Chapter Three
Vernon locked all of Harry's new books in his cupboard the moment he got in the door, Harry hiding the diary he'd gotten from Ginny in the waistband of his pants on a whim. It was completely blank of course, but it was the only one of the books that was small enough to fit even under his baggy clothes.
Spite did no good, but it felt nice. Then he was locked back in his room.
As the sound of his uncle's footsteps died away Harry pulled the diary out and tossed it on his desk, glaring at nothing in particular. He pulled out the ministry books he'd been reading but after about twenty minutes found he could no longer concentrate.
All the good books were downstairs, and he couldn't write for more and he was still locked in and he was bored. Harry had never been a particularly hyperactive child. He'd had to get used to boredom between gruelling hours of manual labour slaving for his relatives, and long hours and days and weeks locked in his cupboard, but it had been almost a year since then and Harry didn't want to go back.
He knew it was a little childish. That no one cared what he wanted. That dignity was a commodity and that freedom and basic right were just a fiction created and traded in first would societies to give people a false sense of security. He knew. But that didn't change what he wanted.
Distractedly, Harry realised he was pacing the length of his room and stopped. He stared down at his desk, struggling for a way out. There was one. Actually, there were probably dozens he just needed to find some of them. On his desk, apart from the new, old, and empty book he just dropped there, there were a few scraps of paper, pens, scissors and the notebook in which he'd been practicing runes. Harry picked it up and flipped through it rapidly. When he didn't find what he was looking for he pulled the original book out from under his bed and began flipping through it, copying down every rune of any origin he could find that was to do with unlocking, opening, clearing obstacles, or anything else that seemed vaguely helpful. By the time he'd gotten to the end of the book he has seven pages of runes and descriptions.
He quickly pulled the new book towards him and began resorting the runes according to origin, mixing runes of different origins was a delicate process that took more mastery then he, after reading one book, had to offer. However almost immediately, the runes began to vanish into the page. Harry visibly snarled, ignoring the part of his brain that reminded him no one was a) present or b) likely to be interested in his little temper tantrum even if they were.
Then words formed.
What are you trying to open?
Harry dropped his pen. The words shone there, the ink that of a quill, not of a biro. Maybe this was some prank of Fred and George's, a diary designed to write back to the owner? But that little niggling sensation of stray neurons firing was buzzing in the back of Harry's head.
Why would a prank object need to know about ancient runes? That wasn't a pre-recorded message designed to frighten the owner into some amusing reaction. That was a deduction made by a mind that was aware of what Harry had written in the diary and could discern meaning from it and then draw a conclusion.
Don't be afraid. I'm just a talking book.
Harry debated for a moment writing back. There was a reason the hat had wanted to put Harry in Slytherin. He was very aware that the safest option was to close the book and never touch in again, it was a magical item that could think for itself and had a set of unknown properties. Harry had no idea what it might do to him.
You've already written in me once…
Harry bit his lip. There was also a reason that, when Harry had decided he didn't want to face the inevitable social backlash that his being sorted into Slytherin would cause, of the remaining three houses, the hat had chosen Gryffindor.
Who are you?
My name is Tom Riddle, what's yours?
Harry debated for a moment.
James Evens.
This time the diary took a second to respond.
Liar.
Harry grinned, enjoying this despite himself. Although he'd actually spoken to more people today then he had in the last month combined, he hadn't really talked with any of them. He'd been carful. He was always carful. He'd been carful for a long as he could remember. If you weren't careful what you said, eventually Aunt Petunia heard about it and told Uncle Vernon. That was how gossip worked.
What are you?
The book gave him a sense of security; obviously a false one but still. The fact that it couldn't speak to anyone about what he said didn't mean it couldn't tell anyone. For all he knew there could be a set of diaries and somewhere far away someone else was writing in the other one.
I would have thought that was obvious, I'm a talking book.
Liar.
Harry grinned. The page remained blank for a moment, Harry wondering if 'Tom' was going to deny it.
You still haven't answered my question. What are you trying to open?
Why would I tell you?
Because you need help.
How do you know?
You're just listing runes, you have no idea what you're doing. You're desperate.
And you're going to help me?
I might if you help me.
Harry sighed, relaxing into his seat. People, or conscious books, were always more dangerous when you didn't know what they wanted, once you could understand what drove them you could predict their action and hopefully avoid being driven over.
And how might I help you?
A pause.
What year is it?
Harry grinned, flipping back to the diary's cover. He'd noted that it was old when he pulled in out of Ginny's cauldron, however he hadn't paid much more attention than that. Now he read the year emblazoned on the front cover with interest.
