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Weaning her off the amortentia - or any other sedative or mind altering potion - had been necessary. For the child's sake, they said. For hers.
Severus Snape had insisted. It would do more harm than good. The others the Dark Lord had confided in - rare, silent confidences, the speak of this and you will be flayed alive kind - had all agreed. Too dangerous. Too unstable. Too unpredictable, now that she carried his child.
But without it, reality came like cold water.
And when it hit her - truly hit her - she tried to escape.
It wasn't the first time she'd tried, of course. It had happened when she first arrived here, too. Hence the amortentia. Hence the wards that weighed heavy across every square inch of this place.
Taking heed of the warnings, he had begun to wean her off. He knew it wouldn't be easy. But to his frustration, her reaction was somehow worse than it had been in those early days. Worse than when she first learned she was pregnant. Worse than any time he'd asked her to open that fucking mokeskin bag.
This time, the truth came slowly. A steady, bleeding realisation, no longer softened by potions or tinctures. She knew what he'd done. Knew it in her bones. Knew what she was. And somehow - worst of all, for her - she knew what he was.
And this time, as reality crept in, no longer something she could escape, she didn't try to flee the room. Or the tower. Or even him.
She tried to flee herself.
She tore at her hair as if she could rip the truth from her mind. As if the reality she now lived was a nightmare she might still claw her way out of. In her worst moments, she would beg him to end her life. To make her forget again. Anything. Something.
"I should've died!" she screamed, lunging at him, trying to swipe at his face.
He caught her wrists. Held them tightly against his chest. She collapsed to her knees, wracked with sobs. Still, he held her.
She began to mumble something about a boat - broken, frantic, senseless. He pulled her into him, smoothing her hair.
"My darling," he murmured against her temple, "you know as well as I do - death would not be enough to keep me from you... nor you from me."
She cried even harder.
"Everything will be all right," he said gently. "This is only temporary."
**
The child should have been a gift.
Perhaps it would have been, had they stayed in the wilderness of Albania.
Had he taken her night after night on that couch, the bed, the kitchen counter - perhaps it would've happened eventually.
Perhaps it would have changed everything. Perhaps he wouldn't have minded, after all.
Had she not left him. Had she not been stolen from him like something sacred -
Perhaps then, yes. Perhaps then it might have felt like a gift.
But not now. And not for the reason you'd expect.
It wasn't even that Lord Voldemort feared a successor. Sickening as it was, his fears were much more mortal than that.
It came to him in dreams.
For a time, it had been his mother. Sickly grey, belly bloated, breath faltering in the dirt. She dragged herself forward towards him. Groaned as she did.
Lately, though - more often than not - it was Hermione in the dreams, his Hermione. She cradled her stomach as she reached for him. Reached for him with fire sparking at her fingertips. Perhaps she were cursing him, he thought. Perhaps she were crying for his help.
The fire at her fingertips spread quickly to her sleeves, and he watched. He tried to move, but couldn't. Just stood there, frozen. Held by something invisible.
She was calling to him. Her mouth formed his name, again and again, but no sound came.
His magic didn't work. His body wouldn't move. He couldn't reach her.
She didn't scream. She only looked at him, as the fire spread to her hair, as her skin blistered and peeled, as it curled like dry leaves.
His own voice whispered behind his ear, soft and merciless. "You'd never let a good witch burn."
But she did.
And he couldn't reach her.
He screamed as he tried. Fell to his knees. Tore at his eyes, his face, his chest - as if he could rip his own heart out and throw it into the fire like an offering. He would have. Without hesitation. He would've burned his fragmented soul if it meant he could save her.
He reached for the Resurrection Stone. Turned it once. Twice. Again.
Nothing. No shift in the air. No veil stirred. Instead, flames rose. He clutched it harder, crushed it into his palm, hissed spells through clenched teeth.
Still, she burned.
And the ring remained cold.
And beneath the agony, something worse whispered to him. Understanding.
The stone hadn't failed. It hadn't worked because it couldn't. Not yet.
Because she wasn't dead. Not yet.
But she would be. That was certain.
He woke choking on the thought as if it were a promise. His heart was a battering ram against his ribs, blood thundering in his ears.
The Resurrection Stone was still wrapped around his middle finger. He must have been clenching his fists in his sleep, he realised - a deep, purple imprint was pressed into his palm.
He woke like that, often. As he had on this night.
The wind howled against the castle. He untangled himself from the sheets. Sat upright, unmoving, back pressed to the headboard. The weight of the dream still heavy in his chest.
His fingers brushed his ring, soft and deliberate.
It was enough. Enough to remind him who he was. What power he wielded. No one could take her from him. Not even death. It simply would not happen.
The Stone would not fail him.
Hermione lay beside him, deeply asleep. She didn't so much as stir.
He did not often stay here. For obvious reasons.
The eyes of the world were fixed on Lord Voldemort, and he would not let them see that his beating heart was hidden between the bricks of this ancient castle.
But sometimes, he stayed. When he allowed himself to. When he could wrangle her into not wanting to rip his face off.
The sleeping charm, Somnus Tenebrae, had worked again. It was the only mercy he could give her now that she was no longer under any kind of influence. It was the only way he could get close to her.
Her mass of curls fanned out over the pillow. One had coiled itself into a tight little knot. He untangled it with infinite care.
Mine, he thought. Mine. Mine.
Even as she slept, she clutched her stomach. Her belly had truly begun to swell in the months since weaning her off everything he'd used to keep her subdued. To keep her from harming herself.
Odd, how it had bloomed more since the potions influence had vanished - as though it had stunted something. Slowed it.
She'd noticed it before anyone else, her shaking hands on her stomach. She'd cried. Vomited from fear. Fear that something was wrong with the child after being, in her words, "doped up for a fucking eternity!"
'You did this to me," she'd whispered. "You could've hurt him."
He hadn't. He had checked. Double checked.
He'd brought in every expert mediwitch and wizard he could find. Forced most of them - his wand pressed to their temple as they examined the centre of the universe with shaking hands. One wrong move, one look from her, would have been all it took.
They had insisted the child was fine. Better now, even, as a result being away from the amortentia, away from anything that could interfere.
And that was enough. Hermione stopped trying to hurt herself after that. As if the reality of the child, a tiny, glowing orb on the mediwizard's aura scan - had anchored her. As if, in that moment, she understood that to harm herself was to harm the life growing inside her.
A boy. That's what she thought the baby would be.
If it were a terribly long time ago, so long in fact that it sometimes felt like another life.. If she were looking up at him in the firelight, gold winding under her skin like ivy - he might have believed her.
She stirred beside him, reaching.
He took her hand in his. She quieted.
He would need to leave before she woke. She could barely look at him these days.
It swung from indifference to horror - her reaction towards him. He could never predict which he'd be faced with. But the distance, that was constant. She never wanted to be close.
He'd considered forcing her. Using a silencing charm. Restraining her. Incarcerous, perhaps. Just to keep her still. Just to be near her. To touch her. Kiss her.
But what was the point in standing that close to the sun if you couldn't feel its burn? It was not the same. He yearned for her fire.
Earlier that afternoon, he'd searched the castle until he found her in one of the towers. More often than not, he would find her like that, standing by a window, hand resting on their growing child, eyes drifting over the grounds.
White snow blanketed what had once been Hogwarts. The lake was frozen over. The Whomping Willow shook its limbs at the cold each morning, as though personally offended by the changing seasons. It was as if she couldn't help but watch time pass.
When he found her today, he had slipped into her mind with a whispered Legilimens from the doorway. She didn't fight it anymore.
Hermione's thoughts were never about here. Not about the castle. Not about him.
More often than not, as he had today, he found her sitting in memory - a snow covered cliff edge, silver sprites dancing in the air.
She always bristled when he entered, from her spot in the snow a few feet away. But her attention would always fall back to them, the two figures sat side by side. Rapt. Unmoving. Like she could not tear her gaze away.
Strangely, she never asked him to leave. She just sat like a child - knees drawn to her chest, chin resting atop them, arms looped around her legs.
He never lingered. It was better this way, he supposed.
He had known her wrath. Had tasted it on her tongue, seen it catch in her eyes like a flame. It was beautiful. Terrible. And somehow, he thought, more honest than her kindness.
But this wasn't wrath, no.
