I have been a shutout for the past week, going to class with no intention of working. I usually sit with my head down, neglecting myself. Today, I had an epiphany, if I let myself live for her, I'm not really living, am I? I have to live for myself. I take a breath and look at myself in the mirror, water from my hot shower moments ago dripping onto the bathroom floor. "Sammy, you've got to get a hold of yourself. I feel you giving in, you sonofabitch, who do you need to-" I freeze, thinking of the microphone. "Right. Mom." I dry off, dress up and go to the dorm, grabbing my microphone and moving to a place where I won't be bothered, the hall on the third floor. I flick the switch and a smoke picks up, when it clears, Mom is standing in front of me.

"You look like crap." She says, before starting to walk towards me. I'm speechless. She's really here. Like she isn't dead, like she never had cancer. "I saw what happened to your girlfriend."

"She's not-"

"Yeah, yeah. 'Not my girlfriend.'" She mocks playfully. "You'd make a great couple. If you'd get the stones to ask her."

I hug Mom, she's really there. "I missed you so much." I whisper.

"I know, I know, but it was my time. I was in so much pain, son. It felt like getting stomped on by an Irish giant every time I moved. I tried to beat it again, but I wasn't strong enough."

"You're the strongest person I know." I object.

"Sammy, I love you. I know how tough this is for you, but you've got to open up a bit. I'll always exist in one form or another." She touches my cheek. "You rely on others' help to keep you alive. I love you, but you're grown up now. Hermione's given you the same affection I have, that care. A different kind of love than a mother's for her son, but still. It's time to put that chin up, Sammy. I don't expect you to be over my passing, but I want you to see the color of the world like you used to. Be happy. Be the Sammy I raised."

"I love you Mom."

"I love you too. Do you need me for anything else, Sammy?"

"No. Not right now."

"Then I have to go." She sighs, pulling me in for one last hug, then she disappears in a flash of light. I slowly move to stand up and leave, heading towards the cafeteria, where I find Harry and Ron.

"Hey, man, you alright?" Harry asks.

"Honestly? Not right now, but I'll be fine. Right now, I just need you two to fill me in."

"Hagrid didn't do it." Ron says, "Yesterday, we found this in Hermione's hand." he pulls out a note. "'Of the many fearsome beasts that roam our land, none is more deadly than the Basilisk. Capable of living for hundreds of years, instant death awaits any who meet this giant serpent's eye. Spiders flee before it and only the crowing of the rooster can kill it.'"

"The monster that's been attacking people is a snake, that's why I could hear it." Harry nods.

"But a basilisk kills people, why is no one dead?" I question.

"I asked that last night, Harry said it was because none of them directly looked him in the eyes. Colin saw it through his camera, Justin saw it through Nearly Headless Nick. Nick got the full blast of it, but he's a ghost, he couldn't die again." Ron shrugs as Harry nods along, "Hermione had a mirror and Mrs. Norris had a puddle. It's been using the plumbing to get around."

Harry looks at me, directly in the eyes, "Remember the person who died fifty years ago? It was a girl. Ron and I suspect it might be Moaning Myrtle."

"Oh, lovely. Doesn't she still hate me?"

"Maybe."

"Great." I mutter. "So, when are we doing this?"

"Tonight." Harry states.

Right before we head out after visiting Hermione. It's so weird doing this without her. We hear a voice over the intercom. "All students are to return to their house dormitories at once. All teachers to the second floor corridor. Immediately."

"We going there?" I ask. They nod. We run to the second door corridor and hide close to the teachers.

"As you can see, the Heir of Slytherin has left another message. Our worst fear has been realized. A student has been taken by the monster into the Chamber itself." McGonagall says, a worried tone in her voice. "I'm afraid we shall have to send the students home. I'm afraid... this is the end of Hogwarts." I've never heard her so distraught.

Lockhart joins his fellow teachers with a cheery attitude, "So sorry. Dozed off. What have I missed?"

"Just the man. A girl has been snatched by the monster, Lockhart. Your moment has come at last." Snape says. He's my favorite. No contest.

"My m-moment?"

"Weren't you saying just last night that you've known all along where the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets is?" Snape questions.

"D-did I? I don't recall…"

"That settles it. We'll leave it to you to deal with the monster, Gilderoy. Your skills, after all, are legend." McGonagall says, almost amused. Maybe it's just me.

"V-very well. I'll - I'll be in my office, getting - getting ready." Lockhart nods before rushing off.

