The Slytherin Mudblood: Book 2

Chapter 20

TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE IS...

As we reached the end of the cave we stood in front of a large iron door. It had seven snakes on it, looking like a muggle bank safe. Harry approached it cautiously and muttered the same Parseltongue words that he used to open the entrance to the Chamber. A fake snake came from the side and wrapped around the door, each of the seven snakes curling inside to avoid being hit by the eighth snake. As the eighth snake finished wrapping around the safe, the door clicked and loudly opened.

The door moved aside to reveal the chamber itself, a large hollow room that looked like a shrine. Giant stone snakeheads lay in a row on each side of the entrance as though greeting us. At the end was a small lake and behind it, a large facial statute. It was the head of a bald man with a long beard that stretched in all different directions. It was a statue of Salazar Slytherin.

"Ginny?" Harry said, taking off running. I was too busy looking around the Chamber, I didn't notice a little red-head girl, lying lifelessly near the tiny lake. Harry and I ran towards her to check if she was okay. Harry tumbled next to her, dropping his wand. I ran to her side, dropping my wand too. I touched her hand, she was as cold as ice. A black book lay in her hands, Tom Riddle's diary.

Harry pleaded, "Ginny! Ginny, please don't be dead! Wake up, wake up! Please wake up!"

"She won't wake," A voice said. A masculine calm voice came from a small crevice of the Chamber. I looked over to see a young adult boy with black hair and chiseled features. He was wearing Slytherin robes. I asked, "Who are you?"

But Harry answered first, "Tom? Tom Riddle? What do you mean, she won't wake? She's not..."

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

Tom Riddle? Tom Marvolo Riddle? He was the guy Harry talked about when he thought it was Hagrid who opened the Chamber of Secrets. Tom Riddle owned the diary Harry had found in the girls bathroom. He walked towards us, seemingly trying to help. Harry backed away and asked, "Are you a ghost?"

"A memory," Tom answered. "Preserved in a diary for fifty years."

"This diary?" I asked as I pointed to the black book in Ginny's hands.

He nodded, Harry spoke again, "She's cold as ice. Ginny, please don't be dead! Wake up! You've got to help me, Tom... There's a Basilisk."

He informed us, "It won't come until it's called."

"What?" I looked at him in confusion. "What'd you mean it won't come until-" Only to see that Tom had our wands in his hands. 

Harry stood up and demanded, "Give us our wands, Tom."

"You won't be needing them," He said, putting mine in his pocket.

Harry continued, "We've got to go! We've got to save her!"

"I'm afraid I can't do that," He said.

"Why not?" I said standing up. "You were so worried about the students fifty years ago and saving them from the basilisk! Why not now?"

"You see," he explained. "As poor Ginny grows weaker, I grow stronger."

We looked at him in confusion. Why would Ginny need to be weak and Tom to be strong? He smiled as Harry's eyes widened, "Yes, it was Ginny Weasley who opened the Chamber of Secrets. It was Ginny who set the basilisk on the mudbloods, and Filch's cat, Ginny who wrote the threatening messages on the wall."

"Why would you do that? She's an innocent girl!" I yelled.

"Because I told her to," He answered calmly. "You'll find I can be very... persuasive, not that she knew what she was doing."

"She was unconscious of her actions," I furrowed my brows in anger. How dare he possess Ginny?! "You used her for your own selfish acts!"

"Precisely. But more of, let's see, in a trance," He corrected. "Still, the power of the diary began to scare her. She tried to dispose of it in the girls bathroom, and then, who should find it? But you; the very person I was most anxious to meet."

Harry stood right in front of him, "And why did you want to meet me?"

Tom exclaimed, "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 our friend!" Harry interrupted Riddle, angry. "And you framed him, didn't you?"

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

We smirked at Tom. "I bet Dumbledore saw right through you," I replied.

Tom interjected, "He certainly kept an annoyingly close watch on me after that. I knew it wouldn't be safe to open the Chamber again while I was at school so I decided to leave behind a diary, persevering my sixteen-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 told him.

"Salazar Slytherin's views are so hecking outdated Tom, even by your time's standards! Why lash out on the muggle-borns who've done you no harm? And why haven't you killed me? I'm a mudblood!" I educated.

"You are very peculiar to me. I was debating on it, but I hadn't decided yet. How could you, a smart and ambitious little girl with muggle parents, make your way into the most prestigious house? But I couldn't possibly kill you, that would mean betraying Salazar Slytherin and killing someone in his house, and you already broke through my grasp once, what's to say you wouldn't do it again?"

"Well, your work was all for nothing, Riddle. In a few hours, the mandrake draught will be ready, and everyone who was petrified will be all right again," Harry informed.

"Haven't I told you? Killing mudbloods doesn't matter to me anymore. For many months now, my new target has been you. How is it that a baby with no extraordinary magical talent was able to defeat the greatest wizard of all time? How did you escape with nothing but a scar while Lord Voldemort's powers were destroyed?"

"Why do you care how I escaped? Voldemort was after your time," Harry asked.

"Everyone cares how you escaped! What you did, that was impossible, Harry!" I told him, as if it weren't obvious already.

"No," Tom Riddle smiled at Harry, "Voldemort is my past, present, and future."

He turned around and pointed Harry's wand at the air. He started writing and red flaming lines started forming from the tip of the wand. He wrote: Tom Marvolo Riddle.

After that, with a flick of his hand the letters started moving and rearranging themselves to form the new words: I am Lord Voldemort.

I started breathing heavily, "You? You're the Heir of Slytherin? You're... You're Voldemort... and you possessed me last year?"

"Surely you didn't think I was going to keep my filthy, muggle father's name? No, 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," He triumphed.

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

Tom practically screamed, "Dumbledore's been driven out of his castle by a mere memory of me!"

"He'll never be gone! Not as long as those who remain are loyal to him!" Harry scolded back.

I was in shock. Tom Marvolo Riddle was Lord Voldemort, and Lord Voldemort possessed me and Professor Quirrell last year, and just now Ginny this time. It was time to end him again.