Once Thomas and Ginny arrived at the entrance to the chamber, Ginny looked at Thomas uncertain about how they would go up.
Seeing her confused face, the blonde boy only smiled before walking a few meters away from her and drawing a magic circle on the ground. "Please trust me."
Before Ginny could react, Thomas gently took the girl in his arms and stepped into the magic circle. In the next moment, they appeared back in the second-floor toilet, where Moaning Myrtle was waiting for them. She shrieked when she saw them, thinking someone came to bother her or worse came after Thomas, but as soon as she saw Thomas and Ginny, she let out a sigh, something that surprised Thomas.
"You're alive," If she could, she would have hugged the blonde boy.
"You don't have to sound so disappointed, you know? It's almost like you wished I would have died down there." Thomas responded with a smirk on his face.
"Oh, well … I'd just been thinking … if you had died, you'd have been welcome to share my toilet," Myrtle blushed slightly when she said that making Ginny hide behind Thomas for some reason.
"I'll keep that in mind if I were to die anytime soon."
Just as he was about to turn towards Ginny to see if she was feeling alright, Myrtle interrupted him.
"There's something related to you that you need to see."
Finding her choice of words strange, Thomas decided to humor her, but not even in his wildest dreams would have he imagined the sight that greeted him when Myrtle told him to open one of the bathroom stalls.
As soon as he opened the door, the first thing that Thomas saw was Gilderoy Lockhart sitting on the toilet, luckily clothed while humming placidly to himself. This… was not something he would have ever expected to see, then again, the man had it coming.
"What happened to him and how did he even get here in the first place?"
"He must have followed you here because he seemed quite ready to kill you, but when I refused to tell him where you were, he attacked me with a Memory charm. Sadly, for him, his spell hit a mirror sending the charm back at him, and then poof his memory's gone. I've tried to talk with him, but he doesn't have a clue who he is, where he is, or who I am. I told him to come and wait here. And while I would kill for some company, I'd rather not have such an old ghost living with me."
Lockhart peered good-naturedly up at them all.
"Hello, sir," he said. "Odd sort of place, this. Do you live here too?"
"No. I'm here to visit my friend."
"Oh, that's good, friends are important."
After leaving Lockhart to hum in peace, Thomas, Ginny, and Myrtle made their way to the center of the room where the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets was. "I don't remember if I told you that I would avenge you or not, but I killed the creature."
When she heard Thomas's words, Myrtle froze midair, as her eyes grew larger and larger until she charged at the blonde boy who just smiled kindly at her. If not for her lack of a real body, then she would have definitely tackled him to the ground. Yet that didn't mean she couldn't cry out of happiness.
"Thank you! Thank you!"
"You don't have to thank me, Myrtle. You deserved justice."
Surprisingly enough, a few minutes later, she calmed herself down, before turning towards Ginny. "What are you two going to do now?"
"Wait for Dumbledore, most likely. While I'm pretty sure that no one will want to come down there, it wouldn't hurt getting my hands on a basilisk's body…"
But before he could continue, Thomas felt the corner of his robe being slowly pulled down. Turning his head towards his side, he saw Ginny pointing towards the stall where Lockhart was still humming.
"Wha-what about him? He's… he was our professor."
Thomas wanted to retort that the man was anything but a teacher, but he didn't want to destroy what little, dignity Lockhart still had, instead, he shook his head. "I don't really know, Ginny. Probably, the same thing, wait for Dumbledore to deal with him since neither one of us is by any means qualified to deal with that."
It took him a minute to coax Myrtle into watching Lockhart, but once she agreed to do it, Thomas and Ginny left the bathroom, following Fawks. Thanks to how long they spent inside the bathroom, Ginny got some time to clean her face so that no one could easily notice that she had been crying. Meanwhile, Fawkes was leading the way, glowing gold along the corridor. They strode after him, and moments later, found themselves outside Professor McGonagall's office.
Since Fawks led them here, Thomas knew that there was no point wasting any more time and knocked on the door. For a moment there was silence as Thomas and Ginny stood in the doorway, and just as they thought that no one was inside, a sudden scream made them think otherwise.
"Ginny!"
As soon as the door opened, Mrs. Weasley, who had been sitting crying in front of the fire, leaped to her feet, closely followed by Mr. Weasley, and both of them flung themselves on their daughter.
Letting the Weasleys catch up with each other, Thomas looked behind them at Professor Dumbledore, who was standing by the mantelpiece, beaming, next to Professor McGonagall, who was taking great, steadying gasps, clutching her chest. Fawkes went whooshing past his ear and settled on Dumbledore's shoulder, just as Thomas found himself being swept into Mrs. Weasley's tight embrace.
"You saved her! You saved her! How did you do it?"
"I think we'd all like to know that," Professor McGonagall managed to say weakly.
Mrs. Weasley let go of Thomas, who after catching his breath, walked over to the desk and laid upon it the Sorting Hat and the ruby-encrusted sword. Sadly, there was nothing left of the diary, so there was no point saying anything about it from the get-go.
Once the talking hat and the sword were put on the table for everyone to see, he started telling them everything, and for the next half an hour, Thomas explained everything he had done: He started with how he and his friends had started to look into the attacks. How they broke the rules and sneaked into the Slytherin common room, just to see if the one they suspected was actually the heir. And he was ending it with his trip to the forest and his meeting with Aragog who was kind enough to tell him what happened fifty years ago and who someone died in the bathroom of the second floor. How that made him realize that Myrtle was actually the girl who died fifty years ago and that the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets might be in her bathroom.
