Chapter 22 - The Heir of Slytherin
Written by Nemesis
Tom sank heavily into a high-backed armchair, still shaking, his breathing coming in short, sharp bursts. Shivering, he folded his arms across his chest, ignoring the curious stares of the other Slytherins. His head was spinning, his mind a jumble of senseless words and pictures. The voices had essentially died down, though snippets of angry conversation still flew around his head. Tom released a breath slowly and forced calm into his panicking mind, trying to ignore the vertigo he was feeling. "Just shut up and calm down," he instructed his brain firmly. "You'll figure out what's wrong, don't worry about it. Just think."
Slowly, he managed to assuage the panic coursing through his veins, until all that remained was a dull, throbbing worry lingering at the back of his mind. But try as he might, he could not begin to think what had happened. He knew he was capable of figuring this out, he knew it. There was some kind of mental block preventing him from getting much further than "my brain isn't working right." Tom sighed heavily and gazed into the fire as though searching for some sort of aid within the blaze. His eyes wandered up to the mantelpiece, falling upon the emblem of Slytherin House carved in marble above the fireplace.
"Chamber of Secrets," Tom thought dully, feeling more weary than ever. All of a sudden, the whole thing seemed so trivial. What did he care about Slytherin's monster? How could he even be sure it existed? He had too much on his mind to bother with it.
"Then again," one of his voices offered reasonably, "brooding over this isn't going to help. Maybe you should try and clear your mind--forget about the whole Specter nonsense for a while. It might do you some good. Ignoring it might even make it go away." Tom tried to find some sense in this statement. The voice tried a different tack. "Maybe all this has been happening because you've been taking too long finding the Chamber," it added slyly.
Tom went rigid.
The voice fell silent. Its lies were told, and its job was done.
********************
Tom had never spent more time hidden beneath the Invisibility Cloak than he did that evening. Starting at about eight o'clock and continuing indefinitely, he had been dashing around the school, checking the faucets of every washroom he came upon. The past four or five hours had gone by in an incoherent haze punctuated with only a few bursts of emotion--dull disappointment whenever a likely find proved moot, and a more prominent explosion when a few whispered words in Parseltongue finally rang true.
In any case, as the boy stood at the end of the Chamber and stared up at the impossibly tall pillars, he had only a vague idea of how he had come to be here. His mind was a numb tangle, and he preferred it to be so--if he thought too hard about what he was doing, he might end up reconsidering. The Invisibility Cloak was folded liquidity, grasped tightly in his right hand, while his wand was clenched in the left. Only two emotions managed to fight their way through the miasma. Apprehension lay to his left, eagerness to his right, mingling into a heavily intangible cape about his shoulders. By now he had merely an indistinct idea why he had come--vengeance. Just who or what he was avenging, was debatable. Even he was not sure anymore.
"You've come this far," his brain said impatiently. "Go on, then, get it over with."
Tom absently strode amongst the towering columns, eyes riveted on the other end of the Chamber. There was a rather inaccurately rendered statue standing at the very end, one Tom supposed represented his ancestor. Reaching it, and still seeing no sign of life, Tom went on instinct and looked up at the statue. "Where do I look next?" he asked quietly in Parseltongue.
In response, the statue's mouth opened. Tom stumbled backward slightly as there emerged from the chamber behind the statue a twenty-foot, poison green serpent, the likes of which had not been seen for centuries. It turned its great yellow eyes on him, and Tom felt a wave of mild dizziness. "You came for me…" the basilisk hissed.
Tom nodded, the feeling of delirious anxiety starting to fade.
"What may I do, Master?" the basilisk demanded, its poisonously silky voice weaving its way through the heavy air.
"Serve your purpose," Tom replied. For the first time in his life, his voice bore a slightly haughty lilt. "To kill Mudbloods." Half of Tom's mind lurched into nausea as the word passed his lips, but he ignored it, as he had grown accustomed to doing.
