Chapter Thirteen: Blank Diaries and Belated Christmases
The students were at dinner when Dumbledore addressed the school.
When he rose from his place at the center of the Professors' table, the noise of the Hall lessened and everyone eventually fell silent.
The headmaster sighed, "I am sorry to inform you that two others were Petrified last night—Mandelina Brocklehurst and the Grey Lady of Ravenclaw."
The reactions of the school were immediate. Most were in shock, particularly the only Slytherins that mattered.
"Mandy—and the Grey Lady?" Blaise intoned dully, as if not quite believing it.
Harry put his head in his hands. "This is really beginning to hit close to home."
Hermione glanced over to the Slytherins were sitting at their own table. She was horrified! Mandy had studied with her and Theo for classes, and they had gotten really close. When did Professor Sprout say the Mandrakes were going to be ready, again?
Ginny left her place at the Slytherin table and walked over to where Harry, Blaise, and Theo were sitting.
"Harry?"
Harry turned around and saw Ginny, who was pasty white and shaking.
"I—I need to tell you something about—"
"Ginny, there you are!" a pompous voice sniffed in disdain. Percy. "Come along now, you need to write a letter to Mother."
"Why?" asked Ginny.
"Because you're stuck in a den of snakes and people are being Petrified, that's why." Percy then proceeded to start dragging his little sister out of the Hall.
"Wait! Ginny, what did you want to say?" Blaise said, halting Percy's arrogant stride.
Ginny's annoyed face immediately went pasty again, clashing horribly with her flaming hair. "It's nothing, really," she said as she was pulled away.
oOoOo
It was difficult for the students of Hogwarts to believe that, with everything that had taken place, it was now the first day of December. Soft snow had started to fall and covered the castle and grounds with a thick layer of white that made it look like a Christmas card.
But the most difficult thing to imagine was that everything was continuing in a slightly normal way. With all the Petrified casualties (Filch, Colin Creevey, McGonagall, Mandy, and even the Grey Lady), school still proceeded normally.
Dumbledore taught the Transfiguration classes, and eventually got the second years to try lemon drops. Snape passed out the sign sheet for those who would be staying for Christmas, and both Harry and Blaise signed it. Theo was going home for the holidays, and Ginny wanted to be with her family. The second years were all given lists of classes they could take in third through fifth year for O.W.L.s, and that was kinda fun. . . .
"Hey, Harry," Blaise asked, nudging her reading friend, "what classes do you think we should take?"
The list read thus:
O.W.L. Classes for Third Year and Up
Arithmancy – Divination (fortune-telling) with numbers. This class will teach you how to find the magical numbers of yourself and those around you. It can help you find out what vague events will happen in your future, and when they will occur. MOST DIFFICULT!
Care of Magical Creatures – This class will teach you about the various magical creatures and their properties.
Divination – This class will teach you of the methods of fortune-telling using tea leaves and hand lines, among other things.
Forgotten Arts – This class will teach you the nearly forgotten arts of crafting wood, metal, and precious gemstones. MOST DIFFICULT!
Healing – This class will teach you the basics of healing and will be helpful for a future career in healing. It is also useful in times of war, and good for general knowledge.
Muggle Studies – This class will teach you the lifestyles and cultures of Muggles, including their technology and clothing.
Study of Ancient Runes – This class will teach you the uses of ancient runes in divination.
"Well, I was thinking of taking all of them except Muggle Studies," Harry said, continuing his examination of the list.
"All of them?" asked Blaise incredulously. "I knew you were a bit of a geek, but all of them?"
"No, I'm not taking Muggle Studies."
"So? That's just one class!"
"Fine! What were you thinking of taking, Blaise?"
"Well, I thought about everything except Muggle Studies, Arithmancy, and the Forgotten Arts."
"Blaise! That would just be taking all the easy classes! Will you at least take Forgotten Arts with me?" Harry pouted.
Blaise sighed and rolled her eyes, but actually thought about it. "Okay, I'll take it. Forgotten Arts does sound a bit fun."
"Thanks, Blaise!"
And then, of course, was the lost presence of Mandy. They hadn't seen her much, but she had been a good friend, and her company was sorely missed.
It seemed that, even though Mandy had only been Petrified, she had died. The loss of one of their friends made it personal (even if they weren't really that close).
But there was only one way Harry and Blaise knew how to cope with it: They tried to pretend it never happened.
oOoOo
"Look at Potter—"
"—strutting down the corridors like he owns 'em—"
"I don't think it's a coincidence—"
"—two more Petrified after we find out Potter's a—"
"—oh, my gosh! Mandy and the Grey Lady!"
