DISCLAIMER
I do not own Harry Potter ... but Tom Riddle was my sexual awakening
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The Chamber of Secrets was like nothing Harry had ever seen before.
For a start, it was a very extensive room.
It was large enough to fit multiple stone statues of snake heads lined up on the left and right sides as a stone pathway led up to a large accumulation of water sat at the bottom of a wall made up of a stone man, slightly resembling Dumbledore with long hair and a flowing beard.
Harry kept his wand tightly clutched in his hand as he walked down the stone pathway.
Once he had passed the first two sets of stone snake head statues, Harry laid eyes on the body of Ginny Weasley lying unconscious on the floor just in front of the water.
He broke out into a sprint, the sounds of water splashing under his feet echoed throughout the room as he did so.
"Ginny! Ginny, please don't be dead", Harry exclaimed as he fell to his knees beside the unconscious girl, his wand dropping to the ground beside him.
"Wake up. Wake up!" Harry started saying as he looked at his friend's younger sister's body.
There was a brief flash in his mind of last year when Ron was lying down in front of him, unconscious, just as Ginny now was.
That memory alone was enough for him to start shaking.
Harry had been greatly affected by such a sight.
It made him empathise with Bel. His best friend who had to witness both himself and Ron narrowly avoiding death.
He now knew how she must have felt that night in the dungeons.
Helpless, afraid, vulnerable.
"Please wake up", Harry continued to beg.
"She won't wake."
A new, unfamiliar voice spoke out to him.
Harry turned his focus off the unconscious girl to see a boy standing in the darkness to his left side.
But when he stepped closer, the light showed Harry that this wasn't a stranger.
"Tom. Tom Riddle", Harry said to himself, relieved that he was no longer alone.
"What do you mean she won't wake? She's not ...", he then continued, trailing off at the end, barely being able to say what he was thinking.
"She's still alive, but only just", Tom replied as he walked closer to the two.
Once he was standing just above Harry, the details of the boy registered in his mind.
This was no longer a grey, dim memory of 50 years ago.
He could see the colours on Tom's tie and prefect badge.
Green and silver.
He was in Slytherin.
And he was very much stood in front of him, still the same young boy from the memory.
"Are you a ghost?" Harry asked, trying to work out how it was possible.
"A memory preserved in a diary for 50 years", Tom explained.
Harry turned his focus back to Ginny, carefully touching his finger to the back of her hand.
"She's cold as ice. Ginny, please don't be dead. Wake up", Harry kept repeating.
There was no response, not even the smallest of movements.
"You've got to help me, Tom. There's a basilisk", Harry started to explain, desperate for help, even if it was from a memory of a person.
"It won't come until it's called."
His reply struck Harry's mind unevenly.
It wasn't what he expected at all.
That was what made Harry look up at the boy with confusion, only to see Tom Riddle now holding his wand.
"Give me my wand, Tom", said Harry as he stood back up straight.
"You won't be needing it", Tom replied nonchalantly.
"Listen, we've got to go! We've got to save her!" Harry found himself saying as if he was begging Tom Riddle to do the right thing and save an innocent girl's life.
"I'm afraid I can't do that, Harry. You see, as poor Ginny grows weaker, I grow stronger", Tom said in response.
Harry stared at him confused, prompting an explanation from Tom Riddle.
"You see, Harry, it was Ginny Weasley who opened the Chamber of Secrets."
"No. She couldn't. She wouldn't", Harry tried to protest.
"It was Ginny who set the basilisk on the mudbloods and Filch's cat. Ginny who wrote the threatening messages on the walls", Tom continued to list.
"But why?" Harry asked.
"Because I told her to. You'll find I can be very persuasive. Not that she knew what she was doing. She was, shall we say, in a kind of trance", Tom answered.
His demeanour had now completely changed.
His face stern and eerily menacing.
His tone conniving and uncaring.