This quiet detachment, this flickering between absence and quiet horror, it was something else.
But it was hers. And that made it better than the whatever the amortentia had made of her. He had loathed that version of her. Too sweet. Too still. A stranger wearing her skin.
But this... this was real. He had that, at least.
He pressed a kiss to the crown of Hermione's head. Beneath the sheets, her stomach rose with each breath - undeniable.
It should have been a gift.
But all he saw were flames. Night after night. Her reaching. Burning. And him, helpless. Always too late.
He brushed his hand over the taut skin of her belly and felt it again - hope, terror. A thing growing between them he could neither trust nor destroy.
He left before the sun awoke. As he always did.
**
There's no magic in the world that allows someone else to open a mokeskin bag.
Even if it contained, say... the cup. The locket. His diary.
Extrenuating circumstances or not, the bag did not care. He had tried to explain as much to it. Even so, it did not care.
He had tried to convince her, given that it would only open for her, her magic. Many times. Each attempt had ended in disaster. He'd considered forcing her.
But frustratingly, as Snape had pointed out, she should not be under any stress. None.
Unfortunately for Lord Voldemort, Hermione Granger was now the most important thing. More important than his fractured soul. More important than the Horcruxes. More important than the time sand in his blood.
It was a ruinous thing. But it had been true for some time.
He used to wonder, during those fifty years she was gone..
If she came back.
If she offered herself freely.
If she promised never to leave him again.
If she explained herself...
On the condition that he gave it all up - would he?
Would he have given it all up?
In his weakest moments, the answer hadn't been an immediate no.
Bargaining, her know it all voice would chime in, clear as a bell in his mind. I believe you're at the worst point in the Kübler-Ross grief cycle.
Gods, how he had yearned to hear her voice again.
More often than not though, when he wasn't wondering himself into oblivion, when he wasn't seeking her out. Murdering. Conquering. Seething. He would dream.
Dream of himself, in fact. Not as flesh and blood, but as something more.
Master of Death. Master of the Universe. Master of every time and planet and place.
In his dreams, he brushed whole universes from the void like they were nothing more than dust. He would sift through them - for her. Every version of her.
He would eat worlds whole. Tear stars apart with his teeth and bare hands if it just meant that he would find her. That she would come back.
And she had.
She had.
Which was why he wouldn't force her to open the bag. Not yet, at least. That was the bargain he made with himself.
But as the months passed, and he watched the life growing inside her with each visit to the castle - so close now to being born, to being real - and as he saw the light return to her eyes in brief, fragile flickers when she thought he wasn't watching, his resolve began to shift. Dissolve.
To his quiet horror, the urgency dulled. The need to act, to finish what he started, it had begun to feel further and further away. As if the life he'd had great plans for had been sealed in that bag... and he no longer found himself wanting to touch it.
**
His eyes were crimson and wide with terror as she screamed. As Hermione bore down and believed, truly believed, that the universe was playing out some kind of just deserved cosmic punishment.
She knew she would die. Thought he might, too - if such a thing were possible - from the way he was shaking.
As she pushed, nothing happened. She had been pushing for hours now, and something was wrong.
She saw it in their faces, their silence - frantic as they avoided her eyes, avoided Lord Voldemort's gaze even more so, as if he might cast the killing curse on the spot if they took their attention from her for even a second.
Hermione felt it in the deep ache, low in her body. Empty. Failing.
She cried - not for herself, but for Merope Gaunt. Perhaps it was only fair. She had tried to change too much, to take too much. Perhaps this was the price. A mother for a mother.
I understand, she thought. Or perhaps she'd said it aloud.
Because he was suddenly holding her face in his hands. The Dark Lord.
If the crowd that had gathered around her were scandalised, they did a tremendous job not showing it. The finest healers not only from St. Mungo's, but from all over Europe. He had told her they were the best. There were more now, rushing in, speaking spells she couldn't quite follow.
Not that it mattered. She thought: no amount of magic will save me.
Then she heard a whisper, felt a coldness slip into her mind. She knew it to be him.
'You cannot leave me.'
He said it into her mind like a command, like a prayer. His voice deadly. As if that was all it would take.
Then, when he was met with silence, 'Hermione.'
He must've said something aloud when she didn't respond, but she couldn't quite make it out. He reached for her jaw, firm. Pulled her face towards his, forced her eyes to meet his.
"Do you understand?"
"It's okay," she whispered in response, barely audible. She was bleeding, she could tell. She had to be. Her energy felt like it was being siphoned out of her at an increasing rate.
He leaned closer to hear her, his hand still on her face. His eyes were wild. Red, yes but more than that, they looked... animal. Crazed. Desperate. His gaze roved over her face, her hair, her eyes, her mouth. Searching, searching.
"Please... don't bring me back."
Damp curls clung to her forehead. He smoothed them back, kissed her temple. He knew what she was asking. He ignored it.
Hermione wondered whether The Dark Lord cared what these people saw - his weakness, his secret, his Queen locked away in a tower. His mudblood.
Perhaps he had sworn them all to secrecy. Perhaps he would kill them. She couldn't be sure.
But they all seemed to know. Their urgency doubled.
"Please..." she begged again, her heart slowing now. She truly couldn't push anymore. Her body wouldn't listen. Couldn't. She pulled weakly on his hand. He came closer still.
"Tom," she whispered - so quiet no one else could hear. His eyes went wide at the sound of his name. She hadn't called him that in a terribly long time, she was sure. "It's okay."
The bed shifted slightly - her legs lifted by magic, her body gently jostled. Spell after spell filled the air. More wizards filtered in. Her vision blurred, darkening at the edges.
Tom looked from them to her, then back again. His mouth twisted. Then he roared - words she couldn't make out. The stone trembled. A crack split through the stained glass window. Fractured light spilled in, pure and brilliant sky blue. It bled across his face, turning him spectral, unearthly... panicked.
He released his grip on her, reaching for the Resurrection Stone like a lifeline. Brushing his fingers against it. He had always claimed he could bring her back to him, always. But his shaking hands told her otherwise.
If he truly believed that, without even a flicker of doubt, he would be calm. He would let her go.
And yet...
"I forbid you to leave me again," he said. Tears were falling freely now, quiet and constant down his pale face.
He looked so, so pale.
Perhaps he wasn't so confident the stone would work a second time. First his mother. Now...
"I FORBID IT."
She smiled softly. She couldn't help it.
She had done extensive reading on the Resurrection Stone. Exploring an ancient, abandoned castle had its perks.
He'd encouraged her to read when she first arrived, but she couldn't. Not under amortentia. Her thoughts had looped endlessly - Tom, Tom, Tom. It was sick. He was sick. How he expected her to do anything, let alone read, she did not know.
It took weeks for her mind to clear. Longer to trust her thoughts. But once he stopped interfering - once she stopped trying to throw herself from the Astronomy Tower or trick him into killing her - she'd began to explore. Maybe she'd find a weakness in his wards.
She didn't, of course.
But at night, during those weeks, he'd whisper into her hair while he thought she slept. Promising that if anything happened to her, he'd bring her back. She'd lie still, breathing softly, watching him through her lashes as he stroked the Resurrection Stone set into the ring on his finger.
Perhaps he feared she would die giving birth. Just as she had.
Eventually, she found ancient, heavily warded texts. Dumbledore's, she suspected. With enough persistence, she cracked them.
See, Hermione had stolen her wand back not long after he stopped drugging her, slipped it from beneath his nose while he slept. Then waited. Days. Weeks. For him to demand it back.
He never did.
Still, they both knew. What she'd taken. What he'd allowed. It became a performance. She carried the wand like a weapon. He never flinched. Never asked.
At first, she thought it was carelessness. But that wasn't like him.
It was intentional. Of course it was.
She'd expected the game would bend when she hexed him for the first time - something wild and ugly that left his jaw bruised for weeks. And still, he let her keep it. Because it helped. Because it made her feel like she had teeth again.
He never mentioned it. And that was the real trick. The message.
If he truly meant her harm... would he have let her keep it?
Yes, she'd decided. Yes, he would.
It was meant to settle her. To make her feel safe. Powerful, even. But when power is given, is it still power at all?
Once she broke through the wards guarding the texts, they confirmed what she'd already begun to suspect.
