Everyone in the room looked around in shock. How much had thia girl heard? Hermione stepped foward, holding out her wand.
"Don't tell anyone, unless you want to be obliviated." Hermione said freakishly quiet. Danielle's eyes widened and she started to look very pale.
"I'll tell the ministry, everyone if you don't let me go. Why is it that you want to change Riddle?" Hermione looked up as her eyes meet Harry. One look in them told her his thoughs. She knew so much.
"You can't tell anyone anything if you don't remember anything," Ginny said holding out her wand, "we don't want to obliviate you but we will." The girl didn't respond and only looked down.
"Let me go and tell me everything and I won't tell anyone." Danielle replied curtly. Draco held out his wand as well.
"We won't tell you a dam_" he started only to be stopped by Celene placing a hand on his wand, lowering it.
"Guys, let's just tell her, it will be for the better. Anyway what would the ministry say when they found a oblivated student?" Everyone seemed to consider this and slowly they shook there heads. With a sigh Hermione turned around, her breath flowing unevenly.
"I hate to say it but Celene is right, we have to tell Danielle everything, we came here not wanting to end up in Askaban, let's not end behind bars." Hermione said.
"I agree with Hermi" Lavender added in a squeaky voice. Hermione cringed at the nickname her best friends boyfriend had given her. Thanks Lav, Hermione said under her breath as Harry nodded.
"It will be the best option for everyone." With a swish if her hand, Celene unbounded Danielle and the brown haired Ravenclaw fell on the floor.
"Well, let's explain everything." Celene said causing Hermione to glare at Draco for telling her everything and Draco to kiss Celenes cheek just because. The whole group explained everything to Danielle who was sitting on the corner of the couch, very pale. Once they were done Danielle looked at everyone with wide eyes.
"Riddle or Voldemort is a dark wizard?! Why haven't you done a kill_"
"We don't want to rot in Azkaban exactly." Harry cut in, placing his fingers on the bridge of his nose. Danielle nodded still looking frightened. Hermione groaned as she suddenly remembered what they were talking about before, Riddle's Curse.
"Guys, we still have to find out what curse Riddle has. We don't have time for this, everyone grab a book and keep looking." Everyone didn't reply for several seconds before scanning the books on the desk throughly. About an hour passed by and Hermione wanted to throw her book across the room. How hard was it to find a curse?
"How hard can this be?!" She unexpectedly yelled. Celene jumped in the air along with Lavendar. They all looked at her confused. She sighed and looked down.
"Sorry."
Draco glanced down at Fatal Curses and Their Symptoms. "Let's just keep going, Nef, all ri—All right," he abruptly purred, his tone changing instantly. He did a double-take at the page and then tapped his book triumphantly, a smile breaking out onto his face. "All right!"
"What? You found it?" she demanded disbelievingly, vaguely relieved that whatever had temporarily come between all of them had passed as she lunged across the length of the sofa in a flash, swiftly leaning over Draco's shoulder.
The Slytherin, however, deviously snatched the book from her line of sight. "Wait… wait… Let me revel…"
"Good Merlin, du Lac, stop it and come on!" Hermione exclaimed, on the verge of screaming in anticipation. She had been searching for the Anima spell for weeks, weeks, and now, here were all the answers, so close… yet so far away, she thought forlornly as she stared balefully at the ancient, yellowed pages of parchment less than six feet away from her, held out in Draco's outstretched arm.
It killed her to beg, but…before she could do anything Celene had glided into Draco's lap and was snatching the book from him.
"Hey, I'll reveal it!" He said snatching the book back from his girlfriend causing her and Hermione to pout.
He flipped Fatal Curses and Their Symptoms open to the marked page and started to read aloud. "Anima Adflictatio, literally, soul pain, is one of the most archaic and advanced of the forty-three fatal Dark Arts curses. Over time, the Anima curse has become increasingly obsolete, in part because the power to administer and remove the curse is only possible by the magic of a member of one of the ancient magical bloodlines. As Muggle and Magical interaction increases, less and less witches and wizards will have the inherent ability to perform the dying art of Dark Magic."
"Well, that explains how dear mummy put it on him in the first place; she was a Slytherin—literally," Ron commented offhandedly. He permanently abandoned his research book - which had somehow turned into a Quidditch handbook - and rubbed his hands together expectantly. "What does it say? Can it kill him?"
For some reason, a knot was beginning to take form in the pit of Hermione's stomach. "Obviously it can't, Ron, because Riddle had to have had it the last time, and Lord Voldemort was still going strong when we left our time…"
"No, no, wait…" Draco held up a finger, his eyes scanning the page. "TheAnima curse is performed… blah blah blah… Here it is: only becoming physically hindering, and, in most cases, fatal, when the Afflicted…"
Draco trailed off, squinting at the writing. "When the Afflicted…"
Hermione glanced sharply at the blond Slytherin, but he was staring at the page in what could have passed as semi-shock, a slow, incredulous but sly smile spreading across his face. "When the Afflicted what?" she warily asked, her voice guardedly tight.
