Well, there seems to be a problem with how short these chapters are. Thing is, I wrote all this during the school year and it didn't seem this ridiculously short in Microsoft Word. I sort of wrote it as a barrelful of drabbles that comes together in the middle, where our plot starts off. But if you guys like, I can combine each chapter with an adjacent one so you get more length. Would that be better?

Here's a chappie for you regardless…

Chapter Six: Presents

"What'd you get?" Malfoy asked Harry as they lay on their beds deep beneath the school.

If one took a regular room, stretched it out so that it was very long and very low, and threw on an ancient, rather eerie décor, one would get the Slytherin common room. At one end there was a fireplace, and all around it sat thin, high-backed armchairs all in the same shade of dark green. The walls were made of hard, cold stone, and round lamps that gave off a greenish glow hung from thick, silver chains on the ceiling.

To access this prestigious headquarters of "Dark masterminds" (as so many other—rather delusional—students would describe it as in excited whispers) one needed to make their way down to the dungeons and say the password to a particular wall, which in any other place would look rather questionable.

Harry thought it was overall a melodramatic way to live. If this was the lot Salazar Slytherin had been given as a common room, no wonder he'd gone berserk and left the school. The place was freezing.

However, it was the home he shared with Malfoy and his other friends, much as he may prefer the warmth and liveliness of the upper castle. Besides, the dormitories were all right—the brass snakes that twisted around the bedposts were a bit much, but otherwise it wasn't that bad of a place.

It was in this very dormitory that Harry and Malfoy now sprawled, prefect badges shoved aside while they opened the packages they'd got in the morning mail.

Harry's mum had sent him some Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans, and when Harry told Malfoy this, the blonde boy had immediately demanded some. As they chewed on various flavors, Malfoy held up his own gift.

"Look at this. A diary. Father obviously wants me to get in touch with my feminine side," Malfoy concluded. Harry laughed. It was a small, black book with a rather shabby cover—surprising for a package sent from the Malfoys' manor.

Malfoy had noticed this and wrinkled his nose. "You'd think he'd have at least gotten me a new one, not some secondhand thing he probably picked off the street." He looked at Harry. "I'm throwing this away." He moved to do so, but Harry stopped him.

"Where's your sense of adventure, Malfoy? You haven't even opened it." Harry grinned. "Maybe it's your dad's and he accidentally owled it off to his precious Drakiekins."

Malfoy reached across the few feet between their beds and slugged Harry in the shoulder, then looked at the diary considerably. "Maybe you're right. I've always wanted to know how father felt about Aunt Bellatrix getting shipped off to Azkaban." But he scowled a moment later—he'd opened it and it was empty. "You and your notions, Potter."

Harry sighed, snatching the feeble diary away from the other boy and rifling through it. "It's all empty. I'd at least fill in a page before I got bored and chucked it."

"Probably someone just got a diary, realized how only prats keep them, and pawned it. Now throw that thing out the window and pass me more of those beans, Potter."

Harry pocketed the diary and obliged.

Before bed that night, he took the little book out one more time. This time, he noticed some blurred writing on the first page. It was a date, from fifty years or so ago, and had words written under it.

"T. M. Riddle."

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Can this be a sighting of…the plot? Well, at least all the book foreshadowing (if anyone spotted it) is revealed. Please review—last chapter we couldn't get ten, but I'm sure if everyone who read contributed one word, we'd have…a very weird disjointed sentence

Not to mention I'd like to know what you think of the chapter-combining idea.