Chapter 24

Inkling of an idea

Chamber of Secrets

As winter slowly melted away and 2003 rolled around the corner so did the quartet's ambitions melt, or rather shift. Their investigations into the Chamber of Secrets were restricted to late evenings in the library, occasions that became shorter and shorter each week, though it saw most of our friends improving on their academic fronts.

Harry had started getting more invested in Defence Against the Dark Arts and Transfiguration, the boy clearly being more interested in practical magic than anything theoretical, though with the help of Hermione he finally started getting a hang of Astronomy, calculating planet movements and such, he did find the pictures in their textbook more pretty than interesting, though. And, despite the fact that most their classes with Lockhart consisted of reading his novels, he, at the very least, found those to be rather entertaining, if a little corny. More often than not he'd glance over to Marley during their study sessions, reflecting on some of Lockhart's supposed romantic quests, wondering how the girl felt about them, her being so far ahead with all of that grownup relationship-y stuff.

Ron, in a very bizarre twist, had begun showing an interest in Potions, all thanks to Marley's uncanny ability of explaining things in a calm, patient manner. That, mixed with her occasionally harsher tone, gave the Weasley boy a push in the right direction, his jaw dropping the other day when Snape had verbally praised him during class, his essay on sleep draughts apparently one of the best ones, only surpassed by his female friends, who had nudged him kindly as he received all of that positive attention.

"I... I really don't know. I'm scared...", he had murmured, eyes fixated on his sloppy handwriting.

Hermione was of course triumphant in every subjected, though she stood no chance when it came to Potions and Miss Verpe. Harry could swear he even caught her angrily doing overtime alone, perhaps fearing some unforeseen competition from Ron. It didn't matter that all of her other grades were superb. She was lacking in this one thing, and it became her concerning obsession because of it. Plus, she remained the only one doing consistent research on the Chamber, which the others had given up, mostly. How she fit all of those into her schedule as a second year remained a mystery to everyone.

Marley found herself flip-flopping in between thrusting herself into mountains of schoolwork and slacking off, a moody cycle that her friends found intriguing above anything. It felt as though their Slytherin companion stuffed herself like a camel with water, after which she proceeded to waste time with pointless Muggle stuff, her newest addiction being her Gameboy which she had managed to get working thanks to a rather complicated electricity spell. On nights where she wasn't completing five essays in a row, she would endlessly talk about this new game she'd be playing nonstop.

"If Care of Magical Creatures is anything like Pokémon, next year is sure to be a blast!", she proclaimed while Ron tried to focus on a Potions project, Hermione skimmed through several tomes on Hogwarts architecture, and Harry stared at her while leaning on one arm, unaware of the wide smirk that had appeared on his features.

"Harry!", Hermione brought him back to the real world, "Your ink spilled!".

Indeed, it had, slowly crawling onto the pages of Daring with Djinns.

Right, of course I also need to mention Harry's and Marley's DADA Club, their strange practice room appearing from nowhere and vanishing afterwards providing them with all the space and time in the world to perfect the more practical part of Lockhart's lessons, which for some reason the legendary wizard never engaged in. While it had been a bother before, the two didn't seem to mind anymore now, being able to dig into all kinds of fun and/or dangerous magic on their own time. Though, at this point, being two second years, other than some basic hexes and the disarming spell, they hadn't gotten that far. Some of the time their training room was nothing more than a lounge to hang out in, which meant that the more time they spent doing nothing, the more items would appear the next time they'd enter, including a sofa, an armchair, a table, chess board, a record player with some really old tunes Marley barely knew, rugs, a tea set, a comfy fireplace, and so on. Only thing that was missing was a Muggle television, which the witch often dared the room to make real, though it never came to be.

"You know...", Ron began after lunch, as both were heading to catch up with the girls in their shared study room, "...as much as I like Marley, she can be a bit much sometimes."

Harry had only halfway been listening, his neck turning sharply towards his friend as they paced up a set of stairs.

"What do you mean?", he asked innocently.

"I mean... half the time she's neck-and-neck with Hermione when it comes to being a know-it-all, and then the other half she gets into trouble with a teacher cause she's doing something completely different in class. And it happens so fast, too. Isn't that odd to you?"

"I suppose it is.", Harry answered quietly as he shrugged, finding all of Ron's complaints to be rather endearing descriptors, actually.

"Right.", Ron pouted, having suspected that Harry won't lose a bad word about the Slytherin girl, "I just want her to stop bothering me with that boygame thing. I don't want to learn more about it..."

"Gameboy.", Harry corrected him with a smug face, "And you'll have plenty of time to learn about it when you take Muggle Studies next year."

"I won't take-", the Weasley grunted as they walked down a hallway on the second floor, "Not you too! Bloody hell..."

