Chapter 13: Premature Denouement

[In which Tom Riddle fails to stall, and there are many roosters.]

Monday, 12 April 1993 – Ginny's Birthday

Fred Weasley

Fred and George Weasley would be the first to tell you that they didn't exactly take life seriously, most of the time. They would also probably be the first (and only) people to tell you that they were, in fact, capable of being incredibly serious when the situation demanded. This whole Chamber of Secrets business was one of those times.

It was almost a pity that they could never tell Percy about their efforts to thwart the Heir of Slytherin. The look on his face would be simply too perfect. They could just imagine that he would be torn between appalled horror (because they had managed to (so far) illegally question every Gryffindor from seventh-year down to second) and pride (because they were, in fact, trying to save the school with their mad inter-house scheme). They couldn't tell him because he would immediately tell their mother that they had drugged him with Veritaserum along with everyone else (and because he was now petrified, anyway), but it was nice to imagine.

Since Percy had been petrified (and wouldn't he just be pissed to be missing out on half a semester of NEWT classes), the Gryffindors had become much more paranoid about things like going around alone, especially the younger students, which had made it increasingly difficult to catch them off guard for a half-hour of clandestine questioning. The twins had managed, like the Slytherins and Ravenclaws, to get through most of their allotted upperclassmen in the month between the start of classes and the Valentine's Day attack, but over the past two months, their progress had been slowed considerably.

The Ravenclaws just took to carrying hand-mirrors around and went on with their normal routines, arguing that there had only been three attacks so far, and it was highly unlikely that any one of them in particular was in any danger. The Hufflepuffs had already been moving in groups, ever since the Creevey attack, which was why the Slytherins had gone after them – they had the greatest numbers and most coordination, and anyway, Professor Snape had already legilimized their entire house – it wasn't any of them. This meant that there had been no appreciable change in the other two groups' rates of questioning, and the last of their target houses had been cleared in the first week of April. But Fred and George, who had been in the lead before Percy's attack, clearing all of their seventh-, sixth-, and fifth- years (and most of fourth), had taken nearly a month to capture the few remaining fourth-years, and it was only when the students started to relax their vigilance in mid-March that they had managed to make any headway with the third- and second-years.

Now it was the Easter so-called 'holiday,' and they were determined to finish clearing their first years before the end of it. At this point, it mostly seemed like a formality, anyway. None of them really thought that a first-year Gryffindor was the Heir. The Slytherins were considering whether they might have another Quirrellmort situation on their hands, and debating whether to interrogate the professors. (They already had done Lockhart, and managed to get enough incriminating evidence on him to get him fired at the end of the year, if fate didn't intervene and kill him off in the meanwhile, but he was innocent of being the Heir of Slytherin.)

"You've got the list, Fred. Who's left?"

Fred consulted the roster off of which they had been slowly crossing students all semester. "Cod, Firstie Dunbar, Epps, Frank, Moray, Otharsonne, Puckle, Samuels, Singh, Tarvec, and Ginny. Oh, and Barrie, looked like she was crossed off there, but that was Bumper."

George groaned. "Otharsonne, Puckle, and Barrie all went home for the holiday anyway. Let's start with Ginny. At least she should be easy to get alone."

"Yeah. Fair enough. And it'll be a nice birthday present, right?"

"What, ask her to help once she's cleared? Very thoughtful."

"Well they've got to be more willing to trust another firstie, right?"

"Hmmm… I suppose our reputation does precede us, never mind we haven't done much this year."

"Yeah, so. Gin Gin, then?"

"Right-o."

Fred nodded. He pulled the Map out of his pocket and activated it, quickly locating their only sister moving toward Gryffindor from the direction of the Great Hall and the Library.

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Ginny, unlike most other students in the castle, was not likely, the twins thought, to tell on them for pulling her into an empty classroom and just forcing her to drink the damn truth serum. It wasn't as though something similar didn't happen at least once or twice every summer, and she had never gotten them in serious trouble yet. That was, therefore, exactly what they did. On intercepting their favorite younger sibling on the fourth floor, they simply threw their arms around each of her shoulders, and ducked into the currently-out-of-use Muggle Studies classroom.

"Hey, guys," Ginny said, somewhat tiredly. "What's up?"

"Nothing, nothing," Fred began.

"We just wanted to wish our favorite,"

"Only,"

"Sister,"

"A happy birthday."

