Ginny heard his door open and close before she ran for the door. The door opened (thankfully) and the stairs were in sight. Without pausing, she began up them.
After a few minutes, she slowed, suddenly remembering the length of the stairway. The rather long length. She took the rest of the stair at a much slower pace, but she reached the top about an hour and forty-five minutes after she had left it.
As she left the sanctity of the passage, Ginny's eyes darted, looking for Filch and his cat. Filch was not in sight, but he was no doubt only a minute or two away. Her only hope to get to Gryffindor Tower unseen was to run. She caught her breath quickly and started her silent sprint down the corridors.
She heard footsteps in front of her and she stopped. She was about to turn back when she heard Mrs. Norris behind her. She was trapped. She found a suit of armor, hoping beyond hope to be overlooked in the dark corner.
Just before she could get to her hiding place, Mrs. Norris appeared around the corner. She meowed for Filch who was just about to turn the corner when Ginny was grabbed by three pairs of hands, and she found herself sitting on the feet of Harry, Ron, and Hermione, thankfully hidden from Filch's sight by the Invisibility Cloak.
She looked at them gratefully as Filch looked carefully in every corner but passed them up. He stopped suspiciously in the middle of the corridor, feeling the students' presences. "Where are they, precious? Did they try to run? They should know better than to be out of bed at this time of night."
As soon as Filch and Mrs. Norris turned the corner, Ginny looked up gratefully to her friends. "Thanks, guys. I thought that I was going to be in detention for months."
Ron was making his oh-so-interesting transformation from freckled and pale to bright red and inarticulate as he sputtered "where in bloody hell were you?"
"Let's talk about this when we get back to the common room," interjected the voice of reason, Hermione.
The trip back to Gryffindor Tower was long, and particularly painful due to the fact that they had four people and one cloak. It was excessively crowded until they decided to just have a strict lookout for Filch. The method seemed a good one, since they managed to not get detention on the way back to their dormitories.
Back at the tower, Ginny was immediately set upon by the others. A flurry of questions spun down upon her, mostly about her location. Ginny was a good liar, but she was also very stressed out and tired. Therefore, her best escape route was that of sleep.
"As much as I would love to answer all of your questions, if I don't go to sleep now you won't be able to get me up for a month. Goodnight!" was her cheerful parting line. Ron, Harry, and Hermione just stared after her, not use to such put-offs.
The next morning, Ginny awoke later than usual. She had been kept up most of the night by the persistent recurring nightmare that she thought had disappeared in Second Year. It was disappointing to find that that was not the case.
The nightmare was silly, and she knew it. In the dream, she and Tom would be walking in the Chamber of Secrets. He would be telling her of the creature that he could command for her. She would seem to be agreeing, but she would always be trying to scream at him to kill the basilisk. Then, the darkness would envelope them both, leaving utter blackness. Tom would say "it's coming." Ginny would then scream to Tom not to leave her alone with the basilisk, at which point he would disappear and she would wake up. It used to be that she would wake up screaming. Later, she learned to stifle the screams and wake up with cold sweat. Her self-inflicted training hadn't left her, as she learned on about four separate occasions that night.
Ginny sat in her bed, not even bothering to go to breakfast. She wasn't hungry enough to face the barrage of questions unprepared. Unfortunately, she didn't even know how they had known that she was missing. Hermione had known that she was staying out after hours, and she hadn't been gone all that long. her best bet was avoidance or silence until someone slipped up.
First, she needed a good excuse for avoidance. She had had her period a week ago, so that wouldn't do. A bad night of sleep was a good start. Maybe something mumbled with a vague male name would confuse Ron long enough for her to sort out her brain.
She was as prepared as she was going to be considering the minimal sleep and maximum anxiety. Ginny got dressed and walked cautiously to the foot of the dormitory stairs. There was no ambush... until she was three feet from the portrait hole. She got asked the predictable questions such as where had she been, and why had she been so tired last night. To those questions, she offered one mumbled, hopefully groggy-sounding sentence: "mmm... mumble fight mumble Roger mumble couldn't sleep."
She walked through the portrait hole with the other three, and she heard exactly what she had hoped to hear. Ron was ranting about "all of her bloody boyfriends." Hermione was lamenting the loss of sleep that might interfere with her studies. Harry was silent in contemplation, but he smiled at her and seemed to accept her answer, or at least her lack of an answer.
It wasn't too long before she could escape her three friends in the library with the excuse of a "nasty potions essay for Snape." Instead of doing her imaginary essay, she sat in a generally unused corner and though of the night before.
Tom had said to think of his motivations, but what could they be? She knew that she was probably being stupid and overlooking something obvious. Well, the only way she knew to get to the answer was to look at the evidence – his offer. He told her that she would have escape, power, and knowledge. Escape she didn't think advisable or pleasant. Power, well "power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely," enough said. She definitely didn't want power. Knowledge, now that was to be desired. The thing was, his specialty was the Dark Arts, and she did not want to know about the Dark Arts. She already knew too much about Dark magic.
Tom knew her, no matter how much she hated to admit it. He had heard her secrets and innermost thoughts for an entire year. If he had remembered what pet names he had called her, then he would most certainly remember the things that she had dwelt upon the most – her obsession with Harry, her hope to impress her family, and her increasing love of magic and learning. She wasn't Hermione, but she still liked the subjects taught at Hogwarts.
With that knowledge, Tom must realize that the things that he had offered were not the things that she would want or respond to. That made her curious and angry, as she was sure was its intended effect. He knew her so well, that even at a distance he could play upon her very mind and twist it the way that he wanted. That was rather manipulative for so early in the day.
So, who would want escape, power, and knowledge? Tom. Tom was giving her what he wanted for himself. Now she was really confused. He was giving away something that he refused to give (in any substantial amount) to anyone else. That needed more feeling that she supposed that he had. She had been tricked before and didn't like the way that this was feeling.
She was always angry with him. It was a normal in her life to be angry with him, something to base her actions around, even though she could never bring herself to outright hate him.
The problem was, she wasn't feeling that angry anymore. Ginny felt lost as well as confused. She couldn't decide if she hated him or loved him. Maybe both. In any case, she couldn't read his mind – at least not until she had one or two more pieces of information.
There was one thing that she was sure of: she wouldn't get any proper rest until she had this sorted out. There was only one way to sort out the situation. She had to settle her mind as to what he was thinking and what he wanted. Ginny needed to ask him one question. The answer to that question would decide what he wanted. He had told her to figure out his motivations, after all.
She put away the book that she had been pretending to use for her "potions essay." She walked from the library to the corridor that had been the beginning of her adventure the night before. She found the tapestry. She lifted it and looked at the small carving there. Just like it had last night, the door slid open, and she disappeared once again from the rarely-frequented hallway.
It turned out that the hall was not nearly as empty as Ginny could have hoped. Harry and Ron took off the Invisibility Cloak. "Did she go off the map?"
"I can't find her anymore" replied Harry. "Should we try the opening? See of we can follow?"
Instead of answering Harry's rather obvious question, Ron went to the tapestry and looked at the spot where Ginny had. There was a small carving of a dragon below eye-level. If he hadn't known that something was there, he probably wouldn't have seen it. Ginny hadn't said anything, hadn't touched anything, so he expected it to simply open for him. It didn't. He tried everything that he could think of, but none of the usual methods worked. He looked at Harry helplessly.
Harry answered his unspoken plea: "I think that we need Hermione for this one."