The Resurrection Stone could bring her back. Or something like her. An echo. A shadow. More than a ghost, yes, but not truly alive. Not able to feel. Only to speak. Only to comfort the one who wore the ring.
If he used it, she'd be trapped. A phantom. For his closure. His comfort.
But Tom Riddle would never know closure. Not when it came to her.
And no matter how powerful he was, no charming of the ring, no magic, no will of the world's most dangerous Dark wizard could change that.
This, she knew.
And she suspected... he had begun to realise it too.
Even if he denied it.
His desperation was proof enough.
In the way that he held her now, sat on the edge of the bed, hovering close, much too close. As if he might crawl into her. Crack open her rib cage and force himself inside. Just to be with her. To fix her.
He dropped his head to her chest. Clung to her, hissing something into her skin.
She couldn't hear the words - everything felt too far away now. It took everything just to keep breathing, just to stay tethered to her body. She only felt the warmth of his agony soaking through her gown.
Hermione slid her fingers into his hair.
She let her hand linger, not to comfort, not to forgive, just to remember the part of him she once reached for.
I love you, she thought.
I hate you.
Please don't bring me back.
She didn't want to come back.
The pull of wherever she was going felt far too warm.
She'd heard something once, long ago, in a far off place. A boy with white blond hair.
"I think it's like being carried from one room to the next," he'd said with a shrug, too casually.
The movement looked rather silly on him, she thought.
"When I'd worn myself out flying my broom as a child, I'd fall asleep in the grass. My mother would carry me inside. I'd wake up with no idea how I got there. I imagine it's a lot like that."
Hermione then, well, she must have scoffed.
But now.. now it sounded wonderful.
She could almost smell the flowers.
She could feel arms beneath her, carrying her through the snow - towards the sun, the soft grass, the quiet bloom of Spring. A place to rest her head.
Her mouth parted to say as much -
And then the world dropped from beneath her.
**
Space, Hermione thought, was... nice.
She was caught in a magically-made world with no gravity and what she knew to be enchanted replications of stars.
Hermione lazily rolled over mid-air. Straight ahead was a simulation of a black hole, sucking in everything and nothing all at once. In front of her was a pseudo-red supergiant. It was beautiful and luminous, and from the perspective of Earth would be the brightest star in the Scorpius constellation, and—
A door.
Right above the black hole, appearing to be upside down from her current point of view, was a door. Just hovering there, in the middle of Space. Brown and wood and benign and utterly out of place.
Perhaps I have been floating here too long, and now I am seeing things, Hermione thought.
She continued to stare, and the door remained present. Irrevocably so.
Though previous experience had taught her that approaching anything entirely unknown in this place was dangerous and stupid, her curiosity won out. Hermione pushed her way forward, floating through the fake stars and planets towards the door.
The grain was smooth, the knob gold and cool to the touch. She tried to turn it. Nothing.
As much as she could, given the floating, she pushed her shoulder against the wood. Still nothing. Not even a creak.
She reached for her wand, it had to be here somewhere. Ah, there! A spell was forming on her lips not yet spoken, when the knob turned on its own. A quiet click.
Before her hand could make contact, could pull it open - the door swung wide on its hinges. A bright, warm light bled through, blinding. Hermione shielded her eyes.
After a beat, she pocketed her wand and risked a glance through her fingers.
A girl stood in the doorway.
Lithe, arms folded, the corner of her mouth sharp. She couldn't have been older than eighteen. Her hair curled, long and wiry, floating around her like ink in a basin. Beautiful, in a strange and severe sort of way. Her eyes were... dark. Too dark. And -
Hermione let out a breath, a whisper of shock.
"Are you coming in?" the girl asked. Or no... demanded?
"Oh, I'm sorry, I -" Hermione looked around helplessly, as if that might help her make sense of where she was, why she was here. She couldn't remember... "I - I believe I'm in the wrong place."
"Is that not your whole... thing?"
The girl raised her eyebrows, dry amusement playing across her features. She looked familiar. The way her mouth tugged sideways, the way she narrowed her eyes in mock challenge -
"I've heard you've made a habit of being in the wrong place. At the wrong time."
"Do I know you?" Hermione asked, drifting forward.
"No," said the girl.
Hermione noticed the wand clutched loosely in her hand. Perhaps she had come to kill her. A part of Hermione thought, That's only fair, though she didn't know why. A mother for a -
"Technically, you do not know me."
"Technically?" Hermione echoed.
The girl huffed something like a laugh. She tried to tuck a curl of raven black hair behind her ear, but it refused to behave, just floated around her like a dark halo.
"What do you mean by technically?"
The girl rolled her eyes, smirked like she found this all terribly amusing. "Gods, I think you must have baby brain."
Hermione crossed her arms, stiff with irritation. "Excuse me?"
"Baby brain is a Muggle term," the girl said, blandly, almost mocking. "It is what one might say to describe a state of impaired memory, concentration, or mental agility supposedly experienced by..."
"I know what it means," Hermione snapped, louder than intended. Her brow furrowed. "Who are you?"
The girl didn't flinch. She only smiled, faintly. Her dark eyes drank in the outburst, pleased, amused even. Hermione drifted closer. Reaching.
"I do know you," she said, before she could stop herself.
She knew that smirk. That sharpened wit. That specific brand of condescension. She was sure she had chased it through time and space. Many times, she suspected.
The realisation didn't strike her like lightning, but rather bled in slow, inevitable.
"I know you," she whispered.
The girl nodded. Hummed. She pulled something from her robes, a watch, and checked it.
"But I must say," she said, "you're usually quicker than this."
"Your eyes," Hermione said softly, reaching through the doorway.
Her hand brushed the girl's arm. Real. Warm.
"Your eyes are -"
"I know," said the girl. Her expression softened slightly. "It's rather strange, isn't it?"
Then, turning, she took Hermione's hand. Tugged her forward. She was far gentler than she looked.
"So," she said, "are you coming then?"
The blinding light grew stronger. It spilled over the edges of the girl's form, her outline fading. Far away, Hermione was sure she could hear ticking.
She squinted, shielding her face.
"Do I have to?" Hermione asked, though she already knew the answer. Felt it deep in her bones.
Tick, tick, tick.
"No," said the girl, honestly. "You don't. But if it makes any difference to you..." she hesitated, her voice quieting, "I would much, much prefer it if you did."
And somehow, that was enough.
She squeezed the girl's hand, and crossed the threshold.
**
Light, sound, breath. Pain.
A shriek split the air. Not hers.
A pink babe with a shock of black hair came out screaming into the world on the 11th of June 2002. So loud, in fact, that it sounded like it was trying to claw its way into existence - to insist that the world take notice.
Hermione gasped, a raw sound tearing from her throat as brilliant white light made way and was replaced by stone and stained glass, colour fracturing across the ceiling.
Someone was holding her, tight, arms wrapped around her like she might slip away. But she could barely feel them.
Her eyes locked on the tiny, furious body being placed on her chest - flailing, tiny limbs, damp skin and sound. So loud. So alive.
A pale hand reached across her, and Hermione almost lashed out, her body tensing, teeth ready - until she saw the ring.
A stone pressed into a ring that wrapped around his middle digit perfectly. Familiar. And for once, instead of the usual discomfort the sight of this hand brought her, she breathed easier now. She didn't question it.
She did not strike the hand, nor its owner, as he reached forward to touch the baby.
His long pale fingers trembled as they passed over pink toes, fingers, a nose. As if he were checking, making sure of something. Perhaps that this was real.
He was shaking. Profusely.
He held her close again. His nose buried in her hair.
"She's perfect," he said, voice thick, wet with emotion. "Hermione, you did beautifully. You're perfect."
A girl. A baby girl. Of course.
It made sense now, though she didn't know why. She had been so certain, so sure, she was carrying a boy.. But now the thought seemed absurd. Of course she was a girl.
Tom continued to hold her. He didn't stop shaking, couldn't. His eyes stayed fixed on Hermione, and the baby, as if they both might vanish into the ether if he looked away.
If he'd been willing to tear humanity apart for his soul, for her, then Hermione knew exactly what he would do for this child. It was resolute. She was sure of it.
As sure as she was that the sun would set, and the moon would rise to follow. As sure as winter would change, and spring would claw its way back through the cold after it.
