Disclaimer:

I do not own this plot.

I do not own these characters.

What I do possess is a thought,

Borne from better creators.

Chapter Four: The Only Thing I Cannot Resist is Temptation

Tom Marvolo Riddle was furious when Hermione Granger first wrote in his diary. He knew all about that meddling Mudblood after Lucius Malfoy had written in the book three months prior. Hermione Granger: best in her year, of no magical parentage, and best friends with the boy-who-killed-him. Lucius had ranted about her academic triumphs over his son, and Tom swiftly argued that while Draco Malfoy would be ecstatic if Hermione Granger was the one he possessed, he ultimately needed a Pureblood or half-blood to control the basilisk easily.

No, he needed someone that was close to Harry Potter, but not too close. He needed a Pureblood Gryffindor who would be out of suspicion once the Chamber opened, and so he trusted Malfoy to deliver him to such an individual. Malfoy had suggested a Weasley, a blood traitor family known for their lack of wits, and Tom had hesitantly agreed to be planted in one of the Weasley's possessions.

However, when Hermione Jean Granger opened his diary and "possessed" him, he couldn't help but bitterly laugh at life's cruel irony. Of course Lucius would royally ruin his plans and give him to a smart, annoyingly curious Mudblood. However, he was only one-half of the present Lord Voldemort's soul, and for that matter, trapped in the pages of an old, ratty book. So, he had to improvise, weaving the story of being a 'homework planner' and keeping Granger invested so that perhaps, one day, he could try to open the Chamber again.

What he hadn't expected was how irritatingly suspicious Granger would be. She constantly lied to him about peoples' names, her own name, the Professors, and what she thought about his more controversial opinions. He could scarcely believe it when she agreed that Muggles were a danger to Wizarding kind. Tom, for all of his carefully constructed charm and wiles, could not tell if she actually believed that or was just flattering him so that he would continue his rough-shod teaching course.

As throughout his Hogwarts career, Tom survived and kept Granger's interest through wit and flattery. It was a softer type of power, one that he had begun to abandon in his sixth year once he started to use more physical forms against his Knights of Walpurgis. It was the power of words and vague promises, of intellectual vanity and grand ambitions.

Oh… yes, Hermione. You could become the most powerful witch the world has ever seen. Feel the magic caress the blood in your veins, swiveling and twisting like two dying lovers. Feel it overtaking your weak, delicate body only to crash in a cymbalic ecstasy and flutter over your lolled-back eyes. Sense it trickling from your wand into the recesses of your mind, your deliciously brilliant, dark mind.

Tom was a master, and the diary was his weapon. Each time she wrote in the diary, he could infuse those words of seduction into his banal statements. Each "How was your day?" was secretly a display of that sumptuous power he had learned to control so long ago. While he had originally made the diary as a diary, to feed on the written emotions of the owner in order to gain a corporeal form, he found the only way that he could gain strength from Granger was to use that soft form of power. She had to see him as harmless, but feel wanted, worthy and most of all, feel that Tom was helping her to attain the knowledge she so pitifully craved.

Tom, were you a good dueler when you were at Hogwarts?

Tom smirked when she had written him that question. Was he a good dueler? Was he, Lord Voldemort, the most-feared name in the Wizarding world, a "good dueler"?

I won my fair share of duels. Let me surmise a guess: you want to join the school Dueling Club?

Tom relished the opportunity to teach Granger dueling spells. Adrenaline was a potent hormone—and the more that he could throw her into dangerous situations, the more she would run to the very person she should dearly avoid. At least that's what he told himself, and Lord Voldemort is nothing but honest.

However… there was another reason he didn't mind playing 'homework planner' and 'Ravenclaw Tom.' It was a small part of who he was. Magic fascinated him for its own sake. When he first opened the Chamber and learned of Salazar Slytherin's legacy, Tom could not help but feel ecstatic beatitude as centuries' old magic coursed through the walls, through the basilisk, and through himself. He wanted to master it, wanted to use magic to master every single one of life's obstacles, wanted to use magic to control people, wanted to know the truth.

