When I finally summoned the strength to walk out of the bathroom and back to the Slytherin Common Room I had reached a conclusion. I wasn't going to let Tom win. And I wasn't going to let Daniel die.

Of course, he was already dead. But I had the Time Turner, therefore I had the power to go back in time and reverse the events which would lead to it. I had no choice. I wasn't a murderer. If I had to go back in time just to prove my morals I would do it. Because it didn't matter about what mistakes I made. It mattered if I didn't try to remedy them. And perhaps it was against the nature of time travel to do this, but Dumbledore had let me save Buckbeak. Dumbledore trusted me to save lives of the innocent with the Time Turner before, and having his faith in me was all that I needed to have confidence in my choice.

I walked back to the Slytherin Common Room trying not to think about the fact the body of Daniel Dolohov was probably buried somewhere. I had no idea what Tom had done with him, but my guess was it was more or less obliterated by magical means.

With each step I took, I started to reflect on who I was, and who I wanted to be. This time, I would make Tom realise he had messed with the wrong girl. I had light in my life, something he didn't have. I had the advantage, and as long as I remembered what I had which he didn't have.

But that didn't stop the fear suddenly crashing over me as I opened the door to the Slytherin Common Room to find Tom Riddle standing directly behind it.

"You took your time." He said by way of greeting.

I walked forward quickly, wanting to suddenly put as much distance between the pair of us. I couldn't let him get to me. He was so good at getting under my skin and making me question myself. I had to stay strong. There was too much at stake right now.

"I have found something that might help you." Tom followed me, finally stopping once I turned around.

"Great." I said. "What did you find, then?"

Tom held out his hand. Something glittered in his palm, a tiny vial. "This," He said, "Is for you."

"That doesn't necessarily answer my question." I said irritably. "I'm not taking another potion if I don't know what's inside it."

"Oh would you look at that," Tom said drily, "You finally making sense." He held the tiny bottle in the air. "What's this? This is a potion specifically to eliminate regret."

"I'm not taking it." I said instantly. "Besides. If you were really serious about me becoming like you, I would have thought you'd want me to be painfully aware of my actions. After all, isn't that how you live?"

Tom froze, the potion bottle still in his hand. And without any warning whatsoever he simply opened his palm causing it to fall to the ground.

Smash!

"What the fuck." I leapt back. I didn't know how I'd expect him to act but that sure as hell wasn't it.

"That was your last chance to help yourself." Tom said. "It's gone forever now."

There was no mistaking it, I had angered him. And....I didn't give a damn. I would go back in time and reverse Daniel's death, and my own feelings of worthlessness that my action had given me. No one, not even Tom could take that away from me. Especially not a stupid potion. Even if it masked the regret, it wouldn't stop the pain. This was just another stupid trick.

"Clean it up." Tom said. "It was yours, after all."

I raised an eyebrow. "No it wasn't. It was yours, which I didn't accept. I'm not touching it." I walked away, half expecting to be cursed to death. I reached the stairs to find Tom still standing in the place where I'd left him. The second I got up the stairs I started running like a mad woman. When I reached the door to my dorm I slammed it shut behind me. This was it. I was going to go back in time and sort this shit out once and for all.

I opened my beaded bag, my hands trembling slightly. If anything went wrong, I'd ruin everything. Time travel wasn't something to mess with. One wrong move and I'd be the one paying for it.

I grabbed my Time Turner, reassured by the familiar feel of it in my hands. I took hold of it and carefully set the time, adjusting it with utmost care. I knew I was time travelling when all of my surroundings started morphing. I looked outside the window, the clouds flew past in the sky in different shades of light and dark.

Then, everything stopped at once. I was further in the past. This was it.

I took a deep breath. I had no damn idea where I would be at this time. I slowly walked to my bedroom door, twisting open the handle. My heart was pounding. What if I just randomly ran into Tom and the version of me in the past?

I walked very slowly out into the hall, holding my wand out in front of me. I had to find Daniel. That was the priority. I didn't have time to pay attention to fear, even though it had its hand around my neck.

So far so good. I reached the top of the stairs, finally seeing a horrific sight. Me, at the bottom of the stairs. Hold on. That meant... That Tom and Daniel were on the landing near where Tom's room was. I doubled back, ducking back into the Hall. I was just in time. Tom strode past me not 3 seconds later, his pale face entirely devoid of emotion as I knew it. I crept back into the shadows, my heartbeat so loud I was surprised Tom didn't just turn around.

