Chapter 18: Nothing Left To Lose

"Ginny…."

Upon recognizing just who was lying on the floor of the Chamber of Secrets, swooned like a sleeping princess in one of the old Muggle fairy tales, Neville broke into a panicked run. He dashed to the side of the baby sister of one of his best friends, only to have his distress grow at the sight of how terrifyingly still she appeared.

Ginny Weasley lay in a horrifying kind of repose, partially in a shallow puddle of water – not deep enough to drown her, it would appear, though this was small comfort. For as Neville bent near her, he could see that the water in which she lay was laced with a thick, black substance, most of it spreading outward from her red curls, forming a kind of dark halo around her. As though there might be the source of a wound. For a split second, he thought it might be Ginny's blood he was seeing, and he nearly hurled. Then he looked again, even dared to dip his finger into the substance. Neville tasted it, before promptly gagging and spitting it back out with disgust. He'd tasted blood before – though it had always thankfully been his own, usually resulting from a split lip. What he tasted now wasn't tangy or coppery enough to be blood. Good Godric, was it… oil? Was she partially lying in oil? If so, that could be nothing but dangerous. Pondering, Neville shook his head. Wait a minute: his Gran had always taught him that certain Muggle laws of science were clear, and equally applicable to the magical world. And one of those laws was that, here as in the non-magical realm, oil and water did not mix any more than two entirely incompatible people couldn't be suitable to each other. Hence the phrase like oil and water.

He drifted his finger through the darker substance again, feeling it mix with the water in some areas, yet still staying separate in others.

No, not oil, Neville decided: ink. Ginny was partially lying in a pool of…. ink.

The answer as to why quickly came into his line of vision. There, just twenty paces or so off from them, lay Tom Riddle's diary, open onto a seemingly blank page, the parchment damp with water.

Feeling a sense of foreboding, Neville turned back to Ginny and began shaking her desperately. If the worst was as he feared…. Ron would be devastated. He might even for some irrational reason blame him, though this seemed unlikely.

"Ginny…..? Ginny, please don't be dead…. Wake up – WAKE UP!" No response. Neville felt his insides clench. At this point, he was becoming just desperate enough that he was considering kissing her awake, just to test if those Muggle fairy tales held some truth in them, when all at once, a tall and striking figure emerged from out of the shadows of whatever large stone carving lay just ahead of them at the far edge of the Chamber.

The young man had a kind of noir coloring about him, as though he had been plucked from some classic black-and-white movie and dropped into this, the real world. His expression was carefully blank, and unnaturally calm considering the state of emergency at hand. "She won't wake."

He called out to Neville softly, and the Boy Who Lived lifted his head. Lowering Ginny gingerly to the tiles, he momentarily forgot about the object of his mission for the moment as he studied this youth who seemed strangely…. familiar, though Neville would be the first one to attest that they had never met.

But he had seen the boy before somewhere, in that memory the diary had dragged him into.

"Tom. Tom Riddle."

Tom Riddle nodded, though he oddly refrained from smiling. Uneasy, Neville gestured back to the poor girl still unconscious and possibly worse. "She's…. she's not…?"

"Oh, she's alive, but only just. She won't wake unless I tell her to."

Neville's eyes narrowed leerily. "…. You did this?"

"If we wish to be technical, no," Tom dismissed, his tone still maddeningly as calm as could be.

That parsing of words made absolutely no sense. It was about as logical as hearing a politician attempt to bend the meaning of words to suit his or her own purposes. Neville set aside the acidic gnawing at his gut for the moment. "Well, then listen, you have to help me out; we've got to save her!"

"I'm afraid I can't do that, Neville, my boy. For you see…. as poor Ginny grows weaker…. I grow stronger."

Now this was getting creepier, and Neville acutely felt the instinct to take Ginny – dead or alive – and get her the bloody hell away from this guy. Except leaving Riddle in a dangerous place might also be rather rude, as after all, "But the basilisk…"

Tom merely shook his head again. "I won't come until it's called," and he sounded quite sure of himself about this.

Trying to ignore the tingling sense that something about this was all very off, Neville knelt by Ginny again. "Ginny, please…. you've got to wake up. You have to stand. Come back, anything!"

His entreaties trailed off as he caught Riddle rising up out of a crouch, having surreptitiously stooped to pick up something in his hand. Neville eyed it, nerves churning, even as he stepped forward.

"…. Give me my wand, Tom."

"You won't be needing it." And Tom actually smirked. As if everything about this was somehow funny.

Neville felt annoyed enough to glower. "Well, then if you're so confident she can wake up without magic, get on with it and…"

"Neville, don't you understand?" Tom's voice was silky, patient, as if he was talking to a very small child. "It's too late. We've now reached a point where poor Ginevra cannot leave the Chamber as long as I am here. Or, well…. I suppose she could, but only under my orders."

