ᴘʏʀʀʜɪᴄ ᴠɪᴄᴛᴏʀʏ// ᴛʜᴇ ɢɪʀʟ ᴡʜᴏ ʟɪᴠᴇᴅ ᴀᴜ

THE HEIR OF SLYTHERIN

Bluebell 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. Her heart beating very fast, Blue stood listening to the chill silence. Could the basilisk be lurking in a shadowy corner, behind a pillar? And where was Ginny?

"God?" Blue whispers nervously "I know I haven't talked to you in a while.... Or ever but— um— if you get me out of here alive, wait, if you get Ginny and me out of here alive I'll change my ways, I promise."

Blue pulled out her wand and moved forward between the serpentine columns. Every careful footstep echoed loudly off the shadowy walls. She kept her eyes narrowed, ready to clamp them shut at the smallest sign of movement. The hollow eye sockets of the stone snakes seemed to be following her. More than once, with a jolt of the stomach, she thought she saw one stir.

She felt like throwing up.

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

Bluebell had to crane her neck to look up into the giant face above: 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 they say we are the self centered ones" scoffs Bluebell, shaking her head, her eyes travel again from the head of the statue to the feet, that was when a gasp left her mouth. Between the feet, facedown, lay a small, black-robed figure with flaming-red hair.

"Ginny!" Blue muttered, sprinting to her and dropping to her knees. "Ginny - oh fuck - don't be dead - please don't be dead -" She flung her 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, it's not time for games - shit" Bluebell muttered desperately, shaking her. Ginny's head lolled hopelessly from side to side.

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

Bluebell jumped and spun around on her knees.

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

"Tom Riddle?" Blue asks.

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

"Listen, bruv, I'm really stressed right now, the least you could do is tell me what the fuck you mean, she won't wake?" Bluebell said exasperated . "I mean - she's not - she can't be -?"

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

Bluebell 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.

"This - this can't be real... Are you a ghost?" Blue 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 Bluebell had found in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. For a second, Bluebell wondered how it had got there - but there were more pressing matters to deal with.

"Okay, one mystery at the time, please." Blue huffs before turning once again to the handsome boy "You've got to help me,Tom," Blue raised Ginny's head again. "We've got to get her out of here. There's a basilisk... somewhere around here and I don't fancy becoming snake food, and I'll be damned if I die down here. So let's go."