The Marauder's Heir (Harry Potter FF)

Chapter 26

I'm free from classes till September! =) Enjoy the chapter.

Chapter 26

The Reward of the Wounded

Harri slowly walked into the chamber with her wand out and at the ready. The chamber was littered with snake pillars that gave her the creeps. She shuddered as a cold breeze hit her. When she reached the end of the pillars she saw a giant statue of a man, who looked 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 smooth Chamber floor. And between the feet, face down, lay a small, black-robed figure with flaming-red hair.

Harri knew who that was right away, it was Ginny. She sprinted over to the fallen girl quickly and turned her over, praying that she was still alive. Her face was the color of marble and she was ice cold to the touch. Harri reached for her arm and checked her pulse. It was there, but very faint.

"Ginny, wake up!" Harri whispered shaking the younger girl's shoulders. Ginny's head just lolled to the side, giving no response.

"She won't wake," a familiar voice said from behind Harri. The second year Gryffindor turned around to see Tom Riddle, though he was blurred around the edges, she could still tell it was him.

"Tom, aren't you a little old to look sixteen?" Harri said unsure, but he nodded. He still looked sixteen even though he should be well into his sixties by now.

"I'm only a memory...preserved by that diary." He replied to her unspoken question. That's when she spotted the diary next to Ginny's unmoving body. Harri's eyes narrowed dangerously and her mind was working in overdrive. After she had written in that book she collapsed...had Ginny been writing in it for a long time? Was that why she was dying on the ground? That still didn't explain how Tom was standing before her.

"What have you done to Ginny?" Harri growled and Tom gave a humorless laugh. He looked at her with an unspoken emotion written on his face.

"You truly are a brilliant witch, Harriet. You figure things out quickly...I've been waiting for a very long time to speak with you," he told her as he came closer the two girls.

"You waited fifty years to talk to me? My parents weren't even born yet. What are you playing at, Tom?" she asked him, as she reached for her wand.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you, I'm connected to Ms. Weasley now. If you were to hurt me...you might just kill the poor thing," he threatened and Harri put her hand down, away from her wand.

"How did Ginny get like this, Tom?" she snapped. She was done playing games. She had a good idea on how Ginny came to be like this, but she wanted to know for sure.

"Well, she poured her heart and soul into my diary. She would write for hours on end. I would reply, being sympathetic and understanding."

"What do you mean she poured her soul into your diary?" Harri questioned numbly.

"Where to begin...about my diary," Tom began, making sure Harri was listening closely, and when he realized that she was, he continued. "Well, 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 to school with secondhand robes and books, how —" Riddle's eyes glinted. "She told me all about you. The girl who destroyed the greatest dark lord the wizarding world had ever seen and how you would never be her friend. Pathetic."

Tom's eyes never left Harri's face, as if he was waiting for a reaction. His eyes turned steely when she didn't respond at all. Instead he continued to bait her.