"ᴛʜᴇ ᴍᴇᴇᴛɪɴɢ ᴏꜰ ᴛᴡᴏ ᴘᴇʀꜱᴏɴᴀʟɪᴛɪᴇꜱ ɪꜱ ʟɪᴋᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ᴄᴏɴᴛᴀᴄᴛ ᴏꜰ ᴛᴡᴏ ᴄʜᴇᴍɪᴄᴀʟ ꜱᴜʙꜱᴛᴀɴᴄᴇꜱ: ɪꜰ ᴛʜᴇʀᴇ ɪꜱ ᴀɴʏ ʀᴇᴀᴄᴛɪᴏɴ, ʙᴏᴛʜ ᴀʀᴇ ᴛʀᴀɴꜱꜰᴏʀᴍᴇᴅ." — ᴄᴀʀʟ ᴊᴜɴɢ
Chapter Three: Planchette Writing
Who are you?
In the three minutes since she had woken up and found a strange, unnerving message (Please get me out of here) inked into the very first page of 'Nostradamus's' Diary, Ruby had been through a lot of mental turmoil. At first, she thought it was a late welcome gift from Pansy, and as a result, panicked.
I think I was human, once… but I can't remember how, or when…
Tell me...
Who?
But sitting here and reading the diary's response, it was clear that it wasn't.
Borgin and Burkes sold Dark magic artefacts. Hence, this diary was cursed.
Or worse yet, somebody was cursed to be stuck inside or transfigured into a diary.
Although, to be honest, Ruby had never been the type to believe in magic (for example, she loved telling the girls at school that ouija boards were a parlour game unrelated to the occult until some charlatan decided to take advantage of widows during World War I and pretend to 'speak with the dead' through them, both the people who thought it could make demons possess you and the ones that thought it really allowed you to contact spirits were off their rockers), or, now that she knew that she was a witch, Divination and Lavender's Other Side.
If this wasn't the Other Side of the Veil she was dealing with, Ruby didn't know what was. There was no reasonable explanation for this diary to ink an entire sentence back to her unless it was either cursed or there was a person stuck inside it.
And yes, it had been used. The diary bore the marks of the writer's fingers clutching the leather cover hard while they wrote. They looked different sizes as if the writer had owned it long enough for their hands to grow larger.
So why, now that she flicked through the pages, did none of their entries show up? And why was it in such a water-damaged, terrible state?
Attempting to copy Snape, she tapped her wand to the page, expecting nothing to happen.
Nothing did.
Magic always takes the path of least resistance. Tapping her wand aimlessly wouldn't result in anything.
So, instead, she tried thinking of questions, starting with Where are you and Do you know who I am — but the diary did nothing.
Then, just as she was beginning to drift off to sleep, Ruby tapped her wand to the empty page once more, vaguely thinking to herself more than the diary, Wake up.
It was like a key fitting into a lock; she knew instantly that it had been the correct command. With shaking hands, she inked her quill and wrote:
Is anybody there? Hello?
Is this what Death feels like?
She blinked, nearly dropping the diary in utter shock. It was the same handwriting — a little neater and less smudgy, but undeniably T. M. Riddle.
They did the same little flick at the top of their i's, and the 't's had the same swoop at the bottom. The e's at the end had the same bizarre, old-fashioned tail.
Was it like one of the talking paintings in Dumbledore's office or the castle ghosts — a pale imprint left behind in the living world? Was T. M. Riddle dead?
Writing back couldn't hurt, right?
Are you T.M. Riddle?
The response came almost immediately, and Ruby felt absurdly like a charlatan herself, leaning over a crystal ball.
I don't know. That could ring a bell. Maybe? Who are you?
She waited. With each word came a low whisper, as if someone was sitting right next to her, but talking so quietly that it might be all in her head.
Indulge me, figment of my imagination. What do I call you for the rest of eternity?
My name is Ruby Potter.
The diary seemed to hesitate.
I may forget. But I'll try to remember. If you come back to remind me, you're probably real. My hallucinations are rarely sequential.
Your hallucinations?
It's been a while.
Ruby paused. Snape had said the diary was purchased in 1938, and in Muggle London at that. It must have indeed been a while.
Tell me about yourself.
