This groveling apology for the hiatus would be longer, but I'm on my work computer and y'all I gotta get out of here.

Eternal thanks to reviewers:

LuluDeer19, Kathy376fun, isabella, Kurai Ummei, Guest, thebluefeather, anoushkadas161, Dumbledoor, GruesomeEmpire, Guest, fauxromanov, veronica-s, Wandering the Arid Sea, LionsWing, Lobeira, anon, Rhaenys, anon, sunneedee, peanutbutterj3lly, aucleldu, FemmeFerret, smithback, Guest, the lovely Nongarak, Charmice, ohmyfish, UniquelyMi, Nytefyre, Ijoan, renyun, love-warmth-life, Besoin, StalkingMalfoy, FaeBreeze, mh21, Quinn Spencer, lizzywithfire, Ella Palladino, BlackShirt16, TheLightningScar, the beautiful & perfect Steph, angrypixels, EriEka127, Anom, Ember Nickel, AvoidedIsland, 013bela, FerrumVigro, and the love of my life probably, Mel.

Love you lots.

speech

Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.

- Buddha

Before she could even get her feet back under her, Alen had taken the double of the Timeglass from Hermione's pocket and placed it in his own.

Hermione stumbled back upright, trying not to cry. "How did you find us?" she said, her voice quaking.

Alen took a step toward her, and she moved back from him. He stopped advancing, his face pained.

They stood on the bank of the Thames, though the river was clear like she'd never seen it and sparkling in an almost alarmingly picturesque fashion. They'd been a hundred universes removed, and now, just like that, they were back. How the hell had he found them? He'd mentioned tracking before, but how could he possibly be powerful enough to have tracked them that far? They'd been helplessly lost – and worse, they'd been so close to getting somewhere with the Timeglass. Hermione was sure it was just a problem with Tom's mindset; that was all – damn it, just one more day and maybe they could have found their way home …

"How did you find us?" she demanded again, her voice rising to a hysterical shriek. Her words rang off a large metal device that moved over the river, occasionally taking in a huge gulp of water and spitting it out again.

Alen folded his arms. He looked marginally unimpressed, but mostly, he looked like he was waiting for something. "July 1st, 2102," he murmured.

Hang on. Hermione's rage spun on its edge, turning to a mixture of shock and realization. Now that she understood the theory, now that they were back on Earth and within range of her abilities, she could just take herself and Tom back to their own times.

Glancing at Alen, she struggled to keep her face blank. She couldn't betray any of this to him. All she needed was a spare moment, now. All she needed was the Timeglass …

Still, it was hard to imagine that – after Alen had found them on an asteroid floating a million universes away – he wouldn't be able to find them again. Even if they had the Timeglass and he didn't. She felt like fate just wouldn't let him leave them the hell alone.

Somewhere, a great clock struck three, and then another Hermione walked out of the air.

Seeing her was akin to being punched in the chest. All the wind went out of Hermione's lungs, and she gaped.

Back in 2036, the old version of herself, willingly sought out, had been at least somewhat manageable. This, though? The sight of this Hermione, her double but for the bushy curtain of hair falling about the other's shoulders, felt so wrong Hermione thought she might shiver right out of her own skin.

The other Hermione lifted her hand and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. Hermione's hand twitched at her side as if to mirror the motion.

Other-Hermione turned to Hermione, and she felt herself pinned beneath the weight of her own gaze.

"Don't leave," Other-Hermione said, with a tone of near reluctance.

"What?" Hermione said. She had to leave. She had to return to her time, restore normalcy to her world –

And yet there was another feeling in her chest. Was that relief? Relief at being told by a greater power that there was a reason to stay?

Hermione bit back panic. She couldn't be relieved. She had to want to go back; she had to go back.

"Don't," Other-Hermione repeated. "There's a time for everything."

On the bank beside her, Tom was staring at the double with narrowed eyes. Alen, on the other hand, had quite a different look on his face, something hungry and frankly unnerving.

Other-Hermione hurried to Hermione's side, reached into her pocket, and palmed something to Hermione. She murmured so that only the pair of them could hear. "Here: located at great risk."

