"§Open§."
At long last, after what was probably hours, Harry and Lisa were at the final hurdle. In front of them, the stone wall started to shiver before each and every stone wiggled around and away to create an opening in the stone wall.
Leaning heavily on his staff on one side and with Lisa's arm around him keeping him up on the other, Harry started forward. And immediately froze.
"Harry!" Sirius cried before bounding forwards towards him.
In the brief flash of time before his godfather reached him, Harry saw enough to realise that the corridor was filled nearly to overflowing with adults. Kneeling in front of him were a pair of men dressed in dark brown cargo pants and a buttoned shirt, their robes loose on their shoulders. Each of them had their wands in their hands, raised as if in the middle of an incantation.
Half a dozen red robes could only be aurors, the most prominent two being Auror Robards and Madam Bones. Professor Dumbledore looked to be in an animated discussion with three or four unknown others, while a knot of professors – McGonagall, Snape, Flitwick and Pomfrey – were clustered together against the far wall.
"Pup! What happened? Are you alright?" Sirius asked.
Harry knew that he must look a sight. He was covered in blood and slime; his robes, what was left of them, were ripped and torn; and he was wrapped in makeshift bandages. Once Lisa was recovered enough, she'd helped him to tear up his robe and wrap it around not only his wounded shoulder, but also his knee which he'd found had been cut quite badly.
"Let me through, Mister Black," the no-nonsense voice of Madam Pomfrey commanded. "The boy obviously needs medical attention."
"That's her! She's the one who kidnapped Potter!" Auror Robards accused in his deep voice.
Three red-robed aurors closed in on Lisa who began shrinking back behind Harry.
"Wait. It wasn't her fault," Harry told them quickly, "she was being possessed."
"Possessed? Whatever do you mean, Harry?" Madam Bones asked quickly, staying her aurors with a single gesture.
"I think that this is neither the time nor the place, Madam Bones," Dumbledore cut across Harry's answer.
"I quite agree," Madam Pomfrey stated as she waved her wand over Harry. "I need to get Mister Potter to the Hospital Wing."
"Perhaps it would be better for all of you to return tomorrow after Harry has been patched up and had a chance to rest," Dumbledore suggested in a tone that left no doubt that he expected to be obeyed.
"From what I've been hearing, this is now a DMLE matter, Headmaster," Madam Bones stated. "Students placed under the imperius curse in order to attack other students and to provide the means for a kidnapping to occur and now there's the suggestion of a possession. No, neither I, nor my aurors, will be going anywhere until I get some answers."
"The School Governors would also like to hear what has been happening here," Lucius Malfoy intoned.
"Madam Pomfrey. Before you take these children to the Hospital Wing, I need to ask them one question," Madam Bones stated. At the healer's nod, she looked at Harry. "Is the school safe? Is whatever was petrifying students still on the loose?"
Harry gave a tight smile. "It's okay, Madam Bones. I killed the basilisk."
His statement was met with an uproar. Most adults stepped back, gasping in shock before trying to bombard the two teens with questions. Over it all, Harry made out Malfoy's drawl as he sent accusation after question at Dumbledore.
Without even giving him an option, Madam Pomfrey conjured a pair of stretchers and bade Harry and Lisa to lie down. Then, with a quick flick and swish of her wand, she began levitating the two towards her Hospital Wing.
-oOoOo-
It was sometime later that Harry found himself sitting up in his hospital bed, surrounded by adults. In the background, Madam Pomfrey was muttering darkly to herself, annoyed that her insistence that the boy needed to take some dreamless sleep potion to allow his body a chance to rest and heal itself was being ignored for now.
And while Harry was tired, the fact that he was now cleaned and the vast majority of his cuts, scrapes and bruises had been treated had made a world of difference. His knee was still bandaged, this time with a clean white dressing, but he had been assured that by morning he wouldn't even have a scar to show for his trouble there. His shoulder, though, had been a different matter.
When Madam Pomfrey had first eased away the matted mess of a robe that he'd been using as a make-shift bandage, she'd gasped before leaping into action. Just the action of pulling away the material had caused it be begin bleeding again and quite heavily at that. Not being able to stop himself, Harry'd taken a single look at the wound. That'd been more than enough to nearly make him vomit.
A long cut, deep enough for him to see the white of bone underneath the skin and muscle ran from his collarbone, across his shoulder and into his upper bicep. From the comments that Madam Pomfrey later made when she'd been talking to Sirius that he'd been able to overhear, he'd been lucky not to lose his whole arm. It also sounded as though he'd be lucky to be out of the Hospital Wing in time for the Leaving Feast and that was still ten days away.
With a sigh, he prepared himself for the coming interrogation.
Sirius stood over his left shoulder in what was clearly a very protective mood. In front of him stood Madam Bones with Auror Robards off to one side, a wad of parchment and a quill ready to take notes. Professor Dumbledore, eyes twinkling merrily away, was also there with Professors McGonagall and Flitwick sitting on the next bed over. Slightly behind Dumbledore, leading against the wall, looking like he was trying not to be noticed, was Professor Snape. And then there were the three School Governors, Lucius Malfoy, Madam Longbottom (who'd given him a small smile) and a third, a man that hadn't been introduced at all.