"Really?" Ginny's face lit up a bit at that and she pulled them into a hug. "Thanks. I thought everyone had forgotten, what with Percy and all…"

"Of course not!"

"We would never!"

"We even got you a present!"

"But first you have to drink this," Fred pointed at George, who already had the dose of Veritaserum uncorked and was poised to pour it into Ginny's mouth.

Ginny looked around in confusion, making it halfway through the word 'what?' before George poked the vial into her mouth and upended it, three carefully measured drops falling onto her tongue.

"Oh, come on, that's not funny!" Ginny objected, her face going a bit slack as the potion took effect. "What was that stuff?"

Fred carefully seated his sister in the nearest chair before saying, slightly pink, "Veritaserum."

"Why did you give me a truth potion?" the girl asked, her eyes wide.

"Because, Gin," George answered, "We need to know anything you know about the Chamber of Secrets."

At that, their sister clapped her hands over her mouth and tried to make a break for it. The boys, momentarily stunned that Ginny apparently knew something, let alone something important that she clearly wanted to keep secret, just barely caught her. They returned her to the chair, tying her down with an Incarcerating Jinx.

They abandoned the list of questions the Slytherins had written for them without conscious decision.

"Ginny," Fred said, his tone deadly serious, "What do you know about the Heir of Slytherin?"

"I-It's me!" burst from her lips, followed instantly by tears. "I'm the one who's b-been at-tack-king every-one."

"What?" The twins spoke as one. "Why? How?"

"I-I-It's t-true! I didn't want to! I don't want to! He m-makes me! I don't know h-how. I n-never re-m-member," she managed to choke out between her sobs.

"Who makes you?" George asked. Fred was still stunned.

"Tom. Tom R-Riddle."

"Who's Tom Riddle?" Fred asked, just as George said, "How does he make you?"

They stared at each other in astonishment, unable to remember the last time they had spoken over each other.

"He's my diary. I don't know how, but he's somehow m-making me attack people. He – he takes over m-my body, and – and then I don't remember any – anything. And when I wake up, there's b-been another at-attack." She was rocking slightly now. "All my fault, it's all my fault, Percy, and C-Colin, I didn't know! Wh-when I f-found out, I t-tried to s-stop him, but I couldn't. I c-couldn't even – couldn't even k-kill myself. I got rid of him and Loony brought him b-back!"

"Ginny, do you know where the Chamber of Secrets is?" Fred asked slowly.

She nodded slowly before the potion forced the word past her lips: a very small, whispered yes.

"Where is it?"

"Under the school. I see it in my nightmares."

"How do you get there, Ginny?" George was impatient. If they could get in, they could kill the basilisk and the attacks would stop, and they would have plenty of time to stop whatever bastard was possessing Ginny.

"I-I don't know. He n-never lets me remember that p-part."

"It's alright," George said, petting her hair softly. "It's going to be okay. We'll get you help, now. Fred?"

Fred nodded. This part of the plan was the same as it ever was – if you find the Heir, find a Slytherin, and they would help explain the situation Snape, because there was no way he would believe a Weasley twin claiming to have caught the Heir. And now, it was Ginny, and she was being possessed? …Maybe Snape wasn't the best choice – but then, who in the school knew more about Dark Arts? He went to find a Slytherin.

}{-}{-}{-}{-}{

Fred walked quickly, nearly running through the halls. Mary was closest, in the library and, strangely, alone. Hermione was in Ravenclaw with the other Ravens, and Lilian was outside with Zabini and Greengrass. Fred dismissed the issue. He only needed one Slytherin to act as an envoy to Snape.

"Mary," he shouted as soon as he entered the library, heedless of the squawking librarian and myriad angry Ravenclaws glaring at him over their "break" essays.

She looked around, struck by the most unusual sight of a lone Weasley twin barreling toward her.

"Mary, I need to talk to you!"

"Out! Get out, you red-haired menace!" Madam Pince intercepted him, shoving him back toward the doors. "You too, Potter! I'll not have your friends coming in here looking for you and making an unconscionable racket!"

Mary gathered her books and quickly followed Fred out of the library. He pulled her behind a nearby statue. "It's Ginny," he said without preamble.

"What's Ginny?"

"The Heir! Ginny's the Heir. She's being possessed or something. Georgie's waiting with her up on the fourth floor. We didn't want to try moving her with just the two of us, like we talked about, but she's tied up."

