Harry potter The Boy Who Remembers

14 August 1992, Diagon Alley

Harry was thankful for it because all he could feel was disappointment. He had lost the Diary and the students of Hogwarts were going to pay for it.

He had failed. Ginny Weasley did not have the diary. From now on, he couldn't rely on the stories, and for the first time, Harry dreaded his return to Hogwarts.

The Potter scion sat in his usual spot in the Leaky Cauldron, in his adult form, contemplating his failure in procuring the diary, as well as the consequences of that failure. Almost two weeks later, and the detail still eluded him on exactly what happened to it. Most likely Lucius Malfoy did end up involved in putting away the diary. The altercation at Flourish and Blotts just wasn't something that someone that's currently at the helm of a third of the Wizengamot, opposing Albus Dumbledore himself, would do.

The story had even been published in the Daily Prophet. It was in a small article at the end of the paper that pretty much only said that a physical fight happened and that Arthur Weasley was the instigator. The Malfoy family is a very old one, and surprisingly secretive. Its founder was the bastard son of Henry the First, whose mother was a skilled sorceress. He was quite skilled, but after his father's death, he attempted to usurp his trueborn brother's throne, unsuccessfully. He was then banished from France and cursed with a name that branded his betrayal. Malfoy came from Male Foi, which means Bad Faith in French.

When he joined William I in his conquest of England, acting as his personal spymaster, he was granted a lordship and a prime piece of land in Wiltshire, starting the rise of the Malfoy family. Not much is known about their family magics, other than it exists – they have magical crests – and that it isn't displayed openly. Of course, after the Statute of Secrecy, they lost their land, but their influence in magical society over centuries did grant them a spot in the Wizengamot. Malfoys often choose to focus on the realm of politics and Lucius Malfoy followed his ancestor's footsteps.

And so, someone of the Malfoy patriarch's reputation and prestige wasn't supposed to publicly get into physical fights, hence why it was probably planned. Lucius Malfoy was definitely involved in the Diary being given away, but Harry did not notice him doing anything. The only thing he had touched was the Weasley girl's cauldron, and there wasn't a diary there.

It was a mystery that just wouldn't be solved. Oh, how he wished he had a pensive. It would have been very useful, but alas they were very rare, and probably cost as much as whatever remained of his family fortune. No matter what crackpots like to say, Occlumency did not grant perfect memory. In fact, perfect memory retention was still being debated in both the magical and the muggle worlds.

Memory is not like a perfect recording device that captures and stores every detail of our experiences. Instead, it involves encoding, storing, and retrieving information, and it can be subject to biases, distortions, and forgetting over time. Our memories are also influenced by factors like attention, emotional significance, and personal interpretation. Of course, there are memory prodigies, with very good recall, but even then, it tends to be more domain specific than universally flawless and comprehensive memory retention.

What a pensive does is analyse memories and scry for the rest of the details. Sometimes they're faulty, especially if a place is warded specifically against that kind of magic, or they can be modified by outside sources, which was why memories really weren't admissible in any magical court. They were too subjective and unpredictable for it to work.

Still, Harry didn't sense any unusual magic to stop scrying. Not that it meant much; the diary had somehow eluded his Arcane Hearing, something that he had no idea how. His Arcane Hearing was an interpretation of the magic around him. You needed to alter the very magic of something to hide its nature. A few concealing wards did that, but the fact that it was anchored to an artefact and that the magical camouflage was able to adapt in real time, was something Harry had never heard of. The fact that an Adolescent Tom Riddle was able to do it was very impressive and disturbing. It definitely raised his threat level by a few notches.

Alas, there was nothing he could do about the diary now. He was at a dead end, and his next chance would be at the Hogwarts Express when the diary first crosses the wards. The shock would hopefully disrupt the concealing enchantment, and Harry would be able to find it.

But in the event that he fails, he needs to figure out a way to survive the Basilisk, or whatever else was in the chamber. That's not mentioning the Riddle shade. He needed to figure out how to survive the Basilisk's glare, before even thinking about anything else. It was too dangerous for him.

But what was the basilisk glare in the first place? How did it work? Harry needed a way to neutralize it and to do so, he needed to understand it. According to the stories indirect eye contact with a basilisk caused petrification, not instant death. Harry sincerely hoped that it was still the case, especially for the sake of the children at Hogwarts. Yeah, petrification was preferable to death.

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