———— hermione pov ————

No one in the school was taking the news well.
Most of them felt guilty. Served them right. Others were just back to being afraid — they no longer had a scapegoat to avoid.

Dean was particularly distraught. I sat with him in classes and outside of them when I could, doing my best to comfort him.

"I know she's a fighter. I believe in her more than anything," he'd said. "But I'm afraid. What if she doesn't wake up? What if this is it for her?"

"It won't be," I assured him. "I promise, it won't."

But of course, this promise was built on nothing but my own determination. Harry, Ron, and I were doing the best we could, but we had nothing to investigate except some Muggle-born boy's empty diary and Myrtle's empty bathroom.

I overheard Snape and Malfoy talking before Potions at the front of his desk, Malfoy struggling to keep it together.

"I don't understand why she'd be so reckless," he said. "She never was before."

At this, Snape had pursed his lips, as though debating whether or not he wanted to say what he was thinking.

"I think," he said levelly, "that Miss Holmes has come across some information that has caused her to act rashly. I think she too has some secrets she wishes to keep hidden."

He looked at me after he said this, and I immediately averted my gaze, thinking he'd been glaring at me for eavesdropping. I only realized at dinner that night what he had meant. I remembered what Malfoy had said about the mind maps — He's the only other Parselmouth that's well known.

Voldemort. Of course.

I dropped my fork in my shock, gaining Harry and Ron's attention.

"Hermione?" Ron asked, concerned. "What's wrong?"

I couldn't tell them. This was Lila's secret to share. I couldn't be responsible for potentially losing her Harry and Ron's friendship. Harry especially — how would he react? Even if he could be related to Voldemort too, it's different when it's someone else.

"Nothing," I said quickly. "Forgot about the Potions project, is all."

Ron groaned, successfully distracted. "Bollocks. I forgot about that too."

Harry wasn't quite so convinced. He looked to me with a raised eyebrow. I only shook my head. I wouldn't ruin this for her — I refused.

———— lila pov ————

I found that the most I could do to aggravate Riddle in the moment was to talk to him. He was very easy to rile up, surprisingly.

"I'm so bored already. What do you even do in here all the time?"

Riddle had paused his sudden frantic writing to look at me. "You're so annoying. Has anyone ever told you how annoying you are?"

"Yes, but I'm a selective listener." I replied easily.

"I should have just killed you when I had the chance." He snapped.

"Yeah, probably." I hummed. He went back to writing, so I went back to bothering him.

"What are you doing?"

He had sat at a nearby desk and begun to scribble onto a singular piece of parchment.

"Replying," he answered. "It seems your hero, Harry Potter, has come upon my diary."

I felt my heart rate speed up. Damn it. Could he trap Harry in here too?

"Harry is my friend, I'm my own hero," I snapped.

"Quiet, I'm focusing," he hissed.

"You'd better not hurt him," I stood shakily. Realizing my legs hurt too much to hold me, I sat back down in the chair. It had merely felt like a few hours in the diary, but I wondered what day it was outside of it.

"Wouldn't dream of it," Riddle said, still focused on replying. "I could only keep you in here because we share the same bloodline. Unfortunately, that leaves Potter out of my reach."

"You failed to kill him too, you know," I told him with a menacing grin. "And he was only an infant. You couldn't kill a baby!"

Riddle looked at me with the coldest fury, but I looked back at him defiantly despite the fear in my heart. He couldn't hurt me here — I was no longer afraid. Lord Voldemort or not, right now he was just a sixteen year old boy.

"Don't talk to me about being weak," he snapped. "You can't even stand up properly."

I tried to stand again to prove him wrong, but I was once again filled with immeasurable pain and sat back down. He scoffed at me, and continued his replying to Harry. I wondered what they were writing about.

"He's asking about you," he chuckled. "He seems very worried. Don't tell me the Boy Who Lived doesn't know about your bloodline."

"You mean the boy you failed to kill," I corrected. "And no, he doesn't. He's my friend, of course he would be worried."

"Oh, friends, relationships, so trivial," Riddle shook his head. "You should know that the only one you can trust is yourself."

"Like you would know what it's like to care about people," I retorted. He chuckled.

"I know how to pretend," he said. "How else do you think Ginny Weasley has done my dirty work for me?"

