PHANTOM FIGURES | harry potter

19. the heir of slytherin

     They were standing at the end of a very long, dimly lit chamber. 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.

     Aspen's heart was beating very fast, Harry's must have been too; they stood listening to the chilling silence. Could the Basilisk be lurking in a shadowy corner, behind a pillar? And where was Ginny?

     Both had their wands pulled out as they moved forward between the serpentine columns. Every careful footstep echoed loudly off the dark walls. Aspen kept her eyes narrowed, ready to clamp them shut at the slightest sign of movement. The hollow eye sockets of the stone snakes seemed to be following them. More than once, with a jolt of the stomach, she thought she saw one stir.

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

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

     "Ginny!" Aspen gasped quietly, sprinting to her and dropping to her knees. Harry following.

     "Please don't be dead - don't be dead-" he flung his wand aside, grabbing Ginny's shoulders to turn her over.

     Aspen dropped her wand on the ground and touched the Weasley girl's face, "She's freezing, and her face is so pale," she muttered, holding Ginny's cold face.

     "Ginny, please wake up," Harry mumbled desperately, shaking her. Ginny's head lolled hopelessly from side to side.

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

     Aspen wrapped her arms around Ginny in shock, her head falling onto the Ravenclaw's shoulder. Harry jumped and spun around on his knees.

     A tall, black-haired boy was leaning against the nearest pillar, watching. He was strangely blurred around the edges, as though Aspen was looking at him through a misted window. She didn't recognise him.

     "Tom - Tom Riddle?"

     Aspen gaped at him.

     Riddle nodded, not taking his eyes off Harry's face.

     "What d'you mean she won't wake?" sputtered Harry. "She's not - she's not -?"

     "She's still alive," said Riddle calmly in his smooth voice. "But only just."

     Aspen stared at him. Tom Riddle attended Hogwarts fifty years ago, yet here he stood, a weird, misty light surrounding him, not looking a day over sixteen.

     "Are you a ghost?" questioned Harry uncertainly.

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

     He pointed toward the floor near the statue's giant toes. Lying open there was the little black diary Harry had found in Moaning Myrtle's toilet. For a second, Aspen wondered how it had gotten there - but there were more pressing matters to deal with.

     "Look, Tom," said Aspen, speaking for the first time in the Chamber, Riddle looked at her for the first time. His eyes were unnerving, calculating, and it felt like he could know everything about her in a second. "We need help. How do we get her back to normal? There's a Basilisk in here somewhere, it could come out at any moment-" she adjusted her grip on Ginny, looking for her wand, but it had disappeared. "Do you know-"