Chapter Twelve: Harish Thomas Riddle
Harish was standing at the end of a very long, dimly lit chamber. Towering stone pillars entwined with snakes rose to support the ceiling lost in darkness, casting long, black shadows through the odd greenish gloom that filled the place.
He stepped forward, his heart thumping in his ribcage. The boy had his eyes squinted with them open hardly enough for him to see. He was afraid the basilisk would hear him and come after him at any minute.
The teen pulled out his wand and moved further between the columns. Every careful step seemed to echo about the Chamber loudly. He kept his eyes ready to clamp shut if the need arose. As he walked out into the open, Egelbert's forehead glowed so bright that he lit up the dark chamber with an eerie, blood-red light.
Along one wall was a statue of a wizard that towered to the ceiling. Its face was slightly monkeyish and ancient, its beard fell almost to the bottom of its sweeping robes, where two enormous grey feet stood on the smooth floor of the Chamber. And between the feet, lying peacefully with her flaming hair all around her was a small, black figure.
Harish walked forward, wrenching his eyes off his ancestor's face and he dashed over to Ginny. He slipped his wand into the pocket of his robes and he slid to a halt, kneeling beside her. Her face was pale and her eyes were closed. She wasn't petrified, but she wasn't dead. Her hands were crossed across her stomach and one of them clutched a small black book.
"She won't wake," said a soft voice.
Harish wheeled around to find himself staring once again into the face of the sixteen-year-old version of his father. He bit his tongue to keep from crying out, "Father!"
Instead, he asked. "Tom? Tom Riddle?"
Riddle—well, Not-Riddle—nodded, not taking his eyes off Harish's face. His expression was a mixture of curiosity and hunger. Harish knew that he was probably noticing how similar they looked. To distract him, Harish decided to play the innocent.
"What do you mean, she won't wake? She's not—she's not—?"
"She's still alive," Not-Riddle replied. "But only just."
"Are you a ghost?" Harish asked, praying that he was buying them some time.
"A memory," Not-Riddle replied quietly. "Preserved in the diary for fifty years."
Harish took this as a chance to avert his face from Riddle's. He looked down at the small book in Ginny's hands.
"Yes," Not-Riddle replied. "It's amazing how much a silly little book can do. Especially in the hands of a silly little girl."
"What d'you—?" Harish asked, looking at Ginny's face now, keeping his head down.
"Don't you see? It was Ginny who opened the Chamber."
"How?"
"The diary. My diary. She's been writing in it for months now, telling me all her pitiful worries and woes—how her brothers tease her, how she had to come to school with second hand robes and books, how—" Harish looked up and saw Not-Riddle reading his face hungrily. "she was so afraid she was the one behind the attacks…It was very boring, having to listen to the silly 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 before, 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…'"
Not-Riddle laughed a high, cold laugh that set Harish's teeth on edge.
"Little Ginny poured out her soul to me and as she grew more attached to the diary I was able to pour a bit of myself into her. You see, it was Ginny who strangled the school roosters and wrote threatening messages on the walls. Ginny set the serpent of Slytherin on four Mudbloods and the Squib's cat."
"Why?"
"Because I told her to. You can find I can be very persuasive. Of course, she didn't know what she was doing at first…it was quite funny. Her entries grew much more interesting after that…Dear Tom," he recited, watching Harish's face grow angrier. "I think I'm losing my memory. There are rooster feathers all over my robes and I can't remember how they got there. Dear Tom, I can't remember where I was on Halloween, but a cat was attacked and I've got paint all down my front. Dear Tom, Percy keeps telling me I'm pale, 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 the one attacking everyone, Tom!'"
Harish listened in silence, his hands clenching so tight his nails dug into the palm of his hands.
"It took a very long time for little Ginny to stop trusting the diary, but she finally became suspicious and tried to dispose of it. And that's where you came in. You can imagine how surprised I was when one day Ginny was writing in my diary, and then the next day it was you who held it. I showed you my memory of catching that brainless oaf, Hagrid to gain your trust, but then you never wrote back and Ginny had the diary once more. She saw you with the diary, you see, and panicked. What if you found out how to work it and I repeated all of her secrets to you? What if I even told her who had been strangling roosters? But the foolish brat stole the diary back and tried to tell you herself who had opened the Chamber. Of course, I couldn't have that, so I made her tell you it was nothing, write her own farewell message on the wall, and then come down here and wait for me. She struggled and cried and became very boring, but there wasn't much life in her…But she told me enough that I knew you would come down here to rescue her, for no one is allowed to touch your friends."
Harish looked into the Other-Riddle's red eyes and grinned.
"You caught me," he said cheekily. His grin grew wider when Riddle looked confused. "But you're wrong."
"Wrong?" Riddle spat. His smile was replaced by an ugly look. "What did I miss?"
"I didn't come down here to rescue Ginny," Harish replied. "I have been looking for the Chamber for long before it was ever opened this year."
"That doesn't matter!" Other-Riddle snapped. "You're here now, where I can dispose of you and no one will know about my diary. Speak to me, Slytherin. Greatest of the Hogwarts four."
Harish wheeled around to look at the statue. Egelbert whimpered and ducked behind his shoulder again. Slytherin's ginormous stone face was moving as its mouth opened wider and wider to make a huge black hole. Something slithered out of the mouth. Harish ran to the other side of the Chamber and hid behind a statue. He pulled a mirror out of his pocket (being petrified would be a lot better than being dead) and glanced to see something huge and bright green hit the floor.
