Thanks to Kreacher and his faithful servitude, Lyra finally felt like everything in her life was on its fated path. It was as though she was destined to be united with her house elf and everything fell neatly into place with a magical pop.
The tenseness in her stomach whenever she thought about Harry evaporated straight away, she didn't have to worry about him starving to death while he was trapped at his aunt's house anymore. Kreacher visited him every single night to drop off a massive supply of delicious food that would tide him over until the next evening. Lyra was a tad concerned that she might have gone overboard when he sent her lots of notes telling her that he didn't need her help, but after his fourth haul of snacks Harry admitted that he was terribly thankful for her care-packages and he secretly loved having a feast served to him every night.
Now that Harry was replying, Ron's letters and Hermione's phone calls finally moved on from fretting about Harry's well-being to counting down the days until they would all be reunited again. Well, Lyra still had a month until Hermione was free but the Weasleys were picking her up at the end of the week and she woke up each day with a huge smile on her face.
The prospect of reuniting with her favourite cousins was like a ray of sunshine, brightening her cloudy days and she basked in the warmth of the Weasleys' anticipation. They were just as feverish as she was. Fred and George wrote to her multiple times a day with thoughtful hospitality questions about things like her pillow preferences and her favourite cereals, Ginny sent Lyra a list of fun activities she had always wanted to try but her brothers refused to take part in, and to Lyra's surprise she even received an incredibly enthusiastic letter from Arthur asking her about what to expect when visiting a Muggle children's home.
Naturally, Lyra sent back exhaustingly long replies to them all and proudly stuffed her growing collection of correspondence in her old sketchbook to keep them safe instead of stuffing them away in her trunk, not caring if they ripped or got lost. Her heavy handed way of thinking meant that most of her possessions were either scuffed or stained. She wasn't the best at being careful and it clearly showed in most aspects of her life, but now she had something important to look after and preserve.
She transformed her sketchbook into an heirloom scrapbook, an unconventional filing system that held everything related to her family and the people she held close to her heart, and she took a lot of pride in decorating it with her favourite polaroids from her photo album. Lyra didn't have any baby photos or family heirlooms but as she admired the chaotic front cover of her scrapbook she almost teared up — this was the next best thing.
"Aw, sweetheart, I love it! It's very creative," gushed Danielle when Lyra showed off her latest project one morning over a cup of tea, but with a quick glance at the kitchen door she quickly added, "but maybe keep it in your room, we can't have anyone seeing those." She nodded at the animated photographs of Lyra on the front cover, and Lyra smirked. But that's the best part!
"Like anyone here would be worthy to even be in the presence of this awesomeness," scoffed Lyra, getting distracted by the photograph of her first private flying lesson, "it'll be in my trunk most of the time, it's not your everyday scrapbook. It's the type of scrapbook you keep in your attic and you look back at it when you're really old and wrinkly… I wish I had an attic."
Danielle arched her painted brow, amused. "You wish you had an attic?"
Lyra stared at her like she was insane. "Uh, duh? Every house should have an attic! That's where you keep all of your treasured heirlooms, or where you stash your creepy miniature model of your town and then ghosts show up and go through all of your stuff looking for a book so it looks like all of your possessions are floating—,"
Danielle snorted into her tea cup. "You've been watching Beetlejuice again, haven't you?" she laughed, dabbing at her mouth, and Lyra nodded unapologetically.
"It's so good! I watched it twice last night before Johnny came into the living room and stole the remote," she drawled, wiggling her brows to emphasise her bravery. She rarely ventured out into the living room alone, the possibility of having to interact with another kid was enough to steer her away from the communal rooms, but with Kreacher cleaning up her hectic life with a click of his fingers she realised how boring being at Coles was. She was desperate to leave for the summer, she wanted out.
"Wow," Danielle looked startled, "you actually sat in the living room? Without me?!"
Lyra grimaced. "I know, I'm shocked too, but I was so bored without you here! I hate your nights off!" she justified, pouting at Danielle as she slumped on her book, "my room's clean, my homework was completed weeks ago, I think I have a photograph of every single square foot of Weymouth, and I've run out of decent fabric so sewing seems pointless!"
She wanted to make Kreacher an outfit but every time she brought it up he protested with an impressively loud tantrum and she sent him away before he drew attention from the Muggles.
