fell open in a silent scream. The air in her lungs vanished as his presence swelled, no longer an idle wanderer but a storm crashing through her thoughts. His blinding rage poured into her like molten metal, all scorching and unstoppable.

“No.” Voldemort hissed aloud, his voice seemed like it came from everywhere and nowhere at once. “No...!”

He clawed through her mind viciously, the invasion no longer cold and clinical but jagged and panicked. Almost fearful. Hermione’s vision blurred as he slammed through memory after memory, digging for everything their side had known about the Horcruxes, not caring how deep the wounds went. 

Tom Riddle's diary.
The Gaunt ring.
Slytherin's locket.

All destroyed.

And now they were hunting for Hufflepuff's cup.

The world tilted violently as a roar ripped through Hermione's skull—an inhuman, animalistic sound of rage and disbelief. Her mind convulsed beneath the crushing weight of his fury, her stomach heaving as if she might vomit from the pressure. 

Was it possible to cast the Cruciatus inside someone’s mind via Legilimency alone? Because that was exactly what she felt like Voldemort was doing to her right now.

Her body was already teetering on the edge, Hermione realised admist the mind-numbing pain. Bellatrix's numerous Crucios, the broken shards from the chandelier, and now Voldemort's wrath lashing out on her mentally. Without a Healer, she doubted she had more than twenty minutes left.

Perhaps he would kill her outright before the damage could. Which, strangely, would be…a blessing.

The more enraged he became, the more reckless his attack was, and the faster he would set her free from this agony. The deeper he drowned in his obsession over the destroyed Horcruxes, the less likely he was to start searching for other secrets buried in her thoughts.

Malfoy had robbed her off her failsafe, but the ending could still be the same. Death was so close now Hermione could almost taste it. All she needed to do was hold on just a little longer.

The thought steadied her breathing—or what scraps of it she could control through the anguish. 

Voldemort's furious howls echoed endlessly inside her head, so loud and raw that Hermione was certain her eardrums must be bleeding.

The pain reached its crescendo when he stumbled accross her conversation with Harry about how she thought Voldemort was likely the most stupid and cowardly dark wizard the world had ever witnessed, because he was too afraid of dying that he didn't realise that every time he split his soul, he carved away another piece of himself, of his own magic.

It was like an open wound doused in acid.

Hermione squeezed her eyes tighter.

She was ready.

Then…it stopped.

The yew wand lifted from her temple, severing the unbearable agony of Legilimency entwined with the Cruciatus. Hermione couldn't help but gasp raggedly, her broken body convulsed pathetically on the cold marble ground. Her every muscle trembled in the aftermath, like she had been dredged out of icy water and dropped onto jagged rocks.

She could feel herself slipping—her heartbeat slowing, her limbs limping. Her lashes fluttered, half-lidded, and this time she knew she wouldn’t wake for a very long while, perhaps not at all.

Through the fog, the last thing she registered was a hoarse, furious voice cutting through the ringing in her ears.

“Fetch a Healer. Now!”

And then the darkness swallowed Hermione whole. 

-----oOo-----

A quarter of the Forbidden Forest lay in ruins by the time the Dark Lord finished unleashing his rage.

The once dense thicket had been reduced to a wasteland—towering trunks cracked and collapsed, thick branches scattered, leaves seared to ash by the rain of lightning. The entire Acromantula nest nearby had been obliterated, leaving nothing but molten threads.

The air was still heavy with the acrid tang of ozone and smoke, the aftershock of dark magic shivered through the ground.

In the middle of the wreckage lay the lifeless body of Horace Slughorn. His plump frame looked oddly shrunken, face slack and grey, shrewd eyes glaring open and staring glassily at nothing.

Next to the corpse, Voldemort remained completely still, inhumanly crimson eyes glowing ferociously in the dim light. 

From a distance, Snape observed the scene without a flicker of emotion, as though the death of his former Potions-professor-turned-colleague didn’t affect him in the slightest. Nor did the fact he just saw his master rip open the coffin of his predecessor to take the wand currently in his grasp.

The Elder Wand was Lord Voldemort’s now.

Claiming the strongest wand. Venting his wrath. Murdering Slughorn. Yet somehow Snape was still certain those weren’t the only purposes behind Voldemort’s sudden return to Hogwarts’ grounds. 

He didn’t dare inquiring what had enraged the Dark Lord so much. He didn’t even want to think about what might have happened to Potter and his two friends. Perhaps they had narrowly gotten away again, slipping between the fingers of Snape’s fellow Death Eaters by some strange miracle. 

The thought was both a relief and a knot of dread in his chest.

“Severus.”

Snape Apparated to stand behind Voldemort. “Yes, my Lord?”

“Open the castle ward. I need to...retrieve an asset.” 

The Headmaster’s spine stiffened for a brief second. “As you command. May I ask if this retrieval involves any student or member of staff?”

“No, I should be quick. Leave now. Make it all ready for me when I arrive.” Voldemort paused, his gaze sliding back to the corpse at his feet. “Get rid of him.”

Snape nodded and crouched beside Slughorn’s body. He pulled out a small vial from his robe’s pocket and poured it over the dead Potions Master’s still chest. The dark liquid hissed and steamed upon contact. Flesh withered and bones disintergrated. Within moments, Horace Slughorn became a pile of grey dust, scattered into the air by the wind.

Rising to his full height, Snape bowed to the Dark Lord before vanishing into the night with a loud crack.

Voldemort didn’t spare him another glance and shifted his entire focus to the Elder Wand in his hand. 

The legendary, invincible wand that once belonged to Death himself was now in his possession.

It almost seemed to hum in his grasp, the weight felt perfect between his fingers—balanced and elegant as though it had been carved with him in mind. He could even feel the wand’s absolute power resonating with his magic, the death and darkness it embodied were Voldemort’s own reflection. 

And yet, despite the instant harmony, there was something not right. The Elder Wand responded to him, yes, however its obedience lacked the utter submission he expected. It tolerated him but it didn’t fully bow to him, like he had yet earned its utmost loyalty.

Voldemort gritted his teeth. He should have killed Albus Dumbledore himself. Even in death, the sanctimonious old fool still found a way to meddle with his business. The Elder Wand’s reluctance was Dumbledore’s last insult from beyond the grave.

But that wasn’t the only wound the dead man had left him.

Voldemort thought of what he had seen in the Mudblood’s mind. 

Not only had Dumbledore and Potter uncovered the existence of his Horcruxes, they had already destroyed three of them. Three of his most treasured creations. Three pieces of himself that meant far more than mere vessels of immortality.

The diary—his very first Horcrux—was the perfect distillation of his youth: a brilliant, ambitious, cunning Tom Marvolo Riddle at the mere age of sixteen. 

The ring—his family’s heirloom—was the ghost of the once great House of Gaunt, a reminder of the noble blood that flowed through his veins. 

The locket—Salazar Slytherin’s emblem—was the proof of his rightful inheritance, being the most powerful and worthy descendant of the bloodline of the serpent.

And now…gone. All gone.

Rage surged through Voldemort again. Killing Slughorn had not been enough to pacify the blaze inside him, his bloodlust still clawing for something more to destroy—preferrably Potter and his blood-traitor friend. If only his followers weren’t such a pitiful collection of incompetents.

Under normal circumstances, in the fevered cruelty that had consumed him since his resurrection, he might have slaughtered every living soul within Malfoy Manor simply to bleed off the raging fury. They would have painted the expensive marble floors crimson before sunrise.

Yet this time something was different.

Voldemort felt…calmer, more deliberately controlled and less bestially impulsive. Much like his old self when he first came back to Britain after ten years traveling the world.

There was still too much to be done—too much at stake for him to indulge in a mindless carnage.

As soon as he reined in his temper, he locked his mind down with the strongest Occlumency shields he could weave, ensuring Potter would never get a stealthy peek again. The boy’s accidental forays were a humiliation he would not allow to repeat.

The Dark Lord allowed the boy the knowledge that he had tortured the Mudblood, though.

Next, he ordered Bellatrix to go to Gringotts at once and retrieve Hufflepuff’s cup from the Lestrange vault. He also told her to bring Rodolphus and Rabastan just in case Potter was thickhead enough to show his face. Voldemort suspected the boy might have gotten a clue of the whereabouts of the cup from Bellatrix’s raving show.

The moment he left Malfoy Manor, he Apparated straight to the Forbidden Forest where Severus was already waiting with a trembling Slughorn kneeling on the ground. He made sure Potter was able to witness how he vented his anger on the old slug, using a Haitian dark curse that left no mark on the skin yet set the organs ablaze until they melted into nothingness.

It was a marvelous sight.

Now that most emergencies had been settled, Voldemort finally had time to think more thoroughly about the whole situation.

He had been careless—he realised with a bitter taste on his tongue—far more careless than he had ever permitted himself to be. 

In his arrogance, he had underestimated Dumbledore’s shrewd paranoia and the habit of poking his nose into others’ business. It appeared that the old coot had been quietly gathering threads of knowledge about Tom Riddle for much longer than Voldemort cared to notice.

He should have ended both Dumbledore and Slughorn years ago. It would have spared him this nuisance.

Three out of his six Horcruxes were gone.

Potter knew the rest existed.

Voldemort’s long fingers drummed slowly against the Elder Wand as he began to sweep through possibilities.

He was certain the boy had no idea how many Horcruxes remained. More likely, he was stumbling blindly from one to the next, driven by luck and whatever scraps of knowledge Dumbledore had left him. Still, it was possible that Potter might have suspected the link to the Founders—Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw in particular. 

But that wouldn’t matter, Voldemort mused to himself. Nagini was no concern. She was always at his side, and her power was more than enough to protect herself. As for the cup and the diadem, he already had the perfect hiding places in mind for them. And this time he wouldn’t make the same mistake with the locket. 

All seemed fine. And yet something still gnawed at the back of his mind.

Voldemort’s thoughts drifted back to the Mudblood.

Hermione Granger.

He had heard about her before, seen her in Potter’s and his Death Eaters’ mind. Normally, he never wasted his attention on Potter’s hangers-on. They were expendable, barely worth the space they occupied. But this one indeed had built some reputation to her name that even he couldn't entirely ignore.

The Brightest Witch of Her Age, they called her. Gryffindor Golden Girl, the clever little Mudblood that had survived Antonin's infamous curse and outwitted more than one of his followers.

