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. He tried to point this out to Ron, but Ron was having trouble with his wand again; large purple bubbles were blossoming out of the end(Amelia happily hummed picking up the bubbles and twirling them into her hair), and he wasn't much interested in anything else. 

*
Harry went to bed before anyone else in his dormitory that night. This was partly because he didn't think he could stand Fred and George singing, 'His eyes are as green as a fresh pickled toad', one more time, and partly because he wanted to examine Riddle's diary

again, and knew that Ron thought he was wasting his time.
Harry sat on his four-poster and flicked through the blank pages, not one of which had a trace of scarlet ink on it. Then he pulled a new bottle out of his bedside cabinet, dipped his quill into it, and dropped a blot onto the first page of the diary.

The ink shone brightly on the paper for a second and then, as though it was being sucked into the page, vanished. Excited, Harry loaded up his quill a second time and wrote, 'My name is Harry Potter.'

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 his very own ink, came words

Harry had never written.

'Hello, Harry Potter. My name is Tom Riddle. How did you come by my diary?'

These words, too, faded away, but not before Harry had started to scribble back.

'Someone tried to flush it down a toilet.'

He waited eagerly for Riddle's reply.

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

'What do you mean?' Harry scrawled, blotting the page in his excitement.

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

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