Hermione tucked the object into her pocket, peeking down for an instant. In her hand was a vial filled with silvery fluid that could only be a memory.

"I'll be taking it back, then," Other-Hermione said, now approaching Alen with hand outstretched.

He hesitated, his hand straying toward his pocket. "How do I know you won't just …"

"You don't," Other-Hermione said. "You don't know and you can't know. You're going to have to trust me."

A grim look settled atop Alen's features. He levitated the second Timeglass out of his pocket and dropped it into Hermione's hand. She vanished with an earsplitting bang.

Hermione spent the next day – or, rather, period of twenty-four hours, which was divided up over a century – in a state of numb, miserable disbelief. It unsettled Tom to see her like this. He'd seen her exhausted to the point of collapse, but he had never seen her look so drained. He blamed Bansherwold for the change and resented him for eight thousand other reasons besides.

Bansherwold seemed to have changed, too, in the time they'd left. His jocular, almost cavalier way of speaking to them had disappeared. Now he hardly spoke at all, and Riddle sometimes saw a gleam of desperation in the man's eyes. His explanation of their travel was unusually terse and lacked its usual self-satisfied quality: "This will hurt less in smaller increments," Bansherwold said. "Just keep quiet and let me handle it."

Bansherwold took the sullen Tom and the mute Hermione through time a few years at a go. They slipped through alleyways in the urban sprawl of California and dimly lit restaurants in Africa; they caught news reports as they went. Bansherwold explained, sometimes, exactly what was happening.

The start of the 2100s was demarcated by a series of hideous anti-Muggle hate crimes that racked up tensions between two worlds, worlds that had only started to merge with partial success by the turn of the century. Anti-wizard technology experiments progressed secretly in Muggle government strongholds around the world, "just in case," and whenever one of these experiments was discovered, outrage erupted. Mutual distrust became the norm.

Then, in 2128, a young Squib in Turkey named Alev Akar started a series of nonviolent protests to raise awareness of anti-Wizard and anti-Muggle crimes alike. Alev was just twenty-one years old. She was small, dark, and plain, with hair coiled around her head in a thick braid. Her following was instantaneous, international, and massive enough to terrify governments around the world. Two hundred and fifty million people shot sparks off the surface of the planet for her first proclaimed ışık günde, the Day of Light. Wizards shot sparks from their wands; Muggles shot fireworks. The result was stunning, when witnessed over satellite camera. The next year, Alev's celebration had triple that number.

The year after that, she was murdered, and the world went quiet, and what had been mutual distrust capitulated into apologies from both worlds. Integration efforts were renewed.

2140 passed, and 2150. Names started to blur together, even in Riddle's mind, and he had always prided himself on never forgetting a name or a face. The world started repeating itself.

A young, precocious man in 2153 attacked Los Angeles, set up a stronghold with a band of bloodthirsty followers, and subjugated half the continent, bent on world domination. But he was stopped. Memorials were had for his victims. He was labeled an atrocity, a lunatic, and turned into the butt of comedians' jokes within the decade.

It happened again in 2175, in Norway.

And again in 2183, in Ghana.

This embarrassed Riddle, for some reason.

2194. Bansherwold dragged them through the Western American Territories, which were now largely airborne. The ancient slums of earthbound San Francisco were buried in a haze of dust, mostly forgotten, picked over by the starving, the broken, the desperate. Colonies of Lethifolds crept through the subways; Streelers slimed up the streets at will. Impoverished Muggles fought them off with guns they'd fashioned from magic neutralizers and electric rifles.

High above, though, glassy vehicles slid through transparent tubes, and housing complexes like trees flowered across the sky. Solar panels glossed over with – bizarrely – Doxy venom kept them humming, floating, soaring.