It terrified her and reassured her in equal measure.
She was perfect. He was right. Her tiny nose. Her reaching, searching hands.
The baby blinked, groggy, fussy. Hermione didn't bother to wipe at her face as fat tears rolled down her cheeks and gathered at her chin.
She felt... happy. So, so happy. Had she died?
Perhaps this was it. Her reward. Her heaven. She was okay with that.
Had she died? She couldn't remember. Only light. Only... only the sound of...
"Her eyes," Tom said suddenly, sharply. As if something was wrong.
As if anything could possibly be wrong with -
The baby's slow blinking eyes eventually settled, on everything and nothing in particular, long enough for Hermione to see.
Her eyes...
Dark, yes. Deep, like the bottom of a still, depthless lake. But there, thin and pulsing as if it were alive, a glowing gold ring circled the iris.
Almost like...
"Time sand," Hermione breathed, a whisper.
She clutched the squirming child tighter to her chest.
The words felt heavy in her mouth, even heavier once spoken. It wasn't possible. It shouldn't have been possible. And yet, there it was. Glinting gold, alive.
Hermione's heart beat faster, not with fear, but something deeper. Recognition without understanding.
This couldn't have come from her, the time sand was gone from her body.
Her eyes found Tom. His gaze was fixed on their daughter - his face preternaturally still. Blank. His body rigid.
Was he... angry? No. That didn't feel right.
Guilty, a quiet voice in her mind supplied.
He'd harnessed time sand - threaded it through his body, his blood - to chase her through time. And now, impossibly, that very same thing pulsed in their daughter's eyes.
The baby began to cry again, mewling.
"It's okay," Hermione whispered, holding her close and stroking the bridge of her nose. "It's okay. It's all rather bright out here. I know. I know."
Tom had his wand out before she could blink.
And pointed it directly at the head healer's forehead, tip pressing hard between his eyes.
Silence fell in the room.
Somehow, Hermione did not feel afraid.
With every slow, deliberate step forward, Tom forced the man back, wand raised, driving him inch by inch until he was tripping over his own feet.
The others froze.
None of them dared move. None dared run. Fleeing was not an option.
They knew what they'd witnessed - the birth of Lord Voldemort's child. And not only that, but that his daughter, somehow, impossibly, had time sand in her tiny, perfect body.
Hermione couldn't imagine more important news.
It was news that would never leave these walls.
If they ran, he would kill them. If they spoke, he would kill them.
And they knew it. So they stayed terribly, terribly still.
"Did you know?" Tom asked. The question was almost casual.
The man's back hit the wall. The Dark Lord followed.
"M-my lord," the healer stammered, voice thin and cracking. "I - I swear to you, I didn't know. We ran every diagnostic charm in the book - Gravidus Revelio, a full aura scan. We brewed every draught I know of, used blood runes, magical resonance mapping, fetal stabilisation wards -"
He stopped himself, chest heaving. "Everything pointed to normalcy, I assure you. Healthy magical development. Exceeded our expectations, in fact. I - I swear it. I believed she was perfectly fine."
"And is she?"
"It is... really rather impossible to say without examining her," the healer spewed, quickly, quickly. "If you would allow me to... just to check, I could run a few -"
Hermione's heart thumped.
She looked down at the baby - dark eyes threaded with gold, blinking up at the world. She was perfect. And Hermione knew, deep in her soul, with a strange sense of sureness that went beyond reason or magic, that she was fine. Not just fine.
Whole. Healthy. Hers.
Her stomach turned itself over with the knowledge that she would not let her go. Not without teeth.
The healer spoke once more. "It would really only take a few moments."
No. No, she would not hand her over. He couldn't make her. She was about to declare as much when -
"No," Tom sneered. Final.
His eyes burned, a red so dark it looked black, his wand practically burning a hole into the man's skull.
Had he so much as twitched, the brain matter of Britains most advanced maternity healer would've been nothing but mist against the stone wall.
"Not today," Tom said, finally lowering his wand.The ire in his eyes remained though. "They need rest."
He turned slightly, addressing the room at large.
"You will stay here tonight. In the castle. All of you."
His voice cut through the silence. The mediwitch closest to Hermione was shaking so badly she looked as though she might need magical-medical intervention herself. But then her eyes found Hermione's, and she stopped. Frozen. Spine rod straight. Her lip quivered, and she did not look back. As if she ought to have been looking at Hermione through a mirror. Or from a bowing position.
Hermione stifled the urge to reach out and comfort her. She knew it would do no good.
"Am I not anything if not a gracious lord?" he asked, quietly. Deadly. "Have I not provided for you? Protected you? Treated you with every kindness these past nine months?"
A ripple of hurried affirmations followed.
"Y-yes, my lord."
"Most generous, my lord."
"Thank you - thank you."
They would've crawled to kiss his feet if they weren't paralysed in terror. Prisoners, just like her. Poor fools.
And yet, when Tom's gaze turned to her. She found that she did not flinch. Even her child, wriggly and fussy as she was, seemed to calm. Hermione didn't understand it. She would not try to.
**
Tom Riddle did not forget.
He did not forget the mediwizard's name who helped bring his daughter into the world. Nor the exact moment Hermione's body gave out, the way her breath stopped, the silence that fell over the room like a curse.
He remembered how he clung to her, shaking, whispering spells, commands, prayers, anything to hold her here.
And then... She returned to him.
Not with a gasp, not with fanfare. Just a flicker of breath. A shift in her eyes. As if Death had considered her, and thought better of it.
He never forgot how she looked then. Silent. Stunned. Eyes wide with something like wonder. Nor the tears that flowed when they laid their daughter in her arms.
He remembered Astra's first word. The strange, golden birthmark at the base of her back that never spread. The sugary lemon tarts she devoured in the summer sun. Her laugh that she inherited from her mother. Her quiet, sullen nature from him.
He remembered the moment - the exact moment - he realised she wasn't simply magical. She was something else entirely.
By then, they had already left Hogwarts. Keeping Hermione and the child there had been a practical choice, at first, in those initial months. The castle was heavily warded, its defences layered and precise. Protections Tom had built himself, woven with blood spells, old magic, and things even darker.
It had been a fortress. Untouchable. Safe.
But with time, he realised, fortresses were also prisons. If the world couldn't get in, they could not get out. And the weight of those wards began to feel less like a shield and more like iron bars.
The realisation didn't come over night. In fact, he had fought it for as long as he could.
He'd spent an age in the Astronomy Tower, staring up into the stars, searching for answers.
They had given him one, of course. He simply refused to listen.
As Astra grew, she took up more space - in the tower, in his thoughts, in what remained of his soul. She filled everything.
So did Hermione.
Hermione - who hadn't touched him since the moment she came back to herself, free of amortentia. Who loved their daughter child with a tenderness he found almost unbearable to witness.
One night, a year or so after Astra's birth, she joined him on the balcony of the Astronomy Tower. She didn't speak at first. She hadn't said much to him in what felt like a very long time. But there, in that high place, she stood beside him, her hands curled around a mug of tea, charmed to stay perfectly warm.
Then, soft and steady, so quiet he thought he'd imagined it.
"She will never know what you've known."
He turned to her. Her expression was sad. And resolute.
His first instinct had been to scoff. To sneer. But the words got caught in his throat.
He thought of Astra growing up in the echo of his story.
The orphanage.
The years of rage.
The Muggle boys with broken noses.
The drag and depth of loneliness.
"I would burn the world down if something happened to her," Hermione had whispered.
Not quite a confession, more like an oath.
She was delectable like that. Fire in her mouth, a mother guarding treasure.
The girl he'd once wanted to control - still did, in some dark corner of himself - looked at him then like even he held no dominion when it came to their daughter.
And gods, how he hated that. How he loved it.
"But hiding her away won't keep her safe," she said. "And your fear won't make her strong."
She met his eyes.
Then, so bold, so maddeningly familiar that he thought he'd imagined it, her voice dipped. Became mocking.
"You are a Dark Lord, are you not?"
And with that, she turned to leave, the ghost of something curling at her mouth, sharp and deliberate. A challenge.
It stopped him cold.
Her unspoken 'then act like it' hung between them, heavy but silent, he felt it all the same - like a hand pushed against his chest.
