It will require opening a special door. I can tell you how to open it, but you will have to follow my instructions exactly and concentrate hard. Can you do that?
Harry swallowed and nodded. Horror flooded him at the idea that Mal had been trapped here for years—decades—just waiting for someone to come and free him, and not even knowing if someone would. How many people had walked past this spot and not touched the stone in the right place? I can do it. Tell me how.
All right. You will have to step back and walk past this wall three times. At each pass, you must think strongly about finding the room where the diadem is hidden. Do you understand?
What's a diadem?
There was a sound like a long sigh. I suppose that Muggle schools and Hogwarts are both lacking in education.
I just didn't have time to spend learning random words!
I also suppose that you aren't in Ravenclaw. If you had been, you would have known the legend of her lost diadem. You're a Slytherin like all your kind.
Harry narrowed his eyes. But he didn't want Mal to make fun of him anymore, so he didn't say that he wasn't actually in Slytherin. You've wasted all this time, and you haven't actually told me what a diadem is.
No, I haven't, have I? Very well. It's a slender band that rests on the head. Rather like a tiara—if you know what that is—or a slim crown. You should see it on the head of a bust in the Room of Hidden Things.
Harry restrained the impulse to ask what the Room of Hidden Things was. Obviously, it was the one that he was opening. All right. And what will happen when I find it? Do I have to do a ritual to release you?
Malfoys all jump to rituals. Mal's mental voice was flavored with laughter this time. No. You'll be able to pick it up, and all you have to do is bring it out of the room and put it on your head, once. That will bring it into contact with your spirit, and from what I've discovered, that will confuse it, because my spirit is already bound to it. I'll go free.
And your body?
Mal's voice was solemn. If you're able to bring someone who can knock into the wall and find my bones, I would appreciate that. But I've thought about it, and I don't think I have any living relatives left. My spirit going free is the most important thing, and that's something you can do for me.
All right. Mal must not be a Malfoy after all, Harry thought. Are you sure that you don't want to tell me your full name? Maybe I could tell you if some of your family was still around.
You can do nothing for me except release my spirit. I would still prefer to keep my name private.
Harry sighed and stepped back from the wall. Mal's voice died away at once, and Harry winced a little. He hoped that he could help free Mal and give him some peace.
As much peace as he can have when his pride is still so strong that he can't admit who he is even after death.
Harry paced back and forth in front of the wall, making sure his Invisibility Cloak was tucked over him so that no one could see his feet. The last thing he wanted was Filch or Mrs. Norris coming up here and interrupting him. Or a prefect or professor, he supposed, even though he hadn't seen any so far the other times he'd been here.
I need to find the room where the diadem is hidden, the diadem is hidden, the diadem is hidden…
Harry felt kind of stupid, and he didn't think it would work, but when he completed the third pass, there was a loud click, and a door appeared in the middle of the stone wall. It was a grimy wooden door with a knob that seemed to be made of black crystal. Harry blinked a little, but reached out and twisted it.
The door opened with the same click, and Harry found himself confronting immense piles of rubbish, most of it covered with spiderwebs. He stared around at chair legs, a stuffed troll, heaps of Knuts, tattered books, a broken umbrella, a broom that looked as if it might be from the nineteenth century, a—
Then his scar pulsed, and Harry winced. Right, he wasn't here to gape at all the forgotten things people had left lying around. He was here to find the diadem and set Mal free.
Harry waded into the rubbish, following the pull in his scar as well as he could. He finally made his way to the side of a huge cabinet that looked sort of familiar. A bust sat on top of it with the diadem draped over it, the way Mal had said.
Harry reached up and clasped the diadem, hissing a little as he did. It almost burned his hand, and definitely his forehead. Yeah, this was a trophy of Voldemort's.
Could it be a Horcrux?
Harry winced at the thought. He almost hoped not. That would mean they had destroyed the other Horcruxes without releasing the spirits trapped in them. On the other hand, maybe their destruction would have done that anyway.
And the Horcrux diary, for example, had made Harry feel slimy and repulsed in a way that the diadem didn't. When he twisted it around, looking at the front, he saw a gleaming sapphire and words inscribed into the silver.
Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure.
Harry smiled. It seemed that this was probably something Voldemort had stolen and hidden so that no one else could have it, instead of a Horcrux. It was pretty enough to be something that would appeal to him.
Maybe it's even Rowena Ravenclaw's lost diadem, whatever that is. Mal had never described it.
Harry stepped out of the Room of Hidden Things and shut the door behind him. It vanished into the wall. Shaking his head, and wondering if he could come back and explore the room to find other hidden things, Harry placed the diadem on his head.
It tightened, burning, around his temples, and he gasped. For a moment, he was flooded with the sensation of a spirit so strong and overwhelming that—
He saw red eyes open in his mind, and his scar burned in response. He screamed.
Thank you, Henry Malfoy. Your body will serve me well.
That was all Harry knew before he drowned in the tide, and was swept away, and closed his eyes on an endless void.
....
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