Salazar's Heir

By: Wilona Riva

Disclaimer: Never have and never will.

Author's Note: I am taking liberties with the rest of the story and changing a few things.

Secret of the Basilisk

Gilderoy Lockhart hummed to himself as he floated around his office deep in thought.

Those two boys know more than they are letting on. If they know where the Chamber of Secrets is hidden, all I have to do is follow them, let them kill whatever monster is hidden within, obliviate them and voila! I have a new book and might even get the Order of Merlin first class for my troubles.

He paused.

"That's nice," he told his reflection, who just grinned charmingly back.

Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was pacing back and forth in his office. Fawkes, his phoenix, looked at him curiously.

"You really should get on with it," he told him.

Fawkes coughed up a fireball.

"Yes, I know. The sword is in the hat. He will most definitely need it to defeat the thing."

Fawkes screeched in agreement.

The Headmaster nodded. He still didn't understand why a dream had warned him not to renew Charity Burbage's contract as the Muggle Studies professor two years ago, but Vladimir Masters, one of the most difficult of the students to grace these hallowed halls, had been more than an adequate replacement.

The half-ghost had been proven a most invaluable investment.

My young master is searching for me.

"Yes, I know," Clockwork said, watching Harry ask Neville if he'd seen Featherhead. The stockier boy said no and then rushed around looking for his toad.

It's hiding behind in the pillow. As if.

"You are a snake," Clockwork mused.

I don't want to watch what comes next.

"That is your choice," the Time Master replied. "You chose to come back as a different type of snake and go to the boy. He will not know this nor will he ever, should you choose not to tell him. You may go to him when the deed is done."

His nest-mate is wiser than his years.

"Yes, he is the son of two brilliant minds and has access to powers that should not have come to him for some years yet. Things have to change to accomodate for that spike in his growth."

"So where do we even begin looking for the Chamber of Secrets?" Ron asked Harry, as Amorpho put Danny through the paces. The half-ghost was grinning ear-to-ear as he split himself in two to avoid getting hit by the bludger. "Good thing Danny's in Slytherin or Wood would have him on the team with you, mate."

"I don't know. Aragog said that a girl had been killed fifty years ago the last time the chamber was open."

"Wait, fifty years ago?" Lee interjected. "Isn't that how long Moaning Myrtle has been haunting her loo, Fred?"

"Yeah, come to think of it, that's what I remember Sir Nicholas telling me at one point. Hey, did you see him scare Malfoy this morning with his disappearing head-throwing trick?"

"That was so wicked cool," Lee exclaimed, steering the conversation to less dangerous waters.

"Shall we go talk to her?" Ron whispered to Harry. "We shouldn't have come out here, mate. We should be trying to find Ginny."

Sam gulped. She handed a piece of paper to Ron. "Here, I found this on Ginny's pillow earlier today. You might want to read it. I tried to find you earlier, but couldn't. Sorry."

Ron swallowed. "Thanks, Sam," he said. His eyes scanned the paper. "She's gone to the Chamber of Secrets. Harry, we have to stop her."

"I agree," he said. "I think Myrtle may know where the Chamber of Secrets is hidden."

"It's over there," Myrtle said, when they asked her. "You'll have to use the hissing language the other boy used. English doesn't work."

"Oh," Ron said. "Parseltongue it is, then. Go ahead and open it, Harry."

"Yes, Mr. Potter, do go and open it," came the cultured voice of the glory hog aka Gilderoy Lockhart. "Show me how it is done." The teacher had been lurking around the Great Hall when he'd seen the two boys coming back from the Quidditch pitch and followed them here; though why they were out this late at night, he had no clue.

"Great," Ron muttered, reaching for his wand. "We're trying to save Ginny and we get busted by a professor."

"I will come with you, of course, to make sure nothing goes wrong," came the false promise.

"Uh-huh," Ron muttered, unconvinced.

"Myrtle get Professor Masters if we're not back in ten minutes," Harry said, eyes flickering to Professor Lockhart. "Please."

"Okay," Myrtle moaned. "Anything for you, Harry. If you die down there, you're always welcome to share my toilet."

"Gee, thanks."

"Think we're under the lake by now?" Ron asked, peering down the dark tunnel. "This place gives me the creeps."

"You dropped your wand," Harry told him, before they stepped up to examine some poisonous green colored snake skin. "Geez, this guy's huge."

"How many centuries do you think it spent down here?" Ron wandered, eyes darting in the dim light, searching for his wand. He found it; in Lockhart's hands, of all the rotten luck.

"Uh, professor, thanks for finding my wand. Can I have it back now?" Ron asked him.

"Certainly," Lockhart said. "Let me just take bit of that skin and...oh yes...Obliviate!"

The wand backfired and knocked Lockhart in next Wednesday and the opposite wall. Parts of the tunnel collapsed trapping Ron and the airheaded professor.

"Git," Ron said, snatching his wand back. "I could have told you not to do that. It's not working properly."

"Ron, are you and Professor Lockhart alright?," Harry asked.

"Yes," came Ron's muffled voice. "He's knocked himself silly."

Neither of the two gave any thought to how Harry was going to get back up with Ginny, but both assumed they'd cross that bridge when they come to it.

Harry didn't really expect to see Ginny alive when he ordered the living serpentine portal to the underground chamber to open. Entering in, he found himself in a labyrinth of serpentine pillars reaching from floor to ceiling decorated with elaborate scrollwork. Harry pulled out his wand and cautiously moved deeper into the chamber.

"Old Salazar must have really loved snakes," he muttered, seeing the motif everyhwere. Reaching the last set of pillars, he saw a black robed figure lying at the feet of a statue of an old wizard with a long beard and a monkeyish face. A flash of red in the gloom caught his eye.

"Ginny!"

