What Lies Ahead

One

Her skin was white as snow and just as cold to the touch beneath his numb fingers. Her mouth, once the perfect shade of pink, had been drained into the slightest of blues. In complete contrast,  her flaming red hair, darkened by the surrounding water, lay pillowed beneath her as if cradling her head from the stone floor. No movement came from her chest: no beat of the heart, no pull from the lungs. Instead, an eery still had settled over her despite the boy's frantic attempts to rouse her from her eternal sleep.

Harry abandoned his futile compressions against Ginny's chest, his arms aching from the adrenaline pumping through his veins. He had only seen CPR on Dudley's television shows; for all he knew he was going at it all wrong anyway. Grabbing for her wrist, his fingers wrapped around the icy skin. There was no pulse against his fingertips, but he begged her to wake up.

"Ginny, I'm here. Please wake up! Please.."

A cool voice broke through his pleas.

"She's gone, Harry."

"No," Harry choked out. He swallowed against the rising lump obscuring his throat, but he couldn't fight back the burning that prickled the corner of his eyes. "No, no, no. Sh-she c-can't..." His words stammered together as his brain tried to process the rapidly changing world that was crashing down around him.

A hand tightly gripped his shoulder, startling him to his unsteady feet. Arms flailing as if fighting off the unseen presence, Harry spun in the direction of the earlier voice. Standing before him was a teenager, dressed in Slytherin robes, a smug smile playing across his pale face. His black hair was combed to perfection completing his debonair look. Harry recognized him immediately, but how? How was he here?

"T-Tom? How-" he questioned, brows furrowing in confusion.  However, there was no time for questions. Shaking his head as to clear the thick fog clouding his mind, he quickly formed the only plan he could think of. "Help me get her upstairs.  If I can just get her to Professor Dumbledore, he'll know-"

High, cold laughter rang through the chamber, reverberating off every stone wall until it seemed to be coming from all directions. The chilling sound bristled the hair on the back of Harry's neck; it seemed impossible that it was coming from the teenager in front of him. "Dumbledore can't save her now," the older boy said with a sickening smirk.

Harry's stomach plummeted. Nausea swept over him as he looked back at Ginny's body spread out on the floor. Something wasn't right. "What do you mean," he asked feebly.

"Well, you see Harry, Ginny has spent the entire year pouring her soul out to a certain dairy. Every day she confided in it; telling it all her little secrets: all about the sweet, adorable, famous Harry Potter who would never notice her."

Tom stepped forward and stooping, retrieved a tattered black book from beside Ginny's open hand. Smiling fondly, he looked it over before raising his eyes back to Harry who stood rooted to the spot, unable to speak.

"I was there to give her advice. I gave her a shoulder to cry on. I gave her everything she desired just by listening to all her petty childhood problems. Until," he paused here, a wicked gleam shining in his dark eyes. "Until one day, I decided I'd had enough giving. It was my turn to take something from her. We started out small of course. Roosters are fairly easy to kill, but she didn't seem too fond of the mess it made."

Pocketing the old diary, Tom took an advancing step towards Harry, careful to step over Ginny's lifeless form. His hungry gaze was locked on Harry's face that had suddenly drained to an ashen grey; understanding clearly rising to the surface. The boy shook his head, but Tom continued with a playful laugh.

"Petrifying the squib's cat was a little more difficult, but even with the paint staining her robes, she had no idea what she had done. Oh, she had her suspicions, but she was very good at denying them. It wasn't until the next attack that she began to stop trusting her diary."

"N..No," Harry stammered out. " She wouldn't-"

"No, she wouldn't," agreed Tom. "But I would."

Tom stopped toe-to-toe with Harry, looking down at him with an excited expression. There was something off about that look, but setting his jaw, Harry held his ground.

"You made her attack everyone. You opened the Chamber of Secrets, not Hagrid," said Harry, clenching his fist at his sides. Anger boiled up in place of his fear.

"Not as slow as you seem, Harry," Tom said amusedly. "Yes, in both cases it was easy. With each new journal entry, Ginny gave me part of her soul, and, in return, I gave her a piece of mine. Soon she became too feeble to fight, and that's when I had her write her own farewell note and come down here. I was finally strong enough to leave those tattered pages and she was too weak to resist."

Without a second thought, Harry plunged his hand inside his pocket, fishing for his wand. However, he found his pockets completely empty. Heart beating violently in his ears, he tore his gaze away from the boy in front of him and peered helplessly around the floor for any sign of where he may have dropped it.

"Looking for something?"

The rhythmic thump of wood striking skin repeatedly, caught Harry's attention and he looked down to see Tom tapping the wand against his splayed palm. An immense dread flooded Harry's senses, as he stared down at the only weapon that could possibly save him from his current situation. The defeat must have shown in his eyes because Riddle let out another cruel laugh.

"Now, the question is what do I do with you?" Tom used the wand to swipe the bangs back from Harry's forehead, revealing the thin lightning bolt scar. "Young Ginny told me all about what you've done; how you've defeated the Dark Lord twice now. What I want to know is how?" Like throwing switch, his tone changed from playful to furious.

Harry aggressively pushed the wand away from his head. "Why do you care, " he growled.

"Haven't you figured it out yet, " he asked as if scolding a child. "I am Lord Voldemort."

Stunned, Harry took half a step back as his mind whirled with information. Standing in front of him was the boy who would grow up to murder his parents. Hatred grew inside of him until he could fight it no longer. Diving forward, he aimed to tackle the teen to the floor, but a red light hit him mid-step, driving him painfully to his knees. Air puffed from his nose as he fought the invisible hold keeping him tethered to the wet stone.

"I must confess, I intended to kill you tonight, Harry, " said Tom, looking down at the boy kneeling before him. "However, it occurs to me you might have some information that would be useful in my search for what's left of my future self."

"I'm not helping you," Harry ground out through gritted teeth.

Tom sat back on his haunches and smiled broadly, his perfect teeth barred. " Who said you had a choice?"

Before Harry could reply, Tom raised the wand and with another flash of red, the world turned dark.