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Leaning back in his chair with crossed arms, Harry stared at the embossed gold lettering as if it had offended him somehow.
“Tom Marvolo Riddle”
More commonly known as Lord Voldemort.
What on earth was Ginny doing with this in her trunk? Sure, it clearly hadn’t been touched in years, if the layers of dust proved anything, but this had to be dangerous. Perhaps she hadn’t even touched it at all? A diary that once belonged to Tom Riddle didn’t seem like an easy something to put down once it was picked up.
And despite that, Harry opened it and grabbed a quill anyway.
Hesitating for a few seconds, he could only watch in slight horror as a large droplet of ink fell from the nib, splattering on the page. He swore, moving the writing instrument away quickly, but not before several more dripped down onto the book.
“This is why the Wizarding World should move to pens, stupid shitting quills. I am not in William Shakespeare’s time, for crying out loud,” He muttered, staring angrily down at ink splattered page.
Just as he reached for his wand to vanish the mess, the ink slowly vanished as if it was falling into the page depths. Or, more likely, the page was sucking it in.
“Stupid Voldy, sucking away everything in sight…happiness, freedom, safety, my will to live-” He was cut off by words appearing on the page in the very same ink that had just vanished, “Oh great, here we go,”
“Hello, is someone there?” The writing floated like wings across the page in a beautiful cursive. Harry snorted, thinking of the time he had dared Lavender to sing in cursive during a Gryffindor ‘Truth and Dare’ party. It had not been pretty.
Come to think of it, that may be why Hermione hated her so much. What other reason would she have?
Pursing his lips, Harry considered his options.
- Write in the book and report it to Dumbledore once he knew it was definitely a dangerous object
- Don’t write in the book and just report it straight to Dumbledore.
- Fuck it all and have a laugh taunting what seemed to be a young Voldemort stuck in his diary before finally reporting it to Dumbledore.
Harry smirked, grabbing the quill again. The third option was the only real option, in his opinion.
“Yes, someone is here, Tommy. It’s your mum!” It was a classic, overused comeback but it was perfect. After all, Tom Riddle was no fan of his dead, inbred, muggle-loving mother. It was the perfect opportunity to use it.
It was silent for a few seconds, the ink soaking into the page. This time the writing didn’t appear on the page as quickly, making Harry grin, but then they rushed onto the page.
“Excuse me? My name is Tom and I don’t believe I know what you mean,” The cursive wasn’t as neat this time, a fact that had another laugh bubbling from Harry’s chest before a pulse of angry magic seemed to tingle under his fingertips, making him pause.
He could feel the diary’s emotions.
For a few seconds, he felt freaked out, wondering why he could feel an inanimate object's emotions - or why it had emotions at all. But he brushed it off just as quickly, realising this came with an advantage.
“Ah alright, you caught me, Tommy boy. I’m not your mum,” He scribbled back, a massive grin taking root on his face.
“Clearly,” The diary wrote back, “I told you my name is Tom, please use it. What is your name?” The sentence was full of forced politeness and, if Harry couldn’t feel the spiking annoyance, he might have believed it.
Spinning the quill through his fingers, he thought for a moment, a memory coming back to him. A laugh followed straight after, “That’s my bad, Thomas. My name is Roonil Wazlib,”
“Tom,”
“Yes - Tim. That’s what I put,” Harry tried to push his amusement into the diaries, wondering if the diary could feel his emotions like he could feel its.
If the overwhelming wave of anger that slammed against his magic was anything to go by, it could feel everything he wanted it to.
“You okay there, Timmy? Feeling pretty hot-headed over here,” He wrote before the diary could reply to his last words.
A rumble of confusion. Ahh, so it didn’t know he could feel how it felt.
Harry raised an eyebrow at that but it made sense, he supposed, they did share a connection. One that had grown stronger after the possession, even if Voldemort was thrown out of his head quite harshly.
“You’ll find I’m quite fine, thank you. Now please, you know my name, what is yours?”
Harry gasped aloud, even though he knew Tom could not hear him, scribbling back like a man lit on fire, “How dare you, Timothy! To imply that Roonil Wazlib is not my name? It is a great offence, I tell you! I great offense - we must duel at dawn,”
Then again, Harry though to himself, staring down at his threat to duel, maybe he was in Shakespeare’s time.
“I am not stupid, I know that is not your name,”
And it went on like that, Tom Riddle desperately trying to get Harry’s name while Harry simply played with him, amusing himself in an attempt to procrastinate his way out of doing his History Of Magic homework. Hermione would have his head but this was worth it.
“You know, Snakeface, I wouldn’t write in a diary personally. Too many feelings in one place and way too easy for someone to steal it and read it. But I guess you don’t know what it’s like to have friends to open up to. So I guess this is your only option,” He couldn’t stop giggling, his quill actually shaking from his laughter.
“It’s a journal, actually. And I do have friends - I have you, don’t I, Roonil?”
That was it, Harry was crying with laughter, scraping his chair back and doubling over in amusement. Oh, how he wished he had a camera to capture the memory of Lord Voldemort calling him Roonil.
“Oh yeah,” He finally managed to reply, “I’m sure you’re great friends with Roonil but that’s not my name so clearly we aren’t friends,”
It was like he could feel the diary expand under his fingertips as if his hand was resting on the chest of someone who was taking a deep, calming breath rather then the yellowing pages of an old diary.