2202. The trio finally stopped, back in London at last.

Diagon Alley looked so different, it made Riddle feel like they'd entered yet another bizarro alternate universe. Everywhere, wizards walked around with strange glowing headsets, or tapped their wands on their delicate car-pods, which revved and hovered away into the night. They were dressed in Muggle clothes – weird synthetic materials – or in robes, weird synthetic robes. Or in robes over Muggle clothes, which seemed almost perverse to Riddle, deeply wrong. God knew if some of them were Muggles – you couldn't even tell, anymore, could you?

The buildings themselves were a strange hodgepodge of the familiar and the new: some were still thatched, quaint, cobblestoned – but others were liberally interspersed with sleek glass walls, engraved with tiny metallic scripts; their interiors, round minimalist arenas hung with brooms that barely looked like broomsticks at all. Some were just dark oak rods, perfectly straight, without tails, which seemed a little hilarious to Riddle.

On one glass storefront, an advertisement for the 473rd Quidditch World Cup flickered in and out. Riddle heard a dead-sounding laugh from Hermione, and glanced over at her.

"Of all the things to last this long," she mumbled. "Quidditch."

"People do love their flashy little displays," Riddle said. "It's all just a wand-measuring contest, in the end."

Hermione cleared her throat, her cheeks turning slightly pink.

Bansherwold stopped in front of the Leaky Cauldron. Riddle was relieved to see that this place, at least, looked virtually identical to the version he was familiar with. The fact that he was relieved at the sight of a filthy little hole-in-the-wall pub deflated something in his chest.

He wondered exactly how much pride he had left to deflate, exactly.

As they entered the inn, the bartender – a burly man with a tattoo of a dragon curled over his forehead – raised a hand. "Welcome back, Al!" he called, over the heads of a few late-afternoon patrons.

Bansherwold's entire body had relaxed, and his face had taken on an easy grin, turning him into someone distinctly younger-looking. He waved back. "Smacked to be back, Rufus. Three rooms, yeah? Got two swims here."

Riddle traded an instinctive, alarmed look with Hermione. Bansherwold had altered his voice completely, speaking in some bizarre accent, vowels flattened and consonants thick.

But as Riddle listened more closely, he noticed that all the conversations floating around him were taking place in voices laden with the same accent. The London accent, he realized, had completely morphed over the years.

"Who are the two ye, then?" said Rufus as the trio approached the bar. "Drink?"

"No, we're –" Riddle started, but Hermione blurted,

"Yes. Something large and potent. Please."

Riddle looked down at her. The frazzled sort of desperation on her face was exquisite. He scoffed. It didn't sound quite as derisive as he'd expected it to.

Rufus' eyebrows waggled. "'Sa tongue ye got there. Which end ye from?"

Riddle looked to Bansherwold, hoping for a translation, as Rufus poured Hermione a frighteningly tall drink.

"They slimmed in from Iceland, 9 this morning," Bansherwold said smoothly. "My tab for the drinks, Rufus, I'll lift it. And I'd have a pref to head up now, if possible."

Rufus nodded and tossed a set of keys to Bansherwold over Riddle's head. As Bansherwold stalked off to the staircase, Rufus slid the drink over to Hermione, who took a huge gulp and promptly had an impressive coughing fit.

Looking at Rufus, Riddle realized that smoke was rising out of the nostrils of the dragon tattooed on the barman's forehead. Even as he watched, the dragon blinked a few times and raised its black head. It looked like a Hungarian Horntail.

"Watching my ridger?" Rufus said to Riddle, his green eyes dancing. "What's it doing, then?"

Riddle could hardly form words. "Walking down the side of your face," he managed. The magic involved in that was utterly ridiculous. The partial animation of his followers' Dark Marks had been the most potent charm, affixed to ink tinted with Boomslang venom. This – this was as if somebody had created a portrait out of this man's skin. "You can't … feel it move?"

"Never seen a ridger before?" Rufus waggled his eyebrows. "No. Don't feel 'em, don't know what they're up to. They cost bit of a penny, though, right penny."

The dragon slunk beneath the man's collar and disappeared. A moment later, a bloom of fire spread down the bartender's bicep and dissipated around his elbow.

"Here," the bartender said, setting an equally large drink in front of Riddle. "I'll leave ye two."

