Disclaimer: Brokenly writhing worst jeopardy. (Four random common words.)

Chapter 36

Fred and George Weasley reluctantly climbed up to their dorm room in Gryffindor Tower while Professor Vector, Harry, Hermione, and that twit Lockhart were going to try to save their baby sister from the Heir of Slytherin. After the things they'd already seen and heard her do, they quickly agreed that they would trust Hermione with their lives—as much as they trusted themselves, anyway. She obviously thought the world of Professor Vector, too, and Harry had done some pretty impressive feats himself, but this was Ginny they were talking about. They would do anything for her, and it was painfully obvious that they'd been ignoring her real problems all year. If she didn't come back from this, they'd never forgive themselves.

As for the fourth member of the rescue party, they knew Lockhart couldn't duel his way out of a paper bag. They couldn't figure why the professors would send him down to the Chamber unless it was as bait, and they were too worried to even laugh at that.

"Out!" Fred shouted the moment they burst into their dorm room.

Kenneth, Lloyd, and Raphael were all too scared of the Twins to dare to question them, and they fled from the room at once. Lee Jordan, however, hesitated and clapped a hand on each of their shoulders on the way out, saying, "I'm sorry, mates. I hope she's okay."

"Us too, Lee," George said.

Fred and George Weasley were most definitely not content to twiddle their thumbs and wait to find out what was happening. Once the room was clear, Fred plunged a hand into his robes and pulled out the one secret they kept from Lee.

"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."

The Marauder's Map unfolded, page by page, floor by floor. They immediately turned to the fourth spread, which showed the second floor, and found Myrtle's bathroom. Inside the little square were writ the names Septima Vector, Hermione Granger, Harry Potter, Gilderoy Lockhart, and Myrtle Warren.

"Well, there they are," said Fred.

"Yeah. Let's just hope they find the Chamber," said George.

"I wish the Chamber were on the map," Fred complained. "We could have solved all this ages ago."

They kept watching the Map for a few minutes. The dots shuffled around in the bathroom a bit, but didn't move otherwise.

"They're just sitting there," said Fred.

"Probably still talking to Myrtle. Can't be easy getting anything out of her."

"Just a tick…Lockhart's gone!"

George looked again and then jumped in surprise. "And Harry's gone, too."

"And there go Hermione and Vector. They must've found the Chamber."

"Great, 'cept now we can't see 'em."

"Yeah…I guess there's nothing we can do but wait for them to come back up."

"Yeah…"

They sat and waited anxiously, but just a couple minutes they saw something else strange.

"Hey, what's Ron doing?" said Fred.

George looked and saw a dot labelled Ronald Weasley moving toward Myrtle's bathroom.

"Must be going after them," said George.

"Wow, he's more Gryffindor than I thought."

"And what does that make us?"

The Twins stared at each other and then started to rush down the Common Room. Fortunately, George kept his wits about him: "Wait a minute, they'll see us leave. How did Ron get out?"

Fred stopped in his tracks. "I dunno," he said, "but we're gonna need a distraction."

A minute later, something very strange happened, especially for a dire situation like this. A Filibuster Firework exploded in the Gryffindor Common Room, sending the students running for cover in terror of another attack.

"It's crude, but it worked," Fred said as they jumped out the portrait hole. And they took off down the corridor.

But they'd barely made it a few steps before George stopped and hissed, "Abort! Abort! Snape's coming!"

"Snape? What's he doing there?" Fred whispered, sneaking a peak at the Map.

"I don't know, but we've gotta go back in and try again when he leaves. We'll never get past him."

"Well, that's just great," Fred growled, but he followed his twin back to the portrait of the Fat Lady. Unfortunately, this one time, they weren't quite fast enough, and Snape spotted them climbing in as he rounded the corner. "Messrs. Weasley!" the greasy git snapped. "Under the circumstances, I will assume that you were a bit late in returning to your tower." The Twins glanced at each other nervously. "There has been a change of plans. Your parents have just arrived in Professor McGonagall's office. Go find Percy and Ronald so that I may…escort you to them," he grumbled.

