Author's Note: Watch there be one poor kid going 'just one more chapter' and then I upload like three more. Also I'm blowing up my own phone at this rate, I forgot you get sent notifications about your own stuff

They heard the call to head back to the dormitories as they entered Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. It was a good thing too, since Lockhart looked about ready to shit himself.

Him and George pulled their alchemy gloves and wands out of their pockets, along with the small amount of combustible powder they still had leftover from christmas, before shrugging them off. They'd probably just get in the way.

The others seemed to have the same idea, and quickly got ready.

"I really think you can handle this yourself Minerva-I mean what do you need me for-" Lockhart muttered nervously to himself.

"Get yourself together Lockhart, based on all your achievements, surely a basilisk must be a walk in the park?" She questioned, and suddenly the man looked at her strangely.

"You know, don't you?" he quivered.

"Albus and I have always known Lockhart…" She warned.

"Known what?" George asked.

"My books wouldn't've sold half as well if people didn't think I'd done those things," he admitted, and Ron's face lit up red with anger.

"I KNEW YOU WERE A PHONY!" He cried.

"But, there are sources and interviews with the people you've saved-" Hermione quietly argued.

"I tracked down the actual heroes myself through small time accounts, had them tell me everything they knew, and then obliviated them and anyone else who thought different," he admitted rather casually, hands in pockets. "I may have lost some talent with other kinds of magic, but I'm rather good at memory charms," he suddenly pulled his wand out of his robes, brandishing it right at Professor McGonagall's face.

"Nobody move, put your wands on the ground-"

"Well which is it?" The twins questioned.

"Don't move?" George asked.

"Or put our wands on the ground?" He added.

"Put your wands down and then don't move," he warned, watching them all crouch low to the floor to put their wands down. Then they all put their stone alchemy gloves on the ground at the same time. Lockhart didn't have time to realize his mistake before the ground below him crackled with energy, and several stone fists burst from under him, sending him flailing into the wall, which he hit with a loud thump and crumpled against the floor

"Wow what an idiot," George commented.

Moaning Myrtle floated out of her stall, looking at the unconscious professor.

"Why are you fighting in my bathroom, what have I ever done to you?" She whined.

"We're not here to fight, we came to ask how you died," Harry assured quietly.

"Oh like that's much better," she cried. "It was dreadful, I died in this stall. Olive Hornby was making fun of me again. I ran in here and locked the door, and I began to cry. Someone got in somehow though, they were saying some nonsense, something I couldn't understand. And it was a boy too. I was going out to tell him he was in the wrong bathroom and then… I died."

"The Basilisk?"

"It had such yellow eyes… my body sort've just seized up and then… I was like this… I spent my days haunting Olive Hornby, even after she graduated until they made me come back here," she frowned.

"Where did you see the eyes?" Hermione asked, and Myrtle pointed to the sinks like they suspected. They all studied the sinks, until George found one with a snake on the tap.

"That one's never worked," Myrtle frowned.

"That's 'cause it's not a sink," Fred exclaimed.

"Harry, say something in Parseltongue," Ron instructed.

"Parseltongue?" McGonagall questioned. Harry suddenly hissed at the tap. The section of wall that the sink was attached to suddenly disappeared, revealing a man sized pipe in the ground.

"The entrance to the Chamber of Secrets," Hoenheim declared gravely. "I'll scope it out," he decided, before dropping into the long pipe.

He floated up a minute later, "It seems safe, it turns into something like a slide at the bottom," he declared.

"Hoenheim, go tell the other professors where we're going, if all goes well, we should be back by dark," McGonagall advised, shrugging off her over robes and taking off her hat, placing them in a neat pile on the ground. She elegantly stood over the pipe, taking a small step before dropping down into the hole.

George turned to him, gesturing his hands over the pit, "Ladies first," he said, grinning wildly.

"Heck yeah, I'm a queen," he pushed past his brother, waiting a moment to be sure he didn't hit McGonagall before hopping in.

Hoenheim was right about the tunnel, it was nearly a dead drop until the very end where it leveled out, and he shot off the end of the pipe onto the wet ground. He rubbed his back and got out of the way just in time for his brother to land in the same spot that he had. He muttered "lumos" and his wand lit up.

Professor McGonagall was de-sliming her dress, holding up her glowing wand and looking around the room they'd landed in skeptically. George got up as the Gryffindor trio all slid in at once, clearly not having waited long enough as they landed in a large heap.

