47: T. M. Riddle

[3rd Pov]

"Your necklace looks different," Daphne said as they strolled towards Charms class. A glimmer caught her eye near Alaric's chest. She waited for the crowd of students to pass by before stepping closer, her face nearing his chest.

"You noticed?" Alaric arched an eyebrow in acknowledgement.

She nodded. "It seems more complete now."

The necklace, once resembling a piece of see-through crystal, was now taking shape into a symbol, though it wasn't fully finished.

"We can talk about it later," Alaric suggested, mindful of the surrounding people.

Daphne's face was close enough to feel Alaric's quickening heartbeat. She smirked, glancing at his face, but her expression turned into a frown.

'Damn Occlumency,' she thought. Alaric's demeanour didn't show any hint of embarrassment, despite his body language giving him away.

Suddenly, a disturbance arose at the far end of the corridor.

"Oy, you! Alaric Grindelwald!" shouted a particularly grim-looking dwarf, elbowing people out of the way to get to Alaric.

Hot all over the face over the thought of being given a valentine in front of so many people, Alaric hurriedly tried to enter the Charms classroom. The dwarf, however, cut his way through the crowd by kicking people's shins and reached him before he'd given two steps.

"I've got twenty letters and five musical messages to deliver Alaric Grindelwald in person," he said, twanging his harp menacingly.

"Not here!" Alaric hissed, trying to escape.

"I've got a job to do!" grunted the dwarf, grabbing hold of Alaric's robes and pulling him back. "And us dwarves never fail to do a job! Stay still!"

"Let me go!" Alaric snarled, tugging on the dwarf's hand. He tried to break his hold but didn't expect the strength behind the little man's compact muscles.

A warcry left the dwarf's mouth as he pulled Alaric's 13-year-old body from the ground, accidentally launching him against a group of students.

With a loud ripping noise, books, quills, and parchment fell on top of Alaric and the student who had fallen with him, and an ink bottle smashed right into his head.

Scarlet ink drenched Alaric's hair and started dripping onto the floor. He clenched his fists and breathed in deeply, holding himself back from jinxing the cupid-dressed dwarf.

Alaric got up from the ground, ignoring the redheaded, green-eyed girl underneath him whose face was the same colour as the ink.

Paying no mind to the muffled laughter coming from the crowd of students, he waved his wand, not wanting to perform wandless magic in front of so many people.

As the books, quills, and parchments were magically stuffed into the ripped bag, the ink on Alaric's hair floated out of it, leaving the once-drenched hair in pristine condition.

Alaric grabbed the repaired bag and shoved it into its owner's arms.

"Here, Potter. Be more careful next time," he said, his voice dripping with annoyance at the stunt the dwarf had pulled.

"What's going on here?" came the cold, drawling voice of Draco Malfoy. Alaric rolled his eyes but then widened them when the bulky dwarf latched on one of his legs, making him fall again.

"Finally," he said, sitting on Alaric's ankles. "Here's the first singing valentine:"

---

Oh Alaric, you're a shining star,

In your presence, I'm never far.

Your smile lights up the darkest day,

In your company, I wish to stay.

---

Alaric wished he could vanish right there and then, even if it meant giving away all his gold. He attempted to stand, but his feet were numb under the dwarf's weight.

His patience wore thin, and when he saw the dwarf gearing up to sing yet another Valentine, he snapped.

"The first Valentine was anonymous but this one has a sender," the dwarf started. "Hop—hmph!"

Before the dwarf could sing again, Alaric pushed him to the ground, scrambling to his feet. Even if the dwarf was persistent, it didn't matter, because only muffled sounds came when he tried to sing again.

The dwarf moved his hands to his face, only to find out that his mouth was nowhere to be seen.

Panicking, he tried to claw at his own face whilst he ran around in circles, shoving anyone to the floor that was in his path.

Naturally, Malfoy attempted to mock Alaric's misfortune, but he wasn't fast enough to do it. Similar to the dwarf, he found himself suddenly without a mouth.

"I should do this more often," Alaric whispered, holstering his wand, savouring Draco's growing horror.

Blaise and Theodore stood against the wall, amused by Draco's situation. Meanwhile, Tracey wore a smirk, observing her blonde friend who displayed a faint blush and a silly grin upon hearing the valentine she had asked for.

"What's all this commotion?" Percy Weasley's voice suddenly sounded, arriving on the scene.

Alaric nearly lost his temper and almost hexed Percy, but Blaise and Theodore intervened just in time, stopping him from doing something that would land him in detention. Percy, as a prefect, did his best to disperse the gathering crowd.

"Time to head to class! The bell rang five minutes ago. Off you go," he directed, shooing away some younger students. Then, he turned his attention to the dwarf and Draco, both of whom were cringing from their altered faces.

"You two should head to the infirmary and have that checked," he advised, unable to hide the disgust from seeing their faces.

Malfoy was looking furious, and he angrily stomped in the direction of the hospital wing, followed by the gloomy dwarf.

"And Alaric!" Percy said loudly. "No magic in the corridors! I'll have to report this, you know!"

But Alaric didn't care. Soon, most of the students went to their respective classes, including Lysandra and her friends, leaving Alaric alone in the corridor.