"Your commands are my Scripture," the basilisk said smoothly. "I have the gift of detecting murky blood. It will work to your advantage. When am I to begin?"
"Immediately." Tom's eyes glimmered faintly red. "If you'll follow me." He spun on his heel and strode off, hearing the basilisk's heavy slithering following close behind. A whispered serpentine command brought the doors open, and as they reached the mouth of the pipe, Tom halted and allowed the basilisk to catch up.
"You are to sit on my back," the basilisk invoked, "and I will take care of the transportation."
Tom obeyed mutely, sitting where the basilisk's shoulders would be and anchoring himself in place by wrapping his arms around its neck. The serpent made sure he was secure, and then it made its way up the pipe.
The ride was unpleasant, to say the least--At least when he had been on his way down, Tom had been going too quickly to see the slime on the walls. Whereas, the basilisk moved at a leisurely pace, and Tom had ample time to take in his surroundings. The stalagmites of pond scum in the walls were making him feel ill. When they finally exited the pipe, Tom immediately leapt off the basilisk's back and tried to remove the slime from his robes with a Scouring Charm. "Where to?" the basilisk demanded impatiently.
"Do you smell any Mudbloods nearby?" Tom asked.
"Yes," the basilisk replied.
"Then we're going there," Tom said. "Lead the way."
The basilisk had been born to obey, so it obeyed. The serpent slithered from the lavatory door and made its way through the hallways, Tom close behind.
********************
Courtney Gunther sighed heavily, folding her arms across her chest. She stood with her back to the wall, her blue-grey eyes staring down the corridor. Naturally, she had got stuck with hall patrol on the coldest night in months. There was a kind of chill to the air that seemed almost unearthly--but Courtney was a sensible girl, she had never believed in Divination.
And yet…
"And yet what?" she asked herself tiredly. "I feel like something bad is going to happen, that's what. It doesn't mean anything. Precognition is impossible."
Courtney could imagine how that Riddle boy would react to this. "You're such a Ravenclaw," he would say. Courtney frowned. She had only known Riddle through her friend, Lili Po, and had never really understood what Lili saw in the boy. Courtney could not stand people who teased, and Tom certainly teased. Besides, he was an avid believer in Divination, another of Courtney's peeves.
Courtney tucked a lock of dark brown hair behind her ear and continued to stare, feeling both frigid and bored. She saw little point in the prefects' hall patrol--very rarely were any children out of bed, and if one ever was, it was usually some Hufflepuff first-year who had forgotten that the common room had a bathroom and wanted the loo. She had no idea what the teachers thought would happen in the dead of night--it wasn't as though anyone really dangerous was attending Hogwarts. Obnoxious, yes. Dangerous? No, of course not…
There was a sudden noise down at the other end of the hallway, one that made Courtney jump. She spun around, eyes like saucers--only to find the hallway completely devoid of life. All she saw was a ghost at the end of the hallway, the Fat Friar. Courtney did not notice that the Hufflepuff ghost had a look of shock on his face, or that he had gone dark and cloudy--she was too preoccupied to pay attention to details. Sighing again, Courtney turned her attention to the floor. She noted, dully, that there was a smudge of spaghetti sauce on her prefect badge--probably from dinner.
Courtney unpinned the silver badge and started cleaning it off with the sleeve of her robe. She thought she heard that soft slithering noise again, but assumed it was the Fat Friar.
When she removed the cloth, she saw two bulbous yellow eyes reflected in the badge. After that, nothing.
********************
Despite his late night, Tom was early to breakfast the next morning. He stumbled into the Great Hall at six-thirty and collapsed into a chair at the Slytherin table, his overwrought psyche weighing on him like a ball and chain. He had not experienced so eventful a thirty-six hour period since he had run away from the orphanage to Little Hangleton. However, everything about the Specter was shoved from his mind by the sadistic excitement about what would happen when that Ravenclaw girl was found. Tom knew he had failed to kill her, but any harm to a Muggle-born was a reward for him.
