As the first days of Christmas holidays rolled around, Harry found some time alone to examine Myrtle's memory. He poured the milky white, translucent fluid into one of the sinks he'd stoppered and dove in. The memory was flickery and distorted, showing Myrtle stumbling upon a figure in the bathroom clearly crying, hissing things to a massive serpent whose head stuck out from a hole flanked by a few sinks.
"That wasn't the plan," the boy hissed, "We can't keep doing this or I'll be caught. I can't be expelled. I can't go back to the orphanage without magic. You're acting so strangely-" The boy stopped as Myrtle gasped, too focused on the basilisk to focus on the boy's face. The memory ended abruptly there and Harry pulled away, shivering from the dregs of death that clung to such a memory. Harry stowed the memory away and sat leaning against the sinks, reeling from the discovery that the Chamber had lain under his feet the whole time. The only thing he could think to do was get that diary to find out who wanted the Chamber open and why.
Harry swallowed and fought the impulse to dry heave again as he composed himself in front of one of the sinks. He would keep the stuff down, dammit. The polyjuice potion he couldn't manage to force down lay abandoned in the sink before him and even the old reliable pipes seemed to be rejecting the green sludge. Hermione was in another stall making suspicious retching noises while Ron had given up altogether and spewed his chunks in the drain that lay in the middle of the room. Draco, Pansy, Crabbe, and Goyle diverted their eyes out of respect.
"Harry, if you need to throw up, I really wouldn't blame you," Pansy said, quietly backing away from Ron's growing puddle of sick. Harry held up his index finger and pounded himself on the chest, still swallowing hard. He turned back to the mirror and observed his features changing. His hair lengthened and his face narrowed and his highly arched eyebrows furrowed in convincing shock and confusion.
"Oy! Why are you me, Potter?" Pansy grabbed Harry by the collar and spun him around to face her. Hermione emerged at the same moment and examined her fingers, which had turned into the thick, calloused hands of Gregory Goyle.
"Hermione," Harry groaned, "You mixed up the hairs. I'm Pansy." Hermione's hands flew to her face in horror and she bent to check the mirror. She screamed and jumped away.
"I'm not sure I'll ever get the image of Goyle wearing a skirt out of my head," Draco said, snickering. Goyle grunted and elbowed him.
"I've never been so self conscious about my height," Harry said, looking down at his now too-short pant legs. "Why have I never realized that you were this much taller than me?" Pansy shrugged and stuck her tongue out at him. Ron finally picked himself off the floor with a disgusted groan and looked at himself in the mirror.
"Blimey, that was rough," he said, washing his mouth out.
"I'll not have you putting your hands on my body. Get out of it this instant," Pansy said, petulantly stamping her foot. Harry put both hands on his hips in a mocking imitation of Pansy's stance.
"I need to change, Pan," he said, "Do you really have so little faith in me?"
Pansy's cheeks colored and she looked as if she were about to pounce until Harry chuckled and put his hands up in mock surrender. He transfigured his robes into a Slytherin girl's uniform and did the same for Hermione and Ron.
"Right, well, we won't know for sure how long you three have, but the sooner we get this done, the better," Draco said, beckoning to the door. "Pan, Crabbe, Goyle, stay here and hide in the stalls until we come back. You three can't be seen." Crabbe and Goyle grunted and obediently shut themselves into one stall. Pansy rolled her eyes and trudged into another. Harry and the others hurried down into the dungeons. The common room was blessedly empty when they arrived save for a few older students scattered about the spacious common room. Malfoy stood watch between the doors that lead to each dorm and the group barely stopped to take in the dark marble before each of them sprinted off in search of the entrance to the chamber of secrets. Harry made his way to the girls' dorm and closed the door behind him with a relieved sigh when he saw that it too was empty. While impersonating Pansy unnerved him, his ruse had worked and he could go on with his work. Treading softly, he crept into each room and bent to read the names on each of the trunks in search of Millicent Bulstrode's bed. His skin prickled as he walked between the swathes of green cloth draped over the beds. It took a few minutes to find Millicent's bed and a few more to rummage through the trunk, only to find that it was nowhere to be found. Replacing the lid, Harry turned to find a girl peering at him from a gap in her curtains.