"Who is it the monster's taken, Minerva?" Sprout asks.

"Ginny Weasley." McGonagall all-but-whispers. Ron's knees give way, and me and Harry catch him. I give him a look to ask if he's okay, but he stares dead ahead, terrified. I read the message.

Her skeleton will lie in the Chamber forever.

"Why her? She is a pure blood right?" I ask. Ron nods.

We walk along the halls towards Lockhart's class. Eventually, Ron speaks, "She knew something, guys. She'd found out something about the Chamber of Secrets. That's why she was taken. I mean, she was - is - a pure-blood. There can't be any other reason."

"C'mon. Let's go see Lockhart. He may be a brainless git, but he's going to try and get into the Chamber. We can tell him what we know…"

"D-d'you guys think there's any chance that she's not - y'know…"

"We'll find her, I promise that she'll be safe." I assure. Ron lets a weak smile cross his lips as we enter Gilderoy's classroom and climb the stairs to his office, his chests are open and being stuffed as we enter. "Loquela Recordin." I murmur. The recording spell. I slam the door and he slams one shut. "Care to explain yourself, jackass?"

Lockhart glares at me, the pain in his neck, the bane of his existence, his biggest threat for the entire year. "Well… uh… Urgent call. Unavoidable. Got to go…"

"What about my sister?" Ron spits.

"Well, as to that - most unfortunate. No one regrets more than I -"

"You're the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher! You can't go now!" Harry snaps

"I must say, when I took the job, nothing in the job description -"

"You're the one fucking teacher who's expected to step up. What's with the change of heart? Hmm? Not the same guy that fought a village of werewolves?"

"Books can be misleading."

"Yeah, sure, there's a lot of room for interpretation in getting into a fist fight with the fucking Wolf Man." I sarcastically growl, "Cut the shit, you fraudulent motherfucker."

"You know, Samuel, you and your father have been up my ass for my writing for years. You're a writer now, you should know those books wouldn't have sold half as well if people didn't think I'd done all those things. No one wants to read about some ugly old Armenian warlock, even if he did save a village from werewolves. He'd look dreadful on the front cover. No dress sense at all…"

"You didn't stretch the truth, you lied! You lied, you stole their memories and left their families to rot! If it wasn't for my dad, they'd be ruined! Kids growing up without a father, my father giving all of his time to the people in need, so he came home to find his wife dead! The wives whose husbands don't recognize them! The good men thrown in asylums for no good reason and called mental! But you don't care do you?! You only care about yourself."

Lockhart laughs, "You say it as if it wasn't difficult for me. I had to track these people down and ask them exactly how they managed to do what they did. No, it's not all book signings and publicity photos. You want fame, you have to be prepared for a long, hard slog. Unless you just make up things on the fly."

"There's a difference between fiction and fraud."

"Look," Ron cuts in, "is there anything you can do?"

"Yes, now that you mention it. I'm rather gifted with Memory Charms. Otherwise, you see, all those wizards would've gone blabbing and I'd never have sold another book, which is what Sam was referring to. I'm afraid I'll have to do the same to you lot, lest you do the same." He attempts to pull his wand on us, but we beat him to the punch.

"Drop it!" Harry commands.

"Well well well, how the turntables…" I pause, "I fucked that up, didn't I? Screw it! You're coming with us." I whisper a second spell to stop the recording as we leave the room.

We enter the bathroom to find Moaning Myrtle quietly sobbing as she hovers around the room. "Who's there? Oh…" She wears a flirty smile, "Hello, Harry. What do you want?"

"To ask you how you died." I cringe. That's the most disrespectful thing to do to a ghost, is ask them how they died, but Myrtle seems… flattered?

"Oooooh, it was dreadful. It happened right here. In this very cubicle. I'd hidden because Olive Hornby was teasing me about my glasses. I was crying, and then I heard somebody come in."

"Who was it Myrtle?" Ron interrogates.

"I don't know! I was distraught!" She snaps, "But they said something funny. A kind of made-up language. And I realized it was a boy speaking. So I unlocked the door, to tell him to go away, and... I died."

"Just like that?" Harry asks, "How?"

"No idea. I just remember seeing a pair of great big yellow eyes. Over there…" She points to the sinks.

"I always thought that design choice looked stupid." I mutter. "Move it. Gilderoy." I train my wand to the back of the professor's head and walk towards the sink as Harry inspects them.

