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Harry and Ron just stared, their mouths agape, at the silent, crystalline graveyard that had, moments before, been a skittering, chittering hive of monstrous spiders.
"Let's go," Hermione said, her voice cutting through the stunned silence. She turned and began to walk back toward the castle, her work here done.
"Your… your magic…" Ron stammered, finally finding his voice as he and Harry scrambled to follow her.
"It's an ordinary Freezing Charm," she said with a dismissive shrug. "I just… amplified it a bit."
"A bit?" Ron squeaked, looking back at the football-field-sized glacier she had just created.
"You two head back to the castle," Hermione said, stopping at the edge of the woods.
"What about you?" Harry asked, a new note of caution in his voice.
"I have some other things to attend to," she said, her expression unreadable. Seeing that she wasn't going to elaborate, the two boys, who had absolutely no desire to spend another second in this terrifying, now-frozen forest, just nodded and hurried away.
The moment they were gone, a slow, predatory grin spread across Hermione's face. She hopped on her broom. Dumbledore was gone. The spiders were neutralized. The forest was hers. It was time to go hunting.
She flew low and fast, a silent, black-robed specter against the moonlit canopy. Her new wand, the Wand of Winter's Ruin, glowed with a faint, pale blue light, an aura of absolute zero spreading out from her in a wave of silent, crystalline death. Acromantulas, Centaurs, rogue Blast-Ended Skrewts—it didn't matter. Anything and everything that moved in the dark, ancient woods was frozen solid, their life-force consumed, their souls harvested. The Forbidden Forest, a place of vibrant, dangerous life, was being transformed, section by section, into a silent, beautiful, and utterly dead ice sculpture garden. And as her soul energy counter ticked ever higher, Hermione, the King of Ganoderma, felt a profound, quiet satisfaction.
Panic had gripped Hogwarts. With Dumbledore gone, a palpable sense of fear permeated the very stones of the castle. Students moved in nervous, whispering herds, their eyes darting into the shadows, no one daring to walk the corridors alone.
"It has to be Malfoy!" Ron insisted for the tenth time, pacing frantically in the Gryffindor common room. "He's the Heir of Slytherin, I know it!"
"It makes sense," Harry agreed, his own mind a whirlwind of suspicion and fear. "His father got Dumbledore suspended. It's the perfect time for him to make his move."
Their grim theorizing was cut short by a frantic, breathless Professor McGonagall bursting through the portrait hole, her face pale with a new, more terrible horror.
"Harry! Ron!" she cried, her voice cracking. "It's Ginny. She's been taken."
The world seemed to drop out from under Ron's feet.
"The heir," McGonagall continued, her voice trembling, "has taken her into the Chamber." She led them, in a daze, back out into the corridor. There, on the wall, a fresh, glistening message had been written in blood.
HER SKELETON WILL LIE IN THE CHAMBER FOREVER.
"Malfoy!" Harry and Ron roared in unison, their fear and grief instantly crystallizing into a single, burning point of hatred. They turned and ran, a desperate, hopeless plan to beat the truth out of their mortal enemy their only guide. But Malfoy, and indeed every other Slytherin, had been confined to their common room. He was nowhere to be found.
Defeated and desperate, they stood in an empty corridor, the full weight of their helplessness crashing down on them. "What do we do?" Ron whispered, his voice a choked, broken sound.
"We find Hermione," Harry said suddenly, a new resolve in his voice.
They ran to the edge of the Forbidden Forest, only to be met with an impossible, breathtaking sight. The once-dark, menacing woods were gone, replaced by a glittering, silent world of ice.
"What… what in the world happened here?" Ron breathed. But there was no sign of Hermione.
Just as they were about to despair, a soft, dreamy voice spoke from behind them. "Are you looking for someone?"
Luna Lovegood stood there, her strange, protuberant eyes full of a serene, otherworldly calm. "I don't know where Hermione is," she said, before they could even ask. "But I know what the monster is. And I know where to find the entrance."
"Open up," Harry hissed in Parseltongue, and the circle of snake-carved sinks in the girls' bathroom ground open, revealing a dark, bottomless pipe.
Behind him, Luna held her wand steady, its tip aimed directly at the back of a trembling Gilderoy Lockhart. Ron stood beside her, his own wand drawn, his expression grim. They had cornered the cowardly professor in his office as he was frantically packing his bags to flee the school. Convincing him to accompany them had not been difficult.
"In you go, Professor," Luna said, her voice a gentle, melodic command.
They plunged into the darkness. At the bottom of the long, slimy slide, they found themselves in a dark, echoing tunnel. And there, in the center of the chamber, lay two small, still figures. Ginny Weasley. And Draco Malfoy.
Harry rushed to Ginny's side. She was cold, pale, and utterly motionless. He turned to Malfoy. The same. Unconscious.
Just then, a small, black diary that had fallen from Ginny's robes began to glow. A tall, handsome, and strangely translucent young man emerged from its pages, a weird, charming smile on his face.
"Good evening, Harry Potter," the figure said, his voice a smooth, chilling whisper.
"Tom? Tom Riddle?" Harry stammered, recognizing him from the memory.
Tom began his monologue. He was a memory, preserved in the diary for fifty years. He explained how he had framed Hagrid, how he had manipulated first Ginny, and then the more ambitious Malfoy, using them as puppets to reopen his Chamber and unleash his Basilisk. And now, he was feeding on their life-force, their very souls, growing stronger by the minute, until he could return to the world as a fully physical being.
"Once I have drained them," he said, his smile widening, "I will be more than just a memory. I will be Lord Voldemort once more."
"Never!" Harry roared, and raised his wand.
But Tom just laughed, a cold, mirthless sound. With a casual, dismissive flick of his hand, he sent an invisible wave of force slamming into Harry, who was thrown against the far wall and crumpled to the ground, unconscious.
Ron, seeing his friend fall, raised his own wand. "Stupefy!" he yelled.
A jet of red light shot out from behind him, hitting him square in the back. He collapsed without a sound.
From the deepest shadows of the chamber, a third figure slowly walked into the light, their face a mask of cold, familiar indifference, the tip of their wand still smoking.