Harry Potter 02 - Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

lengths to solve the mystery – particularly if one of your best friends was attacked. And Ginny had told me the whole school was buzzing because you could speak Parseltongue …
    ‘So I made Ginny write her own farewell on the wall and come down here to wait. She struggled and cried and became very boring. But there isn’t much life left in her: she put too much into the diary, into me. Enough to let me leave its pages at last. I have been waiting for you to appear since we arrived here. I knew you’d come. I have many questions for you, Harry Potter.’
    ‘Like what?’ Harry spat, fists still clenched.
    ‘Well,’ said Riddle, smiling pleasantly, ‘how is it that a baby 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?’
    There was an odd red gleam in his hungry eyes now.
    ‘Why do you care how I escaped?’ said Harry slowly. ‘Voldemort was after your time.’
    ‘Voldemort,’ said Riddle softly, ‘is my past, present and future, Harry Potter …’
    He pulled Harry’s wand from his pocket and began to trace it through the air, writing three shimmering words:
    TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE
    Then he waved the wand once, and the letters of his name re-arranged themselves:
    I AM LORD VOLDEMORT
    ‘You see?’ he whispered. ‘It was a name I was already using at Hogwarts, to my most intimate friends only, of course. You think I was going to use my filthy Muggle father’s name for ever? I, in whose veins runs the blood of Salazar Slytherin himself, through my mother’s side? I, keep the name of a foul, common Muggle, who abandoned me even before I was born, just because he found out his wife was a witch? No, Harry. I fashioned myself a new name, a name I knew wizards everywhere would one day fear to speak, when I had become the greatest sorcerer in the world!’
    Harry’s brain seemed to have jammed. He stared numbly at Riddle, at the orphaned boy who had grown up to murder Harry’s own parents, and so many others … At last he forced himself to speak.
    ‘You’re not,’ he said, his quiet voice full of hatred.
    ‘Not what?’ snapped Riddle.
    ‘Not the greatest sorcerer in the world,’ said Harry, breathing fast. ‘Sorry to disappoint you, and all that, but the greatest wizard in the world is Albus Dumbledore. Everyone says so. Even when you were strong, you didn’t dare try and take over at Hogwarts. Dumbledore saw through you when you were at school and he still frightens you now, wherever you’re hiding these days.’
    The smile had gone from Riddle’s face, to be replaced by a very ugly look.
    ‘Dumbledore’s been driven out of this castle by the mere memory of me!’ he hissed.
    ‘He’s not as gone as you might think!’ Harry retorted. He was speaking at random, wanting to scare Riddle, wishing rather than believing it to be true.
    Riddle opened his mouth, but froze.
    Music was coming from somewhere. Riddle whirled around to stare down the empty chamber. The music was growing louder. It was eerie, spine-tingling, unearthly; it lifted the hair on Harry’s scalp and made his heart feel as though it was swelling to twice its normal size. Then, as the music reached such a pitch that Harry felt it vibrating inside his own ribs, flames erupted at the top of the nearest pillar.
    A crimson bird the size of a swan had appeared, piping its weird music to the vaulted ceiling. It had a glittering golden tail as long as a peacock’s and gleaming golden talons, which were gripping a ragged bundle.
    A second later, the bird was flying straight at Harry. It dropped the ragged thing it was carrying at his feet, then landed heavily on his shoulder. As it folded its great wings, Harry looked up and saw it had a long, sharp golden beak and beady black eyes.
    The bird stopped singing. It sat still and warm next to Harry’s cheek, gazing steadily at Riddle.
    ‘That’s a phoenix …’ said Riddle, staring shrewdly back at it.
    ‘Fawkes?’ Harry breathed, and he felt the bird’s golden claws squeeze his shoulder gently.
    ‘And that –’ said Riddle, now eyeing the ragged thing that Fawkes had dropped, ‘that’s the old school Sorting Hat.’
    So it was. Patched, frayed and dirty, the Hat lay motionless at Harry’s feet.
    Riddle began to laugh again. He laughed so hard that the dark chamber rang with it, as though ten Riddles were laughing at once.
    ‘This is what