Harry's Twin (Harry Potter FanFic)

Chapter 23 - Tom Marvolo Riddle (End of Chamber of Secrets)

This is a super long one because I'm too lazy to make it into two chapters. And also because I can't think of a name for the second chapter if I were to break it.

**********

-Third Person POV-

Harry took out his wand as he approached a locked vault, and spoke Parseltongue to it. The snakes on the vault moved, and the door opened. With his wand pointing straight ahead of him, Harry walked cautiously into the Chamber, and the vault door closed behind him.

Harry then looked around. He was standing at the end of a long, dimly lit chamber. Towering stone pillars entwined with more serpents, rose to a ceiling lost in darkness, casting long, black shadows through the odd, greenish gloom that filled the place. Harry then spotted a statue head of who he presumed to be Salazar Slytherin standing at the other end of the chamber in front of him.

He walked cautiously down the path, looking around him. Suddenly, he spotted someone lying on the ground in front of the statue. Someone named Scarlett. Harry then started running towards her and dropped his wand when he knelt down in front of her.

"Scarlett! Scarlett, please don't be dead. Wake up, wake up. Please wake up." He shook her, trying to get her to open her eyes.

"She won't wake." Someone walked out from the shadows beside, and he started walking towards them.

"Tom. Tom Riddle. What do you mean, she won't wake? She's not..?" Harry can't bear to say the word.

"She's still alive, but only just." He continued to walk towards them.

"Are you a ghost?"

"A memory. Preserved in a diary for 50 years." He looked down at them, and Harry touched her hand.

"She's cold as ice. Scarlett, please don't be dead. Wake up." Tom bent down and picked up Harry's wand. Harry then turned his attention to Tom. "You've got to help me, Tom. There's a basilisk."

"It won't come until it's called." Harry looked up and stood up slowly when he saw Tom holding his wand.

"Give me my wand, Tom."

"You won't be needing it." Harry looked surprised but decided to drop 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 Scarlett grows weaker, I grow stronger." Harry's face changed color. "Yes, Harry, it was Scarlett who opened the Chamber of Secrets."

"No. She couldn't. She wouldn't. She won't lie to me." Harry shook his head in denial.

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

"But why?"

"Because I told her to. You find 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. 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 frowned as his story clashed with how Scarlett behaved, and he decided to believe Scarlett.

"And why did you want to meet me?" Harry asked.

"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." Tom started smirking and Harry scowled.

"Hagrid's my friend. And you framed him, didn't you?"

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