Beware of the Fat Muggle In Love

-----------Beware of the fat Muggle in love, part 17, "The Chamber of Secrets"-------------------

Malfoy pressed three stones in a rhytmic way, left right down, and a small passage opened where there used to be a sink.

"Come on!" Malfoy said and pulled Neville with him through the dark opening.

It was like a dirty and smelly roller coaster for a minute before their feet hit the ground.

Malfoy lit his wand and walked up to a torch on the wall not four feet away.

"Multipicus Incendio!" he said and suddenly twenty torches lit up and shone light in the previously dark corridor.

Neville didn't know for sure what this place was but he had a good idea.

"Where are we?" Neville asked.

"Why, we are in the infamous Chamber of Secrets!" Malfoy answered with a grin and started walking down the corridor.

Neville followed him gripping his wand in his pocket, ready for anything.

After a while they came to what seemed to have been a cave in, but there was a path cleared in it.

Neville figured it was the same place where Ron and Harry had almost had their memorys wiped out by Gilderoy Lockhart.

Harry had told him about it in fifth year.

Neville also remembered the Basilisk, and although he knew it was dead the thought sent more than one chill down his spine.

They reached an opening and Malfoy waved his wand and the huge room beyond the opening was lit up with almost seventy torches, sending eery light effects on the marble faces of the large pillars supporting the huge room.

"I've been making a bit more comfy since I found out how to get in here in our fourth year, and I think I've done a good job, don't you think?" Malfoy said and sat down in a big marble throne in which he'd placed a couple of pillows and a big tigers fur.

"Have a seat," he offered Neville and pointed to a marble chair with only one pillow on it.

Neville sat down and looked around.

On a table behind Malfoy he could see something that looked like a book, but it seemed to be in a terrible shape with a melted frame and it's back was broken in more than one place.

"What's that?" Neville asked and pointed to the book.

Malfoy casually glanced over to it and giggled.

"Oh that! That is a very special little book. It belonged to a boy called Tom Riddle, also known as..."

"Lord Voldemort!" said Neville.

"Yes. I've been trying to restore it to it's original shape and even though it's tricky, I've had some progress!" Malfoy said.

Neville knew about the book and how it worked and if Malfoy could make it work again, there was no telling what mayhem he could produce.

"But never mind that! Now, why don't you tell me about Potter?" Malfoy said and conjured a glass of red wine and began drinking from it.

He stopped himself and conjured one for Neville too, but with white wine instead of red.

"Where are my manners? Go on, it won't kill you!" he said.

"With you, one can't ever be too shure about that, can you?" Neville said and put on a fake smile while he took a sip of the wine.

It was sweet and bitter at the same time, but Neville couldn't care less.

"That's true! But I'm not that dangerous, really. Well, no! That's a lie. I am that dangerous!!" Malfoy said and laughed.

Neville observed him and wondered of how deep into madness a seventeen year old boy could come.

But he must have been mad for a long time to willingly pull off what he'd done in Hogsmeade.

And that wasn't just because of his father or even because of the Dark Lord.

Draco Malfoy had something wrong in his brain, Neville thought and was completely convinced he was sitting face to face with a complete lunatic, drinking wine in a place as evil as the Chamber of Secrets.

It almost made Neville laugh.

Almost.

"So, what have you got to say about Potter?" Malfoy drawled.

Neville took another sip of the wine while he gathered his thoughts and brought the story, which he called The Big Fat Lie, to the surface of his mind.

"I managed to get him to tell me a thing or two!" he said and put on the fake smile again.

Malfoy looked pleased.

"He is barely halfway through his training and isn't that good at it!" Neville said.

"What form has he chosen?" Malfoy asked curiously.

"A stinking cat!!" said Neville and pretended to laugh.

Malfoy laughed too.

They finished their wine and Malfoy continued his interrogation.

"How did you get him to tell you all this, really?"

Neville shrugged.

"I just did the old best friend trick and soon enough, he confided in me."

"That's a trick I yet haven't gotten down right," Malfoy said.

