Chapter 52

Percy's Point of View

The next morning dawned far too bright and early for my liking. Squinting, I noticed that Lily was drawing open our curtains. Huh. No wonder it was so bright. I paused to watching the dust float and spin around in the golden light for a moment before Harry turned our gaze back to Lily.

"What's with the light? Go away." He mumbled, his words slightly slurred by the covers over our mouth. Leo groaned in agreement, burrowing deeper under his covers.

"Blaise, Theo and Draco are here already – or would you prefer I asked them to come back another day? I'm sure they'll be very understanding that my lazy sons can't be bothered to get out of bed before noon."

We heard sniggering at the door, then a ball of ginger fluff landed heavily on our stomach. We gasped, winded as Harry cast our eyes down on the smug ball of fluffy doom that was called Felix. The cat had grown the start of a fluffy main round its head. It gave it the look of a lion, though (as Harry reminded me) male kneazels grew mains as well. I groaned and pushed the large kitten off us.

"Thanks for the sympathy guys." We huffed, mock pouting at the trio standing in the doorway smirking at us.

Glancing at our alarm clock Harry jumped out of bed. When did it reach twelve o'clock already? And – more to the point – how on earth did Leo manage to sleep this long as well?

We froze for a minute, remembering Riddle's diary and our conversation with it last night. Hm. Tom Riddle... That name sounded familiar I realised, now that the heavy restlessness wasn't hanging over our head. But where from? He couldn't have been a particularly famous wizard, we'd definitely remember if he'd made the history books. He couldn't be ancient either. While the soft black leather of his diary had been faded and old, it was still intact and not held together by the usual spells used to preserve old books. Maybe an author of a book we'd read recently? No...

Draco punched our arm lightly. We started and gave him a hurt look.

"What was that for?"

"You were lost in thought. What's on your mind?"

"Tom Riddle." Harry told him. "His name is stuck in our mind and for the life of us we can't remember where the Hades we've heard of it before."

"Tom Riddle... He was head boy when Father was in school. Got a special award for something or another I think, though I can't remember what now." Draco mused.

Blaise and Theo just sighed. "Now you've sorted that out, I swear we were promised a Quidditch match with some red-haired fiends?"

"I call Keeper again." Leo's sleepy voice rang out from his place of the floor. Our three Slytherin friends turned to look at him is surprise, taking in our young friend's youthful face, curly brown hair and tanned skin. I bit back a laugh when I noticed the smoke starting to rise from his hair when as Leo shifted uneasily under the weight of the stares.

"What? Is it my pyjamas? Because personally I rather like Doctor Who, and there is nothing wrong with having a perfectly normal obsession with a TV show." Leo joked weakly, indicating his TARDIS patterned sleepwear.

Draco sneered. "TV show?"

Leo gaped at him, then shook his head. "Man, you guys haven't lived if you haven't watched TV. Harry, Percy, I call for a marathon evening of as many good series you have."

We nodded, and Lily chuckled.

"Right after you fix whatever you did to our TV last time I let you near it."

"What?" Leo pouted. "I was just improving it slightly, and hacking the TV signals to allow you to watch live TV. It's hardly broken."

We laughed, and quickly hustled Lily out the room so we could get changed. Uncaring of our three Slytherin friends and Leo (all of whom we had gotten changed around numerous times) Harry quickly stripped off our pyjamas and threw on some warm clothing appropriate for a Quidditch match.

Moving downstairs, Charles, Ron, Fred, George and (to our surprise) Ginny stood waiting for us in the hallway. All were clutching onto their brooms, watching us run down the stairs impatiently. Ginny kept shooting glares at the twins, which soon answered our question as to why she was suddenly being so social today. We'd half expected to have to keep swapping our team mates round while playing in teams of four.

James and Sirius were waiting for us at the pitch with both Leo and our brooms while Draco, Theo and Blaise got them to unshrink theirs.

