Ginny Weasley and the Riddle Diary

By Starwin

Chapter 2 – Empty Pages

The town of Ottery St. Catchpole was surrounded by low hills and weedy fields. On the southern side of the town was the River Otter, a wide slow moving flow of icy cold water that often overflowed its banks during heavy rains and turned the lands to marsh. The town was small, quiet and no larger than a few blocks in size, with barely half a dozen shops and only twice as many homes.

In the center of town a single signal glowed red in one direction and green in another. Slowly, the signal changed from green to yellow and finally red. A moment later, the light that had been red turned green. No one was awake to see it.

In the very early hours of the morning only the single signal and the lamps spilled light out onto the dark streets. If not for them the town would have been invisible in the shadows of the night.

Far out of town, beyond the reach of the lights, across the churning waters of the river and over a small hill, stood a rickety house. It swayed slightly back and forth in the breeze. All of its windows were dark. Unlike the nearby town there were no streetlamps here. Only the starlight above revealed the home below.

On the third floor of the swaying house, through a small window, a young girl tossed restlessly in her bed. Countless freckles dotted her pale skin and her hair was the color of bright fire. Her name was Ginny Weasley

Ginny was really more of a nickname, her actual name was Ginerva, but only a few people ever called her that. It wasn't that she disliked her name, she just preferred Ginny. Her older brothers, of whom she had six, liked to poked fun at her name.

As if having an unusual name wasn't strange enough, Ginny was not like other girls. She was short for her age, but that was not what made her strange. Her hair was vivid red, just like all her family, although that was not what made her unusual either. Ginny Weasley, was a witch!

She could do magic, make spells and mix potions! Or at least she would one day. For the moment, she was a witch only in name. But that would soon change.

Last week she had turned eleven, the magical age, as it were. When a young witch or wizard turned eleven they were permitted their very first wand. Not only a symbol of their entrance into the magical community but also a powerful tool for casting and controlling the powers of magic.

A wand was an instrument through which magic was channeled and controlled. At school, she would learn how to use that wand, and how to control her gifts.

Eleven also had another surprise to go along with it, admittance into a school of magic! For Ginny this meant that she would at long last be able to attend Hogwarts, School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. There she would learn the secrets of magic! There she would become a proper witch!

Despite growing up in an all wizarding family, Ginny actually knew very little about being a witch. Young, untrained witches and wizards, were susceptible to bouts of accidental magic, which could be very dangerous. Using magic and controlling magic, were very different things.

Even though Ginny didn't know how to do magic properly, that didn't mean she had never done it. Her temper was as fiery as her red hair. When she was angry, her brothers were often both the cause and the target of her uncontrolled spells. She could make bad things happen to people who annoyed her.

Ginny continued to toss back and forth in her bed. Twisted blankets tangled around her legs. Her feet struggled with the covers, trying to kick free, but the sleep driven effort only seemed to ensnare her further.

Her body was damp with sweat. Her eyes were clenched tight as if trying not to see the images that played out behind her lids. A hand flew up and clawed at the air as if fighting a ghost. The other hand came up shielding her face from the invisible attacker.

"No," Ginny whispered before shouting. "No!" She gasped as her eyes snapped open. For a moment she sat motionless, searching the uncomfortable darkness around her for the lingering traces of her nightmares.

However, she was quite alone. Only her uneven breathing rasped in the empty room. Slowly, she forced herself to calm. After a long while she lay still, as if she had simply drifted back to sleep. But, Ginny had not gone back to sleep. She was now wide awake, still frightened by the unsettling dream.

The nightmare had been about a boy, a handsome boy, with dark hair. He'd had some kind of plan that involved killing people and… his name… his name… it was on the tip of her tongue… it had been a secret name… one she shouldn't ever speak. She couldn't remember the name.

Already the dream was fading from her thoughts. The girl rolled to her side, looking out the window into the star filled sky beyond the glass. Then her gaze slid down to the wand on the nightstand at her bedside.

The stick was slender, black and beautiful. Ginny rested a hand on the cool wood, reassuring herself that the wand was real and not apart of her dream. It was real. She finally had a wand of her own.

Sliding out of bed Ginny fumbled with the oil lamp for a moment before a flame lit inside it. Warm yellow light illuminated the small bed room in dancing shadows. The room was simple, with a small desk in front of a small window. There was a small comfy bed against the far wall, next to the worn wooden door, and a beat-up chest-of-drawers. The floor was an uneven mess littered with objects of all shapes and sorts. Her mother had insisted, several times, that she clean it. Ginny had not.

