The diary suddenly unleashed a surge of powerful magical energy, trying to pull Leon into the illusion conjured by the Horcrux.
Luckily, though it was brief, Leon had experience with Horcruxes.
He knew exactly what they were capable of and was ready for this trick.
Before the magical energy could touch him, he deftly blocked it.
Then, without missing a beat, he kept up his taunts:
"Is that all you've got? Can't win an argument, so you try to drag me in and, what, nick my kidneys?
"Didn't work, did it? Bet you're fuming!
"Guess what, mate? I've got some top-notch magical gear!
"You pathetic little Mudblood wannabe! Think you can mess with me? Go practice in front of a mirror!"
As he scribbled the last few words, Leon could almost feel the diary trembling with rage.
Talk about a short fuse.
Then again, Voldemort was always a petty, small-minded git.
If he wasn't so easily riled, Leon might've worried his plan wouldn't work.
Dipping his quill in ink, Leon kept the pressure on, writing at lightning speed:
"So, what's it like? Properly cheesed off yet?
"Don't think I don't know what you are.
"You're just a dark wizard's memory fragment, stuffed into a dark magic trinket.
"You hide it, disguise it as some treasure, hoping someone picks it up and tries to unlock its secrets.
"Then you trap them in an illusion, turn yourself into a Portkey, and whisk them off to your lair to use as fodder for your dark experiments!"
Leon paused, then added with flair:
"Hah! I, the brilliant Draco Malfoy, have seen through it all!"
After that long spiel, the diary finally stopped shaking.
Tom Riddle probably decided it wasn't worth getting mad at a smug little brat.
"Oh? If the clever Mr. Malfoy has it all figured out, why bother chatting with a 'dark wizard' like me?"
"Brilliant Malfoy" spilled the beans:
"Ugh, it's because my dad won't let me near dark magic yet. He's locked up all the family's books.
"He even told our Head of House to block me from borrowing dark magic books from the library.
"But I really want to learn! So, I had to nick a dark magic item from home.
"I was actually excited at first—a diary from fifty years ago? Had to belong to some powerful dark wizard, right?
"Now, though… Merlin's beard, you're pathetic."
After Leon put down his quill, the diary stayed silent for a long time.
He could almost picture Tom Riddle muttering, "Don't get mad, don't get mad, no one's here to take my place."
Eventually, Riddle's handwriting appeared slowly:
"Isn't the clever Mr. Malfoy being a bit hasty? You don't even know what I'm capable of, and you're already calling me 'pathetic.' A tad unfair, don't you think?"
Leon sensed an opening.
While his left hand kept writing in the diary, his right hand summoned two flies and grabbed a spare quill from the desk.
In the diary, he scrawled in deliberately flamboyant handwriting:
"Unfair? Why don't you look in a mirror? Fifty years, and what have you done?
"Fifty years, and all you've got is some lousy illusion that can't even fool anyone!
"I'm pointing at your nose, calling you pathetic, stomping on your face, calling you rubbish, and you can't even spit back at me! Can you get any more useless?
"Heck, even…"
Leon levitated the flies onto the diary and, using magic, kept the quill writing:
"Even a fly squatting on your head, taking a dump, and you can't even swat it!
"Who's pathetic now?
"Loser! Rubbish! Useless! Shoddy Mudblood! Lowly piece of…"
Suddenly, a flash of green light streaked across the diary's surface.
The fly, mid-hand-rubbing, keeled over dead on the page, motionless.
Riddle's warning words started to form on the page.
But Leon wasn't paying attention anymore.
In that moment, Voldemort's extensive experience crafting Horcruxes and the steps outlined in Secrets of the Darkest Art from the Black family's hidden library flooded Leon's mind.
He positioned the prepared quill over the fly, killed by the dark magic.
With unwavering focus, for the first time in his life, he performed the sinister spell with absolute seriousness.
Horcrux creation.
Buzz!