1945
That, combined with the books question, suggested that it had probably been made around that time. If you were going to enchant a diary you'd likely do it with a new one rather then pour all that energy into something decrepit. Unless the diary was created for sentimental reasons. But Harry could think of no likely reason why someone would imbue their own diary from a long time ago with consciousness, which suggested that, if the diary wasn't made just for fun, it was made by someone who had loved this Tome Riddle very much. However, this theory was made less likely by the fact that he's found it stuffed into a second-hand textbook. If you were trying to replace a lost loved one with an enchanted object you'd presumably keep the object close. Or locked away somewhere safe.
I can practically feel you thinking.
The conclusion of all of this was that the diary was most likely almost fifty years old.
1992
I see.
May I ask where we are?
This question told Harry little more than that the book was probably completely unaware of its surroundings.
Although all of these questions could be purposed to lead him to a false conclusion.
Surry, Britain.
I see. I presume you are a wizard?
Harry nodded, then realised Tom couldn't see him.
Yes.
Good.
What are you trying to open?
Harry chewed his lip, trying to think of any possible ramifications of telling him/it.
My bedroom door.
You're locked in?
Yes.
How old are you?
Twelve.
You don't have your wand?
No.
Any magical items at all?
I have books.
No enchanted ones?
Other then you? No.
Again the page remained blank for a moment, Harry getting the distinct feeling that Tom was thinking.
In that case you will have to use wandless magic. Even the most powerful runes are just pretty pictures without magic flowing through them. I can give you a few different combinations, but you will need to be able to perform at least a basic Alohomora without a wand.
Harry took a moment to chew the end of his pen. He was still wary of accepting help from the book but also knew that he was definitely going to anyway.
However, he'd never even heard of wandless magic. I mean sure he'd heard of people doing accidental magic without a wand involved, but he'd never spoken to anyone who could do that sort of thing deliberately.
How do I learn wandless magic?
The same way you learn any magic, you focus hard and try over and over again until you get it.
Harry frowned.
I just hold out my hand and say the incantation and think hard?
Essentially yes, although it sometimes helps to approximate a wand movement with your hand.
Pursing his lips, Harry glared down at the book, his natural suspicion of any supposed altruism not lessened by the context in which the help was being offered. If his childhood had taught him anything it was that people were not intrinsically nice, and only tended to impersonate such a quality when they had something to gain by it, even when they weren't necessarily smart enough or self-aware enough to analyse their own motives. True, Tom had asked him questions, but…he'd already answered them. The book had to want something more.
I'll give it a try.
Not waiting for a response, Harry closed the diary and got up to locate another of Dudley's old exercise books. This he placed on his desk, but he didn't bother to actually open it, instead, he settled down on his bed with the lock that had formerly been on Hedwig's cage, and began trying to will it open.
It's not working.
Then you're not trying hard enough.
That's not very helpful.
How do you expect me to help you with this?
Harry smiled. He liked it when Tom got annoyed. He'd come to the conclusion after some experience talking to him, that Tom was a very nice person primarily because nice people tended to get what they wanted from other people. It sounded exhausting in theory which was why Harry had gone for the hero image already suggested to him, but it suggested a lot about Tom that he was willing to work so hard to be liked.
It also suggested a lot that he seemed to be letting the facade drop more and more often around Harry.
How should I feel when doing this?
How do you usually feel when doing magic?
Awkward and self-conscious?
He could almost feel Tom rolling his eyes.
Magic is a part of you idiot child. If you cannot feel it within you then I'm afraid you are the kind of mediocre wizard to whom wandless magic will forever remain unreachable.
Harry glared at the book before closing it. On second thoughts there were benefits to Tom's charming façade. One tended to get insulted less when it was up.
Harry lay down on his bed and stared up at the ceiling. Hedwig hooted from the top of the bookshelf, but he didn't react. Tom's comment had hit a little too close to home for comfort. He didn't want to be mediocre, but he was also terribly afraid that he was. He knew he'd fudged his grades down a little so as to be on a level with Ron last year but there was still a part of him that was afraid that even if he tried, he'd never amount to much. Being magical was the only thing he really liked about himself. That and maybe his perseverance. Magic was the thing that proved the Dursley's and all the kids at his primary school and everyone else he'd ever known before he met Hagrid wrong. Magic was wonderful, indisputably wonderful and a letter hadn't come for any of them. It had come for him. His parents had been head boy and girl in their time, it was one if the only things he knew about them, that they'd been really good students. And what if he wasn't? What if he wasn't any good at the one thing that made him worthwhile?
