Flight of the Stars

Chapter Six

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, I never have, and I never will. That's rather sad.

o-0-o

Hermione was uncharacteristically quiet all through lunch, and thankfully, since she had only known her lunch mates for a brief amount of time, no one noticed anything off and carried on their conversations as normal. But she was worried, although she wouldn't admit it to anyone, much less why.

She had just threatened Riddle.

She had come here to blend in, kill him, and change the future. But she was beginning to realize that that was far more difficult than she had initially thought. For one thing, Riddle was annoyingly observant. He was able to take note of the things and events surrounding him and make connections that most others wouldn't piece together. A lot of it was her fault as well, she was now realizing. She had drawn too much attention to herself. She had incorrectly assumed that her place among his friends (or servants, or followers, or whatever he thought of them as) had made her trustworthy, and so had acted foolishly in Potions, shown herself to be more knowledgeable than he, and had attracted his attention.

She believed he now even considered her as a threat.

Hermione suddenly thought of something that would also hinder her plans – she had come here to kill him, but she didn't know how. She knew she wasn't willing to use the Killing Curse (and she also knew that she probably wouldn't get a chance to, anyway), but even besides that, he still had his Horcrux, the ring. She needed to destroy that first, but she had no means to.

She was, in short, in a bit of a predicament.

She was deep in thought all the way through lunch and during the walk to the Transfiguration classroom, when the students' sudden stopping made her look up. Everyone was congregated near the door, with no one going in.

"I heard he's going to assign us partners," she heard someone whisper. Hermione wondered who "he" was, when the classroom door opened and out walked Dumbledore.

She grinned in delight – she had never been taught by Dumbledore, and this was sure to be an interesting experience.

He called their names one at a time, and they entered in the order in which they were called, standing together at the back of the classroom. Then Dumbledore began to read out from another list of names, two at a time, and quite randomly, it seemed, and Hermione learned that the person she was paired with would be her partner for the rest of the year.

She waited anxiously for her name to be called, praying silently and slightly desperately that she wouldn't be paired with one name in particular. Although, with her luck, of course, it would –

"Granger, Riddle, come sit at table 12."

She almost stormed out of the classroom right then and there, but settled for internally screaming every swear she could think up at the top of her head as she walked slowly to her death.

Merlin's beard, Merlin's pants, Merlin's saggy left – she shouldn't say that one – I mean, what are the odds? How on earth does Fate hate me this much? What have I done to deserve this?

She set her bag onto the floor and sat down with a slight huff. Glancing to the left, in the seat next to hers, she saw that Riddle looked about just as happy. Their eyes met, and he seemed to convey, with the venomous way in which he was glaring at her, the command that this would never be discussed and that they would ignore each other as much as possible.

She agreed, just as silently.

Even though she loathed her partner (really, what were the odds that she would get paired up with the future Lord Voldemort?), she quickly realized that Dumbledore's classes were a lot of fun. He was incredibly interactive with his students, and rather than telling them what they needed to know, he allowed them to come to the conclusion themselves. In fact, Riddle seemed to be the only student who wasn't enjoying himself. But, she supposed, that was probably because of his past history with the man, from what Harry had told her.