A/N: This was officially the hardest thing I've ever had to write. I tried writing this chapter yesterday but scrapped the lot because it was so awful. Thankfully I was struck by inspiration at a New Year's gathering and started writing as soon as I got home. I'm still not one hundred per cent happy, but it's better than the rubbish I wrote yesterday so I think this is the best it'll get. Just the epilogue after this, and that'll be that. I've started something new as well, (not that I'm shamelessly plugging or anything, I would never do such a thing). It's a Hermione/Cedric story called Eclairs and that's going to be my main project after this. Anyway, hope you're all enjoying the new year. Let me know what you think of this chapter, it's always wonderful to hear from you. =]

Restricted.

by Flaignhan.

"Tell me what happened," Harry said quietly, pulling a chair over so he was sitting down opposite her.

"No," Hermione replied firmly, "you'll hate me."

"I promise you I won't be angry," Harry told her. "I know what he's like."

"You don't though Harry. You only know what the worst part of him's like."

"So tell me what he's really like then."

Hermione sighed. "He saved my life a couple of times," she told him. "I came out of the book one day in the back of Borgin and Burke's and Tom wasn't there. Burke was going to torture me because he thought I was a thief or something but Tom killed him just as he was about to cast the spell. He knows I'm muggleborn, Harry. Why would he bother?"

Harry remained silent.

"So he killed someone, what's new?" Ron said. "It doesn't make him a good person just because he killed someone bad."

"Ron you've got no idea. You've never seen him get excited over a decent meal and you've never seen him write article after article for Cheeky Charms just so he could pay the rent on his grotty little flat. You've never seen him with bags under his eyes after he's been reading all night, and you've never seen him wake up in the middle of the night completely confused because his brain's not working." Hermione sighed. "You know when I was sleeping badly?"

Harry nodded.

"I was having bad dreams. Tom ended up staying one night, that day I stormed out of Potions, remember? Well he stayed and I was fine. So I started sleeping in his flat at night and I was sleeping better and he'd stay next to me just so I'd sleep well. He's not as bad as you think he is. Or wasn't, I should say."

"I guess not," Harry said quietly.

"How can you be so fine with this? Clearly he's gone and confunded -"

"Oh Ron for Merlin's sake!" Hermione snapped. "I have not been confunded!"

"Ron it was her own choice. She's free to make her own choices, isn't she?"

"Yeah but with him? Harry, he killed your parents!"

"I hadn't forgotten, Ron," Harry said sharply.

"I thought you'd be a lot angrier," Hermione admitted, looking worriedly at Harry. "I know it was a stupid thing to do but -"

"Dumbledore said not to judge you. He said a foolish mistake can often be the key."

"What?" Hermione breathed. "Dumbledore -"

"When I went for my lessons last year," Harry explained. "He said not to judge you. He said you're an uncommonly good person and nothing could ever sway you. To be honest I'm quite relieved. I thought it'd be worse than this."

"Relieved?" Ron said indignantly. "How can you be relieved? She's been messing around with You-Know-Who!"

"His name's Tom," Hermione retorted before returning her attention to Harry. "Dumbledore must have realised. He only saw me once. I burst out of Tom's bag in the middle of his Transfiguration lesson and Dumbledore was there. Tom just told him he had no idea who I was and that I'd run away after but he never believed him..."

"Yeah well, Dumbledore has always been cleverer than him."

A loud, well spoken voice echoed throughout the empty classroom and all around the school. "Ladies and gents, please gather in the great hall, and be quick about it. If you're all very good then no injuries need be incurred today."

"Tom..." Hermione whispered. "Harry, what happened in the graveyard?"

"What?"

"The graveyard! What happened? When he got his body back!"

"Erm, Wormtail was there," Harry recalled, absent-mindedly rubbing his scar, "the cauldron was there. Cedric was stunned pretty bad so he had no chance of waking up and helping me to stop it..."

"Stunned?"

"Yeah, Voldemort stunned him," Harry looked confused, then realisation dawned. "He just stunned him, nothing more. He's fine."

Hermione sighed, half in relief and half in disbelief. At least someone had got a second chance. "And how did he actually get his body back?"

"He took the bones of his father, some of my blood, Wormtail's...well, you know, and then there was a little bag of stuff that Wormtail had. It looked like a vial of blood or something. A couple of hairs as well, I think."

"And what did he look like?" Hermione was on the edge of her seat, almost ready to run out of the classroom and up to the great hall to see for herself.

"Exactly like he looked when he was here a couple of hours ago."

"Wow..."

