Rating:
PG
House:
Schnoogle
Characters:
Draco Malfoy Harry Potter
Genres:
Alternate Universe General
Era:
The Harry Potter at Hogwarts Years
Spoilers:
Philosopher's Stone Chamber of Secrets Quidditch Through the Ages Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
Stats:
Published: 04/18/2004
Updated: 06/08/2006
Words: 97,140
Chapters: 21
Hits: 109,125

They Shook Hands: Year Two (Original Version)

Dethryl

Story Summary:
Harry Potter's holiday with the Muggles has been dreadful. He wants nothing more than to return to Hogwarts, but when he is rescued by a masked wizard in a black robe, it sets off a chain reaction of disasters. Things are no calmer at school as an ancient legend comes to life and a deadly monster stalks the halls. The new Defense professor boasts that he will end the threat, but can even the magical might of the famed Gilderoy Lockhart prevail against the Heir of Slytherin? Nobody knows who it could be, but the prime suspect is none other than Harry himself!

Chapter 19 - The Chamber of Secrets

Chapter Summary:
Harry Potter has opened the Chamber of Secrets! Accompanied by Draco Malfoy and Timothy Nott, he advances into darkness to confront the Heir of Slytherin. Armed with wand, desperate courage, and the best guesses he and his friends can make, Harry's own life is in grave danger as faces his destiny once again.
Posted:
02/26/2006
Hits:
5,816
Author's Note:
All chapters are posted on Schnoogle. All chapters and some juicy extras are posted on

They Shook Hands : Year Two

An alternate (but realistic!) universe Harry Potter fic
by Dethryl

Chapter Nineteen - The Chamber of Secrets

"Open," Harry hissed.

The sink sank out of sight, revealing a large pipe wide enough for a man to slide into.

Harry noted the determined expressions on his friends' faces. "Why do we always seem to end up going down into dark holes?" he joked.

"You can go first, Draco," Tim volunteered.

"Me? Why me?"

"I went before you last year."

Draco tipped his head. "I suppose that's fair." With a surprising lack of complaint, he jumped feet first into the pipe and let out a tremendous whoop as he slid rapidly out of sight.

Harry didn't waste time. He gave Draco a ten second head start and leaped in after him.

It was like rushing down an endless, slimy, dark slide. Harry could see more pipes branching off in all directions, but none as large as his, 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 Tim, thudding slightly at the curves.

And then, just as he had begun to worry about what would happen when he hit the ground, the pipe levelled out. Harry shot out of the end and landed with a wet thud on the damp floor of a dark stone tunnel large enough to stand in.

"Lumos!" Harry muttered to his wand, and it lit up the darkness. Draco was getting to his feet a little ways away, covered in slime. Harry stood aside as Tim came whizzing out of the pipe, too.

"Damn, but that was fun!" Tim exclaimed.

"Can we do it again?" Draco agreed.

"You certainly couldn't get any dirtier."

"I'll panic about that when this is all over."

"We must be miles under the school," marveled Harry. His voice echoed in the black tunnel.

"I'd say we're under the lake," Tim observed, squinting around at the dark, slimy walls. "Judging from the wetness factor."

"There's only one way to go," Draco noted.

All three of them turned to stare into the uninviting darkness ahead.

"C'mon," Harry said finally, and off they went, their footsteps slapping loudly on the wet floor.

The tunnel was so murky that they could only see a little distance ahead, even with three lighted wands. Their shadows danced on the wet walls and seemed monstrous to their imaginations. All around them, it was quiet as a grave, so they all jumped when they heard a loud crunch!

"I think I stepped on something," Draco said in a shaky voice. Harry pointed his wand at the floor and saw the source of the unexpected sound. It was a rat's skull, now crushed to splinters beneath Draco's shoe. The whole ground 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 Draco hoarsely, grabbing Harry's shoulder.

They froze, watching. Harry could just see the outline of something huge and curved, laying right across the tunnel. It wasn't moving. After an eternity, when Harry was convinced that it was asleep, he pointed his wand at it. 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 twenty feet long at least.

"Blimey," Draco breathed.

"Whose idea was this again?" Tim asked lightly.

"Looks like you were right, Tim," Harry whispered.

"I hate being right, sometimes."