"Have you tried speaking to the new boy? Jack?" Danielle tried to inspire her but Lyra rolled her eyes.
"Who? Goldfish boy? Johnny got to him already, he keeps muttering about knives anytime I'm near him," she shrugged, but she quickly added, "and I have no idea why," when Danielle looked alarmed.
"Oh, well…" She tutted, nibbling on her glossed lips as she struggled to come up with a resolution for Lyra's entertainment problem, "I haven't seen you paint in a while? What about that?"
"This may or may not have been my last sketchbook," explained Lyra, tapping the book underneath her arms, "I don't have anything to—,"
What about Lucius' book?
Oh yeah!
Lyra stopped herself mid-sentence, a little flummoxed that she had forgotten all about her stolen goods, and an impish grin slowly overtook her freckled face. "Wait, I think I have one more book somewhere. Great idea Danielle!"
"See? Not just a pretty face," purred Danielle, batting her long lashes as she returned her smile, "try and keep your room nice and tidy. This has been the longest it's been clean and I want to see if you can manage a seven day streak."
"Is that a challenge I hear?" offered Lyra with a hand cupped around her ear, liking the idea of destroying Danielle with Kreacher's help, but Danielle laughed her suggestion away and took to her feet to resume her morning duties.
"No, it's a simple request. Now stop distracting me from my cleaning, go and paint!" She shooed Lyra away with a wave of a tea towel, and Lyra scooped her scrapbook up and wandered off to retrieve her new sketchbook.
She knew Danielle would ask her where she got the leather book from if she spotted it so she tucked it into her paint-splattered blanket as she gathered her gear and she headed out into Coles wild garden to find some inspiration amongst the wild flowers and buzzing summer insects. Luckily it wasn't as hot as it had been, a thin veil of clouds diluted the burning sunshine on her skin as Lyra strolled down the half-hidden stone path that trailed through the garden. Two other kids were out playing on the weather-worn swing set near the patio but she blatantly ignored their glares and hid near the fence separating her from a field scattered with cows grazing on the lush green.
Using the blanket as a shield from the ticklish grass, Lyra sprawled out with her paints around her and began to flick through the journal in an attempt to spark something artistic from within. A faded black ink stamp caught her eye on the back page and she guffawed, taken aback by the familiar stationery store name at the very bottom. I thought Muggles were beneath Lucius. How strange…?
"Oh well! It's mine now!" Lyra chirped out loud, smug that she had gotten away with the petty crime. She squirted dollops of paint onto her messy palette, happily humming the funky tune of a new Michael Jackson song Danielle had shown her as she prepared her workspace.
Since the book was a lot more aesthetically pleasing than her usual plain sketchbook, Lyra knew the first page had to be special. She couldn't waste it on a half-assed picture that she wasn't proud of. Maybe I could press a flower? Wait, I don't know how to press flowers.
The forget-me-nots swaying in the light breeze nearby caught her eye first and Lyra got to work mixing the right shades of blue. Shoving her hair into a messy knot on top of her head to avoid dousing her locks in powder blue paint, Lyra readied her brush and started to splotch the colour onto the thick parchment paper, mapping out where the heads of the flowers would start
After her fourth dot, the paint started to melt into the page.
Lyra scoffed.
"Wait," she mumbled, adding a few more dots, and her jaw swung open as they too seeped into the paper like sand in a sieve — and it wouldn't stop.
Lyra abandoned her pretty flower petal dots, her lines were thick and harsh. She wanted to see if the paint was somehow faulty or whether this was the work of Lucius' diary, but the rapid pounding in her ears already gave her the answer she was looking for.
"Stop!" laughed Lyra, too fascinated with the book's trick to reassess her bizarre situation, "just let me paint!"
Throwing the brush to one side, Lyra pinned the journal's front cover down with one hand, forcing the book to stay open, and she flicked off the lid of her biggest paint bottle with her teeth. The blue paint was nowhere to be seen, the warm breeze had long passed and the bone-dry parchment rustled, but Lyra didn't spot the slow emerging baby blue writing stretching across the page. Her one and a half litres of clown white paint was ready and she tipped it upside with the widest smile on her face. So it's a paint-eating book, ey? I wonder if it has a limit?
"Let's see you swallow this, Book!" she jeered, and she squeezed the bottle with all her might.
