"Draco Malfoy is possessed by the spirit of the last Heir of Slytherin and has been using a basilisk from the Chamber of Secrets to attack his enemies." Hermione said firmly as Auror Dawlish secured her in the Hogwarts holding cell, something of a compromise between Moody's "send her to her common room" and Dumbledore's "send her to Azkaban" whole odd polarity surprised most of the Auror corps, but pleased Dawlish to no end.
"I can see why Lord Malfoy wants shut of you. Slandering an Ancient and Noble House like Malfoy, and from a murdering little Mudblood like yourself. It won't be long before you find yourself in the next cell to Sirius Black. Then you can tell each other how terrible it is for being put away for killing someone in front of the whole world, and actually going to Azkaban for it." Dawlish snickered as he locked the door.
Dawlish looked through the bars of set in the stout oaken door and and snarled at her.
"If it were up to me, you would be in a proper cell in the DMLE until the Dementors came to take their nice new treat home for a full buffet dinner. You'd be properly chained then, all your magic locked down tighter than any squib and helpless as a newborn. Mad Eye only let us take your wand, and lock that damned snake in a proper stasis box until we can destroy it right and proper. Now I'm stuck guarding you. Well don't you worry mudblood, I volunteered. I want to hear you crying when the Dementors come for you. Even if you had your wand, you are just a second year and no way you could hope to cast a Patronus." Dawlish snarled with a hunger that made his status as a Law Enforcement agent somewhat questionable.
Hermione sighed and flipped him a muggle offensive gesture before replying
"That sensitivity training really worked, didn't it Dawlish. I swear even Draco can't be that much of a prat without instructions from daddy using very small words.
Harry Potter stood before Albus Dumbledore and made his case.
"Draco Malfoy is under the control of the Heir of Slytherin, Tom Marvolo Riddle through a diary of some sort that holds his ghost. He is using the basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets to petrify students, and if we don't keep stopping him, he is going to be able to use it for killing them."
Professor McGonagall, Sprout, Flitwick, and Snape stood like silent book ends on either side of Dumbledore's desk as Harry Potter made his plea.
Dumbledore smiled serenely. Harry was at last properly motivated to stand against Voldemort, even if he didn't know it. What Harry did not, could not, know is that no Horcrux had the ability to overwrite the soul of a living being. In order to do that, the Horcrux would have to have part of the target soul offered willingly and conciously, a process that would take a deliberate effort over weeks or months and involve a total dropping of mental and magical shields. No Pure Blood heir would ever be so foolish as to open their heart and soul to a foreign magical object. Plus, Lucious Malfoy was well aware of the danger of one of Voldemort's Horcrux to the mental state and soul of any witch or wizard who had prolonged contact with it, and would never have left it anywhere near the precious Malfoy heir.
"The Chamber of Secrets was opened by Tom Riddle many years ago, but I can assure you, his ghost does not lie within these walls, nor within the pages of any diary from that time. Tom Riddle was Head Boy when I was Transfiguration professor here after Grindelwald's war. He graduated and left. Several years later he returned and applied for the post of DADA professor, which I regretfully had to decline." Said Dumbledore serenely, ignoring the fact that he had turned Tom Riddle down for the post, already suspecting he was the rising Dark Lord Voldemort.
"The Heir of Slytherin was a name taken by Tom Riddle due to his unique gift of Parseltongue, the only thing that legend says could open the Chamber of Secrets. Draco Malfoy is a very fine young wizard indeed, and devoted to the ancient customs of House Slytherin. If he had any shred of the Parseltongue gift, I am sure he would be demonstrating it at every feast, and every public event, to underscore his social position within that house."
Dumbledore said, his eyes hard as he looked over Harry, Neville, and Milicent.
"Now there is one parselmouth who has demonstrated her willingness to kill with a magical serpent under her direction. I think it is clear who it is that has been acting as Heir of Slytherin. I am sure that now she is properly secured, there will be no more attacks." Dumbledore said smugly, finally able to remove one of Harry Potter's dangerous influences away.
Neville looked at Dumbledore in shock before blurting. "Hermione is the new Hagrid. Tom Riddle framed Hagrid for it last time. Like having an Acromantula allowed you to petrify anyone. This time at least you are framing Hermione for it, and using an actual snake: but it isn't really different because Rock Viper's can kill with their bite, but they couldn't petrify anyone if you gave them a potions lab, grimoire, and wand. "
"That is enough, Mr Longbottom. Ten points from Hufflepuff for your outburst. None of you will accuse Mr Malfoy of this nonsense again. I command it."
Dumbledore continued sharply. "I think you will find your professors know rather more about it than any second year."
"Headmaster, I really think a basilisk is more likely." Began Professor Sprout who had her Care of Magical Creature's NEWTS with an Outstanding, even though her mastery was Herbology, and knew that a Rock Viper could kill, quite certainly, but not petrify.