"Kill him." The demon said before addressing Harish. "Parseltongue won't save you now, Blake. It only obeys the Heir."
The teen reached for his wand, but realized it wasn't there. He angled the mirror towards Riddle to see that he held it. "You're wrong about another thing!" he shouted. He could hear the basilisk coming towards him. Harish flitted to another pillar to hide behind. "You're not really Tom Riddle. You are just an insane demon who has been in that diary for so long that you forgot who you are."
The serpent lunged for him and Harish could hear the crunch of rock as he slid out of the way. He ran into a passage leading slightly off the Chamber and looked up to see a pipe going up into the ceiling. It was too small for the basilisk to fit through.
Harish heaved himself into it and slid sideways into a separate tunnel that was going parallel to the ground. He slid along it and found a metal vent that showed him a view of the Chamber.
"How do you know this?" the demon shouted.
"I am the real Tom Riddle's son!"
He closed his eyes and slid sideways to another vent as the basilisk lunged for him.
"NO!" the demon shouted. "I would never have had children! I know this from the memories!"
"Not you!" Harish shouted. "You're not Tom Riddle. You're wrong again because he did have me."
"Prove it!" Not-Riddle spat.
"My name isn't Harish Anata Blake," Harish yelled as the serpent lunged for the grate. The grate broke and Harish shut his eyes. He could hear the basilisk rearing back again, so he continued even louder. "My real name is Harish Thomas Riddle and you know what that means? Stop!"
The boy opened his eye a crack to see that the basilisk had indeed stopped and its eyes were averted from him. Its bared teeth were only a foot away from the arm he had thrown up. He slid to his right and down the tube that led him back into the Chamber. He walked slowly out to meet the demon. Red eyes stared into pale green ones.
"I am afraid," Harish said. "That being the real heir overrides being a demon stuck in a copy of the heir's body, don't you think?"
Not-Riddle just stared at him. He sat down next to Ginny and pulled the diary out of her hand.
"What are you doing?" the demon asked. Harish pulled the basilisk fang out of his pocket. "Stop!"
He lunged forward, but Harish stabbed the fang into the centre of the diary. Ink poured out of it and Not-Riddle fell to the floor writhing, twisting, and screaming. And then—he was gone. Something shadowy and red rose out of him and it became more clear. It was the demon that had possessed the diary. It was red, had scales, and pointy teeth. It screamed as well before it exploded, little red wisps of smoke flying everywhere and dissipating.
Harish panted, his chest heaving up and down, and dropped the diary and the fang. His hands shook as he sat down and breathed a sigh of relief. Then Ginny sucked air in hard and sat up, looking around. She saw Harish, and then the ruined diary, and then the basilisk that had curled up a little ways away, and then she burst into tears.
"I—I did it!" she wailed. "R-Riddle made me!"
Not knowing what to do, Harish said. "It's all right. He's gone now."
"Gone?" Ginny asked.
Harish nodded and held up the diary in his right hand and the fang in his left. "I destroyed it." She looked at the diary. "It's all over," he said, standing up. He shifted the diary to his left hand and helped her to her feet. "Come on, let's get out of here."
But she began crying even harder. "I'll be expelled! I've been looking forward to coming ever since B-Bill got old enough and n-now I'll have to leave and—w-what'll Mum and Dad say?"
Harish led her out of the Chamber and back into the tunnel. It didn't seem quite so eerie now. After a few minutes progress, a distant sound of slowly shifting rock could be heard.
"Guys!" Harish shouted. "Ginny is okay! I've got her!"
He heard two strangled cheers and they turned the next bend to his two freckled faces smiling eagerly through a sizable gap in the rocks.
"Ginny!" they both exclaimed at seeing her. Fred reached an arm through the whole to pull her through first.
After Harish had squeezed through, the two started swooping around Ginny to make sure she was all right and chattering.
"You're alive!"
"I don't believe it!"
"How—"
"What—"
"I'm so glad!"
They stopped short when they realized Ginny was crying harder than ever. They looked questioningly at Harish.
"Later," he said and decided for a subject change. "Where's Lockhart?"
"Back there," they said, pointing up the tunnel toward the pipe.
"He's in bad shape—"
"Hasn't got a clue who he is!"
Egelbert, who had stopped glowing ages ago, scampered up the passage, obviously eager to get out of there. The four students followed him and came out to see Lockhart sitting on the ground, humming to himself.
Lockhart peered happily at them as they walked up to him.
"Hello," he said. "Odd sort of place this is. Do you live here?"
"No," the twins replied, raising their eyebrows at Harish.
Harish walked past them and looked up the steep tunnel.
"Have you thought—"
"Of how we're gonna—"
"Get back up this tunnel?" the twins asked.
Harish nodded and said in Parseltongue. "Stairs." Stairs appeared. "I'm so glad that worked," he said.
The group of five then made their way slowly back up to the bathroom. When they emerged from the pipe, the sink slid back into place and Myrtle goggled at them.
"You're alive," she said blankly as Harish forced Lockhart to his feet (he had fallen on his face when he climbed out).
"There's no need to sound disappointed," Harish replied as he wiped flecks of grime and ink off of his face.
Without another word they left the bathroom. Harish decided it would be best to go to the Hospital Wing, as Lockhart had lost his memory and Ginny was still crying.
But, before they had made it into the entrance hall, they ran into Dumbledore. Harish looked down at the diary and the basilisk fang that were still clutched in his left hand. He vaguely wondered what the headmaster thought at the sight of the five of them, all covered in grime and walking out of the girl's bathroom.