"What are you doing in Millicent's things, Pansy?" The girl poked her head all the way out from the curtains and revealed herself to be Daphne Greengrass.
"I'm looking for a book she borrowed from me. You know how forgetful she can be," Harry lied smoothly, doing his best to imitate Pansy's signature sass. Daphne drew back her curtains and Harry could see how disheveled she really was. The few times he saw her around school, Daphne was always well groomed and hung around Pansy when she wasn't with Draco.
"Daph, what's wrong?" Harry rushed to Daphne's side as the poor girl rushed to dry her eyes and smooth down her flaxen hair.
"Pansy, I can't tell you," she said, a slight tremor running through her high-born accent. Harry did his best to be effeminate, crossing his legs and placing a comforting arm around Daphne's trembling shoulders.
"What is it, Daphne? You can tell me anything. You know you can," he cooed, brushing yet more tears from Daphne's face.
"It's the hissing, Pan. It's driving me crazy. A diary. It's telling me to-" Daphne bit her lip, drawing blood, and shook her head violently.
"Hey, hey, Daph. Look at me." She turned and Harry took that moment to dive into her mind as his eyes locked with her deep blue irises. What he found there was exactly as he found in Ginny's mind. This time, he didn't bother to confront the thing that caused her pain and instead evicted it with brute force and obliviated the rest of the memories associated with the diary. Harry pulled away with a start and looked to examine Daphne. Her eyes drooped and her sculpted brow furrowed in confusion as Harry put her to bed. The girl needed her sleep. As he lowered Daphne's head to the pillow, Harry could feel a lump through the cotton. He grabbed the diary and bolted out the door, desperate to get away from the Slytherin common room and make it somewhere private.
"You find anything?" He asked breathlessly as he met the other three. They shook their heads dejectedly.
"Let's get out of here before that potion wears off," Draco said in a low voice, gesturing to Ron's reddening hair. All of them walked as hastily as they could without drawing attention to themselves and stopped to breathe only when they burst through the bathroom doors.
"Finally," Pansy said, emerging from her stall, "Harry Potter, get out of my body this instant!" Harry chuckled and transfigured his clothes back to normal.
"Pan, there's nothing I can do but wait for the potion to wear off. Look, it's about finished. Happy?" Harry's face boiled and his body shrunk to its regular size.
"Well that was a bust," Ron said as he, too shrank and he tripped over his robes.
"Thanks anyway," Draco sighed.
"If it makes you feel better," Harry said as he transfigured Ron and Hermione's clothes, "I cast a few powerful silencing charms on the walls on the way out. I doubt they'll stop the weird things altogether, but I hope it will help all of you sleep," he said.
"Thanks. All of you," Draco, said, gesturing to everyone.
The next morning, Harry was alone outside in the clearing just past Hagrid's hut sheltered by low hanging trees. It was early and the sun had only just banished the dew from the grass and Harry sat cross-legged staring pensively at the diary in his lap. He wasn't sure what to do with it. Writing in it was the simple answer, but it seemed too easy, too stupid. Instead, he probed it with his magic. Though he approached it gently, the diary retaliated with a shockwave of its own that blasted Harry away from it. He flipped over backwards and almost lost a shoe before flipping the right way around and scrambling back to the diary that lay innocently on the grass as if nothing happened. The thing, whatever it was, had a generating source of magic, a magical core. A soul. Harry cursed for not thinking of it earlier and examined the diary closer with the Sight. There was a soul burning white hot with energy in its pages.
It is but a vessel, the floaters hissed. Caution. Interacting with it would affect you as it did the others.
"I know that," Harry huffed, straightening his coat and smoothing down his shirt, "but I need to talk to it."
Give the soul a physical form. Make it solid. Look into it to discover what it was in life.
"I can do that?" Harry was mystified at the thought of giving this thing a body. "Like a ghost?"
It is similar. Ghosts draw from the energy of emotions left over from their lifetimes. This piece of a soul would rely on you to exist. Take care, for it may take its toll on your energies.
Harry grunted and focused on the soul before him, lending it his magic and allowing the soul to show him the form it took in life. Beads of sweat formed on his brow as he concentrated. The amount of energy it took to create a person took its toll, but before he realized what he was doing, a boy a few years older than he appeared before him on all fours with an irritated expression on his face.