Harry rolled over, thinking about Li's idea of the magical core. He closed his eyes and imagined in inside him, like a ball of light in his chest. He imagined it as a warmth, as a feeling of comfort and completeness.
"Alohomora," he whispered. He didn't need to open his eyes to know that the padlock he'd discarded on his bed hadn't opened. Of course, it hadn't, he'd been trying since he got home; it was nearly morning and it hadn't worked once.
Harry closed his hand around the cold piece of metal focusing on the idea of his magic inside him, trying to imagine it flowing up his arm and into the metal object in his hand. He tried to imagine the feel of it, his magic flowing into the padlock through his skin.
"Alohomora!" he tried again but nothing happened. He could feel that nothing happened because he didn't feel any different.
"Alohomora!" he snarled, his eyes open this time as he glared with all his might at the object of his frustration. Once more, nothing happened.
Harry tossed the lock down on his bedside table and got up to turn off the light. He didn't know what time it was but there was grey light coming in through the window and he was tired and he should never have trusted the word of a talking book which clearly had ulterior motives in the first place. In all probability, Tom was just lying to screw with him anyway.
Harry blinked as his eyes grew damp. He knew he was just frustrated and tiered and completely over his ridiculous, shitty excuse for a life but he wasn't going to lie there and cry like a child because he was locked in his room and couldn't get out. He just wasn't.
Harry only slept a couple of hours before Petunia Dursley woke him for his morning bathroom trip by the simple expedient of banging on his bedroom door. Harry leapt up, pushing away his confusing dream and quickly swept the lock onto the floor, before running the door and slipping out as soon as his aunt opened it so she wouldn't see Hedwig who was now asleep on top of the bookshelf.
He was barely awake as he used the facilities, and quickly stumbled back to his room to collect as disgruntled Hedwig and return her to her cage, cursing himself for being so careless. This proved to be quite a challenging task as he had barely half the height of the shelf in question and his desk chair could only help so much. Subsequently, when Harry finally climbed down from the tower of books he built on top of his chair he was irritated enough to be awake and though he might as well give the lock another go. He collapsed, resigned to his bad mood, back onto his bed and stared over the edge at the open lock on the floor.
Then he sat up. It was open. Harry leapt from his bed and quickly searched under it. The only padlock there was the one for his cupboard and it still had its key in it. He straitened and looked at his desk but the lock for Hedwig's cage was firming in place when he'd just put it.
Harry sat down and looked at the lock in his hands. He'd done it, somehow, he'd done it.
Barely daring to breath, Harry twisted the shank and then pushed it back into place. The resulting click sounded terribly final to his ears.
"Alohomora," he murmured, then pulled and the steel loop but it remained firmly where it was.
Closing his eyes, Harry imagined his magical core and tried to push it out into the lock.
"Alohomora," he tried again but the shank remained unyielding. Lying back, Harry tried to remember what he'd been dreaming about. He'd done magic in his sleep as a child when he grew his hair back, so it wasn't impossible. He seemed to remember Snape had been feeding him a motion that turned his blood to lemonade and then Dudley had stuck a straw through his skin and started drinking it.
Harry grimaced before reluctantly concentrating on the feeling of his blood fizzing and bubbling, and then the panic inducing sensation of having it sucked out of him.
"Alohomora," he murmured.
Click
Harry's eyes shot open and he stared at the open lock in his hands for a moment before shoving the shank home again.
Fizzing. Bubbling. Pouring out.
"Alohomora."
Click
Tom I did it!
His writing was atrocious in his haste.
Very good. On your door?
No, on something else but it worked.
Try it on the door.
Harry got up obediently and walked to the door, placing his hand bout where the locks were.
Bubbles. Fizzing.
"Alohomora," he murmured but even before he pushed on the still very locked door he could tell it hadn't worked. It didn't feel quite the same as it had before. It was like a hole had burst in the side of the straw and lemonade was just leaking out everywhere.
It didn't work.
I didn't really think it would. What type of lock do you have on your door?
There's one of those simple sliding locks with a bar like they have on old public toilets, a padlock, one of those ones that's fitted into a handle and a few other's as well I think.
…..
I see.
But no enchantments?
No.
Harry was very aware of the fact this was the closest he'd ever gotten to talking about himself to Tom Riddle from 1945.
In that case we should be fine. Scratch this run combination along the part of the door where the locks are.
A vertical line of joined runes appeared of the opposite page.
If you have to repeat the combination do so, but don't attempt to join the two combinations up. Also, be sure to make the scratches reasonably deep as you're going to be rubbing some of your blood into them.
