Secrets of the Founders
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Summary: Voldemort's discovery that someone has been tampering with his horcruxes prompts him to use a very special artifact to do a little time traveling so that he can protect and booby trap his horcruxes, including a certain diary, a bit more thoroughly. However, this leads to consequences that no one could ever have forseen--as well as the discovery that Slytherin wasn't the only founder who's secrets could be found in a certain chamber...AU after the end of CoS… Very much Harry/Ginny (although not until a bit later on…)
Rating: PG for now, although it will probably go a bit higher later on in the story…
Ships: H/G is the only one I'll guarantee… The rest will be whatever my muse tells me they should be. He's very demanding about these sorts of things.
A/N: Hello all, and thank you for reading my story! As I didn't have access to my copy of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, I'm afraid that the beginning part of this chapter may be somewhat inaccurate in details, although hopefully the general story line will remain the same. If it bothers anyone excessively, feel free to email the corrected version of this scene to me, and I will certainly correct it. Also, now that I think on it, the scene that takes place in Dumbledore's office should really be taking place in McGonagall's office according to book cannon. Movie cannon messes everything up in my head though, and now it's already written, so so be it. The first two paragraphs are from JK's story, but from there things begin to go a bit differently… Please, please, please review!
Chapter One:
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, June 1992
"You're dead, Harry Potter." Tom Riddle's voice echoed laughingly throughout the cavernous chamber of secrets. Harry knew what he said was true. With a grimace, he pulled the basilisk's fang from his forearm, and slumped against the wall of the chamber. He had failed Ginny, he thought. He had failed everyone. Riddle's laughing seemed to be growing more and more distant, as Harry's vision grew cloudier, when suddenly, unexpectedly, Harry heard a reassuring trill next to his ear. "Look," Tom continued. "Do you see what Dumbledore's pet bird is doing? It's crying, Potter. Even the phoenix knows that you're dead…." And it was true. Great pools of diamond-like liquid were forming in the great bird's eyes, and then one by one, they began to drip onto the wound in Harry's arm…. If this was dying, Harry thought groggily, it didn't seem so bad after all. But Harry didn't think he was dying. In fact his vision was becoming more and more clear, and suddenly he felt strength coursing it's way once again through his veins.
With a somewhat undignified squawk, Fawkes took to the air once again, just in time to avoid Tom Riddle's nearly solid foot as it came arching towards it in a kick. "Of course," Tom was muttering… "Phoenix tears…they have healing powers. I forgot. But it's alright, in fact I think I prefer it this way…Now I'll be able to kill you myself. Now I'll prove once and for all that I am the greatest wizard who has ever lived, and stupid Harry Potter will be nothing more than a memory." He aimed his wand directly at Harry's heart. Suddenly Fawkes swooped past once more, and into Harry's lap dropped... the diary. Harry looked down at it for an instant, then plunged the basilisk fang that was still clutched in his hand directly into the heart of the diary.
"Noooooo…" Tom was screaming and ink was pouring out of the diary coating Harry's hands and then the floor around him with the sticky black substance. Harry pulled the fang out of the diary, only to plunge it back in once again with more force. Tom was still screaming, yet strangely, he seemed to be laughing as well. "You're dead, Harry Potter!" This time it wasn't a menacing whisper but a scream of rage. "You're both deeeeeeaa…." Tom's voice was fading and so was his body, and then he was suddenly gone, but the diary continued to spray ink in all directions. It burst suddenly open and the pages began to turn wildly as if there was a massive windstorm inside the chamber, and suddenly, incredibly, there was a windstorm. The wind howled blowing Harry's hair in all directions. Sword still clutched in one hand, Harry rushed over to Ginny, just as the ground began to tremble beneath them both.