The day moved smoothly. We won some games and lost some, which (if we were honest) was probably a good thing, as it kept spirits competitive, but not resigned or angry. It also meant that no house could claim to be better than the other over Quidditch for the day, which probably saved us from having to break up several duels or fist fights.

Ginny was silent but determined all day. We attempted to talk to her once dinner had finished and Draco, Theo and Blaise (along with the creature from hell that was called Felix) had gone home.

"So Ginny, did you enjoy the matches today?" Harry asked, smiling at her.

She sneered at us. "I'm sorry, was I supposed to?"

"Well, enjoyment was the main aim of them, yeah." I retorted, slightly snappishly, more than a little hurt that she couldn't care to even hold a polite conversation with us.

"Whatever."

"Any plans for–"

"Just leave me alone! Can't you take a hint? I don't want to talk to some filthy freakish half-blood such as yourself! You think you're so special, because you're a twin soul, and you belong to two houses, and you go to a summer camp in America and are brother to the boy-who-lived, but none of it's true! You're just a stupid Troll-brained imbecile who can't keep his stupid nose out of other people's business!" Ginny all but snarled at us. "You had absolutely no right poking around in my stuff!"

Confused and more than a little angry now, it took us (well, me at least) a little while to realise that she was talking about Tom Riddle's diary.

"Poking around in your stuff?" I took a step forward and glowered down at her. "Well forgive us if we discover a discarded old diary lying on a windowsill and are just a little bit curious about who it belongs too, or why in Hades it's blank. Or even worst, forgive us when the stupid thing writes back!"

"Well you shouldn't have touched something that isn't yours in the first place!" Ginny was clutching at straws now, her pride and anger not letting her back down, even though she knew her argument was practically in shreds.

Harry took over then. Unlike me, he was completely calm as he looked down at Ginny and shook his head in disappointment. "Aren't you forgetting something though? This isn't your home or even Gryffindor tower. This is the Potter manor, and – as Potter's ourselves – we have more than every right to look around at stuff in our own home."

Ginny opened her mouth then shut it again, running back to her room.

The remaining week of the holidays past in a blur of duelling with Charles, having sword fights or helping invent new machines with Leo, the occasional match of Quidditch and the colourful blur of New Year's parties.

The school did indeed open again for the new Spring Term, though Harry and I were more than a little sceptical that the school was actually safe. However, quandary to our scepticism, there were no more attacks, and Alyssa reported that the red headed girl had stopped visiting her since the hatchings had all been sent home just before Christmas. This information through us for a little while, but we didn't really question it, hoping (oh-so-very naively) that whoever it had been had stopped for good.

Then, as the spring term drew to a close, we discovered someone had flooded Moaning Myrtle's toilet and thrown a book through the poor ghost. Discovering the book, it didn't take us long to recognise the faded leather and age stained pages of Riddle's Diary.

Curious as to why Ginny would have discarded the diary that she had been all too defensive about at Christmas, we picked it up a resolved to discover what Riddle had to say the matter. Needless to say, that was an infuriating conversation.

"Helo Tom." I wrote, probably misspelling numerous words. But hey, give me a break. I was mad, and I wasn't in the mood for thinking about spelling so I did my best to spell them as I would say them. It's not my fault English is just a complicated language! "Care to eggsplain why Ginny droun uo in a toilette?"

"Pardon?"

'Give it to me!' Harry laughed. 'You're writing nonsense.'

"Sorry." Harry scrawled delicately under Tom's loopy writing. "My brother is dyslexic you see. We were wondering if you'd care to explain why Ginevra Weasley tried to drown you in the girls' lavatory."

"Ah, hello again Harry. I will explain, but only if you'd care to explain what you were doing in a girls' lavatory." Tom retorted, his writing slightly messier as if he was digging the nib of his quill into the paper, presumably in annoyance.

Harry grinned. "Certainly. We were visiting our good friend Myrtle of course. She'd a ghost you see, and doesn't leave her toilet very often. We met her while investigating why some stupid Gryffindors were deciding to brew polyjuice potion there."

