Adalbert Gaunt's Diary

"*The diary. My diary. Little Ginny's been writing in it for months and months, telling me all her pitiful worries and woes… So Ginny poured out her soul to me, and her soul happened to be exactly what I wanted… I grew stronger and stronger on a diet of her deepest fears, her darkest secrets.*"
— Adalbert Gaunt's soul regarding Ginny Weasley's emotional dependency on the diary

## Horcrux information

### Manufacturer

Winstanley's Bookstore & Stationers, Vauxhall Road, London

### Usage

* Diary
* Horcrux
* Reopening the Chamber of Secrets

### Owners

* Adalbert Gaunt
* Antonin Dolohov
* Ginny Weasley
* Nathara Prince-Slytherin

**Adalbert Gaunts's Diary** was a simple blank diary, which Adalbert Gaunt transformed into a Horcrux. The diary was made into a Horcrux in 1943, during Adalbert's sixth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. It was the first Horcrux he ever made and was used as a weapon.

Before Lord Voldemort's first defeat in 1981 the diary was passed to Death Eater Antonin Dolohov. In secret, Dolohov kept the diary before he slipped it, unnoticed, into Ginny Weasley's cauldron of school supplies at Flourish and Blotts in 1992. The diary used its dark magical influence to bewitch and force Ginny to re-open the Chamber of Secrets, but it was destroyed by Harry Potter in 1993 with a Basilisk's Fang.

## History

This diary was originally purchased by Gaunt in a Muggle shop called Winstanley's Bookstore & Stationers on Vauxhall Road in London, sometime before or during 1943.

### Creation of the diary as a Horcrux

"*The diary was proof that he was the Heir of Slytherin; I am sure that Voldemort considered it of stupendous importance.*"
— The diary's importance to Lord Voldemort

When Adalbert Castor Gaunt was in his fifth year at Hogwarts, he achieved his goal of locating Salazar Slytherin's Chamber of Secrets and used his ability to speak Parseltongue to open it. He further used this language ability to order the Chamber's Basilisk to terrorise the school and hunt down the Muggle-born students. Eventually one of the Muggle-borns, a Ravenclaw girl named Myrtle Warren, was killed. Gaunt would later use this murder to infuse the journal with a piece of his soul, and transformed it into his first Horcrux.

After Myrtle's death, Albus Dumbledore, then Professor of Transfiguration, began suspecting Gaunt. Knowing it was no longer safe to open the Chamber, and that the school might be shut down if the perpetrator was not caught, Gaunt framed Rubeus Hagrid and his pet Acromantula Aragog for the crimes, and earned himself an award for Special Services to the school. He imbued the diary with other powers, so that the Chamber could be opened again in the future.

In the following years, Gaunt also questioned Potions Master, Horace Slughorn about the properties of a Horcrux and how one might create multiple ones. Influenced by Gaunt's charisma and believing his own wisdom was being admired, Slughorn told Gaunt what little he knew on the subject. Based from Slughorn's information, Gaunt became positive on the possibility of creating more than one Horcrux, and became confident of using the diary as a weapon instead of the intended safeguard. Re-opening of the Chamber of Secrets

"*I was patient. I wrote back. I was sympathetic, I was kind. Ginny simply loved me... No one's ever understood me like you, Tom... I'm so glad I've got this diary to confide in... It's like a friend I can carry around in my pocket... If I say it myself, Harry, I’ve always been able to charm the people I needed.*"
— Adalbert Gaunt's manipulation of Ginny Weasley

Some time during the First Wizarding War, Lord Voldemort entrusted the diary to Death Eater, Antonin Dolohov. The plan was to use the diary to reopen the Chamber, but Voldemort fell before that plan came to fruition, although Voldemort never told Antonin that the diary contained a fragment of his soul, instead simply making it appear to be cleverly charmed. However, Malfoy still possessed the diary and, in 1992, he planted it on Ginny Weasley, hoping to kill three birds with one stone by sabotaging Ginny's father, purge the school of Muggle-borns, and eliminate an incriminating Dark artefact.

Because Antonin was unaware that the diary was actually a container for his master's soul fragment, he treated it with such light-handedness. When the Weasleys and Harry left to King's Cross Station, Ginny accidentally left the diary behind at the Burrow. Just before they got to the motorway, she remembered the diary and demanded to be allowed to go back and get it. She soon learned how to use the diary to communicate with Adalbert Gaunt, though she was unaware that he was Lord Voldemort, or if he was even real. Ginny wrote all of her deepest feelings and secrets in the diary, including her feelings of infatuation toward Harry Potter.

Her emotional vulnerability allowed the fragment of Voldemort's soul within the diary to gain partial control of her mind and force her to re-open the Chamber of Secrets. Ginny was forced not only to paint terrifying threats in the school corridors using blood, but also to release the Basilisk within the Chamber and strangle the school roosters to protect the Basilisk, all the while in a sort of trance, and never knew what she had been doing. The Basilisk attacked several members of the Hogwarts community, including Mrs Norris, Colin Creevey, Justin Finch-Fletchley, Nearly-Headless Nick, Hermione Granger, and Penelope Clearwater. These individuals were not murdered by the basilisk, but petrified, due to them never seeing the Basilisk directly through a series of fortunate events, ranging from seeing a reflection to seeing it through a camera to the viewer being dead already.