Harry raised an eyebrow at this. Ancient Runes Made Easy had mentioned the practice of using one's blood in rune creation in the introduction.
Isn't blood magic illegal?
So wash it off when you're done. The chance of your muggles reporting it to the ministry seems rather low,
Harry went cold all over.
I never told you I live with muggles.
You didn't have to. You live with people who lock you away using muggle means. Furthermore, they do this over a long enough time period that learning fairly difficult branches of magic such as ancient runes and wandless magic is a practical solution to the problem.
Harry didn't respond to that. On the one hand he knew he'd been conducting the same extensive analysis of what Tom had written or implied too. On the other, that didn't make it any less uncomfortable to have that analysis applied to him.
Eventually, Harry picked up his ancient runes book again and began leafing through it looking up the runes that Riddle had combined but they all looked harmless and focused on unlocking so eventually he stood up and walked over to his door, using the end of the spoon his aunt had slid in with his last meal some time yesterday to scratch them into the paint. It took a while and he had to use the combination twice but eventually he had the scratches deep enough. This left the somewhat unappetising task of finding something with which to cut himself, however he eventually managed to do so using one of the looser pieces from the broken screen of Dudley's old television set. The cut, which he'd made in his arm as he felt it would be the least irritating place, bled profusely and while this made the task of spreading the blood quite easy, getting the bleeding to stop was somewhat harder.
Harry eventually managed it by wrapping an ugly old t-shirt around it. This particular shirt had been red back when Dudley owned it but had be heading towards yellow by the time it was Harry's and was now a disturbing amalgamation of mustard and sick. Really, the red was an improvement, he might even go back to wearing it if he could get it to stain evenly.
Done.
Good. I presume you want to wait until your parents are asleep?
They're not my parents.
Good to know.
Harry bit his lip, reluctantly admiring the play for information.
Do you know any healing charms? This is bleeding like anything.
'Episkey'
Thanks.
It was harder to focus on the feeling of bubbles this time, but Harry at least managed to stop the bleeding even if the cut wasn't entirely healed. He wrapped the bloody shirt in his doorjamb-jeans and sat back down at his desk.
And now we wait.
And now we wait.
How to I relock the door after I get my stuff?
I was wondering when that would come up.
You'd already thought of it?
Of course.
But you weren't going to tell me?
No.
Why not?
It was around lunch time – for everyone else – and Harry had spent most of the morning oscillating between reading about the Wizengamot administration and going over his planned activities for this evening. It had only just occurred to him that he had no reliable way of hiding the fact that he'd been out of his room during the night.
To begin with, I was only speculating that you would need to hide your activities. You've told me nothing about what we're doing.
Harry could see this quite clearly for the boldfaced manipulation that it was, but Riddle did have a point. He was asking for help without explaining the situation.
I'm sneaking out to get stuff from my truck, which is locked in the cupboard under the stairs.
Furthermore, if you are truly so carless as to miss a problem like that you deserve whatever punishment your muggles choose to bequeath.
Harry didn't argue with this, mostly because it followed his own system of logic pretty closely.
So how do I relock the door.
'Colloportus'.
But won't that mean that my relatives can't open the door either?
It will make it difficult, but as long there is a time gap of a few hours between your use of the spell and their next attempt to get in, I doubt your magic will be strong enough to cause them more difficulty then a stiff lock.
Something about Riddle's choice of phrasing made Harry's blood run cold. He licked his lips as he his pen hovered over the page, unsure if he truly wanted to ask the next question.
Have I already been expelled?
You do realise that if you don't start thinking of these things beforehand you're going to die one of these days, don't you?
Tom!
No, the ministry cannot detect wandless magic. It is read as accidental magic and the trace ignores it.
Harry let out a breath he hadn't even realised he was holding, cursing himself for his carelessness.
So as long as I don't use my wand they won't know?
I do believe that's the idea of wandless magic.
What about potions?
Do potions require a wand?
…
I'm going to practice the locking charm.
Good idea.
Which do you prefer, Tom or Riddle?
…Riddle.
Why?
Which do you prefer, James or Liar?
Fair enough.
Closing the diary, Harry turned back to his Portions homework.
He'd managed to get out of his room without too much trouble that first night and things had progressed reasonably smoothly ever since. His new trunk was virtually identical to his old one on the outside however the inside was an entirely different story. All his things from his old trunk were stashed inside it, the only things remaining in the cupboard now being an ordinary trunk full of potting mix and his Nimbus. He'd since been working on his summer homework and reading his textbooks. He'd finished everything except potions, which he'd left 'till last out of simple spite, and had read every other book he had other than the Lockhart books. He'd gotten one paragraph into Ghouls and hadn't been able to continue. They were children's books for god sake, and not even good children's books at that.
