Palette

The diary was hidden on the shelf among other old books and it would have stayed hidden for God knows how long if not for the house-elf. His name was Dobby, and his big eyes reminded Draco of oversized marbles. Those were magical marbles that let out puffs of smoke with a tiny sound, and this sound reminded him of Dobby’s voice as well. Dobby was trying not to be seen by any means in the Malfoy manor, and for that Draco couldn’t blame him. Sometimes his father was… a lot. Lucius Malfoy wasn’t a cruel man but he was a demanding head of the house, and recently his mood wasn’t the best, to say the least. He was one of the governors of Hogwarts, and he had visions about the future of the school his one and only son — he liked repeating that with a very dramatic stress on the “only” — was attending, and Lucius was more than willing to share his vision with anyone who would listen. If people didn’t listen, he would write letters, and that was alright. The problem was that he received the replies. “I am very sorry to let you know, Draco, that the headmaster of your school is an old babbling fool who’s ready to kiss the ground Mudbloods are walking on,” Lucius said one time at a dinner, and Draco nodded. His father always knew best. “I hope to make some changes there, boy. What do you think of it?” “That’ll be great!” Draco replied heartily. “I just wish I wouldn’t have to see that Potter and his stupid friends, the mudblood Granger and the Weasley idiot.” “We shall see what we can do about that,” Lucius replied with a scornful smile. “Those Weasleys… the traitors of blood!” He didn’t give his father’s words a second thought until the day he noticed the house-elf swiping dust from the top bookshelf in the library. Dobby took out all the books from the upper shelf and put them neatly on the desk. Draco had nothing better to do, and so he started looking at the books on the table. There were old leather bound tomes with the names he couldn’t even pronounce, there were modern-looking books with pretty covers tarnished with silver and gold prints of flowers and plants, and there was that old dictionary that looked like it was heavy enough to kill a person with. Draco had almost lost interest when he noticed that there was something stuck in the dictionary, right between the pages, and this something was thick enough to make it impossible for the book to close properly. Draco opened the dictionary, which happened to be a Latin one, and there was a book tucked in between the pages. It was small, old and looked as if it had endured a lot. There was no title, no inscription, nothing. Draco touched the book and paused. It felt… weird. Good. The leather of the book was soft and pleasant to touch. He caressed it with his fingertips, enjoying the sensation, and picked the book up. Only it wasn’t a book. It was a diary. Or, at least, it looked like a diary. His mother had one, much more expensive than this one, of course, but Draco knew a diary when he saw one. Except it was empty. Draco quickly flipped through the pages, and was disappointed to find all of them clean. The paper didn’t look old or yellowish. It was very smooth, almost silky to the touch. “Young master Draco,” Dobby called from behind, and his silly little voice made Draco startle in surprise. “Please, let me put the books back on the shelf… if I may.” “Yeah, go on,” Draco replied, annoyed with the fact that the house-elf scared him a little. He picked up the diary, though. It was nice to touch.