Most of the things on the floor were clothing. Buried in the mishmash was a third-hand cauldron, a slightly used set of potion making supplies and one small pile of unopened books. Ginny had hardly looked at any of it. Her parents loved her very much, but love did not buy food, or clothing, or new books, or unused potion ingredients. There was no easy way to put it, her family was poor.

This fact about her family had never bothered Ginny quite as much as it bothered her older brothers. After all, she was the youngest Weasley and everything she got was a hand-me-down. Her bed, her desk, even her room, which had once belonged to her oldest brother Bill, had come from someone else, and in most cases, someone who'd had it before them.

The only new things she had received from their shopping trip in Diagon Alley were her wand, which she had begged and insisted upon, and a set of books. In the end, her mother had agreed to buy Ginny a brand new wand instead of a previously owned one, like her brother Ron had. She had traded up both birthday and Christmas presents for it, but it was worth it. A wand was something special, something that would be a part of her. She didn't want it to be a part of someone else first.

The wand was dark, shiny black, made of Hazel and 15 and quarter inches long. It was fairly rigid, with an intricately inlaid handle in a sort of crisscross pattern. Ginny couldn't be happier with it. She had tried more then thirty different wands in Mr. Ollivander's shop. Some she had held for less than a second, others a full minute passed before he plucked it from her hand and made her try another.

There had been sparks, small explosions and one fire when she had tried a gnarled old oak wand. But nothing had seemed to fit her. Ginny had started to become disheartened. What if the only wand she could ever use had to be pre-owned, just like everything else? Or worse, what if she was never meant to become a proper witch at all? What if no wand would ever accept her?

After some muttering to himself, Mr. Ollivander had vanished into the depths of his shop. He was gone for what seemed like ages and Ginny worried that he had just abandon them. Then there was a crash and a loud bang. When he returned he was smoldering slightly.

"I think this might be the match we have been searching for Miss Weasley," Mr. Ollivander had said, holding out a long dusty white box. The corners of the box were worn with age. For one horrible moment Ginny envisioned a used, beaten, twig of splintered wood inside. However, when the cover was removed she found that her visions of the wand within couldn't have been further from the truth. The wand looked brand new. It had been so highly polished that she could see her own distorted reflection in the black wood.

Mr. Ollivander's eyes had been sparkling when he drew out the wand and handed it to her. Instantly, Ginny felt a connection with the magical instrument the moment she touched it. It was an indescribable feeling of completeness that no other wand had come close to fulfilling.

The wand had blazed red with fire, but it did not hurt her hands, nor, thankfully, did it set anything else in the shop to burning. However, her heart had sunk when Mr. Ollivander informed her that the wand would be fifteen galleons. Her mother looked stunned by the purposed price and Ginny already knew her answer. Five, even seven would have been what she had expected, but fifteen? Ginny had thought her mother would refuse outright, but much to her surprise, after a quick bit of haggling the wand price settled at eight galleons and four silver sickles.

"That is a very special wand," Mr. Ollivander had told her once her mother paid him. "Dragon heartstring and unicorn hair are the majority of wand cores I use in my craft. But only a rare few are made with the feather of a phoenix and only one has ever received a black feather. Your Wand, Ms. Weasley."

Ginny had replied that she did not know that there were any black phoenixes.

"There are not," Mr. Ollivander had answered. "When a phoenix dies and is not reborn, it turns black and becomes hard as stone. Muggles call it obsidian. The feather in that wand was the last that particular Phoenix ever gave. I plucked the feather right before the bird's final death."

Ginny had felt slightly ill, but Mr. Ollivander had simply smiled. She had been very grateful to escape his shop.

Carefully she turned her wand over in her hand as the memory faded away. Mr. Ollivander's words still bothered her. Yet she couldn't help feeling exhilarated by her wand.

Her mind began to wander to the other events of the day and her eyes traveled to the only other new items she had received. A very expensive set of Gilderoy Lockhart books. Altogether, those books were worth two, maybe even three times the cost of her wand. They too would have come to her used and battered had they not been a sort of gift from her older brother's friend.

Her brother Ronald, or Ron as he preferred to be called, had managed, against all odds, to befriend possibly the most famous wizard in the world. That wizard's name was Harry Potter.

He had dark wild black hair and bright green eyes. A pair of badly damaged and often repaired glasses sat on his straight nose. His baggy clothing reminded Ginny of all the hand-me-downs she had been given over the years. But his most striking feature was cut down the center of his forehead, a scar, shaped like a bolt of lightning.

