Chapter 104: Slytherin's Legacy

Fawkes landed beside Harry. One bright tear struck the puncture in his arm, then another. The dark lines stopped spreading. Harry's breathing steadied, though his hand remained weak around the Basilisk fang.

Riddle watched the healing with open hatred.

"The diary," Edward said. "It is drawing from Ginny."

Harry looked from the black book to the figure standing over it. Riddle moved to block him, but his hand passed through Harry's shoulder. He was not solid yet.

Harry drove the fang through the cover.

Black fluid spilled across the floor. Riddle screamed as the pages split beneath the venom. The Chamber shook with a pressure that made Edward's teeth ache, then the diary collapsed around the wound.

Riddle vanished.

Ginny drew a ragged breath.

Harry dropped the fang and turned her onto her side. Fawkes cried once above them. The sound carried warmth rather than warning.

"She is alive," Harry said.

Edward reached them without touching the diary or the venom. He used the signal at his collar to send three clear pulses: threat ended, survivors found, medical help required.

Stone scraped in the passage. Snape came through first, black robes grey with dust. He took in the dead Basilisk, Harry's healed wound, Ginny, and the ruined diary without wasting time on questions.

McGonagall followed with Ron and a levitating stretcher. Her face changed when she saw Ginny, but her hands remained steady as she helped Snape place the girl on it.

"Mr. Potter?"

"Fang in the arm," Harry said. "Fawkes healed it."

Snape examined the puncture and gave him an antidote anyway. "Phoenix tears neutralise venom. They do not excuse stupidity after the fact. Drink."

Ron reached Harry and held on to him with both hands. Neither spoke.

Dumbledore arrived while the adults prepared the return route. The governors had withdrawn his removal after learning that another student had been taken, but he treated the reinstatement as less important than the evidence before him.

Harry described the fight. Edward added what he had heard about Lucius placing the diary among Ginny's books and how the fragment gained strength from her writing. Ginny woke long enough to confirm that the book had answered her, flattered her, and later moved her body while leaving gaps in her memory.

"I opened it," she whispered. "I let it in."

"You were deceived by something designed to deceive you," Dumbledore said. "Responsibility belongs first to the person who made it and the man who placed it in your hands."

He sealed the diary in a glass case. The Basilisk fang remained embedded through its center. Nothing in the book responded.

The curse specialist performed the same three tests from separate sides of the case. The first searched for a living pulse, the second for a compulsion directed at a reader, and the third for a route by which the enchantment could rebuild itself. All returned silent.

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"Destroyed beyond magical repair," she said. "That does not make the remains safe to handle. Venom is still present, and residue can imitate activity under a careless charm."

McGonagall recorded the result, the time, and every witness. Harry described where the fang entered. Edward described the moment Riddle vanished. Ginny was not asked to repeat her account while exhausted; Dumbledore noted that her earlier statement would be confirmed only after Madam Pomfrey approved.

They also photographed the arrangement before moving anything else. The dead Basilisk, the sword, the diary, and the position where Ginny had lain became evidence rather than trophies. Edward had spent months believing that finding a hidden place granted the finder a claim over it. Watching the adults preserve the scene showed him why discovery and ownership were different acts.

The chamber itself required a second examination. Dumbledore refused to leave unknown passages behind the statue, but no one searched alone. Harry used Parseltongue to open a narrow maintenance recess after McGonagall placed shields around the group.

Three volumes lay inside. One was a ledger of repairs to the pipe system. Another contained notes in several hands, including Tom Riddle's, on controlling the Basilisk. The third appeared to be a much older collection attributed to Salazar Slytherin.

Edward read no more than the visible headings. Dumbledore placed each book in a separate warded case.

"They may explain what happened here," Edward said.

"They may also contain instructions that should not leave this room without review," Dumbledore replied.

"I was not asking to take them."

The Headmaster's expression suggested that the answer had passed a test Edward had not known he was taking.

Snape collected two loose fangs with dragon-hide tools and secured the Basilisk's mouth. The corpse would remain under guard until specialists could remove it without spreading venom through the school.

The ruined diary made Edward think of Slytherin's locket at Grimmauld Place. Kreacher had spent years trying to obey Regulus's final order and destroy it. If Basilisk venom could ruin one object carrying this kind of soul magic, the locket might finally have a safe method of destruction.

Edward told Dumbledore what Regulus and Kreacher had done, where the locket was kept, and why he suspected a connection.

The Headmaster did not ask anyone to bring it into the open Chamber. He arranged for Kreacher to keep it sealed at Grimmauld Place until a controlled room, witnesses, and separate transport for a loose Basilisk fang could be prepared. Edward would not carry either object himself.

"We will test the connection under joint custody," Dumbledore said. "Kreacher must be present. It was his burden before it became yours."

Edward agreed.

Fawkes carried Ginny and Harry through the cleared passage while the others climbed with ropes. Lockhart remained unable to remember his own name. Snape sent him to the hospital wing under guard, and McGonagall preserved Ron's broken wand as evidence of the backfired Memory Charm.

By morning, the petrified victims had received the Mandrake draught. Hermione woke asking whether the mirror had worked. Penelope answered before anyone else could.

"It kept us alive."

Mrs. Norris recovered in Filch's arms and immediately scratched him for holding her too tightly. Nearly Headless Nick returned to motion with a complaint about the indignity of being wafted through a fan.

Lucius arrived at the hospital wing expecting to remove Dumbledore again. He found the Headmaster reinstated, Ginny conscious, and his own house-elf staring at the diary case.

Dobby confirmed that Lucius had slipped the book into Ginny's cauldron at Flourish and Blotts. Lucius denied knowledge of its nature but could not explain why he had planted an enchanted object on a child.

Harry freed Dobby with a sock hidden inside the diary's ruined cover. Lucius reached for his wand. Dumbledore's presence stopped the motion before it became a curse.

The Board opened a formal inquiry. Hagrid was ordered released from Azkaban. His arrest had not solved the earlier death, and the Chamber now supplied physical evidence that his Acromantula could not have produced.

Edward watched Lucius leave with Draco several paces behind him. Draco looked once toward Ginny's room, shame and anger competing across his face. Edward did not demand that he choose between his father and the truth in a corridor full of witnesses.

That conversation would come later.

The Chamber yielded no glorious inheritance. Its surviving legacy was a dead creature, a collection of dangerous records, and proof that prejudice had allowed the wrong person to be blamed for fifty years.

What mattered was what they did with the proof now.