Harry went to bed before anyone else in his dormitory that night. This was partly because he didn't think he could possibly stand Fred and George singing "His eyes are as green as a fresh pickled toad", one more time, and partly because he wanted to examine Riddle's diary once more, and knew that Hermione and Ron both thought that he was wasting his time.
Harry sat on his four-poster bed and quickly flicked through the pages, searching them for ink that not one of them had a single trace of. He then pulled out a new bottle of ink, dipped a quill into it, and dropped a blot on the first page of the diary.
The ink shone brightly on the page for a second and then, as though it was being sucked into the page, vanished. Excited, Harry loaded up the quill a second time and wrote, "My name is Harry Potter."
The words shone momentarily on the page and they too sank without trace. Then, at last, something happened.
Oozing back out of the page, in his very own ink, came words Harry had never written.
"Hello, Harry Potter. My name is Tom Riddle. How did you come by my diary?"
Harry quickly responded. "Someone tried to flush it down a toilet. I found it in a bathroom."
The words soon disappeared, and new words Harry had not written were oozing back out of the page. "Flush it down a toilet? How … undignified. Lucky for me that I recorded my memories in more than just ink."
The soul in the diary was furious, far angrier than his words hinted, but he knew to keep that fury concealed. "I knew that this diary, this record, would be opposed. People who wanted the past to remain buried. Ink is not any protection at all."
"What do you mean," Harry wrote.
The Diary quickly responded. "Ink alone is not a protection of any kind, but sufficient magic can be. This diary holds frightful memories, events that happened at Hogwarts School. I recorded them here."
Harry was writing almost the instant the diary stopped. "That's where I am now. Hogwarts. Terrible stuff has been happening. Do you know anything about the Chamber of Secrets?"
Harry's heart hammered and his breath quickened as he wrote. Thankfully, Riddle's reply came very quickly, his writing becoming untidier as though hurrying.
"They told us it did not exist. They were quite wrong. In my fifth year, the Chamber was opened and a monster attacked several students. A little girl died. I caught the monster's keeper and he was expelled. But the Headmaster, Professor Dippet, forbade me to speak up. He gave me a trophy and warned me to keep my mouth shut."
Though Harry did not know it, all of these words were carefully chosen.
Harry nearly upset his ink bottle in a hurry to write back. "It's happening again now. There have been three attacks and no one seems to know who's behind them. Who was it last time?" He was writing as fast as he could.
"I can show you", came Riddle's reply. "I can take you into my memory."
Harry hesitated now. He had no idea how this would work. Of course, he had no idea how this conversation was working either. Still, he hesitated just enough.
He saw fresh words forming.
"Let me show you."
Harry paused for just a second more, and then wrote his acceptance.
The pages of the diary began to blow as though caught in a high wind, stopping halfway through May. Harry saw that the little square for May the thirteenth seemed to have turned into a television screen.
His hands trembling, he raised the book to press his eye against, and before he knew what was happening, he was tilting forwards; the window was widening, and he was pitched head first through the opening in the page.
He felt his feet hit solid ground, and stood, shaking, as blurred shapes around him suddenly sharpened.
But then something important happened without Harry's knowledge. The piece of soul in the diary sensed an invasive fragment of soul asleep within the boy's own soul. That fragment matched the signature of the diary.
Stunned, the diary could not immediately act on this realization. Then, as it showed Harry the memory, it began to plot and to plan.
[o]
For a split second, both Harry and Riddle, wand still raised, stared at it. Then, without thinking, without considering, as though he had meant to do it all along, Harry seized the Basilisk fang on the floor next to him and plunged it straight into the heart of the book.
The soul fragment that had been the diary knew instantly that the diary was lost, that it was damaged beyond repair, and that it itself would be lost if it did not act. In an instant, it was back in the diary, forever cutting off its link to Ginny Weasley for the plan to work, and as ink flowed from the diary in torrents, the fragment of soul flowed through that ink over Harry's hand and arm. Slowly, then not slowly, the soul-binding ink flowed up Harry's right arm, over his shoulder, up his neck and his face. Then it touched his scar.
