AN: Slow updates. Thanks Gin110881 for beta-reading.
If there were two things that defined Ginny Weasley, it was her curiosity and her stubbornness. Both earned her a fair share of troubles and rewards.
Among her siblings, she was the only one who shared her dad's curiosity with all things Muggle. Along with being the youngest and only daughter, it ensured her a very special place in his heart. This meant that she had quite a bit of leeway from him whatever it was to get away lightly on punishment or being allowed to use magic in his shed while "assisting" him in his "investigations" of Muggle items.
She loved magic in all its forms. It didn't matter if she was the one casting the spells, watching her parents doing it, just playing with magical toys or tools, reading magical books or watching her mother and twin brothers brewing potions. All magic fascinated her. This was quite unusual for a child growing up in a magical household, but Ginny never pretended she was "normal". In fact, she rather preferred being weird.
This was one of the reasons she was good friends with Luna Lovegood, who was weird even by Ginny's standards. She enjoyed listening to her friend talking about weird creatures and the adventures she had with her dad while searching for them.
It was the same curiosity that drew Ginny to the mysterious talking diary. Her dad had always talked about the dangerous charmed items he ran across in his line of work. Of course, having a house full of children of all ages, many of which prided themselves on their ability to get into all sorts of troubles, he never brought anything home that could be dangerous to his family.
The exposure to a wide range of charmed items of light nature, her curiosity and her belief that her parents had given her the diary, partially enforced by the diaries' Confundus magic, ensured that Ginny never ever suspected the diary's magic was anything other than light in nature.
It was months later, when the attacks started, that she started to suspect Tom of being less than honest. She started to increasingly find herself in places, she didn't remember getting to. Almost every day she noticed a new hole in her memories. However, every time her suspicious grew, every time she fought him for control, she would find herself forgetting those suspicious thoughts and getting confused over why would she even want to fight with her best friend Tom.
Over a period of months, being constantly exposed to the Confundus and Compelling charms as well as being periodically possessed, she started to learn how to fight those effects. Even then, Tom had to overextend himself in his efforts to cause mayhem, before she was able to fight his control.
She seized that opportunity like a drowning witch and threw the diary away in the nearest bathroom and run away. Even much later, while far away from the diary, she still could feel the Compulsion to find and write in it again. Still, she resisted with everything she had, and even could feel the effect fading somewhat as time passed. At least she hoped it did and she didn't imagine it.
And then she heard Harry-Bloody-Potter, of all people, talking about the diary, and she knew, she could never let him have it. Harry was obvious to its true nature and Tom could ensnare him as he did to her. Tom could also tell Harry what she had done under his influence, frame her like he once framed Hagrid. She couldn't face a threat of expulsion, perhaps even Azkaban, the thought of life without magic, the life in which Harry and her family hated her.
Determined to dispose the diary where no one would find it this time, she sneaked into Harry's dormitory and spend some frantic minutes tearing it apart searching for the diary. However, as soon as her hand closed around the diary, she realized that she didn't exactly think it through.
This time she could feel when Tom took over, and she fought him with all she had, but he was just too strong, and he was much more careful with how much time he spent in control to not overextend himself again. He didn't even cast the Memory Charms as often anymore, partially to gloat at her helplessness in her predicament, and partially to preserve his strength.
He was now strong enough, that he could take over any time she tried to tell someone about him. Her knowledge of his foul nature didn't matter anymore. As time went, he became stronger, and Ginny became only weaker. Many would have given up by now, but she did not. She was very stubborn, as her family could attest to.
She didn't spend her time wallowing in self-pity, she spent time learning to hide her thoughts from Tom as well as pulling a small amount of her strength for a decisive strike. Tom bid his time, hid until he was strong enough to take her over, and so could she. Sooner or later an opportunity would arise, and she would take it with both hands.
Much later, at the end of school year, she could feel Tom's excitement grow. She knew for some time now, that it never has been Tom's true intention to get rid of muggleborns. It was just a pastime, a bit of fun for him while he waited for something else.
At first, she thought, he was afraid to make moves with Dumbledore around. But when he didn't make any new moves even after Dumbledore was suspended, she realized it was something else he wanted. While she watched Tom writing her own farewell on the wall of Myrtle's bathroom, she realized, whatever he'd planned was going to happen very soon.
She was filled with determination and tightened her control over her hidden thoughts and powers expecting the decisive battle between them to start any moment now.