They crept around the giant snake skin carefully, trying not to think too much about the snake that had left it. The tunnel turned and turned again. Every nerve in Harry's body was tingling unpleasantly. He wanted the tunnel to end, yet dreaded what he'd find when it did. And then, at last, torchlight was visible as they crept around yet another bend. Ahead he saw a solid wall, adorned with a carving of two entwined serpents, their eyes set with great, glistening emeralds.

His friends hesitated at the edge of the light, but Harry continued his approach, though his throat was very dry. There was no need to pretend these stone snakes were real; their eyes looked strangely alive, and he could guess what he had to do. He cleared his throat, and the emerald eyes seemed to flicker.

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

The serpents parted as the wall cracked open, each half sliding smoothly out of sight, and Harry, shaking from head to foot, walked inside. He stood 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.

Harry turned to beckon Tim and Draco forward, but- the door! It was sliding shut again! His friends ran forward but were too late. If they'd tried to squeeze through, they would have been crushed. The entrance sealed with a stony crunch.

"Draco!" he shouted, hammering on the wall. "Tim! Open!" But nothing happened. He couldn't hear anything from the other side. Harry took a deep breath. He was alone. So be it.

Harry raised 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.

As he drew level with the last pair of pillars, a statue as high as the Chamber itself loomed into view, standing against the back wall. Harry craned 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 grey feet stood on the smooth Chamber floor. Filtered light lit a circle on the stone floor at the statue's feet, and Ginny was laying in the centre.

Harry slowly approached Ginny's still form. Whatever had brought Ginny down here was intelligent; this was most likely a trap. The girl looked like bait. He stepped forward slowly, holding his wand very tightly.

"Weasley!" he whispered, nudging her with his foot. She didn't move. "Ginny, wake up!"

"She won't wake," said a strange voice. Jumpy, Harry spun around, pointing his wand at the source. 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?" Harry was very confused. "Tom Riddle? How are you here? And what do you mean she won't wake? We're in an awful lot of danger, Tom. There's a basilisk down here."

Riddle didn't move. Harry stared at him. "Help me."

"I cannot," Riddle shook his head. "I don't have true physical form. Yet."

"What are you?" This was decidedly queer. "Are you a ghost?"

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

He pointed at Ginny, and Harry felt a shock as he recognized the little black diary that he had found in the second floor girls' bathroom. The last he'd known, the thing had been in the bottom of his school bag. Now it was clutched possessively in Ginny's little hands, open, and glowing with a strange, unholy light.

"What are you doing to her?" Harry could feel the Dark magic at play here. The sheer magnitude of it was intimidating. All his cleverness would be required if he were to escape from this unscathed. If he panicked or showed weakness, Riddle would destroy him.

"That is really an interesting question," Riddle said casually. "Poor little Ginny is like she is because she opened up her heart and spilled all her secrets to an invisible stranger. She told me everything, all her pitiful woes and worries: how her brothers tease her; how she had to come to school with second-hand robes and books; how her father lost his job at the Ministry, and how humiliated she was at having detention until February," Riddle paused. "My fault, actually. I gave her the idea of getting revenge on the Malfoy boy."

"Draco's my best friend!" Harry shouted. "You did that?"

"The worst, though," Riddle prattled on, "was having to hear about how she had the most awful crush on her brother Ron's worst enemy: the famous, handsome Harry Potter, one of those 'evil Slytherins'."

Harry took a deep breath. He couldn't afford another outburst. He needed to remain calm.

"It's very boring, having to listen to the silly little troubles of an eleven-year-old girl," Riddle continued, "but I was patient. I wrote back; I was sympathetic; I was kind. Poor little Ginny simply loved me. She wrote to me all the time, and every time poor little Ginny wrote in my diary, she gave a small piece of her energy to me, her life-force. It's a clever little bit of magic, I must admit.

"My performance was brilliant, if I do say so myself. I've always been able to charm the people I needed to. Poor little Ginny poured out her soul to me, and her soul happened to be exactly what I wanted. I grew stronger and stronger on a steady diet of her deepest fears, her darkest secrets. I grew powerful, far more powerful than poor little Ginny, powerful enough to start feeding poor little Ginny a few of my own secrets, to start pouring a little of my soul back into her."

Harry's mouth had gone very dry. While he wasn't quite as clever as some of his other friends, all the evidence was before him now.

"You're the Heir of Slytherin. You made Ginny open the Chamber of Secrets."

