A/N: There are some lines directly from chamber, anything you recognize isn't mine. I wrote this at 3 am, so please ignore any grammar/spelling mistakes
Harry carefully stepped into the Chamber, taking care to keep his eyes down and his hands behind his back. He continued this way at a dreadfully slow pace, tripping on the uneven cobblestones occasionally. It didn't help that every time he heard a slight noise, he jumped and squeezed his eyes shut.
Tom Riddle, who was waiting dramatically behind a pillar, was beginning to get impatient.
Honestly! What is that daft child doing? How long does it take to walk fifty feet?! The basilisk isn't even out yet! Open your eyes!
Harry finally came to a stop when he nearly tripped over Ginny Weasley's body. Harry quickly righted himself and tentatively prodded her body with his foot, hands still carefully behind his back and head low. Tom chose this moment to make his grand entrance.
"She won't wake."
Harry jumped about a foot in the air and quickly covered his eyes with one hand, keeping the other behind his back.
"Tom – Tom Riddle? What d'you mean she won't wake? I honestly thought she was already dead." Harry said, poking her again and this time noticing her chest moving slowly up and down.
Riddle, not quite ready to lose his dramatic edge, answered as mysteriously and vaguely as possible.
"She's still alive, but only just."
Harry stared, "Okay, but how are you here? Shouldn't you be extremely old by now? Are you a ghost?"
"A memory," said Riddle quietly. "Preserved in a diary for fifty years."
He gestured toward the floor near the statue's giant toes. Lying open there was the little black diary Harry had found in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. For a second Harry wondered how it had got there – but there were more pressing matters to deal with.
"How did Ginny get like this?" Harry asked slowly.
"Well, that's an interesting question," said Riddle pleasantly. "and quite a long story. I suppose the real reason Ginny Weasley's like this is because she opened her heart and spilled all her secrets to an invisible stranger."
"What are you talking about?" said Harry.
"The diary." said Riddle. "My diary. Little Ginny's been-"
"You used to write in a diary?" Harry cut him off. "That's adorable."
Riddle startled, not expecting that kind of a response.
"Well… yes," Riddle tried to say casually. "Just every once in a while, not very often. I supposed it was more of a journal."
"Well it must have been very detailed, how else would you get a full memory in there?" Harry said, honestly a little curious. "You had to have written in it every day, otherwise you wouldn't be able to remember much."
Riddle frowned unhappily. This was not how he thought the child would react at all.
"How often I wrote in it doesn't matter!" Riddle snapped, "The girl is going to die and so are you, Harry Potter!"
Much to Riddle's displeasure, Harry just looked thoughtful.
"Do you remember if it was your first diary? Maybe it was a present. It does have your name engraved on it after all. I wonder if you had other diaries before this one? There could be a little first year Tom running around somewhere. It'd be fun to gather all your memories together and watch you interact, maybe get together for some tea."
Riddle was furious. How dare this child! But wait, he did kind of have a point. Who knew what he had done after sixth year? He only knew as much as the little girl did, which honestly wasn't much. (It wasn't as if a horcrux would know that it was a horcrux, knowing you were basically life insurance wouldn't be good for the self-esteem.)
"Huh. I guess I never thought of that. My diary was kind of soothing, I suppose there could be another one of me for seventh year." said Riddle. "Has the Chamber been opened before now? An older me would hopefully be more efficient."
"Not that I know of." said Harry. "The general consensus is that the last time it happened was fifty years ago, but the only reason we know that is because of attacks. I guess it could've been opened without anything happening. I mean, is there a rule that says someone needs to die whenever you open it?"
"Well…." Riddle relaxed his stance a bit as a he thought. "I suppose I could've opened it just to check on things, I only know that I haven't. But that isn't to say that I couldn't have some other time, I know there's at least two of me."
"Maybe you should make some kind of logbook at the entrance." Harry said. "Just so you know how many times you've come and gone."
Tom Riddle seemed to think for a long moment. He supposed he could just ask the snake, it would know if he had been there recently. He turned and puffed himself up as grandly as he could.
"Speak to me, Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts Four."
Harry wheeled around to look at the statue, arm carefully behind his back.
Slytherin's gigantic stone face was moving. Horrorstruck, Harry saw his mouth opening, wider and wider, to make a huge black hole.
Riddle didn't seem disturbed in the slightest and was too lost in thought to notice Harry's reaction, who was shutting his eyes as tightly as one could. Instead, he casually walked toward the hole just as a massive serpent started uncoiling itself from Slytherin's mouth.
Then he heard Riddle's hissing voice, "Has anyone else been here lately?"
Harry shut his eyes tighter still as he heard the confused response of the snake, "Only a small child, I'm sorry Master, she told me she was doing your bidding."
"That's alright, I meant if there had been another me in the last fifty years or so."
"Another… you?" the snake said, as uncertainly as a snake could.
"Nothing you need to worry about," Riddle said dismissively, "question answered. Just sit tight with your eyes closed and I'll get you a snack."
The snake seemed to just sit there, uncertainly moving its' head around to try and figure out what was going on just by listening. Harry took this as it being safe for him to open his eyes for the time being and looked up at Riddle.
"Well Potter, you got your answer," Riddle said. "Only I have been here since the other me was here. Can I get back to my monologue now?"
"No." said Harry smugly.
"No?" said Riddle.
