Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter

Chapter 20

We stepped into the Chamber slowly, looking around quickly for any signs that someone was trying to attack us, but no one was…yet.

In front of us was a giant statue of a face. It was a man that had a very long beard that fell to the floor of the Chamber. I assumed that this was the face of Salazar Slytherin, being as he made the Chamber in the first place. Right under this statue there was a small girl with flaming red hair laying on the floor.

"Ginny!" Harry said and ran over to her unconscious body.

Even though I was happy to see that Ginny's body was still intact, the whole situation seemed like a set up. Why would they just lay Ginny's body in the middle of the chamber, completely unguarded.

"Ginny, wake up," Harry whispered.

Then I saw someone walking into the room and I pointed my wand directly at him. It was a boy that I had never seen before. He looked like he would be of age to go to Hogwarts, but there was something strange about him. The boy didn't seem to be real.

Harry hadn't noticed the boy yet and he didn't have his wand out. I ran in front of both him and Ginny and pointed my wand at him.

"Who are you?" I asked threateningly.

Harry stood up quickly behind me.

"Tom Riddle?" Harry asked.

My eyes grew wide, but I didn't put my guard down. Tom Riddle nodded and continued to stare from Harry to me.

"What do you want?" I snarled.

"Emily, it's fine!" Harry said. "This is Tom Riddle! He's the one that talked to me about the chamber before! He helped us!"

I shot a look at my brother and back to Riddle. I didn't really know who he was, but I didn't trust him.

"Then what's he doing here now?" I asked. "He should be dead…or at least older…"

"You don't have to talk about me like I'm not right here," Riddle smirked. "You remind me of your mother Emily Potter…"

I narrowed my eyes and lowered my wand. I stayed ready to pull it out at any moment though.

"You don't know anything about my mum," I said.

"I know that she was willing to put her life on the line to save the people that she loved," he said. "Much like you would have done just now."

"So you're saying that my life was just in danger, correct?"

Riddle smirked and moved forward a little bit more. He didn't answer my question.

"Tom, do you know what's wrong with Ginny?" Harry asked. "She's not waking up…"

"She's still alive."

I glared at him more, trying to figure out what he was.

"Are you some kind of ghost, Riddle?" I asked.

"More like a memory actually," he said slowly. "One that's been preserved in a diary for fifty years."

Riddle walked slowly around all three of us, watching us with a look of hunger on his face. There just wasn't something right about this guy.

"We need to get her out of here, Tom," Harry said trying to move Ginny himself. "There is a basilisk in here somewhere-have you seen my wand?"

Riddle held up Harry's wand in his hand and smirked.

"Oh, thanks," Harry said as he reached out to take it.

Riddle stepped back with Harry's wand in hand.

"Tom, give me my wand, we have to get out of here before the basilisk-"

"It will only call when it's called."

I pointed my wand at him quickly, but Tom was ready. He pointed his wand right back at me and smiled evilly.

"What do you mean when it's called, Riddle?" I snarled. "How do you know about this basilisk?"

"More than you ever will," he said.

I looked over to Harry whose eyes were wide open and he had a look of confusion on his face. Obviously he had trusted Riddle, but I thought differently. This man couldn't be trusted.

"What did you do to Ginny?" I asked him, still aiming at his chest.

"It's quite a long story actually," Riddle said, staring at me intently and pointing Harry's wand at me. "It all starts with this pathetic little girl writing every precious thought that she had into that diary. It was rather irritating to tell you the truth, but I put up with it."

"The diary?" Harry asked.

"Exactly Harry," Riddle said. "Ginny Weasley wrote in it all the time, and I wrote back to her. She just loved me. I helped her with all of her problems and she poured her soul into that diary. Every day I grew stronger as she told me her deepest fears and her darkest secrets. It was only a matter of time before I started to tell her some secrets of mine and started to put some of my soul into hers…"

"What do you mean?" Harry asked.

"Ginny opened the Chamber of Secrets…" I said slowly. "She did it all…and you made her!"

Riddle smiled at me, looking quite demented. Harry looked from Tom to me in complete disbelief.

"That's impossible…" he whispered.

"She didn't know she was doing it," Tom said. "She couldn't remember anything that she was doing. But after a while, she started to figure something out and she lost trust in the diary. That's when I met you Harry."

I looked over at Harry who looked horrified.

"You couldn't imagine the way I felt when I saw that was you," Riddle went on. "Harry Potter, one of the two people in the world that I was hoping meet!"

"Why did you want to talk to us?" Harry asked.

"Oh Ginny told me all about the two of you, especially you Harry! She just went on and on about your fascinating history! That's why I wanted to show you something wonderful that I had done here at Hogwarts. I wanted you to know that it was me that captured Hagrid-"

"We knew from the start that it wasn't him Riddle," I snarled. "It was obvious that you just framed him."

"It doesn't matter what you figured out you stupid little girl! Can't you see what's going on here! When I was sixteen, I preserved my self in a diary so that I could return to finish off Salazar Slytherin's noble work! I've won!"

"No you haven't, Tom," Harry said. "The Mandrakes are finished growing, all of the people that were petrified are going to be fine-"

"I don't care about the filthy little Mudbloods, can't you see! For months now, I've only had two target: both of you."

"Why?" Harry asked.

"Don't you realize who I am?" he asked.

He then wrote his name into the air in fire with Harry's wand.

TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE

Then he waved the wand and the letters began to move around.

