Chapter Text
They all held as still as they could as the light from Harry’s wand slid over the waxy, pale, and empty snake skin. He let out a deep breath, shoulders dropping slightly. Lockhart made a pathetic noise as his knees gave way.
“Get up,” Ron said, prodding the man with his foot. Lockhart got to his feet—then he dived at Ron, knocking him to the ground. Harry jumped forward, but too late—Lockhart was straightening up, panting, Ron’s wand in his hand and a gleaming smile back on his face.
“The adventure ends here, boys!” he said. “I shall take a bit of this skin back up to the school, tell them I was too late to save the girl, and that you two tragically lost your minds at the sight of her mangled body—say good-bye to your memories!” He raised Ron’s Spellotaped wand high over his head and yelled, “Obliviate!”
The wand exploded with the force of a small bomb.
Alarmed, Harry jerked back. He stumbled and tripped over loose rock and the long tail of the snake skin as he dodge falling chunks of the ceiling. In what seemed like seconds, he was separated from the others by a wall of stone. His arm throbbed painfully. A piece of the falling debris had scored a long, shallow cut on his left arm, spanning from elbow to wrist. Blood was already starting to seep sluggishly from the wound.
“Harry! You alright?” shouted Ron.
“Y-yeah, what about you?” he said. The wound was starting to burn a little and was bleeding faster. “Try to clear a way through alright? I’m gonna go on ahead and see if I can find Ginny!”
“Sure. Be careful!”
He left Ron and the grating of shifting rock behind, following the snake skin deeper into the tunnel. Stumbling around a final bend, Harry reached a smooth dry wall. Two large serpents were carved into it, each with large eyes that glistened in the weak light from his wand. He used a bloody hand to steady himself as he tried to catch his breath. Unnoticed, jewel-eyes flickered to an ominous red before dimming. With a fortifying breath, Harry straightened up and stepped away.
“Open,” he hissed.
A seam split the stone snakes apart, and the doors opened soundlessly. Quietly, Harry stepped inside the chamber. His footsteps echoed strangely around the carving covered pillars, the tops of which disappeared into deep shadows. The serpent carvings appeared to move when he wasn’t looking closely and some seemed to have rubies for eyes. Harry hurried his pace, leaving behind a small trail of blood droplets, some of which landed on tiny runes carved into the stone floor.
Eventually he reached an end of the chamber, and there, at the base of a massive statue of a wizard, was Ginny. Heart hammering in his throat, Harry sprinted to her. He dropped to his knees beside her and pushed aside a vaguely familiar open-faced book, leaving a bloody smear across its pages, to press his fingers against her pulse. It was faint but still steady. That was good.
“Come on,” Harry said, lifting the girl to shake her, “please wake up.” Her head lolled to one side.
“She won’t wake, Harry Potter.”
He flinched then turned to look over his shoulder. The room swam so he reached out to steady himself. A tall, dark-haired boy was standing behind him, watching with a strange expression. His body was bit transparent and was misty around the edges. The boy blinked once, twice, and then brought a hand up to rub at his temple.
“You—Tom Riddle?”
“Yes.” Tom smiled. He seemed distracted by something, and Harry thought he saw the other boy’s eyes lose focus for a bit as they drifted to stare at his injured arm. Tom blinked again, shaking his head. Now there was a strained quality to his expression as though the slytherin was suffering a particularly bad headache.
“Listen,” he began. There were questions he should be asking, Harry knew, but he was starting to lose feeling in the fingers of his left hand and that, he was sure, wasn’t good. “We have to get out of here. Can you hel—”
“There is no rush,” said Tom. He took a few steps closer. “Let’s talk, Harry Potter.”
He was close enough now to loom over Harry. The misty edges of his body were solidifying though Tom didn’t seem to notice. He was about to say something else but stopped, closing his mouth with an audible click. Swallowing, he opened his mouth and shut it again.
Alarm grew in the pit of Harry’s stomach. Something was wrong; very, very wrong. Tom’s eyes were wide and glazed, staring fixated at Harry’s arm, although the older boy didn’t seem to realize it. A strange buzzing filled the air, quiet at first but growing in intensity until the gryffindor could feel it in his teeth like a dull ache.
“You are . . . bleeding.” It seemed like Tom was about to say more, but then he was screaming. Fingers dug into his scalp and pulled at his hair as the slytherin folded in on himself, taking painful, gasping breaths between screams. He was completely solid now but was shrinking bit by bit until Tom was smaller than Harry was and swimming in oversized robes. Shivering, he laid there.
“Tom?” Harry said quietly. “Are you okay?” He inched forward, reaching out with a trembling hand to shake the other boy’s shoulder. Muscles twitched and tensed under his hand. Blearily, Tom forced himself to his knees. “Tom?”
