He was descending on her, his body slowly coming into focus. "I'm going to kill you, Virginia." She started to cry softly. "And when you're dead, and all that is left of you is your body, I will be completely restored." Every second he was moving closer to her. "And then, when I feel…alive again," he said, laughing, "I'm going to fuck your dead body."

            A river of tears was running down her face.

            "And do you know why, Virginia?" She whimpered, cowering on the floor, already too weak to stand. "Do you know why I'm going to do that?" He smiled, showing his white teeth. She was trying to hold herself up on her elbows, but it was no use. The process was almost complete. "Because…I can."

            Ginny could tell she only had about 10 more minutes. She had been there, down in the chamber, for hours. The slow process of transferring her life into him was almost complete. He had told her that she would lose consciousness about 10 minutes before it was over. 'So you won't even get to watch. Such a shame,' he had said.

            Slowly, she began to feel drowsy. As the last seconds of consciousness left her, she passed out, her arms slowly sliding out from under her as she slid down onto the ground.

            *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

            Her eyes shot open. "TOM!" she screamed loudly.

"Ginny!" came a voice from beyond the red curtain surrounding her.

She was safe in her bed in the dormitory she shared with the rest of the Gryffindor 6th year girls. It had been a dream.

"Are you…alright?" asked her roommate Gwen, pulling her curtain open.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Sorry for waking you." Ginny pulled the curtain shut again, and stayed there until the breathing of her roommates became regular, before slipping out of bed and into the bathroom.

            Tears running down her face, she closed the door and locked it, also performing a sealing charm and a silencing charm on the room. She turned to the cabinet which held her roommates belongings, digging through to find her own bag. Pulling it out of the cabinet, she sobbed loudly, knowing that nobody would hear her.

            She undid the zipper on her bag and opened the tiny hidden pocket on the inside of it, pulling the razor blade out and dropping the bag to the floor.

            She slid her pajama sleeve up past her elbow, revealing hundreds, maybe thousands of scars. Some were long, white, thin scars, from years ago. Many, however, were more recent. Red, swollen, some even still scabbed.

            She held the blade against her forearm, pressing it against her skin. She crunched up her eyes, holding her breath. After a few moments, she slid the blade sideways, watching it sink into her pale flesh.

            After watching the blood flow freely onto the floor for several minutes, she let her breath out, stood and turned the water on in the sink. She ran the warm water over the fresh cut, gasping through her teeth when the liquid first hit the wound.

            She turned off the water, placing a cloth over the cut and pressing, while quickly performing a cleaning spell for the puddle of blood left on the floor.

            Still pressing the cloth to her arm, she pulled out a piece of scrap material which she kept hidden in her bag as well and, using her wand, tied the cloth tightly around her arm.

            Pulling her sleeve down over the makeshift bandage, she removed the sealing charm from the door and made her way out of the dormitory, down the stairs, up the next flight of stairs and, quietly, into the 7th year boys dormitory.

            Knowing where Harry hid his invisibility cloak, she opened his trunk, dug through, and quietly opened the package. Pulling the cloak from the trunk, she silently pulled it over her shoulders, drawing up the hood to hide her head. Checking to make sure that her feet were hidden, she glided, now invisible, out of the room. Once out of the Gryffindor common room, she made her way slowly to the second floor girls' toilets.

            Hoping to all higher powers that Myrtle was asleep or out of the room, she dropped the cloak to the floor and stepped forward.

            Walking slowly around the island of sinks, she came to the one that didn't work; the entrance to the chamber.

            When Harry Potter had stabbed the basilisk's tooth into the diary, all of the life that had been transferred into Tom Riddle had been transferred back into her. But something strange had happened.

            When Ginny's life energy had been transferred into Tom, it was changed; sort of…molded, to fit him. When she got it back, she got some of his life's 'shape,' for lack of a better word. Some of him was imprinted into her life.

            In other words, she had inherited his Parselmouth abilities. She could speak the language of the serpents.

            It scared her a little, that she could speak it. But it was dead useful. She was absolutely terrified of the chamber, but that was why she went down there. It was relieving. It gave her the same numbness as cutting, and she was addicted.

            "Open up," she whispered in the strange hissing of the snakes. The sinks slid outward, making the grinding sound of stone on stone, and the broken sink sunk into the ground, revealing a wide, slimy looking tunnel.

            She took a deep breath and, holding it, slid down and dropped into the hole.