Chapter 160
Chapter 160
“Is that… Ginny?” Suer stared in astonishment at the red-haired girl floating before him. She was frighteningly pale, her eyes tightly shut.
Snape’s expression was distinctly unpleasant. He handed the black-covered diary to Dumbledore.
“Everything has gone just as you planned,” he said. “That damned Potter and his hanger-on are already preparing to come and save the world.”
Snape’s voice was filled with displeasure, but Dumbledore took no notice.
“Thank you for your trouble, Severus.”
From where Suer stood, he saw Snape discreetly roll his eyes…
Well, well? Suer was astonished and stifled a laugh. Who would have thought that the perpetually stern Snape could make an expression like that?
“If there is nothing else, I am leaving. The basilisk is inside. Everything has been arranged according to your wishes.”
Dumbledore nodded. Snape immediately turned and departed without the slightest reluctance. Before leaving, he silently mouthed something to the invisible Suer.
Suer looked as though the world had ended. He had read Snape’s lips perfectly.
“Tomorrow evening at six. My office.”
The “basilisk” lay in the square at the other end of the passage. The statue of Slytherin, whose mouth had previously been blasted into a great hole, gazed wordlessly into the distance.
“This is…?” Summoning his courage, Suer touched the enormous creature lying motionless on the ground. Its cold scales slid beneath his fingertips, and he could feel the slow beat of its heart underneath.
Dumbledore gently lowered Ginny to the ground. “Magic can always help us accomplish many things,” he explained softly.
“Now, we must hurry.” With that, Dumbledore drew his wand and sent the “false basilisk” into the great hole in the mouth of the Slytherin statue.
Slytherin could never have imagined that his statue’s mouth would be put through this twice.
The rubble scattered nearby rose under the pull of magic and filled the opening. Dumbledore rested a hand lightly on Suer’s shoulder, and the two of them drifted backwards.
Ginny alone remained lying quietly beneath the statue, with the diary beside Slytherin’s enormous toe.
“Professor, what about Ginny?” Suer could not help asking.
“She is all right,” Dumbledore replied softly. “Snape used a potion to preserve what remained of her life force. But the one who tied the knot must untie it. Someone must return the life force Miss Weasley has lost.”
As he spoke, the diary opened of its own accord, as though an invisible hand were turning its pages. The rustle of paper echoed through the empty square.
A translucent spirit floated out of the diary, bewilderment on his face. He turned his head this way and that, apparently trying to understand his surroundings.
“You didn’t destroy it, Professor?” Suer looked at Tom, who stood beneath the statue gazing upwards, and his small head filled with enormous questions.
“I certainly wished to destroy it, but there is no need for me to be the one who does so.”
“You have also seen who was supposed to destroy it. If someone better suited can do it, why should we not follow the course that fate originally laid down?”
“I thought that, with your power…” Suer trailed off.
“No one can resist fate, Mr Bones. Fate merely gives you a choice. No one can foresee where that choice will lead. I understand what you mean. Why, when the monster is already dead, must I recreate a passage that should have vanished from the future?”
“A prophecy merely offers another choice. Nothing more.”
“Not even you?”
“Not even me.”
Dumbledore’s words plunged Suer into silence. He wondered whether anything he had done had meaning. Revealing everything to Dumbledore did not seem to have produced the result he had wanted.
No, that was not quite true. Hermione had not been petrified. Suer had been “petrified” in her place, but the change seemed to make no real difference.
“Do not dwell on it, Mr Bones.” Dumbledore patted Suer’s shoulder gently. “What you have done was right. In fact, this is also the result I wanted. Do not forget that I have a friend who possesses the same ability as you…”
“All right. The person who will deal with him has arrived.”
The sound of hurried, panting footsteps interrupted Suer’s thoughts. Harry raised his wand and looked around in panic, stopping short when he saw the statue of Slytherin.
“Ginny!” he cried. He rushed towards the red-haired girl lying on the cold flagstones and dropped to one knee, his wand rolling away.
“Ginny, don’t die! Wake up, please. Please don’t die!”
His desperate cries echoed through the vast, empty square.
Suer pushed the confused thoughts from his mind and silently watched the scene unfolding in the square.
“She won’t wake.” A second voice spoke softly.
Tom Riddle picked up Harry’s fallen wand, toyed with it, and slipped it into his pocket.
Tom began explaining the truth to Harry.
“Ginny Weasley opened the Chamber of Secrets, strangled the school’s cockerels, and painted those words on the walls. She released the basilisk of Slytherin and set it upon that Squib’s scrawny cat and several Mudbloods.”
“Oh, and that… Suer Bones? I have heard of the Bones family, but he should not have associated so closely with those Mudbloods. He disgraced his blood, so I had no choice but to see that he received the punishment he deserved.”
Harry collapsed to the ground upon learning the truth, looking first at Tom and then at Ginny.
“I merely altered part of his memory so that he believed he had controlled the basilisk and ordered it to attack you,” Dumbledore explained to Suer at precisely the right moment. He winked with satisfaction, as though showing off his handiwork.
Dumbledore’s voice did not travel beyond the two of them. Events in the square continued to unfold.
Tom boasted smugly to Harry of his past “achievements”.
When he reached the part he found most delightful, he broke into shrill, piercing laughter. Poor Harry grew paler and paler, as though he had suffered a devastating blow.
With Harry’s wand, Tom wrote three lines of shining letters in the air:
“Tom Marvolo Riddle.”
He flicked the wand, and the letters rearranged themselves: “I am Lord Voldemort.”
Harry appeared dumbstruck. The corners of Tom’s translucent mouth stretched wildly upwards, making him look utterly deranged.
“Do you see? That name is the one I once used in this castle — the filthy name of my Muggle father. I discovered long ago that the noble blood of Salazar Slytherin flows through my veins, passed down to me through his descendant!”
“My disgusting, filthy Muggle father abandoned my mother before I was even born, simply because he discovered that she was a witch.”
“From the moment I learned all this, I swore to myself that I would surpass Salazar Slytherin and become the greatest wizard in the world. Wizards everywhere will utter my name with the deepest reverence — Voldemort!”
“Do you see?” Dumbledore’s tone held something between reflection and a sigh. “That is the kind of person he is — a man… blinded by hatred.”
“Fate once offered him a choice, but he chose this path. I hope that, when you face a choice of your own, you will not choose to become such a person.”
“Of course I won’t, Professor,” Suer replied softly, his voice firm.
“And I believe you will not.”