"This is it. This is the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets."

"Well, are we waiting for the pope?" I ask, sarcastically.

"Say something in parseltongue, Harry." Ron encourages.

Harry pauses before speaking in a hiss. The circle of sinks pull revealing a hole with a drop that leads to the Chamber of Secrets. "Excellent, Harry. Good work. Well then. I'll just be going. There's no need for me…" Lockhart attempts to escape, but Harry and Ron catch him and shove him in front.

"Oh yes there is." Harry says, wand drawn. "You first." He points at the hole.

"Now, boys. What good will it do?" Lockhart whines.

"A bloody lot of good if it's a two-hundred-foot drop onto jagged rocks." Ron responds, I nod and smirk.

Lockhart begrudgingly steps forward and looks into the hole, legs shaking like a leaf in the wind. "Don't be a pussy." I grunt, before shoving him in, he screams the entire way down.

"It's really quite filthy down here." I take off the jacket Hermione gave me before nodding at Harry.

"Alright, let's go." Right before we jump, Myrtle stops us.

"Oh, Harry... if you die down there, you're welcome to share my toilet."

"…Thanks, Myrtle." He jumps in, then I do and Ron last as we slide through the pipes, ending up in a bunch of muck. Lockhart is assessing his robe miserably. "Lumos!" He calls, prompting his wand to light up like a torch. "Remember. Any sign of movement, close your eyes straight away." We nod, before looking around at the hundreds of little skeletons littered over the ground. Just ahead of us, something long and curved, like a giant snake.

"What's that? Up ahead?" Ron croaks.

"That looks like a... snake." Lockhart gulps before averting his eyes.

"…Maybe it's asleep?" Harry suggests. We hesitantly approach the giant coil, Harry, me, Ron and Lockhart and discover that it's just an empty shell.

"Bloody hell. Whatever shed this must be twenty feet long. Or more." Ron says. Suddenly there's a thump and we all turn to see that Lockhart has fainted, "Heart of a lion, this one." The redhead mutters. Then Lockhart springs up and snatches Ron's wand.

"The adventure ends here, boys! But don't fret. The world will know our story. How I was too late to save the girl. How you two tragically lost your minds at the sight of her mangled body. I'll even bind a limited edition in this snakeskin. Say goodbye to your memories." I can't help it and burst into laughter, "This is no laughing matter, Mr. Hedrich. What will that girl you love say? Hmm?" I continue to laugh. "Very well. Obliviate!" The spell backfires and launches him into the wall, then the cave starts falling apart, before a large wall of rocks cuts me and Harry off from Ron and Lockhart.

"Ron! Are you okay?" Harry calls.

"I'm okay. This git's not, though. He got blasted by my wand." I hear Lockhart start saying something only to be cut short. "What now?

"Wait here. We'll go on. We'll go on and... find Ginny. If we're not back in an hour…" He trails off and gives me a look. I nod.

"I'll try and shift some of this rock. So you can get back through. And, Harry -" Ron stops mid sentence.

"See you in a bit." Harry says, walking away. I follow him through the darkness in silence, until we come upon a large stone wall, a circle is engraved in it, and several snakes decorate it, keeping it sealed like a vault. "Are you ready Sam?"

"Call me Sammy."

He smiles, "Are you ready?"

"As ready as I'm getting, Glasses."

He hisses something in parseltongue and it opens, revealing a long corridor decorated with snake statues on either side until the back, where a statue of Slytherin himself stands. We spot Ginny and run towards her. Harry drops his wand and kneels over her. "Ginny! Please don't be dead. Ginny! Wake up! Wake up!"

"She won't wake." a voice says. We turn and see Tom Riddle. A pit forms in my stomach.

"Tom… Tom Riddle? What d'you mean, she won't wake? She's not…" Harry questions.

"She's still alive. But only just."

"Are you a ghost?" Harry asks.

"A memory. Preserved in a diary for fifty years."

"She's cold as ice. You've got to help me, Tom. There's a basilisk -"

"It won't come until it's called." Tom says. He's holding a wand. Harry's.

"Give me my wand, Tom." Harry demands, coldly.

"You won't be needing it."

"Listen, we've got to go! We've got to save her!"

"I'm afraid I can't do that, Harry. You see, as poor Ginny grows weaker... I grow stronger."

"She's dying, you son of a bitch!" I snap.