Tom didn't reply for a few moments, though a series of ink dots tapped onto the paper as he contemplated his next words.

"We had an argument. She thought I had spilled some of her secrets to her friend after that friend found my diary and wrote to me."

"Of course. Because Ginny generally tries to kill her friends after arguing with them." I sighed. "Moving on, care to explain your view on blood status to me? As a Slytherin I presume you are familiar with how we view it."

"Indeed. Mudbloods don't belong here with their filthy blood."

A memory suddenly hit us of a couple of dreams we had experienced in the summer.

We were sitting in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, though the ghost was no-where in sight. From one of the cubicles we could hear a girl sobbing, and the shifting of her feet on the floor. The door opened and a tall boy walked in, looking about the age of sixteen. He had fine facial features, with the same aristocratic look about him that the Malfoys had. His hair was dark and neat, much like his uniform. Clear green eyes flittered round the room curiously. They skipped over us before resting on the locked cubicle door. Shrugging, the boy turned to the sink.

$Open.$ The boy hissed in a familiar language, apparently to the sink. We gave him a strange look.

'Why is he talking to a sink?' Percy laughed nervously. This boy, whoever he was giving of scary vibes, and we didn't like that.

The cubical door creaked open an inch behind us, but we ignored it, watching in shock as the sinks slowly moved apart, the top floating off it. A large snake waited inside, it's hide a sickly green and its eyes... they looked an almost sulphuric yellow, and had a freezing power. I felt positively sure that, had this not have been a dream, we would have dropped dead after looking into that gaze. We shivered.

A sickly thud echoed round the room, originating from the cubical behind us, where the crying girl had been. A triumphant smirk lit up the other boy's face, and we shivered, forcing ourselves to look round.

We saw the pale hand first. Limp, as if she was unconscious. They we saw the rest of her, from where she had fallen out of the cubical. Her messy black hair covered her face, but I had a strange sense of certainty that she wore glasses, and her round face was patterned with freckles. Myrtle. Moaning Myrtle. The poor, poor girl...

We were at Hogwarts. While the shape of the corridors were familiar, the paintings all seemed different and there were random places were old suits of armour or statues that we didn't have dwelled. We guessed this much have been years ago.

A flicker of black caught our attention up ahead. It was a boy. We crept closer, recognising the boy from a dream we had a while ago. The Parselmouth. He entered the girls' bathroom, and crept closer to the sinks. A sudden voice pulled him to a sudden stop.

"What are you doing here? This is the girls' bathroom. You're not a girl, are you? Tom Riddle?"

The boy spun round to face the ghost of Myrtle. She smirked at the older boy.

"If you don't leave, I'll tell Dumbledore. I'm sure he'd be fascinated to know you came here. Especially since it's out of bounds to students."

The boy's green eyes lit up with a sudden fire. He glared at the ghost, and raised his wand menacingly. The ghost flinched back, holding her hand out in front of her body as if to protect herself from whatever was to come.

"You dare threaten me? You filthy little mud-blood!"

A red curse flew from Riddle's wand, and hit the ghost. She fell back with a cry and the boy smirked.

We froze for a minute, thinking about it.

'It was him wasn't it? He killed Myrtle.' Percy's voice shook with anger and an all-consuming hatred for this boy who had hurt our friend.

I nodded, taking deep breaths in an attempt to calm down. 'He must have been the false heir Alyssa talked about. I presume then he can't actually be a mere memory. His diary must be more powerful than that. But how is a spelled diary capable of possession? Unless he simply influenced her, but I don't believe that.'

Percy hummed in agreement. 'Be careful here Harry.'

"Don't you agree?" The mocking words stared up at us from the page when we stared back down.

I didn't answer, but posed another question.

"Killed any recently?"

"No. Of course I haven't recently. I'm a memory remember?"

"So you have before?" I smirked. Riddle certainly knew how to word his sentences to avoid the truth.

This time there was a long pause. "You don't like me much, do you?"

