12 August 1992
Dear Diary,
Today is the last day I'll be writing in here. I found another diary in my new Transfiguration book, and I really want to try it out. I'll remember you forever, diary, and I'll look at you when I want to read about something that happened during the years I had you. I'll miss you!
Love,
Ginny
***
When Ginny Weasley and the rest of her family arrived back at the Burrow from Diagon Alley, they went their separate ways. Fred and George locked themselves up in their room to try out the new jokes they had bought; Percy did the same, though to read his new textbooks. Harry and Ron went to the paddock to play Quidditch before it got dark. Ginny's mother hurried to refill the pot of Floo powder, and her father quickly wrote down everything he had learned from Hermione's parents about Muggles before he forgot.
Ginny, on the other hand, walked slowly up to her room, lugging her new books and robes with her. She was supposed to be packing them away for safe-keeping, but she decided she would rather marvel at her supplies.
Upon arriving in her room, Ginny emptied her load onto her bed. Everything was there: her books, including the new Lockhart ones from Harry, her robes, her wand, her cauldron, her Potions ingredients, and everything else she could think of that she would possibly need for school.
One odd thing caught her eye, though: there was another book peeking out from inside A Beginners' Guide to Transfiguration. She picked up the book and opened it, turning to the page that the other book was tucked inside. It was a thin book, and smaller than the textbook it had been hiding in. The black cover was worn with age and use. Ginny flipped through the pages of the book, only to see that there was nothing written on them. The only sign of anyone owning the book was a name printed carefully on the first page: T. M. Riddle.
Wondering who T. M. Riddle was, Ginny hurried over to a table where she kept her quills and ink. She took out what she needed, dipped the quill in the ink, and wrote the date at the top of the second page. To her shock, the words faded. She turned the page, but there was nothing there either. Looking at the bottle of ink, Ginny saw that it was some of Fred and George's disappearing ink. Sighing, she took out a new bottle, double-checking that it was real ink this time.
She dipped the quill in the new ink and wrote the date again. And again, the ink sunk right through the page. Exasperated, Ginny held the ink bottle right up to her eye, reading all of the fine print. There was absolutely nothing on it saying that it would disappear.
Just as she was getting ready to go and yell at Fred and George for switching her ink bottles, she noticed new words forming on the page she had been trying to write on.
"My, is it 1992 already?"
Shocked, Ginny sat back down, her mouth hanging open as she stared at the page. The words faded and were replaced with more.
"May I ask who is writing?"
Despite the fact that she knew there was something wrong about the diary and that her father had told her not to do things like what she was about to do, Ginny dipped her quill in the ink once more and wrote, "Ginny Weasley. Who are you?"
The words seemed to sink through the page once more and she watched nervously as a reply was scrawled out.
"Hello, Ginny. I am Tom Riddle. Do you go to Hogwarts?"
Ginny quickly responded, her hand shaking slightly as she wondered how this conversation was possible. "I'm about to go into my first year." Tom's answer was slower this time, almost as though he was thinking deeply about what she had revealed.
"Excellent. Are you excited?"
"Yes. I have six older brothers who have told me all about it. Do you go to Hogwarts too?" She had never heard of a Tom Riddle, so none of her brothers had ever talked about him. Maybe he was in the year above Ron or the year below Percy; they wouldn't have talked about him then.
"I did, in my day."
Ginny, wondering what he meant by this, scribbled out, "When was that?" She didn't have to wait long for a response this time; almost as soon as her words faded, new ones appeared.
"It is 1992, you say? A good fifty years ago, then."
"Wow. What was it like then?" replied Ginny, curious. How could someone who was at Hogwarts fifty years ago be talking to her through a diary?
"It was. . . Unusual. Not like it is now. It was much more exciting, I assure you."
Ginny leaned back in her chair, confused. She wondered what Hogwarts would be like if it was any more exciting than it already was. It seemed like a wonderful place to her, and she couldn't imagine what would have to happen to make it more exhilarating to be this close to going. She hunched back over the diary and wrote, "How could Hogwarts be more exciting than it is now? What happened?"
"Ah, but it is not something for a first-year to know. Maybe when you are older you shall find out."
