In Memoriam

Just after his twelfth birthday, Lucius Malfoy gave his son a present. This was hardly surprising: it was typical of Lucius to show his affection for the boy with gifts rather than words, and his twelfth birthday proper had included a brand-new Nimbus Two-Thousand-and-One, as well as the promise of more - to outfit the entire Slytherin Quidditch team - and private lessons for Draco in honing his skills, and training him how to be a Seeker.

But a few days after that initial excitement had toned down, the usual pallor tightened itself around Malfoy Manor. Draco would retreat to his room, and immerse himself in textbooks, Quidditch magazines, or novels for the pure pleasure of escapism. Every morning he would try out his new broomstick, and go hurtling around on Manor property, alone and desolate amongst the Yorkshire moors. He saw his Mother and Father for meals, at which they all sat ramrod straight and silent, wrapping their isolation around them like a cloak, eyes fixed upon the bowls and plates in front of them. No-one dared speak, or even make a noise; not even the house-elves who served delicacies with silver-plated ladles and the like.

On some days, Narcissa might request her son's presence in the parlour, and they would talk for hours, about Draco's schooling or the news or some gossip. But even they, close as they were, never quite lost their formality with each other, and the sadness at this shone in their eyes. Lucius refused himself the simple human weakness of emotion, and in his household, no-one else was to be tempted by it either, lest the hallmark self-control of the Malfoys finally break, and the emptiness of their lives rise up at them like a shroud.

Roughly one week after his birthday, with a month left of the holidays still to go until his second year at Hogwarts, Draco received a visit from his father. He was lying on his bed at the time, stomach down, in the robe he'd chucked on after showering - his early morning Quidditch practice left him sweaty, and if there was one thing Draco Malfoy could not abide, it was sweat. Lucius entered without knocking, as was his father and Draco soon sat up quickly, suppressing his surprise.

"I have a present for you, Draco," his father had said, extending a simply wrapped package to his son's slender fingers. Draco took it, and looked at it, his brown furrowed in thought. It was slender, rectangular in shape, tied with Slytherin green ribbon. After a nod from the adult, Draco eagerly ripped about the black crepe paper to reveal...a battered book, thin, with a shabby black cover. Draco opened it, running his fingers over the faded notepaper turning from page to page with growing frustration.

It was blank. The entire thing was blank. "What...what is it, Father?"

"A puzzle. A magical puzzle," Lucius said, grey eyes coldly gleaming. "Considering that your recent academic performance at Hogwarts was not what I expected, I thought your mind might need something to stimulate it into action."

Draco looked down at the bed sheets, the book loosely held within his hands. He suddenly felt very small. "Yes, Father."

Lucius leaned over and ruffled his son's hair indulgently. "I'm sure you'll be able to work it out, Draco, and you would make me very proud in doing so." He didn't point out how he would feel if Draco didn't solve the puzzle: some things didn't need to be said in the Malfoy household. Moving back to the door, he stiffened slightly at his son's next words.

"I'll try, I will."

"You either will or will not, Draco. Malfoys do not try," Lucius intoned softly, refusing to look back at him, and left the room. Deep in his heart he dreaded what he had just done, but if Draco were to have any chance in the future, then he would have to prove himself strong enough to overcome now. For if he could not defeat a memory, what hope did he have against the real thing?

Draco quickly found out the name inscribed inside the front cover, and the date, and went to the family library to peruse their copy of Hogwarts: A History. After all, he reasoned that he might not have to do any more work if learning about this 'T.M. Riddle' character was the key to the diary - he'd worked out it was a diary at least, but nothing further.

He found Hogwarts: A History with some difficulty - his father had so much respect for the tome that he was using it to prop up the writing desk in the library, the desk having one leg shorter than the others. Pulling apart its musty pages and turning to the index, he managed to locate the small tidbit of information on one 'Tom Marvolo Riddle': Prefect, later Head Boy. Top of all his classes. Awarded a Special Merit Award for services to the school. Draco closed the book in disgust, and shoved it back under the desk leg. Riddle sounded like a goody goody, like Perfect Potter or that Mudblood Granger. Although he was Slytherin, so perhaps he'd just sucked up enough to the teachers to get the awards, and then stabbed them in the back.

It was what Draco would do, after all.

