part three
They follow the sounds of Potter, Weasley, and Lockhart’s steps through the slimy, dark tunnel. Draco’s heart races after that disorienting slide down the pipe, but it continues racing long after they reach the bottom due to their breakneck pace. They aren’t flat out running yet, but it’s more physical activity than Draco has participated in since before he became an Unspeakable, and he’s loath to admit that a career in research, while great exercise for the brain, does not contribute to a fit physique.
Draco doesn’t dare let go of Ginny’s hand. There’s only one direction they can travel in, but the all-consuming darkness is eerie enough without feeling alone in it. A light would give them away once they drew close enough to the party ahead, so they travel in the darkness with only their clasped hands as reassurance that they are in this together.
Whatever this is.
Their pace slows as the tunnel bends and agitated voices meet them.
“—tell them I was too late to save the girl, and that you two tragically lost your minds at the sight of her mangled body—”
Draco freezes, his breath catching as he realizes Lockhart is referring to Ginny, referring to leaving her to die in the Chamber.
“Come on!” Ginny breaks out into a run and pulls him behind her as Lockhart raises a wand over his head.
“Obliviate!” he cries, and the tunnel explodes around them, stone the size of watermelons and larger falling around their heads.
Draco slips over some material on the ground and covers his head with his free arm as if an arm wouldn’t snap like a quill if a rock fell on him. Somehow, Ginny drags him where they need to be, and as the dust settles, as they hide against a wall and try to catch their breaths, he sees that they did indeed succeed.
A wall of rocks blocks the tunnel in the direction from which they’d arrived. Infant Potter stands in front of it, calling his best friend’s name.
Draco looks to his right where Ginny should be. He can’t see her due to the Disillusionment Charm and the darkness, but her trembling hand is still clasped in his, and he can hear her sucking in breaths through her fear. They stand shoulder to shoulder, and her body is a comfort after the excitement, her warmth feeding into him, sustaining him by reminding him that they’ve survived this long. A little cave-in couldn’t possibly finish them off after all they’ve been through.
“Was he really going to—”
“Yes,” she whispers, keeping her voice low so that Potter won’t hear them. “Then probably sell a heroic story about how he saved Harry and Ron but not me.”
“Why did his wand explode?”
Ginny’s voice wobbles when she answers. “It was Ron’s wand. He broke it at the beginning of the term, but my parents couldn’t afford a new one, so he Spellotaped it instead of asking for one. It backfired on him all year long.”
“That explains the slugs,” Draco says, remembering an incident when Weasley tried to attack him and ended up regurgitating slugs himself instead.
“Yes,” Ginny says, her voice a little colder.
Potter is moving now, and they move on with him, trying to keep their steps as quiet as possible. The tunnel goes on for ages, but Potter, using his wand to light the way, is an easy beacon to follow. They stop when they reach a dead end, a wall carved with the image of two intertwined snakes with glittering emeralds for eyes.
Potter clears his throat, and a hissing sound fills the tunnel.
Hearing Parseltongue spoken once more makes all the hair on Draco’s body stand on end. Potter has the voice of a child, high-pitched and as sinister as a sleeping puppy. Despite that, Draco doesn’t hear a child when he speaks. He hears a memory. The Dark Lord speaking in low hisses, siccing his giant snake on the Muggle Studies professor floating above the dinner table while his most loyal servants watch and laugh. Draco’s parents didn’t laugh. They didn’t watch, either.
But he did. Draco had witnessed the feeding from start to finish, his horror paralyzing him as much as his fascination. He’d made himself watch to remind himself to be grateful he hadn’t met a similar fate after his failure to kill Dumbledore, to remind himself of the consequences of future failures. The snake had swallowed the woman whole, starting with her feet. Draco particularly remembered how her head had turned just before snake jaws clamped around it, turned to look at him. He’d never had Professor Burbage as a teacher, of course, but her eyes had pleaded with him until she found herself in the belly of the beast, quite literally, and he would never forget that look.
No. To be more accurate, he had forgotten all about the expression of terror in her eyes as she died because he’d made himself forget it using his Occlumency to lock the memory away with all of the other ones from the war. Hearing Potter speak Parseltongue has released it as if those hisses are the very key that fit the padlock on the box keeping the memories contained.
As if obeying a command, the wall splits down the middle, separating the snake carvings and creating an entrance to some unknown space beyond.
