Chapter 76 — The Thing That Held Him

I set the lantern on the dry ridge and crouched beside it. Beyond the divider, Harry was trying to breathe without making a sound while the basilisk’s scales dragged along the stone between us.

I threw past the lantern, aiming down the curve of the pipe. ‘Impello!’ The snake turned towards my voice, but then the pulse caught the lamp and sent it flying into the dark.

Metal struck the curved wall with a clang. Glass shattered, and the frame bounced, rolled and struck again, carrying the next sound farther from me. I pressed myself into the shallow recess beside the fork and held my breath while the basilisk hesitated.

Its tongue moved through the air above my head. Then it passed, following the clatter, and a vast length of body slid after it. I waited for the final coil before moving towards Harry’s branch.

He crouched against the grate with both hands over his mouth. I touched his shoulder, put a finger to my lips and helped him stand. We went back together, placing our feet slowly on the wet stone instead of trusting the noise to keep the snake occupied indefinitely.

At the junction, my chalk mark showed faintly in the light seeping from the chamber. Our splashed footprints led towards the opening we had used, but without the lantern every shadow could have concealed another turn. I kept one hand on the wall until we reached the mark.

Harry leaned close to ask what we would do. I told him the diary was next: Riddle had stopped me touching it, and whatever he was doing depended on keeping it near him. We needed him away from the book and Ginny.

The basilisk was still moving somewhere behind us. I could not tell whether it had followed the frame to the end of the pipe or was already turning, so I took the marked route back before another scrape could make us stop and listen again.

Riddle stood near Ginny with the diary beside his foot. He was watching the opening through which we had first fled, while the fires dwindled across the platform and their light shook on the water. I showed Harry two fingers, pointed to the wand and then to Ginny.

He nodded. I climbed onto the stone, and Riddle turned just as the first strip left my hand.

‘Expelliarmus!’ He jerked the wand aside, avoiding the pull. I threw from my other hand and called the charm again before his fingers had properly closed; this time, the wand flew free.

I reached him before he reached it. A kick against the side of his knee broke his balance, and when he caught at my robe I drove my forearm across his chest, forcing him back towards the pillar. He felt solid now, and considerably less willing to hold a conversation.

My bandaged hand struck stone. Pain flashed up my arm, but I kept his sleeve long enough to turn him away from Ginny while Harry ran past and knelt beside her. The fallen wand lay near my boot; I kicked it over the edge into shallow water.

Riddle tried to wrench free. I struck his reaching arm and shoved him down, using surprise and the second it had bought me. There was nothing clean about it, nothing like the movements I remembered practising with an older, stronger body.

Harry said my name. Ginny’s head lay against his shoulder, and he had two fingers at her throat. ‘She’s colder. I can hardly find it.’

Riddle laughed beneath my grip. I hauled him back against the pillar and asked how to stop what he was doing to her.

‘You don’t.’ He watched my face as he said it, but when I asked about the book his eyes went towards the diary. That gave me more than his answer had.

I let go and reached for it. His hand closed around my ankle, bringing me down onto one knee, and he hissed a long command which carried across the water.

The surface beside the platform rose. I saw the basilisk’s head coming through it and reached for the shield strip I had been carrying since the cavern, the one with the creased edge and intact inscription.

‘Protego!’ I threw between the jaws and my body. The barrier formed, held for less than a breath and broke under the impact, sending me sideways into the base of the pillar.

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Something gave inside my chest with a deep crack. For a moment I could not draw breath at all, and the platform seemed to tilt while Harry shouted my name. I heard him moving, then saw Riddle climbing out of the shallows with Ginny’s wand in his hand.

Riddle called the Disarming Charm. Harry’s wand flew away, and he went down beside Ginny with one arm over her as the boy advanced.

I tried to stand. Pain closed around my ribs, folding my knees beneath me, and I caught myself with my good hand before my face hit the floor. Riddle stood over Harry, beginning to tell him what whatever had saved him before could no longer do.

The pouch fastening had torn partly loose. Several preparations lay beneath me, but I could still recognise the fold I needed by touch. I drew a shallow breath, threw the strip and managed to speak its name.

‘Impello.’ The pulse struck Riddle from the side. He hit the edge of the platform and fell into the water, catching the diary with his heel as he went. It slid across the stone towards the broken edging.