The paint slapped onto the front page with an audible sloppy splat, and a violent icy shiver ran down Lyra's spine as though ice cubes had been dropped down her shirt when the book consumed every single drop of white. All of it. It was like a portal to another dimension had opened up between the pages, the stream of paint disappeared from this plane and vanished into another right before her eyes and she gawked at the scene until her bottle started spitting, its neck empty and crumpled tightly in her fist.
Oh my God… that's so cool!
No it's not!
That paint must have gone somewhere, although a diary that you can't write in? Useless.
I'm sure there is a use for it, maybe I can use it in a prank?
Mind buzzing with new opportunities, Lyra ran her hand across the crisp page in the hopes of coming across any signs of moisture and flicked through the pages to see if anything new had popped up. Did she need to fill it with enough liquid in order to unlock its true use? Surely Lucius kept this locked in his desk for a reason, it had a trick lock for crying out loud! What was he hiding? What was this? The parchment edges started to hurt her fingertips as she flicked through faster but she stopped on the first page again in a frustrated huff.
"What the hell are you?!"
Without warning, the book erupted and projectile vomited white paint into Lyra's face. The incredible force startled Lyra beyond belief and she let go of it so she could catch her breath. She couldn't breathe, she couldn't see, everything was wet and suffocating but she could hear the book fizzing wildly like a broken fire hydrant in front of her.
Lyra scraped paint from her face and fretfully wrapped the vomiting book and her painting set into one big blanketed ball of mess. Panicking that someone had seen her magical book she sprinted back to the house. She felt the eyes of the boys on the swings as she fled the scene and they scampered off to investigate the back of the garden, itching to know how she squirted paint everywhere. Straining her ears for possible unwanted encounters, Lyra snuck into her bedroom, dumped the dripping blanket ball under her bed, and ran to the nearest bathroom to clean up. She couldn't stand still in the shower, she was itching to return to the diary to figure out what the hell she had in her possession.
It's not a regular book.
Please be careful.
We have just stumbled upon something great here.
After shoving on whatever clean clothes were closest, Lyra cautiously knelt down, peeled the half-dried blanket from the floor and locked her door, coming up with a back-up plan if the book decided to attack her. She could climb out the window in five seconds flat, and she had a house elf if things went from bad to 'oh no we're going to die right now'. She was more than prepared to deal with a silly old book and she definitely knew not to feed the book a couple pints of possibly toxic liquid now. This should be a piece of cake.
Lyra never thought she would be genuinely scared of a book before. Her chest started to constrict as she slowly unravelled the crispy fabric and she instinctively winced as she opened the ball up but the black book lay amongst her stained paint bottles motionless and unbelievably clean.
Too clean. Not a speck of white paint had tainted the leather cover and the pages remained unused.
"Now that's magic!" scoffed Lyra, ignoring how hard her heart was beating in her ears, and she swiped the book from its ivory nest before jumping onto her bed to study the journal closer. It didn't like paint, it made its stance on that artistic medium abundantly clear and she didn't want to piss the book off in any way… not while she was at Coles.
But the book didn't hate all of Lyra's paint. She landed on the first page again and she froze as she read the forget-me-not blue handwriting that certainly wasn't there before.
"Is my diary in the hands of an artist?"
"Wait," Lyra gasped, dumbfounded, "hold on, no way!"
She scrambled around her room for a spare pen and she dove back onto the bed, almost foaming at the mouth with excitement as she struggled to write back without messing up.
"It is now! Did Lucius make you? Are you his secret diary friend? Do you know any of his secrets?"
Her glittery navy ink melted away before her eyes and waited for the reply with bated breath. The idea of Lucius writing in the journal while he hid in his extravagant office was hilarious, and she wondered how embarrassed he'd be if he found out she knew all of his secrets — maybe the book has dirt on Draco too?!
"I've never spoken to the owner of my diary," it wrote, and Lyra slumped, pouting at the page. Aw man! But her pout vanished as the book continued, "Lucius didn't make me, I created this diary myself… but I do contain secrets."
"I knew it," Lyra scrawled back diagonally, happily using the entire page since it faded within seconds, "I really liked your paint trick, it scared the hell out of me."
"I felt your intrigue, I knew the display would catch your attention."
The more the book wrote back, the more Lyra studied the handwriting and she began to notice how eloquent it was. It felt old-fashioned, she couldn't put her finger on it, but it was much more mature than her own, it felt human.
