It was quiet for a time after Valentine's Day. Even the Voldemorts seemed to be keeping quiet, content at least for the moment. If they had reached any kind of consensus on what to do about themselves, they didn't share it with Harry.
But then, one day on his way to his next class, he found himself being pushed down one of Hogwarts' many flights of stairs. Quick reflexes, honed from years of training with Wendigos, saved him from death in his tumble, or at least severe injury, but once again his belongings went flying.
His friends hurried to his side and helped him to the hospital wing, where Madame Pomfrey pronounced him heavily bruised but otherwise unharmed. He spent the afternoon in his underwear, slathered in bruise-healing paste, but the only class he missed was Lockhart's and so nothing worth worrying about.
What was worth mentioning was that most of his scattered belongings were returned – but not the Riddle diary. His friends couldn't understand why he was so frantic to find it, and he was reluctantly to explain at this stage of the game – all of them would freak out, but especially the light wizards. Draco might take it in stride – but then again, he might not. He was young yet and not as calm and collected as his father.
Yet nothing came of the diary's disappearance – not right away – and the diadem sat alone at the bottom of his trunk. Harry looked at it often, turned it over in his hands, but he was reluctant to put it on, to try interacting with the Voldemort inside (older, wiser, but weaker, more unstable). There was no telling how either of them might react.
The Diary-demort seemed to be avoiding him, or whoever had him was. He caught only the barest brushes at random times, and by the time he was able to pursue, the Dark Lord was already long gone.
But nothing came of it – until the day of the Gryffindor-Hufflepuff Quidditch match. The four boys were waiting in the stands for Hermione to join them when Professor McGonagall came out onto the field and announced that the match was cancelled. Ron and Draco were aghast and practically stampeded the professor while Harry and Neville waited – until they, too, were waived over.
There was a new petrifaction – Penelope Clearwater, a Ravenclaw prefect… and Hermione. She had figured out that there was a basilisk in the Chamber; she and the prefect had been looking around corners with a small compact mirror that McGonagall showed them, to avoid looking directly into the serpent's eyes.
Harry went back to his dorm without speaking a word. He didn't need to; their whole group was in shock, and split up after leaving the hospital wing.
He dug through his trunk and pulled out the diadem, eyed it for several long seconds, and then put it on.
"Hello, Harry."
A semi-translucent specter of an older Voldemort appeared, sitting an his bed. He looked to be in his late twenties to early thirties, skin deathly pale with scale-like patches and eyes the deep red of old blood. "Where is the other me?" he asked, his voice still smooth as silk.
"I don't know," Harry answered, "I was hoping you could tell me. Someone stole the diary."
A brief rictus of rage flashed over Voldemort's face. "Stole it?"
"Or took it back. Whoever brought it here. I got pushed down the stairs, and he disappeared. But he's back to his old tricks again – there's been another petrifaction. One of my friends."
Voldemort was silent for a moment. Then, "He didn't hurt you on purpose. He's the youngest of us, what's left of whatever innocence and gentleness we may have had that wasn't beaten out of us at that damned orphanage. He didn't intentionally target them."
"I know," said Harry, "but I need to take him back. I need to stop this. I don't want to hurt either of you, but I can't let you run wild either. Who had him before? Did he tell you?"
"No," said the Dark Lord, "and I never asked. You had us both, so it wasn't important."
Harry hissed a curse, unknowingly in Parseltongue, which made Voldemort sit up and take note, watching the boy intently. "I will help you find him," the Dark Lord said at last, "He is the youngest of us, and so also the most foolhardy; I will not let him be caught and destroyed, and harm us all in so doing. But he tempers my madness; I cannot promise I won't lose my temper and hurt you."
"That will be enough," Harry replied, also in the snake language, "It's been a while, but I still know how to take a beating."
Voldemort went still again, red eyes flashing. "Who?"
"Pardon?"
"Who abused you?!" he demanded, snarling.
"My aunt and uncle, and their son, Dudley. They've been dead for a long time now and my new family treats me well, but that's not the kind of thing you forget. When can we start?"
There was no direct way to locate or summon the diary, Harry learned; the current Voldemort had spelled both book and diadem against such things from the very beginning, though Tiara-demort taught him several useful detection and summoning spells anyway.
The diadem was far more sensitive to the diary than Harry himself was, and started making noise whenever it was nearby. But it soon became readily apparent that that wasn't enough; whoever had the diary was doing their damnedest to evade them, when they brought it out at all. It was no Ravenclaw, he knew that much. He'd carefully walking the entire tower one night with the diadem on, both of them searching… to no avail.