But Draco knows exactly where this door leads. This can only be the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets.
When Potter moves into the room, so do Ginny and Draco. While Potter walks straight into the center of the room, in between tall pillars adorned with stone snakes that peer at the center of the chamber, Ginny tugs Draco off to the side, behind the pillars where they can take shelter and watch the proceedings.
Potter’s footsteps echo, and they take advantage of the echo to hide their own steps. They keep pace with him as he passes pillar after pillar, until he reaches the last set before a gigantuan statue of a wizard with a beard that nearly touches the ground. The statue is so tall, and the ceiling of the chamber is so high, Draco can hardly see the wizard’s face. Even so, the Chamber of Secrets, home to Slytherin’s monster, would surely feature a larger than life statue of Salazar Slytherin himself.
At the base of the statue, in between Slytherin’s bare feet peeking out from the hem of his robes, a bundle of black and red lay unresponsive.
Adult Ginny releases a breath at the same time Potter says her name and rushes forward, throwing his wand aside to turn the bundle over, revealing the tiny girl, her hair red as fire, her face as white as snow.
“Ginny, please wake up,” Harry says, his desperation manifesting not only in his voice, but in the way he shakes the body.
Draco shudders. He knows little Ginny Weasley’s fate, but seeing her like this—yes, near death, as he can see with his own eyes—a part of him still wonders if she’ll live….
“She won’t wake,” another voice says from the darkness.
Draco looks around along with Harry, searching for the owner of the voice. On the other side of the chamber, a black-haired man—no, a teenager; he’s wearing Hogwarts robes—leans against the pillar opposite the one Draco and Ginny are hiding behind. There’s something strange about his appearance, a blurriness that makes Draco rub his eyes as if to clear his vision. The dim lighting and ghostly green glow that reminds Draco a bit of the Slytherin common room doesn’t help, either. But when he finishes massaging his eyes and blinking into the darkness, the strange blurriness that surrounds the boy is still there.
“Tom—Tom Riddle?” Potter says in disbelief, as if he knows this person.
Draco doesn’t recognize him, so it seems odd that Potter, who had been raised as a Muggle and, at this point in his life, had only been introduced to the wizarding world two years prior, would be familiar with an older former Hogwarts student.
Ginny’s hand disappears from Draco’s. She’s let go of him, and he hears her footsteps as she retreats, but he can’t see her, dammit. This lighting, the Disillusionment Charm, the echo-y chamber…. Even if he could follow her, he wouldn’t lest he draw unwitting attention to himself.
The loss of her terrifies him. Slytherin’s monster is here somewhere, and if they split up, how can they keep each other safe?
“She’s still alive. But only just,” Riddle says, his stare hard and unbreaking as he watches Potter.
A chill runs down Draco’s spine. His clammy hands clench in the material of his robes, looking for something to hold onto now that Ginny’s gone.
“Are you a ghost?” Potter asks.
“A memory. Preserved in a diary for fifty years.” Riddle points toward Ginny, to a black book lying on the ground next to her.
A memory brought to life. A manifestation of a life, an event that happened, apparently, fifty years ago, living, breathing, talking. A time-traveler, not unlike Draco himself. A boy out of place, out of time, visiting an era he’s never seen before. The thought incapacitates Draco. It’s one thing for his memories to wreak havoc inside his own brain, no longer restrained by his Occlumency. It’s quite another if they unleash themselves from his head and begin wreaking havoc on the physical world.
It’s the stuff his nightmares are made of, and while Tom Riddle is not Draco’s memory, it is not a far leap to believe that his memories could one day take on a life of their own, too. That the same magic that brought Riddle to life could make his memories a reality.
Potter begs Riddle for help as he lifts Ginny’s head and continues his attempts to revive her. Riddle still has a strange expression on his face, an intensity he directs at Potter, as if he’s everything he’s ever wanted, as if he’s been waiting eons to meet him.
Draco’s stomach turns.
Riddle has Potter’s wand, and he refuses to give it back. Potter begins to lose patience, saying with just as much urgency as the situation deserves, “Listen, we’ve got to go! If the basilisk comes—”
“It won’t come unless it is called.” Riddle speaks with composure that is inappropriate for the situation. He is, as ever, unhurried, as if he is unaware of the danger.
Or the master of it.
Draco watches with rapt attention as the two go back and forth—Potter demanding his wand—Riddle expressing his interest in meeting Potter—Potter asking what happened to Ginny.