Ginny was just sitting up, blinking rapidly and breathing heavily. Her eyes went straight to Harry. "Harry! Oh, Harry, it was the diary! Tom, he made me do it. I swear I didn't mean…"
"I know!" Harry shouted. "Ginny, we have to get out of here now!" Harry picked up his wand from the ground next to Ginny where it had clattered after Tom's disappearance and stuck it into the pocket of his robe. The ground had begun to shake more violently and cracks were beginning to appear in the stone floor below them. Seemingly taking in her surroundings for the first time, Ginny's eyes widened in panic, and she shot to her feet, only to clap a hand to her head and sway precariously. Harry put his hands on her shoulders to steady her, then, putting an arm around her waist, he began to lead her back towards the entrance to the chamber. Just as the long tunnel came into sight on the other side of the large double doors, boulders from the ceiling began to be hurled down all around them. Ginny screamed as one landed just feet from where they stood, effectively blocking them from entering the tunnel and returning the way they had come.
Wheeling around with his arm still firmly around Ginny's waist, Harry made for the nearest tunnel. Stones and boulders continued to fall like hail all around them, and soon the cracks in the floor would be too wide for them to jump over. A large rock clipped Harry in his shoulder, and he winced, but managed to retain a grip on the sword in his hand.
Hearing Fawkes' piercing cry as he swooped just above them, Harry glanced up, just in time to see a huge boulder come crashing down that would likely have killed both Harry and Ginny if Fawkes hadn't taken the blow for them. Fawkes hovered a moment, holding the boulder at bay above them, just long enough for Harry and Ginny to dash past, leaping over a crack in the floor. The stone walls of the chamber seemed to groan aloud as they began to collapse one by one. Harry saw Fawkes burst into flames moments before they reached the entrance to the tunnel. They couldn't have been more than a few feet into the tunnel when there was an almighty BOOM and the whole chamber collapsed upon itself, shooting smaller rocks and a great cloud of dust into the tunnel after Harry and Ginny.
After a few minutes of coughing and gasping for air in the dust filled tunnel, as they continued to run farther from the destruction occurring in the chamber, everything seemed to settle back to the earth and Harry finally allowed himself to relax. Still coughing, Ginny braced herself on the stone wall of the cave, then slid down to sit with her back leaning against it. Harry followed her to the ground. They sat there for several minutes, and except for the sound of their harsh breathing, all was deathly silent.
Harry retrieved his wand from the pocket of his school wand and muttered "Lumos," as the last of the torches had been extinguished in the chamber's destruction, and they hadn't extended down this tunnel in any case. Turning to Ginny, Harry was surprised to see silent tears running down her face, leaving clean streaks across her otherwise dirty skin. Harry imagined that he looked just as bad, if not worse, than she did. They had both slid down the grimy tunnel leading to the chamber, they were both covered in blood from the basilisk, (although Harry was a bit worse, having been drenched in it while Ginny had only been splashed,) and then dust from the avalanche of falling rocks had left them both looking a dull grayish color all over. Harry's shoulder still throbbed horribly from where it had been hit by a rock, and Ginny had been limping just before she slid to the ground. She touched her knee gingerly now, and Harry realized that it must have been hit by a flying rock as well. Perhaps that's why she was crying.
"Ginny," said Harry tentatively, "Ginny, please don't cry." He glanced down at her knee. "Does it hurt very badly?" he asked. Ginny ignored his question and began to cry more earnestly. "Please don't cry, Ginny," Harry repeated. "It's going to be okay, I promise."
"No it's no-o-o-ot!" Ginny wailed over a hiccup. "You nearly died, and it's all my fault, and Hermione, and Colin, and everyone! And Tom! Tom is going to be so angry with me! And you nearly died, and now we're trapped down here, and we're going to starve to death!" She was nearly screeching by the last sentence, and Harry winced.
"GINNY!" He said loudly. "Look at me!" Momentarily stunned out of her crying, Ginny looked up at him. "It's okay, really, it is. No one died--Madame Pomfrey said the Mandrake drought should be ready today or tomorrow. I'm okay, you're okay, and Tom's gone, he can't hurt you anymore."
"Harry," Ginny replied, "You don't understand. Tom--he's been making me do things all year. I didn't want to, but he made me, and afterwards I couldn't remember. But it's not only that--it's Tom. He's not just Tom. He's--he's--"
"Voldemort. I know," said Harry. "He told me, just now in the chamber. But it's okay, he's gone now."
"But he's not gone," Ginny whispered. "This Tom might be gone, but he is still out there, somewhere, isn't he? Biding his time. Ron said so last summer."
