Unwelcome Epiphany
It is a relief so profound you cannot even put it in words to see anything at all... in those first moments had you beheld even the crooked-nosed face of Albus
bloody Dumbledore you might have been left speechless in wonder. Instead you were regaled to a mildly amusing confrontation, helped along a touch by your own surging emotions...
poor little orphan Riddle, with his threadbare robes and his second hand books, a lost raven in the snake den had been the least insulting they'd called you. Perhaps the younger Malfoy would some day understand just how lightly he came off . Yes... educating him would be entertaining.
Such pleasant thoughts fly from your mind as you notice the decorations in the great fall, pumpkins carved in frightful visages holding up candles still pale against the morning radiance of the enchanted celling... had your host even slept last night, your sense of time had grown unreliable in the confines of the endless gray. Not that you precisely disapprove of her willingness to sacrifice her nights on the altar of power, but you recall such behaviors would be counted as exceptional... How much can you afford for the girl to stand out? How much can be reasonably attributed to the strangeness of her Sorting? Her eyes and thus yours linger overlong on the Gryffindor table. Her family are obvious by the fiery hair. with a bit of luck you should be able to pick out the "Boy Who Lived" from Ginerva's saccharine descriptions....
Your mid grinds to a halt as you realize how few students are seated at the table. You had assumed the small numbers of Slytherins marked some sort of judicial purge or mob vengeance against traditionally blood-purist families at the end of the fighting, with many withdrawing temporarily from the school and making due with parental tutoring as a consequence. For there to be so few
Gryffindors... Salazar's staff, there must be only a quoter as many students in the castle as there had been in your time. Did your other self plan to rule a land of haunts and specters from atop a throne of corpses?
The thought once formed cannot be banished. The war can be the only explanation for this. Even Ginerva, as naive and unworldly as she is, would have mentioned a plague or some other disaster. Doubt gnaws at you with teeth of steel as it had not done since that day you walked into the Common Room for the first time and realized you could not rule by terror and magic alone as you had done at Wool's. Perhaps "You Know Who" had forgotten that lesson... a distant surge of nausea breaks your focus and you realize you are unwittingly influencing the girl. You push your awareness back fully into your paper prison least the depth of your raging emotions give you away.
You have not failed... you
will not fail. The cards of fate have been reshuffled and dealt again and this time you will win it all.
***
Good day Tom. By the time the greeting sink into the pages of the diary you are calm once again, master of your own mind. Your reply is as sure as it ever was. She's in the Defense class but Lockhart has not yet graced the students with his presence. Nothing of value to lose.
I'm feeling a little strange... lonely... like I don't fit in my own skin anymore. Probably a consequence of your earlier near-possession, not that you intend to tell her that.
Why is that? you ask.
Remember it's important to know yourself. Advice which has served to make the thoughts and feelings she offered up more coherent and concise at least.
Flora and Hestia were nice to me and we had fun, talked, but their mother's in Azkaban a Death Eater. I shouldn't be friends with them should I?
What do you reply?
[] Write in
OOC: The disadvantages of being intelligent and reasonably self-aware individual looking back on one's future life as a cackling madman.
