Harry Potter: Master of Talismans

Madam Pomfrey took possession of the remaining Polyjuice and our preparation record that evening. By the following morning, Professor McGonagall had read enough of the record to have several questions about the preparation of the people.

We stood in her office while I explained what I had done to Harper. Harry and Ron described the cakes, the Sleeping Draught and the room where they had left Crabbe and Goyle. McGonagall let us finish, although Ron’s attempt to explain how eagerly the cakes had been eaten ended when she raised her eyes from the page.

‘I shall be speaking to all three students, and to Professor Snape,’ she said. ‘You were instructed to bring information to the staff. That was not permission to drug other children or hex them so that you could borrow their appearances.’

The edge of her desk was level with my hands. I kept them at my sides instead of reaching for the notes I had brought, because there was nothing in those notes that could make the account we had just given sound better.

‘Harper was conscious,’ I said. ‘I used a Body-Bind, then lowered him onto a blanket. I checked on him afterwards, but he’d already got up.’

‘You will give me the location and the circumstances of that check.’ She turned to a clean sheet. ‘Precautions do not make him a willing participant, Mr Mercer.’

I gave her the details. There would be detentions, and for the remainder of the holiday our library and hospital visits would be arranged through the prefects. Our use of the bathroom as a brewing room was over; Madam Pomfrey would keep the potion, and the library book would be returned once she had finished checking it against Hermione’s record.

Before we left, I handed over my account of the conversation in Slytherin. McGonagall read it through, then asked me to repeat exactly what Malfoy had said about Hermione.

‘He said he hoped she would be next,’ I told her. Harry confirmed the words, and she added his name beside mine.

‘I will follow up the threat. As for the old case, you have a boy’s account of what his father claims to know.’ She put the sheet with the others. ‘Whatever you hoped to discover, you should have kept that distinction in view before taking these risks.’

I had written the distinction down before we went. It was rather less useful on paper than it would have been if I had acted on it.

We returned the four sets of robes to the laundry and visited Hermione when we were allowed. Her face looked like her own again before Madam Pomfrey was satisfied with the rest of her recovery, and she remained in the ward for two days. Nobody suggested that looking better ought to be enough to get her discharged.

Once Pomfrey had returned the record, we took Moste Potente Potions back to Madam Pince. Hermione and I went through the preparation together afterwards, following the dates and measurements until we reached the entry for the hair.

‘I checked the colour against Millicent’s,’ she said. Her finger stopped beneath the name. ‘I wrote it as though that settled where it had come from.’

‘And I accepted it.’ I looked at the neat label, which had been much more convincing than the evidence underneath it. ‘We knew what the warning said. We didn’t check the thing it warned us about.’

She drew a firm line beneath the entry and added a note. We could make the mistake clear for anyone reading the record; we could not make the hair belong to a different creature.

The remaining holiday passed without another attack. I wrote to Emma between visits to the ward, and sent Luna a letter that included a dispute between Ron and a particularly stubborn piece of toast. She had asked to hear about ordinary things as well, and breakfast had produced something I could describe without consulting a witness statement.

On the first afternoon we were able to speak to Hagrid, we asked about the older case. He was willing to discuss Harry, the dead cockerels and Professor Sprout’s mandrakes, but his answers shortened as soon as I mentioned fifty years ago.

‘I’ve told Dumbledore what I know about then,’ he said. He lifted a sack onto the bench beside his door. ‘You lot shouldn’t be digging yourselves into it.’

‘We’re trying to understand what happened to the girl.’ I had meant the words as an explanation. Hagrid put the sack down harder than he needed to.

‘I know what happened to her.’ He looked past us towards the castle, then rubbed one broad hand over his face. ‘I’ve got work to do. Off you go.’

We left without another question. Hagrid’s refusal stayed with me because he usually told us too much, but I had no right to turn a conversation he did not want to have into evidence against him.

Lessons resumed, bringing timetables, homework and the detentions we had earned. The searches and restrictions still shaped the day; we fitted workshop records and library visits into the spaces they left us. Harry returned to training only after Pomfrey checked his arm again and Wood cleared the broom.

Gryffindor’s return fixture against Hufflepuff gave him something to worry about which occasionally went where he pointed it. He came back from the pitch tired, muddy and talking about a turn he wanted to improve. I preferred that to hearing which corridor had fallen silent when he entered it.

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The black book came back to me on the evening before the match. Seamus found it while searching the box beside the common-room noticeboard for a missing glove.

‘Nobody’s claimed this,’ he said, holding it out. The slip I had written after finding it was still tucked inside the cover, recording the bathroom and the owner’s name.

I thanked him and checked the binding. It had dried remarkably well for something left on a flooded floor; there was barely a mark on the cover. Tom Marvolo Riddle’s name remained the only writing inside.

I put it with my things, intending to ask where an unclaimed book should go next. By the time I went to bed, I had forgotten about it again.

Before dawn I was awake with Myrtle’s date and Malfoy’s story circling through my head. I sat up, pulled my notes onto the blanket and opened the black book to copy the name correctly onto a slip for Percy. As I moved the quill, its nib caught the page and left a drop of ink.

I reached for a cloth, irritated with myself. The blot disappeared before I could touch it.