That only left most of the school.
The diadem grew frustrated quickly, a side effect of whatever madness consumed them, but Harry learned to leave him alone for a day or so to let him cool off.
It was during one of these cooling-off periods that Harry finally learned who had the diary – Ginny Weasley.
HER SKELETON WILL LIE IN THE CHAMBER FOREVER.
Harry sprinted for his dorm and the diadem, practically jamming it on his head the instant he laid hands on it. "He's down in the Chamber! Where's the entrance?!"
"First floor girls' bathroom, where Moaning Myrtle is," was the immediate reply, "What's he done?!"
"Taken one of my best friends' sister into the Chamber!" Harry grabbed his invisibility cloak and shoved it in his pocket, briefly grateful it could fold up oddly small, along with a small med-kit his fathers had pressed on him, holding a mix of muggle and magical remedies and a full box of bandaids. He didn't know what, if anything, he'd need, but he'd rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it.
He practically flew down the stairs – only to find Ron, Neville, and Draco with Lockhart at wandpoint. "You said you knew where the Chamber was and what's inside!" Ron was snarling at the man, "You're going – we're going – and we're gonna get my sister back!"
"Dear boy, no one regrets more than I-" Lockhart nearly pleaded, and Harry noticed his wand seemed to be missing, "But when I took the job – nothing in the job description – didn't expect – "
"-To be exposed for the liar and the fraud you are?" Harry demanded, pulling out his wand and descending to join his friends, "An incompetent wizard, taking credit for other people's work?"
"Now see here, boy!" the man snapped, "There was work involved! I had to track these 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. No, I've done a lot of work, Harry. It's not all book signings and publicity photos, you know! You want fame, you have to be prepared for a long, hard slog."
"Oh, I do. And guess what?" He shot sparks at Lockhart's feet, making him jump backwards. "Your real one starts now. Let's go."
"Where are we going?" Draco asked.
"Moaning Myrtle's bathroom."
The ghost was perched atop the central bank of sinks. "Oh, you're back," she said, "Did you find the owner of that book?"
"I did," said Harry, something dawning on him, "but now we're here for another reason."
"Oh?"
"Myrtle, how did you die?"
"Oooh! It was dreadful," she giggled, sitting up and shivering in glee, "I was hiding in this very bathroom because Olive Hornby had been teasing me about my glasses, when I heard someone come in and say something in another language. It was a boy, though, so I opened the door to tell him to use his own bathroom, and then – I died."
"How?"
"No idea. I just remember seeing a pair of great yellow eyes, right round this sink." She hopped down and gestured to the sinks she'd been sitting on.
A spectral image of the Dark Lord appeared. "Say, 'open,' in Parseltongue," he said, "and then tell everyone to get clear."
Harry did so, and the ring of sinks opened up, revealing a wide pipe that plunged down into the depths of the school.
He exchanged glances with the other boys. Then Draco growled, "Professors first," and shoved Lockhart in. The man shrieked the whole way down but seemed to land safely, so the rest of them followed, one at a time.
When they were all gathered at the bottom, Ron looking at his wand in concern, the Dark Lord reappeared, smirking. "You could have asked for stairs."
Harry gave him a poisonous look, but he only snickered. The phantom was perfectly dry, of course, and not at all wet and covered in filth from the pipe like the rest of them.
The boys chivvied Lockhart deeper into the warren of tunnels and pipes they found themselves in, crunching over the ancient bones of long-dead animals and following the phantom that only Harry could see. He led them further under the school, but Harry knew he was keeping them on the right path because they came across an enormous shed skin from Ariadne.
Harry lifted his lit want higher to see; the basilisk was sixty feet if she was an inch, perhaps longer since this was what she'd outgrown. He touched the scales with his free hand. "Magnificent. She's gotta be ancient."
"Almost a thousand years old," Voldemort said proudly.
"'She?'" Neville repeated hesitantly.
"Male basilisks have a crest on their heads," he said, gesturing to the skin, "This one's a girl, and what a girl."
But then there was a grunt behind him, a scuffle, and he whipped around to see that Lockhart had tackled Rom and now had his wand in hand. "Farewell, boys," he grinned, "I'll be sure to give you an honorable mention in my next book. I think I'll call it Sparring with Serpents. Obliviate!"
There was an explosion of energy, and Harry was thrown backwards amidst the tremendous crashing of falling stone. When he got up, the diadem was gone, fallen off his head, but he found it quickly and jammed it back on. The Dark Lord reappeared even as he whirled to call out to his friends. "Guys?! Draco? Neville? Ron?"
