Completely ignoring the flow of his verbal provocaciones, I proceeded to bend my knees until I was kneeling in front of the target. With a sharp and precise movement, I gripped my wand and drove the tip directly into the geometric center of the diary.
The very next millisecond, a perfect eight-pointed star traced itself onto the leather cover, glowing with an intense and purifying white light.
"You will be my most devoted vassals..." Riddle attempted to spin, but the articulation of his words was abruptly cut short upon registering the nature of the operation I was executing at a metaphysical level.
The notebook began to manifest its own special effects, transforming into the epicenter of an invisible gravitational vortex that altered the surrounding currents, sucking the atmospheric density toward its core. The sealed chamber was suddenly swept by a rush of upward wind that ruffled the students' robes; however, none experienced any major adverse effects from the anomaly... Except, of course, for the incorporeal projection of Tom Riddle.
"What?! How?!" the specter of Riddle let out a shriek.
His translucent silhouette began to destabilize violently, distorting as the invisible currents mercilessly sucked him toward the diary. In perfect synchrony, a dense spectral matter of a dark hue began to drain from Percy's pores, breaking the final anchors of the possession.
"Girls, would you care to give me a hand?" I intervened in a casual tone, giving them a knowing smile. "I just require a bit more power..."
Penelope was the first to react, executing a neat wand movement aimed right at the magical circle and projecting a beam of pure energy toward it. Upon noticing the maneuver, the others immediately seconded her. Soon, a torrent of magical flashes converged upon the eight-pointed star. As it assimilated the magical flow, the glow of the matrix intensified exponentially and the suction force drastically multiplied. In reality, I did not require their assistance at all; I possessed the ability to seal him outright a second after activation, but I wished to imbue them with the gratifying certainty of teamwork and yet another shared victory.
"Noooooooo...!!" Riddle roared in a final shriek of pure agony, experiencing his spiritual essence being torn apart and forcibly confined within the receptacle.
The remaining soul was fully locked within the pages of the diary, as were the last vestiges of parasitic energy nesting inside Percy, emancipating the prefect definitively from Voldemort's influence. The tome levitated in front of me as its pages flipped at a frantic speed, consuming the kinetic remnant of the vortex. Once the air current completely dissipated in the chamber, the book snapped shut with a dull thud. The engraved star flashed one last time with blinding intensity before mutating into fine chains of spiritual energy that hermetically wrapped the diary; mystical safeguards that Riddle would never have the capacity to break on his own.
With a fluid gesture, I caught the volume out of the air, slid it between the folds of my clothes, and brushed off my palms, staging the conclusion of a regular workday.
Upon witnessing the outcome, the students exhaled a collective sigh that quickly transformed into cheers and shouts of genuine glee. All the psychological oppression gripping their bodies evaporated in an instant. However, following the catharsis, the accumulated fatigue and the pain of their wounds took their toll: some collapsed exhausted onto the cobblestones, others melted into emotional embraces; some laughed uncontrollably and others wept to release the tension. The odyssey of this school year had definitively concluded and they... had risen with an absolute victory.
"Congratulations! You have truly consecrated yourselves as… the authentic heroines of Hogwarts!" I praised them with open arms, but my pompous speech was suddenly cut short when a contingent of them pounced on me in an overwhelming embrace that nearly knocked me over.
It was a highly emotional interlude, filled with effusive declarations and latent promises... Nevertheless, the urgency of the situation forced us to close the celebrations prematurely. Reality reminded them that they still had a severely wounded person on the ground, coupled with the fact that they themselves bore burns and cuts of varying severity; some were on the verge of fainting due to physical exhaustion and sustained blood loss. The only reason they remained stable lay in the jewelry I had given them, added to the subtle healing magias I imperceptibly applied from the shadows to allow them to fully enjoy the post-battle climax.
"We won, Red! We beat him!" Hermione exclaimed, looking at me with flushed cheeks and an excitement at having her revenge so intense that she seemed torn between continuing to celebrate or devouring my lips right then and there.
"We managed to defeat the Heir of Slytherin," Daphne sighed, experiencing a relief that brought the color back to her face.
"We defeated Voldemort himself, to be more precise," Lavender corrected, her fingers unable to keep up as she jotted down explicit details in her personal logbook.
"This will turn us into celebrities," Cho commented, contemplating her wand with an almost mystical fascination.
"It was the logical outcome, nothing less could be expected of us," Pansy sentenced with her habitual aristocratic smugness, making a feint to push Hermione aside to claim her privileged position by my side.
"Should we help Percy?" Penelope and Ginny intervened in unison, bringing back the necessary dose of pragmatism.
"Don't worry, I'll take care of it. For now, our priority is returning," I decreed, drawing the group close to me. "It is necessary for the faculty and student body to become aware of your exploit."
