Summary of the previous chapter:

Severus and Sky go down the slide and realise they'll need a Parselmouth to open another door. Severus sends for Hermione and Marvolo and gets Neville as well. Together, they enter the chamber and find Ginny and Harry unconscious. As there seems to be no good way back up, Severus asks Albus to send Fawkes.

When Harry wakes up, he's alone, in the hospital wing and in turmoil. He can't even feel Tom anymore and is unsure whether he's Occluding or has vanished along with Riddle. After tormenting himself with guilt, doubts and feelings of betrayal, he finally falls asleep again.

A/N: You're welcome, Bob! :)

Ramifications

When Harry woke again, he heard people in the infirmary, and judging by the light that fell through the windows and his growling stomach, it had to be about noon. He couldn't pretend to be asleep any longer.

He reluctantly turned his head to find Madam Pomfrey, Professor Dumbledore and Professor Snape hovering near his bed, speaking quietly to each other. Harry faced the inevitable. They had come to question him.

"Mr. Potter," greeted his Head of House. "You managed once again to give us a good scare. I thought you were resolved not to make a habit of falling unconscious in hitherto unexplored parts of the castle."

"I hadn't planned on it, Sir."

"Severus!" chided the matron. "You could at least ask him how he is feeling before you start rebuking him."

"I was expressing concern," said Professor Snape indignantly. Funnily enough, that's how Harry had understood it. "I'm fine," he said. At least physically, he was, and that was probably what the matron was interested in.

"You must be hungry." Madam Pomfrey helped prop him up with a big cushion and made a tray float in front of him. Although Harry's stomach was growling at the sight of a good English breakfast, it inspired nausea rather than appetite, so he pushed it aside for now.

"Is Ginny okay?" he asked anxiously. He didn't see anyone else occupying a bed in the hospital wing. But given how close she had been to dying, she couldn't be back in the dormitory already, could she?

"She's recovering," assured the headmaster. "We put her into a private room as she is having her family stay with her."

Harry sighed in relief. She was alive. And she had her parents with her. She would probably need a lot of help to get over what Riddle had done to her.

"What about yourself?" asked his guardian, who was eying him with suspicion. He probably guessed rightly that the absence of physical injuries didn't mean that Harry had come away unscathed.

Harry had no idea if, when or how he would get over the things that had been disclosed to him last night. Right now, he only felt numbness, so it was probably best to face the inevitable while it lasted.

"I'm fine. Ask your questions."

"I have a feeling that it's going to be a long story, so it might be best to start at the beginning," suggested the headmaster, sitting down in the chair next to Harry's bed. "What happened after Myrtle woke you last night and told you that the girl you had been looking for had evicted her from her bathroom again?"

So Myrtle had already told them some of the story. Did they know why they had been interested in the girl in the first place? Did they know about the diary? Harry decided to skip that part for now. "Well, it turned out the girl was Ginny. She had just written another message on the wall and was heading back to the bathroom. I followed her, but she cast a spell so that Myrtle couldn't enter. Something was wrong with her – she seemed possessed, like Quirrell. At one point, she begged me to help her. I didn't know what else to do but to follow her."

"Get help from an adult, maybe?" suggested Severus, unable and unwilling to keep the sarcasm out of his voice.

"Myrtle was going to get help," replied Harry. "Right that moment, not leaving Ginny alone seemed more important. I didn't really have time to think it through, though."

"No. Reflexively, you chose to be heroic. Are you sure you're not a Gryffindor at heart?"

"You're not the first to ask me that," muttered Harry.

"Severus, don't be so hard on the boy!" Albus chided. "He tried to do the right thing, and I think he was very brave."

"Of course you do." The Professor's face made clear what he thought of the statement. "What happened then?" he asked Harry.

"Well, at the bottom of the slide, Ginny stunned me and I fell unconscious for a while. It's probably kind of my thing. Not so heroic, is it?"

"She sent a stunner at you?" Albus wasn't sure if he had heard correctly. "Are you quite sure? That's not a spell a first year should be able to cast."

"It was a red light that hit me square in the chest, knocked me out and made me hurt all over when I came round. I'm pretty sure it was a stunner."

"Yes, it definitely sounds like it." The headmaster had a slight frown on his forehead. "Go on, my boy."

