Harry Potter: Master of Talismans

Harry woke as soon as I touched his shoulder. He pushed himself up on one elbow, took a look at my face and reached for his glasses instead of asking what time it was.

Ron needed more persuasion. By the time he sat up, the windows were turning grey and I had checked twice that the black book was still closed. I held it against my chest while they gathered round my bed, keeping our voices low enough to leave the others asleep.

I began with the ink. That part was easy to describe: a blot disappearing, words appearing in its place, questions answered. When I reached the stretcher and the room below the stairs, Harry interrupted me.

‘Hagrid?’ He had been pulling his dressing gown shut. His hands stopped on the belt. ‘You saw Hagrid there?’

‘Younger, but he looked like him. Riddle called him by his name.’ I put the book on my knees so that I could hold my hands still. ‘He was keeping a spider in a box. Riddle accused it of killing the girl.’

‘You went back fifty years?’ Ron asked. He glanced towards the window as though the grounds might help settle which year we were in. ‘Are you sure you weren’t dreaming?’

I showed them the name inside the cover, keeping the other pages together. ‘The writing answered me while I was awake. After that, I couldn’t feel the floor or touch anybody, and nobody heard me speaking. I don’t know what to call that.’

Ron suggested asking the book again. I hesitated with my fingers on the cover, remembering how quickly the light had spread after it offered to show me something. Curiosity had carried me a good deal further than I had intended the first time.

‘I’ll do it,’ I said, taking up the quill. ‘Keep back from the page.’

I wrote Tom’s name and waited. The ink remained exactly where I had put it, drying into an ordinary mark. I watched it long enough to feel foolish, then closed the book with more care than it seemed to require.

‘That’s enough experimenting. We take it to Dumbledore.’ The silence had proved nothing about its safety. I could not make it answer on demand, which also meant I could not tell the others what would happen if they tried.

Ron was still looking at the name. ‘Riddle,’ he said, drawing out the first syllable. ‘I know where I’ve seen that. It’s in the trophy room.’

I found a clean page in my notebook while he explained. One of the awards he had polished was for Special Services to the School, presented to Tom Riddle. He remembered nearly dropping it when Filch came in behind him one night, then spending ages checking whether he had marked the base.

‘Nineteen forty-three,’ Ron said. He frowned at the date I had written. ‘I’m sure that was the year.’

‘We’ll check the award itself.’ I put a question mark beside the date, although my stomach had already tightened at the fit. Another record might confirm that Riddle had received an honour; it would not, by itself, tell us whether he had deserved it.

Harry sat down on the edge of his bed. ‘Hagrid was expelled. When I asked about the umbrella last year, he told me his wand had been broken. He wasn’t allowed an ordinary one afterwards.’

I remembered the battered pink umbrella and how quickly Hagrid changed the subject when anyone noticed it. Harry’s explanation made sense of that without making sense of the dead girl. There were now several pieces of an old case, and they were fitting together far too neatly around our friend.

‘He called the spider Aragog,’ I said, adding the name. ‘He said it hadn’t killed her. Riddle didn’t show me an attack, or an injured person near the box, or anything that proved him wrong.’

Harry looked up immediately. ‘Then Hagrid could be telling the truth. You only saw someone accusing him.’

‘Yes, and I want to keep that clear when I explain it.’ I crossed out the beginning of a sentence in my notes and started it again. Describing what I had seen was difficult enough without letting Riddle supply the conclusion as well.

I wrapped the diary in a cloth without opening it again. The cloth had no protective enchantment; it would simply discourage someone from turning the pages while I looked away. For anything more reliable, we needed a person who understood the magic.

My message to Dumbledore gave Riddle’s full name, the date on the page and the events the book had shown me. I included the unanswered question I had just tried, then asked where he wanted me to bring it. Leo took the letter as daylight began to reach the roofs outside.

I locked the wrapped diary in my trunk. After dressing, the three of us went down together to find Hermione before breakfast, intending to collect it when the Headmaster’s instructions arrived.

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She listened to the whole account with her hands resting on her own notebook. Once or twice she looked as though she wanted to interrupt, but she waited until I had described landing back in bed.

‘A stored memory is possible,’ she said. ‘That doesn’t mean I know how this one works. It might be a record, or something made to look like one.’

I told her about passing my hand through the student’s sleeve. ‘It called itself a record of what he knew. Even if it really is his memory, I only saw where he went.’

‘And whatever he chose to preserve.’ Hermione wrote down the distinction beside my account. ‘We can’t examine the magic by guessing from the effect it had on you.’

Harry leaned across the table. ‘But we can ask Hagrid about Aragog. That’s something real outside the book, if he knows the name.’

Ron rubbed a hand over his mouth. ‘He didn’t much like the last conversation. This one’s going to be wonderful.’

