Hogwarts Reimagined

Content warning - spider

Both Rhiannon and Ron were given Calming Draughts so that Hermione could be tucked into bed, but even trapped behind the disturbing forced calm of the potion Rhiannon refused to leave her friend’s side for more than a moment. She curled up in bed beside the bigger girl, dry-eyed and staring miserably as an effect of the draught while Ron dozed fitfully in the next bed over. Eventually Madam Pomfrey dosed her with a sleeping potion after finding her still awake in the very early hours of the morning. ‘Luckily’, if anything about that situation could be called lucky, it had been a Saturday and they didn’t have to struggle off to class the next day. Quidditch was canceled in the wake of the attacks, even Wood didn’t protest it, but Rhiannon was too shellshocked to care either way and had to be coaxed into even remembering to eat. Even as she began to recover herself enough to get up and move about, she still slept in a bed that she pulled over right beside Hermione’s.

The school atmosphere had been strained when Rhiannon returned after the attack on Justin and Nearly-Headless Nick at New Years’. If it had been strained then, it was stretched almost to breaking now. Several fights broke out, even Dudley was sent to the Hospital Wing with a broken nose after he got into an argument about ‘endangering the real magic students by being here’. Rhiannon’s grades slipped but she couldn’t muster the energy to care, as rumours filled the corridors of Hogwarts potentially being forced to close.

Finally, after a week and a half, Madam Pomfrey ordered her back to the Gryffindor common room at nights. Rhiannon protested, vocally, but Madam Pomfrey had had enough. “I am working on a potion for your friend, right now, but you are making yourself sick in here. You need to go back to your other friends – when did you last shower, or go outside, or even talk to someone other than her? You can visit in free time – and I’ll know if you cut class to do it – but you need to leave. It won’t do Hermione any good to wake and find you fretted yourself half to death while she was here.” the nurse insisted as she shepherded Rhiannon upstairs in person. Rhiannon had been prescribed nightly sleeping potions while she stayed with Hermione, and these were to be delivered to her common room instead. There was no room to protest, only comply.

Even on her return to the dormitory, Rhiannon struggled to muster the will to do anything. She just wanted to be back with Hermione. Her other friends, however, were just as stubborn as Madam Pomfrey, and refused to let her waste away in bed. Outside of class they were restricted to their common rooms and herded about by teachers when they weren’t there, and surrounded by her very attentive friends, Rhiannon slowly started to recover some kind of will to do things again.

Everyone went easy on Rhiannon on her return to the dormitory. She slacked off her homework, too foggy and lost to give it the proper attention, though Dudley and Luna tried their best to keep her at least handing in work. Something else niggled in the back of her mind that took up her attention – Ginny’s diary. For something she’d seen Ginny drawing in herself, and according to her friends had done the same throughout the year – it wasn’t right that it should be empty. She didn’t want to give it back until she knew more, and in her free time she flipped absentmindedly through the book for the little information she could find.

A faded year written on the inside cover told her it was roughly fifty years old. Beneath that, the name ‘T. M. Riddle’ was printed neatly, though the ink was faded and a little smudged. But aside from that – nothing, and what there was wasn’t useful. Ron scowled when she asked him about it, and tried to get her to put the diary aside, but Rhiannon was just as stubborn as he was when she set her mind to it and eventually Ron gave up and let her keep it. “Let it give you a headache, then!” he grumbled one evening – the 14^th of March, half a week before the full moon; as he stomped upstairs and left Rhiannon to stewing over the diary in the Gryffindor common room.

Ginny had written in it all year, but nothing. A fifty year old diary, and there was no writing? It didn’t seem right. Rhiannon scowled at the thing and pulled her wand out of her cane, turning the problem over in her head as she did so. “Aparecium,” she muttered, and rapped the diary sharply with her wand. It had no effect – Rhiannon didn’t even smell the faint burning the spell usually produced, it was as if the diary had eaten it. Hungry death... Rhiannon shook her head, wincing as the movement exacerbated her headache, and rubbed at her eyes as her vision prickled around the edges. She leaned over the table she had been working at and grabbed the fountain pen she usually used in place of a quill – several teachers were still very pedantic about her not using a ball-point pen to complete her work so she’d bought one by mail order from Hogsmeade to more closely mimic the style of writing they wanted. She held the pen over the diary, thinking of what to write, but she thought too long and as was the way of fountain pens when held upright, it dripped a large blot of ink.