He said nothing. Couldn't. He was too busy watching her slip back into the castle, long, coiling hair trailing behind her in the breeze. His ruin. His reason. Taunting him.
He couldn't remember the last time she had.
Pathetically, it had him straining in his trousers.
It wasn't mere want that he felt. It was starvation, and she'd tossed him a bone and smiled while doing it.
He'd leant back, head to the sky. And the stars winked at him in a way that seemed like they, too, were mocking him.
And in that moment, he knew, he would not keep them here. Could not.
And so, they'd left a few months later.
He'd acquired a cottage on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales. Secluded. Shielded by wards even older than Hogwarts. No trace of them in magical maps or any records. Only a select few had clearance.
And Hermione was free to leave. No wards existed to keep her there.
Tom had assumed she would flee the second she had the chance. That first time he left - called away on a matter of the utmost importance - he had braced for her absence upon his return. Spent the entire day preparing for another war. He had torn the world apart for her once. What was a second time?
But when he returned, wand at the ready, prepared to burn the stone of the building to the ground, to rip the foundations up with his bare hands... he found her.
Hermione, curled on the rug beside the fire, Astra asleep in her lap.
They lay tangled together, their hair fanned out beneath them. An open book rested on its front, forgotten. Safe. Whole. His.
He stood in the doorway for a long time. Something strange clutching at his chest. He did not speak. He did not move. He simply watched.
It was there, at the cottage, that the shift came.
Not with prophecy. Not with fire. Just a moment that Tom Riddle would never forget.
The moment he saw it - what his daughter truly was. And what she might become.
Astra was seven.
She'd been screeching with laughter, darting barefoot through the rain soaked garden.
She had an odd affinity for storms, see. They would often catch her giggling at thunder, staring wide eyed at lightning from her bedroom window as if she knew when it would hit, and where.
That day, she'd begged her mother to let her stay outside - just this once. And Hermione, begrudgingly, had obliged.
The sky had split itself open in response.
Wind pushed the trees until they groaned and bent. Rain beat against the cottage walls. Outside, Hermione ran barefoot through the grass, chasing Astra beneath a sky split with thunder - their wicked hair streaming behind them, shrieks of laughter rising with every crack of the storm.
It was the kind of moment that felt untouchable. Sacred.
Until the branch gave way.
Ancient. Heavy. Sharp.
Tom heard Hermione scream before he saw what was happening.
The branch snapped loose, hurtling down towards their daughter.
Astra didn't flinch. She barely blinked.
She simply lifted her hand.
And time... stopped.
The splintered branch stopped mid air. Frozen. Suspended. Glowing gold at the edges, like something caught between worlds.
Time thickened. Slowed. Then, inexplicably, it seemed to reverse.
The wood hurtled back through the air. Knitting itself back to the tree trunk as if it had never been lost to the wind in the first place. Seamless. Whole.
The storm roared on.
Hermione swept Astra up into her arms, sobbing, kissing her hair, asking if she was hurt. The child only blinked in response, lemon tart still clutched in her other hand. She had no idea what she'd done.
That night, Tom stood at the edge of her bed. He didn't sleep. He simply watched her breathe.
**
The bag had been sealed beneath the foundations of their home. Buried by his own hand. Blood wards, old magic, things even he had nearly forgotten how to undo. He'd made it that way on purpose.
He had not wanted it to be easy.
And yet here he was. In the cellar, stone cold beneath his knees. The air was damp. Dark, save for the floating orbs of light, cast hours ago with a quiet Lumos Maxima.
A thin line of magic now shimmered along the floor, where the foundation had split like a scar torn open.
The mokeskin bag sat inside.
It looked unchanged. Smaller than he remembered.
He reached for it slowly.
There had been a time he would have killed for its contents. His diary. The cup. The locket.
His immortality. His contingency. Now, he placed the bag on the mortar floor. Sat beside it. Did not open it right away. His hand simply settled over it. A quiet, deliberate touch.
Astra's face rose behind his eyes. Small. Mischievous. Stubborn as sin.
And Hermione - Hermione who challenged him every day. Who he sometimes caught watching him like she once had. As if she almost trusted the world again. As if she could one day trust him.
He let out a slow breath.
This was his empire now. Not prophecy, not dominion. Not even immortality.
Just a child with her mother's eyes and a mind sharp enough to one day undo him.
A woman who had once left him sick for fifty years with festering, ruined longing... now tangled through his very soul, his life, like a thread of fate.
They were his.
He held the bag close. There was no ceremony, no spells. Just a hand, a breath, a decision.
Then he rose, and sealed the scar in the stone behind him.
She found him, the next morning. The study was dark, the fire having long since burned low.
The bag sat on the desk.
Tom stood beside it, one hand resting on the edge of the wood. Not touching the bag itself. Not yet. He had not moved in some time.
He heard her before he saw her.
Hermione stepped into the room slowly, barefoot, and stopped just past the threshold. Her eyes went to the bag, then to him.
"I'm not opening it."
He didn't answer. Didn't even blink.
She crossed her arms. Not defiant, but guarded. Her voice was low when she asked, "Why now?"
Time stretched, as did his silence.
He didn't look at her when he spoke. "You think I've changed my mind."
"You sealed it in the foundations, years ago, Tom. Forgive me for believing that was an indication of -"
"And I dug it out," he interrupted.
A delicious flush of red began to creep up the side of her neck, Tom noticed. She hated being interrupted.
"That doesn't answer the question," she said, deathly calm.
"No," he said. "It doesn't."
Silence rolled in between them again. Thick. Like something he could part with his hands. Her gaze drifted back to the bag. The leather looked darker in the low light, almost damp. It had been so long.
"I don't trust it," she said finally.
His jaw clenched so tightly his teeth almost groaned.
"You don't trust me," he corrected.
"You're asking me to open -"
"I'm asking you to end it," he said, interrupting again.
She sneered at him.
Tom wasn't certain what did it - perhaps it was the interrupting, or the fact that she truly believed he was lying. That he was trying to trick her.
But her wand snapped up. A Stinging Hex caught his shoulder.
He could've blocked it. Of course he could've. But he didn't. Standing still, he let it land. Let her feel it. Did not take his eyes off her.
Then she turned, on her stubborn, perfect feet, and stormed towards the door.
He was on her before she could reach it.
Her back hit the wall with a soft thud, his body following, close - crowding her in. One hand on her throat, holding, the other still tingling from the hex she'd thrown. He pressed in until he could feel her warmth through his robes.
For a moment, she looked panicked - her eyes wide, lips parted. Curls wild against her cheeks.
"Get. Off. Me," she seethed.
So, so beautiful.
A smile tugged at his mouth before he could stop it.
She shifted beneath him, tense and electric, despite the weight of his body pinning her down. Then he felt it. Her wand, pressed just where his thigh met his groin. The tip angled with dangerous, deliberate precision.
"Hermione," he said. Dark. Wanting. Wanting.
Fingers found her cheek, brushed her hair back. It had been so long since they'd been this close. Years, so many years. He walked the halls like a ghost. Shared a bed with her like one. One yearning to come home. To come back to her.
She'd taunt and tease him, sometimes. But there was no affection behind it. She would spar with him, verbally, sharply. Argue with him over the smallest things. And some days - usually when their love for Astra drew them together - she might even smile at him. Thank him for something. Wish him a safe journey.
Sometimes, in the middle of the night, she'd reach for him in her sleep. Curl toward him without even thinking. But in the light of day, she kept her distance - as if trusting him meant forgetting everything he'd done.
Some days, it was like she did forget. Like she looked at him and saw not the man who had tore his soul apart, who had cleaved the world in two.. but something else. Something lost to time.
"Why now?" Hermione asked again, her voice cracking.
Her throat shifted beneath his palm as she swallowed, thick and slow.
"Why do you want me to open it?"
"So it can be buried," he said. "For good."
She didn't answer. Her stare held steady, her chin tilted up as she looked at him.
"I don't believe you."
He went still again. Not rigid, just wrong. He turned his back to her and crossed the room, slow. He didn't lash out, didn’t raise his voice. But the temperature shifted.
"You are in my world now," he said quietly. "And I am remaking it. Every law. Every decree. The bones of my old empire are broken. Ground to ash, Hermione. By my own hand. For you. For our daughter. You watch it happen. And still you look at me like I might what, exactly? That I might hold greater ambitions?"
