A/N – YAY! You're back! Sweetness! The prologue kind of sucked but that's only because I needed to use it to set up the basics. Now that the basics are complete it should run much smoother. This will be a Gin 'n' Tonic fic eventually, but it does have a plot and it won't be all fluffy and mushy.

Please allow me to introduce myself

I'm a man of wealth and taste

I've been around for a long, long year

Stolen a many man's soul, and faith

Chapter 1 – A Lucky Find?

Everything was perfect. Ginny Weasley was sitting at the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall and Harry was sitting next to her. He smiled at her and moved his large hand over her smaller one. Ginny looked up at him and blushed deeply. Everything was moving in slow motion except for her and Harry. Careless chatter floated in the air around them in a peaceful manner until the doors to the Great Hall were thrown open. An icy gust of wind swept through the hall putting all the candles out. Everything was pitch black, some students screamed, and then Ginny saw it. A pair of deep, crimson eyes burning like the sun in the depths of darkness. All the screaming had ceased and the students stared, as though mesmerized, at the pair of great, crimson eyes. Ginny felt Harry remove his hand from hers. He jumped out of his seat.

"IT'S HIM!" Harry cried. He whipped out his wand, prepared for battle.

"Avada Kedavra." Voldemort whispered.

He didn't even have his wand out. A jet of green light flew from Voldemort's fingertips and hit Harry square in the chest. His eyes widened, and he fell over. The expression on his face never changed. Voldemort snapped his fingers and every candle in the room blazed brightly. Hundreds of cloaked figures surrounded every table. The screaming began. Ginny was thrown under the table by Ron who was shouting out hexes and spells at an alarming rate. Different colored jets of light shot around the room like strobe lights. Ginny was in shock. She crawled along under the table and then stopped. Harry's dead body lay there, inches from her, with the same scared expression. Tears welled up in her eyes but she kept crawling, she was going to get out of the Great Hall alive, but first she wanted to find Hermione.

She peeked over the table and looked around. Dumbledore was being gunned down by fifteen to twenty Death Eaters. She saw no signs of Hermione or anyone she recognized. It was chaos beyond chaos. Students running, dead bodies all over the floor, food spilled everywhere. Ginny was just about to duck back under the table when a rough hand grabbed her shoulder. She screamed and was forced out of her hiding place by Draco Malfoy.

"I've found the filthy blood traitor, father." He said it as though he were doing nothing more than looking for an old sock.

Lucius Malfoy stood before her and then he spoke. "Breakfast."

Ginny looked up at him, confused. Draco shook her shoulder gently, "Breakfast!"

He was gradually getting louder, but now it was Mrs. Weasley's voicecoming fromDraco's mouth."Breakfast! Ginny, breakfast! GINNY! BREAKFAST! NOW, GINNY!"

Ginny awoke with a start. Her mother was leaning over her.

"C'mon, Gin. We have lots to do today." Mrs. Weasley bustled out of the room.

Ginny lay in bed, wide eyed. She had dreams often, but they always turned into nightmares. The one constant in her dreams were those eyes. She had never forgotten them; they pierced her skin like a thousandknives. She slowly dragged her tired body out of bed and into the bathroom across the hall. The Weasley's burrow was a maze in its own right. It consisted of six floors with seven bedrooms, four bathrooms, one very large kitchen, a medium sized sitting room, and a cellar. The rooms were arranged in a bizarre order and Ginny's bedroom was on the sixth and smallest floor. Her bedroom was an irregular shape, somewhat like an octagon with longer sides and a sloping ceiling. It was small but quaint. She had lucked out by being born last, her bedroom used to be a study that her father used, but it was changed into her bedroom once she was born. This entitled her to use the bathroom across the hall. Those were the only two rooms on that floor and Ginny enjoyed her privacy away from everyone else.

She pulled her short, trademark red hair into a ponytail and surveyed herself in the mirror. Ginny was not a common beauty like many other girls. She was very petite, barely five feet tall, and weighed 120 pounds. She had dreamed of being tall and skinny, the picture of teenage perfection, but the reality was that she was very short and muscular. She had deep, chocolate brown eyes and straight red hair. Despite all this, she was stunning in her own unique way. With a frown she hurried downstairs before her mother had a hissy fit.

She entered the kitchen and took a seat at her usual place by the window. The twins had already eaten and taken off to open their joke shop, The Weasley Wizard Wheezes. Mrs. Weasley nearly had a heart attack when they finally revealed their little secret, but she was well over it by now and realized that they were doing what made them happy. Mrs. Weasley poured Ginny a bowl of cereal and placed it in front of her. Ginny was the first one up, Mrs. Weasley always woke her up first. They liked to have little mother and daughter talks before the boys woke up, but this morning Mrs. Weasley was all nerves about getting all the school supplies for the children, so talk was limited.