"Yeah, I reckon he is," said Harry. "But he's only a spirit, and he's weaker, probably, since he had to leave Quirrel. We're safe, for now, Ginny."
Ginny sniffed loudly and wiped her nose on one the sleeve of her robe. She only succeeded in making her face quite a bit dirtier. "We will probably starve to death, though," she said. "No one will be able to reach us down here."
"Maybe there's another way out," said Harry. "C'mon, let's see where this tunnel goes to." He stood up, reached a hand down to help Ginny to her feet, then reached down and picked up the sword from the ground.
Ginny gasped. "Where did that sword come from?"
"Dunno, said Harry. "Tom called up the basilisk, and I thought for sure you and I were both dead, then suddenly Fawkes flew in holding the sorting hat, so I put the hat on my head, and out came this sword...
"I used it to kill the basilisk," he added quietly. Ginny gaped at him. "What?" he asked.
"I just--I saw the basilisk, and I saw that it was dead, but the rocks were falling, and everything was shaking, and I didn't think… You killed the basilisk! With that sword!"
"Yeah, I guess. Fawkes gauged its eyes out first though, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to do anything. It was all just luck, really."
Ginny sniffed, and for a moment Harry was afraid she was going to start crying again, but she just laid a hand gently on Harry's arm and looked up into his face. "Thank you," she said softly. She gazed up at him for a moment, and there was no sign of the blush that usually came upon her the moment she met his eyes--though of course that may have been because she was covered from head to toe in grime and blood. After a moment though, she dropped her hand from Harry's arm, and turned to look down the passageway ahead of them. "Let's see where this tunnel goes, then," she said. Holding his lit wand aloft, Harry followed her down the tunnel.
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Several thousands of feet above Harry and Ginny, there was an uproar going on in the headmaster's office. A recently returned Albus Dumbledore and his head-deputy Minerva McGonagall had just finished explaining to a shocked Arthur and Molly Weasley that their daughter had been taken into the Chamber of Secrets and would most probably never be seen again, when suddenly they became aware that the castle was shaking all around them. Several of the silver instruments whirling and puffing gently began to whirl and puff quite vigorously, until the shaking grew to be too much and they began to fall from their positions on bookshelves and tables and smash on the floor. A heavy paperweight fell from the headmasters desk and shattered on the floor, and books began to shake out of their places and fall one by one to the floor as well. Albus Dumbledore looked up in alarm, Arthur Weasley swayed precariously in his position standing next to the desk, and Molly Weasley began to sob harder than ever into Minerva McGonagall's already very soggy shoulder. "Is it an earthquake, Albus?" cried McGonagall.
Dumbledore opened his mouth to answer, when suddenly the door to the office was flung open, and Percy Weasley, who also seemed to be fighting to keep his balance, entered the room. "Headmaster!" he gasped. "It's Ron--and Harry--they're missing!"
Molly Weasley passed out and pitched face forward out of her chair. Arthur attempted to catch her, but his sudden movement in the violently trembling room only made him lose his balance and fall to the ground as well--and then the shaking suddenly stopped.
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Ron Weasley was having quite a bad day. His dangerous, memory-stealing professor had attempted to curse him, causing a cave-in of rocks that might have killed him, and had left him stranded on one side of a cave, while his best friend and his little sister were trapped on the other side with a giant snake that only had to look at you to kill you, and now, just when he had begun to make real progress on the pile of rocks that he was separated from them by, the cave had begun to shake violently--nearly collapsing upon itself.
The resulting fall of rocks had undone all of the progress he was beginning to make on the original cave in. Professor Lockhart, who was just beginning to stir, had been hit right in the head by one of them, and was now quite unconscious once again. Not that he would have been much help even if he was awake, Ron thought. Ron was beginning to despair of ever getting through to Harry and Ginny, and by the sounds of things, the avalanche of rocks had been even worse on their side of the barrier than it had been on his. Of course, for all he knew, they might both be dead by now even apart from that.
And to top it all off, his wand was still broken. With a sigh and a groan of frustration, Ron left the alcove where he had doven for shelter when the rocks began to fall, and began the slow and tedious process of moving the mountain of rocks out of the way once again.
