So... what exactly was this situation?
Kate stared dumbstruck at the suit of armour in front of her... oh, no, wait — it didn't have eyes, just a slit.
Old Man Dumbledore had gone to the trouble of having Hagrid haul it over, then walked out himself to see Hagrid off, leaving her in here alone to have a staring contest with this suit of armour?
Her eyelashes twitched faintly. She craned her head and shot a few glances toward the doorway.
Surely it wasn't what she thought it meant?
Never mind — whatever it was, she had to give it a try.
She conjured a small awl with her wand, carved a few alchemical sigils onto the armour to improve magical conduction, and then...
"Phantom Clone, manifest!"
A faintly luminous, viscous substance gushed out from the tip of her wand and was gradually absorbed by the armour in front of her.
Kate saw the slit on the helmet flicker briefly with light before quickly fading away.
She glanced toward the doorway again — Dumbledore still hadn't returned.
Then she would just keep refining the clone.
From her previous experience she had concluded that the diary possessed a certain degree of intelligence, enough to tell the difference between a Wizard and a clone.
But Kate didn't know how it could tell. Perhaps it relied on memory; perhaps on something else entirely.
Perfect — she would let the diary itself help her work out how to make the clone more flawless.
She pointed the tip of her wand at her own brain, drew a few wisps of silvery substance out of her temple, and dropped them into the armour.
Kate kept tossing in all sorts of memories — some false, some genuine — while using the awl to carve various alchemical equations onto the armour.
With memory and a physical body, combined with her own consciousness that could remotely inhabit the armour, she just might be able to fool the diary.
But all of this still required real-world verification.
Having finished her share of the preparations, Kate cleared her throat and called out loudly on purpose: "Fawkes, since the Professor still isn't back, I think I'll just head off for now!"
A short while later, the office door was pushed open and Dumbledore came strolling in from outside. "Oh, child — I got so carried away chatting with Hagrid just now that I nearly forgot I still had business to attend to."
"It's quite all right," Kate said, her eyes curving into a smile. "With you here, I feel completely at ease."
Old man and young girl exchanged a knowing smile at exactly the same moment. Dumbledore turned his head and regarded the slightly crooked patterns carved into the armour with no small measure of admiration.
"Are these alchemical equations? It seems you spent your two months of summer holiday in very diligent study indeed."
Although he had never delved especially deeply into the path of alchemy himself, the unusual aura radiating from these markings alone was enough to draw his attention.
To reach this level in just two short months, through self-study alone — even the word "genius" was probably insufficient to describe the child standing before him.
"Very good — though it's still missing one or two things."
He murmured under his breath, gave his wand a wave, and the armour — which had been giving off such an unusual aura — abruptly turned utterly unremarkable.
As though it had simply always been this way.
Kate watched this little trick of his in awe. The aura had certainly changed, yet she could feel that the runes she had carved hadn't lost any of their efficacy — if anything, they seemed faintly strengthened.
The clone she and Dumbledore had crafted together might really be capable of cracking the diary.
"No time to lose — let's give it a try first." Dumbledore walked over to the desk and lifted the diary out of the box.
The armour in front of them suddenly let out a series of creaking sounds, as if adjusting to its own body.
Kate silently retreated two steps and, with her mind, directed it to walk over and sit down.
The steel-forged fingers worked stiffly through a few motions, and only once they had loosened up did they pick up the quill and write a few words on the page.
"My name is Katherine Wynyard." The ink shimmered briefly on the paper before being absorbed in moments, not so much as a trace left behind.
Dumbledore looked up at her in mild surprise.
"It's all right," Kate said with a shrug. "It has no idea who my aunt is anyway."
Besides, falling into Old Man Dumbledore's hands as it had, it was destined never to meet Katherine in person.
Just as they were speaking, words suddenly seeped through the page: "Hello, Katherine Wynyard. My name is Tom Riddle. How did you come to find my diary?"
"From Grindelwald. The old fellow tried to lay hands on me, so I killed him." The armour continued to write according to Kate's intent.
The diary quickly bled out another line: "You killed him? That lunatic who called himself Grindelwald?"
Kate kept a constant eye on Dumbledore's reactions, only to find that his expression could quite literally be described as "still as undisturbed water." She couldn't help but marvel inwardly.
It seemed that, so long as he was prepared, no one could stir even the faintest ripple of emotion in the White Dark Lord.
She pressed her lips together and had the armour go on writing: "Lunatic? No — he was Grindelwald. I found him inside a mysterious prison. A pity, though — the Dark Lord of yesteryear couldn't even withstand a single Avada Kedavra."
As that line of writing faded once again, Kate noticed that the rock-steady armour began to tremor faintly — the diary must have started using Legilimency to probe that particular memory.
But she had anticipated this from the start, and had pre-loaded the clone with a clip from her past life — the scene from a Harry Potter film in which Voldemort kills Grindelwald.
Edited, of course, to cut Voldemort himself out of it.