For an instant, there was pain beyond anything Harry had ever imagined. It was pain beyond endurance.
Harry's sight blinked out and he collapsed unconscious.
He awoke to what seemed a warm floor … not exactly a floor though. It didn't seem quite real, and neither did he.
He was surrounded by what looked like light and fog. It wasn't a fog, but images were forming out of the not-fog. He could not touch the images, but he could see them and recognize them, and he thought the images were real.
And now he could see the floor clearly. But there was nothing to learn about it.
He stood, still not a hundred percent sure that he was real, but feeling more so.
He seemed to be alone, in this space that didn't seem to be a space at all.
Soon it came to his attention that he was naked. Alone, it did not upset him, but it certainly proved he was not in the Chamber of Secrets.
And then he heard noise. It was a ghastly noise – twisted, ugly, foul. Tainted.
When he saw the source, it gripped his mind and became the only thing he could look at. It had the shape of a human child, but surely nothing had ever looked less like a child. It was hairless, its skin rubbed raw, red and black like dried blood. It lay on its back, evidently unable to move – one leg was missing. One arm too. One ear was missing. One eye.
It was repellant. It was attractive. He was sickened, but he could scarcely look away.
Now he wished he were clothed.
"My child," came a sudden voice. A voice he had never heard in all his memories. A woman's voice.
He whipped around when he heard that voice. It was someone of whom he had no memories at all. But barely had he seen her before he was flinging himself into her embrace.
"My child," she almost whispered. "My miracle," her voice trailed over and past him as he simply closed his eyes and clung.
He didn't know how long they stood there, but he ached for it again the moment she let him go, even just to watch him.
"Have I died?" he asked, suspecting it to be the case.
She did not immediately answer, turning her head around to look at the vast emptiness. Finally after what seemed ages and ages she faced him again.
"I think not," her voice still nearly a whisper.
This did not make sense to him. "Not?"
"Not," she repeated.
"But how?" Harry wondered, perplexed. Surely he must be dead if he was seeing her. "And why?"
She didn't answer.
Ironically this let him know the answer almost immediately. "You did this. You're why I survived."
She flinched badly.
"What did you do?" he pressed.
"What only I could," she demurred, not answering his question at all.
For a while they were silent. As his mother looked around, she eventually asked him, "What does it look like here?"
Harry stared at her, somewhat puzzled. "You don't see what I see?"
His mother shook her head. "I very much doubt it."
As she spoke, the vast emptiness became exactly like Kings Cross. There were now distinct train platforms.
"I see Kings Cross," he said. "The train station," he added unnecessarily.
If he wanted to, he realized he could board a train.
"Where would a train take me?" he voiced aloud, in his head sure he knew.
"On," she again nearly whispered.
For another little while they did not speak. Finally she broke the silence. "I wanted so much more for you," she began. "I wanted you to grow up happy, not desperate. But you've become such an amazing boy, I don't think I could be more proud." And she looked deliberately over his head, at what he had turned away from.
The indecent thing was still struggling to breathe. He could hear it.
"You cannot help," she almost spat, her voice carrying a certainty that might have been harder than diamond.
"What is it?" The words formed in his mouth almost against his will.
"Evil," she hissed. "Evil that should not exist, evil from the first to the last."
He considered his words. Reconsidered them. Finally he found what the thought was the right question.
"What can I do?"
His mother closed her eyes, but smiled. "I think you can make a choice. But it has to be yours."
And as she uttered those words, he knew suddenly without a doubt what his choices were.
"What will happen to you, when I choose?" he pressed.
She flinched again, and he found he really didn't like that. "I will board a train of my own. I haven't any choice."
"Will I ever see you again?" he wondered aloud, looking at her and sure she was about to tell him no.
It was so clear in her face that she did not need to speak.
Eventually he realized she was waiting on him.
"What happens if I deal with the problem?"
She siezed him again, and held tightly, but in a harsh voice she breathed, "Forever after his destiny would dominate yours."