"Still, the power of the diary began to scare her, and she tried to dispose of it in the girl's bathroom, and then, who should find it ... but you?" Tom continued as he started to pace around Harry slowly.
"One of the two people I was most anxious to meet."
"And why did you want to meet me?"
"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."
"Hagrid's my friend!" Harry snapped. "And you framed him, didn't you?"
"It was my word against Hagrid's. Only Dumbledore seemed to think he was innocent."
"I'll bet Dumbledore saw right through you", Harry said with a satisfied smile.
It was comforting to know their headmaster wasn't one to be fooled as he had been.
"He certainly kept an annoyingly close watch on me after that. 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 16-year-old self in its pages, so that one day, I would be able to lead another, to finish Salazar Slytherin's noble work."
"Well, you haven't finished it this time. In a few hours, the Mandrake draught will be ready, and everyone who was petrified will be all right again. Not to mention any minute now I have backup coming to put an end to your little show", Harry said calmly.
He could only hope Bel had found McGonagall and was already on her way back, if not already at the door.
"Would that backup have a name?" Tom asked.
Harry stayed silent.
So far, keeping Bel a secret was in his best interest.
How could a memory of 50 years ago know of her.
If he told him, he might call on the basilisk.
"Would that name be ... Mabel Whitlock?"
"How did you –", Harry started.
"There was no possibility of you getting in here without her. I was slightly confused to see that you had managed to venture in here alone. It must be pure luck. But I must also express my joy knowing she will be joining us soon", Tom said in a genuinely excited tone.
That was when Harry put two and two together.
"She's the other person you wanted to meet", he muttered.
"Yes, Harry. You see, Bel was my initial target to enact my plan. But there are many things that made it difficult. To start with, she took no interest in my diary when she first found it. I had hoped that she would stumble upon it again once it had wound up in your hands, but you got in the way. You kept her out of it. Unknowingly, you managed to keep her from me. But it seems like she is going to make my acquaintance anyways."
Harry tried to organise everything he was being told in his mind.
Bel had found the diary before he did. When?
But he focused mainly on one thing.
He had managed to keep her safe.
It wasn't a nice thought, but he was relieved that it wasn't her body lying unconscious in front of him in place of Ginny Weasley.
"Why do you want to see her?" Harry then asked.
"Many, many reasons. None of which she is quite fully aware of, despite the signs presented to her. I have a very different agenda for Bel Whitlock. But it quickly became clear to me that I can't get through to her without you and your infernal friends getting in the way. I managed to get Dumbledore out of the picture. And so, killing mudbloods no longer mattered to me anymore. For many months now, my new target ... has been you."
Harry felt himself tense up again, his slight burst of calmness when they were discussing Bel and Dumbledore vanishing.
"It's all rather satisfying to me, really. I get to kill two birds with one stone. You see, not only am I getting rid of your threat upon my plans, but I'm finally able to get ... revenge of sorts", Tom continued.
"How is it that a baby with no extraordinary magical talent was able 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", Harry said confidently.
Tom smiled a chilling smile, his eyes gleaming with pride as he spoke the words, "Voldemort is my past, present, and future."
Harry watched as Tom Riddle turned his back to him, using his wand to write words in glowing red flames in the air.
TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE
One flick of his wrist caused the letters to slowly move places, forming a new sentence.
A sentence that dispelled all the air from Harry's lungs.
I AM LORD VOLDEMORT
"You ... you're Voldemort. You're the Heir of Slytherin", Harry managed to mutter as he felt his body start to go limp.
"One of them", Tom said in a whisper.
"But surely you didn't think I was going to keep my filthy muggle father's name? No. I fashioned myself a new name ... a name I knew wizards everywhere would one day fear to speak when I became the greatest sorcerer in the world", he continued before Harry could interject about what he had meant when he insinuated there was more than one heir of Slytherin.
"Albus Dumbledore is the greatest sorcerer in the world!" Harry defended.
"Dumbledore's been driven out of this castle by the mere memory of me."
