He took out his wand and walked through the columns decorated with snakes. His steps echoed on the gloomy walls. He walked with his eyes half-closed, with Lockhart trembling and on the verge of fainting ahead of him. If the basilisk decided to attack, it would attack the professor first and Harry would have enough time to temporarily blind him. If it managed to devour the man or bite him, that was the least of it. Harry had to ensure his survival and he was sure that no one would miss that swindler and coward who for years had stolen another's glory to become what he was.

And to think that Hermione admired him so much, Harry supposed that his looks helped a lot.

As he reached the last pair of columns, he saw a statue, as tall as the chamber itself, looming up against the far wall. Harry had to lean back to see the gigantic face that crowned it: an ancient, ape-like face, with a long, fine beard that reached almost to the bottom of the loose wizard's robes, where huge grey feet stood on the smooth floor. And between the feet, face down, he saw a small figure in black robes and pale blond hair.

The overwhelming urge to run over there, grab Draco in his arms and get him to safety settled in his chest but Harry wasn't going to jump up and run after Draco just like that, screaming his name and alerting the enemy to his presence. He needed a plan, to be stealthy and above all to get out unscathed so he could get Draco out of there and make sure he could throw at least three different curses at him as punishment for being so careless to let that happen, because, realistically, those were the kind of things that could happen to someone like... Ginny Weasley and not Draco Malfoy.

"You go ahead," he said to Gilderoy, who instead of advancing, took a couple of steps back, full of fear. Harry stared at him, warning him that he meant it when he said he would kill him if he didn't obey.

Lockhart moved forward fearfully, looking in all directions. Grave mistake, Harry thought, but since the man had no idea what he was up against, and Harry didn't explain it to him, he simply watched him go stealthily, scared as a baby who wants its mother, almost on the verge of tears. The dark-haired man rolled his eyes, not believing that one could be so pathetic. Of course Harry was scared, but he knew perfectly well everything he had to do to emerge victorious and with all his limbs complete. The first step was to take care of the beast, then the diary. He was sure that this was the source of Voldemort's power, as Professor Quirrell had been the previous year.

Gilderoy arrived at Draco Malfoy's unconscious body, and Harry motioned to him to make sure he was alive. The man made a gesture of not understanding, but Harry couldn't speak, not if he wanted to keep the element of surprise completely on his side. He debated internally whether to approach or wait for something to happen. Finally, with his wand in his hand, he walked silently, with his ears alert, he shouldn't trust his sight, not at all.

"Draco…" she whispered, kneeling beside him. "Draco, please, you can't die like this. What do you think your mother will think?" She put her wand aside, grabbed Draco by the shoulders and turned him around. His face was as white and cold as marble. "Draco, please wake up," Harry whispered, feeling the hope leave his body. "You can't leave me, not like my parents, you promised me, you promised."

"He won't wake up," said a soft voice that Harry knew did not belong to Lockhart, who, frightened as he was, froze like stone behind him.

A tall, black-haired boy was leaning against the nearest pillar, staring at him. His outlines were blurred, as if Harry were looking at him through fogged-up glass. Riddle had attended Hogwarts fifty years ago, but he looked as if he were sixteen now.

"Tom Riddle," the dark-haired man said in a very low voice, almost to himself. Seeing him there so calm made him flare up in a rage that he could barely control. He knew he should be cold, that he should control his emotions in order to think, but every time he was in front of that man he could feel nothing but blind hatred. "Or rather, the memory of what you once were."

—Not for long, Harry Potter, not for long. When he dies I can leave the diary altogether, I'll be a living being of flesh and blood again. —Harry groped for the wand that only a couple of minutes ago he had placed on the ground beside him. —Were you looking for this? —Tom asked with a triumphant smile, while his translucent hands held the wand. —Your good friend had the decency to kick it away from you.

Harry glared at Lockhart who had already gone to hide behind a column.

