Disclaimer: Anything you recognize, I do not own


They marched Lockhart out of his office and down the nearest stairs, along the dark corridor where the messages shone on the wall, straight to the door of Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. They sent Lockhart in first. Hope was pleased to see that he was shaking.

Moaning Myrtle was sitting on the tank of the end toilet.

"Oh, it's you." She said when she saw Hope. "What do you want this time?"

"To ask you how you died." Myrtle's whole aspect changed at once. She looked as though she had never been asked such a flattering question.

"Ooooh, it was dreadful." She said with relish. "It happened right in here. I died in this very stall. I remember it so well. I'd hidden because Olive Hornby was teasing me about my glasses. The door was locked, and I was crying, and then I heard somebody come in. They said something funny. A different language, I think it must have been. Anyway, what really got me was that it was a boy speaking. So I unlocked the door, to tell him to go and use his own toilet, and then... I died."

"How?" Hope pressed.

"No idea. I just remember seeing a pair of great, big, yellow eyes. My whole body sort of seized up, and then I was floating away..." She looked dreamily at Hope. "And then I came back again. I was determined to haunt Olive Hornby, you see. Oh, she was sorry she'd ever laughed at my glasses."

"Where exactly did you see the eyes?"

"Somewhere there." Myrtle responded, pointing vaguely toward the sink in front of her toilet.

The girls hurried over to it. Lockhart was standing well back, a look of utter terror on his face. It looked like an ordinary sink. They examined every inch of it, inside and out, including the pipes below. And then Hope saw it: scratched on the side of one of the copper taps was a tiny snake.

"That tap's never worked." Myrtle called brightly as Hope tried to turn it.

"Hope, say something. Something in Parseltongue." Regina urged.

"But..." Hope thought hard. The only times she'd ever managed to speak Parseltongue were when she'd been faced with a real snake. She stared hard at the tiny engraving, trying to imagine it was real.

"Open up." She looked at her friends, who shook their heads.

"English."

Hope looked back at the snake, willing herself to believe it was alive. If she moved her head, the candlelight made it look as though it were moving.

"Open up." Except that the words weren't what he heard; a strange hissing had escaped him, and at once the tap glowed with a brilliant white light and began to spin. Next second, the sink began to move; the sink, in fact, sank, right out of sight, leaving a large pipe exposed, a pipe wide enough for a man to slide into.

"You're really creepy sometimes, you know that?" Cassie whispered to her.

"Well, I am a Slytherin..." Hope whispered back.

"Why are we whispering?" Regina questioned.

"You want to attract the attention of a giant snake?" Hope hissed back. She looked back at the pipe. "I'm going down there."

"So am I. Gavin's down there." Regina reminded her, clenching her fists with a determined look on her face.

"And I'm not staying up here alone, worrying you're dying somewhere in the plumbing." Cassie added.

"Well, you hardly seem to need me." Lockhart called over, with a shadow of his old smile. "I'll just-." He reached for the doorknob, but three wands were immediately pointed at him.

"You can go first." Regina snarled. White-faced and wandless, Lockhart approached the opening.

"Girls..." He said, his voice feeble. "Girls, what good will it do?"

"We don't have to run faster than a snake. We just have to run faster than the guy behind us." Hope told him with a cruel smile. She kicked him, hard, in the butt and he toppled into the pipe, quickly sliding out of sight.

Hope followed quickly. She lowered herself slowly into the pipe, then let go. It was like rushing down an endless, slimy, dark slide. She could see more pipes branching off in all directions, but none as large as theirs, which twisted and turned, sloping steeply downward, and she knew that she was falling deeper below the school than even the dungeons. Behind her she could hear Regina and Cassie, thudding slightly at the curves.

And then, just as she had begun to worry about what would happen when she hit the ground, the pipe leveled out, and she shot out of the end with a wet thud, landing on the damp floor of a dark stone tunnel large enough to stand in. Lockhart was getting to his feet a little ways away, covered in slime and white as a ghost.

Hope stood aside as her friends came whizzing out of the pipe, too. Regina tossed her braided hair back as she looked around, eyes wide. Cassie got slowly to her feet, looking like she was going to be sick as she saw herself covered in slime.