"What are you?" she asked the book, trying a prettier-looking cursive instead of her usual wild scrawls.
The book seemed to hesitate, the ink lingered on the parchment for at least ten seconds longer than usual, and Lyra found herself staring into the book with her tongue anxiously jammed in between her teeth.
"My name is Tom Riddle and I am a memory, I've been preserved in this diary for many years," said the book, and Lyra slapped her forehead. Duh! His name is on the back, you idiot.
Stop talking. Don't write back.
Hell no!
Lyra shut down the pesky hiss at the back of her mind, she would be crazy not to exploit this magical book! A memory trapped in a book, his own book, was he cursed? Did someone curse him to spend eternity inside his own diary? He said 'preserved', that would mean that he intended for this to happen… but what is a memory? Surely if this was the memory of a boy called Tom then it would repeat word for word what Tom had put inside…?
"You're not a memory," concluded Lyra, jotting down her response, "you can't be. A memory wouldn't be able to come up with new thoughts, it would just repeat what's already trapped. We wouldn't be having this conversation if you were truly the memory of Tom Riddle." She quickly read back her reply and smiled at her conclusion as it glimmered up at her, and Riddle rushed to write back.
"An artist with a brain, now I'm the one who is intrigued. What's your name?"
"Lyra Black," she wrote, embellishing her name with a tiny heart, "I've never met a boy trapped in a book before, is this a usual occurrence in the Wizarding world?"
"What year is it, Lyra Black?"
"1992," and she rushed to add, "July," above it before it disappeared.
"What year did you supposedly put your memory into his book?" asked Lyra when Riddle didn't reply, "if you don't mind me asking."
She didn't want to antagonise him, she didn't know the extent of its power yet.
"1943."
Riddle didn't seem to mind her curiosity that time, and Lyra paused, attempting to connect some vague dots in her head. Did she know anything about that year?
"Ah, then I guess I should say," and Lyra chose her most vibrant highlighter to add, "welcome to the nineties, Tom!"
"Thank you, Lyra," the ink shimmered and she caught herself smiling at his appreciation. Before she could ask another question about his so-called memory, Riddle added to his sentence.
"I know your ancestors," he told her, "I suppose they are your grandparents considering the year."
"You had to deal with Walburga?" Lyra wrote patronisingly, sneering at the name on the page, "My condolences."
She could almost feel the laughter in his words as he wrote, "She is a very fierce woman, do you not get along with your grandmother?"
"No. She died a few years ago by the way, I've only met a painting of her but from what I've heard about magic paintings they're a pretty accurate representation," she explained, and the question she knew would pop up once Riddle mentioned the Black family appeared in a flash.
"For a Pureblood you're rather ill-informed," he stated frankly, and Lyra hung her head. Talking to new wizards ended with either friendship or being called a blood traitor and she suddenly dreaded Riddle's reaction. Please please please don't be racist!
"Correct, but I also live in a Muggle orphanage and was raised as a Muggle so there's a reason why," she confessed, her hand shaking a little as offered him a personal piece of information, but her trembling arm fell slack when she read his rapid reply.
"I offer you my condolences this time, I too grew up in a Muggle orphanage. I didn't find out about my true heritage until I received my Hogwarts letter."
Suddenly her heart skipped and she took a few deep breaths, soothing the strange swirling in her stomach. That was the last thing she expected him to write, she never thought she'd talk to someone who knew what it was like to grow up as the freak who wasn't like the other kids, to truly walk in her shoes, and her fascination peaked at an all-time high as she wrote back.
"That's what happened to me. It's very frustrating though, everyone assumes I know everything already when I don't, but when I ask for information they don't tell me! I'm the worst pureblood to ever exist," She let out a little bit of anger and the tension in her stomach eased as he agreed with her resentment.
"That sounds incredibly frustrating," he told her, "but you seem like an intelligent girl, Lyra, why haven't you started an independent search? Sometimes you have to do things by yourself, the world won't help you."
"I have," she corrected him, wanting to show him how intelligent she really was, "I found out I have a house and an elf that no one knows about. The house is a mess at the moment but once I succeed at teaching Kreacher what the word clean means then it'll be a lovely place to live. I haven't explored the house yet but I'm sure I'll find some answers there."
"Why don't you use your own magic?" wondered Riddle.
Lyra felt the heat radiate from her freckled cheeks. "I can't do magic outside of Hogwarts yet."