"Does it matter what he looks like?" Ron asked, clearly annoyed.

"Ron, time's changed for Hermione. Everything that happened when she was in the past, everything she did and said, it's changed stuff, and she's about to see the consequences. Clearly it matters, or she wouldn't have asked."

"I need to go," Hermione said, getting to her feet. The book was sitting on a nearby desk. She bit her lip. "That's a horcrux," she told Harry.

Harry nodded and she left.

He was just walking into the great hall as she arrived and she jogged over to him. She stepped in front of him, walking backwards and glancing over her shoulder every other second to make sure she didn't hit anything.

"Ah, there you are. I've been waiting," he smirked and reached a finger out to touch her cheek.

"Stop this. Stop it now."

"Not even a hello? Not a 'well done for not turning into a monster despite the fact that I had so little faith in your ability to change your future'?"

"Tom just stop. Please!"

Tom looked her up and down and smiled appreciatively. "Fresh from the restricted section?" he asked.

"More or less," Hermione replied grudgingly, glancing over her shoulder.

Tom's smirk became more pronounced. "Watch the steps."

Hermione turned just in time so she didn't end up falling over the steps that led up to the teacher's table. Tom veered off to the left and Hermione followed, barely noticing as the hall filled with teachers and students.

Tom made his way along the back of the chairs, stopping when he reached the chair in the middle. He pulled it out and sat in it. It was Dumbledore's chair.

"Get out of that chair," Hermione said fiercely.

Tom frowned. "Why?"

"That's Dumbledore's chair."

"Dumbledore's dead," Tom replied.

"I don't care, get out of the chair."

"No," Tom said, as though Hermione had just asked him to cartwheel across the great hall.

"Tom, get out of it now!"

"The old codger's dead, Hermione, get over it. I rather like this chair," he put his feet up on the table and began tapping his fingers on the arm of the chair. "Besides, it's high time somebody intelligent took over this school."

Hermione acted before she had thought it through properly. She didn't recall raising her hand, nor did she recall actually slapping him, but she did recall the feeling of shock that followed, as well as the smarting pain in her right hand.

"Do it again, Hermione, I like it," his cheek was red from where she had slapped him but he showed no sign of pain. He merely smirked at her, which only served to make Hermione want to turn her wand on him.

"Get out Tom," Hermione told him in a shaky voice, "get out of the chair."

Tom sighed dramatically and stood up. "Fine. Whatever makes you happy."

"If you leave here, that'll make me happy."

"No can do, I'm afraid. Since when do you hate me so much?" he took her by the arm and led her around to the front of the table. He lifted himself onto the the table top and leant back, his palms flat on the desk behind him. "Sit next to me."

Hermione complied.

Soon enough, the hall was full with every single teacher and every single student. Hermione scanned the thick crowd, looking for Harry and Ron but her attempt was futile; even with Ron's vivid hair colour it was like looking for a couple of needles in an oversized haystack.

The teachers and oldest students were at the front, the younger students having been pushed to the back behind the more advanced wizards. A barrier in case things kicked off.

"I've gathered you all here," Tom hadn't raised his voice at all, hadn't used any spells to increase the volume, yet every word was audible throughout the entire hall, "firstly to introduce your new headmaster. That's me, by the way," Tom smirked and Hermione felt sick, his charming, casual tone much more repulsive than she remembered, "and secondly, to let you know that the lovely Hermione," he put his arm around her shoulders and the stomach acid began to rise in her throat, "has been meddling with time. Basically, if it weren't for her, quite a few of you would already be dead. People on that list include the beloved Cedric Diggory," there was a gasp, and Tom smirked at the reaction, "the true Hogwarts champion. Sirius Black, the man who -"

"Sirius is okay?" Hermione interrupted. It felt like a fist had clenched around her heart and stopped it from beating.

"He's fine. Annoyingly fine, actually. Was it Bella who killed him?"

Hermione nodded and the fist relinquished its grip.

"So that's why you wanted me to get rid of her, to save poor Harry even more heartbreak?"

"Why did you stun Cedric?" Hermione asked quietly. "Why didn't you just kill him?"

"Would you like me to set things right? I can summon him here now, if you like."

"No!" Hermione said quickly. "I just meant, why did you decide to stun him rather than kill him?"

"You said no students, remember?" Tom explained with a shrug.

Hermione frowned. "I said no teachers but you still killed Dumbledore."

"You didn't say no headteachers."