"I found the gate with the snakes – given that I'm here I suppose you found it too and know what I'm talking about?"

"We do," answered Severus, still cross with his charge for rushing into danger like that. "Though I'd like to point out that Myrtle didn't know where the bathroom entrance was since she was banished before you disappeared, so it took us quite a while and effort to find it and to open it. Which would have been considerably easier had you remained behind."

It earned him another reproachful glance from the headmaster. "Severus, really! What's done is done. I think you got your point across. Let Harry continue."

Harry told them how he had found Ginny in the chamber and how he'd thought at first that she was dead. Severus noticed that he wouldn't look them in the eye, even when he appeared to be doing so. Apparently, he was afraid they would use Legilimency on him. Which meant he was hiding something. Surely Albus had noticed that, too.

"What then, Harry?" the headmaster asked gently, when the boy hesitated.

"You won't believe me."

"Try us!" said Severus.

"It was like with Quirrell, except that the one possessing her wasn't in her head, but in a diary Ginny had in her possession. And he had somehow managed to come out of it."

Both adults exchanged surprised glances. "Come out of it how?" asked the headmaster. Obviously, that was not what they had expected to hear, though they had obviously heard of the diary before.

"In the form of a boy, with a solid body. It was a bit blurred at the edges – as if I was looking at him through out-of-focus glasses, but he was real enough. He disarmed me." Once more Harry hesitated, unsure how much to tell them. "He was about sixteen years old and said his name was Tom. Tom Marvolo Riddle."

The headmaster sucked in a sharp breath. Professor Snape seemed less surprised, but he usually had a poker face that didn't give away what he was thinking.

"He was controlling Ginny through the diary," Harry continued. "It was him who made her do all the stuff – write the messages on the wall, set the basilisk on the students. He said it was primarily to hurt you, Professor Dumbledore. He thought you'd be blamed for being unable to protect the students. I don't think he liked you very much."

Dumbledore nodded sadly. "I know, Harry. I have to admit Tom Riddle and I never trusted each other."

"So you knew him?" Dumbledore hadn't been headmaster when Riddle attended Hogwarts, and Riddle had never mentioned him.

"I was his Transfiguration teacher a long time ago. And while Tom had an excellent reputation as a student – he was smart, a hard worker, charming and polite – I couldn't help but feel that there was a darkness about him. Unfortunately, I was later proven right."

Harry kept staring at a point between the headmaster's eyes (at least Severus was reasonably sure that's where he was looking), unsure how much he should reveal.

"Did you find the diary?" he asked, wondering what had happened to it. Had Riddle gone back into its pages? Had Tom been sucked in there as well? Harry felt a sharp pang of pain at the thought and hastily raised his cocooning shields again.

"We did. There were quite a few powerful protection charms on it, and a few other charms that were not entirely harmless, like a compulsion charm, a secrecy charm and a charm that siphoned magic. Otherwise, it's just an empty planner."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, Harry," said the headmaster. "I examined it very carefully. I disabled all the harmful spells and also searched for hidden text, but all the revealing charms I know – and I know quite a few – didn't reveal anything. Whatever else might have been there, it vanished with him."

Harry felt his eyes water and reached for the vial of pain potion someone had put on the table beside his bed. He briefly closed his eyes, hoping for the soothing effect to kick in soon.

"Are you sure you can continue?" asked his guardian, looking openly worried now.

Harry blinked back his tears and nodded. "Yes. Let's get it over with."

The headmaster nodded. "Thank you, Harry – I know whatever happened must have been distressing, but it's really important that we know what happened in the chamber. So Riddle told you about the attacks and what he hoped to achieve with them …"

"He did. When I told him that the basilisk was gone, he said that killing Mudbloods was no longer his goal anyway."

"What then?"

"I was. He wanted to speak to me, said I was the riddle, and that he failed to understand how I could have defeated him twice. I didn't understand at first. Until he showed me an anagram that could be made from his name: I am Lord Voldemort."

Neither his Head of House nor Albus pretended to be shocked, so Harry knew beyond doubt that they had known who Tom Riddle was all along.

"Yes, Harry, I'm afraid it's true," said the Headmaster. "Tom Marvolo Riddle, once a very promising and handsome young man and Hogwarts student, somehow turned into the darkest wizard our country has seen in a long time. I can't tell you how sorry I am for not being able to prevent it from happening."

