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“I think he’ll never be able to return my feelings.”
Yes.
“Is it greedy to hope for something utterly impossible?”
Yes.
“He’s a cold, unfeeling machine. I’ll never get into his heart!” Harry shouted into his pillow.
Yes.
“Are you just auto-replying to me?”
Ye-
Harry growled and chucked the diary — its half-formed Yes still lingering - under his bed, watching as it landed amidst a heap of pillows. Then he flopped onto his mattress, arms sprawled out, staring blankly at the ceiling—pointedly ignoring the diary floating back onto his bed and the materialized vague, shadowy figure now sitting at its edge.
“That was incredibly rude of you,” the shadow complained.
“Fits you perfectly.” Harry grinned.
“Also, throwing pillows is ridiculously childish too.” The diary surveyed the mess on the carpet with clear disapproval.
“I’m about to turn seventeen,” Harry huffed. “By magical standards—”
He stopped mid-sentence, suddenly aware that he had already surpassed the age of the one frozen in time before him.
The realization left both of them in a strange, abrupt silence.
“This feels weird.”
The other nodded. “It does.”
Harry studied the diary, recalling those early days at the manor when he wandered from corridor to corridor, room to room, finding everything and nothing at once.
Voldemort was often away then, always returning with an extra item or two. Something about the way the man handled those objects caught Harry’s attention. Harry was curious, but he stayed silent. Until, one day, he stumbled upon a peculiar gathering in the man's study.
The man was talking to the strange objects lying on the desk:
A worn-out book. A ring with a roughly cut diamond. A golden cup. A locket inscribed with an ornate ‘S.’
All voices stopped the moment Harry entered the room.
If they had eyes, they would all be focused on Harry right now.
“So things can talk too, not just snakes?” Harry spoke with fascination, as though he’d discovered a whole new land. "Is that how magic works? Things talk?"
"Yes," Voldemort inhaled sharply. "And no." He snapped the locket shut, slipping a folded note into his pocket before locking the remaining artifacts inside a dark cabinet lined with writhing, worm-like runes. Chains of dark magic coiled around it, pulsing faintly.
Harry tried to open his mouth.
"No questions. Forget what you saw," Voldemort warned in a grave tone, edged with steel. "And do not touch that cabinet. Ever. Unless you’d like your hands to rot off."
It wasn’t even a threat. He was stating a fact.
“Yes, sir.” Harry mimed zipping his lips shut, clasped his hands behind his back, and strolled away with a cheeky grin.
And true to his word, he never asked another question. Instead, he made a very deliberate show of sighing dramatically about how bored and lonely he was, lamenting that he would surely sprout mold in this dark and dreary manor until Voldemort finally had enough of his rant.
“You know I can’t let anyone near you right now,” Voldemort sighed exasperatedly.
Harry nodded like the sweet kid he was.
“So?” That expression again—Voldemort watched him as if Harry was a particularly frustrating puzzle.
Harry’s gaze pointedly drifted toward the tightly locked cabinet, making his intent unmistakably clear.
That was how Harry acquired his unwilling, reluctant, sentient diary as a play partner.
"Why must I be saddled with this insufferable brat?!"
The diary fumed. Its usual immaculate script was now a frenzied scrawl. stupidchild was underlined, bolded, and plastered across an entire page in various sizes, a chaotic testament to its indignation.
Harry felt personally attacked.
"He probably dumped you on me because you’re the most childish one. Kids play with kids," he shot back, arms crossed. He barely understood what these objects were or how they worked—only that they were alive, each with their peculiarities.
The diary trembled with barely contained fury before snapping itself shut with a decisive thwap. No matter how Harry pulled, pried, or coaxed, its pages remained firmly sealed.
(And, a few days later, upon realizing it no longer had to be smuggled into Hogwarts to unleash a basilisk, purging the unworthy, fulfilling Slytherin’s great mission, the diary sank into an existential crisis. Its pages became damp and heavy from sheer melancholy.
Harry, ever thoughtful, placed it in the fireplace to dry.
Watching an immortal, fireproof book resting in flickering flames without burning was oddly entertaining.)
*
“You were a weird kid. Now you’re a weird teenager,” the diary’s spectral hand brushed against Harry’s fringe.. “Even I struggle to understand your… romantic inclinations.”
“Need I remind you that you are also just a sixteen-year-old teenager?” Harry retorted.
"The one agonizing over a teenager's crush here is you, not me." The diary deftly avoided the point. "I still think this is just a case of misplaced attachment. Your lack of social interaction has caused emotional misalignment. Your adolescent hormones are propelling you to project a fantasy onto the wrong person. Wrong wrong."
"Your brilliant suggestion?"