"I hate you sometimes," she whispered her fingers trembling with anger. He had barely changed and he infuriated her. Change was what she had wanted him to do least of all, but now she just felt sick being in his presence. Perhaps she was finally having a rational reaction to him. It was about time, she thought bitterly.

"No you don't, you adore me," he was smirking again.

"Tom!" the voice was strong and sure. The crowd shifted slightly to allow the speaker through.

Hermione looked up and saw that Harry had made his way through the throng of students. Ron was following close behind him.

"Ah, Potter, didn't your muggle family ever tell you that lateness is impolite? We've all been gathered here for quite a while. You should thank Hermione, by the way. She saved your dear Godfather's pathetic little life. Say thank you like a good boy."

"Tom, stop it," Hermione hissed.

Harry said nothing, but the look he gave Hermione expressed more thanks than words ever could. Thanks for letting him have something that vaguely resembled a father figure, a family of his own.

Ron's face was twisted into a grimace behind Harry. It was only seconds before it happened that she noticed he had the book in his arms and a basilisk fang clutched in his right hand. Tom noticed too, for as soon as Ron had raised his arm and started plunging the fang downwards, he shot a spell towards him. The book and fang iced over instantly with thick ice which looked as crystal clear as glass and Ron dropped them.

Tom summoned them with a frantic wave of his wand.

The fang was frozen to the book, resting on its tip. Tom was muttering, his face panic stricken as he examined it.

"Maybe it's for the best," Hermione said gently. "I don't think horcruxes are -"

"It's not the horcrux I'm worried about," Tom hissed. "How do you feel?"

"I...fine," Hermione replied, confused.

"Positive?" Tom asked, not taking his eyes off of the book.

"Yeah...Tom, what's -"

"Leave." Harry had approached while Tom had been looking at the book. "Get out of here and don't come back."

"Shut up Potter, there are more important things going on right now."

"Like what?"

"Like the fact that your idiotic sidekick almost killed Hermione," Tom growled.

"What?" Harry and Hermione asked in unison.

"This book has got her blood in its pages. It's what makes her able to travel between my past and her present..." Tom bit his lip as he held the book up to look at it from a different angle. "I can't tell if the fang's gone in and I can't risk unfreezing it in case I've frozen the venom..." he rubbed the side of his face anxiously.

"Her blood's in that book? So it's like a horcrux?" Harry asked, seemingly forgetting the fact that a thousand people were crowded into the great hall for what was supposed to be Tom's greatest victory.

"Don't be stupid, Potter. It's the soul that creates a horcrux, not the blood. Her blood merely connects us. But if the venom's got in there and it's poisoned her blood..."

"But the blood's just in the book, it's not in her veins, Ron didn't stab her with the fang," Harry reasoned.

"Her blood is her blood no matter where it is."

Hermione winced as her hand smarted. She looked at it to find the source of the pain.

"Tom," she said quietly.

"Hang on," he was chipping carefully away at some of the ice around the fang to get a better view.

"Tom," Hermione spoke louder this time.

"What?" he asked, finally looking up.

"My hand's bleeding," she held up her palm and showed him the small pool of blood that had formed there for no obvious reason. "Same place you cut me."

Tom's face lost the little colour it normally carried. He tore the fang from the book, ice shattering over him as he did so.

"How do you feel?" he demanded.

"Fine," Hermione answered. "I mean, a little tired but I've had a long day."

"Tired?" Tom repeated, his eyes wide and panicky. He winced suddenly, though apparently he had no reason to.

"What's wrong?" Hermione asked.

"It doesn't matter."

"Yes it does," Hermione persisted. "What's wrong?"

"Wormtail! Here, now!" Tom called sharply across the hall.

Wormtail came scuttling over and Hermione saw Harry stiffen, the hand which was holding his wand was shaking, clearly itching to turn it on the man who had as good as killed his parents.

"Kill him," Tom said to Hermione.

"Master! No! Please!" Wormtail dropped to his knees and began begging. Hermione felt sick.

"I'm not going to kill him, what good would that do?"

"If you kill him then we can make a horcrux for you," Tom said in a rush. "that way, if we can't manage to stop it I can give you your body back afterwards."

"No Tom! I'm not going to kill somebody else to save my own life!"

"Why not?"

Hermione's heart broke when she saw that he was genuinely confused as to why she wouldn't. How the hell had he missed out on the basic lesson that killing people was wrong?

"Do it Hermione, he's barely human anyway."

Hermione turned to look at Harry. "I'm not going to kill anybody, Harry! And I'm most certainly not going to use dark magic to save my own life! Am I the only one with any morals around here?"