Mary nodded grimly, immediately understanding the problem. "So you need me to help you take her to Snape?"

"Yeah, that's the plan, more or less." He pulled the Map from his pocket again, compulsively checking on his siblings. "Oh, shit!"

A dot which should be sitting safely in a fourth-floor classroom was making its way down the main staircase.

"What?!"

"Look!" Fred pointed. "We don't have time to get the others. Ginny's escaped. We have to follow her! No, wait, we need to get George and make sure he's okay, and then we need to follow her! Come on!"

He grabbed Mary's wrist, and, ignoring her protests, dragged her through the same hidden passage he had just traversed, up two flights of stairs, and back to his fallen twin. Ginny was on the second floor, now, headed toward what looked like the girls' loo. He shoved the map into Mary's hands, ordering her to watch Ginny, and revived George, hauling him to his feet.

"What happened?"

George spoke very quickly. "I gave her the antidote and was looking for that fucking diary and she started whimpering and came over all funny, and I was like, Gin, are you okay and she smiled at me all creepy and said, 'Not Ginny, try again,' and then hissed and the ropes disappeared like some kind of finite, and she pulled her wand on me and I hesitated because it's Ginny, right? And she stunned me."

"Guys? She's stopped outside Myrtle's Bathroom… Oh, wait, now she's going inside… She just… disappeared? What diary are you talking about?"

"The diary," "Tom Riddle's diary." "The diary that's possessing Ginny!"

"Did you say… Riddle? …Tom Riddle?" Mary was going very pale. George nodded, but Fred was more interested in the fact that Ginny had "disappeared" from the map.

"What do you mean she's disappeared? You can't disappear from the Map!"

"Well, she did," Mary shoved the parchment back at Fred. "She was in the second floor girls loo, and then she just vanished. It's definitely Tom Riddle's diary that's possessing Ginny?"

"Who the bloody hell is Tom Fucking Riddle?" George asked.

"The Dark Lord," Mary whispered. "Voldemort."

Fred felt like he was going to faint. George grabbed a desk for support. "The bloody fucking Dark Bastard is possessing our little sister?"

"We have to get down to that bathroom right now."

"Guys, just think for a second, alright? We can't fight him! She's safe – he's got to be possessing her for a reason, he wouldn't just kill her. We need to get Snape!"

"Fuck it, Potter, you can't just disappear from the Map!" Fred knew he sounded like he was about to cry, but he didn't care.

George elaborated when he saw the blank look Mary was giving his twin. "She could be dead already! WE NEED TO CHECK THE BATHROOM!"

"Fine, it's on the way, but then, we need to find Snape!" But it didn't really matter what she was saying, by that point. George was already out the door, with Fred hot on his heels, and the only thing she could do was follow.

Mary

Mary raced out of the fourth-floor classroom, following the twins. She had no intention of following the Dark Lord wherever he had taken Ginny, but it wouldn't hurt to check the bathroom before continuing down to the dungeons and Snape. The three of them skidded to a halt just inside the loo, looking around frantically. Nothing seemed to be out of order.

Moaning Myrtle, the most irritating ghost in the castle, poked her head out of her stall. "What do you want? Boys aren't supposed to be in here."

"We're looking for," "Our sister!"

"Red-head, about her height?" the ghost said, nodding at Mary.

"Yes!" "Ginny!"

"She's been coming in here all year, and every time, she's so rude, always banishing me back down the pipes!"

"She just came in here," Mary said. "Did you see where she went?"

Myrtle gave a dramatic huff. "No, I stayed quiet in here so I wouldn't get banished again!"

"Did she say anything?" "Or do anything?"

"I don't see why I ought to tell you anything!"

"Please, Myrtle!" "She's been possessed!" "She's going to die," "If we can't save her!"

"Oh, right, she's going to die! What a tragedy!" And with that the selfish teenage ghost disappeared through the back wall of the bathroom.

"Myrtle, you fucking bitch!"

"Fred…" George laid a hand on his brother's shoulder.

"No, George! We're not going back! Ginny needs us! We didn't notice she's been fucking possessed all year. We have to find her!"

George nodded, and then rounded on Mary. "So if I were Slytherin, how would I guard a Chamber of Secrets?"

Mary flinched away from his sudden attention. "I don't know! Put it somewhere no one would look!"