Harry didn't know what to say to that. He had no idea what had gone wrong that had turned the 'promising' young man into a monster. He must have had some good in him if his soul had reformed into Tom after his death. Though Voldemort wasn't dead. Harry frowned. How could Voldemort be still out there and in Harry's head at the same time if they were one and the same soul? It didn't make any sense. The Riddle of the diary had claimed to be just a memory, and yet he had come very close to coming to life again. With Tom and Voldemort still around, would there have been three Tom Riddles in the world at the same time? Or was a memory not the same as a soul?

"How?" wondered his guardian. "How did you manage to defeat him this time?"

"I didn't." Harry said, turning his eyes away from both of them, staring at his own hands that were playing with a fold of his blanket. "I took the diary, intending to destroy it somehow, maybe tear out the pages or something, but before I could, it suddenly started glowing, Tom started screaming and …" Harry gulped, realizing he had said more than he had intended to. "And then Riddle just started flickering and fading out," he concluded. No one but him would ever make a distinction between Tom and Riddle. He hoped no one had noticed. "I remember seeing Ginny take a deep breath before I fainted."

"That was all?" Albus asked incredulously. "You just held the diary in your hands and he simply vanished?"

"Yes."

"How extraordinary!" The headmaster wrinkled his forehead, his gaze fixated on Harry.

"Well, I also defeated Quirrellmort with my bare hands, maybe it was just the same."

"Hm. I suppose we'll have to accept this explanation, as there seems to be no other. Still – extraordinary!"

"Indeed," Severus said, frowning at his ward. He strongly suspected that there was more to the story. But Harry, as usual, guarded his thoughts carefully. It had Severus concerned – what secrets was he so protective of? Right now, the boy seemed deeply troubled. Probably understandable, given that he had just faced the Dark Lord once again – alone and without help. It was a mystery how he survived these encounters. Maybe Albus was right: the Dark Lord simply couldn't kill him. But what could he do to his soul, to his innocence, to his ability to trust in other people?

Harry didn't trust easily, although he had become a bit more open with Severus lately. But it was probably still a long way to go until the boy would dare trust him with whatever secret he was hiding.

*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*

"Why didn't you tell them?" asked a quiet voice in his mind as soon as his guardian and the headmaster had left. It brought a fresh wave of agony, piercing Harry's armour of blissful numbness. So Tom was still there. Harry didn't know how to feel about it. The ache in his chest was almost constant now, but it seemed to flare up at times. Like at hearing Tom's voice again.

Harry didn't know how to answer his question. Why had he told Dumbledore and Snape all about Riddle, but nothing about Tom? Why was he still guarding his biggest secret? That he had Voldemort in his head. Or some part of Voldemort that wasn't possessing others. Was Voldemort somehow ripped in two – one part in Harry and the other some kind of soul figment that was jumping from host to host? But no – Riddle had come out of the diary. A diary he had been residing in for the last fifty years. It was all so very confusing, and Harry didn't know how to feel about anything at the moment.

"Harry? I'm sorry!" Tom sounded miserable, his voice broken. "I'm so sorry that I am him. Part of me still believes that it can't be true, that he lied. I don't know what to feel right now either, aside from the pain, that is."

So Tom felt the pain, too. It was located somewhere deep in Harry's chest, so he had assumed it resulted from the stunner. But Madam Pomfrey had given him a potion for the soreness, and Harry had felt instant relief. Physically, he was fine. Except that something other than his scar kept hurting, and there was a weight in him that hadn't been there before.

"Something's hurting inside of me that won't stop." Tom echoed Harry's thoughts. His voice was full of anguish, almost as if he was sobbing. "I've never felt anything like this. I think that's what's hurting you: The pain, it's mine, not yours."

Harry still remained silent. What was there to say? Tom had always shared Harry's pain, and now it was the other way round. Just why was Tom hurting so?

"Harry, please! Won't you talk to me?"

Harry felt tears coming to his eyes, and again, he wasn't entirely sure if they were his or Tom's. He wiped them away with his sleeve and closed his lids, concentrating on his breathing again. Occlumency. He just needed to shut it all out for a while.

When Madam Pomfrey came to tell him that Hermione and Neville were there to see him, Harry said that he was too tired to speak to them.