“I’m fine.” He stood slowly, shivering and swaying but steadier than Harry thought possible. Tom rested a cold—freezing—hand on Harry’s shoulder. “Let’s get out of here, shall we? I’ll need to borrow your wand, alright?” With a wordless nod, Harry handed the other boy his wand. Tom took it and let go of Harry’s shoulder to pull up the sleeve of his robe. A flick of his wrist and a white bandage was wrapping itself around Harry’s forearm tightly. “That should hold for a bit.”
Next, he flicked the wand at his oversized robe, shrinking it until he could move without tripping over its hem. With a final jab, Ginny rose steadily off the floor. Harry scrambled to his feet, leaning against Tom’s side as blood loss tilted the room on its axis.
“Your diary . . .”
“It’s just a book now.”
In silence, they walked out of the chamber and down the tunnel to the cave-in. Ron had managed to open a tight passage way at the top of the wall.
“Ron!”
There was some scuffling on the other side.
“Harry?” Ron yelled. “Are you alright; is Ginny with you?”
“Yeah, but she’s unconscious. We’ll levitate her through, oaky? Oh, and Tom’s here, too.”
“Alright. Ready when you are,” said Ron. Tom waved his borrowed wand and levitated Ginny up and through the opening. “Got her!” Slowly, Harry and Tom climbed their way up to the hole. By the time they made it up there, Ron was back at the top on his side waiting for them; he gaped at them. They were pale, clammy, and leaning heavily against each other for support. “Blimey, what happened to you?”
“Not really sure. Got a nasty cut during the cave-in though.”
Ron grimaced while moving back to give Harry enough room to crawl through to the other side. Once he was through and the two second years had started their way down, Tom followed suit. Lockhart was near where Ginny was lying, grinning for no apparent reason.
“Hello; who’re you?” Lockhart said brightly. “Do you live down here?”
Harry blinked then turned to Ron.
“Apparently, when he tried to Obliviate us it didn’t just bring the ceiling down. It erased his memories, too.” He shrugged. “By the way,” he turned to Tom, “who are you?”
“Tom Riddle.”
“Wait, Riddle as in the diary Riddle? How’d you get out?” Ron stared at him as though he had grown another head. “And aren’t you supposed to be a fifth year or something?”
Tom ignored the questions. “We should be getting to the hospital wing.” With that he turned away, pulling Harry back to his side. “Mr. Lockhart, if you would carry Miss Weasley?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, he tugged Harry insistently back toward the pipe-slide. Ron and Lockhart scrambled to catch up.
The group reached the slide without incident. Tom glanced briefly over his shoulder then stepped closer to a blank space of wall just beside where the slide ended. Quickly, he hissed the command for a staircase back to the surface. Harry frowned.
Tom must have noticed, because he then said, “We can talk about this later, when neither of us are about to kneel over.” Reluctantly, he agreed.
The wall groaned but moved aside, revealing the stairwell just as the other two reached them.
“That . . . wasn’t here before,” said Ron, squinting suspiciously at the slytherin.
“Really?” He didn’t bother to appear surprised. They began climbing the stairs, ignoring the shriek of surprise from Ron when the stairs began moving up.
“This is just like magic!” Lockhart shouted happily.
There was no one waiting for them in the bathroom. For a long awkward moment, they just stood there, shuffling in place and avoiding each other’s eyes. Then, almost as one, the group turned and marched out into the corridor. They were half way to the hospital wing when a harried Professor McGonagall stumbled upon them.
“Mr. Potter, Mr. Weasley,” she rounded on them immediately, “what on earth are you doing out of your common room?” She glanced behind them, saw Ginny’s pale form, and gasped. “Oh dear. Hospital wing, then?” She said this more to herself than anyone else. Swiftly, the professor turned on her heel and began leading them. “And don’t think I don’t see you there, Tom Riddle.”
The boy in question huffed, but thankfully remained quiet. Now that the ordeal seemed to be drawing to a close, there were a lot of questions Harry wanted answered. What had Tom’s diary been doing down in the Chamber? Why had he been so sure that Ginny wouldn’t wake up? What had happened to cause him to de-age like that? Harry had the creeping suspicion that he wouldn’t like the answers.
They arrived at the hospital wing without fanfare, and were ushered into beds while Professor McGonagall knocked on the door to Madam Pomfrey’s office. Tom settled on the same bed as Harry and refused to move; he didn’t let Harry move to another bed either. The nurse answered immediately, clicking her tongue irritably as she gave the scattered group an onceover, honing in on Ron’s sister.
“Honestly, children running about doing adults’ work,” she muttered, waving her wand over Ginny’s body in sweeping arcs and pausing to read something only she could see before beginning again. Professor McGonagall cast a cleaning charm on each of them, and an additional one of their beds, clearing away most of the slime and gunk they’d accumulated on their adventure.
“I’m an adult!” protested Lockhart.
“Children running about.”
He wilted into a sulk.
