The Light and Darkness Anthology

Multiplicity

"Remind me why we're doing this again," Harry said, stepping cautiously into the girls' bathroom.

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Would you stop that, I've told you five times already. You're just griping because you're the interpreter."

"No," Harry said, "I'm griping because the last time I went down there, I nearly died and now there's a great, rotting basilisk corpse that, incidentally, we're going to have to get close to."

"And how do you propose we go about removing one of its teeth?" Hermione said loftily, checking to see that there was no one in the stalls and that Moaning Myrtle had not heard them.

"Summoning Charm?"

Hermione huffed at his depressing ignorance. "No wonder Professor Snape and Professor Dumbledore wanted both of us to go. If you just rip out the tooth... The Painstaking Poison is delicate, Harry. You can't just let splinters of the tooth fall into the basilisk venom, and you can't let a single drop of the venom fall on the ground. It's not a removal, it's an extraction. Would you like Mr. Malfoy or Bellatrix Lestrange to recover because the basilisk venom was adulterated?"

"Hermione, I only needed a 'no,' not an entire academic article."

"Harry," Hermione said, "just open the Chamber."

He led her to the sink where the snake was carved on the faucet. "It may take me a minute."

Hermione watched him in restrained fascination as he moved his head from side to side, letting the play of light make the snake look almost like it was real.

"Open up," he said. He looked at Hermione.

"English."

He cursed. "I haven't done this in so long. It's not as if I have a snake or anything."

"Relax, Harry. I'm not going to disembowel you because you didn't speak Parseltongue. Take your time," she reassured him.

He sighed and applied himself back to the task at hand. It took five more tries before his tongue transformed smoothly from English to Parseltongue. Hermione shook her head as he looked at her for confirmation. She could not believe that he could not tell when he was speaking it. But the sink began to drop into the ground, revealing the pipe behind it. Hermione wrinkled her nose.

"I'm glad I was Petrified the first time," she said. "It's so filthy."

Harry grinned. "Ron and I were a mess. And just imagine Lockhart going down there. Ladies first."

Hermione stuck her tongue out at him before she gingerly slipped into the pipe. She didn't fancy losing or breaking her wand on the way down, so she did not cast Lumos, but she wished she could see farther than her feet.

"It's all right," Harry said. "I'm right behind you. And I'll be as dirty as you when I get down there, too."

"I feel so much better," she grumbled before pushing herself down.

It seemed to go on forever. She could feel the back of her robes dampening with the sliminess of the pipe walls. She could hear Harry behind her and hoped that he did not come out on top of her. The end of the pipe was so abrupt that she caught her feet on the ground and tumbled head over heels, bruising her forehead, elbow, hip and knees before colliding with the wall, fortunately not on her head or face. Harry, who had a better idea what to expect, still slid on the ground, covered in slime like she was, but he did so much more gracefully than she did. When he collected himself from the ground, he walked over to help Hermione to her feet. She winced as she felt every place where she had hurt herself.

"Don't you say one word, Harry Potter!"

He tried vainly not to grin.

"And wipe that grin off your face," Hermione said, but she could not help but smile, too. "I ache all over."

"We can always go back and get Snape to do it," Harry suggested. "He's the one who wanted you to get it anyway."

"Harry, it's N.E.W.T. level Potions, it's not supposed to be easy."

"But all I had to do was go into the Forbidden Forest," Harry said. "You have to come down to the Chamber of Secrets - Slytherin's Chamber of Secrets, the Chamber of Secrets made to keep a monster that would rid Hogwarts of all Muggle-borns. You could have chosen a potion with more hospitable ingredients."

"But it was hardest potion on the list, and I wanted..."

"A challenge," Harry said. "I know. Let's go. The sooner we get your basilisk fang, the sooner we can leave. I don't really want to stay too long. And it smells like a toilet bowl down here."

Hermione sighed. "Thank you for being so mature about this," she said sarcastically. "But I agree." She took out her wand.

"Lumos," she said. Harry followed suit. Together they walked into the dark tunnel.

"There'll be some bones on the ground, a snake skin, and a cave-in later on. I'm not sure whether the hole Ron made is still open."

"And Tom Riddle came down here to set the basilisk on people?" Hermione said. "Good, I'm glad he had to get dirty if he was going to be evil. Oh yuck, there's the first skeleton."

Their shoes crunched over the bones of rats. At first, they tried to avoid them, but eventually, they just gave up and walked straight without bothering to look down.