"What happens if I go back?"
She relaxed her hold, but only slightly. "He is still out there. If you go back, you will face him again one day, he will arrange it so that you meet."
He considered these words too. And found them not surprising at all.
"And if I go on?"
Now she held him even tighter than she had before. "Then you shall cease to be everything that you are."
Confirmation.
Some instinct told him she had no more time.
"I want to live," he stated plainly.
"Then go," she commanded, and to his horror he saw her begin to fade away. "May magic protect you."
Not wanting to see her disappear, he turned away and started walking towards the horrible ruin.
From far away, he heard her disappearing voice whisper, "I no longer can."
And he knew at once that she was gone. The platform remained. He was alone. Alone but for the ruination that lay on the floor.
He stood over it. Looking down. Watching.
He could think only that its death should be quick. He looked around for some weapon, but there were none.
He realized he had to be the weapon.
And he acted with sudden violence.
In an instant it lay dead on the floor, its throat crushed under his foot.
For the eternity of that instant, Harry felt lighter than the swiftest winds.
[o]
Harry awoke to the grimy, filthy floor of the underground cavern, his mind feeling full of clouds. Cautiously, he sat up inch by inch, eventually making it to a sitting position, and then to his feet.
Once standing, the haze over his mind disappeared all at once. He shook himself, then picked up his wand from the floor near the ruined book. As he picked it up, it released a burst of molten gold flames, a result he had never seen it do before. Momentarily thrilled, he pocketed the wand.
He quickly gathered the diary and the Sorting Hat from the floor. Neither could be left here. The diary was too much evidence, and the Sorting Hat was too much a part of Hogwarts. Though this Chamber, too, was part of Hogwarts. Salazar Slytherin had built it …
Harry's gaze landed on the corpse of the Basilisk, and as it did so he realized he should keep the fang that had pierced his flesh and hide it safely away. Dangerous as it might be to own, it was no doubt more dangerous to leave behind. Carefully, he drew it out from the ruined diary and pocketed it. Even more carefully, he then drew the glittering sword out from the roof of the serpent's mouth.
As the sword came free he heard a faint moan from the end of the Chamber. Ginny was stirring. As Harry hurried toward her, she sat up. He watched her eyes travel over the huge form of the dead Basilisk, over himself and his appearance – his blood-stained robes, his ink-stained and grimy arms, the muck all over him – he saw her catch the glittering sword he held in one hand, and finally, the diary he held in his other hand.
She drew a shuddering breath and tears began to pour down her face.
"Harry … I tried to tell you at b-breakfast, but I c-couldn't … it was me, Harry," and she raised her hands over her face. "R-Riddle made me, he took me over … and how did you kill that, that thing? W-where's Riddle?"
"You're safe," Harry said plainly, answering none of her questions. "Riddle's finished. Look!" he gestured at the hole the great fang had made all the way through the diary. "Him and the Basilisk! C'mon Ginny, let's get out of here!"
"I'm going to be expelled!" Ginny sobbed into her hands. "I'd looked forward to coming to Hogwarts for y-years and now I'll have to leave …"
Fawkes was waiting for them, hovering in the Chamber entrance. Harry urged Ginny forward. After several minutes' progress, the sound of shifting rock reached them.
"Ron!" Harry yelled, as loud as he could, speeding up immediately. "Ginny's okay!"
He heard Ron give a strangled cheer, and they turned the next bend to see him staring through the gap he had made in the rock fall.
"Ginny!" Ron thrust an arm through the gap in the rock to pull her through. "You're alive! I don't believe it! What happened? And – what – where did that bird come from?"
Fawkes had swooped through the gap after Ginny.
"He's Dumbledore's," Harry noted as he squeezed through.
"How did you get a sword?" goggled Ron, gaping at the glittering weapon.
"I'll explain when we get out of here," Harry evaded again, with a sideways glance at Ginny, who was crying harder than ever.
