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"Aaaagggghhh—!"
The sound that ripped from the diary was not a human scream. It was a high-pitched, agonizing shriek of pure, digital and spiritual feedback, a sound of a soul being scraped raw. The diary in Hermione's hand began to convulse violently, growing hot to the touch, the pages fluttering as if in a hurricane.
She had him. The moment the grimoire had identified the diary as a "Wondrous Item" and analyzed its properties, it had given her what she had always wanted: root access. She now had absolute, administrative control over the soul fragment of Tom Marvolo Riddle.
She wasn't just a reader; she was the editor. And she could delete him.
"You… you… FILTHY… MUDBLOOD!" Tom's voice hissed from the pages, but the usual aristocratic arrogance was gone, replaced by a thin, ragged thread of pure, unadulterated terror. He could feel it—a cold, unfeeling, and impossibly powerful will that had wrapped itself around his very essence. It was grinding against him, crushing him, a pain so profound and so absolute it made the Cruciatus Curse feel like a gentle tickle.
"It seems," Hermione said, her voice a calm, dispassionate murmur in the vast, dark Chamber, "that you're still not quite ready to be polite."
She tightened her mental grip.
"AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!"
The scream was wordless this time. The diary thrashed in her hand, and a wave of black, inky energy pulsed from it, a desperate, pathetic attempt at a counter-attack that she simply brushed aside. She was a god in this equation, and he was just a piece of code. A toy.
Which is it, Tom? she thought, her expression as bored as if she were waiting for a kettle to boil. Are you going to be useful, or are you going to be deleted?
"STOP!" he finally shrieked, the word a ragged, broken sob. "Please! I… I yield! I give up! Whatever you want, I'll do it! Just make it stop!"
The crushing, agonizing pressure receded instantly, leaving him a quivering, whimpering echo in his paper prison. He, the great Lord Voldemort, the heir of Slytherin, the most brilliant wizard Hogwarts had ever produced, had just been broken. By a child. In less than a minute.
"Good," Hermione said, her voice still dangerously calm. She casually flipped the diary open to a blank page. "Now. You want a body, don't you? You want to be free?"
Tom's soul fragment, what was left of it, pulsed with a sudden, desperate hope. "Yes," he whispered. "I can feel the life force… in the girl… if I can just drain enough…"
"And then what?" Hermione cut him off, her voice sharp. "Let's play this out, Tom. You drain Ginny, you get your body back. You're sixteen, handsome, and powerful. You rule the school. You rule the wizarding world. A few years pass. And then, one day, the other you, the wandering, wraith-like, half-dead main-soul, finally finds a follower stupid enough to resurrect him. What happens then?"
Tom was silent. He had never, in his arrogance, considered it.
"Do you really think," Hermione continued, her voice a low, seductive, and poisonous whisper, "that Lord Voldemort, a creature of pure, mutilated ego, a being who cannot bear the thought of an equal, is going to share his name? Is he going to welcome you, his younger, smarter, and much-better-looking self, as a brother?"
She laughed, a cold, mirthless sound that echoed in the vast chamber. "He won't see you as an ally, Tom. He'll see you as a flaw. A rival. A tool that has outlived its usefulness and become a threat. He won't hesitate. He will destroy you, his own Horcrux, his own soul, rather than tolerate another who could challenge his claim to immortality."
The diary in her hand was now trembling, but not from pain. It was trembling with a new, cold, and utterly logical fear. He knew himself. He knew she was right.
"So," Hermione purred, "you're a dead end, Tom. A beautiful, tragic mistake. Unless…"
"Unless what?" his voice was a desperate hiss from the page.
"Unless you change the plan," she said. "There can only be one Lord Voldemort in this world. You just have to make sure it's you. Kill the original. Take his place. Fulfill the destiny he was too insane to achieve."
"I…" he began, "I am just a remnant. A memory. He is the main soul. I cannot defeat him…"
"Not alone, you can't," Hermione agreed. "But with my help… anything is possible."
She unstoppered a fraction of the immense, screaming power she had harvested from Jotunheim. A single, shimmering thread of pure, raw soul energy, more potent than a thousand Ginnys, flowed from her grimoire and into the pages of the diary.
Tom gasped. It was not the agonizing violation from before. This was a wave of pure, ecstatic power. The cold, empty hunger that had defined his entire diary-bound existence was suddenly, blissfully gone. The inky, two-dimensional letters on the page began to swirl and coalesce, rising from the parchment.
A figure, translucent at first, but rapidly solidifying, pulled itself free from the book. He stood before her, no longer a ghost, but a being of solid shadow and coalescing energy. He was sixteen years old, devastatingly handsome, and his dark eyes, no longer red, were burning with a new, cold, and calculating intelligence. He looked down at his own hands, which were now pale but solid, and a slow, beautiful, and utterly terrifying smile spread across his face.
"Well," he said, his voice a smooth, perfect baritone. "Do you believe in my abilities now, Lord Voldemort?"
Tom Riddle looked at her. He looked at the girl who had, in the space of an hour, tortured him to the brink of non-existence, fed him a taste of unimaginable power, and offered him the one thing he had never known he wanted: not just immortality, but a future.
He finally understood. The pain had been a test. A slap. This, this new power, this new, solid form, was the reward. The sweet date. He had been a fool to resist. This girl wasn't his enemy. She was his new god.
"What a pity," he finally said, his voice full of a new, profound, and deeply genuine regret. "All that screaming I did. Such a waste of time. If you had just told me what you were offering, I would have sworn my loyalty to you from the very beginning."