"Very well," Professor McGonagall prompted him as he paused, "so you found out where the entrance was … breaking a hundred school rules into pieces along the way, I might add… but how on earth did you all get out of there alive, Mr. Grayson? I'm not doubting your strength considering that as of right now you are standing at the same level as most of the sixth and even seventh-year students."
Drinking some water that McGonagall had very kindly prepared for him, Thomas knew that there was no way he could lie about the whole thing, and while he wasn't all that keen on revealing that Ginny was the one who used a diary to control the basilisk, changes are that Dumbledore would realize that he would lie, but it was worth a shot.
In the end, he told them everything starting from how he got inside the chamber, how he used his Parseltongue to open the door how he fought against both Tom Riddle, and his memory from a diary and the basilisk, and how after a heavy and almost fatal battle, he managed to kill both of them, or at least the snake. The four adults and even Ginny looked at Thomas like he was the reincarnation of Merlin, but above all, Dumbledore was proud to have such a student. Not only was Thomas a good friend, but he was humble to some extent, he wasn't discriminating between the races, considering his visits to the kitchen, the conversations with the ghosts, his rather dangerous visits to the forest, his meeting with the centaurs, etc. Above all, what made Dumbledore view Thomas as someone who will never turn to the dark side, was his family and friends. They were his anchor to the white side as many refer to it.
"What interests me most," Dumbledore said gently, "is how Lord Voldemort managed to enchant Ginny when my sources tell me he is currently in hiding in the forests of Albania."
"W-what's that?" Mr. Weasley went pale and barely managed to talk in a stunned voice. "You-Know-Who? En-enchant Ginny? But Ginny's not … Ginny hasn't been … has she?"
"As I said, sir. It was the diary," Thomas said and for the first time since he fought Riddle, he wished he had the diary to show everyone just how dangerous it was. "Riddle wrote it when he was sixteen or so he said in it. So please rest assured that nothing happened to Ginny, I made sure of that."
Looking at Thomas for a few moments, Dumbledore then realizes what the blonde boy just said.
"Brilliant," he said softly. "Of course, he was probably the most brilliant student Hogwarts has ever seen." He turned around to the Weasleys, who were looking utterly bewildered, after all, who wouldn't be when they heard that Dumbledore, the symbol of good had taught the most hated wizard to ever live?
"Very few people know that Lord Voldemort was once called Tom Riddle. I taught him myself, fifty years ago, at Hogwarts. He disappeared after leaving the school, no doubt he traveled far and wide and as much as it pains me to say it, sank so deeply into the Dark Arts, consorted with the very worst of our kind, underwent so many dangerous, magical transformations, that when he resurfaced as Lord Voldemort, he was barely recognizable. Hardly anyone connected Lord Voldemort with the clever, handsome boy who was once Head Boy here."
"But, Ginny," by now, Mrs. Weasley was close to bursting into tears fearing the worst. "What's our Ginny got to do wi-with … him?"
"His d-diary!" Ginny sobbed. "I've b-been writing in it, and he's been w-writing back all year …"
"Ginny!" Mr. Weasley exclaimed flabbergasted. "Haven't I taught you anything? What have I always told you? Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brain. Why didn't you show the diary to me, or your mother? A suspicious object like that, it was clearly full of Dark Magic."
"I d-didn't know," sobbed Ginny. "I found it inside one of the books Mum got me. I thought someone had just left it in there and forgotten about it."
"Miss Weasley should go up to the hospital wing right away," Dumbledore interrupted in a firm yet grandfatherly voice. "This has been a terrible ordeal for her. There will be no punishment. Older and wiser wizards than she have been hoodwinked by Lord Voldemort."
He strode over to the door and opened it. "Bed rest and perhaps a large, steaming mug of hot chocolate. I always find that cheers me up," he added, twinkling kindly down at her, which made the little girl cheer up a little. "You will find that Madam Pomfrey is still awake. She's just giving out Mandrake juice and I daresay the basilisk's victims will be waking up any moment."
When he heard Dumbledore's words, Thoams finally let out a sigh that he didn't he was holding in. No matter what punishment he would get, Thomas was going to accept it just so that he could see his friends.
Soon the Weasleys left in a hurry, but not before thanking Thomas once again for saving their daughter, leaving Thomas alone with the headmaster and Professor McGonagall.
"You know, Minerva," Professor Dumbledore said thoughtfully to Professor McGonagall, "I think all this merits a good feast. Might I ask you to go and alert the kitchens?"
"Right," Professor McGonagall smiled at him for a second before glancing slightly at Thomas, as she was moving to the door. "I'll leave you to deal with Grayson, shall I?"
"Certainly," Dumbledore answered while nodding at her.
Once McGonagall left, Dumbledore turned towards Thomas, with a worried look on his face, one that Thomas had seen before on his grandfather, the day he came to pick him up from the hospital. Dumbledore then gently petted Fawkes, who was still on his shoulder, making the phoenix trill softly. He looked at Thomas with a kind and concerned expression.
"Thomas, my dear, you have done a remarkable thing today. You have faced and defeated a younger version of Lord Voldemort and a basilisk You have saved the life of Ginny Weasley and many others. Yet I fear that this feat came with a cost, am I right?"
Thomas only nodded, while showing the headmaster the wounds on his body, which for some reason had only become scars, something in theory shouldn't have happened when using Pheonix tears.
"How are you feeling?"
"Tired, professor. It has been a long day and now that I think about it… there is another problem that would need your input."
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