"Do you now realise your position, Potter?" Riddle asked with a smile that in any other situation would have been charming. "You are going to die, that is imminent, however, if I have made you come attacking the mudblood and kidnapping Draco it is not simply to finish you off, but to ask you some questions. The more we talk, the longer you will live. I bet you want to know how this boy who seemed intelligent to all intents and purposes ended up like this." Harry did not answer, he looked at him in silence, planning his next step. "It was truly convenient, at least for me," he began to narrate. "The boy is very good at pretending, but beneath his mask of cold indifference I managed to find his true emotions, so explosive and pure that they made me shudder. I never managed to understand how he kept them at bay in such a professional manner, however, it only took a little push to make them come out, to show them to the world,

«I bet you noticed, that he was probably being more emotional and not necessarily in a good way; bad moods, spontaneous anger, stress, nighttime depression, nightmares. I caused it all with one purpose, to take over his soul. And it worked, boy did it work, after four months I had him hanging on the diary for hours, talking to me about everything that made him feel terribly bad, without him suspecting that it was me who was causing him such discomfort and he felt so protected by me that he didn't hesitate, not even for a second.»

Harry let out an involuntary groan at that, while a feeling he didn't recognize settled in his chest; it was a mix of bitterness, anger and sadness.

"If I need to say so, Harry, the truth is that I have always fascinated the people who suited me. So Draco opened his soul to me, and it was precisely his soul that I wanted. I grew stronger and stronger by feeding on his fears and his deep secrets. I became more powerful, much more powerful than he was. Powerful enough to begin feeding young Malfoy some of my own secrets, to begin giving him a little of my soul. But surely I owe most of the work to you and you alone, Potter. You have no idea how much help it was for you to be an immature, emotionless brat." Draco suffered, suffered because he was not sure he could ever earn your affection, at least in the way he wanted, being best friends seemed insufficient. Do you know what that meant to someone who had never been denied anything? "A torture, the worst of tortures." Harry looked away at Draco and frowned in distress. He loved him, he loved him very much, he was his best friend, that's why he was there, for him and only him. "In me he found everything he wanted from you, someone who would listen to him, who would understand him, someone who made him believe that he was important and indispensable. I think that the fact that we look so much alike physically also helped a little. Draco found me attractive, but many have done so."

"Draco didn't know what he was doing," she said, her voice like venom.

—You're right about that —he replied bitterly—. When he realized I was using it to get to you he tried to get rid of me, throwing the diary into the bathroom, but things couldn't have gone better, you found it —Tom looked in the direction of the statue's greyish feet and Harry did the same, the diary was there, wide open—. Draco had told me a lot about you, he told me about how you defeated me as a baby and then a year ago, he told me how powerful you were, he told me about how you had lost your family and I thought he wanted to meet you and give you back everything you had done, he wanted you to see your best friend die slowly for me, to be alone again, he wanted to make you suffer. But you never trusted me, very well coming from someone from the House of Salazar, you investigated, put the clues together and came here knowing my true self...

—Lord Voldemort...

—Exactly, Potter, you saw through what no one else could when I studied here, you saw through Tom Riddle, poor but very intelligent, parentless but very brave, school prefect, model student. Maybe only stupid Dumbledore, but not even he could stop me, not before or now. Do you know what that proves? That I am the greatest wizard in all of history.

"You're wrong, Tom," Harry said, smiling. "You're not the greatest wizard in history, that's me." Riddle laughed.

"I was curious, you know? Because there is a strange affinity between us, Harry Potter. Even you will have noticed it. We are both of mixed blood, both orphans, both raised by Muggles. We are perhaps the only two Parseltongues ever to have been at Hogwarts after Slytherin. We even look alike physically… But, after all, it was only luck that saved you from me. I think Draco held you in very high regard, he will be very disappointed when he finds out that I beat you… it is a pity that he has to die, as handsome as he is…"

Harry stood still, waiting for Riddle to point the wand he was holding at him. He wasn't sure if he could use it in his present condition. And he had located two of his three targets, Draco, who was at his feet, the diary at the feet of the giant stone statue, and the basilisk. However, it didn't take him long to discover where it was.

— Speak to me, Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts Four — Parcel spoke.