"Then the title falls down to Bel. His ward. A 12-year-old girl who is a greater sorcerer than you'll ever be. And as long as she's around, Dumbledore will never be gone. And she'll be backed by those who are loyal to both of them."
Tom Riddle looked enraged for the first time.
His cool and self-entitled nature had disappeared.
And what came next was the unexpected sound of a bird squawking.
Harry turned around to lay eyes on a red, orange and yellow coloured bird flying towards him.
"Fawkes?" he muttered.
The bird approached him swiftly, dropping down a tattered brown piece of fabric into Harry's hand before flying just over Tom Riddle's head, making the boy duck out of the way, and heading back to the entrance.
Harry immediately unwrapped the piece of fabric.
It was the sorting hat.
He held it upside down, looking inside to see a small, torn piece of paper, Tom Riddle watching him carefully.
Harry pulled out the paper, unfolding it and immediately recognising the handwriting.
Help on way.
Don't die.
- B
Harry felt the chill in his body fade, the pounding of his heart lower, the strength in him rise, the motivation to keep going take over.
All because Bel Whitlock was nearby.
"So this is what Dumbledore's Ward sends her great defender in her place? A songbird, a note, and an old hat", Tom Riddle spat as Harry tucked the note in his pocket beside the small wooden sword.
He kept analysing the hat over and over.
His mind trying to work out why Bel had sent him the sorting hat of all things.
But he was interrupted by the hiss of words coming from Tom Riddle's mouth.
The boy was now stood facing the stone face with his hand outstretched.
"Speak to me, Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts Four", were the words Harry understood.
Suddenly, the ground started to rumble, the mouth of the gigantic stone face slowly lowering down into the water.
"Let's match the power of Lord Voldemort, Heir of Salazar Slytherin, against the famous Harry Potter."
Next came a series of snarls, shrieks, and growls from within the darkness ahead.
It only took one look at the tip of a gigantic snake's head for Harry to turn and start running as fast as he could back to the entrance.
"Kill him", came the instruction from Tom Riddle's mouth towards the basilisk.
"Parseltongue won't save you now, Potter. It only obeys me!"
Harry kept running, his eyes firmly planted on the open vault door in front of him.
He prayed harder with each step he took that a certain blond-haired girl would suddenly run around the corner, rushing in with Professor McGonagall and a series of other teachers to his aid.
But instead, Harry found himself tripping up, crashing onto the floor as he heard the sounds of the snake approach from behind him.
He knew better than to turn around.
Looking it in the eyes would kill him.
And so Harry covered his head with his hands to prepare for what was to come next.
But whilst he wasn't yet saved by his friends, he was saved by something else.
The cries of Fawkes echoed out once more as Harry looked up to see the phoenix fly back into the chamber from where he had been patiently awaiting his next move.
The shadows on the wall depicted a battle between bird and snake.
Fawkes using his claws to dig straight into the eyes of the basilisk.
"No!" Tom Riddle yelled out as the bird retreated, his job done.
"Your bird may have blinded the basilisk, but it can still hear you."
It was safe for Harry to turn around now, the basilisk no longer having murderous eyes in its arsenal.
He laid eyes on the snake for the first time, slowly backing away as it thrashed around in pain.
The sound of the water underneath his shoes caused the basilisk to stop still, its head pointed in Harry's direction.
The snake, about twenty times his own size, immediately lunged forward, attempting to catch him in its sharp fangs.
Harry had managed to dodge it, dashing down a tunnel to his right, running as fast as his legs could carry him.
The same thing happened twice over, the basilisk expelling forward to try and grab him, Harry turning down another tunnel to avoid it.
He passed small mice fleeing from the snake, distracting him slightly as he turned yet another corner.
But this time, he was met with a metal gate blocking his path.
He had no time to turn back and run the other way, as when he turned around, he was met with the basilisk's head slowly rounding the corner.