Harry and Ron snickered, and Tom tried to cover a laugh under a polite cough. Even Professor McGonagall was amused, the stress easing from her expression enough for her to smile warily as she sank into a guest chair near their beds. That didn’t last long, however. Soon, she turned to the three boys, arms crossed and head tilted reproachfully.
“Perhaps one of you would like to explain to me what exactly happened tonight?”
Ron swallowed, glanced at Harry who was picking at his sleeve, and then started rambling. “We overheard that Ginny had been the one taken, and we’d figured out where the entrance to the Chamber was and what the creature was, so we went to tell Lockhart. But he’d been packing up to run away!” He waved an arm in the man’s direction, glaring for good measure. “So we, ah, took his wand and made him come with us.”
Shaking her head, Professor McGonagall sighed heavily.
“But when we got there, he stole my wand and tried to Obliviate us—but my wand’s broken, so he erased his own memories instead. And caused a cave-in. Me and Harry got separated. He went on and I cleared rocks outta the way so that they could get back through.” He paused, shrugged helplessly and said, “Lockhart was useless.”
“Very well. And you, Mr. Potter?”
“Well,” he said, “Ginny was unconscious, and Tom was there.” Harry turned suddenly and stared at the slytherin. “Why were you there?”
Tom grimaced. “Finish your account, and then I’ll explain.”
“Anyway, Tom was there but he wasn’t solid at first. But then something happened, he became solid and shrunk, and we left. On our way here, we ran into you and you know the rest.”
“You were bleeding,” said Tom, unhelpfully.
There was a minor flurry of activity as Professor McGonagall scolded him for not saying anything earlier while Ron was sent to grab a jar of ointment and a blood-replenisher from the cabinet. The conjured bandage was removed. Frowning, the professor muttered a cleaning charm and then spelled the cut closed, leaving a long pinkish line. She accepted the jar from Ron and rubbed some of the ointment lightly over the scab. Harry drank the potion, gagging at the awful taste.
The professor turned to Tom, her expression grim, and waited.
“I have been trapped in a book for the past fifty years,” Tom said, with a pinched look. “Miss Weasley had agreed to help me regain my freedom, but unfortunately, the preparations took time. We were going to do the ritual tonight but . . .” He glanced sadly at Ginny. “I can’t tell you how she got down there or who it was; I’m sorry I can’t be of more help.”
“Well,” cut in Madam Pomfrey, “regardless of that, you all will be happy to know that Miss Weasley will make a full recovery, after some rest and a few hot meals.” She was smiling faintly.
Ron collapsed against his pillows in relief. “Thank Merlin.”
“I’ll let the others know while you finish up here, Minerva.”
“Thank you, Poppy. And tell their older brothers as well; the entrance is set to the emergency protocols.”
Professor McGonagall turned back to Tom as the nurse left, and signaled for him to continue.
“The Chamber’s ambient magic must have triggered the first half of the ritual. Until Harry arrived, I was stuck in an immaterial state and so I wasn’t able to help Miss Weasley at all.” Frowning thoughtfully, he paused. “Because of his wound, some of his blood got on my diary and that must have finished the ritual. As for how I ended up regressing to whatever age I am now, I’ve no idea.” With a sigh and a shrug, he ended his story.
It was strange. There was no reason for it, but Harry couldn’t help feeling as though something about what Tom had said was wrong. As far as he could tell, there was no reason for the other boy to lie, and everything he had said made sense. Professor McGonagall seemed to thinks so too, because she frowned and gave the slytherin a hard, searching look.
“How did you end up trapped in a book in the first place?” she said, leaning back in her chair. “It wasn’t as though you suddenly disappeared during our school years.”
For a second, Harry thought that Tom was going to ignored her or try to brush off the question. He looked down, laced his fingers together, and then unlaced them. His cheeks reddened.
“I might,” Tom began slowly, “have . . . miscalculated.”
“Miscalculated,” she repeated dryly. “And what, exactly, did you miscalculate?”
He winced. “I was experimenting with divination and soul magic to see if the latter could be used to amplify the success rate of the former. I was hasty and didn’t think to double-check the rune sequence I was using; I overestimated the amount of power needed as well.” Tom smiled sheepishly. “Instead of what I wanted, I ended up imprinting—and possibly replicating—my consciousness onto a book.”
“Quick question,” Ron broke in, “why were you experimenting with divination?”
“I was bored.”
One of the hospital wing doors flew open with such force that it rebounded off the wall. Mrs. Weasley rushed past them with the rest of the Weasley brood on her heels; they crowded around Ginny’s bed. Professor Dumbledore and Madam Pomfrey entered after them. She went over to Mr. and Mrs. Weasley.
Smiling faintly, the headmaster looked around the room. He froze, smile cracking and morphing into a stern frown as soon as he spotted Tom. The slytherin stared back impassively. Dumbledore moved to tower them. A long, heavy silence settled around them. Harry swallowed nervously.