Written for Caesar's Palace Shipping Week with prompt safe.
When Ginny found, amongst her ordinary schoolbooks, a small black book resembling a diary, she, like any other girl her age in the same situation, began to write in it. Finally, she thought, she would have something to confide in, even if it were only a small book that would never respond.
She soon learned, though, that the book was anything but.
As she carefully printed her first entry onto the blank page just waiting to be filled, she paused to consider what to write next and was shocked to see that the diary offered a reply.
It was strange, but not overwhelmingly so. Surely it could all be explained away by some charm that had been placed on it. Growing up in the wizarding world, Ginny was more than familiar with items like this, so thought nothing of it as she eagerly picked up her quill and wrote a response.
It wasn't long before Ginny began to truly feel at ease to tell the diary (which was known to her only as "Tom") anything and everything. She would write about her family and friends, her studies, even her feelings for the mysterious Harry Potter. Tom would always provide Ginny with support and advice if it seemed she needed it, and she finally felt safe and at peace with everything.
No matter what happened, she had Tom, whom she trusted, to help her through it.
It never occurred to her that putting her trust in the small black book was the worst thing she could do.
On the night of the Halloween feast, she released the monster lurking in the Chamber of Secrets.
Ginny never remembered doing it.
After the first attack, Ginny's memory only grew fuzzier.
She spent much of her time feeling as though she were in a sort of trance, and more and more fragments of time passed where she was unable to place where she was or what she had been doing.
Conveniently, these blackouts always seemed to take place around the time of another attack. Another student would be found petrified, and Ginny would have no way of placing her whereabouts. For all she knew, she was responsible for the string of abhorrent attacks plaguing the school.
For all she knew, she was going mad.
And perhaps these two things were connected.
She confided, once again, in her diary, but now Tom did little to soothe her fears. He only seemed to convince her that this nightmare she lived in had become her reality.
It took enough of a toll that she began to realize that, as soon as she possibly could, she needed to relieve herself of Tom.
The diary was dropped with a small splash into the toilet, and Ginny watched as the churning waters washed over it and carried it away. At last she would be free from whatever hold the sinister book had on her. Ginny would have no more blackouts or periods where everything was fuzzy then returned to normal after, she felt, damage had been done.
But she could not keep the monsters at bay forever.
And, above all, she could not simply flush the diary out of her life.
The petrifying cycle continued once more.
It was clear that disclosing anything else to the diary was a poor option, but Ginny knew nowhere else to turn. And with her state of emotional vulnerability, Tom's hold over her grew tighter and tighter.
When he had her write a bloody farewell, Ginny had been consumed too deeply by the dark malevolent thing inside the book to protest, or even care. All she felt anymore was the life draining from her, draining away into Tom, making him stronger.
And as he rose, victorious at last, everything went black.
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