A Hogwarts Legend: Round Two [2]

Chapter Thirty Two

Unedited

Chapter Thirty Two - "In my defence, I was left unsupervised."

For a moment, there's silence as Harry, Ron, Ginny, Lockhart and I stand in the doorway, covered in muck and slime and (in Harry and I's case) blood. Then there's a scream.

"Ginny!"

It's Mrs Weasley who's been sitting crying in front of the fire. She leaps to her feet, closely followed by Mr Weasley, and both of them fling themselves on their daughter.

I, however, am looking past them. Professor Dumbledore is standing by the mantelpiece, beaming, next to Professor McGonagall, who's taking great, steadying gasps, clutching her chest. Fawkes goes whooshing past my ear and settled on Dumbledore's shoulder, just as I find myself and Harry and Ron being swept into Mrs Weasley's tight embrace.

"You saved her! You saved her! How did you do it?"

"I think we'd all like to know that," says Professor McGonagall weakly.

Mrs Weasley lets go of Harry and I, and hesitantly we walk over to the desk and lay upon it the Sorting Hat, the ruby-encrusted sword and what remains of Riddle's diary.

Then we start telling them everything, taking turns. For nearly a quarter of an hour Harry speaks into the rapt silence: he tells them about hearing the disembodied voice, how Hermione had finally realised that we were hearing a Basilisk in the pipes; how he, me and Ron had followed the spiders into the Forest, that Aragog had told us where the last victim of the Basilisk died; how I had guessed that Moaning Myrtle had been the victim, and that the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets might be in her bathroom ...

"Very well," Professor McGonagall prompts him, as he pauses, "so you found out where the entrance was - breaking a hundred school rules into pieces along the way, I might add - but how on earth did you all get out of there alive?"

I take over, and tell them about Fawkes's timely arrival and about the Sorting Hat giving us the sword. But then I falter. So far we've both avoided mentioning Riddle's diary - or Ginny. She's standing with her head against Mrs Weasley's shoulder, and tears are still coursing silently down her cheeks. What if they expel her? Riddle's diary doesn't work any more ... How can we prove it was him that made her do it all along?

Instinctively, I look at Dumbledore, who smiles faintly, the firelight glancing off his half-moon spectacles.

"What interests me most," says Dumbledore gently, "is how Lord Voldemort managed to enchant Ginny, when my sources tell me he is currently in hiding in the forests of Albania."

Relief - warm, sweeping, glorious relief - sweeps over me.

Dumbledore is an all knowing being.

"W-what's that?" says Mr Weasley in a stunned voice. "You Know Who? En-enchant Ginny? But Ginny's not ... Ginny hasn't been ... has she?"

"It was this diary," says Harry quickly, picking it up and showing it to Dumbledore. "Riddle wrote it when he was sixteen."

Dumbledore takes the diary from Harry and peers keenly down his long, crooked nose at its burnt and soggy pages.

"Brilliant," he says softly. "Of course, he was probably the most brilliant student Hogwarts has ever seen." He turns around to the Weasleys, who are looking utterly bewildered.