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Chapter Eight-Inside the Chamber
The Chamber of Secrets was disappointing.
At least, that was Severus's first impression. He stared around the enormous stone room, dripping with water and emptied of whatever secrets it might once have contained and boasting a supremely ugly statue, and sneered.
It would have been good, in some ways, to be allowed to preserve his illusions about Salazar Slytherin being handsome.
Severus prowled slowly into the Chamber, snapping his head around from side to side. The silence and the emptiness continued.
Except for the floor at the feet of the statue. There was a flash of red and black. Severus altered his course, casting a Disillusionment Charm on the rooster as he did so.
Ginny Weasley sprawled on the floor, her school robes spread around her, her face deathly pale. The small black book beside her was a surprise, and so was the wave of Dark magic rolling from it, which made the Mark on Severus's arm throb with pain. He clenched his jaw to avoid crying out, and studied Weasley narrowly.
She was still breathing, from what he saw. He wondered if the Heir was using her solely as bait, or as a sacrifice of some kind.
"You are not whom I expected."
Severus turned his head as slowly as he could, given that he wanted to jump and snarl. No one could have sneaked up on him with all his senses straining to their full alertness, including his magic sense. He was in a plain stone room with no one except the increasingly drained Ginny Weasley around, and she was so weak that she barely felt of magic at all. Even if someone had managed to hide their power somehow, he should have felt the approach of another mind through his passive Legilimency.
But there was indeed a young man standing not far away from Ginny Weasley, his head tilted to the side as he regarded Severus. He was wearing black robes and a Slytherin tie. He was not familiar.
And that was impossible. Severus knew all his students.
"Do you have nothing to say for yourself?" the student asked impatiently when Severus simply remained silent. "Not even to ask how this happened?"
Severus squinted. He still couldn't sense the stranger's magic, which was equally impossible, or his mind. But he could see a faint transparency along the edges of his robes and body, as though he were a ghost—
A ghost made solid.
Severus hissed softly. He did not understand everything, but he knew enough. He had found the Heir.
It seemed that it had not been a student after all, not in the traditional sense. The ghost, or the being, had manifested from the book, and had probably possessed Ginny Weasley. There had to be a connection between them for the being to be growing more solid as he watched. Now Severus could pick up a faint shiver of magic from the boy, where he had not been able to before.
"It's boring that you're not saying anything," the boy complained.
Severus inclined his head. "I presume I address the Heir of Slytherin?"
"Yes, I am." The boy smiled as if at a private joke. "My name is Tom Marvolo Riddle."
The name rang a faint bell for Severus, but he could not say that he could recall the context in which he'd heard it. "And you are gaining life by draining the girl on the floor?"
"Of course."
The Heir was watching him with the smug self-confidence of someone who thought that no one could stop him. Severus was not sure that he could win a duel, come to that, although that was because of the Heir's non-solid state and the fact that the book on the floor was so Dark that he didn't know how to destroy it. So he would keep speaking. "And I cannot convince you to reverse the flow of magic?"
Riddle laughed. "When I have been trapped in a diary for fifty years, a living memory without anyone to communicate with? I think not." He spun a wand that was probably Weasley's around his fingers. "I hope you will understand, and not force me to kill you. You might be of some use."
A memory, trapped in a diary for fifty years…
Severus could not say that he had ever heard of such a thing, but he did think that it moved the diary into a class of Dark artifacts that could only be destroyed one of a few ways. He could use Fiendfyre.
Or basilisk venom.
Careful to keep his face as neutral as possible, he asked, "Why choose this girl, when you could have had more powerful victims?"
"You are curious. I appreciate that." A vicious smile curled across Riddle's face. "She was the one who wrote in the diary. Someone who was chosen by the book's previous keeper." Riddle shrugged. "Yes, I could have chosen someone more powerful, but only if I'd found my way into their hands."
Something about the way he said it made Severus think that had nearly happened, but honestly, he wasn't here to satisfy that curiosity. He nodded as if thinking deeply about the matter. "Why did you release the basilisk?"
"You know it is a basilisk? Good. That will save some tiresome explanations. I wished to consider my great ancestor's noble work, releasing the beast to cleanse the school of Mudbloods."
"Ah."
"You do not have more of a reaction than that?"
"Only that it seems doubly odd the diary's previous keeper gave the book to a pureblood."
Riddle gave a soft laugh that fell on the Chamber around them like poisonous snow. "From what dearest little Ginny said, the previous keeper had a feud with the Weasley family."
Severus held his face still, and he was fairly sure that as the half-solid being he currently was, Riddle could not sense the way his mind or magic might move with the information. But he knew what it meant.