"Girls' loo. Check!"

"Guard it with a giant, sentient snake?"

"Basilisk. You're not helping!"

"Well, the only other thing I can think of is all the tunnels and passages to the commons answer to Parsel…"

"Parseltongue password!" "Brilliant!" "What would it be?"

"I don't know! All the ones I know of are just 'open'!"

"So fucking try that!"

"Where?! You have to give it to the door!"

"Just say it really fucking loud!"

Mary slapped her palm to her face. She highly doubted that would work, but if it meant she could go find Snape and get real help…

open she hissed. Nothing happened. I command the way to the Chamber of Secrets to open! she demanded, feeling incredibly silly to be standing here, in the middle of a bathroom, yelling the walls in Parseltongue. "I'm sorry, Fred, George, I just don't think –" but a sudden light near the sinks drew her attention. One of the taps was spinning and glowing brightly. Its sink disappeared into the floor, revealing a large, slimy pipe.

Mary stared at it in amazement. "You have got to be kidding me."

The boys exchanged a look, and then they turned to Mary with identical sad but determined smiles. "We're going down there," one of them said.

"Okay, I'm going to get Snape," she replied, but they shook their heads slowly.

"You're coming with us."

"No, I'm not. I'm going to get the only person in the castle who could possibly actually fight the Dark Lord, and he can go save your sister."

"There's no time for that."

"Ginny could be dying down there."

"Or organizing another attack – a fatal one this time."

"There's a basilisk down there! And your sister is being possessed by an evil psychopath! We are not going down there!"

"We can handle the basilisk. Roosters, remember?"

"And you have to come – what if there's more doors?"

"NO! This is the Dark Lord we're talking about. You're being stupid!" Mary turned to leave, not even considering that her friends – or at least she had considered them friends until now – would hex her in the back.

Her wand jerked itself out of her pocket, flying to one of the boys. "We're sorry about this, Mary," he said, as his twin cast, "Incarcarious," and ropes burst from his wand, tangling around her torso.

"You're fucking kidnapping me to the Chamber of Secrets, rather than wait half an hour for Snape to get here?" she asked incredulously.

The twin who had bound her nodded. "A lot can happen in half an hour."

"You're insane. You're both fucking insane." Close! she added, hissing at the sink. "Close, damn you!"

The twins looked a bit panicked as they realized that she was trying to cut off their way forward. One of them silenced her, and without another word, jumped into the pipe, screaming all the way down to wherever it ended. Then his voice floated back up to them: "It's okay, Fred! Send Mary down. I'll catch her."

Mary glared impotently at Fred, and he gave her a nervous smile. "Sorry, Mary." He levitated her over the gaping pipe, and then she was falling, sliding. There were other pipes branching off from this one at odd angles, twisting and turning before leveling out. The slime-covered ropes killed her momentum, dragging her to a stop. George was nowhere to be seen, and she could hear Fred banging down behind her. She tried to yell for help – he was going to run right into her – but she was still silenced. The best she could do was try to wriggle around so he wouldn't kick her in the head.

He got her shoulder instead, impacting with enough force to push both of them to the end of the pipe and out into a damp stone tunnel, much like the Slytherin dungeons, but, if Mary was any judge, at least two levels deeper. She lay on the floor, glaring at the boys. Apparently under the impression that it was no longer necessary to keep her bound, silenced, and wandless, given that they had accomplished their task of getting her into the danger zone, they freed her.

"I can't believe you two! Fucking lunatics! You're going to get us all fucking killed! Give me my wand!"

"You're not going to hex us, are you?"

"No, you bloody idiot, it's dark, I'm covered in fucking slime and my glasses are broken! We're in enemy territory! I'm not going to waste time hexing you!"

The Weasley who had been holding it handed back her wand. She immediately sent a Stinging Hex at him before repairing the frames of her glasses and using the Siphoning Charm to suck all the muck off herself. It coalesced into a ball the size of her head, which she flicked at the other boy. Both twins dodged, complaining that she'd said she wouldn't hex them.

"I lied," she said scathingly, lighting her wand and lifting it high and peering around the tunnel. It wasn't like she had hit him. There was no obvious way out. There weren't even any little passage-markers like in the dorm tunnels. There were, however, torches, set into the walls at intervals. "Lucernae!" she ordered, but they remained unlit. The boys were peering at her through the gloom in confusion. "Oh, honestly," she said, looking from one to the other, "You don't think the dungeons are always lit, do you?"