The girls had started teasing him about this very possibility, and of course, the more Ron protested it, the more they kept doing it. Now, unfortunately for him, Harry found it quite amusing as well.

"Maybe you should get one too.", Harry suggested as they kept going, "Your dad works in the Ministry on Muggle items, you said. Maybe he has a spare one lying around."

"Maybe he has some Muggle thing that I can use to restrain all of your jaws!", the Weasley boy snapped back at the precise moment his foot stepped into a puddle. Now, Hogwarts was filled to the brim with all sorts of odd, magical features, but a puddle such as this...

Ignoring their bickering, both boys shared looks of intrigue.

"Yuck.", Ron proclaimed right after, the other boy adjusting his round binoculars as he kept staring at the smelly water down below, almost a full inch in height.

"Looks like Moaning Myrtle flooded the bathroom.", became Harry's best guess, seeing how close by that exact lavatory was. Despite Ron's nod and no inherent reason to panic, it did give the Boy who lived some serious concerns. A large puddle had been present when Mrs. Norris had been petrified, same with Justin, now that he gave it some more thought. While initially both Gryffindors walked normally, Harry eventually switched into a nervous pace as his Weasley companion followed behind, not at all questioning his relatively odd behaviour.

Please let me be wrong. Please let me be wrong.

It kept buzzing through his head like a frightened bumblebee.

Please let me be wrong. Not Hermione. Not...

As they reached the dreaded location a massive weight dropped from his shoulders as they merely found all faucets running and overflowing, surely pointing to a rather plump prank instead of anything concerning. Ron had vaguely caught onto his friend's fears, though seeing as he was somehow able to keep a cool head in situations like these, he decided to step into the aquatic bathroom first, splashing obnoxiously with each step as he complained in mumbles.

What was concerning was the crying spectre of a girl seated at one of the impressive, cathedral-like windowsills overseeing most of the lavatory. Harry in particular found it odd, as the name Moaning Myrtle sounded comical, and silly, as if a whingy annoyance getting upset at every tiny detail. Yet as he heard the ghost sob here, he thought that all of that was more than cruel.

"Come to throw something else at me?", Myrtle finally asked in between sad snorts.

"Why would I throw something at you?", Harry asked with his usual softness that most boys his age lacked.

"Don't ask me. I was just in here, minding my business, when someone thinks it's a fun idea to throw a book at me.", she spat, having calmed down somewhat.

"But... wouldn't it... not hurt? If someone throws something at you, I mean. Wouldn't it just go right through?", Ron added with that more average-boy-bluntness.

"SURE!", Myrtle yelped with shiploads of sarcasm, lowering her voice by a full octave as she came floating down, almost touching noses with a scared Weasley, "Let's all throw books at the ghost girl cause she can't FEEL IT! Ten points if it goes through her STOMACH!", she punched through the boy's appropriate region to make a point, of course her arm going right through it, "Fifty points if it goes through her HEAD!", and again, translucently impaling Ron's skull, having taught him a proper lesson about specterphobia as Myrtle floated somewhere else.

"But who threw it at you anyway?", Harry asked, clearly providing the sane voice for now.

"I don't know, I didn't see them.", her voice had returned to that usual high pitch with a pinch of supernatural, "I was just sitting in the u-bend, thinking about death. That's when it fell through the top of my head."

Her reasonable recounting of events was followed by a more comical howl as she floated somewhere far away to the other side of the room, Harry's eyes having focused on an object by the corner, which had apparently been the cause of Myrtle's sorrow.

Thankfully Hermione successfully performed a drying spell, though lacked the knowledge for any odour magic, and so the quartet had to accept the smell of toilet for now, back in their cosy study room with the fireplace burning neatly in the back.

"Someone just threw it at her?", Marley found herself reiterating in shock, all but Ron standing while Hermione skimmed through the pages of this strange little booklet, bound in black leather and with pages that felt as though they had been around before McGonagall was a student and when Churchill occupied Downing Street.

"That's what she said. Seemed pretty upset.", Harry explained, Marley letting out a scoff that felt as compassionate as it did self-righteous.

"That is just... who'd do such a thing!?"

"I don't think they did it on purpose.", Ron suggested and the Slytherin's sharp eyes began to scold him, "What?", he defended himself, "She was in one of the loos when it happened. Someone wanted to get rid of it, that's the important part."

"Ron's right.", Hermione finally spoke, surprising the room as the Weasley threw up is arms in a gesture of accepting long-overdue gratitude."

"Oh.", Marley conceded as she refused to meet Ronald's eyes.

"There's a name here. Belongs to a... Tom Marvolo Riddle.", Miss Granger let them know, "Other than that there's nothing in it. All the pages are blank."

The Gryffindor put the closed booklet back down again as Miss Verpe took out her short, pointy wand.