***

He threw the diary on his bed and forgot about it till the very evening. It was a very busy day for Draco. He had to accompany his mother on a visit to the family friends who had small kids of their own. The kids were annoying but the family had stables with invisible horses, and Draco got to ride one of them. He remembered about the diary when he went to bed. It seemed that Draco had accidentally shuffled it under his pillow, and he got a little bit scared when touched its smooth leather cover. Draco wanted to throw the old book on the floor but… It felt so good to touch. It felt like… Draco closed his eyes and brushed the leather cover gently as if it wasn’t a stupid old book but a pet. A cat. Or something different… something coily. Draco fell asleep and he dreamt about a beautiful snake. The snake coiled on his chest, resting, and Draco was trying not to move the whole time. He was afraid to disturb this beautiful creature. Several days passed, and Draco learned that this diary belonged to someone named T.M.Riddle. At least, this was the handwritten name on the inner cover. It was written in ink, and at first Draco tried to get rid of the name with a magic eraser. He thought about taking this diary for himself, and surely he didn’t want to keep the name of the previous owner who was too lazy to write anything at all. That was a good thing, though, because then Draco would have had to tear the pages from the diary, and it felt… Draco didn’t know the word “sacrilegious” but he knew the word “wrong”. He wrote his name “Draco Malfoy” above the T.M.Riddle which he had crossed out and started thinking about what he wanted to write inside. Keeping a diary seemed like the most reasonable of the options because it was a diary, after all, but Draco has never been a diligent student who’d willingly spend time scribbling the lines with the finest of the quills. He didn’t know how to start writing a diary without feeling stupid. What would he write about? Come to think of it, his life wasn’t that interesting to write about, especially when he was at home during the holidays. Nothing really happened. Maybe the invisible horses were interesting but Draco simply didn’t see the appeal of wasting time writing about that day. What would he say? “Dear diary, I rode an invisible horse, goodbye for now”? He kept the diary close and got a habit of touching its leather cover, stroking it with his fingertips, while reading comic books. It felt nice. It felt relaxing and at the same time it felt a little bit weird like during those times he had listened to scary stories. There was a mixture of excitement and fear intertwined in perfect amounts, as if something was going to happen, something equally wonderful and terrifying. If Draco had to explain that feeling, he would use the analogy of the closed door — he didn’t know the word “analogy” either — the closed door he was forbidden to open but had the key to, and the curiosity that, according to the saying, killed the cat was gnawing on him. Draco would take the diary to his bed and fall asleep with it clutched in his hands the way small kids do with the teddy bears. The only difference was that kids usually hug their teddy to feel safe at night, and Draco would hold the diary to keep the diary safe. The idea that he could lose the diary never occurred to him, but he wasn’t ready to part with it. The comfort of its touch was too good to refuse. He wouldn’t. Also, the dreams. He had never had such unusual dreams before. In his dreams he would always be in his bed, and there would always be something with him. Usually it was a snake, beautiful and indifferent. It was small at first, just the size of a grass snake, and it wouldn’t move as if it was hibernating. Then the snake woke up and started growing. Draco didn’t register the moment it happened, but at some point he realised that the snake on his chest became heavier. He tried counting the number of its coils but it was a difficult task to perform in the darkness of his bedroom. Then the snake started moving. It was gliding silently, effortlessly around his bed, diving under the covers and blankets, finding its way around his pillow to coil there, next to his head. Draco didn’t move in those dreams. At first, he was too afraid of the serpent and strangely excited, and then he wasn’t sure he still possessed the ability to. The beauty of these dreams was that unusual tranquility that enveloped Draco. Like nothing really mattered but the dance of the snake in his bed, its movements, always graceful, always effortless as if it was moving through the air, piercing his dreams as easily as its venomous fangs would pierce the flesh. All the sorrows of the day, all his worries, fears and hopes would dim and vanish, and the eerie calmness would settle. He did not need to think if he kept on watching the liquid shadow coiling in his bed. One day while stroking the diary, he discovered that his name disappeared from the inner cover. It was T.M.Riddle written there in the ink again, and Draco crossed the name out again, strangely jealous to the fact that it was some other person’s name written on something that belonged to him now. That night the snake bared its fangs and hissed at his face. It raised up slowly, terribly, emerging from the shadows like a ribbon of pure wrath and muscle, lifting its body and swaying gently from side to side, a giant pendulum of a non-existing clock counting down the seconds he had left. It was dancing, it was preparing to attack, and Draco in his panic wasn’t sure which would be worse — if the snake decided to bite his throat or if it went for one of his eyes. The snake hissed. Its forked tongue flickered, tasting the air, tasting Draco’s fear, and then it went down, coiling on his chest, indifferent and heavy, so heavy it was difficult to breathe. He woke up sweaty and exhausted, clutching the diary that was resting peacefully on his chest. Draco opened the diary with trembling hands and saw that his name was gone again, and T.M.Riddle was back in its place. It scared him so much that Draco put the diary under the pile of his school books, as if the weight of them could tame it, and didn’t touch it for the whole day. When it was time to go to bed, he glanced at the tower of books on his desk and went to bed only to find himself in the iron claws of insomnia. He tried closing his eyes and counting sheep. He tried thinking of nothing. He tried turning his pillow to get to the other, cooler side of it. Nothing helped. The sound of grandfather’s clock ticking somewhere in the hallway was excruciating… When the windows turned grey with the dawn slowly crawling on the sky, Draco ran to his desk, pushed the school books aside and took the diary. He went to bed, embracing the diary as if he was just a kid hugging his teddy, and fell asleep immediately. The snake was there, deadly and elegant, and when it coiled around his head, Draco sighed with relief in his sleep. “You look tired, Draco,” Narcissa raised her eyebrows. “Are you feeling alright?” “Yes,” he nodded and thought about the diary waiting for him in the bedroom. “I’m fine.” “You will not believe what the old fool dared to reply to me!” Lucius bellowed from his study, and soon he was in the room. Draco had always idolised his father but now his loud voice and proud posture made him uneasy. As if Draco had done something he could be reprimanded for. “This must end now! He will soon trade away the whole Hogwarts to Mudbloods! No shame! No shame he has that Dumbledore!” “May I be excused?” he asked. “You may…” Lucius looked at his son as if he had only noticed him and frowned. “You look pale, Draco. Don’t tell me you’re falling ill… I knew that letting children ride those thestrals was a bad idea!” “I’m not ill. I didn’t sleep well, that’s all… I’ll go and take a nap now.” “Do that, dear,” Narcissa replied and looked at her husband. “What did Dumbledore tell you?” Draco went to his room but didn’t take a nap right away. He sat at his desk, took the diary and opened it, caressing its sheets with his fingertips. It felt like touching a cold silk scarf. It felt like touching something that should not be touched. It felt… forbidden. “My name is Draco Malfoy,” he wrote in a neat and beautiful handwriting his mother made him master. “And this is my diary.”

***

There was no snake in his bed this time, and Draco felt panic grasping his throat with its bony fingers. Where was the snake? Where was it? Did it leave? He tried to produce a sound, to call, but managed only a tiny whine that still over-exhausted his throat. Draco tried moving, his eyes frantically searching for the whisper of scales on his bedsheets, but then came a cool touch to his forehead… It was a hand. Pale and with long, sensual fingers, a hand of a boy. Draco breathed in heavily and tried to look up. He wanted to see the person touching his forehead in a gesture that oddly reminded him of his mother but he couldn’t move. It was so strange! He used to feel the heavy body of a snake on his chest, and now it was nowhere to be seen but the weight remained. It felt heavier than the snake. It felt… crushing. And yet that felt good. It felt even better than touching the diary. It felt like a cool breeze going through his body and on its way caressing his cheeks with ghostly fingers. “My name is Tom,” the voice came from above. “And this is my diary, Draco.”

***

“Where did you get that?!” Draco flinched at the anger that radiated his father’s features. The man came abruptly to him and snatched the diary from his fingers in a blink of an eye. “That’s mine!” Draco protested, and added pleadingly. “This is my diary, Dad… can I… can I have it back, please?” “Nothing here is yours!” Lucius hissed, his rage making the pale face almost white. “Never! Never take anything without asking!” “I… I’m sorry…” “A man does not need a diary!” Lucius barked and walked away, clutching the diary in his hand. Draco sank in his chair, heartbroken. And yet he was strangely relieved. Draco didn’t know his father wasn’t angry with him for taking the diary. Lucius Malfoy was terrified.