Rhiannon swore, and fumbled for the flannel she used to blot off such errors before they ruined too many pages, but – there was nothing there. She bit her lip, ideas immediately piling up in her head – no wonder it smelled hungry. She dragged it closer and drew a small scribble with her pen and again, it vanished. “Who charmed this?” she wondered, mindlessly writing the same question into the diary as she did so.

Before Rhiannon’s strained eyes, words appeared on the page before her as if someone wrote in an invisible hand. They were lettered in the very same ink she had used herself, her favourite forest green. “I did, myself, so that nobody might steal what I wrote. My name is Tom Riddle – who are you, and how did you come by my diary?”

These words too faded, though they remained imprinted on Rhiannon’s fractured vision as she stared down at the diary. Tom Riddle, the owner of the diary, was speaking to her? That was complex spellwork indeed, and she put aside her instincts and her knowledge that she shouldn’t talk to things if she couldn’t see where they kept their brain; partly out of sheer curiosity but mostly because this was her best shot at figuring out what Ginny had been going through.

“I’m Rhiannon Potter. And somebody tried to flush it down a toilet.” she wrote back – it was only polite. She had to make it like her if it was to tell her anything.

The book paused for a good long moment after it took in her name. The words then came slowly to the open page, as if the unseen author hesitated in writing them. “Rhiannon... Potter. Any relation to Harry Potter?” it asked.

Rhiannon bit her lip and narrowed her eyes, drumming on the table lightly. The enchantment had to be either more recent or sentient, to know about Harry Potter. But there was no point lying about it – it was her story even if it bore a name she hated.

“Yes, in as much as he is a she and that she is me.” Rhiannon wrote back, accidentally making a hole in the page with her pen nib as she finished her sharp sentence.

The book paused again, longer this time, as again Rhiannon got the distinct impression that whoever wrote to her was surprised and considering their next move.

“Indeed? Well, in any case... it is lucky that I recorded my memories in a more lasting way than ink. But I always knew that there would be those who would not want this record read.”

That was even more ominous, and Rhiannon didn’t like it. She didn’t like the idea that Ginny had been on her own with this thing either – maybe tone didn’t convey well through written text but it still felt manipulative and intentionally so.

“Why?” Rhiannon asked the book shortly – she had little patience for being manipulated. It almost sounded like Dumbledore – almost, though not entirely – and that set her teeth to grinding.

“Because this diary holds secrets, memories of things that Hogwarts likes to pretend never happened. Things that are happening again.”

Now, despite herself, Rhiannon was genuinely intrigued. Fifty years... that lined up with what her friends had heard from Malfoy about when the Chamber was last opened. What else would Hogwarts have pretended never happened? Until this year she had never heard of the Chamber of Secrets, but according to the rumours a girl had died – she’d have thought they’d do more.

“Do you mean the Chamber of Secrets?” she wrote back, flicking ink across the page in her haste.

“What else?” the diary wrote back. She snorted – it really was like Dumbledore in a book. At least this one gave answers sometimes. She was about to prompt it for more when it began to write again, a longer passage this time.

“I was a student here, you know, fifty years ago. I was here when it opened. They told us it was a myth when they told us anything at all. But it wasn’t. It was my fifth year that it was opened. Several students were attacked, and finally it killed a girl. I caught the one that opened the Chamber and he was expelled, but Headmaster Dippet, he was ashamed it happened at all and forbade me to tell the truth. The story went that she died in a freak accident, I was given a shiny tropy for ‘services to the school... do they even remember it?”