Riddle clapped mockingly. "Very good, Harry Potter. Poor little Ginny is the one who strangled the school roosters and wrote the messages on the walls. She set the Serpent of Slytherin on all the Mudbloods, and the Squib's cat. She didn't know she was doing it at first, of course, and it took stupid little Ginny a very long time to stop trusting her dear friend Tom. She tried to dispose of the diary, and that's where you come into the story, Harry Potter. Of all the people who could have picked it up, it was you, the person I most wanted to meet."

"Me? Why me?"

"Poor little Ginny told me all about you, Harry Potter. I know your whole fascinating history." Riddle's eyes flicked up to the scar on Harry's forehead. "I knew I had to learn more about you, talk to you, even meet you if I could. I showed you my famous capture of that great oaf, Hagrid, to gain your trust."

"As if anyone could believe he were the Heir of Slytherin!" Harry burst out.

"True," Riddle admitted. "But it was my word against Hagrid's, and old Armando Dippet made the weak decision, as he always did. 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. Even I was surprised by how well the plan worked. Surely someone must realize, as you yourself have, 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 and discover the secret entrance. Hagrid had neither the brains nor the power!

"Only the Transfiguration teacher, Dumbledore, seemed to think Hagrid was innocent. He persuaded Dippet to keep Hagrid on and train him as gamekeeper. There's certainly not much else he's good for. Yes, I think Dumbledore might have guessed. He never did seem to like me as much as the other teachers did. And he kept an annoyingly close watch on me after Hagrid was expelled. 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 I'd spent searching for it. I decided to leave behind a diary, preserving my sixteen-year-old self in its pages, so that one day I would be able to lead another in my footsteps and finish Salazar Slytherin's noble work."

"Your work stops here," Harry told him. "They're going to close the school, and I can't have that.

"Nor could I," Riddle said. "As you saw in my memory. But my work is less important to me now. For several months now, my new target has been you, Harry Potter. Imagine how angry I was when the next time my diary was opened, it was stupid little Ginny writing to me again. She saw you with the diary, you see, and she panicked. What if you figured out how to work it and I repeated all her secrets to you? What if I told you who had been strangling roosters, attacking students, and so on? The foolish little brat knew she'd never be able to break into Slytherin House, so she caught you between classes, made your bag tear, pounced on you, and filched it right in front of you."

I knew that something wasn't right about that day, Harry thought with a lash of venom.

"Despite her interference, it was clear to me that you were working to solve the mystery. When poor little Ginny told me that you could speak Parseltongue, that the whole school suspected you, I knew you wouldn't be able to resist a chance to catch the true Heir and clear your name. I had to lure you into a confrontation, and I couldn't attack any of your friends because they are all purebloods. But poor little Ginny's brother had been adopted into Slytherin. I took a gamble that if I made Ginny write her own farewell on the wall and come down here, her brother would beg you to save her."

Riddle grinned hugely. "And once again, I am exactly right. Here you are: the hero, ready to save the damsel in distress, slay the foul monster, and all that rot. Poor little Ginny struggled and cried and was very boring, but there's not much life left in her. She put too much into the diary, into me, enough to let me leave its pages at last. Soon she will die, and I will be reborn. Until that moment comes, I've been waiting for you, Harry Potter. I have many questions."

Harry's head was spinning. It was probable that he was in entirely over his head this time. "Like what?" he asked, stalling for time. The longer he kept Riddle talking, the longer he could try to figure out a plan.

"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?"

Precisely the question Harry had never had a satisfactory answer to. There was an odd red gleam in Riddle's hungry eyes now. Even more interesting was that Riddle spoke the name of Voldemort without fear, something Harry was not used to.

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

"Voldemort," Riddle said softly, "is my past, present, and future, Harry Potter. My full name is Tom Marvolo Riddle."

Riddle traced letters of flame in the air with his finger. With a snap, the letters rearranged, and a declaratory statement emerged: I am Lord Voldemort!

Harry's jaw dropped.

"It was a name I was already using in Hogwarts," Riddle continued with that self-satisfied look on his face. "Only my closest friends knew of it. As if I would forever keep the filthy name of the filthy Muggle who fathered me! I, in whose veins runs the blood of Salazar Slytherin himself!"

The Heir of Slytherin was a half-breed? Voldemort was a half-breed?

"I, keep the name of a foul, common Muggle, who abandoned me even before I was born, because he learned that my mother was a witch? No, Harry Potter, I fashioned myself a new name, a name I knew wizards everywhere would one day fear to speak. They would fear me, the greatest sorcerer in the world!"

