Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or anything really. What a shame.
A/N: Thanks to everyone who reviewed! You guys are completely amazing.
A Future Riddle
The Chamber of Truths
Jessie was never a good dancer. In fact, back when she was human, her dancing resembled that of a drunken sailor.
Now that she was immortal, and had lived through decades of history and culture...her dancing talents still reeked.
Fortunately for her, Tom Riddle was an exceptionally accomplished dancer. A fact which he took great pleasure in reminding her.
"No. No. No. You're doing it all wrong." He shook his raven head in annoyance and gripped her waste a little tighter in an effort to steer her into the correct dance step.
Jessie frowned and 'accidentally' stomped on his polished black shoe. He hissed in pain and Jessie noted with satisfaction that his eye twitched.
In a far too chipper voice she exclaimed loud enough for him to hear, "Oh dear me! I'm so sorry Mr. Riddle. Are you alright? Can I get you anything? Gillyweed? Arsenic? Bubonic Potion... Cyanide?"
"Short of you taking a short walk with me out in the sunlight, no. There is nothing you can give me."
Jessie smirked and then with her eyes flashing amber whispered, "I'll walk in the sunlight with you in hell Riddle. Until that day comes, how about we quit meandering and get right down to it." She pulled him closer to her and put her arms around his neck. He stiffened in surprise, but regained his cool when he found her voice next to his ear. "I know all about Clarona."
Immediately, waves of trepidation and mild panic emitted from Riddle. Jessie could almost taste his fear. She wanted more of it.
"Oh yes. Did you think for one instant that you could use her against me? I knew all along that she was confiding in you all the things I explicitly told her not to. It is the bond I share with her. There is nothing that she does that I do not know."
Jessie expected him to be furious, she expected him to deny, she expected him to succumb to his fear. However, all he did was laugh.
An inhumanely cold, high-pitched laugh.
How the tables turn. Now it was Jessie who feared.
She cursed herself for being distracted, for there, strategically positioned around the Great Hall were no less than fifteen Knights of Walpurgis in matching black dress robes.
"All it takes is an order, and then the bloodshed will begin. Would you care to give it?" He began laughing again.
In sheer disgust, Jessie roughly pushed him away and whipped out her wand. Before Riddle had a chance to react, she raised it high in the air and screamed, "IMPEDIMENTIA!"
It was as if time had literally stopped. Dumbledore was freeze-framed in the classic disco pose, Romulus Rooks was lip-locked with Erika Sage in the middle of the dance floor, Clarona and Fritz were both staring wide-eyed at Riddle, and the future Dark Lord himself was stuck reaching out to where Jessie had been, attempting to stop her from casting the spell he currently suffered from.
Jessie spared him a quick glare and proceeded to calmly walk over to each of the immobile future Death Eaters and steel their wands. She deposited them in the punch bowl and then walked back over to Riddle.
Training her wand on his repulsively handsome face, she commanded, "IMPERIO!"
Glancing over her work, she looked about ready to finite the impedimentia, but almost as an afterthought, cast a quick aquamenti spell on Clarona's perfect hair.
Satisfied with her work, she finally intoned, "FINITE IMPEDIMENTIA!"
As if they had not been motionless for the past five minutes, everyone began moving again.
Clarona shrieked in surprise and quickly cast a drying charm on herself which only served to aid her hair in resembling a fluffed out shetland on a bad day.
Riddle dropped his outstretched hand and stared indifferently at the world around him. Jessie put her arms around his neck again and said, "A few spins around the floor Riddle. And while you're at it, tell your thugs to stand down."
Riddle lethargically gave a hand signal of the negative variety and resumed dancing with her as his minions unobtrusively abandoned their posts and joined their fellow Slytherins around the hall.
A quick glance around and Jessie was satisfied that not even Fritz was watching her. She pulled away from Riddle and said, "Take me to the Chamber."