"How old are you, Lyra Black?"
Lyra hesitated. She hadn't thought about the age of the boy she was talking to, she assumed he was older than her but she couldn't tell by how much. Was he faking his maturity?
"I'm thirteen at the end of October."
"I assumed you were older."
"How old are you, Tom?" Lyra asked, flopping onto her stomach and getting comfortable. Talking to Riddle blew the idea of painting out of her mind like a powerjet, she was captivated by her new journal.
"I turned sixteen a few months before I created this journal, on New Years Eve, but I suppose I have existed for decades."
Lyra tried to imagine what he sounded like as she read his confession, her brain needed to conjure up a mental image of the boy trapped in the diary. He was a fifth year Hogwarts student, which meant he had more knowledge than her.
"This is impressive magic for a fifth year," she complimented him, "you must be vastly more intelligent than me."
"I pride myself on my knowledge — knowledge is power and power allows you to make the choices," he told her, sucking her in with his wise words, "you are a curious girl, and I can help you refine your curiosity and put it in the right place."
Lyra's eyes widened and she stared at his suggestion, unexpectedly blown away.
"Will you teach me everything you know? I hate not knowing about the world, I get teased about it all the time and you're older and wiser than me. You wouldn't mind helping me, would you? You seem like you know your stuff and you're fun to talk to." She took her time writing the ending to her sentence, and she immediately blushed when she read it back. Why did I say that? She didn't mean to add that.
"I will help you if you help me," compromised Riddle, agreeing to half of her terms, "now I know that my diary is in very good hands I can start my plans."
"Your plans? You mean you want me to help you get out of this diary?" Lyra reworded, assuming his needs, and Riddle's words rushed to appear.
"What do you mean? You do not believe I'm a memory?"
"I already told you, you're not a memory."
"Then what am I?"
"You're you," wrote Lyra simply, as though that explained everything, but Tom wanted more.
"Your mind fascinates me. What do you mean?"
"If you created this diary, which you didn't because the manufacturer's address is printed on the back page, and you're in this diary then this diary is you. Is it your brain that is in here? Your heart? All of you? Did you duplicate yourself and lock one copy in the diary? There's definitely something more than a memory in this book, it feels heavy."
Her theories flowed freely onto the page and she didn't stop them, a part of her wanted to continuously remind Tom of how smart she was.
"It can't be a memory, memories aren't physical. Whatever is in the book is alive." She could almost feel a pulse beneath the leather cover.
Riddle wasn't as snappy with his reply, her questions took their time fading away and Lyra started to chew on her nails, anticipating his opinion. Was she right or did she just make an absolute fool out of herself?
"Curiouser and curiouser… you may be close to the truth," he teased her, and his confirmation sent electrifying chills through her body, unintentionally blowing her ego up further.
"I thought so," she couldn't help but jot down and she swore she could sense his laughter in his sentence.
"I like your confidence, it's very fitting of an intelligent Pureblooded witch, and as your new tutor I encourage that attitude, it will motivate you to strive for greatness," he explained, reformatting his words into elegant bullet points and Lyra watched in awe, hypnotised by his illustrious evaluations.
"First lesson, Miss Black — do not trust anyone, everyone lies."
Lyra immediately thought of Danielle biting her cheek and she frowned, annoyed that Riddle was right. "Yeah, I figured that one out for myself."
"Then you'll do well to remember it, you must keep your cards close to your chest in order to protect yourself," he was very firm in his opinion, and Lyra admired him greatly for that. After the disaster that was the Malfoy lunch she knew she had to fend for herself when it came to her father's family.
"Noted," she agreed, repeating the wise words over and over in her head. She didn't want to forget them, she valued having the company of an older teenage wizard and a small part of her wanted to impress him. Showing off was a speciality of hers but her innate urge to do her best for him burst forth from the butterflies in her stomach.
"But that does not mean that lying is inherently bad, a white lie here or there doesn't hurt if your intentions are pure. Sometimes people will want to stop you from achieving your full potential, they'll feel threatened and they will want to stamp out your curiosity," he continued, but Lyra interjected before he could write another word.
"Did that happen to you?" she scribbled at the bottom of his paragraph, and she waited for the page to clear.