Fred and George exchanged a nervous look as they realised they'd just lost their chance to help. This wasn't going to end well.

Ronald Weasley was not going to take the kidnapping of his little sister lying down, either, doubly so when his two best friends were putting themselves in harm's way to save her. By the time he made it back to Gryffindor Tower, he already had a plan—maybe not his best plan, but he had a plan. He rushed up to his dorm and set upon Harry's trunk, ignoring the questions of Neville, Dean, and Seamus. In a few moments, he found Harry's invisibility cloak and raced out of the room.

Unseen, Ron rushed through the corridors, narrowly avoiding Snape, among other teachers, until he came to Myrtle's bathroom. Inside, he found no sign of any live people, but the whole place was filled with Hermione's blue fire, and one sink seemed to have been ripped away, revealing a huge open pipe. He pulled the cloak partway off, revealing his head.

"AHHH!" Myrtle shrieked like she'd seen a—never mind.

"Myrtle, calm down, it's me," Ron said. He pointed to the pipe. "Did everybody go down there?"

"Yes," Myrtle said uncommonly happily. "Are you here to avenge my death, too?"

Ron blinked in surprise: "Erm, yeah, I guess." And before she could enquire further, he jumped down the pipe.

He sincerely hoped that Harry's invisibility cloak had invisible stains, too, because the pipe was very long and very slimy. He wasn't quite sure why he left it on, except maybe that he didn't want to take the time to fold it up again. Finally, he hit the ground with a thud, skidding out of the pipe into a large tunnel that was also filled with blue fire. He staggered to his feet and tried to make sense of what he was seeing.

Lockhart pointed his wand at Hermione: "Say goodbye to your memories…Obliv—ARGH!"

Hermione gasped as Lockhart spontaneously pitched forward and fell flat on his face. At that moment, the ropes binding her snapped by accidental magic, and, acting on instinct, she ran forward, kicked Lockhart hard in the stomach with a satisfying thud, and grabbed all four of the wands from his hands. It was only then that she looked up and tried to figure out what had interrupted his spell.

And Ron pulled off Harry's invisibility cloak and appeared out of thin air with a half-grin on his face. "Been wanting to do that for months," he said.

"Ron!" Hermione jumped over Lockhart's winded form, grabbed the redheaded boy, and hugged him for all she was worth. "Oh, thank God! Thank Merlin! That was too close. Thank you, Ron, thank you!"

"Wow, Hermione, I didn't think you'd be that happy to see me," Ron grunted, clearly struggling to breathe under her grip.

"Sorry," she muttered, breaking off and collecting herself. "This filthy, lying…bastard—" She kicked Lockhart in the arse, causing him to grunt in pain. "Was going to wipe our memories and leave Ginny to die just so he could write another book!"

"What!" Ron roared.

But before he could get in a kick himself, Professor Vector interrupted, "That's enough. Miss Granger, my wand?"

"Oh, right, Professor." Hermione handed her wand and Lockhart's over and tossed Harry's to him.

"Incarcerous," Vector said, and Lockhart was bound in ropes. She crouched down next to him and removed his sunglasses. "Here, Mr. Weasley, put these on. They'll protect you from the basilisk—mostly. As for you, Gilderoy, you nearly blasted the brightest mind to come through Hogwarts since before you were born. You have no idea what you're dealing with here. It'd serve you right if I wiped your memory, but I want you to remember that you don't screw with Septima Vector, and you especially don't screw with my students." Hermione's eyes widened as she remembered the other moments she had seen her teacher like this—against the troll and Quirrel. She was definitely a fighter. Vector stood up, determined to ignore anything more Lockhart said. "Come along, Mr. Weasley, since you're here, and we have no fast way to get you out, let's go find your sister. And keep that cloak handy."

Ron stood up straight and nodded, drawing his wand. He deliberately stepped on Lockhart as he moved forward.