"How is this happening right now?" The boy's voice was deeper than Harry expected it to be and it cracked with barely controlled anger. "Why didn't you just write in the stupid journal," he continued, "It's a bloody journal. What else would you have done with it? How-how are you doing this? I don't understand and not understanding displeases me."
"My secrets are my own to keep, stranger," Harry replied coolly, arching an annoyed eyebrow. "You've been stuck in that little diary playing dangerous pranks on people and I just let you out to play for a while. Shouldn't you be more grateful?"
The boy looked at his translucent body and back at Harry. "I can tell that you're somehow supporting me with your magic, but it still doesn't explain how you did this."
"Very good," Harry said, surprised that the boy knew so much, "but I won't tell you more unless I get a name."
"I'm Tom," the boy spat disdainfully.
"Tom who?" Harry asked as if to a child.
"Riddle," Tom growled out.
"Well, Mr. Riddle, my name is Harry Potter and I'll let you in on just one secret. I'm a necromancer. I work with dead things."
Tom froze and looked at Harry with cold, steely eyes and said, "Don't call me by that filthy muggle name. I am Tom first and a Riddle second. You have the Sight, then?"
"Secrets, secrets, Tom. I answered one of your questions. It's my turn to ask," Harry replied. "Why are you trying to get people to open the Chamber of Secrets for you? You're only a soul. What would you have to gain?" Tom folded his legs beneath him and huffed.
"I'm trying to get my body back, obviously," he said, "and those pranks as you call them are unintended side effects." He looked down to inspect his fingernails. "I wasn't trying to hurt anybody, they were necessary casualties."
"You think putting people in the hospital wing is necessary? That attack on Justin the other day. You're trying to frame me, aren't you? That thing in the Chamber. What is it?"
"It's my turn to ask questions, Potter. You're a necromancer and that's rare enough," Tom hissed, suddenly reverting to parseltongue, "but how are you a parselmouth? I'm the only descent of Salazar Slytherin left. It should be impossible."
"I got hit with the killing curse by the previous Dark Lord when I was a baby," Harry replied, squinting his eyes at Tom. The last parselmouth to ever exist was Voldemort.
"A Dark Lord? You can't mean Grindelwald. He's still in prison." Tom looked sheepishly at Harry, his own gears turning.
"You're not fooling me, Tom. You would have seen glimpses of Voldemort in Ginny's mind or Daphne's. He's all anyone's talked about. No one my age has even heard of Grindelwald it happened so long ago. How are you related to him?" Tom only smiled smugly at him. After a few tense minutes, Harry sighed.
"Fine, different question," he said. "What is it? What is Slytherin's beast?"
"You mean you haven't figured it out? It's a basilisk, of course."
"It was one of my guesses," Harry shrugged. "Your turn."
"How are you so very good at occlumency? You're almost as good as me."
"I had a lot of practice," Harry replied, unconsciously rubbing the back of his head. "My mindscape has always been mine to control, but I still need more work. I have one hell of a headache thanks to you." Tom laughed and relaxed incrementally.
"I'll make you a deal, Potter," he said, still looking quizzically at Harry. Silently, Harry wondered just how much he was seeing. "As long as you have my diary, I'm completely helpless. If you help me with something, I'll stop these attacks. You're far more useful than those dithering girls and I don't even have to possess you."
"If you're so helpless, shouldn't the attacks cease? I thought you were behind all of it."
"No, not all of it." Tom's smug grin faded a bit. "I can't tell you why, but the attacks will continue even without me to goad them on."
"Harry!" A voice Harry recognized to be Hagrid's sounded behind him.
"Hide, quickly," Harry said as he hastily tucked the diary away into his robes. Tom snorted and threw up his hands.
"Where? We're in the middle of a clearing. If I moved now, he could see me."
"I don't know, go back into the diary!" Harry whipped his head around to gauge how far Hagrid was. When he turned back around, Tom was gone.
"In here," Tom's disembodied voice said, seemingly from nowhere.
"Where? You're in my head?"
"No, I'm in the diary, you fool. I'm simply using one of the more clever things I put on this diary. I used it on the girls, but since you are so frightfully good at the mind arts, it was much easier to establish a psychic connection with you."
