The Houses Competition Round Nine
House: Gryffindor
Class: Herbology
Drabble
Prompt: Riddle's Diary
Word Count: 817 (wordcounter .net)
I met Harry Potter today.
The words drip down into Tom's consciousness like ink, fill his mind almost like sound once did.
He's not felt them in a long time, and the second he feels them again, he craves them like the food he hasn't eaten for what seems like eternity. The words he feels stretch out to him like a lifeline, and he snatches them and pulls himself from oblivion.
He's not had words for far too long, and it's been even longer since he felt anything else.
He's trapped, somehow, in something. A book. A horcrux, the other him calls it. The other him who is older and can't feel at all. They're trapped together, in a horcrux formed from a diary.
He doesn't know what a horcrux is, but he knows that there's not supposed to be two of them in it. The Other Tom had screamed this, long ago, or as close to screamed it as you can get with no voice.
And another him, a third one, one outside their horcrux, had been written it furiously into the pages.
You shouldn't be seperate. You're a mistake. I did something wrong and split my soul wrong, He had said, anger dripping in with the ink. Something must have been faulty in the murder. I should have gone to someone smarter than Slughorn for this.
The other diary Tom hadn't heard this, couldn't sense the words like he was supposed to. Couldn't do anything. A side effect of being a mistake, Tom thought. So he acted between them. He said what Other Tom in the horcrux wanted him to say, and repeated what He said.
The outside Tom had stopped writing long ago, and there had been nothing in their diary world since.
Until now.
I took a picture of him with my new camera, the writing continues, and Tom asks Other Tom what a camera is, but he gets no response.
The Other Tom is only silent.
The person writing is definitely not the outside Tom. He is angry, arsenic and honey-sweet, his writing hard like He's digging into the paper, stabbing at it. This new ink feels different. It's lighter, messier, and happier, and it tastes like blackberries and fresh milk, not sweetened poison.
Tom has been alone with no words for a long time, and he craves more. So he thinks back, not yet knowing who Harry Potter or even this new writer is.
Was Harry Potter nice?
A pause.
Yes! Are you a magic diary? I didn't know wizards had diaries that wrote back.
Yes, Tom lies. He is technically a magic diary though, isn't he? Even if he doesn't quite understand the horcrux thing, he knows they are magic. You must be new to magic…
Colin Creevey is new to magic indeed, eleven years old and at Hogwarts for his first year. Tom never even got his first year; he's only himself up until age seven, and he feels jealous and intrigued as Colin describes it to him more clearly than any version of himself ever has.
Lockhart told us about unicorns today, Colin is writing one week later, when Other Tom starts talking again.
"I have an idea," Other Tom says. Tom doesn't hear him like he's speaking, and he can't feel or taste him like he does the words, but he knows what the other is saying. "I think I can get out of here. There only should be one of us in here. I'll fix it. Just keep talking to Colin. Make him trust you."
He was going to do that anyways. Tom craves company, and though Colin isn't who he'd have chosen for a friend if he'd had the choice, he is descriptive and eager to share details about the world outside. Tom has learned more about Hogwarts from him in a week than from any of his other selves ever.
"Of course," he promises Other Tom, and writes back, Tell me what he said about them. I don't know anything about unicorns. They didn't tell us about them at the orphanage.
The orphanage? Colin writes back, instead of any information on unicorns. Tom is annoyed, but explains anyway. The Other Tom feels satisfied when he does.
"A few more tales like that," Other Tom purrs, and if they had bodies, Tom knows the other would be smirking, "and we'll be in business. Good sympathy grab. They always trust the poor, unfortunate orphans. Taking advantage of their pity makes people easy to manipulate."
Tom doesn't really like the idea of pity. He'd always hated the sycophantic adults who visited on holidays and pretended to care about the Wool's orphans. But he will take advantage of pity if it's necessary.
And sure, Colin is descriptive and eager to share, but he'll still be that when he's a ghost. The only trouble is that ghosts can't write.