The smile having already grown to a full-fledged smirk, Draco held up the book and continued arrogantly, "The curse will remain dormant, only becoming physically hindering, and, in most cases, fatal, when the Afflicted's feelings for another deepen beyond the superficial."
Still smirking, he snapped the book shut, his finger marking his place. "Translate that one into English."
"So, in other words, when he begins to care… about… someone else," Hermione mused slowly, composedly. Her mind, however, was whirling with a thousand confused thoughts, each swirling like a whirlwind of different colours in her head.
"I suppose that explains why Riddle distances himself — that way, he doesn't even run the risk of getting close to anyone," she noted after a beat, pausing. She decided to ask the question that had plagued her mind for weeks. "But why is the curse taking effect this time? What's so different? Why didn't it happen the last time?"
Ginny and Lavender and Celene stealthily exchanged shrewd glances.
"Let's go through this, shall we?" Draco drawled out in the unhurried, teasing manner of one who knows something his neighbour clearly doesn't but would love to find out. He opened the book back to theAnima Curse's page and folded his hands thoughtfully, his slightly amused blue eyes making contact with her perplexed brown ones. "Of the times Riddle's gotten… hit with this curse, I suppose you could say, have you noticed anything… Odd? Similar, even?"
Hermione narrowed her eyes thoughtfully, absently staring into the flickering orange and gold fire. "The first time I saw it happen was at the Friday Night Dance that he found out about—where you two saw him," she added, nodding at Ron and Harry. Her mind easily flew back the three weeks.
"I… I ran into him—literally—and, you know, said hello. Of, course, I wasn't going to stick around and make small talk, and I was about to leave when he just… doubled over. Doubled over. I mean, whatever it was, it was really bad, but it only lasted a few minutes."
"Well, since you actually decided to show up, I honestly do hope you have a good time."
The haughty expression of superiority slightly faded from Riddle's face. "What?"
…."Do you need me to get Madam Lamberdeau?" she asked tightly.
Riddle's grey eyes burned into hers, but in the darkness, they were even more impossible to read than usual. Hermione could only watch helplessly, completely clueless, as he began to shake his head in a No, but abruptly sucked in a another sharp breath, his face contorting into a mask of pain as he yanked his arm more tightly around his waist…
..…."Are you going to tell me what just happened to you?" Hermione demanded, crossing her arms expectantly.
"No," he said shortly.
"Erm… the second time was on the day of your glorious Quidditch match, Draco. We had a prefect meeting that afternoon, and Riddle seemed completely fine…" She frowned. "When we had finished the meeting, I said… oh, I don't remember exactly, but it caused him to tell me that he was going to lunch, and, you know, we never see him in the Great Hall. I thought it'd be a good opportunity to find out where he goes, so… I told him I was hungry, too, and asked if I could come—and I did… He's got this whole little corner in the kitchens…"
"This must go over well," Hermione noted wryly, studying the checkered tablecloth spread over the square, compact table tucked away in a small nook near the massive kitchen fireplace. Hardly perceptible unless you knew where to look, the space seemed big enough for two people, tops.
Riddle indifferently glanced over at her. "Go over well with who?"
Two plates, glasses, and silverware magically appeared before them, and Hermione shrugged. "With whoever you bring down here."
Riddle gave her that piercing, unreadable stormy grey stare, and he said in an equally unreadable voice that was enough to send chills down her spine, "I never bring anyone down here."
"…but the next day, you know the story, he was in the Hospital Wing. That night, he seemed ready to escape out the window, but the next morning, Madam L told me that he had suffered a relapse."
"Mione," Harry interrupted, raising an eyebrow at Draco. He seemed to be following the blond's line of thought, but whatever line of thought that might have been was currently, tauntingly floating just out of Hermione's grasp. "You might not know this, but did Madam L mention if anything out of the ordinary happened, anything that could have set off Riddle's relapse?"
Hermione frowned. "Well, no." She hesitated, then said a bit more quickly, "I did send him a card and an old book that I didn't really need anymore, but I don't see how—"
"You what?" Lavender demanded incredulously, dropping her nail file, her blue eyes staring at Hermione, lashes wide open, as if the latter had just confessed to committing a mortal sin.
"It seemed like the nice thing to do!" Hermione replied defensively, defiantly crossing her arms.
"Nef, Nef, Nef," Draco rudely interjected, waving Fatal Curses and Their Symptoms above his head importantly. "Do you realize what this means?"
Hermione suspiciously eyed the scheming blond, not exactly wanting to hear whatever he was about to say. "No, but I'm sure you'll enlighten me," she said dryly.