Following his initial disappointment, Draco spent the next three days going over the diary with a fine tooth-comb. He tested it with numerous spells, designed to analyse the make: plain paper, binding, glue. He reversed invisibility charms upon it: no help. He even attempted to use a tempore fugit spell in order to make the book reveal everything that had been written upon it in the past. And still nothing.

All his wards agreed the diary was imbued with a very powerful but unknown magic, something tied to every scrap and fibre of its being - something so powerful he didn't dare touch it with something non-specific, lest it interact with the magic in the diary in ways he couldn't predict. Draco might have desperately wanted to please his father, but he'd also prefer not to be dead.

Finally, on the third day, he fell asleep at his desk, head resting in the blank pages, his pale blond hair slightly mussed. Waking groggily the next morning, and somewhat unaware of his surroundings, Draco accidentally knocked over the glass of Restorative Potion the house elves had left for him, and jumped from his seat, suddenly alert now that he saw the pages of his father's present being soaked in thick lime green liquid. He raced around his room, desperately looking for something he could use as a towel, but when he returned, what he saw made him stop dead in his tracks.

The diary was clean, and dry. Surrounding it, the Potion bubbled nastily on the mahogany surface of his desk, but the diary itself seemed to have soaked up whatever had fallen upon it. He plucked the object from the ooze and wiped it off with a rag, and took it back to his bed for further analysis. He settled back on the covers, tucking his legs under himself, and going through the pages. The diary itself was still a mess: shabby, frayed and looking every one of its fifty years. Obvious then, the Restorative qualities of the potion hadn't interacted with the magic of the diary...or had the magic of the Potion been deflected? That was an interesting possibility: the diary warded against other magic. But why would anyone want to protect something that held nothing? Except...the Potion had sunk into the book, physically, even if the magic of the Potion had been nullified.

His natural curiosity aroused, he went back to his desk, ignoring the remnants of the Potion - he could always blame the mishap on clumsy house elves, and he couldn't be bothered cleaning up, not now, not when there was something to prove, not when he could prove something - and picked up his quill, dipping it in the black ink pot. Cupping his hand under the quill to catch any drops, he went back to the bed and began to write on the pages of the diary.

Is this how this thing is supposed to work?, Draco wrote, and watched the ink sink into the musty paper.

Letters appeared out of nothing. //Yes//, they spelt, and Draco could almost hear the amused condescension in the words. //No-one's talked to me in quite a while. You must be very intelligent.//

Of course I am, Draco wrote back frenetically, I am Draco Malfoy, after all. And he ran over to the desk to grab the ink well, and quickly padded back to the bed, careful not to spill it.

//Malfoy? I do believe I went to school with your Grandfather, Vortigern.//

Draco blinked, surprised. Lucius never talked much about his father, for one thing. And there was the small matter of...But aren't you just a diary?

//No. I placed a copy of my...soul if you will, within these pages, so the diary is Tom Riddle and I am the diary.//

Wow. Can you teach me how to do it?

//Perhaps. If you're as intelligent as you claim to be. Why don't you tell me about yourself, Draco; I'd be fascinated to see how the world has changed in fifty years. You are at Hogwarts?//

Oh yes, Draco scratched in elegant letters, I'm in Slytherin.

//Good boy.//

And so they talked: initially about classes, and learning, and history, something they both enjoyed, and then Quidditch and moves that had been developed since Tom's time, and the advances in broomstick technology, and the minutes turned to hours, the hours turned to days, and Draco only left his room to eat meals, quietly, with his parents.

He even had the house elves bring him snacks outside of meal times: he felt oddly hungry, as if stretched thin. Finally, after a few days, they got down to specifics, and Tom asked Draco about Hogwarts.

It was like opening a floodgate. Draco had always concealed the majority of his emotions, forced them down inside because a Malfoy was not supposed to have emotions, leaving him with a bitter unsatisfied rage that curled and twisted and burned inside. Now finally, it found some measure of release. Halfway through a diatribe about perfect Potter, who could do no wrong, what with half the teachers loving him, him and his broomstick and his messy hair and his stupid green eyes, and his scar, and his title just because his stupid Mudblood mother died, words tried to bubble up on the paper, and direct the questioning to a point Tom liked better (//Where did he get the scar, Draco? What about his mother?//) though Riddle soon realised that Draco's wrath was not to be abated, or shunted into a more convenient pathway. Finally, the diary asked //What gets you so mad about Potter, Draco?//

To which Draco replied in ink, ink red like blood (he'd run out of the black ink the previous day), He's got everyone thinking he's their Hero. And if anyone should be a Hero, it should be me. Now...now they'd never look at me.