The giant stone face of the Slytherin statue moved and Harry saw it open its mouth, wider and wider, until it became a great hole. Something was moving inside the statue's mouth. Something was coming out of it. Harry closed his eyes, he heard Lockhart screaming in terror and trying to flee from that place in vain, the door of the chamber would not open unless ordered by some parcel speaker. A great mass hit the stone floor of the chamber, and Harry noticed that the whole room was shaking. He knew what was happening, he could feel it, he could see without opening his eyes the great snake uncoiling from Slytherin's mouth. Then he heard a hissing voice.

— Kill him .

The basilisk was moving towards Harry, and he could hear its heavy body sliding slowly across the dusty floor. With his eyes closed, Harry began to move the fingers of his right hand, waiting. Riddle laughed, thinking him completely helpless.

"I thought facing the monster without a weapon in hand was a Gryffindor thing to do," Riddle mocked.

"And it is," Potter replied, reaching into the inside pocket of his robes to pull out his wand and point it at the monster that stood barely two feet away from him.

Harry had been holding Lockhart's wand and it had been that one that Tom had stolen after Gilderoy kicked it away from him in a desperate attempt to disarm him.

The snake screamed and Harry knew he had hit his mark. His eyes opened. The snake, bright green and thick as an oak trunk, had risen into the air, its great blunt head weaving drunkenly between the columns, its eyeballs exploding in their sockets and blood streaming down its face. The blind snake swayed disoriented, badly wounded.

— No! —Harry heard Riddle shout. — The boy is in front of you! You can smell him! Kill him !

Harry took the moment to dash towards the diary. Tom looked increasingly solid, which meant that Draco was dying. He was glad he had let Lockhart believe he had left his wand in the office after disarming him, he had gone with the man's wand until he knelt beside his friend and had put his own inside his robes. And he had waited patiently, just as Draco would have done, he had planned and now, all that was left was to get rid of the thing that bound his best friend to that poor bastard. He pointed his wand at the object and muttered.

— Avada Kedravra — not sure if it would work.

But he did it.

Harry turned just in time to see Tom pointing Lockhart's wand at him, his face twisted in fierce rage. There was a long, horrible, wrenching scream. Ink poured out of the diary, flooding the floor. Riddle was writhing, screaming, and then... He was gone. There was the sound of Gilderoy's wand falling to the floor, and then there was silence, broken only by the dripping of ink still dripping from the diary. The Killing Curse had torn a glowing hole in the notebook.

When he was sure it was all over, Harry ran over to Draco's body, who stirred on the ground, drawing the basilisk's attention.

—Smell it well, because you are not going to touch a hair of it — he ordered the creature and it obeyed silently, curling up in place, suffering from its wounds.

Harry knelt down beside his friend and, unable to contain himself, hugged him, making him fall on his back, with Draco on top of him. He hugged him tightly, so much so that the blond uttered a soft moan that he moved away and helped him up. Draco had barely put his feet on the ground when Harry threw himself on him again and kissed him; he crashed his reddish lips against the blond's still pale lips and did so for a few seconds that seemed too short. When he separated, Draco looked at him with icy seriousness.

"All this time it was me," he finally said, his voice hoarse from the humiliation of having allowed himself to be manipulated in such a way. "I let him… I acted like a fool, letting myself be carried away by what I felt and now…" He swallowed, anguished, hugging himself, as if he wanted to protect himself from his mistakes.

—Relax, the only thing that matters is that you are safe, that the mandrakes will finish ripening any moment and everything will be fine.

—Don't you realize? I chose the victims, each and every one of them...

—Well, if you don't say it, no one will know and you won't get expelled.

Draco looked at him in disbelief, opened his mouth as if to reply, but didn't. His eyes reflected sadness for a second and then resignation, then he sighed and said:

—I want to get out of here.

"Just wait a moment," Harry said, addressing the basilisk. Its coiled body allowed its head to be level with the boy's. "Come here Draco, Professor Lockhart, drink a drop of its blood. It won't kill you and it won't be able to petrify you anymore."

Lockhart emerged from his hiding place, shooting to obey, apologizing between mumbles for having thought Harry could be really cruel. Draco drank only a drop with some distaste before asking.