Voldemort had wondered why Potter had managed to evade capture for so long after his 17th birthday even when no Order member accompanied him. Now, after tearing into the girl's brain, he finally knew the reason. 

It had always been the Mudblood all along.

Her brilliance and resourcefulness had kept Potter alive longer than any miracle ever could. What Voldemort had seen in her mind—the way she thought, schemed and wielded her knowledge—it was obvious that she could be extremely cunning and vicious when she set her sights on something. 

The girl was an enigma, he decided. At one moment, she was nothing more than an ordinary Gryffindor with a bleeding heart and a nauseating penchant for righteousness (who in their right mind wasted energy campaigning for house-elves??), and yet the next she showcased a ruthlessness that rivalled even himself in his younger years. 

Voldemort couldn't help but be impressed by the way she retaliated against those who wronged her, or how she managed to lie to Bellatrix’s face while writhing under the Cruciatus curse. For someone who normally acted so meek, the girl literally had a mind stronger than steel. 

If not for the taint of her blood and that insufferable moral compass, he would say she would have made a Slytherin worthy of the name. As a matter of fact, the Dark Lord could use a witch as competent and loyal as her in his army. She could be an invaluable asset.

Another thing was her magic.

Her power barely revealed itself, likely because she was half-dead when he tested her limits, and yet even that faint glimpse was enough to ensnare Voldemort’s attention. It wasn’t overwhelming like Potter’s raw and reckless surges, but she definitely had the potential to be formidable, especially when combining with that sharp brain of hers.

When her fingers brushed against his skin, the sensation reminded him of the day he first held his yew and phoenix feather wand, as though something long lost—something that had always belonged to him—had been returned. His magic immediately reached out to hers, answering her call, just like a spark of recognition.

And in that moment, for the first time in many years, Voldemort felt truly himself again. 

The resurrection had changed him—not just his grotesque form, but his very nature. It had stripped him of his refinement and driven him to yield to the animalistic urges of rage and bloodlust. He had indulged impulse over foresight, and in doing so, he had missed things. Overlooked threats. Underestimated enemies.

The Dark Lord had always been arrogant and cruel, yes, but never the kind of mindless tyrant who ruled by terror alone. In his prime, he had bent the world to him through wisdom as much as fear. It was that balance that had drawn even the most gifted witches and wizards to kneel at his feet.

Yet, the current Lord Voldemort was nothing but a shadow of that man. A beast in a borrowed body, always snarling and lashing out. Now as he looked back, he could see how laughably stupid he had been since his return. There had been so many avenues to the victory open and he had squandered them all.

It was as though the Hermione Granger’s touch had cut through the fog and given him clarity.

The idea unsettled him as much as it intrigued him.

The question was, why?

The girl was a nobody. Her parents were worthless Muggles. There was no magical blood running through her veins. She was powerful for a young witch, but it wasn’t much notable compared to Tom Riddle or Albus Dumbledore or Severus Snape when they were her age.

And yet, how did her magic resonate with his like a chord in perfect harmony? What was so special about her that Lord Voldemort—who had always abhorred intimacy—find himself craving the feel of a Mudblood’s skin against his again? 

She wasn’t even that beautiful. 

He had come so close to killing her amidst his rage earlier. The only reason he stopped was because he had realised she was still desperately trying to hide a fragment of her mind from him. He could have easily shattered her pathetic attempt on Occlumency, but her body was already breaking beneath the weight of his wrath.

Perhaps that hidden shard of memory would explain this strange pull Voldemort felt toward the girl.

And if not? Well, she remained a valuable war prize. As a matter of fact, there was no captive who could serve his purposes better than Hermione Granger.

Without her, he doubted Potter and his little operation could function nearly as well. And what greater degradation to the so-called Chosen One than to see the Mudblood he depended on chained at the Dark Lord’s feet? The Boy Who Lived, yet incapable of protecting the one dearest to him. The Golden Girl, debased and reduced to little more than the Dark Lord’s pet.

The notion made his lips curl into a sinister smirk. It had been too long since something or someone piqued his curiosity this much. Entertainment was scarce these days, and from what he had glimpsed in her mind, Hermione Granger might make a truly magnificent diversion.

How fitting that the brightest jewel of Dumbledore’s little army might soon glitter in Voldemort's crown instead. 

And when he grew bored? There would still be no shortage of uses for such an extraordinary witch. He could make good on his earlier threats and gift her as spoils to one of his followers.

Antonin was still seething for vengeance on the girl who had humbled him not once but thrice. Yaxley and Bellatrix must be dying to pay her back for the humiliation she put them through. And hadn’t Voldemort glimpsed her face in Draco’s adolescent fantasies? How exquisite to watch the Malfoy heir rutting after the filth he was raised to despise.

Such possibilities. So many delicious ways the girl could make herself useful to him before the inevitable end.

Voldemort smiled, his ruby eyes glowing maliciously under the pale moonlight.

It was going to be interesting.

Chapter Text

The Dark Lord detested walking among Muggles. 

Their very existence offended him—weak, dull, ignorant creatures who tainted this world with their mediocrity. Years had passed since he was forced to live among them, but even when no longer the poor little boy called Tom Riddle, Voldemort could still catch the lingering stench of his childhood at the orphanage.

Stale porridge. Damp laundry. The syrupy voices of the matrons. The grubby orphans he had to share walls with.

His father.

Voldemort’s dark eyes flared deep crimson. His wand hand twitched at his side, aching with the urge to strike.

Griffin Goyle was going to suffer dearly for this.

It was bad enough that the imbecile had bungled a task so simple even a house-elf could have managed. The tome Voldemort required was of urgent importance, so much that after Goyle’s pitiful failure, the Dark Lord had to go and secure it himself. 

Big Griffin would beg for death long before his master was finished with him.

The only consolation in the matter was that the artefact had been hidden within a library near the centre of Oxford.

Voldemort was, after all, an avid scholar. Even during his school days, the library had always been his sanctuary. He thought he must have devoured half of the books by the time he was thirteen and finished the rest when he turned fifteen. 

This Muggle library was no match for the Restricted Section at Hogwarts nor the private archives of certain wizarding families. Yet the sentiment was still the same. 

Voldemort moved silently between the shelves, a Disillusionment charm bending light over his tall frame. His gaze scanned the rows, alert for any ripple of magic veiled from mundane eyes. A volume caught his attention, and without thinking, he reached out for it. 

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. He had read it a long time ago at the orphanage. 

The memory surfaced: a thin boy with hollow cheeks, sitting cross-legged in the corner with a tattered book, while the other children played outside. 

His younger self had sneered at the melodrama then—sacrifice, redemption, love. All fools’ ideals. And yet the prose had captivated him in its own way, probably because the orphanage owned very few books and he had to take whatever scraps he could find. 

Almost five decades later, and here he was—the great and powerful Lord Voldemort—thumbing through the pages he had once touched as a half-starved orphan in a dingy Muggle library and reminiscing his pitiful past. 

The irony almost made his lips twitch. 

Suddenly, from across the shelves came a low groan. 

Voldemort narrowed his eyes, head tilting slightly. The sound seemed small and distanced, but he immediately realised it belonged to a woman. He walked past a few rows until he reached the farthest corner of the library. 

There, slumped against the wall was a pregnant Muggle hugging her belly. Her face was pale and damp with sweat, blood dripping down her legs. It was obvious that the woman was already in labour, and both she and her offspring would die without proper medical treatment.

How pathetic.

Voldemort's dark gaze swept over her trembling form with cold disdain and detached curiosity. A creature on the brink of bringing another worthless life into this world, and yet she could not even manage it with dignity.

For a moment, he thought of his own mother, and a flicker of loathing coursed through him, igniting a deep hatred that he had long buried alongside his unmemorable past.

The Muggle whimpered, clutching her belly tighter. She appeared to be in too much pain to scream for help, and since she chose to be in this deserted corner, not a single soul in the library had noticed her plight.

Voldemort’s lips curled up into a cruel smile. He briefly wondered if he should end her suffering himself. It would have been an act of mercy, after all. 

Then, the woman lifted her head and looked straight at him.

The Dark Lord stilled.

Amber eyes glazed with pain locked onto his as though the Disillusionment charm around him was nothing at all.

Voldemort was almost aghast. It should have been impossible. Even the most accomplished witch or wizard would struggle to see through his powerful concealment, let alone an ordinary Muggle.

"P-please—help me..." She gasped, her shaky hand reaching in his direction. "My baby..."

He didn't pay attention to her pleas and fixed his eyes on the swell of her belly. Was it desperation that lent this miserable being such clarity? Or was there something else—something in the wretched thing she carried within her? He couldn't think of any other elucidation to this conundrum. 

Voldemort's grip on his wand tightened, a flicker of murderous intent flashing in his icy gaze. He despised enigmas he couldn't fathom. Whenever he found one, he eliminated it. And he wouldn't allow a pitiful Muggle woman to stand as a challenge to his absolute power.

But just as he raised his wand to end two lives at once, a ripple surged through the silence, threading into his magic and brushing against his very core. 

He froze. 

It didn’t come from the woman but from within her—the unborn child.

Voldemort stared dumbfounded. While the mother was obviously a Muggle, her spawn pulsed with magic. It must either be a Half-blood or a Muggle-born, but that didn’t explain why its non-magical parent was able to see through his enchantment, nor the way its faint magic seemed to resonate with his in recognition. Familiarity. Intimacy. 

Fury gathered on the tip of his tongue. He knew that he needed to get rid of them, and yet he couldn’t manage to utter the necessary words. It was neither compassion nor mercy—for that Lord Voldemort was incapable of such sentiment—but something like a cosmic force, an invisible chain that wrapped around his throat. 

What kind of abomination was this creature?

His wand hand fell to his side.

The Muggle didn’t heed his hatred-filled glare as she writhed in pain and lied crumpled on the floor in a widening pool of red. Voldemort stood over her expressionlessly, though obsidian eyes kept flickering toward her belly.

Few minutes passed in silence. At last, he lifted his wand—not for the Killing curse, but to levitate her limp form through the rows of bookshelves, depositing her where she would surely be found.

A scream of horror shattered the quietness of the library as her bloodied state caught the others’ eye. Footsteps pounded closer, voices rising in panic.

"JEAN!!! Oh my God, my wife... CALL AN AMBULANCE!!!!" A Muggle man rushed over and crouched down next to the woman, shouting at the top of his lungs.

