Unraveling Riddle

7. The Book

Sunday, September 16th, 1945

The single night of potion-induced sleep felt much closer to weeks for Annie. The dreams began as hazy recollections of her old cottage, and evolved into an insurrection of distortions, in which she was tortured, and chased, and enclosed within an eternal nightmare.

Upon waking, the nurse grumbled about and forced her to gulp down different potions for anxiety. According to the witnesses from the Slug Club, and the nurse herself, Annie had suffered a terrible panic attack, and blacked out. The cause was unclear to them. But to Annie it was most certain. Tom Riddle and his pureblood friends used magic of some sort on her. Whether that was a spell or potion remained a mystery.

What they wanted was also unclear.

She was not permitted to leave the infirmary until Sunday afternoon, when it was made clear that she had fully recovered and was in no risk of fainting. They directed her to the dining hall, recommending that she eat.

She walked from the room, as if in a daze, seeking sustenance.

For some reason, she couldn't find it in herself to tell the nurse or any professors about what happened. And, upon being alone in the hallway, Annie realized that there wasn't a single soul in Hogwarts who would take her word over Tom Riddle's. He would never hurt a fly.

Even Lucy, her dearest friend, would be hesitant to believe such buggery.

Annie felt a dull ache overcome her body, as she veered away from the dining hall, and made her way towards the library. Her limbs felt heavy with sleep, and her mind was glazed with the calming potions, but there were only two certain things in her mind that Sunday evening; she could not sleep after those horrible dreams, and she had to find out how Riddle knew so much about her.

She traced her memory of the party as she hobbled along, recollecting the awkward dinner, dancing with Nott, and having a heated confrontation with Riddle. Not only that, she realized, but earlier in the evening, she had spoken to Finny, who seemed distressed about the Saturday morning breakfast incident. Or her lack of memory.

It was clear that what Riddle wanted from Annie was something sinister. It didn't align with her original hypothesis, that he was ashamed she had knocked him over during their duel, and was merely asserting dominance. This was not about egos. He used magic to harm her and his friends may have used that same magic on Fionnula.

Annie was still wearing her black dress, tattered from the night's events, and wrinkled from sleeping in an infirmary bed. Many faces turned her way as she walked through the library in search of the hunched-over lady, Mrs. Mander. The librarian was infamously never found at her desk. Instead, she was always on a ladder somewhere or reaching for books with her wand, in obscure aisles. But Annie needed to speak with her if anyone, for Mander had been attached to the Hogwarts library since she graduated, back in the 1880s.

During her argument with Riddle, Annie had asked whether or not he learned about her through a logbook. It was likely one of those Who's Who in the Wizarding World books which were used both to keep track of pureblood and half blood families, and establish a lasting record of each wizard, their profession, and their familial information at any given time.

No doubt Pernella Dyal would have been recorded, but Annie knew very little about her mother other than the controversy which was widely recognized, and the fact that she hated magic, despite being a brilliant witch in her day. Pernella was the sort of person who talked at people, not to them. At least that was the case during Annie's lifetime.

Riddle showed no interest in Cornelius Kiggins, much like the rest of the world. Annie wondered if her father would have been recorded in those books, as he made very few contributions to the wizarding world, and came from one of those mudblood lines so frequently avoided by the media.