Mysterious Journey
Chapter 782 Top-Secret Diary and the Future
Deep within the castle, in the Room of Requirement, Draco Malfoy's dazed and empty eyes gradually regained their focus.
With Lockhart gone, a dense white mist had appeared around Draco, seemingly from nowhere. It was eerily silent, save for the increasingly nervous and rapid beating of his own heart.
Within the mist, a faint light, originating from an unknown source, illuminated an old square table about half a meter in front of him.
A small, thin diary with a tattered cover lay quietly on it.
[sCp-17-03: Tom Riddle's Diary]
Due to the information revealed during Peter Pettigrew's public trial some time ago, everyone now knew that the name "Tom Riddle" belonged to the Dark Lord himself, the mad dark wizard who had once terrorized the British wizarding world.
He was also the culprit who had nearly destroyed his parents' lives.
Draco Malfoy stared at the diary for a few seconds, frowned slightly, and shook his throbbing head.
The memories that had appeared out of nowhere in his mind were still washing over his thoughts, but thanks to Professor Lockhart's superb magical skills, it did not affect his normal thinking. It was more like a beautiful dream.
"Eileen..." Draco took a deep breath and murmured.
Although he knew that those were just illusory memories, the realistic voice, the aura, that delicate face he hid deep in his heart and dared not gaze upon, and the flawed bets, gave him courage like a tidal wave.
He pulled out a chair, sat down, and opened the notebook in front of him—obviously, all the pages were blank.
"First, inject ink, introduce yourself, and activate the diary."
Draco Malfoy followed Eileen's instructions and poured a bottle of ink onto the diary.
If Eileen remembered correctly, a large amount of ink had gushed out when the diary was pierced by the Basilisk's fang in the original story.
Magic could create illusions and even real objects out of thin air, but if there was a certain material basis, the cost of arrangement and combination would definitely be much lower than that of creation and derivation. For this magic notebook, ink was most likely its blood.
On the other hand, this was also the magical trace that distinguished this diary from ordinary notebooks.
Although it might not have been Tom Riddle's intention, just like most inventions, the young Tom inadvertently created a magic that could automatically absorb stains in order to protect his diary—unless it was completely destroyed, all common ink stains, blood stains, and oil stains would not leave any traces on it.
This also meant that from the moment the ink was absorbed, the magic in this diary was activated.
Draco Malfoy, while recalling the time nodes that Eileen had mentioned, stared nervously at the diary stained with large patches of ink, waiting for the first "magic preset program" to run normally.
The ink shimmered brightly on the paper for a few seconds, and then disappeared as if it had been absorbed by the paper, leaving no trace.
"It worked! It didn't detect anything unusual and deliberately conceal its magical properties."
Draco pumped his fist in his mind excitedly, dipped his quill in ink, and wrote on the paper.
"I, Draco Malfoy, son of Lucius Malfoy and Narcissa Black Malfoy, grandson of Abraxas Malfoy, the sole legal heir of the 'Ever Pure and Holy' Malfoy family..."
Due to the lack of practical examples, Eileen and others could not determine the "charging" principle of the diary.
However, according to some existing information, it could be roughly known that "contact" and "writing" were obviously the two most important determining factors, which was also in line with the obscure knowledge about pen spirits and book spirits in the Japanese wizarding world.
What they were testing now was the main channel for the outflow of wizarding power, whether it was "writing" or "thinking."
Pure doodling, or entering a question-and-answer session initiated by the other party, was at a disadvantage in terms of information acquisition. Therefore, the second instruction Eileen gave to Malfoy was to copy the family tree in the diary silently.
As the future heir of an ancient pure-blood wizarding family, Draco Malfoy had been reciting wizarding family trees since he was a child.
After a brief memory activation, let alone the Malfoy family's family motto and family tree, he could write a lot of the family trees of related pure-blood wizarding families in one breath, filling four or five pages of diary paper was not a problem at all.
Tom Riddle had transformed the diary into a Horcrux, which meant that it had self-awareness.