Harry looked at me. I tried to tell him to take Ginny, but only a thin sound came out. Riddle rose in the water with the wand lifted and his face twisted, hissing towards the basilisk.

Its head swung back to me. I pushed against the pillar and discovered that my legs still worked, though every attempt to lift my weight drove something sharp through my side. The mouth opened, showing fangs which looked impossibly clean in the firelight.

The Sorting Hat lay a few feet away. Something gleamed inside its brim, and I reached without understanding what I expected to find.

My fingers closed around a hard grip. Metal scraped over stone as I drew a sword out of the battered folds, far longer than anything that should have fitted inside them. The basilisk struck before I could wonder what that meant.

I braced a foot against the pillar, forced myself upwards and drove the blade into the roof of its open mouth. The impact travelled through my shoulder into my ribs. I cried out as a fang pierced my left forearm and the sword went deeper, trapping it inside the convulsing head.

I could not pull the blade free. The basilisk twisted, snapping the fang with a crack I felt through my arm, and threw me clear. I hit the floor on my side, slid through scattered paper and stopped against the broken edging.

The snake thrashed across the platform once. Then its head came down with a sound that filled the chamber, throwing water from both sides of the causeway. I lay still while the heavy coils settled, waiting for another movement.

None came. The sword remained in its mouth, and when I looked down, the broken fang was still in my arm.

There was less pain than I expected. Numbness crept towards my elbow, leaving the fingers beyond the wound feeling far away. Harry tried to reach me, but Riddle’s spell knocked him back against the pillar beside Ginny.

I brought my right hand to the broken tooth. The bandage across my knuckles was soaked, though I could not tell how much blood belonged to which injury. I pulled the fang free and kept hold of it as my arm began to feel heavier.

Riddle stood between Harry and me, water dripping from his robes. He looked at the motionless basilisk, then down at the wound, and some of his composure returned.

‘Its venom will finish that,’ he said. I let my head rest against the stone, because keeping it upright had begun to seem like work I could spend on something else.

The diary lay beside my knee. Its cover was damp but intact, looking much as it had when I lifted it from Myrtle’s bathroom. Riddle turned his wand towards Harry, and I moved my knee onto the edge of the book to hold it still.

I did not know whether the venom would damage the magic inside it. I knew the point could pierce pages, and I knew where Riddle had looked when I asked how to stop him. The fang was already in my right hand.

I lifted it and stabbed down. The cover gave beneath the point, and Riddle screamed.

A line of light opened across his chest. He turned towards me with his mouth wide and the wand dropping to his side, and I pulled the fang out of the torn pages. Black liquid welled after it, spreading over my fingers and mixing with the blood.

I drove the point down again before he could raise the wand. The light widened until I could see the far wall through him. He took a step towards me, and I stabbed through the binding.

For an instant, the boy broke into bright cracks with his face still visible between them. He looked furious and astonished, as though the room had refused something he believed it owed him. Then he was gone, and Ginny’s wand fell onto the platform.

I waited for the book to answer. Nothing moved in its ruined pages, but across the stone Ginny drew a sudden, deep breath.

Harry caught her when she tried to sit up. She stared at him and then at the enormous body lying across the chamber, beginning to shake before she managed to ask about Tom.

‘Gone,’ Harry told her. ‘Oswald destroyed the diary. He killed the basilisk too.’ She looked towards me, and the relief left Harry’s face when he followed her eyes.

I was trying to get my fingers off the fang. They would not quite obey, and I had to concentrate to tell him not to let anybody touch the point. My own voice sounded as though it came from farther away than my mouth.

Harry knelt beside me. Ginny followed on unsteady legs, saw my arm and covered her mouth.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t—’ She stopped, looking between the blood and the ruined diary. I wanted to answer while I still could.

‘I know,’ I told her. Harry pressed folded cloth against the wound and said they would get me out, but the room was already darkening at its edges.

‘Fawkes.’ I waited until Harry looked at me. ‘His tears. Dumbledore said.’ The stone beneath my back and the sharp place inside my ribs were both still there, but I was finding it harder to care about either.

‘Find him, Harry.’ I tried to keep my eyes on his face while he turned to look for the bird.