Invictus [Tom Riddle / Tomione]

Prelude to a Kiss

Every loneliness is a pinnacle - Ayn Rand

Hermione woke in Godric's Hollow on Monday morning, feeling much more chipper than she had last week. Her Sunday afternoon training session with Dumbledore and Lucky had gone very well, and Albus had elected that they could move on to training in other forms of magic, provided that Hermione continued to practice her occlumency skills with her own house elf, Piksy.

After their lesson in his office at Hogwarts, Hermione had left the castle and strode out to the Black Lake, spread out like a rippling dark mirror reflecting the mountains and the forest. She stared out at the quidditch pitch, marveling that so little had truly changed since her time, so many years in the future. Hermione sprawled out onto the grass, flung out like a cross on the warm earth, feeling empty and flattened under the weight of the sun.

She thought of Harry and Ron, and the Weasleys, and her parents. She thought of Ginny. What had they done when they discovered Hermione was gone? Had Ron mourned her? Had he wept for her? Had they felt abandoned by her?

Hermione knew that she was not the same person after the war. She'd known it before she had even scrawled that cursed incantation across the parchment and journeyed back in time.

She thought of her strange encounter with Madame Violette in The Leaky Cauldron, and the cards that still burned in her beaded bag. The weight of fate began to press upon her like a force, threatening to stifle her. It didn't matter that the object had been created by Voldemort himself. Because the object had not been used as he had intended, that much was clear. There was a reason that Hermione had come across it. The universe, the gods, fate, or some higher power had sent her here, to this time. There was something she was to accomplish. She had thought that her purpose was clear: kill Voldemort, and undermine the evil seeds he had planted, the disastrous movement he had created. But now, Hermione felt that there was something much bigger than even Voldemort. She felt a quickening around herself, the aid of some amorphous magical energy that propelled her.

She thought of the cards.

The Tower ... a violent upheaval.

Death ... the ending of a cycle, and the start of something new.

The Five of Wands ... conflict and competition.

The Lovers and The Two of Cups ... soulmates.

Judgement ... metamorphosis. A spiritual journey to one's higher self.

The cards troubled Hermione. She had been ripped from her fate in one life and been thrust into an alternate destiny, and already, after only three months, she felt her old life begin to fade... a distant memory. Unreachable. Unattainable. Best forgotten.

She missed them all terribly. She missed Luna, George, and Mrs. Weasley's cooking. She missed the familiarity of having people who truly knew and loved her.

Here, nobody truly knew her.

It was both a blessing and a curse.

The better people know you, the more they put you in a box. Here, Hermione felt invincible. She felt as though she were able to reach her full potential, to gain power, and influence. People respected her here because they didn't know her. They wouldn't label her as a swot or a novelty (her magic is remarkable for a muggle-born). She wasn't thrown into the box of Harry and Ron's "motherly" friend, the one with the brains, always with her nose in a book, a walking encyclopedia, an insufferable know-it-all.

Here, Hermione was a force. She possessed ideas and vision . She was influential; or rather, she would be one day. People saw her differently.

Tom Riddle saw her. She didn't exactly know what he saw when he looked at her, but every time he gazed at her with those obsidian eyes, she felt seen . Understood. Desired , even.