I could imagine Hagrid shutting his door before I finished the first question. Still, I wanted him to know that an account existed which named him, and that we were asking the Headmaster to examine it. Letting him hear it first as a rumour in the corridors would be worse.

We met him near the entrance hall, carrying a large container against his chest. He had to adjust his grip to stop it tilting when he paused beside us.

‘Sprout needs this,’ he explained when Ron asked about it. ‘Something’s been at the mandrakes. She’s getting them through it, but the damaged leaves need looking after.’

I looked at the container, then at the huge hand keeping its lid steady. ‘Hagrid, we found an account of a creature called Aragog. I’ve asked Dumbledore to examine it.’

His face changed before I reached the end of the name. ‘Where did you hear that?’ he demanded, and several students crossing the hall glanced towards us.

I lowered my voice. ‘An old book. It showed someone accusing you of keeping the creature that killed the girl.’

Hagrid shifted the container against his coat. For a moment I expected him to turn away, but he stayed where he was, looking down at me.

‘Aragog didn’t kill her.’ He said it without hesitation. ‘Whatever you’ve been shown, he didn’t do that.’

‘Then tell us what’s missing,’ I said. Harry had moved closer beside me. ‘I’m asking because the book didn’t show me an attack. It showed me Riddle saying he knew what had happened.’

Hagrid’s grip tightened around the handle. ‘You’ve told Dumbledore about it?’

‘I sent an account this morning. We’re waiting to hear where he wants the book brought.’ I kept my notebook in my pocket; Hagrid was watching us closely enough without my making the conversation look like another interview.

‘Then let him look at it.’ The anger had gone out of his voice, leaving something that sounded older and much more tired. ‘People have believed one version of that night for most of my life. I’m not giving you another story to go chasing into trouble.’

I wanted to insist that we could listen without charging off after a spider. Our recent record made that a difficult promise to offer him, and he had already said the Headmaster knew what he could tell us.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘But we aren’t deciding you’re guilty because a stranger wrote it down.’

He nodded, and for a moment seemed about to add something. Then the container shifted again, forcing him to lift it higher. He told us to keep together and said he would speak to Dumbledore before setting off towards the greenhouses.

We had not reached the Great Hall when Neville caught up with us. Another Gryffindor was beside him, and both were breathing hard enough to make the first few words unintelligible.

‘Our room,’ Neville managed. He swallowed, then looked directly at me. ‘You need to come.’

I turned back towards the stairs. Neville tried to explain on the way, but I was through the dormitory door before the picture he was describing quite assembled itself in my head.

Drawers had been pulled out and trunks forced open. Clothes covered the floor, my bedding had been cut, and everything from under my bed had been dragged into the middle of the room. Feathers lay across the boards beside Leo’s broken cage.

For a moment I could not see him. Then he moved on top of a cupboard, half spreading his wings and glaring down at us.

‘Stay there,’ I said, quieter than I felt. He was back from delivering the letter, but I had no way to tell whether he had arrived during the search or after the damage was done.

He allowed me close enough to look him over, then snapped at my sleeve when I approached one foot. I could see no blood. A scrap of knitted fabric was caught beneath his claws, and I eased it free before it could pull at them.

There was stitching along one edge. I folded the scrap into clean paper without teasing out the threads, then asked the others to keep clear of the trunks while we checked what was missing.

My pouch was still at my waist, with the map and prepared pieces inside it. Hermione checked her own bag and confirmed that the sealed things she was keeping for me were undisturbed. I crouched beside my open trunk and searched it once, carefully enough that I would not have to believe I had overlooked something.

‘The diary’s gone.’ I stood up without closing the lid. ‘It was here when we went downstairs.’

Harry came beside me and looked into the trunk. Ron turned towards the door, his expression hardening as he took in the damage again.

‘Who could even get in here?’ he asked. ‘Somebody must have seen them come through the common room.’

‘We need to ask,’ Hermione said. ‘But a portrait doesn’t make it impossible. We’ve just used other people’s faces to get into another house.’

Neville told us he had found the room like this on returning upstairs. Nobody he had spoken to had witnessed the search, so his account gave us a time of discovery, not the moment the diary had been taken. I wrote that down instead of trying to make the gap smaller than it was.

Percy went to fetch McGonagall. We left the room as we had found it and waited together outside, with Leo watching from his cupboard and every untidy sound inside making me want to go back and check on him.

McGonagall arrived holding the note Leo had carried away. ‘I was coming to collect you,’ she said, then looked through the open doorway.

‘Someone got to the book first.’ I explained where I had locked it and what we had touched since discovering the damage. She asked each of us to remain available for questions and said another member of staff would inspect the room before anything was repaired.

I gave her the folded paper. ‘This was caught in Leo’s claws. I haven’t opened it out properly.’

She laid it on an undamaged desk and spread the cloth beneath her fingers. A small stitched W sat above the remains of a name, with three letters still attached to the torn edge: Gin.