Narrator's POV

Soon enough, the students would learn that Hagrid had been thrown into Azkaban for 'opening' the Chamber of Secrets during the Yule Break.

Under her pillow on Yule/Christmas morning, Ginny Weasley was delighted to find out her diary of friends had been returned to her.

When the children returned to school, all was calm for several months but in June that changed.

***

The diary horcruxes were slowly becoming solid as Ginny's soul was drained.

Upstairs, the school had found a new message on the wall once they had discovered Ginny missing.

Standing next to the girl's dying body, Tom and Harry were almost solid.

Suddenly, the pair heard a voice heading towards them, they hid themselves in the shadows.

"Ginny!" Ron yelled, sprinting to her

"Ginny, don't be dead! Please, don't be dead." Ron said, throwing his wand to hold her

Her face was white as marble, she was almost gone.

"Ginny, please wake up." Ron muttered desperately, shaking her

"She won't wake." Harry softly said

Ron jumped and spun around on his knees.

"What d'you mean, she won't wake?" Ron said desperately, "She's not-?"

"She's still alive," Tom answered, trying to hide his smirk of near victory, "but only just."

Ron stared at him.

"Are you both ghosts?" Ron asked

"Memories," Tom answered, "preserved in a diary for fifty years."

He pointed toward the floor near the statue, lying open there was the little black diary.

"You both got to help me." Ron said, raising Ginny's head again, "We've got to get her out of here. There's a basilisk —I don't know where it is, but it could be along any moment. Please, help me!"

Ron managed to hoist Ginny half off the floor, and bent to pick up his wand again, but his wand had gone.

"Did you see -?" Ron asked only to see both Slytherin's watching was still watching him —Harry twirling Ron's wand between his fingers.

"Thanks," Ron said, stretching out his hand for it

"Listen." Ron said urgently, "We've got to go! If the basilisk comes -"

"It won't come until it is called." Tom calmly interrupted

"What d'you mean?" Ron asked, "Look, give me my wand, I might need it-"

"You won't be needing it." Harry said, handing Tom the wand

"What d'you mean, I won't be needing it?" Ron asked

"We've waited a long time for this, Ronald Weasley, for the chance to see you. To speak to you." Tom said

"Look," Ron said, losing patience, "I don't think you get it. We're in the Chamber of Secrets. We can talk later -"

"We're going to talk now," Tom said, pocketing Ron's wand
　　
Ron stared at him, "How did Ginny get like this?"

"Well, that's an interesting question, and quite a long story. I suppose the real reason Ginny Weasley's like this is because she opened her heart and spilled all her secrets to a couple of invisible strangers." Tom answered

"What are you talking about?" Ron asked

"The diary," Tom answered, "my diary. Little Ginny's been writing in it for months and months, telling us all her pitiful worries and woes —how her brothers tease her, how she had to come to school with secondhand robes and books. It's very boring, having to listen to the silly little troubles of an eleven- year-old girl, but we were patient. We wrote back. We were sympathetic, we were kind. Ginny simply loved us."

Harry interrupted him, quoting Ginny's entries, "'No one's ever understood me like you two, I'm so glad I've got this diary to confide in, it's like having a couple of friends I can carry around in my pocket.'"

Tom continued his speech as if nothing happened, "If I say it myself, Ron, we've always been able to charm the people we needed. So Ginny poured out her soul to us, and her soul happened to be exactly what we wanted. We grew stronger and stronger on a diet of her deepest fears, her darkest secrets. We grew powerful, far more powerful than little Miss Weasley. Powerful enough to start feeding Miss Weasley a few of our secrets, to start pouring a little of our souls back into her."

"What d'you mean?" Ron asked

"Haven't you guessed yet, Ronald Weasley?" Tom asked, his smirk fully displayed, "Ginny Weasley opened the Chamber of Secrets. She strangled the school roosters and daubed threatening messages on the walls. She set the Serpent of Slytherin on four children, and the Squib's cat."

"No." Ron whispered

"Yes." Tom said, calmly, "Of course, she didn't know what she was doing at first. It was very amusing. I wish you could have seen her new diary entries ... far more interesting, they became."

Harry interrupted once more,"'Dear friends, I think I'm losing my memory. There are rooster feathers all over my robes and I don't know how they got there. Dear friends, l can't remember what I did on the night of Halloween, but a cat was attacked and I've got paint all down my front. Dear friends, Percy keeps telling me I'm pale and I'm not myself. I think he suspects me. There was another attack today and I don't know where I was. Oh, what am I going to do? I think I'm going mad, I think I'm the one attacking everyone!'"

Tom continued, "Once It took a very long time for stupid little Ginny to stop trusting her diary, but she finally became suspicious and tried to dispose of it. And that's when I knew we needed to take control. So I made Ginny write her own farewell on the wall and come down here to wait. She struggled and cried and became very boring. But there isn't much life left in her —she put too much into the diary, into us. Enough to let usleave its pages at last I have been waiting for you to appear since we arrived here. We knew you'd come. We have many questions for you, Ron."
　
"Like what?" Ron angrily asked

"Well, how is it that you a skinny boy with no extraordinary magical talent managed to scare the greatest wizard of all time? How did you escape with nothing but a scar, while Lord Voldemort's fled?" Tom asked

"Why do you care how I scared him?" Ron asked, "Voldemort was after your time."

"Voldemort is my past, present, and future, Ronald Weasley." Tom said, waving Ron's wand to write his name and it changed

"You see?" Tom asked "It was a name I was already using at Hogwarts, to my most intimate friends only, of course. You think I was going to use my filthy Muggle father's name forever? I, in whose veins runs the blood of Salazar Slytherin himself, through my mother's side? I, keep the name of a foul, common Muggle, who abandoned me even before I was born, just because he found out his wife was a witch? No, Ron, I fashioned myself a new name, a name I knew wizards everywhere would one day fear to speak, when I had become the greatest sorcerer in the world!"

Ron gasped: if he was Voldemort than Harry was surly Tenebris.

Suddenly, a phoenix had appeared, with a sword in its mouth, flying straight to Ron.

"Fawkes." Ron muttered as the phoenix picked Ron up by the robes and began to fly towards where the diary was

Neither horcrux moved to save the Diary, since a fake had been planted just in case.

Fawkes dropped Ron next to the diary and Ron used the sword to stab it.

They both quickly faked their deaths and retreated back into the real diary.

Fawkes grabbed Ron again and disappeared back the way it came along with the journal and sword.

That was a very close call.

But, Ginny had died, and in the chaos and they were unable to get the last part of her soul so they were not solid...