Empty Pages

Dear Diary.

Dear, dear Diary.

My dearest, darling Diary,

I can say the words. I can write them over and over. I can speak to you and tell you everything I feel and everything I think and you will never, never write back.

You stupid, useless pile of pages! You are empty.

I once had a diary, and next to it, you are nothing. The words that once comforted me are gone, and they will never return. And it's so incredibly twisted, I'm even turning to writing in you to try and figure it out. So here goes.

The reason I turned to a diary was this boy. This boy who was our world's savior, who was my brother's friend, and who would never, ever spare a glance at me. But then my diary--my Tom--answered back. He comforted me. He cared.

Then the same boy I was upset about killed my diary. Killed my Tom.

So now I'm just as twisted, just as confused, but never again will my diary give me comfort. Never again will my tears be absorbed into the paper, only to resurface as words. I love you, written over and over again, in ink, in tears, in blood.

But maybe even this is jumping too far. I ought to begin at the beginning. A diary has no eyes, Tom told me. A diary only knows what is written in it. A diary is only a thing...

I am a second year. Just a second year. I am twelve years old. Funny, isn't it, how something can age you? To everyone else, I'm a normal, silly little twelve-year-old with silly twelve-year-old problems. But nobody sees that I have aged fifty years by writing in a diary. Only Tom saw the real me. Or maybe Tom was the real me. Either way, I left something behind in the Chamber of Secrets a year ago. I awoke to find, rather than my precious Tom, Harry Potter standing over me, holding my diary. One look, then two, and finally my mind registers what my eyes see. A gaping hole, dripping basilisk venom, dripping ink and tears and blood.

And even that is not the true beginning. But how can I talk of the beginning? The beginning must have been when I found Tom, inside my transfiguration book. Or was the beginning when he first wrote back to me? Perhaps the beginning was when I arrived at Hogwarts, or when Harry Potter arrived at the Burrow. The beginning could have been when I first found the Chamber, the only place I felt truly safe writing to Tom. The beginning must have been before Mrs. Norris... though it could have been when I killed the chickens...

And so you see, even starting at the beginning is a complicated mess.

Or at least, you would see if you were anything more than an empty pile of pages, tied together with string and bound between two pieces of leather.

You would see if you were Tom. Tom, who saw without eyes, who understood me even when I made no sense, who was always there, in my pocket, ready to be called upon at any time.

Tom explained things to me, sometimes when I know he didn't really want to. He told me about the spell that had trapped him in this diary, a terrible curse cast by his future self, meant to imprison his own past. He told me about the last time the chamber was opened, the terrible tragedies that had come about the last time an heir had lost control. I assured him that, between the two of us, we would never let that happen again. For I needed the chamber--we needed the chamber--and the basilisk as well. It was the only way I knew to release Tom from the diary.

That was when we had the fight. He refused to put me and numerous others at risk, just to regain his body. But he was the most important thing to me, more important than my life. As wrong as it may have been, he was more important to me than the countless innocents who might accidentally come across the basilisk before we had finished, before we had used it.

When Tom refused to speak to me, I got angry. When angry CAPITOL LETTERS did nothing, crying was useless, and begging and pleading words were absorbed into the thick pages with no reply, I resorted to drastic measures. I transfigured my quill into a rose (magic I was only able to do after Tom's patient tutoring, I might add) and pricked my finger on a thorn. A knife--or anything sharp really--would have worked. But a rose was most romantic, and so a rose I used. Writing in my own blood, I begged him to come back, to answer me. In my blood, or perhaps his own, his answer wrenched my heart in two.

No.

That was when I threw the diary away. I threw him into Myrtle's toilet, tears pouring down my face. I never thought I'd be whole again, but I couldn't stand the book sitting in my pocket like a dead weight, empty and silent.

If it had been anybody besides Harry Potter who found Tom's diary, I don't know what could have happened. At the time, I thought it was the worst thing that could have happened. A week later, I had decided it was the best. And when I woke up in the Chamber with Harry Potter standing over me, holding the diary and covered in ink and blood, I realized that it was many, many times worse than I had originally thought.

It was stealing my diary back from Harry Potter's dormitory that finally convinced me I loved him. Not Potter--Tom. I was digging through the trunk of the Famous Harry Potter, the boy who I thought I loved, but I felt nothing but fear that Tom might never come back to me. I did everything I could to make sure he was safely in my hands again. And on that day, I swore that I would get him back his body. I must have finally proven myself to him, because on that day he gave in and began to explain to me the rituals and spells that were needed.

I worried for nearly a week about what would happen afterwards. I didn't want to worry about the ritual itself, so I focused on the "when," not the "if."

When Tom was alive again, was in a real body, would he still love me? Would he ignore that he was, in body, six years my senior? Would he resent that he was mentally and emotionally over fifty, while I was a mere eleven? Or would he realize that love knows no bounds, and that he truly is the only one I will ever love?

I should have known it was futile. I should have realized that it couldn't work. Magic cannot work miracles, and love is not ever enough. But I tried.

At times, I didn't know how to do what needed to be done. At those times, Tom helped me. For a few minutes at a time, I was able to free him from his diary and give him a body: my own. But that didn't change the fact that it was me doing the magic. I killed the chickens and cut my fingers and painted the words and opened the chamber. I scared the spiders and crept out at night and lost control and hurt people. Me, not Tom. Tom would never have done that.

And, after everything was done, I surrendered my body to Tom's control, one final time. He was to open the chamber and take us down. He was to add the final ingredient to the lengthy spell we had concocted; he was to kill the basilisk. I remember holding the diary to my chest and feeling his cool mind wash over mine. My control of my muscles ebbed away, and I felt myself fading into unconsciousness. It was all up to him from then on.

I awoke to footsteps. I sat up and saw the dead basilisk. Something had gone right. I saw a blood-soaked boy with dark, dark hair. Something had gone right... maybe. I kept looking around, and saw the diary, dripping venom, dripping ink and tears and blood. Nothing had gone right. That boy was not Tom. That was Harry Potter, and he had killed my Tom. Nothing had gone right.

And so, dear diary, you see how warped my life story is. My love, a diary like yourself, killed by my foolish and childish crush, all in the name of nobility and saving me.

But not like yourself. I had a diary once, and I loved him.

You are just empty pages.