"Are you going to keep it as a pet, or what?" Harry smiled in response, drinking a drop of blood from the basilisk's eyes.

When the three were ready, Harry applied the counter-spell to the creature, which instantly regained its sight. Gratefully, the snake bowed to him and hissed something that sounded like "thank you, master." They walked in silence to the exit, with Gilderoy eager to get away from the place.

"I suppose you'll be leaving now, Professor," said Harry pleasantly.

—Of course, and no one will have to find out what happened here. I won't say a word, on my honor as a wizard.

"I'm pretty sure of that, Gilderoy," Harry said, smiling at him.

Potter pointed his wand at the unarmed professor, who made no attempt to retrieve his wand. The man was sent flying a few metres towards the centre of the chamber, very close to the basilisk. With one more wave of his wand, the green-eyed man brought all of the professor's belongings into view, the ones he had been packing before Harry had forced him to accompany him.

—Unfortunately, I can't stand traitors. If you hadn't tried to take the wand away from me, I might have let you live without memory. However, now I'm afraid I can't forgive you. Your foolishness almost cost us our lives... —then he said in part: —Eat it, so that not even the bones remain. —He smiled falsely—. Enjoy your stay here, Professor. If you survive, which I doubt, you'll be able to write a fantastic book about it.

And so, both Slytherins left the Chamber of Secrets.

[...]

Like everything at Hogwarts, Harry Potter's new feat quickly went from being a secret to the news of the moment. Everyone talked about how heroic he had been and the Slytherins couldn't even get angry; the fact that he had saved Draco earned him the utmost respect and loyalty of all the members of his house. Harry was now definitely ruling Slytherin.

Dumbledore was extremely pleased with his performance and even gave him a plaque which rested in the trophy room, it was the largest and brightest of all. Even Snape seemed extremely interested in his role in that confrontation and even treated him with a little respect that seemed extremely pleasant to him.

However, there was something that touched Harry more than all those honors bestowed by the Minister of Magic himself. It happened on the last day of school, Draco had acted deadly serious and distant after he left the hospital wing. Harry didn't understand it, Malfoy hadn't gotten into trouble, all the victims had been depetrified and everyone understood that it hadn't been his fault and yet it seemed that there was something that tormented him.

Harry was playing chess with Nott when Draco had come down from the bedroom, stood in front of him, knelt down, head bowed, and said:

—My honor is your honor now, in payment for my life I offer it to you without hesitation. This is an oath of pureblood loyalty, on my life, on my blood, on my honor, I... —he looked up— Draco Lucius Malfoy Black swear loyalty to Harry James Potter Evans, as payment for the debt of life.

Everyone present stared at him with their mouths open. Harry had read about the oath, but he had never believed that Draco... He knew that the boy was now obliged not only to protect him, but to always be on his side, and not because a magical bond united them, but because tradition dictated it. In translation, Draco was now a kind of knight to the king.

Within seconds, everyone present reacted, kneeling down, imitating Malfoy, and Harry stood up straight, feeling the sensation of power invading him, it was the first time it was so palpable and it was delicious.

—I accept your loyalty, my dear friend, and as thanks I will grant you something in return, whatever your heart desires —he answered as custom dictated. Harry expected Draco not to ask for anything, usually no one dared to do so, but Draco nodded and stood up, taking him by the wrist and leading him to the room, where once in private he said to him:

—Forgive my father's mistake and the dishonor he has caused —his face was deadly serious. Harry wanted to shout at him not to be stupid, that it was because of his father that he almost died. However, he managed to swallow his anger and answer:

—Okay, I won't tell anyone that he was the one who gave me the diary, but this is the first and last time, Draco.

-Thank you...

—...And... the elf, Dobby, I want him for myself, he tried to warn me about it, he's a loyal elf.

"Okay," he agreed, not offended that the elf had betrayed his family.

That year, returning to Hogwarts was particularly awkward. Harry knew there was definitely something different about his friend, even though he behaved as usual. It wouldn't be until he returned to school after the summer that he would find out what had changed.