"Harry!" Hagrid said, bumbling down into the clearing, "What're you doin' down 'ere by yerself so early in the mornin'?"
"I came out for a walk, Hagrid." Harry did his best to look troubled. "Justin's attack is still bothering me." Hagrid sighed and thumped Harry's back comfortingly.
"Oh I dun blame you. A sigh' like tha' could give anyone the spooks." Harry could still remember Justin's prone form and Nearly Headless Nick's frozen, agonized posture. He was astonished, now that he knew, at the thought that a basilisk's gaze could affect even a ghost. When the rest of the school turned on him, Harry decided that visiting Justin in the infirmary to fix him would only incriminate him further. He couldn't even begin to figure how to fix Nick when the staff could do little but let his body float where he'd been attacked.
"I haven't slept properly in ages. I thought coming out here would help," he lied smoothly. It was, again, only a half lie. Only sneaking into the Slytherin dorms could take his mind off of the latest attacks.
"Hagrid?" He continued, "Where did you come from? I didn't hear your cabin door shut."
"Oh, I came from the forest behind me house. I ha' to tend to my roosters.," Hagrid replied, diverting his eyes to a random spot in the sky. He was a terrible liar.
"Hagrid, what's wrong? You can tell me anything. Remember Norbert?" Harry flashed him the biggest doe eyes he could manage.
"No, no, honest. Somethin's been killing me roosters lately and I went to put up more chicken wire." Hagrid was still lying, but not about the roosters.
"A-anyway," Hagrid stuttered, desperately trying to change the subject, "we should head up to the castle for breakfast before we miss it."
"No, you go ahead, Hagrid. I'm not hungry." Hagrid trudged off without him and Harry made a beeline for the forest behind Hagrid's house.
"What on earth are you doing, Potter?" Tom's voice sounded in his head.
"I need to see what Hagrid's hiding," he said, pointing to the spiders scuttling madly towards the forest.
"Oh you needn't bother. I made the other two twits kill the roosters. They could kill my basilisk, you know."
"Hush, you," Harry said, following the line of spiders. The forest darkened slightly behind him as the sky became obscured with layers of spider silk. He reached a clearing occupied by a giant spider.
"The acromantula that damned fool of a half-giant raised grew quite a bit," Tom chuckled.
"What, Hagrid? You mean Hagrid is friends with this thing?"
"Friend of Hagrid," the spider said, "I am Aragog."
"Yes," Tom continued, both of them ignoring Aragog, "and I managed to frame him for opening the Chamber the first time I did it."
"You mean you're the reason Hagrid is stuck as this castle's groundskeeper?" Harry wanted to slap himself for neglecting to even ask Hagrid why he never finished at Hogwarts.
"Of course," Tom laughed over Aragog's speech, "the man's a menace with a wand. Graduating wouldn't have benefited him in the least. Thanks to me, he has this job and not a financial worry in the world. Half-giants can only get so far with or without an education."
"I can't argue with you there," Harry said wryly.
"I am sorry, friend of Hagrid," Aragog continued. It was clear at this point he meant to make Harry his next meal. Harry's wand was at once in his hand.
"Oh come off it, you," he said, quite annoyed that his conversation with Tom had been interrupted. He cast a few explosive incendios at a group of spiders that got too close. They were instantly set ablaze and Harry took a few weighty steps forward, brandishing his wand and ignoring the burning spiders' shrieks.
"You have a forest full of game, Aragog. You don't need to eat me in order to feed your family." Aragog made a move to trap Harry in spider silk, but reared back in shock as Harry set the silk ablaze as it appeared with little more than a gesture.
"Sorry, maybe I haven't made myself clear," Harry said, raising his wand again. "Ardentum." This time, a wall of spiders went up in flames as if internally and through their screams, Harry spoke again.
"Friend of Hagrid," he said in mock imitation, "I won't harm you because of Hagrid's attachment to you, but I will extend the same offer to your friends here. I've just reduced your little infestation to a manageable number. You don't need to hunt for more than what this forest can provide. You are not the monster that I'm looking for. Don't make me kill you. As a gesture of peace, I will warn you to get your family out and away from the castle and take care of them. Now, you will let me go free."