There was no stain beneath it. I tilted the book towards the light and saw two words forming on the paper: Hello there.

I knew what an inscription looked like when it sank into prepared Runebark paper. I had made no inscription here, put no magic into the page and spoken no incantation. An ordinary inkblot ought to have spread until I cleaned it up.

Across the dormitory, somebody shifted under his blankets. I waited until the room was quiet again, then wrote beneath the greeting: Who is this?

My question vanished. The answering script introduced itself as Tom Riddle and asked my name, with the tidy politeness of somebody sharing a table in the library.

I checked the inside cover once more before giving it. Then I asked whether Tom was a student at Hogwarts.

I was, the book replied. When I asked how long ago, the answer came back: Nearly fifty years.

The quill pressed against my finger. A book could be enchanted to say anything, but I had been lying awake thinking about that same stretch of years. I wanted another answer more than I wanted to put it down.

What are you now? I wrote. The script described itself as a record of what Tom had known then, preserving things he wanted someone to remember.

That left me with several possibilities and no way to choose between them. A memory, a person speaking through a book, an enchantment built to imitate conversation: all three could produce the writing in front of me.

I asked whether it knew about the Chamber of Secrets. It answered yes, and when I asked what had happened, it offered to show me.

The pages began turning before I finished my next question. They slid beneath my fingers and stopped at a sheet marked 13 June, where a patch of light was spreading through the paper.

‘Wait,’ I said, pulling back my hand. The light widened, and my bed disappeared.

I turned on the spot, searching for the dormitory. Stone walls surrounded me, with a staircase ahead and a student waiting at its foot. I was still in my pyjamas, but I could not feel the floor beneath my bare feet.

‘What happened?’ I demanded, moving towards the boy. ‘Where did the room go?’

He kept watching the landing above us. When I stepped into his line of sight, his eyes did not move to my face; when I reached for his sleeve, my fingers passed through it.

I withdrew my hand and held it against my chest. Whatever the book had done, I could neither make the boy hear me nor take hold of anything to keep myself there.

People appeared on the landing carrying a stretcher. A sheet covered the person on it, but one arm had slipped over the edge. The students nearby became quiet as it passed, and I stepped aside even though I could not have obstructed it.

‘Riddle.’ The voice came from the stairs, and I recognised Dumbledore before I properly registered how much younger he looked. His beard was darker, but the attentive look he gave the boy was horribly familiar.

So this was Tom Riddle, at least according to the scene. He went towards Dumbledore, who asked why he was out so late.

‘I wanted to know whether it was true, Professor. About the girl.’ Riddle glanced towards the landing where the stretcher had gone.

‘I’m afraid she has died.’ Dumbledore stood where he could see both the boy and the stairs. ‘You should be in your dormitory.’

Riddle asked whether Hogwarts would close. He had nowhere else he wanted to go, he said; if someone found what had done it, would the students still be sent away?

‘Do you have information that might help?’ Dumbledore asked. He allowed a little silence after the question, and Riddle lowered his eyes.

‘No, Professor. I only wondered.’ The boy waited until he was dismissed, then turned towards the stairs below us.

I followed him past the turning I remembered from our visit to Slytherin. Routes might have changed in the years the diary claimed to show me, but the wand he drew did not suggest that he was simply going to bed.

He stopped outside a small room lower in the castle. Something moved behind its door, and he opened it without knocking.

A large boy stood inside with one hand braced against a wooden box. I recognised the shoulders first; then the younger face resolved into someone I knew.

‘Good evening, Hagrid,’ Riddle said. His wand remained raised as he entered the room. ‘I know what you’ve been keeping.’

Hagrid moved in front of the box. ‘You don’t understand, Tom. It didn’t do anything.’

‘A girl is dead. Her parents are coming tomorrow.’ Riddle advanced, making Hagrid press back against the wood. ‘They have to be told that what killed her has been found.’

‘It wasn’t Aragog,’ Hagrid insisted. Something scraped inside the box, and he spread his arms across it. ‘He’s never killed anyone.’

Riddle ordered him aside. When Hagrid refused, a spell struck the fastening and the lid shifted beneath his hand.

A spider forced its way through the gap and dropped to the floor. It was far larger than the spiders I had watched fleeing towards the castle windows, big enough that I recoiled before remembering I could not touch it.

‘Arania Exumai!’ Riddle turned his wand after the running shape. His spell missed as it shot through the doorway, passing where I stood and vanishing into the dark.

Hagrid lunged after it, but Riddle barred his path. ‘They’ll take your wand for this. You’ll be expelled.’

I looked from the open box to Hagrid’s face. He had kept a dangerous creature, and Riddle had accused it of killing a girl. I had seen neither the attack nor anything that connected this spider to the covered stretcher.

Something caught me and pulled me backwards. The doorway stretched away; I reached for the frame, found nothing to grip and landed sitting upright in bed, with the book open on my knees.

I shut it with both hands and held it closed until my breathing slowed. Hagrid’s face remained horribly clear, along with the spider running from a spell that had missed it.

The scene had felt like an answer because I had stood inside it. But I had stood beside the person making the accusation, and the diary had brought me home without showing me the thing I most needed to see.

I got out of bed with the book under my arm. Harry and Ron needed waking, and this time I would begin with what I had actually witnessed.