"Did you hear him? He was speaking in Parseltongue!"
"—mark of a Dark wizard—"
"—he'll follow in You-Know-Who's footsteps for sure—"
"Just ignore them, Harry," Blaise whispered, pulling her two friends to the Great Hall for lunch after their Transfiguration lesson with Dumbledore. "They're not worth it."
"And let's not forget that they don't know what they're talking about," Theo added.
"Yeah, but there's a grain of truth in there somewhere. I think whoever's doing this is framing me," muttered Harry angrily.
"Maybe," Blaise said.
"Or maybe they're just taking advantage of the student body framing you," said Theo.
"You know what, guys? I'm not very hungry. If you don't mind, I'm going to the library to get a head-start on that Transfiguration essay."
Blaise and Theo looked at each other as Harry pushed his way through the crowds going in the opposite direction and sighed.
"We'll bring him a croissant so his stomach doesn't start growling in Potions."
oOoOo
Harry groaned as he entered the library; he wasn't lying about getting a head-start on that essay, but he really didn't want to have to endure the Great Hall when no one would shut up about him. The continuous questions on whether or not he was planning on being a Dark Lord were really beginning to grate on his nerves.
He turned towards a table at the Transfiguration section and began pulling texts off the shelves that looked like they would be a help. He heard faint murmuring and moved some of the books around so that he could see into the Charms section, where a group of four third year Ravenclaws was sitting.
"Oh, come on, Cassi," a redhead was saying to one of the two blondes—twins. "You know Mandy would never go around after dark when there's such a high risk for Muggleborns."
"Apparently she did, Paige, since she was Petrified then," the second twin added.
Paige rolled her eyes. "Shut up, Mariyh."
"But you have to admit," the as-of-yet quiet brunette put in, "it is awfully suspicious. Mandy did tell Potter she was Muggleborn."
"I think everyone knows Mandy's Muggleborn. Brocklehurst isn't exactly a pureblood name," said Cassi.
"But you do have a point, Alex," the second twin added.
"However, what I don't get is why he Petrified the Grey Lady, too. And how did he do it, anyway?"
"Wasn't Mandy looking straight through the Grey Lady when they found her?" Alexandra asked.
"Yep."
"Potter probably used Dark Magic."
"I wouldn't put it past him."
oOoOo
It didn't take long until the castle was being decorated for the holidays and the students going home were shipped away on the Hogwarts Express. Harry, Blaise, and Malfoy were the only Slytherins left. The only other students were a fifth year Hufflepuff by the name of Leslie McDonald and Leander Walker, a seventh year Gryffindor.
Because there were only five students, Dumbledore had the House tables removed from the Great Hall so the students could just sit across from their professors. A bit odd, but it would be odder if they had to sit at their separate House tables.
The castle had been decorated with tinsel and thistles; poinsettias and icicles. Huge evergreens were brought in from the forest and Professor Flitwick charmed them so fake (but quite real-looking) snow settled on their branches. There was also a charm on the ceiling so it would look as though snow was falling into the Great Hall. The suits of armor were charmed to sing wizarding Christmas carols when someone walked by and wore red and white Chris Cringle hats.
Because of the Christmas spirit, Harry and Blaise were compelled to add their own contributions. Red and green toy snakes were charmed to look alive and drop from the ceiling when someone walked by so they could say 'Happy Christmas, furless humans' in Parsel. This greatly amused the two pranksters.
But their greatest holiday prank was when, well . . .
oOoOo
"Psst! Harry!"
"What, Blaise?"
"Can we please get on with it?"
Harry rolled his eyes from where he was squatting, dressed all in black to try to avoid any detection from the ghosts or portraits, not that there were many. Most were off on the seventh floor having a party the night of Christmas Eve. Most of the portraits were empty down on the second floor where Harry and Blaise were at.
"Fine, hand me the book!"
Blaise squeaked and handed her partner-in-crime a thick, leather-bound book.
Harry quickly opened it to a section near the middle that he had marked. "Okay, here it is; it says to simply point your wand and say 'Viscosus Lutum.' Well, that sounds easy enough, but the hard part is the floor."
"Do you happen to be fluent in Latin?"
"No. . . ."
"Oh, okay, just thought I'd ask."
Harry rolled his eyes and flipped to a section nearer the back in the massive book. Okay, here it is; to deal with the floor, all we need to incant is 'Passus Per.'"
"Okay that sounds easy enough." Blaise pointed her wand at the floor they were standing on and took a deep breath, making Harry blanch.
