Fixing the past (Sirry)

Chapter 20

He was standing at the end of a very long, dimly lit chamber. Towering stone pillars entwined with more carved serpents rose to support a ceiling lost in darkness, casting long, black shadows through the odd,greenish gloom that filled the place.

With a confident stride, he moved forward until he remembered. Wouldn't Tom be watching him? Shouldn't he look more frightened? He let out a small sigh and began to look around frantically in a fit of nervousness. He pulled out a wand, Lockhart's wand, and advanced past the snake-adorned columns.

His footsteps echoed on the gloomy walls. His eyes were narrowed, in an attempt to give the impression of being cautious. The stone serpents watching him moved in what he sensed was curiosity at the obvious confrontation in the chamber.

Then, as he drew level with the last pair of pillars, a statue high as the Chamber itself loomed into view, standing against the back wall.

Harry had to crane his neck to look up into the gigantic face that crowned it, the face of Salazar: it was ancient and monkeyish, with a long, thin beard that fell almost to the bottom of the wizard's sweeping stone robes, where two enormous gray feet stood on the smooth Chamber floor.

And between the feet, face down, lay a small, black-robed figure with flaming-red hair.

"Ginny!" Harry muttered, sprinting to her and dropping to his knees. "Ginny - don't be dead - please don't be dead -" He flung his wand aside, grabbed Ginny's shoulders, and turned her over, fear in his heart, perhaps they should not have entertained themselves by torturing Lockhart. 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 jumped and spun around on his knees.

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. That eased his guilt, Ginny was still with them.

"Tom-Tom Riddle?"

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

"What do you mean, she won't wake?" Harry said desperately, inwardly grimacing in disgust, his only excuse was that he was a child the first time. "She's not - she's not -?"

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

Harry looked at him carefully. Tom Riddle at sixteen was handsome, he admitted, he brought out the best features of his genes on both sides, both muggle and magical, the memory of Merope told him that he should thank the muggle for his looks because the Gaunts were fucked up.

"Are you a ghost?" Asked Harry. The only logical part of his questions, really, he had been a boy.

"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. That bloody book that shared a soul with Harry.

"You've got to help me, Tom," Harry said, raising Ginny's head again. Silly, stupid Gryffindor, was he so blinded by worry before that he didn't see the danger? "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..."

"Come on you fool, do it, do it and call him, we'll see who the real Heir is." He thought.

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