A Darker Form of Magic, book two: Parseltongue

Chapter thirteen

When Harry walked into the Chamber of Secrets, he wasn't expecting to find it to be a large open corridor with stone pillars of serpents lining the way and water on each side. Though in hindsight, he supposed that he might should have. The serpent was the symbol of Slytherin and water is the house's element

The shadows were tall as he walked deeper into the Chamber, though not tall enough to cover the giant face of an ancient man made of stone. One that he could only assume to be Salazar Slytherin himself.

"Egotistical much?" Harry asked himself, not expecting an answer.

He got one.

"I suppose he does seem to be a little full of himself," a soft voice answered and Harry stilled, glancing away from the stone figure to the person before him that he was sure hadn't been there even a moment before.

There was a boy with neat black hair and dark eyes that seemed to know more than they should, leaning against one of the stone pillars. The edge of the older boy - likely sixteen - were shadowy and misted, as if the teen were some sort of ghost. Harry supposed that the idea couldn't be so wrong, especially not as the magic coming from him was the same twisted sort as that of the diary, Quirrell, and even - in part - Harry himself.

Near the teen's feet was the figure of a young girl that Harry recognized instantly. No one else in the school had the same violent red hair as the Weasely's did. No one else's shined so bright, like the flames of Gryffindor house.

Ginny Weasely.

There was a dairy next to her on the ground. The diary.

Harry didn't let his eyes linger on the girl, instead looking back to the teen. The one that hadn't looked away from him yet.

The boy was wearing the robes of a Slytherin, but the designer was old. And the scarred boy knew for a fact that he wasn't one of the prefects.

Not presently.

"Tom Riddle," Harry said. It wasn't a guess, not when the other boy looked like a memory and it had been the name of the diary cover.

The older boy nodded, looking impressed.

"Very good," he praised and between the way that the vestige before him looked and the power that flowed from him, Harry could easily see how some of the original Death Eaters had come to be swayed by him. Even from such a short interaction as this, Harry could see that the teen was likely the embodiment of everything that Slytherin was meant to stand for. "You sure are a puzzle."

"How so?" The younger asked as he stepped closer to the other boy, and to Ginny.

"Ginny wrote so much about you within the diary," the memory explained. "About the boy savior of the Wizarding world. The one to defeat Lord Voldermort when he was only an infant. And yet you're a Slytherin and are different from all the expectations that the girl had."

"And you're Voldermort," Harry said bluntly. "I'm not seeing the point here, Tom."

Harry should have been expecting the cold laugh that he had received from the other snake, but he hadn't been and it sent shivers down his spine.

"The point," the memory continues, "is that you're supposed to be a hero - a tool for the light - and yet you have the eyes of a killer."

"You're one to talk," the younger of the two Slytherins said, pointing to the slowly dying girl on the ground, the one growing more and more pale by the moment.

"As I said," Riddle continued as if Harry had just proven a point, "you're interesting. I should hate you and yet you are fascinating, you and your magic going against all of the rules of nature. Just like my own."