The next five seconds was the most terrified Veronica had ever been in a long, long time.
Complete and total darkness heightened every sense she had until she felt the slide she had been on drop out from under her, she screamed at the sudden drop and she hit the ground.
She blinked and looked around before lighting her wand.
They were in a giant stone cavern and she closed her eyes, trying to maintain her breathing.
Now was not a time to panic, she had to keep it together.
"Okay boys, stay behind me." The woman took a step and stumbled back at the cracking sound and looked down.
The floor was covered in a combination of stone and bones from small creatures.
"Madame Largo"
"Yes?"
"The creature is a Basilisk, if you see any movement close your eyes or…"
"Thank you Harry" she cut him off, well aware of what a basilisk was and grew more terrified.
She pocketed Lockhart's wand and turned to them.
"Since you two seem incapable of remaining in once place as told then you need to follow me very closely, do not stray under any circumstances. Do you understand me?" She spoke seriously and the boys nodded in agreement.
"Very well, this way."
They walked through the cavern in search of any form of light or any clue and soon came across something unnerving.
It was huge, and was over fifty feet long and as wide as a tunnel.
Decaying greyish black and flaking in some parts Veronica reached out and touched it, it felt like stiff tissue paper.
"It's a snake skin." She whispered and Harry swallowed. "A basilisk skin. It's been here."
She began to stand and turned to them. "It's too dangerous, you three…"
She never got to finish as Lockhart, upon inspecting the skin, fell into a dead faint.
"Great" Veronica sighed and stalked over him. "Lockhart!"
She knelt down but suddenly he shot up and grabbed her shoulder, grappling with her desperately until he took his wand back from her pocket and shoved her off to the ground.
"This is the end of the line." He declared. "I can't have you three shooting your mouths off about me or the books, and I refuse to die in this place."
"Lockhart!" Veronica protested and drew her own wand. "Don't move!"
He turned on her and the stood face to face, wands drawn.
"It doesn't have to be like this Ronnie, I don't want to erase your memories, believe me I don't" He swallowed. "Let's just go back to the way things were huh? You and me, partners…what do you say?"
"Put down the wand Lockhart." She hissed and he sighed.
"Very well…Oblivia-!"
"Protego!" She countered instantly and the curse shot back at him and sent him flying through the air before colliding with the stone wall.
They didn't have time to revel in the attack before the cavern around them began to quake furiously and Veronica, hearing the o too familiar sound of cracking stone looked up before snatching Harry's cloak and pulling him back.
"Watch out!"
The rocks around them collapsed to the ground and enveloped them in a cloud of thick dust.
"Ron! Ron!"
"Mr. Wealsey are you okay?" Veronica called and rushed to the solid wall of stone that now barricaded them both from the others.
"I'm fine!"
Veronica looked around, "Harry you stay here and help Ron shift through the rock so we can get through. I am going to find your friend."
"But miss! I can help!" Harry protested and Veronica put her hands on his shoulders.
"Harry, you have done a wonderful Job! But it's time to leave this part to the adults, okay?" She cupped his face. "Stay here, please."
Harry reluctantly nodded and Veronica smiled. "I'll be back"
She paused only to summon her courage and send out a Patronus with a message she prayed someone would get soon. The silvery white Turtle dove shooting through the solid rock and through the dark cavern.
Removing her high heels so that she could move more freely, she left him to shift through the rock and with her wand drawn rushed into the darkness.
The chamber was vast, and winding, but she soon spotted light at the far end of a tunnel.
"Knox" she snuffed her wand and followed the light into a cavern filled with water and large, carved face of stone staring out from the walls.
In the center of the room she spotted something that made her heart race.
"Miss Weasley." She whispered and ran through the water on the floor to her, her footsteps splashing with each movement
She was pale as death, and everything around her seemed to be dulled of color and life. Her chest moved but it was small and weak and the pulse under her skin was only just detectable.
"Ginny, Ginny? Can you hear me?" She whispered and the girl did not respond or even move.