"No." I left our answer short but not-too sweet. Tom didn't reply for a long time after then. We just left it, closing the book and shoving it into our bag to think about at a later date. Hopefully – if we were lucky – this could be the end of it! Destroy the diary, and Alyssa would be free from the false heir. And the school would be truly safe again!

The fates, it would appear, weren't listening to our prayers. The following day after our little chat with Riddle we passed a duel between a pair of older students in the corridor. A Gryffindor and Slytherin obviously. A widely cast severing curse however caught the bottom of our bag before the teachers could break the pair up, and our belongings were send crashing to the floor, breaking our ink bottle.

"Hades!" I cursed. I had spent ages on our homework last night after Harry (for once) forgot about it and called an early night. 'There goes all my hard work.'

Harry chuckled slightly at our pout. 'Sprout won't kill us for an honest mistake. And Severus favours us as his godsons and members of his House. We'll redo McGonagall's at lunch. It'll be fine, Percy.'

'Still.' I muttered. 'The one time I even attempt to try to do the homework without your help – and Draco agreed I got it right as well!'

In our rush to collect up all our books and parchment after repairing our bag we missed a certain ginger first year reclaiming the leather diary we had discarded in there the night before. In fact, we probably would have taken a lot longer to find out had there not been another attack, landing a Hufflepuff – Justin Finch-Fletchley – in the Hospital wing, petrified, just the next day.

It had been the day of a Quidditch Match – Gryffindor vs Hufflepuff. Most people scoffed at the Hufflepuffs, claiming they were too weak or peace loving to play Quidditch properly, but this season my money was firmly on them. They had a new Seeker – a fifth year called Cedric Diggory – and he was both swift on his broom and had a sharp eye for the snitch. Not that we had told Charles our (Harry's) observations. After all, why would we give the Gryffindors a better chance at the Cup than they could muster on their own?

Anyway, Draco and we had been trailing the Gryffindor Quidditch team down to their changing rooms, occasionally offering the expected friendly banter of jokes and insults. Well, Harry and my remarks were friendly. Draco (obviously) had a bit more spit to his, but the team were obliging us with surprising good-will, giving back as good as they got.

Just outside the changing room door, Professors Sprout and McGonagall stood with stern and worried faces.

"I'm sorry, team, but I'm afraid the match today has been cancelled." McGonagall didn't seem at all happy with her news, not that the Gryffindors noticed. They were far too busy complaining.

"But Professor, you can't just cancel Quidditch!" Oliver Wood, captain of the Lions were complaining.

The Twins were kicking up their dual noise, declaring her news to be "Rubbish!" and "Utterly preposterous Professor!"

Professor McGonagall sighed. "I really am sorry. But there's been another attack."

"Who?"

My voice filled the weighted silence that followed our Deputy Headmistress' words. But it was Professor Sprout who replied, her normally cheerful face downcast.

"One of my Badgers. Justin Finch-Fletchley."

The Hufflepuffs started shouting all at once over that, demanding to see their Housemate. As Professor Sprout attempted to stop their shouting and calm them all down, we felt a sliver of dread fill us. Desperately, we checked our bag for the diary that we had dumped there a few nights ago.

'The severing curse!' I realised. 'Someone must have picked it up or we must have missed it when trying to gather up our books.'

'Di Immortals!' Harry cursed. 'The Fates only know where it is now!'

'School might be closed now.' I realised with a small sigh. I realised only now that I really didn't want school to close. The reading and writing might be a pain, but the social life and practical skills were actually really great fun.

'We need to solve this then.' Harry decided. 'As soon as possible.'

'And we have an idea where to start.' I declared smugly.

'Ginny Weasley!' We spoke together, with a small grin.

Hey guys! I'm so sorry I left you hanging for so long! I was away on holiday, and before that my computer wasn't letting me copy and paste my story from its word document onto Wattpad's updated way of writing, so it was all going rather wrong. So I am very sorry about that! But I'm back now! Just bully me if I'm not updating a much/quickly as you like. I'll do my best however :)

Smartiepants :)