Y/N POTTER (2)

Chapter 18: The Heir of Slytherin

"I was left out."

"Ginny!" Harry and I called at the same time. We dashed towards her dropping to our knees.

"Don't be dead," Harry muttered. "Please don't be dead!"

I grabbed her shoulders and shook.

"She won't wake," said a voice behind us. We turned to see a silhouette of a tall boy. I squinted my eyes focusing on him. He was — Wow... He was hot stuff.

Did the temperature just rise even more? I'm boiling.

"Tom — Tom Marvolo Riddle?" Harry asked surprised.

He did look like Tom, but a few years older. I seem to have lost my voice.

"What do you mean she won't wake?" Harry said desperatly. "She's not—"

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

I stared at him. Tom Riddle had been at Hogwarts fifty years ago — wait — that means he's over fifty years old. Gross! I mentally slapped myself for finding him attractive.

But if the Tom in my year grows up to look like this...

Oh, shut up, will you? I said to myself.

There was a misty glow around him and he didn't look a day older than sixteen.

"Are you a ghost?" Harry asked.

"A memory. Preserved in a diary for fifty years."

Harry touched Ginny's hand. "She's cold as ice. You've got to help us, Tom. There's a basilisk—"

"It won't come until it's called."

That's suspicious...

I realized he was holding our wands in his hands. Harry stood up cautiously and stretched his hand. "Give me our wands, Tom."

"You want be needing them."

Oh, yes we will, Sir Hottie.

"Listen," said Harry. "We've got to go — We've got to save her!"

"I'm afraid I can't let you do that, Harry. You see, as poor Ginny gets weaker, I grow stronger."

Harry's face went pale in realization.

"Yes, Harry. It was Ginny Weasley who opened the Chamber of Secrets."

Wait a minute—

"No." Harry shook his head. "She couldn't. She wouldn't—"

"It was Ginny who sent the basilisk on the Mudbloods and Filch's cat. Ginny who wrote the threatening messages on the walls."

"Why?" Harry asked in a whisper.

"Because I told her to. You'll find I can be very... persuasive," said Riddle.

You're not wrong.

"Not that she knew what she was doing. She was, shall we say, in some sort of trance. Soon, the power of the diary began to scare her and she tried to dispose of it in the girls' bathroom. And then, who should find it but you? The very person I was most anxious to meet. Of courses your sister too... but I was fine with one."

"Why were you anxious to meet us?" Harry said.

"I knew I had ho talk to one of you. Reach you if I could. So I decided to show you my capture of the of that brainless oaf, Hagrid, to gain your trust—"