Standard Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters in this story; they all belong to JK Rowlings. This is a work of fan fiction, produced solely for enjoyment. No infringement of rights is intended.

– CHAPTER TWENTY THREE –

Riddled With Memories

As Harry and Ginny made their way down to Hogsmeade, he recounted his discovery of the Pensieve's contents and Dumbledore's last message. They continued walking in silence for a few moments, before Ginny turned to him and smirked.

'I told you there would be something important in there!' She exclaimed smugly. Harry sighed theatrically and groaned.

'Yes, I know. You were and always are right, happy now?'

'Very!' She announced happily. They continued walking in comfortable silence for a few more minutes, both deep in thought, when Harry broke the silence.

'So where would you like to go first, anything you need in particular?' He asked.

'Hmm no, I don't think so. Fred and George don't have a branch in Hogsmeade, so apart from getting some Butterbeers,' she rubbed her hands together vigorously, 'I'm not going to insist on going anywhere today. How about you, do you need anything?' Harry thought for a moment, and something Sirius had written came to mind.

'Well yes, it's not for me, but I need to buy a set of robes. Sirius asked me to get them for Remus.' Ginny looked at him sharply for a moment, before nodding.

'Alright, well we can do that before going to the Three Broomsticks, might as well get that done first.' Harry nodded, and slipped her hand into his, interlacing their fingers together. Ginny beamed at him, and snuggled into his side as they rounded the path's corner, and Hogsmeade came into view.

Upon Harry's return, his first port of call was the Library, where he was certain that he would find Hermione, knee deep in homework or research. Approaching her silently, he covered her eyes.

'Guess who!' He whispered in his best imitation of Hagrid. Startled, Hermione jumped about a foot, dropping the book she was reading on the floor. Madam Pince glared at Harry, but he didn't release Hermione.

'Harry, get off me!' Hermione snapped in an angry whisper. Harry let go and dropped into the seat opposite her, disgruntled.

'How did you know it was me?' He asked grumpily. Hermione looked at him as him he'd grown a third head.

'Harry, pick someone closer to you in size next time! Hagrid's hands would have enveloped my whole head. Anyway, you said you'd find me when you got back from Hogsmeade,' she paused, 'how was it incidentally?' Harry leaned back into his seat, a huge smile plastered on his face.

'It was amazing Hermione, you should have come. We walked around the shops for a while, I bought and posted a new set of robes for Remus, we stopped over at the Three Broomsticks, and went to the Shrieking Shack and err,' he paused, his face reddening, 'had a look around inside.' He added quickly. Hermione gave him a knowing look.

'It doesn't look like I would have enjoyed the day quite as much as you two.' She said pointedly, while Harry blushed even harder.

'Yeah, well, err. The reason I needed to find you is,' he hesitated, trying to compose his face, which still had a grin plastered on it, 'I found something in my trunk this morning.' Hermione didn't look up from the book she'd picked up and resumed reading. 'I found something important.'

Hermione looked up at him in bemusement, and then a look of understanding crossed her face.

'What, you mean to do with the -' Harry nodded frantically and clamped his hand over her mouth.

'Not here!' He mouthed. She nodded, and pulled his hand from her mouth.

'Ok, let me just put these books away, I didn't find anything useful in them anyway.' She stood up, and floated the books back to their shelves, while Harry went to wait for her at the exit. As he left the desk Hermione had been working at, he heard the swish of a cloak that came from the bookshelf behind him.

Spinning around and approaching the row of shelves, he whispered 'Lumos', and held his hand high above his head. He found nothing when he reached the end of the bookshelves, but as he turned back towards the Library exit, he thought he saw a pair of long, slanting eyes staring at him before they too disappeared in the gloom.

When Hermione finally joined him, he grabbed her arm and practically dragged her back to his dormitory, where he pushed her onto his bed and proceeded to explain his discovery of the Pensieve's contents while lifting all the locking spells on his trunk. Hermione was mildly annoyed that he hadn't told her before he left for Hogsmeade, to save her time if nothing else, but was too excited to be really angry at him.