"What?" My mind reeled. That's why she looked so guilty all the time. That's why she wanted the diary. And that's why she ambushed me and cut open my hand. Oh God.

"Ah yes, she was so troubled," Riddle said, continuing to scribble. "I bored myself with her complaints and whining. 'Oh, Tom, I don't think Harry likes me;' 'Tom, you're my only friend right now;' 'Tom, why do I have feathers all over me?' 'Tom, why is there paint on my hands?' 'Tom I can't remember anything and now there's been another attack!'"

"You possessed her?" I hissed. "How dare you!"

"Once I gained her trust, she did what I told her to do," he grinned icily. "And now, the only threat to my plan is sitting right here with me."

"Harry has the diary," I said. "He wouldn't give it back to Ginny. He probably doesn't even know it's hers."

"She'll get it back eventually," Riddle said lazily. "But for now—"

Riddle placed a palm on the parchment. He and the parchment began to glow. I tried to say something, but he couldn't hear me. This lasted for a minute or so before the glowing finally stopped. Riddle looked up from the parchment, seeming pleased.

"What did you just do?" I asked, accusatory.

"Exactly what I did last time." Riddle smirked slowly. "I'm sure you know Rubeus Hagrid?"

"You did not," I growled. "Harry would never believe you! He of all people knows of Hagrid's kindness."

"But he saw my memories with his own eyes," Riddle explained gleefully. "Who do you think actually opened the Chamber fifty years ago? Me, of course. But dumb old Professor Dippet, the Headmaster, had no idea. Rubeus was the perfect scapegoat — he's always had a love for dangerous monsters. I caught him sneaking an Acromantula into the school and he was expelled for my work!"

Riddle sneered. "Only Dumbledore and my sister were suspicious of me. It's a pity the Ministry saw it as an accident — he was only a third-year. He would have went to Azkaban. A girl had died, you know. A real shame."

"You're the one who killed her," I said accusingly, feeling my heart song when I remembered Anne's wracked sobs. "You monster."

"You do realize, Lila, that we're not all that different," Riddle crossed his arms. "Even I can't deny that we are alike. Half-blood, ambitious Parselmouths whose feeble mothers died after giving birth to us—"

"We may have similar qualities," I interrupted. "But I'm nothing like you."

"You're right," Riddle sneered. "Because you're weak." He gave me a shrewd once-over in the mirror. "You're a disgrace to your ancestors, being in the House of Slytherin's enemy."

"Why do you care about the opinions of a dead man?" I asked Riddle, my eyes gleaming with spite. Riddle sneered.

"Because he was right, and now that I'm going to live forever, I can accomplish what he was trying to achieve," he replied. "Because part of my soul is sealed in this diary, I cannot physically die outside of it."

"But if it's destroyed?" I challenged, turning to face him. Riddle scoffed down at me.

"I'd kill you first—"

"Not if I do." I said sharply. He raised an eyebrow.

"You think you have the power to kill me?" He sneered. "How foolish must you be—"

"Must I remind you that you were struck down by an infant?" I grew a smirk to match his. "The same power runs through our blood, you said it yourself. There's almost no other more likely to take you down than me, and remember that I will take utmost pride in doing it."

There was silence as we stared each other down. To my surprise, he smirked.

"Now that," he said. "That's the Slytherin speaking."

———— hermione pov ————

Months had gone by since Lila was attacked, things returning to normal. Almost. There hadn't been another attack, and we were coming up on the final Quidditch game of the year at the end of the week.

I studied for finals often in the library, which most everyone knew, so I wasn't too surprised when Malfoy approached me of his own accord, setting down Lila's mind map on top of my homework. I'd led him borrow it for the time being to see if he could figure out anything more. Turns out, he had.

"Granger, I've got a revelation for you," he said, seeming excited. I looked up at him curiously.

"Humor me," I offered.

"You said Potter is a Parselmouth too," he said slowly. He pointed to the list of initials near the bottom. "And he and Holmes were the only two that could hear voices before the attacks."

He hardly needed to continue. When he put it together like that, it came to me instantly.

"Of course! You're saying the monster must be some kind of snake!" I beamed, astounded. I couldn't help but direct my grin at him. "Malfoy, you're brilliant."

"Yes, I know." He rolled his eyes, though his ears went pink. "She also underlined it here, see?"

