chosen - harry potter

Chapter 15 - The Basilisk

Cassia and Harry stood at the end of a long, dimly lit chamber. Tall pillars, decorated with carved serpents, supported an unseen ceiling. 

Cassia drew her wand and started forward, prompting Harry to join her with a nod. They passed through several pairs of pillars, paying careful attention to every minuscule sound around them: their footsteps, the quiet dripping of water.

They passed through the final pair of pillars, and they were met by an enormous statue of an ancient wizard with a long, thin beard.

"Ginny!" Harry muttered, sprinting to a small, robed figure with bright red hair, dropping his wand in the process.

 Cassia sprinted behind him, clutching her mouth.

"Ginny - please don't be dead," Harry was muttering, shaking the girl's shoulder.

She was stone white, her eyes closed, and her skin ice cold. Cassia held her hand over her mouth 

"Ginny, please wake up," Harry murmured, continuing to shake her shoulder. Cassia let out a shaky breath.

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

Cassia and Harry jolted, facing it.

A tall, dark-haired boy was leaning on a near pillar, watching them. He seemed to be blurred around the edges, as though in a dream, and Cassia's breath hitched in her throat.

"Tom- Tom Riddle?" Harry said. Cassia looked at him confusedly, but she stayed silent.

Riddle nodded, his eyes staring unbreaking at the two.

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

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

Cassia stared at him, shaking slightly.

"You did this," Cassia said, her eyes squinting.

"No, Cass, he's-" Harry began.

"Smart girl," Riddle said, interrupting Harry. Cassia and Harry stared at him.

"Are you a ghost?" Harry asked. 

"A memory," Riddle said quietly. "Preserved in a diary for fifty years."

Cassia gripped her wand in her hand, her expression hardening.

"What did you do to her?" she asked.

Riddle stooped down and took Harry's wand from where he dropped it.

"Quite an interesting question," he said twirling the wand between his fingers. "Nothing can get past you, can it?"

"Give me my wand, Tom, I meet need it. If the Basilisk comes -" Harry said.

"You won't need it," Tom said, staring. "It won't come unless it's called."

"What did you do to her?" Cassia said, angrily.

"Ginny Weasley opened her heart and spilled all of her secrets to an invisible stranger," he said, looking at the small girl on the floor. "The diary. My diary. Little Ginny's been writing in it for months and months, telling me all her pitiful worries and woes - how her brothers tease her, how she had to come to school with secondhand robes and books, how" - his eyes stared at Cassia - "how she wished Cassia, her dear friend, wasn't so preoccupied trying to save the school."

As he spoke, his eyes stared at Cassia and Harry, flickering between the two of them, almost hungrily. He tucked Harry's wand into his pocket.

"It's very boring, having to listen to the silly little troubles of an eleven-year-old girl," he continued. "But I was patient. I wrote back. I was sympathetic, I was kind. Ginny 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..."