"Remind me to take some of that when we go back up," Hermione told Harry, looking at the folds of parchment-like skin that lay haphazardly along the tunnel.

"What for?"

"For Professor Snape. There are about thirty five potent potions that use basilisk skin. And he wouldn't even have to pay for it," Hermione answered.

"Or you could charge him."

"Harry."

Harry tripped on a spread of skin, and Hermione grabbed his shoulder to steady him. "Thanks. At least you could bribe him."

Hermione giggled. "To do what? Raise my grade?"

Harry smiled sheepishly. "Well... you could bribe him to take points from Malfoy. Or do a happy little dance in the Great Hall."

"Harry, don't do that again. Bad visuals."

They stopped in front of a great pile of rocks. Both of them held their wands up to see the cave in more clearly.

"I remember it was... somewhere over here..." Harry said, climbing up on some of the bigger rocks.

"Careful," Hermione snapped, concerned. "If one rock goes, the whole thing will go."

"Well, we'll have to climb up it anyway," Harry called. "The opening is up here." He held his wand to the hole and looked down at Hermione. "I'll go first and help you down. You're bruised enough already without falling down the rocks."

"My hero," Hermione muttered, waiting until he gave her the okay. Harry's hands were there at the edge of the opening and he guided her down. She admitted to herself that it was better to have someone help her, even if it niggled at her independence. She might have been all black and blue if he had not caught her after catching her foot in a crevice between the rocks. Harry took the brunt of the fall, and although her foot twisted painfully, it did not seem to be too badly hurt - not sprained or broken.

"Remind me to kill you when we get back to the surface," Harry said through gritted teeth - more than a few rocks were pressed into sensitive parts. "Don't wiggle too much, otherwise my future wife will dig up your grave and kill you again."

"Well, we're not going anywhere unless I move," Hermione said, shifting.

"Hermione!" Harry gasped. "Don't move!" He clenched his eyes shut as a particularly sharp point rubbed between his legs.

"Then what..."

"Let me move you," he said. He pressed his feet against a few rocks and pushed slightly, relieving the pressure of the rocks under him. He breathed out before pushing Hermione up so that he could slide out from under her.

"Harry, my foot is stuck, and this angle isn't helping." She tried to get to her knees. "Damn it. After you kill me, I'm going to haunt Professor Snape until he comes down here himself and makes a fool out of himself."

"You did choose the potion, Hermione."

"Shut up."

By turning her foot and with Harry gently pulling it up by the heel, she eased her way out of the crevice.

"Are you all right?" he asked, as she put her weight on it and winced.

"Yeah, it's fine," she said. "Just hurts. I can walk on it. Are you all right?"

"I was this far from being a eunuch, but yeah."

"Ready to go on?"

Harry picked up their wands from where they had thrown them on the ground. "If we don't get that basilisk tooth and keep the venom in it, I will not be happy."

"I'll take that as a yes. All right." Hermione dusted herself off as best as she could before limping ahead.

"There'll be a wall next, with snakes on it. The wall will open up into the chamber. Then we can put our lights out," Harry explained. "The chamber has its own lighting."

They rounded a bend.

"I'll take it that's the wall," Hermione said.

Harry breathed in. "And I have to bring Parseltongue back."

"They look... alive," Hermione said, eyes roaming over the snakes.

"Makes it easier," Harry said, sticking his wand in his pocket.

"No, Harry, they really look alive," Hermione said, her voice cracking. "They're moving."

Harry looked up. And swallowed. "Those aren't carvings."

"Harry, open the wall," she whispered.

Looking at the snakes twined about exposed pipes on the ceiling, Harry hissed again, "Open up."

As the wall split open, Harry and Hermione rushed through the opening.

"They looked too big to be poisonous," Harry said.

"Doesn't mean that they aren't. The largest king cobra is around eighteen feet," Hermione said, still looking up and behind her, making sure that none of the snakes were following. "But you're right - they looked more like constrictors. Still, it was creepy. Snakes under Hogwarts? Where did they come from? Did you see any last time you were here?"

"Aside from the big, deadly, magical one I killed?"

"Harry."

"No," Harry replied. "But maybe Slytherin or Voldemort bred them and they've just been nesting since then. There's no lack of rodent life."

"I hope they didn't breed any poisonous ones," Hermione said, shivering. "Excluding the obvious, of course."

They both whispered "Nox" and looked around. There in front of them farther down the chamber, lay the basilisk.

"Wow, Harry, you killed that?" Hermione said.

"It looked more hostile when it still had most of its flesh, and Fawkes put out its eyes, but... yeah."

