This was inspired by the House Animals Challenge by FredRocks29 and was a scenario I have been wondering about for a long time.
It is, as usual, J. K Rowling's world and characters.
Slytherin's secret
Tom looked up angrily, fuming at the time the other occupants of the common room took to leave. At last, the lingering children had gone to bed. He closed Hogwarts: A History with a snap and stood up.
The fire had long since died down for the night and the common room was now only lit by a few candles near to where he had been seated. The yellow glow from the candles could be seen flickering reflected in the glass of the lake window showing a shadowy form outside but Tom paid no attention to this. The great squid was often seen swimming lazily by or peering in during the day.
He strode to the fireplace looking up to the over mantle, where snakes twirled in complicated Celtic knots. He touched the centre snake and whispered to it.
'I wish to see the secrets of Salazar Slytherin.' The words came out in a hiss, the sibilant phrase falling from his tongue like liquid metal.
To his excitement, the snake moved looking down at him and assessing him. 'Who wishes to know?' it asked.
'One who is a descendant of the great one and one who would put them to their original purpose' he replied steadily, not betraying the fact it had taken him long hours of research to guess the best answer to the question.
The snake's tongue flickered out tasting the truth of his words. 'You may pass' it eventually responded.
Excitement flickered in Tom's eyes, mirroring the candlelight which still danced unaware of the great events that were taking place in its beam. The flames shrunk slightly and the shadows grew as next to the fireplace, a door swung open letting cold, damp air flood into the room.
Tom smiled and set off down the passage that had appeared. It sloped steadily downwards. Lit only by the light from his wand, he could see the passage whilst damp was of finely cut stone, with rows of carved snakes slithering down the passage as it sloped further under the lake. He could hear their chatter as faint hissing reaching his ears.
'Atsss lastsss, one comesss'
'Master returnsssss'
'Bigsss snakessss willsss be pleasedsss.'
He stopped at that one and turned to the snake that had spoken on the wall. 'Who is the big snake?'
'Snakesss doesn't knowsss. Snakesss just hearssss storiesssss of bigsss snakesss and rustlesssss in the corridorssss as bigsss snakesss passessss.'
He frowned and strode on, this time casting a longer light and proceeding more carefully. He thought as he went, trying to work out what the big snake could be. Since he had discovered he could speak to snakes, he had learnt much about the magical and muggle varieties but none he could think of apart from a basilisk could live such a long time. Could it be a Basilisk down here? How long could they live for?
Suddenly his feet crunched on something and looking down he could see broken bones littered the floor. The snakes that had been on the walls had vanished leaving an empty carving behind. He looked up looking around him slowly. The passage here seemed to divide in two. One appeared to have more bones in the entrance, so marking his way with a flaming cross on the wall, he took the other passage.
This turned sharply several yards in and ahead he could see a door. This door was covered with snakes forming an elaborate locking system. He approached and hissed 'open'. The snakes moved and the door swung open.
In the dim light from the wand, he saw dusty benches and glassware. Looking round many of the glass jars had thick substances in them, when he approached further he could see this was an abandoned potions lab. Then he spotted it.
On one desk by the wall was a pile of scrolls. He looked them over slowly careful not to touch least the preserved knowledge be lost. The quill in the inkwell had long since rotted away but these scrolls were left.
He cast a detecting spell and noted that the papers were under a stasis spell to preserve them. He looked around to see what else had been preserved. There was a door in the corner. He crossed the room and opened it. Immediately, light flooded the space, making him blink in the sudden brightness.
The room was lit by the same light motion sensor spells as much of the rest of the castle. In the light Tom saw shelves of scrolls and a few books. He walked in carefully trying not to disturb the thick layers of dust that coated everything. At the desk in the middle of the room, he stopped to look at the book left open. The page was half written. He frowned, trying to read it under the dust but the language was like none he had read before.
He made a mental note to research translation spells and moved on. Behind him, footprints showed where he had walked through the dust but no others marred the surface. He wondered and thought it possible that he was the first to come down here since Salazar Slytherin. His ancestors' great as they were had not penetrated the secrets of Hogwarts like he had. His need for supplies had found him the room on the seventh floor and now his research had led him to this treasure trove. In here could be the keys to greatness. A greatness worthy of Lord Voldemort to make his mark on the world, creating a great and pure state just as Salazar had wanted.
