To the Victors

Part 59

Hermione had various chains from little necklaces she'd collected over the years. Narcissa included nearly all her jewelry when she sent Hermione her trunk at the start of the year. She slipped the pendant off one dainty, golden chain, and slipped the ring over it to secure around her throat.

It was icy cold, but warmed fast where it hung against her chest. It felt friendly, almost, like she was welcoming someone she knew and liked.

True to her promise, she pulled her journal from its hiding place between her mattresses and opened it up.

I've been thinking, and while I want to be yours, long to be yours, I am afraid. I know you're a darker wizard than who I thought you were, but how dark are you, Tom? Are you a dark lord like Grindewald? He's the reason I am where I am, stuck as lesser in this world that favors the pure.

You are handsome and intelligent and charming, but those traits are as dangerous as they are desirable in the wrong person. I have trusted you since I was eleven years old and first showed up in your classroom. How could I not? You are a Hogwarts professor, and I am your student.

However, that was several years ago. I once trusted Master Lucius as well— she crossed out 'master' and added his last name— but he became a deranged monster by the end of my time with him.

Not that I think you are a monster; I could never. You've taught me how to defend myself against dark beasts and curses and more.

But the idea of using certain dark curses makes something in me recoil. Must I learn these things beyond the theoretical aspects? Why?

Will you expect me to cast them on others?

I worry. How many times have you used the Unforgivables? On second thought, I'd rather not know.

Help me understand, Tom.

Yours,

Hermione

She was his and she could not deny it, but she was herself and her own first. It was something she remembered vaguely from her own mother, who had been a staunch supporter of women's rights.

Helen had told her daughter to never allow a boy to make her feel less. Not at school, nor the playground, nor anywhere else. She was not less than anyone, nor would she ever belong to someone else regardless of whether she married.

Those ideas were at odds with the way Hermione had been forced to live her life and the ideals the Wizarding world had foisted upon her, but she still believed she wasn't, couldn't be less. One day, she would prove it to them all.

She sighed as she laid in bed with one hand curled around the heavy black stone ring and the other one her stomach. The burgundy canopy yawned back at her, black velvet shadows in the dim light of her bluebell firelight. She should extinguish it but didn't want to quite yet.

She never knew what it meant that her light was blue. The color of her wisp light was not indication of temperature, as it was more a faint coolness than true cold, and certainly nothing like blue fire the scientific way. The fire in the Slytherin common room was supposedly green, like the flash of fire when Floo Powder activated, but—

Wait. How did she know that?

She frowned and thought back to a dream she'd once had, one that had turned rather torrid. Hermione's cheeks flushed with the memory of it and the ring seemed to grow hot in her grasp.

How silly, getting embarrassed about a dream.

Only... it had felt so real.

She yawned back at the shadows of the room and snuggled into her covers. It was so cozy here in the tower despite winter's bite outside. The elves made sure students returned from classes to stoked fires and turned down covers.