Voldemort cast her one last glance, eyes narrowing on the curve of her belly—or rather, the little unborn Mudblood inside it. Dark gaze bled crimson, burning with disgust and contempt. 

Then, with a twist in the air, he vanished into the shadows, abandoning his original quest amidst rage and confusion.

-----oOo-----

The instant Hermione cracked her eyes open, the wrenching pain soon made her wish she hadn’t.

With a low groan, she bit down the agony and pushed herself upright, her arms quivering beneath her weight. Her head immediately spun, her whole body ached as though she had been trampled by a pack of centaurs.

"Merlin..." Hermione rasped, her throat sore from just speaking. "...what the heck had happened to me?"

Black and white flecks swarmed at the edges of her vision, threatening to drown her back into unconsciousness. She had to press a trembling hand to her temple, forcing herself to stay present.

When her sluggish mind finally pieced itself together, the first thing Hermione registered was the texture beneath her fingertips. Soft, silken, expensive. Too comfortable for anything she had known in months—or perhaps her entire life—and certainly not the frigid camp-bed she had hastily packed for their trip. 

Blinking rapidly, her gaze swept across the pool of rich emerald fabric beneath her. Amber eyes widened in shock. She was lying on a bloody king-sized bed! Beyond the parted drapery, she noticed the most luxurious chamber she had ever seen: gleaming dark wood panelling, polished marble floors, a grand fireplace across the room, embers glowing dully in the grate.

Hermione’s lips parted on a sharp breath. 

It was then that her scattered memories of the night before returned.

Luna's father. The Snatchers. Malfoy Manor. Bellatrix Lestrange. The Cruciatus. Mudblood. The chandelier. Harry and Ron gone. Screams. Voldemort.

Voldemort!

Hermione’s entire frame shook uncontrollably, blood drained completely from her already pale face. Dread and fear coiled in her stomach, knotting tighter and tighter until she thought she might be sick.

Her mind began replaying all the events that had led to this moment. 

Harry and Ron had escaped with Dobby's help, that was for sure. Hermione remembered trying to take her own life when Voldemort arrived at the Manor, but Draco had stopped her. Then Voldemort’s eyes locked on hers, and he brutally ripped into her head. She had been certain she was about to die—she prayed she was about to die. Instead, the world went black.

And now, she woke up, probably in a chamber inside the Manor.

Hermione squeezed her eyes shut, as though hoping darkness could erase this reality. The cruel truth hit her harder than any curse Bellatrix had cast.

She was alive. And she was Voldemort's prisoner now.

Hermione's hands trembled violently as she dug her nails into the silken sheets, every tremor betraying the terror she could no longer contain. A sob left her lips, she tried to force it down but hot tears had already been spilling down her cheeks.

She could still feel Voldemort's presence inside her head, the way he had ruthlessly clawed through her thoughts with Legilimency as though they were nothing more than paper. Hermione had fought, Merlin helped her, but what use was Occlumency against him? His fury had burned through every shield she raised until her memories was stripped bare before him.

Voldemort had seen it.

He knew that they knew. 

He knew about the destroyed Horcruxes.

All because of her. 

Hermione buried her face between her palms, unable to control her pitiful cries of desperation.

Dumbledore’s carefully laid plans, Harry’s determination, their combined efforts during the last half year—all seemed to crumble beneath her incompetency in Occlumency and hesitation to end herself before Voldemort could grasp a hold of her. 

Now that he had known, he would undoubtedly guard the remaining Horcruxes with a paranoia beyond imagining, ensuring no Order member would ever stand a chance of finding them again.

Her chest constricted as she thought of it: Harry and Ron searching blindly, chasing shadows while Voldemort was always two steps ahead. They had lost their trump card, and everything they had been fighting for was on the verge of unravelling. The war could already be lost, and it was her fault for letting him in.

Hermione couldn't help letting out more audible sobs.

She had fucked it up so terribly—for herself, for Harry, for the fate of this entire world. 

She was supposed to help Harry, for Godric's sake! It had always been her role, her burden, her pride. She had carried their plans on her shoulders, memorised every scrap of lore, prepared every charm, every contingency. She had driven herself to exhaustion night after night because failure had never been an option. Not for her, not when Harry relied on her.

And now, she had crumbled at the worst moment imaginable.

Why was she still alive?

The question hit Hermione like a cold slap. She blinked hard to clear the tears away and stared unseeingly at the opulent canopy above her head. 

It made no sense. She had expected to die last night, she even welcomed it in those final agonising moments when her body threatened to give out entirely under the Dark Lord's wrath. The thought of death had been terrifying, yes, but also merciful. 

And yet she was still breathing.

Relief should have washed through her, but it didn’t. Instead, bitter disappointment lodged in her heart. She had been ready to die, or at least she had told herself she was. To open her eyes now and find herself still among the living felt cruel, because if Voldemort had chosen not to kill her, it could only mean that he had other designs for her—designs that promised hell.

Had he seen her memories of his locket Horcrux? Of her shared moments with Tom Riddle? Of what she had learned from the phantom of his thirty-year-old self?

Hermione's stomach clenched, hot tears stinging her eyes until her vision blurred once more. 

From the way it looked, her torment was far from finished. The Cruciatus was only the beginning, an introduction. Would Voldemort use her as bait, a message to Harry? Would he keep her alive just to peel her mind open again and again until she had nothing left to give? 

She might survive another hour, another day, another week. But what good did it do to herself? To her loved ones?

Hermione's heart squeezed as she thought of Harry and Ron. The image of Harry’s green eyes, wide and frantic, burned in her mind. Ron’s raw voice shouting her name haunted her ears. Had they gotten to safety? She prayed they would not be foolish enough to try and come for her. 

Stop thinking too much of them! A voice inside her head scolded scornfully. You shouldn't expose more of your weakness to Voldemort and his Death Eaters! Besides, you have to worry more about yourself! You're the one at the mercy of the enemies now!

Hermione bit her quivering lips. That was correct. How could she hope to help her friends when she remained a helpless captive? She had to cease crying and start working her arse out of this nightmare before it consumed her whole.

They had left her alone for now, likely believing she was still unconscious. That gave her a little time, but it wouldn’t last for much longer. Soon someone would come, and she couldn’t be caught unprepared. The least she could do was to pull herself together and get a proper sense of her surroundings.

That led to another question: Why was she staying in this...ridiculously fancy chamber?

Hermione forced her puffy eyes open, dragging her gaze over the space once again. Yeah, this lavishness felt almost surreal. It was a room fit for royalty, most certainly eclipsing Grimmauld Place in its prime days. And she doubted it was even the finest suite in the Manor.

No wonder Malfoy strutted about Hogwarts as though the world owed him reverence—he had indeed been raised in a palace.

Her brows furrowed. Hermione could understand why all of her wounds were healed—Voldemort wouldn't want his newest pawn broken too soon—but why locking her in this gilded cage instead of a damp, freezing cell in the dungeon? 

Suddenly, a sharp pain shot through her temples and she had to press her palms against her head to steady herself. Merlin, her body was too weak to even think straight. She shut her eyes, trying to recollect her thoughts.

All Hermione knew for now was that she could never allow herself to fall for the games Voldemort was playing. Whatever twisted scheme brewed inside his mind, whatever role he had chosen for her in his grand plan—she wouldn't comply to any of them.

She would rather be die before letting him turn her into a weapon against Harry and the Order.

Besides…there were things worse than death. Far much worse.

As though fate itself had chosen that moment to prove that notion right, a sound shattered the silence—the rhythmic thud of loud and quick footsteps, echoing closer and closer down the corridor outside.

Hermione jumped, instantly filled with panic and dread. Her heart lurched, drumming rapidly inside her ribcage.

She needed to move, to get up, to do something. Yet her limbs—still leaden and sore from the torment she had endured—betrayed her, gluing her down the bed helplessly. She could only stare at the door, breath stuttered in her throat and eyes wide open in trepidation.

Who was it gonna be? Voldemort himself, come to pry deeper into her mind? Bellatrix, eager for another chance to make her scream? Or Lucius, desperate to reclaim his master’s favour by using her as an example? 

It didn’t really matter, because Hermione was in no condition to stand a sliver of chance against either of them. 

There was nothing she could do to stop them from getting what they wanted.

Then, the latch clicked. And with a violent shove, the door burst open.

Hermione’s mouth fell agape in utter horror as the long shadow stretched across the marble floor. When her gaze landed on the tall and broad frame, her blood ran cold at once.

No. No. No. This couldn’t be.

She would rather have Bellatrix torture the daylight out of her than be trapped in this Death Eater’s presence even for just one second.

This was just a nightmare—it had to be. 

The same nightmare that had been stalking her restless sleep for two years, ever since she had miraculously woken from near death at his hands in the Department of Mysteries. The same gaunt, cruel face she had glimpsed months ago at the café near Tottenham Court Road and brought down with a hastily-cast Petrificus Totalus.

The last Hermione had heard of him from Harry, Voldemort had forced Draco to torture his companion savagely until every trace of her Obliviate was stripped away. If that was true, he himself wouldn’t have escaped the Dark Lord’s fury either. He must have suffered just as much, or perhaps worse.

Which could only mean that his hatred for her now burned deeper than ever.

And here she was—alone, battered and wandless, in the same room as him.

Hermione almost whimpered out loud, the fear for her own life intensified.

Antonin Dolohov stood looming at the doorway. His soulless dark-blue eyes—dulled and hollowed by decades in Azkaban—swept across the room like a starving predator scenting blood. When his gaze landed on her small figure curling amidst the pool of silk sheets, they widened in recognition. Then, a malicious grin spread across his features, showing his slightly crooked teeth.

At that moment, Hermione wished for nothing but that the enormous bed would just split apart and swallow her whole.

But no such miracle came, of course.

"Well well well, look who is here." Dolohov drawled, his English heavy with thick Russian accent. "This just has to be my lucky day."

Hermione's lips quivered. The ugly scar across her chest suddenly burned and itched as though remembering the wizard responsible for it. 

Dolohov’s grin widened as he stalked into the room, not forgetting to shut the door behind him and blocking her only escape route. 

"At first I didn't believe Mulciber, you see. I told them you're too smart to be captured by those dimwit Snatchers." He smirked. "But turn out even Potter's Mudblood isn't always…untouchable.”