"Blaise—"
"Passus Per!"
"I don't think—"
They both screamed as the floor seemed to collapse from below them, sending them to a heap in the middle of the Great Hall.
"—that was such a good idea."
"Sorry," Blaise said sheepishly as Harry helped her up.
"No problem; at least the spell worked. Now we need to go do the final part, and hopefully not fall through this time."
"Sure thing."
They made it back to the second floor in one piece and stopped when Harry carefully put his foot where they had been standing earlier and it slipped through.
"Okay, this is it, so what was the incantation again?"
Harry pointed his wand at the stone floor and said softly, "Viscosus Lutum."
"We aren't trying that out, now come on so I can get some sleep."
oOoOo
"Harry! Wake up, already!"
Harry groaned as he turned over in bed as his sheets were pulled off. He blearily opened one eye a fraction of an inch.
"Blaise! What are you doing here?!"
"What I always do here, you idiot: Waking you up."
"But why?" Harry moaned desperately.
"Shut up, you pathetic imbeciles!" Malfoy yelled from the other side of the room.
"He's not a morning person," Harry stage-whispered conspiringly to Blaise. Her eyes lit up and Harry grinned, and they tiptoed over to Malfoy's closed curtains.
'One, two, three,' Harry mouthed, counting down with his fingers. On the count of three they yanked the curtains open. Malfoy shrieked and started yelling out obscenities, but the two mischief-makers just laughed and pulled his woolen emerald blankets down, exposing too much pale skin to the harsh temperatures of the dungeons.
"AAARRRGGGHHH!!!" was the only thing heard as one girl and one pale boy screamed in agony. Malfoy because of the ice-cold temperature, but Blaise because of what she had just been subjected to seeing.
Blaise ran as fast as she could from the dorm room, Harry trailing behind her and snickering pathetically.
He met her at the bottom of the stairs and cringed when she whimpered and sniffled into his shoulder, not exactly crying but probably getting snot on him anyway.
"Harry . . . why could you have warned me?"
". . . Oops?"
Blaise glared at him and Harry shrugged.
"I forgot he slept nude."
"How could you just forget something so traumatizing?"
"You learn to try to block things like that from your mind."
"Well, I suppose I could understand that. . . . Now, come on, my dear partner-in-crime! I wanna see the effects of last night's rendezvous," Blaise intoned with a grin, leading Harry out of the common room and to the Great Hall.
The walk took little time, considering that the Dubious Duo were walking at a fast pace through the maze of the dungeons to see the results of their . . . gift . . . to Christmas day.
In other words: They were more than ready to observe and witness what mayhem they had wrecked!
And—oh!—had they wrecked mayhem! Just as they arrived at the Great Hall and took their seats opposite Professors Flitwick and Sprout, a commotion was heard from the ceiling and two robed bodies fell into the hall gracelessly, landing in a crumpled, muddy heap in front of the staff table.
Harry and Blaise took one look at the heap, another at each other, and busted out into hysterical laughter, not quite caring what their professors or the headmaster thought of them.
But all good things must come to an end, as the heap soon came to life and a mud-drenched Snape and Sinistra (the Astronomy professor) were glaring daggers at the duo.
"DETENTION FOR A MONTH!"
"AND THIRTY POINTS FROM SLYTHERIN!"
But—oh!—had it been worth it!
oOoOo
"I still can't help but wonder how Snape managed to fall through," Blaise muttered as they wandered the halls after dinner, intent on using their last bits of freedom to get some school discovery time in.
"What was he doing on the second floor anyway? With Sinistra?"
Harry turned wide eyes to his friend, and she flinched and recoiled sharply. "Ew, Harry! She's too beautiful for him!"
Professor Sinistra was young, a bit younger than Snape, but she was the most beautiful person on the staff. Several of the older boys crushed on her.
"Yeah, and how would he manage to get her attention anyway?"
Blaise shrugged. "Who the bloody hell knows? Besides, they might not even be together!"
"Hopefully, they aren't. . . ."
There was a small gap of silence as they pondered on more serious matters.
"Hey, have you made any progress on what kind of snake's in the Chamber?"
Blaise gave her friend a long, hard look. "If I haven't, you haven't, genius."
Harry mock pouted. "Just thought I'd ask—jeez."
Their walk continued until Harry broke the silence yet again. "I took a sample of the blood used for the 'Chamber of Secrets Has Been Opened' message, and its rooster blood. Why do you think it was rooster blood?"
