꧁☬༒ᵞᴼᵁᴿ ᴾᴼᵛ༒☬꧂

I gasp from the air, I looked around and it was the .

"You're finally awake..."

I looked to the owner of the voice, my eyes widen. He looks exactly like Tom, a replica of him. The exact height, face and voice.

"T-Tom?"

"How dare you call me that" he spat "I do not tolerate this just because you look exactly like her." he glared at me.

I look like her? Is he perhaps talking about me?

"W-what?" I stutter

I stood up and almost fell but I got my balance together, I walked towards him. The height is a bit off balance because in that reality I'm taller and mature looking due to the magic I did.

"T-tom..." Tears started dropping off, I placed my hand on his cheek "why-why are you..." I started sobbing.

"Look into my eyes." Said Tom.

꧁☬⋆ᴺᴼ ᴼᴺᴱ'ˢ ᴾᴼᵛ⋆☬꧂

A vast chamber stretches ahead. Along the path are rows of stone serpents. The serpents rest in pools of black water. Ahead is an enormous statue of Salazar Slytherin. Several feet in front of the statue, Ginny Weasley lies motionless and Y/N missing. As Harry dashes and takes her into his arms, her head lolls to one side, cheeks white as marble. A pale hand clutches Tom Riddle's diary to her chest.

Harry drops the torch, races to Ginny, places his wand on the floor and kneels beside her.

"Ginny! Please don't be dead. Wake up! Wake up! Ginny!" He flung his wand aside, grabbed Ginny's shoulders, and turned her over. Her face was white as marble and as cold, yet her eyes were closed, so she wasn't Petrified. But then she must be...

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

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

Harry spins. Tom Riddle stands nearby. He is strangely blurred around the edges, as though Harry was looking at him through a misted window.

A tall, black-haired boy was leaning against the nearest pillar, watching. He was strangely blurred around the edges, as though Harry were looking at him through a misted window. But there was no mistaking him.

And behind him it was Y/N but her eyes were emotionless even her face, it looks like she was being controlled.

"Y/N? What happened to her! Is she okay?" Harry run-up to her and touches her cheeks and checked if she's okay.

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

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

"She's still alive," said Riddle. "But only just." Harry stared at him. Tom Riddle had been at Hogwarts fifty years ago, yet here he stood, a weird, misty light shining about him, not a day older than sixteen.

"Are you a ghost?" Harry said 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 bathroom. For a second, Harry wondered how it had got there - but there were more pressing matters to deal with.

"You've got to help me, Tom," Harry said, raising Ginny's head again. "We've got to get her out of here. There's a basilisk... I don't know where it is, but it could be along any moment... Please, help me. And Y/N she's not acting normal."

Riddle didn't move. Harry, sweating, managed to hoist Ginny half off the floor and bent to pick up his wand again.

But his wand had gone.

"Did you see -?"

He looked up. Riddle was still watching him - twirling Harry's wand between his long fingers.

"Thanks," said Harry, stretching out his hand for it.

A smile curled the corners of Riddle's mouth. He continued to stare at Harry, twirling the wand idly.

"Listen," said Harry urgently, his knees sagging with Ginny's dead weight. "We've got to go! If the basilisk comes--"

"It won't come until it is called," said Riddle calmly.

Harry lowered Ginny back onto the floor, unable to hold her up any longer.

"What d'you mean?" he said. "Look, give me my wand, I might need it--" Riddle's smile broadened.

"You won't be needing it," he said, Harry stared at him.

"What d'you mean, I won't be -?"

"I've waited a long time for this, Harry Potter," said Riddle. "For the chance to see you. To speak to you."

"Look," said Harry, losing patience, "I don't think you get it. We're in the Chamber of Secrets. We can talk later--"

"We're going to talk now," said Riddle, still smiling broadly, and he pocketed Harry's wand.

Harry stared at him. There was something very funny going on here ...

"How did Ginny get like this?" he asked slowly.

"Well, that's an interesting question," said Riddle pleasantly. "And quite a long story. I suppose the real reason why dear little Y/N like this is because she opened her heart and spilt all her secrets to an invisible stranger."

"What are you talking about?" said Harry.

"The diary," said Riddle. 'My diary. Little Y/N's been writing in it for months and months, telling me all her pitiful worries and woes - how her best friend died, how her friends think she's the heir of the Slytherin which makes her heartbroken-" Riddle's eyes glinted "-also how she desperately wants her best friend to come back and about one if her crush breaking her heart too, I think it's one of her brothers..." Riddle pointed at Ginny.

All the time he spoke, Riddle's eyes never left Harry's face. There was an almost hungry look in them.

"It's very boring, having to listen to the silly little troubles of a mere girl that looks like my dear moonlight," he went on. "But I was patient. I wrote back. I was sympathetic, I was kind. Y/N simply loved me. No one's ever understood me like you, Tom... I'm so glad I've got this diary to confide in... It's like having a friend I can carry around in my pocket ..."

Riddle laughed, a high, cold laugh that didn't suit him. It made the hairs stand up on the back of Harry's neck.

"If I say it myself, Harry, I've always been able to charm the people I needed. But when I found out she looks except for the fact that she looks like the girl who BETRAYED ME. But I had to calm myself down after it and a while ago she woke up and started crying and calling me by my old name... " he looked at her.

"What d'you mean?" said Harry, whose mouth had gone very dry.

"Haven't you guessed yet, Harry Potter?" said Riddle softly. "Y/N and Ginny opened the Chamber of Secrets. Ginny strangled the school roosters and daubed threatening messages on the walls. She set the Serpent of Slytherin on four Mudbloods, and the Squib's cat."