"Try Parseltongue," one of them suggested.

Light she hissed, and the torches burst into flame.

"Seems to be a theme," the other boy said with a grin.

"Oh, come on, you smug bastards. I don't see a way out, so we might as well look for the bloody Dark Lord."

"So you're with us?"

"It's not like I really have a choice, is it?" she spat, stomping off down the tunnel. She got a perverse pleasure out of the sound of small animal bones crunching under her favourite boots.

The boys followed behind her quietly until they came across an absolutely enormous snakeskin lying curled across the tunnel. It was at least twenty feet long, poisonous green in colour. Mary approached it carefully, and nearly wet herself when a cockerel crowed behind her.

She spun around to see the twins' heads poking around the last curve, a pair of roosters posturing at their feet. "What the hell?"

"Did we get it?"

"Is it dead?"

"No, I don't think it is…"

"Is it sleeping?"

Mary nearly laughed. "You idiots know nothing about snakes, do you?"

"We know the crow of a rooster can kill it!"

"Yeah, well, maybe, if this was an actual basilisk. It's just a skin." She poked it with the toe of her boot, and it rustled. "They grow and then shed when their skin gets too small."

"So you mean…" "It's bigger than that?"

"Oh, yeah. Definitely. Aerin said if it's really been here since Slytherin, it would have to be forty or fifty feet, at least."

The boys looked distinctly nervous for the first time since they'd entered the tunnel, but followed when Mary continued onward. She had to activate the lights twice more, but after perhaps half an hour, they came to a solid wall, with two entwined snakes carved into it. Their eyes were set with great, glittering emeralds, and they looked almost alive.

"Ready?" she asked the boys. They nodded, assuming a 'ready' position with their wands. Mary did the same, and then whispered open.

The wall seemed to crack in two, and the halves slid out of sight. The trio walked forward, finding themselves in a very long, dimly (and faintly greenly) lit chamber. Towering stone pillars with more twining serpents supported a ceiling that was lost in darkness. There was a massive statue of Salazar Slytherin, old and monkey-faced, like the unmoving portrait of him in the common room, at the other end of the chamber.

Mary made to take a step forward, but one of the boys stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. She gladly let them go first, following half a step behind as they made their way into the hall, footfalls echoing loudly.

They found Ginny lying at the statue's feet, pale, and apparently sleeping under some charm that could not be reversed by a simple Revival, but the notorious diary was nowhere to be seen. There was a hiss of Parsel from behind them. The boys spun around, ready to transfigure roosters at the slightest sign of a basilisk, but Mary sniggered. She couldn't help it.

"Who are we, who dare to trespass in the hall of the great lord Slytheirn? Who really talks like that?"

A boy, perhaps sixteen or seventeen years old, strolled out of the shadow of the nearest pillar. To Mary, who had been expecting the wraith from last year, this was entirely unexpected. He looked rather irritated, and also somewhat transparent, like a ghost, but in color. He was tall, with dark hair and blue eyes. His features were aristocratic, though his manner seemed slightly less fluid than Mary would have expected for the Heir of Slytherin. Of course, that would make sense, if he was really a half-blood, and not raised as the Heir.

He looked down his nose at her. Little Speaker? You must learn how to properly address your betters. Parsel didn't normally have much intonation, but he managed to make it sound mocking.

You are not my better, she scowled at him. And it is rude to speak a language others cannot in their presence.

Not 'better,' 'senior.' He emphasized the second word slightly differently and she caught the distinction. I am older than you, and if you speak the snake-tongue, you are most likely my offspring. I am better than you too, that just goes without saying.

If Mary hadn't been so shocked by his interpretation of her ability to speak Parsel, she might have taken offence to his last statement. "I'm not your daughter!" she said, stifling a laugh at the looks the twins gave her.

"No, I must have been fifty, at least, by the time you were born. You are more likely my granddaughter."

"Do you know who I am?" she asked tentatively.

"Of course I do. You are Mary Potter, the Girl Who Lived."

Mary scowled. "And you are presumably Tom Riddle, Lord Voldemort, aka, the Dark Lord Who Died."

