Chapter 9: Chamber of Secrets

They stood at the end of a very long, dimly lit chamber. Towering stone pillars entwined with more carved serpents rose to support a ceiling lost in darkness, casting long, black shadows through the odd, greenish gloom that filled the place.

"This is what we're going to do," Dawn said. "Harry, you protect Ginny. Buffy will take care of the basilisk." Buffy held up the sword that had been strapped to her back. "And I will deal with whoever is controlling it."

It was then that Buffy and Harry noticed Dawn's hair had gone black.

"Dawn," Buffy said.

"I know," Dawn said. "You and Harry will be my ground. If I delve too far off the deep end you two will pull me back."

Harry and Buffy looked at each other and then nodded.

They moved forward between the serpentine columns. Every careful footstep echoed loudly off the shadowy walls. As they drew level with the last pair of pillars, a statue high as the Chamber itself loomed into view, standing against the back wall.

They craned their necks to look up into the giant face above: It was ancient and monkeyish, with a long, thin beard that fell almost to the bottom of the wizard's sweeping stone robes, where two enormous gray feet stood on the smooth Chamber floor. And between the feet, facedown, lay a small, black-robed figure with flaming-red hair.

"Ginny!" Harry muttered, sprinting to her and dropping to his knees as Buffy and Dawn followed.. "Ginny—don't be dead—please don't be dead—" He flung his wand aside, grabbed Ginny's shoulders, and turned her over. Her face was white as marble, and as cold, yet her eyes were closed, so she wasn't Petrified. But then she must be—

"Ginny, please wake up," Harry muttered desperately, shaking her. Ginny's head lolled hopelessly from side to side.

"She won't wake," said a soft voice.

Harry jumped and spun around on his knees.

Buffy and Dawn too spun around to face the voice.

A tall, black-haired boy was leaning against the nearest pillar, watching. He was strangely blurred around the edges, as though Harry were looking at him through a misted window.

"Hello, Riddle," Dawn said. "Or should I say Voldemort."

"Ah you must be the sister," Riddle said as he glanced at Buffy. "Which would make you the Slayer."

"Actually," Buffy said. "We're both Slayers."

"Impossible," Riddle said. "There is only one at a time. One dies and the next one is called."

"That is no longer the case," Dawn said.

"What d'you mean, she won't wake?" Harry said desperately. "She's not—she's not—?"

"She's still alive," said Riddle. "But only just."

They stared at Riddle, who had been at Hogwarts fifty years ago, yet here he stood, a weird, misty light shining about him, not a day older than sixteen.

"Are you a ghost?" Harry said uncertainly.

"A memory," said Dawn.

"Correct," Riddle agreed. "Preserved in a diary for fifty years."

He pointed toward the floor near the statue's giant toes. Lying open there was the little black diary Dawn had found in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom.

"You were working through, Ginny," Dawn said.

"Correct," Tom said.

"Harry, get Ginny out of here," Dawn said.

Harry, sweating, managed to hoist Ginny half off the floor, and bent to pick up his wand again.

But his wand had gone.

"Did you see—?" he asked looking at Buffy and Dawn. He then followed their gaze and saw that Riddle was twirling Harry's wand between his long fingers.

"You won't be needing it," Riddle said. "I've waited a long time for this, Harry Potter. For the chance to see you. To speak to you."

"So you orchestrated the whole throwing the book away," Dawn said. "Hoping Harry would find it."

"Yes," Riddle said. "But instead you did. And my priorities changed. I wanted to meet you as well."

"How did Ginny get like this?" Harry wondered.

"He did it," Dawn answered. "You lured her in just as you tried to lure me and Buffy in."

"Quite right," Riddle said. "And I did. Little Ginny's been writing in it for months and months, telling me all her pitiful worries and woes—how her brothers tease her, how she had to come to school with secondhand robes and books, how"—Riddle's eyes glinted—"how she didn't think famous,

good, great Harry Potter would ever like her. It's very boring, having to listen to the silly little troubles of an eleven-year-old girl. But I was patient. I wrote back. I was sympathetic, I was kind. Ginny simply loved me. No one's ever understood me like you, Tom… I'm so glad I've got this diary to confide in… It's like having a friend I can carry around in my pocket…"

Riddle laughed, a high, cold laugh that didn't suit him.

"If I say it myself, I've always been able to charm the people I needed. So Ginny poured out her soul to me, and her soul happened to be exactly what I wanted … I grew stronger and stronger on a diet of her deepest fears, her darkest secrets. I grew powerful, far more powerful than little Miss Weasley. Powerful enough to start feeding Miss Weasley a few of my secrets, to start pouring a little of my soul back into her…"

"Ginny opened the Chamber," Buffy said. "At your behest."

Dawn's eyes went wide in understanding. "She strangled the school roosters and daubed threatening messages on the walls. She set the Serpent of Slytherin on four muggle-borns, and Mrs. Norris."