"Alright so find Ginny, get her out, and then come back and help the fight," George planned.

"I'd rather you just took Ginny and went… There's no sense in any of you getting hurt," McGonagall frowned as Harry, Hermione, and Ron finally pushed themselves up.

"Bloody hell, what's that?" Ron shouted, pointing at the scaley mass drawn across the floor.

"Snake skin… it must've shed recently…" McGonagall frowned as they reached the end of the tunnel. Two intertwined serpents were carved into the wall, eyes made of emeralds. "If you hear any sign of the basilisk I want you to look down at the floor, even if you see it's reflection… I'd rather you end up Petrified than dead…" She warned.

Harry stepped forward to the engraved wall, and hissed again. The snakes eyes glowed before they parted, and the door cracked open, the wall sliding completely out of sight.

They slowly walked into a dim long chamber, stone pillars engraved with snakes reaching high, high, above them, disappearing into the blackness. Torches provided the only source of light besides their wands. They walked slowly, looking at the wet ground to make sure the basilisk wasn't hiding behind any of the pillars.

Their wet footsteps were awkwardly loud, but other than themselves they heard nothing. George was the first to spot the robed figure on the floor at the end of the hall.

"Ginny!" Ron shouted, taking off towards the figure, him and George quickly following despite McGonagall's warnings.

Ron pulled Ginny's head into his lap, moving her hair out of her face, "Come on Ginny," George mumbled. Ginny's eyes fluttered for a moment, but shut again quickly after.

"She won't come out of it, no matter how nicely you ask," they heard someone declare. They turned behind them, where a pale boy with dark hair was leaning against a pillar. "She's still alive, but only just."

"Who are you?" McGonagall questioned.

"Tom Riddle… I don't think you'd know me by that name though," The boy pushed himself off of the pillar, hands casually tucked in his pants pockets. He was wearing an old fashioned pair of hogwarts robes, looking nearly as ghostly as Myrtle.

"Boys, get Ginny out of here now, if the basilisk comes-"

"It won't come until it's called," the boy said calmly, with a dark look in his eyes. "Besides, we're not done talking. Hello Harry, we only talked once but, I know a lot about you," the boy skipped up, but McGonagall put herself between the two. Tom looked up annoyed.

"This isn't any of your business," he hissed.

"What did you do to Ginny?" Harry asked angrily.

"Oh yeah her, she poured her heart and soul into the diary, my diary. She's been writing in it for months, and months, and months…" He kicked a piece of loose stone off the wet path. "And I wrote back, no matter how boring or needy she got I always wrote back. Ginny loved me as much as she loved you Harry," Tom teased.

"Oh shut up you little snakey shit!" Fred shouted angrily.

"Ginny poured out her soul to me, and I poured mine back into hers. The more anxious and disturbed she got, the more she wrote to me… Dear Tom, I think I'm losing my memory. There are rooster feathers all over my robes and I don't know how they got there. Dear Tom, I can't remember what I did on the night of Halloween, but a cat was attacked and I've got paint all down my robes. Dear Tom, There was another attack today and I don't know where I was. Tom what am I going to do? TOM! TOM! TOM!" he ranted. Fred and george both slammed their hands down on the ground, but Tom dodged out of the way.

"Don't think I don't know about your alchemy…" he tutted. "I took out that Professor for a reason…"

"But what about the Hufflepuff-"

"Ginny lured her there so it wouldn't be suspicious… Poor girl was so confused," he whispered delightedly. "Ginny got aggravated with me eventually… thought I'd lost her… but she was so grateful when she got it back she wrote nearly non-stop… I didn't mind talking to you though Harry, Ginny told me so much about you. I think you were already suspicious of me though… I thought showing you my capture of that Oaf Hagrid would win you over."

"Hagrid's our friend and you framed him!" Harry yelled angrily.

"An oversight on my part. He was so easy to blame, the headmaster already wanted him out of the castle because of his heritage… My word against his? Laughable… Dumbledore was the only one who suspected the truth, he used to be the Transfiguration teacher back in the day… That's what you are right?" He pointed to McGonagall. "But Dumbledore wasn't headmaster, so he couldn't do anything," he laughed.

"He did keep an annoyingly close eye on me though… couldn't reopen the chamber back then even if I wanted to," he looked up, reminiscing, "So I made my diary, stuck part of my sixteen year old soul inside it, knowing someone would find me eventually, and I could work on completing my ancestors work."

