a place for writing things

[alt_hydra]

It's difficult to write about the diary because there are parts of that year I don't remember well at all, and then other parts that I remember vividly.

I already had this journal and was able to use it for the first time. I was excited to talk to people, maybe even make friends, but looking back the things I wrote about were peculiar. Lots of random observations and odd questions. (Maybe that's why, a few years later, I was invited to a club called The Tea of the Strange.) Writing here was nice enough. I got to keep in touch with Daddy and talk to Harry and Draco, and even got to know some new people, like Sally Anne Perks and Ron Weasley. On a few occasions I exchanged comments with a muggleborn girl who was then owned by Harry Marvolo (Potter). I was shocked to learn that muggleborns could read and write. Mummy loathed muggleborns, wouldn't even think of having them in the house. She felt that they tainted the environment in some way, and filled my head with a lot of wholly inaccurate notions about them.

Because of my mother's very strong opinions I never wrote too openly in this journal. I knew she could read every word, and that she would file away every detail, whether she commented on it or not.

I probably made some kind of passive complaint about it in front of Harry, because he later gave me an old diary and told me I could write in it, instead, if I wanted to write my thoughts where no one could see them. The diary was given to Harry by his father, but Harry wasn't too interested in it.

I was very interested in it, nearly from the start. Not just because it was a place for writing secret thoughts, but because the diary wrote back to me.

I thought the diary must be charmed, at first. To function as a friendly but harmless companion, maybe. But the more the diary wrote to me, the more I understood it as a real person. He was a boy, quite a bit older than I, who had gone to Hogwarts a long time ago. He was very well-spoken but there was something sad and a little bit lonely in his words. I wanted him to tell me everything about himself, so I told him everything about me. I told him things I never told anyone, and will probably never tell anyone again.

Each time I opened up to him, he would open up a tiny bit, too. I learned that he was an orphan. That he was afraid certain professors didn't like him. They were tiny, sparkling bits that I was able to add to my growing idealisation of him - which, of course, was just what he wanted. He wanted me in a state where I would do anything for him, and soon enough, that's just where I was.

That's when I started forgetting things. And that's when the Basalisk Basilisk starting attacking people in the school.

Even when I started to suspect there was something wrong with me, and that there was something off about the boy, I didn't want to stop writing. I didn't want to lose the only person I had ever shown myself to.

I never did push him away, and by the time I really, truly wanted to, there wasn't enough of me left to do it. So I had to be saved, that time. By Harry and his friends.

I will always be grateful to Harry. To the people who helped me come back to myself. I think I might even be grateful to that boy, for teaching me lessons that were crucial in the years that came after. They are lessons that I wish I could have passed along to certain friends of mine, but unfortunately, some things only stick when you experience them first hand.

That diary is gone now. I'm using this one, instead.

Comments

[alt_hermione]

It was rather horrible and ridiculous, the things your mother told you about muggleborns. But at least it was just stories, not like how Nott wanted to see if my blood was actually brown like mud. And once you realised all those things were lies, you weren't ever mean or cruel. Not like some people!

[alt_hydra]

I know, and you've not even heard all of them.

Teddy's curiosity was sort of understable, since he was probably taught the same things. But even after seeing that it wasn't brown he didn't change his way of thinking. Except to evolve into a more disgusting person.

Good thing he's dead.

[alt_draco]

Guilty as charged.

Slow learner, here.

[alt_hermione]

You got better, too. It just took you a little longer.

[alt_hermione]

But then, you're also a boy.

[alt_draco]

I'm pretty sure the word you meant to use is "man."

[alt_hermione]

Possibly. Maybe the word I meant to use was pillock.

[alt_draco]

That also sometimes applies.

Private message to Draco

[alt_hydra]

Why do you both tease each other?

Not that Justin and I never do but, you don't usually like being called a pillock.

Is it a trust thing, of sorts, where you're proving you can both say anything to each other?

Re: Private message to Draco

[alt_draco]

There's nothing to prove there.

Every once and a while I say something deliberately arrogant to her, and she gets to deliberately put me in my place.

It plays out differently when I say something accidentally arrogant - but that still happens, too.

Anyway, it's just for a laugh, and only once and a while. Would get old if I did it too much.

Re: Private message to Draco

[alt_hydra]

Oh yes, I've seen you be accidentally arrogant.

Private Message to Draco

[alt_hermione]

Good luck tonight.

Come home, okay? In one piece if possible.

I don't have brewing to do overnight, but I thought I'd sit up and read.

Re: Private Message to Draco

[alt_draco]

I will.

Love you, journeywoman.

Re: Private Message to Draco

[alt_hermione]

Me, too, Auror-'man.'

[alt_sally_anne]

I wish I'd talked to you more, that year.

I could tell you were nothing like your mother, but I was still afraid that if I got close to you, that might put me in danger from your mother.

Also, being a half-blood in Slytherin was just complicated. (At least, being a fostered half-blood was complicated. Things might have been different for Milli.)

Order Only

[alt_sally_anne]

I'm STILL terrified of your mother, mind you. But I'm also pretty certain these days -- well I mean, she'd kill me, but she'd kill loads of other people first, if they were in the room.

Re: Order Only

[alt_hydra]

I think it's easy to feel that she's not as dangerous now, because there's no one here who's going to call her in and have her interrogate someone.

But she's still out there. And we have no idea what she's doing.

Which in some ways is worse, maybe?

[alt_crouch_jr]

Basilisk.

One A. Two Is.

[alt_hydra]

Thank you.

I fixed it.