Chapter Four: How Dumbledore Knew

"Who's Tom?"

"You can dispense with the act, Mr. Riddle. I don't need to trick you into confirming it."

"But Professor, you're confusing me. I only just learned that I'm Ginny Weas—"

"Silencio." Dumbledore spoke and Tom felt his voice mute. The Headmaster must have cast additional wordless spells, because Tom felt his body involuntarily sit down in a chair which scooted itself forward to the edge of the desk. Damn him! How did he find out!?

"I'll unsilence you when you're ready to cooperate. For now, listen to what I have to say."

Earlier that day, Dumbledore had begun to suspect something was amiss with Ginny's amnesia while they spoke in the hospital wing. It was strange that a third year would have retained memories of school but not of her childhood home and family. That was inconsistent with what he'd seen from victims of magical memory loss. Earliest memories were usually more resilient, which was why language often remained intact.

The first thing he'd done was investigate the cause of the amnesia. He had already checked Ginny's wand with a Prior Incantato charm, which revealed that its last spell had been obliviate. That was simple enough. But why had Ginny been experimenting with a memory charm? That was forbidden magic for a third year. Who had been the intended target? Or had the spell been cast at Ginny by another person using her wand? With the safety and well being of a student at stake, it was enough to warrant use of a time turner.

So Dumbledore had excused himself from the company of the Weasleys and returned to his office where he kept it. He'd spun the magical gizmo enough times to take him back the maximum of five hours—any longer would invite all manner of uncertainty.

Next, he went down to the Great Hall where Friday morning's breakfast was being served. No one detected him because he had cloaked himself with advanced spells of invisibility and sound muffling. Even his own self from five hours earlier was none the wiser.

He observed Ginny finish breakfast and then return to Gryffindor Tower with her house, as students often did to pick up their books before classes began. But Ginny had grabbed something else—a diary from her bedside. After that, her behavior became strange.

Instead of going to class, Ginny had snuck off by herself through the castle corridors, far from prying eyes (other than Dumbledore's) until she reached the Room of Requirement.

How does she know about this place? Dumbledore did not know of any current student who knew. Most members of the faculty were not even aware of the room's existence.

Dumbledore observed Ginny hiding the diary in the endless trove of lost items that the room presented her.

In all his years as a teacher, Dumbledore had known a few students to hide, burn or tear out compromising pages from their diaries. None had been so meticulous as to hide it away so privately, in such a secret room.

What was so compromising about what she'd written there? Or was it not the words that were compromising, but the diary itself? It could easily be an illegal, enchanted object.

He thought of how he had once become enamored with looking into the Mirror of Erised—which reflected the deepest, most desperate desire of one's heart—before he'd found the willpower to stop. Perhaps this diary was something like that, a sort of emotional crutch for a teenage girl suffering from insecurities and unrequited love. Perhaps Ginny had found it addictive and was trying to rid herself of the object once and for all by hiding it away and casting a memory charm on herself to forget the location.

Such a thing could happen to a girl at Hogwarts. But why did it happen to Ginny Weasley in particular? Perhaps there was another element at play, something tied to her father's current situation.

After the deadly Death Eater attacks on the Quidditch World Cup in August, the Wizengamot had passed a series of laws to counter the rising tide of pure-blood supremacist violence. Arthur Weasley had worked with Dumbledore's friend and Wizengamot Member Amelia Bones to write the Muggle Protection Act, which authorized the Auror Office to conduct raids on suspected Death Eater homes. The Aurors had searched them for anything they could use to prosecute, such as possession of illegal dark artifacts.

Unfortunately, the damnable Ministry had so many leaks that the Death Eaters had been tipped off before every raid. Suspects had always had just enough time to rid themselves of their illegal possessions first—by pawning them off to unscrupulous vendors in Diagon Alley, hiding them in Gringotts vaults, or in some cases—placing them in the possession of political enemies.

