Author's Note: I am Tomione Trash.

Discaimer: All properties are owned by JK Rowling, and I am receiving no monetary compensation for this work of fiction.

Chapter One: Of Horcruxes and Potions

Hermione Granger gazed at the objects before her with a pensive look on her face, nervously chewing her lip. Concealed behind the thick, warded glass sat all five of Lord Voldemort's horcruxes, destroyed and shattered. Yet, she could still feel them she thought, the sinister magic just beyond the glass and whispering to her. Subconsciously, she raised a hand to her collar bone, feeling her skin where once sat the locket, her heart heavy with the memory of it.

"Is this...suitable to you, Miss Granger?" Adesa Gabler asked. The older witch looked down at Hermione from behind her horn-rimmed glasses, her voice a thick Germanic accent.

Hermione swallowed hard, hoping she didn't look as uneasy as she felt. "Yes, I think it will be alright," she said, attempting a wavering smile as she looked back up to her new boss, placing a hand over the glass and flinching when she felt the cold surface.

Adesa looked relieved. "Thank goodness. No one else wanted to study them, you see. I think they're a little bit frightened of them, especially so soon after the war," she said, sighing as she pushed some loose strands of gray hair behind her ear.

"That's silly. They're inactive, and the horcrux has been destroyed. I only hope there will be at least enough magic in them for me to write up a proper report for you," Hermione said, following as her boss left the case and walked over to a messy desk, books and parchment strewn over it. The war had ended several months ago, and the world had just begun to push forward from where it stood still in time, grieving and rebuilding cast into the background as life did as it often does and kept moving. There had been months spent in mourning, in volunteering to raise the walls of Hogwarts back from where they fell. But there was a time limit on everything, a statute of limitations to how long someone could stand still in the face of tragedy, and everyone was forced to resume their lives once more, with heavier hearts and somber faces.

Hermione, Ron and Harry had then had the world handed to them, regaled as heroes and honored as such. They were already written into history books, had chocolate frogs dedicated to them, and were offered nearly any job they wanted. Ron and Harry had immediately accepted jobs in the Auror Department of the Ministry, while Hermione had taken a position with the Unspeakables, eager to dedicate her days to learning all she could. To unfolding magic before her eyes in ways no one had previously done before, creating knowledge just as quickly as she could consume it.

"Well, just because they're inactive does not mean that they aren't dangerous," Adesa confessed, rubbing the back of her neck as Hermione narrowed her eyes at her. Chewing her lip nervously, the older witch sighed. "I hope this doesn't deter you away from working with them, as our understanding on horcruxes is incredibly limited and we look forward to this opportunity to learn more. But I have done a general overview of them and..."

Hermione rose a brow. "Yes..?"

"You can't destroy a soul, Hermione. You can destroy a body, you can steal a soul, and you can destroy a soul receptacle," Adesa started, waving her hand in the direction of the horcruxes behind them as if in example. "But you can't destroy a soul."

"So you mean parts of his soul are still...in there?" she asked, turning around and eyeing the seemingly innocent objects with a new consideration, her brown eyes wide. She suddenly felt as though she were being watched, as if Tom Riddle and Lord Voldemort and all the other fragmented parts of him were observing her from where they were confined. Trapped, in the diadem, the goblet, beckoning her to them in the hopes to be free. She pulled her robes closer to her, feeling as if the air grew several degrees colder.

"I wouldn't worry about it too much!" Adesa hastily added, drawing Hermione's attention back to her stretched smile. "There is no magic attached to them anymore. Think of it like this: The objects represent a room, and when You-Know-Who turned them into horcruxes, he added a door into that room, and then trapped his soul into that room until he needed them. But when they were destroyed- by you, Potter and the others- the door was removed. And there's no way to put it back."

She nodded, unable to keep her eyes away from the horcruxes now, knowing that they were indeed alive, if not barely, with the soul of a dead man. A chill went through her. "So, does that mean that when someone creates a horcrux, their soul will never be restored, even in death?" she asked. She supposed that, if that were the case, then perhaps Tom Riddle did succeed in his attempt to conquer Death. He would spend eternity trapped between the planes, not whole enough for Heaven or Hell, for life or death. He would not die, but he would not live. And that was one of the more horrifying fates she had ever imagined.

Adesa grinned, shuffling everything atop the desk into messy, contained piles, clearing off a workable surface. "Those are the questions we hope you can answer for us." She stepped back then, making a broad gesture to the room they stood in- a cluttered and suffocating library with more books than it could hold, objects littered randomly about that Hermione recognized as being tools of exploring Dark Magic. "You will have this entire room at your disposal for your studies, as well as the larger library on Floor Y, and the offices on Floors R and X. If you feel these are not adequate tools, speak with me and I will do everything I can to provide you with what you need."

