Reaper's Heir (Book 2)

Chapter 11

Chapter XI TW: mentions death in childbirth at the end of the chapter

The door opened to reveal a short tunnel with a metal ladder going down to a long stone walkway. Harry climbed down the ladder and stood with his wand at the ready. I climbed down after him, taking in the snakehead statues lining the walkway. Each snake had its fangs bared and its tongues sticking out to varying degrees. The chamber was flooded in areas, sending light ripples across the ceiling. Harry and I walked down the walkway, moving faster as we came up to Ginny's body.

"Ginny... Ginny!" Harry dropped his wand and began feeling for a pulse. "Oh, Ginny, please don't be dead. Wake up. Wake up! Please, wake up!"

Kill them. Kill them all.

I looked around, trying to find the voice. A boy with dark hair came out of the shadows on the other side of the pool in front of us. I tensed, adjusting my grip on my hand. "Harry-"

"She won't wake." The older boy said.

Harry looked up. "Tom. Tom Riddle! What do you mean, 'she won't wake?' She's not...?"

"She's still alive, but only just."

"Are you a ghost?"

Almost subconsciously, I shook my head. I could tell he wasn't a ghost. I wasn't sure what he was, but he didn't seem dead, at least not in the way the castle ghosts were.

"A memory, preserved in a diary for fifty years." Riddle corrected.

"Maeve, she's cold as ice." I looked at Harry, shaking Ginny's arm desperately. "Ginny, please don't be dead. Wake up! You've got to help us, Tom. There's a basilisk."

"It won't come until it's called." Riddle said calmly. Feeling my blood run cold, I looked back at him just in time to see him pick up Harry's wand.

Harry stood up slowly, his face guarded. "Give me my wand, Tom."

"You won't be needing it."

"Listen, we've got to go! We've got to save her!"

"I'm afraid I can't do that, Harry. You see, as poor Ginny grows weaker, I grow stronger. Yes Harry, it was Ginny Weasley who opened the Chamber of Secrets."

"No. She couldn't. She wouldn't!"

"It was Ginny who set the basilisk on the Mudbloods and Filch's cat, Ginny who wrote the threatening messages on the walls."

"But why?" I asked, mind racing. It made no sense. Ginny was only a first year. There was no way she knew powerful enough spells to control something like a basilisk and it didn't make any sense for her to go after muggleborns. If anything, it would've made more sense for her to attack someone like Malfoy.

Riddle smirked, acknowledging me for the first time. "Because I told her to. You'll find that I can be very persuasive. Not that she knew what she was doing. She was, shall we say, in a kind of trance. Still, the power of the diary began to scare her. And she tried to dispose of it in the girl's bathroom. And then, who should find it, but you, Harry? The very person I was most anxious to meet."

Harry looked as confused as I felt. "But, why did you want to meet me?"

"I knew I had to talk to you, meet you if I could. So I decided to show you my capture of that brainless oaf, Hagrid, to gain your trust."

"Hagrid's my friend!" Harry yelled.

"You framed him, didn't you?" I asked.

"It was my word against Hagrid's. Only Dumbledore seemed to think he was innocent."