\"I see you idiots figured it out.\" Nova said.

\"Nova you are right this guy is a fraud.\" Harry gestured to Lockhart with his wand.

\"Nova, we are going to save my sister.\" Ron said and then went on to explain the situation.

\"Harry, you said you were hearing voices?\" Nova asked. \"What did it say?\"

\"Master kill . . . Samuel destroy. No Kill Master. Or something like that.\" Harry said.

\"Ok.\" Nova said.

\"Ok Harry open it up.\" Ron said.

\"Open up,\" he said.

He looked at Ron, who shook his head.

\"English,\" he said.

Harry looked back at the snake, willing himself to believe it was alive. If he moved his head, the candlelight made it look as though it were moving.

\"Open up,\" he said.

Except that the words weren't what he heard; a strange hissing had escaped him, and at once the tap glowed with a brilliant white light and began to spin. Next second, the sink began to move; the sink, in fact, sank, right out of sight, leaving a large pipe exposed, a pipe wide enough for a man to slide into.

\"I'm going down there,\" he said. .

He couldn't not go, not now they had found the entrance to the Chamber, not if there was even the faintest, slimmest, wildest chance that Ginny might be alive.

\"Me too,\" said Ron.

There was a pause.

\"Well, you hardly seem to need me,\" said Lockhart, with a shadow of his old smile. \"I'll just -\"

He put his hand on the door knob, but Ron and Harry both pointed their wands at him.

\"You can go first,\" Ron snarled.

White-faced and wandless, Lockhart approached the opening. \"Boys,\" he said, his voice feeble. \"Boys, what good will it do?\"

Harry jabbed him in the back with his wand. Lockhart slid his legs into the pipe.

\"Oh enough of this.\" Nova said and kicked Lockhart in, then turned to Harry and Ron, \"Do you need an invitation?\"

Nova then grabbed Luna and jumped down with her. It was like rushing down an endless, slimy, dark slide. He could see more pipes branching off in all directions, but none as large as theirs, which twisted and turned, sloping steeply downward, and he knew that he was falling deeper below the school than even the dungeons. Behind him he could hear Harry and Ron, thudding slightly at the curves.

\"We must be miles under the school,\" said Harry, his voice echoing in the black tunnel.

\"Under the lake, probably,\" said Ron, squinting around at the dark, slimy walls.

\"Lumos!\" Harry muttered to his wand and it lit again. \"C'mon,\" he said to Ron and Lockhart, and off they went, their footsteps slapping loudly on the wet floor.

\"Remember,\" Harry said quietly as they walked cautiously forward, \"any sign of movement, close your eyes right away . .....

But the tunnel was quiet as the grave, and the first unexpected sound they heard was a loud crunch as Ron stepped on what turned out to be a rat's skull. Harry lowered his wand to look at the floor and saw that it was littered with small animal bones. Trying very hard not to imagine what Ginny might look like if they found her, Harry led the way forward, around a dark bend in the tunnel.

\"Harry - there's something up there -\" said Ron hoarsely, grabbing Harry's shoulder.

They froze, watching. Harry could just see the outline of something huge and curved, lying right across the tunnel. It wasn't moving.

\"Maybe it's asleep,\" he breathed, glancing back at the other two. Lockhart's hands were pressed over his eyes. Harry turned back to look at the thing, his heart beating so fast it hurt.

The light slid over a gigantic snake skin, of a vivid, poisonous green, lying curled and empty across the tunnel floor. The creature that had shed it must have been thousands of feet long at least.

Nova walked up to the shed skin and could help but shake his head. \"My dear, how long were you here.\"

\"Blimey,\" said Ron weakly.

There was a sudden movement behind them. Gilderoy Lockhart's knees had given way.

\"Get up,\" said Ron sharply, pointing his wand at Lockhart. Lockhart got to his feet - then he dived at Ron, knocking him to the ground. Harry jumped forward, but too late - Lockhart was straightening up, panting, Ron's wand in his hand and a gleaming smile back on his face.