Harry finished removing the spells, and pulled the Pensieve out, placing it gently on his chest of drawers, before prodding it gently with his wand. The memory of Dumbledore rose again, spinning slowly as it recited its message.

When it was finished, Harry prodded the Pensieve again and turned to Hermione.

'So, what do you think?' Hermione gave him a piercing stare before replying.

'I think you should have looked at this a long time ago Harry,' she said slowly, 'it might have saved us a lot of fruitless searching.' Harry hung his head.

'I know that, I just couldn't bring myself to. It would have –' he took a deep breath, 'made his death more real, more final.' Hermione looked at him, an aggrieved look on her face while his thoughts raged around his head.

'I'm sorry Harry, I shouldn't have said that.' She got up and put a hand on his shoulder. 'Come on, let's go find Ginny, it is after all the weekend, you need a break.' Harry shook his head.

'No, I want to look at some of these memories now. I told Ginny about them, she'll understand.'

Hermione looked like she was about to argue with him, but he'd already started swirling the memories around, and it didn't take long for her own curiosity got the better of her. She sat down, and waited while Harry inspected the memories carefully.

'This looks like an interesting one, let's have a look. Do you want to go first?' Hermione nodded eagerly and taking a deep breath, she plunged into the Pensieve head first. Harry followed her immediately, and when he landed, he found her looking around eagerly. He could almost hear her brain whirring around as it processed the differences between modern-day Hogwarts and it's counterpart of fifty years ago.

Harry looked around himself, and realised that they must be in one of Dumbledore's Transfiguration lessons. His heart ached as he watched a much younger Albus Dumbledore lecturing the class on the correct wand movement needed to change a hedgehog into a pincushion. He turned to the class, and quickly found Tom Riddle sitting in the front row. He wasn't much younger than when Harry had seen his memory, and Harry guessed that Riddle had to be around fourteen or fifteen.

He called Hermione over, and they observed Riddle as he practised the transfiguration, which he managed to accomplish on his second try. After having shown his pincushion to Dumbledore and earning Slytherin five points, he started scrawling notes on a spare scrap of parchment. Harry leaned over Riddle's shoulder to read what he was writing, but he'd barely got a glance when Dumbledore asked Riddle why he was doodling in his class.

Riddle hastily wiped the parchment blank and apologised, saying that he'd already successfully managed to perform the transfiguration and didn't have anything else to do. Dumbledore gave Riddle a penetrating stare for a short moment, before nodding and suggesting that he help out his classmates who hadn't managed the transfiguration yet. Riddle immediately turned to the student sitting next him and started showing him the right wand movement, but as soon as he thought Dumbledore wasn't looking, Riddle threw him a glare of pure loathing, and his eyes gleamed red for a second.

The boy sitting next to Riddle seemed unnerved for a moment, but quickly regained his senses and listened to Riddle's instructions with a mixture of fear and awe. The class continued normally for a few more minutes, before the memory ended and Harry and Hermione rose up through oblivion and back to Harry's dormitory. Hermione turned to Harry straight away and asked him what Riddle had been writing on the parchment.

'I'm not really sure, he'd only written "Elixir of Life or unicorn blood" before he wiped the sheet clean. Maybe he was already thinking of ways to become immortal, and was making a list of possible methods. I doubt that he'd have heard of Horcruxes by then.'

Hermione thought about that for a while, and then asked if Dumbledore had left any memories of later lessons, maybe from Riddle's seventh year. Harry leaned over the Pensieve for a few minutes, his hands resting on each side of the basin. The mass of memories began to spin faster and faster as Harry frowned in concentration, but they eventually slowed as he looked up and nodded.

'Found one.' He announced. Hermione hurried over and within a couple of seconds they were both falling through oblivion until they landed in the same classroom as they had before.

