Ophelia wove fluidly in and out of consciousness. To fall asleep would be so painfully, so blissfully easy. It would be the warm embrace of a mother who actually loved her, the joyous laugh of a father who didn't have his life cut short criminally young. It would be comfort and then nothing at all.
Something about that felt off. Unreal. The concept of peace just seemed so entirely foreign that it propelled her to open her eyes again and again, even as what she actually saw grew dark and it felt like she was falling and falling and falling to a bottom that always remained just out of reach. Chaos was a grudging friend; peace, an unknowable stranger.
At times, she could hear angry, frantic, desperate shouts, but then at random the whole world would fade away until she wondered if she'd gone deaf, or if, perhaps, she was already dead and merely imagined the noise.
"Albus— Oh, thank heavens you're here. I've tried everything— blood replenishment, my strongest healing charms, even resorted to muggle stitches, barbaric as they are— nothing worked!" The school nurse continued breathlessly, "And even if they miraculously did, I fear the wound is poisoned. I haven't enough time to concoct all the potions necessary to identify and nullify the correct one."
Am I going to die?
There was a rush of movement and then a hand bit into her shoulder. "You are not going to die if you tell us what did this. There is no time to waste."
Ophelia hadn't even realised she'd spoken aloud. She wished he'd let go.
"What... did this?" her mouth formed the words but she wasn't sure if any noise actually moved past her throat.
The fingers dug deeper. "Quickly."
She opened her mouth again. Basilisk. That wouldn't be so hard to say. Basilisk. Just a single word.
And still she couldn't do it. She could never explain away being bitten by a Basilisk, not when they'd been extinct from Britain for several hundred years.
"You see, Dumbledore, I was in the bathroom when one leapt right out of the toilet. It was a wild time. You would have to have been there."
Something told her he probably wouldn't believe it, which left only the truth. The truth she would never tell. He couldn't know she was a liar; not after all he'd already done for her. To feel indebted to someone is a curious thing. She knew she'd repaid his good faith with deceit. He didn't, however, and she couldn't bear to be the object of his disappointment. Even in her own head it sounded pathetic. What a stupid reason to die. The entire situation was unbelievable.
She settled on a near inaudible, "Thank you."
As far as last words went, they weren't so bad.
Thank you for believing in me. For believing I could be better when no one else did. For searching out a scared child when the whole world hunted her like an animal. For offering her a new home. For pushing her to make friends even if the idea of rejection scared her almost as much as being alone. For guiding her to Tom. Me. Thank you for guiding me to Tom, even if that was never your intention. Thank you.
A new weight pressed down on her chest just as a swath of brilliant crimson blurred across her unfocused vision. She couldn't breathe. The effort was too monumental. The last of the air in her lungs slipped out between barely parted lips until nothing was left.
Ophelia's heart fought on. It beat. Beat.
Beat.
Stopped.
But the pain didn't. Where it should have vanished entirely, it spread up her arms, across her chest, down to the tip of her toes.
And dissipated.
Beat. Beat. Beat.
Her vision cleared, the encroaching fog lifted to reveal a beautiful crimson and gold plumage, and at last the pressure over her heart vanished as the bird fluttered off into Dumbledore's arms.
"Thank you, too, Fawkes, most of all."
III
The Headmaster arrived, as was characteristic, too late to do anything. He wanted answers, though. They all did, so it wasn't hard to imagine how tense things got when it became clear Ophelia had no intention of offering any explanation. They talked. They kept on talking. They wouldn't shut up.
"Would you at least look at us when we're speaking to you?" Professor Dippet asked, exasperated.
She tore her eyes away from the door, away from any fanciful daydreams she had about escaping through it to avoid the conversation she was currently having. Really, it was more an interrogation than anything.
She gave him a bland, Are you happy now? look, but didn't say a word.
Laughter sounded down the corridor outside the Hospital Wing and, despite herself, her longing gaze drifted back towards the wide open doors. Snippets of Slytherin green trickled past steadily. It took her moment to realise she recognised a handful of the faces: Fenella, Avery... so carefree. They probably didn't hear anything happened, or perhaps they did and simply didn't care. Ophelia's heart fell when she noticed Tom wasn't with them, and then she was immediately irritated for feeling that way.
By chance, as Rabastan flowed past just a step behind the others, he looked inside, eyes catching on her. He paused, a slight frown curving on his lips as he took in her company and the fact that she was restricted to one of many hospital beds that littered the room.
Help, Ophelia mouthed hopefully, only for those hopes to be promptly dashed as he turned around, away from the rest of his group, and stalked off.
Well, that had been a long shot to begin with.
She sighed.
"You said Tom Riddle found her, Albus? Where is he? Perhaps he could shed some light."
