Hey everyone!
Hope yall are having a good day.
One of the walls of the undercroft was now completely covered with newspaper clipping, notes and moving photos that mapped out the life and political network of the Malfoy family.
Leon had been investigating for the past five weeks and with Halloween right around the corner he didn’t feel like he was any closer to finding out who had Tom’s Diary.
Oh, he had identified a dozen likely candidates.
He even had folders of observations on them.
But he hadn’t yet spotted the signs that they were under the influence of the Horcrux.
It was maddening.
In other news, Leon’s plan to befriend Luna Lovegood was stalled and dead in the water.
Why?
Because he could never seem to engineer a believable encounter with her.
He was running into the issue of how to befriend an 11-year-old girl again.
He just didn’t know how to even try and start a friendship without coming across as weird.
He’d tried.
A few times.
He paused and said hi to Luna in a hallway one time when he passed her.
She’d said hi back and continued walking as if Leon didn’t exist.
Lost in her own little world.
Another time he’d spotted her at breakfast far earlier than most students were awake.
And he’d asked if she wanted some company.
She’d replied with, “I’m not particularly lonely right now.” And didn’t say a single word to him after that.
He’d awkwardly shuffled away not knowing how to engage beyond that.
What does one even say to that?
Two failures to start the year.
Things were not looking good for his self-assigned goals.
Well, at least not those two goals.
The fitness routines were coming along swimmingly though.
And Leon had realized that his stats seemed to be pulling more weight than they’d been doing the previous year.
His memory was sharper; he sometimes recalled not only the contents of a book, but the exact page he’d read it on.
And he was physically stronger than he should be by at least fifty percent.
Even his recovery was going faster than the supplements would indicate.
Hagrid was continually impressed by Leon’s perseverance in their training and had started introducing Leon to some Strongman workouts to put on top of his routine.
The coursework for second year was more information-dense than first year, but the jump wasn’t nearly as dramatic as Leon had expected, perhaps only fifty percent more work overall.
Though Harry and Ron complained a lot about the essays and workbooks that were given out as homework.
Leon had taken to saving up his homework for the weekends so that he had more time throughout the week for his workouts and Malfoy Diary investigation.
Another failure on his part was the fact that he hadn’t even checked in on what was happening in Coldharbour or his other realms in the past few weeks.
He’d even been sleeping for real all this time.
It was a lot of time he could have spent working.
But not something that he really regretted.
His daily workouts took a lot out of him, on top of everything else that he was doing and investigating, sleep felt like a gift.
One that he would start giving up again once he didn’t feel so ungodly sore all day every day.
This particular personal failure was one that he didn’t particularly want to fix.
With Halloween fast approaching, Leon had reinforced the single rat that he’d stationed near the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets with several more of its ilk, just in case anything happened to one or two of them.
He’d contemplated having them tail the various people who could possibly have the Diary.
But he’d dismissed it.
Hogwarts students and personnel were particularly suspicious of rodents nowadays.
Yet another unintended consequence of last year’s Pettigrew reveal.
Leon couldn’t risk people noticing unnaturally behaving rats in the castle.
But the biggest failure of them all?
Leon had forgotten about his Task.
Objectively one of the easiest Tasks he had been given.
And just because Tom’s Diary had slipped from his grasp, and the workout sessions were leaving him beat, he’d just sort of forgotten about it.
[Task: Steal a Diary without taking any other Valuables.
Reward: Spiral Skein] He could have completed this Task weeks ago.
He would take care of it today.
It really wouldn’t be hard to swipe a Diary.
People left theirs unattended in the common room all the time.
Just this morning he’d seen three of them on one of the tables in the common room.
Not only would he be completing his Task today.
But he had finally saved up enough points for a purchase that he’d been looking forward to for a long time.
An unnamed realm.
Starting at a million points.
Which he had accumulated over the past months.
“”Hey cousin!”” two voices said in synchrony as Leon rounded a bend.
Fred and George Weasley, both sporting their trademarked grins.
“Fred.” Leon deliberately looked directly at Fred before turning to his brother, “George… What brings you two looking for me?”
The twins looked at each other for a moment before turning to Leon, “How do you do that?
Even our mother can’t tell us apart most of the time.” George asked.
Leon shrugged, “You two look nothing alike to me.” He said, which was partially true.
To his mundane senses the Twins were absolutely identical.
But on the metaphysical side?
It was like seeing two completely different paintings that were trying to portray the same scene from different angles.
Their magical energies, souls, and even overall presence was just different, “Anyway, again, what did you to want?
I’m kind of busy.
Need to start my workout in 15 minutes.”
“Ok, we need some help with the D&D thing.
We’ve worked out a lot of the kinks.
But we need an artist’s touch, and we don’t have enough left over to hire someone.” Fred explained.
“We need to get someone who can paint really well.” George added.
Leon paused at that.
He was really good at painting.
He hadn’t really flexed that ability.
But it was purchased to the Grandmastery level, “I may be able to take care of that myself.
What do you need painted?” he asked.