"Your book list came this morning, dear."

Ginny glanced up from her cereal. "Yay." She replied with sarcastic enthusiasm.

Ginny was excited about starting her 6th year, but nervous about her classes she was going to have. Advanced potions frightened her the most. Snape, in general, frightened her. She continued to eat her cereal.

"It's so nice only having to buy two sets of books this year," Mrs. Weasley sighed. "Next year it will just be you, Gin." A few tears formed in Mrs. Weasley's eyes, "All my babies are growing up."

"It's okay, mum." Ginny said through bites.

"Yes, I'm just being silly I suppose. Oh! Good morning, Harry! Morning, Ron! Sit down and have a good breakfast, we have loads to do today."

Harry and Ron had entered and both sat down groggily in the rickety chairs. Ginny glanced up at Harry from her breakfast. He had grown extremely tall, and was no longer the gawky, lanky twelve year old boy she had first seen. His quidditch playing had built him a solid frame and his messy hair now seemed attractive rather than annoying. He eyed Ginny over his glasses and she stared right back at him. Ginny had turned into quite the sassy young lady. This was due to her brothers constant tormenting. She never picked fights, but if someone picked one with her, she would rise to the occasion. She wasn't afraid to speak to Harry anymore and even opened up to him a little. Needless to say, sparks had flown over the summer months. Ron noticed the pair's locked gaze and stomped on Harry's foot rather roughly under the table. Ginny looked away, but she still saw Ron mouth, 'THAT IS MY SISTER!' out of the corner of her eye.

"Well," Ginny broke the silence. "What time do you want to leave here, mum?"

"Very shortly, around nine I should say."

Ginny placed her dirty bowl in the sink and, with one last glance at Harry, hurried up the stairs to get ready for the long day ahead of her.

Roger Danfirth was just arriving at his used book shop to open when he noticed something rather peculiar. On the cobblestone, not far from the entrance to his store, lay a small, black leather book. He wouldn't have noticed it except for a gleam of gold caught his eye in the morning sunlight. He walked over and picked it up. It was a fine binding job, on the back a name was embossed in gold, Tom Marvolo Riddle. Assuming it was a journal; he opened it, but was shocked to find the pages empty. Mr. Danfirth opened his store and placed the blank book in the journal section.

"Someone will claim it, or buy it." He chuckled to himself.

"HURRY UP, BOYS!"

Mrs. Weasley and Ginny were standing near the fireplace ready to leave. It was ten after nine. Mrs. Weasley tapped her foot impatiently.

"WE ARE LATE."

Harry and Ron sprinted down the stairs mumbling apologies. Moments late they all arrived in Diagon Alley.

Harry made his way to Flourish and Blotts to purchase his supplies while Ron, Ginny, and Mrs. Weasley headed off to Danfirth's Second Hand Book Shop. Ginny scanned the potions section for the book she would need, her list was a mile long this year and she worried about how her parents were going to afford all the supplies she would need. A half an hour later she had every book she could possibly need to enhance her knowledge of the wizarding world. It seemed like she carried the whole store in her arms as she plopped the books down on the counter to be rung up.

Ginny meandered around and the journal section caught her eye. None of them seemed to jump out at her, but as she turned to walk away she felt a tug in the pit of her stomach and had to look back. A handsome, black leather journal screamed out for her attention. She reached out for it and it almost seemed to burn her slightly as she touched it.

'This is nice. It's in very good shape…' Ginny thought to herself.

She ran her fingers over the rich leather; she turned it over in her hands to check for any tears or scratches. That's when she saw it. Her breath caught in her throat and she froze. Tom Marvolo Riddle. The name stared at her as though it could see her.

"No… it can't be…" She had a flashback of the diary as she had last seen it, bloody and with a huge gaping hole in the cover. Ginny looked around nervously. She put the journal back down quickly and almost ran from the store, but then a thought stopped her.

'What if someone else picks it up? What if it's some poor first year… just like me? What if he uses them… like he used me?'

Ginny still hesitated.

'What if….. I could fix everything…. Stop him before he ever got really strong…'

In that moment, Ginny changed her life forever.

Sorry this is so short and pretty sucky! It's going to pick up as soon as I get past these boring introduction chapters. I just really wanted to get this one out of the way so I can get into the plot. It looks like this is going to be a pretty long story.

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