Text

Hermione knew that Ginny Weasley loved Harry. she had known it since the year prior, though it hadn't made much of an impression. Lots of young girls with fresh scrubbed faces had made eyes at Harry his first day at Platform 9 & 3/4. Now everyone knew it. Ginny stared after Harry as her housemates nudged one another and giggled behind their hands. Her face would break into mild alarm every time he came into her sight and she would caress the slim black book she always carried. Her lips would be red with the imprints of her teeth. Perhaps it was the sight of those even white teeth biting her bottom lip that made her wan face distinctive.

Girls in Hermione's house were already trying that same trick on the boys they wanted to attract and the first years were always anxious. However, they never drew blood the way Ginny did. Sometimes her bottom lip would be red with it and Hermione always had the urge to lick it off. After that other things had become fascinating to Hermione. The way those fingers stroked, stroked that thin, black book as if it were alive. Hermione never could see what Ginny wrote in that book. Every time she tried to look Ginny was already putting her pen away, her fingers stained with ink.

When fascination turned to obsession Hermione hardly noticed.

She still got the highest marks in her class and she still spent most of her time with Harry and Ron. She just would sometimes haunt certain aisles in the library so she could watch Ginny write in that black book. Hermione assumed it was Ginny's diary. She watched and watched until the realization came to her that Ginny never turned the pages of her diary. Not once. The page might change from day to day, sometimes it was ahead of the day before or behind. Yet it never changed from the time Ginny sat down to the time Ginny got up to leave.

It was a magic diary.

That made a certain amount of sense but Hermione had never read about magic diaries. She had never thought to look. When she left her regular post in the Arithmancy aisle she researched magic diaries and found very little. Hermione discovered one interesting fact about magic books. Sometimes good friends, lovers - she stumbled over the word -, or those in business used magic books to communicate back and forth. It was faster than owls and was rather convenient. These magic books had been involved in dark circumstances in the past because enemies of the witch or wizard with such a diary would impersonate the owner of said diary. This way valuable information was gotten from the officials of the old rulers - not yet a government - and from those fighting for a cause. Such books had been banned in 1936 but sometimes were still used clandestinely.

Hermione fretted over that last bit. It would not do for Ginny to get in trouble because of a friend or even a boyfriend. She would find herself wondering who was the mystery correspondent throughout the days. She had never seen Ginny around anyone that was not family. Perhaps the person was scared of seeing a girl with six older brothers. Ginny was too young to be seeing boys. Most boys her age were sloppy and older boys were much too experienced and thought about - well, things an eleven-year-old girl ought not be thinking about. Hermione thought and thought but never could find a chance to get at that diary or figure out the mystery person.

-----

Hermione had been up to many other things besides watching Ginny that school year. She had made the polyjuice potion for Harry so that they could impersonate the Slytherins and find out if Draco Malfoy was the heir of Slytherin. Unfortunately the hair she had taken from that awful Milicent Bulstrode had been a cat hair. Hermione had spent weeks in the infirmary taking potions to get back to normal.

The evening she came back from the infirmary Harry had the familiar black diary in hand. Hermione started upon seeing it. She marveled with Harry over the name T.M. Riddle and Ron said it was the name of an old student who had gotten an award for special services fifty years ago. Hermione thought furiously and tried matching the name with a face. She had done some research on old prefects and head girls and boys but not to the extent that Percy Weasley had gone to. The pages of the diary were blank, just as she had expected. She excitedly told Ron and Harry that T.M. Riddle might be connected with the Chamber of Secrets. She kept coming back to the look on Ginny's face when she wrote in the diary, pale and apprehensive This was the clue she... they had needed.

----

When Harry came to breakfast the next day with the story of Tom Riddle, a head boy in old fashioned dress and seeing a younger Hagrid Hermione almost burst with questions. The boy was able to communicate through the diary, he was a memory preserved in a diary. None of her research on magic diaries had said anything of this sort of magic. Tom Riddle had been talking to Ginny. Hermione felt she ought to tell Harry but she couldn't quite find the words and one day turned into two and the diary was back in Ginny's hands. Ginny didn't know that Hermione had found a picture of Tom Riddle in an old yearbook and that she and Harry had already identified him. Harry never noted the missing diary held carefully in Ginny's hands at all times.

A peaked look had come into Ginny's face and she had begun to jump at the slightest noise. One day Hermione knocked over a book in the Arithmancy section and like a bolt Ginny was out the door of the library with a spooked look on her face.

Harry and Ron still didn't know the mysterious diary was an illegal sort. They had not read enough to know and Hermione did not enlighten them. She could hardly get them interested in her other theories about the diary because Ron said they had too many big words in the explanations. She felt they could hardly blame her for not telling them about Ginny.

The day Hermione woke up with Ginny's name on her lips and a wetness between her legs she knew that feeling ought not come before thinking.

The next day she knew nothing. The following day she still knew nothing.

She knew nothing until Madame Pomfrey poured an awful tasting potion down her throat and hugged her. Professor Snape looked down his nose at her and - at breakfast - Harry and Ron both gave her awkward hugs - Ron even more awkwardly than Harry. When Hermione looked over Ron's shoulder at Ginny she saw the younger girl had more color in her face. Hermione's eyes met Ginny's and she realized she hadn't thought about her beyond the news she had been told. She had almost not thought of her at all since the second before the basilisk had come. Even then Ginny's face had been the last image she had seen.

As she saw Ginny chatting with the girl next to her she realized Ginny's bottom lip wasn't frayed and bloody. Ginny occasionally looked at Harry hopefully but beyond the initial meeting with Hermione's eyes almost not once at her. Hermione found she didn't mind. She bit her lip and decided freckled girls had lost their attraction. She wondered why there had ever been one at all. That night in dreams she licked the bloody lower lip of a familiar girl and found she liked the taste. When she woke with a smile on her face she remembered nothing.

She only puzzled over the taste of blood in her mouth.