The True Heir
"If the monster is a basilisk, or a cockatrice, we're gonna need to shield our eyes," said Sadie. She took a pair of goggles from her satchel. They were made of a kind of misty purple glass. Sadie put them on, looking really weird with the glassy lenses on top of her green plastic looking face. Harry couldn't quite stop himself smiling in amusement at her. She smiled back. "I've spoken forbidden words over these. They've got moonlight trapped in them, filtered through the distortion globe you kindly got me."
Harry remembered the Dark artefact he and Lucius had got her for her birthday. "Glad you er… had fun with it," said Harry.
She smiled with the lips of her mask and held out a pair to Harry.
"I'd look a bit dopey with those on, but whatever," said Harry, snapping them over his eyes. They made everything look purple and slightly misty. Harry supposed that was the idea.
"I don't need goggles, do I Mummy?" squeaked Chip from her bag.
"No, honey," said Sadie. "You're well past being hurt by a basilisk or a cockatrice. But either strange beast could hurt us. It it's a cockatrice, it has poisonous breath on top of a lethal stare." She took two strips of purple silk from her pocket and wrapped one around her mouth. "That's the best I could do at short notice," she said, her voice slightly muffled. She held the other strip of silk out to Harry.
Oh well, Harry shouldn't mind looking even dorkier. He wrapped the silk around his mouth. It was very thin silk so he could breathe through it. It put a slightly sweetish taste on his lips. Hopefully Sadie knew what she was doing.
"So we're going to rescue her?" said Chip. "Rescue Ginny Weasley? Like you said?"
"I don't know," said Sadie and her voice sounded sad. "I really hope we're not too late."
Harry thought it seemed a pretty remote chance that Ginny would still be alive, but he didn't see how he could turn back now. He peered down the pipe.
"Hang on!"
Sadie insisted on knotting them together with a purple rope. Harry could fit in the pipe while clutching Sadie in his arms. She had Chip and her bag roped around her.
It was like rushing down an endless, slimy, dark slide. Harry could see more pipes branching off in all directions, but none as large as his, which twisted and turned, sloping steeply downward, and he knew that he was falling deeper below the school than even the dungeons.
"Wheee!" squeaked Chip.
It was distracting with Sadie's cold, plastic cheek pressed against his. They thudded at a curve in the pipe, and Harry almost lost his grip on her. He held her very tight around her waist, making her squeak. Then the pipe levelled out. They shot out of the end and landed with a wet thud on the damp floor of a dark stone tunnel large enough to stand in.
Harry unknotted the rope and lifted Sadie to her feet.
"Thanks, Harry." She was swaying slightly.
" Lumos!" Harry muttered to his wand, and it lit up the darkness.
"That ride was fun!" Chip exclaimed.
"Glad you liked it," said Sadie. "I feel woozy." She was covered in greenish muck, somehow even more than Harry and Chip were.
"I'd say we're under the lake," Harry observed, squinting around at the dark, slimy walls. "Judging from the wetness. Just like the sewers."
Harry had grown up with his adoptive mother in a cave in the sewers beneath London.
Harry stared into the darkness ahead. He felt a prickling sense of unease. Was there spooky magic waiting for them? He felt a chill down his spine. "The dark could swallow us!" he said aloud.
"That does sound exciting!" said Sadie. "But don't forget about the monster. We've gotta be on our toes."
Harry and Sadie held hands, and off they went, their footsteps slapping loudly on the wet floor.
The tunnel was so murky that they could only see a little distance ahead, even Harry's wand giving off white light and Sadie's a beam of purple light. Their shadows danced on the wet walls and seemed monstrous to Harry's imagination. All around them, it was quiet as a grave. Sadie was looking around with keen interest. It was dead silent, so they both jumped when they heard a loud crunch!
"What's wrong?" squeaked Chip.
"I think I stepped on something," Harry said in a shaky voice. Sadie pointed her wand at the floor and they saw the source of the unexpected sound. It was a rat's skull, now crushed to splinters beneath Harry's shoe. The whole ground was littered with small animal bones.
"I hope Ginny's not a skeleton already," said Harry, remembering the Heir's writing on the wall.
"Ohhh, so do I," moaned Sadie.
"Could you bring her back as well, Mummy?" asked Chip. "If she were dead?"
"I doubt it, darling," said Sadie.
Then they saw something more impressive than a rat skull. Harry could just see the outline of something huge and curved, laying right across the tunnel. It wasn't moving.
"Don't move!" murmured Sadie. "Snakes hear vibrations." She flicked her ward towards the shape. The purple 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.