They approached the slimy, decaying body slowly, as though any moment it would come back to life and snap them in two. They looked at it for a moment.

Finally, Hermione said, "Slytherin had serious sexual issues - inferiority, possibly an obsession with..."

"Hermione, spare me the secret life of Salazar Slytherin and take out the tooth already."

"But really, are all these snakes really necessary...?"

"The man was one of the rare Parselmouths of all time," Harry said. "Maybe he just wanted company when he came down here."

"Oh, wonderful. Now we have a lonely, dirty old man. That really sheds light on what he needed all these snakes for..."

"Let's not mention bestiality, Hermione, I'm getting sick just smelling the thing. I don't need any more help." Harry put his fingers under his nose, but the action did not work as well as he would have liked. "Besides, when did you start becoming so interested in Slytherin sex lives?"

Hermione grinned. "You're just still not used to me talking about sex, are you?"

Harry glared at her. "I try not to listen to you and Ron when you start talking about the birds and bees, thank you. Though I wonder how long Ron can maintain a blush when you start raking him over the coals for one of his slip ups about girls."

"I'm just glad we're not talking about each other anymore," Hermione said, edging toward the basilisk and trying to breathe through her mouth.

"And believe me, so does the rest of Gryffindor Tower," Harry added. "We got a bit too much information out of your fights."

"As long as you didn't sell tickets and popcorn, I'm all right with that," Hermione said distractedly. The stench of the snake faded away as her attention honed in on the remaining fang.

"Neh, we just made bets on who would call it off," Harry said quietly, knowing that she would not hear him when she was like this. "I made five Galleons."

"Uh-huh," she murmured, prodding gently at the receded gum at the edge of the tooth.

"Hermione?"

"Mm."

"How long is this going to take?"

Hermione turned around and gave him a look. "If you're already bored, go play with the nice snakes. Just don't wander too far or get your socks dirty."

Harry blushed at her intentional mothering, but he took her advice and started walking down beside the basilisk. The smell did not seem so strong, as though he was getting used to it. When he looked more closely at the snake carvings around the chamber, he noticed more of the living snakes, but he did not want to alarm Hermione any more than she needed to be. And when she applied herself to difficult tasks like this, it was almost impossible to drag her out of the trance she set herself in unless he wanted his face scratched. Some of the snakes eyed him, but they did not seem to be angry or even curious. Just watchful.

Harry looked up at the statue of Slytherin, the mouth gaping open and the skin wrinkled, the stone beard trailing down to the floor. The empty holes of the eyes made him shiver, so he kept walking toward the great stone shoes. He could hear the echoes of Hermione mumbling to herself as she slowly extracted the tooth with magic without polluting the poison that Hermione coaxed into the tooth. She kept the extracted tooth in her hand as the venom dripped little by little into the makeshift cup, as though she was taking the blood of a sacrifice. When the hollow of the tooth was filled, Hermione chanced a breath and pulled the tooth away, letting the rest of the venom continue dripping on the floor. Sidestepping the growing puddle, she put a stasis charm on the tooth and its contents so that she could put them in her pocket and they would not break, leak, or spill.

When she looked up from her completed work, she found that Harry was gone.

"Harry?" she called, a worm of fear curling in her throat. "Harry?"

"Here," he called back, waving his arm from the right corner of the chamber.

"What...?"

"There are more rooms here," he said, beckoning her over.

"What?"

"Just come here."

Great, Hermione thought, Harry gets curious. Harry's curiosity nearly gets us killed. He's sheepish and gives me that cute I'm-an-innocent-little-puppy look, and I forgive him, and the whole cycle continues. Either that, or they'll never find our remains.

"You do remember that this is Slytherin's Chamber of Secrets, don't you?" Hermione said, making her way over to him. "And Voldemort's after that?"

"Yeah. Just look."

"And that could mean that there could be more than poisonous snakes. There could be all kinds of rigged Dark magics and... oh." Hermione's mouth stopped working as she looked down the corridor. Unlike the Chamber itself, the large, self-lit room was furnished - not luxuriously or extravagantly, but there was a carpet on the floor, only a little bit water stained and riddled with rodent gnawing at the entrance. But what caught Hermione's eye and her utter devotion were the shelves of books that extended all the way around the room. Periodically, a door interrupted the flow of books, but Hermione did not notice them as much as the prospect of all these books. Harry smirked at the glow in her eyes and the deepening red of her cheeks - excitement personified, she looked positively radiant.