"No, she can't" a voice replied from behind her and Veronica whipped around to find a young man standing only a meter or two behind her.
He was handsome and dressed in clean Slytherin robes.
"Who are you?" she asked. "What are you doing down here?"
"I might ask you the same thing." He shot back smartly and looked her up and down with a certain level of disdain, it was obvious that she was not the one he had been expecting to show up.
"Young man, do you understand how dangerous it is down here?" She became strict and serious but the boy threw his head back and laughed as if he was hearing a marvelous joke.
"Only for you." He hissed with a sinister look in his eye. "I am not one of your precious students, do not thing you have any power here."
Veronica tried to place his face, or his voice, but she just couldn't
There was no way that this young man was a student at the school.
"Are you a ghost?" She asked and his smirked.
"Not quite. A memory, preserved long ago in a diary." He motioned to the black book in Ginny's hands.
Veronica shook her head, confused and terrified but also determined. "Look, you may be dead but I have to get her out of here alive."
She pocket her wand, knowing a ghost could not harm her, and knelt down to pick up Ginny but she froze, suddenly stiff and stationary in her position as if she were being held by some unnatural force.
"I can't let you do that." The boy smirked. "You see I need her here, as she grows weaker I get stronger."
"You're draining her." Veronica gasped. "You're killing her!"
"How astute you are" He noted mockingly and with a show of force, shoved her back and away from Ginny.
"You can't do this."
"But I am."
Veronica drew her wand and scowled. "Stupify!"
The spell shot but at the last moment it seemed to swerve just to miss him.
"I'll go get help." Veronica stepped back as he approached her, "You won't get away with this."
"You won't make it out the front gate." He smirked and turned to the large stone face carved in the wall. "The Basilisk always needs feeding."
Veronica was frozen with fear as he pointed at the face and began to hiss just as Harry had the mouth of the face began to open with a deafening grinding sound.
From the pitch blackness of the mouth slithered the most terrifying creature Veronica ever laid eyes upon and she look away quickly to avoid its gaze.
Without thinking of the boy or Ginny she whipped out and sprinted for the exit, tailed closely by the creature that snarled her heels.
Her heart was pounding, and her eyes were blurring but she kept making sharp turn after sharp turn hoping to stay ahead of it.
After one turn she pinned herself to the wall and waited from the creature to come.
The second its ugly scaly snout reared around the corner she closed her eyes and whipped out her wand.
"INCENDIO!"
A wall of violent flame hit the creature square in the face, blinding it and making it let out an ear-piercing, almost prehistoric wail and thrash around in the tunnel.
Its massive body slammed into the walls of the tunnel, making the ground shake and rocks fall around her as she Ran past the monster into the opposing tunnel, still rattled by the shrieking screech the monster let out.
She was lost in the labyrinthine maze of darkness until she spotted light at the end of one of the tunnels and darted for it as if it was the light of heaven itself, all the while aware of the movement once again behind her.
She reached the tunnel's end and had returned to the main chamber where the evil boy with the dark eyes still hovered over Ginny, somehow looking more real than ever, more there if that made any sense.
But beside Ginny she saw Harry Potter kneeling behind her, he must have followed her here.
"Potter!" she screamed and ran for them, "Run! Don't look back just run!" Harry looked up and suddenly looked away before scrambling in the opposite direction when he saw the monstrous creature in hot pursuit of his teacher.
He was fumbling with something, but Veronica couldn't see what as she scooped up Ginny and carried her with some difficulty, fueled mainly by sheer adrenaline.
But a second later Potter whipped around and, of all things, began to run toward the creature."
"Potter!" She yelled and set Ginny down and whipped out her wand. "Get back here!"
She darted for the boy but caught sight of the magnificent silver sword in his hands and stumbled a moment.
What the bloody hell?
But that stumble cost her speed and she was forced to watch in abject terror as the creature reared back with a mouth full of large, venom dripping teeth and lunged for the boy.
