Chapter 43, The Morale Booster

Late one night the next week Vanella was working on a Transfiguration assignment that the others had finished the night before, while Harry was, once again, examining the diary, and Draco was playing one-person chess against the board itself.

He was flipping through the pages with one hand while fiddling with a quill in an inkbottle with his right. "Why would someone want to get rid of this?" he said, frustrated. "It's empty! There's nothing offensive, nothing giving hints to anything; there's nothing at all."

Vanella 'mm-hmm'ed absentmindedly while scratching away with her quill. Suddenly she jumped, eyes wide, and slammed the table with her hand. "That's not right! Oh, hell, I'm going to have to rewrite this," she said pathetically.

But Harry wasn't paying attention. He was watching the ink that she'd caused him to spill spread over the pages. "Vanella!" he yelled. "Look what you've—holy Merlin, what's happening…" The ink was disappearing into the pages, leaving them looking like the ink had never touched in the first place.

Vanella looked over with mild interest. "It's probably charmed to make whatever ink touches it invisible," she said. "Nothing too exciting. Later you can look up the counter-charm. Or ask Hermione about it. She has a Revealer, you know."

Harry nodded absently and retreated to bed.

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Hermione's book wasn't in the library. It was already checked out by someone else. Madam Pince wouldn't tell them who had it ("The lists of who had what book became restricted after one student attacked another student over a book last year; no names required," she had said to them). So they were left with no clues to concentrate on but the diary of T. M. Riddle.

One day at dinner, when Hermione was fiddling with it at the Gryffindor table, while a very uninterested Ron stuffed his face with chocolate pudding. Suddenly, in the middle of dinner, she gave a little outcry. She then stood abruptly, knocking Ron's elbow and sending pudding hurling into Neville Longbottom's face. But she didn't notice, because she had already sprinted to the Slytherin table and squeezed herself in between Harry and Draco. She set the book down in front of her.

The large portion of the Great Hall that had noticed her shot the girl strange looks before going back to their own conversations.

The three Slytherins she had come to see leaned in to hear what she had to say.

"Ron said he got a Special Services Award, right?"

The others nodded.

"And Draco, didn't you tell us that your father said the Chamber was opened fifty years ago?"

Draco nodded.

She put her finger under the date. "Fifty years ago! What if T. M. Riddle got the Special Services Award for catching Slytherin's heir?"

Vanella looked skeptical. Her voice dropped to a whisper, eyes darting wearily to the people around that could possibly hear. "My father is the heir," she said. "And if my father was caught when he was in school, he never would have become the wizard he did, would he? Not to mention that if Voldemort was accused of opening the Chamber of Secrets, they'd have more stuff to pin on him, and would make it openly known!"

Hermione bit her lip. "But it would make sense this way!"

Harry was thinking, shaking his head. "What if they expelled the wrong person. What if T. M. Riddle pinned the blame on someone else, and as soon as the actual heir got wind of it, he stopped to save his own hide?"

"That would make sense, too," said Draco. "But it doesn't explain how the Chamber was open in the first place. Who but the heir could open it? And we know Voldemort hasn't; he's hiding out somewhere, trying to find ways to get his power back. And neither is his only daughter."

"Maybe he has more children?" Vanella offered hopefully.

Hermione shook her head. "If he did, he'd have already killed them."

"Then what do you suggest, Hermione?" Harry asked.

"I think," she said, opening to where it said 'T. M. Riddle' in worn black ink, "that we ought to investigate this Riddle person."

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So they did. At the end of the week they ventured into the trophy room.

"It's over here," Ron said dully, wanting to be anywhere but that room again.

"Wow, Ron, these are nice and shiny," Vanella said, smiling, dragging her finger across the base of a dustless 1956 Gryffindor House Cup.

He grunted in return as they all walked over to where he was standing.

Harry leaned over to examine the Special Services to Hogwarts Award. "T. M. Riddle," he said. "The same."

"I could have told you that," snorted an aggravated Ron, who had 'better things to do'. "And I did."

Hermione had moved to the corner, where there were plaques for prefects and Head Boys and Girls. "Look here," she said. "Tom M. Riddle was both prefect and Head Boy."

Ron leaned against a wall, waiting for them to finish their search.

Vanella looked too. "Prefect, Head Boy, a Special Services to the School Award; he must've been a favorite."

The others nodded.

"Look here," said Harry suddenly. "Tom Marvolo Riddle. Slytherin House. They won the cup in 1943. It lists all the house members."

They all moved to look also.

"Tom Marvolo Riddle," Vanella said. "Vaguely familiar somehow. He was a Slytherin?" They were silent for a few moments. "Maybe he was friends with my father, and he framed someone else to shift the blame."

"That's a risky chance to take for a friend," said Draco.

"Well, if that's what did happen," Hermione said loftily, "I bet he regrets it now."

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The sun had now begun to shine weakly on Hogwarts again. Inside the castle, the mood had grown more hopeful. There had been no more attacks since those on Justin and Nearly Headless Nick, and Madam Pomfrey was pleased to report that the Mandrakes were becoming moody and secretive, meaning that they were fast leaving childhood.