"Good God, have you no decency?" one of his voices demanded sharply. "What's happened to you, Tom? You've turned into a complete--"
"Quiet, you," the other voice shot back.
"What would Lili think if she saw you now?" the first voice asked shrewdly.
Tom's stomach turned over and he suddenly felt a surge of painful guilt. The latter voice began to panic. "Tom, he's playing the dead-best-friend card now! Do you really want to listen to him?"
"Good point," Tom mumbled, and he went back to his ham and omelet as though nothing had happened.
At seven o'clock there was a sudden scream in a nearby hallway, and all of the early birds in the Great Hall fell silent. A red-haired second-year burst through the double doors in a few moments, her eyes wide with shock. "Courtney's dead! Courtney's dead!" she shrieked madly. "The Fat Friar's gone smoky and Courtney's dead!"
The teachers stared at the little girl in confusion, but to Tom's unease, it was Dumbledore to stand up first. "Everyone stay in here," he commanded sharply, and there was such a look of fury on his face that nobody dared disobey.
********************
Over the next months, Tom started feeling like a serpent-tongued Jack the Ripper. He would steal off to the Chamber of Secrets during his break times and ask the basilisk to find a solitary Mudblood. For the first two weeks, he was unsuccessful, until he managed to corner a first-year Ravenclaw girl, Jessie Davies, on a Saturday afternoon. She had been scuttling around on her hands and knees out in the hallway, examining the floor with a magnifying glass. Tom supposed she had been looking for any evidence left by the Heir of Slytherin--little children were like that. In any case, she had seen the basilisk only through the magnifying glass, so she had been Petrified rather than killed. Tom decided against pretending to stumble on her body, for any attention drawn to him would put him in danger.
With this in mind, Tom suddenly stopped talking much in class. He raised his hand less often, and did his work quietly. If anyone noticed this, it was Dumbledore--Dumbledore noticed everything. But nobody else did. The school had been turned upside-down over the sudden attacks, so everyone was distraught. After the first attack, Dippet ordered the prefects (Tom included) to take turns roaming the hallways at night.
By the third week, there had been two more attacks, both on Gryffindor boys--Joseph Forman, a fifth-year, and Louis Orion, a second-year. They had been sitting together in their common room, chatting, and they saw the basilisk reflected in the mirror above the mantelpiece. The Headmaster was in a panic--all he knew to do in this situation was up the number of prefects in the hallways, which clearly did not work. Thus, Dippet did virtually nothing.
Dozens of students, mostly in Ravenclaw, had noticed that all four victims were Muggle-borns, and had figured out that the Chamber of Secrets was no joke. Michelle Field of Hufflepuff started telling wild stories, claiming to have seen the monster that was attacking everyone ("…a hundred feet tall, with great blunt teeth and wild black fur--wings like a hippogriff, and a lion's head, too, with big purple eyes…"). A few of the Gryffindors decided to use the situation to their advantage, so they started something of a Gryffindor Mafia--selling cheap "protectors" to the more gullible first-years for an exorbitant amount of money, and using the whole Heir of Slytherin legend as an excuse for attacking random Slytherins.
Tom watched all this in his quiet way, that ever-present nasty half of him reveling in their fear while the oppressed better half cowered in a corner and moaned. As the attacks continued, as Tom watched the school panic at his hand, the rend between his two personalities widened. His nightmares slowly increased.
He had next to no idea who was a Muggle-born and who was not--he relied on the basilisk to tell him. "Mudbloods turn up in the strangest places," Tom often thought. Not long after the double attack in the Gryffindor common room, Tom made another double attack during the Christmas Dance. He did not enjoy this attack much--the Muggle-borns the basilisk directed him to, Abby Forrey and Robert Aberson, were to be found snogging behind an evergreen tree in back of the school. They saw the basilisk through the fog, so, to Tom's disappointment, they only ended up Petrified. The professors who discovered them had quite a time prying them apart--but it was an essential action, as otherwise the two Hufflepuffs would have been laughed off the face of the earth by any student who caught a glimpse of them in the infirmary.