To my absolute luck, he did no such thing. I saw him descending the stairs with that irritating air of superiority I had come to loathe. I couldn't waste a moment. I darted forward out of the shadows while his back was turned, walking very quickly and quietly up the same hall he had just vacated. I reached his bedroom door fast enough. With my wand at the ready I held it out in front of me pointing it at the door.

"Alohomora." I said in a rush.

It didn't work. And then I realised it was because Tom's door was already open.

"Wake up." I said under my breath. I was going to get caught if I kept acting this stupid.

I pushed open his door, not knowing what to expect. Daniel should be here. He wasn't in the Hall where I thought he'd be. I stepped into Tom's room, shutting his door behind me and locking it. That of course would be a giveaway if Tom came back and saw his own damn door shut when he himself hadn't shut it, but I had no choice. I wanted to know the second he came into his room, and nothing was going to alert me more than the sound of it opening.

I looked around the room, breathing heavily. So Daniel wasn't in his room. He must already be in that sack in Tom's hidden cellar room.

That was the second I knew I was doomed. I had no access to that room! I didn't even know what spell or what damned book on his shelf he pushed to open it.

I strode over to his bookshelf pulling books forward at random. There were only two ways to open this room. Either pull a book forward, or just use some dark spell. I didn't know the dark magic of course, but I sure as hell could grab books.

I took the opportunity to start yanking every book I could see, making sure I didn't pull them too far and have them crashing to the ground. Tom had quite a lot of books. Titles leapt out at me.

The Dark Arts Exposed- A Comprehensive Theorem - Bornulus Bane-Croftwell

Defensive Non Verbal Counter Curses and Strategising Attack by Kallister Kolt

I was beginning to get a terrible feeling about this. Tom was more than likely going to come back at any second. He had left with his door open. He was too secretive to do something like that. I was so fixated on my fears of Tom returning I didn't actually realise the doorway had already opened. It gave me a fright to see the massive wall of darkness that was suddenly right beside me. Wasting no time at all, I stepped through it hurtling down the stairs almost tripping over in my haste.

The sack with the unconscious Daniel wasn't there. But Daniel himself was, lying immobilised on the ground gagged and bound.

"Daniel!"

Daniel turned his head, his eyes widening as soon as he saw me.

"It's ok, you're ok now."

I raced back up the stairs. I had to have more than a simple lock on the door to keep Tom out. I poked my head out of the dark doorway, pointing my wand at the door and casting any form of barrier I could think of over it. I had about 4 I remembered from my days out with Harry and Ron in the Forest of Dean. Of course, every spell I had said still counted as very basic forms of defence however I knew they would at least stall Tom for a moment while I did what I had to do.

I ran back down the short steep steps, rushing over to Daniel and unbinding him.

"Are you alright?"

"Aren't you... Aren't you supposed to be unconscious?" Daniel looked extremely confused.

"I don't have time to explain. I need to get you out of here." I said urgently.

"Don't worry about me." Daniel said. "You need to get out of here. Tom will kill you if he finds you trying to rescue me."

"I don't care. He's going to kill you Daniel. Well... Not Tom.... But someone is going to. I can't give too much away but you need to let me help you."

"How do you know all of this?" Daniel scrambled to his feet. "Where have you come from? The future?"

"Something like that. Now let's go!"

We both took off running up the short staircase both of us arriving in Tom's room which Tom thankfully was not in.

"Why's Tom not here." I said quietly. "It seems weird of him to be absent for so long..."

"He mentioned something about having to erase minds." Daniel told me. "I don't know what he meant, though. I was barely conscious."

"Right." I said. Tom was going around erasing people's memories of Daniel so that when I murdered him no one would say anything about it. Which meant... I had time. We had time.

"Daniel I'm going to need you to listen to me very carefully." I told him.

"You must leave Hogwarts. It's not safe for you here."

"But what about Isabella." Daniel said indignantly. "I love her."

"If you love her so much why did you assault her?" I bristled. "That doesn't seem like something loving, does it?"

"What are you talking about? I never assaulted her, nor would I ever dream of it. Who told you that bullshit?"

I looked at him directly and knew he was telling the truth just by the fierceness ablaze in his eyes.