"He did," Dumbledore conceded with brief tilt of his head. "Unfortunately, I haven't been able to locate Mister Riddle since, however. I asked him to await me in my office, but he never showed."
"That's quite unlike the boy," Dippet said with a frown.
Ophelia could have laughed at that assessment. That sounded exactly like Tom. Always where you didn't want him and never there when needed.
Instead, she leaned back onto her pillow and stared at the ceiling, letting them talk over her. Abruptly, she became acutely aware that they'd ceased speaking and indeed appeared to be awaiting some sort of answer.
Grudgingly, she cleared her throat. "Yes?"
The Headmaster went paler than Nearly Headless Nick and nearly as translucent. "That's— that's impossible. We caught the beast, chased it from the grounds—"
Ophelia got the distinct impression she'd missed an integral part of the conversation. "Wait, no— not yes as in an affirmative, yes as in would you please repeat the question."
"I'm sure you at least understand why we need to know if this is connected at all to the other recent attacks," Dumbledore intervened, patting her leg through the thin blankets.
The thought had occurred to her.
"I told you that keeping that child on the grounds was a terrible idea, Albus," the Headmaster said, lowering his voice am octave, as though that would actually prevent Ophelia from overhearing.
The ill feeling in her gut intensified. She asked, "What child?" despite knowing full well who they were talking about.
The Headmaster seemed loathe to say it, but Dumbledore had no such qualms. "Rubeus Hagrid."
Ever since her heart stopped, it felt like it seemed intent on working twice as hard to make up on lost time, to make up for failing once. Ophelia's pulse spiked, reacting to her panic, and her breathing escalated proportionately.
"Rubeus didn't do anything!" She grabbed Professor Dippet's robes and forcibly yanked him closer. He startled, and Fawkes, cooing indignantly at the disrupted serenity, glided out of an open window. Lucky bird. Jumping out the window was looking increasingly tempting with the panic that was expanding like a bubble in Ophelia's chest. "Nothing! This has nothing to do with him! Do you hear me?"
"How can we be sure if we don't even know what happened? Your wounds– they were unnatural, and without an idea of what did it, I'm afraid—"
"I did it!" she exclaimed desperately. The room went silent, and she continued more quietly, "I did it to myself. Are you happy? Rubeus had nothing to do with it."
III
The fifth year Slytherin boy's dormitory had seen better days: curtains were ripped from windows, sheets, blankets, and pillows strewn across the room, down fluttered softly through the air like snow. Tom's trunk laid upturned on his now barren bed, it's contents spilled haphazardly across the floor. A History of Magic and Advanced Potion-making missed several pages each, shredded into confetti-sized bits and littering the floor beside the glass and feathers.
He picked up one of the few items that somehow survived his purge— a crystal decanter now mostly empty of the firewhisky Avery managed to sneak from home— and watched it shatter against the wall, amber liquid and glass shards flying in every direction. Breathing heavily, he looked for something else— anything else— to break into a thousand satisfying pieces.
The mess didn't matter. Magic could fix it all in a fraction of the time it took him to break it.
Not all.
Tom buried the intrusive thought under a fresh wave anger. Anger was good. If not for anger, he'd be overcome by that other feeling, and he wouldn't let it come to that.
Fury at least had purpose and a cure. That other emotion provided nothing except pain and suffering. So why didn't he feel better yet? The basilisk, the source of his problems, was dealt with.
Why, then, did he still want to raze the whole castle, the whole country, to the ground?
His fingers dug into the cover of an old notebook, gripping the edges to rip it apart when he distantly realised it was his diary. Pages upon pages of notes filled its space, varying from useless thoughts that happened to cross his mind to painfully detailed descriptions of enchantments that didn't quite fit into Hogwarts' carefully curated curriculum. In a coincidence that felt more like fate than chance, the spot where the diary split in half, where he gripped one cover in one hand and the other with his remaining one, intending to tear the whole thing apart, was his record of a rather particular branch of magic.
Horcruxes.
Tom took up slow, retreating steps until the back of his legs collided with one of the four-poster beds and his knees buckled. Sinking into the bare mattress, he let his head drop into his hands and the diary slip out of his fingers to fall back onto the rug with a nearly silent thud.
This was Ophelia's fault. All of it. Going into the Chamber without him was suicide and she must have known that. She must have. How could she not?
Against his best efforts, Tom couldn't fight off the encroaching bitterness. That unfamiliar feeling of someone reaching their hand into his chest and crushing his heart within their fist. He wished they'd finish the job and rip it out already.
Why her? Why her? Why her? Why her? Why her? Why her? Why her? Why her? Why her? Why—
Abruptly, his anger rekindled with new direction.
