page_title: Magical objects in Harry Potter
section_title: Tom Riddle's diary
hierarchical_section_title: Magical objects in Harry Potter / Horcruxes / Tom Riddle's diary
caption_attribution_description: Tom Riddle's Diary (horcruxe)
context_page_description: The following is a list of magical objects used in the Harry Potter series.
context_section_description: Tom Riddle created his first Horcrux during his fifth year at Hogwarts, using his own school diary. He cast the spell after murdering his fellow student Myrtle Warren using the Basilisk. The diary is introduced in the thirteenth chapter of Chamber of Secrets and is destroyed by Harry Potter during the climax of the same book.
  Before Voldemort's downfall, he entrusted the Horcrux to Lucius Malfoy. While aware of its corrupting magical properties, Malfoy did not know the diary was a Horcrux, Voldemort having informed him of its value as a weapon but believing that he would be in a position to coordinate Malfoy's use of it. In an attempt to discredit Arthur Weasley as well as dispose of an incriminating Dark object, Malfoy hid the diary in Ginny Weasley's cauldron amongst her other books. Tom Riddle's soul-fragment possessed Ginny and, through her, reopened the Chamber of Secrets, eventually starting to draw her life from her. At the end of book two, Harry saved Ginny and destroyed the diary by stabbing it with the venomous fang of a Basilisk, making it the first Horcrux to be destroyed. His reports of the diary's behavior to Dumbledore were the latter's first inkling that Voldemort might have created not just one Horcrux, but several: "What intrigued and alarmed me most was that the diary had been intended as a weapon as much as a safeguard", implying that Voldemort must have had backups of some sort. It is also mentioned that Lucius was meant to wait for Voldemort's authorization before allowing the diary to be smuggled into Hogwarts, and that he never received it before Voldemort's first defeat. Voldemort did not learn of the diary's destruction until he forced the truth out of Lucius, and he became greatly enraged at the manner in which Lucius had so recklessly endangered it.
  To J. K. Rowling, a diary is a very scary object, having said in an interview: "The temptation particularly for a young girl, is to pour out her heart to a diary." Rowling's little sister Diane was prone to this, and her great fear was that someone would read her diary. This gave Rowling the idea to have a diary that is, in itself, against the confider. When asked what would have happened if Ginny had died and Riddle had managed to escape, Rowling revealed that "it would have strengthened the present-day Voldemort considerably."
caption: Tom Riddle's diary, with the basilisk fang that destroyed its horcrux
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