𝕓𝕣𝕒𝕧𝕖𝕣𝕪 // 𝕙. 𝕡𝕠𝕥𝕥𝕖𝕣

chapter 11: the heir of slytherin

your pov

As the door slowly closes behind us, Harry and i climb down the ladder and walk down the corridor. Looking ahead, we see Ginny lying motionless at the end of the Chamber.

"Ginny," i gasp  as we run to her, harry drops drops his wand and i kneel next to her. "Ginny. No, Ginny. Please don't be dead. Wake up. Wake up! Please wake up." i say, shaking her. Suddenly, a boy with dark hair swept to the side and dark eyes walks in through one of the doorways.

"She won't wake." he says. Harry looks as if he recognizes him. the boy walks over to us.

"Tom? Tom Riddle? What do you mean she won't wake? She's not...?" harry says.

"She's still alive, but only just." he says. that's a relief. but wait..

"wait a minute. tom riddle? like the diary?" i ask. riddle turns to me.

"oh, i see harry told you about me.." he pauses, as if he's asking my name.

"(y/n) (l/n). and yes he did." i say. riddle looks me up and down. this is the guy who blamed the attacks fifty years ago on hagrid..

"Are you a ghost?" harry asks him.

"A memory, preserved in a diary for fifty years." he says, turning back to harry. i touch ginnys arm.

"She's as cold as ice." i say to harry. he kneels down.

"Ginny, please don't be dead. Wake up." he says. poor ginny. harry stands back up.

"You've got to help me, Tom. There's a Basilisk." he says, but i have a bad feeling about this tom riddle..

"It won't come until it's called." he says. i narrows my eyes. Harry sees Riddle holding his wand.

"Give me my wand, Tom." he says, holding his hand out.

"You won't be needing it." tom says.

"Listen, we've got to go. We've got to save her!" harry exclaims.

"I'm afraid I can't do that, Harry. You see, as poor Ginny grows weaker, I grow stronger," tom says. Harry and i look at him, confused. "Yes, Harry. It was Ginny Weasley who opened the Chamber of Secrets." i look down at ginny in disbelief.

"No. She couldn't. She wouldn't." i say. ginny wouldn't hurt a fly.

"It was Ginny who set the Basilisk on the Mudbloods and Filch's cat, Ginny who wrote the threatening messages on the walls." tom says.

"But why?" harry asks.

"Because I told her to. You'll find I can be very.." riddle looks down at me. "persuasive. Not that she knew what she was doing. She was, shall we say, in a kind of trance. Still, the power of the diary began to scare her. And she tried to dispose of it in the girls' bathroom. And then," he looks back at harry. "who should find it but you? The very person I was most anxious to meet."

"And why did you want to meet me?" harry says, taking a step back.

"I knew I had to talk to you, meet you if I could. So I decided to show you my capture of that brainless oaf Hagrid to gain your trust." riddle says.

"Hagrid's my friend!" harry yells. "and you framed him, didn't you?"

"It was my word against Hagrid's. Only Dumbledore seemed to think he was innocent." riddle says. i smirk at him.

"I'll bet Dumbledore saw right through you." i say.

"He certainly kept an annoyingly close watch on me after that," riddle says, walking around Harry and i as he speaks. "I knew it wouldn't be safe to open the Chamber again while I was still at school, so I decided to leave behind a diary, preserving my sixteen-year-old self in its pages, so that one day, I would be able to lead another, to finish Salazar Slytherin's noble work."