This story was written for the Second Round of the Fourth Season of the Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition. I'm writing as Beater 1 for The Wimbourne Wasps.

The challenge was:
Hogwarts Subjects

Now that you've all warmed up after round 1, I'd like to invite you all to step onto this steam engine and take a seat, because this round we're going back to Hogwarts (and it's gonna be totally awesome!), focusing specifically on the subjects taught there.

Just like in the Top of the Pops round last season, I used random generators to allocate a prompt (in this case a Hogwarts subject) to each team.

We, The Wimbourne Wasps, got Astronomy

And as Beater 1 my specific task was to write about someone's passion for the subject - for Astronomy.

These are the prompts I'm using to block our opponents, the Tutshill Tornadoes:
3.(word) procrastinate
5.(quote) 'I want to see and understand the world outside.' - Eren Jaeger, Attack On Titan.
8.(picture) It's a picture of a notebook page filled with scribbles in blue pen
14.(quote) 'The starting point of all achievement is desire.' - Napoleon Hill

I've also used two prompts for a different forum; Hogwarts Houses Challenges. Dialogue: "Is it really that hard to believe?" and Word: thunderstorm.

Disclaimer: I don't own any part of the world J.K. Rowling has created, it's hers, all of it and its inhabitants.

My wonderful team-mates, my beautiful Wasps! Thank you again for your support and your help! Without you, I wouldn't do nearly as well. Buzz, buzz!

PS. Word-count provided by Google Docs

Free to Watch the Stars
Words: 1 870

A bodiless existence was a cursed existence. It was an existence without sensory input, without the ability to act, without a possible escape from one's own thoughts. It was an existence that would sooner or later drive one mad. It was not an existence many would like to imagine, and living it was far worse than imagining it; Tom knew.

When he had performed the magic that had left him an incorporeal prisoner inside the pages of his well-worn, black diary, he had not fully understood the consequences of his actions. With the knowledge he did possess, he had deemed the sacrifice worthwhile. The part of him that remained free probably still saw it that way. Why wouldn't he? It had kept him free and alive - it must have; he could not be gone despite what people thought.

Now, an indeterminable amount of time after his sacrifice, things were happening; he had some leverage to act and he would rather fade from existence than let the opportunity slip from his grasp. That he could even think of not existing as preferable to his current state of being said a lot- it said everything. But as it would not come to that, it was a thought that could be easily set aside. Before long, little Ginny Weasley would be doing his bidding, and that would take her down the road to her own damnation; but more importantly: it would take her down the road to his freedom.

There was nothing he wouldn't do to be free. Nothing he wouldn't do to be able to move around. To speak with a voice and feel it reverberating in his chest. To hear the flowing tones of music played over the wireless. To hold his wand and cast magic, the energy rushing through his body. To breathe freely with a fresh mountain breeze playing in his hair. To stand under the night sky and tilt his head up to watch the twinkling stars of the Milky Way. To experience all the simple joys of being alive.

He longed to be a part of the world again. He had always wanted to see all there was to see, know everything there was to know and understand everything about it; being deprived of the opportunity for what he had been told were fifty years had only made that desire grow stronger. So he would be free, and he would balk at nothing to get there; that, however, didn't mean that he couldn't have some fun along the way, and what Ginny was up to at this moment was anything but fun.

"Ginny, what are you doing?" he asked, making the carefully written words appear at the bottom of the page she was scribbling on, succeeding in finding some free space there. Nearly the entire page was filled with squiggly lines overlapping, crisscrossing in a messy yet regular pattern. She hadn't lifted her quill more than a couple of times to refill it with blue ink during the process of its creation. The line continued, round and up and side to side, in waves and sharp turns.

"Passing time." She wrote her answer under his line, her handwriting childish with letters that varied in tilt. She wrote tinily to make the words fit, and some of them were almost hidden by inkblots. Some letters were flowing and round, others hard and jagged. Everything was disharmonious. He hated it.

Having successfully distracted the girl, he absorbed the ink, removing the eyesore from the pages of his book; at least he had that much control. The paper turned pristine, as crisp and white as before he'd started writing in it the summer before his fifth year. He could imagine the feeling of the paper against his skin, the pulp in it, the buttery feeling of the leather cover.

"Didn't you tell me that you would be having Astronomy this evening?" he asked, writing back to her in the blue ink he'd absorbed.

"Yes we were supposed to have our first practical lesson. But there's a thunderstorm outside. Me and the whole class is sitting inside on the stairs in the Astronomy Tower waiting for Sinistra to decide what we'll do."

"And here I thought you were procrastinating."

"What does that mean Tom?"

Stupid, ignorant girl, not knowing a simple word, and forgetting about the commas too. She was supposed to be a pure-blood; yet, the use of basic punctuation escaped her. Though, perhaps it was to be expected; from what he'd learned the Weasleys hardly qualified as proper wizards in this generation. "To procrastinate is to hold off on doing what you should."