"SILENCE" Roared Dumbledore, and his power beat the air, and made the stones of the castle ring as the Master of Hogwarts called its power to his command. The oaths that bound the professors bound them to their silence. The power of oaths for magical people was not a matter of choice, but a binding of power anchored in their very soul.
Milicent Bulstrode knew the freedom that came from Oath conflict, because while magical oaths could compel obedience, when two or more oaths conflicted, a certain amount of freedom became possible.
Turning to her Head of House, she bowed formally and addressed him.
"Head of House Snape, as a member of Slytherin, I bring to your attention that your sworn godson Draco Malfoy is in danger of his life, his magic and his soul. He has been possessed by the spirit of Tom Marvolo Riddle, and I do not believe this ghost will stop at killing Draco to regain its life and freedom." Milicent said formally, her dark eyes meeting the onyx chips that passed for Snape's eyes. If eyes were the windows to the soul, then Snapes were locked tighter than any vault at Gringotts, and she was gambling no one really knew what went on behind them.
Dumbledore was finished being defied by students in his own office. He snapped again.
"Ten points from Slytherin as well. Severus, confine this child to her room until such time as she understands how to be silent when so instructed." Dumbledore ordered and Severus nodded.
As they stalked back to the Dungeon, the bonds of Obedience to Voldemort, to Dumbledore and yes, to Narcissa Malfoy as Draco's godfather and magical guardian clashed in a conflict that put his mind into a degree of chaos and pain that most could not imagine.
Severus Snape was a master Occulemens. His mind was his to command. He could partition and arrange it to suit his whims, or his very grim needs. If he chose to see the possession of Draco Malfoy as a usurpation of the rightful name and power of his Dark Lord Voldemort, once known as Tom Marvolo Riddle, then he could act against him. If Draco had been foolish enough to open his soul to allow Voldemort even the slightest toehold, there is no way he would allow Draco to live. The Dark Lord would eat his soul, and wear his flesh like a puppet.
To defend Voldemort, the pretender must be crushed. To save his godson Draco, the possession of Tom Marvolo Riddle must be proved.
"You have no proof that Tom Riddle possesses Draco Malfoy." Severus said neutrally, not looking at Milicent as he made a production of dragging her into the Dungeon and towards the Slytherin common room.
Milicent Bulstrode was a very good Slytherin, not as good as Severus Snape, but that was why he was the House Master. She was however good enough to read between lines the House Master drew so very thickly. Loud enough for Harry to overhear, she said quite firmly.
"Do you agree that Draco Malfoy does not possess the Founder's tongue, but that Tom Marvolo Riddle does?" Milicent asked, loudly.
"Agreed. Draco has often complained about the unfairness of a 'half blood upstart', (apologies Miss Bulstrode), a goblin, blood-traitor, and muggleborn from having a gift that should rightly be the property of an Ancient and Noble house like his own. If he had he ability, I would know of it." Snape concluded.
Milicent asked the obvious question, because while she adored her Hufflepuff friends, the smart one was currently in jail.
"So any public demonstration of Draco using Parseltongue and parselmagic would be?" Milicent trailed off.
"Proof my godson was possessed by the Heir of Slytherin, and most certainly doomed to die unless the source of the possession is found and destroyed." Severus Snape concluded, having ridden the freedom of his conflicting oaths to the point he could reach without positive proof.
Dinner in the Great Hall was tense before Harry and Neville arrived. Dumbledore was off in his office doing damage control with Floo calls to various concerned and outraged parents over the events of the last day, but the Heads of Houses sat at the staff table to keep order.
Draco Malfoy was finally enjoying the primacy he deserved. His tablemates in Slytherin looked at him in wary fear. The Bulstrode girl was locked in the girls dorm, the whole school was whispering the truth, that Draco Malfoy was the Heir of Slytherin, yet the Granger mudblood would go to Azkaban for his crimes.
This was the ultimate Slytherin victory, to strike from the shadows, with every person knowing it was your hand, but none daring to charge him.
Harry and Neville walked into the common room, and each of them cast Sonorus on themselves as they grabbed their place at the Hufflepuff table, looking over at the Slytherins.
"If figures that Hermione was the Heir of Slytherin. I mean, she is Muggleborn, and Tom Riddle who last claimed to be Slytherin heir was Muggle on one side and squib on the other. That is worse than an actual muggle, it's like so weak you may as well give up and be muggle." Said Neville loudly.
Harry slowly buttered a bun then took a bite before answering in Parseltongue.
