Burn With Me

30 something and nowhere.

That's what she was.

A war heroine.

A wife.

An ex-wife.

A nine to five Ministry worker who was good enough to run for Minister for Magic, have all the appropriately patronizing, supportive campaigns behind her and still "fail to win" the peoples' vote.

Why?

Why, she'd asked.

The answers she was given were flimsy and hardly believable.

Too young.

She was hardly the youngest to run for it.

Inexperienced.

She won the bloody WAR for them.

While Harry was busy being broken and confused by fate and Ron foolhardy and headstrong by blood, she was busy winning-the-bleeding-war.

Who researched the horcruxes?

Who figured out the patterns?

Who figured out how to destroy the damnedable things?

Inexperienced her arse.

Just too 'unqualified'.

Read: a Muggle-born.

They enjoyed the integration of certain aspects of Muggle culture - ahem, divorce - but they weren't okay with one of the very same leading the wizarding world.

Right. Fine. Splendid.

They wanted the freedom to change and have mixed opinions without the commitment of having to; all of them did.

Purebloods weren't the thing anymore. Halves and Muggle-borns made up so much of the population, yet there was something about the latter that still set the others on edge. Her kind wasn't 'unclean', per se...just, apparently, 'unqualified'.

You want the choice but you don't want to HAVE to.

Well, Hermione thought, I gave you the choice. And I can take it away.

. . . . .

"I shall not be bound as a slave to the likes of you."

"Then you can go back beyond the Veil. Shall I escort you myself? Shall I push you through on my own? Perhaps something more dramatic. You enjoy dramatics, don't you?"

She turned to him and clasped a hand around the locket she had repaired and turned into a phylactery with the ash from what had remained of his diary. Her fingers clenched around the pendant, wand hand turned to him, to send him to his hands and knees before her.

"I will dissolve you, Tom Riddle, cell by cell in the most excruciating way possible. I will send you back to that void in which you say you entertained. Not burning in the fires of Hell, nor singing songs with the bloody Angels. I will unmake you just as easily as I have brought you to stand again before me!"

The man - less snake than man this time thanks to the objects with which she used to restore him - growled venomously at her. "That is NOT my name!"

And she laughed, then turned her wrist more harshly, sending his face to the tile of the Department of Mysteries with the hiss of her spell. "Your name is what I wish it to be!"

The Dark Lord struggled against her magic. His strength was still returning and he knew, by the feel of it, that he would be at his full power soon enough, yet the compulsion of this witch's spell was woven through the threads of his very being as it existed again on this plane. He grit his pointed teeth, growled and spat at her, lashing out as he could, as often as he was able, yet all it resulted in was her tinkling laughter.

At last, the press of her pulled away and he was able to push himself shakily to his hands and knees.

Spitting out a clump of blood, he swiped a pale forearm across his lips and turned gleaming red eyes up to the woman who was now coming to kneel with him.

"I've a proposition for you...Tom."

He sneered and let his eyes rove over her deceptively dainty figure. "And I have a choice, my Lady?" He spat the last as distastefully as he could muster.

"Not truly, no. But I rather dislike the idea of owning slaves."

Her hand came out to press lightly over his chest and she smirked; it was such a wicked thing it made his brows go up with interest.

"What then?" he asked, eyes narrowed as she ran her hand up the thick muscle of his neck, fingertips dipping into the dark waves tinted with gray that had been born to this incarnation of his body.

"A partnership."

He scoffed.

"As much of one as we can have, anyway. You could be my new beau if you would like. Husband if you prefer."

"I would kill you," he said flatly, nodding to her neck. "If your witchcraft did not forcibly stay my hand, I would kill you where you stand."

She laughed again, chocolate eyes twinkling with mischief. "See? Already thinking like a married man."

At that, he did crack a smile and in every way it was as wicked as the one she sported.

"Perhaps..." He allowed himself to drink her in, shoving his hatred for the Mudblood witch that would command him aside in favor of having a more...objective look at her.

His hand swept up her neck, fingers sliding around it as if to crush the wind from those pipes and, instead, offering a languid caress, his sharpened nails tickling at her flesh. He watched his captor shiver at his touch as though she'd not been handled in such a way in ages...perhaps ever.

He could work with this.

He would.

"I would ask one question to my Lady."

Hermione cracked open her eyes and smiled a lazy, catlike smile. "Just the one?"

"What brings such a...powerful witch to these dark halls?"

She preened under his assessment and let both of her hands smooth over his chest, fixing her attention back on him fully. She rose as high as she could on her knees before him in an attempt to match his eye level. Draping her arms over his shoulders, she leaned in ever so slowly, close enough to brush her nose over the tip of his.

"Hell hath no fury," she muttered, glancing at his lips that were no longer thin pieces of flesh stretched hideously over jagged teeth. "I gave away my childhood for these ungrateful sods and I am repaid as a second-class citizen. I risked my life time and time again to save the world as we know it from a tyrannical mad man."

He afforded her a smile caught halfway between a smirk and a sneer.

"I gave my life for this world and they disrespect my sacrifice. So..." She breathed out a sigh and was close enough that it tickled over his mouth and cheeks. "I shall take it back."

His eyes darkened, throat bobbed in excitement, and his pointed tongue came out to whet his lips. "You would give it to me, lay it before me-"

She scoffed. "It is not mine to give." Hermione paused to admire his so strange combination of handsome and monstrous features that her spell brought about before leaning in to brush her lips against his. "This time, however, I shall merely not stand in your way." She smirked and breathed out a soft, "My Lord."

The Dark Lord practically snarled before lunging forward and capturing her mouth. He swallowed down her surprised squeak and tangled a hand in her hair. When she gasped, he seized the opportunity to taste her, to trail his tongue past the sensitive flesh of her lips and send pleasure filled chills spiking through her limbs. He moved her to her back, pressed her to the cold tile beneath them both until she was sprawled beneath him, all beautiful wickedness, cleverness, and spite.

"Your friends...your family...your peers," he muttered, swiftly divesting her of her more cumbersome robes. "They would burn you for this-"

Hermione lifted her hips to help along his frantic removal of her clothes. Her own hands slipped beneath the tattered robes she'd found for his new body and practically tore them from his lean, pale flesh. Her breath was coming in shorter pants as he repositioned himself above her, one of those dangerously taloned hands coming to encircle her neck again as firmly as the magic would allow.

"Gone," she said huskily. "What I had of these things left me long ago. All that remains are the wretches that shun me with their polite smiles and tipped caps. They would burn me for bringing back the Dark Lord Voldemort...and they can burn with me for all I give a damn."

He shuddered at his name and title, covering her completely with his reborn body once again. He stole her lips in another fevered kiss and sank into her in one firm thrust that had her arched and keening under him. He swallowed those sounds, too. Her whimpers, her pleas, her gasps for more, he devoured them, he devoured her. With every pump of his hips, he groaned and writhed into the sharp drags of her nails ripping open long lines of flesh in his back.

She would burn.

They would burn.

He muttered promises into her sweat dampened hair that they would all burn.

A/N: Random Volmione's while out basking in the sun? Sure!