"Magnificent," Sadie breathed. "Basilisk skin." She ran her little fingers over the skin with a rustling sound, like she was stroking ancient parchment. "This is an old skin. The basilisk will be even bigger than this now."
"Is a basilisk better or worse than a cockatrice?" asked Harry.
"Yes, Mummy, what's the difference?" squeaked Chip.
"A cockatrice is from a hen's egg hatched by a toad or snake," said Sadie. "A basilisk is a deadly serpent's egg hatched by a chicken. Bad library books get them mixed up all the time. There are even authors of books about Gryffindors who forget that the Wizarding World has never used the metric system of measurement. A cockatrice is like a monster chicken. A basilisk is a massive snake. A basilisk doesn't have poison breath, so we don't need these." They took off their silk masks.
"Weird how none of the teachers worked out it might be a basilisk," said Harry. "Even Hagrid ought to have done, seeing as how he's had fifty years to ponder the mystery of the Chamber. He likes poisonous reptiles as much as you do."
"It is weird," said Sadie. "We're the first to have any clue since the Middle Ages."
"Magic is strange," squeaked Chip. "How does it make such a difference what hatches the egg?"
"You're right," said Sadie, smiling with the lips of her mask. "I think the Muggles might say that magic is 'chaotic.' What a birthright we have!"
"I'm not magic, am I Mummy?" said Chip. "Even though you are."
"Aw, Chip, I think you're magic," said Sadie, brushing the lips of her mask against his smiley mask. Harry thought it weird how her real lips would never touch anything again.
They crept around the giant snake skin carefully. The tunnel turned and turned again. Every nerve in Harry's body was tingling unpleasantly. He wanted the tunnel to end but dreaded what he'd find when it did. He didn't get why Sadie was happily humming an eerie tune. The ambience of this place was seriously creepy. Then, at last, torchlight was visible as they crept around yet another bend. Ahead he saw a solid wall, adorned with a carving of two entwined serpents, their eyes set with great, glistening emeralds.
Harry and Sadie held hands as they stood before the doors. There was no need to pretend these stone snakes were real; their eyes looked strangely alive, and he could guess what he had to do. He cleared his throat, and the emerald eyes seemed to flicker.
" Open," said Harry, in a low, faint hiss.
The serpents parted as the wall cracked open, each half sliding smoothly out of sight. Harry, was shaking from head to foot as they walked inside. 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.
They raised their wands and moved forward between the serpentine columns. Every careful footstep echoed loudly off the shadowy walls. Harry kept his eyes narrowed, ready to clamp them shut at the smallest sign of movement. The hollow eye sockets of the stone snakes seemed to be following him.
"Beautifully decorated," said Sadie.
With a jolt of the stomach, Harry thought he saw a serpent stir.
"What's wrong?" asked Sadie, sensing his unease.
"It's just this place," said Harry. "It feels weird and I don't like it."
"Aw." Sadie squeezed his hand. "It's the ancient magic left to ferment." She breathed through her nose. "Mm, you can almost smell it."
As they drew level with the last pair of pillars, a statue as high as the Chamber itself loomed into view, standing against the back wall. Harry craned his neck 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 grey feet stood on the smooth Chamber floor.
"Our founder!" said Sadie. "I'd be honored to meet him if he hadn't started this hatred of Muggleborn stuff."
Eerie lights flared, lighting a circle on the stone floor at the statue's feet. Ginny was lying in the center.
Sadie was about to start forward, but Harry restrained her. "It's probably a trap."
"Oh Weasley, please be alive," said Sadie, staring at the red headed girl.
They crept forward. Ginny was so pale she looked like a ghost = if a ghost had a lot of freckles. Sadie leaned down to touch her cheek. "Cold…" she whispered.
"Will she wake up?" asked Chip, fearfully.
"She won't wake," said a hollow voice. Harry spun around, pointing his wand at the source. 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, but there was no mistaking him.
Sadie peered at the intruder, her disfigured face creasing as her eyes narrowed behind the strange goggles.
"Tom?" Harry was very confused. "Tom Riddle? How are you here?"
"Yes. How indeed," said Sadie. She sounded odd, but that could be just her usual strangeness.
"What's wrong, Mummy?" squeaked Chip.
"Are you a ghost?" asked Harry.
"A memory," Riddle said quietly. "Preserved in a diary for fifty years."
He pointed at Ginny, and Harry felt a shock as he recognized the little black diary that he had found in the second floor girls' bathroom. The last he'd known, the thing had been in the bottom of his school bag. Now it was clutched possessively in Ginny's little hands, open, and glowing with a strange light.
"I think we know our enemy," said Sadie in a brittle voice. "Tom Riddle. What have you done to Ginny?"
