Prompt: O68 - To his horror, he realised he'd been this way before.
AN: I took the liberty to change the prompt a bit to "To her horror, she realised she'd been this way before" and made it a kind of missing CoS moment.
Quietly, Ginny Weasley crept through the deserted corridors of Hogwarts. Her footsteps echoed softly on the cold stone floors. It was still early morning, and all the students and professors were fast asleep. Only about Filch, Ginny wasn't sure. He never seemed to sleep. His hatred of the students probably kept him awake all night. Cautiously, Ginny walked on. Occasionally, she paused and looked around nervously, the weight of Tom's diary like a lead weight in her pocket.
A sinking feeling settled in the pit of her stomach. It was the same route she'd taken the night before, the same corridors she'd wandered through in a desperate attempt to free herself from the cursed diary that threatened to consume her. Where could she get rid of that damn thing before Tom took control of her again?
Entering an abandoned girls' loo, she looked around. Her gaze fell on a sink, and she froze, her eyes staring at that strange snake symbol that had haunted her so many times in her dreams, opening the way into a deep, dark abyss. But she wasn't dreaming now, she was sure of that.
To her horror, she realised she'd been this way before. Memories of unlit underground passages and a stench of decay came back to her and - her heart almost stopped - a gigantic snake.
Ginny's heart was pounding in her chest. She could feel the weight of the diary in her pocket, its dark presence looming over her like a shadow. But she refused to let fear hold her back - she had come too far to turn back now. She had to get rid of this diary.
Maybe she could throw it into that abyss. But how did she open it? She bit her bottom lip and thought. But in all the memories of long, dark passages, there was not a single one that told her how she got there.
Unsure, she pulled the diary out of her bag. She had wrapped it in a rag because she was afraid she'd wake Tom if she touched it directly.
Suddenly, she heard a noise outside in the hallway. She froze and listened, her eyes wide with fear of being discovered - with that damn diary in her hands. No one was allowed to find the diary. Tom knew too much about her. A blush flashed over her cheeks. He knew too much about her crush on Harry. And he would betray her, she was sure of that. The days when she'd trusted Tom were over. Too many times, he'd forced her to do something she didn't want to.
Footsteps shuffled in the hallway outside.
Without thinking, Ginny quickly went into a stall, threw the diary into the toilet bowl and flushed.
The door opened, and she heard McGonagall's voice. "Is anyone in there?"
Ginny sighed and was about to step out of the cubicle when someone pushed open the door of the another stall and clattered out.
"Oh, it's you, Myrtle," said McGonagall, relieved. "I thought one of my students was sneaking around so early in the morning."
"Nope. No students here. Just little unimportant Myrtle that no one wants," Myrtle whined. The following splash suggested that the girl had disappeared through one of the toilet bowls.
Ginny wondered if Myrtle knew she was here but shrugged in relief as McGonagall's footsteps receded down the hallway.
Without turning around again and without noticing the little black diary slowly rising from the depths of the toilet bowl, Ginny made her way back into Gryffindor Tower.