CHAPTER THIRTEEN
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.
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