Oh that I could find a Chamber

Removed from prying eyes

Where secrets slither through crevices

Formed from seeping, acidic lies

Learning the ways of a Sociopath

Justin Finch-Fletchley's parents came to retrieve their son's ashen body that afternoon. At the end of the memorial service in the Great Hall, Hermione weaved through the crowd in an attempt to talk with Justin's parents, to tell them that she would try everything in her power to stop whatever had killed their son. They were dressed in fine clothing-the father's suit must have been from Saville Row; his mother sobbed in heaving gasps into his shoulder. But when Hermione neared them, she could only barely make out the shoulder of Mr. Finch-Fletchley's suit jacket disappearing into the room behind the High Table.

Professor Dumbledore had made a somber speech to the silent, wide-eyed student body. Even Malfoy was attentive, hushing Crabbe and Goyle when the decorum proved boring to them.

We shall do everything in our power to keep Hogwarts safe for its students-however, we ask that you do not put yourself in unnecessary danger-there shall be a new system where you must not ever be unescorted through the hallways-younger students must find older students to accompany them after-hours.

Hermione could not believe that Professor Dumbledore thought a buddy system would deter a fully-grown Acromantula. She had half of a mind to march up to the front of the Great Hall and yell that she knew what had killed Justin, that Hagrid had been responsible for the Chamber's opening 50 years prior. But, then again, if Tom had lied about any part of his story, she would look insane. It was best, even though it pained her to go so fully against her nature, to not tell the teachers anything before she was absolutely certain she was correct.

She felt a sudden pang of sympathy for Professor Snape. How he must hate Harry and Ron for quickly jumping to the wrong conclusions.

After failing to give her condolences to the Finch-Fletchleys, Hermione began the long climb up to Gryffindor Tower. She wanted to practice the Imperius Curse behind the closed, crimson drapes of her four-poster.

"Hermione!" two voices yelled from behind her. Harry and Ron. She didn't even turn around.

"We need to talk, Hermione," Harry said in his high, concerned voice. The only person she had been talking to with regularity was Tom, who spoke in a cadenced baritone. Harry seemed so young in comparison.

"Yes?" she asked curtly, turning on them. How did they not understand that their studies mattered? She was sick and tired of only being used as the third musketeer, as the one they kept around for homework assistance. Her eyes flared at the pair in front of her. Ron shrunk behind Harry a bit.

"What has been going on, Hermione? You don't raise your hand in class anymore. You barely say two words to Ron and me. Parvati told Ginny who told Ron that you are gone the entire night sometimes," Harry said in a rush.

Hermione tried something. She knew how Tom could have an effect on her simply by ramping up the intensity of an encounter. Harry and Ron would not approve of her friendship with Tom or her copious amounts of alone time studying and practicing curses. She needed to convince them that everything was fine, even if it meant skirting the truth a bit. The planner suddenly warmed under her robes (she had taken to carrying it with her in case someone spotted it in her bag.)

She needed to charm them. Like Tom charmed Dippet.

"I'm sorry..." she said, biting her lip for effect, "is there somewhere that we can go so I can explain what has been going on?"

Harry's eyes crinkled with relief. Ron stepped out from behind Harry and gave her a grin. "Of course...er, outside then?"

They walked through front doors out onto the grounds in silence to the edge of the Forbidden Forest. Hermione tried to collect herself into the composed persona Tom always showed. She was no longer a flustered know-it-all, but that was all Harry and Ron knew her as. Her love of knowledge had transformed her into someone who wanted a complete picture, someone who wanted the ability to transfer spellbook knowledge to actual effect. They were not right for her any longer. She was their friend because no one wanted to deal with a frizzy-haired, annoying girl besides two people who happened to have saved her life. Was their friendship based on guilt? It always seemed like she was the third wheel, the Girl, the one that they rolled their eyes about -It's Hermione again, caring too much about schoolwork-.

She had to care about learning. She had to learn to defend herself, to kill the thing that killed Justin. She had to learn to impress Tom-NO-She had to learn in order to show everyone that she was more than her impure blood-She wanted to be able to have the effect on others that Tom had on her-NO-she just wanted to be alone with her magic and her knowledge and to have everyone else know she was better, because she knew more, worked harder, had more magic, more power, more hold, more everything...

"It's about my family, actually," she began, looking first at Harry then at Ron from behind her eyelashes, "my mother...I don't know how long she'll be alive," she said quietly.