"No," Harry whispered.

"Yes," said Riddle, calmly. "Of course, she didn't know what she was doing at first. It was very amusing. I wish you all could have seen her new diary entries … far more interesting, they became… Dear Tom," he recited, "I think I'm losing my memory. There are rooster feathers all over my robes and I don't know how they got there. Dear Tom, I can't remember what I did on the night of Halloween, but a cat was attacked and I've got paint all down my front. Dear Tom, Percy keeps telling me I'm pale and I'm not myself. I think he suspects me … There was another attack today and I don't know where I was. Tom, what am I going to do? I think I'm going mad … I think I'm the one attacking everyone, Tom!"

Harry's fists were clenched, the nails digging deep into his palms.

"It took a very long time for stupid little Ginny to stop trusting her diary," said Riddle. "But she finally became suspicious and tried to dispose of it. She didn't realize I was manipulating her. And that's where you were supposed to come in Harry. Instead you found it, Dawn. I knew from Ginny's writings who you are of course. A Wiccan witch and your wife was muggle-born. The great Harry Potter's aunt."

Dawn realized that Harry had likely told Ron and Hermione that Willow was his aunt.

"It was why I had Ginny set the serpent loose on your dear Willow. I knew it would drive Harry Potter insane with grief."

Dawn looked at Harry who nodded indicating he had grieved for Willow. He just had not mentioned it to her, Ron or Hermione.

"I was anxious of course to meet Harry Potter," Riddle said. "But I was pleased that you had gotten your hands on it. I thought with a little trickery on my part. What better host for my resurrection. One of the two strongest Wiccan witches in the world. But you had already seen through my trickery. The moment I told you that I had found the culprit for the attacks fifty years ago. You knew the truth, likely from Dumbledore."

"Well sorry to spoil your plans," Dawn said.

"You haven't spoiled anything," Riddle said. "I knew it wouldn't be safe to open the Chamber again while I was still at school. But I wasn't going to waste those long years I'd spent searching for it. I decided to leave behind a diary, preserving my sixteen-year-old self in its pages, so that one day, with luck, I would be able to lead another in my footsteps, and finish Salazar Slytherin's noble work."

"I made Ginny write her own farewell on the wall after the last attack and come down here to wait. She struggled and cried and became very boring. But there isn't much life left in her … She put too much into the diary, into me. Enough to let me leave its pages at last … I have been waiting for you all to appear since we arrived here. I knew you three would come."

"To business," said Riddle, still smiling broadly. "Twice—in your past, Harry, in my future—we have met. And twice I failed to kill you. How did you survive? Tell me everything. The longer you talk," he added softly, "the longer you stay alive."

Dawn smiled. "Love. Willow's sister, Harry's mother. Died for him. And love is one of the oldest of magicks. It provided him the protection against you. And now you face me. "

"So," Riddle said looking at Harry. "Your mother died to save you. Yes, that's a powerful counter-charm. I can see now … there is nothing special about you, after all. I wondered, you see. There are strange likenesses between us, after all. Even you must have noticed. Both half-bloods, orphans, raised by Muggles. Probably the three of us the only Parselmouths to come to Hogwarts since the great Slytherin himself. You and I Harry even look something alike… but after all, it was merely a lucky chance that saved you from me. That's all I wanted to know."

"Now I'm going to teach all three of you a little lesson. Let's match the powers of Lord Voldemort, Heir of Salazar Slytherin, against famous Harry Potter, the Wiccan witch Dawn Rosenberg-Summers and the Slayer Buffy Summers-Lehane," Riddle said and then walked toward the statue and looked up into the stone face of Slytherin, high above him in the half-darkness. Riddle opened his mouth wide and hissed —but Harry and Dawn understood what he was saying …

"Speak to me, Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts Four."

Slytherin's gigantic stone face opened wider and wider, to make a huge black hole.

And something was stirring inside the statue's mouth. Something was slithering up from its depths.

"Buffy, you're up," Dawn said.

Buffy nodded as she unsheathed the sword Dumbledore had given her to use against the basilisk.

Harry and Dawn turned into each other so that they would not be able to look into the basilisk's eyes.

The giant serpant hit the stone floor of the Chamber. It uncoiled itself from Slytherin's mouth.

Then Riddle hissed. "Kill them."

Buffy moved away from the basilisk. "Dawn, tell me you have a way of blinding it."

A memory surged forth and Dawn saw Dumbledore's phoenix blinding the basilisk. She opened the portal and stuck her head in. "Albus, I need your pheonix."

As Dawn pulled her head out of the portal Fawkes flew out. The phoenix flew at the basilisk immediately and attacked the basilisk's eyes.