The quill trembled, and the fly disintegrated into ash.
The diary seemed to wither, its condition irreversibly deteriorating just a fraction.
Darkness—endless darkness.
All the light in the Chamber seemed to be sucked into the quill at that moment.
A soul-chilling cold surged outward, then swiftly retracted, converging entirely into the quill.
Magic, power, soul—all bound to the quill.
The Horcrux was complete!
…
It was nearly four in the morning.
The diary, its black leather cover noticeably faded, lay closed and still on the workbench.
Kreacher stood nearby, his bulging eyes fixed unblinkingly on Leon, who was still engrossed in his research.
Leon, wearing dragonhide gloves, carefully held the Horcrux quill, examining it inch by inch under the lamplight, probing it with his soul and magic.
How to put it?
The Horcrux was a success, but just barely.
The quill was, at best, a shoddy Horcrux.
If Horcruxes were graded from lowest to highest—white, green, blue, purple, orange—Tom Riddle's diary would probably rank blue.
The Slytherin locket Leon had once "lived in" was purple.
Harry Potter, the sixth Horcrux, was an odd case, fluctuating unpredictably between white and orange.
This freshly made quill, Leon's first attempt at a Horcrux, was green at best.
The main issue? The soul fragment inside was utter rubbish.
Leon's initial tests revealed that this sliver of Tom Riddle's soul—already a fragment of a fragment—had less than half the intellect and power of the original.
It was tiny, barely the size of a grain of rice.
A strong breeze might snuff it out.
With Leon's current strength, he could probably gobble it up like a sweet.
Still, he was satisfied.
After all, this was a Horcrux made from another Horcrux.
A fragment of Voldemort's fragment.
The shoddy quality was to be expected.
Leon cast several Obliviate charms on the diary, erasing its memory of the Horcrux creation entirely, then tucked it away in his ring.
He'd wait for Riddle to recover some strength before making another.
As for the new Horcrux quill, Leon hadn't decided what to do with it yet.
He asked Kreacher for a storage ring to keep it on him for now.
He'd find a proper hiding spot later.
This wasn't some abstract experiment.
For years, Leon had lived under the constant threat of a survival crisis.
The undigested remnants of Voldemort's soul inside him were steadily growing stronger, always ready to hijack his body and soul.
Even if Leon consumed the dormant fragment without it causing trouble, Voldemort's main soul could still resurrect directly through him, much like Harry's situation.
Leon used to think the only way to solve this was to destroy all the Horcruxes and kill every piece of Voldemort.
But every step toward that goal put him in mortal danger.
The fewer Horcruxes there were, the fewer options Voldemort had for resurrection—and the more likely Leon would be possessed.
His problem wasn't like Harry's, where a straightforward solution might work.
His odds of survival were so low they might as well depend on sheer luck.
Praying to Merlin would've been more useful than trying to grow stronger.
But now, Leon had a new idea.
If the problem couldn't be solved, why bother solving it?
Instead, he'd do the opposite—create more problems.
Make the dilemma so complex, so insurmountable, that it could never be resolved, even until the universe burned out.
Like a program riddled with bugs but still running.
Fix the bugs, and it crashes.
Add more bugs, and it keeps chugging along.
When Voldemort's Horcruxes numbered fewer than ten and kept dwindling, Leon's risk of death would skyrocket.
But if there were hundreds, thousands, or even countless Horcruxes, with endless resurrection options, Leon's chance of dying would approach zero.
The diary wasn't just a Horcrux—it was the perfect Horcrux-making machine.
This first success gave Leon a huge boost of confidence.
He decided to make at least one Horcrux a month from now on, spreading Voldemort's second-hand soul fragments across the wizarding world.
Voldemort wanted immortality?
Fine, let him have it!
As long as he didn't resurrect in Leon's body or steal his soul, Voldemort could pop up wherever and however he liked.
His sorry life? Leon would make sure it lasted forever!