"Yes, yes," Tom replied impatiently, "we all know you're sickeningly wholesome, but Hermione, there's only one cure and I don't see any phoenixes around here. Do you?"

"You don't even know if the venom got in," she lied as she tried to ignore the pain which was slowly creeping over her.

"Yes, I do," Tom hissed.

"How?" Hermione demanded.

"Because I can feel my soul burning," Tom said through gritted teeth. "I can feel it being torn into a thousand pieces and every single one of those pieces being torn into a thousand pieces, too.

"Can't you fix it?" Hermione asked quietly.

"It doesn't matter," Tom replied, picking up the book again even though they both knew he could do nothing.

"Yes it does, it's your soul!"

"It's not as important as your life! Why the hell did you give the book to the witless wonder? What did you possibly think you could achieve by doing that? Get out of the way, Wormtail!" Tom aimed a sharp kick at Wormtail but he dodged it and scuttled away, back to the group of death eaters who had accompanied Tom on his journey to the castle.

Hermione didn't answer him. She was concentrating on showing no sign of pain even though it felt like her skin was on fire. She could feel the progression of the venom around her body, most painful at her hand, but not having reached the left side of her body yet.

"Is it hurting?" Harry asked.

Hermione glanced up at him and after a moment he nodded, understanding her look to mean yes. A sudden numbness washed over her and she felt as though her mind was separate from her body.

"Better?" Tom asked.

"A little," Hermione replied.

"Hermione," Harry said, "Fawkes will come."

"Don't be stupid, Potter. Fawkes is Dumbledore's pet and since when has Dumbledore ever done me any favours?"

"How is it doing you a favour?" Harry asked. "It's Hermione's life he'll be saving, not yours."

"She is the only person that actually means anything to me," Tom replied, his attention completely on the book, determined not to look at Harry or Hermione. "Dumbledore would love to deprive me of anything that makes me happy."

"Trust you to leave the nicest thing you've ever said about me until I'm about to die," Hermione smiled vaguely, Tom's numbing charm seemed to have numbed her mind slightly as well; everything was starting to become fuzzy.

"You're not dying. Hermione, please, just make the horcrux."

"No," her voice sounded distant to her own ears, but still firm, and the light was beginning to hurt her eyes.

Tom hissed impatiently.

"I'm tired," Hermione said. "And it hurts." She laid down on her side on the table and closed her eyes, though this did nothing to ease the pain. It made her feel slightly less sick, but that had been the least of her worries.

"No, Hermione sit up," Harry's voice was soft and distant, like he was speaking to her through a pillow.

Numbness engulfed her again, but only for a brief moment before the pain returned.

"It's not working," she moaned.

"What can we do?"

"I'm thinking, Potter."

"Think faster!"

"Severus! Are there any apothecaries that keep a stock of phoenix tears?"

"No, my Lord, waiting lists are months long."

Tom growled.

"Fawkes will come," even though his voice sounded muffled, Hermione could hear the doubt in Harry's tone. "He will come. Hermione's always been loyal to Dumbledore, he won't punish her for what you've done. He won't."

"Potter we can't afford to sit around and wait for Dumbledore's stupid pet bird when he's not even going to -"

Hermione could hear music. It felt like a lullaby, gently edging her closer and closer towards sleep. It felt like home, and it felt like everything was okay.

"-come," Tom finished, and the shock was evident in his voice.

Hermione felt warmth nearby and was almost able to smile.

"It's not Fawkes," Hermione barely heard Harry's whisper.

"Does it matter?"

"Look at the eyes."

"Potter for Merlin's sake! She's dying! Get the stupid bird to save her!"

"I don't think he's just going to save her. He wants something in return."

"What? How can you know that?"

"He seems like he wants to make a deal."

"Here's the deal. If she dies, so does every other miserable person in this hall. Horrible, painful deaths. If she dies -"

Hermione tried to protest but the only sound she could muster was a low moan.

"That's not the kind of deal he wants."

Tom huffed loudly.

"I think he'll save her if you stop."

The voices were becoming fainter but it was still easy to distinguish between the two. Hermione just wished she could open her eyes and see what was happening.

"Stop what?"

"Everything."

"I thought you said he wasn't going to punish her for what I've done?"

"She's not going to want you if you carry on, anyway. She's too good."

"It didn't matter to her before."

"Tom, she's dying. If she really matters to you, isn't it worth it?"

"She's supposed to be your friend, Potter! How can you let her life hang in the balance like this?"

"What's your answer, Tom?"

The answer was lost to the darkness.