I do not own…
Chapter Thirty: The Heir of Salazar Slytherin
Ever since that night Harry and Ron were afraid to get Vanessas' bad side again. They never seen her so mad like that before but understood as it was stupid of them to go the forbidden forest alone on Hagrids' word. Uma had stayed around under Vanessa's watch of course and they took her sword away. The princess witch explained to professor McGonagall that Uma was just a runaway witch that she knew from Auradon. Which in truth, was true. She couldn't stay long because of what's happening. Uma was amazed by the school with everything, with the moving portraits, ghosts, the food and the magic classes. They were coming out of Herbology when they spotted Harry and Ron hiding in the hallway and calling them. When they made sure no one noticed them the two witches walked away and hurried towards them.
"What are you two doing now?" Vanessa asked
'We just came back from seeing Hermione and we found this, look." Harry whispered and had her the crumble paper.
"Of the many fearsome beasts and monsters that roam our land, there is none more curious or more deadly than the Basilisk, known also as the King of Serpents. This snake, which may reach gigantic size and live many hundreds of years, is born from a chicken's egg, hatched beneath a toad. Its methods of killing are most wondrous, for aside from its deadly and venomous fangs, the Basilisk has a murderous stare, and all who are fixed with the beam of its eye shall suffer instant death. Spiders flee before the Basilisk, for it is their mortal enemy, and the Basilisk flees only from the crowing of the rooster, which is fatal to it.'
"So Hermione figured it out. It's a snake. That's why you could hear it." Vanessa smiled
"Wait, hold up. If it's a giant snake how is it moving around without anyone noticing it?" Uma asked
"Hermione seemed to have answered that too. The pipes." Vanessa said, showing her written part of the book page. "But if it kills by looking at it in the eyes how come people are petrified instead of dead."
"Harry figured that out. No one looked it in the eyes because they all saw the creatures' reflection." Ron said
"Right, Colin saw it through his camera. Justin saw it through Nearly Headless Nick. Hermione and the Ravenclaw prefect were found with a mirror next to them and Mrs. Norris saw its reflection from the water." Harry explained "And that's not all. You remember when Aragog mentioned that the dead girl from 50 years ago died in the bathroom. I believe she's Moaning Myrtle."
Before Vanessa could say anything Professor McGonagall's voice was heard from the speakers.
"All students return to their House dormitories at once. All teachers return to the hallway. Immediately, please."
The four looked at each other and decided to see what this was about. They hid behind the corner as all the Professors gathered where the first message was written.
"It has happened." Professor McGonagall told the staff. "A student has been taken by the monster. Right into the Chamber itself."
All the Professors gasped in fear and disbelief.
"The Heir of Slytherin has left another message. Right underneath the first one." Professor McGonagall said
Professor Flitwick burst into tears.
"Who is it?" Madam Hooch asked
"Ginny Weasley." Professor McGonagall said
Harry and Vanessa heard Ron gasped in disbelief.
Then Lockhard came walking in with a beaming smile.
"So sorry...dozed off...what have I missed?" He said
"Just the man. The very man. A girl has been snatched by the monster, Lockhart." Snape said "Taken into the Chamber of Secrets itself. Your moment has come at last."
Lockhart's smile faded.
More teachers started to chip in repeating all the things he had said to them before. This just made Lockhart pale more and stuttered for a bit but placed another fake smile on his face.
"V-very well." He said "I'll...I'll be in my office, getting...getting ready."
And he left the room.
"Right. That's got him out from under our feet. The Head of Houses should go and inform their students what has happened." Professor McGonagall said "Tell them the Hogwarts Express will take them home first thing tomorrow. Will the rest of you please make sure no students have been left outside their dormitories."
The teachers nodded left, one by one. Once they were sure the hallway was an enemy they came out of their hiding spot and looked at the message on the wall.
"Her skeleton will lie in the Chamber forever." Ron readed "Ginny."