Frustrated, Ginny wrote back, "But I want to know now! Maybe I can make Hogwarts that exciting again!" She watched the words disappear, hoping Tom would tell her if he knew she could do it again, whatever it was. She waited for what felt like an eternity for the words. When none came, she closed the diary angrily, enjoying the slamming sound.
If Tom Riddle wouldn't tell her what had happened, she would just have to find out herself. She grabbed one of her textbooks, A History of Magic, and flipped to the table of contents.
***
Three hours later, Ginny still had not found anything about something interesting happening at Hogwarts fifty years ago in her book. Frustrated, she threw the book on the top of her trunk and leaned back on the bed, thinking about Tom Riddle. She wasn't sure if she trusted him. He hadn't told her all he could; she knew he knew more than he was letting on.
"Supper is ready!"
It was her mother, calling the family downstairs. Ginny rolled off her bed reluctantly and started slowly down the stairs, still deep in thought. She didn't realize anyone was behind her until she heard the low hum of a funeral march.
She turned around and saw, not to her surprise, that Fred and George were coming down the stairs too. They were humming together, their eyes closed and their arms around each other. Even after Ginny had stopped, they kept walking, and continued until they ran into her. They opened their eyes abruptly, and Fred said, "Go any slower and you'll be dead."
"You going to eat or not?" George asked, tapping his foot and pretending to look at a watch on his wrist. He pointed to the pretend watch and said, "Looks like suppertime to me."
"Can't a girl think?" asserted Ginny, glaring at her brothers.
"Well then," said Fred, backing up a step, "don't mind us."
Ginny turned and continued down the stairs, irritated with her large family. She knew she wasn't acting like she normally would, but the diary and Tom Riddle had set her on edge. She tried to make her face look more normal before walking into the kitchen, but it was still set angrily.
"Are you okay?" asked her father, looking at her worriedly as she sat down.
"I'm fine," she replied, taking a roll from her mother. "Just tired."
He didn't ask any more questions, but Ginny could tell from the look on his face that he knew something was wrong besides tiredness. Her mother glanced at her and gave her a look, clearly telling her to stop being so sour. Ginny sat up straighter and plastered a smile on her face, taking a bowl that Percy offered her.
"You really should be more considerate," he stated as he gave her the bowl. "You aren't acting very grateful for the things they've done today." As a second thought, he added, "They bought you a wand," under his breath.
"I know," she said. "Sorry. . ."
For the rest of dinner, she was unusually quiet. She only spoke when Harry asked her if she was excited to go to Hogwarts. "Yes," she replied softly, looking down at her plate, "it should be fun."
Nobody made the mistake of speaking to her after that, knowing that she wasn't in the mood. She ate her dinner slowly, only paying attention to a small amount of the conversation. Nothing came up that particularly interested her, so she just thought about the diary some more, wondering what the exciting thing Tom had mentioned was.
By the time everybody had finished eating and they had been excused, Ginny had decided to search the rest of her textbooks for anything to do with Hogwarts, even her potions book. She walked quickly up the stairs to her room, avoiding everybody she could on the way, and closed the door behind her once she got there. She sat down on her bed and picked up One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi.
Before she got very far, though, something on her desk caught her eye. She looked up from the table of contents and saw that Tom Riddle's diary lay open. Confused, she set down the book and walked over to the desk. She was sure she had closed the book. . . Hadn't she?
She gasped when she looked at the book and saw fresh writing. It read,
"Do you think you could do that? Make what happened repeat itself?"
She hastened to get her ink bottle and quill, wondering how long this reply had been there. When she had dipped the quill in the ink, she wrote as fast as she could while still being able to read what she had written, "Yes! I know I can!"
The words faded and were quickly replaced, making Ginny think the last reply hadn't been written that long ago. "Then allow me to show you."
Ginny stared at these words, and to her shock, the pages of the diary began flipping wildly. She gasped and leaned back in her chair, frightened. What was happening?
At last, the diary's pages slowed down and stopped. Ginny looked at the date, and she saw that the box for September eighth wasn't the normal color of parchment; instead, it housed a miniscule figure that seemed to be speaking. She leaned closer, hoping to catch what he was saying. She had tried to be cautious, but she felt herself falling forward. She screamed and tried to hold onto the desk, but she continued falling until she was standing next to the boy, who was hissing like a snake.