Following the softly glowing, hovering Fawkes, they made their way back to the very mouth of the Chamber. There Harry learned that Lockhart had lost all of his memory when the Memory Charm backfired. It was far more than he had ever taken from any of the people he'd cheated. There was something about that fact which struck Harry as being rather like justice.
Fawkes lifted the whole group up the great pipe-shaft. After a brief meeting with Myrtle, they all made their way towards Professor McGonagall's office. Fawkes' soft glow illuminated their path through the pitch-black hallways.
Unbidden, the words "strange likenesses" crossed Harry's mind as he pushed open the door.
[o]
The reunion and the explanation drained Harry almost completely, and eventually Dumbledore had dismissed everyone else. He and Harry remained in the office.
"Please sit down, Harry," began the headmaster.
"First of all, Harry, I need to thank you." Harry saw that he was smiling. "You must have shown real loyalty to me, deep in the Chamber of Secrets. Only that would call Fawkes to you." Dumbledore's expression turned somewhat curious. He stroked the scarlet feathers of the phoenix, who had just flown onto his knee.
"And so you met Tom Riddle," the man continued thoughtfully. "Yes … I have to imagine he was quite keen to speak with you."
There were any number of ways Harry could have responded to that, and to the uncomfortable feelings rising in his chest that he just wanted to make go away.
"Professor, Riddle said I'm like him," Harry spoke miserably, wanting some kind of absolution from this. "He said there were strange likenesses."
The professor's eyebrows rose at that statement. "Did he, now? And what do you think about that?"
"I don't think I'm like him at all!" Harry exclaimed. "I don't want to be like him … I'm in Gryffindor," but at the name of his house he stopped short. The Sorting Hat had not initially wanted to place him there, had told him more than a year later it still felt the same way …
The headmaster was not speaking, was seemingly considering him in silence. That silence grew until Harry decided he had to make these feelings go away.
"Professor," he began again, "the Sorting Hat told me … it told me I would have done well in Slytherin." His breath hitched a bit. "Nearly the whole school suspected me of being the one opening the Chamber, of being Slytherin's Heir, because I can speak Parseltongue."
"You can speak Parseltongue," Dumbledore cut him off, "I believe, because Tom Riddle can speak Parseltongue. It has become my suspicion that on the Halloween night when Tom failed to kill you, that he transferred some of his powers to you instead."
"Voldemort put some of himself in me?" Harry yelped, horrified.
'That certainly seems to be the case," the headmaster replied gravely.
"So I should be in Slytherin, then" Harry said dejectedly, now feeling defeat. "The Sorting Hat saw that in me, and it" but he was interrupted before he finished.
"Put you in Gryffindor," the headmaster intoned. "I think you would know why that is."
Still feeling only defeat, Harry almost whispered, "It only put me in Gryffindor because I didn't want to go to Slytherin," he finished.
But these words made Dumbledore beam. "And that may have been all the Sorting Hat needed." The man's smile was serene. "Harry. You happen to possess qualities that I believe Salazar Slytherin would have respected: your resourcefulness; your determination; your, shall we say, disregard for inconvenient rules." The professor's mustache and beard twitched. "But the Sorting Hat took quite a while to place you, whereas Tom Riddle was Sorted into Slytherin very nearly as quickly as your schoolboy rival Draco Malfoy."
These words took Harry aback. "Malfoy was Sorted more quickly than Voldemort?"
The professor's beard and mustache twitched again. "Yes, although I think that says much less than you think it does. Draco Malfoy grew up hearing about Slytherin House. Tom Riddle did not." The professor paused. "Tom Riddle, I believe, merely wanted to make something of himself, as terrible as that has been, and the Sorting Hat obliged him in the only way it could."
Harry was not sure how to respond.
Perhaps the Headmaster somehow knew. "It is our choices, Harry, that ultimately define who we truly are, far more than any mere abilities. Tom Riddle chose to make a terrible monster of himself. But you," the professor stopped, and beamed, "you have chosen nothing of the sort, you throw yourself directly into opposition with him. That you reject him so thoroughly gives me hope." He stroked Fawkes' feathers, and Fawkes trilled a long, apparently pleased note.
