Chapter 7 – Slytherin's Heir

"Why are you frowning?"

"I'm still mad about you lying about the Dolphin, Dad!"

"You think you're mad?" William said, settling back a bit. "Imagine how furious Dumbledore would be if he ever found out his greatest enemy never actually existed?"

"Why didn't he kick you out of Hogwarts?"

"Kick me out? Why would he do that?"

"Well, you were being mean. Or, or they thought you were at least."

"They don't kick people out for being mean. I studied hard, I worked hard - and, well, not a whole lot of people outside of Slytherin actually saw me do anything too terrible – and the ones that did really couldn't say too much. Hagrid could've reported my spell, but he'd have to admit he broke the law. The Ravenclaw could've… but they probably felt like I was doing it to help them out. And, well, the Slytherins either liked me too much, were scared of me too much, or just hated telling on fellow students too much. The worst I ever got the last two years was a few detentions."

"Nuh uh. What about the basilisk?"

"What Basilisk?"

William Jr. stared at his father. "I know you let out a Basilisk your final year at school. Something about the Chamber of Secrets."

William laughed; he couldn't help it. "Yeah, about that..."

Tom Riddle was on top of the world; William was despairing.

Not only was Tom Riddle the top student at Howarts - nobody came anywhere close to his abilities (whether magical or illusionary) but he was the top dog as well. He was conferred an amount of respect that, frankly, even the professors rarely got. Sure, "Tom Riddle" loved the alpha status of an upcoming dark lord who even the upper year Gryffindors didn't want to tangle with…

… but it made William's job terribly difficult. He wanted to leave Hogwarts with a splash, but that wasn't exactly a possibility if everyone was already treating him like the king of the world. What could he do to impress everyone if... well, everyone was already impressed?

A few weeks before Halloween, Tom was making his way to the Charms classroom. Usually, he found a gaggle of lower-year Hufflepuffs or Gryffindors to trail behind – being slightly amused by how nervous some of them got simply to be trailed by the "evil" Slytherin (sometimes they even squeaked!) Today, though, he had to make do with a pair of 6th year Ravenclaws – and they were too engrossed in gossiping to even notice he was there to begin with.

However, as the three of them were about to pass the Ancient Runes classroom, they stopped.

"I think he's in here," one whispered.

Tom was confused.

"Oh, come on, you can see him later – we're going to be late for class."

"Give me a minute, I just want to peek in. He's so hot when he's doing magic."

Tom rolled his eyes. Silly girls.

The infatuated Ravenclaw slowly eked the door open... only to find that it wasn't smart to open any sort of passage into a 7th year Ancient Runes classroom while they're working. Slate-blue tendrils of old magic wafted into the hallway at accelerating speeds, looking like phantom appendages of a gossamer assassin vine. Tom's eyes widened as the pair of Ravenclaws became as stiff as statues, paralyzed by some primeval magic. The door quietly closed, but the Ravenclaws were still frozen in place.

"Uh…" Tom murmured to himself. "Huh." He brandished his wand, and was pretty sure he knew how to reverse something like this… until he thought to himself: How can I use this?

It didn't take long to come up with an answer. The school was already full of whispers that he was Salazar Slytherin's heir – and the generally accepted rumor for his first-year absence was that he was spending all his time in his secret lair, the Epic and Mysterious Chamber of Secrets.

Well? Why not have some fun with this? The legend was that there was a monster in there (something probably terribly horrendous – that's how legends always seemed to go, after all.) So maybe someone should bring "it" out to play.

Grinning mischievously, Tom instead cast a memory charm on the two Ravenclaw victims. No sense in letting them remember why they got frozen (and honestly, any reason for getting petrified was better than "I wanted to stare at my crush through a crack in the door and an accident happened.") Instead, he put a vague memory of some monstrous yellow eyes. Tom had no clue what sort of monster had yellow eyes – but he figured that was the sort of detail that could get filled in by someone else.

He then used a mobilis spell to maneuver the students to a better location. The corridor above the Great Hall should work. Finishing his work, he put some magical writing on the corridor wall:

To those who deny His ascendancy

His monster emerges once more

Ready to restore His name

Greatest of the Hogwarts Four

He surveyed his message. Suitably mystical, a simple rhyme, and yet… it didn't leave a whole lot to chance. There was no way on earth someone intelligent could read that and not know who the "His" was. One of the Hogwarts four, a male, and willing to wield a monster to claim a place above the other three houses? Not even the most hard-headed Gryffiphobe could believe that such a passage would describe Godric.

The whole affair was actually pretty easy. Shortly afterwards, he drilled a foot-wide hole in the Arithmancy classroom behind one of the tapestries; the hole led to a closet of an adjoining vacant classroom. From there, it wasn't too hard to find a suitable victim every few weeks, stun them, place them in that closet, pick them up after class ended, and move them to however he wanted the next petrified victim of "Slytherin's Monster" to be found.

The next several months were... strange. The Slytherins were begging Tom to tell them how he did it; he relentlessly feigned ignorance and refused to confirm anything. And, of course, the Slytherins immediately took that to mean that, yes, he did truly have a gigantic monstrous… something… following him around and dispatching anyone that displeased him.

The other three houses were understandably terrified on him. In classes, there was a 20-foot bubble around him where non-slytherins simply wouldn't sit (which made the tight confines of the Herbology greenhouses positively hilarious.) In the Great Hall, at least two dozen Ravenclaws had taken to sitting with the Hufflepuffs on the opposite side of the hall, simply so they didn't have to sit so close to the Slytherin table. It even got to a point where some older Hufflepuffs were selling copies of Riddle's class schedule simply so people would know which corridors to avoid between classes.

Only the professors were acting normally, seeming to believe that Riddle was innocent – and knowing that the idea of a large mystical creature running around the castle undetected was a bit far-fetched. Most held the (correct) theory that it was some unknown phenomenon that was causing the petrifactions. As for Dumbledore? Well, he seemed to know that Riddle was doing something, and was occasionally trying to catch Riddle making a statement or comment that would give away a nugget of information.

By springtime, "Slytherin's Monster" and "Slytherin's Heir" was the talk of the school...

Please Review

AN: I was asked how much reader reviews played into the content of chapters 4-6. The answer is: not much. This story was/is in a place where I like it - I'm comfortable with the pace, tenor, and plot. About the only major change I've done since the initial rough draft is to split chapter 5 into two separate chapters (one for the OWL exam, and one for the examples of the combos) - before, it was much sketchier and crammed into one chapter and it didn't feel very fluid to me.

However, the reviews are making a huge deal of impact in the rough-draft I'm working on for the sequel. I've already rewrote and restructured several chapters based on feedback - especially the comment about there not being enough 'zing' - I've taken out and condensed parts where there wasn't enough oomph and added new sections to spice the story up.