Today was the weirdest day ever. The only person Ginny could talk to—was, well, her own very damn diary. When the lights were out at the dorms, Ginny quietly lit up a candle beside her desk and sat down. She opened the book's worn covers, savoring the well-used feel in her hand. The parchment contained within had the vaguest scent of evergreen trees, and she always found herself relishing in that aroma, even as her ink often masked the smell temporarily.

Like many young girls, she found a certain solace in her diary. There was something in the motion of being able to communicate her thoughts on paper, a private, nonjudgmental platform for her worries. Better yet that her diary could communicate and be so encouraging and behave so kindly. The friend she didn't have in real life.

"Hey, Tom," Ginny wrote excitably. "Guess what?"

The calligraphic words responded in black ink. "Hello, Ginny. What happened?"

"Today I got my first period," she wrote. This might seem a bit odd for a girl to announce to her male diary, but he was a diary first and person second, with being male a mere third. Besides, she'd never seen him before. "It was really weird. I woke up this morning and everything was fine, but later in the day I felt something was wet, and when I went to the bathroom, I saw a few bloody spots."

"I...see." Not exactly the rousing Harry Potter themed excitement Tom Riddle was hoping for.

"I know, it was so strange and sudden!" The words flew swiftly from under her quill. "I was so nervous somebody else was going to notice so I borrowed my friend's jacket, except I was worried that I would bleed through that as well, because my underwear was practically destroyed by then. I had to run to the infirmary. Thankfully, Madam Pomfrey reassured me that I wasn't alone."

She paused for Tom's formulaic kindness. Sometimes, depending on the way she used him, he was more like the motivational quotes on planners than anything else.

"I'm sure you weren't alone. I believe that's a very common problem for girls at Hogwarts. Thankfully, it seems like the problem was resolved well."

"First step to me being a woman!"

"Yeah alol."

"Tom, I told you already, it's 'lol.' It stands for 'laughing out loud.'"

"Sorry, my hand slipped and I added another 'a' on accident. It's addicting to add extra loops sometimes. What was 'lmao' again?"

"'Laughing my ass off.'"

"Okay, that sounds like a fun saying."

"Well, I'm glad that nobody seemed to notice my incident."

"Especially Harry Potter."

"YEAH OF COURSE." Ginny wrote those words with a large bubble around them, as well as underlined those words several times for good measure. "I would've died."

"Yes, thank God that didn't happen. Anyway, speaking of Harry Potter, have you seen him lately?"

With Tom, Ginny had spent countless hours reciting events with Harry Potter with a second-to-second playback. She'd written essays on how hot he is while Tom had politely drawn in the background hands clapping and halos, writing "GOALS." Emoji weren't a thing back then, but if they were, Ginny would've given him an emoji keyboard on one page and he would've spammed it.

"Hell yeah! He was eating spaghetti. But he was so delicate about it as well. He didn't even get any on his face. I always somehow get on my face every time but he doesn't, because well—he's perfect! He can't do anything wrong. Even his walk is so graceful."

"What meat was the spaghetti?"

"Oh, I don't know...beef, I think?"

"...Hm."

Tom seemed to muse on this for a little while, wondering what this might symbolize.

"Do you think I can ever be with Harry Potter?" Ginny wrote. She was pouring her heart out here. "Please, Tom, be totally honest with me on this one. You've got to tell me the truth. Can you ever see me with him? He's so perfect, and I am nothing. I'm just a poor girl in a lower-income single-earner household and I can't afford anything, and he's so much better than me. He managed to get on the team in his first year and everything, and plus, he'd defeated Voldemort, and I am nothing compared to him. Nothing."

She watched the words disappear, her breath quite taken.

Tom, of course, wrote back with words of reassurance. "Of course I can see you with him. You're great and you're funny, and he would be lucky to have you. I definitely think you have a decent chance. In fact, you should talk to him—"

He never got to finish his sentence before Ginny started writing all over him. "Yes, of course! Tom, you always make me feel so much better."

"Well—"

"When do you think I should ask him out?"

"I mean, you should probably try to develop a strong friendshi—"

"Yes, of course. But I'm soooo shy, Tom. I don't know how to even talk with him."

"If you acted like yourself and kept calm, I'm sure he'll end up liking your personality."

This was his first chance in what felt like a while that Ginny allowed Tom to write, so he took his sweet time with this one. His handwriting was even neater than usual.

"You should try to act natural towards him. Try to befriend him that way. He's in the same house as you which makes it easier for you to interact with him. Plus, he's friends with your brother, isn't he? Unlike many other girls who may admire him from afar, you have many opportunities to develop a friendship with him."

The words disappeared from the paper soon after the last period. There was a pause as Tom waited for more input from Ginny.

"Hm...okay. You know, Tom, I'm really worried about my Potions test in a week."

"...What?"