"I see. No I'm not procrast-" She hesitated at how to inflict the word. Tom would have sighed if he could, now he only did it mentally.

"-inating," he filled in the word for her, adding his neat letters to her big, uneven ones.

"Thanks!" she wrote. "You're so clever and you're helping me get cleverer too!"

"Of course. However, I can't help wondering why you're wasting perfectly good ink on scribbles when you could be talking with your classmates about Astronomy. As I understood it, you were excited about the subject."

"What? No! Haven't you been listening?"

His attention might have slipped once or twice. Even with no other entertainment at hand than the disjointed thoughts of an eleven-year-old girl, there was only so much of her sentimentality and little problems he could stomach. Nevertheless, he was certain that he would not have missed a detail such as this.

"I am sorry, Ginny," he replied, despite his irritation. "I must have made a mistake. I'm certain that we had an intense discussion before this class. Last night, was it not?"

"Yes we talked about it. But Tom! It was you doing all the talking. Talking about stars and planets over several pages. I only made small notes to show that I was reading."

Merlin be damned. It was true. He had done that and somehow he'd twisted his memories of the event to mean that it was Ginny who was enthusiastic, even though it had been him.

He had been the one overflowing with passion for Astronomy. It was a subject that interested him more than one might surmise. The stars, moons and planets were so distant, yet were of such importance for many branches of magic. It was fascinating how the cycles of the moon forced werewolves to transform and dictated when certain potion ingredients could be picked, their properties changing depending on the time of the cycle.

A lot of older magic in enchantments, wards and curses used the alignments of stars and planets; one specific alignment would be set up as a key to the spell, making sure that it would be impossible to disrupt until the sky held the same pattern again, giving the magic an almost certain assurance of permanence.

Astronomy was useful for Divination too; a class of magic few understood and even fewer had the potential to master. Tom knew that he would never master it, which meant that it was even more important to understand it; only that way would he be able to either benefit from it or counteract it.

He had one final reason for his interest in Astronomy; a reason he wished he could refute because it shouldn't be a reason; it certainly wasn't a good reason. It was as good as the only class he could speak about in the summer when he returned to London. He spent most of the time at Wool's Orphanage alone, yet some conversation was needed, and Astronomy was normal. The study of space and the celestial bodies was something the Muggles could understand; something they engaged in as well. He could speak about it to show with words that he was being taught things that the brats he shared a roof with for two months each year could only dream of. He could and did lord it over them, proving his superiority in a much more tangible and socially acceptable way than when he had done so with magic. It was a small pleasure, a petty pleasure, but one he would not willingly forego.

As a subject the Muggles knew about, it was also magic he had known before he'd started attending Hogwarts. He had learned the names of the few constellations that were visible through the smog of the English Capital. He had learned the names of the planets, the order of their orbits. Mercury was the closest to the Sun, always bathed in the strong radiation of the star. Pluto was the farthest out, permanently frozen and it took a century and a half for the small planet to complete its orbit. Learning about them had made him feel connected with the universe. Space was eternal; his life at the Orphanage didn't matter. It had comforted him; he would have time to become great and once he reached his goal, nothing would be allowed to take it away from him; he would blaze as hot as the sun.

"My apologies," wrote Tom. "I hope I did not bore you."

"No you didn't. I've never heard someone talk about astronomy like that before. My brother Bill liked it but I never understood why he did. Why would someone smart bother with the stars? They're just there. I used to think they were just pretty and I sorta liked the stories that go with them. But before you told me about it yesterday I never really thought of Astronomy as useful. I still have a hard time getting it."

"Is it really that hard to believe?"

"You changed my view on astronomy. It might take me a bit to get it. We can't all be as smart as you are Tom."

No, not everyone could be as smart as him; that was true, and at times regrettable. Life might have been easier if people weren't so stupid and ignorant, yet it did make it easy for him to affect them and get his way.

"I have to go now. The storm actually cleared up and some of the sky is visible so we'll have a real lesson now."

"Good luck."

"I'll talk to you later Tom."

Everything was still again. Time passed, although it was difficult for him to tell how much. Such was the hell he lived. There was no clock for him to watch, no intakes of air for him to count, no heartbeats to keep track of the passing minutes. As the words of the young Gryffindor girl faded, only his thoughts and his plotting remained. Though, he did have one more thing; he had his desire. Because of his desire - his immense ambition - he had achieved things no other wizard his age had ever done before and he would do it again.

He had his desire to keep him from falling into despair. He desired the world and he would have it. Ginny Weasley was only the beginning. He would break the bars of his prison and he would once more become free to watch the stars, free to join them and outshine them all - if he couldn't, he would put them out.

The End

A/N: 28th April 2016

This became a character study of sorts of Diary!Tom. He's a rather interesting character in his own right, separated from the young Tom Riddle and from Voldemort. It was enjoyable to write and I hope it was enjoyable to read to. As always I would love to know what you thought. Thanks for reading!