//You want to steal his fame, Draco?// Tom asked, the words almost appearing gently on the page.

No. Draco's mouth was set in a firm line, his grey eyes enraged. That wouldn't teach him anything. I want to show him who's really got the power. I want him to look at me the way everyone looks at him. The quill almost biting into the paper. I want to own him, and I want him to need it.

The diary was silent for a few moments, and then finally, it spoke.

//You've given me a lot to think about, Draco. Why don't you get some sleep?//

A sudden wave of tiredness hit the young boy like a ton of bricks. He hadn't slept much, always talking to the diary, to Tom, and his constant hunger gnawed at him as well. He felt weak, like he was about to slip away on the wind, and crumble into a thousand different pieces.

Tucking the diary under his pillow, Draco slipped between his covers, and closed his eyes. He fell asleep almost immediately.

He could tell this was a dream, the tones were all wrong. Black and white and sepia, like some kind of old fashioned sideshow exhibit. Even the air around him seemed hazy. He was sitting up in his bed, back resting against the pillows, hands lightly resting on the tangled bed sheets. Around his bed, there were only shadows, as if darkness was something solid one could touch, or lose oneself in. The empty blackness scared Draco somewhat: for some reason he thought it was hungry.

And then something moved. He jumped a bit, startled, and attempted to follow it with his eye. No success. It was like an afterimage, or a negative, and you could only glimpse when you weren't looking at it, either. He couldn't make out any detail, just an impression...swirling grey against the black. It moved again, and Draco jumped again, his breathing picking up. Curling his knees up and into himself, he had to admit he was rapidly becoming frightened by this dream, and by the thing that stalked him in it. He may have been nearing manhood, but he was too afraid to speak, certain that his newly tenor voice would crack into boyish soprano, and make him sound weak, and timid.

The only problem was he didn't know any longer if he wasn't.

A voice spoke from out of the shadows, a cool whisper, and Draco could almost see a distinct form emerging from the grey. "You're mine," someone said softly, and Draco imagined footsteps, something pacing around his bed.

"You were made to be mine," the voice said again, calm, male and soft: it made Draco think of silk. Draco shivered, and wrapped the sheets up around him tighter. Finally, the form coalesced out of the shadows, and Draco saw an older boy, perhaps around 16, step towards his bed, his face half-visible in the murky light. Charcoal grey trousers, and a jacket to match, high pale cheekbones, green eyes and slightly wavy black hair, perfectly coiffed. It was, Draco thought, as if someone had put a physical description of Potter together with his own exacting presence: his smooth arrogance and Potter's colouring, melded into one.

He absently noticed the Hogwarts crest on the jacket, but was too busy being transfixed by those green eyes to notice. They held power, and secrets, and control, and Draco wished he could look like that ever so much. The older boy looked down at him, a smirk on his face, and spoke in a voice like smoke.

"Hello, little boy."

Draco woke up.

He ran as fast as he could, wrapping his robe around him, and barged into his father's study, the story spilling from his lips.

He didn't notice the look on his father's face, somewhat sad and yet relaxed, nor did he pay much attention to his father's slender fingers grasping the pale beech wand on his desk, and well, after his father cast the memory charm on him, Draco wasn't particularly aware of anything.

In a quiet voice, Lucius told his son to go down to the kitchen and have some breakfast, remembering nothing of the past week. Once Draco had left, he himself moved quickly, removing the diary from under Draco's pillow, after a quick search of the room revealed its whereabouts.

His plan hadn't exactly succeeded the way he'd intended to, and his son was still vulnerable to a future he'd prefer to forget existed. And there was still the diary to dispose of.

Last year, Lucius heard of the Dark Lord's resurrection, and his Dark Mark had burned ferociously one night, simmering to a constant itch before it flared up one day before term ended. Of course, he had heard the stories Draco had brought home, and dismissed them...But if they were true...then he would need something rather...obvious in order to prove his loyalty and ensure he wasn't killed.

Lucius hefted the thin book in his right hand. Oh yes, he had plans for this.