"Tell him you were joking. Next term, get yourself a normal relationship. Like your peers do."
"After six months of him avoiding me?" Harry scoffed.
The diary shrugged. "If you don’t want him to keep avoiding you forever."
"Why do I even talk to you? You’re the worst." Harry turned onto his side, facing away.
The diary, shameless as ever, proudly flashed the BFF (Best Friend Forever) heart-shaped sticker on its cover.
"This was my biggest mistake."Harry groaned into his pillow.
The diary continued, merciless as ever. “You used to be this tall and small,” the figure gestured to its phantom waist, “and if even I can’t find it in me to develop… romantic feelings for you, then—”
"You two are different."
"We are the same person. In essence. Same soul. You even carry a part of him." The diary flicked a glance at Harry’s forehead—at the lightning-shaped scar.
"That’s what I keep wondering," Harry murmured, fingers ghosting over the scar. “Maybe… everything he’s done for me is just… duty. A responsibility to his own soul.”
"If he just wanted to keep you as a Horcrux vessel, you’d be locked in a vault, warded to hell and back, and fed Draught of Living Death for safety." Diary reassured Harry with a weird touch of suspicious excitement, "Or stuffed in a cave somewhere. I would’ve done that.”
Harry squinted at him. The shadow only smirked.
“And yet, you have an entire manor. A Quidditch field. A unicorn. Three Thestrals—”
"Four," Harry corrected. "One of them had a baby last month."
“And countless minions you could take your frustrations out on.” The diary suggested, “Why not pick one and torture them a little?”
"That’s hardly a perk." Harry rolled his eyes,“They would be so heartbroken if they heard you.”
Harry shook his head, knowing he was only joking—though it wasn’t exactly a funny joke.
Harry had a deep-seated aversion to cruelty, even when it comes to the Death Eaters.
Harry thought back to the first time he had stumbled upon them torturing a prisoner in the dungeon. It could have been a spy, an enemy, or perhaps just an innocent soul. The person strung up against the wall was barely human, reduced to weak, pained groans. Beneath the strips of torn flesh, raw muscle and blood vessels exposed.
The scene burned into Harry’s visions.
Harry warned the panicked Death Eaters not to utter a word about his presence. He returned to his room in heavy, leaden steps.
That night, Harry had fallen into fevered nightmares.
Blood, screams, pleading eyes. A surreal whirlwind of hatred and resentment.
Harry had jolted awake, drenched in sweat, sitting there for a long time before realizing that someone had been standing in his room for a while.
A cold, dry hand brushed against his damp fringe.
Voldemort said to him, "You won’t see it again."
The dungeons became storage rooms on the next day, now filled with old furniture, books, and magical artifacts.
Harry had long known that Voldemort was not a "good person" by any conventional definition. He was the very opposite of any good. Voldemort didn't even bother faking or pretending to be one.
He had merely kept Harry separate from it all—everything he deemed "inappropriate."
Not to protect the delicate, fragile, childish innocence of Harry. No. Voldemort simply decided that Harry did not need to see it.
Voldemort decided a lot of things.
Midnight was approaching.
Harry waved away the golden clock he had summoned. His bedroom had no timepieces.
"I’m not so sure now," Harry murmured. "I hope at least there’s cake."
The diary was silent for a moment before speaking.
"Your excessive compassion, easy forgiveness, and...capacity for love, frankly, are quite overwhelming." It wasn’t the first time it had made such an observation.
"...and painfully disarming," the diary added, glancing at its near-transparent hand，"You seem like the stubborn fool who won’t heed warnings and insists on touching the fire—but sometimes, you are the fire."
The figure vanished, like a whisper of moonlight.
The spell Voldemort had placed on the diary, ensured its physical form could only last so long. Voldemort had once explained this to him with long boring convoluted terms — To summarize, the main idea is how a Horcrux’s energy was supplied through the soul of others, through emotional openness. So it's safer to limit the time and frequency diary materializing.
Harry had always suspected Voldemort made it sound complicated intentionally as if to ensure Harry wouldn’t understand.
On the open diary page, a tiny doodle of a birthday cake remained.
Ink still wet.
Harry chuckled softly, shutting the diary with a muted thud before setting it carefully on his bedside table.
Then he lay in the darkness, eyes closed, listening—only to the steady rhythm of his own heartbeat, a quiet metronome ticking in the stillness.
It was too quiet. The air itself seemed to hush, waiting.
He thought back to his childhood—wandering the manor alone, playing by himself, waiting. Some things never really changed.
Harry wasn’t sure how much time had passed—only that, in a single moment, something shifted.
Somewhere beyond his door, magic stirred. A quiet shift—like a gift wrapped with care, tied with a bow.
Music drifted in.
Soft as a dream.