And as he did, Hermione gave Riddle another frazzled look that made his lips twitch in amusement.

"You should stop drinking that," he said drily.

"Oh, please," Hermione replied. She glanced over at the bartender, flicked her wand at the glass, and Vanished the contents. "I just need an excuse to stay in the bathroom for an unusually long time tonight."

"What? Why?"

Hermione extracted a vial filled with swirling silver liquid from her pocket. Riddle instinctively reached for it, but she held it away.

"Your older self gave that to you," he guessed. "What is it?"

"That's what I need to see." Hermione grimaced. "Unfortunately, I don't exactly have a Pensieve handy, so I thought I'd create a rudimentary one by inscribing the appropriate runes on the bathroom sink. Of course, there's the matter of …"

As she outlined her plan, Riddle found himself not particularly focusing on the details. He found himself looking at her, instead. The way her brows quirked inward as she examined every potential pitfall, the way her lips pursed in-between sentences and dissatisfactions, the slight glint in her eye when she reached her smug conclusion.

He found it gratifying to sit there and simply listen to her, he realized. It was a pleasure to hear her thoughts spilling out. It was a pleasure for her to share them with him.

When had that happened? When had she turned from a nemesis to a nuisance to a partner-in-defiance to a constant to this?

He did not even know, really, what this was, but he knew that there was a strange instinct in his chest for him to take a large swallow of that stiff drink in front of him and kiss her until the burn of that alcohol was all she could taste.

"I can help you with the runes," Riddle said idly, as if nothing at all had passed through his mind.

"Oh," Hermione said. She bit her lip, thought for a second, and said, "Yes, that'll work nicely. This needs to be as expeditious and convincing as possible, and if I really were violently drunk and throwing up, I'd need somebody to be plying me with water, anyway."

"You say this as if you have experience," Riddle said.

"You say that as if you think I don't," she sniffed, raising one eyebrow at him. A smirk tugged at a corner of his mouth, as if a string had connected their expressions.

She looked at him for a second too long, grabbed his drink, and took a swallow of it. Then she poured a liberal amount over her shirt. It smelled shockingly strong, hitting Riddle's nostrils as if somebody had flicked him hard on the bridge of the nose.

Vanishing the rest, she stood and tucked the vial back into her pocket. "That should do," she said, looking down at herself. With one hand, she tousled her hair, although it was still so short that the tousling had hardly any effect. "Do I look like a stumbling drunk yet?"

Riddle eyed her critically. "Your eyes aren't glassy enough."

She sighed. "Well, I'll keep them mostly shut. I suppose we should stay down here a bit longer, for it to be realistic."

"Long enough," Riddle said, "for me to have a drink or two, I think." He raised his hand to signal the bartender.

"Hundreds of years of magical theory," Bansherwold said from somewhere above Hermione, "and they still haven't brewed a liquor that won't make people stop drinking before they turn into miserable wrecks. Wonderful to know."

Hermione wondered if he was faking the irritation in his voice; if he knew she was actually completely sober. Either way, it wasn't actually enjoyable, hunching over the toilet and making herself retch, so she hoped he left soon.

"No need for you to concern yourself," said Riddle's voice. "I'll see to her."

"That makes it sound like you're going to dispose of her," said Bansherwold.

"I had ample time to do that," said Riddle acidly, "and I think of the two of us, only one is likely to bring about her demise."

There was a long pause. Then the door banged shut. Hermione straightened up, wiping her mouth with a grimace. "Well," she said, and then caught sight of the pensive look on Riddle's face. "What?"

"That was an interesting glare he just gave me," Riddle murmured. "I wonder …"

"What?" Hermione said.

"Nothing."

"Oh, don't give me that. Tell me." Hermione flicked her wand, casting Muffliato on the door. "If you have a theory, I want to hear it."

"He murdered your older self," Riddle said slowly. "I never particularly stopped to ask why, as there are a million reasons to need someone disposed of, but … what was his, exactly?"

