DISCLAIMER: THE BOOK BELONGS TO J. I HAVE ONLY BORROWED BOTH CHARACTERS AND PLOTLINE.

CHAPTER 40

It had been a week since Harry had received the letter and though he had tried his hardest to search for something about it in the library there had been nothing mentioned about it in any of the books, only a small reference about a defense school that may have existed centuries ago.

Harry had thought about whether he should sign the missive or not, but seeing his brother so carefree and happy, knowing how short lived that happiness would be, he took a quill and holding it firmly in his hand he signed his name. Draco was yet to make any decision and he looked more and more undecided by the day.

That evening at dinner Neville and Luna came to Harry asking if they could talk privately, Harry had nodded and the three of them walked to the lake and cast a 'Muffliato' charm around them.

"Did you find out, about the Diary?" Harry asked Neville concernedly.

Neville and Luna both nodded, "It wasn't easy Harry," Neville said "the only time that Ginny ever relinquishes hold of that book is when she heads to the shower and there was no way for me to look at it when she'd left it in the girls dormitory, so I asked Luna to help."

"Yesterday evening, when Darren had gone for Quidditch practice I borrowed his invisibility cloak and hid it. Then late in the evening when Ginny usually heads to the bathrooms' I snuck Luna into the Gryffindor tower and she went up to the dorms."

Luna interjected saying "I searched for the Diary and opened it to see if Tom Marvolo Riddle was written in it and it wasn't."

Harry looked terribly disappointed he was so sure his hunch would be right, "But then" Luna continued "I remembered seeing such a Diary before, they are called memory Diaries kind of like the paintings in Hogwarts they have very faint impressions of people, my mum was quite the fan of them. So I wrote down the name myself and waited and sure enough the diary responded in the affirmative. What was strange was that the Diary could hold a lengthy and intelligent conversation quite unlike my mother's it seemed as if it were like a person itself."

Harry had finally started to look like there was some hope left when he heard that the Diary was Tom Riddle's, now all he had to figure out was, what the monster was and where the chamber had been hidden. He thanked Neville and Luna profusely, which they immediately dismissed saying Ginny was a friend.

That evening Harry sat in an overly large and comfortable armchair in the Ravenclaw common room thinking about what the monster could be. He had lined up all the facts but was struggling to come with an answer. He thought about Draco's vision once again, a vision, he knew could be interpreted in two ways, metaphorically or literally, they had thought the snake in the vision had meant danger, but now Harry had started to wonder if they had been wrong.

He was also troubled by the last line Draco had spoken, that when he had looked into the snakes eyes he had seen death. Suddenly, he sat up and ran excitedly to his room pulling out the 'Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them' book and stopped at the page on Basilisks,

"Of the many fearsome beasts and monsters that roam our land, there is none more curious or more deadly than the Basilisk, known also as the King of Serpents. This snake, which may reach gigantic size, and live many hundreds of years, is born from a chicken's egg, hatched beneath a toad. Its methods of killing are most wondrous, for aside from its deadly and venomous fangs, the Basilisk has a murderous stare, and all who are fixed with the beam of its eye shall suffer instant death. Spiders flee before the Basilisk, for it is their mortal enemy, and the Basilisk flees only from the crowing of the rooster, which is fatal to it."

Harry whooped and slammed the book closed, he was sure he had found the beast.

The next day Harry told Draco of all his suspicions leaving Draco a bit flabbergasted at how much Harry had gotten from a single vision and the he told Harry that there was one last way to confirm it. Snapping his fingers he summoned Dobby and asked him if he knew how the Diary looked, Dobby had scrunched up his nose and said it was plain black and lastly Draco asked the elf if the book had really belonged to the Dark Lord. Dobby had looked frightened and said it belonged to him but wasn't his, after this cryptic message Draco thanked Dobby and looked at Harry with a small smile on his face "Well, there you go, you have a winner."

The next day, Harry sat at the Gryffindor table with Darren and the others right opposite Ginny and when no was looking he whispered 'Legilimens' and entered her mind quietly. He was suddenly hit but a nauseous stink of something rotten emanating from Ginny's mind pushing him away firmly and as he tried to make his way further in, he saw all of Ginny's thoughts shrouded in a malevolent black swirling mist that seemed so foreign.

Harry quickly exited her mind desperately trying not to gag in front of others after being in such a horrendously foul place. Ginny was definitely possessed by something or someone; tomorrow he would try and take her to someone to get help.