Dolonia

Chapter 14

        We were 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. My heart beating very fast, Harry and I stood listening to the chill silence. Could the basilisk be lurking in a shadowy corner, behind a pillar? And where was Ginny?

        We moved forward between the serpentine columns with our wands ready. Every careful footstep echoed loudly off the shadowy walls. I kept my 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 us. More than once, with a jolt of the stomach, I thought I saw one stir.

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

        We had to crane his 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 between the feet, facedown, lay a small, black-robed figure with flaming-red hair.

        "Ginny!" Harry muttered, and we sprinting to her.

        "Ginny - don't be dead - please don't be dead -" I begged. I put my wand down as Harry flung his aside and we 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," a soft voice said.

        Harry and I jumped and spun around on our knees.

        A tall, black-haired boy was leaning against the nearest pillar, watching. He was strangely blurred around the edges, as though I was looking at him through a misted window.

        "Tom - Tom Riddle?" Harry said shocked.

        The boy 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," Riddle said. "But only just."

        I 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?" I said uncertainly.

        "A memory," Riddle said 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 we had found in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. And I wondered how it had got there. My mind went to Ginny and how she always looked on the verge of tears all year. How she looked horrible when Mrs. Norris was petrified almost as if she felt guilty. And it had to have been a Gryffindor that broke into the boys' dormitory. Ginny had done it. I wasn't getting a good feeling from Riddle. The name Tom Riddle sounded familiar. But where had I heard it before?

        "You've got to help us, Tom," Harry said, raising Ginny's head again. "We've got to get her out of here. There's a basilisk... We don't know where it is, but it could be along any moment... Please, help us."