A/N: Welcome to the last part of the story.

Her legs were still tired from the night before, so the trip down was much more painful, although decidedly less mysterious. At the bottom of the stairs, Tom was not there to meet her as he had been before, so she was forced to find him. She supposed that he was probably where she had left him last night.

She walked into the obsidian room and from there to the oak door. She opened it and walked into a very dark bedroom. It was quite elegant, with polished wood and deep colors. Tom was, as far as she could tell, fast asleep on the bed that occupied one corner of the room that appeared to be a study as well as a bedroom.

She walked to approximately the middle of the room where she could see him but was still close enough to the door to feel comfortable and not trapped. "Tom?" She watched him bolt up, his normally very neat appearance somewhat tussled. "I didn't know that you actually slept."

"Everybody sleeps." His voice was gravelly from sleep, and he was obviously trying to compose himself. Tom Riddle was definitely not accustomed to being awoken in such a manner.

"I just have one question to ask you." Ginny was slightly nervous, not quite sure what kind of query this was – stupid or intelligent. Either way, his answer would clear up some sort of confusion.

Tom nodded and stood up. He had on his robes that he had been wearing the night before, and they were slightly wrinkled. He walked in front of her with his hands behind her back and looked at her attentively.

"Why did the doors open for me?" The question was somewhat random, it seemed, but it was important. Tom had told her that everything was his and that nothing would obey her, and yet they had. Even the door at the top of the stairs.

Tom looked amused by her words. Before he could answer, however, a small tapping sound started to ring in the room, and he tilted his head to the side. "What's that?" Ginny asked her second, more unexpected, question.

See note at bottom "Well, that is my door bell of sorts. Someone other than yourself has found my carving and is, rather amateurishly, attempting to open the door. They won't succeed, but it is certainly annoying. I shall have to discourage them."

"Who is it?"

"Shall we take a trip and see?" Ginny's legs were tired from the continual stairs, but she agreed since she was curious. And she didn't want anything bad to happen.

Ginny was in luck. Tom apparently had no wish to travel the stairs either. He got to the bottom of the stairs and pressed a small lever that was hidden among the decorations on the walls. The lever opened a small door. Tom ushered her through and they appeared in a narrow, badly lit corridor that apparently ran parallel to the passage at the head of the stairs. It was, seemingly, a magical door. She wished that she had known about it before, so that she wouldn't have had to walk so much.

She looked at Tom somewhat curiously, and he actually decided to explain: "It allows us a faster exit than the stairs. It has a door to the main corridor a few meters from where the stairs begin. As an added bonus, it has a few convenient holes for us to look through. Some at eye-level for me and a few significantly below eye-level for you." Ginny stuck her tongue out at him and looked through.

Of all the people to find at the head of the stairs, there were the three people that she most certainly did not want to find it. "Damn it. Damn cloak," she muttered, not oblivious to the fact that they must have followed her.

"Friends of yours?" was Tom's comment, even though the slight tensing of his voice told her that he recognized Harry all too well. Ginny chose not to reply. "Would you like to think on this some more, or should I relieve you of your quagmire?"

Ginny spun around to face him. "What do you want to do?" she asked suspiciously.

"Don't you trust me?"

"You should know the answer to that already." Ginny went back to watching her friends try various spells.

"Well, whatever happens, just get them to stop trying that door. It won't open and that alarm spell will give me a migraine after a while."

"First you're sleeping, then you're talking about migraines? You sound almost like a normal teenager."

"You don't have to be offensive. You came back on your own."

"And you still didn't answer my question. Why do the doors open for me. You were sleeping when I came back, so you weren't controlling them, and they obviously won't open for everyone." She gestured in the direction of her struggling friends who had actually cheered when the dragon carving had moved a bit to spit some fire at them.

In the relative dark of the corridor, Ginny couldn't see Tom very well, but she could feel the hand that he put on her arm just fine. He turned her towards him and kissed her ever so quickly on the lips. Then, he released her arm and said, "does that answer your question? What's mine is yours as soon as you decided to come back."

Tom turned back to the failing trio as though nothing had happened. He, in fact, couldn't believe what had happened. It is one thing to plan such an interaction, it is another to note the astonishment on her face and feel the thankfully invisible blush rising to his own cheeks.

Ginny was silent. She was amazed and frightened and happy and worried and dozens of other emotions that were completely foreign to her. Then, she spoke, "you won't leave me in the dark, will you Tom?"

"No," was his simple reply. She nodded, sure that he would keep his word, just as he always had – to her, anyway.

"I suppose that I can tell them that it is my little study hideout. Do you think that I can pull off some sort of illusion and claim that I need privacy?"

"And the tutoring begins. We can work on it. We can let them amuse themselves for another couple of hours while we set it up. Then you can come and go without too much wondering on your friends' parts."

So he did know that I would never actually leave Hogwarts. Tom and Ginny walked back along the corridor, through the door, and back to the foot of the stairs.

As he led Ginny to a row of illusion spellbooks that he had in his room, he realized that although he had considered the night a success, Ginny would probably exert her will in their relationship to a point where the entire thing would probably be great training for casting off the Imperius. He accepted that. Just as he accepted – with a smile that no one but she would ever see – the way that she welcomed his hand on her elbow.

A/N: The reason that the tapping doesn't occur when Harry and Ron try to open the door is because they really don't know the right sort of spells. Tom's warning spell didn't even register them as trying to enter. Hermione, on the other hand, has some base knowledge on the subject, so she is a bit more successful.

A/N 2: Thanks for sticking with this story all the way through. I hope that you liked it. Most of it was probably redone about half a dozen times since my characters seem to change with my moods heheheh. If you didn't like it, well, too bad. Coming up with an ending was horrible. And sorry for a lack of actual romance. Oh well, I can't write about that sort of thing. I'll see you (not literally) if you read my other stories! 'Till then.