Fawkes was soaring around its head, and the basilisk was snapping furiously at him with fangs long and thin as sabers—Fawkes dived. His long golden beak sank out of sight and a sudden shower of dark blood spattered the floor. The snake's tail thrashed, narrowly missing Buffy, and before Dawn or Harry could shut their eyes, it turned—they looked straight into its face and saw that its eyes, both its great, bulbous yellow eyes, had been punctured by the phoenix; blood was streaming to the floor, and the snake was spitting in agony.

Dawn turned to Riddle and smiled. "Buffy, you can fight it now. It's blinded."

"Thanks, Dawnie," Buffy said as she turned to face the basilisk.

"NO!" Riddle screamed. "LEAVE THE BIRD! LEAVE THE BIRD! THE SLAYER IS BEHIND YOU! YOU CAN STILL SMELL HER! KILL HER! THEN COME BACK AND KILL HER SISTER AND THE BOY."

The basilisk's head was falling, its body coiling around, hitting pillars as it twisted to face Buffy. It lunged blindly and Buffy swung the sword and drove it to the hilt into the roof of the serpent's mouth—

But as warm blood drenched Buffy's arms, she felt a searing pain just above her elbow. One long, poisonous fang was sinking deeper and deeper into her arm and it splintered as the basilisk keeled over sideways and fell, twitching, to the floor.

"Go check on Buffy," Dawn said as Harry lifted Ginny and carried her next to his aunt's sister.

"You okay?" Harry asked.

Fawkes landed next to Buffy and laid its head on the spot where the serpent's fang had pierced her.

And then another memory surged forth and Dawn smiled. "And now for you, Riddle," she said as she ran over to the book and scooped it up. She ran to Buffy and Harry.

"The tooth, Harry," Dawn said. "I need the tooth."

Harry took the basilisk tooth from Buffy's arm where it had lodged and handed it to Dawn.

"Fawkes," Dawn said as she motioned toward her sister.

The phoenix nodded its head as its tears began to flow onto Buffy's wound. Dawn turned back to Riddle and smiled. "You won't be returning not this way." She then plunged the tooth straight into the heart of the book.

There was a long, dreadful, piercing scream. Ink spurted out of the diary in torrents, streaming over Dawn's hands, flooding the floor. Riddle was writhing and twisting, screaming and flailing and then—

He had gone. Harry's wand fell to the floor with a clatter and there was silence. Silence except for the steady drip drip of ink still oozing from the diary. The basilisk venom had burned a sizzling hole right through it.

Buffy looked up at her sister and smiled as her wound finished healing, thanks to Fawkes. "Let me guess you had another flash of memory?"

Dawn nodded. "That I did."

Then came a faint moan from next to them. Ginny was stirring. She sat up. Her bemused eyes traveled from the huge form of the dead basilisk, over Harry, Buffy and Dawn, then to the diary in Dawn's hand. She drew a great, shuddering gasp and tears began to pour down her face.

"Harry—oh, Harry—I tried to tell you at b-breakfast, but I c-couldn't say it in front of Percy—it was me, Harry—but I—I s-swear I d-didn't mean to—R-Riddle made me, he t-took me over—and—how did you kill that—that thing? W-where's Riddle? The last thing I r-remember is him coming out of the diary—"

"Actually Buffy killed the basilisk," Dawn said. "She's a Slayer and my sister." Buffy smiled as Ginny looked at her in appreciation. "And about Riddle, well I'm a seer on top of being a Slayer and a witch. I saw how to defeat Riddle. And I did."

"Wow," Ginny said.

"C'mon, let's get out of here—" Dawn said.

"I'm going to be expelled!" Ginny wept as Harry helped her awkwardly to her feet. "I've looked forward to coming to Hogwarts ever since B-Bill came and n-now I'll have to leave and—w-what'll Mum and Dad say?"

"Easy," Dawn said. "That it was not your fault. It is the fault of the person who gave you the diary. If not for that person you would never have been possessed."

"I don't know who gave me the diary," Ginny said.

"I think I know," Harry said. "Malfoy's father. He slipped it into Ginny's cauldron when we went shopping in Diagon Alley."

"We'll pay him a visit," Buffy said.

"And about your expulsion, Ginny," Dawn said. "I believe two Slayers, one of them a Hogwarts professor. Might be able to convince Dumbledore not to expel you, not that I expect him too."

Dawn opened a portal to the girl's bathroom and they stepped through.

"Ginny!" Ron pulled his sister into an embrace. "You're alive! I don't believe it! What happened? How—what—where did that bird come from?"

Fawkes had swooped through the portal after Ginny.

"He's Dumbledore's," said Harry, as he stepped through the portal.

Myrtle goggled at them. "You're alive," she said blankly to Harry, Buffy and Dawn.

"There's no need to sound so disappointed," Dawn said.

"Oh, well … I'd just been thinking … if you three had died, you'd have been welcome to share my toilet," said Myrtle.

"Urgh!" said Ron as they left the bathroom for the dark, deserted corridor outside.