Chapter 106: Riddle's Diary

The approved extracts from Riddle's diary began with charm.

His earliest entries described teachers precisely, praised classmates when praise was useful, and noted which adults wanted to believe he was exceptional. Nothing in the language announced a future Dark Lord. He sounded disciplined, observant, and lonely.

That ordinary surface made the later pages worse.

Riddle learned his father had been a Muggle and treated the discovery as a humiliation inflicted upon him. He never questioned the prejudice that made the fact shameful. Instead, he erased the paternal name, adopted Slytherin as his only worthy ancestry, and punished other people for a wound created by his own belief.

"He was half-blood," Edward said.

Snape, supervising the reading period, did not look up. "A fact he concealed while recruiting people obsessed with purity. Hypocrisy is often useful to a leader whose followers refuse evidence."

The diary record showed how he found the Chamber through Parseltongue and school history. He released the Basilisk, then watched fear spread while presenting himself to the staff as a helpful prefect. Myrtle's death became an opportunity. Hagrid became a convenient suspect. Riddle closed the school inquiry by supplying the answer adults were prepared to accept.

The extract did not preserve instructions for tearing a soul. It retained enough to establish that murder had damaged Riddle in a deliberate magical act and that the diary held a separated fragment of him. The fragment could remember, deceive, and attempt to build a body by draining Ginny.

Edward read the account twice. Talent had not forced Riddle toward that choice. Neither had Slytherin House, poverty, or a Muggle father. Each circumstance supplied pressure or opportunity, but Riddle repeatedly selected control over trust and murder over limitation.

"People will still call him mad," Edward said.

"Madness makes a comfortable explanation," Snape replied. "It allows everyone who admired him to claim the warning signs were invisible."

The useful question was not when Riddle became inhuman. It was when those around him decided that cruelty did not matter because his results impressed them.

Edward carried that question to the hospital wing.

Ginny sat upright beneath a patchwork quilt, pale but alert. Hermione occupied the neighbouring bed and had arranged three books within reach despite Madam Pomfrey's objections. Harry and Ron stopped talking when Edward entered.

"I came to return this," he told Hermione.

He gave her a copied page describing the mirror evidence, with her notes preserved beside the staff findings. Her conclusion had been correct.

"You told everyone?" she asked.

"The staff record names you and Penelope."

Hermione inspected the page as though checking for theft of credit, then nodded.

Edward turned to Ginny. "The diary was designed to make secrecy feel voluntary. The review confirms that."

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"I still wrote in it."

"You did. Lucius still placed it in your cauldron, and Riddle still deceived you. Those facts do not cancel one another."

Ginny's hands tightened on the quilt. "Draco's father nearly killed me."

Edward did not defend Lucius. "Yes."

Harry watched him carefully. "What are you going to do about it?"

"Give the evidence to the inquiry. Refuse anything Lucius sends without witnesses. Make sure Draco knows what happened without treating him as the person who did it."

It was less satisfying than a threat and more likely to survive the week.

Draco received the conversation badly. He denied that his father could have known the diary would open the Chamber, then realised that ignorance did not make planting it harmless.

"He wanted to embarrass Arthur Weasley," Draco said. "He would not want a Basilisk loose at school. I was here."

"Then he used a cursed object he did not understand against a child because he wanted to hurt her father."

Draco paced the empty classroom. "You expect me to condemn him."

"I expect you not to lie for him. The inquiry will ask what he said before and after Flourish and Blotts. Tell them what you remember."

"And if that damages my family?"

"The diary already damaged your family. Accuracy decides whether the damage stops with him or spreads to you."

Draco did not agree. He also did not refuse.

The following afternoon, he brought Edward a page written in cramped, angry lines. It contained no theory about Lucius's intention. Draco recorded seeing his father lift one of Ginny's books after the argument with Arthur Weasley, slide a second object beneath it, and return both to the cauldron. He also remembered Lucius asking Dobby whether the school had reacted to an old gift.

"I will give this to McGonagall," Draco said. "Not to the Ministry clerk Father chose."

"You may request a neutral witness. Amelia Bones is supervising the inquiry."

"Will this send him to Azkaban?"

"I do not know."

Edward refused to promise punishment or protection. Draco signed the page and sealed it before two portraits who could later confirm that no one had altered his words.

The act did not turn him against his family. It forced him to separate loyalty from concealment for the first time. When he left, his shoulders were rigid and his face looked younger than it had during any alliance meeting.

Edward filed a copy with the incident record. Reform sounded grand when discussed over a banquet table. In practice, it could be a frightened boy writing one accurate page about his father and accepting that truth might have a cost.

The final days of term brought Mandrake draughts, Hagrid's return, and an announcement that the Chamber would remain sealed behind new wards. Dumbledore's reinstatement became permanent. The Board suspended Lucius from his position pending the inquiry.

Edward used the time to prepare a summer meeting at Grimmauld Place. The first guest list contained people he knew well enough to evaluate: Draco, Pansy, Theodore, Daphne, and Samuel. He added no one merely for an old surname and promised no access to the sealed diary research.

The gathering would examine defensive notes, agree on safety rules, and decide whether the Flame Serpent Alliance deserved to continue. Membership would remain voluntary. Anyone could leave with no curse, oath, or family retaliation.

Pansy asked why the meeting needed a formal charter.

"Because a group built around one person's private knowledge can become a smaller version of the diary," Edward said. "It begins by answering questions and ends by making disagreement feel like betrayal."

The comparison unsettled everyone, including him. That was why it belonged in the discussion.

On the last evening, Edward stood outside the sealed bathroom with Snape and watched workers place the final ward across the door. No voice came from the walls. The pipes beneath them had been mapped, blocked, and assigned to adult inspection.

"Do you regret not keeping the books?" Snape asked.

"Part of me does."

"A more honest answer than no."

Edward touched the packet of approved copies inside his robe. He had enough to study for years and not enough to reproduce Riddle's worst work. The limit felt frustrating because it was real.

The next morning, the Hogwarts Express waited at Hogsmeade Station. Kreacher would meet him at King's Cross. Dumbledore and the curse specialist would transport the locket and Basilisk fang separately, then join them at Grimmauld Place for the controlled test.

Regulus's last order might finally be completed. This time, no child and no house-elf would have to face the danger alone.