"No, I'm not." Riddle appeared to think about this for a moment. "Okay, yes, I am Tom Riddle, and yes, I had plans to be Lord Voldemort, but I never actually did that, and he's not actually dead."

"Whatever. He's not actually alive, either. He's like some kind of wraith thing. The point I was going for, there, was that my parents were Lily Evans and James Potter. No Riddles."

"My working theory is that your mother was actually hidden with a muggle family for her protection. It makes sense with the political climate at the time to keep her out of harm's way, and I hear she was formidable on the battlefield – not exactly what you'd expect from a real muggleborn."

This was an interesting theory, but it couldn't possibly be true. She was certain Aunt Petunia would have mentioned if her mother was adopted, and wasn't the whole point of leaving her there in the first place that they shared blood? "I lived with her older sister for ten years. Definitely muggles."

The older boy waved away her argument. "Nonsense. Blood will out. I'd bet she was nothing like this muggle 'sister' of hers."

It was at that moment that the twins, who had been carrying on their own conversation in hushed tones and gestures, decided to interrupt. "Mary," one of them hissed in her ear, "Why are we just standing around?"

"Does he look like he's getting brighter to you?"

Mary squinted at the phantom boy in front of her. Now that they mentioned it, he did seem slightly more solid. "You're stalling, you sneaky bastard!" she accused him, sending a stunner in his direction. It passed right through him.

He grinned. In any other circumstances, it would have been infectious. "Yes. I suppose I am a bit… transparent… at the moment."

"Sweet" "Bobby" "Robin-" "-son" The twins gaped at the Slytherin Heir. "Lord Voldemort," "Just made a pun."

"A really bad pun."

"I will have you know," the boy said, in a tone faintly reminiscent of Percy, "that puns are the most advanced form of humour. They have a long and honourable history, and –"

"And you're stalling again. What are you waiting for?"

Riddle's grin this time was scary, rather than friendly. "To become solid enough that I can take the little ginger's wand and kill you all, before I finish sucking the life out of her and continue on my merry way to track down that stupid bastard I grew up to become."

Mary shivered. She wanted desperately to ask if he was going to join 'that stupid bastard' or turn against him, but every minute they sat her talking was another minute Ginny grew closer to death. "Guys, get Ginny, we're leaving."

"Oh, no, child," the phantom said, vaguely threateningly. "You can't go."

"Watch us! You've already said you can't do magic, and we can't hit you, clearly. So we'll go and find a way to break whatever hold you have over Ginny. We'll come back and deal with the basilisk later."

"I've got her," one of the boys said, his sister cradled in his arms.

"Let's go," the other twin said, wand still at the ready.

But Mary wasn't paying them much attention, because Riddle was speaking Parsel again.

Why not deal with her now? Speak to me, Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts Four.

The mouth of the statue of Slytherin was opening, and something gigantic and scaled was moving in its depths. They were about to be attacked by a basilisk, and all Mary could think was What a stupid password.

Riddle laughed – a high, cold, piercing sound. I supposed it is a bit conceited, isn't it?

I have got to get better about speaking Parsel when I don't mean to, Mary thought, running with the boys to hide behind a pillar. Riddle followed them, still intangible, but ever more solid-looking.

They laid Ginny carefully at its foot, and then started blasting the walls, creating rubble to transfigure into roosters.

"Hey! You ruddy ginger bastards! What are you doing?" the Heir of Slytherin shouted at the Weasleys, who were systematically digging into the rough wall of the cavern. They ignored him.

Mary, unable to perform the spells they were using, peered around the pillar with her mirror. The massive serpent was coiling down the statue. "Hurry up, guys, it's coming!"

Kill anything that moves! Tom ordered the snake.

Kill… the great serpent hissed.

No! Don't kill anything! Mary countered.

Not?... the basilisk was momentarily confused.

Kill anything that moves, and ignore the little speaker, Tom said, smirking at Mary.

Kill…

I said NO! Bad queen of serpents! Mary shouted, but the snake ignored her.

She would much rather follow my orders than yours, he added, as the great serpent turned her head toward the explosions behind the pillar. I win.

Guys?

Snake-language, Riddle said, pretending to be helpful.

"Fuck. Guys? He's told it to kill anything that moves. Close your eyes and don't move!"

Powers, you are irritating. Riddle turned to the Basilisk again as the boys froze. You know one scent. Kill the others!