Harry looked dumbstruck. Ron looked at his feet. They both came in to give her a hug. Without any explanation, without any real sort of lie (her mother was sick with the flu, and she did not know exactly when her mother would end up passing away). She could tell that both of them felt too awkward to ask what exactly her mother suffered from or to follow up on their original accusations.

"I just need some distance right now, to be whole," she whispered into Harry's ear. She could feel him shudder under her breath. Ron hadn't heard, but both of them continued to hug her. Ron stepped back. Harry stood there, holding her waist, head on her shoulder. A flash of guilt reminded her that Harry probably was going through more emotion than she was at the moment, being reminded of his mother, whom he would never know. She leaned towards his ear again. "Meet me tonight, just you, at midnight outside of the tapestry on the seventh floor. I need to talk to you," she whispered again. Harry turned to her, befuddled as usual, but gave a slight, imperceptible nod. He knew as well as anyone that Ron could be unsympathetic. He had told her about the Mirror of Erised after their first year, and she could infer that Ron hadn't been the best ear to hear about Harry's long-gone family.

They trudged back up to the castle, Harry and Hermione listening to Ron lightly babbling about how there was no way on Earth he was going to pass Potions and how he thought that Malfoy was the Heir of Slytherin.

When Hermione got back to the Girls' Dormitory, her four roommates were happily at dinner. She pulled out her Planner and hurriedly scribbled into it with red ink.

Tom, how do you manipulate people to make them believe something that's not true?

Hermione, I thought you were afraid that I would corrupt your soul. Now you're pointedly asking me to tell you how?

It's Harry and Ron. But mostly Harry. He's suspicious that I've been spending so much away from them, but I honestly don't want to spend time with them--because they don't understand what is happening.

She didn't want to express her lack of confidence in Tom's story as the reason she hadn't brought Ron and Harry into the loop. She also knew that any mention against Hagrid would be taken as a personal injury.

You want me to assuage your friend's doubts?

I suppose that's one way of putting it.

If there is one thing I learned in the orphanage, it is how to distance myself without making enemies.

How could you help me?

I can talk to Harry for you, feed you your lines. It would all be -there was a pause in the elegant script- voluntary, of course. You would be in control. There would just be companion in that brilliant mind of yours.

I'm meeting him at midnight in front of the secret room. You'll be with me?

Keep the diary on your person, and everything will go smoothly.

Thank you, Tom.

Hermione shut the planner with a snap before gasping and reopening it to the page. The last two lines had just begun to fade. Diary... he had called the book a diary. Not a homework planner, not an academic study guide, but a diary. That explained a portion of why the Planner-no, diary-was so personable. It had something that Hermione could only define as "soul" and had none of the pedantic diction of the textbooks she so lovingly held.

Perhaps Tom was embarrassed to admit he had a diary. However, Tom seemed so unembarrassed at everything he did. The lilting words, the perfectly brushed black hair, his commanding presence even in the face of those five times his age. It seemed so uncharacteristic for him to be ashamed of anything really. What did he have to be ashamed about? His muggle father? His poor upbringing? She supposed those were large enough skeletons, especially for a Slytherin.

However, an unbidden voice in Hermione's head whispered, you honestly think he has nothing to be ashamed about because he is everything you aspire to be.

She wanted to practice curses with Tom again, to see him and ask him about his past, about what made him the way he was. She wanted to learn how he knew so many curses. But above all, she wanted to know how she could become him. Instead of the brash know-it-all she shuddered to recall, she wanted to be the collected, velvet-gloved holder of knowledge. She wanted to show everyone that had teased her that she was better than them, not through shoving her talent in their faces but by the soft power Tom so deftly wielded.

She rose from her four-poster and stepped into the bathroom, littered with Parvati and Lavender's cosmetics along with a stack of witches' fashion magazines. In the mirror stood a pale teenage girl. Her brown hair frizzed and curled as if her image wasn't staying still, as if she was quietly shifting every moment, ill-defined. Her eyes were cradled by indigo shadows, her lips chapped from the Scottish air. She hesitantly smiled, but quickly closed her mouth at the revealing of her unsightly front teeth. Honestly, for the daughter of dentists, you think she could be a better advertisement for their practice.