Harry spun on his heel and walked out of the forest, the spiders parting like a tide of writhing bodies. He went straight to the common room and wrote a letter to Solicitor Lawson before scrambling to Myrtle's bathroom. Tom appeared before him and Harry fixed him with a stern look.
"Why are you so intent on opening this stupid Chamber? What makes you think that running over this many people to do it is worth it?" Harry spoke calmly, but shook with barely restrained rage.
"I'm the heir of Slytherin, Potter," Tom said, airily, "It was my duty to open up that Chamber to eliminate any threat to the school. You needn't put on airs. I saw you torch those spiders. You enjoyed it. What I did to the students here is no different than what you did to those spiders. It was a warning. The more muggle students who got attacked, the more cautious the administration would be in handling muggle-born students."
"I guess I can see your point. You opened the Chamber in the 40's right? The war and the muggles' new warfare strategies made muggle students an even greater security risk. If they ever found a way to reach Hogwarts, no amount of magic could shield the magical world from a war that big." Harry thumbed his lower lip contemplatively.
"Yes," Tom said slowly, genuinely surprised, "though I don't think anyone's agreed with me before. Usually, I have to throw in some blood purity nonsense to get people to do something about it."
"I do agree. We're still dealing with nuclear threats now, except killing someone in the process of warning people is like killing someone with a warning shot. It misses the point and only makes muggle-borns think of magic as a threat that can't be left alone. You could risk discovery if a muggle-born child just up and died at school...unless it was an accident." Harry snapped his eyes back to Tom, who'd lost his color and fixed Harry with a raptor-like gaze. He opened his mouth to speak, but Harry held up a finger to his lips, eyes snapping to the door.
"People are coming," he said, sighing frustratedly. "We'll speak again later. Back into the diary with you." Tom was gone as Harry finished speaking. Mere moments later, Draco and company threw open the door.
"Potter, explain to me why you missed breakfast," Draco said, crossing his arms across his chest.
"I'm sorry, Draco. I went to take a walk on the grounds and time got away from me." Harry shrugged, looking helplessly to Hermione for help.
"Oh no, Potter," she said as Draco snapped his fingers, "You're not getting any sympathy from me."
"That's right, you's on a schedule master Potty sir." Dobby appeared at his master's call with a plate, big enough to require the strength of both Dobby's arms to lift, fully loaded with food.
"You haven't been keeping up with your meals, Harry. If you skive off one more, I'm telling godfather," Draco said. His expression softened minutely as he took in the bags under Harry's eyes. Harry threw his hands up in mock defeat and accepted the plate from Dobby. He sat cross-legged on the floor and stuffed a forkful of eggs into his mouth. The others joined him and sprawled out on the floor, revelling in the cozy warmth and freedom of the winter holidays. Their laughter ceased briefly when a low growling overpowered the low din and it took a few seconds for everyone to register where the sound came from.
"Harry, your body didn't know it was hungry until you gave it some food. That's the sound of mistreated belly," Ron said.
"You would know, Weasley. I can't think of anyone else who can speak gut quite as well as you can," Blaise said, winking. Ron threw a shoe at him for his cheek and had to run after it when Blaise picked it up and ran for the nearest toilet. The room erupted in laughter and Harry had to set a forkful of food down to keep himself from spitting it into Neville's laugh.
"Oh no, Potter," Pansy said, levitating the fork up to his face, "You're finishing every last bite."
"I will, I will, Pan, just give me a second," he said, taking the fork from him. "This is enough food to feed a small country or all the house elves in the castle."
"Or one Weasley," Draco joked as Ron fished his shoe out of the toilet.
Harry found some time to sneak away to the astronomy tower just before dinner and after an afternoon quidditch game.
"Your love for that game disgusts me," Tom said, appearing before Harry with a genuinely appalled expression, mouth stuck in a deep frown.
"What, you didn't like quidditch back in your day? Not even a little?" Harry was still breathless and giddy from his game.
"No, of course not," Tom said, smirking. "The game was beneath me. Broomsticks limit your true potential in the air. Now quidditch without broomsticks. That would be interesting."
Harry furrowed his eyebrows. "I might not know a lot of things because of my muggle upbringing, but I'm pretty sure you're pulling my leg."