"Mister Potter, are you ready to tell us what happened?" Madam Bones asked, almost gently.
At his nod, she asked, "I think it would be a good idea to start with you explaining your assertion that Miss Turpin was possessed."
Harry reached across Sirius and grabbed up the remains of the diary. The black leather was marred by a massive hole in its centre as though a red hot poker had been shoved through it, charring the edge of the pages that it'd touched.
"It was this diary," he began. "Voldemort used this to possess Lisa when she wrote in it and made her do things that she didn't know that she was doing."
"Are you saying that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Name has been in the school?" Madam Bones asked, concern clear in her voice.
"Yes. No," Harry shook his head. "I got to see him and talk to him when he came out of the diary, but he looked like he was only sixteen or seventeen. And he didn't know anything about what'd been going on since then apart from whatever Lisa, Luna and I told him."
"I truly believe that this is not a discussion for so many people," Dumbledore said quickly. "This knowledge needs to be kept strictly confidential. Perhaps it would be best if Harry told his tale to me first before we involve others."
Madam Bones shot the Headmaster a look that clearly told him what she thought of that idea, before dismissing him and turning back to Harry.
"Let me check to make sure that I understand you correctly. You-Know-Who's teenage mind was able to possess Miss Turpin when she wrote in the diary and cause her to do things that she ordinarily wouldn't do without her even realising it?"
Harry nodded. "Yeah, although when I was talking to him, he always used the word 'soul', not mind."
Turning in her chair, Madam Bones addressed Auror Robards. "That would explain how those three students were placed under the imperius curse in order to distract you. I'd say that after some final interviews, those children will be free to go."
At his acknowledging nod, Madam Bones turned back to Harry.
"Now that we've got that part sorted out, I think that it would be beneficial to hear the entire story from you, Harry. We already know that there were three students who attacked you to distract Auror Robards and that during the conflict, both Miss Granger and Mister Longbottom were stunned."
Taking a deep breath, he began.
"After Auror Robards ran off, Lisa appeared. I could see that there was something wrong with her. Her eyes looked dull, as though she wasn't really seeing me or something. She was pointing her wand at me and quickly disarmed me, bound me with ropes and silenced me so that I couldn't even call out for help. Then she forced me down the corridor and into a hidden passageway."
"How did she get it open?" Madam Bones asked. "We had two curse breakers working on it for over an hour and neither of them were having any luck."
"It only opened by parseltongue," Harry replied, now understanding who the two strange wizards had been that he'd seen when they'd first come back out.
"But Miss Turpin doesn't speak parseltongue," Professor Flitwick squeaked.
"I'd assume that she could do it because she was possessed at the time," Professor Snape replied.
"Anyway, we walked for ages," Harry continued, "down passageways and pipes until we reached the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets."
"It really exists?" an eager Professor McGonagall asked. "What's it like?"
Harry gave his favourite professor a small smile. "The door's huge and you need to be able to speak parseltongue to get it open as well. Inside, the Chamber's massive. Much bigger than the Great Hall. It's really dark, even with all of the torches around it. There's dozens and dozens of huge stone columns and patches of water everywhere. And at the very end is a huge stone statue of Salazar Slytherin."
"Indeed? I was under the impression that no images of Slytherin have survived to this time. I would be curious to see that," Professor Snape mentioned.
"When we got there, Lisa tied me to one of the pillars before she began some sort of ritual. She placed the diary on the ground and then used her wand to cut her finger so that she could draw a bunch of runes around it in a pentagram pattern. And then she started to chant something, but I couldn't hear what it was.
"Whatever it was that she did, it made her shoot magic from her wand into the closest rune. The magic got passed to each rune and once they were all charged, he appeared. Voldemort."
Gasps escaped all those around as Sirius' hand that had come to rest on Harry's shoulder some time during his story suddenly clamped painfully.
"And then we talked."
"What did he have to say?" Madam Bones asked.
"Once again, Madam Bones, I must implore you to leave off this line of questioning for now. The information that was imparted to young Harry may be of strategic value and shouldn't be bandied around lightly," Dumbledore stated forcefully.
Madam Bones looked around at each person present, her eyes narrowed. "I will have a magical oath from each of you before you leave this room not to divulge anything you are about to hear to anyone without my express permission. If you feel you are unable to give such an oath, you may leave now."
When not one person moved, Madam Bones nodded to Harry to continue.
"He mostly talked about how he really was Lord Voldemort," said Harry. "That's probably because I kept saying that I didn't believe him. He told me that he was an orphan like me, that his muggle dad had left his magical mum before she died giving birth to him. He went to school here where only Professor Dumbledore seemed wary of him."
Every eye switched to the Headmaster with varying degrees of interest before turning back to Harry.
"In the end, it took him explaining his name to make me believe him."
"His name? What do you mean?" Madam Bones asked.
