Ginny bent her head lower and lower and scribbled.

"...I don't care if it's all Daddy can afford, I really don't. I'd rather have my Dad who punches people who insult nice Muggles like the Grangers than Malfoy's stuck-up evil-looking fur-wearing shiny-booted green-tie old-moneyed father."

The last words Ginny found herself squeezing into a tiny little corner of the parchment, making her writing as small as possible with the Finesse Quill that Dad had given her for her birthday. "Good things come in small packages, Gin," he'd said, ruffling her hair, and she'd started trying to make her writing as tiny as possible, so tiny it couldn't possibly be read, unless you already knew what it said…

She went to start afresh on the reverse when she realised that there was no reverse—she had come to the end of her diary space. She set her teeth in frustration. Mum had just bought her this diary, how had she already used it all up? Ginny glanced over the previous pages and squinted at her tiny writing—every other sentence appeared to be something about Harry Snape. Oh. That was how.

She sighed and opened her trunk, which she had packed carefully and geometrically, ready for her great adventure. She had allotted herself a precise amount of parchment, ready for essay-writing, scratch paper, note-taking, and, who knew, maybe even some note-passing, assuming she made friends. But maybe she could use just one piece, just to finish writing out her thoughts.

She moved aside 1001 Magical Herbs and Fungi, The Standard Book of Spells,Grade 1, and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. When she picked up A Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration, though, a book slipped out from its pages, a book she didn't recognise (and she had thoroughly familiarised herself with the appearance of all her books, and the order in which she had them, so that when the teacher said "Everyone please bring out your such-and-such book" she would be the first one ready with the page open and everything).

This book was small and black and shabby, and the pages were cracked and yellow.

But it was also completely blank, except for the date in the top left-hand corner.

"Jackpot!" said Ginny under her breath. Then she grinned to herself—Mum or Dad must have bought it as a surprise for her to find when she got to Hogwarts, knowing how much she liked to write in her diary. Well, they surely wouldn't mind if she started a little bit early.

She fell onto her bed on her belly, pulled out her Finesse quill, and opened it. It was obviously a second-hand diary; someone had written their name on the top of the very first page. T.M. Riddle.

"Hello, T.M. Riddle," wrote Ginny in her tiniest hand, smiling at herself. The fact that her diary had a name sort of appealed to her. "My name is Ginevra Molly Weasley. I wonder who you were. The manufacturing date on here says you lived fifty years ago. Maybe you're dead now. I wonder why you never wrote anything in here except your name…"

"Oi!" Ginny suddenly realised that her writing was disappearing, as if being sucked into the page. She shook her quill and scribbled a tornado, but it disappeared too.

"Oh, very funny," she said, deeply disappointed. Good old Fred and George; thought it would be a lark to give Ginny a diary she could never use, thought they'd have a laugh over…

Hello, Ginevra. I'm Tom.

She yelped and sat up.

In the same ink she used in her Finesse pen, but it much larger characters, the words appeared as though they were being written by an invisible hand.

A diary that could write itself?

It went on writing as though it had not heard her yelp, and Ginny noticed that the words there disappeared after a second too.

How did you come by my diary?

Ginny seized her quill and, not bothering to make her print tiny, wrote "What are you?"

I told you—I'm Tom. Tom Marvolo Riddle.

"But what are you? I didn't know there were any diaries that could write for themselves!"

I'm not just a diary. I'm more like a memory in a diary.

"A memory of what?"

A boy who lived long ago.

"Fifty years?"

That's right.

"When you say a memory, you mean this is sort of like what you would have written, fifty years ago? This remembers you as a person and the sort of things you would write, I mean?"

Exactly.

"How does that work? I mean, how did you do it? I never heard of anything like that before!"

It's really complicated and kind of boring. It took me until my fifth year here to figure it out.

"You go to Hogwarts?"

Yes. Or, from your perspective, I went to Hogwarts. I'm hoping to be Head Boy. Do you go, too?

"I'm just starting there this year!"

So you must be eleven years old?

"Just barely. My birthday was two weeks ago, August eleventh. How old are you?"

Well, I was born on December 31, 1926. I made this diary when I was sixteen.

"Whoa, so you could still alive somewhere? I mean, not as a boy? You'd only be, like, in your sixties or something."

Oh, probably! But I don't know that you could find me anywhere. I'm planning—I mean, I was planning, fifty years ago—to change my name once I get out of school.

"How come?"

There was a pause before the writing began again, and when it did it was very slow, as though what it was writing was painful to the writer. I have my father's name. He abandoned my mother before I was even born. I'd rather not be called after him.

"Oh, but that's so sad!"

Not really. I never knew him, so I never missed him.

"You should meet my father. He's the best father in the world."

Really? What's he like?

"Well…"