Tom matched Harry's expression and said, "I'm a fifty year old spirit and even I don't use that expression anymore. No, I mean it. Flight without a broomstick. It's horribly difficult for anybody but one with my extraordinary power to achieve."
"How do you do it?"
"No, don't bother. You probably wouldn't be able to do it. You're, what, a second year?" Tom snorted.
"Try me," Harry said, arching one eyebrow. Tom studied him with a lopsided grin.
"Alright, then. Brooms ride the stream of magic like a train moves on tracks. If you can generate enough power to latch onto the stream with your own body, you don't need a broom." Harry smacked himself in the head.
"Why didn't I think of that?"
"Lack of imagination, I'm sure," Tom mumbled. "Anyway, like I said, you probably couldn't-" The last words died on Tom's lips as Harry rose a few feet. A choppy wind whipped Harry's clothes around and his tongue poked out of the corner of his mouth, concentration and strain showing plainly on his face. He lasted a few moments longer before gently lowering to the floor again.
"You were saying?" Harry nailed Tom with his best shit eating grin and laughed.
"You are talented," Tom chuckled, "but not nearly trained enough, not without a teacher."
"What, you offering? What makes you think you can do a better job than the teachers I already have?"
"Oh believe me, I am powerful. The things I could teach you," he said, a dangerous glint in his eyes.
"Yeah, well, I don't trust you yet. You still haven't told me anything useful about the Chamber." Harry's smile faded.
"Fine, how about another trade? I'll tell you what happened fifty years ago if you tell me why you're on an eating schedule." Harry worried his lip as he leaned against the ramparts.
"You first," Harry said defiantly.
"Fine, as a sign of good will." Tom settled himself against the wall next to Harry, mimicking his posture.
"Fifty years ago, I found the Chamber on accident while I was experimenting with parseltongue. I met the basilisk inside and she listened to me because I was a descendent of Slytherin. She explained to me that Slytherin meant to scare the school into tightening security measures concerning muggle-born students. If there was a potential danger at the school, the ministry would have to better monitor and educate muggle family members or risk discovery if the magical world proved too much a threat to the muggle world. I explained the state of the world to her and we agreed that the same measures would have to be taken to prevent disaster and force the sort of radical change the magical world needed. We were only going to petrify a few more students, only until the ministry could step in to regulate the school's admissions policies. Things went wrong when the basilisk started acting strangely. That muggle girl walked in on one of our conversations and her death ended our plans. I sealed the basilisk away and framed Hagrid to keep myself safe."
"I talked to Myrtle," Harry said, "and she revealed to me what she heard when she found you. You were going to get caught. What went wrong?"
"How did you manage that?"
"I exorcised her and she gave me her memories of that night." This earned him a skeptical look from Tom.
"Well, I don't know what went wrong. She just sort of snapped and went crazy. She wouldn't listen to me anymore. I thought after so many years of dormancy, she would be better and she was for a little while, but I'm losing her again."
"So you lost control over her and that's why you need me to help you figure out what's wrong with her."
"Please, Potter, I'm not incompetent," Tom said, crossing his arms. "I have a plan. I'm certain I can fix her. I never completed the ritual that would bond her to me. I need a body in order to have full control over her mind. Since you're a necromancer, I figure you can help me do that." Harry thought hard.
"That means we'll have to kill somebody, doesn't it?"
"Well, yes," he said, unaffected by the thought of killing someone, "but enough about the Chamber. It's your turn. Why do all of your friends treat you like you're made out of glass?"
"I was...hurt in the summer and it took me a while to recover," Harry began, haltingly.
"That's not a proper answer, Potter. It doesn't explain the eating schedule," Tom said quietly. "I've told you a lot. You have to return the favor." Harry looked down at his shoes.
"I didn't get enough food growing up because my relatives, they-" Harry cut himself off.
"You said you were raised by muggles," Tom said, dawning horror spreading on his face. Anger cracked his voice. "You were raised by muggles and they hurt you, didn't they? They hurt you because they thought magic was unnatural."
Harry looked at him, surprised. "How did you know? You sound like you speak from personal experience."
"I was left at a muggle orphanage. I'm the same as you," Tom said, still red-faced and furious. Harry grunted.
"That answer satisfy you?" Harry pushed away from the wall and made for the stairs. He didn't wait for Tom to reply and made his way down to dinner.