𝐂𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐋𝐄𝐒 𝐂𝐑𝐔𝐌𝐁𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐆 (OC x OC)

[002] Chapter 29

Makayla

I have been throwing rocks at the walls of this echoey sewer tunnel for at least 10 minutes and 43 seconds. Harry has been missing for 12 minutes and 23 seconds. I have been thinking about whether I should follow Harry or not for two minutes and counting. I haven't said a word to Louis or Ron in 11 minutes and 56 seconds. The water hasn't rippled from distant footsteps in 43 seconds.

I noticed the water suddenly going still 10 seconds ago and now I stand, dropping the rock in my hand and disrupting the water from its slumber. Harry has stopped moving. He's reached the house of the monster. I don't care if he kills me or not, I'm going to go help him.

"Makayla?" Louis says, also standing.

I ignore him.

"Makayla, what are you thinking?"

I continue to ignore him.

"Makayla, he'll kill you."

I walk off.

"MAKAYLA!"

It's been five minutes and 17 seconds since I last heard Louis' voice. It has been six minutes and counting since the water stopped moving. Now, it does nothing but move. You're welcome.

It's been one second since I heard Harry's voice. He's speaking to someone. I don't recognize the second voice. I wonder why.

Harry and the second voice come into view, which means I'm in their view, too. Harry spots me and points his wand at me.

"I told you I'd kill you!"

"The water stopped moving, I got worried!" I defend myself with my hands in the air as if I am getting arrested. I meet eyes with the second voice. He has brown, fancy hair, grayish green eyes, and is wearing a Slytherin uniform. His face is twisted. He reminds me of Draco when he's making fun of Harry—or father when he kicks Dobby around. He looks evil, and young. Around Louis' age, which isn't much older than me. Only a few months. "Harry, who is this?"

"Ah," the boy says. "Makayla Malfoy. I've been waiting to see you."

I raise my voice a little louder in case Harry can't hear me, "Harry, who is this?"

"Tom Riddle," Harry says, "the one who owns the diary!"

My eyes land on Ginny Weasley, who is passed out on the floor. She's pale as if she has hypothermia.

"Oh, Ginny..." I run over and kneel before her, resting my hand on her forehead. I jolt back at the shocking feeling of ice. "What happened to her?"

"She's dying," Tom Riddle says. "Every moment she spends down here helps me gain my power. It was fairly easy to get her to open the Chamber of Secrets for me."

Harry meets eyes with me and turns back to Tom, "What? Ginny opened the Chamber?"

"Of course. But then she got terrified of the diary's power and tossed it into the bathroom to get rid of it, but that didn't stop me..."

"Because Harry found it," I finish for him.

Tom's twisted face forms a twisted smile, "Precisely. And he introduced it to you as well. The diary landed in the hands of the very people I was most anxious to meet."

"And why is that?" Harry asks. "Why did you want to meet us?"

"I had to talk to one of you—meet you if I could," Tom's twisted smile twitches but doesn't change form. It's terrifying. "So I decided to show you my capture of that brainless old Hagrid to gain your trust."

"Hagrid is our friend!" I shout, then my gaze softens at the realization of the truth. "And you framed him... Didn't you?" My voice is raised higher than I expected, which causes me to jump at the sound of it bouncing off the walls."

"It was my word against Hagrid's," Tom says, his accent thick and full of pure evil. It sends chills down my spine. "Only Dumbledore seemed to think he was innocent."

Harry's mouth is pulled into a tight smile, "I bet Dumbledore saw right through you."

"He certainly kept an annoyingly close watch on me after that," Tom says with a slight amount of attitude. Sassy. He starts to circle around Harry and I get up, standing next to Harry, in a sort of defensive position. "I knew it wouldn't be safe to open the Chamber again while I was still at school, so I decided to leave behind a diary—preserving my 16-year-old self in its pages, so that one day I would be able to lead another to finish Salazar Slytherin's noble work."

"Well you haven't finished it this time," Harry snarls. "In a few hours, the Mandrake trough will be ready, and everyone who was petrified will be alright again."

Tom shakes his head, "Haven't I told you? Killing mudbloods doesn't matter to me anymore." His smile grows more tight and treacherous and it makes me want to pull my teeth out. "For many months, now, my new target... has been you... Both of you." Harry and I look to each other, the fear on our faces being imminent and equal to the other's. "How did an infant, with no extraordinary magical abilities be able to single-handedly defeat the greatest wizard of all time, only to escape with nothing but a scar?" Tom spits in Harry's face, using Harry's wand to move his hair out of the way of his scar, "while Lord Voldemort's powers were destroyed?" Then turns to me. "And you... Oh, we can't forget you. You; the girl who was first tested on. How did you, a one year old, manage to single-handedly destroy the entire fleet of death eaters that stood before you that day so many years ago? How did you escape with only a scar as well—?"

"Why do you care how we escaped?" Harry asks, ignoring the secrets of my past that Tom Riddle just spilt on the pavement of the sewer tunnel. "Voldemort was after your time."

Tom's smile somehow gets worse. "Voldemort is my past, present, and future."

He turns around, using Harry's wand as a pen to write in the air: TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE. Then the words rearrange into something different. Something worse. Oh, much worse. The name unscrambled into: I AM LORD VOLDEMORT.

"You..." Harry says, somehow calmly. "You're the Heir of Slytherin?" He takes a long time to continue with, "You're Voldemort...?"

"Surely, you didn't think I was going to keep my filthy muggle father's name? No." Tom gets in the both of our faces, his perfect teeth being used to say the worst words. "I fashioned myself a new name—a name I knew wizards everywhere would one day fear to speak when I became the greatest sorcerer in the world!"

"Albus Dumbledore is the greatest sorcerer in the world!" Harry shouts.

"Dumbledore has been driven out of this castle by the meer memory of me."

"He'll never be gone, not as long as those who remain are loyal to him!"

Tom's twisted smile turns to twisted anger, his whole face pulled together. It kind of looks funny. Before he gets the chance to say anything, a loud CAWWWWW comes from the other end of the tunnel. It's Dumbledore's phoenix.