19 March 1993, Hogwarts
Harry pondered on his conversation with Dumbledore as he made his way to the Hospital Wing. He felt vindicated, in a way, to finally get a real win against the headmaster. What he had done was essentially give the man a choice between risking his newly regained position as headmaster or not investigating Harry's involvement in the whole Chamber of Secrets fiasco.
This was the plan ever since Harry decided that he needed to get Longbottom to get into the chamber.
It was a big step, in a way, for Harry to finally stop clinging to the shadows and step into the light. When he decided that he would have to fight Riddle, he knew that he couldn't stay hidden anymore and Dumbledore's attention was more likely going to be on him.
So, the first thing he did was secure the fact that the old man wouldn't have any influence on him. This was easily done by asking Arcturus Black to take him as his ward. The paperwork took a couple of days to arrange, which was why Harry calibrated the rune to shut down Neville's consciousness for that duration.
The next step was moving the Chamber, which was done by using a mixture of compulsion charm and hypnosis on the unconscious body of the Longbottom boy. While Harry had disabled his consciousness, technically speaking, his unconscious mind still worked in the background. Giving him the image of a snake and asking him to tell that snake to move allowed Harry to analyze that particular word using his Arcane Hearing and use it to change the location of the entrance to the Chamber. It was like the boy who lived talked in his sleep, so, he wouldn't really remember anything.
The sword trick was far more advanced. Harry didn't think it would appear but didn't really discount the possibility because of whatever Destiny bullshit tended to happen around Longbottom. So, all it took was analyzing the enchantments on the sword and seeing whatever Godric Gryffindor added to it. Honestly, it was mostly Harry screwing around with it, and he had given up about making it disappear. And wasn't it a surprise, finding out that the sword disappeared? The Weasley boy wasn't one to hold his mouth.
It was like Fate itself wanted Harry to get one over Dumbledore. He didn't know if it was something he did when he messed with the sword, or if there was a hidden functionality that made it disappear when certain parameters are met, but he didn't care. It worked and that's enough.
It would have honestly been better to not have involved Longbottom at all, but it was mostly done to cover most of his bases. The Parseltongue was useful, but the fact that Neville should be protected by the prophecy meant that he had an edge that Harry could use against Riddle. It was a bit cruel, but it worked. The idiot actually killed a fucking Basilisk, with a sword that appeared out of thin air.
Changing his memories was something that Dumbledore would notice, especially considering the trauma that a memory charm would leave on the kid. Harry was many things, but he wasn't cruel. Maybe he could have used whatever bullshit his magic crest had done when they were attacked by Quirrell a year back, but he didn't know how to use it. Also, the fact that the boy who lived was in extreme pain during the encounter already hid any sign of trauma that could be caused by memory manipulation.
Still, Harry had won. He had denied Dumbledore an asset in the Basilisk corpse, let alone whatever Jörmungandr was. He had forced the man to not involve himself in his business, and most importantly, he defeated Riddle.
In a way, Harry was disappointed with the fact that the game ended. Did that make him a bad person? That he still craved the intellectual challenge of a rival, that he missed the blood pumping through his veins, the thrill of the chase against an impossible deadline.
Tom Riddle was a fascinating puzzle, a Horcrux that somehow combined with the portrait-like personality depicted in the Diary, and somehow became alive. More alive than Lord Voldemort.
It was probably a mistake, considering how unprepared Tom Riddle was when he made his first Horcrux. The soul wasn't some tangible thing that could be quantified. It's the summation of someone's character, of their true self. Theoretically speaking, making a Horcrux would make one immortal because of the paradoxical nature of someone being both alive and dead at the same time. Herpo the foul perverted the Phylactery ritual by finding out that souls that are split into pieces are still connected enough that if anchored properly could convince the world that you were still alive and that your body is the anchor. The advantage is the idea that you avoided the dangers of someone discovering your phylactery and using soul magic to literally remake you. But the main disadvantage is that splitting your soul is splitting your personality.
The idea, on principle, is to give away your ability to do something or feel something, into the book. Tom Riddle, who had accidentally killed an innocent student, wanted to get rid of the guilt he felt and unconsciously resented his complex planning, and his cunning that didn't account for him making a mistake. He put all of it into the diary, and slowly, without him noticing, started to lose those attributes, becoming the power-hungry monster that Voldemort was.
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