I open up my eyes with a start, a heavy frown decorating my face. This isn't my bedroom, and I've never had the habit of sleepwalking. What more... I feel strange. As if I'm not here, nor there, but somewhere inbetween. It's a very unsettling feeling, bordering on a nightmare to be honest.

Huh... A lucid dream? That's nice, I guess. Never really had too many of them. Rubbing my forehead in thought, I soon find myself glancing about and studying my immediate surroundings. I can only wince in realization - my subconscious minds seems to have created a simulacrum of the Chamber of Secrets. What with the dinky cave, intimidating murals of snakes and the humongous statues scattered to and fro. It's all very impressive when all's said and done, if you disregard the perpetuating stench of mold and decaying animal carcasses.

I wrinkled my nose in distaste; neither the movie nor the book had mentioned anything of this. Just a few hours previous I had finished watching this very scene, where Tom Riddle gloated and Potter got lucky. For once... For once I'd really like it if the villain won!

Just think about it! What's honestly going to happen in a few years in the Potterverse? Muggles are going to discover and murder them. That's what I'd do, were I a mundane man schmoozing through life. If somehow, out of nowhere, a secret magical culture of thousands were revealed... I'd eat their god-damn souls. Anything for some of that juice of theirs. If that wasn't possible? Well... If I can't have it, no-one can! Gyuhuhuhuu!

Coughing once into my fist, I glanced down at Ginny Weasley, whom was fast asleep. She was a pretty little thing, cute to boot. Nothing like in the movie, where there was plenty of babyfat rounding off her face. No, here she was unnaturally gaunt, with an unhealthy shade of white plastered across her face. Ugh, upon closer inspection she looked starved. Well... Not my problem! If she was older and ate some more, I might've just have kept her in my pocket as a pet. Cast a few reducios and apply some illegal transfiguration to her back, and I'd have my own pixie. Like Tinkerbell. Not those blue, juvenile monstrosities Lockhart introduced earlier in the year.

Why do I believe transfiguring someone permanently without their consent to be illegal? Besides the obvious, that is. Eh, it's a dream with dream rules. I might as well have some fun in this... Incredibly realistic dream of mine. Like, I've had a few lucid dreams in my time, but they were nothing like this. Neither was I prone to random hallucinations.

I glanced down at my hands, eyeing their blurry and transparent outline. I waved them around, they responded. Gosh, I could see through my own hands! So cool! Pinching myself, I felt a phantom pain of sort. That, huh... Well, I'm not sure how to respond to that. So I repeated the action and got the same response; a distant twinge of pain, as if I weren't quite real. A phantom pain.

How... Interesting.

Now, I'd like to imagine myself as a pretty genre savvy guy, and not a total moron. So I'm going to take a leap of faith and do something utterly ridiculous. I'm going to say that this is real, and that I've taken over the role of villain in this grand story known as the 'Potter Saga' - something I'm more than keen to do.

Hooh! I'm all giddy! Who would've thought? Me, a grand overlord of despair and darkness!? It's like a dream come true, baby! I've even got butterflies in my stomach! Kukukuku! One tyrannical villain coming right up, world!

The kicker is that I'm going to be competent. Like, be the best monstrous overlord I can be - all fringe horror and stuff, but end up doing a good job. So after my Empire has been established and been in the running for fifty years or so, I'll have a plucky group of heroic adventurers 'vanquish' me. I'm sure that'd work. I take over the world, give it half a century to stabilize as a world-spanning magical government answering only to me and many, many children. (I'm going to aim for a harem).

Or none of that. It sounds like... It sounds like a lot of work, to be honest. And dangerous to boot. But I can handle danger, can't I? I'm in the form of Tom Marvolo Riddle, Dark Lord Supreme! So just swishing my wand ought to solve plenty of issues that's going to crop up. I grimace at the thought; do I actually know any magic?

Nope, I don't. It's all empty. I spent about a minute or so racking my mind for any magic I might have, but all I have is info from the books, movies and heaplods of fanfiction.

Fanfiction... I've got to assume that Dumbledore is evil. And manipulative. And Harry has been beaten and abused and everyone is out to get me. Shit. That's... That's really bad. Holy christ, I might end up having to save everyone from the Headmaster's wicked schemes!

What will I have to do? First things first; play it smart. Harry is going to come storming through those elaborately snake-engraved doors any minute now, and that's when his powers of fate and prophecy will begin to function. That underachiver got more luck in his pinky than I'll ever have in ten lifetimes. So... So what? I'll pretend to be a memory, as the original Riddle presented himself as originally. Yeah, that'll work. Like a painting. An OWL project in charms. That sounds reasonable.

Ginny? The Chamber is eating her magic, yeah. That makes sense. But where do I go from there?