And then Riddle mocks her. “I suppose the real reason Ginny Weasley’s like this is because she opened her heart and spilled all her secrets to an invisible stranger…. The diary. My diary. Little Ginny’s been writing in it for months and months, telling me all her pitiful worries and woes—
“It’s very boring having to listen to the silly little troubles of an eleven-year-old girl. But I was patient. I wrote back. I was sympathetic, I was kind. Ginny simply loved me. No one’s ever understood me like you, Tom…. I’m so glad I’ve got this diary to confide in…. It’s like having a friend I can carry around in my pocket….”
Riddle laughs, high-pitched, cold, and utterly familiar. It doesn’t sound like the kind of laugh a teenage boy could make, especially not one so young and handsome. It has a villainous quality to it, an evilness that Draco knows he’s heard before.
“If I say it myself, Harry, I’ve always been able to charm the people I needed. So Ginny poured out her soul to me, and her soul happened to be exactly what I wanted…. I grew stronger and stronger on a diet of her deepest fears, her darkest secrets. I grew powerful, far more powerful than little Miss Weasley. Powerful enough to start feeding Miss Weasley a few of my secrets, to start pouring a little of my soul back into her....”
“What d’you mean?” Potter asks, his question echoing the one Draco screams in his mind.
He’s gripping the pillar now, the stone biting into the soft flesh of his palms, leaving ancient debris embedded in his skin. But that doesn’t matter, because Draco wants to understand… he needs to know what’s going on….
“Haven’t you guessed yet, Harry Potter?” Riddle says, his voice soft, inviting—derisive. “Ginny Weasley opened the Chamber of Secrets. She strangled the school roosters and daubed threatening messages on the walls. She set the serpent of Slytherin on four Mudbloods, and the Squib’s cat.”
“No,” Potter whispers.
Draco’s mind has gone too dark and empty to think even that single word. It’s impossible, what Riddle suggests. The legend said that Slytherin’s heir was the only one who could open the Chamber of Secrets and control Slytherin’s monster. Draco’s father had said as such when he’d written home about the first attacks and messages on the walls. No one would have ever thought to suspect a Weasley to act as the heir of Slytherin, and even though she did Riddle’s bidding under duress, Draco still can’t imagine it.
Riddle drones on, and Draco hangs onto every word, trying to understand his motivation. And then an explanation arrives.
“Haven’t I already told you that killing Mudbloods doesn’t matter to me anymore? For many months now, my new target has been—you.
“...how is it that you—a skinny boy with no extraordinary magical talent—managed to defeat the greatest wizard of all time? How did you escape with nothing but a scar, while Lord Voldemort’s powers were destroyed?”
“Why do you care how I escaped? Voldemort was after your time….”
There is something odd about Riddle’s eyes now, a red tint to them that Draco might be imagining, though his instincts tell him he’s not. Just before Riddle opens his mouth, he puts it together, and Draco realizes why that laugh was so familiar, why Riddle’s eyes make him sick.
“Voldemort is my past, present, and future, Harry Potter….”
Using Potter’s wand, he slashes it through the air, not casting a spell, but writing three words large enough for Draco to read:
TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE
He waves the wand, and the letters begin to move in mid-air, rearranging themselves to say:
I AM LORD VOLDEMORT
“No,” Draco says out loud. He slaps a hand over his mouth, but his voice was a mere whisper, barely audible over Riddle explaining himself.
Looks like someone never outgrew his enjoyment of the sound of his own voice.
A delirious giggle climbs up Draco’s throat, but he smothers it back down using the sheer force of his will and his terror. As the wildly inappropriate laughter slithers back to the depths from which it came, Draco’s body descends with it, his legs finally giving out. He collapses to the ground and turns his back to the pillar, his knees drawn up to his chest.
When she was eleven years old, Ginny Weasley wrote into a diary that wrote back to her. The memory embedded in the diary became her dearest friend and used her vulnerability against her, to manipulate her, to possess her.
Draco had shared a residence with Lord Voldemort in his most evil form, and that memory had been so traumatizing Draco had vowed never to enter Malfoy Manor again and taught himself how to bury the memory deeply within himself so as to never confront it again. But Ginny had lived with the memory of Lord Voldemort residing inside her for nearly a whole year.