Tom's luck with the attacks seemed to go in this direction at all times. Two months later, the next victim, a fourth-year Gryffindor named Jacob Waters, lived up to his name perfectly--he had happened to be carrying a full aquarium of fish down to the Care of Magical Creatures teacher's office. After that, a second year named Nikhil Abjeru (yet another Gryffindor) was up in the Astronomy Tower late at night doing some stargazing. When he had heard the basilisk hiss he had spun around, telescope and all, and seen the basilisk through it.
Sprinkled throughout this were several visits to the small barn down on the grounds. Tom had read in a book somewhere that the cry of a rooster was fatal to a basilisk, so in order to ensure his success, he went down to the barn once every two or three nights. Tom had never known himself to be so good at strangling things, but apparently it was another one of his talents. Once all the adult roosters were dead, Tom checked up regularly to kill all of the male chicks as well. Somehow, one chick's death caused more guilt in him than all his attacks combined--something in him felt dirty about killing something that had barely had a chance to live. Whenever the school tried to buy a new rooster, Tom would have to kill that one, too. He kept finding rooster feathers in his bedsheets, and once in a while he even found a fluffy little yellow one (after which he usually felt horrible).
His next human attack came late in May. As he did every Wednesday, Tom had to go through the corridors and, basically, look for himself. Heir of Slytherin or not, he was still a prefect, and had to fulfill his duties as one. Tom yawned--to him, this was a complete waste of time. He knew who was attacking everyone, and he knew just as well that that person was not going to pull anything like that now.
That is, unless that person was getting extremely bored. And that person was getting extremely bored.
"Great way to get rid of ennui," one of his voices snapped sarcastically. "Go kill a few Muggle-borns, THAT'S the way to go!"
"It is indeed," Tom thought. He yawned again and pulled his cloak tighter around him. Trying to look casual in case he met up with any other prefects, Tom changed direction and made his way toward the washroom. Whenever he passed a prefect, Tom's throat would clench like a fist, and he would nod in greeting so as not to seem too suspicious. One or two were not easy to get away from--Molly Robbins and Marina Edwards of Gryffindor both wanted to chat. Tom managed to make some pretty convincing excuses, and it was always a relief to him when the other prefects walked away.
When Tom finally reached his destination, he cast a quick eye around the deserted hallway before proceeding. He counted taps until he found the right one, bent over, and started to speak.
A sudden creak behind him made him jump, and whirl around in surprise. Myrtle Potter was standing in a stall, a pout on her abysmally freckled face. "This is a girls' toilet," she whined. "You're a boy."
"No, really?" Tom muttered. "Look, Myrtle, I'm also a prefect. I'm told to inspect where I think there might be people snooping around. I heard you sniveling in here." This was a flat-out lie, but Myrtle's startling him had put him in a panicky sort of foul temper, and it made him feel better to hurt her feelings. "Five points from Hufflepuff. Get to bed, Myrtle."
Myrtle huffed. "I don't know what's stopping me from going and ratting you out to my cousin for being so mean to me," she snuffled.
For whatever reason, the thought of Nathan Potter angry with him made Tom feel jittery. "Better make it fifteen more points from Hufflepuff," Tom added nastily. "And don't let me catch you in here again after curfew, understand me?"
"Slytherin scum," Myrtle mumbled, and she hied out of the lavatory before Tom could even think about going for his wand.
Once she was out of sight, Tom blinked a few times. "That was mean of you," he said to himself flatly. Naturally, part of him found this incredibly amusing. Rather than ponder it further, Tom turned back to the faucet. "Open," he said impatiently. Once the sink had disappeared, Tom called down into the void, "Oy, basilisk, I'm up here!" Within ten seconds, the serpent had slid out of the pipe, looking groggy and irritable.
"I was sleeping," it hissed petulantly.