"However our dear Y/N here took her dear FREIND, which is surprising she wanted to do it. She said the mudblood pisses her off thinking that it's Y/N and her dear best friend who is the heir of Slytherin... But it's a good thing she didn't know that her dear best friend is actually the heir of the Slytherin and she was the first one who opened the chamber and wanted to kill the monster, however she needed the book to get rid of me too."

"No," Harry whispered.

'There's no way Y/N would do that to Hermione. They are friends...' Harry thought.

"Wait, Knight is the heir?!" My eyes widen.

"Well, not anymore since she died and now I am the heir again. Also didn't plan to attack anyone and wants the monster here to disappear. Also haven't I already told you," said Riddle quietly, "that killing Mudbloods doesn't matter to me anymore? For many months now, my new target has been - you." Harry stared at him.

"Imagine how angry I was when the next time my diary was opened, it was Ginny who was writing to me, not Y/N nor you. She saw Y/N and you with the diary, you see, and panicked. What if you found out how to work it, and I repeated all her secrets to you? What if, even worse, I told you who'd been strangling roosters? So the foolish little brat waited until Y/N let her in her dormitory and waited for her to the loo and was deserted and stole it back."

"But I knew what I must do. It was clear to me that you were on the trail of Slytherin's heir. From everything Ginny had told me about you, I knew you would go to any lengths to solve the mystery - particularly if one of your best friends was attacked. And Ginny had told me the whole school was buzzing because you could speak Parseltongue... and even worse Y/N and her best friend."

"Also it was funny that Y/N's best friend Kayden Knight died, I made Ginny place poison on her drink and it turns out she was destined to die anyway so her illness was unexpected and helped me kill her easily. Because that kid annoyed me, she's always with Y/N. Even that time when Y/N went here and I was talking at her about her looking like my moonlight but then that pest came." Tom groan.

"So I made Ginny write her own farewell on the wall and come down here to wait. She struggled and cried and became very boring. But there isn't much life left in her... She put too much into the diary, into me. Enough to let me leave its pages at last... I have been waiting for you to appear since we arrived here. I knew you'd come. I have many questions for you, Harry Potter."

"Like what?" Harry spat, fists still clenched.

"Well," said Riddle, smiling pleasantly, "how is it that you - a skinny boy with no extraordinary magical talent - managed to defeat the greatest wizard of all time? How did you escape with nothing but a scar, while Lord Voldemort's powers were destroyed?" There was an odd red gleam in his hungry eyes now.

"Why do you care how I escaped?" said Harry slowly. "Voldemort was after your time..."

"Voldemort," said Riddle softly, "is my past, present, and future, Harry Potter..."

He pulled Harry's wand from his pocket and began to trace it through the air, writing three shimmering words:

TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE

Then he waved the wand once, and the letters of his name rearranged themselves:

I AM LORD VOLDEMORT

"It was a name I was already using at Hogwarts, to my most intimate friends only, of course. Do you think I was going to use my filthy Muggle father's name forever? I, in whose veins runs the blood of Salazar Slytherin himself, through my mother's side? I, keep the name of a foul, common Muggle, who abandoned me even before I was born, just because he found out his wife was a witch? No, Harry - I fashioned myself a new name, a name I knew wizards everywhere would one day fear to speak when I had become the greatest sorcerer in the world!"

Harry's brain seemed to have jammed. He stared numbly at Riddle, at the orphaned boy who had grown up to murder Harry's own parents, and so many others... At last, he forced himself to speak.

"You're not," he said, his quiet voice full of hatred.

"Not what?" snapped Riddle.

"Not the greatest sorcerer in the world," said Harry, breathing fast. "Sorry to disappoint you and all that, but the greatest wizard in the world is Albus Dumbledore. Everyone says so. Even when you were strong, you didn't dare try and take over at Hogwarts. Dumbledore saw through you when you were at school and he still frightens you now, wherever you're hiding these days--"

The smile had gone from Riddle's face, to be replaced by a very ugly look. Harry glance at Y/N who was just standing and fainted.

"Y/N!" Harry was about to run towards her but Tom stopped him.

"Dumbledore's been driven out of this castle by the mere memory of me!" he hissed.

"He's not as gone as you might think!" Harry retorted. He was speaking at random, wanting to scare Riddle, wishing rather than believing it to be true.

Riddle opened his mouth but froze.

Music was coming from somewhere. Riddle whirled around to stare down the empty Chamber. The music was growing louder. It was eerie, spine-tingling, unearthly; it lifted the hair on Harry's scalp and made his heart feel as though it was swelling to twice its normal size. Then, as the music reached such a pitch that Harry felt it vibrating inside his own ribs, flames erupted at the top of the nearest pillar.

A crimson bird the size of a swan had appeared, piping its weird music to the vaulted ceiling. It had a glittering golden tail as long as a peacock's and gleaming golden talons, which were gripping a ragged bundle.

A second later, the bird was flying straight at Harry. It dropped the ragged thing it was carrying at his feet, then landed heavily on his shoulder. As it folded its great wings, Harry looked up and saw it had a long, sharp golden beak and a beady black eye.

The bird stopped singing. It sat still and warm next to Harry's cheek, gazing steadily at Riddle.

"That's a phoenix," said Riddle, staring shrewdly back at it.

"Fawkes?" Harry breathed, and he felt the bird's golden claws squeeze his shoulder gently.

"And that -" said Riddle, now eyeing the ragged thing that Fawkes had dropped, "that's the old school Sorting Hat--"

So it was. Patched, frayed, and dirty, the hat lay motionless at Harry's feet.

Riddle began to laugh again. He laughed so hard that the dark chamber rang with it, as though ten Riddles were laughing at once.

"This is what Dumbledore sends his defender! A songbird and an old hat! Do you feel brave, Harry Potter? Do you feel safe now?"

"What just happened." Y/N woke up and stood up. She grabs her head as it's aching real badly and groans.