Always There

Chapter 22

A vast chamber stretched ahead. Along the path were rows of stone serpents. The serpents rest in pools of black water. Ahead is an enormous statue of Salazar Slytherin.

Several feet in front of the statue, Ginny Weasley lied motionless. As Harry dashed and took her into his arms, her head lolled to one side and her cheeks white as marble.

A pale hand clutched Tom Riddle diary to her chest. Olivia dropped the torch and raced to Ginny, placing her wand on the floor and kneeled beside her.

Olivia grabbed on of Ginny's cold hands. "Ginny! Please don't be dead. Wake up! Wake up! Ginny!" Harry yelled and Olivia took his hand in the one that wasn't holding Ginny's.

"She won't wake." Olivia let go of both hands and stood up. Harry only spun with Ginny still in his arms. Tom Riddle stood nearby.

He was strangely blurred around the edges, as though Olivia was looking at him through a misted window. "Tom... Tom Riddle? What d'you mean, she won't wake? She's not..." Olivia asked confused why that boy from 50 years ago was standing in front of her.

"She's still alive. But only just." He confessed with a smile on his face.

"Are you a ghost?" Harry asked and Olivia thought about It.

"A memory. Preserved in a diary for fifty years." Harry looked to the diary in Ginny's hand, then placed his own hand on Ginny's arm.

"She's cold as ice. You've got to help me, Tom. There's a basilisk --" Harry was cut off by Tom. Olivia yelled out as Tom took her wand.

"It won't come until it's called." Harry looked up, seeing Riddle twirling a wand in his fingers.

"Give us our wands, Tom." Olivia and Harry growled out. Don't mess with the Potter sibling was all Tom thought.

"You won't be needing it." He told the two and Olivia shook her head.

"Listen, we've got to go! We've got to save her!" Olivia yelled at the ghostly figure. Harry didn't know if he should stand up or stay next to Ginny.

"I'm afraid I can't do that, Harry, Olivia. You see, as poor Ginny grows weaker... I grow stronger." Olivia noticed that he was more solid than when they had arrived.

"But she's dying!" Harry yelled and Olivia started to piece everything together.

"Yes. I'm afraid so. But then, she's been in so much pain, poor Ginny. She's been writing to me for months, telling me all her pitiful worries and woes. Ginny poured her soul out to me. I grew stronger on a diet of her deepest fears, her darkest secrets. I grew powerful enough to start feeding Ginny a few secrets, to start pouring a bit of my soul back into her..." Riddle, growing less vaporous by the second, grinning cruelly.

"Ginny opened the Chamber of Secrets." Olivia muttered and Tom nodded with a smile.

"Yes, Olivia, it was Ginny Weasley who opened the Chamber of Secrets."

"No... she couldn't -- she wouldn't." Harry was at a loss of words. Why would Ginny do that. Olivia's hair turned a mix of red and white.

"It was Ginny who set the Basilisk on the Mudbloods and the Squib's cat. Ginny who wrote threatening messages on the walls." Tom smirked and Olivia's was confused. Why? Why would she do all of that.

"But... Why?" Olivia asked and Tom laughed. Olivia took a step back.

"Because I told her to. You'll find that I can be very persuasive. 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 dispose of it in the girls' bathroom. But then, who should find it but you. The very person I was most anxious to meet." Tom explained and Liv shook her head.