Perhaps the Heir of Slytherin had lost his or her nerve, thought Harry. It must be getting riskier and riskier to open the Chamber of Secrets, with the school so alert and suspicious. Perhaps the monster, whatever it was, was even now settling itself down to hibernate for another fifty years….

Ernie Macmillan of Hufflepuff didn't take this cheerful view. He was still convinced that Harry was the guilty one, that he had "given himself away" at the Dueling Club. Peeves wasn't helping matters; he kept popping up in the crowded corridors singing "Oh, Potter, you rotter…" now with a dance routine to match.

Gilderoy Lockhart seemed to think he himself had made the attacks stop. Harry overheard him telling Professor McGonagall so while the Slytherins were filing into Transfiguration.

"I don't think there'll be any more trouble, Minerva," he said, tapping his nose knowingly and winking. "I think the Chamber has been locked for good this time. The culprit must have known it was only a matter of time before I caught him. Rather sensible to stop now, before I came down hard on him.

"You know, what the school needs now is a morale-booster. Wash away the memories of last term! I won't say any more just now, but I think I know just the thing…."

He tapped his nose again and strode off.

Lockhart's idea of a morale-booster became clear at breakfast time on February fourteenth. Harry hadn't had much sleep because of a late-running Quidditch practice the night before, and he hurried down to the Great Hall, slightly late. He thought, for a moment, that he'd walked through the wrong doors.

The walls were all covered with large, lurid pink flowers. Worse still, heart-shaped confetti was falling from the pale blue ceiling. Harry went over to the Slytherin table, where Draco and Vanella looked positively sickened, pushing their food and confetti around their plates, trying to look anywhere but the decorations.

"What's going on?" Harry asked them, sitting down and wiping confetti off his bacon.

Vanella pointed to the teachers' table, apparently too disgusted to speak. Lockhart, wearing lurid pink robes to match the decorations, was waving for silence. The teachers on either side of him were looking stony-faced. From where he sat, Harry could see a muscle going in Professor McGonagall's cheek. Snape looked as though someone had just fed him a large beaker of Skele-Gro.

"Happy Valentine's Day!" Lockhart shouted. "And may I thank the forty-six people who have so far sent me cards! Yes, I have taken the liberty of arranging this little surprise for you all—and it doesn't end here!"

Vanella groaned. "How can he do this? It should be illegal!"

Lockhart clapped his hands and through the doors to the entrance hall marched a dozen surly-looking dwarfs. Not just any dwarfs, however. Lockhart had them all wearing golden wings and carrying harps.

Many groans were coming from the congregation.

"My friendly, card-carrying cupids!" beamed Lockhart. "They will be roving around the school today delivering your valentines! And the fun doesn't stop here! I'm sure my colleagues will want to enter into the spirit of the occasion! Why not ask Professor Snape to show you how to whip up a Love Potion! And while you're at it, Professor Flitwick knows more about Entrancing Enchantments than any wizard I've ever met, the sly old dog!"

Professor Flitwick buried his face in his hands. Snape was looking as though the first person to ask him for a Love Potion would be force-fed poison.

"On your birthday, too, Vanella," said Harry. "I feel bad for you."

She put her head in her hands. "I feel bad for me, also."

Not to their surprise, the day got worse. The little 'friendly, card-carrying cupids' did exactly what the name implied. They carried cards. But were not necessarily friendly about it, actually. In fact, they would elbow, kick, headbutt, and in-step their way to whomever they were giving the card to. All day long, the dwarfs kept barging into their classes to deliver valentines, to the annoyance of the teachers, and late that afternoon as the Slytherins were walking upstairs for Charms, one of the dwarfs caught up with Harry.

"Oy, you! 'Arry Potter!" shouted a particularly grim-looking dwarf, elbowing people out of the way to get to Harry.

Hot all over at the thought of being given a valentine in front of a line of first years (some Gryffindors, including Ginny Weasley, and some Ravenclaws) and many Slytherin second years, Harry tried to escape. The dwarf, however, cut his way through the crowd by kicking people's shins, and reached him before he'd gone two paces.

"I've got a musical message to deliver to 'Arry Potter in person," he said, twanging his harp in a threatening sort of way.

"Not here," Harry said harshly, trying to escape, not really wanting to resort to teleportation or invisibility.

"Stay still!" grunted the dwarf, grabbing hold of Harry's robes and pulling him back.

"Let me go!" Harry snarled, tugging.

With a loud rip, Harry's outer robes ripped open, letting everything that was in the right pocket tumble out. Ink, quill, shrunken Charms and Potions books, and random pieces of parchment.

Harry groaned and began picking everything up, by summoning it (for practice, of course, not just for the fun of it…). He then desperately tried to put his robes back together, and finally resorted to magic, running his fingers down the seam and watching it reattach itself to its counterpart.

"What's this?" came the voice of Ernie Macmillan.

Harry grimaced and picked up the rest of his parchments, stuffing them into the already full left pocket.