Rhiannon smiled wryly down at the diary, her headache forgotten now. Dippet, Dumbledore – the story sounded familiar. “They remember it – as rumours, at least, nothing solid. But it’s happening again. There’s been three people, a ghost and a cat so far.” she replied, her handwriting growing messier in her haste.

“Of course it is – because the one who opened it was only expelled, never imprisoned. Would you like me to show you?”

“How?” Rhiannon asked it, truly engaged now – could she catch whoever it was? No – no, she reminded herself, this diary wasn’t to be trusted... but that didn’t mean what it had to say was worthless, just that she needed to be careful.

For a moment, the diary had no response. Then, instead of forming words, the pages fluttered and then began to blow, as if caught in a wind, until they stopped on the page marked June 13

^th. Instead of a blank page as Rhiannon had seen prior, here there was a tiny picture framed like a window. Rhiannon scowled at it and held it up to see closer, ignoring the stabbing in her head and eyes, and before she knew what was happening she was being sucked in through that window. She was pitched into a sickening whirl of colour, shadow and sparks; the air smelled like ash and unfamiliar herbs – the sensation was not unlike that of a Portkey.

Unlike with a Portkey, Rhiannon was deposited gently on her feet, still clutching the diary. She shook herself and rubbed at her eyes with her free hand, peering around at the greyed surroundings through the sparks and blackness that had plagued her for weeks at a time now. A pit formed in her stomach – she recognised this office, and she had to clutch at the wall and force herself not to run. The sleeping portraits on the wall were familiar though one was missing, she even imagined she could smell the incense that usually perfumed the space in her time though here in this memory there was no scent but that of the magic itself. She turned, memories tangling together behind her eyes of the first and only time she had ever been in Dumbledore’s office – but the wizard behind the desk she now faced was not Dumbledore.

He was short, wizened and bald save for a few wisps of hair, though he had an impressively long and tangled beard, and he read a long letter by the light of a candle that stood on the desk between them.

“I – I’m s-s-s-sssss-sorry, I didn’t mean to-” Rhiannon stammered, then trailed off as the old wizard remained completely unresponsive. She peered closer and winced as she jogged her headache, but ignored it. “Hello? Anything?” she asked him. Nothing – it was as if she didn’t exist. Of course – it’s a memory, she reminded herself. “I just have to look around... there’s something it wants me to see here.”

There was a light knock on the office door, the old wizard looked up from his reading. “Enter,” he said in a frail voice – it seemed too thin in the great high-ceilinged space when she was used to Dumbledore’s trained oratory speech.

A boy of about sixteen entered, taking off his pointed hat as he did so. He was tall even for that age, pale-skinned and wiry in build with sleek jet-black hair that just touched his ears and jaw. Pinned to his robe over his chest was a silver Prefect’s badge, though Rhiannon couldn’t tell the House colour in the memory.

“Ah, Riddle – please, sit down,” the old wizard greeted the teenage boy, gesturing to a chair before his desk – in the very same place Rhiannon herself had once sat.

“You wanted to see me, Headmaster Dippet?” the boy – Tom Riddle – asked, his voice carefully controlled. It was higher in pitch than she might have expected, and he looked nervous – was this really the Tom Riddle who had grown up to speak to her through a diary? Who had he become?

“I’ve just been reading the letter you sent me,” the old wizard, Dippet, explained kindly. “Surely you want to go home for the holidays? You must understand, I can’t let you stay here over summer.”

Tom Riddle’s long-fingered hands shifted and tightened their grip on the arms of the chair he sat in. “No- sir, please, I’d much rather stay at school than go back to that-”

The headmaster held up his hand and the boy fell silent. “You stay at a Muggle orphanage during the holidays, am I correct?” he asked. Tom nodded, a resentful grimace twisting his features. “So you are Muggleborn?” Dippet continued.

This time, Tom shook his head emphatically. “No, sir – half-blood. I’m a proper wizard – witch mother, Muggle father.” he corrected the old man sharply. Rhiannon scowled at the memory-Tom, he acted like there was something wrong with nonmagical heritage.