With a firm nod, Adesa made her way over to the small door, expertly hidden between two over-sized bookshelves and calendars and parchments taped to the wood of it. Her hand on the doorknob, she turned to Hermione with a serious expression on her face as she added soberly, "And remember the oath you signed when you accepted this job. Your work is private, and isn't to be shared with anyone but myself when you are ready to report your findings. Make use of your concealing charms, and know that there will be severe repercussions should you fail to adequately ward your studies. Understood?"

"Yes."

With that, she nodded. "Thank you, if not for you no one would study these, and we would never truly know how horcruxes work. Good Luck, Miss Granger." And with that, she left, closing the door behind her with a firm click. Hermione could feel the automatic wards take over the room, barring entrance to prying eyes, and she was alone.

Looking to the horcruxes once more with reserved interest, her brows knitted, she thought, 'Well, not entirely.'

-xXx-

'I wonder,' Hermione thought idly as she pulled the tattered journal towards her, her hand running along the stiff and soiled pages of the diary. Dried ink had hardened it, and she had to dig her nails into the pages and pry them apart forcibly, some of them ripping with the action, in order to separate them. When she finally found a page that was mostly clean- towards the back and with only a a small tear in it from the basilisk fang- she smoothed the spine of the book out before her and grabbed a quill.

Twirling it in between her fingers for a second, breathing deeply as she steeled her resolve and her suddenly pounding heart, she said aloud to the empty room, "The horcrux is inactive. Even if it works, he can't possess me." The affirmation hanging in the air, she dipped the quill into the ink pot and began to write on the page.

'Hello? Tom Riddle?'

She sat back, waiting with baited breath as her eyes remained focused on the page. She exhaled, rather sharply, when the ink began to dissolve, vanishing into the crisp page of the journal. After several seconds, another message appeared in its place, the handwriting different from her own. It was neater, and slanted somewhat heavily to the side with sharp and spindly peaks and valleys.

'Hello, Hermione Granger.'

Sucking in her lower lip, she slammed the journal shut, her hand remaining on the leather cover as though it would burst open of its own accord. Her heart pounded hard in her chest, thumping against her rib cage and threatening to break free. She was trembling, suddenly terrifyingly aware that Tom Riddle still resided within the pages of the journal, and he knew who she was.

She stood from the desk, walking away from it and the diary as she ran a hand through her wild curls, catching her fingers in several knots as she did so. "The horcrux is inactive, and even though it worked, he can't possess me," she said once more, her voice wavering over the words. Somehow, they had less weight to them, dissipating from the room as soon as she said them.

Eyeing the diary from across the room, she wondered what exactly Tom Riddle could see, what he was aware of. A chill ran through her, as though she had ducked her head into the Great Lake, and she looked around the room, a part of her silly enough to think that the Slytherin boy might be standing in the corner, shrouded in the shadows.

He wasn't though, she knew, letting out a breath of relief. Because he was forever entombed into the diary, the destroyed and poisoned pages of it his final resting place.

-xXx-

She squealed, quite loudly, from where she sat in the library, earning herself several pointed glares and one rudely whispered 'shhh!'. But she paid no mind, ignoring them as she stormed through with the book still raised in front of her face, her nose practically buried into the spine of it. The tome was torn and tattered and nearly in pieces, certain pages slipping from the binding of it and the silver lettering on the cover was peeling away. The ink was smeared and smudged, and some spaces were unreadable, and yet she had found something, something she could use.

On the page that she was currently reading, even as she ran through the corridors of the lower levels to the Ministry of Magic, was a large header.

'Preparing a Draught of Dark Magic Revelation: How to use elixirs to reveal any spells or affects of an unseemly nature that might have been placed on an object, as well as to expel any curses that may afflict it.'

Her footsteps echoed off the floors in the empty space as she rounded the corner, descending down a flight of stairs to where the offices of the personal Potions Masters the Ministry kept on hand were working. Just a brief overview told her that the potion was far more complex than she had the talent or the time to brew, and she would need the expertise of another. She certainly didn't want to mess this up, as this could be the answer to learning the secrets of Voldemort's horcruxes.

'Then I can move on to another task. Something more pleasant that doesn't deal with handling the trapped souls of a megalomaniac serial killer,' she thought in disdain, rapping her small fist sharply on a door to the first office she saw.

-xXx-

She ignored the diary for several weeks after her first time writing in it, instead focusing her studies on the other horcruxes, moving onto the goblet while she waited for her potion to be completed. The resurrection stone had been lost when Harry dropped it in the forest, pushed deep into the soft earth. She was informed that efforts were being made to retrieve it, but there had been no such luck as of yet, and so only the clumsy setting of the ring remained, the band uneven and pushed too far in on one side. She could not study it as such, and had decided to bypass it, as well as the locket, feeling rather uneasy about it after her time camping through the Forest of Dean with it. So she settled on the goblet next, and had it resting on her lap, the tip of her wand balanced on the polished surface.

