"Miss Lovegood."
Luna looked up with what one might call a "vague" expression. "Yes, Professor Snape?"
"Are you able to read?" the man asked contemptuously.
"Yes, Professor Snape!" Luna answered with much too sunny a smile. Then, frowning slightly: "Aren't you, sir?"
Professor Snape pressed his lips together into a thin line. "I am. Would you care to explain, Miss Lovegood..." (He raised his voice slightly, so that any student who had not already been listening now could not help but do so.) "...why your potion has yet to turn yellow?"
"I haven't squeezed the manticore venom out of the manticore stingers yet, professor," Luna answered clearly.
"'Yet'?" Snape repeated. "That was step three, and you have by now completed steps four, five, and seven. Would you care to explain why you saw fit to complete the steps of this potion out of order?"
Again, Luna frowned slightly. "You said the most important ingredient in the potion was time, sir. I thought that meant we could do it out of order, since time doesn't have to go in order. I expect a man of your academic stature knows that better than I, sir."
"Miss Lovegood, I have never heard such nonsense," Snape snapped.
"Really?" Luna replied, genuinely surprised. "Was that the most nonsensical thing you've ever heard? Truly?"
"Miss Lovegood, you are now disrupting class," Snape said coolly. "That will be ten points from Ravenclaw, in addition to the twenty points you've already lost for asking me if I could read moments ago."
"But you can, though, sir," Luna said lightly. "So I don't see what the trouble is."
Just as Snape was about to respond, another Ravenclaw interceded, "Don't mind her, professor! She's barmy."
Professor Snape stood still a moment before returning to his desk. Over his shoulder, he said, "That will be an additional ten points, Miss Lovegood, for subjecting all of us to this conversation for too long."
Every Ravenclaw in the room groaned, and the girl seated beside Luna kicked the chair out from under her. She hit the ground, rather painfully. There were a few snickers as Luna sat up, looking as though she had just woken from a dream. She gathered her books and papers, which has fallen with her, back into her bag.
Her hand hesitated halfway through putting away the last book. It was the diary that Tom had given her.
It occurred to her that she had yet to use it.
Having the Doctor in Hogwarts for these last few weeks had been pleasant. Every now and then, she'd see him sprinting around the building or grounds or dining in the Great Hall (sometimes with the students, sometimes with the teachers) or just sitting on a staircase, chatting with Mrs. Norris. Still, she missed Tom. In a strange way, he was like a friend to her, so much so that she kept the diary in her hands rather than putting it away.
"For your homework," Snape said to the class, "you will be composing an essay on the uses of manticore venom. That's two rolls of parchment, and I will be measuring length. You are dismissed."
The students exited with alacrity.
Luna exited last (She had long known, by now, that the safest place to be in a crowd was behind it.) and was pleased to recall that the next several hours of her day were free.
Once she had completed the long trek to the Forbidden Forest and was seated in the clearing where the thestrals liked to sleep, she opened the little book from Tom and took out her quill pen.
...
"Mr...Doctor, you are not a student!" Professor McGonagall said, her words in conflict with her no-nonsense tone. "I should not have to tell you that it is wrong to pester the ghosts!"
"Pester?" the Doctor repeated with a very childish tone of indignation. "I was only asking a few questions! It was vital to my research!"
"Sir Nicholas complained that you wouldn't stop waving your wand at him. He said it made an infernal sound."
"Sonic screwdriver," the Doctor murmured.
The old woman narrowed her eyes. "You managed to annoy Peeves, as well," Professor McGonagall pointed out, gesturing at the poltergeist who was at that moment running amuck in the room. "Peeves. Doctor, are you aware that, in all my tenure at Hogwarts, I have never known someone to genuinely irritate Peeves? The only being in this castle more irritating than Peeves is-"
"Minerva?"
Professor McGonagall sighed in exasperation as an obnoxiously attractive blond man entered her office.
"Minerva!" Gilderoy Lockhart repeated with condescending fondness. "I heard this hullabaloo and worried that you were in mortal peril."
"Well, Gilderoy, seeing as it is merely a poltergeist-"
"How fortunate you are that I have arrived! I know precisely how to rectify the situation!"
"I doubt that, Lockhart," the Doctor said. "Memory charms don't work on poltergeists, you know."
Lockhart's face fell. "What did you say?" he asked seriously.
"Nothing!" the Doctor replied, patting Lockhart on the shoulder. "Run along, boyo. The adults are talking."
McGonagall's lips twitched into what was nearly a smile for a fraction of a second. "Doctor, it is wrong to disrespect a Hogwarts professor."
"You've just finished saying I'm not a student," the Doctor replied jovially.
McGonagall actually did smile, now. "Well, then, that's the matter settled, isn't it?"
"Settled?" Lockhart repeated. "Minerva, he hasn't apologized!"
"Gilderoy, how would you have me punish him? Should I ban him from Hogsmeade? Take points away?"
The Doctor's face lit up suddenly. "That reminds me! I'm going to go play with the Sorting Hat!" And, just like that, the man was off, flailing his limbs a bit as he ran.
"For whatever reason, Albus still hasn't told me what it is that man is doing here," Lockhart noted aloofly.
"The Headmaster needn't explain himself to his professors, Gilderoy," McGonagall reminded him.
"I'm hardly just a professor, though, Minerva. Perhaps it is the curse of my keen perception, but something about this 'Doctor' seems odd."
It took herculean effort for McGonagall to refrain from responding with Everything about him seems odd, you fool! Even the first years notice that much! It was true; the Doctor was popular among the students for that very reason. He had such a strong presence, such a depth, and such a bubbly disposition. He was at stark contrast, then, with Lockhart, who had a weak and shallow presence but a similarly bubbly disposition and sought the same air of mystery.
She could already tell that Potter, Granger, and Weasley were intrigued. Malfoy had probably written to his father by now, in the hopes of finding some new insight to share with his Slytherin peers.
"No matter," Lockhart said breezily. "Opportunities to deriddle him will no doubt present themselves in time." He left the office to a chorus of rude noises from Peeves.
...
It took Luna a minute to decide what to write, but eventually she went with:
This diary is the intellectual property of Miss Luna E. C. Lovegood.
She looked out at the lake, then. The afternoon was filled with the symphony of birdsong, but Luna felt strangely empty, ever since Potions class. She wasn't even moved to sadness, per se; she just felt completely blank. It was to this emptiness that she attributed her moderate reaction when she looked down at the book on her lap and saw that the page was blank.
Surely she had just written...Was this a joke? Making the ink disappear? Was it a trick? Was someone watching from the bushes? Someone with a level of self-control that was atypical among Luna's peers; she couldn't even hear any giggling.
Experimentally, she wrote out the same message again, this time watching the page. Sure enough, after a moment, the words vanished.
And she still couldn't hear anyone laughing at her.
Luna tried out another message:
Will this disappear?
Again, the words went away.
Is this a game? she wrote.
The page blankened itself.
Somewhere in herself, Luna happened upon a smile. Thomas Riddle is the silliest boy I think I've ever met, she wrote.
The words disappeared.
Then...ink started to stain the page on its own accord, forming the words: Who is silly?
Luna stared at these new words for a moment. They lingered on the page for longer than hers had, but then they, too, vanished...
...and were replaced by more words, despite her quill still not having touched the page in a while:
Oh, Lovegood, I wish I could see your face!
Having found the sense of incredulity that she had originally been missing, Luna wrote in large, deep letters on the again-blank page, TOM?