"Maybe Slytherin wasn't such a bad guy after all," Harry said, all guileless.

"Ha ha," Hermione breathed. "There are more books here than in the library. Are they all Dark Arts books? Are there that many Dark Arts books in the world? Or..." She stepped into the room. "I wonder if he has the Codex of Orion. Or the Francis Cistus Anthology of Polytransformation. They've been lost for centuries. Maybe he has the diaries of Lucretius."

Harry followed her in. "I see we've forgotten all about the rigged Dark magics," Harry pointed out.

Hermione ignored him as she looked at the spines of the books along the wall. "I could spend years in here. I wonder if we could rig some way down here without having to go through that pipe and all that fuss..."

Once again, Hermione was lost in her little world, and Harry felt it best to leave her alone, although he looked back at her every now and then to make sure she had not opened a book that made her break out in warts or not let her stop reading, like Ron had said back in second year.

Hermione knew better than to randomly open a book in Slytherin's library without subjecting it to hundreds of enchantment tests, but she was still mesmerized by the sheer number of books there were. Some of them were books she had never heard of.

As she made her way along the row, she reached one of the breaks where there was a door. Unlike most of the others around the room, this door was ajar. She peeked in carefully. A sitting room combined with a laboratory. Looking back to make sure that Harry was still there, she opened the door a little farther and stepped in.

The door closed behind her with the lightest of clicks. Hermione whirled around to face the closed door, reached for the door knob...

"Hello, Hermione Granger."

Hermione froze.

"I know you," the voice said. "And I think you know me."

She turned around slowly to see a nice-looking boy with dark hair, dark eyes, and a Head Boy badge pinned to his Hogwarts robes.

"Harry!" she screamed.

"No, that's the wrong answer," the boy said with a smirk, "but you're close."

"Harry!" she screamed again.

"He can't hear you," the boy said, sitting down casually in one of the armchairs. "Or he can, but you scream lasts less than a second to his ears. Time moves differently in these rooms. Now, let's try again: Who am I?"

Hermione backed against the wall. "Tom Riddle," she said quickly in between her quick gasps of breath.

"Again, close, Hermione. Closer." He clicked his tongue. "From all the talk about you, I would have thought you'd be quicker. Try again."

Hermione's legs did not want to hold her up, and she fought not to slide to the ground. "Voldemort."

His mouth spread into a lazy smile. "There's a good girl." He crossed his legs and looked at her expectantly.

"I-I-I-I don't u-understand. You-you're Tom. You-you're just a memory. How can you be V-?"

"And there, Hermione, is where you are wrong," he said. "I am not a memory. Touch me, and I am corporeal. Go on." He held out his hand, but Hermione did not move.

"Where is that vaunted Gryffindor courage?" he chided. "Lucius and Antonin tell me that you're quite the little spitfire when you're mad enough. But I rather like you like this. Go ahead and fall to the ground, Hermione. Legs are spindly things. Careful of your basilisk fang, though."

Hermione's legs gave way.

"There we go. That is much more comfortable, isn't it?"

"I don't..."

"Understand? Yes, we've been there already." The boy-Voldemort leaned his head back against the chair and took out his wand, playing with it between his fingers. "I would much rather watch the clever, formidable Miss Granger quiver, but I suppose questions must be answered eventually."

Hermione watched as his lungs expanded and his eyes closed, savoring the possession of the answers he was going to give.

"Just as the Chamber of Secrets is not one chamber, but many, do you think that the Tom Riddle that the young Miss Weasley got lost in was the only Tom Riddle I made? Or the best? That Tom Riddle was merely a memory, as were several other Riddles that you will find about the Chamber and within some of my Death Eaters' houses, as well as in some Muggle museums and even among Hogwarts relics. Cry if you want to, little Hermione. I can smell your tears from here."

Hermione blinked, caught the tears with the sleeve of her robes.

"That is impolite. Don't you have a handkerchief?" The boy-Voldemort pulled one out of his pocket and Levitated it to her. Hermione flinched away as it dropped into her lap. "It won't hurt you."

She still did not touch it.

Boy-Voldemort shrugged. "Have it your way. As I was saying, some Tom Riddles were memories. Others were golems. Others were clones. You'll find them all over the chamber. Ghosts, voices, corporeal forms. The best, though, the best were the ones I finished near the end of my seventh year." He opened his eyes and looked at Hermione. "This one. And two others. Consciousnesses. Corporeal bodies with my bits of my consciousness. I'll bet that even now your fear is fading and being replaced by curiosity."