Headmaster Dippet shook his bald head and steepled his fingers on the desk. “The thing is, Tom... in ordinary times, we might have made an exception, but in the current circumstances...”

“You mean the attacks, sir?” Tom supplied, and Rhiannon drifted closer to listen, fearful of missing anything but very conscious now that this was indeed Tom’s memory and given her impression of him in his diary, she would need to treat it with caution and not take the information given at face value.

Headmaster Dippet nodded solemnly. “Exactly. My dear boy, you must see how foolish it would be for me to allow you to remain, given the situation. It was bad enough, and now that poor girl... No, you will be far safer at the orphanage. As a matter of fact, the Ministry is now talking of closing the school; and we are no closer to locating the – source – of this unpleasantness.” he replied, his tone grave.

Riddle’s eyes widened, and his grip on the chair arms went white-knuckled, as Rhiannon looked closer she could see that he trembled. “Close the school?” he asked, again in that carefully controlled voice though he couldn’t quite keep his fear from it. “But – surely if the one responsible was found, if it all stopped-”

The headmaster’s kind expression turned very serious. “Tom, if you know anything – anything – about this,” he warned the boy, who shook his head hastily.

“No sir,” Riddle replied quickly. But somehow, Rhiannon didn’t believe him. She wasn’t as good at reading peoples’ tones as Neville was, or at reading their bodies as Luna – but she wasn’t stupid, either. Tom Riddle was up to something.

“Very well then... you may go – and right back to your common room, mind, it’s not safe to be wandering,” Dippet dismissed Riddle, looking faintly disappointed. The black-haired boy nodded stiffly and rose from the chair. Rhiannon followed him like a ghost as he hurried from the room, but to her disappointment it seemed he was doing as Dippet had asked. He must have been a Slytherin, she recognised the part of the dungeons they stood in as being near that common room, but instead of entering it Riddle strode past the common room entrance and down a side corridor, tilting his head and clearly listening for something.

It was Riddle’s memory, Rhiannon could hear only what he had and so her heightened senses were of no use here. She hadn’t realised quite how much she had come to rely on her new perception of the world to navigate until she was forced back into normal boundaries.

Rhiannon followed Riddle in silence, grinding her teeth in frustration as they passed down another hallway and then stopped in the shadow of a wall, Riddle watching the archway of another passage that branched off ahead of them. Rhiannon peered at Riddle suspiciously, the older boy was clearly waiting for something but she hadn’t the patience he did. It felt as if they waited an hour in the hallway, though rationally Rhiannon knew it must have been about fifteen to twenty minutes. Eventually, someone’s shuffling footsteps drew near down the adjacent passage.

That someone turned out to be a boy taller even than Riddle, broad-shouldered and bushy-haired. He passed without seeing Tom, who slipped out of his place in the wall’s shadow as the heavyset boy passed and followed him silently with Rhiannon drifting along with him outside time. They stopped again as the heavyset boy entered a room, while Riddle slipped to the side to avoid being seen. Rhiannon, however, had no such problem, and she drifted closer, sensing this was important.

The boy retrieved a shuttered lantern from on top of a crate, and lit it with a muttered spell. He turned his attention to a cobwebby wardrobe, and Rhiannon took a moment to look around. The room seemed to be an old store-room of some kind, with crates stacked against the walls containing all kinds of meaningless clutter. Riddle’s attention was on the heavyset boy and so by extension was Rhiannon’s, as he fiddled with the catch of the wardrobe and opened it carefully.

“C’mon now... gotta get yeh out, you’ve got t’ get in the crate now, before ye’re too big for it... come on, in the box, please?”

There was something very familiar about that voice, even fifty years younger, and Rhiannon stared at the broad-shouldered boy now, trying to place it. He knelt before the wardrobe, trying to coax something out of its’ shadows and into a crate lined with a sheet that he had evidently prepared sometime earlier.