"Do I look like I care?" Tom shot back rhetorically. Inside, he kicked himself--why was he being so nasty with everyone? "Come on." Tom opened the door an inch and looked outside before opening all the way. The basilisk followed him out silently. After a few empty hallways, Tom got too comfortable and rounded the corner into the Trophy Room without looking. When he saw that it was not empty as the other places had been, he stopped dead. "Stop!" he whispered fiercely to the basilisk.
"Oh, hi, Tom!" Nathan smiled, looking up from his book. He had been leaning against the inside wall of an alcove, reading, and his thick glasses made his eyes look enormous in the firelight. It suddenly struck Tom that Nathan looked very much like that little green-eyed boy in one of his earlier nightmares. The resemblance made him shudder. "How's life been treating you?" the Hufflepuff asked pleasantly, closing the volume and placing it in his pocket.
"Well enough, considering," Tom replied, cleverly masking the anxiety in his voice. "You?"
Nathan's face fell. "I don't know how to feel about it," he sighed. "I mean, I try to look at everything and see something good in it--" (Tom resisted the urge to gag) "--but this whole Chamber of Secrets thing, I don't know…"
"Bad business, that," Tom mock-sighed.
"Yeah… I'm not worried for me, I'm worried for Myrtle," Nathan said uneasily. "I mean, we're both Muggle-born, but Myrtle's also very nearly a Squib, so the way I see it she's doubly at risk."
"I've never heard of a Muggle-born Squib…" Tom thought dryly. On the outside, he forced his voice to sound tremulous and fearful. "I'm worried about it too," he said faux-scrupulously, "my dad was a Muggle, so…"
"I don't know, he's not attacked half-bloods yet," Nathan reasoned. ("Won't, either," Tom added to himself.) "But still, good to have your guard up."
"I'm amazed all the Mud--Muggle-borns at the school haven't packed up and left," Tom mused aloud. Nathan laughed.
"Can't let the bastards win, can we?" he chuckled. Then he frowned, serious once more. "Ethnic purity… what a load of tripe… whoever this Heir is, he needs to take a look at the recent events in Germany. How much you want to bet that ten years from now the little bigot has loads of followers, all chanting 'Heil' before his name?"
Tom felt the ground lurch under his feet. Nathan was comparing him to Hitler? Newspaper headlines and Muggle newsreels swam in his head like black-and-white flounders. He had always been outspoken against that inhuman creature… "I'm not like him, of course I'm not… don't pay any attention…" Tom thought, shutting his eyes against the wash of agonizing nausea.
"I'd not bet on it, we'll catch him before then," Tom replied, trying to inject some confidence into his wavering voice. "Well, I'd best get back to my patrol, Nathan--see you around."
"You too," the other prefect responded with a smile. Tom exited the Trophy Room and nearly tripped right into the basilisk, which was sitting in a coil outside the door.
"Mudblood!" the basilisk hissed eagerly, and before Tom could protest, it had shot past him and gone right into the Trophy Room. Tom rushed in after it.
"Stop it, you idiot, what the hell are you thinking?!" Tom snapped. The basilisk stopped dead, its bared fangs scarcely two inches away from Nathan's prone body. Tom irritably brushed past the snake and gave Nathan the once-over. His eyes were open, and his chest was rising and falling gently, as though he were asleep. From his position, Tom could tell he had been looking at one of the metal trophies when he was attacked, and his Coke-bottle specs lay smashed on the floor. Tom felt a sudden and irrational burst of panic. He had never had any intention of attacking either Potter, for some reason--something in him had always told him never to go near them with a ten-foot pole.
"Go back to the Chamber," Tom invoked the basilisk quietly. "Go alone. If someone catches you, I don't really care."
"But Master--"
"Get OUT, I said!" Tom snapped, spinning around to glare at the serpent. It drew back slightly--Tom's eyes had obtained that scarlet glint, and the basilisk's instincts told it that the boy was not a force to be reckoned with.
"Yes, Master," it said meekly, and slithered off into the night.