Trivial, complicated, boring, logical, and sufficiently lengthy content, she couldn't think of anything more suitable for self-introduction than this, and at the same time, it could force the soul in the book to respond.
Faced with the family tree of his "old subordinates," there were only two reasons why Tom Riddle didn't respond.
First, simple writing could directly obtain power, and the purpose of all his conversations was to induce people to write.
Second, at the moment of contact, the soul in the diary could directly perform Legilimency, skipping all the preliminary procedures.
"...Nicholas Malfoy, born in 1375 AD, main achievements..."
Draco Malfoy carefully wrote the family tree, while secretly estimating the time in his mind.
The Malfoy family originated in the eleventh century. If the lengthy family tree of nearly ten centuries was written out completely, it would obviously exceed the previously scheduled warning time by far. If the diary did not enter the "second stage" after a long time, then he might need to prepare to wear a hat when he wrote to around the eighteenth century.
However, just as Eileen had guessed, Voldemort's patience was obviously not that good.
In the wizarding world, the family tree of pure-blood wizards was undoubtedly one of the most powerful proofs of blood relationship.
Even the "young" Tom Riddle, who had been sealed in the diary for decades, did not have much desire to learn about the great achievements of their predecessors when faced with the family tree of the Malfoy family, who had been following him since school.
Before Draco Malfoy could turn to the third page, the writing on the diary suddenly flickered rapidly.
Then, all the words written in ink were absorbed in an instant, leaving no trace.
Draco keenly noticed that perhaps fearing that he would continue to write, not only the words on the paper, but even his quill dipped in ink had become as white as new, with no ink remaining on it.
Then, a miracle finally happened.
Some words that Draco had never written suddenly oozed out of the paper, and they were using his ink.
"Hello, Draco Malfoy, my name is Tom Riddle—"
Before these words could be written completely, they quickly began to disappear and fade, as if someone was frantically erasing them behind the paper with an ink eraser, because Draco had hastily written a few words at the same time that this line of words appeared.
[Lordvoldemort]
Draco stared nervously at the diary in front of him, which had turned back into a blank piece of paper, waiting for Riddle's answer.
After a moment, a few lines of writing floated up on the diary.
"I'm sorry, I don't understand what you're talking about?"
"Young Malfoy, how did you find my notebook?"
"And... is there anything I can help you with? Or what do you hope to get from me?"
Huff—
Seeing the words on the diary, Draco Malfoy breathed a sigh of relief. He raised his left hand in the air and made a grasping motion similar to catching the Golden Snitch. He dipped his quill in the ink and continued to write.
"Anything I want!"
"In exchange, I can answer all your questions. But before that, you must first prove that you are the legendary 'Tom Riddle,' the one who conquered death, the most dangerous dark wizard in history."
…………
At the same time, outside the thick fog.
Unlike the dense fog surrounding Draco, from the position of Eileen and others, nothing except a few wisps of thin white water vapor would affect their observation of the interaction between Malfoy and the diary.
Seeing the gestures made by Draco Malfoy not far away, Eileen and others also breathed a sigh of relief.
"From the current situation, the whole process is much smoother than we imagined—"
Gilderoy Lockhart said with a smile, turning his head to look at the big shots sitting beside him.
As the chief surgeon, although he was quite confident in his Obliviate charm skills, if he could avoid directly confronting Voldemort so early, it would naturally be a good thing for both Lockhart and Malfoy.
"As expected, people's energy is limited. We had obviously overestimated Tom before."
Grindelwald grinned, shook his head, and sneered, a hint of contempt flashing in his eyes.
If he had known that Tom Riddle's diary obtained information based on the content of the text, he could even use Polyjuice Potion to tease that young man and let this misguided junior know what the language art of a real dark wizard was.
"We can't be careless yet, after all, his soul body hasn't come out yet..."
Newt Scamander slowly shook his head, looking solemnly in the direction of Draco Malfoy.
The wand in the hand of this Magizoologist was intentionally or unintentionally pointed forward. If something unexpected happened, he could cast a spell as soon as possible. He had personally seen the complete condensation of Voldemort's soul body in Russia.