The boy looked to her to be about sixteen years old, and reminded her of her brother, Percy. He had a prefect badge pinned to his chest, and was standing in the middle of a deserted bathroom. Still scared, Ginny tried to speak to him.
"Hello?" she asked. She was met with more hissing, and the boy didn't seem to have heard her at all. Suddenly, one of the sinks sank into the ground, and Ginny gasped. "What's going on?"
Once again, the boy didn't answer, but instead jumped into the hole left by the sink. She walked over to the hole and looked down, trying to find him again. All of a sudden, she felt a strong gust of wind, and fell once again, this time into the hole after the boy. She screamed loudly as she fell, trying to grab onto a wall, a crack in the cement, anything that would hold her.
Unfortunately, the walls of the chute were smooth as glass, and there was nothing for her to grip. She landed in a heap at the bottom, and saw the boy in front of her. He didn't seem to have heard her, and Ginny was forced to conclude that he had no realization of her presence.
The boy walked forward into a dark tunnel. She quickly got to her feet and followed him, not caring that she had no idea where she was, only worried about losing him. If she let him get away, she had a strange feeling that she would never get back to her room.
They walked until they came upon a wall with two snakes carved on it. She shuddered, feeling suddenly cold. The boy stopped and hissed once more, and the snakes came apart, revealing another room beyond the tunnel. The boy walked into it, and Ginny followed him, walking so close behind him that she was treading on his heels. He took no notice.
Ginny looked around and saw huge pillars all around her, with more snakes that seemed to be staring at her. She followed the boy up to a gigantic statue of a man. The boy hissed again, and the statue's mouth opened wide. Before she was able to see inside it, however, everything went black.
Ginny could still feel and hear even in her blind state, and she felt as though she were moving very fast backwards, then up for a long time. Just when she was beginning to think she was going back to her bedroom, everything stopped abruptly and she could see once more.
She saw a large boy with fiery red hair like her own lying on the floor in front of her. She was in a bathroom again, but a different one this time. The boy was near the mirror, and he looked like he had seen a ghost, one that wasn't very nice at all. He seemed frozen in his position, and the boy from the other bathroom was standing over him, grinning and completely mobile.
She heard the door open, and turned to see an old, bald man hurrying into the room. "Oh, thank goodness you were here, Tom," he said, bending down over the frozen boy. "Thank you so much."
Tom nodded at the old man, and everything went black once more. Ginny experienced the same sensations she had before, and this time she came out into a hallway.
There was a small girl on the floor this time, surrounded in water from a recent spill. At first Ginny thought she had slipped and fallen, but then she saw that the girl had the same mortified look that the red-headed boy had had in the bathroom. Two teachers came running into view with a woman who seemed to be the school nurse, and they hauled the girl away. Ginny could tell by her vision becoming blurrier that things were about to get very dark again, and she was right.
She arrived in another bathroom, and she recognized it as being the very first bathroom that she had been in with Tom. There were more people in the bathroom than she had ever seen in a room, even at her family's reunions. They all seemed to be teachers, and there was one by the door telling some students to stay outside.
She walked right past them to a stall at the end of the bathroom, where they all seemed to be gathering. To her horror, she saw a girl lying on the floor, who looked remarkably like how the others had. There was something in her face, though, that told Ginny her situation wasn't nearly the same.
This girl was dead.
***
After seeing the dead girl, Ginny had felt herself being pulled up through the pages of Tom Riddle's diary, and was soon sitting in her chair at her desk, breathing heavily.
Once she had regained her breath, she looked back at the diary, disgusted. Almost as though it could read her mind, the words appeared.
"Wait. Don't go."
She felt herself being pulled towards the diary again. She thought of how her father had told her never to trust inanimate objects, but the thought was quickly blown from her mind as if the wind had sent it away. She couldn't remember what she had been thinking about, and found herself writing back.
"I'll do it."
Spellbound by ravenclaw1997
Chapter Notes:Thanks, once more, to my mom for beta'ing. You're so awesome!
***
Chapter Endnotes:I've just started school again, and I have no more chapters written, so I'm afraid there's going to be a longer wait between chapters now. I'll try and get one in before the queue closes on Saturday, but I'm not promising anything.
Give me an R! Give me an E! Give me a V! Give me an I! Give me an E! Give me a W! What does that spell? Review!