"Can I ask you something?" Neville said.

"What?"

"How did you open the Chamber? I thought only Parselmouths could do that," Neville said.

Malfoy looked smug and refilled his glass of wine and drank it all up.

"Well. I simply took a spell, Dark Magic of course, that transformed one language to another!" Malfoy said.

"But you didn't say anything in the bathroom," Neville said.

"I know! I planned on converting Parselmouth to English or maybe Spanish, but the closest I could come was Toucher language, so I was stuck with it!" Malfoy said.

Neville checked his watch and pretended to be in a hurry.

"Oh shit! I have to go, I was supposed to be in detention five minutes ago!" Neville said and rose from the marble chair.

Oddly enough, Malfoy didn't say anything to stop him from leaving, instead he showed him another easier way out.

It was just to the left of the corridor leading up to Moaning Myrtle's bathroom and led out to into the corridor on the first floor.

There was no-one there and the two boys went different ways to their respective common rooms.

Even though it was late, Neville woke Harry, Ron and Dudley and told them what had happened.

They were all mortified when Neville told the part of Tom Riddle's diary and Harry decided that they should go tell Hermione immediately.

Harry was the one who would sneak into the Girls dormitory as he was the lightest of them and therefore the most quiet one.

He pulled on the Invisibility Cloak and no sooner than he'd gone he was back with Hermione, groggy and obviously still half asleep.

They shook some life into her and Neville told the story once again.

"We have to go down there and destroy that book a second time!" Hermione said, now fully awake.

"I agree. But when should we do it? We don't know when Malfoy is down there and when he isn't," said Harry.

"We will go now!" said Hermione.

"Now? But.." said Dudley.

"She's right! Neville said that Malfoy was on his way to the Slytherin common room, right?" said Ron.

"Yeah," said Neville.

"Then we know for sure that Malfoy won't be there now, don't we?" Ron continued.

They agreed and got dressed and silently sneaked out of the Gryffindor common room.

Once they entered Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, Harry and Ron felt a shiver roll down their spines.

This place had nothing but bad memorys for the two of them and now they were going down there again? Complete insanity, thought Ron.

Harry walked over to the sink with the snake painted on the wall next to it.

He bent over and visualised the snake to be a real one so he could talk to it, as he had done all those years ago.

He spoke and the others heard nothing but hissing sounds.

"Open up!" Harry hissed.

Nothing happened.

Harry tried again and still nothing.

"What's going on, Harry? Why won't it open?" said Hermione.

"I don't know. It worked the last time," Harry answered.

"Oh, I know what's wrong!" said Neville and remembered what Malfoy had said not one hour earlier.

"Malfoy said he'd changed the language from Parselmouth to Toucher language!" Neville continued.

"What? Explain that again," said Ron.

"You needed to talk Parselmouth to open the Chamber before, but Malfoy changed it so you can only open it with Toucher language now," Neville said.

"Well, that was a pretty nifty trick. Especially for Malfoy," said Hermione.

"I agree. Does anyone know how to say open up in Toucher language?" asked Harry.

Clearly no-one could as they didn't say a word.

"Ok. Do you think you could repeat what Malfoy did to open the Chamber, Neville?" Harry asked.

"I don't know. But I guess I could try," Neville said and stepped up to the sink and got on his knees.

He touched the stones in what he thought was how Malfoy had done it, but nothing happened.

He thought about it and tried to remember what the combination was.

Was it left down up? Or was it left up down? Shit!

I guess I'll have to try all of the combinations untill I get it right, Neville thought.

So he continued, left down right, left up left, right up down.

Then it worked! Left right down, and the Chamber was opened again.

The team went on the dirty rollercoaster down into the depths and were soon standing in complete darkness.

"Multipicus Incendio!" said Neville and lit the torches the same way Malfoy had lit them earlier.

When they stepped into the huge room Neville used the same spell again and lit the torches in there too.

Hermione felt nervous when she saw the huge faces on the marble pillars looking down on them.

She held Ron's hand tightly.

They walked over to the large table where the diary of Tom Riddle was lying.

