𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐟 𝐒𝐞𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐭𝐬

Part Two

━━ 𓆙 𓆙 𓆙 ━━

"Tom? Tom Riddle? What do you mean she won't wake?" Harry asked, confusion clouding his face. Cassidy glared at the dark haired boy, who was advancing towards them.

"Harry, I told you that book is no good. You saw him in it, right?" Cassidy asked. Harry nodded. "Something's wrong here, something's very wrong, he's probably killed-"

"She's still alive." Tom said, getting nearer. "But only just."

"You stay away." Cassidy seethed, holding Ginny closer. She didn't know why, but she had a sudden deep mistrust of this Tom fellow.

"Are you a ghost?" Harry asked.

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

Cassidy touched Ginny's cheek. "She's so...cold." Harry touched Ginny's hand. "As cold as ice."

"Ginny, please don't be dead." Harry pleaded helplessly. "I can't...you've got to help me, Tom, there's a Basilisk." Cassidy suddenly noticed that Tom had picked up Harry's wand, which he had left lying on the floor. He was inspecting it with great interest.

"What are you doing?" she asked slowly, eyes narrowed. "You just heard Harry, there's a basilisk around. Why aren't you helping-"

"It won't come until it's called." Tom cut her off calmly. Harry rose up slowly, facing Tom Riddle.

"Give me my wand, Tom." He said firmly.

"You won't be needing it." He answered calmly.

Cassidy whipped her wand out, aiming it in Tom's direction.

Cassidy didn't know much about Tom Riddle. All she knew was that something dark radiated off this boy—something unnatural. Her necklace was burning so hot against her skin it almost hurt. She didn't hesitate.

"Stupefy!" Cassidy slashed her wand through the air, red light bursting toward Tom Riddle.

The spell hit him square in the chest—and passed straight through.

Cassidy's breath caught. She had never seen that happen before. The hex should have done something—anything. But it was like trying to hex a shadow.

Riddle didn't even flinch. He merely tilted his head, a smirk tugging at his lips.

"That's not very polite, you know," he said coolly, as if she'd just spilled his tea rather than attempted to stun him. "I must admit, I wasn't expecting you down here."

Cassidy's grip on her wand tightened. "What are you?"

Riddle only smiled wider, stepping closer. His dark eyes flickered to her necklace, lingering on its glow.

"That," he mused, "is a very interesting trinket you have."

The whisper slithered through her mind again.

"Kill... it is meant to kill..."

Cassidy's stomach twisted, but she shoved the voice away.

Harry stepped protectively in front of Ginny and Cassidy. "Stay away from them."

Riddle chuckled softly. "Or what, Harry?" His gaze flickered back to Cassidy. "Or will she try another spell that doesn't work?"

"Listen, we've got to go, we've got to save her!" Harry protested.

"I'm afraid I can't do that, Harry, you see...as poor Ginny grows weaker, I grow stronger."

Cassidy and Harry furrowed their brow at the same time.

"Yes, Harry and Cassandra. It was Ginny Weasley who opened the Chamber of Secrets."

"No." Cassidy said, gently putting Ginny down and standing. "You're lying!"

"Is that so, Cassandra?" Riddle asked, smirking.

"She couldn't..." Harry said in disbelief. "She wouldn't...!"

"It was Ginny who set the Basilisk on the Mudbloods and Filch's cat."

"Don't you dare say that word-"

"Ginny who wrote the threatening messages on the walls!" Riddle continued, ignoring Cassidy.

"Why?" Harry asked, still in shock.

"I told her to." Riddle said simply.

Then it all made sense. The reason Cassidy had recognized that book Harry had, the weathered one...she knew where'd she'd seen it before. It was the book Lucius Malfoy was holding in Flourish and Blotts. The one he'd dropped into little Ginny's cauldron. The reason her necklace had felt warm when he was there. He'd had it.

"You can find that I can be very... persuasive. Not that she knew what she was doing, she was... shall we say that she was in a kind of...trance?"

"You evil boy." Cassidy spat.

"Well thank you, Miss Sweet." Tom replied bitterly. "Still, the power of the diary began to scare her. And she tried to dispose of it in the girl's bathroom. And then... who should find it, but you?" Riddle started to round the two, wand pointed at them. "And if things couldn't get any better, you brought her down with you." He pointed to Cassidy with his wand, smirking. "Brought that necklace. The very trinket that will aid me, with the very person that I was most anxious to meet."

"What...?" Cassidy muttered, confused.