The girl did not stir as Harry ran to her, praying to God that she was still alive. His face looked relieved when he saw her chest barely rise and fall. Checking her pulse, it was very faint, but still there. "Thank God," he murmured. "I've got to get you out of here and to the Infirmary. You'll be okay, Ginny. I promise."

"Don't expect her to wake, Harry Potter," a soft voice spoke from the shadows. Tom Riddle, was a bit blurry around the edges, but he had come forth out of the not-so-distant past. "I'm a memory, preserved in a diary for fifty years," he added, as if Harry needed an explanation, one hand motioning at the little black book next to Ginny's right foot.

"How did Ginny get to be like this?" Harry asked, puzzled how Tom Riddle had gotten in, no less Ginny, into the Chamber of Secrets.

"When little Ginny Weasley spilled her secrets as she wrote within my diary, it created a connection between her soul and mine. I have been able to draw from her life force bit by bit," Riddle explained. "Quite a bit of boring life she has."

Harry listened with growing horror as Riddle launched into a horrific story of what he'd done fifty years ago, his discovery of the Chamber and the quick hiding of it again quickly, and of what his connection to Ginny had cost her and him.

He wanted to throw up. "You're worse than Voldemort!"

Tom Riddle laughed. "I am Voldemort," he said, spelling the glowing letters of his name with Harry's wand, which he must have dropped while checking Ginny's pulse. The letters rearranged themselves as Harry watched.

"An anagram," he stated.

"Yes," Riddle admitted. "I was quite good at them in my day. Tell me, child, how did you survive the Killing Curse when no one else has ever managed to do so?"

"I don't know," Harry replied. "I was too young to remember."

The fight that followed is too awful to describe. Fawkes the Phoenix appeared at the last minute before Riddle summoned the Basilisk and threw the Sorting Hat, of all things, at Harry. Sticking out of its mouth was a jewelled blade.

Riddle smiled, his form stronger and firmer minute by minute. "How are you enjoying my pet, Potter?"

"Never better," the boy gasped, narrowly escaping the lunging jaw of the serpent by rolling out of the way. "Does your snake like classical music, by any chance?"

"Yes."

"Huh, mine too."

Fawkes blinded the Basilisk when gave Harry the opportunity he needed to drive the sword to the hilt into the mouth of the serpent, killing it instantly.

Riddle screamed in horror. "NOOOO!"

"Yes," Harry said, ripping out one of the monster's fangs as he withdrew the sword, dripping blood onto the stony floor of the cavern. "Even dead, this fang will have enough deadly venom to complete its task."

"No, don't do it," Riddle exclaimed, eyes wide in fear.

"Sorry," Harry told him, picking up the book. "Ginny is more important to me than your memory." Saying that, he plunged the dagger-like fang into the diary.

Smoke, screams, and a gasp from Ginny as color came slowly back into her face followed the act. Harry smiled briefly before the darkness claimed him, then left. He was alive, but how?

He saw the phoenix crying.

"A phoenix's tears can heal," Professor Masters said, appearing in his ghost form. "Professor Dumbledore surely told you of this, Harry."

"I thought I was dying," Harry told him. "Where's Tom?"

"Gone," came the curt response. "Now, let's get you and Miss Weasley to Madame Pomfrey. It was wise of you to send for me when you did, but very foolish of you get your friends involved. Daniel is beside himself, when he saw the two of you leave this evening's session in such a hurry."

"Not disappointed are you?" he asked Myrtle when Professor Masters brought them back to the surface.

"A little," Myrtle answered. "I was so looking forward to having company."

"Jack, where did all these owls come from?" Maddie asked in astonishment, when they came downstairs to breakfast the next morning.

"No idea, Mads," her sleepy husband answered. "Jazz?"

"They've already left," his daughter replied, around a mouth full of toast. "This one's from Harry."

Dear Mom and Dad:

Okay, don't freak. Professor Dumbledore almost expelled us. You see, Ginny got a hold of Lord Voldemort's diary from fifty years ago. Can't tell you the how or the why, but Ron and I (with Hermione's help) managed to locate the fabled Chamber of Secrets and got it to open. There was this big snake with a look that can kill and it almost got Hermione, who had figured it out. Professor Sprout's mandrake potion will be able to revive her and the other students who were petrified, and unfortunately, Filch's cat too. The basilisk's poison almost killed me too during our fight, but Professor Dumbledore's pet phoenix-did you know that he had one?- healed me with its tears.

Ginny is safe and alive. She almost died, but one of Featherhead's fangs took care of that. The diary is destroyed.

Oh, and you are not really going to believe this:

FEATHERHEAD IS THE BASILISK!

He went to this ghost who can control time and asked to go back in time as another kind of snake so he could take care of me. I killed him, but he chose to do this, knowing what was coming.

What an awesome snake!

Love,

Harry

"Okay," Maddie said, "I did not see this coming. Jazz, who are the others from?"

"Uh, Professor Dumbledore, Danny, Uncle Vlad, and someone named Amorpho. Who the heck would name their kid Amorpho?"

"That's Danny's ghost teacher," Jack answered. "Probably a progress report of some kind."

"Oh."

Another letter appeared with a crack on the table. This time, it was written on a slimy grey sock.

Dear Caretakers of the Great Harry Potter,

He set me free from bad master. Gave me a sock he did, but I thought he'd like it back. Great wizard might miss it.

Thank you,

Dobby

"Okay, now who is Dobby?" Jazz wanted to know.

"Don't know," Jack said, "but the boys will have quite a story to tell when they return, I would imagine."

"In the mean time," Maddie said, " who wants pancakes?"

"Me! Me!"

The school year ended off with a bang, literally, when a firework in Malfoy's pumpkin juice exploded.

Danny and Harry laughed the whole way home about that one.