Harry runs into the Chamber without any precautions, glancing around him for a glimpse of fiery red because how is he meant to face Ron if he comes back empty handed, without his little sister who even Harry has come to like. He's always had a soft spot for the Weasleys, probably because they were the first people who showed him what unconditional love was like.
His eyes scan the dingy room, and there! She's slumped on the floor, hair lacklustre and face pale. Harry kneels beside her, shaking her because she has to wake up, she must. "Ginny, Ginny please wake up. Please." His voice breaks embarrassingly but he can't bring himself to care because Ron will be devastated if Ginny dies and that can't happen, not when he needs Ron to be stable and emotionally aware and if Ron blames Harry then he will lose his only friends because Hermoine will choose Ron and then Harry will be on his own.
And Harry can't bear to be on his own.
"She won't wake up." A boy, a few years older than Harry, melts out of the shadows. He is a very handsome boy, Harry thinks, with clean cut features and glittering brown eyes. And transparent, but that's not important right now.
"Who are you?" Harry asks, suspicion lacing every word.
"I am Lord Voldemort." The boy states flatly, no hint of a joke in his tone.
But he must be joking, because Voldemort is a seventy year old wrath not a very pretty teenager.
"No you're not, Voldemort is much uglier. He also doesn't have a body... Unless he's possessing you? Turn around, let me see the back of your head." The boy does no such thing, a vaguely concerned look on his face. Harry sighs and walks around the boy and reveals...
a perfectly normal head of hair - albeit a bit translucent. Tom turned to face Harry again, perplexed and angry and Harry gets the impression that he doesn't like not knowing what is going on.
"So if you're not being possessed by Voldemort, then what is your name."
The boy sighs and narrows his eyes, before catching himself and pasting on a practised smile.
"My name is Tom Marvolo Riddle." He says begrudgingly, annoyance bleeding through his carefully crafted mask.
Harry has always excelled at annoying people.
"There we go, that wasn't so hard was it?" He says as if soothing a toddler.
"My name is Harry Potter."
Tom smirks now, it appears he thinks he holds something over Harry. Harry doesn't really care, people have held things over him all of his life.
"I know all about you, Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived."
"As do most people in the wizarding world." Harry said gently, reminding him.
Tom powers on, unperturbed. "I know that you grew up without your parents and you never got to experience a real family. I know that you only found out about magic when you turned eleven and I know that you were mistreated. And most importantly, I know that you are just like me."
Harry's eyes narrow, Tom seems to know a lot more about him than what he expected and he has no idea how.
"How do you know this?"
"Dearest Ginny told me, it got rather tedious you know, having to listen to her talk about the amazing Harry Potter and how he looked in her direction one day and how that means that he loves her."
"What. But how did she tell you this? I think Ron would've noticed his little sister talking to an older boy." He said, frowning. He racked his brain for anything he might have noticed, although he was quite oblivious to most things.
"I have my ways, Harry Potter. Now, I have a proposition for you." Tom smiles down at him, mask back in place. Harry doesn't trust him however, and still wants to know why Tom would say that he's Lord Voldemort.
"I'll listen, but first tell me why you said you were Lord Voldemort." Tom's smile becomes a little strained, and Harry can see the look of exasperation in his eyes. Good.
"Because I am Lord Voldemort, how many times do I have to tell you? I- In fact I'll prove it to you." And Tom takes out Ginny's wand and casts a spell. Harry tenses, eyes scanning around the mouldy chamber. But no attack comes.
Instead, words pour out of the tip of the wand, spelling out 'Tom Marvolo Riddle'. Harry taps his foot, not seeing why this will magically convince him that the boy is Voldemort. The letters faintly glow, casting light on the waterlogged floor and carpet of animal bones. Tom waves his wand, and the letters rearrange themselves to say 'I am Lord Voldemort'.
Tom looks at Harry with a glimmer of hope on his face, and Harry takes great pleasure in squishing it. "Fancy, your names have the same letters in them." He says derisively.
Tom looks to the ceiling, as if pleading with a god that had long forsaken him.
"I am half of his soul, which he left in this diary when we were sixteen. I have been in it roughly fifty years, and me and Lord Voldemort have a certain connection you could say."
Harry frowns, but Tom doesn't seem like he's lying.
"Fine, what's your proposition."
Tom's face transforms into one of true joy for a split second, and then settles back into the vaguely pleasant facade. "Me and you, we could do great things together. Together we could destroy Voldemort once and for all, and then rule over Britain together. Think of it Harry, never having to go back to your relatives, just you and me."
Harry mulled it over in his mind, but he wasn't entirely sure.
"Last chance Harry."
Harry glanced at Ginny's still body, the red of her hair seemed to have dulled to a limp brownish-orange. He couldn't leave her, she didn't deserve to be left here - possibly forever.
"There's no helping her now Harry, she's dead."
Wait- what? No, no no no no no.
Harry knelt next to her body jerkily, distantly he noticed damp seeping through the knees of his trousers. Everything seemed to be reaching him through a thick fog, his only focus finding her pulse. He picked up her pale, cold wrist and desperately feeling for a pulse that wasn't there. He felt warm arms wrap around him, and he was turned into a firm chest, a hand running soothingly through his hair. Then Harry starts to cry, hiccupping, heaving things that feel like his heart is getting wrenched out of his throat.
"Do you want to come with me Harry? Or go back to your friend with his dead sister?"
OhGod. He can't face Ron without Ginny safe and alive. He can't go back.
"With you."
He feels himself get pulled to his feet, and Tom casts something that he doesn't quite hear. Suddenly his eyes become hard to open, and he sways on his feet straight into Tom's open arms.
Darkness engulfs him, and the last thing he hears before he slips into sleep is
"Good boy."
"