13 June 1943

It was a beautiful Saturday.

The sun had streamed into the stone corridors from the windows, and outside one could see the clear, azure sky that had complimented the green lawns. One could even smell the aroma of the freshly grown grass inside.

The corridors were bare save for one Tom Marvolo Riddle walking briskly along the stone walls. The green and silver prefect badge was pinned to the folds of his black robes. Wearing the uniform was not required on weekends. However, he needed to.

Except, this was not his patrol time. For it was in another couple hours. At the sound of conversation, he hides behind a pillar. Watching as two girls pass by.

"…and they are still bombing London."

"Think the train station might still be standing for us to return home. I'm surprised that Professor Dippet hasn't…."

Tom adjusts the golden chain wrapped around his neck. The tiny clock still ticking away. He'd be damned by Salazar if he was caught out here. At this time, he was supposed to be helping a group of third-years revising for their exams in the Slytherin common room.

Leave it to Abraxas to not ask why I'd need one of these, he muses with satisfaction. When Tom had expressed the need to borrow a time-turner, the Malfoy heir went ahead and obliged without asking further questions. Even putting it under his own name as Tom had requested.

Tom wouldn't want it to reach Professor Dumbledore that he was borrowing a time-turner. Tosser was always suspicious of him.

When the coast was clear, Tom had straightened his leather diary in the pocket of his black robe before continuing on his way towards his destination.

Today was the day. It should be.

For the past eight times, his victims hadn't even bothered to meet the gaze of the serpent's eyes. Instead, petrified as if they were statues. Fail a ninth time, and he'd miss that window of that first time to attain immortality.

Maybe it might not be in vain after all, he muses with a smile when he reaches the girls' lavatory. Clearly hearing the sound of a girl crying her heart out. Did Olive say something again? Tom thinks with relish as he hears Ravenclaw's Myrtle Warren crying her heart out a few stalls away. No need to shed a tear, as I'll be putting you out of your misery soon enough.

His target in mind, Tom faces the turret of sinks. Imagine his initial surprise when a reading of Hogwarts, A History had clued to him where the Chamber might be. It was only an innocuous mention of the integration of plumbing into the ancient castle, and if he hadn't traced his lineage back to the best of Hogwarts' founders, he would have thought nothing of it.

Of course, his ancestor would build the chamber underneath the very room where he had once bonded with his beloved serpents.

It was a slight inconvenience, it being a girls' lavatory. Though Tom was not going to let that stop him. Thus his request of the time-turner.

"Open up," he hisses to the tiny serpent on one of the taps as Myrtle Warren had continued sobbing. Not paying attention to the Basilisk that would be unleashed from the depths of this castle.

30 June 1992

Lucius Abraxas Malfoy had sat back in the wingback chair behind his desk. Massaging his temples in frustration as he could feel the veins throb in his neck and face.

Between frustration and anger, he'd like to say he was more of the latter.

That blood traitor, he seethes, feeling the blood reach his face. Who does he think he is? What did he do to convince Fudge that idiotic stipulation was worthwhile? He doesn't have a Galleon to his tainted name.

This law was not only designed to protect his precious vermin but also to confirm what he'd suspected all along: That Lucius Malfoy had lied when he claimed to have been put under the Imperius Curse by the Dark Lord.

Part of this, Lucius had recognized, was his own fault. He was too arrogant to not even attempt to sway Minister Fudge to not get it to pass. Too confident that Fudge wouldn't bother to give it a single thought and not give it the light of day. Perhaps he should have made a few nudges to not have it passed, as he had done with the other useless stipulations before it.

Arthur Weasley was going to regret that he'd ever thought to think of such a bill. Lucius was going to ensure that Arthur would forever rue that day.

Hands shaking, he opened the top drawer at the center of his desk. Taking out a piece of his stationary when he noticed that thin, leather book just sitting in the corner.

Heart pounding, he abandons his stationary and picks up the aged journal. Gazing at the empty pages as he sifts through them. Ah, he remembered his conversation with the Dark Lord where he gave this to him back in early 1979.

"At the right time, should you make sure this gets into the school. That Hogwarts will be purged in the magnitude the likes of which it has never seen when I have attended."

That was before Victoria was born, and since then, the Dark Lord had fallen at the hands of a one-year-old boy (Lucius was skeptical of the claims that he was deceased, for the Dark Lord had boasted to finding the secret to immortality, even if he didn't disclose what it was). So far, Victoria had shown no interest in opening the Chamber of Secrets despite it being her birthright. Cementing to never for her disbelief in the existence of the Chamber (her fear of snakes would have complicated things even if she did believe the stories and knew what was beneath the school) and Draco telling him and Narcissa about her friendships with that Gryffindor and Slytherin Mudblood.

Not that Lucius wasn't going to do anything about it. After all, she was under the care of his best friend, who was tight with Potter's Mudblood mother in his early school days. The Dark Lord himself was able to scrap a few Mudbloods to join him, for blood status never mattered if skill and intelligence factored in.

No, he wasn't going to give the Dark Lord's diary to Toria. One had to surrender their autonomy for the diary to do its work, which he had divulged, and he was sure that the Dark Lord wouldn't want her to have it. Giving it to her would also endanger his friendship with Severus in the process, and Lucius didn't want to take the risk of losing that connection. Even if Severus was a half-blood who still lived in the Muggle slums where he grew up in.

If memory had served him right, Weasley's youngest daughter was going to attend Hogwarts the coming term. The term that Victoria was supposed to start before Severus had ensured that she'd start a year early.

Lucius feels the onset of a smirk as his plan begins to come together. Oh, how he'll revel the day when he drags Arthur Weasley's already polluted name through the mud, where people will believe that not every child in that pathetic litter adhered to his Muggle-loving ways.

Yes, this was the right time to plant the diary in the school.