Harry looked around, and quickly confirmed that this was Riddle's class; he was sitting in the same seat as before, but looked older, and had a Head Boy badge pinned on the front of his robes. Harry glanced out the window and saw a beautiful, sunny day; it was probably summertime and one of the last lessons before the beginning of NEWTs. He turned back to the class, and noticed that Dumbledore was carrying out a revision of all the work the students would need to know for the exam. Riddle looked thoroughly bored and was twirling his wand between his fingers, occasionally performing one of the transfigurations when Dumbledore was watching.

As Harry watched, he noticed that Riddle was slowly enchanting a piece of charcoal to silently scrawl out a message on some parchment under the table when Dumbledore wasn't watching. Harry tried to crawl under the desk to read it, but as he reached it, Riddle banished it. Harry climbed up and looked around, hoping to see someone reading from a scrap of parchment, but could see nothing out of place.

'Hermione, did you notice if anyone just received a scrap of parchment?' He asked her, but she hadn't.

They spent the rest of the lesson prowling the classroom, hoping to find the missing piece of parchment, but it was only at the end of the lesson, that Hermione caught a glimpse of it sticking out of Rodolphus Lestrange's school bag. However, before Harry or Hermione could get to him, the memory ended and the found themselves back in Harry's room. They quickly dived back into the memory to retrieve the message, but all it turned out to be was a message telling Riddle's group of followers to meet him in an abandoned classroom after dinner. 'He was probably planning some kind of attack on a Muggleborn.' Harry thought angrily when he re-emerged from the memory.

As Hermione landed next to him, she checked her watch.

'Merlin's beard Harry, it's already dinner time! Come let's go get Ginny and tell her what we found.' Harry hurriedly placed the Pensieve back in his trunk and cast a few locking spells on it before they rushed down to the Common Room to find Ginny playing a game of Wizard's Chess with Colin Creevey.

They didn't have to wait long though, within a couple of minutes, Ginny had taken his Queen and it was only a few more moves before she checkmated him.

'Damn it Ginny,' Colin moaned, 'do you have to win every time?' Harry and Hermione shared a small smile; Ron's prowess on the chessboard had elicited a similar reaction from them many a time. Ginny smiled sweetly in reply, but before she could open her mouth, Harry put a hand on her shoulder.

'Do you two want to come down to dinner with us?' He asked. 'We were on our way down.' Ginny jumped up and slipped her arm around his and practically dragged him towards the portrait hole, leaving Hermione and Colin to try and catch up. 'Umm Ginny, what are you doing?'

'If we finish dinner quickly, we can continue our conversation we were having this morning.' Harry frowned, and asked her what she was talking about.

'You know Harry, the one we were having in the Shrieking Shack.' She replied innocently. Harry blushed scarlet and Hermione, who had caught up by then, sniggered into her hand. Colin looked like he'd been petrified all over again.

'You went inside the Shrieking Shack? Sweet Merlin, you two are brave! I would never have gone in there; don't you know it's the most haunted building in Britain?' Hermione had to stuff her fist in her mouth to stop herself laughing at this, and Harry, who was still scarlet, tried to stutter a response.

'Well, you see –' He started to answer, but Ginny, with a straight face, interrupted him.

'We dared ourselves to go in and find one of the ghosts haunting the place, but when we got in there, there was nothing. No one's heard any noise from the Shrieking Shack in decades, so we reckon the ghosts have left – or there weren't any in the first place and it was all a myth.' Hermione and Harry turned to stare at Ginny, mouths gaping, but Colin didn't notice.

'Really? That's so cool; I think next Hogsmeade weekend I'll go take a few pictures to show my parents. Just imagine "pictures from inside the most haunted building in Britain", thanks Ginny! I'll go write that down now, see you later guys!' He sprinted back the way they'd come as Harry, Hermione and Ginny cracked up, leaning against each other for support.

