~O~

Tom expected, perhaps too optimistically, that Draco would handover the diary right away.

However, getting the spoiled pureblood to handover the diary to Granger was like getting a whiny toddler to handover their favourite toy...and Draco, most definitely, had never learned to share.

A whole week dragged by at Hogwarts with Draco going to various classes, much of which had Granger there too, yet the diary came back to Slytherin dorm every night. Tom tried to keep up his patience but after several decades, locked seal-tight in a bloody diary, he was kind of losing his cool head...and Tom was exceptionally level-headed.

He asked again why Draco insisted on keeping his diary and written inane things about his day and classmates in his book every night while he snuggled in bed with the diary...sort of like Gollum and the ring. Tom could imagine Draco rubbing his grubby hands together and hugging his leather-bound journal.

"You know I have more important plans for Hogwarts that I could be enacting out?" Tom said rather imperiously.

Draco fished for another excuse to not give up the book. "What if she doesn't even read it? What if she simply tosses you out, Tom? You could end up in a second-hand book store, or even worse, a muggle bookstore!" Draco shivered.

Tom felt a headache coming on. "We've already gone over all this. She's a bookworm. And curious. She's not going to throw out a book, let alone a magical diary book. She'll be glued to my pages!" (And I to her mudblood soul soon enough, before I feed her to the basilisk!)

"I don't know," Draco said. "Wouldn't you rather stay with me and we'll find some other way to get rid of Granger?"

Tom sighed heavily. He knew the truth about Draco's reluctance to let him go: Draco had grown too attached to him.

Tom cursed himself that he was so charming that everyone who interacted with him was soon obsessed as either a follower or friend or other type of admirer.

"There can be no other plan! I will come back to you as your friend, once I have a body," Tom reminded him. "Then we'll be best friends in Slytherin," he lied.

"How can we be best friends if you're 15, you'll be in 5th year classes while I'm still stuck in 2nd year classes!"

So Draco Malfoy could do math. Perhaps he was smarter than Tom gave him credit for.

"How about this? Did you know I can become headboy or prefect? I usually am chosen for such a position given my talent and reputation. If I'm made prefect, I will make sure to give you all privileges and you can run about as you like?"

Draco seemed satisfied now. "Brilliant. You promise?"

"Of course," he lied. Though it was true he had been headboy and prefect in his own time at Hogwarts, being a top student. He doubted he'd stay long at Hogwarts before venturing out in the wider world and reclaiming his following.

"Okay I'll drop you off in Granger's bookbag tonight. We have Herbology classes together and everyone will leave their bags unattended at the back. I will slip it in there."

Tom licked his lips in anticipation. Just a few more days and he could kill this Granger girl and be a real boy again.

How heartwarming, like the story of Pinocchio becoming a real boy again by killing a mudblood instead of being swallowed by a whale.

Well done me! Tom thought...rather optimistically.

~o~

His last few minutes with Draco were painfully slow. And it was the hardest performance of his life to pretend to be sad...at their parting. Tom had to restrain himself from writing in multicoloured ink and throwing confetti across the pages.

"You'll show me the Chamber of Secrets once it's opened?" Draco asked, tears falling down onto the diary pages as he wrote with his quill for the last time upon Tom's pages.

Tom cringed. "The chamber will be our secret clubhouse, just you and me..." and the Basilisk eating your bones hopefully.

More teardrops fell onto Tom's pages, angering him further.

"God speed! May the dead and expelled mudbloods be worth our parting, oh parting is such sweet sorrow," Draco bawled, full on crying, and he closed the diary and Tom heard the boy walking towards the bags of his classmates.

Tom grinned to himself as he felt his diary being inserted into a heavy bookbag, which smelt of quill ink, filthy mudblood and lavender soap of some sort. "My new home," he chuckled.

Not a long time after, Tom felt the bag, which was already heavily packed to the brim with books, being filled with yet another book and then lifted onto someone's shoulders - presumably the mudblood's - and brought to Gryffindor Tower.

"Bingo!" Tom thought.

How hard would it be to fool a mudblood into doing his bidding?

Not hard at all, he presumed.

~o~