He was currently two floors above her in her brother's bedroom, asleep. For all he had done—surviving an unsurvivable curse when he was just a baby and defeating the most terrible dark wizard of the age, twice—Harry Potter was remarkably humble about it. And, at least Ginny thought, exceptionally handsome.

He had been at their house four weeks now, and Ginny hadn't said even a single word to him. Yet, yesterday she had jumped to Harry's defense as an obnoxious boy by the name of Draco Malfoy insulted him. But her momentary laps in shyness had backfired. Far short of defending Harry she had humiliated him and embroiled her father in an unsightly fist fight.

Ginny hugged her legs to her chest as she sat in bed, her thoughts stuck on the boy named Harry. He was so kind, so nice, yet she was terrified to speak to him. The thought almost made her laugh.

She let out a long breath as she tried to calm herself back to sleep. But it was no good, she simply wasn't tired. Moreover she was still afraid of the dream that lingered at the edge of her thoughts.

Ginny's hand returned to the brand new wand that lay on her nightstand. She had been so excited about the wand that she hadn't bothered to look at anything else. Her eyes turned towards the pile in the middle of her floor. Somewhere, underneath that chaos on her floor were the things she had bought in Diagon Alley. In those things, were the gifts she had gotten from her secret heartache.

Crawling out of bed she got down on her hands and knees, tossing aside the clutter upon her floor. She began to shift through the piles of clothing and books in the glow of the lamp light, searching for the edge of the cauldron that contained the Lockhart books.

Her hands fumbled across the different objects, throwing each aside when it was not what she was searching for. She wished she had taken the time to clean like her mother had asked. At last, after what felt like most of the room had been piled-up elsewhere, her knuckles bumped against cold metal.

Ginny pulled her hand back and shook her wrist, trying to throw off the sharp pain in her slightly bruised fingers. She had found the cauldron that had the Lockhart books in it, the ones that Harry had given her. Well, in truth had dumped into her cauldron and told her she could have, because he didn't want them.

Tenderly Ginny lifted one of the books out. It was halfway out before Ginny realized that the book she was holding couldn't be a Lockhart book. Its cover was old and damaged with age. It was a second-hand book, A beginners Guide to Transfiguration.

Glancing down into her cauldron Ginny saw that the next book was Magical Me, a sort of biography about Lockhart. A moving image of the dashing Lockhart winked at her and smiled broadly. His golden curls of hair glowed in the light from the oil lamp.

In the world of wizards it was not uncommon for pictures and portraits to move on their own. They were simply shadowy imitations of their real life counterparts, but Ginny felt like it was the real Lockhart smiling up at her. Weakly she smiled back. Her mother was infatuated with Lockhart, although she would never admit to such. Ginny however was not nearly as taken with him. Her thoughts were for someone else, for the person who had given her the books.

She made to set the old transfiguration book aside, but as she did something slid out from between its pages and tumbled into her lap. Placing the transfigurations book on the floor, she reached down into her lap for whatever had fallen out of the old book. Her fingers brushed against a rough, leathery cover.

Picking it up from her lap, Ginny stared at the small black rectangle in the lamp-lit darkness. It was a book of some kind. It looked old and worn and used. There was no title on its front nor its back. In the low light it was hard to tell, but Ginny didn't think that the letters had simply faded away with age. This book had no title and no author.

Casually, Ginny flipped the black leather book open and was surprised to find that its pages contained nothing. They were completely blank! Ginny couldn't believe it. Not only had she gotten an old, used book, but it was empty too! At least she thought it was at first. In the upper corner of each page she could make out the faintest writing.

Ginny moved closer to the lamp. The book wasn't empty. And it wasn't a book either. At last Ginny finally understood what she was holding. This was a diary. The words in the upper corners were days and dates, which she found very odd. She had never seen a diary that used days to track important events. Important usually happened when they needed to, which would leave some pages blank.

Wizard diaries usually had things like different colored pages for the different moods of the writer. Or books that could self organized, with de-tachable, re-trachable pages, to keep the important events wherever you might need them. Ginny had once even seen one that folded into a very tiny square and could be unfolded to fill an entire room! This odd format of using days was something new to her. What would she do on days were nothing happened? Leave the pages blank?

Carefully, Ginny lifted the oil lamp and took both it and the diary to her desk, so she could better examine the book. It didn't take long before she discovered that she was not the first to own it. Like nearly everything else she had, this diary had once belonged to someone else.

