The Girl Who Had No Escape [1]

Year 2 - 33

Harry entered the chamber, it had snake heads along the sides of the path and a large statue of Slytherin's head at the end. Harry walked down the path, and then saw a figure with red hair lying on the floor. Harry then ran towards her. He knelt beside her.

"Ginny?" He asked. "Ginny? Oh, Ginny. Please don't be dead. Wake up. Wake up! Please wake up!" Harry demanded, leaning over her.

"She won't wake." A voice said. Harry's head snapped up and he saw Tom Riddle walking towards him.

"Tom- Tom Riddle? What do you mean 'she won't wake', she's not-" Harry said.

"She's still alive, but only just." Tom replied, walking towards him.

"Are you a ghost?" Harry asked.

"A memory, preserved in a diary for fifty years." He replied. Harry then touched Ginny's hand.

"She's as cold as ice. Ginny, please don't be dead. Please, wake up." He said. Tom leant down and took Harry's wand from the floor. Harry then turned to Tom. "You've got to help me, Tom. There's a Basilisk. And-"

"It won't come untill it's called. Tom replied. Harry then noticed that he was holding his wand. He held out his hand.

"Give me my wand, Tom." Harry ordered.

"You won't be needing it." Tom replied.

"Listen, we've got to go, we've got to save her." Harry said, pointing to Ginny.

"I'm afraid I can't do that Harry. You see, as poor Ginny grows weaker, I grow stronger." Tom replied. "Yes, Harry. It was Ginny Weasley who opened the Chamber of Secrets."

"No, she couldn't. She wouldn't." Harry replied.

"It was Ginny who set the Basilisk on the mud-bloods and Filch's cat. It was Ginny who wrote the threatening messages on the walls." Tom replied.

"But why?" Harry asked.

"Well, because I told her to. You'll find I can be very persuasive." Tom replied. "Not that she knew what she was doing, she was, shall we say, in a kind of trance. Still the power of the diary began to scare her. And she tried to disposed of it in the girls' bathroom. And then who should find it, but you. The very person I was most anxious to meet."

"Why did you want to meet me?" Harry asked.

"I knew I had to talk to you, meet you if I could. So I decided to show you my capture of that brainless oaf, Hagrid, to gain your trust." Tom replied.

"Hagrid's my friend!" Harry exclaimed. "And you framed him, didn't you?"

"It was my word against Hagrid's. Only Dumbledore seemed to think he was innocent." Tom replied.

"I bet Dumbledore saw right through you." Harry replied, smirking.

"He certainly kept an annoyingly close watch on me after that. I knew I wouldn't be safe to open the chamber again while I was at school, so I decided to leave behind a diary preserving my sixteen-year-old self in its pages. So that one day I would be able to led another and finish Salazar Slytherin's noble work."

"Why would you go after a pure-blood then?" Harry asked, feeling disheartened at the reminder of Cassiopeia.

"Ah, yes. Cassiopeia Reid. She actually not dead." Tom replied. Harry looked at him in shock.

"W-what?" He asked.

"Yes, you see. For me to remake myself once again, I needed some magic also- otherwise I wouldn't have my magic, I would be a regular filthy muggle. So, while Ginny was in one of her trances, I made her seek out Cassiopeia, I made her get her to write in the pages. And she did, allowing me to make a connection with her, allow me to take some of her magic. However, this did come with a small price. It gave her nightmares, she saw the attacks before they happened, she saw a repeat of the attacks every single night, did you notice how tired she always was?" Tom replied. "She figured out who the last people were to be petrified, so she asked the mud-blood Granger to carry around a hand mirror. She was starting to think about telling people. Telling people what she knew so she could save everyone. So, I had to stop her from ruining my chance. She did see the final attack multiple times, even seeing herself. However, she didn't guess who the final victim would be."