He left, the light extinguishing itself behind him and retraced his steps through the passage ways back to the Slytherin common room. He slipped silently out of the door watching as it concealed itself back into the wall and crept to his dorm room.
He wouldn't risk waking the fools he lived with. None of them were worthy to understand or use the discovery that he had made. None of them had the gift passed down from the great Salazar. They were worthy followers, meant to be led to great things and to be used as a way of achieving his domination in the world.
He felt the irritating blue eyes of Dumbledore watching him throughout the day as usual especially as he effortlessly produced the required transfiguration. His friends flocked around him mocking the efforts of the Gryffindors and mudbloods in the class and Tom secretly smiled inside. One day he would achieve greatness and then who would remember the transfiguration teacher, who played with helping the failing continental resistance against Grindelwald.
At dinner that night, he watched his eyes thoughtful as the large second year from Gryffindor slipped away, his bumbling attempts at not being noticed proving ineffectual. He wondered what the Gryffindor was doing down in the corridors of the dungeons but his research was necessary tonight and so, spying on clumsy Gryffindors, even for blackmail material, was on the back burner.
He again waited till the common room was clear. It had taken five years of research to get this far and he wasn't about to throw it away for some student busy revising for their Newts. He sneered at the last one busy cramming for his exams as he headed to his dormitory, head still in a book. The idiots should have learnt it before instead of relying on last minute cramming but he seemed to be the only clever one amongst them. They were content to rest on their family fortunes and past greatness but he was the only one ambitious enough to covet future eminence.
He made his way swiftly down the passage tonight. He paused at the junction and decided the lure of the knowledge was for tonight greater than the unexplored passageways that lay in the lingering darkness.
The library once again lit up as he opened the door and he sat down at the desk pulling the book gently towards him. He raised his wand and cast the translation spell. Before his eyes, the words blurred and then resolved themselves into archaic but readable English. He smiled and settled down to read.
Hours later, he walked back to the dormitories excited. The half written book had been Salazar's journal. Probably left behind when he had been thrown out by Godric Gryffindor, the document charted the founding of Hogwarts. Reading it he had learnt of several new rooms and passageways, the curriculum for those early students and the personal creed of Salazar. Several times the text had referred to Horcruxes and how to make them, as well as his hatred of mudbloods and desire to keep the school as pure as possible. The book charted the breakdown of the relationship between the founders. The founders had all been purebloods but Salazar was the only one from a truly dark family and Gryffindor was much as the Potters and Abbotts were now, a staunch supporter of rights for all.
He found he had been right not to access the other passageway yet as the creature, who had left the bones was as he had surmised a basilisk. Salazar had hatched him secretly and left it in the chamber to protect his secrets as the relationship with the other founders had deteriorated. Tom didn't know whether the basilisk was still alive but he was now armed with Salazar's pass phrases to command the creature if it was still alive and finally unleash Salazar's plan to clear the school of mudbloods permanently.
He smiled at a new way of disrupting the mudblood loving Dippet and Dumbledore during the exam period. He had kept his parsel tongue abilities secret from only the closest of his friends and he imagined them all running around panicking as one after one the mudblood students and blood traitors dropped dead from the deadly stare.
At lunch the next day he saw the second year Gryffindor slipping away again and this time intrigued followed him. He saw Hagrid enter one of the classrooms and crossing to a cupboard, take out a large box, which he then tipped something in and talked to, gently crooning at the contents.
Tom sneered as he stood silently in the shadows. The oaf was notorious for collecting creatures and was often seen visiting the stables or the gamekeeper. Clearly he was keeping another creature in the castle. He stiffened slightly as Hagrid let the creature out of the box and out scuttled a very large spider, easily two foot across. An Acromantula, for Merlin's sake! He smiled slowly. Oh this couldn't be better. Here was a perfect scapegoat for any deaths by the basilisk.
Slipping away before Hagrid or the spider could notice him, he prepared for another trip to the chamber of secrets that evening during dinner, a perfect time to let the basilisk out to continue its mission. Of course he would have to see if another entrance could be found as a basilisk in the common room may bring attention but his plans for eradicating the mudblood scum were finally about to start.
He crunched his way down the passage that he had yet to explore. Above him all the students were at dinner. He imagined them eagerly chatting away not realising they were about to be wiped out. He looked round as he entered a large chamber dominated by a statue at one end, walking through he noticed the columns that held up the ceiling were decorated with the same frieze of snakes although these were not animated like the earlier frieze. Standing near the statue he cried in parsel tongue.