*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*

"What do you make of all this, Albus?" asked Severus, when the two were sitting in Albus' office after their visit to he hospital wing.

"I don't know, Severus. I really don't know. Judging by what Harry told us, Tom must have somehow managed to conserve a part of himself in the diary. He was very advanced at charms – at all kinds of magic, to be honest. He was inventing his own spells before he had even finished his OWLs."

"Objects that can talk are not uncommon in the wizarding word, nor are books that can take the reader into a visualisation of whatever scene is depicted. I also know of darker items that are somewhat sentient and siphon off their handler's power. But combining all three into one object? You surely realize that it's a work worthy of a charms mastery, and the Dark Lord seemingly managed such a masterpiece as a mere 16-year old. But none of this explains how he was able to come out of it and regain a physical form. What would have happened if he had fully drained Miss Weasley?"

"We can't know for sure, Severus, but I'm afraid we might have seen Voldemort return last night if Miss Weasley had died. The body created by these charms was just an empty husk – a shadow self. It wouldn't have been able to remain alive for long without a soul. Unfortunately, we know that the soul of Voldemort is still out there. My best guess is that it would have been drawn into the newly created physical body, thus reuniting both."

"So the Dark Lord might have re-emerged as a sixteen-year old?" What a perturbing thought. Severus wondered how his Death Eaters would have felt about that. The Dark Lord would have kept his vast knowledge, but his magical core at sixteen wouldn't have been quite the same as it was when fully grown. And getting orders from someone young enough to be your own son would surely have been extremely unsettling. "He would have been recognized."

"Only by me, Hagrid and Silvanus," Albus said. "But Silvanus would have been gone by the beginning of the next school year. And Tom did his best to get rid of me and Hagrid. I have no doubt that he would have been made a scapegoat yet again if the petrifications hadn't stopped."

"Lucius must have been in the know. If he wrote in the diary, the Dark Lord would doubtlessly have been able to communicate with him and formulate a plan. I'm sure he was in on it. Though we won't be able to prove it. He always comes out with a clean vest." Severus felt some bitterness at the thought. They all had suffered after the fall of the Dark Lord, and all of them had paid for their choices. But not Lucius. Instead, he had somehow ended up with the means to resurrect his master at his hand and had chosen to do exactly that.

"But how could Riddle at sixteen possibly have known that he might be in need of a body shell one day?" Severus wondered, guessing that the diary must have been given to Abraxas Malfoy at some point. "It's as if he knew already then that he wouldn't die like any other person if hit by an Avada. How did he manage to cheat death?"

"There are ways, Severus. I had thought for a moment that there might have been more to the diary, but thankfully, I was wrong. Tom was always experimenting with all kinds of magic. He had an inquisitive mind and an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. He might have created a diary that could procure a body shell merely to see if he could do it. And when his diary self heard from Lucius that his soul was still out there, he saw a chance of using its full potential."

"He was very close to achieving just that."

"Indeed." The headmaster looked very serious. "I'm happy that once again, Harry thwarted his plans somehow."

"Another mystery. What powers does the boy possess, Albus? What really happened down there?"

Albus sighed. "I really wish I knew, Severus. I can only assume that it has to do with the power Lily bestowed upon her son. The power of love. Voldemort cannot bear to be touched by such pureness."

Severus refrained from rolling his eyes. That nonsense again: the power of love! Did the headmaster honestly believe in it?

"So all we have to do is to find what remains of the Dark Lord out there and let Harry give him a hug?"

"Don't be ridiculous, Severus, that's not what I meant, and you know it."

"Well, I'm not sure what you meant. But I'm concerned for the boy. Constantly running into the Dark Lord and having to face him alone must be traumatizing."

"Harry is strong. Remarkably strong for his age. You've said it before – what doesn't kill us makes us stronger. I think Harry is living proof of that."

"And what about Miss Weasley? Will it make her stronger too, having been possessed by the Dark Lord, having tried to kill a few of her classmates and almost dying herself?"

Miss Weasley would need all the emotional support she could get. Apart from the serious depletion of her magic which she would take a while to recover from, the most serious damage to her had been emotional. "I hope we'll manage to impress upon her that she is not to blame. If Quirrell succumbed to the seduction and the charms of Voldemort, how was a girl as young and impressionable as she supposed to resist the charms of Tom Riddle?"