Hermione caught herself staring at him in awe, hungry for his explanation and quickly looked down at her hands.

"Oh, there is no need to hide your curiosity. I remember when I first came down to the chamber. I was frightened, like the little school boy that I was. When I saw the basilisk, I thought I was dead. But its eyes did not kill me, and I could look into them without concern. I found the library, and like you, I was transfixed by the vastness of the library. I understand your fascination. I watched your fascination. I tasted your fascination. And Harry Potter is regretting your fascination because he, too, has wondered into one of the rooms and is being held down by golems as I speak. One of my consciousnesses is on its way." Boy-Voldemort stood.

"The answer to your question is in one of the many books in the library. You would have to search for it yourself. You might even find the way to destroy this consciousness and the others, but I doubt you could do so before my real body found you."

"What?" Hermione said slowly, realization surfacing murkily past the terror and contemplation.

"Well, I know that I have Potter in my grasp, and I have you at my disposal. There are ways to reach the chamber from the outside, not just down the pipes of Hogwarts. Parts of the chamber extend beyond the borders of the Hogwarts Apparition wards. I will be here momentarily." He looked down at her. "I rather fancied you would be taller. Squarish. But you're nothing more than a sprite, are you?"

As he approached her in his slow, cool way, Hermione scrambled to her feet, not wanting him too close. No, not that close. Standing, she had a better idea how tall he was in comparison, and she did not like the way he loomed over her, the intensity of his countenance making her feel as though she was been laid open, stripped of her clothes, her skin, her mind bared to his. She wanted to wrap her arms around herself, shield herself from his gaze.

She tried to grab her wand, but with a simple Disarming Spell, he held both his wand and her wand in his hand.

"How did you... Where did you get the wand?" she asked, glancing behind her to make sure she was not walking straight into a corner.

"I have many wands. Not all of them perfectly compatible, but usable." He stopped stalking her. "I still cannot believe that you are Hermione Granger. You're just an ordinary girl. Lucius made you out to be a hideous demon who cheats on tests and sings siren songs to professors, and Antonin said you were just a child, if fair with a wand. I had almost hoped that, after reading the Prophet, Antonin was wrong, but I see now that he isn't. How disillusioning."

Her eyes darted to the door. Maybe she could run for it.

"I wouldn't if I were you. Golems and memories have swarmed the library. Or at least they will if you open the door. It hasn't happened yet. And it won't for the next hundred years if you stay in here. The genius of Slytherin permits a great deal of time. And anyway, I'll let you out when I'm finished with you so that my real body can have you. I must admit, I'm curious, you are Hermione Granger, are you not?"

He attacked swiftly before she knew what was happening. His hands clutched at her shoulders, pressing into the bruises from her tumble out of the pipe. He pressed her against the wall and bent his head down so that they were eye to eye. She could feel his breath on her lips. She gave a little cry at the suddenness of the violent act, but she was caught by the darkness of his eyes, probing, piercing, reaching into her mind, plundering, pillaging. He smiled.

"Hello, again, Hermione."

His body was pressed against hers, and she knew that he was very corporeal, and very human as well. His heat burned through his robes and her robes until her skin broke into a thin sweat.

"It is really a pity that you're Muggleborn," he said softly. "I think it would be interesting to let you lose among my Death Eaters, in my house, to know you when other people cannot see you, to know you and see you in ways that Potter never even thought of, or that Weasley boy that you spend so much time with. To see you when you are alone - when you lose yourself to a book or lie sleeping in your bed, or when you cry in a cubicle of the girls' toilet because no one respects you, no one likes you, when you find yourself crying in the showers for no reason. Would you like me to tell you the reason?"

She tried to look away, tried to push him off of her, but he only pressed himself closer, only tangled his fingers tight in her hair so that her head could not move.

"Because the people around you are fools, ignorant fools, and they never seem to compare. Like everyone else, you feel like you want to be a part of them, you want to be accepted, but you don't want to stoop to their level to do it. You're better than them, and you know it, but you don't understand why. You ignore it when you can, distract yourself with your friends and your books and your professors and your classes, but sometimes, when you have nothing to do, nothing in your mind, it surfaces. It closes in on you like a predator and you don't know what to do with yourself but cry and push it away again."