A wave of nausea engulfed Hermione. As much as she loathed Dolohov and his mocking praises, a part of her knew he was right. She was supposed to be cleverer than that. She shouldn’t have argued with Harry and led him to spelling out Voldemort’s name amidst his frustration.

Dolohov began advancing toward her bed, and she pressed herself instinctively deeper into the carved headboard, trembling hands clutching at the blanket as if it could shield her from the looming monster. 

He moved with a languid ease, like a cat toying with cornered prey. Dark blue eyes never left hers, glittering with the same sadistic hunger Hermione remembered from the Department of Mysteries. She couldn’t help but flinch when his gaze swept slowly down her torso, lingering disturbingly before returning to her face.

“You’ve grown since the last time we met.” Dolohov chuckled darkly, lips curling in a sneer. “Not our encounter months ago of course—I still couldn’t recall that one, thanks to your Obliviate—but that night at the Ministry. You still remember, don’t you? I bet you do. I had you in my grasp. I literally carved my name onto you.”

Hermione’s stomach churned violently. She reminisced it all too well: his suffocating arms wrapping around her neck, his rancid breath in her ear, and then the searing agony of his curse ripping through her chest. She still had that jagged scar above the swell of her breasts to commemorate him. It never went away, no matter what potion Madame Pompfrey gave her.

Dolohov inhaled deeply, voice turning feral. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve waited for this day, kúkolka?” The pet name—little doll—rolling out of his tongue made her skin crawl. “You haunted my dreams. I couldn’t close my eyes without seeing you, without thinking of you.”

Hermione shuddered. The thought that she had lived rent-free inside his head for years made her want to retch. 

“You should have died that night.” He went on musingly, though the hard edge in his tone betrayed the fury beneath. “Nobody survives my curse, non-verbally or not. Even the Dark Lord complimented my craftmanship. No one survives it except you. And my mark is still on you, isn’t it? You carry me on your skin every day.”

Dolohov licked his lips. "I thought of you all the time. I imagined meeting you in the flesh again, to finish that curse." His grin twisted into a grotesque snarl. "But then, you humiliated me once more at that café. A filthy little Mudblood girl striking me down and even erasing my memories."

His shadow was falling across the edge of the bed now. 

"Others hope to catch Potter to please the Dark Lord. But me? I long to get my hands on the boy because finding him means finding you." He smiled maliciously. "Oh kúkolka, all the things I'd do to you once I have you in my arms again."

Hermione’s pulse rushed with panic. She knew Antonin Dolohov hated her, but she didn’t know he was this obsessed with her.

Her head raced. She was no match for Dolohov in this current state, but if he came any closer—if he so much as tried to touch her, maybe she could manage a burst of wandless magic strong enough to knock him back. Just enough to reach the window—to hurl herself into the unknown rather than endure what awaited her here.

Dolohov dipped one knee onto the bed. Hermione’s terror spiked and she scrambled backwards, clutching the blanket tighter around herself. With one vicious tug, he wrenched it free from her trembling fists. The silk slipped away, pooling at her sides and revealing the thin nightgown she hadn’t even realised she was wearing.

Hermione gasped, arms snapping around her torso to cover herself. Dolohov's palm braced against the mattress beside her ankle, his eyes running up and down every inch of her curves lecherously. His grin stretched wider and darker, hungrier.

“I wonder if your screams will sound the same as they did that night.” He murmured, almost to himself. "Perhaps sweeter, now that you’re older…ripened."

Hermione’s mind screamed move but her body betrayed her. She could only curl tighter against the headboard, shaking so hard her teeth nearly chattered as his hand nearly reached her...

The door banged open.

"Enough."

Dolohov froze mid-motion, his head snapping toward the doorway. Hermione’s eyes darted past him, and relief tangled with dread when she recognised the pale figure standing framed by the fireplace light.

Lucius Malfoy's expression was a mixture of icy disdain and carefully contained fright. His silver-tipped cane tapped once against the floor, the sound crisp and commanding. “Step away from the girl, Dolohov. She isn't to be played with."

Dolohov straightened slowly, his grin replaced with a sneer. "I was merely greeting our newest guest.” He drawled mockingly. "Though I didn't know the Malfoy patriarch has become a Mudblood's keeper now. You even placed her in this luxurious chamber instead of the dungeon."

Lucius’s grey eyes flashed dangerously. “I'm abiding by our Lord's instructions. If you have questions, you may take them directly to him.”

For a moment, the two men held each other’s stare, the air between them taut with silent challenge. Dolohov’s jaw twitched, his knuckles whitening as his hands curled into fists at his sides. Hermione, still trembling against the pillows, hardly dared to breathe.

Finally, Dolohov gave a raspy chuckle, though there was no humour in it. “Very well. I wouldn’t dream of defying the Dark Lord.” His eyes flicked back to Hermione. “Until next time, kúkolka.”

Dolohov backed away but his sly gaze never left Hermione's, lingering over her trembling form in a way that made her wish she could claw her own skin off. 

This isn't over. He was telling her wordlessly.

Hermione shuddered.

Even after Dolohov vanished behind the doorway, Lucius didn't move from where he stood. His hand rested lightly atop the silver serpent head of his cane as he stared at her. The contempt in his pale eyes was no less cutting than Dolohov’s leer. Hermione’s arms hugged the blanket tighter around herself, refusing to break the silence first.

Lucius exhaled through his nose haughtily. “You would do well not to provoke him, Miss Granger. The Dark Lord may have plans for you, but there are others who are much...less restrained. You should thank me for my interference."

At that, Hermione snapped her head up to glare at Lucius scathingly despite the tremor still coursing through her limbs. Thank him? For saving her from one monster only to preserve her for another? The audacity!

“Why would you care?” She spat, her voice hoarse but edged with venom. “I’m certain you’d be just as happy seeing me and my kind dead.”

Lucius' lips twitched, not even bothering to deny. "Perhaps. But the Dark Lord has entrusted you to my family." Lucius grimaced slightly as though the words left a sour taste on his tongue. "It's our duty to keep you alive and well until he is done with you. And for your sake, let us hope that day does not come any time soon.”

Hermione flinched at the chill in his voice. So that was her life now, then. Protected not out of compassion, but because she was property—an asset for Voldemort’s purpose.

Lucius turned toward the door, the echo of his cane against the marble punctuating his every step. He paused on the threshold with his hand on the handle, as though suddenly remembering something.

“Oh, and the Dark Lord bade me deliver you a message.” He smiled coldly without a hint of sympathy. "If you ever attempt to kill yourself without his permission again, he will ensure Wendell and Monica Wilkins suffer consequences most…unimaginable. Melbourne, isn’t it?”

The air was immediately knocked from Hermione's lungs. Frightful amber eyes locked onto Lucius' emotionless grey, her mouth parted in utter horror and disbelief.

"Your life belonged to him now, Miss Granger. Do not waste it under the foolish illusion that it’s still your own. The same to your parents'.”

And with that, he swept out of the chamber, the heavy door slamming shut behind him with a finality that reverberated in her bones.

Chapter Text

Just as expected, two days after escaping from Malfoy Manor, Potter had broken into Gringotts in a desperate attempt to find Hufflepuff’s cup.

What a dimwit, Voldemort thought.

Hadn’t he already let the boy see how he tortured his friend till near death? If Potter had a brain, he would have realised Voldemort had discovered the destroyed Horcruxes and immediately evacuated the remaining ones from their old hiding places.

Typical Gryffindor overconfidence to think he could still make it in time before the Dark Lord did.

Voldemort couldn’t help but idly wonder whether this reckless display of bravado stemmed from the absence of the group’s lone voice of reason. Without the Mudblood and her rationality to keep him on his toes, Potter had nothing but his rash instincts and foolish tendencies to run straight to death on his own volition.

The notion brought a small smirk to Voldemort’s mouth. He really should have thought of stealing the girl away from Potter a long time ago. Even the boy didn’t realise how much he had grown to emotionally depend on her.

His musings ended as his gaze fell once more upon the three Lestranges kneeling and trembling at his feet. His eyes narrowed murderously as he took in Bellatrix’s scorched hair and Rabastan’s burned shoulder. Rodolphus appeared to be the only one unscathed but Voldemort still noticed his slightly limp leg.

“Let me be sure I understand this clearly.” Voldemort said coldly. “Potter were inside Gringotts, where I had deliberately instructed you to guard carefully because I knew he would be there. And you still let him get away—the second time in two days, Bellatrix? Right after you swore on your life that you would never fail me again?”

Bellatrix let out a choked sob, her voice muffled against the floor she was pressing her forehead onto. “My Lord, please… I-it was unexpected. He released the dragon—”

The sentence was cut off by her own scream of agony, then soon followed by Rodolphus’ and Rabastan’s.

“Excuses.” Voldemort spat. “They’re merely two brats and an old goblin. You three Lestranges are supposed to be among my best duelists. Yet recently you only proved to be a disappointment.”

Crimson eyes swept across the drawing room, blazing and pinning down each of the Death Eaters who stayed present. The silence was suffocating like as a noose tightening around every throat.

“You all did.”

Lucius lowered his head when the Dark Lord's gaze lingered on him a bit longer than the others. Draco mirrored his father’s posture, though the tremor in his shoulders betrayed his terror.

Voldemort inwardly grimaced in distaste. Pathetic. Sometimes he still couldn’t believe these two were meant to be Abraxas’ flesh and blood.

Abraxas Malfoy used to be Tom Riddle’s most trusted Knight of Walpurgis, the first to pledge his loyalty to Lord Voldemort upon his return. It was a pity that Lucius inherited only a pale immitation of his father’s brilliance and instead reminded Voldemort more of his snobbish Selwyn mother—Elspeth, if he remembered correctly.

"You all disappointed me." Voldemort repeated, each syllable slow and menacing. “How many times had you let Potter slip through your fingers? Tell me, how was it that a band of lowly Snatchers managed to hold the boy captive for longer than any of my official Death Eaters ever could?”

He turned to Bellatrix again, anger flaring hotly. “You let me down the most, Bellatrix. Your tardiness to inform me the very moment Potter was delivered to you was precisely what had allowed the boy to get away.”

Bellatrix let out a keening sound, hair falling across her tear-streaked face. “M-my Lord…the boy’s face was deformed! We couldn't recognise him straight away...we didn't dare call you back before knowing it was him for sure—”

"Ah yes, the girl's Stinging hex, was it?" Voldemort sneered at Bellatrix's surprised expression. "One simple trick from a Mudblood and my most devoted warrior was easily misled and rendered blind."

