Breaking Hermione

Wit Beyond Measure

Dedicated to my best friend Gaby ♡
Thank you for understanding Tom Riddle.

Hermione

It was midnight. I was standing alone in the great maze in the Triwizard tournament, my entire body was so cold it was numb. It was absolutely freezing. My feet were aching with pain, and when I looked down I realised why. I was in my heels from the Yule Ball. I yanked them off my feet quickly, throwing them aside into the dark greenery. A flash of scarlet, and they had disappeared into nothingness.

It was as if the hedges went on forever, in endless towering rows. I walked ahead slowly, trying to gauge the situation. My heart was pounding in fear - although I had no idea why. There no one around, the maze must have been entirely empty it not been for me.

Or so it seemed.

I suppose you could never be too sure in a place like this, could you?

I picked up pace, breaking into a light jog. It was hard to run in a long dress, I wasn't moving very quickly. I might as well have been going nowhere. I stopped, tearing the silk from the knee downward. Now I could actually run. The wind picked up, leaves and the scraps of pink silk I had discarded flying past me. Was it going to storm? It looked like it. My hair came undone from its pins, copper coloured curls falling down across my face.

I rounded the next corner- and froze. What looked like a black shadow was lying directly in the centre of the pathway, sprawled out as though it had descended from above. There was no mistaking the tall figure, even from here. Tom Riddle. My eyes were drawn helplessly to him, and as much as I tried I couldn't look away. He lay motionless on the ground, his pale face appearing even paler in the moonlight. I approached warily, becoming increasingly stricken the closer I got.
He was unconscious. Blood shone beneath him on the dark earth.

I knelt beside him, my robes falling over him. Without really knowing what I was doing I reached out a shaking hand to touch him.

Who possessed the power to bring this man down? I wondered.

"Tom?" I said quietly. "Tom."

"I wouldn't do that if I were you." Someone said.

I looked up. I knew that voice. I turned to see who it was, and my breath caught in my chest. Albus Dumbledore had materialised out of thin air, suddenly standing right there on my left in dress robes of deep Prussian blue. He was peering down at the both of us pityingly through his half moon spectacles, his long white hair glowing in the moonlight like a white aura.

"Appearances can be deceiving," He said all-knowingly. "Even to the well trained eye. But to love one who has never known love is a tragedy all on its own accord."

"What do you mean?" I looked from Dumbledore back to Tom. "What happened to him?"

"Someone was beginning to learn how to love him." Dumbledore said simply. "That is all."

"What?" I stared down at Tom's bleeding form, and felt rather stupid all of a sudden. "Professor, I don't understand."

"Do you think that Tom Riddle has ever been loved?" Dumbledore said seriously. "You are in the process of turning darkness inside out, and are you claiming to be ignorant to the violence this incites?"