As Tom Riddle is hunting for the diadem in Albania, he stumbles across a strange artifact he's never seen before. Hermione Granger is a lowly Ministry employee on vacation in the mountains of Albania. She's found the perfect cabin for a week of rela...
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A/N: RachaelLA26 was the beta extraordinaire! If you liked this (or hated it) please let me know about it in a review! I make a new mood board for each chapter of this story, find them on my Tumblr crochetawayhpff, my facebook Shan Crochetaway, or on the AO3 or Wattpad versions.
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Chapter 11: Treachery
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February 2003
Hermione's Flat
Diagon Alley, London, England
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Tom returned from an evening spent at Theo's to find Hermione surrounded by books. It was a sight he was becoming more and more used to. She was a very thorough researcher and at the moment, her mind was still on sex magic, which only pleased Tom. It wasn't just about the sex, which was the best he'd ever had, but it was about the single-minded way Hermione dove into the subject and wanted to know and try everything. It was the way he felt he had seduced her to seeing how magic couldn't so easily be divided into Light and Dark magic. If he could convince Hermione, a consummate Gryffindor most of the time, he had hopes that he could eventually convince the rest of wizarding society.
Dark magic was only Dark because it was more powerful. And leaders of societies had always been terrified of things they didn't understand and that they thought or perceived as more powerful than them. Tom broke that mold. He wanted to lead his society to a place where they regularly used those more powerful magics because they were better. Tom saw Dark magic like a new technology, even though it wasn't new at all. Dark magic was often much older than magic classified as Light, and Tom knew that if more people practiced Dark magic, then it would only get better. More powerful magic, that was practiced enough to be improved upon? That's where Tom wanted to see wizarding Britain go.
"So, you never did tell me your plans?" Hermione said without looking up from her parchment and quill.
Tom laughed. "I guess I haven't. It's nothing concrete really. I want to build a better world without becoming like the snake-face that I used to be." Tom curled his lip. He'd seen a pensieve memory of what he had looked like earlier that night and it made his stomach roll at the thought. He settled himself onto the floor next to her, idly flipping through her pile of books.
Hermione glanced up at him sharply. "How do you know what you looked like?"
"Draco shared a pensieve with me tonight," Tom said solemnly.
Hermione's face scrunched and she sighed. "Draco probably had it as bad as we ever did during the war."
"What do you mean?" Tom asked. He liked the fact that she sympathized with Draco. He was sure part of it was because Hermione seemed to care about everyone, but also that perhaps she wasn't so opposed to some of his deeper schemes. The ones he hadn't told her about.