Bellatrix widened her eyes in disbelief, momentarily forgetting about her misery. "Th-the Mudblood..."

"Say, Bella, when will you even realise that she was outright lying to your face about the sword?" Voldemort smiled cruelly. “Perhaps I should re-teach you the Cruciatus, since yours clearly no longer works.”

“My Lord, I—”

Her words dissolved into a piercing shriek as Voldemort slashed the Elder Wand lazily through the air.

The space reverberated with Bellatrix's screams, and none of the Death Eaters dared to move a muscle.

When the Dark Lord was done, Bellatrix collapsed back onto the floor, still twitching and muttering broken pleas. Voldemort glanced at her without any hint of pity. Then he turned his gaze to the other faces in the room.

"I'm most disheartened, my friends." He spoke softly. "It seems like arrogance and carelessness have taken root among you. You have grown too bold for your own good, so much that a mere schoolgirl with filthy blood is able to outwit you multiple times. Should I blame it on how extraordinary she is or how incompetent my servants are?"

A few shoulders slightly jerked up at the humiliation of being compared to a Muggle-born, but no one uttered a sound.

Ruby eyes slid to the tall Death Eater standing nearby. "Which one is it, Dolohov?”

Dolohov stiffened under the weight of Voldemort’s hardened stare, but instead of cowering in fear, he raised his head to meet it steadily.

“I’d say the girl is indeed a remarkable witch, my Lord.” He ignored the muffled scornful scoff from his fellow Death Eaters and continued. “But she also had luck in her favour. I intend never to let that happen again.”

Silence fell.

Voldemort didn’t speak at once and took a moment to study Dolohov.

He had always liked this man—one of his favourites, alongside Bellatrix and Severus. There was much to admire in Antonin Dolohov, after all.

His duelling skill was was second to nearly none in his ranks. Just like Bellatrix, he was savage in his attack, revelling in destruction and in the artistry of pain. However, his savagery wasn’t wild but measured and deliberate, and that was exactly what made him much a more formidable warrior than Bellatrix.

Then, similar to Severus, Antonin possessed that rare gift of innovation. Many of his frequently-used spells were his own creations—the purple-flamed curse that had maimed the Mudblood was just one of those. Very few others could boast such ingenuity.

In a way, the Russian wizard’s lust for blood reminded the Dark Lord of his own. It wasn’t Bellatrix’s and some others’ sheer sadistic hunger, but something closer to Voldemort’s nature: the thrill of battle, the unquenchable thirst for violence and domination.

People like them didn’t merely enjoy inflicting pain on others—they craved the clash of magic, the sheer intoxication of power unleashed.

Yet with that strength inevitably came the impertinence.

Antonin was no arse-kisser, even to his Lord and master. He rarely grovelled, always speaking with a directness that bordered on insolence.

Though Voldemort enjoyed the honesty—it was refreshing compared to Lucius’ and Belletrix’s constant flattering—he was aware that too much straightforwardness could turn to arrogance, and too much confidence could curdle into recklessness.

Antonin Dolohov was a dog that might one day bite even the hand that fed it.

Voldemort narrowed his eyes and flicked his wand. Dolohov immediately crumpled to his knees and writhed in silenced agony. The gathered Death Eaters flinched as though fearing his pain might cut through them as well.

The Dark Lord drawled. “It has come to my attention, Antonin, that you have taken a certain liberty to disregard my command.” His tone dropped lethally. “Had I, or had I not, ordered that no one was to touch a hair on the girl’s head unless I said otherwise?”

Dolohov’s voice came out thin and ragged. “My Lord, I didn’t know—”

“You are fortunate that you have yet truly laid a finger on her.” Voldemort hissed. “Had you done so, your hands would have been removed, and I would have displayed them for the rest of my servants to learn the cost of disobedience.”

The other Death Eaters watched in utter horror as Dolohov’s body convulsed under the intensified Blood-boil curse. After a good long ten minutes or so, Voldemort lifted the magic and allowed Dolohov to shrink back limply on the floor.

He continued. “When I issue an order, I expect it to be followed. Under normal circumstances, your generous master might not begrudge you the girl. However she is no ordinary Mudblood, and until I decided what to do with her, she is to be unharmed—by any of you, at least.”

Bellatrix—now able to stand up—whined. “But she is just filth, my Lord!”

Rodolphus instantly tugged at his wife’s wrist fearfully.

Voldemort’s chilling smile was full of venom. “Filth, yes, but that same filth managed to make a fool of you twice and Antonin here thrice. Leastwise Antonin was capable of owning his failure. You Bellatrix, on the other hand, is the perfect example of the ineptitude and superciliousness I just mentioned earlier.”

Some of the throng snorted, likely trying to hold back their laughter. Bellatrix’s face flushed with embarrassment, but Voldemort barely paid attention to her any longer.

“Remember this, incompetency and insolence are two things I absolutely do not tolerate. Make yourself useful to me and you shall be rewarded. Fail me or defy me again, and you shall regret it dearly.” Crimson eyes swept through the drawing room and met each person’s gaze coldly. “Do I make myself clear?”

“YES, MY LORD!” Came a chorus.

Voldemort looked at Dolohov who was breathing shallowly yet still vaguely conscious. “You’re a valuable blade, Antonin, but you’re letting your primal instincts get the better of you.” He smiled humourlessly. “Serve me well, and perhaps I might allow you a chance to have what your heart so desires.”

Dolohov didn’t respond, but the slight incline of his head in an imitation of a bow implied that he had gotten the message.

“Let tonight be a reminder to all of you. I am Lord Voldemort, and my will is your law. Forget this, and you shall learn that I could be far more cruel to my own men than to my enemies.”

Another ‘yes, my Lord’ in unison, some voices shakier than others.

Voldemort let the words hang for another moment, then he turned away. With a flick of his wand, the long table and chairs were back in place. He lowered himself into the seat at the head and gestured the rest to follow suit.

“Now, let us not waste more time. We have much to discuss, especially regarding the news from the Confederation. Yaxley, begin.”

The meeting dragged on—the Order’s recent activities, diplomacy with I.W.C., new policies and decrees. After another long hour, Voldemort finally waved his Death Eaters off.

“That will be enough for today. You all are dismissed.” He paused. “Lucius, stay.”

The Death Eaters didn’t need telling twice and began retreating, all more than happy to be away from this suffocating gathering. Rowle had to hunch Antonin over his shoulders to drag him out. Narcissa swept out with the rest, brushing her fingers briefly against her husband’s hand in passing. 

When the door shut, Lucius moved forward and spoke in a nervous tone. “I’m at your command, my Lord.”

Voldemort leaned back in his chair, his expression calm and collected. “Ah yes, Lucius. Tell me, how is Potter’s Mudblood faring under your roof?”

Lucius swallowed, carefully arranging his words. “I have done everything you commanded, my Lord. She was placed under the finest Healer’s care I could summon.” His hands twitched at his sides. “The incident with Dolohov was unforeseen. I had already moved her to the farthest wing of the Manor, but he… I stopped it in time, my Lord.”

His voice rose at the last sentence, as though hoping for a praise.

“Has she recovered enough for a visit from me?”

Lucius paled a bit. He knew all too well what the Dark Lord's visit meant for Hermione Granger.

“Healer Ashworth assured me that she is nearly restored, but she still needs more time to be able to...endure harsher treatment.” He hesitated. “However since she is just a Mudblood, I’d say you could interrogate her whenever you see fit, my Lord.”

The drawing room was silent but for the faint crackles in the fireplace. Voldemort tapped one long finger idly against the arm of his seat, ruby eyes distant and lost in thought.

Lucius began to sweat.

At last Voldemort stirred, coming to a decision. “I have a small task for you, Lucius.” His serpentine smile was almost casual. “How about you entertain a quick trip to Oxfordshire?”

-----oOo-----

It was common knowledge among the villagers of Little Hangleton that the Riddle House was haunted, and horrible things would befall anyone foolish enough to trespass its grounds.

Over the years, countless whispers had been spread through the pubs—of strange lights from the windows, of hisses and screams carried on the wind, of livestock that strayed too close and were found mutilated the next morning.

Little did those mundane Muggles know that the rumours were not born of superstition, but by Lord Voldemort himself who had placed the curse upon the land.

After killing his father and grandparents at the age of sixteen, Tom Riddle had seized the Riddle family’s enormous fortune and used it to fuel his early rise. When he returned to Britain after a decade of travelling the world, the Riddle House became his personal residence.

The original interior design of the mansion was ostentatious but tasteless. So the Dark Lord innovated it, shrouding the entire estate beneath a veil of enchantments. To the eyes of passing Muggles, the grand house appeared nothing more than a decayed ruin. He even kept Frank the gardener—Imperio-ed, of course—until the fool overheard him and Wormtail few years ago.

How much he relished the idea of claiming the wealth that once belonged to his father—the same despicable man who lived lavishly while his son grew up in the squalor of a London orphanage. Revenge tasted sweet indeed.

In the past, Voldemort often came here to spend time on thinking, to reflect on himself inside a place that he could truly call his own after the Chamber of Secrets. Since his resurrection, however, he rarely returned to this house. His new body scarcely required rest, and his days were consumed by either murder or violence.

Yet now, for the first time in years, he felt the need to claim moments for himself again.

After touching the Mudblood girl.

Voldemort narrowed his eyes.

The Dark Lord was sitting quietly in the dark master suite. The utter silence was broken only by the sound of the ticking grandfather clock. His ruby orbs gleamed under the pale moonlight, deep in thought.

Nagini slithered across the antique rug, moving with unhurried grace until she settled at his feet. Her large head nuzzled against his lap affectionately.

“Master, what’s wrong?” She hissed softly, her tongue flickering in and out.

Voldemort absently lowered a hand to stroke her smooth scales and answered in Parseltongue. “Just a puzzle I didn’t expect.”

“The girl?”

“Yes, Nagini. There is something peculiar about her, but I can’t yet fathom what it is.”

“Master isn’t the same after meeting her.”

Voldemort raised an eyebrow. It didn’t surprise him that his familiar noticed his change, but the fact she could sense the subtle shift meant it was real and not just an illusion.

“How?”

Nagini lifted her unblinking golden eyes to meet his. “Master feels…more whole.”