About herself? Ruby wasn't particularly fond of doing that, but she supposed the diary didn't need to know about the unsavoury bits.
Well, I'm twelve years old. I'm a witch, and my twin brother, Harry, is a wizard. We both go to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Ruby didn't expect any of that to make sense to a diary purchased in a Muggle newsagents, but shockingly, it did.
You go to Hogwarts? Really?
I think I might have, as well.
You know. Before.
You wouldn't happen to know anything about Wool's Orphanage by any chance?
No, sorry.
Shame.
If this diary was indeed sentient, Lavender was the person to tell, she decided.
I've got to go.
I don't know your name, sorry.
T.M. Riddle, you said?
Yeah. That's what's on the front page.
Oh. All right. I'll settle for T, then.
Goodbye, hallucination. Nice meeting you.
And with a strange kind of finality, as if this were the beginning of something big, Ruby shut the book.
"Potter!" came Pansy's shrill, irritating voice at that exact moment.
Ruby flung her curtains open, glaring at the girl already dressed in her school uniform, her feet planted firm and her hands on her hips.
"Parkinson."
For a moment, both girls stared at each other in a silent battle of wills.
"Legilimens," whispered Pansy.
All of a sudden, Ruby felt a horrible, scraping sensation in the back of her head, like a fingernail tunnelling through bone, meninges, and brain.
"Hey, stop that!"
Pansy frowned and backed off, her short hair flaring around her cheekbones.
What was that spell? wondered Ruby. And what was it doing to me?
Still, there was something distinctly amateurish about it, and Ruby didn't think Pansy really knew what the spell did.
Just to be safe, she gripped her blackthorn wand tightly as she went to go brush her teeth.
Daphne and Tracey were already there, trying on lip gloss. When they saw her, they both muttered a quick hello and went back to ignoring Ruby.
After putting on clean socks and basking in the fact that she finally knew how to tie a slightly sloppy four-in-hand (although sadly, her hair refused to comply with her best efforts at neatness), she went up the stairs to the common room, taking two at a time. Quiet, dull, rabbity Theodore Nott was lurking behind the famously vain Blaise Zabini, who was alternating between admiring himself in the silver-plated, floor-length mirror and tying his school tie.
It seemed like a strangely lonely and forlorn scene with the absence of Malfoy, Goyle, and Crabbe, all gone off to Durmstrang to study the Dark Arts.
The new first-years, still apparently basking in the glow of Gemma and Alastair's ego-boosting Slytherin Talk, were strutting around the common room; but Ruby wasn't interested in speaking with them.
"Morning, Blaise," she said as she walked over to them, attempting to make her voice sound as forceful as possible. "Morning Theo, I mean, Theodore."
"Morning, Pyromaniac Potter," said Blaise over whatever Theodore mumbled back. Ruby groaned. She hadn't even set anything ablaze this year. Yet.
"I'm trying out for Quidditch next week," he continued blithely. "Seeker. You going for it too, Potter?"
Ruby shook her head; not being at all fond of heights, unlike Harry, she preferred to watch.
"Eh, you win some, you lose some. Good going in Defence though, brilliant way to start off the term—"
"Blaise," said Ruby. "If you're not careful, I'll hex you when you're not looking."
He simply (and infuriatingly) grinned.
"Oh, yeah. I'll hold you to it. C'mon, Theo, let's go get breakfast."
But it wasn't long before she was joined by someone else, a very annoyed and tired-looking Mafalda Prewett.
"Did you know I got detention last night with that man?" she asked, seizing Ruby by the shoulders. "Did you know I had to help him answer fan mail all night? I swear, Potter, that man is going to leave this school in a wooden box at the end of the year, and it's going to be because of me. And when I die, I want an epitaph composed—"
"So you met Lockhart," Ruby interrupted.
"Yes. I bloody met Lockhart, and what's more, I'm officially lodging a formal complaint with Dumbledore. Did you know," she seethed, "that his favourite colour is lilac? And that his best side in photographs is his left?"
"Unfortunately, yes."
"Oh, relax, Mafalda," said Gemma, another seventh-year and one of the Slytherin prefects. "He's not that bad. At least he's not got the Dark Lord on the back of his head."