Apart from the three-headed dog, conventional spells could almost be ignored for its damage.
Thinking of this, Newt's gaze subconsciously swept across the chest of a certain white-haired dumpling.
Above Eileen's bulging chest, three sleepy little puppy heads stretched out from the neckline, yawning cutely in turn, without the brutal and bloodthirsty appearance described in the ancient wizarding civilization.
However, Eileen did not have the energy to pay attention to Newt's gaze at this time.
From now on, the success or failure of the following negotiations mainly depends on Draco Malfoy's on-the-spot performance, and how much negligence and arrogance Tom Riddle sealed in the diary has.
Among so many wizards present, she was the most nervous one—for some reason, she had concealed some details.
Eileen knew very well that Malfoy's current magic power was not enough to support Voldemort to condense a complete soul body.
No one could guarantee that this Tom Riddle would not give them enough time to deal with it, as in the original story, instead of using some unknown means to absorb a large amount of Draco's vitality in an instant.
Fortunately, unlike Harry, who fought Riddle alone in the original story, her lineup was too luxurious.
However, in contrast, her purpose was not only to destroy Voldemort's Horcrux—just like hunting in deep mountains and dense forests, capturing the prey completely and trying to tame it was much more difficult than killing it.
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……
And at the same time, on the other side.
Draco's answer obviously exceeded Tom Riddle's expectations.
In this time and space, there was no ignorant Ginny to popularize the future story for him. All the information Tom Riddle knew was temporarily stuck decades ago, like a blank piece of paper waiting to be colored and smeared.
The writing on the diary paused for a moment, as if thinking about how to answer.
Just when Draco Malfoy thought that the other party had "disconnected," Riddle's answer finally reappeared in Draco's sight. His handwriting began to be a little heavy, as if he unconsciously used a little more strength when writing.
"I'm sorry, I'm just a memory, a memory that has been preserved in the diary for fifty years."
"The reason why I record the past in a way that is more durable than ink is only because some people don't want some terrible past events to be read, some covered-up past events, extremely bad stories that happened at Hogwarts."
Tom Marvolo Riddle, this was the name that Voldemort used when he was studying at Hogwarts.
But only his closest friends knew this name. Since he discovered that the blood of Salazar Slytherin himself was flowing in his veins and traced back to his parents' past history, he came up with a new name.
Therefore, according to common sense, when he one day became the greatest wizard in the world, the great demon king whose name all wizards in the wizarding world did not dare to easily say, people should not and could not know this name that he had already made up his mind to completely erase when he was sixteen years old—unless some extremely bad things happened in the future.
Draco Malfoy took a deep breath and calmly wrote in the diary.
"tommarvoloriddle's letters rearranged are iamLordvoldemort. Almost everyone in the wizarding world knows this, so don't hide it anymore, Mr. Riddle."
"Voldemort, this is your past, present, and future..."
After hesitating slightly, Draco tried to overcome the fear and anxiety in his heart, and the quill moved across the paper.
"You succeeded, but you also failed. The dark magic forces once spread throughout Britain. Even Professor Dumbledore could only rely on Hogwarts Castle as the last resistance—my parents also joined your camp and became Death Eaters, but just when the dark magic forces were at their most glorious and prosperous, you failed everyone's expectations and lost all your magic power overnight and disappeared without a trace..."
"The day after you disappeared, apart from some deaths, some Death Eaters fled, some were caught, traitors were everywhere, and countless pure-blood families declined as a result, and the Malfoy family and the Black family were just two of them..."
With the rustling sound of the quill on the paper, a somewhat abrupt text story gradually emerged in Draco Malfoy's mind, as if a voice was whispering in his ear, telling him what to say next.
And all he needed to do was to write out the story according to those familiar and unfamiliar memories.
As for the authenticity of the story, it was just a matter of writing an essay, so how could it all be taken seriously...
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Goo Ya! A big chapter in one! The first day of October, the outbreak is complete!