The Dark Lord had used Draco to do his bidding, threatening his parents’ lives and offering the kind of reward Draco could not refuse if he succeeded. The teenage version of the Dark Lord had controlled Ginny to make her do his bidding. He’d taken over her body, mind, and soul and forced her to hurt people, ghosts, and cats alike.
How had she lived so long with such memories? Draco hadn’t been able to function in Azkaban. The memories the Dementors had feasted on had turned him into a babbling, incoherent psychotic, and it wasn’t until he’d strengthened his Occlumency that he’d been able to think for himself again.
For fifteen years, this kind of darkness has lived inside her.
Does anyone know? Besides Potter, of course, who is dead now at any rate. Her family, her friends, do any of them understand what she went through at eleven years old?
How had they moved on as if nothing had happened? How had she?
He needs to know so that he, too, can learn to live with the memories of his past. Because he’s starting to see that ignoring them, locking them up, pretending they don’t exist, is not working for him.
Draco’s thoughts are interrupted by a horrific sound: hissing. He peers around the column to see Riddle standing at the foot of the statue, his arms lifted as he speaks Parseltongue to it. The sound of stone grinding together fills the chamber as Salazar Slytherin’s mouth opens wide, creating a black hole in the middle of Slytherin’s face to match the hole in Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom that led down into an abyss.
Potter backs away until his back hits the wall closest to Draco, and a phoenix—which must have arrived while he’d been lost in his ghastly thoughts—takes flight from his shoulder, fleeing the way Draco wishes he could.
And then something falls out of the statue’s mouth onto the chamber floor, and Draco is scrambling to his feet because he knows what’s coming next, and with Potter so close to him, that means Draco is now in the monster’s direct path.
A snake, the largest snake Draco has ever seen, uncoils and looks to its master for instruction. Riddle points in Draco’s direction—at Potter—and speaks.
And Draco knows without understanding the language that he’s just commanded the monster to kill.
They follow the sounds of Potter, Weasley, and Lockhart’s steps through the slimy, dark tunnel. Draco’s heart races after that disorienting slide down the pipe, but it continues racing long after they reach the bottom due to their breakneck pace. They aren’t flat out running yet, but it’s more physical activity than Draco has participated in since before he became an Unspeakable, and he’s loath to admit that a career in research, while great exercise for the brain, does not contribute to a fit physique.
Draco doesn’t dare let go of Ginny’s hand. There’s only one direction they can travel in, but the all-consuming darkness is eerie enough without feeling alone in it. A light would give them away once they drew close enough to the party ahead, so they travel in the darkness with only their clasped hands as reassurance that they are in this together.
Whatever this is.
Their pace slows as the tunnel bends and agitated voices meet them.
“—tell them I was too late to save the girl, and that you two tragically lost your minds at the sight of her mangled body—”
Draco freezes, his breath catching as he realizes Lockhart is referring to Ginny, referring to leaving her to die in the Chamber.
“Come on!” Ginny breaks out into a run and pulls him behind her as Lockhart raises a wand over his head.
“Obliviate!” he cries, and the tunnel explodes around them, stone the size of watermelons and larger falling around their heads.
Draco slips over some material on the ground and covers his head with his free arm as if an arm wouldn’t snap like a quill if a rock fell on him. Somehow, Ginny drags him where they need to be, and as the dust settles, as they hide against a wall and try to catch their breaths, he sees that they did indeed succeed.
A wall of rocks blocks the tunnel in the direction from which they’d arrived. Infant Potter stands in front of it, calling his best friend’s name.
Draco looks to his right where Ginny should be. He can’t see her due to the Disillusionment Charm and the darkness, but her trembling hand is still clasped in his, and he can hear her sucking in breaths through her fear. They stand shoulder to shoulder, and her body is a comfort after the excitement, her warmth feeding into him, sustaining him by reminding him that they’ve survived this long. A little cave-in couldn’t possibly finish them off after all they’ve been through.
“Was he really going to—”
“Yes,” she whispers, keeping her voice low so that Potter won’t hear them. “Then probably sell a heroic story about how he saved Harry and Ron but not me.”
“Why did his wand explode?”
Ginny’s voice wobbles when she answers. “It was Ron’s wand. He broke it at the beginning of the term, but my parents couldn’t afford a new one, so he Spellotaped it instead of asking for one. It backfired on him all year long.”
“That explains the slugs,” Draco says, remembering an incident when Weasley tried to attack him and ended up regurgitating slugs himself instead.
“Yes,” Ginny says, her voice a little colder.
