General Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry Potter series. J.K. Rowling is the owner of Harry Potter and all its affiliates. Some themes may be similar to other stories on fanfiction, but I have not plagiarized any writing.
Chapter One.
T. M. Riddle. She turned the book over in her hands a few times before flipping it open casually.
Blank. All the pages were blank. She supposed that the owner never got a chance to use the thing before he or she lost it, or perhaps it was a present that for some reason never got delivered. Judging from the condition of the book, it was rather old, but had been kept in decent enough shape. Well, finder's keepers and all that; she needed a notebook anyway. Writing on scrolls with quills was still something to get used to. The girl put the book into her backpack and went towards Ravenclaw's Tower. Once inside she took out the book, a pen from her bag, and made herself comfortable in a nook between the window and the bookshelves. The common room had its uses for blending in and not garnering attention; she just had to look for the right places. She took her black fine point pen and debated whether or not to write on the inside cover. A stereotypical "This belongs to…" would be rather pointless considering the name emblazoned on the spine. She shook her head and skipped the first two pages before writing.
thursday. 13 october 1992
The magical world seems to be a bit backwards. Wizards and witches have the ability to create the most wondrous things, yet their view on nonmagicals seem out of character compared to the intelligence and willpower needed to wield magic—granted I have witnessed cases where the so called pureblooded higher class suffers from a visible tradition of inbreeding.
From my observations this past month and a half, I have seen that people rely too much on magic and are left completely dumbfounded and vulnerable when faced with a situation where "physical" or "Muggle" ways of doing things interrupts their routine. For instance, wands are held with such reverence, yet they are so easily broken. Apparently. RW (G2) broke his wand before coming to school and seemed to think that fixing it with a bit of tape would solve all his problems. Even I can see that wand creation is almost like a scientific art and I would have expected better from someone raised in such a society.
People seem to be rather careless with their wands, putting them in back pockets, behind ears, or using them to tie up their hair in the case of some girls. With the whole society's view on Muggles, I wonder if faced with a physical fight if any one of my peers would be able to keep going if I managed to disarm them and snap their wand. What would they do then besides consider it cowardly or cheating? I'm sure there is even some law against doing so.
Emeree finished her first entry and looked up to view the slowly filling common room. Dinner would be held shortly if the gathering of people was anything to go by. Unbeknownst to her, the first drop of ink of the page had activated a chain of delayed spells embedded into the leather tome. One of Tom Riddle's horcruxes had awoken and was taking in the freshly written passage. The memory of a boy smirked slightly as he read over the contents. He had assumed that the first contact to his diary would be that of someone pouring out their woes and worries about school, friends, love interests even, but this was much more appealing. Looking back down, Emeree was startled to find that her writing was slowly disappearing and being replaced with a handwriting that was not her own.
Interesting observations and thoughts.
She watched as those words too seemed to just disappear within the pages of the book. How was it doing that? She hadn't heard about such an object or read about it and the children in her dorm didn't seem to have anything similar. Was this just another artifact of the magical world that people took for granted and didn't bother to explain to muggleborns? Artificial intelligence was a concept still under research within the Muggle world, but she had seen bathroom mirrors throughout the castle that talked and gave advice pertaining to appearance. Perhaps this was some type of study aide? She decided to ignore the response for now and continue to write. If it was magically programmed to be sentient, it would respond no matter what she wrote. This passage would be a musing about the book itself to see if it would spout out anything else.
Curious. Despite having seen mirrors responding to some type of voice activated spells, I wasn't aware that study aides existed as well that commented on a person's writing. Hello world! I can now understand why professors are diligent about checking for special quills or parchment for exams.
the quik browen fox jumpped over the lazee read dog?
Yesterday, evening, she will decided to rake the leafs wash the dog go to the bank and attends a party!
The blew store had run out of succulent stationary paper.
She waited for those words to fade as well to see if the journal made any corrections or had anything else to say. Tom found the entire exchange somewhat humorous, yet at the same time could not help compliment on the method used to test a theory. Judging from what was being written, whoever was in possession of his diary was a mudblood. He found it entertaining that he was being tested on syntax, grammar, pragmatics, spelling, and use of punctuation. It was actually a bit clever, but despite the various intentional errors he would not be chalked up to being a wizarding review tool. However, his plan of acting as a sympathetic confidant may not work in this case even if the person was a mudblood. He considered leaving a general reply again in order to continue to read a few more bits of insight from this individual, but he may just end up revealing himself to someone who may turn him in to some authority figure. He may not even be within the halls of Hogwarts. The writer had not mentioned anything about a particular school, yet the reference for RW (G2) must be a code for a person. G for Gryffindor perhaps. He would remain silent for now.
Emeree waited a few moments before deciding that the book acted like the mirrors, most likely responding to certain code words or sporadically. Slightly disappointing for sure, but she would work with what she had. Maybe she could look into the spells and actually make a decent working study aide. First, she would need to figure out how to keep her writing from disappearing. By this time people were heading down to the Great Hall for dinner and she decided to put all the thinking aside in place of food. Regardless, she slid the book into her bag in case dinner was uneventful.
