I guess I should have warned you all that I'm the queen of cliffhangers, lol. Tom just really wanted to make an entrance. Or exit? Whatever. This chapter (I promise) ends slightly less dramatically.

I'm also excited to let y'all know that I'll be participating in the Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition, as a Chaser for the Chudley Cannons! The first round starts soon, so be on the lookout for new stuff from me. This is my first time writing for something like this, so wish me luck?

"Y – You can see me?"

"Unfortunately, she was the only victim," Tom said, as if he hadn't heard Draco. "Her death caused the Board of Directors to threaten to close the school. I had to find a plausible scapegoat, and then close the Chamber."

"A scapegoat?" Draco asked.

"Hagrid had a pet acromantula," Tom shrugged. "It was quite simple to expose him."

Draco stared at him, and then looked back down at Myrtle's frozen dead body.

"Why?"

"You haven't guessed?" Tom smiled, dangerously. He lifted his wand, and traced flaming letters into the air. Tom Marvolo Riddle, they spelled. Draco felt his heart pounding in his ears. Tom swished his wand at the letters, and they slowly rearranged themselves.

I am Lord Voldemort, they now read.

"I am disappointed in you, Draco Malfoy," Tom said, twirling his wand slowly. "You don't seem as… eager… as I expected the son of Lucius to be."

Draco's mouth had gone dry.

"Do you not wish to join me? Or has Lucius betrayed me?"

"No!" Draco said, panicking a little. "I just… Myrtle – she, um, haunts this bathroom. I didn't know how she – how she died."

Tom seemed to relax a little. "Sympathy, Draco? Don't worry, we'll soon fix that."

"Uh, we will?"

"Of course," Tom drawled. "You'll be much more effective than that Weasley brat. She kept fighting me. Foolish girl."

Draco frowned, thinking quickly. "So… you were controlling her?"

Tom snorted. "She's the daughter of blood traitors. Perhaps she could be won over, with the right persuasion, but…" he shrugged, "this way was easier."

"Are – are you going to do that to me?" Draco felt his voice shaking, and hated it for betraying him. Tom's eyes roved over him.

"That depends entirely on how cooperative you are, Draco," he said, smoothly. "Have you ever studied Occlumency?"

"Yes," Draco said, honestly. He was a Malfoy, of course he had. It was important to keep the family secrets.

"Then just relax, Draco," Tom said, and then, with no warning at all, he was battering at Draco's mind. The illusion of the girl's third floor bathroom bled away, and he was left fighting off the Dark Lord's mind in a dim, gray fog.

He was trying everything he could remember from his Occlumency lessons, because he knew if Tom got in, he'd see that his father had definitely not been strictly loyal, and that would be very bad. There was also the fact that Draco didn't really want to be the one going around letting a basilisk petrify and kill people, even if they were mudbloods.

He threw up everything he could in the way – walls and hedges, memories that didn't matter, like of him riding a broom, or listening to Snape in Potions class. Tom paused a little at that one, and Draco remembered that Snape, too, had been a Death Eater with his father. He tried to distract him with another memory of Snape, but the Dark Lord wasn't so easily dissuaded again.

Draco knew he wouldn't be able to hold out forever, and was just about resigned to becoming a puppet, when a sudden pain lanced through his head. Abruptly, Tom was also gone. Draco reeled at the sudden disappearance, grateful, but very confused, until the pain was overwhelming, and he blanked out.

He awoke in the hospital wing, with a headache. He muddled awake, and then quickly wished he hadn't.

On the other side of the curtain next to his bed, he could hear people talking. They weren't very quiet, and their voices were really setting off his head. He was about to ask them to shut up, but then he recognized who it was.

Weasley and Longbottom.

Draco immediately decided it was worth the headache to find out why they were in the hospital wing.

"Feels a bit odd, talking to a Petrified person," Weasley said.

"Yeah," Longbottom agreed. "Wish you were awake. We might've figured this thing out by now."

"Also, our grades are dropping," said Weasley. "Any way you could wake up in time to help us write our foot of parchment for Binns, Hermione?"

Granger was petrified? Draco could hardly believe his ears. When had this happened? How long had he been out? More importantly, where was the diary?

He could hear Weasley and Longbottom shuffling around, and the sound of books and crumpled parchment being put away. He contained himself until they'd left, and the door to the hospital wing creaked shut, and then slowly levered himself out of bed, wincing as the movement jostled his head.

Draco rounded the curtain, and couldn't help shivering when he saw Granger's Petrified body on the cot. It looked too similar to how Myrtle's body had looked in the memory for him to be comfortable.

He looked aside, noticing a mirror on the bedside table, and frowned. Had she been found with it? What an odd thing for her to carry around. It was no secret that Granger was one of the least vain people at Hogwarts; she had no reason to carry a mirror around.

"Salazar's beard, Granger. You did," he whispered in realization, and immediately felt silly for talking to someone who couldn't hear him. She must have, he concluded, been using the mirror to look around just in case the basilisk came after her. She was too smart to ignore the fact that she was a target.

He almost didn't resent her for the title of 'brightest witch of their age'. (Almost.)

Draco snuck back into his own bed when he heard the telltale squeak of Madam Pomfrey's door opening and pretended to be just stirring when she looked in on him.

A diagnostic spell, and a headache potion later, Draco was free of the infirmary, after insisting that he had no idea how he'd been in a comatose state for two weeks. He hadn't had to fake his own shock at that – two whole weeks, lost! He was dreading the make-up assignments already.

He was going to go back to his room to take a nap – the headache potion had made him a bit sleepy – when he stumbled across a clearly not meant to be overheard conversation. Dumbledore, McGonagall, Snape, Sprout, Flitwick, and, for some reason, that idiot Lockhart, were discussing something in the Potions classroom.

He was already beaten to the eavesdropping business, he saw, observing Weasley and Longbottom crouched next to the door, completely oblivious to anything else. (Merlin, why did he keep running into them?) Since the best place was already taken, Draco was forced to find a spot behind the suit of armor across the hall.

He couldn't make out half of what was being said inside the classroom, just the occasional word that didn't help at all – but then Lockhart's boasting made everything loud and clear.

Ginevra Weasley was being held in the Chamber of Secrets, and Lockhart was going to rescue her.

If Lockhart managed anything of the sort, Draco thought, he'd curse himself to vomit slugs. There was no way Lockhart had the slightest idea where the Chamber even was.

Lockhart exited the Potions classroom shortly after, although the rest of the teachers stayed inside, continuing their discussion. Weasley and Longbottom looked at each other, and then scrambled to follow him.

Draco sat another minute behind the armor, trying to decide what to do. He could probably mimic what Tom had said and get in the Chamber easily enough. The only trouble would be the basilisk.

It wasn't like they taught students how to fight off basilisks in Defense. He didn't know any spells that could possibly harm a magical beast like that. They hadn't learned anything useful all year in there, and basilisks were almost mythical, anyway. Even in their regular textbooks (not Lockhart's narcissistic novels) they were –

Oh, Merlin, he was an idiot.

What did Draco realize? You'll have to wait and find out! Muahahahaha!