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Pat*eon : ilham20
Naruto : Chimera Ninja!
This time the handwriting took forever to appear—so long that Richie started to wonder if Tom had given up and gone silent.
But eventually the ink slowly took shape.
Tom: You surprise me, Elliot.
Tom: I never expected to see those words from a first-year. Those aren't terms an ordinary young wizard would know. Where did you hear them?
Richie thought for a second, then wrote:
Richie: My home tutor. His name is Quirinus Quirrell.
Tom: Ah, a home tutor… If I were you, I'd keep my distance. In my opinion, he doesn't have good intentions.
Richie: Why?
Tom explained patiently.
Tom: Because, like I said, you're still a young wizard. At your age you can't control this kind of magic.
Tom: A real teacher shouldn't be feeding you this stuff—he should be keeping you as far away from it as possible. Otherwise…
Tom: In short, stay on your guard with him. Have you told him about this diary?
Richie: Not yet.
Tom: Good…
Richie: But he did give me a book called The Healing Potential of Blood Curses. You think there's something wrong with it?
Tom: The Healing Potential of Blood Curses? I've read it.
Tom: On the surface it's about healing, but every chapter is really teaching you how to create patients—blood contracts, tracking spells, torture, sacrifice. It's an ancient, evil forbidden tome.
Tom: They say werewolves were the result of the author's failed experiments.
Richie clicked his tongue at Tom's no-holds-barred explanation. He glanced up at the copy of The Healing Potential of Blood Curses sitting on the corner of his shelf and immediately dropped any thought of cracking it open.
The title really was misleading as hell.
Still, Richie only wanted curse knowledge so he wouldn't get blindsided—he wasn't looking to manufacture pain and disaster.
Occlumency, though… that was still on the table.
Richie: What about Occlumency? Any problems with that?
Tom: Oh, of course not. In fact, it's an extremely advanced piece of magic. It lets you build a barrier around your mind to stop anyone from peering into your thoughts.
Richie: I want to learn it. Can I study with my home tutor?
Tom: Absolutely not! To master Occlumency you have to let someone attack your mind over and over with Legilimency, probing your memories, until you learn to defend yourself in the process.
Tom: But if you do that, your scheming tutor would learn every secret you have—including my existence!
Tom: And then you'd lose me as a friend! Do you want to lose me as a friend?!
Richie shrugged and kept writing.
Richie: Of course not!
Tom: Then stay away from your home tutor!
Tom: However… I do have a few special methods. Would you be willing to try them?
Richie: Let's hear them.
Tom: Explaining it here would be too complicated. I'd like to invite you to my dorm room.
Richie frowned at the elegant script.
Richie: Your dorm room? Aren't you just a memory?
Tom: Yes, a memory. This is my dorm from my memories. It's part of the magic…
The last line appeared slowly. Then a blob of ink seemed to drip from nowhere onto the diary page. It spun rapidly and bled across the entire sheet.
Richie tensed as the ink broke through the paper and surged upward into the air.
The next second he was pulled straight into the diary.
---
In a hazy gray space, Richie looked around curiously.
Like a curtain rising, a gray dormitory slowly materialized in front of him.
Three four-poster beds with curtains, snake carvings everywhere, and a giant creature flashing past the window outside.
Everything screamed Hogwarts—and Slytherin House.
Footsteps suddenly sounded. Richie turned.
A tall, slender, strikingly handsome boy stood behind him.
"Welcome to my memory of the dorm, Elliot."
"Tom?"
Richie stared at Tom Riddle in surprise. He hadn't expected the guy to look this good.
Tom gave a small smile and motioned for Richie to follow.
They stopped in front of a full-length mirror.
"For rule-following wizards, there's only one way to learn Occlumency: let someone attack you again and again with Legilimency until you figure out how to defend yourself in the moment."
"Of course, for people like us who have secrets, that method isn't ideal."
"Because we only ever trust ourselves."
The corner of Tom's mouth curved upward. His voice stayed calm, but Richie could feel the intense confidence—bordering on narcissism—behind every word.
"So, to protect our secrets from others, we have to learn Occlumency through other means."
Tom drew his wand.
"For example, by attacking ourselves with Legilimency."
"It sounds contradictory, I know."
"Legilimency reads another person's mind. You can't simply point your wand at yourself."
"But clever people always find unconventional paths."
With that, Tom cast the spell at the mirror in front of them.
"Speculum Reflecto!"
A grayish-white film shot from his wand and coated the full-length mirror.
Tom continued in that smooth, measured tone.
"According to magical history, the Mirror Reflection Charm was originally created for self-defense."
"In the Middle Ages, to escape witch-hunters, a few wizards built a tall tower—the Wizard's Tower. They covered every wall of the narrow corridors with mirrors and cast permanent Mirror Reflection Charms on them."
"If any hunters broke in, the wizards stayed safe at the top, using the mirrors to reflect spells back at their attackers or to hurl crude fire magic at them."
"Unfortunately those wizards were eventually trapped and starved to death inside their own tower."
"That may have been one of the reasons flying brooms were invented."
"The mirrors were smashed or scattered across the world by the hunters."
"Eventually one wizard recovered a fragment and recreated part of the original charm—the version I just cast."
"It can reflect any spell you throw at it for up to half an hour, though the power is greatly reduced."