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The way up to the second floor girl's lavatory had been torture. With every step, it had become increasingly difficult to maintain her imperious on the sixth year. His mental shields were amazingly well-fortified and it was apparent that he was going to throw off the spell any minute.
Thankfully, they had arrived at the bathroom and entered the chamber before it wore off.
Sliding down the tunnel, Jessie's concentration had wavered for a second and as soon as she had reached the end and fell quite heavily on her butt, she found herself looking down the end of her own wand.
Riddle pressed the tip against her throat and bayed her to stand up.
Keeping the wand exactly where it was, Riddle gestured for her to walk in front of him.
"Before my Basilisk kills you, well, more so than you already are at any rate, there is one thing I'd like to know." They paused before the giant snake encrusted vault door to the chamber and Riddle hissed, "hessh-isssssa" whereupon the snakes clicked into place with a deafening finality and the immense door creaked open.
Jessie easily hopped through the entrance and turned to Riddle with an impudent glare. "Is that right?"
Riddle ignored her and gracefully jumped over the vault's bottom framing to join her in the majestic dark of the Chamber of Secrets.
Calmly turning toward her he said, "Why is it that you know so much about me? You hated me before you even knew me. I can say that of no one. Not even your precious Dumbledore." She opened her mouth to speak but he cut her off, "And don't even say it's because you have some, excuse my slang, 'freakish' Vampire sixth sense of evil or whatnot, because we both know that's rubbish."
Jessie sighed. She turned her back on him and began walking toward the end of the chamber. The emerald gems in the eyes of the giant serpent statues glinted threateningly at her as Riddle raged in a blood chilling voice, "ANSWER ME, OR YOU WILL DIE THAT SOONER!"
She continued to purposefully stride to the head statue of Salazar Slytherin, where she knew the Basilisk slept. In a level voice she said loud enough for him to hear, "I hold no fear of death. I've tasted it. I know from experience that as often as it is sour, it is sweet...and merciful. Go ahead and call your snake. Let it do its worst. But remember, only the weak fear death."
Riddle couldn't see her face, but her words obviously hit a sore spot because he commanded loudly in parseltonge and the stone mouth of Slytherin opened to expel the ancient Basilisk.
As soon as the snake slithered into the water in front of the statue and into Jessie's line of sight, she closed her eyes and with a snarling scream, vamped out.
Riddle commanded the snake to kill her by any means necessary and calmly leaned back against a snake pillar to enjoy the show.
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Jessie's enhanced hearing made it easy to determine when the snake would lunge at her, the hard part, as she rather painfully found out, was that she couldn't differentiate which part of the snake she was dealing with.
Quickly into their battle, the Basilisk had discovered that by distracting her with his tail, he could get in a strike with his fangs.
The snake's lethal venom was beginning to burn her and she had to fight down the nausea the poison was invoking.
Her once elegant black formal was now reduced to a bloodied, ripped mess-It almost made Jessie glad she had to have her eyes shut.
Finally catching onto the snake's game, Jessie devised a plan of her own. The next time the Basilisk's fangs sunk into her back, she twisted around, ignoring the pain of her flesh being peeled away, and gripped onto the large, razor sharp fangs.
In complete surprise, the snake jerked his head up and in a panicked frenzy, tossed it every which way.
Only by sheer will and enhanced strength was Jessie able to keep her grip. While her body was flopping around like a rag doll, she began to slowly twist the fangs off, one at a time.
The snake howled in pain, and, in a last frantic effort, slammed its own head against the stone floor of the chamber.
Jessie felt her spine shatter, but through the fog of pain threatening to blanket her, was pleased to find that she still retained the use of her arms. With a monumental effort, she clutched the elongated venomous fang in her hand and thrust it upward into the snake's brain as hard as was vampircally possible.
The snake shuttered and its entire body withered until, after what seemed an eon, it finally ceased to twitch and lay still.
Jessie opened her eyes, but only saw darkness as she collapsed next to the giant serpent. The blood from the snake intermingling with her own in a pool of crimson.