\"The adventure ends here, boys!\" he said. \"I shall take a bit of this skin back up to the school, tell them I was too late to save the girl, and that you two tragically lost your minds at the sight of her mangled body - say good-bye to your memories! And as for you, Mr. Void, I will tell them that you were in league with the creature down here and not only assisted in killing the girl but you also kidnapped another first year and killed her as well.\"

\"Oh you will, will you?\" Nova said.

\"Indeed. It is your own fault for calling me an idiot and a fraud all the time. For locking me in that cage with the pixies and making me look like a fool during the dueling class.\" Lockhart said.

He raised Ron's Spellotaped wand high over his head and yelled, \"Obliviate!\" But before anything could happen, Nova snapped his fingers and the wand disintegrated and moved forward grabbing Lockhart by the throat.

\"Oh Professor Lockhart. Didn't you want to make a story on your deeds of saving a girl from a Basilisk. We can't be having you wiping your memory just yet. Come along.\" Nova said and started dragging Lockhart.

Soon they came across a solid wall ahead on which two entwined serpents were carved, their eyes set with great, glinting emeralds.

\"Open, \"said Harry, in a low, faint hiss.

The serpents parted as the wall cracked open, the halves slid smoothly out of sight, and Harry, shaking from head to foot, walked inside. 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 darkness, casting long, black shadows through the odd, greenish gloom that filled the place.

As Nova tried to walk in he found that he was blocked, \"You three go ahead. It seems I need to undo something for me to pass.\"

As he looked around Nova saw a string of void ruins.

\"This might take a minute.\"

***************************

Harry - POV

***************************

As Harry, Ron, and Luna went through the hole, leaving Nova and Lockhart on the other side. 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 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 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 was white as marble, and as cold, yet her eyes were closed, so she wasn't Petrified. But then she must be alive.

\"Ginny, please wake up,\" Ron muttered desperately, shaking her. Ginny's head lolled hopelessly from side to side.

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

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

\"Tom - Tom Riddle?\"

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

\"What d'you mean, she won't wake?\" Ron said desperately. \"She's not - she's not -?\"

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

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 a day older than sixteen.

\"Are you a ghost?\" Harry said uncertainly.

\"Harry, something is wrong with him.\" Luna whispered.

\"A memory,\" said Riddle quietly. \"Preserved 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. For a second, Harry wondered how it had got there - but there were more pressing matters to deal with.\"

\"You've got to help me, Tom,\" Harry said. \"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.\"

Harry bent down to pick up his wand, but it was gone. He looked up. Riddle was still watching him - twirling Harry's wand between his long fingers.

\"Thanks,\" said Harry, stretching out his hand for it.

A smile curled the corners of Riddle's mouth. He continued to stare at Harry, twirling the wand idly.

\"Listen,\" said Harry urgently, as he watched Luna and Ron knees sag under Ginny's dead weight as they tried to pick her up. \"We've got to go! If the basilisk comes -\"

\"It won't come until it is called,\" said Riddle calmly.

\"What d'you mean?\" he said. \"Look, give me my wand, I might need it -\"

Riddle's smile broadened.

\"You won't be needing it,\" he said.

\"What d'you mean, I won't be -?\"

\"I've waited a long time for this, Harry Potter,\" said Riddle. \"For the chance to see you. To speak to you.\"

\"Look,\" said Harry, losing patience, \"I don't think you get it. We're in the Chamber of Secrets. We can talk later -\"

\"We're going to talk now,\" said Riddle, still smiling broadly, and he pocketed Harry's wand. Harry stared at him. There was something very funny going on here.

\"How did Ginny get like this?\" he asked slowly.

\"Well, that's an interesting question,\" said Riddle pleasantly. \"And quite a long story. I suppose the real reason Ginny Weasley's like this is because she opened her heart and spilled all her secrets to an invisible stranger.\"

\"What are you talking about?\" said Ron as he was starting to get red from carrying his sister.