"I don't fear you," Harry said defiantly. "I've seen what you are now: a pathetic shade, clinging to life by leeching off of others like a parasite." His earlier confusion was gone; even if he didn't fully understand, he knew what was important: Riddle was Voldemort, and Voldemort had killed his parents. "Whatever your plans are, I'm going to stop you, Voldemort. I stopped you eleven years ago, I stopped you last year, and I will stop you tonight!"

Riddle's grin seemed eerie and out-of-place. He walked over to between the high pillars and looked 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."

Slytherin's gigantic stone face was moving. Morbidly curious, Harry watched as the mouth opened wider and wider, to make a huge black hole. Inside the statue's mouth, something was stirring, slithering up from its depths. The huge snake poured out of the mouth of Slytherin's statue and hit the ground with a floor-shaking thud.

Harry shut his eyes tightly as he backed away. Focus! he ordered himself.

"Kill him," Riddle hissed.

"Back away!" he ordered the snake in Parseltongue. "You have no wish to harm me."

Riddle laughed. "Parseltongue won't help you, Harry Potter. It only obeys me!"

That couldn't be true. Tim's book had said that basilisks could only be controlled by Parselmouths. This one wasn't any more special than any other basilisk, though it was considerably bigger.

"Stop where you are!" Harry commanded.

"Kill him!" Riddle ordered.

The poor snake didn't know what to do. It was confused from having conflicting orders hissed at it. It coiled upon itself, withdrawing into a place of safety and shelter to work things out. The yellow eyes closed.

"It obeys only me, Harry Potter. It obeys only the Heir!" Riddle was laughing now, maniacally so. He obviously thought everything had been all wrapped up.

Harry took a deep breath to calm himself. He had to think. Riddle was lying to him; that was his first conclusion. He wanted Harry to stop giving orders in Parseltongue so that the basilisk would kill him. First part of the solution: Speak only in Parseltongue.

"Then how come I'm not dead yet?" he demanded of Riddle. "It won't attack one who speaks its language."

A flicker of uncertainty passed across Riddle's face.

"It obeys the Heir, but it listens to me too," Harry said, growing more confident. "Come to me," he called out to the basilisk, putting all his force of will behind those words.

The king of serpents uncoiled itself. With only the sound of scales rubbing against scales, the basilisk slid quickly across the floor of the Chamber, answering Harry's call.

"No!" Riddle shouted, too stunned to speak in Parseltongue.

"What is your name, my friend?" Harry asked.

"The great one named me Eithne," the basilisk replied.

"A beautiful name," Harry hissed. "A beautiful serpent."

Eithne curled around Harry, bringing her head up under his hand. He stroked her scales lightly. "No one has ever asked my name," she said sadly.

"This cannot be!" Riddle shouted. His voice clearly held his disbelief, his astonishment.

Harry glared at the ghost, or whatever he was. "It is a beast only the Heir can control," he said, paraphrasing the legend of the Chamber of Secrets.

"It is true!" Riddle shrieked.

"You are a failed and unworthy descendant of Slytherin," Harry accused. "You're nothing more than a shade from a time long past. You are nothing. I am the Heir of Slytherin!"

The last words escaped his lips in Parseltongue, and the world seemed to shift radically. Dust filtered down from the ceiling as the whole Chamber shook. For a second, Harry saw the world through a red haze. Eithne had reared up sharply at his words. She poised herself to strike at Riddle.

"Begone, Riddle, and haunt this school no more," Harry commanded. His voice was unexpectedly deep and strong. "I banish you from Hogwarts forever."

Riddle drew himself up. "You cannot banish me," he hissed. "I-"

"Strike!"

The basilisk lunged forward, striking with amazing speed at Tom Riddle. Harry nearly choked when Eithne's head passed right through the apparition. Furious, she turned and lunged again with the same results. She held back, confused, hissing angrily.

Harry knew he could do one of two things: he could wait until Riddle finished draining the life-force from Ginny Weasley and became manifest again, or he could take action now. His eyes fell on the diary, clutched so fiercely in Ginny's hands. He ran to her side as quickly as he could. Prying the book from her fingers, Harry glanced about wildly for a burning torch with which to immolate the diary, but they were all too high for him to reach. His eyes fell upon the pool of water, but he rejected that. The diary would simply absorb all that liquid.