For the first time she could recall, Tom closed The Chambers of Secrets behind him. It was very clear that he was not here to summon the Basilisk this time. He took her body to the end of The Chamber at the foot of the statue of Salazar Slytherin. Then asserting his control over her body and magic, he pulled with great force on her strength, making her knees go weak and her mind blank out.
Yet, the part of herself she had hidden deep in her subconsciousness, where Tom never had a reason to look, stayed alert. Unnoticed by Tom, she waited to seize a perfect opportunity to strike back.
She could feel Tom giving her mind and body cursorily observation, to make sure that she was unconscious and her body drained of all of its power. Yet she could feel that his thoughts were not into it. He was confident in his victory, he was already planning and working on five moves ahead, never realizing that the battle was not finished yet.
Just a moment later she could feel Tom leaving her body completely for the first time in weeks. Even with her body drained and her mind unconscious, her body left a small sign of relief after the oppressive spirit left it. Yet Ginny waited, not daring to make any moves. She could feel the diary grasped in her hands. Tom could take control back at any time. This was not the opportunity she was waiting for yet.
It was only moments later that she felt a small breeze move over her body, which soon started to increase in intensity. Her clothes started to flatter and her skin tingled with what she soon realized was magic. Ever so slowly and carefully she left her hidden place in her mind and slowly took barest of controls over herself, just enough to barely crack open one of her eyes to see what was happening.
She was startled and amazed to see that the wind and magic seem to be coming from the diary, slowly building a tornado of power over it. With a bit of a gulp she realized that with as much magic as Tom was releasing for whatever he was doing, he could have spattered her best efforts of taking control back with barely a thought. She didn't imagine that the gap in their power grew so much since he took full control.
Anyone else would have been scared and demotivated to the point of giving up by the realization. But Ginny did not. Tom was expending lots and lots of magic, magic he couldn't use to fight her at the moment. With this in mind, Ginny ever so slowly started to take back full control over her own body.
As soon as her consciousness and control returned over different parts of her body, she realized that she was really tired. No, not tired. She felt beyond exhausted. It felt like breathing was taking more efforts that she had, more than she could master. Ever so slowly she started to spread the reserves of the magic she hid to different parts of her body, lessening the exhaustion somewhat.
It took her more efforts than she'd expected. Restarting her magical core alone took over half of her remaining magic. Without restarting it, she had no way of recovering any of her magic. It may have taken weeks for it to restart on its own, as was common for severe cases of magical exhaustion.
Through all this, she made special efforts to keep her consciousness and magic as far away from the diary as she could. She didn't know if she could keep hidden from Tom for much longer, but the longer he was fooled, the more power he spent and more time she had to recover.
It was, perhaps, a couple of minutes since Tom left her body, that she noticed wisps of magic that formed a tornado over her body started to slowly move to her side and ever so slowly condense into a shape. With a feeling of dread, she realized that Tom was making himself a body. It was one thing to escape from a diary, for all its powers it was simply a book, that could not move on its own. If Tom regained a body, it would be so much harder to escape him.
She was about to have a panic attack, before she noticed that his new body seemed to be ghostly, even more so than ghosts in Hogwarts. As new parts of his body formed, he didn't become any more solid. Instead, it looked like his body was rebuild from the top down. Every moment a little more of the body was formed.
Additionally, as his head formed, she could see an intense concentration on his face and his mouth moving in a chant. He clearly had to actively keep this spell going. For a moment she debated if it was more beneficial to interrupt the spell over attempts of escaping. While undoubtedly, it would piss Tom off immensely. At best, it would just buy her some time while Tom got his strength back from her.
No, her best option was to escape from the diaries influence and recover her strength. If anything, this situation only increased her chances. She could make her move before Tom had finished his ritual. With a bit of luck, he might not be able to concentrate on getting her back under his control for a little while.
She waited until Tom started to regain his knees. Then she reached very carefully with her consciousness to the diary, trying to get a feeling of Tom's state. He was releasing enormous amounts of magic for a while now, and she wanted to know if there were any other stages to the spell to make his form solid.
As soon as she mentally touched the diary, she could feel an intense sense of concentration as well as nearly overwhelming feeling of exhaustion. There was no way Tom was up to any other powerful magic after this spell was done. He was greatly overextending his magic as it was. She wondered for a moment if he perhaps miscalculated the amount of magic he needed, but she didn't dwell on the thought for long. This was her moment!
As soon as she retreated from the diary, she firmly grasped all of her body control and magic, not caring if Tom noticed. She had to prevent Tom from getting in at any cost. Both of her eyes flew wide open and she set up sharply. She still could feel exhaustion in every muscle and bone, but she was running on adrenaline and magic now, exhaustion was but a distant thought.