And Hermione Granger did too. She was the only person Tom had met who understood the all-consuming need to know things, to constantly absorb, plan, plot, scheme, craft, spell, control, devise, divine, and illuminate. It was a maddening desire, but losing it would be worse. And that is why Tom Marvolo Riddle decided to kill his father in order to live forever.

However, he could only live forever and fulfill Salazar's legacy of the preservation of the old branches of magic by releasing the basilisk, and a dirty vessel such as Hermione Granger would regrettably have to do. After she had a fight with her two imbecilic friends, Harry Potter and the Weasley boy (as if he would be fooled by shallow pseudonyms), he quietly possessed the young girl as she drifted off into a restless sleep.

She had found his room, the Room of Hidden Things, but had used it in a different way so that it was a comfortable hideaway. He would have to remember to return it back to the exact way he found it so that Granger wouldn't panic or realize she was being possessed. He examined her wand, shaking his head at how wrong it felt in his hands. He cast a disillusionment charm on himself and silently made his way down to the girls' bathroom on the second floor and into the tunnel to the Chamber.

Tom banished the basilisk skins and rat skeletons as he went, disgusted with how derelict the place had become since his last visit. When he arrived at the antechamber, he brushed his hand and spoke the Parseltongue for 'open,' and watched with the closest thing he had ever felt to glee as the Chamber was revealed. Now he could rise to glory…fifty years after the first try, he would finally get it right, and all because of a silly little Mudblood girl.

He saw her reflection in the water, a warped reflection as his twisted smirk looked positively sinful on her face. It was a thing of beauty. Tom stared at Granger's countenance with something close to awe—he could control everything this girl did. He could make her into whatever he wanted, and that power thrilled him.

However, he had to get down to business as the basilisk certainly wouldn't call itself. He invoked the name of Slytherin and the basilisk slithered out of the orifice, contentedly hissing at Tom's call.

Massssster… I have waiting sssso long, the basilisk hissed, coming to a rest at Tom's feet. But why do you have ssuch dirty blood? It smellssss sssso good. Issss ssshe a sssssacrifice? Tom shook his head and whispered that she was the best he could do at such short notice. Then, he sent the orders that in six hours, the basilisk should look for a Mudblood near the second floor in front of the library to finish the cleansing he started as a young boy all those years ago. Meanwhile, he would scrawl and enchant the warning message to appear when the Mudblood was discovered, and then he would return to the Room of Hidden Things and try to figure out how to put Granger back as he had found her.

After taking nearly a pint of Granger's blood to write the 'Beware' message and after an hour of pacing back and forth before realizing that he could wish for other rooms rather than the Room of Hidden Things (how handy it would have been for Knights of Walpurgis meetings), Tom settled Granger down and returned to the diary, ecstatic that his plan had worked so perfectly.

Now came the difficult part. Granger was not so invested that he could take on a corporeal form. No, she was only invested enough for a brief possession. In order to regain his body, he would have to convince her to trust him completely and absolutely. He would have to peel back each layer of lies and security that she had forged and have her confide in him the truth of her person. While Tom had thought it would be tedious, after seeing himself use her to open the Chamber, he was actually looking forward to this gambit.

The chance came earlier than he had hoped. The next morning, who should bring up the topic of the Chamber but Granger herself? He briefly wondered if the basilisk was able to do its job properly as apparently Hermione was in the library looking up pictures of him in the archives (how could she have not seen a mangled, petrified body on the landing?) He fed her the egregious lie of his heroism and was shocked to realize that Hermione actually wanted to see the story. After six weeks of cold indifference and being unknowingly possessed, she wanted to go inside the diary to see Tom Riddle's act of death-defying bravery.

Tom reached out the magic of the diary and tore the girl down into the Horcrux. She would be powerless. She would see his side, his perfectly crafted, aesthetically ecstatic, fool-proof account that everyone except Dumbledore took as gospel.

And then he would be able to control Hermione Granger to form his new world order. He would have her heart, mind, and yes, her utterly corruptible soul.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: And so the first of Tom's chapters (sorry for leaving everyone at that cliffhanger, but I desperately wanted to write Tom's perspective). I believe that the character requires it, for no other reason than genius needs an audience. I am super-excited about this story (if you can't tell… the updates have been, shall we say, exuberantly frequent?) Please review with your thoughts, suggestions, and criticism.