Shoes scuffed on the stone, and Rhiannon turned as Riddle entered the room behind them and leaned across the doorway. “Evening, Rubeus,” he said in a mock-conversational manner. Rhiannon stared at him, mouth agape, then again at the bushy-haired boy.

Rubeus. Rubeus Hagrid – no wonder she had recognised the voice. And the book wanted her to think he had had something to do with the Chamber, fifty years ago?

Rubeus Hagrid, in his younger self, whirled to face Riddle, blocking whatever was in the cupboard with his body. “What’re yeh doin’ here, Tom?” he asked, his voice quivering. He could only have been fifteen or so.

“It’s over, Rubeus,” Tom continued, still in that falsely friendly manner. “I’m going to have to turn you in. They’re talking about closing Hogwarts if the attacks don’t stop.”

“What- what d’ye-” the young Hagrid stammered, his usually red-cheeked face going grey in the light of the lantern he held up between them.

“I’m sure you didn’t mean to kill anyone,” Tom consoled Hagrid. “But monsters don’t make good pets, Rube. You must’ve just – let it out for a bit of exercise, and-”

“He never killed no-one!” Hagrid snapped, some of the colour coming back to his face now as his temper rose. Behind him, Rhiannon could hear a whispery rustling, clicking sound, one that was also familiar to her – Acromantula. She peered at the darkness inside the wardrobe, but she was limited by Riddle’s memories – she was fairly sure she knew what was inside, but Tom couldn’t see in the dark and so now neither could she.

“Come on, Rubeus,” Riddle replied sharply, the drawling patience draining from his tone. “Her parents are going to be here tomorrow, the least we can all do is make sure the thing that killed their daughter is slaughtered.”

“It wasn’t him!” Hagrid bellowed. “He wouldn’, he’d never!”

“Stand aside.” Riddle told him coldly, and Rhiannon shivered. Whatever was in the Chamber of Secrets, if indeed it was a monster – it wasn’t an Acromantula. She would have recognised the sound. Tom Riddle, despite being only sixteen, was almost frightening now – and she knew now she was right not to trust him. There had to be some reason he wanted her to believe it was Hagrid, and the only one she could think of was that maybe – he knew who the real culprit was. Maybe it was even Riddle himself – if Hagrid was still alive, there was no reason Riddle couldn’t be as well.

As she was thinking, Rhiannon missed the flurry of movement as Tom Riddle drew his wand, and she blinked away painful sparks in her vision as a brilliant spell-flare lit up the room around them. Rhiannon felt ghostly heat on her face, smelled the beginnings of smoke as the crates and wardrobe began to burn. Hagrid shrieked in fury and lunged at Riddle, but he was knocked aside as something erupted out of the wardrobe behind him.

An Acromantula, just as Rhiannon had guessed, though much smaller than the one she had met in September. Probably only young. Still it was the size of a stocky dog with a low-slung body and overlong hairy limbs. Rhiannon backed away, though she knew it couldn’t hurt her – the fear was instinctive, just as it had been in the forest. The great spider-like creature bowled past Hagrid and Riddle, Riddle turned to run, but Hagrid had staggered to his feet and threw himself on the Prefect, howling in anger. “NOOOO, Don’t you DARE!”

Rhiannon lurched forward, angry for Hagrid and desperate to see more, but she was thrown out of the memory in a flurry of colour and sound and left gasping again in her chair in the Gryffindor common room. She coughed and rubbed at her eyes underneath her spectacles as her headache surged again, so sharp it made her nauseous. Cautiously she opened her eyes, then groaned as before her there was nothing but sparks and shadow. “Not again,” she growled, rubbing more insistently at her eyes as if that might clear them.

Someone’s footsteps sounded off to her left, soft footfalls on carpet from above her – the stairs. “He-hey, who’s there?” she asked, hating the tremble in her voice – hating being so vulnerable. She so rarely needed her probing cane she had fallen out of the habit of carrying it, especially as she needed a hand free for her walking cane as it was. Now she was stuck, and she didn’t trust her memory of the shape of the common room to get to the girls’ stairs, let alone up them and into her dormitory.