The memory was a tangled mix of truth and falsehood. Even after rummaging around for a good while with Legilimency through the clone's undefended mind, the diary couldn't determine whether it was real.
And so it fell silent.
"When I killed Grindelwald, I noticed he kept the diary clutched to his chest the whole time. I thought it might be something interesting — but it turns out that even when I lower my mental defences and let you inside, you still can't tell what's real from what isn't."
Kate decided to provoke it a little more: "Oh well — perhaps I ought to just hand you over to Dumbledore and let him take a look at what sort of trinket you actually are."
That set the diary on edge at once. Words came spilling out rapidly: "You know Dumbledore? You're one of his people!"
Oh dear, terribly sorry — Old Man Dumbledore is standing right across from you at this very moment.
Kate snickered quietly to herself for a moment before continuing to write: "Dumbledore is nothing but an outdated old conservative. He may have defeated Grindelwald, but he was never capable of killing him."
"I, on the other hand, killed him with ease — which only proves that I am stronger than Dumbledore. I would never have guessed that you'd be so terribly frightened of such a useless old man. How utterly dull."
Sensing from her tone that she seemed ready to give up on it, the diary began to shake violently.
"You won't hand me over to him! Because there's still one thing in which you fall short of him — Hogwarts. You haven't fully claimed that school yet, and I can help you! Only I can help you surpass him!"
Kate raised an eyebrow and tilted her head toward the central figure of their conversation.
After going around in circles for so long, they had finally gotten to the real subject.
"Hogwarts? I have no interest in that sort of school."
The moment she finished writing, the armour snapped the diary shut with a sharp clap.
Kate's body gave a small jolt as part of her consciousness flooded back into her, sharpening her spirits in an instant.
After all the disparaging things she had just said about both Dark Lords — white and black — Old Man Dumbledore wasn't going to start holding a grudge against her, was he?
She glanced reflexively at Dumbledore, only to find the old man sitting in his chair, gaze fixed calmly on the diary, as though pondering something.
After a long moment, he finally lifted his head and asked, "Why don't you continue?"
"Eh?"
"Why don't you keep questioning it?" he patiently repeated.
Under his gaze, Kate began to feel a touch nervous. "Because... because one has to hold on to the upper hand at all times. I can't let it lead me around by the nose."
Her thinking was simple: when conversing with the diary, she had to construct an absolutely dominant persona.
A persona dominant enough to have easily killed the first-generation Dark Lord — outwardly dismissive of the White Dark Lord, while privately caring about him to death.
That's right — the persona she was crafting was, in essence, a feminised version of Voldemort himself.
See? Using Katherine as the raw material was a perfect fit!
Except this "Voldemort" was the future, kill-without-blinking Dark Lord Voldemort, whereas the consciousness of the Horcrux inside this diary was still the not-yet-adult Tom Riddle.
Even the Tom of this period, cunning and deep as he already was, would still find himself fearing — and being involuntarily drawn to — this feminised version of his future self.
By then, the diary would be the one becoming her vassal, rather than her being controlled by it.
Dumbledore adjusted his half-moon spectacles. What flowed from his deep-blue eyes wasn't wariness or scrutiny at a young wizard possessing such depth of mind, but rather the gentle warmth of an elder regarding a younger generation.
"I think you've done very well," he said, leaning lightly back against the chair, his tone mild with praise. "I had originally thought I would still need to give you some hints on how to lead it along; now, it seems, you can manage perfectly well on your own."
Hiss — Old Man Dumbledore, please stop praising her like that, she was about to die of panic.
Kate instinctively took half a step back, opened her mouth with a troubled look — but her mind had gone completely blank, no idea how to respond.
If Dumbledore had been probing because of her performance, or guarded and wary in some way, she could still have parried whatever move he threw.
But she'd been hurling insults at his head — and Grindelwald's — and not only was he not angry, he had actually started complimenting her!
Kate had no idea what kind of expression she was supposed to wear to receive his praise. She was even half-suspecting that this was the calm before the storm.
It wasn't that she couldn't take a compliment — but put herself in his shoes: if she were the White Dark Lord, and she saw a child displaying intelligence on par with an adult's, how would she react?
Even if not outright wary, surely there'd be at least some probing — who just heaps praise on someone without restraint like this? No matter how she thought about it, it was strange.
And yet the moment Dumbledore was finished praising her, he started showing her out: "You must be tired today as well. Go back and rest — we'll set another time next."
Kate froze again, pointed at herself, then glanced at the armour beside her. "Then it..."
"I'll trouble you to put it back where it came from." Dumbledore stroked his beard. "You wouldn't have a centenarian doing manual labour like that, would you?"
But she was only a human cub of a dozen-odd years herself.
After a stretch of silence, Kate — with no small amount of weariness — manipulated the clone into wobbling back to its feet.
Girl and armour bowed to Dumbledore at exactly the same moment, and together they walked out of the office.
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