"No! Because I know how to defeat the basilisk!" Harry said happily.
Harry then pulled from behind his back… a cage with a sleeping rooster in it?
"A chicken?" said Riddle.
"No, a rooster! Everyone knows that the cry of a rooster is fatal to the basilisk!" Harry said confidently. He was lucky too, he got the last rooster in stock at the Magical Menagerie.
Riddle only looked even more confused than he was when trying to figure how many of himself could fit into the chamber at once.
"Why on Earth would a rooster crowing kill a basilisk?" asked Riddle.
"I don't really know." Harry muttered sheepishly, "My petrified friend read it in a book. Something about a chicken and an egg… not really sure which came first"
Riddle stared.
"I am honestly curious if this will work, I suppose I can always just kill you myself if it does." Riddle conceded.
Harry nodded, not quite paying attention as he started poking the rooster to wake it up. He tried shaking the cage a few times before it dawned on him.
"Um… I think the rooster might be dead." Harry said, a little embarrassed that he had forgotten to feed his weapon.
"That's more than a little convenient… for me." Riddle smirked.
"Not as convenient as all of the chickens at Hogwarts being dead. If you didn't know about the Power of the Rooster, then why did you have Ginny kill all those chickens?" asked Harry.
"Where else was she going to get the blood for the messages on the walls?" said Riddle. "It's not as if I had actual human blood on hand."
"Red paint?"
"Well, that's just tacky and not threatening at all." said Riddle, as though it were obvious.
"Not to mention it's vandalism." Harry agreed.
"Exactly!" exclaimed Riddle. He may be a murderer, but he had always cared about the school and aesthetics.
"Why not dragon's blood though?" asked Harry. "That's a bit more magical and threatening than a common chicken from the grounds.
"I thought of that." Riddle said a little defensively. "Do you have any idea how expensive dragon's blood is? I've been stuck in a diary for a while, and the inflation really is awful. Plus, I just HAPPENED to possess the daughter of the poorest pureblood family there is."
"You sound just like Malfoy." Harry huffed.
"Abraxas?" asked Riddle curiously.
"No, his grandson, Draco." said Harry.
"Abraxas had a kid?" Riddle said incredulously. "I was under the impression that he was gay."
"I know that a lot of people thought that Lucius was gay too and he managed to have a kid." said Harry.
"Maybe the Malfoy's finally figured out artificial insemination?" Riddle offered. "I know a lot of the purebloods have been trying to figure that out for ages."
Before the two could further discuss the merits of artificial insemination and effects of inbreeding, Fawkes the Phoenix swooped in. The phoenix landed on Harry's shoulder, quite confused as to why the wizards were just standing there with a calmly waiting basilisk behind them. Being a creature of the Light, he didn't believe in attacking unprovoked, so he decided to leave the serpent alone for now.
Riddle finally seemed to remember that he was supposed to be in the middle of killing his worst enemy and gaining a body, and quickly plastered a mean sneer on his face. He had let his guard down too much, so he decided to just skip the rest of the monologue. Pity too, he spent a long time memorizing it with no diary to copy it down in.
"Kill him!" Riddle screeched at the snake.
Fawkes began to take flight and Harry skittered backwards, desperately closing his eyes. Fawkes dived, and his long golden beak made contact and blinded the beast. As blood splattered in all directions, the great snake started thrashing around the get the bird off of it.
The basilisk seemed to regain its' bearings and started gliding in the general direction of Harry at Riddle's behest ("move, you big dumb snake!").
Harry, terrified out of his mind and wandless, did the only thing he could think of. He threw the rooster at it.
As it flew through the air, the rooster revealed that it was, in fact, actually sleeping. The rooster gave a startled squawk as its' cage collided with the side of the snake and broke open. Luckily for everyone but Riddle and the snake, basilisks don't discriminate between a squawk and a crow and it simply fell over and died.
Riddle stared at his poor, poor basilisk in surprise.
"Well, I guess you were right." said Riddle grumpily.
Somewhere in the ruckus, Riddle had very conveniently dropped Harry's wand. With no weapons to speak of, other than the rooster, the two just stood and stared at each other.
"…so, what now?" asked Harry.
"For the first time in my life, I really don't know how I plan to murder you. Can you wait a few minutes? When I have my full body, we could arm wrestle or something." said Riddle.
While Harry thought that was one of the stupidest things he'd ever heard, he really didn't have any better ideas. After the bird equivalent of an eye roll, Fawkes decided to intervene by dropping the diary on Harry's head.
Harry grabbed it and just stared at it confused. Riddle looked very on edge but didn't really want Harry to think that the diary was important, so he said nothing. Fawkes, thoroughly irritated by the idiot human, grabbed him by the shirt with his claws and dragged him over to the dead basilisk. He then grabbed Harry's hand and used it to impale the diary on one of the long fangs. Mission accomplished.
Harry turned around as he heard a girly, pained scream and saw a big flash of light. Riddle was gone, and Ginny began to wake up. With all the excitement, Harry had kind of forgotten she was even there.
Ginny immediately started crying and stuttering about how sorry she was. Harry awkwardly knelt down and hugged her and patted her on the back. Ginny managed to calm down a bit after much reassurance and they began to make their way out of the chamber. Before they left, they turned and saw that the rooster had climbed on top of the once-majestic serpent.
"Cock-a-doodle-doo!"