Bella and the Chamber (Book Two)

Chapter Thirty-Five

"Harry, why do you bother with that thing?" I ask, putting down my Charms homework. 

He didn't look at me. "Oh, so you're talking to me now?"

"Well, maybe if you weren't such a douche, then maybe I would talk to you"

He finally looked at me. "I'm a douche huh? You're the one who's saying the diary is useless."

"I hate to break it to yah buddy, but it is useless," I say with a roll of my eyes. 

"It's not, I can feel it"

"You can feel it? How - oh great, why are you writing in it?" I ask when I saw him pull out his brand new ink bottle out and quill and started mess around with it. 

The ink shone brightly on the paper for a second and then, as though it was being sucked into the page, vanished. I gasped. 

"See? I told you there was something strange going on!" Harry said excitedly. 

My eyes never leave the book. "There's something fishy more like"

Harry loaded up his quill a second time and wrote, 'My name is Harry Potter"

The words shone on the page and they too sank without a trace. Then, at last, something happened. Oozing back out of the page, in his very own ink, came words Harry had never written.

"Hello, Harry Potter. My name is Tom Riddle. How did you come by my diary?"

"Harry I don't like this" I say and he hushed me. "Bitch you just did not just do that!"

"Shut up, Bella!" he snarled and I gaped at him. 

The words on the page faded away, but not before Harry had started to scribble back. 

'Someone tried to flush it down a toilet'

He waited eagerly for a reply and I watched warily. Why do I have a bad feeling about this?

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

'What do you mean?" Harry scrawled. 

"Careful, Harry," I warned but he didn't listen. I scowled. Damn him. 

'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'.

"I seriously need to do some research on this guy," I grumbled when Harry scribbled back in the diary.

'That's where I am now,' Harry wrote quickly. "I'm at Hogwarts and horrible stuff's been happening. Do you know anything about the Chamber of Secrets?'

My heart was hammering. Is he insane? We don't know who this is! Riddle's reply came quickly, his writing becoming messier, as though he was hurrying to tell all he knew. 

'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 thing happened at Hogwarts, forbade me to tell the truth. A story was given out that the girl had 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.'

Harry nearly upset his ink bottle in his hurry to write back. So it has happened before and Riddle was there? Why do I have a bad feeling about this....

'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 rolled my eyes. "Nothing like getting straight to the point, is there, Harry?

He didn't reply as Riddle had written back. 

'I can show you if you like. You don't have to take my word for it. I can you inside my memory of the night I caught him'

Harry hesitated, his quill suspended over the diary. Wait, what did Riddle mean? How could he be taken inside someone else's memory? He glanced nervously at me and I shook my head before looking back at the diary where fresh words were forming. 

'Let me show you'

"Harry don't!" I warned him. 

But it was too late. Harry had written a reply.

'OK'.

"No!"

The pages of the diary began to blow as though caught in a high wind, stopping halfway through the month of June. Mouth hanging open, I saw that the little square for June the thirteenth seemed to have turned into a minuscule television screen. With his hands trembling, Harry raised the book to press his eye against the little window, and before either of us knew what was happening, we were tiling forwards; the wind was widening, I felt my body leave the floor and I was pitched headfirst through the opening in the page, into a whirl of colour and shadow. 

I felt my feet hit solid ground, and stood, shaking, as the blurred shapes around me suddenly came into focus. I was confused. How did I get here? Did Harry grab me before he fell in? I turned to face him and glared at him. 

"HARRY JAMES POTTER WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?"