Liquid...

Harry watched, frozen in a moment of time, as venom dripped from Eithne the Basilisk's fangs. Venom: a liquid that was also deadly; a liquid that could kill. He ran to her, opening the diary as he went.

"Bite this book!" he commanded her. She glared sullenly at Tom Riddle, but lowered her head and did as Harry asked.

Riddle screamed in agony as the first drop of venom was absorbed into the diary. A hole appeared in Riddle's chest with bright light shining from inside him. Harry watched dispassionately as drop after drop of venom dripped into the book, swallowed up by the magic. Each drop was matched by a shriek of agony. More beams of light began to burst from the shadow.

Finally it seemed that the diary could take no more. The fragments of light that were all that remained of Tom Riddle exploded into a flurry of rainbows before fading into darkness. Harry jumped and dropped the diary as it spontaneously began to burn. The flames lit the darkness for a moment, but the book was quickly consumed.

Harry took a deep breath. It was over. The reign of terror that had descended upon Hogwarts was lifted.

"Thank you, my friend," he hissed to the basilisk.

"I never liked him much," Eithne replied. "He never talked to me. He never asked my name. All he did was give orders."

"It's over now," Harry told her. "And there will be no more killings. This school is my only home, my only refuge. I cannot allow it to close. This has to end."

"Killing is my nature," she told him. "It's what I do. I am a predator."

"No more people," Harry told her firmly. "You must never kill a student here again."

She pouted for a moment, but she reluctantly agreed. Harry looked all around the Chamber. There was a door at the back that he almost went to go investigate, but fatigue suddenly gripped him, and he would have fallen to the floor had not Eithne helped him to stand.

"You should leave this place," she advised him. "Return when you are strong again."

Harry was about to let Eithne lead him out of the Chamber when a sobbing gasp drew his attention. He'd forgotten all about Ginny! He hurried to her side and got the air squeezed from him as she clung to him and wept. Harry did his best to comfort her, but she was inconsolable. Harry picked the girl up (she seemed to weigh almost nothing), and walked out of the Chamber of Secrets. The great doors at the end of the hall opened as he approached, and Draco and Tim jumped to their feet; they sat waiting for him on the other side.

"Harry!"

"Harry, you're alive!"

"Of course I'm alive," he said haughtily. "I'm the Boy-Who-Lived."

"You great pillock!" Draco exclaimed. "And you even rescued the baby Weasel."

"My name is Ginny, Malfoy."

"Hey, welcome back," Harry smiled at her.

"You can put me down now."

"I'm sure the story is fascinating, but let's cover the basics, shall we? Is the Heir dead?" Tim asked.

"It was Tom Riddle and his stupid diary," Harry snorted. "Yes, he's quite dead."

"Was it a basilisk, and is it dead?"

"Yes it was, and under no circumstances. Eithne, come meet my friends."

Eithne the basilisk poked her head out of the doors, drawing a high scream from Draco, and causing Tim to call upon several different gods.

"That's Draco, and that's Tim, and this is Ginny."

The snake's tongue flickered in and out of her mouth.

"Harry. . . ." Draco said nervously.

Tim clapped him on the shoulder. "Remember what the book said? Uncontrollable except by Parselmouths. Harry's got himself a pet basilisk!"

Draco managed a weak grin. "Bloody marvellous."

Harry fought off a wave of dizziness. "My friend, we need to get back up to the surface. Can you help us?"

"I will carry you."

Eithne urged them to climb on her back, and when they were all securely seated, she slithered rapidly to the pipe by which they had descended to these depths. She darted into it with the greatest of ease, and Harry had to keep his head down to avoid bashing it against the top of the pipe, since the basilisk was so very big that she nearly filled the whole thing. They were moving at great speed, and Harry felt his ears pop as the air pressure changed. When they reached the top, they hopped off her back and out into the second floor girls' bathroom.

"Farewell, Master," the basilisk called to him, vanishing back into the depths of the school.

to be continued...


Yes, there is an AU version of Year One. Please read my previous work, They Shook Hands before you read this one, otherwise things will get confusing. You can join my Yahoo group Deth By Fanfiction to participate in an open forum for discussing all things about this fic. Chapter updates go out here first before I post to Schnoogle. Many thanks to my loffly beta reader, Christi. This fic would not be possible without her help. I loff you so much, Christi!