In answer, Harry retrieved his wand from his nightstand and began writing in the air as Riddle had done as he explained.
"His first name is Tom, like his father. His middle name is Marvolo, after his mum's father. And his last name is Riddle."
Then, with a single swish of his wand, the letters rearranged themselves.
"Tom Marvolo Riddle is You-Know-Who? But there's a Special Services Award to the school of his in the Trophy Room," Professor McGonagall gasped.
Madam Bones' nod to Auror Robards told Harry that that award was going to be under a fair bit of scrutiny later.
"After he explained who he was," Harry continued, "he cut me loose and called for his pet basilisk to kill me."
"How did you not die straight away?" Professor McGonagall asked. "The gaze of a basilisk is deadly."
"Ah, but only if seen directly, Minerva" Dumbledore remarked. "If seen as a reflection, it merely petrifies."
"And that explains all of the petrifications," Madam Longbottom remarked. "None of those poor people saw the beast directly."
"No," Harry said slowly, his brain working overtime. "Lil, Crabbe and Goyle were looking at a window and would have only seen its reflection. Filch ... Filch was looking into Mrs Norris' eyes and Mrs Norris ... there was water all over the floor! She saw the basilisk's reflection in the water!"
"Well done, Mister Potter!" Professor Flitwick beamed. "Twenty points to Gryffindor for such excellent deductions."
With a smile to the diminutive professor, Harry continued his story.
"As soon as the basilisk started coming, I ran. It nearly got me a bunch of times until I found a small passageway and room that the basilisk was too big to enter. That's where I found the staff," he said, indicating the rowan wizard staff propped up against the wall beside his bed. "I worked out that it could channel my magic like my wand so I used that to kill the basilisk."
"But basilisk hide is impervious to magic," Madam Bones frowned.
Harry shrugged. "I didn't know that but it didn't matter anyway. I used a couple of cutting curses inside its mouth. I think I managed to cut through to its brain and killed it that way."
Sirius' hand clapped his shoulder a couple of time and Harry looked up to see the pride clear on his face.
"After that, I tried to take out Riddle and rescue Lisa," Harry told them all. "Riddle'd already said that Lisa would die once the soul and magic transfer was complete. But my spells didn't work. They went straight through him. His spells, though, worked just fine. I realised that it was the diary giving him his power, so I decided to destroy that instead."
"What did you use?" Madam Bones asked.
"A basilisk fang," Harry replied. "When I stabbed the diary, it killed off Voldemort and Lisa woke up and we simply walked back out."
"Absolutely amazing," the third School Governor who still hadn't been introduced to Harry stated.
"What I still don't understand is how Miss Turpin came into the possession of You-Know-Who's diary in the first place," Madam Bones mused.
"I can answer that," Harry told her, eliciting an eager look from the Head of the DMLE. "Lisa found the dairy after Luna Lovegood had tried to get Riddle's soul out of it and had failed and thrown it away. Luna was given it by Mister Malfoy before school started in Diagon Alley."
Both Madam Bones and Auror Robards stepped forward quickly, cutting off the beginnings of Malfoys sidle away from the group.
"Lucius Malfoy, I am placing you under arrest for the possession of a dark object. Specific charges will be laid, assuming that they warrant them, of course, after your questioning. Aurors?" Madam Bones announced.
At her declaration, two red-robed aurors appeared, relieved Mister Malfoy of his wand and snapped some magic-suppression cuffs on him.
Once they were gone, Madam Pomfrey stepped forward. "I think that Mister Potter has answered more than enough questions this evening. In fact, if he answers any more, the sun will be up and he will have talked the night away."
"I quite agree," Professor Dumbledore twinkled, "let us allow young Harry his rest for now."
As the adults began dispersing, Harry saw Dumbledore step towards him, his hand outstretched. The old man's hand had barely closed around the staff beside Harry's bed before Sirius had reached across and snapped a large, muscly hand onto Dumbledore's wrist.
"What do you think you're doing?" he growled.
"It was my intention to keep this wonderful artefact somewhere safe for young Harry until he's old enough to use it," Dumbledore assured him.
"In case you weren't listening before," Sirius retorted. "He's already proven that he's old enough to use it. He used the bloody thing to kill a ruddy basilisk, for Merlin's sake! One that had been stalking your halls! And you know the laws. He found it, it's his."
"I quite agree," Madam Longbottom spoke up from where she stood at the end of Harry's bed. "Now, Albus, I think that you need to come along with us. Mister Colpher and I have a few questions for you on the state of the school and most especially about how such a dark object found its way past Hogwart's supposedly magnificent wards."
Harry smirked at the fleeting expression of pain that crossed the Headmaster's face.
"Don't worry, Pup," Sirius said as he settled into a comfortable-looking chair that he transfigured for himself. "I'm not going to go anywhere. You just take that potion that Madam Pomfrey left for you and rest. You've done more than enough and earned yourself a nice long sleep."
With a nod and a smile to his godfather, Harry did as he'd been told, pulling the covers up as he settled further down into the bed.