Tom was left staring down at Nathan's peacefully prone figure, a look of confusion and helplessness on his face. He had no idea why he was so disturbed, which aggravated him further. He was possessed by a mad urge to do something. Just what, he had not the foggiest. And then, louder and clearer than ever, a voice drifted to the top of his mind.
"Kill him."
"What?!" Tom asked, feeling even more nauseated at the idea.
"Kill him. You have your wand right here. Kill him."
Tom blinked. "Why? I--I wasn't even supposed to attack him--"
"KILL THE POTTER!" the voice shrieked. "BEWARE THE CERAMIST! BEWARE THE EVE OF HALLOWS! KILL THE POTTER! KILL HIM!"
Eyes wide and horrified, Tom backed out of the Trophy Room, eyes riveted to Nathan's open, glassy ones.
"KILL HIM! DON'T RUN AWAY! KILL HIM!"
"I can't," Tom whispered, and he broke into a run. The voice screamed in his ears, but he managed to ignore it for the moment. He did not stop running until he reached his usual watch area near the Ravenclaw common room.
********************
It was the first of June.
"I wonder if they have a name for today," Myrtle thought dully. "I mean, we have April Fool's Day and May Day… why isn't there a June Day? Probably because it's my birthday…"
Myrtle sat petulantly on the toilet lid, tears rolling down her face. "Stupid Olive Hornby," she sniffled, blowing her nose loudly into a handkerchief. She was half-amazed Olive had the gall to make fun of her--after all, Myrtle's cousin had been attacked a few days ago. But, Myrtle thought, Slytherins were all in favor of killing off Muggle-borns, so naturally the girl would want to aggravate the situation. Myrtle frowned. All Slytherins were awful, in her eyes.
Even Tom Riddle was being mean to her now--Tom who had listened to her troubles without complaint all through her first year and part of her second. Myrtle frowned. "Then his bratty little Chinese girlfriend died on him," she muttered. "Then he had to go and get all mopey…"
Myrtle sniffled again. She seemed to be doing a lot of agonizing over Slytherins lately--one in particular. Myrtle frowned. She had come to hide in here to whine to herself about Olive, and here she was thinking about him again. Pathetic.
"I wonder if he realizes half the school's in love with him," Myrtle mused, shooting a few sparks from her wand. Probably not, he was not particularly astute in that department. Though how he could have missed it, Myrtle had no idea--whenever he stepped into a hallway the giggling got so loud it sounded like the corridor was full of busy bees. Myrtle sighed. Someday he would figure it out… then he'd realize he could have any girl he wanted, and what were the chances of him picking her? Myrtle started crying again--it was what she did best. It never made her feel any better, but no matter--Myrtle loved moping and crying made her mope the best.
Myrtle heard someone enter the bathroom. Oh, great. It was probably that dratted Olive Hornby again, come to make fun of her specs some more. Myrtle pulled her knees up to her chest so Olive would not know she was there. However, the shoes she saw crossing the floor could not have belonged to Olive Hornby--Olive wore shiny blue Mary-Janes every day. These were rough, dull black leather, with coarse black laces, and they were barely visible in the swirl of black robes. The stride was quick and light, and Myrtle could tell the person was in a hurry. Whoever-it-was stopped before one of the faucets.
The stranger proceeded to utter a series of quick, soft, coldly beautiful words in some language Myrtle did not understand. The voice was low, quiet, and frank--Myrtle should have recognized it, but she did not. "That's a boy talking!" she thought, disgusted. She ignored the odd whirring noise coming from the outside. Myrtle stood up huffily and threw the door open. "What are you doing in here?" she started to snap, but she halted at the first syllable. Everything was a wash of yellow and black, and Myrtle suddenly felt very light. She thought she heard someone swear, but thought nothing of it--all that mattered was that this felt rather nice, despite the fact she felt vaguely like she was suffocating. Though she thought she was still standing, she heard something hit the ground with a thud.