During the Christmas break, Oleandra had dreaded returning to Hogwarts, where she was somehow in constant mortal peril. She had hoped the source of the danger would disappear after the break, but she had no such luck. And now, weeks after her return to school, this was still going on.
Oleandra had no doubt the threat was due to Slytherin's creature; the danger level had spiked every time there had been an attack near her. She had checked with her sister, Tracey, and even Draco; she was the only one who Naudhiz, the rune of distress, would warn to this extent, especially if she tried to open her Mystic Eyes.
As Oleandra was heading to her next class, she stopped dead in her tracks. All of a sudden, the annoying ringing of Naudhiz had turned off, for seemingly no reason.
"Oleandra?" asked Tracey tentatively. "You do know you're standing in a puddle of water, right?"
But Oleandra was experiencing some serious déjà-vu, but she couldn't quite put her finger on what was so familiar. And more importantly, she was free to let out a sigh of relief! She could finally relax her guard.
"Ah, I've got it!" said Oleandra, snapping her fingers. "It's just like the day Filch's cat got petrified."
"We're not far from where Mrs. Norris was hung up," said Tracey thoughtfully. "We've got a couple of minutes before the next class. Want to go look?"
"Not yet," Oleandra shook her head. "I want to see where the water's coming from."
"But our feet will get wet," complained Tracey.
Oleandra stamped her foot once, causing water to splash around her, and said, "Laukaz."
Immediately, the water parted around her, creating a path of dry land all the way to the girl's bathroom.
"Come on, we should hurry before Filch arrives. I just know he'll find a way to blame this on us."
Oleandra ignored the OUT OF ORDER sign and put her hand on the door to push it open, but as soon as she did, she was greeted with a piercing wail.
"Hello, Myrtle," said Oleandra soothingly. "Is everything alright? What's going on?"
Moaning Myrtle swooped down from the ceiling, crying her eyes out.
"You're not like those mean girls who used to bully me, are you?" blubbered the ghost. "They won't leave me alone, even after I died."
"We're not bullies," said Tracey gently. "Who won't leave you alone?"
"Always ignoring me, or calling me names," whimpered Moaning Myrtle, ignoring her. "You two look just like they did. I bet you two are friends with the one who threw a book at me! Ten points if you can get it through her chest, fifty if you can get it through her head!"
"Heh," Oleandra couldn't help but snigger.
"I knew it!" screeched Myrtle. "Well, I hope you like being drenched in TOILET WATER!"
"Wait, I wasn't laughing at you, I was laughing with—"
"LIAR!" screamed the angsty ghost, and she dived into a nearby toilet, causing water to splash everywhere.
A moment later, Myrtle gently poked her head out of the toilet bowl, hoping to see the two girls screaming in disgust, but unfortunately for her, Oleandra was currently controlling the water around her, so not even a drop had reached them.
"Ugh!" she choked out. "Just leave me alone!" And then she disappeared into her toilet.
Oleandra walked over to the book Myrtle had mentioned and picked it up, shaking the water out of its pages.
"Tom M. Riddle. I feel like I know that name," she observed, flipping through the pages. "Looks like a diary, but there's not a word written inside."
"Just chuck it in the nearest bin," said Tracey with a look of disgust on her face. But an instant later, her expression changed subtly. "Or just take it to Lost and Found. But we really should be hurrying this up—"
At that moment, the bell rang; they were going to be late for class.
Unbeknownst to Oleandra, the moment she put the diary in her pouch, the stars in her inner world began to sparkle less brilliantly, and Naudhiz nearly completely faded away into the darkness of her mindscape's firmament.
_
Oleandra tried her best to stifle a yawn; these days, Professor Lockhart only ever read from his books in class. Even watching Potter reenact scenes from the course books had lost its fun; there was only so much she could take of vampire impressions. If those constituted as appropriate Defense Against the Dark Arts lessons, she would eat her pointy hat.
She glanced over to her sister; she was currently writing furiously in her notebook, formulating a plan to get back at Granger and her gang for fooling her into revealing important secrets. She knew it had to be them, since Moste Potente Potions also contained the recipe for the Polyjuice Potion, and nobody else had a motive for doing such a thing. It hadn't been hard figuring out that the Oleandra she had met during Christmas was a fake; a short conversation with her sister had instantly pointed out the discrepancies.
Oleandra doodled distractedly in Tom's diary. To her astonishment, once the ink seeped into the pages, it would disappear instants later, as if sucked into the paper.
"Perthro," she wrote down. "Reveal the secrets hidden within."
The rune glowed briefly, but before it could take effect, the ink it was written out of disappeared.
"How vexing," Oleandra thought to herself, frowning. As she was about to try the spell without writing it down, a line of text appeared in the pages, as if an invisible quill had written the words under her nose.
"Hello, are you practising drawing Ancient Runes? Your lines are very precise."
Once they had appeared, the words didn't last long before they too had faded away.
"Why thank you, Mr. Book," Oleandra wrote back. Wasn't this diary nice? "My name is Oleandra Greengrass. Are you Tom M. Riddle's diary?"
"Well met, Oleandra Greengrass. I am actually a memory left behind by the original Tom Riddle. May I ask how my diary came into your possession?"
"I found it in the girl's bathroom, the one on the first floor," Oleandra wrote back. "Its previous owner tossed it at a ghost to score fifty points."
Oleandra stared at the virgin pages, waiting for a reply. Just as she was beginning to think she had somehow broken the diary with her nonsensical answer, words finally began to appear.
"I see, thank you so much for saving my diary. May I ask how you attained such a mastery in Ancient Runes? From what I can tell, you are still in your second year, are you not?"
Oleandra blinked, rubbing her eyes. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Naudhiz blinked back to life, flashing dimly. Something wasn't right, but she couldn't figure out what.