Harry held his breath, limiting his sounds to absolute zero, as he backed up against the metal bars.
The snake opened its jaws, revealing lines of razor-sharp fangs, venom dripping down from them as it inched closer.
Harry lowered himself, feeling a small rock below his left hand as he did so.
Not taking his eyes away from the back of the basilisk's throat and his supposed fate, Harry silently lifted the rock, throwing it around the corner.
It emitted a clattering noise, the basilisk closing its mouth and turning around to locate just where it believed Harry to be.
Harry didn't dare move, he didn't dare make a sound, until the snake had vanished completely further down the tunnels.
That was when he returned back to Ginny Weasley.
Harry ran back to her body, now white as a ghost, Tom Riddle standing over her like an animal awaiting its moment to pounce.
"Yes, Potter. The process is nearly complete. In a few minutes, Ginny Weasley will be dead, and I will cease to be a memory. Lord Voldemort will return ... very ... much ... alive."
"Ginny ...", Harry started, but was interrupted by the explosion of water behind him.
The basilisk had returned, roaring as it surfaced out of the pool of water.
He had tried running.
It only came back.
The only option he had was to kill it.
But with what?
Voldemort had his wand.
So Harry did the only thing he could think to do.
He reached his hand into his pocket, feeling the oddly comforting outline of the wooden sword that Bel had given him.
He had totally dismissed her earlier statement of using it as a weapon to fight against the basilisk with.
But in this situation, he was prepared to use whatever he possibly could to kill this snake.
To save Ginny Weasley.
To save Ron, Hermione, all the muggle-borns who were under threat.
To save Hogwarts.
To save himself.
And to save Bel.
A girl who he now knew needed his protection more than ever.
Voldemort himself had an agenda for her.
And he had been able to keep her from it so far.
There was no doubt in his mind that he would go down fighting to keep her from it still.
But before he could take out the small wooden sword that could only do as much damage as a prick on one's finger, a glimmer caught his eye.
Harry turned to face the sorting hat.
It was no longer empty.
Sat at the edge was the hilt of a glistening silver sword, red gemstones decorating the handle.
It was certainly an improvement on the tiny wooden one he was planning on using.
Harry didn't waste a second in pulling the sword from the hat, holding it up towards the basilisk.
His mind started racing, trying to figure out how to take on a gigantic beast.
Don't panic.
Bel's voice called out in his head.
Harry tried his best to focus, to stay in the moment and not spiral into disarray.
That was when he realized he needed to make himself level with the snake's head.
Only stabbing it in the body would cause damage, but he needed it dead.
It was the only way.
And considering the size of the monster, he needed to get higher.
The only thing around him being the stone face carved onto the wall.
So Harry ran across the water, climbing up the wisps of the man's beard.
The basilisk lunged at the wall where it could hear Harry's attempts to climb, the boy retaliating with waves of the sword, trying to hit it.
The next time the snake lunged for him, it crashed so hard into the stone that pieces of it crumbled down.
Harry took his opportunity as the basilisk retreated after such an impact, gripping onto the stone edges for dear life.
It didn't take long for the snake to recover, coming at him again, and once again hitting the stone beside him.
Harry lost his balance, hanging down from the wall with one hand, turning to see the basilisk rearing up for another attack.
He swung his legs around, trying to locate anything to put his weight on so that he could pull himself back up.
But there was nothing there.
The basilisk slowly backed up, and before Harry could even try and think of what to do next, a voice called out.
"Stop!"
It was said in a slight hiss, letting Harry know that whilst he may understand it, it wasn't English.
And, to his surprise, the basilisk stopped just inches away from Harry's body.
He watched in complete shock as the snake backed away, turning its head to look at the person who spoke.
As it did so, Harry also got a view of his rescuer.
A blond-haired girl was stood halfway down the stone pathway.
Mabel Whitlock.
Of course.
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I'm gonna heavily edit this when I go back through
This is what ur getting for now hehe