On the very first page was the name T. M. Riddle. Ginny flipped past this to the first empty page. A strange realization came over her. If this diary had belonged to someone else, long ago, where was that persons entries? Every page—Ginny turned the book all the way to the end to make sure—was blank! Whoever this T. M. had been, he had never even written more than his initials and last name in the thing.

The strangeness only confused Ginny more. Why keep a diary if you never wrote in it? Perhaps T. M. had lost it not long after getting it? Maybe he'd only been able to write his name before it had vanished on him? Ginny didn't know, and doubted that she ever would.

In any case, the diary had come to her. It was old, but never used. Almost like the Lockhart books she had, except Lockhart—instead of Harry—had signed the inside covers, just like this T. M. person had.

Dipping her quill in some ink, Ginny was about to try writing when she stopped. She couldn't use the first page because the date in the upper corner read, Jan 1st. The thought of just how strange this diary was returned to her. What a silly idea dates were, she'd end up with a half empty book! Or a completely empty book…

Flipping forward Ginny searched for… Aug 19th, today's date, more or less. She wasn't sure if it was actually tomorrow or not. She stared at the empty page for a long while, half expecting to find words there she had missed. At last, coming to a decision she re-inked her quill and prepared to write. The previous owner had never used it and Ginny would not let this book go to waste.

'Dear Diary,' Ginny wrote in her best handwriting, 'my name is Ginny Molly Weasley.' She paused, thinking about all the things she wanted to write about. But before she could even start to consider what she wanted to say next, the words began to bleed away, fading into the paper. Ginny stared at it in disbelief. She wrote the words again, and again, they vanished.

A small knowing smile crept across her lips. She knew what was going on here. Fred and George were playing a prank on her. They had replaced her ink with vanishing ink. They had pulled this prank on her before, when she was a few years younger. She had been drawing all morning, creating pictures of everything in sight. When she had run out of ink, Fred had been happy to provide her with more.

After she finished one drawing, the previous one would vanish! The twins had found this hysterical. Their mother however, had not, nor had Ginny. And she had gotten them back with Sally's Super Sticky Super Long Sweets, a candy that effectively glued shut someone's mount for a solid week. Their mother had also not found this funny either, having to pay to get the counter sweet to un-stick her twin sons.

However, when asked what had happened, Fred and George blamed each other for the prank, even though Ginny was sure they knew it had been her. After that, the twins had called a truce with her, out of earshot of everyone else. And until now, they had kept it.

Ginny was debating how she would get them back, a curse she had read about, the Bat-Bogie Hex, seemed appropriate. But an odd thought occurred to Ginny. She pulled a piece of blank parchment and rewrote the words on it. This time they did not fade, even though she waited for several minutes.

It was not vanishing ink after all. It was not a prank. This was real. This was special. She had something before her that Ginny had never seen, or even knew existed. Her attention returned excitedly to the diary. This book had a charm on it so that only the owner of the diary could see what was written inside! All she had to do was figure out how to work it. There had to be a password or code or charm.

Determinedly, Ginny began to write everything she could think of into the pages of the diary. Each word glistened in black ink before vanishing, one after the other. But none of them seemed to have any effect. It wasn't until the sun started to rise that Ginny at last came to a halt. This was not something that could be solved in a single night.

Sleepily she moved back to her bed, setting the empty diary on her nightstand, next to her wand. As she closed her eyes and began to drift back into sleep Ginny continued to work on ways to open up the secrets in the book. Her nightmare that had woken her hours earlier was all but forgotten.

Authors Notes:

First up, thank you to the two people who took the time to leave me a review! XB16B2 and AnnaMariaNordlade! Your words mean a lot to me, thank you for taking the time to give me feedback!

I hope everyone enjoyed the second chapter, I've put in a lot of time on it, having two weeks to focus and review certainly helped. I haven't made as much forward progress towards new chapters as I would have liked (still puttering away on chapter 16ish), but that's mostly been due to high demand on my time.

Conceptually, this chapter hasn't changed too much. While it exposition heavy, there is a lot to establish. Some of it still got cut way back. And there was a while where all of the wand stuff got completely snuffed out, but I liked it too much and it made it back in.

Not sure what readers will think about Ginny's wand. I put a lot of time, and research into it (and actually own a replica of it, YEAH Harry Potter World in Florida!). There is a lot of speculation about wands out there and how a wand describes the person it belongs to. I put a lot of thought into Ginny's wand, no part of it is by chance. Feel free to tell me what you think about it :D

Anyhow, back to work on stuff. Next chapter will be Monday January 1st!

~Starwin