A/N: We have many new readers! Welcome! New Blood updates Tuesdays and Fridays. Reading along live is very different than marathoning it all at once; many readers come back once a month or so to read several chapters in quick succession, so find what works for you. :)
For the readers who read in chunks: after this chapter, come back on July 31 for chapter 189.
Hermione's mother had always been very open with Hermione.
"Risks are okay and good to take," she'd say, "so long as you're aware of them, you've analyzed them, and you have mitigation strategies in place. Without taking careful leaps forward, you will be left behind."
Hermione would venture to say her mother hadn't been thinking about the risk of recorporealizing the young Dark Lord when she'd spoken to her, but she figured the underlying logic was still the same.
Hermione had limited the risks and possible damage beforehand; she'd locked the door, and she'd made sure her wand was inaccessible to anyone but her. She kept her sword on her for good measure, just in case – she wouldn't hesitate to defend herself if need be, and basilisk venom was one of the few things known to defeat a horcrux, which she'd made sure had imbued her sword.
It was still stupidly risky, Hermione was aware, to help Tom Riddle materialize a body at all.
But she was willing to take that risk for the possible reward.
She'd been pouring her magic into the diary for nearly ten minutes, her core spinning and spinning and spinning and regenerating more and more and more, when Hermione felt a change. Something shifted, the power the diary had been accumulating changing, and she felt something new, someone new, take hold and grab onto her power.
Steadying herself, Hermione carefully pulled her power out.
It was a shocking sight to behold, the body of a teenage boy slowly being pulled from the pages of an open diary, dragged into existence by naught but magic and will.
Hermione examined him as he slowly emerged, coalescing inch by inch. Tom Riddle was rather taller than she'd realized from looking at him across the fiery chasm of her mindscape, his shoulders rather broader, and he was much more attractive than she'd seen before. He had a classically handsome jawline, masculine features, and jet-black hair that seemed to naturally fall into perfectly-styled waves.
Hermione looked at him, biting her lip. She remembered the lesson she had learned with Lockhart – to look past people's looks and to beware wanting to believe the best of someone just because she found them attractive…
…but it was very easy to see how Tom Riddle had once charmed the school and a crowd of admirers into following him wherever he chose to go.
Tom looked as stunned as Hermione felt, watching his body slowly form as she pulled him out, but once his feet emerged and he was able to stand on solid ground, he looked up at her and smirked.
"A body," he murmured, running his hands over his chest. His voice sounded just like it had in her mindscape. "I'd never thought I'd have one of these again."
"You won't for long," Hermione warned him. She kept her wand aimed at him. "Any funny business, and I'll use my sword."
"I will keep my end of our bargain," Tom told her, his dark eyes gleaming, "but surely you know your sword would not cut me."
"I dipped it in the basilisk venom today, and it's goblin-made," she informed him. "I wouldn't go after you; I'd go after the diary."
Tom flinched, and his eyes were hard.
"You needn't threaten me, Hermione," he told her. "Let's be civilized, here."
"If you don't act against me, I won't need lethal self-defense," she said conversationally. "And forgive me if I don't instinctively trust the Dark Lord."
Hermione had set out a wide-mouthed flask and a small ritual knife. Tom looked them over, taking the silver knife into his hand, and cut deeply into his arm. He held it over the flask, blood running freely and fast down his arm, off his hand, and collecting into the container. His eyes held hers as he did, not showing any evidence of pain.
"I'm not the Dark Lord, Hermione," he quietly chided her. "I would have been, once upon a time, but not anymore."
Hermione scoffed. "Well, seeing as the rest of you already was the Dark Lord, that doesn't entirely surprise me, Tom, that you wouldn't see the need to copy."
"No. You misunderstand." His eyes gleamed at her. "If I were to get the chance again, I would not move against Muggleborns."
"…what?"
Hermione was incredulous. She looked at him, astonished.
"You can't honestly expect me to believe that, can you?" she demanded.
"You were right, in your reflections on Slytherin's motives," Tom said, fully ignoring the blood running down his arm. "If I wanted to take over the wizarding world now, I would not court the old families' favor as the other part of me did. I would instead remember the wrongs they did to me when I entered the wizarding world, and I would pay them back in full as I gained power."
Hermione raised her eyebrows.
"Let me get this straight," she said. "You're saying that instead of leading a genocide on blood-traitors and Muggleborns, you'd instead go after the pureblood houses who mocked you in revenge?"
