Chapter 161

Chapter 161

“There is a fundamental difference between you and Tom.”

There certainly was. Suer was fundamentally different from the fellow who had practised magic until he no longer even had a proper face.

Suer, Harry, and the one-seventh fragment of Voldemort present in the square had all lived through remarkably similar experiences.

Each had lost his parents at a very young age, been raised in a Muggle household, and eventually come to study at Hogwarts…

Yet there was one crucial difference. Suer had met two parents who treated him as their own child. Even after they had a child of their own, the love they gave him had never diminished in the slightest.

Tom, by contrast, had suffered relentless bullying in the orphanage and grown to hate the world. He came to Hogwarts in pursuit of greater power, placed himself above everyone else, and ultimately turned himself into something neither human nor ghost.

And Harry? He had also lost both parents and grown up in a home where he was unwanted. But at the castle he had made friends who cared for him, and there were adults who cared for him as well. Everything Dumbledore had done was intended to teach Harry the meaning of love and responsibility.

Of course, it might still be too early to speak of responsibility.

Suer suddenly understood Dumbledore’s main reason for bringing him here.

Ethereal, mysterious music drifted in from nowhere.

High above the Chamber of Secrets, a golden-red flame suddenly appeared in the darkness. The music rose, and Suer felt the same thing Harry did: his heart beat faster and stronger in time with the song, as though some power were flowing from it through his entire body.

Fawkes descended from above with a battered old hat in his claws and landed on Harry’s shoulder. The hat dropped beside Harry’s feet.

“A shabby old hat? And a singing bird?” Tom covered his face and shrieked with laughter. “Harry Potter, do you think you can use those to fight me?”

“How utterly pathetic!”

Harry remained silent. Tom’s wild laughter stopped, and his expression turned icy.

“Let me show you what true power is.”

A long hiss issued from his open mouth.

The stone statue of Slytherin began to tremble, shedding chips of stone.

An enormous snake emerged from the statue’s mouth.

For the third time, something emerged through the damaged mouth of Slytherin’s statue.

Tom laughed madly as he commanded the basilisk crawling from the statue’s mouth. He had not noticed that it was no longer the one he knew.

Suer quietly edged behind Dumbledore. He had no idea what Snape and Dumbledore had done, but the basilisk appeared completely alive, launching frenzied attacks at Harry under Tom’s commands.

Fawkes circled overhead.

Harry clutched the Sorting Hat and rolled clumsily across the floor. A moment earlier, the enormous snake had nearly bitten him in half.

Suer watched the fierce battle from the sidelines and winced.

“Kill the boy! He’s behind you, you stupid snake!” Tom screamed with manic laughter.

The basilisk swayed its head and turned around awkwardly, moving with all the stiffness of a small child abruptly placed inside a much larger body.

Voldemort might later practise magic until his mind went wrong, but at sixteen he was by no means a fool.

He realised that something was wrong with the basilisk. Judging by his expression, he had also discovered something amiss with his own memories. His eyes suddenly widened as he stared at Harry retreating in disarray.

“Dumble–”
Suer heard Dumbledore sigh softly. The headmaster drew his wand and gave it a gentle wave.

Of course. The old bee always kept one contingency after another in reserve.

Suer stared at Tom — no, at Dumbledore’s puppet. The projection paused as though a tape had caught, then resumed “commanding the basilisk” to charge Harry.

With Dumbledore deliberately directing events and Fawkes helping from above, Harry put on the hat and drew forth a mighty sword. No, the great sword of Gryffindor. That was not quite right either…

In any case, Harry and the “basilisk” traded attacks for several rounds. Harry found an opening and drove the sword through the creature’s upper jaw. It gave a terrible hiss of pain and crashed to the ground beneath his blade.

A second-year wizard had physically dispatched a thousand-year-old basilisk with a sword. The story would sound unbelievable beyond the Chamber.

Suer certainly would not…

He had countless cutting remarks on the tip of his tongue and nowhere to direct them.

The basilisk had fallen. Harry was exhausted after his battle with it. At that moment, Fawkes picked up Tom Riddle’s diary and dropped it directly in front of Harry.

Harry neither hesitated nor stopped to think. As though he had always known what he was meant to do, he plunged the sword of Gryffindor straight into Tom Riddle’s diary.

A dreadful, sustained scream pierced the air, and torrents of ink gushed from the diary.

Tom Riddle vanished. A great hole had appeared in Tom Riddle’s diary, from which coils of black smoke rose.

The battle was over. Harry had won.

The phoenix began to sing, as though celebrating Harry’s hard-earned victory.

With a clang, Harry planted the great sword against the flagstones and struggled unsteadily to his feet. At that moment, Ginny, who had lain beside the battle throughout, gave a faint moan.

Harry left with Ginny, and silence returned to the square. Only the wreckage scattered across the ground showed that a fierce battle had just taken place.

Once the “basilisk” had fulfilled its purpose, it gave a soft hiss and slowly deflated like a punctured tyre.

Dumbledore lifted the Disillusionment Charm from himself and Suer. He stood before the statue of Slytherin, silently gazing up at it, his thoughts impossible to guess.

Suer studied the snakeskin. Inside the hole Harry had stabbed lay the thin corpse of a small black snake. From beginning to end, that was the creature which had impersonated the “basilisk”.

He wondered what Snape would think when he saw the hole in the top of the snakeskin.

Harry had never once noticed anything wrong with the basilisk. It had no fangs, no fatal gaze, and moved with stiff, wooden motions.

Anyone with even a little combat experience would have realised that something was wrong. The basilisk had practically offered its head to Harry’s sword. And apart from the opening moments — no, throughout the entire battle, Tom had held Harry’s wand without casting a single spell.

Suer refused to believe that Tom knew no Dark magic at sixteen.

The entire encounter had been riddled with flaws and would not stand up to the slightest scrutiny.

But that no longer mattered. Dumbledore, the hand behind the performance, had obtained the result he wanted.

“We should go,” Dumbledore said softly. “Severus will come and clean this place later.”