Septima Vector walked on with the three children in tow—two of whose help she needed and the third just stuck with them out of stubbornness—and wondered how she'd got into this situation again. Twenty years of teaching at Hogwarts with no major incidents, including clear through the war, and now, the same three children had come into mortal peril three times in the space of two years, each time with her as the only adult around to help them. The thought crossed her mind that Harry Potter might be cursed—not that that would stop Hermione from being his friend. If the girl could survive a basilisk, she wasn't sure anything could stop Hermione—at least that's what she told herself.

The girl in question was moving holding a jar of bluebell flames aloft for visibility and casting the charm around the corridor every so often. Wand at the ready, though she really didn't have much idea what spells to use against a basilisk, Vector tried to keep in front. Rounding another bend, they came upon a wall on which two emerald-eyed serpents were carved. At once, Potter made that eerie hissing sound that made her shudder in her shoes, and a door slid silently open.

This, they realised, must be the true Chamber of Secrets. It was high and vaulted like a macabre cathedral, supported by towering pillars carved like serpents, barely visible in the dim light and stretching out and disappearing into the shadows. That little jar of flames wasn't going to cut it.

"No element of surprise," Hermione warned. She raised her wand and threw blue fire as far as she could into the Chamber, but even then, they couldn't see to the other end.

"Stay alert," Vector said, and she started forward.

Pillar after pillar they passed, the serpents looking frighteningly alive in the flickering firelight. Their footsteps echoed thunderously in the stillness. Hermione threw out another spread of flames what looked like about halfway down, revealing the shadowy image of an enormous statue in the distance with a long, thin beard, a glaring face, and sweeping stone robes.

"That must be Slytherin," Harry said.

"Mm hmm," Vector confirmed. "There's a bust of him in the Slytherin Common Room. Hermione, are you feeling alright? You've been using that spell an awful lot. And you were unconscious an hour ago."

"I'll manage," Hermione said, though truthfully, she was starting to feel out of breath. She threw out one more spread of fire as they approached the statue, and then she saw a small, figure sprawled on the floor as if she had fallen down in homage to the statue, her long, black hair fanned out around her head.

Hermione was the first to remember the effect of the glasses on colours. "Ginny!" she cried and ran over to the girl.

"Ginny!" Harry and Ron repeated, following close behind.

She turned the girl over, putting her rusty first aid knowledge to good use and feeling for a pulse. "She's alive," she said with a sigh of relief, although the pulse was weak, and she felt ice cold to the touch.

"Oh, thank Merlin!" Ron said. He shook Ginny's shoulder: "Ginny, wake up! We have to get out of here!" Ginny flopped around limply. "Wake up!" he said more frantically.

"Maybe the basilisk knocked her out somehow," Hermione suggested. "Let's just find a way out and get her to Madam Pomfrey."

She and Ron started to pick her up, but then a deep voice said softly from behind them, "She won't wake."

The four of them spun around to see a tall, handsome, dark-haired boy of about sixteen leaning against a pillar. He had a strange look about him: blurry around the edges, maybe even a little translucent. Hermione couldn't tell with the glasses if he was in full colour or in black and white, like a ghost, and she wasn't going to risk taking them off.

Harry gasped as he recognised the boy: "Tom?"

"Tom?" Ron said.

"Tom Riddle?" Hermione asked. "From the diary?"

"Diary?" Vector said in confusion.

"Very clever, Miss Granger," said Tom Riddle with a grin. "I wasn't sure whether to believe Ginny's stories about your intelligence. But seeing your ingenious means of defending yourself against my basilisk convinced me. I admit even I would have never thought to use blue-tinted glasses."

"Your basilisk?" Ron said. "You! You're the Heir of Slytherin! What did you do to Ginny?" He jumped up and charged Riddle.

"Weasley!" Vector shouted, but she was too slow. Ron passed straight through him like a ghost.

