fishmaiden

To find a room of forgotten things again is not a challenge Harry expected: the same tether that seals his lips tugs him and bothers him when he is half asleep, until he dons his invisibility cloak and slips away from Gryffindor tower close to midnight. It leads him all the way to the seventh floor, it insists that he pace three times before an empty wall, until a familiar door blooms into existence.

Silence is liminal. 

Diadem waits for him, regal and impatient, where he left it.

“Ah,” he whispers in Harry’s head, “you came. Good.”

Harry does an intake of air, and suddenly his feet are cold from a way he made barefoot, and he is tired, and his memory of how he got here is incomplete.

Anger comes next. It is a quiet, instinctive sort, a little viper in the grass. Familiar companion, reserved for his Uncle, for Snape, for Lockhart, even. For any man who is bigger and stronger, who punishes and controls - for now, this anger always whispers. For now.

“What did you do to me?” Harry asks darkly.

“Ensured that you will come to me again, brother. My diary is wreaking havoc, isn’t he?”

“So it’s him.”

“Of course. You have figured that out already, haven’t you? Handwriting. Clever.”

“Is yours the same?”

“It is.” Harry feels a smile behind that voice, and he doesn't like it one bit.

“What are you? What is he?” he tries.

“What he said: old memories, stuffed away out of sight, out of mind.”

It does not explain anything. Except it bears the question: if one memory was so strong that it made Hogwarts such a cold and dangerous place, what can another, older, stronger one do? How long was it there, sitting innocently right in the heart of his home?