Harry stepped towards Tom.

"Why did you want to meet me? And what do you want with Cassidy's necklace?"

"I knew I had to talk to you,"Riddle answered. "Meet you two if I could. Take what is rightfully mine. So I decided to show you, Harry, my capture of that brainless oaf Hagrid. To gain your trust-"

"Hagrid's our friend!" Harry yelled, furious. "And you framed him, didn't you?"

"It was my word against Hagrid's." Tom said calmly, his smooth, pale skin catching the green glow of the chamber. "Only Dumbledore seemed to think he was innocent."

Cassidy's chest started tightening, but it wasn't from the necklace- it was from rage.

"You ruined his life!" She yelled, jabbing a finger at Tom. "You killed Myrtle-"

"It didn't look like that Mudblood had much to live for, anyway." Tom replied, unfazed. "I would've expected this outburst from a blood-traitor like you, Cassandra."

"Don't you call her that!" Harry snapped. "Dumbledore saw right through you, didn't he?"

"He suddenly kept an annoyingly close watch on me after that. I knew it wouldn't be safe for me to open the Chamber again while at school, so 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 to finish Salazar Slytherin's noble work."

He looked at Cassidy's necklace again.

"And maybe get a little help from a certain artifact." He muttered.

"But you haven't finished it this time, and you didn't get the necklace." Harry shot back. "In a few hours, the Mandrake drug will be ready, and everyone's who's been Petrified will be all right again."

Harry and Cassidy smiled smugly.

"Haven't I told you?" Riddle lowered his voice, staring at the both of them with narrowed eyes. "Killing Mudbloods doesn't matter to me anymore. For many months now, my new target... has been you two."

"What?" Cassidy said, disbelief etched across her face. Evil things, evil wizards, usually targeted Harry. They were always after Harry. Where did she fit into all this? She was just his friend, his aide-

"How is it that a baby with no extraordinary magical talent was able to defeat the greatest wizard of all time? How is it that a silly girl like you and her family managed to keep that necklace away from me?! For all this time?"

Cassidy was becoming more and more confused by the minute. What on Earth did Riddle want with her necklace?

"How did you escape with nothing but a scar, while Lord Voldemort's powers were destroyed?" Tom continued, looking at Harry.

"Why do you care how I escaped, or what Cassidy did with her necklace?" Harry asked coldly. "Voldemort was after your time."

A beat of silence followed this statement, and Tom Riddle's lips curled up in a smile.

"Voldemort is my past, present, and future." Riddle said, before turning around and writing his name into the air with Harry's wand.

Tom Marvolo Riddle

"Okay, so you have a silly name. What're we supposed to do with that?" Cassidy scoffed.

"Shut up and look, Cassandra." Riddle snapped. Cassidy was about to retort, when the letters started to rearrange themselves.

Her stomach sunk with dread.

I am Lord Voldemort

"You." Harry breathed. "You're the heir of Slytherin."

"Why do these things always happens to us?" Cassidy mumbled, shaking her head. Tom turned to glare at the both of them.

"Voldemort." Harry whispered.

"Surely, you didn't think, I was going to keep my filthy Muggle father's name?" Tom snapped. "I fashioned myself a new name. A name I knew wizards everywhere would one day fear to speak, when I became the greatest sorcerer in the world!"

"You're insane!" Cassidy shouted.

"Albus Dumbledore is the greatest sorcerer in the world!"

"Dumbledore's been driven out of this castle by the mere memory of me." Tom retorted.

"He was forced to, Tom." Cassidy said quietly. "He would've stayed if he had the choice."

"You shut your mouth, Cassandra, before I rip that trinket off your neck!" Tom shouted, enraged.

"I dare you!" Harry said, outraged. "Dumbledore will never be gone. Not as long as those who remain are loyal to him."

The three glared at each other, Cassidy's hand wandering to her necklace.

"Give it to me." Tom demanded.

"No." Cassidy replied, voice shaking. It was her necklace, and she wouldn't give it to anyone if she didn't want to, not even Lord Voldemort himself.

"Give it to me, now." He seethed, stepping closer to her before Harry stepped in between the two.

"You'll have to go through me first." Said Harry, heart pounding. Before Tom could say anything else, a glorious bird's call was heard. Cassidy and Harry whirled around, and a fiery bird flew into the chamber. Its beautiful red coat shimmered in sharp contrast to the gloomy glow of the Chamber, and it glided seamlessly towards Harry.

It was a phoenix.