Nico Di Angelo goes to Hogwarts :)

Tom marvalo riddle

I had guessed what we had to do. And by the looks of it Harry wanted me to do it. And I was about to, until I turned abruptly.

"you do it."

"what?! But I've never-"

"close your eyes and picture an actual snake. Try not to think about it, it works better like that." I ordered. He might as well use it. He did as I said and sure enough it worked. The snake slithered around the circle door, and with a hissing it opened to reveal a huge place, with black marble floor.

We were 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 darkness, casting long, black shadows

through the odd, greenish gloom that filled the place. My heart beating very fast, I stood listening to the chill silence. Could the basilisk be lurking in a shadowy corner, behind a pillar? And where was Ginny?

I pulled out my sword, and dagger and moved forward between the serpentine columns, Harry mirroring me with his wand. Every careful footstep echoed loudly off the shadowy walls. I kept my eyes 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, I thought I saw one stir.

Then, as I drew level with the last pair of pillars, a statue high as the Chamber itself loomed into view, standing against the back wall.

Harry and I had to crane our necks to look up into the giant face above: It was ancient and monkey-like, with a long, thin beard that fell almost to the bottom of the wizard's sweeping stone robes, where two enormous grey feet stood on the smooth Chamber floor. And between the feet, facedown, lay a small, black-robed figure with flaming-red hair.

"Ginny!" Harry muttered, sprinting to her and dropping to his knees. "Ginny - don't be dead - please don't be dead -" He flung his wand aside, grabbed Ginny's shoulders, and turned her over. "Her face is white as marble, and as cold, yet her eyes are closed, so she wasn't Petrified. But then she must be..." he turned to me, remembering I could sense her lifeline. "is she..."

"no but she's barely alive."

"Ginny – please- Ginny wake up." Harry pleaded.

"she won't wake." Said a soft voice from behind me.

I jumped and spun around.
A tall, black-haired boy, that looked scarily like me, was leaning against the nearest pillar, watching. He was strangely blurred around the edges, as though I were looking at him through a misted window. Like an Iris message. But there was no mistaking him.

"Tom - Tom Riddle?"

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

"What do you mean, she won't wake?" Harry said desperately. "She's not – you said she's not -?"

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

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

"Are you a ghost?" Harry said uncertainly.

"no he can't be. He's more of a memory."

"Preserved in a diary for fifty years." said Riddle quietly.

He pointed toward the floor near the statue's giant toes. Lying open there was the little black diary we had found in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. For a second, I wondered how it had got there - but there were more pressing matters to deal with.