"$ She really must be the Heir. I mean, she told Noodle to kill that pervert and Noodle killed that pervert. That prat Malfoy has been trying to get the basilisk to kill someone for months and couldn't even make it kill a cat. I mean, how weak do you have to be that a muggle can tell your own familiar what to do? I'm kind of surprised Filch hasn't taken the basilisk to replace Mrs Norris if the false Heir is that weak. $"
Funny thing about Slytherin House, they were not just blood purists, they were blood scholars. When Milicent Bulstrode got the name Tom Marvolo Riddle, she had gone to the Slytherin library and traced the lineage. The fact that Tom Riddle was the son of the semi-squid daughter Merope Guant and her potioned muggle paramour Tom Riddle Senior was a juicy bit of gossip. To other houses, it may not seem much of a scandal. In Hufflepuff no one would care, in Ravenclaw, it might rate a footnote, but in Slytherin, House of the Pure Blood obsession, it was the worst scandal. She had briefed her Hufflepuff friends not just on Tom Riddle's background, but on how shameful it would be if revealed.
Draco had not been having a good term. Having been mocked non-stop by all houses about his supposed Weasley paternity (not true, but a surprisingly hard to kill rumour), his pride based on his Malfoy name and heritage had gone from the core of his inner strength to his greatest weakness.
Tom Marvolo Riddle as a sixth-year student had created the persona of Lord Voldemort and his plan for taking over the wizarding world, but he had come up through Slytherin house as a poor half blood surrounded by arrogant blood purists of a tenth his skill and power, who all looked down on him for his birth. In a few years, Voldemort would have the confidence of having Pure Blood House Lords kneel to kiss his robe hem, but as a sixth-year student, the Tom who wrote the diary was filled with as yet unexpressed rage and shame over his blood status.
Taken by surprise, while basking in his moment of triumph, Draco/Tom felt the shock of the dual insults, openly in English for the hall to hear, and the other in Parseltongue in the arrogant knowledge that Tom would understand and know his enemies mocked him for his secret shame, he reacted.
Badly.
Rising from his bench, Draco Malfoy waved his wand and the twenty foot stone table flew across the hall, scattering food and plates to rain down upon the stone and half the Griffindor table.
"Harry Potter, you claim to have defeated the Dark Lord? Well, prove it. Face the Heir of Slytherin and let us end this farce of the Boy Who Lived." Draco snarled as he stepped out and cast a series of curses, flowing from one to the next with the skill of a master duelist and the power to equal any of the watching professors.
Professor Filius Flitwick of Ravenclaw had been the European dueling champion for years, and he was amazed at the speed, accuracy, and skill of the flow of curses coming from young Draco's wand. He would have guessed it would take as many as a dozen years to go from where Draco had been at the start of term to where he was now.
"Merlin's beard." Whispered Flitwick, "Is it true. Is Malfoy possessed?"
Harry had two advantages. First, he was not trying to win, he was simply trying to escalate. Second, Draco was proud. Harry was Hufflepuff and goblin. Neither influence gave a damn about what people thought, or how noble a tactic was. The simply used the best tool for the job, and if people chose to look down on them, that was none of their business.
Harry danced through the spells, transfiguring food from the table into golems of foody goodness to charge the Malfoy scion. As Harry deflected, dodged, and countered Draco's very serious attempts at murder and mayhem without taking so much as a scratch, Draco wasn't in much, if any physical danger.
The objects transfigured to attack him as birds, serpents, badgers, griffons, and one very decorative flying monkey made of several different fruits, were all composed of food. As Draco blasted them from existence, he became covered in food.
The whole hall soon began laughing as Draco cast cutting curses, burning curses, lightning, flames, cold, acid, spears of stone, and dark forbidden spells that would have withered Harry's limbs to those of a thing a century dead, while Harry sent bread birds and pudding wolves to be blown up in rainbow sprays of goo all over the well dressed and immaculately coifed Malfoy Heir.
The humiliation became too much for Malfoy, and he finally reached into the depths of Tom Riddles forbidden instructions and spoke the two words that would damn him forever.
"Avada Kedavera!" Draco Malfoy roared and a green beam of killing energy lanced out at Harry Potter, only to meet a shining mirror of glass and silver. Draco Malfoy got a good look at his own face as the killing curse hit the mirror, and exploded it into bits.
The hall exploded into screams as the worst of the unforgivables was released by a second year student in the Great Hall before the assembled Heads of Houses.
"$ Serpensorcia $" Hissed Harry Potter, summoning a green and silver magical snake the very image of Slytherin's symbol. "$ Go kill that pretender. Go kill that pathetic and weak failed Heir of Slytherin.$ Harry hissed.
Tom Riddle had been too late to stop Draco Malfoy from casting the killing curse, but now he was in full control, and ready to teach this next generation of Wizarding Britiain who the true Heir of Slytherin was, and why he was feared.
"I am the true Heir of Slytherin." Tom Marvolo Riddle spoke through Draco's mouth, but the voice booming out of it was something far deeper, stronger, and infinitely more terrifying than Draco Malfoy's worst nightmare.
