Dreaming Through the Noise

Title: On the Eve
Rating: G
Genre: AU
Summary: On the evening of battle, Hermione finds herself robbing a grave. More of a scene than a story, really.


The night had been full of shouts, screams, and the whip crack of hexes. Stars stained the sky chartreuse green. The silence, when she apparated to the cemetery, had descended on her like a shroud. And the normal night sounds seemed obscenely loud in the hush of the dead.

She had shrugged off her discomfort, followed the course that Harry had told her about, searching for the grave and for what lay beneath. If bone could restore, certainly bone could destroy, she had thought.

Tonight, her thoughts had, finally, proved right in the tests. And then the battle had fallen and she’d been forced from test to trial.

She was all focus, kneeling before the marble effigy of the Death Angel with its wings splayed to the night air, her mind on the spell that sifted six feet of dirt from bone. She tried to ignore the name standing out stark and oppressive on the tomb.

The earth parted and a moon-white sliver rose like a suddenly blooming flower. Slim and fragile. A finger bone, perhaps. She reached out to grasp it.

“Don’t kill her,” said a voice, offhandedly as one would remind a spouse to pick up a bag of crisps at the shop. She hadn’t heard them coming. No crack of apparation or a footfall. She slid her hand to her hip where her wand sheath sat snug. Too late. Violet light ricocheted off the scythe, blinding her.

She fell back among the grasses, chest aching, swallowing lungfuls of moist air in a panic as she tried to wrest her wand away from the hand that had appeared and wrenched her shoulder as it pulled her from the ground and disarmed her.

Wand light glinted silver off the curve of the Death Eater’s mask as he let her fall once more.

The sight wasn’t unexpected. What was unexpected, and what sent her shuffling uselessly against the ground, her aching limbs refusing to cooperate, was the movement behind the Death Eater. The pale, cold face coming into view as the half moon drew out from behind a cloud.

She’d never seen him before but she knew the face.

Ginny, while reluctant to talk to most about the time she spent with Riddle, had confided in Hermione one night in Hermione’s sixth year, after a particularly vicious nightmare had woken them both.

Over bowls of ice cream gifted from the elves in the kitchen, Ginny had told her about the boy with the black hair and the night in his eyes. A boy, Ginny had thought at first, who looked a bit like Harry, before she observed the coldness of his gaze, the lush and sometimes malevolent impiety in his movements.

Hermione had thought of the marble visage of the angels, blessed and fallen, she’d seen in her books the summer she spent attending an art class, the angles of their faces, the baby smooth curve of a cheek, the ancient knowledge in their stone eyes.

Back then, she had mentally placed black and blue on marble and thought it to life.

Now that marble was gliding toward her and the corners of his sinner’s mouth were turned up in a winsome smile.

“Miss…Granger, isn’t it? Hermione. I’ve heard tell you are the cleverest witch of your age.” He stopped in front of her. His gaze was heavy and it made her skin twitch. She stared at his shoes, black and half lost in the night shaded grass but for the shine. “But, I have to ask myself ‘What, might this clever witch be doing so far from home, so far from her falling comrades, and prostrating herself at the grave of my ancestors…”

She won’t answer. That’s to say, she can’t answer. Her lungs feel scorched and her throat is tight and she’s having trouble keeping the world in focus. When she blinks she sees two Riddle gravestones, half a Death Eater, and one and one half Dark Lords turned young again.

“No answer?” he asks. “Pity. We’ll have to do this another way.”

And with that there are arms around her, hands balancing her against a body, her feet are off the ground and then she is sitting on cold stone and there’s warmth at her back that keeps the chill at bay and she knows she’s cradled half in his lap. When she pries open her eyes she can see the dagger sharp edges of the letters that make up his name swimming in and out of focus behind his head.

He tilts her chin up with two fingers. His hands are softer than they have any right to be.

She can see the stars in his eyes, silver and white on blue and she wonders for a moment how it’s possible to be falling toward the sky; oxygen seems scarce and she can’t quite feel her limbs.

Then Riddle smiles, and she can breathe again.

“Clever girl, indeed.” His voice is an imitation of the night wind and she shivers. “I think we may have to see what other tricks this clever girl has up her sleeve.”

In a matter of moments the cemetery is empty of life once more.

On the ledge of the Riddle grave sits a fragile white bone crossed with impeccably polished vine wood that bears a dragon heart string at its core.