THE VERY SECRET DIARY
everyone who read Sonnets of a Sorcerer spoke in limericks for the
rest of their lives. And some old witch in Bath had a book that you
could never stop reading! You just had to wander around with your
nose in it, trying to do everything one-handed. And —”
“All right, I’ve got the point,” said Harry.
The little book lay on the floor, nondescript and soggy.
“Well, we won’t find out unless we look at it,” he said, and he
ducked around Ron and picked it up off the floor.
Harry saw at once that it was a diary, and the faded year on the
cover told him it was fifty years old. He opened it eagerly. On the
first page he could just make out the name “T. M. Riddle” in
smudged ink.
“Hang on,” said Ron, who had approached cautiously and was
looking over Harry’s shoulder. “I know that name. . . . T. M. Rid-
dle got an award for special services to the school fifty years ago.”
“How on earth d’you know that?” said Harry in amazement.
“Because Filch made me polish his shield about fifty times in de-
tention,” said Ron resentfully. “That was the one I burped slugs all
over. If you’d wiped slime off a name for an hour, you’d remember
it, too.”
Harry peeled the wet pages apart. They were completely blank.
There wasn’t the faintest trace of writing on any of them, not even
Auntie Mabel’s birthday, or dentist, half-past three.
“He never wrote in it,” said Harry, disappointed.
“I wonder why someone wanted to flush it away?” said Ron cu-
riously.
Harry turned to the back cover of the book and saw the printed
name of a variety store on Vauxhall Road, London.
231