"$ Fiendfire! $" Hissed Tom Riddle in Parseltongue, letting the rich language of Slytherin flow off his tongue.
"$ I will purge your goblin stain from the holy line of Slytherin. I will burn even your soul from existence. Then I will find your mudblood bitch and feed her to my basilisk. You have dared mock my command of the King of Serpents, now feel it's truth! $"
Harry was considering how succeeding in his plan to force Riddle to reveal himself was not working out as hoped. Malfoy/Riddle's use of the killing curse was enough to expose him, and the parseltongue was enough proof even for Snape to see Draco was possessed.
The parselmagic was really not required, but utterly splendid from the point of view of proving Draco Malfoy was not alone in his body, as only a true master of Parseltongue and a Dark Wizard of the highest order and power could possibly cast the spell the Malfoy/Riddle had just unleashed.
Fiendfire was a spell that literally brough hellfire to earth, gave it form and awareness, and then used it to destroy cities, armies, small islands. It could not be extinguished with water, did not need air, and could burn even the most warded stone or enchanted metal in existence. It was alive, aware, and it hated life in all forms.
This version was actually worse. Summoned with Parselmagic, it was far stronger than normal fiendfire, and far more aware. Anyone who had taken at least the third year of Care of Magical Creatures, or second year Defense Against the Dark Arts knew the shape that had been summoned in the fiendfire. It was a basilisk, the guardian of Slytherin, the king of serpents, this time forged of pure hellfire.
It snapped up Harry's magical snake like the last spoonful of treacle tart at the feast.
"Harry! Can you stop that?" Neville shouted, using his own wand to raise a wall of stone the fiendfire basilisk simply flowed through.
Filius Flitwick cast a powerful ice spell that should have locked it in a block of ice a dozen feet thick, only the ice vaporized before it neared the fiendfire.
Minerva McGonagall hurled a banishment so strong that space around the fiendfire basilisk seemed to shudder and bend, but the parselmagic infused fiendfire basilisk devoured the budding rift in space like it ate the stone and flowed forward towards Harry.
"Hermione could make the fire just not burn people" Harry offered, extending his senses to get a feel for the magics woven into the fiendfire.
"She's locked up in the dungeon!" Shouted Neville, dropping spikes of stones down from the ceiling that evaporated before nearing the Fiendfire serpent.
"Milicent could freeze it trapped between miliseconds." Harry offered, dodging as the Fiendfire snake struck, eating a six foot hole in the floor he was standing on a second ago.
Professor Snape finished his chant and lashed out with a tentacle of pure darkness that scraped the edges of mind and soul with its foulness, but that flared and died when it struck the Fiendfire basilisk.
"She's locked up in the dungeon!" Shouted Neville, this time making the floor rise up in a wave to move the Slytherin students back from the lashing tail of emerald hellfire.
Harry ran out of time, space, and help. He had a fragment of Volemort's soul inside him, or what was left after he digested it, but whatever knowledge he gained from that did not include Fiendfire.
Harry looked at the shape, and something inside him wanted to reach out and touch it. This was a part of him. For one second, he reached out with his hand, only to stop when he saw McGonagall send in a dozen of the suits of armour and gargoyles guarding the hall and watching them explode in a mist of metaliic droplets and slag.
Harry muttered to himself. "Right, fire is not my thing. Snakes are."
Pulling his hand back, he reached out with his core, the heart of his magic. He shut his eyes and let himself feel the parselmagic, let it wash over him, flow into him, and become him.
Opening his eyes, Harry smiled and spoke softly.
"$ Enough old friend. Sleep now. I will call when you are needed. $" Harry gestured with his wand, and made the motions for a simple release of the serpent summoning spell, and to the shock and awe of the whole of the Great Hall, the Fiendfire basilisk bowed deeply and faded away.
Malfoy/Riddle stood stone faced, looking at Harry with an unreadable expression, then vanished in a mist of darkness that seemed to form a screaming skull that flared about the room and swept down towards the dungeons.
The Hogwarts Heads of House knew that spell, especially Snape who could actually cast it. It was the spell Voldemort taught all his Death Eaters, the one that allowed them to travel magically even inside the most restrictive teleport and apparition wards.
In fifty years, no one who was not a marked Death Eater had ever been able to cast that spell. Draco Malfoy had used it to flee the hall.
Albus Dumbledore popped into existence in the great hall, wrapped in power, his wand lost in the blaze of light that matched the beacons that passed for his eyes.
"What is going on here!" Dumbledore demanded.
"Your work, but don't worry, someone else will do it." Muttered Neville Longbottom as he supported a nearly unconscious Harry Potter as they fled from the Great Hall towards the medical wing.
Severus Snape stared at the place his godson had vanished from for a long minute, before turning and striding off towards the Slytherin dungeons, ignoring Headmaster Dumbledore's demand for a report.