She said nothing. He wanted her to say it.
"You still might."
The flicker in his jaw was the only sign he'd heard her.
Then, a knock at the front door. Once. Precise.
Neither of them moved.
The wards shifted and with it, the door opened. And Severus Snape swept into the room.
Hermione looked surprised, but she didn't flinch. Instead something flickered behind her eyes - then, stillness. Her expression locked into place.
"Severus," she said, as she always did, as if she were naming a ghost.
Snape only inclined his head.
"You know why I called you here," Tom said.
"I do," Severus said. "I'll take them."
Beside him, Hermione didn't speak. Didn't move. But her eyes found his own, slowly, sharply - like she was trying to see straight through him.
He turned his gaze back to Severus.
"And?" Tom prompted.
"I'll hide them. And remove the memory."
"It may kill you."
Snape did not so much as blink at the fact.
"It might," he agreed.
"And if it doesn't, it makes you vulnerable. If I ever wanted what's inside that bag, if I wanted to find those items..."
"You'd have no way to get it from me," Severus said calmly. "Because I wouldn't know it myself."
Tom gave the faintest smirk. "You're a fool."
Severus returned it, just barely. "Unfortunately, Lily has told me as much many times, my Lord."
Tom's gaze cut to Hermione.
She looked away.
He moved through the room and laid his hand on the bag. His fingers traced the seam, as if to test, one final time, whether it would yield to him. It didn't. It remained as sealed now as the day she'd hidden it.
Hermione's eyes bounced from the bag, to him, to Severus, back again. He could almost hear her brilliant mind turning itself over. Assessing. Searching. Always. She never stopped.
He gestured to where it sat atop the desk. She did not move.
"Now, Hermione."
She hesitated, then stepped forward. Her fingers accidentally brushed his, barely, as she moved past him - the fleeting contact made something inside him tighten.
The bag sagged as if it were taking a breath when she opened it and stepped a few paces back.
Hermione's eyes stayed on him the entire time. Her breath hitched at the sight of the diary as he removed it from the bag. Her hands trembled, so visibly, that he watched her cross her arms over her chest to hide it. But she didn't say a word.
When he handed them over, there was no ceremony. No explanation, really. Just transfer. And a measure of trust Tom Riddle could not remember the last time he had exercised. If he had ever.
Severus took the locket as instructed. Then the cup. Tom hesitated with the diary, just for a moment, then gave it over too.
Hermione waited for the other shoe to drop. He looked at her, tried to make her understand with that look alone, that this was real. He was not deceiving her. She blinked, once, twice. Her mouth twisted, not quite disbelief, not quite relief either, but something caught between.
"If I don't return..." Severus began.
"You will," Hermione said. "You must, Severus. I'm not sure what Astra would do without you."
It was true. Astra had developed an odd attachment to the wizard after he'd began privately tutoring her in Potions. It had perplexed both Hermione and Tom.
When Hermione asked her about it, Astra had simply replied, "I find that the most miserable people are usually the most intelligent. If you're incredibly happy all the time, you're either not very bright or you're ignorant."
Hermione had looked at Tom then - accusing, suspicious. As if this were his doing.
It wasn't.
Severus held Hermione's gaze a beat longer. Then came the barest twitch of a smile. so slight it could've been imagined, before he turned to Tom.
"I expect you to keep your word," Tom said.
"I don't give it lightly, my Lord."
He hadn’t. An Unbreakable Vow bound them - they both understood the cost.
Granted, the risk to his most esteemed follower far outweighed anything that could truly harm him.
But the man was no fool, despite his earlier assertion. He was no blind devotee.
Once Severus had gone, and the niceties that came with handing over a fragment your soul - and your would-be horcruxes - had been thoroughly exhausted, the wards resettled.
The room, mercifully, fell still.
For a time Hermione didn't move. Neither did he. But he could feel her eyes on him - steady, unreadable. Like she was weighing something. Like she'd already made up her mind.
The hearth was cold now. That was how long they'd stood like that, assessing one another, hoping the other might crack first.
He'd been the one to, of course.
"Are you satisfied?" he asked, when he could no longer stand the silence.
Tom braced for her venom. But it did not come.
"Time will tell," she said, simply.
She turned to leave, her shoulder brushing his as she moved to pass him - and then, slow and uncertain, but entirely deliberate, her fingers found his in the dark.
A brush of skin. One that lingered, like the memory of something they hadn't quite reached. Not gone. Just waiting to be found again.
**
They said the world was different now. Better, supposedly. Not that she would know.
They said it with strained smiles that didn’t meet their eyes. Her mother said it with quiet melancholy. Her father never said it at all.
Astra was seventeen. She didn’t remember the old world, just flickers from early childhood. Cold stone corridors. Kaleidoscope sunlight through windows. A castle that smelled of parchment and lilac.
But she’d read enough to understand. Even if the books were censored. Even if they’d all been written by the victors.
She knew what it had been. Not fully, of course, how could she, having never lived it? But she knew enough.
Knew of the world her father was still dismantling, even now, all these years later.
“Improving,” her mother would correct. “Not dismantling.”
Her father never agreed.
But once, when he caught Astra eavesdropping on such an argument, the corner of his mouth lifted. Barely.
She suspected she knew her father’s role in that old world. She could feel it in the way portraits whispered when they thought she could not hear them. In the cracks that surfaced when her mother talked about the past. In the careful way that people said her name.
Or rather, in the way they didn’t.
Astra Amaryllis Gaunt was not a name people said lightly.
Not because it was a mouthful, though trust her, she knew.
But because people did not speak what they feared. And most had no idea the name existed at all.
That, of course, was the point.
She'd been privately educated from the moment she could form a sentence. The very best, her mother had said. And her father had made it so, through gold, magic, threat. Whatever it took.
Tutors from every discipline. A former professor from Beauxbatons. Severus Snape himself - who had agreed, begrudgingly (she'd overheard her mother's request) - to teach her Potions. A centaur, once revered, who wept when she mastered nonverbal spells before her eleventh birthday. And many more.
She was fluent in six languages. One being parseltongue. She could hex a grown wizard silent with a flick. She could rewrite the conclusion to a magical theory and have the author thank her for it.
But none of that mattered when she was thirteen, screaming in the hall and stomping her boots, doors slamming shut from her fury alone.
"But I was born there!" she had shrieked, wild eyed, hands clenched at her sides.
"Hogwarts is not equipped -" Her mother had tried to argue back as if she believed her own argument, flushed and trembling with frustration. She was so easy to rile up.
Her father had said nothing. Just one look. A single look, crimson and cold, and the silence that followed hit harder than any Howler she could've received.
She inherited that look. She knew it. And sometimes, she hated it.
He'd reopened Hogwarts. Eventually. Begrudgingly. For the public good, of course. Or rather, for her mother, she suspected. But not for her. Never for her.
Now, she was seventeen.
And Hogwarts was no longer a dream, it was a regret. Not because she'd missed anything. But because she knew she'd never get the chance to even try and belong now.
She was brilliant. Her OWLs had proved as much. Her duelling scores had terrified those she rivalled. Even her tutors struggled to keep up.
And yet. And yet..
There were things she could never reveal. Things that brilliance could not erase. Things that, admittedly, would have made her a spectacle at a place like Hogwarts.
The way her scraped knees healed in seconds. The strange golden birthmark that glowed if she caught it just so in the light. The way time sometimes folded around her, how she could pause it, slow it, rewind it. The rare flashes she got, glimpses of things before they happened. The crackle in the air before lightning struck.
Time, it seemed, liked her an awful lot.
She didn't speak of it. Not if she could help it. Not to her parents.
But she had heard them whisper when she was younger. Arguing late into the night, her ear pressed to their bedroom wall. At eleven, she'd transfigured her ear to stretch, long and wide enough to catch the sound more clearly. The spell had taken two hours but it worked. She had rather impressed herself.
"She is brilliant, Tom. You're squandering it. Do you have any idea what it means to raise a mind like hers in a cage?"
Her father had said nothing.
"You think you're protecting her by not letting her go to school. You're not. You're stunting her. You're teaching her that fear is reason enough to keep her small."
"She is safe here," he simply said.
"She's hidden here."
Silence stretched between them.
