The Girl Who Hid | ✓

|16| Heir of Slytherin

Towering stone pillars entwined with more carved serpents rose to support a ceiling lost in darkness, casting long, black shadows through the odd, greenish gloom that filled the place. My heart sank at the sight of the empty chamber.

Harry pulled out his wand and pulled me forward between the serpentine columns. I followed him and raised my wand as well. Every careful footstep echoed loudly off the shadowy walls. I kept my eyes narrowed, ready to clamp them shut at the smallest sign of movement. The hollow eye sockets of the stone snakes seemed to be following us. More than once, with a jolt of the stomach, I thought I saw one stir.

Then, as we drew level with the last pair of pillars, a statue high as the Chamber itself loomed into view, standing against the back wall.

I had to crane my neck to look up into the giant face above: It was ancient and monkeyish, with a long, thin beard that fell almost to the bottom of the wizard's sweeping stone robes, where two enormous gray feet stood on the smooth Chamber floor. And between the feet, facedown, lay a small, black-robed figure with flaming-red hair.

"Harry," I said, pulling on his robes and pointing up to the body.

"Ginny!" He whispered harshly and ran over to her, dropping to his knees. I jogged over as well, looking around the room. "Ginny — don't be dead — please don't be dead —" Harry threw his wand aside, grabbing Ginny's shoulders and turned her over. Her face was white as marble, and as cold, yet her eyes were closed, so she wasn't Petrified.

"Ginny, please wake up..." I knelt down beside them. "I– I'm sorry, I-I'll listen to you more..."

Harry continued to shake her, but Ginny's head lolled hopelessly from side to side.

"She won't wake," said a soft voice.

I quickly spun around as Harry jumped up and faced the voice. A tall, black-haired boy was leaning against the nearest pillar, watching. He was strangely blurred around the edges, as though I were looking at him through a misted window. But there was no mistaking him.

"Tom— Tom Riddle?" I breathed.

Riddle nodded, flickering his eyes from me to Harry.

"What d'you mean, she won't wake?" Harry said desperately. "She's not — she's not —?"

"She's still alive," said Riddle. "But only just."

My breath caught in my throat, Tom Riddle had been at Hogwarts fifty years ago, yet here he stood, a weird, misty light shining about him, not a day older than sixteen.

"Are you a ghost?" Harry said uncertainly.

"A memory," said Riddle quietly. "Preserved in a diary for fifty years."

"L-Like the one you showed me?" I breathed.

He nodded and pointed toward the floor near the statue's giant toes. Lying open there was the little black diary we had found in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom.

"Tom, you've got to help us," I said, stepping forward. "We've got to get her out of here. There's a basilisk... I don't know where it is, but it could be along any moment... Please, help us."

Riddle didn't move. From beside me, Harry pulled Ginny up and bent down to get his wand, but it wasn't where he'd thrown it. Instead, Riddle was still watching him — twirling Harry's wand between his long fingers.

"How did you get his wand?" I asked Riddle.

A smile curled the corners of Riddle's mouth. He continued to stare at us, twirling the wand idly.

"Listen," said Harry urgently, his knees sagging with Ginny's dead weight as I ran over to help him. "We've got to go! If the basilisk comes —"

"It won't come until it is called," said Riddle calmly.