After they'd calmed down somewhat, they made their way down to the Great Hall, only just making it in time to get desert. They ate in silence, and when they finished, Harry led them to an abandoned classroom. Closing the door behind him, he pulled out his wand and muttered 'Colloportus' at the door, which made a loud squelching noise, and 'Muffliato'. Turning back to the girls, he looked at Hermione, who nodded almost imperceptibly.

'Ginny, Hermione and I had a look at some of the memories that Dumbledore left me this afternoon –' he hesitated. Should he tell her? After all, Tom Riddle had assaulted her mind when she was little, and he knew that she still thought about it every so often.

'And?' Ginny prompted eagerly. Harry took a deep breath.

'The ones we saw were of Tom Riddle as a student here.' Ginny's face blanched. No one uttered a sound for what seemed like an eternity, Harry and Hermione waiting for a response from Ginny, who was entrenched in her own memories of Riddle.

Harry eventually tried to prompt a response out of her, but as he began saying, 'Look, you don't need to look –', Ginny replied.

'I think I need to look at the memories.' Harry looked confused for a moment, then countered.

'No, you don't have to, not if it hurts. We'll look without you, and tell you if we find anything.' Ginny shook her head emphatically.

'You don't understand Harry, I have to look at them, they might help me get over my first year, if I can see him as he was at school.' Harry looked at Hermione for support, but she shook her head. Ginny was right. He sighed in resignation.

'Alright, but you are never to go into those memories alone you understand?' Ginny looked like she was about to argue, but he cut her off. 'I don't want you to be alone if you see anything shocking, or that brings back memories of your first year.' Hermione looked surprised at his thoughtfulness; she expected the reason to be in case Ginny stumbled on something related to the Horcruxes. Ginny didn't look entirely surprised, but quickly recovered and giving Harry a glowing smile, she threw her arms around him.

'Right, well I think that's my cue to leave.' Hermione quipped, smirking, but Harry laughed and said.

'Actually, I was thinking of going to the kitchens. Desert alone hardly counts as dinner.' Hermione and Ginny shared a grin, and replied in unison.

'Oh, I wouldn't say that.' Harry laughed, but released the spells on the door and dragged the two giggling girls down to the kitchen.

As they stepped through the portrait, Harry was almost bowled over as a squealing blur of green and maroon crashed into his knees.

'Dobby! How are you?' He exclaimed happily, pulling the excitable house-elf off him. Dobby looked up at him with adoration in his eyes.

'Dobby is well, sir. Dobby is happy to see the great Harry Potter again, sir.' Hermione and Ginny sniggered into the back of their hands. 'Would the miss or Master Harry Potter's Wheezy be needing anything, sir?' This time Harry sniggered at Hermione and Ginny while they blushed and tried to get Dobby to call them by their names.

'We only wanted to get some food Dobby, we missed most of dinner.' Dobby bowed low, his nose almost touching the floor.

'Of course, sir. Dobby will go and fetch you all dinner immediately.' And with that he disappeared into the kitchen, returning a few minutes later with a basket full of food.

'Thanks Dobby.' Harry said, taking the heavy basket from the small house-elf. Dobby bowed deeply again, before lifting his adoring eyes to meet Harry's.

'You is most welcome, sir. Anything for the great Harry Potter, sir.'

'Anything apart from an order to stop calling me "great Harry Potter" that is.' Harry grumbled under his breath, but Ginny heard him and laughed at his discomfort.

'Come on, Oh Great One. Come and feed your hungry lady.' She said merrily, taking his hand is hers. Hermione giggled, and followed them out the kitchens, waving a goodbye to Dobby as she left.

'You know,' Harry said in passing a few hours and a full stomach later, 'it could be quite useful having your own house-elf working in the kitchens. Kreacher!'

A/N - I Apologise for the huge delay between the last update and this one. The last few months have been beyond hectic, and that, coupled with a bout of writer's block made writing anything impossible for a while. Anyway, I think I'll be able to write quite often from now on for a while, so enjoy!