"We must be miles under the school." Hope's voice echoed in the black tunnel.

"Under the lake, probably." Regina agreed, squinting around at the dark, slimy walls. All four of them turned to stare into the darkness ahead.

"Lumos!" Hope muttered to her wand and it lit again. "C'mon." She said to the others.

Off they went, their footsteps slapping loudly on the wet floor. Hope took the lead, lighting the way. Lockhart was behind her, with Regina and Cassie bringing up the rear, Cassie's wand lit up as brightly as Hope's. The tunnel was so dark that they could only see a little distance ahead. Their shadows on the wet walls looked monstrous in the wandlight.

"Any sign of movement, close your eyes." Hope whispered over her shoulder to the others.

But the tunnel was quiet as the grave and the first unexpected sound they heard was a loud crunch as Regina stepped on what turned out to be a rat's skull. Hope lowered her wand to look at the floor and saw that it was littered with small animal bones. Trying very hard not to imagine what Gavin might look like if they found him, Hope led the way forward, around a dark bend in the tunnel.

"Hope, there's something ahead." Cassie whispered in horror. They froze, watching. Hope could just see the outline of something huge and curved, lying right across the tunnel. It wasn't moving.

"Maybe it's asleep." She breathed, glancing back at the other three. Lockhart's hands were pressed over his eyes. Hope turned back to look at the thing, her heart beating so fast it hurt. Very slowly, her eyes as narrow as she could make them and still see, Hope edged forward with her wand held high.

The light slid over a gigantic snake skin, of a vivid, poisonous green, lying curled and empty across the tunnel floor. The creature that had shed it must have been twenty feet long at least.

"Blimey." Regina said weakly.

There was a sudden movement behind them. Gilderoy Lockhart's knees had given way and he looked as though he had fainted.

"Get up." Regina said sharply, pointing her wand at Lockhart. Lockhart got to his feet and, lightning fast, he dived at Regina, knocking her to the ground. Hope and Cassie jumped forward to stop him, but too late: Lockhart was straightening up, panting, Regina's wand in his hand and a gleaming smile back on his face. Regina sat up her elbows on the ground, glaring hatefully at their teacher.

"The adventure ends here, girls!" He announced. "I shall take a bit of this skin back up to the school, tell them I was too late to save the boy and that you three tragically lost your minds at the sight of his mangled body. Say good-bye to your memories!" He raised Regina's Spellotaped wand high over his head and yelled: "Obliviate!" The wand exploded with the force of a small bomb.

Great chunks of rock rained down from the ceiling. Hope ducked and rolled, rolling straight into the snake skin. She frantically freed herself and rolled away again, only to look and see she was alone, staring at a solid wall of broken rock.

"Regina! Cassie!" She screamed, pushing herself to her feet and running over to the rocks.

"We're here!" Came Regina's muffled voice from the other side. "We're okay. This git's not, though. He got blasted by the wand." There was a dull thud and an 'ow'; it sounded as though Regina had kicked Lockhart.

"We can't get through!" Cassie called, sounding panicked. There was another thud and another 'ow' from behind the rocks. Hope wondered if Regina's goal was to kick Lockhart to death.

"We're wasting time." Hope told them. "Wait with Lockhart. I'll go on. If I'm not back in an hour..." Hope trailed off. If she wasn't back in an hour... What? Could Cassie and Regina even find another way out? Was there another way out? Was there really anything any of them could do anymore?

"We'll see if we can shift some of these rocks." Regina's voice came, sounding a little shaky. "So you can... get back through..."

"See you in a bit." Hope tried to inject some confidence into her voice before she set off alone past the giant snake skin.

Soon the distant noise of Regina and Cassie straining to shift the rocks was gone. The tunnel turned and turned again. Every nerve in Hope's body was tingling unpleasantly. She wanted the tunnel to end, yet dreaded what she'd find when it did. Her knuckles were white and her fingers were sore from gripping her wand so tightly. And then, at last, as she crept around yet another bend, she saw a solid wall ahead on which two entwined serpents were carved, their eyes set with great, glinting emeralds.