Potter is moving now, and they move on with him, trying to keep their steps as quiet as possible. The tunnel goes on for ages, but Potter, using his wand to light the way, is an easy beacon to follow. They stop when they reach a dead end, a wall carved with the image of two intertwined snakes with glittering emeralds for eyes.
Potter clears his throat, and a hissing sound fills the tunnel.
Hearing Parseltongue spoken once more makes all the hair on Draco’s body stand on end. Potter has the voice of a child, high-pitched and as sinister as a sleeping puppy. Despite that, Draco doesn’t hear a child when he speaks. He hears a memory. The Dark Lord speaking in low hisses, siccing his giant snake on the Muggle Studies professor floating above the dinner table while his most loyal servants watch and laugh. Draco’s parents didn’t laugh. They didn’t watch, either.
But he did. Draco had witnessed the feeding from start to finish, his horror paralyzing him as much as his fascination. He’d made himself watch to remind himself to be grateful he hadn’t met a similar fate after his failure to kill Dumbledore, to remind himself of the consequences of future failures. The snake had swallowed the woman whole, starting with her feet. Draco particularly remembered how her head had turned just before snake jaws clamped around it, turned to look at him. He’d never had Professor Burbage as a teacher, of course, but her eyes had pleaded with him until she found herself in the belly of the beast, quite literally, and he would never forget that look.
No. To be more accurate, he had forgotten all about the expression of terror in her eyes as she died because he’d made himself forget it using his Occlumency to lock the memory away with all of the other ones from the war. Hearing Potter speak Parseltongue has released it as if those hisses are the very key that fit the padlock on the box keeping the memories contained.
As if obeying a command, the wall splits down the middle, separating the snake carvings and creating an entrance to some unknown space beyond.
But Draco knows exactly where this door leads. This can only be the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets.
When Potter moves into the room, so do Ginny and Draco. While Potter walks straight into the center of the room, in between tall pillars adorned with stone snakes that peer at the center of the chamber, Ginny tugs Draco off to the side, behind the pillars where they can take shelter and watch the proceedings.
Potter’s footsteps echo, and they take advantage of the echo to hide their own steps. They keep pace with him as he passes pillar after pillar, until he reaches the last set before a gigantuan statue of a wizard with a beard that nearly touches the ground. The statue is so tall, and the ceiling of the chamber is so high, Draco can hardly see the wizard’s face. Even so, the Chamber of Secrets, home to Slytherin’s monster, would surely feature a larger than life statue of Salazar Slytherin himself.
At the base of the statue, in between Slytherin’s bare feet peeking out from the hem of his robes, a bundle of black and red lay unresponsive.
Adult Ginny releases a breath at the same time Potter says her name and rushes forward, throwing his wand aside to turn the bundle over, revealing the tiny girl, her hair red as fire, her face as white as snow.
“Ginny, please wake up,” Harry says, his desperation manifesting not only in his voice, but in the way he shakes the body.
Draco shudders. He knows little Ginny Weasley’s fate, but seeing her like this—yes, near death, as he can see with his own eyes—a part of him still wonders if she’ll live….
“She won’t wake,” another voice says from the darkness.
Draco looks around along with Harry, searching for the owner of the voice. On the other side of the chamber, a black-haired man—no, a teenager; he’s wearing Hogwarts robes—leans against the pillar opposite the one Draco and Ginny are hiding behind. There’s something strange about his appearance, a blurriness that makes Draco rub his eyes as if to clear his vision. The dim lighting and ghostly green glow that reminds Draco a bit of the Slytherin common room doesn’t help, either. But when he finishes massaging his eyes and blinking into the darkness, the strange blurriness that surrounds the boy is still there.
“Tom—Tom Riddle?” Potter says in disbelief, as if he knows this person.
Draco doesn’t recognize him, so it seems odd that Potter, who had been raised as a Muggle and, at this point in his life, had only been introduced to the wizarding world two years prior, would be familiar with an older former Hogwarts student.
Ginny’s hand disappears from Draco’s. She’s let go of him, and he hears her footsteps as she retreats, but he can’t see her, dammit. This lighting, the Disillusionment Charm, the echo-y chamber…. Even if he could follow her, he wouldn’t lest he draw unwitting attention to himself.
The loss of her terrifies him. Slytherin’s monster is here somewhere, and if they split up, how can they keep each other safe?