The occlumency book had been an excellent idea on Moon's part, and Harry had already started practicing. The early stages mainly involved meditation, practicing visualising dark voids, waterfalls and valleys, basic strategies to help one learn to clear the mind. Riddle had said it would be hard to really learn without someone to test his shields, but Harry was enjoying trying nonetheless. It was immensely calming, imagining oneself immersed in dark water.
He'd also begun working on the next stage, although Harry acknowledged he probably wasn't ready yet. The idea was, once your mind was clear, to use one's magic to create a strong barrier around the mind. The nature of this technique was what made it so difficult. The book had described it by likening a normal spell, for example, a levitation charm, to a straight line; a line of magic that extended to a specific point or object. A shielding charm could be thought of similarly, accept it affected a specific radius. However, occlumency shields did not extend out in a line, nor did they effect a specific point. One's occlumency shield formed a sphere which protected a person's mind at the source of their magic. Magic that effected oneself didn't go anywhere before working, which meant there was no point at which it stopped or began. Harry liked to think of it like the tide, one's shields could strengthen or fall but they were never truly gone and never really peaked. It was a matter of degrees of protection.
The book mentioned other forms of self-effecting magic such as apparition which Harry had never heard of, and something called an Animagus transformation, something else Harry had never heard of, although he'd made note of both in his diary, the normal one, not the one possessed by a short tempered sixth-year, as something to read up on later. Later, because tomorrow, he'd be going back to Hogwarts, with Ron and Hermione.
Harry paused, his quill hovering over his explanation of the potential adverse effects of insufficient or inept processing of the aconite plant before use in the wolfsbane potion.
It had taken him some time to build up the courage to face his feelings about seeing Ron and Hermione again, and even longer to separate how he thought he should feel and how he was afraid he felt, from how he was actually feeling.
The simple fact of the matter was that Harry had never really had any close friends as a child. Subsequently, he wasn't a particularly social person. It wasn't that he didn't like his two first friends, it was more that he didn't want to resume the sort of relationship he'd had with them last year. He'd spent almost every waking hour with Ron at least, during his first year at Hogwarts. This wasn't Ron's fault. He had never asked for space or indicated in any way that he would like to be left alone for a bit. He had clung to his first friends desperately, basking in the acceptance and support they'd offered him during one of the most major transitions of his life. However, he also had something of a fear of confrontation, this was something Riddle had pointed out, but Harry agreed he might be onto something, which was why he was lying about being unable to write, which was really quite stupid and childish, rather than trying to change the dynamic of the relationships he'd started.
In short, he was blaming his friends rather than face his own insecurities, which wasn't fair to them.
None of this lessened the tendrils of fear keeping Harry awake and adding footnotes on nitric acid production in humans to his technically finished essay but he felt better at least having some plan for how to deal with the situation. Even if both Riddle and his intuition kept telling him it wasn't going to be that easy.
That was the other thing concerning him. Riddle.
He knew the diary had an agenda. He knew Riddle wasn't sharing that agenda. He knew this probably meant he wouldn't approve or would be actively put in harm's way by said agenda. He knew he was becoming worryingly emotionally dependent on Riddle, the snarky comments, fierce admonishments and occasional grudging praise that had begun to immerge had established the entity as something of a big brother to Harry. He knew this put him at a worrying disadvantage to the older boy. But he still couldn't bring himself to stop writing to him.
Harry had inicaially though there might be some form of compulsion on the book, so he'd tested it using a rune combination provided in Ancient Runes Made Easy. There was. Harry now had a strip of cloth with several runes on it to protect him against simple compulsions and warn him of complex ones wrapped around his wrist, it hadn't gotten hot since he'd put it on but although he was no longer writing in the book every hour, he still couldn't stop.
He didn't really want to.
Riddle wasn't a nice person, but that was okay because Harry didn't really feel comfortable around nice people. They had a whole way of life with rules and systems that he didn't understand. He approved of them, objectively, but he didn't know how to talk to people who didn't see that the answer to the trolley problem was obvious.
Riddle wasn't really his friend, but that was okay because he didn't really want friends.
Riddle was a liar.
So was he.
Something would happen. Harry wasn't sure what or when, but he knew eventually something would happen. And he would deal with it when it did.
I want to apologise for the recent silence. I made the mistake of trying to write a Quidditch scene and things just immediately ground to a halt. Remind me never to do that again. I'll try to just get it over with and get back to the fun stuff.
I still don't know how to get a line going across my page if anyone feels like helping me out.