'Speak to me, Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts four'.
The mouth of the statue opened with a smooth motion and he heard rustling growing louder. So, the basilisk still lived, his plans were still possible. As the basilisk appeared, he turned unwilling to risk looking it in the eye. He heard it slither down the statue and then felt its motion behind him as it slid towards him.
'Is there another exit from this chamber?' He hissed.
The basilisk responded 'Yesssss. To the pipessss'
The pipes, of course, that was how the basilisk could travel around. It was perfect.
'Show me' he hissed back in response and heard the snake start moving again. He followed the trail it left on the damp ground and found it led to another snake locked door.
Hissing 'open' at this one as well allowed them both through and the basilisk lead the way through the pipes to the entrance of a sloping pipe. By this time Tom estimated they were back under the main school and he wondered where this pipe came out. Taking a note of the location, he returned to the main chamber and leaving the basilisk, once again exited the passageways in the Slytherin Common Room in time for his friends to return from dinner.
He needed a better entrance to the chamber, which wasn't so obvious and where his friends wouldn't be looking for him. He puzzled over the location of the other passage all evening and finally having drawn it out on a scrap of parchment came to the conclusion, that it was somewhere in the south side of the castle.
He didn't fancy exploring every room on the south side, so again waited for the common room to empty that night before making his way down to the chamber and awaiting passage. He took a broom with him borrowed from a friend with the excuse of perfecting a flying manoeuvre. Whilst he wasn't on the Quidditch team, as it was a waste of time and energy that could be spent in research, he understood the usefulness of a broom and his rich pureblood friends often leant him one to practice on. Flight was a wizarding skill that defined a wizard. Muggles attempted it but could not achieve the grace and poise of a broomstick.
Flying up the steeply sloping pipe having left the basilisk behind, he came to a dead end. On the off chance that it had worked else where, he hissed 'open'. There was a creaking sound and light appeared at the top of the hole. He went up emerging in a bathroom, by the looks of it, a girls' toilet room. He crossed to the door and looked out. Outside the passageway was bathed in moonlight, the stones shining silver. The shadow he cast loomed up menacingly as he listened for teachers alerted by the noise the sink had made moving aside. Thankful that no one came, he looked around. The torch on the bracket had gone out but the light was bright enough that Tom recognised his location. He was on the second floor near the DADA classroom. He smiled realising that his plan would work.
He returned to the toilets looking around at the deserted room. The place was clean and tidy the only sign of the entrance to the chamber was the hole that had appeared. He hissed telling the entrance to close and the sink rose up and filled in the space again, hiding the entrance perfectly. He looked closely at the sink and then noticed a small snake etched on to a tap. He hissed 'open' at it and the entrance to the chamber slid open once again.
Regaining the broom, he hovered inside, once again closing the entrance to others. The pipe below him was slimy and he was thankful for the broom to protect his robes. He sneered mentally at Gryffindors, who he knew would have just thrown themselves down the pipe without thinking.
The next day, he thought over his plans. Hagrid was still sneaking off to see his creature and some how no one else had noticed. He tried releasing the basilisk several times but each time the student somehow didn't manage to die. He grew angrier and tried again.
Again, the basilisk merely managed to petrify the intended victim. He had never released exactly how many people travelled around this castle with mirrors in their hands or with cameras to their faces. The students he noticed were growing more nervous and the staff were looking worried. Dumbledore was still keeping an annoyingly close watch on him, his blue eyes looking grave as the staff hunted through the castle for the cause of the petrifications.
He just needed a victim to be in a better place and two days later he found one.
Strolling through the corridors with friends before dinner, they were roughly pushed aside as a girl in the year below ran past in floods of tears. Behind her, a girl appeared shouting in glee as the other girl ran. Tom saw the crying girl, Myrtle, he thought her name was, run into the toilet room.
'Hah, she'll be in there for hours now' said the other girl, he thought was called Olive. 'The four eyed spotty freak.'
Tom smiled to himself and made his excuses to his friends as they entered the Great Hall. He slipped back up the stairs to the second floor. He had released the basilisk and told it to wait at the pipe for him in preparation for just such an opportunity. As he neared the toilet room he could hear the girl wailing. Bloody mudbloods had no decorum, no sense of modesty, wailing where everyone could here them. This one was clearly a poor specimen and hardly deserved to be his first victim but he had to start somewhere.