"Yes. I'm afraid so. But then, she's been in so much pain, poor Ginny. She's been writing to me for months, telling me all her pitiful worries and woes. Ginny poured her soul out to me. I grew stronger on a diet of her deepest fears, her darkest secrets. I grew powerful enough to start feeding Ginny a few secrets, to start pouring a bit of my soul back into her…" I glare, gritting my teeth in realization. "Yes, Sammy, she opened the Chamber of Secrets."

"No... she couldn't - she wouldn't." Harry denies.

"It was Ginny who set the Basilisk on the Mudbloods and the Squib's cat. Ginny who wrote threatening messages on the walls."

"But… why…" Harry whispers.

"Because I told her to. You'll find that I can be very persuasive. Not that she knew what she was doing. She was, shall we say, in a kind of trance. Still, the power of the diary began to scare her and she tried to dispose of it in the girls' bathroom. But then, who should find it... but you, Harry. The very person I was most anxious to meet."

"Why did you want to meet me?"

"Ginny told me all about you. I knew I had to talk to you, meet you if I could. So I decided to show you my capture of that brainless oaf, Hagrid, to gain your trust. Unfortunately Brooklyn here ruined that."

"Hagrid's my friend. And you framed him, didn't you?" Harry demands.

"It was my word against Hagrid's. Only Dumbledore seemed to think Hagrid was innocent."

"I'll bet Dumbledore saw right through you." I spit.

"Yes, just like you. I knew it wouldn't be safe to open the Chamber again while I was still at school. So I decided to leave behind a diary, preserving my sixteen-year-old self in its pages, so that one day... I would be able to lead another to finish Salazar Slytherin's noble work."

"Well, you haven't finished it this time. In a few hours Mandrake Draught will be ready and everyone who was petrified will be alright again." Harry spits.

"Haven't I told you that killing Mudbloods doesn't matter to me anymore? For many months now, my new target has been... you." He gives us an evil grin. "Imagine my disappointment when I learned Ginny had stolen the diary back from you."

"Ginny stole the diary from my room? But why?"

"She was afraid. Afraid you'd learn how to work the diary. Afraid I'd tell you just who it was that had been strangling all those roosters." We look at Ginny whose lips are now a shade of help, "Come now, Harry. Don't look so disappointed. Had Ginny succeeded in destroying the diary, she would have destroyed me. And we couldn't be having this little talk. And I have so many questions for you." I feel like a third wheel here, I quickly draw my wand. "Expelliarmus!" I fall backwards and my wand rolls into the Chamber. "You would've made such a promising Slytherin. Such a shame you fell in love with that dirty little mudblood."

"Hermione is twice the wizard you'll ever be."

"Confringo." An explosion launches me across the room.

"Sammy!"

"Don't worry!" I grunt, getting up on shaky legs.

"Now, Mr. Potter, about those questions…"

"What?" Harry growls.

"Well, how is it that a baby 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?"

"Why do you care how I escaped? Voldemort was after your time."

"Voldemort is my past, present and future." Riddle hisses, before spelling his name in the air, and with a swipe, the letters change from: Tom Marvolo Riddle to: I am Lord Voldemort.

"Told you this fucker was bad news." I grumble.

"You." Harry frowns, "You're the heir of Slytherin. You're Voldemort?"

"Surely you didn't think I would keep my filthy Muggle father's name?" He looks as if he's about to laugh, "No, I fashioned myself a new name, a name I knew wizards everywhere would one day fear to speak, when I became the greatest sorcerer in the world."

"Dumbledore is the greatest sorcerer." I growl.

"Dumbledore's been driven out of this castle by the mere memory of me."

"He'll never be gone! Not as long as those who remain are loyal to him!" Harry exclaims. I hear the statue of Slytherin shift and Tom grabs me and holds the wand to my neck. "Let him go!" Suddenly a phoenix flies in from the sky. "Fawkes?" Harry asks. The bird drops a hat.

"This is what Dumbledore sends his defender! A songbird and an old hat!" Riddle laughs as he kicks the hat away, and says something in parseltongue. The statue of Slytherin starts to move. "Keep your eyes open, we'll see just how powerful you are, Brooklyn."

"Actually, I'm from Queens." I clutch Snape's watch tightly and I feel it change in my hand, into a dagger. I shove it into Tom's ribcage and he lets go. A little too late, I see a pair of yellow eyes, and then nothing.

(A/N: I pulled a little sneaky on you. Stay tuned to find out what happens to Samuel Hedrich.)