\"The diary,\" said Riddle. `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 to 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 . . . .\"

\"She couldn't have. Dad's always warned us about items that could talk.\" Ron said white as a ghost.

\"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 understood 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 . . . . Riddle laughed, a high, cold laugh that didn't suit him. It made the hairs stand up on the back of Harry's neck.

\"If I say it myself, Harry, I've always been able to charm the people I needed. So Ginny poured out her soul to me, and her soul happened to be exactly what I wanted .... I grew stronger and stronger on a diet of her deepest fears, her darkest secrets. I grew powerful, far more powerful than little Miss Weasley. Powerful enough to start feeding Miss Weasley a few of my secrets, to start pouring a little of my soul back into her. . .\"

\"What d'you mean?\" said Harry, whose mouth had gone very dry. \" Haven't you guessed yet, Harry Potter?\" said Riddle softly. \"Ginny Weasley opened the Chamber of Secrets. She strangled the school roosters and daubed threatening messages on the walls. She set the Serpent of Slytherin on four Mudbloods, and the Squib's cat.

\"No,\" Harry whispered.

\"Yes,\" said Riddle, calmly. \"Of course, she didn't know what she was doing at first. It was very amusing. I wish you could have seen her new diary entries ... far more interesting, they became .... Dear Tom,\" he recited, watching Harry's horrified face, `I think I'm losing my memory. There are rooster feathers all over my robes and I don't know how they got there. Dear Tom, l can't remember what I did on the night of Halloween, but a cat was attacked and I've got paint all down my front. Dear Tom, Percy keeps telling me I'm pale and I'm not myself. I think he suspects me... There was another attack today and I don't know where I was. Tom, what am I going to do? I think I'm going mad... I think I'm the one attacking everyone, Tom!\"

Harry's fists were clenched, the nails digging deep into his Palms.

\"It took a very long time for stupid little Ginny to stop trusting her diary,\" said Riddle.

\"Don't call my sister stupid!\" Ron yelled. He was ignored.

\"But she finally became suspicious and tried to dispose of it. And that's where you came in, Harry. You found it, and I couldn't have been more delighted. Of all the people who could have picked it up, it was you, the very person I was most anxious to meet . . . .\"

\"And why did you want to meet me?\" said Harry. Anger was coursing through him, and it was an effort to keep his voice steady.

\"Well, you see, Ginny told me all about you, Harry,\" said Riddle. \"Your whole fascinating history. \" His eyes roved over the lightning scar on Harry's forehead, and their expression grew hungrier. \"I knew I must find out more about you, talk to you, meet you if I could. So I decided to show you my famous capture of that great oaf, Hagrid, to gain your trust -\"

\"Hagrid's my friend,\" said Harry, his voice now shaking. \"And you framed him, didn't you? I thought you made a mistake, but -\"

Riddle laughed his high laugh again.

\"It was my word against Hagrid's, Harry. Well, you can imagine how it looked to old Armando Dippet. On the one hand, Tom Riddle, poor but brilliant, parentless but so brave, school prefect, model student .. on the other hand, big, blundering Hagrid, in trouble every other week, trying to raise werewolf cubs under his bed, sneaking off to the Forbidden Forest to wrestle trolls ... but I admit, even I was surprised how well the plan worked. I thought someone must realize that Hagrid couldn't possibly be the Heir of Slytherin. It had taken me five whole years to find out everything I could about the Chamber of Secrets and discover the secret entrance ... as though Hagrid had the brains, or the power! Only the Transfiguration teacher, Dumbledore, seemed to think Hagrid was innocent. He persuaded Dipper to keep Hagrid and train him as gamekeeper. Yes, I think Dumbledore might have guessed .... Dumbledore never seemed to like me as much as the other teachers did ...

\"I bet Dumbledore saw right through you,\" said Harry, his teeth gritted.