"She has no one else," her mother continued. "No cousins, no siblings, no friends! Just you. And me. And a world she's never been allowed to properly touch. Do you really think we're enough?"
Then, quieter, as if she feared speaking it any louder would make it come true.
"She will never forgive us if we clip her wings."
"She won't survive if we don't."
It hadn't made sense then. Not really. Not until recently.
It had began innocently enough. Her father had started teaching her advanced Legilimency and Occlumency. Not from books, he'd said, he was the book. Her mother had stifled a laugh at the ridiculous statement.
Astra had never seen him more alive than when she failed to enter his mind the first time.
"You won't beat me," her father had said, not unkindly. "But you will learn to get close. In time."
"I will beat you," she said. And meant it.
He laughed, low and sharp. "Confidence with nothing to show for it will get you nowhere, Astra."
"Neither will cowardice."
She saw the twitch of his eye. She liked it.
He challenged her, for months at a time, to find her first word. A memory buried in his mind. The first time she spoke.
"Find it," he said. "You'll need it to improve. Use what you have."
She tried. Over and over. Hours spent pressing against his mind. But he was good. Too good.
So she got better with time. Not by force, but by cunning. By learning, quietly, relentlessly, and better still, by keeping her progress secret.
It was a warm evening, a few weeks before she would turn seventeen. The grass was damp with the summer heat.
Her father sat across from her in the garden, sleeves rolled up, his ring glinting. She'd had to beg him to teach her outside, her favourite place to be. He preferred formality - the stone walls, control. She found him rather amusing sometimes. He was so proper.
"Again," he said.
She smiled, and prepared to slip in.
But not head on. She waited, stilled her breath. Let the moment stretch.
Then, casually, she shifted her weight, an innocent movement, tucking a foot beneath her leg, her hand brushing the grass. A flicker so ordinary.. but his attention, just briefly, twitched toward the physical.
In that breath of weakened focus, she cast Legilimens wordlessly.
And her magic slid in.
She didn't enter through the front. It was too obvious. Too well protected, lined with false corridors, polished memories meant to impress or mislead.
Instead, she slipped between folds. Under the seam of something he only half remembered.
He noticed. Of course he did. She felt it, the coldness of his mind turning inward, the pressure building like the feeling before a storm. More than that, she felt his shock. She'd entered his mind without a word.
It should've been impossible. She'd read up on it, it practically was - only the most powerful witches and wizards could do such a thing.
She felt his confusion, and something more, she realised, as she ventured deeper... Something like panic.
It came through in the sudden shields he raised, in the way his mind shifted beneath her touch. It almost distracted her. She couldn't imagine him panicked. She'd never even seen him blink at anything she would deem panic worthy.
She would never get this chance again.
He pushed her back. Swift, precise, brutal.
But she was quicker.
She dodged his mental blocks, his attempts to shove her out. She felt the flicker of his disbelief, the realisation that he was being bested. By a child. His child.
Astra heard the thought as it formed. Her child. A flicker of her mother. Yes. That made more sense. She felt him realise it too.
Her father was rattled.
She could feel it in the way his mind shifted, creased at the edges, memories folded in on themselves as he made them smaller, tighter. As they vanished.
And then, quicker than his thoughts could snap shut, she slipped through a seam, into the gap just before he folded it into nothing.
It was like she had jumped through a darkened threshold in his mind.
Parchment - memories - fluttered down a dark, vaulted corridor. Stacks of it, high to the ceiling of his mind. Some soared. Some burned mid air.
He didn't like her being here. She realised that quickly.
This dark place was different to where they usually sparred. Different to the structured, curated space in the forefront of his mind. There, it was safe, filtered. Polished memories crafted to distract her, to trip her up. There were only safe things back there.
Memories of her, wild black curls flying behind her as she first rode a broom. Her high, shrieking laughter. Sticky fingers cramming lemon tart into her mouth while her mother laughed nearby, sunlight dancing in her eyes. Useless memories. Harmless.
Her duelling her mother, both of them too emotional, too loud - his thought, not hers. That they lacked control. That neither knew how to hold their power properly.
Memories of him watching her sleep when she was younger. As if he couldn't believe she were real.
Memories of her mother.
But here... in this dark recess of his mind. He did not want Astra here - not in this part of him. She felt it.
He tried to disorient her now though, in this corridor, shifting the landscape beneath her feet, mentally dragging her back out by her ankle.
She feigned reaching for a floating piece of parchment fluttering in the breeze, and felt him pause. Her fingers were inches away when he brushed it out of reach. It was enough. Astra stumbled, caught herself against a wall, one that bled ink.
'Enough,' his voice echoed, both everywhere and nowhere. Commanding. Cold.
But there was an edge to it. He didn't understand why she was slipping through his grasp. That edge, she thought, might have been fear.
'Astra!' He bellowed.
Ignoring him, she took off.
She knew immediately that he was destroying things as she ran further down the corridor, dodging his advances, his attempts to block her. She could see it - the way he wiped the vaulted walls clear of anything she could get her hands on.
The further she got, the more she felt it.
There were dark things here. Whole sections, stacks of parchment, were blackened and singed. Some of the parchment glowed a sick unnatural green, others gold. But she ran, barefoot and breathless, fingers brushing through the air, seeking, something. Anything.
There. A singed, curled piece of parchment clung at the edge of a door. She reached for it, knowing even as she did that she shouldn't.
Astra felt him reach for her, almost seizing her.
Her father was not quick enough.
The moment her fingertips touched it, the world cracked.
Time and space split open. And she was dragged through the gap between them.
**
It smelled like smoke.
The air was heavy with it. Thick with ash. It fell, like snowflakes, but not quite - not white, but grey. The sky cried with dying embers.
Above her, the world moved. Not the sky, though, she realised - nor cloud, nor smoke. Something worse.
It sat high above the decapitated rooftops, above the trees, glowing with a darkness she'd never seen before.
A skull and a snake twisted there together, branded into the stars - shifting as if it were alive. Watching.
Astra didn't know what it was, only that it didn't belong in the sky.
She stood on broken cobblestone beside a crumbling building swallowed by the woods. All around her, the village lay in ruin, torn open as if a storm had ripped it from the earth. Bodies were strewn like dolls.
And in the far distance, crying. Screaming. The hoarse sound of someone begging.
She didn’t know this place. This memory.
Astra turned instinctively, searching for her father. He would’ve followed her like he always did. And yet..
She scanned the ruins, trying to piece it together. He was not here. How was that possible? Why was she here without him?
Why would he carry a memory like this? Why had he been here?
The trees loomed tall, their blackened trunks stretching into the night sky.
She squinted into the gaps between them, certain she’d heard something -
A flicker of dark magic ripped through the air, enough made the hairs on her arms rise.
And then, she saw it, saw him, at the top of the clearing, just beyond the embankment…
Her father.
He looked younger, somehow. But not softer as a result. He was severe in a way she could not describe. He looked haunted. Terrible. Crazed. Radiant with fury. His wand lit with a green glow.
At his feet, a man knelt. Burned, bound and bleeding - encircled by figures in dark robes, silent as statues.
She stepped back, terrified. Her foot snagged on something charred.
It cracked like a bone, and echoed through the trees.
One of the figures near her father turned. Tall. Heavy. Face in shadow. But what she saw made her stomach turn. Sharp yellow teeth, and the kind of face that smiled at pain.
She bolted further down the embankment. Darted behind a crumbling wall.
And she knew then, with startling clarity, that this wasn't a vision. This wasn't simply watching a memory in her father's mind.
Astra had watched memories before, plenty. Had even tried to interact with herself in them, just to see if she could. She'd aimed a hex at her ten year old self once for the fun of it. It had gone right through her. Her mother had called her wicked, though she'd looked secretly amused.
She knew a memory couldn't be changed. It could not be interacted with. You could scream in someone's face and they would walk right through you. It looped. Unaffected. Safe. Like a movie, or so her Muggle Studies tutor used to say.
This was not that. This was no memory. This was no movie.
This was a stage. Live and breathing and burning.
And she'd somehow been dropped into the middle of it.
Pressed tight to the wall, her fingers dug into crumbling brick. An acrid breeze moved through the trees. Blood slicked the stone beneath bare feet. And the the copper tang of it all made her feel like she might vomit.