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It seemed to Harry and Ginny that they had been following the old winding tunnel for a number of hours, (although it had in reality been perhaps one hour at the most.) Yet in their current states of exhaustion, coupled with their desire to get out of the blasted chamber already, neither was measuring time very accurately. Ginny had taken over carrying Harry's lit wand for him as his injured shoulder had made it difficult for him to keep it raised in the air for long, and he was still carrying the sword from the sorting hat in his other hand.
Both had given up talking some time ago, as neither wanted to give voice to their thoughts that perhaps this tunnel didn't go anywhere at all--perhaps it simply continued on forever and ever, and they would be doomed to walk until they could walk no longer, at which point they would confront Ginny's previous fear of being left to starve to death.
Given these pessimistic thoughts, in addition to the fact that both were beginning to have a hard time keeping their eyes open, even as they walked, it shouldn't be surprising that neither noticed the great drop off in the floor of the cave right in front of them; and so it was with a great deal of alarm and confusion that Harry and Ginny suddenly found themselves tumbling head over heels down a huge sliding incline for the second time that day.
As strange (and slimy) as the first slide (the one from Myrtle's bathroom that led down into the chamber) that day had been, it was nothing compared to the second slide that Harry and Ginny were coursing through at the moment. At first they had seemed to be going downward on such a steep incline that it had seemed more a hole than a slide as it was very nearly vertical. After that though, it had evened out a bit, given them a chance to reposition themselves a little bit so that they were sliding downward feet first, rather than tumbling and rolling as they had been at first, (which was lucky, as the bruises they had incurred were beginning to ache quite badly.) After that, however, the slide seemed to become quite strange. Sometimes they were sliding downwards, sometimes they seemed to be sliding upwards, sometimes they seemed to be spinning around in circles, sometimes they seemed to be looping. The slide was pressing in upon them at one instant, then stretching them outwards in another. At first they had slid in darkness, (Ginny had lost her concentration when she fell, and Harry's wand had been extinguished in her hand,) but as they continued down (or up, or somewhere on) the slide, strange lights began to flash, and images began to flash on the walls around them, behind them, and sometimes right in front of them.
An eyeless basilisk was suddenly lunging at them, fangs bared, and then just as suddenly it was gone, and in its place was a crying girl with thick glasses, and then she was gone as well, and there was a woman screaming and a blinding flash of green light, then two wizards dueling furiously one with another, spells ricocheting off of one another and blinding Harry and Ginny, and then they were replaced with yet another image. An army of goblins was marching through a dreary swamp land, lances held high above the marshy water, when suddenly fiery arrows began to rain down upon them seemingly from no where. A woman tied to a stake was screaming as the flames surrounding her began to lick at her ankles and then her knees, while the woman tied to the stake next to her and in the same position began to laugh first giddily, and then cruely as the flames crept higher and higher. A great ship was being tossed to and fro on some unseen waves. Someone on a broomstick was chasing a golden snitch, and then the snitch became a small golden bird flying furiously to get away, but the wizard on the broomstick was closing in… Countless images continued to rush by them in a blur--much too fast for them to be able to see what most of them were, and the swirling, rushing, flashing lights grew continuously brighter. And then, finally, after what might have been several hours or perhaps only several seconds of sliding in countless directions there was a monkey like man directly in front of them crouched over what seemed to be a toad perched on a nest of something. He opened his mouth wide to let out a loud laugh, and they slid right through the open lips into his mouth and suddenly there was nothing but blackness and silence all around them, and the sliding had stopped, but there was nothing beneath them and they seemed to be suspended in mid-air, but before their brains could register even this they were falling and a moment later they landed in a heap right in the middle of the Hogwarts' Great Hall. Luckily, in the split second between when they began to fall and when they landed, Harry had the good sense to fling the sword away from their bodies--otherwise they might have been impaled quite messily. As it was, they only sustained some bruises to cover up their bruises.
Harry groaned and tried to turn his head to see if Ginny was okay beside him, but before he could a great many people were screaming and shouting and suddenly both he and Ginny found themselves bound from head to toe in thick ropes and a wizard it crimson robes was stalking towards them, wand raised menacingly.
"Who are you?" he demanded. "Who are you, and how on earth did you apparate into Hogwarts?"
End of Chapter One! Please Review!