Dove: The origins

Lily gazed down with increasing excitement at the black leather diary she had unwrapped from its gift cover. The diary looked quite ordinary from outside; dark brown textured leather with subtle carved embossing at the corners to give it an ancient look and feel. Yes, the diary looked pretty ordinary from its cover but what was extraordinary about the diary was the small golden scribbling on it which said “Tom Marvolo Riddle”.

• ·         Replica of Tom Riddle’s diary, Horcrux of Lord Voldemort.
• ·         Officially licensed Harry Potter collectible.
• ·         From the movie Harry Potter and the chamber of secrets.
• ·         Contains blank pages, may or may not contain the Dark Lord.

These were the product specifications that came along with the package.

“May or may not contain Lord Voldemort”. Though Lily knew it was stupid to fantasize something so highly improbable, she felt a surge of thrill rush into her blood as she opened her precious gift.

It looked exactly how she had imagined it, or even better. The pages were a dull cream color and looked more like parchment than ordinary paper. Lily instantly wished for a quill to write on it, and complete the magical ‘Harry potter’ effect.

Yes, Lily Edmonte was a die hard potterhead, ever since she was caught into the magical world of JKR at the age of 10. So when she saw the ad of the diary on a FB Harry Potter fan page, she begged her dad to get it for her birthday. And finally, after a long wait, her priceless dream diary was in her hands. Without wasting further time, she unscrewed the top of her ink pen and wrote in her childish, bold scribbles-

“My name is Lily Edmonte”, she wrote, copying Harry’s words from his first experience with the riddle diary.

Though she wasn’t expecting anything to happen, she still sat with bated breath for a while.

Only to meet that expected disappointment.

“Never mind Lily. Voldy or no Voldy, this is still such an awesome diary to write on!” she consoled herself.

And that was when the magic started.

The words she had written… disappeared.

(So anticlimactic wasn’t it? :P)

She screamed and jumped out of her bed, staring at the diary in shock. Her parents scrambled into the room to inspect the nature disturbance and it took her a long time to explain its cause.

“It… it… disappeared” she managed to splutter.

“My words! They disappeared! Just like they did in the books!” she elaborated seeing her parent’s confusion.

“You are just imagining it baby. You are tired and excited with the party today. Get some rest honey” her mother said soothingly.

“No!”, Lily shouted “daddy look. LOOK. There are still traces of my pen scribbles. I am not imagining it!”

Her father inspected the diary and started smiling “Look Martha, how clever these people are” he said, as his wife joined him curiously. “See the paper here. Its thicker than normal paper is. I think what went in there concealed cleverly beneath the layers of parchment” he looked around to see if he had their attention. “Blotting paper” he finished, looking pleased with himself.

“And it must be a pretty good one too, to leave no trace of ink” it was her mother this time, looking impressed.

But lily couldn’t digest such a simple explanation for the first magical thing that happened with her. So it was a thoughtful and brooding little girl who went to bed that night, after her parents kissed her goodnight for the second time.

“It cant be just blotting paper. That’s too simple an explanation!” she thought.

She opened the diary again, staring at the blank page that had sucked in her ink and oozed out nothing but disappointment. “Write back Tom. Write back!” she pleaded but nothing happened.

She sighed and was about to shut it when she spotted something unusual.

A drop of INK.

Before she could even start to digest what was happening, the magic started the second time. The diary started writing back, but what it wrote was something no one could ever expect.

“Hello Lily Edmonte. My name is Lily Evans”

Lily stared and stared. She pinched herself twice to make sure she wasn’t dreaming and after the second rather painful confirmation, she realized that it was happening. It was really happening.

“Are you really Lily?” she wrote, to make sure it wasn’t old Voldy with his bag of tricks.

“Of course. This is my diary. From my 4^th year at the Hogwarts School of witchcraft and wizardry.”

“This isn’t a horcrux?”

“A… what??”

“Never mind. You are able to write back to me. Can you show me your memories too?”

“Of course. Memories are what my diary is all about.”

“But… how does that work?”

“Why don’t you join me so that I can show you in person?”

After that it happened exactly like it happened in the book, may you rot in misery if you haven’t read the book :P

Lily felt solid ground beneath her feet after something that felt very similar to a hair raising roller coaster ride. Blurred shapes came into focus slowly and to her surprise she saw a red headed girl standing beside her, smiling.

Lily looked around her, to make sure the girl was looking at her. “Can you see me?” she asked.

“Of course” said the girl, who could only be Lily Evans, with the trademark green eyes and flaming red hair.

“So how come… I am here in your memory?” Little Lily asked her.

“I enchanted this diary in a way that I could record my memories in it and revisit them later. So whoever I choose can see them with me” Lily explained.

“Like a video recording camera!!” Lily crowed in excitement. “Er… so which memory are we in right now” she said hurriedly seeing Lily Evans’s curious glance.