When the attacks began, Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, and Hermione Granger began to investigate the matter. They initially suspected Draco Malfoy, who was openly prejudiced against Muggle-borns, but after using Polyjuice Potion to spy on him, they discovered that he knew as little about the attacks as they did. Hermione eventually deduced that the monster had to be a Basilisk, due to Harry's ability to hear it and the nature of the attacks, but she was petrified before she could inform Harry or Ron, though she managed to leave them a relatively straightforward clue, a clipping from a Magizoology book *Most Macabre Monstrosities*.

Harry heard strange voices in the walls of Hogwarts, which exhorted the urge to kill. Harry followed the voices through the Hogwarts corridors until he came upon the second floor girls' lavatory. It was here that he discovered the water-logged diary, which Ginny had discarded when she suspected that it was she who had petrified the Muggle-borns, and that she finally realised that the diary was the cause. Soon enough, Harry was communicating with Adalbert Gaunt, who showed him a memory within the diary, in which Gaunt confronted Rubeus Hagrid about the keeping of a dangerous pet. This implied to Harry that Hagrid had opened the Chamber of Secrets, but Gaunt was merely using Hagrid's pet Acromantula, Aragog, as a scapegoat so Hogwarts would not be closed down.

Later, Ginny, having seen the diary amongst Harry's books, stole the diary from among Harry's room in the Gryffindor Boys' Dormitory. She feared that Gaunt would tell Harry about her feelings toward him, and shortly thereafter went missing. She was forced to paint a threat against her life on the walls of a hallway and sealed herself inside the Chamber. Hogwarts was again under threat of being closed down.

### Destruction

"*When Voldemort discovered that the diary had been mutilated and robbed of all its power, I am told that his anger was terrible to behold.*"
— The Horcrux diary's destruction

On the evening of 29 May, 1993, Harry returned to the girls' lavatory and successfully discovered and opened the Chamber of Secrets. He, Ron, Nathara, and Professor Gilderoy Lockhart made their way into the Chamber. Lockhart, who had no plans to actually fight the Basilisk, attacked the students with Ron's own broken wand, which backfired on him, and wiped his memory. Harry continued into the Chamber, where he discovered an unconscious Ginny next to Adalbert Gaunt, who was gaining strength and form. Concealing his true nature as a Horcrux, Gaunt claimed to be a memory of his younger self, and revealed the truth of his identity and plans to Harry and unleashed the Basilisk.

Harry slayed the Basilisk with the assistance of Dumbledore's phoenix, Fawkes and Godric Gryffindor's Sword which appeared from the Sorting Hat. Harry then took one of the Basilisk's fangs and stabbed the diary with it. This successfully destroyed the Horcrux, as basilisk venom was one of the few substances with that ability. When he later explained about the diary's true nature to Dumbledore, the latter was privately concerned, as no mere memory could just possess a girl and eventually take physical form, and he suspected the diary was a Horcrux. Because of how careless this Horcrux was treated (after all, its purpose was to keep its owner immortal), Dumbledore theorised that Gaunt had created more Horcruxes, something that had never been done before.

Lord Voldemort was unaware that this Horcrux had been destroyed, until he forced the truth out of Antonin Dolohov (who did not know the diary was a Horcrux) shortly after his return to power in June of 1995, due to the portion of the soul being separated from his body for such a long time. Despite the known risks of using the diary as a weapon instead of a safeguard, Voldemort was nevertheless furious to learn of its destruction, due to Antonin implementing the plan without Voldemort's say-so in order to dispose of the diary for his own benefit while also attempting to destroy the Weasley family and Dumbledore's reputation, as well as getting rid of an incriminating Dark Arts artefact (the Ministry was conducting a search at the time); this was one of the many reasons that he lost trust in the Dolohov family and why Antonin was punished and demoted.

Although Voldemort was unaware of the diary's destruction until Dolohov reported it to him, he attributed this to his non-corporeal status at the time of its loss; as a result, he took no additional precautions to safeguard the remaining Horcruxes, and assumed that they were safe and undamaged until the break-in to Gringotts confirmed to him that someone else was hunting them.

## Powers

"*While the magical container is still intact, the bit of soul inside it can flit in and out of someone if they get too close to the object. I don't mean holding it for too long... I mean close emotionally. Ginny poured her heart out into that diary, she made herself incredibly vulnerable. You're in trouble if you get too fond of or dependent on the Horcrux.*"
— A Horcrux's ability to influence a person

As a Horcrux, the diary allowed a writer to communicate with the memory of the sixteen-year-old Adalbert Gaunt, merely through writing on the journal's blank pages. The diary could transport the reader into a realm of memories, much like the Pensieve. The diary was also able to siphon the life force from a reader and transfer it to Gaunt's stored memory. This act was an endeavour to create a physical body for the sixteen-year-old Soul of Adalbert Gaunt. The closer a writer became to the memory of Adalbert Gaunt emotionally, the more power the diary would acquire over him or her. As this diary contained Gaunt's soul, it also housed his magical powers, including his ability to speak Parseltongue, even by possessing the writer to speak it, which was instrumental in reopening the Chamber of Secrets.

It was unclear whether other Horcruxes include any of these same abilities; however, Salazar Slytherin's Locket had a negative physical and emotional effect on those who wore it, and Marvolo Gaunt's Ring was fatally cursed Albus Dumbledore. Also, it was unknown if Gaunt had placed powerful enchantments to protect the diary from being destroyed by conventional means, as he did with all of his other Horcruxes, but it was highly likely that this was indeed the case. Ginny Weasley tried to flush it down the toilet, but it came back perfect as new. When Harry's ink bottles shattered and drenched all of his other textbooks, the diary alone remained dry and unmarked.