“She’s still alive. But only just,” Riddle says, his stare hard and unbreaking as he watches Potter.
A chill runs down Draco’s spine. His clammy hands clench in the material of his robes, looking for something to hold onto now that Ginny’s gone.
“Are you a ghost?” Potter asks.
“A memory. Preserved in a diary for fifty years.” Riddle points toward Ginny, to a black book lying on the ground next to her.
A memory brought to life. A manifestation of a life, an event that happened, apparently, fifty years ago, living, breathing, talking. A time-traveler, not unlike Draco himself. A boy out of place, out of time, visiting an era he’s never seen before. The thought incapacitates Draco. It’s one thing for his memories to wreak havoc inside his own brain, no longer restrained by his Occlumency. It’s quite another if they unleash themselves from his head and begin wreaking havoc on the physical world.
It’s the stuff his nightmares are made of, and while Tom Riddle is not Draco’s memory, it is not a far leap to believe that his memories could one day take on a life of their own, too. That the same magic that brought Riddle to life could make his memories a reality.
Potter begs Riddle for help as he lifts Ginny’s head and continues his attempts to revive her. Riddle still has a strange expression on his face, an intensity he directs at Potter, as if he’s everything he’s ever wanted, as if he’s been waiting eons to meet him.
Draco’s stomach turns.
Riddle has Potter’s wand, and he refuses to give it back. Potter begins to lose patience, saying with just as much urgency as the situation deserves, “Listen, we’ve got to go! If the basilisk comes—”
“It won’t come unless it is called.” Riddle speaks with composure that is inappropriate for the situation. He is, as ever, unhurried, as if he is unaware of the danger.
Or the master of it.
Draco watches with rapt attention as the two go back and forth—Potter demanding his wand—Riddle expressing his interest in meeting Potter—Potter asking what happened to Ginny.
And then Riddle mocks her. “I suppose the real reason Ginny Weasley’s like this is because she opened her heart and spilled all her secrets to an invisible stranger…. The diary. My diary. Little Ginny’s been writing in it for months and months, telling me all her pitiful worries and woes—
“It’s very boring having to listen to the silly little troubles of an eleven-year-old girl. But I was patient. I wrote back. I was sympathetic, I was kind. Ginny simply loved me. No one’s ever understood me like you, Tom…. I’m so glad I’ve got this diary to confide in…. It’s like having a friend I can carry around in my pocket….”
Riddle laughs, high-pitched, cold, and utterly familiar. It doesn’t sound like the kind of laugh a teenage boy could make, especially not one so young and handsome. It has a villainous quality to it, an evilness that Draco knows he’s heard before.
“If I say it myself, Harry, I’ve always been able to charm the people I needed. So Ginny poured out her soul to me, and her soul happened to be exactly what I wanted…. I grew stronger and stronger on a diet of her deepest fears, her darkest secrets. I grew powerful, far more powerful than little Miss Weasley. Powerful enough to start feeding Miss Weasley a few of my secrets, to start pouring a little of my soul back into her....”
“What d’you mean?” Potter asks, his question echoing the one Draco screams in his mind.
He’s gripping the pillar now, the stone biting into the soft flesh of his palms, leaving ancient debris embedded in his skin. But that doesn’t matter, because Draco wants to understand… he needs to know what’s going on….
“Haven’t you guessed yet, Harry Potter?” Riddle says, his voice soft, inviting—derisive. “Ginny Weasley opened the Chamber of Secrets. She strangled the school roosters and daubed threatening messages on the walls. She set the serpent of Slytherin on four Mudbloods, and the Squib’s cat.”
“No,” Potter whispers.
Draco’s mind has gone too dark and empty to think even that single word. It’s impossible, what Riddle suggests. The legend said that Slytherin’s heir was the only one who could open the Chamber of Secrets and control Slytherin’s monster. Draco’s father had said as such when he’d written home about the first attacks and messages on the walls. No one would have ever thought to suspect a Weasley to act as the heir of Slytherin, and even though she did Riddle’s bidding under duress, Draco still can’t imagine it.
Riddle drones on, and Draco hangs onto every word, trying to understand his motivation. And then an explanation arrives.
“Haven’t I already told you that killing Mudbloods doesn’t matter to me anymore? For many months now, my new target has been—you.
“...how is it that you—a skinny boy with no extraordinary magical talent—managed to defeat the greatest wizard of all time? How did you escape with nothing but a scar, while Lord Voldemort’s powers were destroyed?”