"He's not got the Dark Lord on the back of his head; why yes, Gemma, I should be eternally grateful for that small mercy."
Privately, Ruby thought that if Voldemort had the misfortune to end up attached to Lockhart, something drastic might occur.
As it were, the Dark Lord was probably well on his way to a physical body; as a result, no one wanted to talk about him for long.
"When are Seeker tryouts?" asked Ruby, trying to keep her mind off of that dark path.
"Next Wednesday after classes," Mafalda answered. "Why?"
"Oh, no reason," said Ruby sunnily.
In fact, she thought that she just might have come up with the perfect time to hex Blaise.
Hopefully, the time she'd spent in the library all summer would pay off.
Either way, she headed upstairs to breakfast in the Great Hall, making sure to stop by the Gryffindor table to show the diary to Lavender.
"You showed me it last night," said Lavender archly.
"Yeah, but look what happens when you write it in!" said Ruby, offering her quill to Lavender and peering over her shoulder as she wrote.
Hello.
Lavender frowned, but Ruby shook her head, waiting excitedly for the words to appear.
They did not.
"It was working fine this morning!" she protested, taking the quill back from Lavender. What if she really had hallucinated it all?
Hello again. It's me.
Ruby held her breath as the words finally appeared.
Oh, hello.
Ruby.
Is that right?
Now, she nudged Lavender, pointing to the freshly-inked words.
"Do you see it now?"
"It?"
"The writing!"
"What?" asked Lavender, shocked. "I can't see anything! Why doesn't it work for me?"
Intending to ask the diary exactly that, Ruby put her quill to the paper. She was not convinced that it wasn't all a hallucination.
Why didn't you answer when Lavender wrote hello?
Wrote? What do you mean, wrote?
Oh, sorry. Do you know what you are?
What?
You know, that you're a diary?
Then came the largest pause yet. Ruby could almost certainly hear the next word.
WHAT?
She looked over at Lavender, but the other girl appeared to have lost interest.
But can't you feel it? Ruby wanted to ask. Can't you feel the warmth where T.M. Riddle's hands have been, the places where the cheap leather has gone soft? Don't you want to know what happened to them? Can't you feel the strangeness in all this?
But the girl who dreamed of being a Seer was uncharacteristically uninterested in the mystery of the diary, and so Ruby drifted back to her seat at the Slytherin table.
No, seriously.
Can we go back?
To the whole 'I'm a diary' thing?
Well, that is what you are, isn't it?
Who are you?
Who am I?
Am I dead or alive?
Where am I?
Who am I?
Ghosts knew who they were. They knew they were dead.
Whatever was in the diary, whoever T. M. Riddle was — maybe they were alive, they could understand her, they were possibly even trapped in there. They didn't even know that they were inside of a diary.
What had she just discovered?
"Potter!" someone snapped, and she looked up, knocking her tea over with her elbow by accident and staining the open book. Ruby scowled as she picked up the soggy book, but strangely, as she picked it up, she realised that the pages had not been harmed. She gave it a shake, and tea ran off the ancient paper as if it were laminated, splattering onto the floor.
Furthermore, it rattled.
That's weird.
Pansy lunged for the book, snatching it out of her hands while she was distracted.
"Hey, give it back!"
"No," said Pansy, flipping through the pages with a greedy smile. "It's mine now. Let's find out what Potter writes in her diary, shall we?"
"Give it back, Parkinson!" shouted Ruby, leaping to her feet. "Stand up, Greengrass, I want my book back—"
"You're both acting like kids," scoffed Daphne, who was sitting between them and primly cutting her toast into triangles. "Pansy, stop being a brat and give Potter her book back. Potter, kindly stop shoving and sit down; I'm not a sliding door."
Ruby sat down, chastised. But Pansy was not.
"I won't give it back," she said, sneering. And with a very hostile glance at Ruby, she put the book in her bag.
"Brat," muttered Ruby, stabbing her egg, so the yolk ran, bleeding yellow against the white plate.
"Don't mind her," whispered Theodore from across the table, once he was sure both Daphne and Pansy were distracted. "She can't help herself."
"Yeah, I've noticed."
"I could help you get it back," said Theodore, with another guilty glance at Pansy. "If you promise to tell me what it is. I can keep a secret."