Voldemort stiffened. More whole. That was the precise description of what had happened the moment Hermione Granger’s skin brushed against his. For the briefest second, the cracks within him—the splintered soul, the gnawing emptiness, the endless cold—had seemed to mend.

Nagini’s tongue flickered again. “The girl hurt Nagini before, but Nagini likes the girl.”

“You like her?” Voldemort’s tone was slightly incredulous. His familiar barely tolerated any breathing being that wasn’t him, and now she told him she fancied the Mudblood?

“She smells like Master.”

Had it been someone else, Voldemort might have taken offense at being compared to a girl with such filthy blood. Yet this was Nagini, and he knew she must have meant it literally.

“You think she is…akin to me?”

“No, Master, not alike. Something else.”

Voldemort’s frown deepened, but he didn’t press for more. Nagini was loyal and perceptive in her way, but he knew better than to overvalue her words. Once she had been a woman, but years of the Maledictus curse had eroded her humanity. Most of her thoughts now were filtered through instinct and sensation.

Soon, Nagini grew restless and slipped away, her massive body vanishing into the shadowed corridor beyond.

For a long while, the Dark Lord remained still, staring into the unknown. Then he flicked his wand, and a small object materialised in his pale palm.

A beaded bag.

Narcissa informed him they had found it stuffed inside Granger’s sock while changing her bloodied attire. Even the Malfoy matriarch seemed to be impressed by how quick-witted the girl was, despite the fact it also proved her sister’s imcompetency. 

Voldemort’s lips curved into a cold smile. Apparently Bellatrix still needed some more punishment.

He let the bag hover in the air before him and began inspecting it. 

The Extension charm was woven with precision and completely undetectable. With a wave of his hand, the bag’s contents were levitated outside. Books, food, clothes, camping gear, potions, money. Basically all that one needed for a long hiding trip.

Voldemort smirked disdainfully. Clever little Mudblood. She had really thought of everything, had she not? No wonder why Potter managed to stay under his radar for so long.

Perhaps he would give her a lesson for that. A very personal lesson.

Crimson gaze sharpened when one particular object drifted forward. The glint of gold got caught in the light, and Voldemort’s breath stilled.

The locket.

Salazar Slytherin’s locket.
His heirloom.
His Horcrux.

Broken in half—destroyed.

The circle of floating objects collapsed at once, crashing to the floor as Voldemort grabbed the locket from the air. His long fingers closed around the blackened surface, and a roar of wrath clawed up his throat.

It was a part of his immortality, and they had ruined it.

The room shuddered with barely contained fury. He pictured Hermione Granger’s fearful face and considered Apparating back to the Manor to show her the consequences of helping the Dark Lord’s enemies. 

Wasn’t Ronald Weasley the one dealing the final blow on his locket? Sending him the mulitated corpse of the girl he loved might deliver the message.

The thought tasted sweet and hot in Voldemort’s mouth, but he still reined the monster in.

Not yet. He told himself. He had yet uncovered the girl’s secrets, and she was much more useful to him alive than dead.

Murdering Granger would be too lenient on her, especially when she herself was ready to end her own life the instant she got captured. No, he had read her mind and heard her plea, she wanted him to kill her. 

There was something in her brilliant brain she would rather die to keep than confess. And Lord Voldemort had every intention of finding out.

Besides, what kind of villain would he be if he granted her wish that easily?

Voldemort’s smirk vanished when his attention returned to the broken Horcrux.

From what he had glimpsed in the Mudblood’s memories, they had discovered basilisk venom could destroy a Horcrux. Since Gryffindor’s sword had absorbed the poison after Potter slew the serpent in the Chamber of Secrets—a matter that he had yet had the time to rage over—they likely used the same blade against Slytherin’s locket.

He ran his thumb over the cold metal. There was no whisper of magic left. The shard of his soul inside was truly gone forever. Irretrievable.

Voldemort’s wrath flared again, but he forced it down. Anger solved nothing right now, and he knew he also had himself to blame for being so careless and leaving Dumbledore traces to follow. 

What he needed was a solution to this whole mess. And to do that, he had to find out exactly what had happened.

Voldemort pointed the Elder Wand at the Horcrux and murmured a long incantation. The air grew heavier with each word he chanted, and the locket seemed to shiver in his palm like a living thing. 

Soon, a frosty wind filled the chamber and shadows swirled unnaturally on the wall, following by a faint smell of iron and decay. From the charred heirloom rose a plume of black vapour, the tendrils twisted and thickened until they shaped themselves into a tall figure.

Tom Riddle. Young and handsome at the age of thirty. 

Voldemort’s precise image the day he split a fragment of his soul into Slytherin’s locket.

The Dark Lord’s gaze hardened. 

His Horcrux could never be restored, true, but that wasn’t what he sought. This was a spell he had mastered at the ruins of the temple of Acheron while traveling across Europe. Through the ancient Greek necromancy, he could summon the echo of his soul that once resided inside the locket and harvest its knowledge.

“Horcrux.” Voldemort’s tone was sharp and commanding. “Tell me what you know about Harry Potter’s plan.” 

The Horcrux didn’t reply at once and titled its head, studying Voldemort with flat and appraising obsidian eyes. Voldemort met its gaze coldly, irritation building up with each second passed.

Then, the Horcrux’s lips twitched into an amused smirk.

“She is right.” The phantom of Tom Riddle said softly, velvety voice reminding Voldemort of his once own. “You’re indeed monstrous.” 

Voldemort froze. 

The Horcrux didn’t wait for his response and continued with a chuckle. “I didn’t really believe her at first, you know. I mean, I had seen you in the four-eyed boy’s memories, but I had thought they were coloured by his personal vendetta against you.”

Voldemort’s nostrils flared. “And pray tell, who is this ‘she’?”

The Horcrux smiled slyly as though enjoying a private joke. “Why, my butterfly, of course.”

Voldemort’s wand hand twitched, utterly tempted to banish this wretched ghost back into oblivion. Was this truly his phantom? He didn’t remember himself this annoying at that age. 

Still, he had already had his answer. There had only been two witches to carry the locket in the past fifty years, and no shard of his soul would ever address Dolores Umbridge with such a name.

Crimson eyes narrowed to lethal slits. What was this sudden fondness his Horcruxes held toward a Mudblood?

“What do you know about Hermione Granger?” Voldemort demanded.

The Horcrux grinned wickedly. “I thought you want to hear about Potter’s plan.”

The tip of the Elder Wand was instantly at its nose. “Enough.” Voldemort hissed angrily. “Since you insist on being difficult, give me one reason why I shouldn’t expel you from the living realm right now.”

The Horcrux shrugged, eyes darkening. “I’m destroyed, remember? There is nothing worse you can do.” Then it smirked. “I assume you have her in your captive?”

“Yes.”

“Then you already have everything you need to win this war.”

Voldemort was bemused. “Hermione Granger is the key to my victory?”

The Horcrux merely smiled.

Voldemort’s patience cracked. “If you don’t stop speaking in riddles—“

“I’m not obliged to help you, Voldemort.” The Horcrux’s voice dropped to a freezing temperature, flat with contempt. “I’m not your servant. I’m you. Or rather, what you chose to discard.”

Ruby orbs glowed hotter. “You’re nothing more than a shadow of me.”

“Which is precisely why I never followed your descent into madness.” The ghost spat venomously. “You have grown blind, lost in your own lust for power and the hunger for dominion. That is why you failed again and again. How many fatal mistakes have you made since you returned? Look at yourself and tell me what had become of you?”

Voldemort clenched his jaw tightly. He did not need to hear these—not from his enemies, not from his followers, and certainly not from his own phantom. Least of all now after he just spent two days seething and dissecting every step he fumbled. 

He understood too well what the Horcrux was on about. Like it just said, it was him—a fracture of who he used to be decades ago. The Dark Lord remembered himself then: charming, brilliant, devastatingly certain of his own superiority. No doubt that arrogance had convinced it that his recent missteps were the result of lacking its foresight.

It hated him for abandoning it.

“Do not lecture me, Horcrux. And do not act like you’re any better than me.” Voldemort growled. “I know this for exactly what it’s. You envy me, don’t you? I’m a corporeal being while you remained shackled to a locket. You wish to be me.”

The Horcrux gave a humourless laugh. “Well well, just how perceptive you're. And here I thought you have lost that virtue." Its face twisted maliciously. "Yes, Voldemort, I'm jealous of you. Seeing the mess that you made, I realised it should have been me who walks this Earth. You don't deserve what you have right now, and you certainly don't deserve her."

Voldemort gritted his teeth. Her again. "And what is so special about that Mudblood?" He hissed, deciding to ignore the other insults. "What am I missing?"

"She is your second chance." 

Silence stretched across the room after that. Voldemort glared at the Horcrux's flickering figure scathingly, then his patience snapped and he slashed his wand forward, cutting off the summoning spell.

"Begone." He spat furiously.

The phantom began disolving into a cloud of black smoke and getting sucked back into the ruined locket. Yet the smug grin on Tom Riddle’s younger face only widened knowingly. 

“We are the most powerful wizard alive, Tom. Potter will never defeat you, but power alone won’t keep you from falling again.” The last words were a taunting whisper. “To win and to rule…you must first live.”

Then it was gone.

The icy darkness the spell had conjured was lifted, though the chamber somehow still felt freezing. Voldemort stood rigid, the Elder Wand humming faintly in his hand, his long fingers coiled so tightly around the Horcrux his knuckles strained white.

Slytherin's locket lay inert and dull in his palm, yet its mocking laughter still echoed in his skull.

She is your second chance.

Voldemort pressed his lips together, ruby orbs glinting with cold calculation.

It seemed like it was time he paid his war prize a proper visit.

Chapter Text

Much to Hermione’s surprise and reluctant relief, the Death Eaters truly left her to the solitude of her gilded prison.

She had been on edge the entire day after the terrifying encounter with Dolohov, keeping her gaze glued on the door, half-expecting it to burst open at any moment. Even the faintest creak of the window boards could set her nerves alight, and each time, she would shrink herself deeper into the mattress as if it could shield her from the horrors waiting outside. 

But no one came, and the prolong silence was just as disturbing as it was comforting.

Soon, her trembling subsided and her mind regained steadiness. Then Hermione finally stood up and started investigating her newest accommodation closely for the first time. 

As she had noted before, the chamber was far too extravagant for a captive—especially a Muggleborn one. Tall windows framed by heavy emerald curtains, a four-poster bed draped in the finest silk, a large armoire carved from mahogany stood by the wall. Everything about it screamed old-money wealth, the opulence entirely out of place for someone like her.

