All day long, the ugly dwarfs kept barging into classes to deliver valentines messages, to the annoyance of the teachers and students alike. Late that afternoon as the Gryffindors were walking upstairs for Charms, one of the dwarfs caught up with Arabella.

"Oy, you! 'Potter!" shouted a particularly grim-looking dwarf, elbowing people out of the way to get closer.

"Hide me!" shrieked Arabella, hot all over at the thought of being given a valentine in front of a line of first years, which happened to include both Ginny and Astoria.

Ron and Hermione did their best to conceal their friend, but the dwarf cut his way through the crowd by kicking people's shins and reached them in no time.

"I've got a musical message to deliver to 'Arabella Potter in person," he said, twanging his harp in a threatening sort of way.

"Not here!" Arabella hissed, "anywhere but here!"

"Stay still!" grunted the dwarf, grabbing hold of her bag and pulling the girl back with a hard jerk.

With a loud ripping noise, her bag split in two. Her books, wand, parchment, and quill spilled onto the floor and his ink bottle smashed over everything. Scrambling to try and pick everything up before the dwarf started singing, Arabella wished she could just sink into the shadows of the corridor and vanish.

"What's going on here?" came the cold, drawling voice of Pansy Parkinson. Arabella started stuffing everything feverishly into her ripped bag, desperate to get away before the girl could hear her musical valentine.

"What's all this commotion?" said another familiar voice as Percy Weasley arrived.

Losing her head, Arabella tried to make a run for it, but the dwarf seized her around the knees and brought her crashing to the floor.

"Right," he grunted, sitting on Arabella's ankles. "Here is your singing valentine:

Her eyes are as green as a fresh pickled toad,

Her hair is as dark as a blackboard,

I wish she was mine, she's really divine,

The hero who conquered the Dark Lord.

Arabella would have given all the gold in Gringotts to evaporate on the spot. Trying valiantly to laugh along with everyone else, she stumbled to her feet with the help of Hermione. She too was laughing, though one look from her friend caused the other girl to break into a fit of coughing. Numb from the weight of the dwarf, the girl did her best to get through the crowd that Percy Weasley did his best to disperse, some of whom were crying with mirth.

"Off you go, off you go, the bell rang five minutes ago, off to class, now," said the Prefect, shooing some of the younger students away. "And you, Parkinson, is it—?"

Arabella stole a glance over at Pansy and her gang, just in time to catch the girl stooping low and snatching up something from the floor. Leering, she showed it to Millicent and Tracy, and Arabella realized that she'd missed grabbing Riddle's diary.

"Give that back," said Arabella quietly.

"Wonder what Potter's written in this?" said Millicent with an ugly snort, who obviously hadn't noticed the year on the cover and thought she had Arabella's own diary. A hush fell over the onlookers. Ginny and Astoria were staring from the diary to Arabella, both looking terrified.

"Hand it over, Parkinson," said Percy sternly.

"When I've had a look," responded Pansy with a devilish smile, grabbing the book from the other girl.

"As a school Prefect —" Percy began but was abruptly cut off by Arabella.

"Expelliarmus!"

Just as Snape had disarmed Lockhart, so was Pansy watching as the diary shot free from her grasp. Hermione, grinning broadly, caught it.

"Arabella!" said Percy loudly. "No magic in the corridors! I'll have to report this, you know!"

But she didn't care, she was one-up on Pansy, and that was worth five points from Gryffindor any day. Pansy was looking furious, and as Ginny passed her to enter her classroom, she yelled spitefully after her, "I don't think Potter liked your valentine much!"

Astoria scowled and ushered her friend inside, while Ginny covered her face with her hands. Snarling, Ron pulled out his wand, but Hermione pulled him away.

"Do you really want to spend all of Charms belching slugs again?"

It wasn't until they had reached Flitwick's class that Arabella noticed something rather odd about Riddle's diary. All her other books were drenched in scarlet ink. The diary, however, was as clean as it had been before the ink bottle had smashed all over it. She tried to point this out to Ron as a means of distraction, but Ron was having trouble with his wand again; large purple bubbles were blossoming out of the end, and he wasn't much interested in anything else.

At the request of Arabella, Lyla agreed to meet her in the library alone. It had been some time since the two had been left to their own devices, and there was much to catch up on.