Neville frowned. "What do you mean, 'your orders'….?"

"Haven't you figured it out already yet, silly boy? It was Ginny who opened the Chamber of Secrets."

The world seemed to spin. "No," Neville croaked, unable to imagine how a girl of eleven barely through her first year could manage such a thing. "She…. she couldn't. She wouldn't."

"It was Ginny who went after the Muggleborns and Filch's cat. Ginny who wrote those threatening messages on the walls!"

"…. Why?"

Tom grinned wickedly, the answer apparently self-evident, at least to him. "Because I told her to. You'll find I can be very… persuasive." Tilting his head down to Ginny, expression still infuriatingly couldn't-be-bothered, he suddenly snapped his fingers. "Ginevra, my dear…. Wake up, please. We have a visitor."

Neville watched in horror as Ginny slowly stirred, and rose to her feet, all with the deadened lethargy of someone in a trance. The young girl carried herself like someone who was sleepwalking, though this filmy veil of…. perhaps apathy wasn't the right word, more…. nothingness remained.

At least until she lifted her head, and opened her eyes. Neville couldn't see where the sweet, happy little girl he had met end of last summer had gone to, but she wasn't in this person.

"Hello, Neville," she murmured low, dangerous. She turned to Tom almost absently. "Shall I kill him, Master?"

"Oh, that won't be necessary, dear, although I do appreciate the enthusiasm," Tom just about chortled, entirely amused by this real-life horror movie playing out in front of him.

Neville glanced between Ginny to Riddle and back again, and that was when it hit him: she was being controlled. He didn't know how yet, but she was. That had to be the explanation. Sure, Tom was the culprit (he'd admitted as much!) but to completely control another person's free will…. how was he doing it? And what kind of magic was that? Surely none that Neville wanted anything to do with.

He took a different tact, holding out his hand to her. "Ginny… your brother is waiting for you at the other end of this tunnel. Come on. We're going home."

She eyed his open, outstretched palm as though it was diseased, before taking a very deliberate step closer into Tom. "I am home," she intoned, sounding robotic.

"No, you're not," Neville pushed back, attempting to keep his voice calm. "Is that what he's telling you?" He almost delighted in how he clearly saw Riddle flinch, stiffen, threatened.

Tellingly, Ginny refused to answer. Was she waiting to hear whatever poison Riddle was feeding her? Equally as tellingly, Riddle also refused to answer, either for her or for himself. Neville gathered his thoughts, tried again. He fought down how he was clearly out of his depth in that he had no idea how to fight this kind of conditioning, especially if magic (possibly Dark magic) was likely (definitely) involved.

Meanwhile, Ginny was glowering at him, as though he had done something wrong, made some affront, in attempting to come after her. He didn't see how she had any reason to be angry. If anything, a rational Ginny would – should – only be mad at Riddle for doing this to her, except she had been brainwashed into believing Riddle was her friend.

With that, Neville latched onto a strategy, and it had something to do with how he remembered feeling down in another part of the castle's hidden depths, last year, with Quirrell. He'd felt a tug, a gravitational pull towards the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, who had also, it turned out, been under the control of someone else: Voldemort. And that tug had never been stronger than when he'd heard that voice in his head, telling him to kill Quirrell.

Maybe…. maybe it didn't matter trying to figure out why Ginny was angry. Maybe a breakthrough was possible just by first acknowledging that she was – however irrationally it appeared.

"Ginny…. You're angry, I get it," Neville attempted to meet her where she was. "Believe me, I know what it's like…" And recalling the strange sensations he'd felt down below the trapdoor last term, with the Stone, he realized that he did, yet he'd somehow clearly resisted it. Perhaps Ginny could too. "…. But you are making a mistake: The path to hate is a dangerous track. You take one step and it's hard to turn back. It pulls you along and though it seems wrong, it feels right. Don't you see this path you're on leaves a permanent mark? It feels good at first, then it slowly turns dark. With each passing day, you're further astray from the light….!"

Tom did nothing to stop this last-ditch plea, but he appeared clearly nervous. Ginny sneered and turned slightly away, but Neville doggedly kept up this poor man's version of reconditioning. "Suddenly you lose your way and lose the thread. Lose your cool, then lose your head. Every loss is harder to excuse. Then you'll see you lose your faith, and lose your soul, till you lose complete control, and realize there's nothing left to lose!" He emphasized. "Nothing left to lose!"

He desperately reached for her hand, and he felt her flinch, which he took as an encouraging sign. "Gin – trust me. Becoming the villain isn't the answer…."