"She's still alive, Ron." Vanessa said "Come on, Lockhart may be useless but at least we could tell him what you guys found out."
They set out and headed to Lockhart's office. When they opened the door they saw that everything in his office was empty and the man himself was packing.
"Oh...Potter, Weasly…" Lockhart said "I'm rather busy at the moment...if you would be quick…"
"What are you doing?" Vanessa asked "You going somewhere?"
"Er, well, yes." Lockhart said "Urgent call...unavoidable...got to go…"
"You're leaving? What about my sister?" Ron glared
"Well, as to that...most unfortunate…" Lockhart said, packing faster. "No one regrets more than I…"
"You're the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher!" Harry glared "You can't go now!"
"Well...I must say...when I took the job…" Lockhart muttered "Nothing in the job description...didn't expect…"
"You mean you're running away?" Harry said in disbelief. "After all that's stuff you wrote in your books…"
"Books can be misleading." Lockhart said
"You wrote them!" Harry shouted
"My dear boy, do you use your common sense. My books wouldn't have sold half as well if people didn't think I'd done all those things." Lockhart said.
"I knew it. You're a fraud. You just been taking credit for what a load of other people have done." Vanessa stated
"Vanessa, Vanessa. It's not nearly as simple as that. There was work involved. I had to track those people down. Ask them exactly how they managed to do what they did. Then I had to put a Memory Charm on them so they wouldn't remember doing it. If there's one thing I pride myself on, it's my Memory Charms." Lockhart explained
He banged the lids of his trunks shut and locked them.
"Let's see. I think that's everything. Yes. Only one thing left." Lockhart said
He pulled out his wand and turned to them but Vanessa already saw this.
"Expelliarmus!" She incarnated
Lockhart was taken back and his wand flew out of his hand. Uma caught it and aimed it at him.
"Unlike you Professor, I'm an expert in this field." Vanessa said
"What d'you want me to do?" Lockhart asked weakly. "I don't know where the Chamber of Secrets is. There's nothing I can do."
"You're in luck." Harry said, pointing his wand too. "We think we know where it is. And what's inside it. Let's go."
Uma pulled Lockhart to his feet, wand still pointing at him and pushed him. They marched him out of his office and down the nearest stairs and headed to the door of Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. Moaning Myrtle was sitting on the tank of the end toilet.
"Oh, it's you." She said when she saw them. "What do you want this time?"
"To ask you how you died." Harry said
"Ooh, it was dreadful." Myrtle said in 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?" Vanessa asked
"No idea." Myrtle said in a hushed tone. "I just remember seeing a pair of great, big, yellow eyes over there by that sink."
She pointed towards the sinks. Harry and Ron hurried over to it while Vanessa and Uma kept an eye on Lockhart. It looked like an ordinary sink until Harry saw it: scratched on the side of one of the copper taps was a tiny snake.
"This is it. Vanessa, this has to be it." Harry said
"Okay. Then how do you open it?" Uma asked
"Harry, say something." Ron said "Say something in Parseltongue."
"But…" Harry thought hard.
He never managed to speak Parseltongue without a snake in front of him. When he tried to imagine the sink as a snake he tried speaking but it didn't work a few times until it finally happened. The sink itself sank down and revealed a large pipe exposed, wide enough for a man to slide into.
Uma whistled.
"Okay, who's first?" She asked
They all looked back at Lockhart who tried to back away.
"Now, now, kids, what good will it do?" He asked feeble.
Uma pulled him back and pushed him towards the sink.
"Really, I don't think…" He started to say but was cut off when Ron pushed him in.
He fell in and they all heard him slide out of sight. Vanessa went down next. Harry and Ron followed after her and then Uma. The pipes were like a water park slide except it was endless, slimy and dark. There were more pipes in different directions with a lot of twist and turns. They fell so far down that they knew they were deeper below the school and the dungeons. It wasn't long till the tunnel ended and they all shot out with a wet thud and landed on the damp floor of a dark large stone tunnel.