"I assumed it was for intimidation's sake," Hermione said, "or, on the opposite end of the spectrum, to save me from what was coming, but …" She frowned. Come to think of it, the question was valid. Why had he murdered her in 2036? She would have seen the future already. She would have been well-prepared for the atrocities of the Crown, the wizard camps. She would have known exactly when to hide, or to join forces with Merlin's Order.

"Let's make the Pensieve," she decided, "and we can go back. Re-examine the memory. Maybe there's something we didn't know."

Riddle nodded. They set about sealing and setting the sink, which was chipped, filthy porcelain. Hermione etched a sequence of runes into its brim.

When all was said and done, the creation of a Pensieve was not a particularly strenuous task. Hermione had read a history of a man who had made a Pensieve out of the ocean itself, carving the requisite runes into the bedrock of some deep ocean trench. He had cast half his memories out to sea, and supposedly, one could still find bits of his memories floating out on the open ocean, silvery glints lost and diluted to time. She privately thought the book was mostly fairy tale, but it was an interesting concept, at least.

Hermione straightened up, plugged the sink, and took the vial of memory out of her pocket. "This first," she said.

"I'm coming in too," Riddle said.

Hermione looked at him for a moment. Presumably, the memory was something from the future, something that could help unravel where they were going. Bansherwold's plan. … It couldn't hurt for Riddle to know, could it? Her future self hadn't told her to keep it secret from him, in any case.

Besides, she had already trusted him with her life about a thousand times, as they'd been blasted through universe after treacherous universe. This felt almost paltry in comparison.

Hermione took his hand and ducked her head into the sink. The crown of her head made contact with the tiny amount of liquid, and then they were spinning, spinning, and falling.

They'd been here before.

This was familiar. Hermione shook her head and looked at Tom. How was this right?

This wasn't the future. They stood in the grand setting of the House of Lords, watching Tom battle the elder Gurdy Bansherwold. Chaos stormed around them, curses being flung left and right. Muggles screaming and storming back from the duel.

But –

This wasn't where Hermione had been standing. This wasn't Hermione's memory.

Of course it wasn't. Located at great risk, the other Hermione had said. She'd stolen it, but from – ?

Hermione looked to her left. Alen stood inches from her, his wand poised to strike.

It was his memory she'd taken. Alen's own memory of murdering himself.

"AVADA –" Tom roared, but Alen's mouth had already spat the words.

"Avada Kedavra."

The jet of green light rushed toward Gurdy Bansherwold. The old man flung his wand out, conjured a shield so blindingly bright Hermione shut her eyes.

As she closed her eyes, she heard a thought. Distinctly, overhead, it rang out:

Scapan anwaz.

When she opened her eyes again, Gurdy Bansherwold was dead on the ground. Then the world dissolved and reformed around them. The memory was replaying.

"What …" she said. Riddle, on her right, only shook his head. His eyebrows were deeply creased. He took out his wand and flicked it, but nothing happened.

"What were you trying to –"

"I was trying to make a barrier. We need shade," he said.

"To see what happens," Hermione said slowly, looking back at the duel.

"Yes. Keep your eyes open."

She nodded.

"Avada Kedavra," said Bansherwold.

The light was so bright, Hermione had to hold her eyes open with her fingers. They watered and burned. She let out an agonized sound.

But she saw. The elder Bansherwold's figure twisted inside the shield he had created. The Avada – had it missed, vanished? Had it connected? She could scarcely see – and the deafening roar was blocking out all sound, but for a split second, the figure at the center of the light seemed to ripple,as if his clothes had turned empty for just a moment, fluttering –

Scapan anwaz, said the great overhead voice.

Bansherwold's nonverbal spell, a tiny yellow point of light, rushed into the inferno.

And it was over. The whole thing had taken maybe three seconds. When the light cleared, Bansherwold was lying on the ground.

Hermione turned to Tom. "Did you see –"

"Yes, I – but I've never heard of that spell," Riddle said, striding across the room.

"Scapan anwaz. Saxon derivation," Hermione said slowly. "Old potions, high charms, or complex transfiguration. That's all that would need …"

Then, with a great lurch in her stomach, she remembered Barty Crouch, Jr. having transformed his father's corpse into a bone.

