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Aurora Areli
FOR A MOMENT, THERE was silence as Harry, Ron, Ginny, Lockhart and I stood in the doorway, covered in muck and slime and (in mine and Harry's case) blood. Then there was a scream.
"Ginny!"
Mrs Weasley leapt to her feet from her spot by the fire, closely followed by Mr Weasley. I smiled as both of them flung themselves onto their daughter.
I had just looked over to see Professor Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall standing by the mantelpiece, when I found myself being swept into Mrs Weasley's tight embrace with Harry and Ron.
"You saved her!" she cried. "You saved her! How did you do it?"
"I think we'd all like to know that," Professor McGonagall, who had recovered from her initial shocked and gasping state, said weakly.
Mrs Weasley let go of us. Harry hesitated for a moment before walking over to McGonagall's desk and placed the Sorting Hat, the ruby-encrusted sword and the remains of Riddle's diary on the smooth surface.
Then he started telling everybody else what had happened. For nearly a quarter of an hour he spoke into the rapt silence: he told them about hearing the disembodied voice, how Hermione had finally realized that he was hearing a Basilisk in the pipes, how he, Ron and I had followed the spiders into the Forest, that Aragog had told us where the last victim of the Basilisk had died; how Harry had guessed that Moaning Myrtle had been the victim, and that the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets might be in her bathroom . . .
"Very well," Professor McGonagall prompted Harry as he paused, "so you found out where the entrance was — breaking a hundred school rules into pieces along the way, I might add — but how on earth did you all get out of there alive, Potter?"
So Harry, his voice hoarse from talking so much, told everyone about Fawkes' timely arrival and about me finding the sword for him to use on the Basilisk. When he faltered, I noticed that he had managed to leave Ginny out of the story.
Then I realized why — she could be expelled since Riddle's diary was destroyed, and there was no way to prove that he had made Ginny do all those things.
"What interests me the most," Dumbledore said gently, "is how Lord Voldemort managed to enchant Ginny, when my sources tell me he is currently hiding in the forests of Albania."
"W-what's that?" Mr Weasley said, in a stunned voice. "You-Know-Who? En-enchant Ginny? But Ginny's not . . . Ginny hasn't been . . . has she?"
"It was his diary," I said quickly, picking it up to show to Dumbledore. "Riddle wrote in it when he was sixteen."
Dumbledore took the diary from me and peered keenly down his long, crooked nose at its burnt and soggy pages.