"That is exactly what I am saying." His eyes glittered. "Having helped you plan your own revenge… I realize I had forgotten just how rewarding asserting true justice can be."
"You know that your approval over my plan is only making me doubt it more, you realize?" Hermione snapped. "I don't exactly want your blessing, Tom. We may chat and be loose acquaintances, but I'm well aware of who and what you are."
"How cruel you are, Hermione," Tom said, adopting injured tones with a smirk. "And here I am, your friend, bleeding for you, and you would wound me so."
Hermione's eyes flitted to the container, which was almost full of blood, and her eyes widened.
"How are you not passed out?" she said, astonished. "That's… that looks like a lot of blood."
"It's nothing," Tom scoffed. "Scarcely even a pint, and that's what the muggles took for transfusions. I can't feel it anyway, so what's it matter?"
"You… you can't feel it?" she asked, surprised. "I thought you had a body."
"I have a magical construct of a body that your power pulled into existence," he corrected. "You had a subconscious concept of my body and helped it materialize – what I looked like, that I would bleed. But a nervous system is hard to create, Hermione, and I doubt you were thinking of all the body's systems when your power pulled me through. This construct holds my soul and magical signature, but little more."
Hermione hesitated.
"But – your blood, though," she faltered. "That—that will match your old DNA, right?"
"I don't know what that is," Tom sniffed. "But if someone has a sample of my old blood signature, I assure you, this one will match." His eyes darkened. "Though, this one might be Darker. I am a horcrux, after all."
The container nearly full, Tom pulled away, wrapping his arm in his robes.
"I don't think you'll be able to heal me," he mused. "I would venture to say magic can't work on me, that I'd just absorb it. But I don't think I'd be able to cast magic either, if I tried."
"What do you want me to do with this thing, now?" Hermione said, pulling out the hideous pendant she'd made. "Just dip it in your blood?"
Tom's eyes glittered.
"Unless you're willing to cast a Dark spell, yes," he told her, though his voice sounded weirdly hollow. "It's blood from a horcrux; the Darkness inherent in my blood and magic will leave a taint."
Hermione's eyes went wide.
"You—you're fading," she said in surprise. "Tom, you're fading."
Tom looked down at himself, then scowled.
"Of course, this body only lasts just long enough for you to get what you need," he said scathingly. He closed his eyes and sighed. "At least I got to have one for a while, to stretch and feel magic once more."
He gave her a small, resigned smile, and Hermione felt her heart pang as he continued to fade.
"I wasn't the one who made the decision to make a horcrux," she argued. "You can't blame me for your own prison!"
"I'm not blaming you for anything, Hermione," Tom said gently. His eyes were soft on hers, looking more sad than anything akin to anger. "I'm grateful you gave me the chance to leave it, is all. But having had a taste of freedom… it makes it harder to go back."
Hermione watched as his feet were slowly drawn back into the diary, pulling his legs down as he slowly sank into the pages, as if trapped in quicksand.
"I—I'll still write to you," Hermione told him, feeling the desperate need to reassure him somehow. "It's not like you're going to be alone for another fifty years."
"I know," Tom said, sinking in up to his waist. He offered her a small smile, before raising his eyebrow in a teasing way. "But even you know that it's not quite the same, isn't it? As face to face conversation."
Hermione gnawed on her lip as he sank in up to his chest, the remaining bits of him becoming more and more transparent in the dim light.
"I'll see you again," she said quietly, watching him sink in up to his neck. "It'll be okay, Tom. Really."
Tom sighed.
"Will it, though?" he said wistfully. "Will it ever?"
With that, his head sank into the pages of the diary, and with a violent breeze, the diary snapped itself shut, leaving no indication Tom had ever existed, save the blood pooled in the flask and dripping down the knife, bright red against the dark colors of the room.
Hesitantly, Hermione went over to the container, submerging the necklace in the blood and screwing a lid onto it. She hid the flask under her bed with her Potions components, wanting to make sure the House Elves wouldn't find it if they came for her clothes.
"He made his own bed, and he has to lie in it," Hermione told herself firmly. "It is not my fault he did Dark magic as a teen and tore his soul in half."
Still, even as Hermione tucked the diary away safely and changed for bed, she couldn't help but wonder. A lifetime sentence for criminals was a common thing for murder – but an eternity, trapped alone in a book?
Hermione wondered if there was truly a crime that deserved something quite so horrible as that.