Silver light wrapped around the goblet, sparking in response as it seemed to deflect off it. She sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose.

Three weeks, and nothing worked. She had nothing to report on, nothing to deliver. Every spell and charm accomplished nothing, and the only horcrux that responded to any stimulation was the diary, which had sat locked within the warded case since she first put her quill to it.

Standing from her seat, she placed the goblet down on the desk and began pacing around the room, absentmindedly pulling on her curls. Three weeks, and she had discovered nothing new about this piece of dark magic, nothing beyond what Adesa had told her when she was assigned the task. She was already halfway through her deadline, and nothing.

Pausing in her lap around the cramped office, she looked back to the case, her eyes landing on the diary from where it lay on the satin lining. The bulge from where the fang pierced through puckering up from the leather binding. She bit her lip as she folded her arms across her chest, her brown eyes staring at the diary accusingly. He seemed to beckon her, whispering for her to move closer, to caress through the pages once more. Raising her hand to her mouth, she chewed idly on her thumb.

The diary was the only horcrux that would respond to anything at the moment. Every spell and charm she had used hitherto had no effect on the other ones, and she was at a loss.

Before she could talk herself out of it, she took several long strides across the room and towards the case, pulling the diary out from within it. Gripping tight onto it and ignoring the rush of adrenaline that came over her, she sat back down at her desk, opening the journal back to the page she had written on before. It was empty.

Dipping her quill into the inkwell, she hovered it over the page for only a second before she began to write, her heart in her throat.

'How do you know who I am? Can you see me?'

She pulled her arm back, worrying her lip between her teeth, as she watched the words melt away, absorbing into page. It didn't take long for him to respond, the writing the same as before.

'Why do you wish to know?'

She groaned, rolling her eyes in annoyance. He would not make this easy on her, she knew, but at this point, he was all she had.

'One does not often have books know them by name.'

The words lingered for only a moment before disappearing into the parchment, replaced with Riddle's own neat scrawl.

'This isn't just a book, Miss Granger.'

She hesitated before adding her next words.

'No, it isn't. It's a horcrux.'

'It was a horcrux. Now it's just a prison.'

'And does this prison have windows? How can you see me?'

It took some time for him to respond, her words had long since dissolved into the parchment, and for a moment she thought he might not write back, that he had grown tired of her questions. But just as she sighed and was ready to close it shut, his neat and spirally handwriting filled the page.

'If you'd like, I can show you, Miss Granger.'

She knew that he had no power over her, that the horcrux had been destroyed and any magic he might have held as one had been vanished with it. But it was unnerving, and though he was just taunting her, she snapped the book close, shaking her head. "That's enough of that," she said to the empty- yes, it was empty!- room before rising from her chair and dropping the diary in the case with the other horcruxes. She closed the glass lid down on it and turned away, deciding now would be an excellent time to break for lunch.

-xXx-

Two more weeks went by, and though she did not make anymore contact with Tom Riddle, she did try various spells on the diary. Her research progressed- slowly, but it did progress, and she had a least some things to report to Adesa when the time would come.

Stifling a yawn with her hand, she reached across the desk to to the potion vial sitting on the corner of it, examining the pale green liquid as it sloshed along the sides of it. The Potion Master who had brewed it for her had brought it to her when she was on her break, had given her the instructions to administer it effectively, as well as what should happen if it worked.

Lowering it into her palm, she uncorked it and transfigured the cork top into a dropper, dipping it into the vial and filling the tube with some of the elixir. Bringing it over to the diary, she carefully emptied some of it onto the crevice of the puncture mark- one, two, three drops slipping into the hole and sizzling with the contact, a small string of smoke rising from it as it seared through the leather like acid.

She waited for five minutes for something to happen, but nothing did, the sound of burning eventually fading as the potion dried. She sighed in frustration as she pulled her journal with her scrawled notes on it closer to her and added some more, yawning once more. She was exhausted, having barely gotten any sleep the past several nights. Her and Ron had been constantly going at it, fighting with the other more frequently than they did get along. Perhaps she could lie down, just for moment. She wasn't getting anywhere anyway, how much difference would it make if she toiled away half an hour?

Rising from her desk, she slipped the diary back into the case and settled herself down on the couch after moving the books that had been on the cushions to a nearby table. She was asleep within seconds, her soft snores filling the room as the diary hummed from where it sat in the case she had forgotten to close.

-xXx-

He was alive, for the first time in an eternity he was alive. His hands tingled with the sensation of pins and needles, feeling ebbing away the numbness he had long since grown accustomed to. His head was fuzzy and heavy, his neck felt too weak to support the sudden weight of it. He had been so used to nothing- to feeling nothing, to being nothing, to existing in nothing. He had forgotten what it was like to have clothes against your skin, strands of hair in front of your face. The simple sensations that are ignored do to how often they occur were all at once new and oh so familiar to him. His heart as it pressed against his chest, his blood thrumming through his veins.