"Why, thank you, Mr. Weasley," Riddle said, holding his hand aloft. Impossibly, he had picked Ron's pocket and was now holding the redhead's wand in his hand.

"W-what are you?" Vector asked fearfully. She'd never heard of a spirit doing that, and she could practically smell dark magic on him. She had a feeling negotiating wouldn't do much good here.

"A memory," Riddle said. "Preserved for fifty years in my diary." He motioned to the stone steps at the base of the statue, where lay the diary Harry had found in Myrtle's bathroom, and then, looking back and forth between Ginny and the black book, Hermione finally remembered where else she had seen it before.

"Oh, my God, I'm such a fool!" she cried. Everyone turned to stare at her, even Riddle. "I saw Ginny with that diary the day we went to Diagon Alley. She asked me if it was mine. She didn't know where it came from, but she started acting funny the day after she got it. I…I never even thought of it again," she said sadly.

"Oh, yes, Miss Granger," Riddle said, his evil grin growing wider. "Of all the people in the school, you came the closest to derailing my plans. Even closer than Percy, despite his constant snooping. I was expecting a girl with no friends her own age, who despaired over coming to school with secondhand books and robes, who was constantly teased and overshadowed by her brothers—" Ron face turned eerily dark through the glasses, which meant he was flushing deep red. "—and then you came along and befriended her, giving her a real human being to prattle to about all of her pitiful worries and woes, forcing her brothers to recognise her Quidditch skills, helping her prank them back when they pranked her. You very nearly wrenched her from my grasp." Tom let out a cold, high, almost falsetto laugh. "But I've always been able to charm the people I've needed, and as soon as you felt that your own life was in danger, suddenly, you were too wrapped up in your own worries to pay attention to her."

Hermione sank to the stone floor in horror. How much of this mess had she brought about?

But Ron was growing increasingly enraged: "Tell me what you did to Ginny!"

A bang issued from Ron's wand in Riddle's hand, and Ron was thrown back into Harry and Hermione and lay sprawled on the floor.

"Ah, Ronald, the most clueless brother," Riddle said. "It's not what I did. It's what Ginny did. I was the only one there for her when all her friends and family abandoned her, when she didn't think she could talk to anyone else, when she despaired that the famous, great, good Harry Potter would never like her…" He let out a creepy, girlish sigh. "And, of course, when she started having blackouts and tried to figure out why—that was about the only interesting thing she wrote, mind you, but I was patient while she poured out her soul to me, and she became close enough—she trusted me enough, that I was able to put a little of myself back into her."

The answer clicked in Vector's mind: "You possessed her!" The children gasped and turned to her. "You've been controlling her all year. Your…diary thing made her open the Chamber, attack the students, write those messages…"

"Smart group here," Riddle laughed again. "Quite the catch. To be honest, I was only hoping for Mr. Potter."

"M-m-me?" Harry stammered. Hermione could see his eyebrows shoot up behind his clip-on sunglasses.

"But of course. Such a fascinating story you have there. It was a lucky break for me when Ginny stopped trusting her diary and threw it away, only for you to find it. Unfortunately, you weren't quite as trusting as she was—"

"You tried to turn me against Hagrid!" Harry protested.

"Yes, that oaf Hagrid. That was one of my rare miscalculations, showing you that. You saw through it almost as fast as Dumbledore did, and I spent the next two and half months trapped at the bottom of your trunk. I was most displeased when Ginny panicked and stole the diary back, but I had to make do. I was sure I could lure you down here if one of your little friends was attacked, but then, I seemed to have underestimated you, Miss Granger—the brains of your little trio. As soon as I saw that the blue glasses had protected you, I knew you'd solved the mystery, and I had to move up my plans."

"T-taking Ginny," Hermione said. Riddle smiled and nodded.

"What the hell did you do to her?" Ron shouted.

"What? Haven't you figured it out yet, Weasley? No? Pfft. Children these days. Perhaps you, Professor? You were a Slytherin, weren't you? Seen a fair bit of dark magic in your day?"