I AM LORD VOLDEMORT

Both Harry and I had our jaws drop and the hand that held my wand dropped down. I regretted this action immediately when Riddle raised his wand towards me.

"Expelliarmus!" Riddle yelled.

I was immediately thrown back onto the ground where I landed flat on my back, my wand flying from my hands.

"Now that I have your attention, Emily Potter," Riddle smiled. "I am sorry to say that it is the end of you both. There is no one here to help you this time. Dumbledore's gone-"

"Dumbledore's not as gone as you think he is," Harry said.

Just at that moment, a giant red bird flew above us. It was carrying the Sorting Hat.

"Fawkes," Harry breathed.

"What?" I said as I picked myself off of the ground.

"It's Dumbledore's phoenix!" Harry said.

It dropped the hat into my hands and I looked at it. What was this supposed to do?

Riddle began to laugh at Fawkes who flew above us and the Sorting Hat that was in my hands. He then turned to the statue of Salazar Slytherin and began to talk to it.

"Speak to me, Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts four!"

The mouth of the statue opened up and something large began to slither out of it. It was the basilisk.

"KILL THEM!" Tom yelled.

Harry and I began to run away from the snake and we shut our eyes in the process to avoid its fatal gaze. We didn't get very far before Harry tripped and fell to the ground.

"HARRY!" I screamed.

I wanted to open my eyes to find where my brother had fallen so I could help him, but being dead wouldn't really be very useful at the moment.

"KEEP GOING!" Harry yelled. "AND KEEP YOUR EYES CLOSED!"

I couldn't leave Harry to die there, so I decided to make a distraction. I listened to where the snake was slithering and quickly ran towards it. I opened my eyes slightly to make sure that I wasn't going to run into it. It began to hiss in my direction and that's when I ran for it. I could hear the snake slithering behind me, it was gaining speed.

Then the snake made a noise that sounded like it was in pain.

"NOOOO!" Tom yelled. "Your bird may have blinded the basilisk, but it can still find you! AFTER THEM!"

"EMILY!" Harry yelled. "OPEN YOUR EYES, IT CAN'T KILL YOU!"

I opened my eyes and turned to see the snake trailing me. It wasn't far from me. As I was sprinting away from the snake, I saw Harry running at it with what appeared to be a sword. Where did he get that…?

Then I ran into a dead end. There was nowhere I could go and the snake was directly behind me. I turned around just as the snake bit directly into my left arm.

"EMILY!" Harry yelled when he saw that the snake had my arm.

The basilisk let go of me and turned to Harry. My brother took the sword that he was holding and stabbed it directly into the snakes mouth, making it fall to the ground.

Then I began to feel weak. The venom from the snake was quickly spreading throughout my body, and I could feel myself losing strength. I grabbed onto my arm to see the blood oozing out of it.

The last thing I heard was Tom Riddle screaming at Harry for killing the snake and Harry yelling my name.

Everything went black.

When I regained consciousness, I heard a screaming voice coming not that far away from me. On my arm sat Fawkes who was crying on my arm that once had a wound. I felt healed, but I still felt a little weak. I then noticed that I was laying in a pool of my own blood and I grew slightly faint.

I sat up quickly and I saw Harry sitting next to me and Riddle was gone.

"What happened?" I asked.

Harry pointed to a book - which I realized was Riddle's diary - that had a large tooth sticking through it. The book appeared to be leaking blood out of it, which seemed to be very odd.

"Riddle's gone," Harry smiled. "When I stabbed the book, he just vanished."

Then Ginny sat up quickly, looking around the room in panic.

"Harry - Emily - it was m-me!" she said quickly. "It w-was me all a-along! B-but I didn't m-mean t-to! I-I didn't know w-what I w-was d-doing - I swear!"

"It's okay Ginny," Harry said. "We already know."

I grabbed Riddle's diary and then we started to walk ahead, but I still felt weak from the amount of blood that I had lost. I managed to stumble through the chamber until we met up with Ron again. Luckily he had managed to make a hole through the rocks that we could get through.

"GINNY!" Ron said happily as he pulled her through the hole in the pile of rocks. "Are you okay? What happened? Oh my gosh, Emily! Are you okay?"

I looked down to see what he was talking about. My entire body, especially my left arm, was completely covered in dry blood. I felt the left side of my face and could tell that blood was on it too.

"We'll explain everything later," Harry said.

Something - or someone - was missing.

"Where's Lockhart?" I asked Ron.

"Oh, he's right here. The Memory Charm that he tried to put on us backfired…he's lost it."

Lockhart was sitting in the corner rocking back and forth and humming cheerfully.

"Why hello there!" he smiled.

"Um…hi…" Harry said.

"How are we going to get out of here?" Ron asked.

Fawkes swooped down in front of us and we looked at each other.

"There is no way that bird can hold us all," Ron said.

"Fawkes isn't your average bird," Harry smiled.

We all took hold of Fawkes and the phoenix took us back up to Moaning Myrtle's bathroom once more. When we landed, the sink closed up and the chamber closed itself for what I hoped to be the last time.

Thank you soooo much for reading! I hope that you liked this chapter! There will be one more chapter after this one tomorrow and then I will start writing the Prisoner of Askaban. I closed the poll yesterday and I can't really say what the results were. Not many people voted on it, so I kind of count that poll as void. I've come up with my own twist of things with the help of BlueMoon-Tenshi that I think that you all will like, you'll have to see what happens.

PLEASE REVIEW!