the magpie // tomione

epilogue.

"If you are silent about your pain, they'll kill you and say you enjoyed it."

— Zora Neale Hurston

GRANGER'S GOT TO GO!

Wizengamot members Bronwen Yaxley and Octavius Selwyn submitted a petition Friday morning asking for the resignation of Minister of Magic Hermione Granger. Yaxley and Selwyn cite Minister Granger's radical and exclusionary policies, a dereliction of duties, and counterproductive priorities.

The Office of the Minister has yet to respond. An anonymous redheaded source called the petition "bloody malarkey."

With a frown Hermione sets down the Daily Prophet. She takes a sip of her morning coffee, letting the rare bit of sunlight warm her face. The garden is in full bloom now, Draco having figured out the charms that failed to keep the roses alive on the Malfoy estate.

From the corner of her eye she sees a small green snake slithering beneath the camellia. Abandoning her coffee on the patio table she kneels beside the snake, picking it up in her hand, letting it curl around her fingers. The spindly creature lays its docile head on her thumb, looking up at her with its tiny black eyes and curving smile.

"Are you a little spy?" Hermione asks with an arched brow, the snake opening its mouth slightly as if to answer.

"You never held me quite so fondly, Madam Minister."

The sudden voice startles her, and she whips her head to look at Tom Riddle standing with his hands in his pockets. He walks near the table, peering at the newspaper headline. He takes the coffee from the table and takes a sip, still holding the mug as he moves toward her.

"I miss the mustache," she says with a smile, scanning his bare face. The tiny snake slithers suspiciously down from her hand and back into the camellias. A spy, indeed. "No longer concerned about being found out?"

"Anyone who has seen this face is dead," Tom shrugs, taking another sip of coffee.

"You sound like Medusa," Hermione muses, taking the coffee from him. There's a smudge of lipstick on the corner of his mouth, residue from the cup. She reaches without thinking and wipes away the red with her thumb. Tom doesn't flinch, his lips quirking upward. He grabs her wrist softly, moving away her hand. She tugs from his grip and looks away.

"Where's the old ball and chain?"

" My husband is in Paris with his mother, you know that." She responds tartly. "That's why you're standing so confidently in my garden, stealing my morning coffee."

He gives her a coquettish sort of smile, his glance going back toward the paper on the table.

"Yaxley and Selwyn are making a fuss again?" She nods. "Shall I take care of that for you, my dear?"

"Yes," she takes the coffee from him, finishing it with one resolute swallow. "Yes, I think you may have to."

When Tom Riddle walked into her office at the Ministry one day she realized that whatever plan he had been working on for the last five years had begun.

He appeared almost as exactly as she remembered him, but aged by a few years and wearing a pair of horn rimmed glasses and a neatly trimmed mustache. It was an almost comical, out-dated attempt at a disguise, exactly what she should expect out of a man who had stepped out of 1945. His disguise would be perfect if only he wore a bowler hat atop his head.

"I could find a bowler hat," he said, blank expression cracking only slightly. "Leaving your mind defenseless is not like you, Hermione."

"May I help you?" Hermione glared, setting down her quill. She did not reach for her wand, but was confident she could blast him through the door without it (after the portrait had arrived at her home she had been relentlessly training in wandless, wordless magic).