Once a week, every week from the start of term, Draco Malfoy would enter the Room of Requirement and attempt to fix the broken twin of the vanishing cabinet at Borgin and Burkes. Every week, once the young wizard had gone, Hermione Granger would slip into the room and undo the work he had done.

She only had eyes for the cabinet. She never looked over her shoulder, placing her trust in the room that manifested itself when she needed it most.

A diary lay unseen, discarded among the miscellaneous objects stacked haphazardly behind her. A ghost lay inside, frozen, on the cusp of existence. With nothing to do but listen, the ghost heard a lot of things.

Based upon these things he heard, and depending on his mood – which was all he really had left – he would sometimes place imaginary bets on whose magic and determination would win out.

He heard Hermione grumble to herself, tutting as she tended to the cabinet, attempting to penetrate the shaky foundations of a complex repairing spell that clung feebly to its frame. He even heard her sob once, though it was so brief he thought he may have imagined it. A sharp intake of breath and the sound was stifled. Resilience was something he favoured, so he decided to root for her. Malfoy cried a lot more than the young witch, and it was becoming tedious.

A witch and a wizard the mutilated diary's resident ghost could not see. He listened until he began to wish he couldn't any more.

To think just a few years ago he had almost been flesh and blood once more – oh, how it had slipped through his grasp! Now he couldn't even communicate with the girl. Couldn't even tell her that what she was doing was wrong, that in her foolish wand waving she was circumventing the true core of the issue… If he just had his voice, never mind his wand.

Not to say that the girl wasn't clever. She was certainly setting Malfoy back in his attempts to mend the cabinet, albeit in a slow, crude way. So clever, and yet so out of reach.

He heard a sigh, perhaps of exhaustion with a tinge of resignation. It was hard to tell with no view of the facial expression that accompanied it. The retreating footsteps of the witch informed him that she had done all she could for the night. She left, as the boy had, and would return as he surely would.

Riddle screamed, and the silence was deafening.


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