"Yeah well, we've already got mandrakes on the way, and you haven't even managed to kill anyone properly," George bragged.

"Oh, that stopped being my goal a while ago," Riddle admitted, spinning on his heal. No one dared move. "My new goal was you Potter. See Ginny told me everything about you, about how you and your friends will do anything to solve a mystery… If you hadn't gotten a move on I had been planning on taking your little mudblood friend, get the action started. But you were already well on your way, so I had Ginny write her farewell on the wall, she nearly didn't make it all the way down here, she's almost gone now, gave too much of herself to me."

"And now I'm here, and I can ask you all the questions I want."

"Like what?" Harry asked skeptically.

"How did you, a chubby little infant manage to defeat the greatest wizard of all time. And then again as a scrawny little boy with almost no control over your magic? How did you destroy Lord Voldemort?"

"What do you care, Voldemort came after your time," Hermione asked.

"I wasn't talking you you Mud. Voldemort did technically come after my time, he also came before and during my time," he bounced again on his heel before suddenly kneeing McGonagall in the gut. Everyone gasped as she dropped, and he grabbed her wand.

The wand sparkled in his grasp, and he turned his back to them casually, writing his full name in the air. Tom Marvolo Riddle sparked in the air, and then he swiped the wand again, and the letters began to move, switching places until- I am Lord Voldemort.

Everyone in the chamber gasped. "I had already began using the name in my school days, only with my closest friends of course. Wasn't going to conquer the world using my father's filthy muggle name, so a fashioned myself a new one. A name that others could fear as I became more powerful, when I became one of the most powerful sorcerers in the world."

"That's not going to ever happen," Harry said defiantly.

"I'm already feared, I know that-"

"You're never going to be the most powerful sorcerer… that's Dumbledore. Everyone says so, even when you were at full power you never went after Hogwarts, you're still scared of him, you're hiding down here. If you weren't scared you could've just gone upstairs and found me."

"Dumbledore has been forced out by a mere echo of my memory-"

"He's never gone, just like you left a memory so did he-"

Harry paused as he heard something like whistling. Riddle looked around the room looking for the source, and Harry helped Professor McGonagall up off the ground. The Weasley's grabbed Ginny at the same time, slowly moving off of the foot of the statue.

Something up ahead burst into flames, and a flaming bird flew down from the pillars, something clutched in its talons. Whatever it had, it was dropped at Harry's feet before landing on his shoulder.

"That's a phoenix… and the… sorting hat?" Riddle questioned. "Wow… Dumbledore's older than I thought if he think the sorting hat can stop me," he crouched low to the floor. "What are you gonna do? Sing at me?" Tom grabbed the hat and threw it at Harry. "Here you go, your mighty weapon. You've even got your wand and your silly gloves. I mean I have a wand and a basilisk waiting for my instructions…" He ranted, grinning.

"Now let me ask you again, how-did you-defeat me?"

"I don't know, no one knows. You couldn't kill me because my mother died to save me, her love was stronger than your hate, the magic of a muggleborn was enough to destroy you. And I've seen you, what's left of the real you, you're nothing, less powerful than a ghost. Hell, Professor Ed's half petrified and he could still hit you if he wanted," Harry gloated.

"Ah, so it's not you who's special then…" Riddle commented, and suddenly the look on Harry's face fell. "Well, I guess that's all I needed to know… I don't need you anymore." Suddenly Riddle hissed, and the statue above them began to move. They quickly picked up Ginny and ran, and Harry pushed Riddle out of the way so they could escape. He didn't seem all that interested in them anyway.

"Don't turn around! We don't know where it could be!" George shouted as they ran out of the chamber, back into the main tunnel. They heard Harry yell, and suddenly the Basilisk hissed loudly, with Fawkes screeching in the distance.

Hermione suddenly ran out of the chamber, panting. "McGonagall got petrified," she gasped. "The Phoenix blinded the basilisk but it wasn't quick enough. How's Ginny?"

"She's still alive but… we have to destroy that Diary," George urged. Fred pulled out a piece of chalk from his back pocket, and began slowly walking back into the chamber. "What are you doing?"

"It can't see us remember, but Riddle still can," he whispered. "I blow up the rest of our powder, and you sneak in and help Harry if you can."

"It's a good thing Professor Ed's petrified or he'd kick our asses for using that much powdered unsupervised," George groaned, but still nodded in agreement. "Ron, Hermione, stay with Ginny."

