𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝙿𝚘𝚝𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝚃𝚠𝚒𝚗𝚜 (second year)

THE REWARD

Narrator pov

For a moment as, Harry, Ron, Amelia, Ginny, and the lost professor stood in the door way covered in muck and slime, and in Amelia's case, also blood, there was a scream,"Ginny!"

Mrs Weasley had been crying at the fire, she leapt to her feet and ran over to Ginny. Both Mr. and Mrs Weasley tossed themselves onto their daughter.

Harry and Amelia how ever had been looking at Professor Dumbledore and Professor Mcgonagall. Fawkes flew past Amelia and landed on Dumbledore's shoulder as Mrs Weasley hugged her, Ron and Harry.

"You saved her! How did you do it?"

"I think that's what we're all wondering."said Professor Mcgonagall.

"Amelia did all of it." Ron said, smiling. Mrs Weasley let go of them and Amelia walked over to the desk and laid upon it the Sorting Hat, the ruby-encrusted sword, and what remained of Riddle's diary.

Then she started telling them everything. For nearly a quarter of an hour she spoke into the rapt silence: She told them about hearing the disembodied voice, how they had finally realized that her and Harry were hearing a basilisk in the pipes; how she, Harry and Ron had followed the spiders into the forest, that Aragog had told them where the last victim of the basilisk had died; how he had guessed that Moaning Myrtle had been the victim, and that the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets might be in her bathroom.

"Very well," Professor McGonagall spoke as she paused, "so you found out where the entrance was — breaking a hundred school rules into pieces along the way, I might add — but how on earth did you all get out of there alive, Girl Potter?"

So Amelia, her voice now growing hoarse from all this talking, told them about Fawkes's timely arrival and about the Sorting Hat giving her the sword. But then she faltered. She had so far avoided mentioning Riddle's diary — or Ginny.

Ginny was standing near Mrs. Weasley's, tears were still running down her cheeks. What if they expelled her? Amelia thought in panic. Riddle's diary didn't work anymore...How could they prove it had been he who'd made her do it all?

"What interests me most," said Dumbledore gently, "is how Lord Voldemort managed to enchant Ginny, when my sources tell me he is currently in hiding in the forests of Albania."

Relief swept over her.

"W-what's that?" said Mr. Weasley in a stunned voice. "You-Know-Who? En-enchant Ginny? But Ginny's not . . . Ginny hasn't been . . . has she?"

"It was this diary," Amelia said, picking it up and showing it to Dumbledore. "Riddle wrote it when he was sixteen. . . ."

Dumbledore took the diary from Amelia and peered keenly down his long, crooked nose at its burnt and soggy pages. "Brilliant," he said softly. "He was probably the most brilliant student Hogwarts has ever seen."

He turned around to the Weasleys, who looked bewildered. "Very few people know that Lord Voldemort was once called Tom Riddle. I taught him myself, fifty years ago, at Hogwarts. He disappeared after leaving the school . . . traveled far and wide . . . sank so deeply into the Dark Arts, consorted with the very worst of our kind, underwent so many dangerous, magical transformations, that when he resurfaced as Lord Voldemort, he was barely recognizable. Hardly anyone connected Lord Voldemort with the clever, handsome boy who was once Head Boy here."