An uneventful dinner it was indeed. The food was relatively the same, the conversation mostly centered around Quidditch, studies, and the pointed out animosity between Gryffindor and Slytherin. Honestly, she didn't know how she would survive from the food choices alone. Roast beef, roast lamb, roast potatoes, roast chicken, it was always the same types of proteins. She looked over at the population and figured that it was mostly white children, but what about the obviously more ethnic students, including herself? Or, Merlin forbid, if someone wanted to each fish or were vegetarian. She turned to one of the older students, Cho, and waited for her discussion about Charms to finish.
"Excuse me, Cho, do you know who I can talk to regarding food preference?" The girl gave her such a bewildered look that she wondered if she had made a social faux pas. After a moment the girl cleared her throat and answered.
"Well, you are welcome to go down to the kitchens and have a talk with the house elves, though they tend to be rather particular about their work." House elves? She had not been aware that there were other species living within the castle.
"Thank you. Where would I find them?" Cho snuck a glance to the Hufflepuff table before turning back to her.
"It's towards the Hufflepuff dormitory. I'll introduce you to Cedric and he can help you." Emeree observed that Cho blushed a bit when referring to Cedric and decided that she would be somewhat pleasant and not comment on the girl's romantic interest. But, it was information to keep in mind for sure.
"I would really appreciate that thanks." Everyone was currently eating dessert so she pulled out the diary and made a quick note.
House elves are currently in charge of the Hogwarts kitchen. CC (R3) has agreed to introduce me to CD (H4) in order to find the correct passageway.
She was just wasting time at this point since the letters faded to reveal blankness. With dinner not quite finished she began a quick sketch. Tom watched the image emerge from the confines of the book and never really took into account that someone would do anything other than write in his diary. The image was messy and gestural but had enough detail that he could make out the familiar setting of the Great Hall within Hogwarts. From the vantage point, he was in the possession of a Ravenclaw. He shouldn't have been surprised since that house tended to have more mudbloods than the others even in his time. Based on the previous entry, it was a Ravenclaw first year. Tom continued to watch as the student this time imagined a creature that was part organic beast and part machinery. The anatomy was comical in its inaccuracy but the idea of merging the two worlds was intriguing. Despite his followers being overly concerned with blood status, he had seen plenty of examples of weak purebloods and powerful halfbloods and mudbloods, one would need only look at him as example. It brought back to mind the comment about how wizards would react if their wand was snapped in half. Since most children allowed themselves to be limited in their beliefs of magic mainly due to the fostering of wand dependency, they really wouldn't be able to fight back. The orphanage at least had taught him how to hold his own in a physical fight, he couldn't say the same for any of his schoolmates.
"Emeree." Emeree snapped her head back up to look at Cho and quickly tucked everything away in her backpack. The older girl led her over to the Hufflepuff table towards Cedric, who was rather handsome in her opinion but she hoped he had smarts to back up the looks.
"Cedric, this is Emeree, one of our first years. I was hoping you could show her the way towards the kitchens. I've never been, but I've heard it's towards your passageway." Cedric took a look at her before smiling.
"Well, it is always nice to know something you Ravens don't. Sure. Are you coming along?" He glanced at Cho and seemed to enjoy how she blushed if his smirk was anything to go by. Emeree narrowed her eyes and appraised him as well. Cedric looked to be knowledgeable enough she supposed, but she would ditch both of them, because of course Cho was coming along, as soon as she found the door.
"I'll just go get my bag." Cho turned and headed back towards their table. Cedric then focused all his attention on her, though now he was scrutinizing her suspiciously.
"So, any particular reason you want to find the kitchens?" His voice was smooth and even, but he couldn't hide the curiosity in the end.
"I want to talk to the house elves about food preference." He chuckled before standing. He was quite a bit taller than she was but she didn't step back.
"For some reason, I thought you would want to talk to them about their rights. Usually most muggleborns find out about them and ask one of us to show them the way." Rights? She would have to look into that when she went down there.
"I'm not quite ready to be crusading for the downtrodden." She said it blandly, not particularly meant as a joke but Cedric seemed to think it was. He patted her on the shoulder a few times.
"No, I don't suppose you are. When you do, I'm sure the Gryffindors would have something to say about it." He glanced at Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, and Hermionie Granger when saying so. Emeree had heard of them of course. Not to mention that most of the new students within her house had read the same books proclaiming Harry Potter to be a hero and The-Boy-Who-Lived. His exploits last year regarding the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor were still circulating the school. However, Emeree wondered if anyone ever saw what she did. A bit too thin. A bit too spooked. A bit too tense when around the male professors. Not confident in his posture, his eye contact, his attitude when speaking to anyone besides his best friends. These were things she noticed, but had not voiced her concerns about. It was the first year she was observing him, if it continued to be a problem then she would talk to someone.
"I'm ready to go." Cho had returned and Emeree was glad that Cedric's attentions were back to the older girl. Now she would be able to observe in peace, for the most part.