“You don’t mind if I write down a shopping list or two, do you, orphan boy?” He continued to write, ignoring the angry shock that flooded through the diary and into his fingertips at the word ‘orphan’, “We have a party coming up to celebrate Gryffindor winning the house cup and I’ve been tasked to get some food from the kitchen,”
He didn’t wait for the reply, already beginning to list down different snacks and drinks.
The list didn’t get far, soaking into the pages and being replaced by a large, hastily drawn image of a hand flipping him off.
Cracking up again, Harry watched as the image disappeared before composing himself to write back, “Damn, knew you had a sense of humour, you weird little orphan. Shame you’re stuck in this weird emo diary of yours,”
“It’s a journal and-”
He didn’t even get to finish, Harry writing over him, “You had so much potential. Maybe you should have gone into stand up instead of going bald and torturing people with hair,”
“What? I’m not bald-”
“Actually! Is that why nearly all of your Death Eaters have long luscious hair? Lucius, Bellatrix…although I guess you don’t know them yet. I wonder if Abraxus Malfoy had the same long hair as his son,”
“Death Eaters? What the hell are they- and Abraxus has a son? You’re from the future!?” The diary filled with intrigued excitement, something that set Harry on edge, biting his lip at the realisation that he had given too much away. More distraction!
“None of that really matters, does it though, Moldy Voldy? You could have had such a great career in comedy - I hope you can smell my disappointment from here,” He paused, ignoring all the insults that were being written on the opposite page as he thought. Clearly the false niceties had ran their course, “Actually…I wonder if you can still smell without a nose. Do you stick your tongue out to smell things now?”
“What-!?”
“I’ll have to ask Voldemort next time I see him,” Harry realised his mistake too late, the ink gone before he could rub it off.
The diary went deadly still, making Harry hang his head, sighing loudly. Clearly 16-year-old Tom Riddle had already come up with the name Lord Voldemort. Dammit, why couldn’t he have had a normal teenage crisis like everyone else?
“You know, I think you should come visit me here. I’d love to meet the person who knows my hidden identity,” If the diary could talk, its voice would be silky smooth with extremely large doses of persuasion.
Luckily for Harry, it couldn’t talk but he could steal hear loud danger sirens blaring inside his brain.
Unluckily for everyone else, Harry had never listened to those danger sirens.
“Yeah, I’ll have to decline your offer, I’m just not interested in you like that. Or at all, to be honest,”
“It will be nice, to finally meet each other after all this talking, don’t you think?” Tom continued to try and persuade him, a feeling rising up through the diary that reminded Harry of the love potion drugged chocolates that Romilda Vane had tried to slip him.
“I told you I’m not interested, stop being such a creepy little orphan!” He scribbled back, trying to not touch the pages that were trying to convince him.
But the feeling stopped after a few minutes, replaced by furious rage, “I- what is this! I can’t get into your mind! Who are you?” The writing was only getting sloppier as Tom’s anger grew, making Harry’s amusement grow even more.
“Aw, you do always love to turn back to the age-old method of possessing me, don’t you Moldyshorts?” A small spike of annoyance slid into Harry’s fun at the memory of how Voldemort had slowly infiltrated his mind last year before finally fully possessing him once he was weak enough.
That wouldn’t be happening again.
“Moldyshorts? What are you talking about? Are you quite mad?” Tom was growing distressed and the pages were growing uncomfortably hot in a way that made Harry flinch away if his fingers touched them for too long.
“You’re the mad one, Tom Riddle, I killed you when I was a baby - yes, a baby. I mean, how weak can you get? Practically muggle like,” The pages grew hotter, “And then, after 14 years of possessing creatures and humans like the leech you are, you came back. You were bald, noseless and extremely ugly,” A sharp stab of disbelief cut through the book, “Yes, ugly. But you’re almost forgetting the greatest bit! At 14, I bested you yet again by escaping after you failed to kill me,”
“You’re lying,” The writing was no longer cursive at all. It was angry, rushed writing that gave away every single feeling that Harry could feel through the book.
The pages were only getting hotter.
“I wish I was but you really are just that weak, Moldywart. I escaped you again last year too, at 15, after you failed to possess me. You weren’t strong enough. You never will be,”
Harry stopped, waiting for the ink to disappear and a reply to come before he wrote his final line. But the reply never came, only unrelenting, boiling anger. Shrugging, he wrote it anyway.
“And mark my words, Lord Voldemort. I will kill you and bury you next to your muggle father like you deserve,”
The diary suddenly exploded, creating a wave of hot air that scalded Harry’s exposed skin as he fell backwards off his chair and onto the floor, knocking him unconscious when his head smacked against the carpeted stone floor.
***
“Harry!” A voice yelled at him, shaking his shoulders. He went to push them away, tell them to let him sleep for a few more minutes, before everything came rushing back to him and his eyes flew open.
Hermione and Ron’s faces were what greeted him, along with several others further away.
“You okay, Harry? You’re all burnt and this book has a hole blown through it,” Hermione shot at him in a worried voice, holding up the ruined book, “What have you been doing?”
Harry grinned, allowing himself to fall back to the ground, “Oh Hermione, you have no idea how much fun I’ve had - and I have a new tactic on how to deal with old Snakeface,” His voice grew sleepy as his injuries caught up to him, hearing his friends calling his name again as someone began yelling for Dumbledore and Madam Pomfrey to come, “That creepy orphan won’t know what hit him,”
***
Miles away, Voldemort looked up from his desk, fear clenching at his heart for the first time in decades.
“Oh fuck,”