As he was about to enter the classroom, he noticed a familiar black-leather notebook with a sinister aura sitting against the wall.

"Reparo didn't affect it?" he wondered, picking up the book. "Well, don't mind if I do," he said, placing the notebook in his bag.

__________

Alaric went to the common room before anyone else that night. This was partly because he couldn't stand Blaise or even Fred and George singing, "Oh Alaric, you're a shining star," one more time, and partly because he wanted to examine the notebook he "borrowed" from Harry Potter.

He sat on his four-poster and started flicking through the book, expecting some dark spells and rituals, only to, to his disappointment, find blank pages.

Using his wand, Alaric performed a series of diagnostic and analysis spells. However, he couldn't discover anything that might explain why the book was emitting such a magical aura.

Magical trinkets, obscure spells, and even small rituals written on pieces of parchment were used, but nothing seemed to point out the cause.

But then, something clicked in Alaric's mind.

When Harry's bag spilt its contents on the floor, the scarlet ink drenched most of the books. All except one.

Pulling a bottle out of his bedside cabinet, he dipped his quill into it and dropped a blot onto the first page of the book. The ink shone brightly on the paper for a second and then, as though it was being sucked into the page, vanished.

Excited, Alaric loaded up his quill a second time and thought before writing a simple, "Hi,".

The words shone momentarily on the page and they, too, sank without a trace. Then, at last, something happened. Oozing back out of the page, in his very own ink, came a response for what Alaric had written.

-Hello,-

These words, too, faded away, but not before Alaric had started to write again.

"Who are you?"

A simple question, but the one he was the most curious about.

-You can call me Tom,-

'Tom?' he thought. A common name, but a nagging feeling told him there was more to it.

"So Tom, is this your notebook? Diary maybe?"

-Yes. I recorded my memories here in a more lasting way than ink,-

"Why?"

-Because I always knew that there would be those who would not want this diary read,-

"What do you mean?" Alaric scrawled, almost blotting the page in the process.

-I mean that this diary holds memories of terrible things. Things that were covered up fifty years ago in Hogwarts,-

"Don't tell me... " Alaric whispered, but before he could react, the pages of the diary began to blow as though caught in a high wind, stopping halfway through June. Before he knew what was happening, he was tilting forward; the page was widening, he felt his body leave his bed, and he was pitched headfirst through the opening in the page, into a whirl of colour and shadow.

A short while after, the dormitory door swung open.

"Alaric?" Theodore's voice called, but he quickly realized his friend wasn't around. His gaze settled on Alaric's table, where his eyes landed on the diary.

__________

"How could you lose the diary?!" Hope's voice rang out angrily at her brother.

"How would I know?!" Harry retorted with frustration. "It was there the other day, and now it's gone!"

"Maybe Harry left it in one of the classrooms..." Ron suggested, glancing at the bushy-haired girl who was observing the sibling argument beside him.

"Lysandra already went and checked," Hermione said, before adopting a thoughtful look. "She seemed really agitated when I told her who the owner of the diary was,"

"Do you think she knows who Riddle is?" Ron asked in a doubtful tone.

"I'm not sure," Hermione frowned. She grabbed a book from the table they were in and opened it on her lap. "Great Hogwarts' students throughout the ages" it was called. Flicking through the pages, she tried to search for any student named Riddle.

__________

It was now nearly four months since Justin and Nearly Headless Nick had been Petrified, and nearly everybody seemed to think that the attacker, whoever it was, had retired for good.

The rumours had settled down, and students began to worry not about the creature roaming the castle, but about what subjects they would choose to take next year.

On the fifth floor, the stall Alaric had set up to sell talismans ended up closing due to the lack of customers, and the glasses he and Flitwick had made were now rarely seen worn by the student body.

"Where are your glasses, young lady?" Flitwick would go around the school whenever he lacked teacherly duties, nagging everyone who wasn't wearing the protective spectacles. "It's for your safety!" he always said.

Professor Sprout and Madam Pomfrey were in a jolly mood. The Mandrakes had thrown a party in Greenhouse three, meaning they were steadily approaching adulthood, and that soon, they would be able to cure the victims of the attacks.

"The moment they start trying to move into each other's pots, we'll know they're fully mature," Lysandra told her brother one day.

But while the school was preoccupied with other events, two students remained focused on the threat.

"I thought you would tell them who Tom Riddle truly is," Alaric said. Beside him, on his office table, Riddle's diary was enveloped in what seemed, to the naked eye, white cloth.

"It's better this way," Lysandra commented while twirling her hair with her finger. "We've got the exams coming up, and I swear Hermione is going to faint if she keeps switching between studying and finding out who Riddle is. Besides, Harry and Hope would try to throw themselves in the moment they find Voldemort opened the chamber fifty years ago,"

"Can't say I disagree," Alaric said.

For a moment, only the sound of a quill scribbling down on paper could be heard.

Lysandra stared patiently at her brother, knowing full well not to disturb him when he was taking care of matters about the Emporium.

When the writing died down, Alaric got up and grabbed the diary.

"Shall we?" he asked with a resolute expression.

Nodding, Lysandra sat up and followed after Alaric, swiftly leaving the workshop in the direction of a certain bathroom.

**********

A/N: Let me know if you find any grammatical mistakes!

Hope you enjoyed the chapter!