“First we need some sceneries.
Forests, towns, pubs, interiors of buildings.
That sort of thing.”
“Then we need NPCs, Generic Characters, Character Sheets, and monsters.”
“We worked out a really co-” Fred cut off as George smacked his head.
“You’re right Fred!”
“I’m George!”
“Sure.”
Leon interrupted their bit with a raised hand.
A raised hand that held a coin purse.
He would have been delighted to help if he only needed to paint a few pieces.
But the scale that they were operating on needed more than a single painter to make everything in a reasonable timeframe, “I can help with a few paintings.
I’ll do a couple of monsters with stat sheets for you.
But don’t count on me exclusively.
Hire whoever you need to get things done.”
“Excellent!
We knew that you were the man to talk to.”
“Hopefully we’ll have it done by Christmas.
Then we can use the school as trial run.”
Leon looked at his timepiece and sighed as the twins headed off.
They hadn’t eaten much of his time.
But he was running a tight ship these days.
They had almost caused him to be late.
But now he had a few ideas for monsters that he could paint as well.
First, he could use his Dremora.
Goblins, Arachne, Driders and Nuckelavee.
It would be cool to make them stat sheets.
Lots of ideas beyond that, but Leon wasn’t about to start dedicating a large amount of time to this particular pursuit.
Not with everything else he was juggling.
∞∞∞
“Have you learned to not be a mean Diary?” ink appeared across the page of an old worn looking Diary.
“…”
“Good, I want your opinion on something.
It’s about a boy…”
“And who is this boy?
Who are you, actually, you still haven’t told me.”
“You don’t need to know names.
Mother warned me about giving my name to strange books.”
“I’m not a strange book though.
I’m a Diary.
And I want to help you.”
“Ok… There’s this boy.
And I don’t know how to talk to him.
How does one talk to boys?
Especially older ones.”
Tom Riddle of the Diary was in mental anguish.
This girl was giving him no details.
Refused to even name herself.
And wouldn’t even fully explain the situation.
How could he give any advice on such a subject without any context!
Tentatively he began to carefully frame a response.
“Well, maybe ask him about his hobbies?
Boys like it when you show interest in things that interest them.” Tom responded carefully.
If he was ever going to manipulate this girl, he’d need her to trust him.
If he needed to cold-start a ‘friendship,’ that’s how he would approach it.
Build rapport, gain trust, bend towards specific use.
The Girl would see that his advice worked and come back to him more frequently.
Maybe even start keeping him close, which is what he needed.
“But what if I already know all that?”
“Ask anyway.
Pretend not to know to give yourself an excuse to talk to him.”
“You mean I should LIE…”
Tom realized in that last word that he’d screwed up again.
What was wrong with this girl!
It was good advice!
A small lie wasn’t even a bad thing when it came to things like this!
There was a long moment where Tom hoped that the girl was genuinely thinking about it.
Then the words “BAD DIARY.” appeared on his pages.
Tom felt despair as he felt his bindings snap shut.
The girl shook her head as she shoved the Diary back into its little cubby hole at the bottom of her trunk.
Diaries should know better than to tell people to lie.
Her momma always said that bad books get better if you let them rest then come back to them later.
Another time-out may fix the problem.
∞∞∞
Leon sighed deeply as the rush of power flowed through him.
And it was double the normal.
He’d finally purchased an Unnamed Realm.
Maybe it was a waste of OP to purchase an Unnamed Realm, but he wasn’t in a hurry to end up as a drooling vegetable again with purchasing more knowledge.
More Stat points would always be helpful.
Perhaps it wasn’t an optimized purchase path.
But he could handle that.
He’d also just swiped a Diary off the tables in the common room.
Task completed.
He’d return it once he assessed the two new realms that had just faded into his awareness.
Spiral Skein was an immense realm made entirely of silken strands.
A web in the shape of a giant wheel.
Each individual spoke of the wheel was a hollow structure of multiple layers.
And each Spoke had a unique geography within it.
one of them was filled with pillars of some dark substance, another filled with shallow stagnant grottoes and mysterious lights floating everywhere.
There were eight spokes in all, with enough land area in each spoke to house an entire world.
The Rim or Tread of the wheel shape was even larger and mixed the biomes of each of the spokes, seemingly at random.
Then, at the center, was a pillar of silk so massive that Leon had no words to describe it.
And housed within it was a Palace that could house a civilization.
Leon didn’t immediately see a use for the realm.
It was mostly dark and dreary.
Not really ideal for establishing ecosystems.
But if the Nuckelavee had proven anything, it was that they excelled at finding solutions for spreading life to unlikely places.
The Unnamed Realm was very different from the realms he already had.
It was an infinite plane of nothing but air.
Set in a perpetual dawning light.
There was a distinct up and down directions.
But things would just fall forever downward.
There was no bottom.
And no loop.
One could fly upwards to infinity and never reach the end.
Without some extended observations Leon wasn’t sure if there was a day/night cycle.
But he could tell that there was no weather.
It didn’t rain, it didn’t develop tornados or hurricanes.
