earth did you all get out of there alive, Potter?'

'You do not want to know,' yawned Amelia.

So Harry, his voice now growing hoarse from all this talking, told them about Fawkes's timely arrival and about the Sorting Hat giving him the sword. But then he faltered. He had so far avoided mentioning Riddle's diary – or Ginny. She was standing with her head against Mrs Weasley's shoulder, and tears were still coursing silently down her cheeks. What if they expelled her? Harry thought in panic. Riddle's diary didn't work any more ... How could they prove it had been he who'd made her do it all?

Instinctively, Harry looked at Dumbledore, who smiled faintly, the firelight glancing off his half-moon spectacles.

'What interests me most,' said Dumbledore gently, 'is how Lord Voldemort managed to enchant Ginny, when my sources tell me he is currently in hiding in the forests of Albania.'

Relief – warm, sweeping, glorious relief – swept over Harry. Amelia let out a breath she didn't know she had been holding.

'W-what's that?' said Mr Weasley in a stunned voice. 'You Know Who? En-enchant Ginny? But Ginny's not ... Ginny hasn't been ... has she?'

'It was this diary,' said Harry quickly, picking it up and showing it to Dumbledore. 'Riddle wrote it when he was sixteen.'

Dumbledore took the diary from Harry and peered keenly down his long, crooked nose at its burnt and soggy pages.

'Brilliant,' he said softly. 'Of course, he was probably the most brilliant student Hogwarts has ever seen.' He turned around to the Weasleys, who were looking utterly bewildered.

'Very few people know that Lord Voldemort was once called Tom Riddle. I taught him myself, fifty years ago, at Hogwarts. He disappeared after leaving the school ... travelled far and wide ... sank so deeply into the Dark Arts, consorted with the very worst of our kind, underwent so many dangerous, magical transfor- mations, that when he resurfaced as Lord Voldemort, he was barely recognisable. Hardly anyone connected Lord Voldemort with the clever, handsome boy who was once Head Boy here.'

'But Ginny,' said Mrs Weasley, 'what's our Ginny got to do with – with – him?'

'His d-diary!' Ginny sobbed. 'I've b-been writing in it, and he's been w-writing back all year –'

'Ginny!' said Mr Weasley flabbergasted. 'Haven't I taught you anything? What have I always told you? Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brain. Why