Here, he finally got a reaction. Just not the one he'd been hoping for. "Is that what you think I am?" Ginny rounded on him, her long, red hair twirling about her like tongues of flame. A deadly anger flashed in her eyes, one that seemed to be born almost of betrayal. As if Neville had done something to hurt her, let her down. "The path I'm on is a path paved in black. I'm taking that road and I'm not looking back. Each twist and each turn leads straight where I'm yearning to go!" For just an instant, unease briefly visited her as she conceded, "Yes, it's true, my path is dark, but I see where it ends. My rivals will fall as my power ascends! Despise me, that's fine – I'm taking what's mine, even so! Not like you: you've lost your nerve, you've lost the game! But you and I, we're not the same. I'm not lost; this fate was mine to choose! So I chose to lose my doubts and lose my chains! Lose each weakness that remains, now that I have nothing left to lose! Nothing left to lose!"

Throughout all of this, Ginny was displaying feats of magic that she absolutely should not, at her age and level, have been able to do. It made Neville wonder: were these really Ginny's words she was speaking? Or was she rotely parroting back someone else's talking points? Was she buying her own bullshit, or was she reading from some sort of script? He hoped – had to believe – it was the latter, even as the girl now boldly drew her wand on him as he stood there, weaponless and defenseless as Tom was still holding his wand. Neville had no choice but to stay her hand and try to turn the wand's tip away from himself, now resorting to begging.

"You have so much to hold onto…"

"I only want my rightful dues!" Ginny shoved him away from her, and he stumbled back, losing his footing and quickly righting himself. Two different philosophies now went to war, almost talking over each other.

"Listen please, you've lost your grip and lost your mind! (I'm not gonna lose!)

All's not lost; don't be so blind! (I refuse!)

Cut your losses, drop the IOUS (I REFUSE!)

Choose! It's time for you to choose! (I lose no tears and lose no sleep. What I want, I'll take and keep!)

You can('t) stop the turning of the screws!"

Ginny expressionlessly waved her wand and Neville felt walls closing in on him, forcing him to his knees, trapping him. She knelt. "You'll stay in that cage until this is done."

"Now, now, Ginevra…." Riddle called, even as he slowly applauded her performance. "Let's not be hasty. We may need our quarry scurrying about yet." He was smirking wickedly.

Ginny ignored him, standing with a deadly confidence more befitting a young woman several years her senior, turning away to return to her Master. Riddle now stepped forward, studying his automaton's work, pleased. Neville sneered.

"You've failed to finish what you set out to do, Tom." He chose where to place the blame very deliberately, hoping that he could cut through the noise and that Ginny might at last hear him. "In a few hours, the Mandrake potion will be ready, and everyone who was Petrified will be all right again."

To his shock, this did not seem to bother the evil student of a Hogwarts past. "Haven't I told you? Killing Mudbloods doesn't matter to me anymore. For many months now, my new target…. has been you. I wanted to talk with you, meet you if I could."

"And why did you want to meet me?" Neville goaded.

"I needed answers, and only you could give them to me. For instance, how is it that someone – a baby - with no particularly extraordinary magical talent managed to defeat the greatest wizard of all time? How did you escape, with nothing but a scar, while Lord Voldemort's powers were destroyed?!"

Neville's mind whirled, trying to piece the logic together. "Why do you care how I escaped? Voldemort was after your time!"

Riddle's answering grin nearly chilled his bones. "Voldemort is my past…. present and future, Neville Longbottom." Turning to face the wall, he suddenly made a sweeping motion with Neville's wand, spelling out a message in blood-red ink. Another flick, and the anagram of his full name – Tom Marvolo Riddle - rearranged itself to read:

I AM LORD VOLDEMORT.

Neville went white. "You… you're the heir of Slytherin…. You're Voldemort!"

Riddle's lip curled into a sneer. "You really thought I was ever going to keep my filthy Muggle father's name? No…. I fashioned myself a new name, a name I knew one day wizards everywhere would fear to even speak, when I became the greatest sorcerer in the world…..!"

"ALBUS DUMBLEDORE IS THE GREATEST SORCERER IN THE WORLD!" Neville bellowed defiantly, trolling him, hoping a taunt like that would set him off and force the man, ghost, whatever he was to do something stupid.

"Dumbledore has been driven out of this castle by the mere memory of me!" Riddle screeched.

"He'll never be gone!" Neville bit back. "Not as long as those that remain are loyal to him!"

Riddle grinned wickedly, tssssking. "Well, that's a lesson you'll have to unlearn. Now, I'm going to teach you a lesson! Let's match the powers of Tom Riddle, Heir of Slytherin, against the famous Neville…" A chortle bubbled up and almost escaped from him. "Longbottom." Riddle took a few steps back, studying his imprisoned enemy, altogether satisfied and confident in the fact that he would be even more so within moments. Vindicated, he lay down his word as law:

"You've lost your balls, you've lost the plot. Now in hell is where you'll rot. Cause, damnit, I have nothing left to lose!"

A/N: Song credit goes to the Master of Maestros, Alan Menken. Only Riddle's ending lyric is mine, as it doesn't appear in the original Tangled Series song.