Vector shook her head: "I don't…I've never seen…" She stopped and looked at the Weasley girl, and then took another, careful look at the strange boy. "You're drawing on her life force, somehow," she said. "You've got more solid since we came down here. You're using her to…what? Come back to life?"

"Oh, bravo, Professor. Ten points to Slytherin. That was a difficult one. Yes, Ginny poured enough of herself into me for me to leave the pages of my diary at last. And the process is nearly complete…"

Ron tried to leap to his feet again, but Harry and Hermione held him back. He was no good without a wand.

"You let her go!" Vector shouted. "Stupefy!"

The professor's Stunner passed straight through Riddle's head. He laughed evilly and brandished Ron's wand: "Ah ah ah. You can't hurt me, but I can hurt you. I suggest you behave, Professor. I have questions for Mr. Potter, here."

Harry's nostrils flared: "Like what?"

"Like how you, a scrawny boy of no great magical talent, defeated the greatest wizard of all time. How is it that you came away with only a scar while Lord Voldemort's powers were destroyed?" Vector and Ron gasped.

"Why do you care?" Harry said defiantly. "Voldemort was after your time."

At this, Riddle laughed the most heartily that he had all night. His laughter echoed through the Chamber as if reaching to the deepest depths. "Foolish boy, do you still not see," he said? He raised Ron's wand and began drawing letters of blue fire in the air:

TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE

Hermione was looking for it once, and she gasped when she saw it. Then, with a flourish, Riddle guided the letters to rearrange themselves. Then, Vector must have seen it too, because she gasped and started shouting the nastiest spells she could think of before he finished, "Reducto! Brachium Emendo! Defodio! Viscera—"

"Expelliarmus!" Riddle said lazily as the curses passed through him, some of them blasting craters in the Chamber wall. Vector's wand was flung from her hand.

In the air between them, the letters had rearranged to spell:

I AM LORD VOLDEMORT

"Voldemort," Harry whispered.

"Not again," Hermione mumbled flopping down on her hands and knees directly beside Ron. Ron looked like he was about to faint.

"You see, Potter? Not one of you can touch me," Riddle—Voldemort said. "You cannot stop me. Ginny will die, and Lord Voldemort will return, very much alive."

"NO!" All eyes turned to Hermione. She seemed to be trying to scramble away in a panic and looked to be unable to get a grip with her hands and feet. "No, no, no, no, NO!" Suddenly, she staggered to her feet and ran away as fast as she could.

"Hermione!" Harry cried in disbelief.

"Hermione?" Ron said.

Riddle just laughed again. "Run all you want, girl!" he called after her. "It's too late to get help! Well, Mr. Potter, it looks like your friend is still the same scared little mudblood as ever, running away when things get too tough."

"Hermione's ten times as good a witch as you are a wizard!" he said defiantly.

"From what I could gather, your mudblood couldn't even take on Draco Malfoy herself when she thought he was the Heir of Slytherin. She's just one more person who says she's on your side, but you can't rely on when you really need help. Just like your teachers, who ignore all of your concerns. Just like Dumbledore, who left you with such awful relatives—oh, yes, Ginny told me everything."

"Albus Dumbledore is the greatest wizard in the world! He's the only one you were ever afraid of."

"Albus Dumbledore has been driven from this castle by the mere memory of me."

"You're wrong!" Harry levelled his wand at Riddle, even though he didn't know what he'd do with it. His face was white as he tried to bluff Riddle: "I'm with Dumbledore. We're with Dumbledore. Every single teacher in this castle is with Dumbledore. They told us so. He'll never be gone while we're here!"

Riddle started to laugh again, but he froze. Music began to fill the Chamber—an unearthly music—Harry, Ron, and even Vector were convinced it was the most beautiful music they had ever heard—a sweeping, courageous, uplifting music. And then, a huge bird, as large as a swan, appeared on top of a pillar and swooped down to land beside Harry, dropping something at his feet. The bird was a deep midnight blue in the glasses, but it seemed to shine like starlight around the edges, and its eyes glowed like sapphires. Harry had never seen the bird in its prime, but he knew the shape at once.