The door, as expected, was secured with more than just lock and key or some simple charm that could be easily opened by a wandless Alohomora. The glasses didn’t budge either, enchanted to resist both physical and magical force. 

Hermione recalled her naive plan to fling herself out of the window and shuddered. Thanks Merlin that Lucius barged in just in time before Dolohov could lay his hand on her. 

Understanding there was no way to escape without a wand, she sighed in resignation and began looking into the other facilities inside the chamber.

Unsurprisingly, the adjoining bathroom was equally luxurious. Hermione dazedly stared at the grand clawfoot tub and the bottles of perfumed soap by the marble sink. It had been so long since she last had a proper bath. Months of running and hiding in the woods forced her to make do with the Scouring charm, but she still missed the feeling of hot water against her skin.

Just how much she longed to feel human again.

Hermione tore her gaze away from the alluring space and shook her head. As much as she loved to indulge herself, she couldn't afford to let her guard down. What if someone decided to walk in? The thought of being seen naked by any Death Eater sickened her to the core.  

She explored every inch of the main room again, checking for anything that could be of use. There was none, of course. The vanity drawers contained only a hairbrush and some magical beauty products, the wardrobe held several gowns far too fine for Hermione’s taste, even the fireplace poker was missing its sharp point. 

Whoever prepared the chamber had ensured they left her nothing to harm herself with, let alone attack anyone else.

When she finally turned back toward the bed, something new caught her attention: a tray of breakfast had appeared on the small table near the window. Steam curled from the teapot, and the smell of freshly baked bread wafted through the air. 

Hermione’s mouth watered, but she sat back on the edge of the bed and glared at the tray instead.

She knew they wouldn’t poison her—if Voldemort had wanted her dead, she wouldn’t have woken up at all—yet her pride didn’t allow her to go along with whatever game they were playing. 

By noon, the breakfast tray vanished and got replaced by lunch. The roasted meat and pumpkin soup were far richer than anything she had eaten in weeks. She had to press a hand to her growling belly and turned away defiantly.

Then came dinner. This time, a silver dome covered the plate, and next to it sat a folded piece of parchment. Hermione hesitantly picked it up, her breath caught as she saw the neat and elegant handwriting.

The Wilkins send their regards.

Hermione’s knees buckled. 

She grabbed the table edge to keep herself from collapsing, the note slipping from her fingers. Her heart pounded so violently it made her dizzy, hot tears blurring her vision. Dread filled her chest as trembling hand slowly reached out toward the dome to lift it up and reveal what was inside.

Food.

No mutilated body parts or bloodied tokens. Just food.

Hermione exhaled shakily, yet her relief was short-lived as she quickly realised what the meal was.

Potted shrimps, beef Wellington, mashed potatoes and a glass of red wine—the exact same dinner she had had with her parents before she altered their memories and sent them to Australia.

The message couldn’t have been any clearer.

Her limbs instantly moved on their own. Like a marionette pulled by invisible strings, Hermione sank onto the chair and took the fork with shivering fingers. The food tasted like ash in her mouth. She thought she could have vomitted it all out, but she forced herself to swallow bites after bites until she finished the whole plate.

She never missed a meal again after that.

The next few days passed in a blur.

Hermione’s daily routine fell into a dull rhythm—waking up, eating, thinking, then crying herself to sleep. The cycle repeated until she almost lost all sense of day and night if not for the faint light that filtered through the stained-glass window.

Not a single soul visited her, and by the fifth day, she began to wonder whether the isolation was intentional. Perhaps Voldemort had decided that the most efficient form of torture was to let her rot quietly until she crumbled on her own—to let despair consume her until she became an empty shell, too weak to defy him when he came.

And Merlin have mercy, if that truly was his plan, then maybe the noseless bastard was succeeding.

Hermione could feel herself slipping.

There was nothing to do in this place. No books, no wand. Nothing to occupy her mind, nothing to keep her wandering thoughts from turning darker and more desperate with each passing hour. The silence was the worst part, reminding her too much of those miserable days in the tent after Ron left when the only sounds had been the crackling fire and Harry’s weary sighs.

But even then she still had someone breathing beside her and anchoring her sanity. Here, Hermione was truly alone in the serpent’s den, surrounded by her enemies, without the comfort of a friendly voice to break the stillness.

She had always been afraid of loneliness, after all.

Hermione tried to keep her mind sharp. She practised small burst of wandless magic whenever she could—lighting the candles, levitating a spoon, closing the curtains. It wasn’t nearly enough to defend herself or break free from this heavily warded chamber, but it reminded her that she was a witch. The Death Eaters didn’t even bother suppressing her magic anyway.

She also gave in to the temptation of the lavish bathtub. The memories of Dolohov’s dark gaze gluing on her curves made her skin crawl, but let’s be honest, it wasn’t like refusing to bath could protect her from anything. If she was going to suffer either way then why deny herself this last privilege?

By the end of the week, Hermione had finally stopped sobbing herself to sleep. 

It was unforgivable to waste so much time drowning in her own sorrow while Ron and Harry were out there struggling to survive. Knowing her boys, they might even be trying to rescue her. She couldn’t stay still and be the damsel in distress like this.

Besides, the realisation that Voldemort might be somewhere relishing her misery made her bristle with fury, and her hatred for him and his Death Eaters burned brighter than any depression and hopelessness. 

The last time Hermione Granger loathed someone this much, she sent that despicable woman to a herd of very angry centaurs. There was no way she was gonna let an ugly and hairless monster be an exception, the most evil Dark Lord in the history or not! 

Now that rage had somehow cleared her mind, Hermione began to think—as in, really thinking and putting her big brain into use—and she decided maybe she did have some leverage of her own. She only didn’t know what it was yet.

As far as she was aware, the Dark Lord was a maniacal tyrant, a psychopath that murdered mindlessly without blinking an eye. Meanwhile Hermione was a Muggle-born girl who had helped The Boy Who Lived thwart his plans on numerous occasions. The fact she was still breathing—alive, healthy, even clothed and fed—was a certainly miracle.

Voldemort had likely extracted all the information he wanted from Hermione after barging into her head that first night. He could have just discarded her or made an example of her to terrorise Harry and the Order. Yet all he had done so far was threatening her twice with her parents to force her to eat and prevent her from attempting to kill herself again.

Even Lucius seemed both angered and terrified when Dolohov was about to touch her.

Hermione knew it might sound absurd and delusional, but she suspected Voldemort needed something else from her, something he wouldn’t obtain through torture and violence. He even charged her well-being to the Malfoys, for Merlin’s sake. There had to be something…well, she wouldn’t say special, but perhaps abnormal about her that she was given this odd treatment.

The question was, what was it that she had?

War intelligence? Hardly. He had already gotten more than enough from her mind with Legilimency.

A bait to lure Harry out? That made sense, but he could have dangled her broken corpse from the gates of Hogwarts and achieved the same effect. 

A new Peter Pettigrew? Eh, certainly his fanatical pure-blood followers would have a lot to say about their master recruiting a Mudblood to his inner circle.

Hermione’s brows knitted together in frustration. How annoying. No matter how many times she turned the problem over in her head, she still couldn’t fathom it out. 

The moment she failed to escape Malfoy Manor and fell into the enemies’ hands, she had prepared herself for the most horrific outcomes imaginable. Torment, abuse, death. The worst fate for a young girl such as herself. What she didn’t expect was this…psychological game from someone like Voldemort.

Hermione had always believed that the key to defeating an opponent was understanding them better than themselves, which was why she paid very close attention whenever Harry spoke about his encounters with Voldemort. Eventually, she came to a firm conclusion: The Dark Lord was, in fact, nothing but a beast driven by its impulses.

While researching the Horcruxes, she found herself surprisingly drawn to the philosophy surrounding the soul. A soul, as the ancient texts from Grimmauld Place suggested, was a delicate matter—closely tied to a person’s identity and sense of self. An intact soul meant an intact being, and to damage it was to damage one’s very ability to think and exist as a living thing.

And here Voldemort had done it not once or twice, but at least five times.

It wasn’t merely dark magic, Hermione realised, it was self-mutilation on the deepest metaphysical level. 

She thought of Voldemort's pure-blood Death Eaters. Some of them must have known he was a half-blood, and they pledged themselves to his cause anyway. To sway such egoistic people to his side, it must have taken more than just violence and cruelty, but also charm and charisma. 

However, with each piece of his soul he ripped away and secured inside a Horcrux, he lost a fragment of who he had once been. Hermione wasn't sure whether his magical stability was affected, but it was rather obvious every split had deepened the fracture of his humanity, until madness began to consume his mind.

Voldemort's resurrection only affirmed this truth. The grosteque and serpentine form he took mirrored his hollow soul, and whatever personality he once possessed had vanished entirely. In its place stood a tyrant who relied on fear, brutality, and theatrical displays of sadism to control those around him.

Over time, he had become unstable, driven less by clear goals and more by erratic surges of rage. The only time he had demonstrated any tactical brilliance was the Department of Mysteries when he used the connection with Harry to lure them into a trap, then almost nothing after that. He was powerful, yes, but strategically inept and completely lacked of foresight. 

And yet the Voldemort who kept Hermione confined here was not that creature.

The Voldemort she had grown up fearing would have dragged the answers out of her through torture and agony until she finally broke into obedience. He would have never placed her in this luxurious prison and left her with nothing but her wandering thoughts and the unsettling question of what he truly intended to do with her.

Hermione could handle pain—she had endured it before and was capable of holding her ground against it. But psychological manipulation was something she was far less prepared for. It didn’t feel like the Voldemort the Wizarding world currently knew. Instead, the creeping deception reminded her more of—

The locket.

Hermione flinched. No, she shouldn't be thinking of him—of it—while trapped under this roof. Not if she still wished to withhold those memories from Voldemort.

Yet she could still hear its alluring and poisonous voice echoing in her mind, even see the illusion of a beautiful man with such intense eyes that had made her heart race with both fury and confusion. A master of manipulation, that was what the fragment of Tom Riddle inside Slytherin's locket was.

It almost succeeded in its goal of corrupting her, almost.

Hermione couldn't help but wonder if the Horcruxes retained any connection to Voldemort. There wasn't any other reasonable explanation to his sudden shift of behaviour. Maybe a piece of his younger mind—his original, more whole self—still influenced him. 