Her fingers, longish and delicate, were her favorite feature. She carefully turned each of the dozens of potions bottles towards her, reading the names off. Sleek-Eazy Hair Potion, Voluminous Vixen Conditioner, Don't-Be-A-Hag Hair Removal. All of the things she had so blithely cast aside for years as vanity and shallowness. You're going to need to cultivate a presence if you want to get anywhere. The mirror yawned at her and gave her a once over.

"Dearie, you could be so pretty if you tried. Not like those two girls, oh you know who I'm talking about. They don't try, they overcompensate."

Hermione lifted her shirt and prodded her stomach, slightly bloated from a particularly large portion of Shepherd's Pie she had at lunch, before the funeral.

"Oh, that's not the problem, love. You just need to use some of those potions, and sleep more. I always see you in here in the wee hours of the morning..." the mirror yawned again.

Hermione took the magazines, turned on the faucet of one of the bathtubs, and decided that she would craft a new image. One that was more in line with her growth as a witch, one that would make people take her seriously, and one that, when she looked in the mirror, knew she could defeat whatever it was that wanted to kill her. Don't you think this is just a distraction? You should be studying spells and researching Acromantulas, and Learning. Hermione brushed aside her pedantry and resolved to begin her quest to become the most knowledgeable, most dynamic, most in-control student at Hogwarts.

Tom Riddle, from the confines of his diary, was curious as to the response of Hermione Granger to prolonged contact with his Horcrux. When Lucius Malfoy had opened the book several months prior and hesitantly wrote of Voldemort's destruction at the hands of Harry Potter, his will was not strong enough to resist the coercion Voldemort's reign had been built upon. It only took a few well-placed promises of recognition and honor and, perhaps a bit of something Unforgivable to bend Malfoy to his will. Just like his father. For all of their well-bred, pureblood upbringing, neither Abraxas nor Lucius had the wherewithal to stand up to the Dark Lord.

However, Hermione Granger seemed to be internalizing the diary. He hadn't used charms on her (past his own patented blend of seduction and flattery). He hadn't purposely bended her subconscious. Besides the brief sojourns of possession, he hadn't meddled with her mind at all. Part of him refused to out of his principles of cleanliness, as generally, the less time he had to spend in a Mudblood's mind, the better. However, part of it was a vanity issue. He wanted to see if he still had the ability to charm, and wanted to boast at the end to Potter himself that he didn't even need to influence his best friend. She had come willingly.

But whether it was the nature of the Horcrux or a testament to Granger's indeterminable will, she seemed to be turning into him. When he was placed on her person, he could catch the train of her thought, or at least her motivation and desire. For some odd reason, she had changed from a neurotic bookworm obsessed with assignments and due dates to someone who craved knowledge for its use. He had somewhat written her off at the beginning as a troubled girl who used the quest for academic perfection as a distraction for her insecurity, and he wasn't prepared to admit that he was wrong about that. Yet now...she thought the same thoughts he had when he was her age. He knew that he needed to craft himself anew, that he couldn't be a poor orphan and simultaneously lead the Noble House of Salazar Slytherin. He needed to embody his ancestor, learn words of power, learn magic lost to all before him, to unleash the Basilisk, to form a following, and to rid the Earth of the cretinous muggles who challenged magic's existence.

But why was Granger coming to the same conclusion of change? She seemed to become more sociopathic with every passing day. Manipulating Potter, detaching herself from classes, outright lying to friends. She had gained confidence in herself and her abilities. Tom prided himself on inspiring fear, not self-improvement! However, he could not help but feel a tinge of pride whenever she mastered a new spell, or asked a question he long ago posed to Professor Merrythought during his autodidactic academic career. There was no question that she was intelligent, and a part of him wished that he could kill her on the spot in order to assuage his doubts of supremacy.

A thought sprang to his mind. Perhaps the Basilisk wasn't the right tool for the moment. If Granger truly could serve as a foil to his mind and as a willing source of information, then he didn't necessarily need to arouse suspicion and fear in her mind through the Basilisk. He needed her to resurrect him, willingly. Every day they spent on this red herring was a day that Granger could be using learning the depths of magic needed to perform the resurrection ritual with the Diary. He just needed to find something to offer in return so that Granger would help him and to convince her that the Basilisk, or Acromantula, pardon, was no longer a threat. Once he had a body, everything would be easier.

And he knew exactly how to make Hermione agree.

AN: Thank you everyone for your patience! College, quite obviously, proved to be unsatisfactorily busy during the Fall Semester. However, I'm going to try to update a few times a month as penance for my cliffhanger sins. As always, reviews are appreciated greatly.