"I forbid you from going any further," she'd said. "I like your soul just the way it is...."
And like a blinded fool, he swore he wouldn't. But what good were promises to a dead girl? If she wasn't going to stick around to keep her end of the bargain, neither would he. Had she only listened to him, had he only pressed his argument instead of getting distracted, they would both be virtually immortal and she... well, she wouldn't be dead.
He wouldn't make the same mistake twice. He would never die.
III
It was agony, the type of pain so unimaginable that it made the word lose meaning. For a moment, Tom forgot everything, even how to breathe. Only when his knees collided with the ground and black spots danced across his vision did he make a conscious effort to force oxygen into his lungs. Inhale. Exhale. His breaths came in laboured gasps, his skin was feverish to the touch, yet he felt ice cold inside.
The only warmth left in the universe was on the pads of his fingers where they grazed along the cover of his diary, the two pieces of his soul calling to each other, yearning to reunite.
Tom flung the thing away, before doubling over as a new inferno of pain erupted across his entire body. He wasn't sure he could scream if he wanted to. The longer he waited, however, the less he felt. Less pain, less despair, less everything, and so much more nothing in their place. Despite the agony of ripping his soul in two, it came as almost a relief.
Heavy steps pounded down the stairs leading from the common room. Tom waited for them to pass, only they didn't. The door slammed open.
"I've been looking everywhere— oh." Rabastan blinked from the doorway, taking in the destruction. "Wow, Tom. I love what you've done with the place."
Tom dragged himself up to his feet, despite his trembling arms and legs that felt like jelly. Hopefully Rabastan was too preoccupied with the rest of the disaster to notice. "I really haven't the patience for your nonsense today, less so than usual. Leave."
Rabastan crossed his arms, but didn't otherwise move. "Pretending I'm not offended, I still think you have enough patience to care about what I have to say."
"I guarantee you, I care about very little right now, least of all what you have to say," Tom replied dully, leaning heavily against the wall with one arm.
Rabastan breathed out an exasperated sigh and tossed his hands into the air by his head. "Let the record show I tried. When you come at me tomorrow, yelling, probably ready to boss me around, I'd like you to think back on this exact moment."
"Get out." Tom closed his eyes, as if the loss of visual sensory information would also block the unwelcome auditory intrusion. "Get out before I do something I won't regret, although you might."
"Always violence with you. Fine, I'm gone, your lordliness. Forever at your
eternal service, o' benevolent dictator. I do nothing in life without thinking of your highest comfort, my authoritarian friend." Tom sincerely wished he had actually gone deaf as Rabastan geared up to continue. "I suppose, even though it doesn't suit my carefully curated image, I'll just have to politely ask Peeves to destroy a wing of the castle so I can liberate my dearest imprisoned Ophelia from the chains that bind her to the hospital wing."
"Stop talking about things you know nothing about." The remaining untouched lamp on his side table flickered, casting dark, unflattering shadows sharply across his face. His fists, bone white and clenched, shook with something akin to, but not quite, anger. "And don't say that name again if you fancy speaking again in the near future."
Rabastan, who'd only just been in the process of leaving, paused in the threshold and half-turned back to get a good look at Tom. Whatever he saw produced a spark of anxiety searing enough that Tom could practically taste it, despite that fact that he hadn't been actively employing his Legilimency. Rabastan's voice was surprisingly light when he again spoke.
"So testy today."
"Only because you are testing my patience."
"Have a falling out with our favourite Gryffindor that I should be aware of? I can guarantee it would make Fenella's decade if you did."
Tom was well aware of how Rabastan heeded his threat and carefully avoided using Ophelia's name.
His words came out like chips of ice. "She's dead."
Rabastan tilted his head and his doubt was obvious. His voice remained infuriatingly neutral as he asked, "Did you kill her recently?"
Tom's nails bit even further into his palms and the void in his chest that felt so comfortingly empty mere moments before began to fill with the echos of something ugly. "Of course not."
"Well, she seemed incredibly not deceased when I saw her like twenty minutes ago, so unless Fen has had her way since I came to look for you—"
"That's impossible."
"Then the headmaster is interrogating a very colourful ghost upstairs. And," he gave Tom a brief once over, "I feel morally obligated to ask: where did all the blood come from? Should I be concerned?"
The world seemed to crack and distort around the edges. "That's impossible," Tom repeated, quieter, more to himself than anyone else. "It can't be."
Without even realising it, he shoved Rabastan out of the way and flew up the stairs two at a time, diary forgotten on the floor.
A/N
In case it wasn't clear in the beginning of chapter 16 when I briefly touched upon it, Ophelia would have heard Tom open the chamber a few times when they entered it together. Once for the sink to open, once for the inner door, two times in total, so that's how she got in by herself.