"I've been lied to my whole life," confessed Riddle, the glitter of the blue gel pens darkened with his emotion, "I was told I was destined to be nothing, that I was the spawn of the Devil, that I deserved to die in the arms of my passing mother after she gave birth to me. I believed them until I realised that I was truly the only one with the power."
"I'm so sorry," Lyra comforted him. What an awful way to live… he doesn't deserve that.
Neither do you.
"Do the Muggles treat you well?" asked Riddle, and Lyra's hand didn't stop writing for a full minute. She spilt her guts and told Tom about the horrible children she lived with, all of the crude names they called her, the ridiculing inhumane pranks they pulled on her, and she even went into detail about Rachel's last murder attempt at Poor Man's Point.
"We have a lot in common, and I'm truly sorry that you've had to experience that. No child with magical blood should feel ostracised for simply existing, those brainless Muggles were wrong to cross someone as special as you," concluded Tom, gently consoling her. Unleashing the full weight of her trauma always felt uplifting and rejuvenating, but this time telling someone who truly understood made her feel particularly powerful. Her fingertips pricked as she brushed the page, secretly savouring his comparison, but she quickly grabbed her pen again when he asked another question.
"If you don't mind me asking, what happened to your parents? Why are you in a Muggle children's home?"
Lyra had no trouble clarifying her situation with Riddle now, he was being more considerate than she could have hoped for and he didn't pressure her too much into answering uncomfortable questions. Talking to him felt natural, it was easier than her chats with Harry.
"My dad killed my mum, and he's now in prison and I'm stuck here in Weymouth," she simplified the facts, but her own backstory sparked her own questions. "What about you? What happened to your family? What are you going to do once you're free from this diary? And how did you get stuck in this in the first place?"
"I don't want to talk about myself, I want to talk about you. You fascinate me, Lyra Black, and I want to know everything about you and your world. Please, tell me, what have I missed while I have been trapped?"
"Ah, so you are trapped? You don't know anything about the world after 1943?" she interrogated, her mental picture of Tom was gradually coming together.
"Correct."
"Fascinating!"
"When I created this diary there was an ongoing war in the Wizarding world," Riddle was eager to get this out, it was apparent he had waited a very long time, "what was the outcome, out of interest?"
Lyra tapped her pen against her leg, scanning her mind for an answer. Surely not the Second World War, did that influence the Wizarding world in any way? The front cover of one of her History of Magic textbooks she hadn't touched popped up in her mind and she hurried to find the book in her trunk, hoping that it would give her an answer. Greatest Defeats in Magical History landed on the bed with a thud and Lyra returned to her notebook as she searched the history text's index page for the desired year.
"Ok, so are you talking about," she double-checked the spelling of the name, "Grindelwald's Defeat or are you talking about the Second World War? Or is there another war that I'm unaware of?" Lyra immediately thought of Lord Voldemort and her chest seized, a sudden cramp paralysed her lungs for a split second out of fear of the dark wizard, but after rapidly scanning the textbook's index for the dates of Voldemort's downfall she worked out that Riddle was before his time. It couldn't have been that war.
Instead of removing Lyra's writing, Riddle underlined the name Grindelwald and she flicked to the section on the infamous wizard.
"Long story short — Dumbledore defeated Grindelwald in 1945 and he is currently imprisoned in Nurmengard," she relayed the main facts, wanting to do a decent job, and he thanked her for the outcome.
"What happened afterwards?"
"Well, there was another war," she elucidated, "you're lucky you were stuck in this book, there was this dark wizard called Lord Voldemort who wanted to take over the world and spread his evil blood purist propaganda." It was rare that she was more informed than someone else and she took great pleasure in teaching Riddle about Lord Voldemort.
"Tell me everything."
It wasn't a question, and Lyra more than willingly copied down the contents of her modern magical history book for Tom to read.
"—but then was allegedly killed in 1981 when he tried to kill Harry," she finished her lengthy paragraphs with a smiley face. He let her continue onto the other pages and she flicked back to the front page to wait for his answer.
"Who is Harry?"
"Oh, duh!" Lyra smacked herself in the face and happily carried on her explanation.
"Sorry, I should have clarified. Harry Potter is the boy that killed Voldemort, but he didn't really. He's my best friend actually, we met last year at school, he's in my year," she barely took her pen off the page before the ink began to disappear.
"Harry Potter was one-years-old when he killed Lord Voldemort?"
"Yup! If you think I'm fascinating then you should meet him."