"Yeah," said Ruby again, a bit half-heartedly. She wasn't sure if she quite liked the idea. Theodore Nott was far from stupid, reckless, or risk-seeking.
She thought of his father, the pardoned Death Eater with a broken pupil and a golden monocle.
There was an in somewhere.
And what scared (and intrigued) her a little bit was that she could not see what Theodore saw.
It was time to face Lockhart again. In preparation, Harry went to the very back of the class, but nevertheless, he was not spared.
"Harry," said Lockhart, placing an unwelcome hand on his shoulder. "Harry, Harry, Harry."
Even his name, Harry noted, seemed to induce a mild panic in the classroom.
"Shame I wasn't the Defence teacher last year," Lockhart went on. "You could have had eight books rather than seven! Imagine — perhaps — Ordeal with an Obscurial might have joined the booklist!"
Unsurprisingly, no one seemed to find this nearly as titillating as Lockhart thought it was. Only Neville gave a nervous laugh.
"So," continued Lockhart, "in honour of the book that never was, I have decided — and this is a real treat, students, a real treat — to give a lecture — on — Obscurials."
Harry groaned and slid down further in his chair. That did not, however, stop people from staring.
This couldn't possibly be worse than the Cornish Pixies, he decided. Or perhaps, it could, because this time, Lockhart had slides.
"Now, Harry, if you'll come to the front..."
He had the Invisibility Cloak in his bag, amongst his schoolbooks. Wouldn't it be nice to disappear now...
Best not to chance it. Lockhart might get some awful idea from it.
So, he got up and shuffled to the front of the class. A class full of faces that looked either bored to death or in absolute rapture with Lockhart stared back at him.
"Now, who can tell me what an Obscurial is?"
Hermione, unable to help herself, raised her hand, causing Ron to roll his eyes.
"Please, sir. An Obscurial is a witch or wizard who has developed a Dark, parasitical magical force, known as an Obscurus, as a result of their magic being suppressed."
"Exactly. Ten points to Gryffindor, Miss Granger."
She beamed, and now it was Harry's turn to roll his eyes and grit his teeth while Lockhart described (and possibly romanticised) incidents of fatal Obscurial attacks, from Sudan to Ireland to Brazil.
It was as if the man wanted him to turn into a shadow monster again before their very eyes, if even just so he could write about it and sell tens of thousands of copies of some self-aggrandising book with an alliterative title.
"ENOUGH!" Harry finally snapped.
The entire class was staring at him in fear — oh, no. He put his corporeal hand up to his face and felt cold, oily shadows billowing around his eyes.
Brilliant. Turn into a half-shadow, again. Absolutely fantastic way to start the term.
"Nothing to fear," Lockhart was saying. "It'll be fixed in a jiffy — now, not to worry, Harry — you're in capable hands, I assure you."
The professor, if you could call him that, took out his wand and began to attempt to return Harry to his normal form, which was pointless because the only way Harry would do so was if he calmed down.
So he shut his eyes and went through the breathing exercises that Nicholas Flamel taught him over the summer until the shadows settled and receded, then drifted back to his seat, rubbing his eyes under his glasses to extract the last of the shadow shards.
Lockhart looked relieved and instantly tried to pretend he had the situation under control at all times, but the clock struck five to ten, and they were free.
"I didn't know you could... half do it," said Hermione as they hurried out of class.
Harry shrugged. "How did you think I nearly fell off my broom last year? Or made fires go out on accident? I just don't turn into a raging monster every time I get the slightest bit annoyed."
"Yeah, so maybe you'd better lay off him, Hermione. Just in case," added Ron.
"It's not funny!"
"I thought it was out of order for Lockhart to pull you up in front of class, though," said Ron, ignoring Harry's retort. "Who does he think he is?"
"He was only trying to educate us, Ron!" protested Hermione. And with a guilty glance towards Harry, she added: "Fine, maybe it was a bit heavy-handed... and uncalled for."
"That's because he's a brainless git," said Ron. "But who cares, the jinx'll take care of him—"
"He is not a brainless git," said Hermione shrilly.
Harry was inclined to agree with Ron, but he wasn't keen on being on the other end of Hermione's fury.
