Chapter 1: In the Beginning
When she first encountered it among her schoolbooks Ginny was not the least bit worried. After all, her birthday had only been a few weeks ago and there hadn't been enough extra money for any real presents. When she found the parcel she assumed that it was a surprise, packed away in her trunk by her mother to commemorate her eleventh birthday and help her transition into Hogwarts. It didn't concern her that there was another boy's name on her gift. She'd never had new things, and so it seemed only natural to her that this belated birthday present was second hand. Later, when everything was said and done people would scold her and ask themselves how she could have possibly been naïve enough to trust a mysterious artifact that was so blatantly full of dark magic. But the truth was that in the beginning she was just a little girl who was comforted on her first night away from home by a belated birthday present in the form of a small black diary.
She began writing in it that very night, sitting in her new bed with the curtains drawn. The words she wrote seeped into the page, ink black against the yellowing parchment before it began to fade. At first she was puzzled and attempted to write darker, lest her words disappear again, but she soon found it to be of no use. The diary would not retain her writing. She considered this for a moment, and realized that it must be some spell placed on the diary. After all, if the words she wrote disappeared after she wrote them than she would never have to worry about anyone finding the diary and reading all of her secrets, and she'd never have to get a new one since the pages wouldn't fill up. Growing up she had been taught to carefully measure her use of everything from shampoo to crayons. Faced with the possibility of endless pages she couldn't help but to write. She wrote about the train ride and the sorting, about the feast and the common room, about her dormitory and her roommates, and finally about her excitement and her trepidation. Aside from absorbing her words the little book was just like any other diary. It did not write back, nor did it offer glimpses into the past. But it listened, and Ginny soon found that its mere presence emanated a sense of warmth and comfort. That night was the first night Ginny fell asleep with the diary held close to her chest, too tired to write any more.