Lily cleared her throat “This memory is a very special and memorable one because this is when I did something really helpful for a friend of mine and made something that helped everyone in years to come”

“My friend suffered from really pathetic hair trouble. Hair fall, grimy hair that looked oily and dirty all the time, hair that would stench from half a mile away. My friend didn’t care much about physical appearance but as we grew older, people started noticing things you wouldn’t expect people to notice in a school of magic. Anyways, when the taunts and the mockery got too much to bear, my friend broke down completely and sort of… stopped socializing and became bitter and withdrawn.

I wouldn’t have known about all this if I hadn’t gone into Myrtle’s bathroom once… you know who Moaning Myrtle is right?” She asked lily.

Lily nodded hurriedly, not wanting her to stop.

“So Myrtle, the sick sadist she is, took particular glee in telling me how my friend spent most of the free time moping and pouring about hair troubles to her, who by the way, doesn’t have very impressive hair herself” Lily said contemptuously, running fingers through her own spectacular mane of red hair.

Little Lily felt conscious suddenly; she had never bothered much about her own hair.

“So I decided to help my friend out but it was a bit tricky as that person usually avoided any sorts of confrontation and turned particularly rude and aloof. I first checked the truth of this matter by sneaking into my friend’s inbox one day which confirmed Myrtle’s tale as it contained several messages seeking help  from reputed hair care companies and…”

“Wait… hold on. INBOX??? MESSAGES??” Lily asked in shock.

“Surely you know about Inbox and the communication tablet we use to send short messages to each other in the school and beyond?” Lily Evans asked, taking out a small square tablet from her own robes which looked like the primitive brother of the cell phones we use today. Except, it had no numbers.

“Of course I know about Inbox and messages and cell phones but what are they doing HERE?” Lily asked baffled.

“Cell phones?” She looked at her curiously. Then light dawning on her face she said “Is that what you call these in your world?”

Lily nodded.

“Don’t mind it dear but the muggles do have this habit of copying our ideas sometimes.” Lily Evans said, assuming a slightly superior tone.

“Anyways, so I went ahead and confronted this friend of mine. After a lot of coaxing the matter was finally revealed to me and to end my closest friend’s misery, we decided to find a solution ourselves. For seven weeks, we concocted a potion, even stealing from Prof Slughorn’s personal store which wasn’t too hard, sitting at stolen hours in Moaning Myrtle’s abandoned bathroom amidst her wails and mourning, and after a lot of changes and experimentation, we finally got the product of our dreams. It was so beautiful, it frothed and bubbled issuing a delicious, warm scent, and it shimmered like the soft wings of bird. It looked so clean and pure that we named it… Dove…”

“And then…” Lily asked in a whisper.

“The beautiful potion had only to come in contact with my friend’s hair, and everything changed just after the first wash. The grime and dirt accumulated for years with bitterness was washed away leaving soft, silky hair that smelled and felt wonderful. My friend was overjoyed with the instant result and we sent a sample of this beautiful potion to a famous hair care company so that other people across the world facing hair trouble could heave a sigh of relief too. My friend ended up as the brand ambassador of this company and was seen holding a bottle of our potion with a sunny smile saying ‘and that was the end of my hair problems!’ “finished Lily, smiling a sunny smile herself.

“That is… such a wonderful story Lily!” Lily Edmonte crowed with delight.

“I know. It’s a true pleasure to see your friends happy Lily. And since you are my little friend now, I would like to make you happy too” She swished her hand swiftly once and a small, beautiful packet with two bottles came floating up to her.

“Thank you so much Lily!! This has to be the best birthday gift ever!” she squealed.

Lily smiled and hugged her. “You are most welcome dear. Off you must go now; you must be in bed by this time!”

Lily stood back amidst fiercely blowing wind again when she suddenly remembered something and shouted “You didn’t tell me who this friend was!”

Lily Evans smiled and said “It was my best friend… Severus Snape…”

***

“This is such a crappy idea Kush! Its too lame to even THINK about writing! I think I should just trash it and be done with it” said Ruhi in frustration, mindless plucking the grass beside her.

“No its not. Its funny and original. OK, it is crazy no doubt and you humor in writing needs wee bit more honing but it’s worth a shot! It doesn’t matter you win or not, you would still have a good story on your blog Ruhi!” Kush said gently.

“It SOUNDS good. I doubt if it would READ good.” She said dejectedly.

“It would. Trust yourself. Come on Ruhi, you can do this!” he encouraged her.

Ruhi looked at him and whispered “Maybe I will…”

“That’s the spirit. And by the way, your hair looks beautiful today” he said, running his fingers through them. “Wonderfully SOFT…”

Ruhi smiled and said “I know. The wonderful ‘potion’ of Dove put an end to my hair problems too” she winked as Kush laughed. 

***

This was written for a Dove contest on Indiblogger.

Dove has an awesome hair aware application. Check it out here!

This is purely a work of fiction. Thanks to J.K.Rowling for making awesome characters like Snape and Lily!! :D :)


And yeahhh. The diary EXISTS. It really DOES!! someone get it for me PLEASE!
Here you are. And i fell out laughing reading the description.