"We're here!" Draco called, coughing from the dust, "We're okay!"
"What happened?!"
"My wand cracked when we landed down here," Ron called, also coughing, "Must have caused his spell to backfire!"
"Thank heavens for small mercies," said Harry, "Neville, are you okay?"
"Fine," the Hufflepuff called, "A little bruised, but I'm okay."
"Good, I'm glad. What about Lockhart?"
"Unconscious, but still breathing."
"Fools' luck," Harry grunted, "I'm gonna keep going, try to find Ginny!"
"Okay! We'll try to move some of this rock, open up a way for you to get back."
"Got it!" Harry looked to the Dark Lord and nodded, and they set off.
It wasn't too much further to the entrance of the actual Chamber. Harry stopped in front of the doors and looked up at Tiara-demort. "Open," said the man, so that was what Harry hissed out. The doors swung open, revealing a long, low hall with stone serpents lining the central path. The Chamber was partially flooded, which made Voldemort scowl-
And on the far side of the hall, in front of a statue of what could only be Salazar Slytherin, a small figure lay limp on the ground, a tall figure pacing nearby.
"What the fuck!" Harry snarled, and sprinted for them, the phantom ghosting alongside him.
Diary-demort whirled around, eyes going wide at the sight of him. "How did you get in here?!" he demanded.
"I can speak Parseltongue, asshole!" the boy snapped, kneeling next to Ginny to check her pulse. It was weak and thready, but still there. "What do you think you're doing?!:
"Getting out of here!" Diary-demort shot back, "Going to find us – fix this!"
"And you honestly think this isn't going to make it worse?!" Harry darted back to his feet and glared at him, fists tightening.
"How?!"
"'How?!' Your emergence, your rebirth is being tainted by a death! And that of a pureblood! Killing is nothing to you, but what if it does something to you?! Have you done this before?! What if she gets stuck in that body with you?!"
"That won't happen – that's not the way this works! She is going in, so I can come out!"
"Okay, fine, let's say. That's how it goes," Harry snapped, the words springing to his mind full-formed from what had previously been half-thoughts – were the diadem's natural powers helping him? "You say you're a 'memory' of Voldemort – is her energy gonna be enough to sustain you? What if it's not? What are you gonna do, body-hop until you find your current self? And the world's a big place. Gonna let the weight of all those deaths twist you up, drag you down?
"And what if – what if by doing this, you can't merge back? What if by doing this from your end instead of letting him do it on his, you're making it so that you can't fix yourselves? You'll be stuck, two separate, broken versions of yourself with no hope of recovery!
"And what if you don't make it? You're sixteen! You're not at the height of your knowledge and power! – you really think you can face Dumbledore and all the teachers like this? What if you die before reaching your current self? And what if you dying makes the damage permanent, you impulsive Gryffindor?!
"What would you do – how would you feel if any of that – all of that came to pass and it was your fault?!"
The Chamber rang with Harry's furious tirade, and a series of emotions flashed over Diary-demort's face, too fast to define.
But suddenly he started to glow white. "What – what is this?" he demanded, frantically looking himself over, "What's happening?!"
To his and Tiara-demort's horror, his fingers started to dissolve into silvery mist. Tiara-demort's power lanced across the space between them, trying to stabilize the diary-spirit, but it only succeeded in causing the dissolution to propagate over to him, too. The phantom vanished, and a silvery mist gushed out of the diadem. When Diary-demort was completely dissolved, the mists whirled together into one – and then streaked upward and vanished through the ceiling, leaving Harry, Ginny, diary, and diadem behind.
Harry stared after them, panting, then whispered, "What the fuck."
Coughing interrupted any analysis he might have tried with the diadem's powers augmenting his mind; Ginny was waking up and trying to sit up. Harry knelt next to her and said, "Ginny? I'm Harry, Ron's friend. He's waiting for us. Can you walk?"
The youngest Weasley was weak, but she could stand. Harry scooped up the diary and tucked it and the diadem into another pocket, then offered the girl a sip of a small Pepperup Potion from his med-kit. That gave her enough energy to walk out of the Chamber under her own power.
Between the three boys, they managed to clear an opening and wake Lockhart, who seemed to have been hit by his own Memory Charm. He had no idea who he was or who they were, which was an improvement, and he followed them quite cheerfully back to the entrance.