Lucius.
And the diary was likely an artifact that had belonged to the Dark Lord.
Which meant—
Severus did not allow that particular realization to show on his face, either. Instead, he asked, "And now?"
"And now I walk out of the Chamber when dear Ginny is dead and resume my proper place in the world. A place that I count on you to help me attain, given that I can feel the magic on your left arm that tells me you belong to me."
Yes. But Severus raised his eyebrows and let his voice convey polite disbelief as he said, "I belong to a great Dark Lord, the greatest that Britain has ever seen. You are telling me that you are him?"
"A part of him. A memory of him."
Very well.
Severus let himself sneer. From the way Riddle blinked, it surprised him. "I do not believe you."
Riddle bristled and raised his wand. The fiery letters that appeared in the air, spelling out TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE, twisted into I AM LORD VOLDEMORT a moment later.
Something in Severus's stomach twisted as well. He had truly never realized how pathetic the monster he had bound to himself was.
"You are a memory," he said instead. "That is not the same as the Lord to whom I swore myself. And there would be too many questions if I did not rescue Weasley." He turned and walked towards Weasley.
"Stop!"
Severus did not stop, and was not surprised when a stream of unintelligible Parseltongue followed. He was a bit surprised when the statue's jaw swung open like the jaw of a snake, but then, he was starting to think that Salazar Slytherin had been too obsessed with the snake motif.
As the rasping sound of scales came nearer and nearer, Severus dropped into a crouch and placed the rooster on the floor. From Riddle's laughter, he had no idea what Severus was doing and might think he was simply frozen with fear. The Disillusionment Charm over the rooster must be holding, then.
There was a hiss that, to Severus, sounded mad with hatred and pain as the beast came forth. Severus swung his wand and ended the Disillusionment Charm and the Silencing Charm on the rooster at the same time.
The rooster swung its head back and crowed.
The sound seemed to ring through the Chamber and bring a flash of sunrise to the dim place. The basilisk crashed without a further sound, other than that of the rumble as its bulk shook the stones.
"No. No!"
Severus rose to his feet, and then dived and rolled. The Killing Curse that Riddle cast hit the rooster instead, and the bird went limp. Severus stood up and drew his wand.
"I am going to kill you."
"Perhaps," Severus replied, and began the duel.
The shade of the Dark Lord was very good at dueling. He was fast, he was fluid, and he wasn't afraid to use Dark magic in the way that many children of that age would have been. And a few of the spells Severus used went through him because he was still not completely solid, although others struck.
But Severus was a far more experienced duelist than Riddle had been at this age, and he was not truly aiming to kill the boy. Instead, he was working his way towards the basilisk's head, and when Riddle cast another Killing Curse, he stooped behind the snake.
"Do you think to use my own weapons against me?" There was the increasingly heavy sound of footsteps, altering between one moment and the next, as Riddle walked towards the corpse. "I am immortal! I am Lord Voldemort!"
Severus cast a silent charm that he often used in the lab to collect spilled potion, and the venom pooling next to the fangs in the gaping mouth rose in a green cascade. Severus whirled around and flicked his wrist, and the venom flew.
Soaking the diary.
There was a scream from Riddle that was worse than a dying thing, that went on and on. Severus resisted the temptation to cover his ears. He had heard worse. And there was always the chance that he would need to defend himself in the next moment.
But the scream faded away. And when Severus stood slowly and looked towards the place where Riddle had been, clutching his wand, there was no sign of him.
"Pro-professor?"
Severus spun around, crouching in place, and Weasley flopped back with a scream. Severus shook his head and moved over to her. He had recognized her voice, but it had been so unexpected for her to wake up so soon that he had almost attacked her anyway.
"Miss Weasley."
"Where is—Tom! You have to stop him—"
"I have stopped him, Miss Weasley. I have destroyed the diary."
Weasley stared at the diary, and then swallowed loudly. "Oh."
"In the meantime, we will need to know everything you can tell us about Mr. Riddle and the diary. When you recover your magical strength," Severus added, when he saw the wide-eyed way she stared at him. Albus would not forgive him for being too harsh with a Weasley. "I will take you back to the school now."
Weasley nodded and then fainted, too quickly for Severus to do more than place a Cushioning Charm between her head and the floor. He shook his head and gathered her up, floating in the air between him. Then he surrounded her with bubble shields to keep her from being bumped or scratched on the way out of the Chamber.
He cast one long, careful look around the Chamber before he left. Perhaps there were more secrets here than he had thought after all.
He would have to come back.