"I think I'm going to fail, because Snape is a terrible teacher and he hasn't reviewed the stuff from earlier this month." Ginny was writing faster than ever at this point, and her writing gradually became sloppier as she ranted non-stop. "I never had a teacher this bad in my entire life. He sometimes mutters, and then whenever we ask him to speak he starts yelling at us for not 'paying attention' even though we obviously are. And it's dumb because he refuses to repeat what he said when he was practically whispering, and nobody knows what to do. He doesn't review the homework, and instead he just tells us to pass it in. Then when we get the papers back, we all get failing grades. And he never reviews it. Now we've got a huge test next week, and I don't even what we've been learning. The potions textbook is dense and has nothing useful in it, and I'm probably GOING TO FAIL BIG TIME."

She underlined the last few words, close to tears. This was a crisis, and she had to let her diary know. It should comfort her in this time of great distress.

"What about Harry Potter?"

Ginny frowned at the sudden question. She dipped her quill in and wrote, creating a massive blot of ink shaped like Antarctica next to her first word.

"Like...for tutoring? He's bad at Potions too. Apparently."

"I mean, are you going to take my advice, are you going to talk with him...?"

"Maybe some other time because I am flipping out over this potions test and if I get bad grades, it's going to affect my future."

"Of course, but will you talk with him later?"

"I don't know. Maybe." Ginny sat over the paper, tapping her quill against the edge of her desk.

Tom had a revelation.

"You know what you should do? You should bond with Harry Potter over your mutual hate of Professor Snape. I remember reading from somewhere that hate unifies more than loves does."

Ginny dismissed him with simple words: "Okay, I'll add it sometime to my bucket list."

If a diary could wither and feel pain, Tom would've done it.

"Okay, why don't we have a drawing contest on who can draw Harry Potter better? It might distract you from your worries."

Ginny sighed as she read those words. Sometimes Tom could get easily obsessed with Harry Potter. There were times where she wasn't sure who had the stronger interest.

"All right," she wrote back, trying not to offend her only friend. She drew a shrimpy stick figure with glasses and a lightning bolt scar. Around the stick figure's body, she drew the swooping appearance of a cloak.

"Your turn," she scribbled at the bottom of the picture. The picture gradually faded away.

Tom already knew a decent amount about Harry's appearance from the three thousand times before when he discussed it with Ginny. He had also been practicing drawing Harry Potter, so his picture came out relatively decent. He managed to draw a face with almost realistic wire glasses, taking care to make sure the lenses were circular like Ginny described. He made sure that he didn't add too much shading on the eyes, since Ginny had emphasized to him before that his eyes were a green color, bright and tranquil. He put a great amount of effort in sketching out his hair, which according to Ginny, was "silky" and "tousled" and also "hot". He wasn't sure what his mouth looked like, so he just tried to draw a good one in general.

By the time he was done, Drawing Harry didn't look like he was twelve years old. He looked more like he was in his early twenties.

Ginny stared at the drawing for a few moments. Tom's drawing skills had clearly improved through chronic practice of drawing emoji before there were emoji, but she had a few complaints to make.

She wrote on the margins, "Good job! But you made him look too old."

There was something cold in how Tom responded below her. "What do you mean by that?"

"Well, he's twelve," Ginny wrote.

"Maybe I can use creative license if I want, Ginny."

"I don't know." Ginny paused, then wrote, "Actually, I think my drawing was kind of more realistic."

That was the moment Tom began to hate Ginny. Before, he was apathetic and sometimes bored with her, but now, he actively hated her guts.

Ginny went to her diary crying that she failed her potions test. It was worse than she thought: she got a twenty percent, which was almost too humiliating to reveal to Tom Riddle.

"Tom...I'm scared everyone will think I'm dumb!"

Tom took a few extra moments to answer this new crisis in young Ginny's life. "Nonsense. I'm sure that everyone else did terrible."

"I don't know what to do! My grade is in the toilet in that class and I can't focus on any of my other homework."

If there was a line for Tom Riddle Jr.'s boredom, Ginny had sprinted over that line and slammed Tom's forehead with a book multiple times.

"You need to forgive yourself for doing bad on that one assignment and tell yourself you'll do better next time. Allowing your other assignments to be affected by this is not going to go well."

Tom had never failed anything in his life. Giving Ginny that piece of advice was his equivalent of a creative writing assignment.

"Okay, Tom, I'll try my best. But if it goes even worse next time?"

"Don't worry yourself about that. If you study better in the future, you shouldn't get yourself in that situation again. What day of the week is it today?"

"Monday."

"Okay."

As a certified genius, Tom then outlined a comprehensive study schedule for his poorly performing diarist. He included a few breaks specifically for diary time because while Ginny didn't know at the time, he was trying to possess her. Still, it was a fine schedule.

"Are you happy with this schedule?"

"Yes...thank you!"

"All right then. Now let's discuss Harry Potter."

"Kinda tired right now." After her rant, Ginny had exhausted her diary writing energy and she shut the diary without letting Tom get a word in edgewise.

Inside, Tom was quietly seething, plotting her downfall. Ginny had no idea of this at the time of course, but like we all know, she would find out later.