“You’re still up?” a voice replied, and Rhiannon sagged in relief.

“Ron!” she replied, unable to keep that relief out of her voice. His footsteps quickened, she tilted her head as he drew nearer. “I – I was looking at the diary and, it showed me something – but now I can’t see, can you help me?”

Ron bristled with indignance, Rhiannon could almost feel it as he leaned on the table. He reached for the diary, she clutched at it and growled at him when he tried to take it. “No – it knows something,” she protested.

Ron snorted, relinquishing his hold on the diary. “And I said it’d give you a headache,” he grumbled, though there was no real heat in it – to Rhiannon it sounded as if he was covering his concern for her with irritation. “D’you even know what time it is? It’s almost eleven, we do have a class tomorrow you know,” he added.

Rhiannon groaned and leaned her head on her arms. “Nooooooooo,” she whined, realising now that she really was tired – it had only been something like seven or eight o’clock when Ron had left to go to bed, had she really been here another three hours? She stretched, and whimpered as something in her back clicked. That would be a yes.

Ron patted her shoulder gently, then tousled her hair. “C’mon then, let’s get you up to bed,” he said, helping her out of the chair as he did so. Rhiannon stowed the headache-producing diary in her robes and fumbled for her cane, knocking it to the floor it to the floor. Ron snickered softly and bent to retrieve it, then pressed it into her hands and patiently helped her to gather the rest of her things. He slung an arm around Rhiannon’s torso under her arms so she could lean on him, and helped her over to the stairs. “You gonna be alright on these?” he asked.

Rhiannon tried the first one and promptly caught her toe on the lip of the stair, Ron lurched forward to catch her as she pitched forward. She shook her head, embarrassed. “I’m go-go-gog-gonna go with no,” she stuttered.

Ron sighed, and readjusted his grip so he held her more firmly, and leaned on the rail to support her up the stairs. His steps seemed a little hesitant but Rhiannon wasn’t sure why, she was too tired to ask him as they came up to the landing. “Whoa, it’s just like a mirror of ours up here,” Ron murmured, and Rhiannon felt his scruffy overlong hair brush against her cheek as evidently he turned his head in search of the second-year dormitory. On finding it, the two of them set off towards it and Ron helped Rhiannon inside.

“Ron?” Parvati asked, her voice muzzy with sleep. “What’re you doing up here?”

Rhi answered for him as Ron went stiff, she heard his breath catch in his throat. “Ha-a-a-a-had an episode, couldn’t get up the st-t-t-t-t-t-t-stairs,” she explained as he helped her over to her bed. She held the post nearest her and sank into the bed, disrupting her sleeping cat who hissed and jumped off the bed. By the sounds of things, she went to curl up with one of Rhiannon’s other roommates instead.

“Oh – okay, then,” Parvati said sleepily, still sounding a little bewildered. There was a rustle of sheets as she rolled back into bed.

Rhiannon lay flat on the bed too tired to move, and Ron leaned over and shook her shoulder gently. “I’m going to head to bed, and so are you. Come on, you’ll be miserable if you sleep in your clothes.” he whispered. Rhiannon rolled away grumbling, and Ron lifted her pyjamas out from under the pillow. He dropped them on her face, she growled at him – but was at least annoyed enough to sit up.

“Fine,” Rhiannon muttered. Ron squeezed her shoulder and whispered good night, then left her to change. She could hear his footsteps as he went back downstairs and was half-tempted to flop back on the bed and go to sleep there anyway, but he had been right – she would be miserable if she fell asleep clothed. Or, did it matter? Hermione’s empty bed felt like yawning gap next to hers. No – if she were here, Hermione would insist that Rhiannon get changed too. So begrudgingly she did, and settled herself in bed. “Night,” she murmured, to nobody in particular, stroking Callie’s ears as the cat returned from her sulk. Slowly, uncomfortably, she drifted off to sleep.