"Wow, we must be miles under the school." Harry said
"Maybe even under the lake." Vanessa muttered and held up her wand. "Lumos!" Her wand lit up. "Come on. And remember, any sign of movement, close your eyes right away..."
She took the lead with the others following her. Ron and Uma kept their wands on Lockhart as they followed. They walked down the stone tunnel for a while until they noticed a few things. One: there was crunching noise when they were walking and they looked down to see that it was a bunch of bones of rats and other small animals. Second: there was something large and white up ahead. They walked up to it with caution and noticed that it wasn't moving. When they got closer they saw that it was a snake sink.
"Blimey, whatever snake made this has to be over 50ft long or more." Ron said
This made Lockhart faint.
"Pathetic this one is." Ron scoffed
In one fast move Lockhart grabbed Rons' wand and pushed himself up, aiming it at them.
"The adventure ends here!" He said "I shall take a bit of this skin back up to the school, tell them I was too late to save the girl, and you four tragically lost your minds at the sight of her mangled body...say good-bye to your memories!"
He raised Ron's Spellotaped wand high over his head and yelled, "Obliviate!"
The wand exploded with the force of a small bomb. Vanessa grabbed Harry's hand and pulled him away from the rocks that were falling down upon them. When the Potters looked up they saw a solid wall of broken rocks. Ron and Uma were okay but they were trapped on the other side and there was no way for them to get through. Lockhart was still alive but because Ron's Spellotaped wand the spell backfired on him. Now the man had no idea who he is. Knowing that the others were okay Vanessa and Harry continued walking. After a couple of steps they came face to face with the chamber door. Harry spoke in Parseltongue again and the snakes on the door moved, opening the door for them. They were standing 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. The two took out their wands and walked in the chamber with the look out for the basilisk. When they got to the middle they saw a huge statue that looked like Salazar himself up ahead. By the feet of it they saw Ginny Weasly laying on the floor with the dairy in her hand.
"Ginny!" Harry muttered
The two sprinted towards her. Vanessa checked the little witch's forehead and her pulse. Ginny was completely cold and her pulse was very low.
"She won't wake." A soft voice said
They turned around and saw a tall, black-hair boy that was leaning against the nearest pillar, watching. He was strangely blurred around the edges.
"Tom...Tom Riddle?" Harry asked
Riddle nodded.
For some reason Harry let his guard down but Vanessa didn't. She remembered her grandmas' warning about him so she didn't trust him. She kept her wand on him while Harry was busy with Ginny.
"What d'you mean, she won't wake?" Harry asked desperately. "She's not...she's not..?"
"She's still alive but only just." Tom said
"What are you? You're not a ghost." Vanessa asked
"A memory. Preserved in a dairy for fifty years." Tom smirked
He gave her a once over that unnerved her greatly.
"You've got to help, Tom." Harry said "We've got to get her out of here. There's a basilisk…"
"It won't come until it's called." Tom said
Vanessa heard a noise from behind her and took a quick look. Tom used this to quickly pick up Harry's wand. Harry noticed his wand was missing and looked around for it until he saw it in Toms' hand.
"Give me my wand Tom." Harry said
"You won't be needing it." Tom said calmly
"What d'you mean, I won't be-?" Harry said "Look we got to go, we got to save her."
"I'm afraid I can't let you two do that." Tom said "You see, as poor Ginny grows weaker, I grow stronger."
Both Vanessa and Harry looked at each other before looking back at Tom.
"Yes, it was Ginny Weasley who opened the Chamber of Secrets." Tom smirked
"No. She couldn't. She wouldn't." Harry replied
"It was Ginny who set the basilisk on the Mudbloods and Filch's cat...Ginny who wrote the threatening messages on the walls." Tom said
"But why?" Harry asked
"Because I told her to. You'll find 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." Tom smirked "She tried to dispose of it in the girls' bathroom. And then who should find it but you, Harry? One of the two people I was most anxious to meet. You see Ginny wrote about you two very often."
