CHLOE WAS STANDING at the end of a 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.
Her heart beating very fast, Chloe listened to the chill silence. Could the Basilisk be lurking in a shadowy corner, behind a pillar? Where was Ginny?
When Chloe pulled out her wand, she moved forward between the serpentine columns. Every careful footstep echoed loudly off the shadowy walls. She kept her 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 her. More than once, with a jolt of the stomach, she thought she saw one stir.
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Then, as Chloe drew level with the last pair of pillars, a statue high as the Chamber itself loomed into view, standing against the back wall.
Chloe had to crane her 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.
"Ginny!" Chloe gasped, immediately sprinting over to Ginny Weasley and dropping to her knees. "Ginny - don't be dead, please don't be dead-"
Chloe flung her wand aside, 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..
"Oh, Ginny, please wake up," murmured Chloe, shaking Ginny desperately. Ginny's head just lolled hopelessly from side to side. "Please wake up.."
"She won't wake," said a soft voice.
Chloe jumped and spun around on her knees.
A tall, good-looking black-haired boy was leaning against the nearest pillar, watching. He was strangely blurred around the edges, as though Chloe was looking at him through a misted window. But there was no mistaking him.
"Tom.. Tom Riddle?" Chloe spoke up, as she stared at the boy. It felt almost impossible for the girl to look anywhere else. He nodded, not taking his eyes off Chloe's face. "What do you mean, she won't wake? She's not.. she's not-?" She asked.
"She's still alive," said Riddle. "But only just."
Chloe continued to stare. 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?" She asked, uncertainly.
"A memory." Tom Riddle informed Chloe, quietly. "Preserved in a diary for fifty years."
Riddle pointed toward the floor near the statue's giant toes. Lying open there was the little black diary Chloe had found in Myrtle's bathroom. For a second, she wondered how it had got there - but there were more pressing matters to deal with.
