"Are you bleeding?" "We don't have time to deal with it. I'll be fine."

Time Turners were nasty business, Hermione was sure of it now. It had been a mistake to carry her own broken version from her third year out of a heavy sense of nostalgia for simpler times. For when the worst thing she had to do was help Harry help Sirius. It felt like such a long time ago-and she supposed it had been a long time ago-but at the same time, it felt like not a day had passed since.

It had been one hundred and twenty-three days since she had been met with a curse that she didn't know the name of in the final battle.

One hundred and twenty three days since she'd been flung backward in the same courtyard she'd woken up in, with time turner warped against her chest, the fragments of it digging into her chest.

The memory surged up, reaching out to sink into her, and she remembered cracking one eye open, and croaking, "Is it over?"

The head boy had looked at her oddly, tilted his head to the side as if he couldn't quite figure her out, and she'd known from the second he introduced himself that she'd have been better off if she were dead.

Tom Riddle.

The source of all the pain she'd been through had stood over her, lips turned up into a smile, but that smile hadn't reached his eyes. As the days wore on-in light of Professor Dumbledore and Headmaster Dippet announcing a new student, taking refuge from the war-she had come to realize that Riddle had everyone fooled.

Except for her, that was.

The tragedy was that he so obviously knew it.

oOo

She tried not to stand out. Earning his curiosity was not something she wanted to do, but Hermione could see that she'd already done so merely by existing. She was a puzzle.

And he liked to know things.

Sharing nearly every class with him didn't make it any less difficult to avoid him, and at the end of a Defence lesson, Hermione knew that it was of little use.

Abraxas Malfoy wasn't nearly as terrible as his pointy-faced grandson, but he was better with a wand, and a brutal hex had splintered the protective shield. It snaked through, and met the inside of her forearm as she turned.

While Professor Merrythought said nothing, it was obvious the spell was dark in nature, and the cursed wound on her arm opened it.

Beneath the thick fabric of her sleeve, she could feel it open, and knew it had began to bleed. However, when everyone else began to shuffle out, Riddle made his way to her, brows drawn in concern.

It was bloody terrifying for it to look genuine.

"Are you alright?"

Hermione didn't spare him a glance as she stepped around him, but fingers closed around her arm and she paused. "Let me go," she squeezed her eyes shut. "Please."

He ignored her, and stepped in front of her before raising her opposite arm.

"Don't," she hissed, but he rolled up her sleeve anyway and there it was.

There was an unmistakable shakiness in his tone when his murmured, "You're bleeding."

"We don't have time to deal with this. The next class will be coming soon, and I'll be fine."

He laid his hand over the wound, flexing his fingers, and just as she opened her mouth to snap at him, the pain vanished as quickly as it had come.

"That was certainly dark magic."

His hand remained, warm.

Hermione swallowed.

He left her there, but at the edge of the classroom, Tom stopped. "If you wanted to remove it entirely…"

Then he really did leave her, and she wasn't sure what to think, but Hermione knew her heart was pounding.