Harry's mind was overflowed with memories from his last visit when he saw the torn and burnt pages of the book.

Harry picked it up and looked at it more closely.

"Malfoy said he'd had some progress in restoring it, right?" Harry asked.

Neville nodded.

"Ok. Then let's see how far he's come," Harry said and pulled out a quill.

He opened the book and started writing.

"Are you in there?"

The words dissapeared and new ones appeared.

"Who is asking?"

Harry felt his stomach wrench and the others were definately scared of what this evil thing could do now that it was active again.

Harry continued writing.

"Your old nemesis, Harry Potter!"

New words appeared.

"Mr Potter? How unecpected to hear from you! Where is Draco?"

Harry wrote again.

"Why do you care?"

"None of your buisness! Where is he?"

"Are you doing to him what you did to Ginny Weasley?"

"As I said, NONE OF YOUR BUISNESS!!!"

Harry closed the book and put it in his pocket.

"I think it's best to give it to Dumbledore once we find out whether or not Riddle is manipulating Malfoy or not. Who knows what evil things he could have Malfoy do?" said Harry.

"Why not just destroy it now?" said Ron.

"Because we don't know what kind of spells Riddle has put on Malfoy," said Hermione.

"If the book was to be destroyed now, it might trigger something in Malfoy to go berserk or something worse!" she continued.

"I agree! We need to find out what the hell is going on between Malfoy and Riddle before we do anything to it," said Dudley.

"How do we do that?" asked Neville.

"I don't know yet, but if we want to find out we can't take the book!" said Hermione.

"What? Are you mental? That means Riddle would tell Malfoy about Harry writing to him!" Ron said.

"Oh, shit! How do we keep him from telling?" said Neville.

"I know!" said Harry and opened the book again and started to write.

"Hello again, Tom!"

"Who is it?"

"It's me, Draco. Who else would it be?"

The others let out a collective "Oh" and continued reading over Harry's shoulder.

"I just heard from Potter! He knows about us. You must do something about it!!"

"What can I do?"

"Kill him before he tells Dumbledore!!"

"Ok, I can do it tonight."

"Very good! Write back immediately when you have done it!"

"Ok!"

Harry shut the book again and looked at the others.

"Ok, now we just wait for a good half an hour so it seems likely that Malfoy could have gotten into our common room and killed me and returned here," Harry said.

"You're a genius, Harry!" said Ron.

"But how are we going to stop Riddle from mentioning you being dead to Malfoy?" asked Neville.

"I guess we'll just have to risk it. That or put a Memory charm on Malfoy so he forgets about it," said Harry.

"That's illegal, Harry!" said Hermione.

"I know! That's why we have to go with our first option right now," said Harry.

They decided to wait in the Chamber untill Harry could write back and fool Riddle.

They walked around and Neville found some feathers near one of the walls.

It was Fawkes feathers since he had helped Harry back in second year and they had strangely enough not decomposed.

The Basilisk however had! All that was left of it was it's massive skeleton lying on the ground in the same pose as it had been killed.

Hermione jumped at the opportunity to gather some teeth from it.

They were supposed to be very powerful in potions and were very hard to come by.

Ron nicked two fist fulls and put them in his pockets.

He was going to sell them and make a shitload of money!

Harry called them back. It was time to write back to Riddle.

He opened the book again and started writing.

"It's been done!"

"Good! How did you do it?"

Harry scratched his head.

"I put the Killing curse on him and burned his body!"

"Excellent! Good to be rid of him."

"I'll say!"

"Now you can concentrate on how to bring me back from the pages of this book so I can be even more powerful than I am in your lifetime!"

So that's his plan, thought Harry.

Well, we will be ready to burn this thing right now, you dickhead!

"Yes. When do you think you will be strong enough?"

"It isn't long now. Maybe in a months time if you keep writing."

"Ok."

Harry closed the book yet again and put it in it's original place on the table and soon they were on their way out of the Chamber of Secrets.

--------------To be continued in chapter 18, "The Dueling Club"--------------