"All right, stop bickering, you two. We've got Snape after this."
The first lesson of their second year did not come with a speech about stoppering death and brewing glory; instead, they were treated to an impromptu review of the preparation skills last year; a closed-book practical quiz that required each student to prepare each raw ingredient that they were given for the maximal efficacy in potions.
Harry couldn't help but watch in half-envy, half-horror as his sister expertly separated the petals, stamens, stems, and leaves of aconite, remembering what she'd used the poisonous plant for a mere two years ago. While Snape wasn't looking, he offered to help Neville dice his frog brains, which first had to be fixed in a cold water and sugar solution so that they were solid enough to work with.
Unfortunately, Neville was still very much terrified of Harry, and when Snape walked past them, he squeaked in fear and dropped the entire bucket of frog brains on the floor, causing Pansy Parkinson and the blonde girl next to her to start whispering insults.
"Potter!"
Harry sighed. "Yes, Professor Snape?"
Snape held a small, notched leaf between his forefinger and thumb up to Harry's face.
"What is this, Potter?"
"A peppermint leaf, Professor Snape," said Harry in a monotone voice.
"Why is it not crushed?"
"I'll do it in a minute."
Snape looked as if he had just tasted something sour. Neville quaked in his shoes, although he looked glad to have the attention off of him.
"I'll do it in a minute, sir."
"There's no need to call me sir, Professor."
In that tense moment, no one made a sound, except for Lavender Brown, who let out a nervous, high-pitched giggle.
And then, with an air of absolute satisfaction and relief (he must have been holding back the words for months), Snape said:
"That will be ten points from Gryffindor for your cheek, Potter. Clean up the frog brains, Longbottom. You should expect to receive a zero for the day."
Neville, his face scarlet with embarrassment, knelt down to mop up the spill. Harry wondered why Snape didn't just Vanish it.
Of course he won't. He likes humiliating Neville for some reason.
As annoying as Neville acting so afraid of him was, Harry was more annoyed at Snape right down, so he knelt down to help him, scooping up pieces of brain and refilling the bucket.
"Potter, what are you doing?"
"I'm cleaning up, Professor."
"Stop."
Harry ignored him.
"I know you heard me, Potter. Stop helping Longbottom, and return to your work, or else you will share his fate and result in him serving detention with me. Does that appeal to your heroic sensibilities?"
"Just go back to working, Harry," whispered Neville. "I'll be fine."
Scowling, he stood and returned to slowly and painstakingly crushing peppermint leaves until class was over, all the while glaring at Snape.
"You know what," said Harry. "I don't think I belong here anymore."
"Of course you do," said Ron, taking three apples purloined from the Great Hall out of his robes' pockets and passing one each to Harry and Hermione.
"But I'm a monster."
"You're not a monster, Harry; stop it," said Hermione. "I mean, Obscurials aren't even classified as Beasts, it just means—"
"—Just means I'm an extreme hazard. I can't even control it anymore; the ring doesn't work now that Quirrell— Voldemort's gone. What if I hurt someone again?"
"You won't," said Ron. "Fred and George want to show us something, are you coming?"
But Harry wasn't convinced.
"I'll stay out here."
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah," said Harry, forcing a fake smile. At any rate, it seemed to convince Ron and Hermione enough for them to go inside without question.
Almost immediately, the same brown snake (or was it a different one?) slithered up to Harry.
Now, he focused on the snake's red, dragon-pupiled eyes and felt something switch.
"Oh, it's you again," he said, but this time, he was aware of the strange, hissing undertone.
Lazily, the snake rose, its head weaving back and forth like a cobra's, and Harry drew back in case it meant to strike.
"You're bigger," said Harry, realising that it wasn't, in fact, the same snake. "Sorry. I thought you were someone else."
"I, too, thought you were someone else... no, though you speak, you are not the—" And then that funny word that almost meant son, but not quite.
"Who are you talking about?"
"Nobody," said the snake, with the air of someone who had just told a blatant lie and yet was utterly unashamed.
"But you said—" Harry tried to imitate the unknown word and failed miserably.
"Nobody."