"Tom did..." I said heavily.

I held up a hand, Daniel looked as if he was about to start on an outraged tangent.

"Look, you need to get out of here. There is a plan Tom is formulating to have you be killed. Don't you get it? I'm not screwing with you. This is serious. And quite frankly, if you really did love Isabella you would get the hell out of here while you can. I know her. She'd be crushed if you died. Do you really want to do that to her?"

Daniel looked thrown off guard.

"Look." I said. "You're going to have to trust me."

"How can I trust someone like you? No offence, I do like you and everything but you're kind of Tom's lapdog."

"Tom's lapdog who's just saved your damn life." I growled. "I'm my own damn person. I answer to no one."

Thud.

We both froze. A sharp sound had issued from just outside Tom's door.

He was back.

"What the hell was that?" Daniel said quietly.

"Who do you think?"

I quickly pulled the invisibility cloak from within my bag, throwing it both over us.

"Hey what are you-?"

"Shut up." I hissed. "It's an invisibility cloak. No one will see you or I as long as we are both under it. And stop talking you're going to get us-"

The door turned, and Tom walked into the room. It was like everything became cold, like we had just walked past a Dementor.

He looked directly past us to the open gateway beside his bookshelf.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me." He said under his breath, striding forward and through the door of darkness.

"Ok, let's get out of here." I said quietly. We stumbled forward clumsily, Daniel stepped on my foot.

"Seriously?" I hissed.

"Sorry." Daniel said.

All in all Daniel and I made a very awkward pair underneath the invisibility cloak. He was so tall and I was really short. Several times I had to tell Daniel to duck down, just so the cloak didn't expose his ankles.

"Do you want to be seen?" I snapped as we made our way down the hall. Suddenly, we both heard footsteps behind us. We turned, I almost had a heart attack seeing Tom approaching. I shoved Daniel and myself against the wall very quickly as he came walking very quickly out of his room, his cloak billowing behind him. He passed us, and froze dead in his tracks. He inhaled, turning slowly on his heel, coming to look directly at the place where I was.

And then, by some form of miracle, he had turned around and was walking away.

"Thank fuck." I sighed. Daniel breathed out a sigh of relief too.

I was panicking so much. We weren't out of harms way yet. Only when we made it outside the Slytherin Common Room into a very empty hall did I finally begin to relax.

We walked down the hall. I knew where to go. I knew what to do. I had to get Daniel out of the School so he could apparate to safety. I had to get him to one of the seven secret passageways. I knew which one, too. Behind the statue of Gregory the Smarmy on a fifth floor corridor of the east wing was the passage way I knew about, the same one Fred and George had discovered on their first week at Hogwarts. It took us a bit of time to get there.

"Can't we take the cloak off now?" Daniel had asked.

"We don't know where Tom is right now." I had answered. "Do you really want to risk it?"

As soon as we approached the statue I pulled the cloak off the pair of us, instructing Daniel very quickly on what to do.

"And Daniel?" I said, just as he had almost disappeared into the passage and out of sight.

"Never let Tom see you alive." I told him. "I don't want you to die. Do you understand me? This is very important."

"I get it." Daniel said. He gave me a sad smile. "I'm sorry about Tom." He told me with sincerity. "I'm going to miss you. Good luck, Hermione. And look out for Isabella for me." He ducked down into the passage and disappeared from sight.

I threw the invisibility cloak back over myself and hurried back to the hall outside the Slytherin Common Room. Now to get back to Tom's current time. I had to get back to my room where I had first began time travelling from. I entered the Common Room to find Tom sitting on an armchair, appearing to be deep in thought. "Xavier." Tom said, startling me so much I almost jumped. A little way behind me was Xavier Malfoy, leaning against a wall.

And not too far from him lay my own unconscious form still on the ground. I could see those ugly bruises on my ankle and wrist from here. Shuddering I made to walk away. I reached the bottom of the stairs when I heard Tom start to talk.

"I have discovered that a very important book of mine has been stolen." He told Xavier. "It is a diary. I have written things regarding what I would like to do to Hermione within its pages. Have you seen it?"

I looked at Tom. Daniel was missing, and he was rambling about a book?

"You have a diary?" Xavier said.

"I have two of them." Tom said irritably. "One of them I never use. The other I do. This is the one I must find again, since the other I have rendered... unusable."