"If you still hold any doubt, Harry, that you belong in Gryffindor, I suggest you take a closer look at this." And then he passed Harry the glittering sword.
Turning it over, Harry saw the single name engraved upon it: Godric Gryffindor.
"Only a true Gryffindor could have pulled that sword – the genuine sword, not a fake – from the Sorting Hat … from Gryffindor's hat." Dumbledore's smile was perfectly serene.
Later that night, after freeing Dobby from servitude to the Malfoy family, after a feast in the Great Hall, which the Basilisk's victims had woken up for and attended, after Hagrid had turned up hours in, Harry found himself thinking about the entire conversation with Dumbledore.
He wondered if he should have brought up the diary's ink spilling over him.
Dumbledore had said Harry's choices gave him hope.
The ink had touched Harry's scar … and Harry had already apparently had something of Voldemort in him, according to Dumbledore.
But there seemed a good chance that it was now gone.
His mother had told him, "May magic protect you."
Harry remembered the song Fawkes had sung in the Chamber, the song which had made his heart feel as though it were swelling in his chest and had given him renewed courage.
Dumbledore had once spoken of music as being a magic beyond all that was done at Hogwarts …
In the phoenix, Harry believed.
[=]
At that same time, Dumbledore was still awake in his office. He had too much to do before bed. Too many tasks he considered really of no importance.
He was examining an object he'd enchanted. It hadn't been his invention to start, instead being merely a silver teapot he'd purchased in the Muggle world … and not even a fancy teapot at that, as it had no decorations at all. And now it no longer even had the dignity of being used for what it was made. Albus supposed he could still serve tea in it, but did not. Instead he had enchanted it heavily … although in a touch of irony it did still issue steam, as it might have if he were serving boiling tea.
The teapot usually emitted steam that would twist itself into two serpents, wrapped around each other and then opposing each other with bared fangs. Now it simply emitted formless steam as if it were a completely ordinary teapot.
Albus was puzzled by this response. It didn't fit his current understanding. Yet perhaps that qualifier "current" was more than trivial.
Words that Garrick had once told him, words from not long after Harry had bought the holly and phoenix feather wand, came back to mind.
"A wandmaker's senses must be very keen, if he wants to be any good at his work."
He thought he had known at the time what that might have meant.
Was his understanding defunct? He did not know, could not say. And yet …
The Sorting Hat had pronounced Harry Potter a Gryffindor. Harry had drawn Godric Gryffindor's own sword from it.
Surely that proved he belonged there?
"Belonged" … "belonging" … those were strange words all told.
Harry had said the Sorting Hat told him he would have done well in Slytherin … did he believe he really should have gone there, that it was so restrictive and defining for him?
Albus didn't believe that even for an instant.
The Hat might have told Harry he'd have done well in Slytherin, but from where Albus stood Harry was doing very well indeed in Gryffindor.
Would it be enough?
Albus knew with resignation that this could not possibly be answered tonight. And there was still one more dangerously concerning matter to ponder.
That diary had been a Horcrux.
He wished now that he had not allowed Harry to give it back to Lucius Malfoy, though there was probably little more the ruined book could tell him
Still … considering it fully … it looked very likely … no, he was certain … that the diary had been intended as a weapon as well as a safeguard. Why else build into it the functions that Harry had described?
And he had allowed Harry to give it back to Lucius.
That had probably been too hasty. It might even have been arrogant.
Yet some good had come of it. Harry had gotten that elf free from the Malfoys because of it. That would undoubtedly be important later. Strange creatures, elves … yet this one, from what he had observed of others, seemed quite unique.
But what, Albus realized with horror, did it mean that Tom Riddle had thought so little of his Horcrux that he had decided it could be a weapon as well as his safeguard?
Could it mean he had intended to make more Horcruxes?
Surely not. Surely not?
Did he really want more? How many more did he want? How many was it even possible to have?
That question … those questions … would definitely not be answered tonight.