Riddle smirked. "Ginny did it to herself. She spilled all her secrets to an invisible stranger. She told me everything, all her pitiful woes and worries: how her brothers tease her; how she had to come to school with second-hand robes and books, how humiliated she was at having detention until February," Riddle paused. "Partly my doing. I gave her the idea of getting revenge on the Malfoy boy with a Dark Spell."
"Draco's my friend!" Harry shouted. "You did that?"
Sadie was breathing through her nose and she was trembling.
"Riddle's a real villain isn't he Mummy?" squeaked Chip.
Riddle bowed. "Thank you. The worst, though was having to hear about Ginny'scrush on Ron's worst enemy: Harry Potter, one of those 'evil Slytherins'. She said she had a thing for bad boys, but not too bad. It's very boring, having to listen to the silly troubles of an eleven-year-old girl," Riddle continued, "but I was patient. I pretended to care and Ginny simply loved me. Ginny poured out her soul to me and I grew stronger on a steady diet of her deepest fears, her darkest secrets. Strong enough to start feeding Ginny a few of my own secrets, to start pouring a little of my soul back into her."
"It's obvious you're the Heir of Slytherin," said Sadie, glaring at Riddle. "You made Ginny open the Chamber of Secrets."
Riddle clapped mockingly. "Very good, freak. Ginny is the one who strangled the school roosters and wrote the messages on the walls. She set the Serpent of Slytherin on all the Mudbloods, and the Squib's cat. She didn't know she was doing it at first, of course, and it took her a long time to stop trusting her diary. Then she tried to dispose of me and that's where you come into the story, Harry Potter. Of all the people who could have picked it up, it was you, the person I most wanted to meet."
"Me? Why me?"
"Poor little Ginny told me all about you, Harry Potter. I know your whole fascinating history." Riddle's eyes flicked up to the scar on Harry's forehead. "I knew I had to learn more about you, talk to you, even meet you if I could. I showed you my framing that half-breed Hagrid, to gain your trust. I was furious when the next time it was stupid little Ginny writing to me again. She saw you with the diary, you see, and she panicked. What if you figured out how to work it and I repeated all her secrets to you? What if I told you who had been strangling roosters, attacking students, and so on? The foolish little brat knew she'd never be able to break into Slytherin House, so she caught you between classes, made your bag tear, pounced on you, and filched it right in front of you."
"So that was why the bag broke," said Sadie.
"Mummy, why is Riddle telling us all this?" squeaked Chip.
"Not you, little ghost," said Riddle. "I'm only interested in Harry Potter. I took a gamble that if I made Ginny write her own farewell on the wall and come down here, her brother would beg you to save her. Soon she will die, and I will be reborn. Until that moment comes, I've been waiting for you, Harry Potter. I have many questions."
"Like what?" demanded Sadie. She was glancing from Riddle to the diary.
"How is it that Harry escaped with nothing but a scar while Lord Voldemort's powers were destroyed?"
"What do you care?" demanded Sadie.
"Voldemort," Riddle said softly, "is my past, present, and future."
Riddle traced letters of flame in the air with his finger. The name Tom Marvolo Riddle appeared. With a snap, the letters rearranged to form: I am Lord Voldemort!
Harry's jaw dropped.
"You!" hissed Sadie.
"A worse villain than I thought then," squeaked Chip.
"It was a name I was already using at Hogwarts," Riddle continued with a smirk. "A name I knew wizards everywhere would one day fear to speak. They would fear me!"
"I don't fear you," Harry said defiantly.
"Nor do I," said Sadie, her masked face crinkling as she curled her lip. "You're just a leech now!"
She fired a jet of purple light with her wand at Riddle, but it passed right through him.
"Pathetic!" said Riddle.
Sadie took something from her satchel and muttered a strange sounding word. A cloud of smoke formed and coalesced into a cloud of buzzing insects that went for Riddle, but they flew around and threw him, having no effect.
Riddle hissed and Harry understood.
"Speak to me, Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts Four."
Slytherin's gigantic stone face was moving. The mouth opened to form a huge black hole. Inside the statue's mouth, something was stirring, slithering up from its depths. The huge snake emerged from the mouth of Slytherin's statue and hit the ground with a floor-shaking thud.
"Kill him," Riddle hissed.
Sadie snapped her fingers and the insect cloud dissipated. "Harry, you're a Parselmouth too!" she screeched.
"Back away!" Harry ordered the snake in Parseltongue. "You have no wish to harm me."
Riddle laughed. "Parseltongue won't help you, Harry Potter. It only obeys me! "
"For Darkness' sake Harry, try!" said Sadie.