Albus sighed. "She blames herself for not recognizing the danger. Her parents had warned her not to trust anything that seemed to have a mind of its own without actually possessing a brain."

Severus figured it was sound dating advice as well and congratulated himself for having followed it. "It was certainly foolish of her," he agreed. "But she is only eleven years old. It is an excusable folly."

"I'll speak to Molly and Arthur again before they take her home," Albus said. "They will make sure to tell Ginevra what she needs to hear until she, too, understands that she was only an innocent victim."

"What have you told the Weasleys?"

"Not much as of yet, I wanted to hear what Harry had to say first. But they'll have to know the entire story, though it's probably wise to keep the fact that the basilisk is roaming the Forbidden Forest from Ginevra for now. I'll let her parents know that an expert for XXXXX rated creatures is taking care of it and that she and Harry have assured us that Scilla poses no danger to anyone anymore."

"Will you tell anybody else what happened in the Chamber?"

"No. Fortunately, I was able to vanish the last message of the heir before the school awoke. No one but the people directly involved know that Miss Weasley was ever in danger or had anything to do with the attacks, and we will keep it that way."

Severus frowned. There was going to be an issue with that approach. "We can't keep it a secret forever. Soon, the mandrakes will be ready and the petrified students will be revived. They will remember both the basilisk and Ginevra commanding her."

Albus fixed him with a firm glance. "No. We can't allow them to remember, Severus. I know what the ethics on Obliviation are, but sometimes, the end does justify the means. Too many innocents would come to harm: Miss Weasley, the basilisk and the kids who were petrified. It was a traumatizing event, they might have nightmares for years or develop a paranoia of snakes. I see no other way than to take those few seconds before they stopped breathing from their memory."

"And Lockhart?"

"If we're lucky, he won't even have noticed anything. Leave it to me, Severus."

The Potions Master had a very good idea what Albus was going to do. He would use Legilimency to determine what Lockhart knew and what he might do with the knowledge. Was it ethical? Probably not. On the other hand: It was a known fact that there were Legilimens in the world, so wizards and witches who didn't want their minds explored had better learn Occlumency. Muggles who knew that there were burglars around took safety measures as well instead of counting on the burglars' sense of ethics. In a way, they were still – or rather once more – at war. The Dark Lord had come to the school again, and now they had to do damage control to not let him win after his defeat.

"What about the Malfoys, the Ministry and the other governors?"

"Well, I think they are up to date, are they not?" Albus popped one of those annoying lemon drops into his mouth. "Nothing has changed as far as they are concerned. Let them think it was a house-elf acting on his master's orders. Lucius will know it was the diary, but he won't be able to tell anybody without revealing his part in the scheme. Let Ginevra's and even Harry's involvement remain unknown this time."

"I daresay Harry prefers it this way."

*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*

Severus went to see Harry in the hospital wing again after lunch to let him know about the headmaster's decision to keep the chamber a secret. As Harry was one of the few people who knew the truth, he had to know what he was at liberty to say – and what not.

The boy was still lying in bed with his eyes closed. On hearing footsteps approaching, however, he opened them immediately, indicating that he hadn't been sleeping. Severus noticed that the lunch tray beside him still remained untouched. Given that Harry had already missed breakfast, shouldn't he be hungry by now?

Harry listened to the explanation Severus gave him for the measures they had decided on, but different from all other one-on-one talks with the boy, he was entirely passive, didn't ask questions and didn't comment. He also showed remarkably little emotion – if Severus didn't know any better, he'd have suspected that the boy was Occluding. That, of course, was impossible. Even if he had read all the books Severus had suggested, it took discipline and effort to even master the basic skill of focussing one's thoughts, calming one's mind and separating oneself from one's emotions. A lot to ask for a child as young as Harry, though it helped that the boy had a calm disposition and was rational rather than emotional.

When Severus left the hospital wing, his unease increased. Perhaps Albus was right, and whatever Harry had seen in the Chamber had been more traumatizing than meeting the Dark Lord in the body of his teacher last year. Severus couldn't shake the feeling that there was more to it – that there were things Harry hadn't told them. But as that was kind of a default setting with Harry, there was nothing he could do about it. He wished the boy would trust him – though why Severus should experience such stirrings in the first place was another mystery.