A Hogwarts Legend: Round Two [2]

Chapter Thirty

Unedited

Chapter Thirty - "So why don't you shut your pie hole, Tim Riddle?"

We're standing at the end of a very long, dimly lit chamber. Towering stone pillars entwined with more carved serpents rise to support a ceiling lost in darkness, casting long black shadows through the odd, greenish gloom that fills the place.

My heart is beating very fast. I stand listening to the chill silence. Could the Basilisk be lurking in a shadowy corner, behind a pillar? And where's Ginny?

I pull out my wand and move forward between the serpentine columns. Every careful footstep echoes loudly off the shadowy walls. I keep my eyes narrowed, ready to clamp them shut at the smallest sign of movement. The hollow eye sockets of the stone snakes seem to be following me. More than once, with a jolt of the stomach, I think I see one stir.

Then, as we draw level with the last pair of pillars, a statue high as the Chamber itself looms into view, standing against the back wall.

I have to crane my neck to look up into the giant face about; it's ancient and monkey-like, with a long thin beard that falls almost to the bottom of the wizard's sweeping stone robes, where two enormous grey feet stand in the smooth chamber floor. And between the feet, face down, lies a small, black-robed figure with flaming red hair.

"Ginny!" I mutter, sprinting to her, Harry behind me, and dropping to my knees. "Ginny! Don't be dead! Please don't be dead!" I fling my wand aside, grab Ginny's shoulders and turn her over. Her face is white as marble, and as cold, yet her eyes are closed, so she isn't Petrified. But then she must be ...

"Ginny, please wake up," Harry mutters desperately, shaking her. Ginny's head lolls hopelessly from side to side.

"She won't wake," says a soft voice.

I jump and spin around on my knees.

A tall, black-haired boy is leaning against the nearest pillar, watching. He's strangely blurred around the edges, as though I'm looking at him through a misted window. But there's no mistaking him.

IT'S THE HOT BUT CREEPY ONE!

"Tom - Tom Riddle?"

Riddle nods, not taking his eyes off Harry's face. "Hello Harry Potter, Emily Swift."

"What d'you mean, she won't wake?" Harry says desperately. "She's not - she's not -?"

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

I stare at him. Tom Riddle had been at Hogwarts fifty years ago, yet here he stands, a weird, misty light shining about me, not a day older than sixteen.

"Are you a ghost?" I ask uncertainly.

"A memory," says Riddle quietly. "Preserved in a diary for fifty years."

He points towards the floor near the statue's giant toes. Lying open there's the little black diary I found in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. For a second, I wonder how it's got there - but there are more pressing matters to deal with.

"You've got to help me, Tom," Harry says, raising Ginny's head again. "We've got to get her out of here. There's a Basilisk ... I don't know where it is, but it could be along any moment. Please, help me ..."