"Stop where you are!" Harry commanded.
"Kill him!" Riddle ordered.
The poor snake didn't know what to do. It was confused from having conflicting orders hissed at it. It coiled upon itself, withdrawing into a place of safety and shelter to work things out. The yellow eyes closed.
"Come to me," Harry called out to the basilisk, putting all his force of will behind those words.
The serpent uncoiled itself. With only the sound of scales rubbing against scales, the basilisk slid quickly across the floor of the Chamber, answering Harry's call.
"No!" Riddle shouted, too stunned to speak in Parseltongue.
Sadie gave a sigh of relief. She was holding a bracelet with a little dagger attached to it. Was it her backup plan if Harry couldn't convince the basilisk?
"What is your name, my friend?" Harry asked.
"The great one named me Eridhne," the basilisk replied.
"A beautiful name," Harry hissed. "A beautiful serpent."
Eridhne curled around Harry, bringing her head up under his hand. He stroked her scales lightly. "No one has ever asked my name," she said sadly.
"This cannot be!" Riddle shouted. His voice clearly held his disbelief, his astonishment.
Harry glared at the ghost, or whatever he was. "It is a beast only the Heir can control," he said, paraphrasing the legend of the Chamber of Secrets.
"It is true!" Riddle shrieked.
"Then you are an unworthy descendant of Slytherin," said Sadie. "You're just an evil shade. Harry is the Heir of Slytherin now!"
With a giddy unreal feeling Harry repeated: "I am the Heir of Slytherin!"
The words escaped his lips in Parseltongue, and the world seemed to shift radically. Dust filtered down from the ceiling as the whole Chamber shook. For a second, Harry saw the world through a red haze. Eridhne had reared up sharply at his words. She poised herself to strike at Riddle.
"Begone, Riddle, and trouble this school no more," Harry commanded. His voice was unexpectedly deep and strong. "I banish you from Hogwarts forever."
Riddle drew himself up. "You dare?" he hissed. "I-"
"Strike!"
The basilisk lunged forward, striking at Tom Riddle. Harry nearly choked when her head passed right through the apparition.
"The diary!" said Sadie, wresting it from Ginny's grasp and throwing it on the floor of the Chamber. "Basilisk venom should work."
"Bite this book!" Harry commanded in Parseltongue.
Eridhne lowered her head and bit through the diary.
Riddle screamed in agony as the first drop of venom was absorbed into the diary. A hole appeared in his chest with bright light shining from inside him. More beams of light began to burst from his spectral form, before he burst into a flurry of sparks which faded away.
"Oh Darkness," said Sadie, giving a sigh of relief and putting her hand against her green forehead.
"Is it over, Mummy?" squeaked Chip.
"I really hope so."
"Thank you, my friend," Harry hissed to the basilisk.
"I never liked him much," Eridhne replied. "He never talked to me. He never asked my name. All he did was give orders."
"It's over now," Harry told her. "You must never hurt a student here again."
She reluctantly agreed. Harry looked all around the Chamber. There was a door at the back that he almost went to go investigate, but fatigue suddenly gripped him, and he would have fallen to the floor if Sadie hadn't caught him, although she almost collapsed herself under his weight.
"You're amazing, Harry!" said Sadie. "I think we've saved Ginny. I really hope we have…"
They hurried to the red headed girl who was stirring. Her eyes opened. She glanced at Sadie then Harry got the breath squeezed from him as Ginny clung to him and wept. What was Harry supposed to do? How could he comfort a hysterical girl?
"There, there, it's alright," said Sadie, patting Ginny's back.
"Yes, don't worry anymore. Mummy knows it's alright," squeaked Chip.
Ginny ignored them both and pressed her face against Harry's cheek. "I – Get me out of here, Harry," she said. "Take me with you."
"OK…" The strange quartet staggered out of the Chamber together. The great doors at the end of the hall opened as they approached to let them through.
"How do we get back up?" Harry wondered.
"Ah… that it a problem," said Sadie. "Does the basilisk have any ideas?"
"We can't get out of here!" Harry said in Parseltongue.
"I will carry you. "
They climbed onto the basilisk's back, and when they were all securely seated, she slithered rapidly to the pipe by which they had descended to these depths. She darted into it with the greatest of ease, and Harry had to keep his head down to avoid bashing it against the top of the pipe, since the basilisk was so very big that she nearly filled the whole thing. They were moving at great speed, and Harry felt his ears pop as the air pressure changed. When they reached the top, they hopped off her back and out into the girls' bathroom.
"Farewell, Master," the basilisk called to him, vanishing back into the depths of the school.