If you drink ink, you will die

A/N: This is my first fanfic that I have published. So, please R&R.

Summary: It's ironic, how far people can go to soothe themselves of their pain. Some people do drugs, others drink unhealthy amounts of alcohol. For eleven year old Ginny, however, her method of soothing herself was to pour her heart and soul into a book, a book that talked back, that comforted her, that made her feel much better. And even though she knew that there was something wrong about the whole thing, she didn't do anything. She wasn't giving up Tom any time soon.

Rating : T because I'm paranoid.

Prologue

When she was younger, Ginny would often get enamored by the very idea of Hogwarts. Her brothers would tell stories of their time there, and each story was so different from the other, that Ginny truly believed that Hogwarts welcomed all kinds of people.

Ginny had always been the closest to Ron, who, like her, didn't particularly go out of his way to befriend other children at Ottery St. Catchpole. It was also a plus point that both of them had just a year's gap in age, which made them very agreeable with each other.

But occasionally, Ron would wander, and play with his older brothers, completely ignoring Ginny. Like when the Weasley children decided to play Quidditch, they would exclude Ginny, saying that girls shouldn't play sports. In reality, they didn't want Ginny to play Quidditch at such a young age. But it hurt Ginny, to see Ron allowed to play the game, who often told her that he would always be beside her. Gradually, as they both grew older, Ron and Ginny grew apart, and Ginny grew closer to Molly.

There was no denying that her brothers loved Ginny very much, but sometimes they couldn't communicate that love to her very well. And as a result, they spent more time with people they could understand more easily, boys.

When Ron came back from Hogwarts, Ginny was excited to hear stories about his time. But she mostly wanted to hear about Harry Potter. Oh, how she admired the boy-who-lived! When her father first talked about the boy who defeated You-Know-Who, Ginny had been so, so glossy eyed, dreaming about meeting the great hero. She often wondered about how he looked, and dreamed of meeting him. But then, Harry Potter came to the Burrow, and she saw him, and she ran away. But unlike what her brothers thought, Ginny didn't run away just because she was speechless, she also ran away because she realized that he looked normal. And she did not expect that. She felt ashamed that she knew nothing about the boy she admired so much.

Ginny now had a goal. She would try to learn more about. That plan failed, as each time she came across Harry, she couldn't say anything.

( Well there was this one time when she stood up for Harry against Draco Malfoy, but that courage was gone as soon as the stupid blondie made a comment about how Potter had a girlfriend now )

So the night before her first look at Hogwarts, she decided that she would go there and try to make friends first. Then she would think about Harry.

But when she did reach Hogwarts, she realized that she was all alone.

Somewhere in her subconscious, she had thought that her brothers, how much ever sexist they were, would be beside her. But they weren't. Percy had his own group of Ravenclaw and Gryffindor friends, Fred and George had each other and Lee Jordan, and Ron had Harry Potter and Hermione Granger.

In short, her brothers had better things to do than be with her.

It didn't help that all the teachers had made assumptions about her, about the legacy she would go on to make.

Some thought she would be a chess genius, like Ron, or perhaps a prankster, like Fred and George, maybe even a Quidditch star, like Charlie.

But she, was nothing. She wasn't sharp in class, she was extremely innocent, and her designated broom didn't even move when she called for it in flying class. Soon, the teachers stopped making speculations.

Ginny felt… alone.

She was very shy as a child, so it was extremely hard for her to befriend anyone in her year. So she tried to enter Ron's group, her closest, youngest brother.

She would subtly include herself in their conversations, only to make it awkward by impulsively praising the very existence of Harry Potter. She would sit close to them, hoping they would include her in whatever they were talking about.

But she failed every time.

One day, Ron cornered her and told her to stay away from his friends. His words haunted her that night.

"Can you stop trying to befriend my friends? You already have all of mom and dad's attention. At least Harry and Hermione care for me, don't steal them! Let me win for at least once! Get yourself your own friends!"

Ron didn't give Ginny a chance to reply. He stormed off, not looking back once.

She then thought,' Hey, I can still talk to Percy and the twins. '

But that idea was quickly quenched as she feared that they would react to her the same way as Ron did.

One fateful night, as she went through her trunk looking for a jumper, Ginny found an old, leather-bound diary. She didn't remember buying it, so she asked her dorm mates whether it was theirs. But the girls, who were playing some muggle card game, replied that it wasn't. After mumbling a bit about how they could have at least invited her to play with them, Ginny opened the diary, thinking there might be something written in it. There wasn't.

After another extremely lonely day, Ginny, desperate to tell her emotions to someone, decided that she would use the leather bound diary. She took a quill and ink pot, and starting writing in the book.

'Dear Diary,

Hello, my name is Ginevra Weasley, but you can call me Ginny. '

Ginny raised her quill and was just about to dip it in ink again, when the words disappeared from the page. She gasped as new words appeared on the same page.

'Hello Ginny, my name is Tom Riddle, but you can call me Tom. '

Later that night, as one of Ginny's dorm mates entered the dorm, tired after studying in the common room all day, she frowned as she noticed a familiar book on the couch.

'' Isn't that the book Weasley was showing us yesterday? Did it always have 'Tom Riddle' engraved on it?"

So, I decided that in this story, Ginny doesn't know how to fly before she comes to Hogwarts. Also, she never found out that the boy she met at King's Cross is Harry.