"Nef," he whispered, that completely delighted smirk spreading across his face again, coming off like the Grinch who had just been told that Christmas had been cancelled, "All you have to do is make Riddle fall in love with you, and all of our problems in this blasted world will be completely, absolutely solved!"
"Draco!" she gasped. Her heart stopped, and her mouth fell open for about the fiftieth time that week, her left hand reaching out and clutching the object nearest her — the poofy Ravenclaw pillow. "You… you don't think that it's - it's me who he… You're not serious!"
"Nef, he's the bloody Head Boy, and you're the bleedin' Head Girl!" Draco exclaimed with a knowing flourish of his hands. "Those are the classic get-together posts! Open up your eyes! You share a common room with just him, for Merlin's sake! You always have Head business together, and you were always the last or one of the last people he was thinking of in some way before the curse jumped up and bit him in the arse. Please, if there's a better candidate for someone he would care about enough for the curse to take effect, feel free to point her out."
"And that would explain why it never happened the last time," Lavender piped in with a knowing nod, calculatingly waving her finger at Hermione.
"Yeah." Ron, like his girlfriend beside him, was nodding at Hermione, too. "The last time around, he never had you!"
A sudden chill trickled down Hermione's spine, and Dumbledore's parting words seconds before she left, moments after she had discovered that no change had occurred in Harry, Ginny, Ron, Lavender, and Draco's absence, echoed hauntingly in her mind:
"Headmaster," Hermione began, her voice excited, "if Harry, Ron, Draco, Ginny, and Lavender have technically been in the past for fifty years now, wouldn't things here be different already? Wouldn't Voldemort and all the Dark Forces have been erased by now? Turned to dust?"
Dumbledore nudged his head toward the small corner window. "Nothing looks different, does it, Ms. Nefertari?"
"You mean, it didn't work?" After all this insanity, this extreme preparation, and it didn't work? That's it. Hope had died.
Dumbledore smiled tiredly and slowly rose to his feet. "Perhaps they just need you, Ms. Nefertari."
Dear Merlin, did the fate of the future of the entire magical world —or at least one life— lie completely in her hands?
"Wait a minute, all of you," she said loudly, quickly. She held up her hands, her rational side desperately trying to rein in the situation before it spiralled dangerously out of control. "Let's not jump to conclusions. We don't know if the AnimaCurse is what Riddle really has."
"Nef, when you touched the Heir of Slytherin, you had an actual, honest-to-goodness vision, and it only involved two words," Draco drawled knowingly. "Do you really think that God would waste his time giving a vision to you, the ultimate Anti-Divinationess, unless that vision had to do with everything?"
Hermione rolled her eyes and retorted witheringly, "And how do you suggest I go about 'making him fall in love with me,' if your positively mad idea is actually true, as you seem to think it is—No, I take it back, don't answer that," she quickly amended as crafty grins immediately spread across the faces of both Draco and Ron.
"Bugger, you sick men," Ginny groaned, surreptitiously examining Harry's sober face to make sure that her boyfriend wasn't sharing the same line of thought as her brother and the ferret. Sufficiently satisfied, the redhead turned to Hermione seriously. "What do you think, Hermione?"
By now, Hermione's irritation with Draco had caused her to tumble off the edge of her seat. From her new spot on the ground, wedged between the Ravenclaw sofa and the coffee table, the brunette shrugged helplessly, the frustration of her mind emerging in her voice. "Well, I don't know, Ginny; I just found out that the boy who would become one of the most evil Dark Lords in the last five hundred years fancies me enough to make him physically ill! What would you think?"
The moment the words left her mouth, the insanity of the entire situation finally sank in. After all of her and Riddle's explosive arguments, the utter lack of love in their relationship—
No. No, this was wrong, this was all wrong. This couldn't be right. Tom Riddle didn't have emotions. He didn't feel. He didn't care about anything or anyone but himself, that fact was plainly obvious in everything he did, in every word he said.
He didn't.
He couldn't.
This was ridiculous.
"I would think," Ginny startled slowly, and Hermione was absolutely floored at the abrupt change in the redhead's tone — now so brutal, so dark, so full of utter hate. Had Ginny always had all of those emotions bottled up inside her, waiting to explode?
The afternoon was quickly plummeting out of control.
"I would think, 'Thank you Merlin, thank you for finally giving us a way of successfully… successfully executing what we came here to execute" —Hermione almost flinched at Ginny's ruthless choice of wording— "without ending up in Azkaban.' I would be grateful that god gave us such a simple way to save our family, our friends, and our future."
'A simple way.' For who, Ginny?
Ginny paused and licked her cherry-red lips. "And then, I would jump on this chance before it gets away." Hermione's world was spinning. It couldn't be true, could it? It just...couldn't.
"Hey Nef, Nef?" Was the last thing she heard before plummeting into darkness. And the last thing she though was simple yet life-changing.
The snake might like her