"Revelio!", she spoke while aiming at it. Opening the book again, she shook her head in disappointment, her mind continuing to work towards a solution.

"I don't remember a 'Riddle', but I also don't know all the Slytherins by heart.", Ron added while leaning forward, "Marley, can you get us a list or something?"

"Actually...", she deflected his point as she turned around, a triumphant smirk appearing where before there was doubt, "There's no need to do that. I remember that name."

"Who is it?", the Boy who cut in asked right away.

"After my first conversation with Harry I began reading all the Slytherin trophies and awards, just to see what we've accomplished as a house."

"And?", Ron pushed her a little more urgently.

"Tom Marvolo Riddle has a trophy, quite a huge one. Don't remember what it was for. Must've been... 1950... something?", she groaned in annoyance a bit, "Blast it, Marlene – why can't you remember any details?!"

"Hang on.", Hermione reassured and refocused her friend, "1950s? That was 50 years ago. That's when the Chamber was last opened, according to Malfoy."

"Fifty years ago.", Harry finally realized, "That means-"

"It means he was in Hogwarts when it happened!", Hermione skipped to the chase, "Maybe he saw what happened and wrote it down. Maybe he knew where the Chamber was and how to open it – and what sort of creature lurks inside. If so, whoever is behind those attacks now wouldn't want this lying around somewhere, would they?"

They shared some looks of scepticism, Marley appearing the most convinced by this theory.

"It's brilliant, Hermione. The problem is, it's empty.", Harry responded as he sat down, flipping through the pages once again as a mouldy smell huffed into his face.

"Maybe Mr. Riddle bought it and never used it after.", Ron suggested, fidgeting around with rental wand number eight, "Maybe his girlfriend gave it to him as a birthday gift and he politely accepted."

"He was a horrible twat then.", Hermione judged the 50-year-old boy not present.

"It's possible he deleted it all.", Marley suggested while picking up the item from Harry, balancing it liberally with one hand, "There's spells for that. Getting rid of an embarrassing diary could be one use. But then again... Revelio should've reversed that. Unless..."

"Unless it's dark magic.", Hermione surmised, lowering the room's temperature as the Slytherin girl stared at the object with big eyes hidden behind perfectly polished glass.

Later that same day, by the time Harry and Marley had resumed their DADA session, the two had made some progress.

"Alright.", Marley mumbled with one tongue out, concentrating as hard as possible, "Now I just lower it and..."

Some static noise, a jolt and – voilà! One of the old vinyl discs had finally started playing "Rock Lobster" by the B-52's at a relatively loud volume. As his friend started stretching and stepping away, the boy wondered how sound proven their training room was.

While Marley was there, in her white shirt with a loose tie and wide pants, jamming along to this strange melody, Harry once again remembered how backwards he felt compared to the Slytherin. She already knew boys and girl were both her thing – bloody hell, she probably had a proper grasp on who she liked in school. It was intimidating, strangling him slightly as he loosened his own tie. He'd need to figure out this stuff already as well. Maybe he could ask Hermione about it? Well... better to ask Ron, actually-

"Hey!", she snapped him back, quite literally as her fingers jingled, "Earth to Harry? You there?"

He nodded frantically as she smirked with her legs tucked together and her arms folded behind her back.

Good on you, Marlene. Not even blushing in his presence anymore, I'm proud of you.

Concentrate, Harry – focus! Stop thinking about Marley and who she might like!

"Serpensortia!", the girl thankfully shouted, a cobra jumping from the tip of her duelling stick as it hissed at Harry, the boy ignoring the Parsletongue translation as he countered.

"Vipera Evanesca!", he yelled, and the snake promptly disintegrated, his opponent already on the move.

"Petrificus Totalus!", the girl howled, a cloud of white sparkles missing the boy nearly as he already thought of his next attack, a spell he'd been starting to master with the help of his Slytherin friend.

"Ventus!", he roared, though was blocked as-

"Ventus!", Marley shouted as well. Both twisters now met in the centre and created a slightly larger tornado, their furniture moving slightly while the record player, somehow, remained intact.

"Rock Lobster!", was followed by guitar and keyboard.

While both opponents tried getting around this air-based obstacle, they simultaneously brainstormed their next attacks. The only rule of their friendly duels was to only use the disarming spell at the very end, and to practice charms that they had been studying and helping each other with. This meant that the two were forced to be creative.

"Rock Lobster!"

Whilst each opponent circled the massive tornado in an attempt to find the proper angle, Marley had chosen her next hex – the devious leg-locker. With the girl quick on her feet, Harry found himself somewhat insecure, still. After all, she was the more experienced duellist, and he did always feel some level of unease when doing these practice fights against Marley. She must've been utilizing some kind of advanced tactic that could make his heart beat faster.

"Ha-Ha!", the Slytherin roared as Harry turned around, enemy wand aimed at his chest.