But as soon as it did the blade of the sword punctured the roof of the creature's mouth, and drove its tip right up through the top of its head.
Harry cried out as one of the long dagger like teeth pierced his arm but he dropped the sword as the monster began to thrash and writhe in furious death throws, roaring and shrieking until it collapsed on the floor.
Dead.
Veronica ran for Harry who was on the floor, pale from the fast acting venom in his bloodstream.
"It doesn't matter now" the Riddle declared triumphantly. "The process is nearly complete. In a few minutes Ginny will be dead, and I will cease to be a memory." He loomed over the woman as she cradled the boy gently.
"Lord Voldemort will return- very... much... alive!"
Veronica froze.
Holy God.
She understood now.
"It's a Horcrux." She gasped, her mind running back to every black magic book she ever read. The horrific art of making a Horcrux and what sacrifices it required.
And how to destroy one.
"Sorry, Harry." She whispered as she grasped the base of the fang buried in Harry's arm and jerked it out, making the boy cry out slightly.
"What are you doing?" Riddle asked, suddenly sounding nervous as the woman reached for the black book and eyed him.
Without a word she stabbed the cover of the book with the fang and Riddle cry out, double over in pain.
"Stop! NO!"
She stabbed it again, and again, and with each stab there came a burst of light from Riddle's artificial form until with one final motion he was gone and the book bled heavily with black, staining ink.
But it wasn't over yet, Harry was still dying.
"Potter, Potter look at me." She held his face. "Listen to my voice, can you hear me?"
He nodded weakly.
"Just keep listening to my voice I'm going to get you out of here." she spoke slowly and shoved her arms under him and lifted him up with a grunt.
"Harry!" Ginny, now fully awake and alive, ran over to them.
"Now is not the time Miss Weasley, we must hurry." Veronica informed her but a cry about them made her stop.
She looked up and saw, soaring above them, a vibrantly colored bird; a phoenix.
"Wait, it might not be too late." Veronica sat Harry down as the phoenix swooped down beside the boy.
Without a sound the bird crept over to Harry and, leaning over his arm, wept shimmering silver tears onto the wound.
It only took a few seconds for the healing process to begin and Veronica could have laughed with relief.
"Okay, okay." She nodded. "Okay you two, let's get going." She led them back through the tunnel back to the still barricaded tunnel.
"Mr. Weasely? Are you there?"
"I'm here! Are you all alright."
"Yes we're fine! Any progress?"
"No Ma'am"
"Right" Veronica sighed and thought. "I have an Idea. Eh Mr. Wealsey?"
"Yes ma'am"
"I'm going to need you to take Lockhart and move as far as you can away from the wall, can you do that? And quickly."
Veronica turned to Harry and Ginny, the latter whom had the phoenix resting on her shoulder, and motioned for them to step back.
"Okay, are you ready?"
"Yes Ma'am!"
Veronica pointed her wand at the middle of the wall and took a deep breath, "Reducto!"
The wall shuddered with a thunderous boom and began to cave in on itself, clearing a path way but only for a moment.
"Go, Go!" Veronica pushed the children through and only just made it out herself before watching the tunnel end collapse completely, blocking itself off for good.
"Everyone okay?" She looked over all of them
"I think so, except for maybe Lockhart." Ron pointed to the man who was still wondering around aimlessly.
"What's wrong with him?"
"The spell rebounded remember? He doesn't remember a thing, not even his own name."
Veronica gasped and swallowed.
She was so fired.
"Right well, everybody hold on to each other tightly." She instructed as the phoenix latched onto her forearm. "We're going up."
And up they went, all hauled by the strength of the Phoenix to the top of the pit where they were met not only with Moaning Myrtle, but also Professor Dumbledore, Snape, Minerva, Madame Pomphrey, and the Minister of Magic himself.
"Professor Dumbledore, sir." Veronica swallowed and looked at the three children and one adult with the mind of a child.
"I can explain."