"I don't know, but the other day I heard some Gryffindors talking about how all of Hagrid's roosters had been murdered. They were all slashed up and there were guts everywhere. Apparently the attack seemed random."
Harry stared at his friend. "It could just be the Gryffindors exaggerating, you know?"
"Yeah, but I asked Granger and she confirmed it."
"Seriously? That's awfully violent. . . ."
"Yup, so I figure either the roosters had to be gotten rid of, or it was just an act to scare everyone."
"Do you think maybe the snake in the Chamber can't stand roosters or something?"
"I don't—Eugh, what happened here?"
The two Slytherins were standing in the third floor corridor, and it was currently covered in three to four centimeters of water, and it seemed to be coming from—
"Moaning Myrtle," Blaise said with a sigh.
Harry blanched. "M-Moaning . . . Myrtle?"
"Stop stuttering, Harry, you're beginning to sound like Quirrell; and yes, that Moaning Myrtle. There is no other, thank Salazar."
"Um, I think—"
A piercing wail broke the previously silent (except for Harry and Blaise's mindless chatter) corridor, and it seemed to be coming from a door that said: OUT OF ORDER!
Blaise sighed and stared balefully at her robe hems, which were soaking up the deep water like a life source. "I'd better go see what she's up to. You stay here, Harry. . . . Or better yet, go head back to the common room; this may take a while."
"You're sure?" asked Harry fearfully. His friend may have been a pureblood, but he didn't want her walking the corridors alone after hours.
"I'm absolutely certain, Harry." Blaise turned to enter the bathroom. "And don't wait up without me."
oOoOo
Blaise had gotten back to the common room to see that Harry had apparently given up on waiting for her and had headed off to bed. It was a good thing, too, because a girl like Blaise needed her beauty sleep (though not as much as Pansy Parkinson, per se) and still needed to find out if there was anything off with the diary that had been plunged at Moaning Myrtle.
After she had dealt with hearing all of Myrtle's moaning and moping, the ghost finally admitted that someone had thrown a book at her, and pointed to where it lay—sopping wet and innocent-looking—immersed in the flood binge that Myrtle had created.
It seemed as if the book was calling to her, although that was odd in itself. How did a book call to someone? But Blaise had felt a strange compulsion to pick up the little black book and leaf through it, so she did just that.
To her surprise, it was blank, except for a name on the first page, of one "T. M. Riddle" in smudged ink.
Apparently, it was a diary, and a quick look at the faded year on the cover showed that it was about fifty years old.
It seemed nondescript enough, but why would somebody go around throwing it at Myrtle's head?
Blaise turned to the back cover of the book and saw the printed name of a variety store on Vauxhall Road, London.
'He must've been Muggleborn to be buying something from Vauxhall Road,' Blaise had thought at the time.
There was a niggling suspicion in the back of Blaise's mind that she shouldn't keep it, but there was the larger voice more towards the front of her mind that she should pocket it.
And so she did.
And now here she was, staring at the empty Slytherin common room at one o'clock in the morning when she had a diary to explore.
Blaise tiptoed down the hall that contained the girl's dormitories and swung open a squeak-less door that lead to the second year dorm. She hurriedly got ready for bed and closed the emerald green hangings, but not before getting a quill and some patented emerald green ink to see what writing in a diary was like.
She lay on her stomach with her legs crossed and was resting her elbows on the pillow before grabbing the diary from her bedside table.
Blaise blinked in surprise. Surely it was a trick of her tired mind that the diary seemed to have dried completely, and looked as though it had never been wet and soggy in the first place?
But no, the book was completely dry, and she opened it to the first page to see that the paper seemed brand new, not even the slightest hint that it had recently dried itself out or the faintest ripple or stain in the grain.
Confused, Blaise dipped her quill in the ink and wrote, "My name is Blaise Zabini."
Blaise's already wide eyes grew as large as Galleons as the words shone momentarily on the page before they seemed to sink into the paper without the slightest trace they had once been written there before more writing slowly appeared.
"Hello, Blaise Zabini. My name is Tom Riddle. . . ."
oOoOo
Authoress's Note: Happy and 'belated' really late eighteenth birthday to SaphirePhoenix!
Names Mentioned:
Mariyh and Cassi Halliwell (twins; Ravenclaw) - PotterPhan21 (Great personalities you got there!)
Paige Katz (Ravenclaw) - Dani Collins
Alexandra Russell (Ravenclaw) - Royari
Names to be Mentioned:
Steve Levi - animeflunky
Kristen Malkin - BitterIcing
Leander Walker - walka88 (anon.)