\"Well, he certainly kept an annoyingly close watch on me after Hagrid was expelled,\" said Riddle carelessly. \"I knew it wouldn't be safe to open the Chamber again while I was still at school. But I wasn't going to waste those long years Id spent searching for it. I decided to leave behind a diary, preserving my sixteen-year-old self in its pages, so that one day, with luck, I would be able to lead another in my footsteps, and finish Salazar Slytherin's noble work.\"

\"Well, you haven't finished it,\" said Harry triumphantly. \"No one's died this time, not even the cat. In a few hours the Mandrake Draught will be ready and everyone who was Petrified will be all right again -\"

\"Haven't I already told you,\" said Riddle quietly, \"that killing Mudbloods doesn't matter to me anymore? For many months now, my new target has been -you.\"

Harry stared at him.

\"Imagine how angry I was when the next time my diary was opened, it was Ginny who was writing to me, not you. She saw you with the diary, you see, and panicked. \"What if you found out how to work it, and I repeated all her secrets to you? What if, even worse, I told you who'd been strangling roosters? So the foolish little brat waited until your dormitory was deserted and stole it back. But I knew what I must do. It was clear to me that you were on the trail of Slytherin's heir. From everything Ginny had told me about you, I knew you would go to any lengths to solve the mystery -- particularly if one of your best friends was attacked. And Ginny had told me the whole school was buzzing because you could speak Parseltongue ....

\"So I made Ginny write her own farewell on the wall and come down here to wait. She struggled and cried and became very boring. But there isn't much life left in her .... She put too much into the diary, into me. Enough to let me leave its pages at last .... I have been waiting for you to appear since we arrived here. I knew you'd come. I have many questions for you, Harry Potter.\"

\"Like what?\" Harry spat, fists still clenched.

\"Well,\" said Riddle, smiling pleasantly, \"how is it that you a skinny boy with no extraordinary magical talent - managed to defeat the greatest wizard of all time? How did you escape with nothing but a scar, while Lord Voldemort's powers were destroyed?\"

There was an odd red gleam in his hungry eyes now.

\"Why do you care how I escaped?\" said Harry slowly. \"Voldemort was after your time.\"

\"Voldemort,\" said Riddle softly, \"is my past, present, and future, Harry Potter . . . .\"

He pulled Harry's wand from his pocket and began to trace it through the air, writing three shimmering words: TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE

Then he waved the wand once, and the letters of his name rearranged themselves:

I AM LORD VOLDEMORT

\"You see?\" he whispered. \"It was a name I was already using at Hogwarts, to my most intimate friends only, of course. You think I was going to use my filthy Muggle father's name forever? I, in whose veins runs the blood of Salazar Slytherin himself, through my mother's side? I, keep the name of a foul, common Muggle, who abandoned me even before I was born, just because he found out his wife was a witch? No, Harry - I fashioned myself a new name, a name I knew wizards everywhere would one day fear to speak, when I had become the greatest sorcerer in the world!\"

\"Now, Harry, I'm going to teach you a little lesson. Let's match the powers of Lord Voldemort, Heir of Salazar Slytherin, against famous Harry Potter, and the best weapons Dumbledore can give him . . . .\"

Harry, fear spreading up his numb legs, watched Ridthe stop between the high pillars and look up into the stone face of Slytherin, high above him in the half-darkness. Riddle opened his mouth wide and hissed - but Harry understood what he was saying ....

\"Speak to me, Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts Four. \" Harry wheeled around to look up at the statue, Slytherin's gigantic stone face was moving. Horrorstruck, Harry saw

his mouth opening, wider and wider, to make a huge black hole. And something was stirring inside the statue's mouth. Something was slithering up from its depths.

Then suddenly, from the other end of the chamber a small explosion went off and Lockhart could be seen flying through the air and crashed into Tom Riddle.

\"Sorry about that, it took a little longer to break the seal.\" Harry heard Nova say as he walked through the smoke cloud.

\"Hello Celes.\"