You just need to concentrate very hard on how what you need to do is find the diadem, Tom thought.
Ginny squirmed away from having his thoughts back in her head. She had set her hand on the diary and let him slither back inside her so he rested against her very soul, so he dripped down into every crevice of her being, and she had told herself it was because she needed to do this. This was necessary to defeat Voldemort. She locked away every thought she had about how comforting and familiar it was to have him back with her, part of her, closer to her than any friend could ever be, closer than any lover would ever be.
It's an empty wall, she thought. Just an empty wall opposite a very ugly tapestry.
Do it, Tom said, or I will.
She pushed away the threat implicit in that thought and focused instead on how very, very much she needed to find Rowena Ravenclaw's diadem. It was urgent. It was crucial. It would help to save the world.
An unremarkable door shimmered into existence in the wall and, as used as she was to magic, Ginny still gasped in wonder.
Open it, Tom said. He seemed less impressed.
She put her hand on the doorknob and let herself into a room filled with more junk and she'd ever seen in her life. There were shelves filled with old books and forgotten relics. There were tables piled high with brooms and lost jumpers and things she couldn't even identify. On a shelf near the door she saw a bust of some ancient wizard, and on that wizard sat a diadem.
If Tom had had breath to suck in, he would have sucked his in. She could feel the thrill that rushed through him at the sight of the legendary object. She picked the jeweled crown up and ran her thumb over the large sapphire set in the center. "This is magnificent," she said out loud. "Do you think it's one?"
She hated the idea of having to destroy something so beautiful.
It seems likely, Tom thought at her. She'd never felt such raw lust in anything he'd ever thought or written to her before; she'd never felt so uncomfortably in agreement with Tom since she'd realized who he was. She coveted this crown in a way that made her desire for the kind of pretty clothes Narcissa Malfoy bought her seem like nothing. She understood as she held it how 'coveting' was different from 'wanting' and, oh, how she coveted. The force of that desire made her hand shake as she dropped the diadem into the bag she'd brought with her.
She turned to go and realized she couldn't. Her mouth opened without her volition and said, "Accio dagger."
She fought in vain to regain control of her body as Tom's summoning charm brought dozens of daggers towards her. They came, pulled out of cupboards and off shelves, to slide across the room and clatter along the stones of the floor until they gathered in a pile at her feet. There were big daggers. There were short daggers. There were daggers so rusty she thought they would probably fall apart if she poked at them with her finger. She squatted down – or, rather, Tom squatted down – and began to sort through them. He selected two from the collected offerings. Both were relatively short, both were sharp, both had black handles. He hefted them in her hand and she could feel the satisfaction in his soul as he added them to the bag and turned, at last, to leave.
Long ago, he said to her, sounding like an erudite but arrogant lecturer, magic wasn't done with wands and bad Latin. Long ago, people still used ritual knives to draw the circle, candles when they called the corners, and grimoires to keep track of such spells that worked, instead of neatly printed textbooks designed to standardize and neuter magic.
She settled down inside her own mind, sulking as he refused to give control back to her.
He seemed amused. You need me to do the parseltongue anyway, Ginevra. Don't act like a petulant child.
And then they were there, in Myrtle's bathroom, and he was talking with the hisses that she couldn't understand and opening the passageway down to his monster. They went down, into the bowels of the school, and he summoned the basilisk. He spoke to it, and she shivered as he ran his hand along the creature's neck like a man pleased with a particularly skilled hunting dog.
The basilisk spit out a stream of foul, smoking liquid. It's the venom, Tom thought at her. One of the few things that destroys a horcrux. I made a point of researching their vulnerabilities. He pulled out the two knives he'd selected and held the blades in the stream of venom, and then bathed them in the collected pool that was slowly eating its way into the floor. I never thought, of course, that I would be the one making use of that information. I thought more to guard against it.
He pulled the daggers out, and seemed to hesitate for a moment before he handed the body back over to Ginny. I confess, he thought her, I am not completely sure that I can bring myself to destroy my own horcrux. I am going to have to ask you to do it.
Ginny gripped one of the daggers and slammed it down against the delicate metalwork of the crown. The filigree shattered, the sapphire rolled free, and the whole thing hissed as an acrid black smoke rose out of it. "No one will ever value for yourself, you know, Ginevra," is said. "Your family doesn't love you because you weren't in Gryffindor, and if you think that Tom is even capable of love, you're a fool.
She shivered and gave the crown one last hack with the knife before kicking it across the room. It slid across the floor and came to rest in the dissipating puddle of basilisk venom where it slowly dissolved into nothing.
Tom took her over again briefly to hiss something at the basilisk, which looked as pleased as a monstrous snake could ever look, Ginny supposed, before slithering back to wherever it stayed when not answering the summons of its lord and master.
Well done, Tom said to her. He relinquished control again and added, One down, five to go.
Six, she said.
Right, he agreed. Six things to destroy.