I stared at where he was, where Lila had written SNAKE LANGUAGE.

"It's been staring me in the face all this time!" I stood quickly, gathering my things. "I must go tell Harry and Ron! I'll credit you, of course—"

"Don't," he said quickly. "They won't trust that." He mimicked Ron's voice. "Slytherin's monster? A snake? Ha, real creative Malfoy." He then looked at me meaningfully. I sighed. As overdramatic as it seemed, he was right.

"Alright, well then I'll see you around. Thank you for your help," I smiled at him. "Truly. Lila would be so proud."

His cheeks flushed as he waved it off. "Yeah, yeah. I'm expecting maximum gratuity from her when she wakes up and figures out I helped save her reckless arse."

I couldn't help but chuckle. Maybe Malfoy wasn't so bad, if this was his true self. It's too bad he wasn't put in dire situations more often — it was doing great things for his character.

However, I forgot my promise when I reached the common room and saw Harry and Ron looking particularly grim.

"Our whole dorm's been ransacked," Ron said with a scowl. "A real mess for us to clean up."

"And the diary's gone," Harry added stonily. This worried me most. We'd made progress with the diary when we realized it could talk back, but who would take it? Who knew of its abilities?

"The only person who could've taken the diary would have to be a Gryffindor,"  I pursed my lips. This wasn't good. I helped them look for it again, but to no avail.

The next morning, an eerie thought crossed my mind. How much could we trust the diary? What else was it capable of, and who was Tom Riddle?

Ron said he'd barfed slugs all over his special services plaque, and Harry had hypothesized that he'd caught the Heir. But then the "Heir" had turned out to be Hagrid, and I suddenly didn't trust everything about the diary.

"I'll be in the library, but I'll leave in time for the match, I promise." I told Ron and Harry before breakfast. "There's just something I need to clear up!"

I hardly gave them a chance to respond before I rushed off. The first thing I did was settle down with Most Macabre Monstrosities and flip to my primary suspect: the basilisk.

"Of the many fearsome beasts and monsters that roam our land, there is none more curious or more deadly than the Basilisk, known also as the King of Serpents . . . .  Its methods of killing are most wondrous, for aside from its deadly and venomous fangs, the Basilisk has a murderous stare, and all who are fixed with the beam of its eye shall suffer instant death. Spiders flee before the Basilisk, for it is their mortal enemy, and the Basilisk flees only from the crowing of the rooster, which is fatal to it."

I was underlining the words before I even realized what I was doing, then gasped at my own vandalism. I'd written on a library book! Surely, desperate times called for desperate measures, but Lila was becoming a bad influence on me. Malfoy too, apparently.

How was it getting around though? The first attack had been just outside Myrtle's bathroom, and the girl that had died fifty years ago had also been in a bathroom —

I gasped, realizing that said girl must have been Myrtle. What did she know? What did she remember? That was what Lila had meant when she wanted Malfoy and I to talk to her, surely.

A sudden scoff brought my attention to Madam Pomfrey. She was looking up at the ceiling affrontedly. I followed her gaze, noticing the darkening of the wood.

"Another leak?" She hissed. "Ridiculous. This is the fifth one this week."

I gasped. The pipes! I wrote this quickly in the book again before realizing the implications. A chill ran down my spine. What if the basilisk was above us right now? Panicking, I ripped the page out of the book. Maybe nobody would notice?

"What are you doing?"

Shoot.

Ravenclaw Prefect Penelope Clearwater stood next to me, staring down at the crime scene affrontedly. "That's school property, you know."

"I know," I cried, gathering my things. I crumpled the page in one hand and took out my makeup mirror with the other. "And I'll be happy to explain this to you later, but we really have to go. Do you have a mirror on you?"

She looked at me strangely. "Yes, one just like that. What's that got to do with anything?"

"We need to get out of here," I said quickly. "Follow me, and look only using your mirror."

Even as we left, I still felt unsettled as we rounded each corner. Like we were being watched, hunted.

"I still don't understand why—"

Penelope suddenly stopped speaking and went very still next to me. I made the mistake of turning my mirror just slightly to look back at her.

That's when it all went black.

A/n: Ron belching slugs all over Voldemort's award is actually hilarious when you think about it. Also, I've finished this year and started year 3 so YAY go me!!