Ginny is going to Hogwarts this year.

She's so excited she can barely breathe, and it makes it hard to keep up with Mum, who keeps dragging her to and fro, muttering about money and books and school and Lockhart. Ginny doesn't mind; she's starting at Hogwarts, just like all her brothers, and she's going to make so many new friends and it'll be so exciting, and Harry Potter is staying at her very own house because he's friends with her very own brother, and Ginny has never been so excited in her life.

Harry is exactly everything she's ever dreamed, willing to stand up to that horrid Malfoy in the shop, and to his father too. He's even given her his Lockhart books, that Lockhart gave him free, so Mum has to buy one less set. Ginny admires him more than anything, she thinks he's more handsome than Lockhart, even if Ron thinks she's stupid. Ginny thinks Ron is stupid, but she gets in trouble if Mum catches her calling names, so she keeps it to herself, even when he's a great big git and makes fun of her because she likes Harry. She can't help liking Harry, can she? He's so wonderful, and brave, and brilliant, and it makes Ginny happy to have him here in her very own house. He's friends with her brother, so in a way that makes him friends with her too. Sort of.

It's much later that evening, when Ginny is alone with her new things and her happy memories of Harry being brilliant and Dad being pretty brilliant too, that she finds the book in her cauldron. It's an old book, used like everything else, but Ginny doesn't really mind. She's not sure what it's for, but she doesn't mind that either. She examines it carefully, stares curiously at the name stamped in elegant gold type across the back. Tom Marvolo Riddle. She doesn't know what sort of name Marvolo is, but she sort of likes it, the way it rolls off her tongue when she says it under her breath. She feels a bit sorry for Tom Marvolo, who's lost his book.

Ginny opens it, and the book is blank from start to finish. She's partly disappointed, and partly glad. It might have been Tom's once, but it's hers now, to do with as she pleases. And it's blank, a whole book full of empty pages that Ginny can fill with whatever she wants. She scrabbles for her quill, and for the brand-new bottle of scarlet ink Mum bought her for school, and burrows back under her covers. She uncorks the ink, dips in the quill, and sets it to the very first page.

My name is Ginny Weasley, she writes, and I am eleven years old.

There is a pause, and then with a silence like a whisper, the words disappear. Ginny stares in shock, running her finger over the empty page. And then....

Hello, Ginny. My name is Tom.