"What's all this commotion?" said another familiar voice as Percy Weasley arrived.

Willing to try anything, Harry tried to make a run for it, but the dwarf seized him around the knees and brought him crashing to the floor.

"Right," he said, sitting on Harry's ankles. "Here is your singing valentine:

"His eyes are as green as a fresh pickled toad,

His hair is as dark as a black board.

I wish he were mine, he's really divine,

The hero who conquered the Dark Lord."

Harry would've loved to use his teleportation skills to be somewhere—anywhere—else at that moment. Unfortunately, his two books were still on the floor by his feet. As well as, he was pretty sure, Tom Riddle's Diary, which was somewhere around here, not shrunken. Trying valiantly to laugh along with everyone else, he got up, his feet numb from the weight of the dwarf, as Percy Weasley did his best to disperse the crowd, some of whom were crying with mirth. Harry gave up laughing and picked up the Charms and Potions books, looking around for Riddle's diary.

"Off you go, off you go, the bell rang five minutes ago, off to class, now," he said, shooing some of the younger students away. "Even you, Ernie, let's go, come on—"

Harry looked up to see Ernie lean over and snatch up something. With a raised eyebrow and a look on his face that couldn't seem to decide whether to be a smile or a frown, he showed it to a couple of the surrounding Hufflepuffs.

"Give that back," Harry said quietly.

"Wonder what Potter's written in this?" said Macmillan, who obviously hadn't noticed the year on the cover and thought he had Harry's own diary. A hush fell over the onlookers. Ginny Weasley was staring from the diary to Harry, looking positively terrified. Her Slytherin friend had a similar expression, but another girl with the two, a Ravenclaw, just looked like she was dazed, staring at Harry and the book in turn, her mind seemingly working a mile a minute.

"Give it to him, Macmillan," said Percy sternly, losing the friendly, first-name basis he had earlier ventured.

"When I've had a look," said Macmillan, waving the diary at Harry. "I want to know who's next to go. Perhaps it's a checklist?"

They all knew what he meant. The Muggle-born checklist of the Heir of Slytherin.

Harry narrowed his eyes. "The Heir of Slytherin wouldn't need a checklist, Macmillan. I'm sure by now he's learned—other—methods," he said coldly. Then he reached out his arm, and the diary shot out of Ernie's into Harry's outstretched hand. With a humorless, cold smirk to a very scared-looking Ernie Macmillan, Harry stalked the rest of his way to Charms, followed closely by Vanella and Draco, who were shooting looks back at a bewildered crowd and gaping (but quickly recovering) Percy Weasley.

The three female second years looking positively terrified, except the Ravenclaw, who's expression hadn't changed, rather, she said something to the Slytherin and the Gryffindor and slipped her quill behind her ear. The other two looked at her sharply with wide eyes, but no one but them had heard what she said.

In the Charms classroom, Harry took his seat and started laughing. "Yeah," he managed. "If that doesn't convince them that I'm the Heir of Slytherin," he said between uncontrolled snorts of laughter, "then none of them think I am already, and we all know that's not true."

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That night Harry wanted to go to bed early. Vanella wasn't up for celebrating her birthday anyway, because of the atrocity Lockhart had mutated the day into, and they were all getting sick of the singing of "His eyes are green as a fresh pickled toad" that was going around like a virus. He had given Vanella her birthday present in the darkness of their small corner, where Harry, Draco, and Vanella always studied or talked privately. He had given her a lightweight green summer robe that clasped at the neck with two sides of a snake. Inside it, though, was her own snake, a small male Cobra, completely passive and wouldn't bite if told not to. Even Dumbledore had said he would allow it, when Harry inquired earlier that week. Besides, Vitesse needed a friend. She named him Sentir (:sahn-teer:), and became deeply engrossed in a conversation with him and Vitesse (:vee-tehs:) about his earlier home. Draco, knowing Harry's gift, supplied her with snake feed and bedding, only the best. So, seeing there was nothing keeping him in the common room, Harry retired to his dormitory with Riddle's diary.

He flipped through the pages again, looking for anything—anything at all, that might indicate what the secret of this diary was.

Shrugging, he took out ink and a quill and wrote, on the first page, "Hello, my name is Harry Potter."

He watched as the ink disappeared. That was expected. It had happened before, anyways.

But then the unexpected happened. The ink reappeared. In words. In response!

Harry read it excitedly.

"Hello, Harry Potter," it said"My name is Tom Riddle. How in Merlin's name did you come by my diary?"

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Author's Note: 'Bout time, too. Lots of things starting to unfold. Hmm….gee, who can identify the Ravenclaw girl…?

All right, sorry this is so late. I've been busy, and sick, and working really hard on other writing projects. I'm going back to revise SD1 some parts of SD2, am trying desperately to get unstuck in FoD, and am still working with Liz on Concordia Discors I (and excerpts from II and III — read! please! chapter 6 is up!). Stick with me, and know that I won't give this up. Real life is just being a hassle. I'm really sorry.

Cheers, happy writing or reading (or both), and Happy Belated Valentine's Day,
Sam.