Ms. Riddle, The Beginning

20.2 - The Mysterious Journal

Ronald had decided to go to bed early before anyone else as he wanted to examine Riddle's diary again. He sat at his desk flipping through the book as he closed it aggressively and pushed it away only for it to accidentally collide with his ink pot and have it spill on the book.

He panicked thinking he ruined the book, only to realize the ink had vanished making the book look brand new again. Ronald was confused as he opened the book to a random page and dipped his quill into his half-filled pot before dropping a drop of ink onto that page.

The ink disappeared yet again as Ronald let out a gasp of astonishment and a bit of curiosity. He dipped his quill once more and wrote,

'My name is Ronald Weasley.'

The sentence stayed on the page before it sank into the pages. He almost lost hope only for the diary to reply with a sentence oozing back out of the page.

'Hello Ronald Weasley. My name is Tom Riddle. How did you come by my diary?'

These words soon faded away as Ronald who was still in shock with the fact he was conversing with a diary, quickly wrote back.

'It was left on my bed anonymously.'

The diary then replied,

'Lucky that I recorded my memories in some more lasting way than ink. But I always knew that one day there would be someone who didn't want this diary read.'

'What do you mean?' Ron scribbled back in excitement.

'I mean that this diary holds memories of terrible things. Things that were covered up. Things that happened at Hogwarts'

'Would any of these terrible things happen to be about the Chamber of Secrets?' Ronald wrote back in anticipation.

The diary had gone silent for awhile making Ron think he had gone too far with the questions, only for the diary to reply back with a long paragraph.

'Of course, I know about the chamber. In my day, they told us that it was a myth, that it didn't 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 happened at Hogwarts, forbade me to tell the truth.

As 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 wasn't imprisoned.'

Ron was quick to write back, almost spilling his ink pot yet again in the process.

'It's been happened again now. There's been three attacks, and no one knows who's behind it. Who was it last time?'

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

Ron was confused reading Riddle's reply. How could he be taken inside someone's memory? He was looking around the dorm room, half expecting Riddle's ghost to appear out of thin air. He looked back at the diary as he saw fresh words forming.

'Let me show you.'

The pages of the diary began to blow as though caught in a high wind before stopping halfway through the month of June. Before he knew what was happening, Ronald felt his body leave his desk and he was pulled into what seemed like a tornado before he felt his feet hit the solid ground.