A Hogwarts Legend: Round Two [2]

Chapter Twenty Three

"Someone tried to flush it down a toilet."

We wait eagerly for Riddle's reply.

"Lucky that I recorded my memories in some more lasting way than ink. But I always knew that there would be those who would not want this diary read."

"What do you mean?" I scrawl, blotting the page slightly.

"I mean that this diary holds memories of terrible things. Things which were covered up. Things which happened at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."

"That's where we are now," Harry writes quickly. "We're at Hogwarts, and horrible stuff's been happening. Do you know anything about the Chamber of Secrets?"

Riddle's reply comes quickly, his writing becoming untidier, as though he's hurrying to tell all he knows.

"Of course I know about the Chamber of Secrets. In my day, they told us it was a legend, that it did not exist. But this was a lie. In my fifth year, the Chamber was opened and the monster attacked several students, finally killing one. I caught the person who'd opened the Chamber and he was expelled. But the Headmaster, Professor Dippet, ashamed that such a thing had happened at Hogwarts, forbade me to tell the truth. A story was given out that the girl has died in a freak accident. They gave me a nice, shiny, engraved trophy for my trouble and warned me to keep my mouth shut. But I knew it could happen again. The monster lived on, and the one who had the power to release it was not imprisoned."

I nearly knock over my ink bottle in my hurry to write back.

"It's happening again now. There have been three attacks and no one seems to know who's behind them. Who was it last time?"

"I can show you, if you like," comes Riddle's reply. "You don't have to take my word for it. I can take you inside my memory of the night when I caught him."

"What does that mean?" Harry asks me. "Can you be taken into somebody else's memory?"

"I don't know," I look down at the diary, to see fresh words forming.

"Let me show you."

Harry looks at me, and I nod. Harry pauses for a fraction of a second and then writes two letters.

"OK."

The pages of the diary begin to blow as though caught in a high wing, stopping halfway though the month of June. Mouth hanging open, I see that the little square for June the thirteenth seems o have turned into a minuscule television screen. My hands shaking slightly, I raise the book so we're both closer to the little window, and before I know what's happening, we're tilting forwards; the window is widening, I feel my body leave my chair and I pitch headfirst through the opening in the page, into a whirl of colour and shadow, Harry close behind.

I feel my feet hit solid ground, and stand, shaking, as the blurred shaped around me come suddenly into focus.

I know immediately where I am. This circular room with the sleeping portraits is Dumbledore's office - but it isn't Dumbledore sitting behind the desk. A wizened, frail-looking wizard, bald except for a few wisps of white hair, is reading a letter by candlelight.

Who da fuck is he?

"I'm sorry," says Harry shakily. "We didn't mean to butt in ..."