"Never mind! Roosters! Now!" Mary shouted in response to Tom's new orders. "And run!" She levitated Ginny, pulling her along as she fled to another pillar. The boys ran in different directions, summoning rubble and transfiguring roosters behind them.

What followed was undoubtedly the most surreal, utterly insane ten minutes that Mary had ever experienced at Hogwarts. If it hadn't been so completely terrifying to watch, it would have been hilarious. In hindsight, Mary couldn't think why she had expected the twins to pull off a serious rescue anyway.

"What the? Stop! Stop that!" Riddle chased after first one twin, then the other, shouting "evanesco" to vanish each rooster before it could notice any of the others and crow. Apparently it had been an overstatement to say that he couldn't use magic, but he was clearly limited in the range his wandless casting, and probably in its power, as well, since he hadn't just stunned them earlier.

The snake obviously recognized the roosters as a more immediate threat than the twins, as it was more concerned with catching them with its gaze or just plain biting them than with following Riddle's orders.

The twins ran blindly away from the snake, not daring to look back and see how close it might be, lest they meet its eyes. This meant that they had no idea that it wasn't actually following them at all, and completely failed to locate each other to coordinate their efforts. Mary tried to tell them this, but between Riddle's shouts and the twins' spells, they (apparently) couldn't hear her. They just kept alternating between demolition curses to create more rubble (which Tom eventually realized was easier to vanish all at once than individual roosters), Summoning Charms to get the rocks close enough to transfigure, and the rooster transfiguration, which unfortunately took several long seconds to complete.

Mary stood in the open, staring, stunned at the farce playing out before her, for several minutes before she realized that she should just get Ginny out. She didn't know any of the spells the twins were using, couldn't touch Riddle, and the basilisk wouldn't listen to her. She wasn't doing anyone any good where she was, and both girls had clearly been forgotten by the three boys and the snake.

Mary (and the floating Ginny) had nearly reached the massive stone doors, which had somehow closed behind the rescue party, when several things happened in quick succession: A rooster finally crowed; there was an almighty thrashing and keening (and much yelling from the twins) as the basilisk died; Tom Riddle swore loudly enough in Parsel that Mary could hear him all the way at the other end of the hall, over the twins and the dying basilisk; and the lights went out as a wave of power washed through the room like a tidal wave. Riddle and the twins fell silent. There was a thud as Ginny's unconscious body fell to the floor, and Mary's wand failed to light when she tried lumos.

"Fred, George? Are you alright?" she called into the sudden quiet.

"Mary?" "Ginny?" came identical voices from opposite sides of the Chamber.

"Ginny's still unconscious. What just happened? Why won't my wand work?"

Riddle's voice came out of the darkness, nearer to Mary than either of the twins. "You idiots just killed a millennium-old basilisk, using magic, which caused the magic of the basilisk to be released into the chamber, and completely swamped every spell in progress." He was now very close to Mary.

"Boo," he said, creating an orb of light in the palm of his hand. Mary flinched in the sudden light, and Riddle laughed again before turning his attention to Ginny. "Damn it," he said, leaning over the younger girl. He summoned a plain-looking, black, leather-bound book from somewhere in the darkness, casting some sort of revealing spell on it before flipping through it carelessly and muttering under his breath. The Diary?

"How can you use magic, when I can't?" Mary asked, feeling a bit stupid.

"I told you: I'm better than you." But there was no sting in his words.

"Jackass," Mary glared at the young Dark Lord. He really was far less intimidating than the wraith. He kept teasing and being charming, and he seemed to share Hermione's compulsion to answer any question asked in his vicinity.

"Impertinent granddaughter."

"I told you, my mum's parents were muggles."

"And I told you, memory charms are easy. They might have thought she was their daughter, but without a Lineae Familiae test, there's no way to know for sure."

"No you didn't," said one of the twins, materializing out of the darkness.

"We'd have remembered that," said the other.

"And speaking of remembering…"

"We do believe we were on our way out."

"Right," Mary said, "Let's go."

Tom smirked at them. "You're going to get back up to the school with no light and no magic?"

"It's one long tunnel. It's not like we can get lost."

"Well, then, we may be at an impasse, as I'm afraid I still can't let you leave. I am still without a body, you see, and that, my stubborn children, is a sad state of affairs which I cannot allow to persist."

"What do you want us to do about it?"

"We're not going to let you kill our sister!"