"What?" Riddle demanded, examining her stricken expression. "What is it?"

"He's not dead. He didn't die," Hermione said, her mind churning. "But why … we haven't seen him since then, where could he possibly have … why would he have …"

"That corpse was a transfiguration?" Riddle said. "What is the point of that?"

"Besides briefly making himself – and us – national heroes?" Hermione said. "I haven't the foggiest."

She and Riddle looked at each other for a few minutes as the scene replayed over and over in the background. Their eyes dared each other to figure it out, to understand.

Where had he gone?

Where had he sent himself?

Why did it matter? Why would he want them to think he was dead?

They stumbled out of the Pensieve just in time to hear a knock on the door. Hermione quickly flicked her wand at the door, removing the Muffliato.

"Oi! When ye goin' to be out, next fuckin' year?" said a gruff voice.

"My friend's ill; use the one on the first floor," Riddle snapped back.

Hermione made a few retching sounds for effect, but once she heard the footsteps retreating, she stopped and gave Riddle an odd look.

"What?" he said.

"'My friend,' is it?" she said slowly.

"Well, what else was I supposed to say?" he sniffed, literally looking down his nose at her.

She snorted. It was almost funny when he slipped back under that mask, becoming a caricature of himself again. Pretending to be the same person from 1945.

He looked away as if he'd heard the thought. "Just … take the memory out, would you, silly girl."

Hermione chuckled. "You realize it makes you sound about seventy when you say that silly girl rubbish?" she said, placing her wandtip to her temple. Closing her eyes, she drew the strand of memory out of her head and placed it in the basin.

"We're both over two hundred at this point, so seventy makes me look positively youthful," Riddle said.

She slipped her arm into his and ignored how he stiffened slightly at her touch. Then she leaned over, and they were sliding back into the memory of her death.

"You're displeased with this future, I daresay," Past-Tom was saying. "As I would be."

"Be quiet. Your postulates have no place here," Past-Hermione snapped.

"That was polite," Tom remarked.

"Well, I was right," Hermione mumbled, hardly paying attention. She was examining the flat. The well-swept hearth; the photographs on the mantel; the Gryffindor-red rug. Anything strange, anything out of place …

The elder Hermione, now that Hermione was examining her so closely, seemed the tiniest bit uncomfortable. She was tucking her graying hair back too often; she was twisting her watch and shifting in her chair every couple of minutes. Of course, discomfort was natural – she was going to die, for goodness' sake, and the old woman knew it all too well.

Then a thought struck Hermione: if Bansherwold hadn't killed himself, who was to say he hadn't also faked his murder of her?

But she forced herself to swallow her excitement at the possibility. She'd seen it happen. She'd seen the curse connect directly with her body, no shields or bright light or trickery. There was no coming back from the Avada Kedavra.

Finally, the elder Hermione glanced at the clock. 12:47.

"Oh, dear. I really don't have much time, do I?"

Hermione shook her head, gritting her teeth. Why hadn't she said anything? Why hadn't she given them some clue?

"Please don't be upset or rash," the elder Hermione said. "You'll have to go in a few minutes, regardless. But know that, at this point in my life, I am happy, and I am satisfied."

Bansherwold stepped out into the apartment, and Hermione the Elder's eyes glowed with pain, understanding, resignation. "Alengurd. Alen. Here again, are you?"

And right before the curse: I've long forgiven you."

Tom and Hermione watched it again, and again, and again, but neither of them could understand.

Hermione scrubbed out the runes, repairing the basin of the sink. She recollected her own memory and let Bansherwold's coil back into its vial.

The day behind them felt unimaginably long. They had been awake for God knew how many hours, and the years had piled up on them. Hermione trudged out of the bathroom with her thoughts railing against the inside of her head.

As they walked back to their rooms, Bansherwold emerged from his. Hermione instantly adjusted her walk, staggering slightly, letting her eyes droop so much, they were nearly shut. She staggered with a bit too much actual weight behind the lurch, but suddenly an arm was around her waist, holding her upright.