"And why did you want to meet us?" Vanessa glared
"I knew I had to talk to you two, meet you if I could. So I decided to show you my capture of that brainless oaf Hagrid...to gain your trust." Tom said
"Hagrid's our friend. And Victoria knew that you framed him." Vanessa glared
"It was my word against Hagrid's. Only Dumbledore and Victoria seemed to think he was innocent." Tom said
"They sure did see right through you." Vanessa said
"Dumbledore certainly kept an annoyingly close watch on me after that. 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 16-year-old self in its pages...so that one day I would be able to lead another...to finish Salazar Slytherin's noble work." Tom said
"Well, you haven't finished it this time." Harry spoke up. "In a few hours, the Mandrake Draught will be ready. And everyone who was Petrified will be all right again."
"Haven't I told you? Killing Mudbloods doesn't matter to me anymore. For many months now my new target has been you." Tom said to Harry. "How is it that baby with no extraordinary magical talent was able to defeat the greatest wizards 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?" Harry said "Voldemort was after your time."
This made Tom give them a sinister smirk.
"Voldemort is my part, present and future."
He turned around and used Harry's wand to write his full name.
TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE
With one wave the words moved around.
I AM LORD VOLDEMORT
'Hunter and Lucas are Voldemorts' sons.' Vanessa thought in disbelief.
"You. You're the Heir of Slytherin." Harry said in disbelief.
"You're Voldemort." Vanessa glared
"Surely you didn't think I was going to keep my filthy Muggle father's name?" Tom sneered before smirking "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."
"Albus Dumbledore is the greatest sorcerer in the world." Harry glared
"Dumbledore's been driven out of this castle by the mere memory of me." Tom sneered
"He'll never be gone. Not as long as those who remain are loyal to him." Vanessa said
Tom froze as he looked down at them with anger. Before he could say anything music was heard. The three turned towards the entryway and saw Fawkes flying towards them. When the phoenix flew over them it dropped the Sorting Hat in Harry's hands before landing on Vanessa's shoulder.
"So this is what Dumbledore sends his great defender." Tom laughed "To business. Twice...in your past, in my future...we have met. And twice I failed to kill you. How did you survive? I understand you Vanessas'. That protective charm her mother placed on her was created by Victoria herself. Sadly...she never told me her secrets since she found out mine. But you, Harry Potter is a different story. Tell me everything. The longer you talk the longer you stay alive."
"No one knows why you lost your powers when you attacked me. I don't know myself. But I know why you couldn't kill me. Because my mother died to save me. My common Muggle-born mother." Harry explained "She stopped you killing me."
"And we both saw the real you last year. You're a wreck. You're barely alive. That's where all your power got you. You're in hiding. Ugly and foul." Vanessa glared
Tom's face showed no emotion for a minute before forcing an awful smile.
"So. Your mother died to save you. Yes, that's a powerful counter-charm. I can see now...there is nothing special about you, after all. I wondered, you see. Because there are strange likenesses between us, Harry Potter." Tom explained "Even you must have noticed. Both half-bloods, orphans, raised by Muggles. Probably the only two Parselmouths to come to Hogwarts since the great Slytherin himself. We even look something alike….But after all, it was merely a lucky chance that saved you from me. That's all I wanted to know."
Vanessa looked at with a raised brow. She knew that Lucas had the diary first and must have figured out that he was his son. Was he actually trying to protect the identity of his sons'.
Tom walked over to the statue with a hand up and started speaking Parseltongue.
"Speak to me, Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts Four."
Slytherins' gigantic stone face moving. It's mouth started to open up wider and wider.
"Let's match the power of Lord Voldemort, Heir of Salazar Slytherin against the famous Harry and Vanessa Potter, descendants of Victoria Tepes." He said with a dark grin.