Independent (drarry story) (female Draco)

Part 14

  "It's over there, it got washed out..."

Harry and Ron looked under the sink where Myrtle was pointing.

A small, thin book lay there.

It had a shabby black cover and was as wet as everything else in the bathroom.

Hermione stepped forward to pick it up, but Ron suddenly flung out an arm to hold her back.

"What?" said Hermione.

"Are you crazy?" said Ron.
"It could be dangerous."

"Dangerous?" said Hermione, laughing.
"Come off it, how could it be dangerous?"

"You'd be surprised," said Ron, who was looking apprehensively at the book.

  "Some of the books the Ministry's confiscated Dad's told me, there was one that burned your eyes out. And everyone who read Sonnets of a Sorcerer spoke in limericks for the rest of their lives. And some old witch in Bath had a book that you could never stop reading!You just had to wander around with your nose in it, trying to do everything one handed.And — "

"Oh please,these stories are probably fake" argued Hermione.

The little book lay on the floor, nondescript and soggy.

"Well, we won't find out unless we look at it," Harry said, he ducked around Ron and Hermione as he picked the book up off the floor.

Harry saw at once that it was a diary, and the faded year on the cover told him it was fifty years old.

He opened it eagerly.

On the first page he could just make out the name 'T.M. Riddle' in smudged ink.

"Hang on," said Ron, who had approached cautiously and was looking over Harry's shoulder.

  "I know that name... T. M. Riddle got an award for special services to the school fifty years ago."

"Really! Where do you know it from?" Asked Hermione as she approached the two.

"Filch made me polish his shield about fifty times in detention," said Ron resentfully.

  "That was the one I burped slugs all over.
If you'd wiped slime off a name for an hour, you'd remember it, too."

Harry peeled the wet pages apart.
They were completely blank.

There wasn't the faintest trace of writing on any of them, not even Auntie Mabel's birthday, or dentist, half past three.

"He never wrote in it," said Harry, disappointed.

"I wonder why someone wanted to flush it away?" said Ron curiously.

Harry turned to the back cover of the book and saw the printed name of a variety store on Vauxhall Road, London.

"He must've been Muggle-born," said Harry thoughtfully.
"To have bought a diary from Vauxhall Road..."

"Well, it's not much use to you," said Ron.
He dropped his voice.

"Fifty points if you can get it through Myrtle's nose." Harry, however, pocketed it.

********

Lyra left the hospital wing, de-whiskered, tail-less, and fur-free, at the beginning of February.
On her first evening while she was wondering the corridors, Harry showed her T. M. Riddle's diary and told her the story of how they had found it.

"Oooh, it might have hidden powers," said Lyra enthusiastically, taking the diary and looking at it closely. Her smile dribbled as she recognized the book to be none other than Tom riddles diary.