Hope approached, her throat very dry. There was no need to pretend these stone snakes were real; their eyes looked strangely alive. She could guess what she had to do. She cleared her throat and the emerald eyes seemed to flicker.

"Open." She commanded in a low, faint hiss. The serpents parted as the wall cracked open, the halves slid smoothly out of sight to reveal another short pipe. Hope crawled inside, trying to calm her racing heart. Within a few feet, she found herself at a ladder. Clambering down it, she looked around at the Chamber of Secrets.

She was standing on a stone walkway; water rose to the edges of it on either side and snake statues rose from the water in the most disturbing way possible. At the end of the walkway was a large semi-circular stone platform, facing a large stone head. Below it's mouth, on the floor, lay a figure, face-down with tomato red hair.

"Gavin!" Hope gasped aloud. She sprinted down the walkway towards the boy. She dropped to her knees beside the body and set her wand aside to roll Gavin over. His face was white as marble and just as cold, yet his eyes were closed, so he wasn't Petrified. Hope felt desperately for a pulse on his neck. When she found one, albeit a weak one, she nearly cried in relief. "Gavin, wake up. Come on, wake up!"

"He won't wake." Hope jumped and spun around on her knees. A tall, black-haired boy was standing off to the side, watching. He was strangely blurred around the edges, as though Hope were looking at him through a misted window. But there was no mistaking him.

"Tom Riddle?" The boy nodded. Tom Riddle 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?"

"A memory." Riddle correct quietly. "Preserved in a diary for fifty years." He pointed toward the floor near the statue mouth. Lying open there was the little black diary Hope had found in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. She wanted to demand more answers, but she had more pressing matters to attend to.

She tried to haul Gavin up so she could drag him, but he was too heavy for her alone. She was fast when she wanted to be, but she had never been very strong. Gavin was as heavy as she herself was; she couldn't drag her own body-weight easily. She looked at Tom Riddle imploringly.

"Help me, please." Riddle didn't move.

Hope, sweating, managed to hoist Gavin half off the floor, and bent to pick up her wand again. But her wand had gone. Slowly, she looked over at Riddle. He was twiddling the wand between his fingers. She lowered Gavin back onto the cold, stone floor and stood up straight.

"Give me my wand. If the basilisk comes-."

"It won't come until it is called." Riddle told her calmly.

"Called by whom?" She asked through clenched teeth.

"I've waited a long time for this, Hope Potter. For the chance to see you. To speak to you."

"You have to have my wand to speak to me?" She asked, trying to look as though she was calm and not planning on punching him in the face the first chance she got. "What did you do to Gavin?" She added; he was the priority here. He was dying, she knew it.

"Well, that's an interesting question. And quite a long story. I suppose the real reason Gavin Weasley is like this is because he spilled all his secrets to an invisible stranger."

"The diary." Hope realized.

"Little Gavin's been writing in it for months and months, telling me all his pitiful worries and woes. How his big brothers tease him, how his only sister ignores him in favor of her friends. How he didn't think beautiful, famous Hope Potter would ever like him." All the time he spoke, Riddle's eyes never left Hope's face. There was an almost hungry look in them. "It's very boring, listening to the troubles of an eleven-year-old boy. But I was patient. I wrote back. I was sympathetic, I was kind. I was the best friend poor Gavin had never had." Riddle laughed, a high, cold laugh that didn't suit him. It made the hairs stand up on the back of Hope's neck. "If I say it myself, Hope, I've always been able to charm the people I needed. So Gavin poured out his soul to me and his soul happened to be exactly what I wanted... I grew stronger and stronger on a diet of his deepest fears, his darkest secrets. I grew powerful, far more powerful than little Mr. Weasley. Powerful enough to start feeding Mr. Weasley a few of my secrets, to start pouring a little of my soul back into him..."

"What did you do?" Hope demanded.

"It was Gavin Weasley who opened the Chamber of Secrets. He strangled the school roosters and daubed threatening messages on the walls. He set the Serpent of Slytherin on four Mudbloods and the Squib's cat."

"He wouldn't."