"Is she better?" Bansherwold asked Riddle, as Hermione let her body sag against Riddle's side.

"Marginally," Riddle replied. "It was not a delightful experience."

"How chivalrous of you to endure it," Bansherwold said, and Hermione knew she wasn't imagining the sardonic edge to his voice.

Riddle's fingers tightened slightly on her waist, and Hermione's heart did something strange and inappropriate in her chest.

"Well, one of us needs to have some sense of decency, since the only one we had between the three of us is currently out of commission," Riddle said smoothly.

A pause.

"Good night," said Bansherwold. He shut his door with what sounded like unnecessary force.

Hermione opened her eyes and straightened her stained shirt. She moved slightly away from Riddle, but his hand didn't leave her side. Feeling oddly outside herself, she looked down at his hand, resting there on her waist, and then back up at him. He was scrutinizing her with transparent intensity.

She remembered where they had last slept. On a barren white chip of a planet, the tiniest prop in the vast dark opera house of space. She had awoken with his hand touching the back of her neck, her cheek pressed to his forearm. Her hand resting lightly on his chest.

There was some sort of disassociation, she thought, going on here. It was not a good one. She had lost the sight of Voldemort in him. The age-old, instinctive repulsion of looking at the face of a young Voldemort was long-gone; now she could hardly even picture Riddle in Hogwarts robes, let alone picture him calling a Basilisk or being Head Boy. It seemed nonsensical.

There was a disconnect between what she knew to be true and what she felt to be true. Part of her wondered if these two truths could exist simultaneously, or if they were mutually exclusive.

She blinked a few times. As her thoughts disengaged, Hermione looked at him standing there with eyes that felt new. In concrete terms, he was just a young man. Still far too thin. Cheekbones like cliffs. Dark hair and brown eyes, alert and living brown eyes.

His hand shifted on her waist, moving down to rest on her hip, and a pulse broke out racing in her stomach. Energy lit up her back, a shiver that darted out to her fingertips. Her mind went blank, every thought replaced by one word: shit, shit, shit shit shit –

He opened the door to her room. She went inside, and he followed.

He shut the door behind them. Hermione stood facing him, her arms folded. He took one step toward her. Just one – so close so quickly. She felt his body already, a phantom presence. His strangely familiar body that had been glued to her through time, through universe after universe. A perfectly postured line.

She looked up at his face. It was dark in the room, except for the neon glow coming in from outside, from a sign across the street. Apothecary, it said, in blinking orange. The harsh color lit Tom's face up like a warning sign. It glazed his eyes with an orange streak, making him look crazed, almost feverish. He placed his hands on her shoulders and the weight of them startled her, somehow. He leaned down slightly, but she didn't close her eyes. She placed her hands on his waist, slipped her thumb under the fabric of his shirt, felt his skin warm under her fingertip. She didn't know what else to do except to hold on.

Riddle pinned her back against the door. Their bodies were sealed together, all of a sudden, and she was sure he would be able to feel her pulse drumming in every inch of her. Where his hips touched her. Where his thighs pressed hers. Where his chest pushed against hers.

His eyes were practically black, now that they had turned away from the light. They were unblinking, unwavering, devouring her. He was so close, now; his lips were a centimeter from hers, and there – a centimeter away, with the space between their lips alight and aching – he hesitated.

Hermione reached up; her shaky fingers trailed the curve of his jaw. He closed his eyes and let out a breath; Hermione's lips tingled under that faint brush of air. She kept examining, kept studying. Where his tangled lashes met the top of his cheek, it looked like stitches. Where his brow was creased, the crevice was a cavern in the smoothness of his skin.

She could see every tiny line in his skin and every pore in his nose. She could feel his fingers tightening on her shoulders, his whole self pressing her back into the door. She could practically taste him already.

What she couldn't do was breathe.

Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living.

- Soren Kierkegaard

right, so, er ... right.

reviews are a lot better than sex in my experience

let's just ... let's just leave that statement there