She could hear his voice, carried to her on the wind. Her father. Speaking in low tones, in that calm and deadly way she'd only heard once or twice in her life. She dared to look, shifting herself back and peering around the wall, her gaze landing atop the embankment.
The bound wizard looked to be begging now, though no sound left his mouth. A pretty powerful silencing charm, if she were to guess. Or perhaps he was being suffocated, she thought, watching as he writhed, as he turned purple. Horror lanced through her.
All of this - all of this horror. All of this destruction... For what?
The howling scream that tore from the tortured wizard's throat when the spell holding him finally broke was inhuman. Sickening. Her stomach twisted. She wanted to look away, tried to, but her gaze stayed snagged on the man she so resembled.
The man who had made her.
Her father, the Dark Lord, raised his wand.
"No -" Astra rasped.
Pausing, preternaturally still - he looked up.
It was a twitch of movement.
The Dark Lord dragged his gaze through the trees. Not urgent, not worried, but... searching. He looked paler for a moment, if such a thing were possible, almost like he'd heard something that shouldn't be there.
Astra scrambled back, desperate to slip out of sight. To get back. A jagged slice tore across her palm as she clawed through the rubble, her fingers catching on the shattered remains of an obliterated window frame.
She ignored the sting. Didn't breathe. Didn't move.
The only sound was her heartbeat, her blood rushing in her ears.
Perhaps they hadn't seen her, perhaps -
"Greyback," a woman's voice called. Shrill. Gleeful.
Melodic. It echoed through the trees like a cursed song.
"I think you missed ooone."
Astra flinched. Her heart slammed against her ribs.
She ran.
But before she could round the building - before even a scream could escape her - a figure broke from the tree line, cutting her off.
He rounded the ruin's edge faster than she could dodge him.
Massive. Robed. Beastlike...
A werewolf.
He grinned as if he could hear the realisation in her mind. His yellow teeth catching the low green light.
His presence hit her like a physical thing. She could not move. Only retreat.
He was taller than he'd seemed through trees, broader, as he approached her. He stank of damp fur, blood, and something fouler beneath.
Her back thumped into the wall behind her, bare heels scraping hard against the stone.
His eyes gleamed as he loomed over her, his gaze dragging up from her feet - blackened with ash - to her bloodied hand, her face, the soft spot where her neck met shoulder.
"Aren't you a delicious little thing?"
His head tilted as if he were expecting an answer, the movement more animal than man.
She tried to raise her hands, scrambled for something, anything - tried to conjure her wand - but she was too slow. Too late.
The spell hit her like a crack of lightning.
A blast of dark magic slammed straight between her eyes.
And she was gone.
**
She woke screaming.
Her throat raw. Dirt under her fingernails. Her chest heaving, as if she'd been drowning and had only just broken the surface. She dragged air into her lungs, greedy, shaking. Her hands flew to her forehead. The spot where she'd been - she'd been -
But nothing. She felt nothing. Her skin was unmarked.
She couldn't breathe. Couldn't fathom -
Strong hands gripped her shoulders. Shaking her.
Her father. Hovering above her. The Dark Lord.
Scrambling backwards, breath catching, her fingers clawed at the grass for purchase. He followed her, unhurried, kneeling. His eyes burning.
"You pushed me out."
The sound of his voice tore through the garden like a spell gone wrong - shattering, terrifying in a way she'd never heard from him.
Astra froze.
He was wrong. She hadn't pushed him out. He thought she'd been rummaging around in his memories without him. He had no idea where she'd been. That she'd been in one - dropped into it, back in time. As it happened. He had no clue.
Kneeling across from her, his face was lit by the dying light of the afternoon. But he didn't look like her father, not the version she knew. This man looked much more like the one she'd just witnessed. The version of him he held in his past. Unmoored. Crazed.
"You forced me out of my own memory. How?!"
His shout cracked through the open air. Birds scattered from the trees. He said it like he couldn't quite believe it.
Truthfully, neither could she.
"Do you have any idea what you just did?"
She tried to pull herself back, away. He held her in place, shook her once more. His breath was fast. Uncontrolled. His composure utterly shattered. And his eyes - crimson, bleeding at the edges.
"What did you see?" His voice broke. "Tell me."
She thought to explain, to lie, perhaps she could -
"Tell me what you saw!"
His magic was bleeding out of him, dark and crackling, buzzing through the hedges as if his fury had manifested into something physical, reaching. The grass wilted beneath his knees.
She couldn't answer. Couldn't explain. She didn't know how.
Her mouth gaped uselessly around words that she could not form.
He stared at her, breathing hard, his expression wild, like he didn't know whether to hex her or drag the truth out of her. He looked... haunted, she realised.
"I..." Her mouth was dry. "I didn't - "
Her throat tightened. No sound came out. Her hands shook at her sides. Something warm traced down her cheeks, catching at her chin. She didn't wipe it away.
Something in his expression cracked then, just barely, but enough. Without another word, he let her go.
Her father had always looked ageless. Immovable. Now, he looked like a man watching the sky collapse.
**
Astra sat in the garden long after he left. The sun dipped low, casting taller and taller shadows as time passed. She traced her fingers along the grass where his magic had scorched it, blackened it.
Something had broken in him. And something in her, too.
Her mother returned home from a Lycanthropy Research Fundraiser. She'd somehow known something was wrong with Astra immediately. Not because of the scorched earth. Not because of the way her father had locked himself away in his study.
But, she imagined, because Astra hadn't said a word about Lycanthropy.
No rant about outdated legislation. No outrage over restricted access to Wolfsbane. Not even a half hearted - "why can't Dad just make them all agree to sign the Decree?"
Nothing.
Just... silence. In fact, if anything, she was sure she'd paled at the subject.
Hermione's gaze had flicked to the dead grass. Then the sky. Then back to Astra.
She didn't ask what happened. Somehow, she didn't need to.
"I'm putting the kettle on," she said quietly. "Would you like some tea?"
Astra nodded. Didn't look up.
A few minutes later, her mother returned. She sat beside her on the grass, tucking her skirt beneath her knees, wand slipping easily into the twist of hair gathered at the nape of her neck.
Hermione didn't press. But she didn't coddle either. That wasn't her way. Astra was grateful for that.
She passed her the tea, watched her cradle it with shaking hands, and after a long pause, her mother asked, "Did he hurt you?"
Astra swore she saw fire in her mother's eyes, but it was gone when she blinked. Just steam rising from her cup, perhaps. Just the afternoon settling over the garden. Just her mother, perfectly calm. Too calm.
She shook her head in answer, slow. Truthful.
Another pause.
"Did something hurt you?"
Astra hesitated. Then, "No."
Hermione studied her for a long moment, then looked out across the garden. The hedgerow was still black, like something dark had tried to take root but couldn't.
"You know," she said, tone conspiratorial, "when I was your age, I broke into the Ministry of Magic."
Astra blinked.
The Ministry... the Ministry hadn't existed in a terribly long time. Since the nineteen sixties, she was sure. Far too long ago for her to have -
"Accidentally committed several crimes, very much on purpose. Nearly died. Twice."
Astra gave her a look. Like she'd grown two heads. It wasn't possible - had her mother fallen? Hit her head?
Hermione simply blinked back at her, her expression soft, though Astra didn't miss the glint in her eye, like firelight on water.
A promise. A secret threaded with gold.
"What I mean to say,” she continued, “is that there is nothing you can't tell me. I've lived a lot of life, my darling. And you - you're the most precious thing I've ever come across. So whatever it is, you can say it. I won't be shocked. I promise, okay?"
Astra looked down. Gripped the cup a little tighter.
"Truly, mum, I’m fine," she said, though it came out softer than she intended. "I pushed too far during one of Dad's lessons, something with Legilimency. I could've hurt myself, but it wasn't his fault. I just... I misjudged it."
Hermione reached over and brushed a curl from her daughter's temple.
If she believed her, she didn't say.
**
Astra did not know what she had done. Not truly. Not yet.
She only knew that the past was now a place she could visit. But not safely. Not yet.
It bled now, into her, through her. Like something she had tugged on and unravelled without meaning to.
In the distance, sometimes, she swore she heard the wind shift. A whisper through the trees.
A soft tick, tick, tick beneath the world.
Time, it seemed, was beginning to notice her back.