I spent the next ten minutes or so plotting out my next course of action. During that time I accepted that this was real, because my new body started to ground itself in the material plane, disregarding its previous ghostly state of in-between. The gross scents of the chamber intensified, the sense of touch escalated and I ended up being able to actually move the black notebook, whereas my first attempts ended with my hands gliding through it. I did the smart thing and hid it behind a pillar in one of the far corners of the room. Couldn't have Harry get any ideas. Then I pilfered Ginny for her wand, hiding the stick of wood up my sleeve. At this point in time my pinches had begun to hurt more than they had previously, but there was still the faint traces of... Being hollow. As if I was missing something cruical that was slowly being filled in by some relatively scarce source. I theorized that this was the girl's soul, that I was more or less eating.

It was a scary thought, one which I furtively ignored. I couldn't think of the consequences right now. I had to look at my immediate future, yeah. Like some sort of game; If I lose? Then I'll start over, maybe get reborn in a proper manner. If I lose? Eh, it'll just be another grand adventure for me, just somewhere else. As it was I felt that I was teetering on the edge of a chasm, a dark void. Would I really be alright if I failed? I... Was it fair of me to let this random girl of eleven die so I could live?

Hell yes it was! Useless Ginny! I'll change the world, what will she do? Become a broodmare for Potter, that's what! I'm going to get resurrected, deal with the Potter boy, cast a spell or two with Ginny's wand and then continue my plan for world domination! I'll just disregard any thoughts of guilt, fright and self-hatred 'till this scene was over and done!

The thing is, in my younger days I performed at a theater and even went up to the stage at times, performing my act for a few hundred people at most. It was loads of fun, and the experience would lend itself well here. So I'd act out my part as a memory, stall Harry for some time, answering a few questions and ultimately advising him on what to do. Call Dumbledore for help. No villain wouuld do such a thing, aye? I might even chide him from bringing the obviously incompetent Lockhart down into the chamber, mentioning this 'delay' might be what ends up killing Ginny, cause she didn't get help in time.

Gyuhuhuhu!

Alright, alright... Better hide myself behind a pillar and 'mysteriously' appear when he starts crying for help, like some little bitch. Were I him I'd already learned how to transfigure air into highly volatile explosions. That way I would always have the "blow shit up!" option whenever stuff went pear-shaped. Useless Harry, only having some sort of importance to the plot cause he got a piece of ol' Voldy stuck in his skull.

Do I have Riddle still accompanying me?

I must have. I can't take the chance and say 'no' - I've read enough self-insert fanfics to know better. Man, that must suck! Some random joe snatches fifty years of hard work from right under your nose, with no forewarning whatsoever. I better try to, uh... Eat his soul or something later on. Maybe subsume/integrate it within myself and gain all of Riddle's magical knowledge for me own, without his megalomaniac tendencies. That'd be nice.

I spent the next thirty minutes or so trying to get into 'contact' with my own soul, magic and whatever mystic energies existed in this world - to little success. All I could feel, with an alarming clarity at that, was how far I was off to experience a 'true body', so to say. There was an intense connection between me and Ginny Weasley, one whom I didn't dare touch. The girl was going to die soon, and that was that.

So when a thunderous boom echoed through the chamber, and obnoxious cries of "it's open, charge!", "death to the basilisk" and "wow, it's even more impressive than I remember!" I was obviously surprised. Startled, even. This wasn't how I had imagined it going; I'd planned out a whole timeline and shit. Gazing out from behind the corner I was hiding, I was met by the startling gaze of three tiny figures rushing through the Chamber's walkway, all decked out in medieval armor. Which were glowing. With magic. Runic script at that, when I studied them further - I had plenty of time; the path from one side of the Chamber to another took a minute or so to cross.

I couldn't help but sigh in resignation when the three of them arrived beside Ginny's body, huffing and puffing as if they'd run a maraton. It was the Golden Trio, decked out with what could only be runic armor and somesort of unwieldy two-handed claymore of ridicilous proportions. Like, anime-style bullshit that the guy Cloud from Final Fantasy wields. It was called a Buster Sword, I think.

"So, Ron, your sister still alive? And do any of you see the Diary? Wasn't she supposed to keep it close to her chest in the movie?" One of the figures said; I recognized the voice as Harry Potter's.

That's when I hid behind my pillar and really started sweating. Damn, oh damn, oh no no noooo... At least of one of those bastards was a self-insert like me, and that kind of ruined any kind of plan I had. Neither was I gonna take a chance with these bastards and talk it out - I didn't want to die. They had the impression of the self-righteous sort.

"Nope, no Diary and Ginny's pulse is barely there... She's deathly cold as well, damn. I'd really hate to lose another sibling, guys; Percy was bad enough as it is." That ought to be Ron, he sounded... Resigned, as if he had expected something like this.

"My occlumency is quite advanced", I heard Hermoine continue, and I grimaced in response. "So my memory is perfect, and we've all seen the movies, so something must have changed. Darn. Ron, Harry, go and smite Riddle, he's no doubt lurking around. We kill the spectre and the connection should get broken."

I was utterly fucked. They were all self-inserts in in some kind of retarded fanfic universe where the 'main characters' breaks all rules of established magic. That armour was proof enough; hell, this world was about Wizards and Witches, not Mage Knights! Motherfuckers!

I had to get away. I had to... I just had to run. I don't want to die, oh god... Mommy...