The Blank Pages
Ron turned the book over in his hands and once again looked at the small inscription on the cover.
"T. S. Riddle," he read aloud.
It was the only thing written in the entire diary.
The rest of its pages were completely blank.
"That name sounds familiar," Percy said.
Though he was having a hard time concentrating.
Mark had managed to prepare Hermione's potion in a single night, and practically her entire body had returned to normal.
Practically.
Two cat ears were still sticking out through her hair and, to make things worse, they seemed to move depending on her mood.
At that moment, the three of them were staring at them.
Hermione noticed and frowned, covering both ears with her hands in annoyance.
"Stop it!" she complained, making the three of them look away, though they couldn't really help it.
The only one who wasn't paying attention to Hermione's ears was Tyson, who was sleeping soundly in a corner of the hospital wing.
He had taken his job as a guardian a little too seriously, and the night before he'd even ignored curfew to guard the door without any of them realizing it.
They would definitely have to remind him that guardians needed sleep too.
"Ahem. Where could you have seen the name T. S. Riddle?" Harry asked with a more serious expression, taking no responsibility for the fact that he'd been paying the most attention to Hermione's ears. He was even very curious to know if they felt like real cat ears, but obviously he wasn't going to ask for the sake of his friend's pride.
"I know. In the trophy room. Last year, during one of my detentions for... well, I don't remember which one anymore, Filch made me clean trophies for hours, and there was one with the name T. S. Riddle. Well, I don't really remember what else it said because I didn't read much more, you know... dyslexia, but I remember a date written on it. I think it was 1942, some kind of award for doing something really special or something like that," Percy said as he racked his brain trying to remember.
Harry looked at his brother and raised an eyebrow, trying to understand his train of thought.
"An Award for Special Services to the School?" Hermione asked. "It's an award given to students who do something especially worthy for Hogwarts. A lot of the time it ends up going to prefects who truly stood out," she added, sounding suspiciously familiar with an award she probably hoped to win herself someday.
"Maybe he just won it for saving a professor from the giant squid, or maybe he murdered Myrtle and everyone considered that a great service," Ron said, obviously still annoyed about the ghost girl's earlier outburst at him.
But Harry and Hermione seemed to be thinking about something else, especially the date Percy had mentioned.
"What?" Percy asked, realizing that something seemed to have occurred to both Harry and Hermione as he looked from one to the other.
"Malfoy said it. The Chamber was opened fifty years ago. And this Riddle guy was also at Hogwarts fifty years ago," Harry said with a serious look.
"Just like this diary," Hermione added.
"Yeah, and?" Percy asked, unable to keep up with them.
"Percy, you need to think a little. We know the person who opened the Chamber fifty years ago was expelled. Riddle was given an Award for Special Services to the School fifty years ago too. What if Riddle got the award for catching the Heir of Slytherin?" Hermione quickly let out.
Ron looked at the diary again.
Percy seemed to finally understand where she was going with this.
"And if this is his diary, maybe everything is explained in there: where the Chamber is, how to open it, and how he caught the Heir. There has to be a reason the diary showed up again right now. The Heir probably found it and didn't want it lying around, so they tried to get rid of it down the toilet," she added as if she'd figured everything out, with a hint of excitement in her voice.
"That's a brilliant theory, Hermione, except for the tiny problem that there's nothing written in it," Ron said as he picked up the diary and opened it in front of them, once again showing its blank pages.
Hermione didn't answer. Instead, she let out a grunt as if it were something simple and incredibly stupid, while pulling out her wand and pointing it at the diary in Ron's hands.
"Aparecium," she murmured, casting a spell. But when nothing happened, she waved it again. "Revelio."
And once again, nothing.
She frowned, taking the diary from Ron's hands while reaching into her backpack beside the bed and pulling out an eraser.
Then she started rubbing it hard against the book.
"It's a Reveal Eraser. I bought it in Diagon Alley," she explained while the boys gave her confused looks at her attempts to uncover something.
But after rubbing it several times over one of the pages, nothing happened.
Visiting hours ended, and Madam Pomfrey kicked them out before they could keep trying to uncover the diary's secrets.
Before putting it away, Harry stared at it for a few seconds alongside the green key.
He felt like these strange objects just kept piling up, yet none of them gave him even the slightest clue about how to proceed.
It wasn't until he returned to his dormitory and left both objects on the bedside table that he noticed something he'd been ignoring for days.
The strange piece of parchment he'd taken from Filch's office.
It was still exactly where he'd left it.
The parchment should have shown that detention notice Filch had left half-finished for him.
But now something else was written on it.
"HARRY POTTER, WHAT ARE YOUR INTENTIONS?"
And it wouldn't have been strange to think that one of his roommates was playing a prank on him, if it weren't for the fact that those words seemed to fade in and out of sight, as if they were waiting for an answer.
And just like that, another strange object joined the collection Harry seemed to be accumulating lately.
Harry stared for a few seconds at the key, the diary, and finally the parchment.
Then he let out a long sigh.
Every day, he understood that castle a little less.