The Dark Prince's Ascension

Chapter 1

He was standing at the end of a very long, dimly lit chamber. Towering stone pillars entwined with more carved serpents rose to support a ceiling lost in the great darkness, casting long, black shadows through the greenish gloom that filled the place stuck very much like a saw thumb.

His heart beating very fast, Harry stood listening to the chill silence. Could the basilisk be lurking in a shadowy corner, behind a pillar? And where was Ginny?

He pulled out his wand and moved forward between the serpentine columns. Every careful footstep echoed loudly off the shadowy walls. He kept his eyes on the breach of closing, narrowed, ready to clamp them shut at the smallest sign of movement. The hollow eye sockets of the stone snakes seemed to be following him. More than once, with a jolt of the stomach, he thought he saw one stir.

Then, as he drew level with the last pair of pillars, a statue high as the Chamber itself loomed into view, standing against the back wall. Harry had to crane his 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 cold smooth Chamber floor. And between the feet, facedown, lay a small, black-robed figure with flaming hot red hair.

"Ginny!" Harry muttered, sprinting to her and dropping to his knees. "Don't be dead—don't be dead—Ron will be very distort if you're dead! Just wake up!"

"She won't wake," a soft voice raised said.

Harry jumped and spun around on his knees. A tall, black-haired, handsome boy was leaning against the nearest pillar, watching. He was strangely blurred around the edges, as thought Harry was looking at him through a misted window. But there was no mistaking him.

"Tom...Tom Riddle?"

Riddle nodded, not moving his eyes off Harry's face.

"What d'you mean she won't wake?" Harry asked. "She's not—Is she—"

"She's still alive, but only barely," Riddle said. Harry stared at him. Tom Riddle had been at Hogwarts fifty years ago, yet here he stood, a weird, misty light shining about him, not even a day over sixteen.

"How is this happening?" Harry asked, ignoring his heart's heighten pace. "Are you a ghost?"

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

He pointed toward the floor near the statue's giant toes. Lying open there was the little black diary Harry had found in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. Moving immediately, Harry got to the diary and took it. "I thought I lost it," he breathed, looking at Riddle. "How did all this happen—how did the dairy get out of my room, into here?" he asked.

Riddle chuckled. "Her," the boy said. "Everything that happened is because Ginny Weasley opened her heart and spilled all her secrets to an invisible stranger."

"What are you talking about?"

"The diary," Riddle said. "My diary. Little Ginny's been writing in it for months and months, telling me all her pitiful worries and woes—how her brothers tease her, how she had to come ot school with secondhand robes and books, how"—Riddle's eyes glinted—"how she didn't think famous, good, great Harry Potter would ever like her or take intrest. ..."

All the time he spoke, Riddle's eyes never left Harry's face. There was an almost hungry look in there. Harry tried to look away, making an unconscious groan at the last part.

"It's very boring, having to listen to the silly little troubles of an eleven-year-old girl," he went on. "But I was patient. I wrote back. I was sympathetic. I was kind. Ginny simply loved me. No one's ever understand me like you, Tom. ...I'm so glad I've got this diary to confide in ...It's like having a friend I can carry around in my pocket. ..."