Harry sighed. He pulled out his holly wand from his pocket, rolling the smooth, green-tinted wood between his fingers. Inside it was the feather of a phoenix, who had only given a single other feather to be used in a wand. And that wand belonged to the man who murdered his parents, the man who duped him and the whole school for an entire year.
Maybe that meant Harry, at his core, was dangerous, too.
"I don't think I should be here anymore," he told the snake, who did not respond.
"I think I'm dangerous."
"Hmmm. Dangerous is good," said the snake. "Very good, hatchling."
"I don't think you understand," said Harry, annoyed. "I think I'm putting people in danger. People I care about."
"Caring for others is foolish."
"I don't like you."
"Good."
"Good?" asked Harry, exasperated. "How is that good?"
Maybe he could run away from Hogwarts. But where to? He could hide deep in the Forbidden Forest, but that wasn't far enough away. Maybe there would be a forest somewhere, but Harry wasn't the outdoorsy type, and his charmwork was clumsy at best, so he probably wouldn't survive on second-year Potions skills alone.
Perhaps he could turn himself in... though the thought made his stomach turn. But it was worth it; it had to be...
"Stay, hatchling," said the snake, and Harry froze. "Gryffindors do not run from fate, am I right?"
And then, before it slunk back into the shadows, it whispered, "Coward."
"What're you doin' out 'ere?"
"Don't talk with your mouth full, Ruby; that's disgusting," said Harry reflexively. He brushed non-existent dirt off his robes and tried to look as unaffected as possible.
Ruby shrugged and swallowed her bite of apple.
"So, you're talking to snakes now?"
"Don't tell anyone," said Harry. "I think it's weird."
"You're weird."
Harry sighed. "How long have you been out here spying on me, anyway?"
"I prefer the word eavesdropping. And long enough, although it did take me a while to figure out what all the hissing and spitting was about until I saw the snake. You should be careful, you know? They say Parseltongue is the mark of a Dark wizard."
"Great," said Harry. "Just what I need. And how do you know about Parsel-whatever?"
"Parseltongue." Ruby lowered her voice and sat down next to him. "And I found out about it while I doing some research on Voldemort; I thought especially you should be prepared."
"So I can speak a different language? But how? I've never learnt it!"
"It's not learnt, Harry. It's usually inherited."
She coughed and looked away from Harry as if embarrassed.
"Voldemort's a Parselmouth too," she said quietly. "It's not like he's not only one, though, just the most notorious. Salazar Slytherin was a Parselmouth, and so were the members of the House of Gaunt before they all died out. Oh, and a really nasty Dark wizard from Ancient Greece called Herpo the Foul."
Harry exhaled slowly.
"So I'm not exactly in good company," he said. "Who do you think I got it from? Mum or Dad?"
"I'll go back to the library and find out. For now, though, all hail Harry Potter, great Dark wizard."
"Oh, shut up," said Harry, but there wasn't much bite in his tone. And then, very quietly, he added: "I think I should go away."
"I'll come with you."
"No!" said Harry. "You have to stay here; you're meant to be here. You're safer without me."
"What do you mean, I'm safer without you?"
She was gripping her wand, and Harry heard the tell-tale snap snap of sparking magic.
"Ruby," he said tightly. "I could have killed you. I almost killed you."
"But it wasn't your fault!"
"You think I could live with myself?" he shouted. "Accident or not, every night since then, I've dreamed of you lying on the floor like Quirrell, dead!"
For a moment, all he saw was darkness, and then, very faintly heard Ruby say, "Harry, you're scaring me."
The shadows retreated, and exhausted, Harry slumped against the wall.
"Don't you see, now? Why I can't stay here anymore?"
He didn't know how to explain the sheer horror of the situation. He didn't know how to explain to Ruby that often, when he looked at her face, he saw her deathly pale and covered in the charcoal-coloured, swirling patterns that marked her the victim of an Obscurial.
"You're staying right here," said Ruby angrily, "and that's final."
With that, she stomped out of the courtyard.
A planchette is a heart-shaped piece of wood or plastic, used to facilitate automatic writing. Basically you place your hand on top of the planchette, jiggle your hand around without really thinking about it, and generally get the answer you were thinking of (via the ideomotor effect). It's kind of like suggestion in hypnotism.
If you're wondering about the diary - fear not. Tom will be doing quite a bit more than writing.