"Return? But we haven't even explored the place," Hermione protested with genuine intellectual greed, momentarily ignoring her own ailments. "We are in the Chamber of Secrets! The relics and information that could be confined here are incalculable." However, the weight of her wounds did not take long to manifest as soon as the adrenaline levels dropped, making her stagger slightly.
"There are no great mysteries exposed in this sector; we can postpone the exploration for another time. After all, the location is no longer a secret and Daphne has the ability to enter whenever you wish," I assured her, arching an eyebrow with a suggestive tone. "Now let's focus on getting out of here... If you behave well, I will offer you a guided tour featuring everything I have already cataloged in the lower levels."
The girls finally nodded, ultimately overcome by the physical rigor of the conflict. Straight after, I conjured a levitation charm on Percy and began the slow march, flanked by the girls. The journey became a hotbed of conjectures, mutual praise, tactical debates, and nervous laughter denoting a boundless happiness...
"What exactly did you discover, Red? Did you fight the Basilisk?! Are you alright? What is the creature like? Can we see it?" They began to pepper me with questions during the return.
"I am in perfect condition, do not underestimate my capabilities," I replied in good humor, using one hand to tenderly caress Hermione's hair while employing my other arm to keep my sister tucked tight against my side. "Regarding the Basilisk... I will find a time to show it to you."
"Was it truly such an aberrant creation, designed with the sole purpose of purging muggle-borns?" Susan inquired timidly from the left flank.
"Bah, nowadays it's incapable of executing anyone," Parvati decreed, marching with renewed confidence. "We have finished it off, just like its master."
"It was Red who killed it," her twin Padma corrected her.
"We belong to the same team, therefore it qualifies as a collective victory in the record," Parvati countered without the slightest shame.
"In fact, the records and vestiges I have inspected in the depths of this chamber indicate that the official narrative differs quite a bit from historical reality," I let slip casually, planting the seed of doubt.
"What do you mean by that?" Cho inquired, causing the entirety of the group to fix their eyes on me with absolute intrigue.
"You see, Salazar Slytherin was not the ruthless monster that official history tries to paint... Well, at least not in the way everyone believes. He was not an ideological supremacist, but rather a paranoid, grumpy old man," I commented, measuring my words to structure the explanation. That only increased the curiosity of the girls, who pressed closer to me so as to not miss a single detail. "He did not harbor an inherent prejudice against muggle-borns simply because of their blood. His distrust lay in their connections to the outside world: their families. He did not despise them for their lineage, but rather feared them as potential vectors of treason and infiltration. In fact, the chronicles of the chamber reveal that he himself came to tutor several muggle-born students, under one strict condition..." I made a dramatic pause, capturing the absolute attention of the group: "they had to be orphans."
My words fell like a conceptual bomb, igniting an immediate debate among the girls, whose academic frameworks were beginning to shatter.
"So... Slytherin was good?" Padma inquired, flabbergasted by the revelation.
"Neeh... Everything is relative in history," I qualified with a smile. "Perhaps he shared certain biases, but not directed toward the magical community. If we were talking about other races or species that in his era represented a direct threat to wizards, like goblins or muggles... Let's just say Salazar wasn't exactly a charitable soul. With his absolute mastery of the Dark Arts, he was an authentic living nightmare. Eradicating or subjugating hostile species would not have made a dent in his conscience. But to his own, to wizards, he was an exceptional teacher: strict, severe, and warped in his methods, but unconditionally loyal. Looking at it that way, it makes all the sense in the world that he maintained such a close friendship with the other three founders."
"But if that's true... How did everything...?" Millicent asked, visibly confused.
The other members of Slytherin shared the same mental short circuit, questioning the dogma with which they had been raised—a bewilderment that was replicated in the girls from the other houses, albeit under different nuances.
"Let me ask you a rhetorical question: why do you think witch hunting was a real danger in the Middle Ages? How do you explain simple muggles managing to capture and execute members of our community?" The girls nodded in silence, urging me to continue. "Because they went after isolated individuals, this generation of wizards who manifested magic erratically, devoid of a lineage to back them up or formal instruction. Back then, there was no standardized teaching system. The closest thing to a magical education was the apprenticeship system, where a master adopted one or several disciples. And what happened to those who couldn't secure a tutor? They were left at the mercy of their own lack of control, becoming easy prey for muggle fanaticism. Even gifted wizards suffered betrayal from those they trusted. And a wizard, no matter how powerful, needs to sleep; there were always flanks of vulnerability for those who lacked the cunning or power to erect complex safeguards. That is why the alliance of the Four Founders was a historical milestone: they offered thousands of helpless wizards the opportunity to be instructed under the greatest exponents of the era to learn to defend themselves and transcend... And among them, of course, were half-bloods and muggle-borns."
My arguments transformed into an impromptu masterclass. The girls listened to me with a level of absorption and intellectual sharpness they would have never granted to Professor Binns's soporific sessions, beginning to connect the loose ends on their own.