Fred kicked off his shoes quietly so he could go faster without making a sound. Harry was fighting off the Basilisk with a sword, who knows where he got it from, and Riddle seemed pretty distracted, but still had view of the diary. George was slowly inching ahead, using the pillars as cover as he pulled out his chalk.

It actually drew better on the wet floor than expected, creating heavy thick lines that made it easy to see what he was doing. He had to factor in for the water when he drew the circle, but by the time George was sneaking behind the last pillar, it was finished.

Fred quickly pulled out the combustible powder from his pocket, dumping out the entire bag on the circle. He then pictured the explosion he wanted, thinking of all of the necessary combustions, and slammed his hands down on the circle.

He was thrown backwards as the powder exploded, and everyone in the room was knocked off their feet, including the petrified professor. George dove out and grabbed the diary, and Harry took the same opportunity to stab his sword through the roof of the Basilisks mouth.

The room was filled with noxious purple smoke, and the Basilisk dropped to the ground, dead. Harry was clutching his arm, before suddenly dropping to the ground with a fang in hand. Fred ran forward with George, and tackled Riddle away when he started heading for Harry.

"Oh screw off you bloody memory," Fred cursed, kneeing the thing in the gut, just like he'd done to McGonagall. Fawkes began to cry on Harry's wound as George pinned Mini-Voldemort to the ground. Fred got up and dashed to Harry, but the Phoenix apparently had it covered, healing the wound in Harry's arm with it's tears.

Fred picked up the diary, blank and empty inside, frowning. He could feel the energy and magic pulsating inside of it. He had a feeling magic wouldn't do much.

Suddenly the bird picked the book out of his hand, and dropped it in Harry's lap before pecking incessantly at the Basilisk fang.

"No don't you dare-" Riddle hissed, trying to toss George off him. Harry quickly got the message, and stabbed the diary through with the fang.

Riddle began to scream something awful, writhing under Fred as ink began to pour out of the diary in a large flood, and tore out of Riddle's eyes as he began to dissolve, just like the diary. Suddenly George fell to the floor, and the book silently sizzled as it was destroyed by venom. They sat in silence for a moment before they herd Ron cheer.

"SHE'S WAKING UP!" He shouted. Fred grabbed the Diary and the Sorting hat, and quickly ran towards the tunnel outside of the Chamber. George and Harry quickly followed with the sword and Dumbledore's Phoenix.

Ginny was crying, head still in Ron's lap, mumbling sorry over and over.

"I'm sorry I should've listened I-"

"Ginny it's not your fault, we should've turned that thing in the minute you gave it to us," Ron assured.

"But I-" Fred hushed Ginny before crouching down next to her.

"Ginny, none of this is your fault, it was all Riddle okay," Fred assured. Ginny seemed to accept it, but kept crying quietly. Hermione got up from her spot, running over to the edge of the pipe. There was no way in hell they'd be able to climb up the damn thing, and as far as he knew, none of them had learned metal alchemy.

Instead she began yelling, "HELLO! ANYONE UP THERE!"

"Hermione we're probably below the lake, no one's going to hear us," Ron complained.

"Ginny, I uhm… I don't mean to be rude… But do you remember how you got out of here?"

Ginny just started crying harder.

"We have to get McGonagall out as well," George added, frowning as he looked back towards the chamber.

"She can't be heavier than Ed," Fred argued, when suddenly the bird chimed to get their attention, hovering near the entrance, waving his long tail feathers like the answer was obvious.

"Fawkes there's no way you can carry all of us-"

"It's a magic bird Harry, and it doesn't have to be all of us at once. You three and Ginny get out, we'll stay down here with McGonagall," George instructed.

"We can't just leave you down here-"

"Look, Ron you get Ginny to the hospital wing, and Harry and Hermione can get Al. He can probably turn this pipe into a staircase or something," Fred agreed.

"The stupid snake's dead and Riddle's gone," George added.

"We'll be fine," they said together.

Ron still looked like he wanted to argue, but looked down at Ginny, and agreed. "Someone'll be right down."

"Counting on it, it's creepy down here," Fred jokingly shivered. They laughed quietly, and the trio and Ginny all linked arms before Harry grabbed the tail of the Phoenix. They all hovered for a moment, before the Phoenix shot up the pipe, taking everyone with him.

"Man it's a good thing we didn't try taking McGonagall up that thing," George snickered.

Fred laughed, after all, what was left to scare them.