“Why do you care how I escaped? Voldemort was after your time….”
There is something odd about Riddle’s eyes now, a red tint to them that Draco might be imagining, though his instincts tell him he’s not. Just before Riddle opens his mouth, he puts it together, and Draco realizes why that laugh was so familiar, why Riddle’s eyes make him sick.
“Voldemort is my past, present, and future, Harry Potter….”
Using Potter’s wand, he slashes it through the air, not casting a spell, but writing three words large enough for Draco to read:
He waves the wand, and the letters begin to move in mid-air, rearranging themselves to say:
“No,” Draco says out loud. He slaps a hand over his mouth, but his voice was a mere whisper, barely audible over Riddle explaining himself.
Looks like someone never outgrew his enjoyment of the sound of his own voice.
A delirious giggle climbs up Draco’s throat, but he smothers it back down using the sheer force of his will and his terror. As the wildly inappropriate laughter slithers back to the depths from which it came, Draco’s body descends with it, his legs finally giving out. He collapses to the ground and turns his back to the pillar, his knees drawn up to his chest.
When she was eleven years old, Ginny Weasley wrote into a diary that wrote back to her. The memory embedded in the diary became her dearest friend and used her vulnerability against her, to manipulate her, to possess her.
Draco had shared a residence with Lord Voldemort in his most evil form, and that memory had been so traumatizing Draco had vowed never to enter Malfoy Manor again and taught himself how to bury the memory deeply within himself so as to never confront it again. But Ginny had lived with the memory of Lord Voldemort residing inside her for nearly a whole year.
The Dark Lord had used Draco to do his bidding, threatening his parents’ lives and offering the kind of reward Draco could not refuse if he succeeded. The teenage version of the Dark Lord had controlled Ginny to make her do his bidding. He’d taken over her body, mind, and soul and forced her to hurt people, ghosts, and cats alike.
How had she lived so long with such memories? Draco hadn’t been able to function in Azkaban. The memories the Dementors had feasted on had turned him into a babbling, incoherent psychotic, and it wasn’t until he’d strengthened his Occlumency that he’d been able to think for himself again.
For fifteen years, this kind of darkness has lived inside her.
Does anyone know? Besides Potter, of course, who is dead now at any rate. Her family, her friends, do any of them understand what she went through at eleven years old?
How had they moved on as if nothing had happened? How had she?
He needs to know so that he, too, can learn to live with the memories of his past. Because he’s starting to see that ignoring them, locking them up, pretending they don’t exist, is not working for him.
Draco’s thoughts are interrupted by a horrific sound: hissing. He peers around the column to see Riddle standing at the foot of the statue, his arms lifted as he speaks Parseltongue to it. The sound of stone grinding together fills the chamber as Salazar Slytherin’s mouth opens wide, creating a black hole in the middle of Slytherin’s face to match the hole in Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom that led down into an abyss.
Potter backs away until his back hits the wall closest to Draco, and a phoenix—which must have arrived while he’d been lost in his ghastly thoughts—takes flight from his shoulder, fleeing the way Draco wishes he could.
And then something falls out of the statue’s mouth onto the chamber floor, and Draco is scrambling to his feet because he knows what’s coming next, and with Potter so close to him, that means Draco is now in the monster’s direct path.
A snake, the largest snake Draco has ever seen, uncoils and looks to its master for instruction. Riddle points in Draco’s direction—at Potter—and speaks.
And Draco knows without understanding the language that he’s just commanded the monster to kill.
Author notes:
All of Lockhart, Harry, and Tom Riddle’s dialogue is pulled directly from the Chamber of Secrets book, so that dialogue is not mine originally. The challenge with this chapter was attempting to make the Harry/Tom scene interesting for us readers who are already familiar with it, and I hope I achieved that. Tom talks A LOT in this scene of the book, and I didn’t want to copy the entire scene word for word because the important bits were Draco learning about why Ginny had been dragged down to the CoS and what she nearly lost there. So in some places, I used exposition to skip past Tom and Harry’s conversation. In other places, I outright omitted some of Tom’s dialogue so that you’re only reading the dialogue that was most important for my story. Seriously, 16-year-old Tom is a classic villain. Goes on and on and on, never stops talking.
The rest of the story is unbeta-ed, so I take the blame if this chapter and the last aren't that great! The last chapter will be posted later this week.
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