"Fawkes?" he said.

"Fawkes!" Vector exclaimed, relieved at the help.

"A phoenix," Riddle breathed.

"Dumbledore's phoenix," Harry told him. "You see?"

Riddle looked down at the small bundle that had fallen at Harry's feet. "And the Sorting Hat, it seems," he smirked, twirling Ron's wand in his hands and levelling it at Harry, probably to cast some horrible curse. "So this is what Dumbledore sends his champion: a songbird and an old ha—AHHH!"

Ron's wand jerked in Riddle's hand. Something appeared to have attacked him from behind, passing through his ghostly body, but physically fighting with him for the wand. His arm shook more and more violently, and he tried to cast a couple of spells, which went wide. He groped about blindly with his other hand, forgetting that his body was still intangible.

Then, a hand appeared from thin air, and another voice cried out, "Lumos Solem!"

"AHHH!"

A brilliant flash of sunlight was visible around the rims of the onlookers' glasses, and a fair bit of blue got through the lenses. Riddle took it point blank in the face. There was a sickening crack, and he staggered back, covering his eyes with his hands.

Harry, Ron, and Vector watched in awe as the hand appeared again, and pulled off Harry's invisibility cloak.

"Hermione!" they said.

There she was, standing in her stocking feet for quiet, the tip of her wand still glowing, and glaring as fiercely as she could at Riddle. "I'm not running away anymore," she said.

Then, she looked down at her other hand: "Oh, Ron, I'm so sorry."

Ron paled when he saw her hand. His wand was snapped clean in two. "My wand!"

"I'm sorry Ron. I had to get it away from him. I'll…I'll buy you a new one—wait a minute." She raced over to Ginny and felt around her robes. In a few moments, she fished out Ginny's wand. "Here, use hers for now."

"You've gotta be kidding me," Ron whined, but he took Ginny's wand.

They heard a growl. "Forget the questions!" Riddle said. Then, he let out a long string of hisses. There was a stony grinding sound, and the mouth of the huge statue of Salazar Slytherin opened.

"The basilisk! Run!" Harry yelled. He snatched up the Sorting Hat and backed away, trying to hiss back.

"Parseltongue won't save you now, Potter. It only obeys the Heir of Slytherin," Riddle said.

Ron and Hermione scattered. Vector picked up Ginny and threw her over her shoulder before heading back toward the exit.

Riddle hissed something else. Hermione didn't know what he said, but from the way Harry screamed, "Hermione, watch out!" she could guess that it was something along the lines of, Kill the mudblood!

She ducked behind a pillar and tried to think of a spell that she could possibly use. As a powerful magical creature, the basilisk was sure to have a powerfully magic-resistant hide that would block most of the spells she knew. Professor Vector was firing curses blindly behind her as fast as she could, hoping that something would get through: "Conjunctivitis! Diffindo! Percutio! Reducto! Defodio! Bombarda! Confringo! Depulso! Incendio! Immobulus!" Hermione could only cast a handful of those spells, and not as powerfully. Dazzling the basilisk with light like she had Riddle was the only thing that came to mind—if only she knew some kind of armour-piercing spells.

"What the—?" she heard Harry say, and she saw him pulling something long and glittering out of the Sorting Hat. But then, the worst happened.

The basilisk glided into view, turned its head, and looked at her.

She couldn't make out where its eyes were in that split second, but she felt them hit hard. She squeezed her eyes shut and turned away. She was still conscious, but it was like being hit with a lead pipe. She had a whanging headache again, and all that spellcasting before was catching up with her. Good God, it was huge! Forty feet long, maybe fifty. She could hear it slithering closer and closer, looming over her. A drop of deadly venom dripped down from its fangs and burned a hole clean through the skirts of her robes…

"Hey!" Harry yelled, and at the same time, Fawkes screeched. Hermione squinted in the flickering light and thought she was hallucinating. She saw Harry running straight at the basilisk with a huge sword, but he staggered and fell to his knees, clearly having been caught by its gaze. It lunged to strike, but it jerked back when Fawkes screeched again and dived at it. The snake roared in pain, and Hermione chanced another glance up at its head, confirming what she expected: Fawkes had pecked out its eyes, preserved by the regenerative powers of the phoenix.

