Hogwarts in summer was a sleeping giant.
No students. No ghosts wandering the halls. No Dumbledore sweeping around like a wind-drenched prophet. The wards were passive, reduced to low alert, trusting the season's peace. I moved through them like mist, invisible thanks to a network of perception-breaking runes etched into my coat and skin.
Even in stillness, the castle pulsed with layered magic. It was old, layered, aware. I respected it.
But I had come for something it had forgotten.
The Room of Requirement welcomed me like an old friend. I'd studied its function for weeks from afar—its ancient adaptability, its quiet omniscience.
"I need a place to find what was lost and hidden."
The door rippled into form.
I stepped inside the Room of Hidden Things a cathedral of clutter, where centuries of desperation had piled on top of itself. Books, weapons, cauldrons, shrunken heads, bloodied robes, forgotten artifacts and above all that, radiating faint pulses of cold intelligence
There it was.
The Diadem of Rowena Ravenclaw.
Tarnished silver. A faint shimmer of enchanted sapphire. Carved with the line: Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure. And bound to it like a shadow in the edge of a mirror was the Horcrux. Tom Riddle.
I didn't reach for it.
Not yet.
A floating Archive screen shimmered into existence beside me, runes glowing softly in my peripheral vision. I tapped a series of commands:
"Scan: Mental Enhancement Artifact. Origin: Pre-Ministry Enchanting. Secondary Signature: Fragmented Soul."
The Archive began deconstructing the magic threads of the diadem without touching it. Layer by layer, it unfolded: ancient enchantments designed to enhance clarity, processing speed, associative recall. Not mind control, mental expansion. A perfect tool for my overloaded Archive.
Once I'd finished scanning, I reached out.
The second I touched it, his presence surged like static through bone.
"You are not worthy."
The voice was colder than the room.
Tom Riddle, fragment of a soul, coiled like a serpent in the silver band. He had sensed me—not just my magic, but my difference. He struck, tried to flood my mind, but—
I was no student.
My Archive intercepted him. Runes snapped to life around my eyes and chest, redirecting the soul like code rerouted through a firewall.
"Soul Data Acquisition: Initiated."
I didn't absorb him.
Instead, I created a prison.
A transfer stream opened—directly into my Fairy Tail simulation. The magical architecture accepted the soul fragment as a conscious foreign entity. Not erased. Not enslaved. But observed.
Tom Riddle's consciousness was cast into the simulated world—a sandbox teeming with evolving AI and natural magic systems.
I tagged his identity:
[RIDDLE_01] – Contained. Sentient. Under Live Observation.
Then I began scanning everything his soul's metadata, his emotional evolution, the exact spells he had used, learned, or created, from childhood to near-immortality. His use of power. His obsession. The structure of Wizarding Magic through his experience.
Every curse, charm, ritual, and dark innovation.
Inside the Fairy Tail world, Riddle began changing.
Wizarding magic was wand-bound, heavily ritualized, often inflexible, built on precise Latin formulas and intent. Its power was linear—strength scaled through knowledge and ancestry.
But Fairy Tail magic was biological, will-driven, fueled by emotion and personal origin. There were no wands—only spirit, control, memory.
And Riddle… adapted.
Even without a body, his mind began to warp. He learned to channel elemental magic directly. To fight Dragon Slayers. To barter with celestial spirits.
As he changed, my Archive recorded it all:
How Wizarding curses transmuted into Fairy Tail-style techniques How he rewrote his identity using emotional resonance How he gradually began to respect freedom over control
It was like watching two philosophies of magic wrestle inside one soul. Not good vs. evil. But structure vs. freedom. Control vs. chaos. School vs. instinct.
And as Riddle adapted...
So did I.
The overload was gone. The Diadem's enhancements synced with my neural pattern, making the Archive interface run smoother, faster. With the energy from Fairy Tail's world still flowing into the Library World, my magic reached new depth.
I didn't become stronger.
I became clearer.
Smarter.
Faster.
I had the soul of a Dark Lord, now a test subject in a simulated world. I had access to two branches of magic, side by side. Compared, translated, broken down and rebuilt.
And Hogwarts still slept.
I slipped the Diadem into a temporal stasis rune. It belonged to history, not me.
As I exited the castle, I whispered:
"Thank you, Rowena. You built it to enhance thought. I'm just using it… for a bigger equation."