"Locomotor..."

Some seconds passed with the young witch failing to remember the second part of the jinx, giving Harry his lucky opening.

"Immobilus!", the boy finally countered, Marley freezing on the spot as he went for the finishing blow, "Expelliarmus!"

He fortunately utilized the disarming spell in a fashion that only flung the girl's wand away, and didn't catapult her across the room.

And with that, the Boy who lived stood victorious.

"Brilliant!", he exclaimed in excitement. Getting no reaction from a girl stuck in place he quickly remembered to undo all of their prior magic.

"Finite Incatatem!", he pronounced with his wand raised like a conductor, quickly dissolving the massive tornado and freeing Marley from her state of petrification. It didn't take the Slytherin long to readjust her posture and congratulate her opponent, smile first.

"That was fan-TASTIC!", she roared perhaps a bit too loud, getting back her wand as Harry took a seat in a nearby armchair, practicing his levitation skills as he restacked all of their items back onto the living room table. As the girl got back to him, she significantly lowered the volume of the old record player.

"S'in a giant clam!"

Harry Wingardium Leviosa'd the odd diary last, eyeing it as his mind began racing all over the place.

"You okay?", she inquired softly, sounding mildly out of breath while taking a seat on the soft carpet and picking the booklet up herself.

"Just thinking.", he answered as he felt his heartbeat normalizing, though in Marley's presence it was always just a pinch above an equilibrium.

"I think we should focus on the present.", she pondered, playing around with the item as she lightly smacked it with her palm, "Your whirlwind charm was sublime just before. I'm really impressed."

The Boy who won chuckled nervously, scratching his neck as he felt the heat rising again.

"You were amazing too. I almost lost there.", he gave her back and, while she was pleased initially, her smirk morphed into a frown rather suddenly.

"Yeah, if only my memory wasn't so shit, I could actually bloody remember spell names...", she complained, far more comfortable using swear words when only in Harry's presence. Hermione wasn't such a big fan of certain words being uttered at their age, Merlin knows why.

"Maybe you ought to write them down.", Harry suggested, half-joking, "What you need is a booklet of your own."

Watching her pupils growing to twice their size, the boy could tell his minor comment triggered something within the girl.

"Harry, that's it!", the girl declared, cramming around in her bag before putting down her ink tray and ruffled feather. Thankfully Harry had proven often enough how clever he is, his jaw dropping right on cue as he got on the floor next to her.

"We're meant to write something in it."

"It's possible.", Marley gave back cautiously, dunking her writing tool before hovering it above the page, her lips curling up to form a thoughtful pout, "The... heck am I supposed to write in the magic diary?"

"Introduce yourself. Maybe it needs you to be polite.", Harry suggested with a shrug, receiving the same gesture as Marley did just that, saying the words out loud as she scribbled them in her incredibly hard to decipher cursive writing.

"Hello. I... am... Marley... Verpe."

There was little confidence in her voice as she performed the action, seeking reassurance from her Gryffindor friend as the edges of her mouth wandered downwards.

"Should I ask it how it's doing?"

"Look!", Harry interrupted her, redirecting her attention back to the page as they both stared in awe at the ink dissolving, as if absorbed by the paper. Some seconds of undecidability passed before an answer appeared below them.

Nice to meet you, Marley Verpe. My name is Tom Riddle.

Both kids with glasses shared flurried faces before the Slytherin dunked her feather into ink again.

"You're a goddamn bloody genius, Harry.", she let him know without checking his reaction, failing to catch the brief blush on his features.

"But... it was your idea-"

"Shut up. Do you know... anything about the Chamer – dammit!", she made sure to cross out the misspelled word before continuing, "...Chamber of Secrets?"

Once again, the words plus angry scribbly lines dissolved, and, after a short period of suspense, a response was quietly spat back out.

Yes.

Marley seemed more so genuinely excited to be solving this particular puzzle, Harry being the one to keep a cool head as he watched her going.

"Can you... tell me?"

...

No.

"What?!", she shrieked in her offended fury, "Damn you Riddle, you cheeky bastard! I'll-"

But I can show you.

Those words seemed to draw the young witch to the page like a moth to a flame, Harry beginning to worry as he placed his hand on her shoulder.

"Marley?", he asked in a concerned cry.

The girl, however, refused to move. Something about this whole thing kept her frozen, as if petrified.

Let me take you back, fifty years ago.

And with, supposedly Riddle's final message, the pages of his diary began flipping to a different section, much further back.

13th June 1953

"Marley?!", he began shaking her, though she didn't look away. Couldn't. The book now had her under its grasp, the pages in front of her slowly starting to glow with a strange, bright light, which soon engulfed her until the girl had vanished, the book now closed and the record player still playing the same song.

"MARLEY!"

"Rock Lobster!"