She could see Tom's face twitch in surprise, before setting back into concentration with some anger lines on his face, but he didn't make any attempts to talk to her or take control back. Encouraged by it, she quickly picked herself up from the ground. Giving the diary in her hands barely a glance, she threw it with all her might at the ghostly Tom.
To her disappointment, it harmlessly passed through him disrupting barely a few wisps of magic and momently distorting his form. It didn't seem to interrupt the spell or break Tom's concentration. Without waiting a moment longer, she turned and run in the direction of the exit of The Chamber.
She absentmindedly remembered about Tom locking the doors behind him. Without a moment of hesitation, she turned to the closest of the numerous tunnels, hopping with all her might it wouldn't lead back into The Chamber from the other side. By the time she reached the tunnel, her lungs were already screaming for oxygen and her legs felt like they were made from lead, but she continued running.
Shortly thereafter, she felt Tom's consciousness smash into hers. It made her stumble, but she was able to keep upright and was also able to repel his attack, if just barely. For the exhaustion she felt from him earlier, his attack was surprisingly strong, on the same level she expected him to be for their final battle without that spell he cast.
It was only a few moments later that she felt him smash into her defences again, and again, and again. She quickly realized that she could not keep up running and fighting at the same time. Getting as far away from him as possible was her top priority. The only way she knew how to lower the diary's influence was through distance and separation by time. That was her main goal in this battle, to get as far away from the diary as possible, for as long as possible.
She chose to abandon the defence after creating as many obstacles on his way as possible. Then retreat her consciousness to her body control centre, concentrating on running.
Without her actively defending and repairing the damage it took Tom only a few more smashes before he broke into her head. His anger was palpable. It clearly overrode any of his other senses as he tore at her consciousness and memories without care.
Ginny could no longer feel her legs and black dots were dancing in front of her eyes, but she continued on, left, right, left, right, one foot in front of the other, no stopping, no distractions. Tom may have been stronger, but she was the one in control right now, and he lost his control completely to his anger. Instead of focusing on trying to stop or slow her down, he seems to be focused on letting her know how angry he was with her.
It didn't take him long to regain some of his control and he started to smash through the obstacles she had placed on his way. It was clear who was a master of mental arts between them. She had probably wasted more strength placing those obstacles than it took him to take them down. They barely slowed him down. It was only moments later that she could feel him smash into her control centre.
Although her body long since exhausted its adrenalin fuelled energy, she still kept increasing the distance between them. She was no longer able to run without passing out, so instead she was walking as fast as her body would allow her. Left, right, smash, left, right, smash, left, right, smash, crack, left, smash, crack, right.
When she could not keep him at bay for much longer, she retreated even further. Firmly focusing her control on her legs alone, abandoning the rest of her body. It was only moments later that he smashed through and took firm control of rest of her body.
As soon as he had control of her hands, he started casting spells on her. She absentmindedly thought that she probably should have dropped her wand beforehand. Fortunately, he still seemed to be controlled by his anger, as she could feel him casting range of painful curses on her body. However, since he was controlling most of her body now, it was affecting him more so than herself.
He seemed to realize that too soon enough and turned to his favourite, - memory charms. This time he was neither focused or careful of what he Obliviated. She could feel days and even weeks being erased at a time. Left, right, left, right. She wondered how much of Ginny Weasley would be left after the battle was over.
It was perhaps 20 steps later that Tom finally decided to do something about her mobility by casting a leg locking curse on her, making her smash face first into the ground. For a moment she tried to push forward lying on the floor, but quickly realized it was not possible. She abandoned her legs and pushed with all her might for control of her arms, trying to escape crawling.
It was at this moment that she realized that her strength was nearly gone. She was spent, and there was no way she could continue fighting like this. There was no way she could increase the distance between her and the diary anymore. She had to try to win some more time away from it.
Leaving her body control centre to Tom, she ran into her damaged mind, frantically searching for a solution to her problem. It took her only moments to find the Stupefy spell. It was perfect. With any luck, the curse would make her drop her wand. Without it, Tom would not be able to Enervate her body so easily.
By this point, Tom already undid the Leg Locking curse and was slowly walking her body back. With last of her strength, she took control of her wand hand. Pointing the wand on her own body, she whispered "Stupefy", putting all of her reminding magic behind it. As darkness claimed her, she allowed a small smile to grace her lips, as her body slumped and her wand rolled out of her slack fingers.