It had been quite the embarrassing setback when an illegal dark artifact had turned up at Amelia Bones' home. Dumbledore had no proof, but he knew Lucius Malfoy must have been responsible for setting her up, because the devious Opposition Leader had been so swift to call for the vote to expel Bones from the Wizengamot, after the Auror raid on Malfoy's own manor had turned up nothing. The law had backfired, and it had taken all of Dumbledore's influence to save Amelia from being sent to Azkaban on top of losing her seat.

It followed that Lucius Malfoy might have attempted to set up the Muggle Protection Act's other co-author—Arthur Weasley—in the same way.

Had Malfoy snuck the diary into the Burrow, or into the Weasley's possession somehow? Come to think of it, after Bones' scandal, Malfoy had been advocating for a search on the Weasley home as well.

And Ginny had been reading The Daily Prophet that morning at breakfast. Perhaps she'd read something about Malfoy calling once more for a raid on the Weasleys—he'd have to check if that was in there. That might explain why Ginny was trying to get rid of the diary and wipe her memory of it—to protect her father from losing his job at the Ministry and being sent to Azkaban. Yes, she must be under an incredible amount of stress with all that was going on, especially having survived the traumatic attacks at the Quidditch World Cup only four months earlier.

Before he could be sure of that theory, however, Dumbledore wanted to see the circumstances of the memory charm.

He followed Ginny back to part of the castle where students were attending their first classes of the day. She had entered a girl's bathroom and double checked that she was alone. (She failed to detect Dumbledore of course). Then she removed her wand and cast obliviate, which splashed harmlessly into a wall.

She wasn't struck by the spell.

Ginny lay down carefully on the floor, dropped the wand and waited twenty minutes until she was found by a group of unsuspecting Hufflepuff girls who had come to use the bathroom after class. They became alarmed at Ginny's apparent distress, so they flagged down Professor Flitwick in the corridor. Shortly after, Ginny was taken to the hospital wing where Dumbledore had originally found her.

She's faking it. There was no memory loss. That much was obvious.

But then, why? Dumbledore knew Ginny Weasley was an honest girl, highly trustworthy, with a strong sense of right and wrong. Even if she was under a great deal of stress, it was hard to believe she would be acting so dishonest as to lie to everyone.

Wasn't there a more simple explanation? What if she was being controlled? Either by the Imperius Curse or—

Dumbledore sighed, took off his half-moon spectacles and rubbed his eyes.

There was one more thing to check.

Dumbledore returned to the Room of Requirement and retrieved the diary from where he'd seen her hide it. He flipped it open to the last entry. Yesterday's date. Ginny's handwriting. A hopeless crush on Harry Potter. Fears she isn't pretty enough. Dumbledore felt for her, but he didn't have time to dwell on it. It didn't seem like she was particularly worried about Arthur getting sacked.

He flipped through the diary pages, going further back. Ginny's entries had indeed begun at the start of the school year, supporting his theory that Malfoy had slipped it to the Weasleys after the Muggle Protection Act had been introduced in the Wizengamot.

Before Ginny's pages, there were dozens of prior entries—all written in cipher.

Voldemort's cipher.

The one Dumbledore had never cracked, not even after the War. But he didn't need to crack it now. He had everything else solved.

Dumbledore hurried back to his office to review a memory he had preserved in his pensieve. He leaned over the magical stone basin. It was cloudy and bright with the silvery substance of memory. With the tip of his wand, he delicately lifted out the one he was looking for.

It was a memory of his own from three years earlier, the year Quirinus Quirrell, Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor at the time, had returned from the summer holidays with a secret plot to steal the Philosopher's Stone from Hogwarts. Quirrell had eventually gotten to the Stone, but botched the escape. Dumbledore had found him out, caught up with him and—in a harrowing duel, and with the greatest difficulty—defeated the wizard who had once been his student.

The memory Dumbledore pulled from the pensieve was of the subsequent interrogation. He had conducted it alone.

He had given the defeated Quirrell three drops of veritaserum and told him to start at the beginning of his story. That was when Quirrell revealed he was not Quirrell at all, but another one of Dumbledore's former students—Quirrell's body had been possessed by the soul of a twenty-four year old Tom Riddle.