"It's blind!" Hermione screamed. She whipped her glasses off her face. The world looked green from the yellow afterimage combined with the bluebell flames strewn around the Chamber, but it was much brighter and clearer. "Fawkes blinded it—AHHH!" In its flailing, the side of the basilisk's head struck her in the chest and knocked her into the wall. She was sure she felt a rib crack, and she collapsed in pain.

Riddle was hissing with rage. The basilisk turned on Harry again, striking blindly. Harry was on the floor holding the sword up above him. He rolled out of the way as the King of Serpents' many fangs missed and gouged into the floor inches to his right—its teeth scraped on the stone. Then his left—a fang broke off on the floor. Over his head—Harry thrust the sword upward, gouging into its throat and tongue. It jerked back in pain, but lined up again, ready to strike directly at Harry's face.

"Hey!" Professor Vector and Ron were running at the basilisk, sunglasses off and shooting spells. Ron's hexes were sure to do no more than annoy the beast, but Hermione pulled herself up joined in with what spells she knew, anyway. Vector, however, was aiming powerful curses at its mouth and empty eye sockets. Most of her spells splashed off the armoured skin of its face, but one Incendio slipped between its jaws and struck the sensitive flesh in the roof of its mouth.

The basilisk roared in pain again, and it lunged toward the source of the spells. It barely missed as Vector jumped back. Not bothering to remove his clip-on sunglasses, Harry flipped over and scrambled forwards, sword in hand. When the snake brought its head down again, he pushed off with his feet, running the two or three steps of space under the huge arc of its body, and thrust the sword into its jaw with all his strength. The glimmering steel thrust through the cut flesh of its lower jaw, through the burnt flesh of its upper jaw, and straight through the beast's brain, emerging from the top of its head. Hermione, Ron, and Vector gasped as the Monster of Slytherin, a thousand years old, shuddered once and collapsed lifeless to the Chamber floor.

Right on top of Harry!

"Harry!" Ron and Hermione yelled.

"Potter!" Vector said. She didn't even try to levitate the carcass. She just pointed her wand and yelled, "Depulso!" The snake's body rolled off of Harry under the Banishing Charm, flipping Harry over in the process. "Are you alright, Mr. Potter?" she said worriedly, casting what few diagnostic charms she knew.

"Oww…I'll live," Harry groaned. Hermione wasn't sure Harry was the best judge of that, but her teacher seemed to calm down as she examined him—a little. "Is it dead?" he asked.

"Yes, Mr. Potter, it's definitely dead. Now, lie still. You're still in bad shape."

"Ginny?" he said weakly.

"Still out cold," Ron said. He dragged Ginny back to the group from where Vector had set her down. Hermione staggered toward them, clutching her chest above her cracked rib and still nursing her headache, feeling like she was about to collapse from exhaustion.

And then Riddle—Voldemort—strode toward them in a rage—still blurry, still transparent, but nearly solid, now. "You think you've won, Potter?" he ranted. "You've lost! You may have killed Slytherin's beast, but you still can't save Ginny! Lord Voldemort will return, and then I will kill every one of your friends and save you for last…I think I'll start with the mudblood."

Hermione started at the wicked wizard like a deer in headlamps. She didn't know what to do. Ginny was going to die, and her own chances of making it out of here still looked slim. But then, she made the connection: the diary, the broken fang, the hole burnt through her robes. She straightened up and pointed her wand not at Riddle, not at Ginny, but at the diary, and she prayed she had the strength to cast one more spell.