He did not know exactly how it came to be this way- from nothing to something, from locked away in shadows to suddenly bathed in light, but he was grateful to whatever came along to rescue him from the darkness. To the room he suddenly found himself standing in, the cramped and cluttered room without any windows but still filled with more warmth and light than he had known. The warmth! He had forgotten that too, the feeling of being frozen and chilled so that your skin was freckled with goosebumps. And to feel so hot that a thick layer of sweat would coat your brow, and the smallest article of clothing felt suffocating.

He felt so alive, so marvelously human- a feeling he did not think he would cherish but oh how he did! He would never underestimate this, this feeling of being such a limited, and mortal human. Because he was alive!

Tom Riddle pressed a hand to his chest, gently caressing the soft fabric of the wool jumper, and sighed in contentedness as he felt his heart pulse below his splayed fingers. His chest rose with each inhalation, and fell with each exhalation, and his nostrils flared. It was overwhelming, to have existed in sensory deprivation for so long, to suddenly be filled with it, engulfed in the world he had left beyond.

Slowly, when his heartbeat began to settle, he allowed himself to look around, to study the room he had gloriously materialized in. There was a desk in the center of it, though it was less of a desk and more of shelf. There were various books and parchments littering the surface, and only a small square directly in front of the chair that was clear. There was a half empty vial of a green potion among the mess, and some quills, but other than that, nothing of real interest.

Walking pass, he turned to his side at the soft sound of breathing. A young woman was sleeping on the couch shoved between two bookshelves- there were more bookshelves than walls in this room- and her long brown hair spilled over the side of the sofa in messy, frizzy curls. She was pretty, with pale skin that glowed in the candlelight, and a dusting of freckles over her nose and the top of her cheeks. This must be her, the one and only witch he had spoken to in a decade, since his diary had fallen into the hands of Ginny Weasley, and then Harry Potter. This was Hermione Granger.

He smiled down at her, his cheeks feeling unnaturally stiff as they pulled taut with it. Where there was a witch, there was a wand.

Being ever so careful to not disturb her, knowing the longer she slept the better, he began shuffling around her, reaching out with gentle hands. Long, tapered fingers grazed over her sleeping form, searching for any pocket she may keep a wand in. He finally found it, tucked into her back pocket with the handle poking out.

Of all the sensations he felt recently, that was the best. To wrap his fingers around the hilt of a wand, to feel the core of it tap into his own magic, even if it did resist a little to him. He was not its master, and it seemed to sense this, vibrating in his palm in protest. But it would obey him nonetheless, least long enough for it to do what he required of it.

He was startled from his thoughts by the sound of a loud gasp, of springs creaking loudly as weight shifted. Looking up from the wand in his hand, he met the wide and frightened eyes of Hermione Granger, a honey-colored brown with flecks of gold. Her mouth was slacked open, and he could see her nostrils flare as she attempted to control her breathing, to not look quite as afraid as he was certain she felt.

"Who are you? What are you doing with my wand? This is a private office," she said, all of it in one rushed voice so the words sounded strung together. She was standing now, moving closer to him with her chin raised and her hands balled into fists at her side. Her hair seemed to spark with her rage, her mortification at having been walked in on so rudely, and he could feel the magic coming from her, felt the wand in his hand fight against him and yearn to be with its rightful owner. Instead, he trained it on her, the tip of it resting just above her collarbone, where the dip of it left a soft square of skin.

"You don't remember me, Miss Granger? You seemed to know who I was when you were writing to me in my diary," he said, his voice low and threatening. He could see the exact moment when realization snapped into her, when her eyes widened even more and her slim eyebrows rose to her hairline.

She shook her head, the curls swaying around her. "No. That's impossible, the horcrux was destroyed!" she said, her voice wavering over the words, betraying her confidence. He did not know who she thought she was convincing, him or herself, but she looked around her, bewildered, before he eyes settled on something behind him.

And then she dove, agile and quick with reflexes he would not admit to being impressed by, and she grabbed hold of one of the many candelabras around the space. Her hand gripped tight around the tarnished brass base of it, and then rose it high above her head, bringing it back down in one quick movement.

But Tom sidestepped away from her, chuckling tauntingly as he never once moved the wand from its fixated point on her. "Brightest witch of her age and doesn't even use wandless magic? Are you a witch or not?" he jeered at her, his upper lip rising in a snarl. Before she could react, he yelled out, his voice booming in the room, "AVADA KEDAVRA!"

-xXx-

Author's Note: Follow me on Tumblr for answers to questions, requests, and sneak peaks to various works of mine, at reneehartblog dot tumblr dot com. I hope you all enjoyed this.