He wished it were possible to guess what would.
It would be a year before he would begin to understand how little he had truly understood.
Hours past critical events, Albus watched a scene inside his Pensieve …
He knocked on the door to Remus's office. He knew that Harry was inside, talking to one of his parents' last living school-friends. The previous night, Sirius Black had come to him with a story that had explained much from his group's school days. But Sirius had now left to go into hiding, and Remus too was about to leave.
Harry opened the door. Remus was clearly ready, not at all hesitant to go.
"Your carriage is at the gates, Remus," The headmaster of the memory spoke softly.
Remus gave his thanks, then picked up his battered suitcase and the empty grindylow tank. "Well – goodbye, Harry. It has been a pleasure – an honor – to teach you. I feel sure that we'll see each other again."
The memory Albus, and Albus now, were quite certain by the look on Harry's face that Harry had realized Remus wanted to leave as quickly as possible.
In barely more than a minute, the man was gone.
Harry sat down in the man's vacated chair, staring at the floor wearing an empty expression.
The memory Albus had found words much more quickly than Albus could ever have imagined.
"You did a good thing, Harry," he said. "An amazing thing."
"It didn't make any real difference," Harry in the Pensieve said, his voice full of obvious bitterness. "Pettigrew got away."
Albus marveled at how deeply Harry could immerse himself in his own darkness even without the use of dark magic weighing on him.
Well … "marveled" was not likely the right word. Or maybe it was. From a certain point of view.
"Not any real difference?" he echoed, appalled. "You helped to uncover truth … you saved an innocent man from a terrible fate."
The memory Harry did not seem at all salved by Albus's words. "But Sirius can't show himself in public."
The memory Albus nodded. "That is true. But Harry, you should think on this … the people Sirius will want to know the truth, now know it. His old friend Remus Lupin … and, of what I suspect is much greater concern to Sirius, you yourself. The burden of guilt he carried, should be greatly lessened. That should do him great good."
All of it was true and sounded true to Albus's own ears.
So why did it feel like an enormous lie?
In any case it didn't seem to make a jot of difference on Harry in the memory. "Pettigrew got away with it all."
It hurt Albus's heart that Harry thought this way. "Pettigrew owes his life to you. He cannot run from that debt forever. One day … I cannot say when, but it will be repaid."
Harry in the memory just shook his head, apparently believing nothing of Albus's words.
The Albus in the memory had stared at Harry in abject disbelief, now feeling a dire need to change the subject. Casting for any bite, he had found one.
"Remus told me, Harry, of how you worked to learn the Patronus Charm this year. I would be happy to assess your progress on it, if you are willing?"
For a long moment the memory Albus thought he had not been heard. But then the memory Harry had drawn his wand, concentrated, and cast.
What emerged was a sight to behold.
The Patronus was silver as all were, and yet it also shone with a glimmer of golden light. It was fully defined, with the clear shape of a majestic avian. It was a true Patronus. Albus could feel the tremendous emotional force that radiated from it; it was pure, vibrant, and cool – and completely the opposite of everything he ever had felt from Tom Riddle.
If only … what did that glimmer of golden light mean?
Marveling at the wonder of a thirteen year-old wizard being able to conjure a true Patronus, and puzzling over the curious emotional blend it needed, Albus almost missed that Harry's Patronus took the form of a phoenix. Almost.
Albus withdrew from the Pensieve and sat at his desk for a long time.
The Sorting Hat had wanted to place Harry in Slytherin, had apparently told him more than a year later it still felt the same way.
The diary of Tom Riddle had told Harry there were "strange likenesses" between Harry and Tom Riddle himself.
Fawkes had gone to Harry's aid because of Harry's defense of Albus.
Harry had not said it explicitly, but Fawkes must have sung as he flew into the Chamber.
Phoenix song had the power to lift people's hearts and fill them with courage.
And now, a year later, Harry had produced a phoenix Patronus.
Albus recalled once saying that music was a magic beyond all that was done at Hogwarts …
In the phoenix, Albus believed.
=/O\=