He moved his mouth closer to her ear, his cheek pressing against hers. "And oh how you shake when you look in the mirror and see the person that you are pretending to be. How you hate it that you have to be among commoners, mere mortals who let you do the work for them, who sit there dully in class and watch you present your acumen, only to be shunted aside and teased. All in good fun, eh, Hermione? But let's go have real fun, silly fun, fun that isn't fun at all, but tedious, ephemeral gratification that leaves a hollow place that once again needs to be filled by something fulfilling. It really is a pity that you're Muggleborn. Because of your blood, you have to be used and discarded like rubbish when you could be sitting at my side, reveling in the glory, in the challenges that you face. You could be sneering at Lucius when he once sneered at you. But no, this cannot be allowed. You are very annoyingly a sport, which means that you must be enjoyed now. Amaze me, Hermione, and I might let you live, still a servant but living."

Disentangling his hands from her hair, he pulled her robes from her shoulders.

"Tell me how you would like to die. And be very careful, very thorough. A wrong answer will only make me despise you and feel no shame in throwing you to my Death Eaters when I open the door and my real body takes you and Harry Potter with me."

She gasped as he curled his fingers around the bottom of her sweater and pulled it over her head.

"I don't hear you, Hermione."

He undid her tie and began on her blouse buttons.

"What...?"

"Death, Hermione. Tell me how you want to die. Do you want to die slowly?" He bent over and licked her neck. "Or quickly?" Her blouse was thrown on the floor, followed by her bra. "Tell me," he said, nipping at the skin beneath her ear, paralyzing her with fear and... there was something there beneath the fear. No, within it. Something that blossomed with movements of his mouth, making her arch her neck to him.

"Tell me," he murmured, "and I may grant your wish. You have a golden opportunity." He bent to his knees, one arm holding her against the wall, and the other pulling off her shoes, her stockings, reaching up for her skirt.

"What are you doing?" she gasped as he pressed a kiss to her inner thigh. He was moving so quickly, so quickly that she was not completely registering what was happening. Her fear made it a dream.

"Taking off your clothes. How do you want to die?" His hands slid up her legs, taking off the last piece of clothing as he licked her stomach with the tip of his tongue.

"No... not..." Again, her legs did not want to hold her and her twisted foot was hurt. "Not... not like this."

"Not like this?" he asked, smiling against her skin. "Are you sure? It would be a good way to die."

"Not... no... what are you doing?" she repeated.

"You're supposed to be intelligent, Hermione," he murmured, his fingernails scraping gently against her inner thighs. "Intelligence requires a certain degree of observation and interpretation, even under duress. Guess."

"Why are you... oh... my god... why are you doing this, then?"

He hummed into her body before answering. "Amazing how sensitive your fear can make you, isn't it? If you really want to know, I'm doing this because I want to. Because it will humiliate you. Because I want to here you say how you want to die." His tongue darted out again.

She gasped. "In... in... in my bed..."

"That... can... be... arranged," he said between strokes of his tongue.

"No... not now..."

"When, Hermione, tonight?"

"In my... god... in my bed... old... when I'm o-old, one h-hundred and fifty th-three years old... don't... don't..."

"Don't what?" he murmured.

"Don't stop." His hands were on the back of her thighs, holding her steady, and her head was thrown back against the wall. "Don't stop."

He stopped. "Continue, please," he said smoothly.

Hermione keened in frustration, but she obeyed. "In m-my bed when I-I'm one hundred and fifty three years old, with children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren. In a time of peace. God." His mouth was back again, and she pressed her arm against her teeth as she fell apart. He caught her as she slid to the ground. She breathed heavily against his shoulder, eyes tight shut, not wanting to admit what she had just done, not wanting to see it or believe it.

He pointed his wand at the door and opened it with a word. A figure stood in the doorway, and boy-Voldemort pulled away from Hermione. When she opened her eyes, he waved mockingly.

"Play your cards right, and you might get your wish," said Voldemort. Not the boy. There, cloaked in darkness, beckoned the Dark Lord. Boy-Voldemort tossed the real Voldemort Hermione's wand, and Hermione was inexplicably pulled to the figure. "Potter is dead. And you can either die here or come with me. The new order has begun, and even the Mudbloods, especially a Mudblood like you, will have their place. What is your choice, Hermione?"

She fell forward, toward him, all sensations flooding her mind and body and darkening, dimming. The real form of Voldemort caught her.

"Good choice."

He called to a golem Tom Riddle, who took Hermione in his arms and followed Voldemort out of the chamber to the point at which Voldemort took Hermione and Disapparated. Indeed, the new order had begun, beginning with her. He would have her at his side. He saw it when she walked into the Dark library, the Slytherin library. All it would take was time.