"But you said that Voldemort's not really dead?" propted Tom, yearning for more.
"Nope, I met him last year. He tried to kill Harry and steal the Philosopher's Stone but he failed. I have no idea where he is now though," wrote Lyra.
"How did he come back?"
"Dark magic I assume, he possessed my Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, but he's in Azkaban now and Voldemort isn't on the back of his head anymore so he's out there somewhere… probably on the back of another head."
Lyra tried not to think too much about what state the dark wizard was in right now. She didn't remember him leaving Quirrell's body and the thought of Voldemort's spirit wafting around unnoticed made her violently nauseous.
"How did Voldemort fail?" Riddle still had questions.
"Harry and I stopped him," Lyra wrote proudly, bragging a little, "he kidnapped me and then my friends came to save me, it was really badass but we've done other cool stuff too." She wanted to look cool in front of Tom, she wanted him to admire her in the same way that she admired him.
"...You are an enigma, Lyra," Riddle eventually wrote in the centre of the page, "I can never predict what you are going to say next."
"Thank you," she took it as a compliment.
"You're not a Slytherin, are you?" guessed Tom, and Lyra's heart sank at the mention of the snake house. She prayed that he would overlook her house loyalty, she knew by his phrasing that he was a Slytherin but she didn't want their alliances to create a barrier between them. She hoped she had just made a new friend but the prospect of him calling her a blood traitor came flooding back.
"No, I'm a Gryffindor… that's not gonna be a problem, right? I don't care if you're a Slytherin, house rivalry seems dumb and I like you," but Lyra's hand slipped down the page and she immediately slammed the book shut, mortified that she had just said that. Ugh! Lyra! Way to play it cool! Don't scare your new friend!
It took her a couple of minutes to build up the courage to return to the conversation, her erratic breathing still rattled her nerves but she ripped the anticipation away like a plaster and peeled back the cover to see what Riddle thought of her declaration. Please like me, please don't hate me!
"I suppose I could overlook that fact, at least you're not a Hufflepuff," answered Riddle smoothly, and Lyra let out a chuckle of relief. Phew! Crisis averted.
"As long as you promise that you'll consider defecting to Slytherin," Tom wrote his compromise with an extra flair to his letters.
"Wait, you can do that?"
"No, but it's always worth a try!" replied Tom, making her giggle again.
"Ha ha, no."
"We'll see," countered Tom, but he slid into a more serious topic underneath his casual banter. "I'm looking forward to working with you, Black, we have barely scratched the surface and I already see great potential in you."
"I'm a keen student," warned Lyra, glowing from his tender words, "I love asking questions."
"I can tell," Riddle couldn't help but scrawl beside her sentence, "you've asked over thirty questions already."
Oh God, was he keeping count?
"Sorry," she apologised without hesitating, but he scolded her equally as quickly.
"Do not say that, I encourage your questions," he assured her, warming her heart with his sincerity. "I enjoy them."
"And I enjoy your answers, thank you for being honest with me," she wrote back, kicking her legs back and forth as she nibbled her pen, "I appreciate it."
"And I appreciate your cooperation too, it means a lot to me," thanked Tom, trailing off with a few dots, and Lyra was transfixed, waiting for him to carry on. He was being so sweet, it felt different but a good different, she couldn't quite describe it yet. Her heart fluttered when the sentence faded and another took its place.
"I hope you will keep my diary hidden," mused Riddle, "I want this to be our little secret."
Lyra, please no—,
"Absolutely!" Lyra agreed with her whole chest, ecstatic at her present situation, "I'm not sharing you with anyone, I'm harnessing all of your power for myself! Mwahaha!" She let out a quiet maniacal laugh as she joked with Riddle, but she emphasised her agreement to his terms with an extra, "No one will know about you, I promise."
The stubborn, cynical voice at the back of her head tried to dissuade her from helping Tom but she felt good in her decision. She needed to help him, it wasn't fair that he was trapped in a book for half a century and he could secretly help her excel in all of her classes, maybe he knew some special tips and tricks that would allow her to outshine all of her classmates. She could impress Hermione, the opportunity to prank her friends with her sudden knowledge of magic was too good to resist.
"Ten points to Gryffindor, Black." The words shone brighter than before, the navy gleamed like a broad smile and Lyra giggled, addicted to writing in her new journal.
"Thanks Professor Riddle."