"Wingardium Leviosa!"

"What!" Riddle shouted.

The diary was light, but it was a small target to levitate across a large distance, and it was much harder than usual. It wobbled as she levitated it toward her with shaking hands, and then dropped as Tom lunged at her, quite possibly solid enough to touch her now, forcing her to duck and roll out of the way, further hurting her chest.

But it was then—not when Lockhart tried to Memory Charm them, not when she found out what had happened to the Weasley girl, not when the basilisk came out of the statue, but now, when he tried to throttle Hermione—that Septima Vector's anger boiled over, and in a moment of sudden clarity, she knew what she had to do.

"Not today, you son of a bitch! Accio diary!"

"No!"

But Riddle wasn't fast enough. The diary flew into her hand, and she threw it on the floor next to the broken off, foot-long basilisk fang and knelt over it. Hermione knelt over it, too, and recognition flickered in Harry's eyes, and he rolled over painfully to reach it. All three of their hands reached it at the same moment, and Ron's hand joined them a split second later when he saw what they were doing, even as he cradled Ginny in his other arm.

"No! Stop that!" Riddle shouted. He lunged at them again, but there was nothing he could do. The foursome lifted up the fang like a dagger and plunged it with all their might into the cover of the diary. Ink poured out of the cover like a torrent of blood. Riddle screamed a long, piercing scream that seemed to emanate from the diary itself, and then he vanished in a flash of light.

And Ginny's eyes flew open, and she gasped for breath.

"Ginny!" Ron cried with joy and clutched his sister tight to his chest. "Oh, thank Merlin!"

"R-R-Ron…?" Ginny said weakly.

"You're alright," he said.

"Ron! The monster! We have to get out of here!"

"It's okay, Ginny," Hermione said. She held up the destroyed diary for her to see. "It's all over."

"Hermione?" the younger girl said in confusion. Her eyes wandered from the diary to Professor Vector to the dead basilisk to Harry lying in pain on the ground. "Harry?" she gasped and started sobbing into Ron's shoulder: "Oh my God, Harry, I'm so sorry! I didn't want to do it, I swear—Riddle made me—he took me over—I couldn't stop him—I wanted to tell someone, but I was so scared—what happened? How did you kill it? What happened to Riddle?"

"Please calm down, Miss Weasley," Professor Vector said. "Riddle is gone, and Mr. Potter killed the basilisk. You're safe, now."

"But I'll be expelled!" Ginny cried. "I set a giant monster on the school!"

"I highly doubt that. Riddle told us everything. Being possessed by You-Know-Who is hardly grounds for expulsion. Now, we need to get you four to the Hospital Wing. Can you walk, Miss Weasley?"

"I…I think so." Ron helped her to her feet.

"Hermione?"

"I'll manage," she said for the third time that night, although she was wobbling and slipping in her sock-clad feet.

"Come here, Hermione," Vector said, and she propped up one of Hermione's arms on her shoulder and summoned her shoes. Harry tried to right himself, but it was clearly impossible. The professor pointed her wand at him and said, "Mobilicorpus." Harry rose off the ground, lying flat in the air. "Try to relax, Mr. Potter. We'll get you to help as soon as possible. Mr. Weasley, could you get that sword and the Sorting Hat, please?" Ron nodded and stuck them in his belt. Vector turned to the phoenix and said, "I'm sorry to trouble you further, Fawkes, but do you think you could carry the five of us—damn, Lockhart—the five of us plus one more up out of the Chamber?"

Caw! Fawkes crowed, and he nodded.

"Thank you, Fawkes. Let's go."

"Hermione?" Ron said as they stumbled toward the exit.

"Yeah?"

"Did you just hex You-Know-Who in the face again?"

"Oh, no," Hermione said in embarrassment, and she covered her face with her free hand.

A/N: Percutio: the Piercing Hex, based on the Latin for "pierce".

Viscera—: the beginning of the Entrail-Expelling Curse, based on the Latin for "organs".