It was just airspace.
“If the Nuckelavee can figure out how to spread a natural ecosystem to this plane… I’ll give them a raise.” Leon muttered to himself as he pulled away his awareness and brought up his status panel.
Race: Oblivion Lord
Named Realm/s: Coldharbour, The Hunting Grounds, The Shivering Isles, Apocrypha, The Colored Rooms, Evergloam, Spiral Skein
Unnamed Realm/s: 1
Avatar/s: [Coldharbour 1/1(Human/changeable)] [HP-Earthly Realm 1/1(human/wizard)]
Mind: 8
Body: 8
Spirit: 8
OP: 53
[Shop]
[Task: Swear an Oath in the presence of witnesses and carry out that Oath to its completion.
Reward: Ashpit]
Leon looked at the stat gains with satisfaction, then cringed a little at the OP total.
This new task was interesting.
Focused on an aspect of Malacath that Leon would not have expected.
He would have expected something more along the lines of the spurned and the ostracized since that seemed more fundamental to the Daedric Prince than anything.
But he wasn’t going to complain about an easier task.
Swearing an Oath and carrying it out to completion… Hopefully, he could just swear that he was going to eat his breakfast within fifteen minutes or something silly like that.
The system didn’t specify that the Task needed to be some grand Oath with grand stakes after all.
Tomorrow he was going to pivot his investigation slightly.
He had a list of possible Diary holders.
He couldn’t send spies to watch them.
The next best thing was to either befriend them or befriend their friends to gather information.
Fitting this new avenue of investigation into his schedule was going to suck.
But he’d already laid the foundation, knew the ties, and knew what would make sense.
The number one suspect on his list was also the easiest to get information on.
Willow Longbottom.
She was in Gryffindor, and Leon could ask Harry and Ron about her… the only issue is that he would be asking Harry and Ron about a girl.
And that was something that they would definitely hold over his head for years to come.
In fact, most of his highest rated suspects were in Gryffindor.
Ellen Macmillan, Terry Boot(somehow, she had the same name despite the gender difference) and Antonia Goldstein were all in Gryffindor.
And all of their families had done something or said something publicly within the last year to get them on Lucius’ bad side.
But asking Harry and Ron about all of them came with consequences that he wasn’t really excited to deal with.
Willow was the number one on his list because of her grandmother.
Augusta Longbottom had given multiple public statements since Pettigrew was revealed, claiming that Lucius had never been under the Imperious Curse.
That he was just a liar and a coward who had evaded justice because of his wealth.
She was preaching the truth!
Not that anyone actually took her accusations seriously.
But Malfoy would definitely want revenge.
Goldstein was actually number two on the list.
The Goldstein Family had sued the Malfoy Family and won a tidy sum of 10,000 galleons.
That was a lot of money.
And it pushed Malfoy’s name into the mud due to the nature of the lawsuit.
The only reason that Antonia Goldstein wasn’t number one on the list was due to the fact that the Malfoy’s were actually business partners with the Goldstein family in multiple industries.
That made the whole lawsuit kind of performative.
And the actual payout of 10k galleons was only a large sum to ordinary people.
To both families it would only represent like a day’s worth of their revenue.
But even if it was performative, Malfoy was petty, so the number two spot on the list went to her.
The others on Leon’s lists had quite a few compelling reasons why Lucius Malfoy may target them.
But the reasons fell a little short of his top contenders.
The only thing that Leon feared, was that it was theoretically possible that Lucius hadn’t been the one to pick and deploy the Diary.
It could have been Narcissa Malfoy.
This world was different from his memories after all.
If she had done it… Then Leon would have literally nowhere to start.
He knew next to nothing about her or what would motivate her to plant a dark artifact on a student.
He set aside that possibility.
What little he had gathered on her through the Lucius investigation wouldn’t lead him to believe that she would target children.
She was more one for grand displays of drama in the ministry to grab tabloid headlines.
As much as asking Harry and Ron about a handful of Gryffindor girls was going to wound his pride, and hand them enough ammunition to tease him for years, the real problem lay elsewhere.
Leon had already checked the Hufflepuffs.
Like a dirty scoundrel he’d already rummaged through the Hufflepuffs trunks under the effects of a TES Invisibility Potion and found nothing.
But the girls in Slytherin that might be targets?
Leon mostly dismissed them; Lucius would never intentionally release a dark artifact in his own daughter’s house.
That didn’t mean he wouldn’t keep an eye on them.
And hopefully he could befriend Luna soon so he could have a source of information on the inside there.
So, Ravenclaw was the hardest nut to crack.
Leon genuinely had no idea how he was supposed to investigate Ravenclaw.
Most of the suspects there were fifteen or sixteen.
Older students had established friend groups, spent less time around younger years, and their behavior was much harder to interpret.
Fatigue, distraction, or mood swings could just as easily be explained by O.W.L.
preparation as by a sentient Dark artifact.
Leon fell asleep that night with his mind clouded.
Churning through all the possibilities and wondering how he was still hungry after supper.