"Look here," whispered Arabella, pulling Riddle's diary free from her ink-stained bag. "I spilled ink all over my books today– but this didn't get anything on it."

"What happened to your bag?" Lyla asked with raised brows.

"Those stupid little dwarfs Lockheart hired," her sister responded savagely. "And I just got this bag!"

"Aww, you got a valentines message!?" squealed Lyla with glee, "I wonder whose the poor chap who sent it."

Slapping the diary onto the desk, Arabella only shook her head in disgust.

"I don't know, and I don't care. But if I hear Fred and George sing that horrible song one more time, I'm going to jinx them both."

"You know, I may have heard them singing something earlier today," mused Lyla thoughtfully. "How did the song go? Something along the lines of 'her eyes are as green as a fresh pickled toad, her hair–'

"Enough!" hissed Arabella.

Lyla found herself giggling harder than ever. Her sister began flicking through the diary's pages feverishly as if trying to find something.

"Aha! You see what I mean here?" Arabella asked once she reached the last pages, "look! Not a spot of ink anywhere! I have an idea. You got any ink bottles on you?"

Lyla placed a new bottle beside the booklet, not understanding Arabella's train of thought. She watched with baited breath as her sister dipped her quill into it, and dropped a blot onto the first page of the diary. nThe ink shone brightly on the paper for a second and then, as though it was being sucked into the page, vanished.

Both girls gasped.

"I thought that was going to happen!" Arabella gushed excitedly, loading the quill a second time. "Let's see… what should I write... Ah! My name is Arabella Potter, and I'm here with my sister, Lyla."

The words shone momentarily on the page and they, too, sank without trace. Then, at last, something happened. Oozing back out of the page, in her very own ink, came words Arabella had never written, in handwriting that was not her own.

'Hello, Arabella and Lyla Potter," Lyla read aloud, not truly believing her eyes, "my name is Tom Riddle. How did you come by my diary?'

These words, too, faded away, but not before Arabella had started to scribble back. "Someone tried to flush it down the toilet," she mumbled. The two waited eagerly for Riddle's reply.

'Lucky that I recorded my memories in some more lasting way than ink,' responded the diary, 'but I always knew that there would be those who would not want this diary read.'

"What's that supposed to mean?" asked Lyla.

Arabella wrote the question and sighed as her writing sank away and was replaced with Riddle's answer.

'I mean that this diary holds memories of terrible things. Things that were covered up. Things that happened at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.'

"That's where I am now," Arabella wrote quickly. "I'm at Hogwarts, and horrible stuff's been happening. Do you know anything about the Chamber of Secrets?"

Their hearts were hammering against their chests. Riddle's reply came quickly, the writing becoming untidier, as though he was hurrying to tell all he knew.

'Of course, I know about the Chamber of Secrets. In my day, they told us it was a legend, that it did not exist. But this was a lie. In my fifth year, the Chamber was opened and the monster attacked several students, finally killing one. I caught the person who'd opened the Chamber and he was expelled. But the Headmaster, Professor Dippet, ashamed that such a thing had happened at Hogwarts, forbade me to tell the truth. A story was given out that the girl had died in a freak accident. They gave me a nice, shiny, engraved trophy for my trouble and warned me to keep my mouth shut. But I knew it could happen again. The monster lived on, and the one who had the power to release it was not imprisoned.'

Lyla nearly upset the ink bottle while Arabella hurried to write back.

"It's happening again," she whispered as she wrote, her own writing becoming almost eligible. "There have been three attacks and no one seems to know who's behind them. Who was it last time?"

'I can show you if you like,' came Riddle's reply. 'You don't have to take my word for it. I can take you inside my memory of the night when I caught him.'

"He can do what?" asked Arabella, hand hovering over the page.

Lyla looked around nervously, then back at the diary. New words had now appeared.

'Let me show you.'

The sisters met one another's eyes and nodded.

"Okay," wrote Arabella, flourishing her Y.

The second her words sank into the paper, the pages of the diary began to blow as though caught in a high wind, stopping halfway through June. Mouth hanging open, Lyla saw that the little square for June thirteenth seemed to have turned into a minuscule television screen. Hands trembling, Arabella raised the book higher so she could get a better view beside her sister, and before the two knew what was happening, they were tilting forward; the window was widening, and they felt their bodies leave the chairs of the library. They were pitched headfirst through the opening, into a whirl of color and shadow.

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