Harry looked up the pipe, then at his friends, who looked as unsure as him. "Ah, up? Up? Reverse? – Oh! Stairs?"
The pipe rippled and changed into a metal staircase. "Should have thought of that going down," Harry grunted, and let the way back up to the school.
Harry had absolutely no idea how he managed to successfully bullshit his way through explaining what happened in the Chamber not only to the Weasleys, but also Professors McGonagall and Dumbledore. Lucius Malfoy was also present, but he, on the other hand, knew Harry well enough to see he was lying.
The story Harry told had some elements of truth, however: that he spoke with Voldemort – Tom Riddle – and got pulled inside the diary, that he learned the location of the Chamber and what was within, that they all journeyed down to the Chamber, that. Lockhart stole Ron's want and his spell backfired, that the passage collapsed and forced Harry to continue on his own.
He never let on that he knew who Tom Riddle was, but that was where the real bullshitting began. He said that Voldemort called the basilisk out of the statue, that he managed to dodge two strikes from the serpent by watching around it rather than looking directly at it in order to avoid its deadly gaze – "-but somehow, I guess with that second strike, when it hit the ground, it got the diary in its mouth and bit down? Because the next thing I knew, Riddle was screaming like he was dying, and the basilisk had ink just pouring out of its mouth. And then Riddle dissolved into mist and vanished through the ceiling…" There he made the briefest contact with Dumbledore's eyes, remembering the way the mist had whirled together and rushed away, before breaking to look at McGonagall. "…and the basilisk fell back into the water. If it resurfaced, it wasn't while we were there, but I closed the doors behind us anyway. And then… we came back, and here we are."
The Weasleys were beyond grateful, and Dumbledore gave each of the boys two hundred points for their houses and Special Awards for Services to the School. And Draco – Draco asked his father if they could buy Ron's new wand for him.
"We don't need your charity, Snake!"
"Consider it a replacement then, Weasel, 'cause I'm pretty sure I'm the one who landed on it and cracked it! And I don't know when your birthday is!"
Harry and Neville started giggling. "Ignore them," said the Ravenclaw to the adults, "They're always like this. They were arguing about ghost snakes earlier this year, 'cause I was hearing the basilisk in the walls."
"Harry!" both of them yelped simultaneously, which only made him laugh harder.
The school was formally reopened, having been threatened with permanent closure from the attacks, and Dumbledore canceled the exams, which disappointed both Harry and Hermione when she was restored from petrifaction.
For the last few weeks of school, Ginny was folded into their group. Hermione took to her especially; she still remembered her time during her first year when she had been alone, before she had battle-bonded with them. Neville befriended her, too, and a Ravenclaw girl from from her own year, Luna Lovegood.
And then the year was over, and they were all on the train. With Crabbe and Goyle, there were so many of then that they didn't fit into one compartment. Yet when Harry asked, the train expanded the compartment to fit all of them and their trunks and animals.
"How'd you do that?" Draco asked.
"I was thinking like going out of the Chamber, it gave me stairs when I asked. Thought it might be the same here." Harry shrugged.
The compartment expanded even further when Fred and George came by with a deck of cards for Exploding Snap. Both Crabbe and Goyle proved surprisingly good at the game, going toe to toe with everyone else in the compartment and winning. The twins challenged them both repeatedly and lost every time, finally giving up when they pulled into King's Cross.
Will, Hannibal, and Abigail were waiting at the station, and as last year, they all shared a long embrace before gathering Harry's things and heading for the car, bidding farewell to his friends after extracting promises to write.
Then they were safely home, Will asked, "So what happened? I can tell they're gone. What happened to them?"
Harry told them the whole story as completely as he could remember it over a light snack before supper. At the end of it all, they sat in silence until Abby said, "Well damn."
"Abigail."
"What? We were all thinking it! Memories in books and giant snakes with deadly eyes…"
"Regardless." Hannibal shook his head. "Harry, we told you to be careful."
"I know," said the boy, hanging his head, "I wasn't careful – I let Ginny take back the diary, then rushed in to save her without thinking too hard, but I wasn't sure how much time I had."
"Hannibal," Will said softly, laying a hand on his husband's arm, "Ignoring the fact that she's no longer young and naïve enough to trust so blindly, if Abby was taken, or…"
He didn't speak her name, but they all knew who he meant. Hannibal sighed. "Very well. But no hunts this summer."
That made Harry scowl. When he acted as bait to mark out prey for the Wendigos, at his age he attracted a very specific kind of prey, one he absolutely wanted to eliminate. "Ugh, fine."