"You say this as though you have a choice in the matter."

"That's it. Mary?"

"Yes?"

"Get the door."

Mary turned to the great ceremonial entryway and began to command them to open, but her voice cut out halfway through the password.

"What part of 'I have magic and you don't,' don't you understand? You're staying here until I tell you that you may leave!" The worst part was that the boy didn't even sound angry.

There was a long moment of tense silence before one of the twins spoke.

"So all we have to do," "Is make you want us," "To go away?" "George?" "Yes, Fred?" "I do believe we have been challenged." "I do believe you're right, Brother."

Mary smacked a palm to her face. The twins specialized in irritating Slytherins, it was true, but surely even they could not simply bother the Dark Lord enough that he would let them all go, just to get rid of them. He'd probably kill them first.

It did seem their plan was having some effect, though.

"Dark powers, will you stop that?" Riddle complained.

"Stop," "What?"

"That!"

"Sorry," "Can't," "Think" "What" "You" "Might" "Be" "Referring" "To." "No, Fred, it ought to have been 'to what'." "Sorry, George." "Can't," "Think" "To" "What" "You" "Might" "Be" "Referring."

Riddle made a show of massaging his temples. Even Mary was finding it a bit irritating by this point. Surprisingly, the older boy's next move was not simply to silence or stun the twins, but to offer a deal. "I'll tell you how I'm doing magic if you knock it off."

"Done," the boys said together.

Riddle glared at them for a moment, but when they showed no signs of resuming their twin-speak thing, he upheld his end. "This," he said, nodding at the light on his palm, "is wandless."

"Obviously," Mary said, somewhat surprised that she was allowed to speak. She tried to poke Riddle in the side, wondering how far his tolerance extended. "You're still not solid."

Apparently further than she suspected, as long as she wasn't trying to open the doors. He twitched away. "No, I'm not. That doesn't mean you can go sticking your grubby fingers in my space."

"So the magic?" only one of the twins asked. The other remained silent. Mary considered this a minor miracle, even as she wondered what the phantom boy was up to. He had to have some sort of plan.

"Wandless magic, at least the way I do it, is totally different from wanded magic. You use your wand to direct your magic, and from there affect the magic of the world around you. I just reach out and touch the magic of the world. There's a lot of free magic around right now, so it's easier to just reach out. Using a wand would be like… trying to make a whirlpool in the Black Lake with your potions-rod. It's great when there's not much magic to manipulate, but when there's too much, it won't make a difference at all."

All three of the teens were staring at the intangible young Dark Lord.

"That made a surprising amount of sense," the same twin said.

"Was that what Flitwick was trying to tell us in that theory lecture that no one understood?"

"I think so. So wands focus and direct your magic, which most of the time you need to do, but now that's not going to work."

Riddle sighed. "Yes. Basically. Let's go."

"Go where?" one of the Weasleys asked.

"To figure out what we need to do so you irritating little brats can leave." Had something gone wrong with whatever spell was on Ginny? Mary wondered.

"What if we don't want to go with you?" the other Weasley asked. It appeared Riddle hadn't entirely managed to break their habit.

"Then I imagine you'll all die of thirst eventually and I'll have to find some other way to get a body. But things will be much easier for all of us if you just cooperate. Don't you trust me?" Riddle asked with the same pleasant smile. It would have been easy to ignore that he had just threatened to let them die before he let them go.

"Well," Mary pointed out, "You're not exactly Mr. Nice Guy, are you? I mean, you did say you were going to kill us and suck all the life out of Ginny."

"I can't believe you would say such a thing! Surely a fellow Slytherin can appreciate the urge to survive at any cost? Ginny was simply a means to an end."

Mary shot a look at the twins, who were eyeing her speculatively. It probably wasn't a good idea to answer that. "There wasn't any other alternative?"

Riddle's expression turned thoughtful. "Well, that is the question, isn't it? I wouldn't have killed the basilisk, but since it's already dead…" He started walking away.

"Hey, Riddle!" Mary called, "If all spells are stopped, what about Ginny?"

The boy looked around. He appeared surprised that she wasn't following him. He shrugged. "She'll wake up in a few hours. Aren't you coming?"

Mary had no idea where he was going, but she certainly didn't want to be left in the dark to die of thirst. The twins apparently agreed, because one of them scooped up Ginny, and they began to follow the apparition as it strode away.