"But he did. Of course, he didn't know what he was doing at first. It was very amusing. I wish you could have seen his new diary entries... far more interesting, they became... Dear Tom, 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. But I don't think it's paint-."

"Stop!" Hope cut him off. "You sick little-."

"It took a very long time for stupid little Gavin to stop trusting his diary." Riddle continued as though she hadn't spoken. "But he finally became suspicious and tried to dispose of it in the very place he found himself coming back to, again and again... And that's where you came in, Hope. You found it and I couldn't have been more delighted. Of all the people who could have picked it up, it was you, the very person I was most anxious to meet..."

"You've met me." Hope told him. "Leave Gavin alone."

"It's already done." Riddle said carelessly. "Gavin told me all about you. Eyes as green as a fresh pickled toad. Hair as red as a red brick road. And, of course, your fascinating history." His eyes roved over the lightning scar on Hope's forehead and their expression grew hungrier. "I knew I must find out more about you, talk to you, meet you if I could. So I decided to show you my famous capture of that great oaf, Hagrid, to gain your trust-."

"Hagrid is my friend! You framed him, didn't you?"

"It was my word against Hagrid's, Hope. Well, you can imagine how it looked to old Armando Dippet. On the one hand, Tom Riddle, poor but brilliant, parentless but so brave, school prefect, model student... On the other hand, big, blundering Hagrid, in trouble every other week, trying to raise werewolf cubs under his bed, sneaking off to the Forbidden Forest to wrestle trolls... But I admit, even I was surprised how well the plan worked. I thought someone must realize that Hagrid couldn't possibly be the Heir of Slytherin. It had taken me five whole years to find out everything I could about the Chamber of Secrets and discover the secret entrance! As though Hagrid had the brains, or the power! Only the Transfiguration teacher, Dumbledore, seemed to think Hagrid was innocent. He persuaded Dippet to keep Hagrid and train him as gamekeeper. Yes, I think Dumbledore might have guessed... Dumbledore never seemed to like me as much as the other teachers did..."

"I bet Dumbledore saw right through you."

"Well, he certainly kept an annoyingly close watch on me after Hagrid was expelled. 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."

"But you haven't finish it. You just caused a minor annoyance. No death and the people petrified will be fine tomorrow morning." Hope told him, growing in confidence. If she could deal with a guy with two faces, she could deal with a sixteen year old with some kind of sick, twisted hero complex.

"Haven't I already told you?" Riddle snapped at her. "Killing Mudbloods doesn't matter to me anymore. For many months now, my new target has been you. Imagine how angry I was when the next time my diary was opened, it was Gavin who was writing to me, not you. He saw you with the diary, you see, and panicked. What if you found out how to work it and I repeated all his secrets to you? What if, even worse, I told you who'd been strangling roosters? So the foolish little brat waited until you left your bag somewhere and stole it back. But I knew what I must do. It was clear to me that you were on the trail of Slytherin's heir. From everything Gavin had told me about you, I knew you would go to any lengths to solve the mystery. Particularly if one of your best friends was attacked. And Gavin had told me the whole school was buzzing because you could speak Parseltongue... So I made Gavin write his own farewell on the wall and come down here to wait. He struggled and fought and became very boring. But there isn't much life left in him... He put too much into the diary, into me. Enough to let me leave its pages at last... I have been waiting for you to appear since we arrived here. I knew you'd come. I have many questions for you, Hope."

"Long walks on the beach. Yes. No. To get to the other side." Hope told him dryly. "Wand. Now." She growled, holding out her hand. Of course, it wasn't going to be that easy.

"How is it that you, a little girl with no extraordinary magical talent, managed to defeat the greatest wizard of all time? How did you escape with nothing but a scar, while Lord Voldemort's powers were destroyed?" There was an odd red gleam in his hungry eyes now.

"Why do you care? I thought you were all gun-ho about Slytherin, not Voldemort."

"Voldemort is my past, present, and future, Hope Potter..." He pulled Hope's wand from his pocket and began to trace it through the air, writing three shimmering words:

Tom Marvolo riddle

Then he waved the wand once and the letters of his name rearranged themselves:

I am Lord Voldemort