He looked around but no one was watching him and he slipped inside crossing to the marked sink. Opening the entrance, he hissed his instructions and then slipped inside a vacant cubicle. Up close, the crying was hideous and loud but it stopped as he had hissed and he heard the cubicle door unlock at the same time as the basilisk's rustling grew louder.
'Kill…blood… hungry…'
He heard a dull thud as the girl slumped to the floor and then ordered the basilisk to return to the chamber.
As the basilisk's angry hissings at being denied food faded, he stepped out of the cubicle. The girl was lying there, slumped, her eyes open. He checked her pulse quickly but the basilisk's stare had done its work and the girl was dead.
He stood up, hissed for the chamber to close and then hurried down to dinner before anyone grew suspicious of his continued absence. Entering the Great Hall, he was glad to see Hagrid was absent. He saw the boy entering a little later wiping his hands down his uniform nervously and gleefully smiled inside, whilst tucking into an excellent steak.
That night he returned to the chamber to study more of Salazar's notes taking particular care on the information he had collected on horcruxes. He had found the word before in the DADA section of the library but Salazar's notes showed the stages of progressing along the road to immortality although it didn't look as if Salazar had tried his notes out and actually produced a horcrux.
It wasn't till the next morning after Tom had had a good night's sleep that he first started hearing the rumours. They started at the Ravenclaw table and travelled around the hall. He heard whispers of how Myrtle was missing and how Olive Hornby was in the hospital wing having a mental breakdown. He noticed that the ghosts were missing and frowned. Had the girl decided to spoil his plans and come back as a ghost? If she told them what had happened they would be alerted and his plans would have to come to a standstill.
The rumours persisted throughout the day and many of the students began to travel in groups for additional protection worried about the previous petrefications and the missing students. The teachers could be seen looking grave talking in small groups. At dinner, Professor Dippet stood up, his face looking drawn and announced.
'Unfortunately late last night, Myrtle Haunter was found dead in the second floor bathroom. She has returned as a ghost, however unfortunately cannot tell us much about the creature or person that killed her. Her parents have been informed. Olive Hornby is in the hospital wing from the shock off seeing Myrtle as a ghost. If anyone has any information on the attacks please let us know as Hogwarts is sadly in grave danger of closing if nothing is found. We cannot have any more attacks and so if a solution is not found in the next few days Hogwarts will close early and not reopen for next term. We will now have a minute's silence in the memory of Myrtle Haunter, a young lady sadly killed in her prime.'
Tom drew in a sharp breath hidden amongst the sudden out pouring of noise after the minute's silence. He hadn't thought that Hogwarts might close. Hogwarts was permanent and solid; it couldn't disappear before he had solidified his hold. He could not go back to the orphanage early and loose the chance to practice magic again for the summer and access to the chamber and its information.
That was it; Hagrid was going to be the scapegoat. He would leave it a couple of days to see if the furore died down and if Hogwarts was definitely to be closed but if it was he turn Hagrid in. He turned back to his friends his decision made, laughing at a joke as the Slytherins ate merrily, whilst the Ravenclaws, in particular, cried for the loss of one of their number to the monster.
Several days later, the furore had not died down. Myrtle was still haunting Olive Hornby, which made Tom and his friends laugh but Hogwarts was to close, so he gathered parchment and ink and wrote to Professor Dippet.
Dear Professor Dippet,
I am writing to you to ask if it is possible to stay at Hogwarts over the summer in order to retain contact with the wizarding world and further my studies instead of returning home on the Hogwarts Express.
Yours sincerely,
Tom Marvalo Riddle.
He sent the letter off with a school owl and waited to be called to see Professor Dippet.
The meeting with Professor Dippet went as he had expected although he would have preferred a different outcome but the doddering idiot was still content to bask in the innocence of youth and muggles. Meeting Dumbledore on the way back only solidified his plans as the old fool chose to warn him while looking at him suspiciously yet again. It was a good job, really, he had started learning occulumency. Therefore, he went down to turn Hagrid in with a light heart, they may suspect him but there was nothing they could prove. He was content in the knowledge that Hogwarts would be there to return to despite the fact that he would have to return to the orphanage again this summer and his plans with the basilisk would have to cease, for now.
He watched Hagrid being escorted away by his father, sobbing and his wand in pieces and smiled. Maybe the summer wouldn't be too bad; after all, he was now old enough to travel away from the orphanage. Perhaps it was time for a visit to his relations….