It was a tempting theory. Too bad she knew, academically and logically, that it shouldn’t be possible.

The moment Voldemort tore his soul apart to create a Horcrux, that shred of soul became completely severed from the main whole, independent and frozen in time inside its container. It was like amputating a limb: once cut off, you could no longer feel it.

Besides, if he had somehow managed to maintain the link to his Horcruxes, he would never have been blindsided when he discovered that three of them had already been destroyed.

Hermione let out a long and exhausted breath. She rubbed her temples, trying to quell the dull throbbing beneath her skull. So many possibilities that sorting through them made her head ache.

In this utter silence with nothing but her thoughts to keep her company, her own spiraling mind felt like another enemy. Every speculation literally fed her paranoia. There might be chance she was merely overthinking and Voldemort simply had yet found the time to personally deal with her. She was, after all, one of the closest people to Harry Potter. 

Yeah, perhaps so.

Hermione sank back onto the bed with a another exhale, drawing her legs tightly to her chest and squeezing her eyes shut.

None of this, she was certain, had anything to do with the fact she had seen a flicker of sanity returned to Voldemort's crimson eyes the precise moment her fingers brushed against his skin, of course.

-----oOo-----

By the twelfth day, just when Hermione was certain she might actually die from boredom and depression, the door to her chamber opened for the very first time since Dolohov and Lucius.

She had just stepped out of the bathroom, steam still curling around her damp hair, body wrapped in nothing but a plush bathrobe that had yet been tied properly. Normally she would have never been so careless, but today she accidentally dropped the gown she was about to wear into the bathtub and had no choice but to walk outside to get another one.

When Hermione lifted her eyes, what she saw was Draco Malfoy standing near the entrance and gaping at her like a stunned blobberfish.

For a heartbeat, neither of them moved. 

Hermione’s brain blanked.

Draco’s jaw dropped.

Then Hermione let out an ear-splitting scream and hurled whatever she had in her hand at Draco's direction. Since he was too busy gawking at her exposed skin to even attempt dodging, the ivory brush struck him squarely on his head, eliciting an undignified squeak.

"Merlin! Granger, what...?! Why are you..." Draco sputtered, voice cracking like he had fallen straight back into puberty.

Hermione's face flushed crimson as she immediately yanked the robe tighter around herself and shrieked. "GET OUT, MALFOY!!"

Draco jolted as if electrocuted and stumbled backwards, nearly tripping over the carpet. "I-I don't... I need to..."

"GET OUT!! AND LOOK AWAY YOU FUCKING FERRET!!"

Grey eyes widened in mortification and heat immediately burned up Draco's neck. He tore his gaze away and practically slammed himself into the door in his panic before finally managing to wrench it open. "F-FINE! BUT I'LL BE BACK LATER! FATHER SAID—"

"GET. OUT!!!!"

The door snapped shut behind him.

Hermione stood panting and trembling as she stared at the empty space Draco had occupied. Then she bolted for the wardrobe and hastily tugged the first garment she found over her head. Once finishing dressing herself, she slumped to the edge of the bed and pressed her hands over her face, forcing herself to breathe slow and deep.

Mortification, fear, and fury all crashed over her at once. 

Gosh, how could she have been so reckless and foolish? This was the enemies’ territory, for Godric’s sake. Had she truly fallen for the failed sense of safety in the last twelve days? Hermione didn’t want to imagine what might have happened had it been someone else walking into her half-naked. At least Draco was just...Draco. 

What did he come here for anyway? Did Voldemort send for her? Had her judgement day finally approached? 

Hermione swallowed hard. Her stomach twisted painfully with dread, and she had to bite her quivering lips to stop the rising wave of nausea and the sudden urge to vomit her dinner out. 

For all her attempts to brace herself, all her mental rehearsing of worst-case scenarios, she was still not ready for this. 

She doubted she ever truly could be.

When the doorknob rattled, Hermione instantly jumped to her feet, heart thrumming loudly against her ribs. The latch clicked and the door was slowly cracked open. 

Draco slipped inside again, shoulders tense, grey eyes fixed resolutely on the floor as though terrified to look in her direction. His ears were still burning red with embarrassment, his fingers gripping the wand so tightly his knuckles had gone white.

Hermione’s anxiety gave way to irritation. Really? He was worried about her attacking him? As if she, wandless and trapped, posed any real threat to a fully-armed wizard. Then again, maybe he remembered the taste of her slap in their 3rd year—one of the most satisfying moments of her life—and decided he wasn’t taking any chances.

A sharp ache shot through her chest. Merlin, she missed her beautiful wand. 

Draco cleared his throat. “I’m—”

“Be very careful of what you’re about to say, Malfoy.” Hermione cut in venomously. “You may have a wand, but my hands are still perfectly intact. And I won’t hesitate to break your pointed nose.”

Draco snapped his head up to gape at her in disbelief. It was only then that Hermione got a proper look at her former classmate and realised—with no small amount of shock—what a wrecked mess he had become. 

His usually immaculate platinum-blond hair looked dishevelled as though he had run his hands through it too many times. Faint purple bruises smudged the skin beneath his bloodshot eyes, and his cheeks were noticeably hollowed. Even his robes were wrinkled, which ironically reminded Hermione of Ron. 

The pristine Malfoy polish was gone, stripped away by stress, fear, and whatever horrors he had been witnessing or participating in in the last two years.

Hermione recalled what Harry had said about Voldemort making Draco torture Rowle and Dolohov, and an unwelcome pang of pity twisted in her chest. Apparently, the life of a Death Eater didn’t suit him nearly as well as he had once imagined and even bragged about in their 5th year.

Unaware of her sympathetic thoughts, colours rose up Draco’s pale face—anger or panic, Hermione couldn’t tell. His grip on his wand tightened as he scowled at her. “That should be my line, Granger. You’re the prisoner here!”

Whatever fleeting softness Hermione had felt instantly evaporated at that. Her glare turned glacial. “And whose fault is that?!”

Draco flinched, but he quickly drew himself up and spat back with equal scorn. “No one’s but your own! If you were even half as clever as our professors think you are, you would have fled the country the moment the Dark Lord returned instead of throwing yourself head-first into Potter’s war.”

“I’m a Muggle-born, for Godric’s sake. It’s my war as much as it’s Harry’s! And my mistake for being a loyal friend—a concept you would never understand!” Hermione sneered. “Oh wait, but you and your family do know what loyalty is, don’t you? That’s why you kept me alive to hand me over to your master like some compensation offering!”

Draco took a step back as if she had slapped him again. “I-I didn’t… You were about to—“

Hermione scoffed. “Kill myself? Please don’t act like you give a damn about my well-being. You once wished the Heir of Slytherin would target me first, remember? I always knew you wanted me dead, Malfoy, but I never imagined you’d be such a sadistic arse you went out of your way to prolong my misery.”

“You’re hardly miserable right now, Granger.” Draco bit back, eyeing the chamber warily. “This is one of the two finest guest suites in the Manor. Better than anything you’ve ever had in your entire life.”

Hermione’s anger flared. This spoiled brat’s audacity!

She stepped toward Draco, fire blazing in her eyes. “So what? Do I have to fall to my knees and thank you for this privilege?!" 

"Well yeah!" Draco snapped, no less angry. "You have no idea what would have happened had you been thrown into the dungeon. My aunt has been asking about you non-stop, practically salivating at the idea of getting her hands on Potter’s precious Mudblood girlfriend again!"

Hermione’s blood ran cold. Of course that madwoman had yet forgotten about her. Another name beside Dolohov that she had to be extremely cautious around—or better, to avoid at all cost.

The slight shudder that ran down her spine didn’t escape Draco’s notice. His shoulders straightened as his tone regained its usually nasty edge. "Afraid of my dear auntie, are you not? You should be. And it isn't just her. If you ever step one foot outside this room, half the Death Eaters shall be fighting over who gets to torture you first."

Hermione clenched her jaw. "A Death Eater like you, you mean?"

Draco stiffened, unwittingly hiding his left arm behind his back.

"Death Eaters that are much worse than me." He snarled in response, his face twisted and voice shivering as though about to cry. "You haven't seen what I have, Granger. Believe me, the only reason a worthless Mudblood like you is still alive is because the Dark Lord has use for you. Too bad my family unfortunately got stuck being your caretakers.”

Hermione bristled. "Caretakers? That's what you call jailers and kidnappers? And I never asked you or your family to babysit me! Hell, I wouldn't even have to go through all of this if you had just let me die!"

Draco's mouth fell agape, ears flushing crimson. "I-I..." He stuttered, then snapped snidely. "Why the fuck are you so obsessed with dying anyway? I thought you're supposed to be the resourceful one!"

"Because I'd rather be dead than be a burden to Harry! Which I am right now, thanks to you!" Hermione yelled, the corners of her eyes burning hotly. "Do you have any idea what You-Know-Who had seen in my mind? What secrets I'm carrying? You have literally doomed us all—"

"Just you and your band of misfits!" Draco cut in coldly with a haughty sniff that reminded Hermione painfully of their school years. “Like you said, my family’s loyalty is to the Dark Lord. If your knowledge is as valuable as you claim it's then he’ll reward us handsomely when he prevails from it.”

Hermione froze and stared at him in disbelief. Her entire body trembled with fury, nails digging deep into her palms.

"Go to hell, Malfoy." She whispered, voice shaking with disgust. “Merlin, why am I even wasting my time talking to you? You haven’t changed at all.”

Draco’s expression twitched—something uncertain and vunerable flickering beneath the surface, but he crushed it beneath a sneer. “Hogwarts days are over, Mudblood. You’re a prisoner now. Try to remember that.”

For a long moment they both just glared at each other scathingly. Hermione half expected him to raise his wand and hex her, and judging by the rigid set of his shoulders, Draco seemed just as ready to assume she would launch herself at him again.

Then he tore his gaze away first, jaw tightening as he turned toward the door. His hand had barely brushed the handle when he paused. 

“The Dark Lord has returned.” 

Hermione’s heart stalled. 

“Father said you're to be summoned soon." Draco finished quietly. “It’s better that you’re on your…best behaviour.”

Without waiting for her reply, he slipped out of the chamber, slamming the door shut behind him just as his father did twelve days earlier, leaving Hermione gazing at the wood in stunned silence. 

Fucking Malfoys and their bad news.